Vault Of Heaven 01 - The Unremembered (34 page)

“Can we start a fire?” he asked. “It’s getting cold.”

Wendra considered the risk, but heard the fear behind his request. “Gather some wood, but quietly. And don’t stray too far from the mouth of the cave.”

“Won’t have to, there’s plenty just outside.”

Penit left again on his errand. Wendra retrieved a bag filled with dried meats and cheese, and another with Sedagin flatbread that she’d saved from the previous night’s feast. Thoughts of the Sedagin left her dejected. They certainly would have come to their defense had they been close at hand. Instead, here she lay, far below them, holed up in the bedrock of their High Plain and bleeding out her life’s blood. Suddenly, her thoughts turned to her lost child, and to the Bar’dyn who had come into her home and taken it from her, and who had pushed them up the road to Myrr, into the wilds and finally into the high home of the Sedagin. Then, upon leaving, they had passed through these mists. Anger brought bile to the back of her throat, and she tasted the hot acid of her stomach. Tears of frustration and loss shook her, but she let them fall without a sound, for fear of being heard by the boy and worrying him.

Penit returned with an armload of wood and laid it on the cave floor beside her. She took a flint and handed it to the boy, who readily built a fire. His face, streaked with dirt and tears, glowed in the orange glare of the flames with a thankful smile that warmed Wendra’s heart. They ate in silence, building meals of the bread, meat, and cheese. Penit fetched the waterskin, and they both drank deeply before settling in and tending the fire.

Sometime later, Wendra decided to have a look outside, but her leg had grown stiff and numb and did not respond to her attempts to use it. She sat again and looked at Penit, who appeared lost in thought and somehow content here in the cave despite the events that had brought them here. She thought she could see all the terrible circumstances and nightmarish beings disappearing from his consciousness as he put himself in the present moment, fed and warm and tending a healthy fire. She envied him this, as she watched him live so contentedly even for a few moments without concern for tomorrow. Unwittingly, she smiled with the same expression that she’d seen on Balatin’s face so often: wonder, love, admiration. She’d assumed her father lived a contented and happy life. It pained her now to realize that these moments were, for parents, but islands in a river current. But it made her glad as well that, though she hadn’t known it, her life had offered him some respite from the hardships a parent knows.

“When do we go find the others?” Penit said, interrupting Wendra’s reverie.

She looked at Penit with increasing amazement and wondered if life on the wagon beds had instilled such persistence and courage in him. “Tomorrow. My leg is stiff and I have the sweats. After I sleep, and it’s light, we can search for them. They may well find us; Mira is an adept tracker.”

“Good,” Penit replied.

Wendra studied the boy’s face, wondering if she dared jeopardize the feeling of safety he seemed to have.
Not tonight. Tomorrow. When the greater light is firmly over our heads, I will ask him what the mists showed him.
So she sat with him in the light of the fire. They steadily fed the flames and remarked softly about unimportant things, the way she and Balatin and Tahn had done in the years before. Sometime later in the evening, Wendra began to hum softly, her dulcet tones a perfect counterpoint to the crackle of the fire and the low hum of wood being consumed by flame. Penit watched her, grinning. Wendra returned the smile, spontaneously creating a soothing, lilting melody. Penit crawled closer and rested his head on her lap. Long before the fire had burned to coals, Wendra followed the boy into sleep.

*   *   *

She woke to the sound of wood being laid for a fire. Opening her eyes, Wendra saw Penit fussing over kindling and flint. Beyond the cave entrance, the day had already grown strong in the sky. Her attention returned to Penit, who began quietly singing to himself, though his efforts were not so practiced and squeaked in his adolsecent throat. Wendra sat up, several drops of sweat falling from her nose and forehead. The fever was worse. She had lost a great deal of blood. Even without standing she knew her leg would be of little use to her.

