Bells of the Kingdom (Children of the Desert Book 3) (14 page)

How did I get here? Where is here? How did I escape?

Who am I?

The name
Kolan
held no meaning. It was an abstraction, a tag to align himself with something he no longer remembered. It meant no more than
chair
or
foot.

The smells of honeysuckle and lilac drifted past him. Sometimes rain thrummed on the simple, slanted roof. Other times, sunlight poured through wide, low windows, bathing him in the munificence of Payti’s love.

A tremendous cracking sound, an unearthly scream, a shattering earth tremor: he fell, sprawling over the dirty floor, and a section of the wall where he had been standing simply collapsed, caving into a cascade of rubble that led into a new darkness.

Fresh air tumbled through that hole like a blow against his skin. He curled up in a corner as far from the collapse as he could get, shivering, whimpering, crying in utter terror of this new threat. It had to be a threat. There was nothing good in the world, nothing safe. Every attempt at escape had been a manipulated game that ended with screams. His. Hers. Theirs. He’d stopped trying, long ago. How long? Time didn’t exist, in the dark. Nothing existed except the screams and the knowledge that he had always been here and always would be.

After a long, long, terribly long silence, he stopped shivering. After another stretch of nothingness, the faintest glimmer of light formed in the breach: sunlight, creeping down into the hellish pit. He stayed still, watching that painful glimmer until it faded away.

Then he began to crawl forward, until grit and dirt and chunks of stone cut his hands and knees and elbows. The sides of the opening tore at his shoulders. His toes shredded against sharp edges.

Kolan drew in a long, long breath and let it out, flexing his toes slowly. The pain was gone. His flesh had healed. The darkness was gone. Sunlight bathed him. The silence was gone. Voices murmured softly nearby.

He listened, and their words slowly began to make sense, a scattering of clarity against a background of indecipherable mumbles.

“Hasn’t moved... days.”

“Tried a book... didn’t even... it.”

“I don’t think he’ll ever... out... damage.”

“We have to... trying... what... have there?”

The words descended back into mumbles as Kolan let go of focus; the effort had already exhausted him. He sat in his simple chair, sunlight warming his face, chest, and lap, and rested.

The scent of apples and lemons wafted past. Someone bent over him.

“Opal,” a voice said. It was a male voice, a kind voice, one that matched the comforting smells. “Opal, I have something for you. Look—marbles. Aren’t they lovely?”

Gentle fingers opened up one of Kolan’s hands. Several slick, cool globes of glass pressed against his palm. The man folded Kolan’s hand around the toys.

Marbles.

My marbles.

Glass marbles in a bag, always by my side. Then gone. Stolen. Fever dream. Didn’t miss them at first, not until—

Sio Arenin thumping along in perpetual bad temper, always rushing, always looking to scold, especially Solian—

Solian! Where is he? Did I see him in the darkness? I did—

Vague images of laughter, of a voice:
Not so smart now, are you? Not so perfect now, are you? And
you—
Here’s what
you
deserve
—

She screamed protest, fought without result, bound by a greater power. Kolan watched, helpless, raging—

Give us a child, someone said. Give us a child and the pain stops.

Kolan held her as she sobbed, terrified and frustrated: I can’t, she wailed. I’m trying. I can’t!

The screams began again, and again, and again....

At some point it all became normal. At some point it stopped mattering.

The marbles shifted in his hand, clicking and grinding a little as they settled closer together.

Marbles. Sio Arenin. The stairs. Solian.

Ellemoa.

The warm sunlight in his face turned into a searing blanket of understanding.

Ellemoa. Solian. Sio Arenin falling, shrieking. The heavy crack of shattering bone, so like the wall of darkness collapsing. Fever dreams. All a fever dream.

The marbles rolled around in his hand as Kolan slowly worked his fingers.

Not a dream.

Ellemoa. Solian.

Ellemoa.

Marbles.

“Marbles,” he said aloud, and heard a fluttering of startled conversation break out around him. He couldn’t help smiling: they wouldn’t understand the joke, but he said it anyway. “I’ve found my marbles.”

