The Pleasure of Memory (74 page)

He rose up in his stirrups, shading his eyes as his horse loped along beneath him. There it was, not a half mile ahead, erupting from the grass of that low hill like a great rusting canker. It was the same thrill of seeing a candle in the window of home at the end of a terrible march. Unable to suppress his impatience any longer, he urged Farnot into a gallop.

Minutes later, his horse danced to a halt before the stone rim, snorting her excitement amid a flurry of dirt and clods of grass. Jhom landed on his feet before she’d even stopped, and was already unbuckling the saddle. There was no way to know how long he’d be underground. Farnot needed the freedom to run and feed while he was preoccupied below.

He dropped the saddle into the grass on the shady side of the stone rim. Farnot drew in a deep breath and snorted in relief, shaking the sweat from her withers as she wandered a few feet off to munch on the grainy heads of grass. Jhom only wished he had time to brush the frothy sweat from her. Instead, he hugged her neck, wished her the gods’ speed, and then turned to the hatch.

The heat radiating from the iron was impressive. When the summer sun heated that much iron, a man could fry meat on it. He slipped off his wide leather hat and wrapped it carefully around the nearest ring.

The hatch door creaked woefully as he labored to open it. Raising a two-inch plate of iron was no small feat, not even for a Baeldon. Once he got it upright, he wanted nothing more than to simply release it and let it drop the remaining distance, but he knew the resulting clang would act as a beacon to any nosy ears or horns in the area. Instead, he got into position behind it, braced himself, and used his great legs to ease it the rest of the way down.

Then he slapped his hat back on and gave the surrounding plains one last scan. The grass was empty for as far as he could see. In fact, there seemed to be no life at all out here with the exception of one particularly large buzzard drifting lazily on the thermals a few miles off to the west.

Satisfied, he lifted his saddle and heaved it across his shoulder. A moment later, he was descending into the abyss as the brilliant blue half-circle to the outer world slowly shrank above him.

∞

“We’re getting woefully low on food,” Chance said as he packed the last few bits of food into the pack.

Beam sat with his back to a wall, his torch burning on the ground beside him. He was cleaning his nails with the tip of his knife. “Well,” he said without looking up, “There’s only a half dozen more miles to the exit. So what’s the worry? We can go topside long enough to scavenge, right?”

“We don’t know what waits for us topside.”

Beam shrugged and continued his grooming.

“Well, you seemed fairly unconcerned about—”

“Are you going to start?” Beam immediately regretted the words. They came out harder than he’d meant. As usual.

The mage watched him for a few beats, and then turned back to his work. “Forgive me,” he said as he tied the hollow pack’s straps, “Didn’t mean to interrupt your work.”

Beam silently slapped himself. It seemed like every time he opened his stinking mouth, he caused the man some kind of offense. If he had any scruples, he’d cut out his own damned tongue.

Chance sat back against the wall beneath the sarcophagus of a remarkably ugly Baeldon. The mage looked across the corridor at Beam and proffered a weak grin. “Apologies,” he said too quietly, “I’m just overtired.”

The man’s face was so drawn and pathetic that Beam felt a kick of shame just looking at it. He turned back to his knife and thumbed the edge of it. He could sense Brother Dael’s ghost standing over him shaking his head in that sad way he did whenever Beam disappointed him in his youth. It was an act he’d experienced with shameless regularity.

He glanced over at Koonta who stood with her back to them a dozen yards down the hall. Her bare, muscular arms glistened green in the unnatural torchlight. She was listening for the taer-cael of their predators. As she did, she thought about the three Vaemyn he’d seen in his vision of her memories. Her most pressing worry was for the big one, the one called Maw or Mawby.

He leaned his head back against the marble and pressed his palms into his eyes and tried to drive her thoughts from his mind. It wasn’t like before when he had to force his way in. Now her thoughts were coming to him like unguarded whispers from across a thin wall, unsolicited and unwanted. He could hear Chance’s thoughts as well, though it was somehow easier to filter his.

“Are you all right?”

He dropped his hands to his lap and looked over at Chance. “Sure,” he said with a forced grin, “I’m just dandy.”

“Blood of the gods, you’re a lousy liar.”

Beam sighed. “Sit with me for a minute, will you?” he said, “I need to talk to someone.”

