Eyes in the Water (9 page)

No. There is too much here for Bren
already,
the juile thought decisively.
This will have to
wait. I will continue to hunt for answers alone.

Arman smoothed his face of worry. “That was
Colette?” He pointed to the aurenal in the man’s hand.

“Yeah.”

“Go. I will meet you at the soladrome in
Limbartina in ten days, two septspan at most. It will mean you must
move hard, but I think you can manage it.” He gave him a
calculating look. “Send seal if you cannot. I will meet with the
umbus. They have much skill in healing.”

As if reading Brenol’s thoughts, his black
eyes met the young man’s, and he spoke, sparing nothing. “We must
not lose hope, but yes, this is grave. This is an evil I had not
foreseen.”

I have been looking elsewhere,
Arman
thought sourly.

Brenol nodded, left without speech. Finally,
despite his reluctance to part from the juile, he bowed. “It has
been bountiful.”

Arman smiled handsomely, his olive features
suddenly balancing. “Bountiful indeed.” The juile handed a small
wallet to the young man. “Now you can pay your own sealtors,” he
added with a teasing grin.

Brenol nodded in thanks, still somber. He
pocketed the gift and watched as the juile swept quickly away on
limber legs. His gray cloak was soon out of sight.

Brenol turned his own heels south, moving
fast along the Pearia
.
He had pushed well into the center of
the terrisdan by midday.

Suddenly, the eye of Garnoble was upon him.
The land here was no longer absent or asleep. There was a strange
strength in it, like the clenching grip of a man on his death
bed.

He grimaced, momentarily unsure of what
action to take. Tentatively, he crouched down and whispered across
the grasses, “Hello, old friend. It has been some time.”

He waited tensely, afraid of what might
come.

A weak whisper stirred. “You may…pass.” When
Brenol compared this gasp to the terrisdan conversations of his
youth, his heart strained in sorrow. The pain Garnoble must be
experiencing was only too evident.

He jumped forward with renewed purpose. “I
will help. I will,” he promised, feeling his limbs pregnant with
strength. He moved as he had been taught from Deniel’s memories:
swiftly, quietly, observantly. His heart thrilled in the
anticipation of beholding Colette after so long, but he was sobered
even in that; there was a world crumbling beneath him, and he knew
nothing of how to save it. He could not afford to be
distracted.

~

Arman pressed through the lugazzi, his mind
attempting to sort through the terrifying reality nipping at his
back. So much lay before them. So much.

He did not typically contend with self-doubt,
but now he found himself drowning in it. He was without
direction.

And Ordah holed up in the wilderness,
refusing to help or talk. That man,
he fumed.

Arman did not have the skills of a prophet,
but the signs were clear enough. Entirely aside from Jerem’s
poison, something else horrendous was at play and had been for a
terrifying length of time—orbits, likely. It had begun so gradually
that he had nearly missed it, or had at least assumed it to be
something else. At the same time, he wondered if he had chosen
blindness over seeing such pernicious evil.

I shall bake in the sun like a mindless
toad if I keep ignoring the things that are in front of my
face,
he ruminated gravely.
And all of Massada with
me.

The signs point to something…something…

More and more bodies are emerging, with
fewer signs of illness. And more scenes of violence are
accompanying them.

Indeed, Arman had investigated two more
scorched bodies on his journey from the east, crossing specifically
through northern Brovingbune to follow the rumors that the black
fever had struck again. The second victim had been an aged man, his
flesh black as a bruise and radiating heat. It had been enough to
turn his own solid limbs quivering and insides cold.

Arman was familiar with the devastation
caused by the fever; for seasons he had traversed the country in
search of signs and symptoms. This man, though, had been an old
companion. His name was Carles, and he had been one of the
freeal,
the long-living. He would have been nearing his four
hundredth orbit, with likely a centibit to add, but the fever had
jerked his life from him just like any other.

Carles makes twenty-two dead this season
alone, thirty-eight this orbit.

The numbers were increasing at an alarming
rate.

