The Pleasure of Memory (44 page)

“Damn me, yes! Everything’s funny. This whole muddled mess I’ve found myself in the middle of is funny.”

“Do tell.”

Beam dug the pouch out from the neck of his tunic. “Have you ever spent time among ravers, Brother? Ever rubbed elbows with lunatics?”

“Not until now,” Chance said.

“Oh, that’s funny,” Beam said back, “Hilarious. You’re a real hoot.”

“I suppose I’m just trying to keep up,” Chance replied.

Beam brushed it off. The man had a point. But, rather than pursuing it, he continued his story. “The thing about ravers is there are basically two camps,” he said instead.

“Is that right?”

“That’s right. You’ve got the gigglers and you’ve got the screamers.”

“Gigglers and screamers.”

“Screamers are afraid of everything. They’re afraid of living and they’re afraid of dying, which means they never win. They never take risks, they never learn, they never experience anything more than those mundane events they simply can’t avoid. Their hell is never-ending. Kind of like this walk.”

Chance nodded. “And the gigglers?”

“Complete opposites. Gigglers aren’t afraid of anything. They’ll try anything that interests them. Hell, some of them will eat anything they can fit in their mouths, vegetable or mineral, natural or manufactured, anything. And mad or not, they thoroughly enjoy themselves. It makes them reckless, though. They die young.”

“I understand. You’re a giggler.”

“Brother,” Beam said as he poured the stone from his pouch to his sand-speckled palm, “I have a tendency for both, just depends on my mood and the company. However, I’ve decided the gigglers have the best of it. They’re not afraid of the things they don’t understand. Their truth is always in the moment. Sure, they risk premature death, but they’re completely alive in the meantime. And anyway, I sure as hell don’t want to be a screamer.” He held the stone out to Chance.

“It’s beautiful,” Chance whispered.

“Go ahead. Pick it up.”

Chance looked up at him, and as he did, Beam wondered if that was fear he saw in those dark eyes. If so, it was the first time he’d witnessed it since they’d been forced into this fateful party. Then the man gingerly picked up the eye and cupped it in his hands.

“All caeyls,” Chance said as he studied it through his fingers, “Contain the primal spark of their energy when they’re idle, and glow brilliantly when that energy’s being channeled via the caeylsphere. And this one…my goodness. This one’s practically alive. In fact, it’s even getting brighter as I look at it. It’s as if it knows I’m here considering it. This is the rarest of energies, the life energy of a Blood Caeyl.”

Beam could see the glow of the light through the flesh of the man’s hands. As he watched, the intensity grew until spikes of red light stabbed out from between his fingers, and with that change, he suffered a surge of panic.

“Oh, no,” he whispered. He pulled Chance’s hands open. The red light splattered the darkness.

Chance’s astonished face was awash in a crimson glow. “Oh, my lords,” he whispered, “It’s wondrous. It’s—”

“It’s terrible!” Beam interrupted, “See, the thing is…it’s not usually a good thing when the red light flows.”

Chance looked up at him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, it’s like a warning. It means something’s afoot.”

“Afoot?”

Beam turned and held his torch out into the gloom trailing them, but the light did nothing to part the deeper darkness. At times like this, he resented the stupid decision made by a youthful version of himself; he wished he still had his horns.

A mournful howl suddenly erupted from the gloom behind them.

Chance handed the stone off to Beam and held his own torch out toward the night. He slipped closer to Beam and whispered, “Our old friend’s getting closer. I think the light is—”

A second wail resounded, this one emanating from farther back than the first.

“Damn me,” Beam whispered, “Is that another one?”

“It’s the caeyl light,” Chance whispered back, “I told you it attracts predators.”

Beam just looked at him. “You said it attracts
creatures
. You never said it attracts predators specifically.”

“I thought you understood that. Why would I care if anything else was attracted to the light?”

Beam suddenly wanted to scream. “You know, you do that a lot,” he said as harshly as a whisper would allow, “Spill half the truth, and keep the rest to yourself.”