Chance stared off into the awaiting darkness. “The hatch is close,” he said, “I know you want fresh air. Perhaps we should continue—”

“No!” Beam said, exactly as hard as he meant, “Sit with me. Please.”

The mage watched him for a beat, and then shrugged. He grabbed the pack and climbed stiffly to his feet. He crossed over to Beam and dropped beneath the boots of another dead Baeldon. He set the sagging pack between them.

Beam checked to see that Koonta remained at her post, then leaned closer to Chance and whispered carefully, “I’m hearing things.”

“Hearing things?” Chance repeated, “How do you mean, hearing things?”

“I mean I’m hearing things. I’m…I’m hearing...”

He shrugged and shut his mouth and ran his hand along his newly shaven jaw. He didn’t know how to explain it. Trying to say it out loud only made him wonder for the thousandth time if he’d gone mad.

Chance put a hand on his forearm. “Just say it, Beam. You’ll never have a safer audience than with me.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“It’s exactly that easy. Just start talking. I’m pretty sure you’ve got enough experience to pull it off.”

Beam again looked over at the Vaemyd, who didn’t appear to have moved a muscle. “All right,” he said as he watched her, “I’ll just start.”

“Well, that’s—”

“She thinks the creatures are very close. She’s confident they’ll make a move soon.”

“What?”

“She’s also thinking about three men. She’s most worried about a warrior named Mawby. He was the big Vaemyn, the one back at the hatch. She worries that he’s dead. She worries more that it was her brother who killed him.”

Chance sat forward and looked at him. Some of the wear had faded from his face, displaced by the fresher look of curiosity. “What are you saying exactly?” he asked.

Beam anchored himself onto Koonta, held her tightly with his gaze. “She thinks I’m an ass,” he said, “Yet she’s strangely fascinated by me. She thinks I may have an answer she’s looking for, an answer she’s sought for a long time.” He looked at Chance. “Do you want to know what that question is?”

Chance stared at him a moment, and then softly shrugged. “I expect she wonders if her people follow false gods.”

“Yes,” Beam said, “We’re her greatest fear. You and I represent the absolute worst case for her, that we’re right.”

Chance said nothing, but only waited patiently. Beam knew he’d wait all night.

He looked back at Koonta again. “She’s suffered great losses,” he said, “A lover named Pa’ana. A brother named Maeryc. It’s tearing her apart, not that she’d ever show it, not to us anyway. But it’s become nearly more than she can bear.”

“Keep going,” Chance whispered.

Beam dropped his head to his chest, dragged his hair back, and tried to keep breathing. “You said I was changing,” he whispered, “But you have no idea. It’s the goddamned Blood Caeyl. It’s screwing with my mind.”

“If the lore about the caeyl is true,” Chance said gently, “Your old life’s gone. You’ll never be what you were. You’re something new now, something different.”

“Something different,” Beam whispered, “Well, that’s reassuring.”

“I’m afraid it’s not so much about the Blood Caeyl, either,” Chance said, “As I’ve read it, the lore is directed more toward the bearers than the amulet. It’s the men holding the blades that are at the heart of the legends.”

“Bearer,” Beam whispered, “Singular, not bearers. I told you, there’s only one Caeyllth Blade.”

Chance seemed to shrink at that, again leaving Beam regretting having opened his mouth. The man was already grief-wracked enough. It didn’t help to keep waving the flags of his failures in his face, and the man considered his historical misconstructions failures.

Beam threw a hand on Chance’s forearm and squeezed it. “Look, it’s not your fault that you were given bullshit all your life and were told it was history,” he said, “Stop beating yourself up. The heart of what you know is still valid.”

“I know,” Chance whispered, “I mean, I understand. It doesn’t matter. Please…go on.”

Beam dropped his head back against the marble and rocked the kinks from his neck. “Be’ahm Ambix Gry’ar,” he said with a laugh that didn’t even convince him, “How did that name ever get mixed in the same sentence as legend? It’s ludicrous.”

“Is it?”

Beam thought about the dream warrior and wondered how to begin. It wasn’t going to be anything like easy to explain this. “The bloody dreams,” he said for lack of a better place to start.

Chance waited.

“Every night it’s the same. Same place, same conversations. And every night I meet...”

“A mage?” Chance offered.