Why do they rise now? There is an element
I’m not seeing. Or am I blinded by fear?

Arman sighed and freely acknowledged his
terror, but in the indifferent way that one might acknowledge an
untied shoelace.

No, it is not my emotion. I just do not have
all the pieces…but I glimpse the truth.

This is not a true disease. No mere
fever.

The juile plunged again through the stores of
memories he had amassed. The parchment on Heart Render was not
misplaced. It was nowhere to be found. It had been taken.

By whom? Or what?

He had searched the charred body and
belongings of every victim of the black fever, but there was always
little left to decipher. They were each scattered across the
terrisdans without reason. This murderer was subtle—although
getting progressively sloppier—and had power Arman had never before
seen. The juile did not know how to find him, contend with him. The
only clue was a trail of cadavers.

Should I have told Bren? Maybe he would see
something I have not…

He shook his head in frustration.
And have
him chasing my conjectures? Thinking about a sword that to all of
Massada is a mere myth? A sword I have pledged silence over
anyway?

Yet the truth was unavoidable: he had
discovered little in the five orbits of hunting this evil. He could
not delay much longer. He would need to seek help soon, regardless
of his lack of information.

For now, I hold,
he thought
determinedly.
I must find out more. And deal with this
poison.

It startled him to realize that Jerem’s
little endeavor, which was very likely tainting the terrisdans to
their death, seemed an afterthought compared to the evil he
perceived hovering.

Could this be the malitas of the
Genesifin
?

Arman shuddered at the thought.

He had hoped that the terror of malitas was
not to be faced in his lifetime.

For who could contend with such a monster?
Who?

~

Brenol awoke in the night with a start. His
body felt stiff from the cold, but he groaned to a seat and glanced
about him. The fire had died hours previously, and even the embers
had long ago flaked and grayed. Above, the dual moons shone in
gentle glory. One was full and one waned, but both were awake and
welcoming. He ignored their radiant beauty and clamped his eyes
shut, seeking to grasp a missing thread of thought through the fog
of his fading dreams.

Maralane corpses had lapped the shores like
foam from waves. Their bloated bodies had bobbed through Ziel,
staring at him through half-lidded eyes. Preifest had been there.
He had extended a translucent finger and called to him with the
voice of the visnat Colvin. Standing suddenly next to him, the
maralane leader had slipped something into his hand. His whisper
had shot icy tendrils down Brenol’s spine. “Do not destroy us,
Brenol. Do not.”

Something in my hand…

Brenol’s jaw snapped shut as he realized his
error. He flung his blankets aside and leaped up. “What did you
give me, Preifest?” he whispered.

He dug in the darkness until his hands
clutched his abandoned bag. He upended the sack, hearing items
topple and thud to his feet. His jacket slid to the soil.

He extended a hand hesitantly into its inner
pocket. His grief had been so hot that he had shoved the item away
for later examination. But travel, the emotional distress of
burying the maralane girl, meeting Arman, and anticipating Colette
had all combined to leave the gift of Preifest forgotten.

Until now.

Brenol’s fingers cupped the object and drew
it out slowly, fearfully. His hands knew the piece, just as his
dreams had. He opened his palm to allow the soft yellow moonlight
to caress it.

It was the hos Deniel had found in the
cooling hand of the murdered man. The same green tails and opal
eyes. And now, Preifest had returned it to the upper-world.

Why?

~

Colette woke before dawn, alert and rippling
with greed for the nuresti power. She lay sweating in her sheets
for several hours, waiting for it to dissipate. While it did
lessen, it refused to leave entirely, and she was left with a
coursing desperation. Eventually, the lunitata rose, dressed
shakily, and left the castle walls.

Outside, she headed south. She could not
bring herself to return to her favorite garden nook after the flash
of delicious power and her shocking behavior to Marnet, so she
turned instead toward a small hill she had favored as a child. The
wind whipped at her locks and flapped her silky cream dress about
her, but her eyes were forever ahead, determined and hard.