Laughter started to bubble out. Before it reached his throat, the warmth turned to a terrible cold, the searing touch of Wae and Eki at their worst digging through his flesh and his soul alike.

Ellemoa. Oh, dear gods, Ellemoa.

He threw his head back and screamed with the agony of understanding, with the clarity of remembering.

Shadow priests danced around him, lifting, carrying, binding: tying him down as he thrashed, hatred and fear and pain escaping through sweat and spit and bile. Bitter and sweet liquids slid over his tongue. Brief periods of calm followed, enough to soothe his throat for another round of screaming when the panic returned.

The voices around him came more clearly now:

“We’ve lost him. He’s broken.”

“He might yet come out of it. Have some faith.”

“He’ll be the first.”

“There always is a first time.”

“Wish there was a
last
time.”

Rueful laughter followed.

Kolan followed the laughter like a shaky lifeline: emerged with sunlight flooding the air around him and silence in the room. He lay still, breathing evenly, and blinked until vision focused: a simple wooden ceiling overhead, painted a soothing white. Nothing in the least interesting or notable about it.

He stared at that bland white through three dimmings of sunlight. Three days. His hand stayed wrapped around the marbles the whole time. Sometimes he clicked them together, or moved them to the other hand, just to remind himself they were there.

Mustn’t drop the marbles. Someone could get hurt.

Even in the dark, he could see the sturdy beams of the ceiling, if he squinted a little now and again to keep it clear. The white turned grey and the black shadows between were like cracks back into the screaming; he watched them with care to be sure they didn’t widen and come after him again.

On the third day of his quiet staring, he knew they wouldn’t. Not while he watched them. It was safe to remember it all, to feel it all, to see it all.

“I remember,” he said into the early morning stillness.

His voice moved through roughness, emerging as a barely intelligible croak: it didn’t matter if anyone else understood him. He knew what he was saying. He needed to hear himself say it aloud. Nobody else mattered right now.

“I remember my name,” he said. “I’m Kolan. I remember her name. Ellemoa. I remember all of it. Everything.”

The tears came, then, silent and vast: as though Wae had chosen to flood Kolan’s entire body with holy fluid, rinsing out the grey and the black and the red bits that were all stuck in ragged patches along his insides. With the tears came a light, and a clarity, and a sharpness; a touch from Payti, and Eki, and Wae, and Syrta, all at once, all around him: surrounding, comforting, explaining why it had all been the way it had been. Balancing the world again. Giving him a small, small patch of solid truth on which to stand.

At some point, the restraints loosened. At some point, the tears stopped.

A priest with short-cropped, sandy hair and sad brown eyes helped Kolan sit up. Fed him a light broth. Bathed him. Led him outside to sit in a chair near the honeysuckle and lilac.

People, both priests and
—others—
moved around a courtyard. There were some stone benches, and flowers, and other cottages. Kolan watched the priests. He didn’t look at the
others.
He could feel their dazed hurt, too similar to his own. Seeing them, acknowledging them, risked opening those thin shadow lines into gaping hands that would drag him back into the times of screaming.

He’d always have to watch those cracks. That was one of the solid truths under his feet. The screams would never be more than a step away. The seeds of red and black and grey would remain in his soul, needing only a careless breath to bloom once more.

It was a balance. There was no true escape: not after going that far into the dark.

Balance brought his head up and his shoulders straight. Balance met the gazes of the watchful priests. Balance said, very quietly, “I’d like to go now, if you please. You’ve been very kind to me. I won’t forget. But it’s time for me to go home.”

Kolan held out the marbles in his cupped palms.

“I’d like to keep one, if I may,” he said. “To remind me of your kindness.”

His first almost-lie under sunlight; they clustered around him, worried, anxious, skeptical. He kept his gaze clear and steady, his voice even, his tone calm.

Balance. Balance.

“I’m a priest myself,” he said.

Their expressions tightened, their worry strained further.

“A priest of the Arason Church. I’m from Arason. I never served in Bright Bay.”

Not above ground, at any rate,
he added silently. They didn’t really want to know the truth, these too-kind, so-sad men who thought they did the gods’ work by keeping the
others
alive.