“I don’t know,” Beam said, “Maybe. He’s a sav—” The words dried in his mouth. It was wrong; he didn’t see those people that way now. He’d never see them that way again.

“He’s a Vaemyn,” Chance finished for him.

“Yeah. A Vaemyn. A warrior. Maybe a mage. Probably a mage.”

Definitely a mage. He wasn’t sure why he was so hesitant to say so.

“What happens in the dream?” Chance pressed.

Beam caught the gaze of another Baeldon glaring down at him from across the corridor. The eyes were at once both blind and all knowing. He swerved his attention away from it. There was too much grief in there; he had enough of his own.

“The dream mage,” he said, looking down at his boots, “Tells me it’s not a dream at all. He says it’s a memory. He tells me I’m learning things.”

“Learning?”

Beam shook his head. “No,” he said carefully, “No, that’s not right. Not learning. He says I’m remembering.”

“Remembering?”

“Damn me, I know. It doesn’t make any sense to me, either.”

“It makes perfect sense.”

“I…I
know
things now. I hear things. Every time I wake up, I feel different. It’s not just that the damned light heals me every night. It’s more complicated than that. Every time I wake up, I feel more…I don’t know. Complete, I guess.”

The white water of Chance’s thoughts suddenly coursed too close to his mind. He could hear the fury of the man’s anger and fears and hopes. Beam felt like he was falling into a deep pit, and he didn’t know if he’d hit the merciless rocks at the bottom or simply drop out the other side.

“Can you hear
me
?” Chance whispered to him, “Right now? Do you hear my thoughts?”

Beam considered the question. Telling the man he could hear his thoughts just felt too personal, too defiling. Instead, he looked over at the still form of Koonta.

“Not like her,” he said, “I can hear her words. I can see the faces of her memories. I can feel her pain, her anger. I have to fight to stay out of her head. And yet, the twisted truth is that every time I touch her mind, I feel more normal.” He dropped his head and sighed. “Maybe what that dream warrior says is true. Maybe they are memories.”

“You’ve been through a lot,” Chance said, “You deserve to go easy on yourself.”

The man’s words were stated so simply, so matter-of-factly, they felt like a rescue, like a hand reached down to a man dangling from a rafter. He realized that telling his story out loud felt like freedom, though he understood the price was high. In admitting the reality of the caeyl’s effects to Chance, he was admitting them to himself. There could be no more denial after this. The skeptic may not be dead, but he was in one hell of a coma.

“Beam, there’s something I have to ask you.”

Beam’s stomach knotted. Chance had selected his words a mite too carefully, as if he were picking his way across the rocks littering a coarse stream. He pushed himself back against the marble and braced himself. “Go ahead,” he whispered.

“Do you realize that you’ve been telling me this in Vaemysh?”

Another thunderbolt! Vaemysh!
You’ve been telling me this in Vaemysh!
It wasn’t possible! He suddenly wanted to cry. Or scream. Or maybe just slap someone.

“I think the dream warrior’s right,” Chance said quickly, “The Blood Caeyl seems to be awakening a kind of collective memory, perhaps the remnants of your Vaemysh ancestry.”

Beam struggled to breathe. He was suddenly freezing, but he was determined to stay focused. He wouldn’t submit to his fears, not anymore. They’d only defeat him. It was time to face this.

“It’s not unprecedented,” Chance said, “The order—”

“He said pain defines my life.”

Chance stopped. Beam could feel his fear. He could feel the cold slicing through his bones. He heard the question before Chance could put it into form.

“Praven Vaenfyl,” Beam said, “The dream warrior. He said my pain defines me. He said my pain makes me who I am. He also said that strength comes of suffering. He said that pain should not always be avoided. When I say it out loud it sounds even more ridiculous than in the dream.”

“Suffering?” Chance asked, “I don’t understand. Physical or emotional?”

Beam was standing now. He was facing the emptiness awaiting them. “You have to walk through the dark tunnel to arrive in the light,” he heard himself tell Chance, “That’s what he told me. He said when I do, I’ll be every man I ever was. He said I’ll be a god.”

Chance was standing beside him. Beam could feel the man’s terror. Chance was suddenly afraid of him, and knowing that fact left him feeling dirty. “Just say it, Chance,” he whispered, “Damn me, we don’t have any secrets now.”