When Colette arrived, she inhaled heavily and
threw herself to the soft turf. The vista before her was serenely
lovely, and the morning breezes stirred the grass beneath her. She
buried her face in its rich green.

Veronia?
Colette called
interiorly.

No sound returned.

“Veronia?” she whispered. She rose to a seat,
her legs curled to one side. Even now, desire thrummed through her.
She ran her sweating hands through the swaying grass. It was cool
and smooth.

A sigh seemed to rise from the ground, and a
flurry of leaves danced around her in a gentle, synchronized
circle. It was no mere play of wind. No breeze behaved so
deliberately.

“Veronia?” she repeated. Her voice was
cracked and desperate, and her eyes were marked with a pained
hope.

The sigh eased up to her again, and she
shuddered as comprehension filled her. It wasn’t the usual voice
that filled her mind and blared through her senses. It was a soft,
nearly unintelligible whisper: “
Be brave.
”

“No!” she shouted with immediate violence,
shaking her clenched fists. The world around her was silent, as if
judging her unreasonable reaction. She attempted to calm her spirit
and then, willing control, asked, “Why?”

She waited for what felt like an
eternity.

“
Remember your cartess,
” the land
eventually breathed.

Colette froze. Her face paled, and her tongue
felt dry and sticky.
I must have heard wrong.

“What?” she asked warily.

There was no response, but slowly, so slowly,
the remaining clutches of greed drained from her, and she felt as
empty as a broken jug. Silence issued over the hill, and all that
remained was the morning air tugging at her hair and garb.

The lunitata peered down and realized that
her feet were bare. She had traveled over a matrole, maybe two,
without perceiving as much. It startled and shook her.

Colette rubbed her pale face with shaking
hands. She sighed and swallowed back tears. It was clear to her now
that even these little moments were false. She longed for union
with Veronia so much that she was imagining things.

“I’m dreaming. My cartess is a false dream,”
Colette said bitterly. “It is a lie. And Deniel is dead because of
it.”

She sank back into the grass and wallowed in
self-loathing.

~

Brenol ruminated upon the hos with every
stride he took. It was almost a surprise when he neared the border
of Veronia, for his mind had been so occupied elsewhere.

He paused and glanced about anxiously. The
roof of his mouth felt cottony as he stared before and behind him.
For orbits he had feared this moment, and to suddenly be faced with
it sent his stomach churning. In a mere three or four paces, the
lugazzi would end and Veronia would begin. Brenol could feel the
difference across the whole of his skin. He heaved in mouthfuls of
air, staring stupidly.

Do I still want it? Could I possibly still
be a nurest? What will happen when I cross over?

His mind spun in circles.

Brenol tarried, kicking up dirt with his
boots. Finally, he shook his head and inhaled purposefully.

“Time to find out how much of a man you are,”
he said defiantly to himself.

He strode forward with clenched shoulders,
gazed around him, and sighed.

“Bountiful indeed,” he whispered and allowed
a sweet relief to wash over him.

There was no nurest connection, and
satisfaction at its absence coursed through his veins. He allowed
himself a grin; it is not every day that one finds one’s addictions
no longer alluring. He drank in the freedom.

Yet suddenly he perceived Veronia’s eye upon
him. What he had felt from the other terrisdans had hardly prepared
him for the gruesome and terrible gaze of Veronia. The land was
more dead than alive. It was as if it lingered in its final
moments.

Oh.

He fought the impulse to retch and urged his
heels to haste. Never had he pushed himself harder. Two days later,
just after nightfall, Brenol stood before the castle walls of
Sleockna.

Even Arman would have been impressed.

~

Where is it,
the spirit pondered. Its
bony fingers strummed the parchment again.
Where? Where did
these stupid little bugs hide it? Or is it truly just a
legend?

It would have been much more pleasant—not to
mention easier—to leave the sword as a silly Massadan fantasy, but
the risk was too high. Legends had a way of holding a shard of
truth, and the spirit feared this shard might one day meet its
throat with a lethal and curving stroke.