“Do I?”

“Damn me, yes! And it’s not getting any less annoying.” Beam replaced the stone and tucked the pouch back into his shirt.

“Well, I’ve never noticed.”

“We can debate it later,” Beam said, “We ought to get moving.”

Chance pointed at Beam’s hip. “Do you have anything to cover that with?”

Beam glanced down at his sword. The eye in the pommel was on fire. He slapped a hand over it. “That’ll have to do for now. If I need it in a hurry, I don’t want to have to fumble around unwrapping it before I draw the damned thing.”

Chance again held his torch out toward the darkness, and again it did nothing to part the shadows.

“What the hell is that thing anyway?” Beam asked as he watched.

“I’m not sure.”

Beam heard the last gasp of his dying mood. He turned to Chance. “I’ve been down here a hundred times, you said. It’s perfectly safe, you said. But we’re not in the tunnels ten minutes before something behind us starts bellowing like a banshee.”

“There’s no such thing as banshees.”

“That’s not the point!”

Another mournful bawl erupted. Before the memory of it faded into echoes, the second creature responded from farther back in the tunnels.

“They’re communicating,” Beam whispered as he peered toward the sounds, “How many more do you think there can be, Chance? Huh? Care to throw down a guess? How many?”

“I don’t believe I can say.”

Beam jabbed a finger into his chest. “Oh, that’s right! You don’t even know what they are, let along how many!”

“I don’t think—”

“That’s your first good idea in days. Don’t think. I’ll do the thinking from now on.”

With that, Beam turned and began a vigorous march in the opposite direction from the howls.

XXI

THE HACK

OONTA’AR LED MAWBY THROUGH THE DARK OF THE FOREST.

It was still before moonrise, but the smear of Mengrae’s Blade blazed across the cloudless midnight sky like the flames of Calina. Even without the use of taer-cael, it was bright enough to walk through the shadows of night without having to feel their way.

They walked carefully, expertly, staggering their steps in a coordinated effort to imitate the taer-cael of a foraging bear. As usual, the lightness of foot possessed by her old friend amazed her. For a man of his size, he moved like the wind.

She signaled him to stop, then stooped low to the ground and listened. The taer-cael was still distant, and the boggy ground made the images fuzzy, the motion of their prey hard to read. Still, she harbored no doubts about what lay ahead. She fingered a coded message back at Mawby. Their prey was directly in front of them, no more than six hundred feet.

It took them nearly as long to creep those final yards as it had to cross the previous miles from the hatch. They moved slowly, carefully, slinking through the underbrush with deliberate irregularity. She slipped into a sumac thicket and crawled forward, stopping behind the rotting carcass of a fallen beech. Mawby followed suit. Together they peered over the edge of the mossy trunk.

That they’d managed to creep within fifty yards of Maeryc spoke volumes about her brother’s state of mind. A warrior with his seasoning would always be on guard, always alert and listening. Despite their best efforts at evasion, despite even the sloppy transmission traits of the bog, he should’ve sensed them coming long ago.

He was alone out there in the darkness, a ghostly image pacing in the starlight before the silent expanse of an inky pond. It was too quiet. The frogs and crickets had fallen mute. Even the breeze had died.

Throughout the day, she’d struggled with her shame. Though she knew it’d be irresponsible not to follow up on Mawby’s suspicions, she hated herself for even considering them. It’d been a long day of anger and guilt, suspicion and self-doubt, and yet, in the end, she had to know the truth. She owed it to her warriors even above her people. She owed it to Mawby, who she trusted above anyone else. He wasn’t one to suffer unsubstantiated fits of suspicion. If there were a hack in the company, he would know. So, when Maeryc slipped off in the dead of night without so much as a sword or knife, she and Mawby were ready.

Now, the wretched truth was about to be revealed. As she watched her brother pacing before the dark pond, muttering to himself and flailing his arms about so murderously, she knew her real worries had only begun. She leaned into to the furry bark until her oteuryns were nearly touching it, and focused her sight, hearing, and taer-cael into a single effort.