Propping herself up, she wiped her face and sat a moment as Penit finished relighting the fire. The boy had stripped a green switch and sharpened one end, threading several pieces of dried meat onto it for their endfast. He sat with his knees up close to his chest, heating the meat over the fire. Wendra smiled weakly through her fever at his innocence. What she must ask of him was too much. At what cost would it come for a boy who believed all the old stories enough to stand up to a league captain in his own defense to play the tales? But she knew she must ask. Merely propping herself up had exhausted all her energy; she couldn’t even reach the entrance to the cave without help, and Penit could not carry her. He certainly couldn’t help her reach Recityv.

“Penit, I need your help.”

“Sure. What can I do?” He turned over the roasting meat and looked at her.

“I cannot stand.” Wendra swallowed hard to keep her emotions from welling up. “I will need help if I am to make it to Recityv. I need you to find that help for me.” She paused, looking into the boy’s large blue eyes. “Can you do that for me?”

The boy did not hesitate. “I will.” Then he surprised Wendra. “It was hard for you to ask me that, wasn’t it?” He put his meat down on the saddlebag. “I am young, and I have been without parents for as long as I can remember. And,” he said, hesitating, “I don’t want to meet the Bar’dyn again.” He smiled nervously. “But I can do it. I can follow the stream. Deleira always said water leads to people. He was the troupe leader.”

“You must be careful. Even if the Bar’dyn are gone, a child … a young man alone is not safe in the world of men.”

Penit smirked knowingly. “I’ve seen my share of scalawags. They’re always close to the wagon pot or spinning a tale to see your pocket stitching.” His smile faded and he looked distantly into the fire. “I will be careful. I don’t want to see any more of the darkness in the clouds.”

He offered no explanation, and Wendra chose to hold her questions for another time. “You’ll be all right, Penit.” Her voice broke with emotion. She wiped her brow and eyes with the hem of her cloak.

“You, too,” the boy said.

Penit gathered a great stack of wood for her, and refilled the waterskin. He took four strips of meat and a slice of cheese and put the rest in the saddlebag. When he finished, he knelt beside her.

“You’re sick because of me, because you came after me and got hurt. I won’t fail. I will come back.”

Wendra put her arms around him and kissed his cheek. “Go safely, Penit.”

Then he rose and walked to the mouth of the cave, where he stopped and looked back. “I lied before. I did care about the pageant wagon, the troupe. And I miss them.” He stopped, reflecting. “But I had to get away. I saw what happens after a life on the boards.”

He left off there, and jogged from the cave. She heard him mount Ildico and pass briefly across the mouth of the cave, heading east. “And come back to me again, son,” she said to herself and lay her head back down on the cool loam of the cavern floor.

*   *   *

Wendra drifted in and out of consciousness. Too weak to even lift herself up, she lay on the ground inside her cave and watched the last dances of fire-shadow on the uneven surface of the rocky ceiling. Fever sweat drenched her back, and her lips were dry and cracked from panting and dehydration. The food Penit had left was beyond her reach, but the thought of it nauseated her anyway, so she gave up on eating.

As the fire died, the cave grew quiet and cold. Dim light shone from the entrance as the day came fast to a close. Chills shook her violently, alternating with hot waves of fever. She managed to pull her blanket up over her shoulders and listen to the sound of her own heart in her ears.

Perhaps the Sheason or the Far would find her before Penit could return with help. But she had been here more than a day. If they hadn’t come to her yet, they had likely turned east toward Recityv.

When Penit tore from her grasp in the mists, she had reacted without thinking, chasing him, hoping to catch him before whatever darkness groaned in the clouds could destroy him. Her thoughts grew darker still. She would probably have failed if Mira had not come after her. The Bar’dyn had put its sharp, powerful nails into her and she had crawled into this large tomb to die.

Wendra pushed back the morbid thoughts. There was still hope. Hope that she would live … a hope her own child had lost at the hands of the same brutal beasts. Her throat tightened with weak anger at the thought of what they had cost her: her home, her child, and now possibly her life. Wendra started to cough from the thick emotion. The convulsions from the coughing tore at the wound in her hip that was trying to heal.