They thought they were redeeming themselves.

Kolan left them their illusions. It was the gods’ place, not his, to explain the truth of things.

“I had nothing to do with the madness,” he said, then gave them a very nearly outright lie: “I’m quite sane now. Quite safe.”

I won’t hurt anyone, at least. That much, I’m sure of.

They withdrew and talked about it for two days. He behaved with perfect courtesy, avoided the
others,
let himself be seen admiring flowers, ate what was put before him, handled his own needs without prompting.

At last they returned and quizzed him. He professed amnesia past a few basic points: from Arason. Priest. Not mad. Quite able to handle himself. Otherwise, all was blank.

Frustrated, they withdrew. He waited, infinitely patient.

They returned a day later with a pack of almost-new clothing; a few days worth of simple trail foods; enough coin for a carriage back to Arason.

He thanked them and walked out their gate without looking back.

The study had been dusty and silent last time Idisio saw it; in less than three days, servants had transformed it into what he could only call
Cafad Scratha’s office.
From the predominance of black and white as colors to the squared-off lines of the furniture, the room matched the desert lord’s angular personality perfectly.

Evkit’s peculiar scent, a mixture of bitter almonds, sweat, and sour milk, was slow to fade from the room. Idisio moved a little farther away from the seat the diminutive teyanain lord had occupied, then decided to try the trick Deiq had mentioned during Conclave. Given that the only people left in the room were Cafad, Deiq, and Alyea, this seemed a safe enough time to dull his senses; none of them would hurt him.

He squinted at Deiq and Cafad, thinking that assumption over more carefully, then shrugged and closed his eyes.
Cotton in my nose,
he told himself.
A nice thick fluffy lining of—

He choked, gagged, and spit. Panic flooded through him. He couldn’t
breathe—

Deiq’s by-now familiar presence reached into his head and stripped out the muffled feeling, then, delicately, settled a lighter version along the insides of Idisio’s nostrils before withdrawing again.

Idisio drew in a deep breath of relief and blinked watering eyes. Alyea was staring at him in alarmed bewilderment. Cafad and Deiq hadn’t even looked up from their low-voiced discussion of trail supplies and map distances.

His sense of smell had faded almost to nothing. It was
wonderful.

Thank you,
he said, trying to focus on
quiet
and
Deiq.

Deiq raised his head, pinned Idisio with a long, steady stare, then motioned Alyea’s attention back to the discussion with Cafad.

Idisio grimaced and came back to stand beside Cafad’s desk, feeling unnaturally large and clumbering—a street word for anyone too clumsy to walk without tripping over his own feet. Remembering the word brought a smile to Idisio’s face and straightened his back a bit. He might be something of a clumbering idiot
here,
but put him in a crowded city and he’d—

This time Cafad
and
Deiq raised their heads and skewered him with ferocious glares.

Idisio made a faint
urk
ing sound and hurriedly dropped his gaze to the maps.

One of the men snorted dryly—he thought it was Cafad, but didn’t dare look up to be sure. The papers before him seemed nothing more than a mass of incomprehensible lines and colors.

Desperate for a distraction, he blurted, “Uhm, so, where’s Bright Bay?”

In the following silence, his ears began to burn. He could
feel
them staring at him.

“You’ve never seen a map before?” Cafad clicked his tongue, halfway between bemused and impatient. “No. Of course not.”

“We’ll leave you alone to explain, Lord Scratha,” Deiq said. “We could use a walk to stretch our legs.”
Say your goodbyes, Idisio,
he noted privately.
This is probably your last chance to be alone with him.

Deiq steered Alyea out of the room without looking back.

Cafad watched them go, his expression pensive, then shook his head and looked down at the map. Pointing as he spoke, he said, “This one is an elevation map. The land is higher where the lines are thinner. This is water. This is land. This is the mark for forest, river, large city, fortress, small town, rocky land, true desert. Now you tell
me—
where is Bright Bay?”

Idisio squinted, considering, and finally put his finger on a small black dot with water to east and west and land to north and south; it was the only possible spot. Grinning, Cafad slapped Idisio on the shoulder.