Her brother’s words grew louder and more agitated whenever he moved closer to the water. “Tonight!” he said, his voice coarse and rough with fatigue, “Why do you keep asking me? I’ll go down in after them myself if I have to. Do you hear me? I’m not afraid of the goddamned tunnels, if that’s what worries you so.”

The silence that followed seemed eternal. Maeryc stood frozen, his gaze locked on the dark pond, his arms hanging limply as if waiting for something.

“I know,” he said suddenly, “I know what to—”

Silence.

Then, “Why are you pushing me? I’ve already sworn I will! I told you I’ll go after them! The caeyl mage doesn’t frighten me! They’re not—”

Silence.

Mawby flicked a finger message to Koonta. She looked up into his mud-camouflaged face. She studied the white flames of his eyes, and despaired what they both knew to be the truth. Maeryc wasn’t simply irrational. He wasn’t just talking to himself at the edge of a pond in the middle of a loveless night. He was communicating with someone. This was a conversation.

“No!” Maeryc suddenly yelled at the water, “No! No! No!”

Koonta flinched. The words echoed off into the forest, and each reverberation struck her like a kick.

“No!” he yelled again, “I told you I’ll do anything! I’ll go in after them! I’ll kill the mage! I’ll get the stone for you, I swear it! But I won’t do that! I won’t! I won’t do
that
!”

She could see that he was shaking even from this distance. He was clawing manically at his hair. She wanted to run to him, to pull him away from the horror of what he must be experiencing, but she couldn’t. It would mean revealing what they knew, and such was the state of the world now that secrets were the only power they had.

Maeryc slowly turned toward them, his long fingers locked to his skull as if holding it together. The moon broke the crest of the trees off to his left. Half his gaunt face simmered skullishly in the milky light, the other half was lost to the shadows. He was looking directly at them. His hands drifted slowly away from his head. For just an instant, she was sure they’d been found out, that he’d sensed their presence.

Then Maeryc released a cry that was as visceral and raw as the sound of a cornered animal. “Because she’s my sister!” he shouted as he again ripped at his hair, “I won’t do it! You damned well better here me! You can’t force me to do that! You’ll have to kill me first! You hear me? Do you?”

Koonta’s stomach wrenched angrily. She dug her fingers into the bark and willed her anguish back into the forbidden box. Not now, she told herself, you cannot submit now.

Maeryc beat his fists against his thighs. “She’s my sister! She has nothing to do with this! You’ll never make me do it! You’ll never make me! Never…never…” The words choked into silence. He fell to his hands and knees in the mud and vomited violently. Between the angry wretches, he slapped the earth and sobbed.

Koonta sensed Mawby looking at her and knew exactly what he was thinking. This was no ordinary hack. Maeryc was still at least partially in there, whether by the demon’s intent or by the power of Maeryc’s resistance. Either way, she didn’t know if his presence there was a blessing or a horrible curse.

The longer she watched, the more hopeless she felt. She dug her fingers deeper into the log’s lush moss as she struggled to hold on. This was her brother. She would not cry. Not now. She wouldn’t yield to that weakness.

Maeryc crawled away from them, pawing his way through the mud back to the edge of the pond where he fell to his belly and splashed water on his face. “I will,” he sputtered. He dragged the water back over his short hair, and then punched the mud. “Ay’a! Ay’a! Ay’a! As soon as we get it, I will! I don’t care about the others! I’ll get it for you, I swear it. I…I swear it.” He was crying now, sobbing so pathetically his shoulders heaved for the effort.

Koonta watched him in utter horror. She couldn’t remember him ever looking so weak, so out of control. It was the most wretched sight she’d ever had to witness, and knowing there wasn’t a damned thing she could do about it only made it worse. No matter how deeply she loved him, she could not intervene. The wyrlaerd could not be made to know that they were aware.