Lying on her back, the coughing worsened, each fit reopening her wound. She summoned all her strength and rolled onto her side to try and calm the spasms. Her coughs now stirred the fire ash into small clouds that settled and clung to her sweat-slickened face. The smell of spent alder and soot nauseated her, but the wracking convulsions stopped, and she breathed easier. Lying still, Wendra felt an uncomfortable lump protruding into her side. She reached into the folds of her cloak and removed the box she had brought with her from beneath her bed back home.

Carefully, she placed the songbox beside her head. A wan smile touched her lips at the memories the box’s cedar smell evoked, and the gulf that seemed to separate her from her life when the box had been so important. Then her thoughts turned bitter, and she considered how much better this token might serve as wood for her fire than to remind her of what was no more. Salty tears stung her eyes and ran over her nose and cheeks. She liked the feel of them and did not wipe them away, tasting them as they ran onto her lips.

The songbox reminded her of home, the Hollows. The thought of it raised the question to her mind again: Why had the Sheason brought her? Was she supposed to support Tahn? Would she have been in danger if she’d remained behind? Something told her there was more to it than simply keeping siblings together. But no matter how she concentrated or reasoned, she could find no good answer. And now she was alone; left to try to make it to Rectiyv with only the help of a boy.

Wendra fingered open the box’s clasp and lifted its lid. Softly, its melody began, small gears turning the roll inside, which plucked a tune through the tiny tone prongs. The delicate song was too soft to ring as high as the cave’s ceiling, but it fell on the fire pit, the cavern floor around her, and her own tired ears like a memory, and she closed her eyes. The gentle notes called out their tune like a wounded bird, and Wendra felt herself falling into a fevered sleep.

Suddenly, Wendra had the feeling that she was not alone. Opening her eyes, she saw seated across from her a kindly looking man in a brilliant white robe. Between them, the fire had been rekindled. Distantly, like wind causing chimes to jangle, she could hear the melody of her box.

A fever vision?

Maybe. But despite not feeling any immediate fear, she sensed that her life had just irrevocably changed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The Rushing of Je’holta

Braethen lay on the ground staring up through the great hole in the mist. His chest still heaved from exertion. He clutched in his left hand the sword Vendanj had given him. The Sheason remained still, his eyes shut, one hand to his chest, the other extended. Not far from either of them, the ashy heap that had been the Maere still smoked in the bright shaft of light that broke through the gloom. Sometime later, the Sheason opened his eyes.

The sound of hurried footsteps could be heard in the mist, vague sounds that were retreating from him. The cries and moans deep within the fog bank slowly faded, leaving the sodalist and the Sheason in a pervasive silence. The hole torn in the mist began slowly to close, but for several moments the two sat in the sunlight, catching their breath.

“Do we wait, or do we continue on?” Braethen asked.

“The Maere likely means Bar’dyn are close by,” Vendanj said. “I believe I heard their heavy strides chasing the others when the line broke. The Quietgiven will feel the death of the Maere, gather quickly, and come for us. We will wait for Mira to return, then we will try to find Tahn and the rest.”

“What of the sounds in the mists?”

“Always a threat, sodalist, but they are no longer alive in the flesh. The mist gives them shape to the eye: their influence is in the mind. Their voices belong to souls lost while serving the One. They cry from beyond death, their hollow voices audible within Je’holta, like corrupted remembrance.”

“You said the Bar’dyn were here in the mist,” Braethen said. “Are they not affected by it?”

“Not as you or I. The Bar’dyn and other lost races that serve the Artificer no longer feel hope. Abandonment is what they know, and so the taint of Male’Siriptus has no hold over them. It is said that all the Bourne is Je’holta. For them,” the Sheason said mournfully, “it is like home.”

The Sheason’s words drew Braethen’s thoughts back to the black world that had enveloped him as he’d taken the sword he now held. In stark contrast, the brightness of the sun above him made his eyes water, but he did not turn away. He decided it was some kind of test.