Memory's Wake Omnibus: The Complete Illustrated YA Fantasy Series (23 page)

“El.” He frantically pulled his tattered shirt off his arms. Bundling the cloth, he held it against the torn flesh on her torso, trying to hold in her life. Blood welled up through the fabric, staining his hands. He tore strips off her skirt and tied them around her waist to pull closed the largest holes in her body.

Eloryn’s mouth opened as though in pain, and spluttering a deep breath, she opened her eyes. They were dim and moved slowly, taking in her surroundings. Her eyes flickered over his shirtless chest and a trace of color made it to her cheeks.

“By the… Don’t blush now, you haven’t enough blood.”

“Roen. Are you hurt? Where’s Mem?” Eloryn’s voice was the softest rasp of whisper.

Roen’s emotions caught in his throat. Memory. He saw her fragile body fall under Thayl’s deadly magic. No one could survive that. The Wizards’ Council members were captured, awaiting execution. Alward was dead too. They were alone, and there was no comfort he could give her but more lies. Before he could answer she began to fade again. Roen squeezed her gently.

“Please, stay awake,” he begged her. “Can you heal yourself, with your magic?”

Eloryn’s eyelids fluttered. Roen knew it was no use.

“I’m sorry I can’t… Is there nothing else I can do? Tell me what to do.” He brushed his hand over her forehead, under her hair, feeling it cold under his flushed skin.

“Please don’t leave me again,” Eloryn murmured.

“Never, Princess. Just don’t leave me.”

Eloryn stilled. Roen lifted her shoulders, pulling her up into his lap.

Roen cradled Eloryn’s body. He stared at her face, as still and silent as she, in too much pain to let tears fall. Hearing the sound of soft footsteps approaching he wrapped his hand around the hilt of his thin knife. His other arm remained around Eloryn. He barely looked up to see who approached.

“Roen! Oh God.” Memory came to a stop just in front of him. “Oh God, oh God, oh God.”

Roen tightened his hand around the knife hilt.

“It’s me,” she said, fighting the whine in her voice.

“It can’t be. I saw you fall,” he said.

“I’m fine. Tell me she’s not dead, please.” Memory moved closer, and he jumped in shock when she touched him, finally looking at her properly. He twitched again when he saw the tall shape of Will shadowing them. He pulled Eloryn’s body closer to him and looked to Memory with a skeptical frown.

“He helped me find you,” Memory said. “Roen, please, is she still alive?”

Roen’s head dropped. He laid Eloryn flat on the ground so Memory could see.

Memory suppressed a dry heave. The dragon had messed Eloryn up badly. It took her three times to build the courage to feel for a pulse, but when she did, she found one, slow and fading.

Memory looked up into Roen’s eyes. Red-rimmed, bloodshot, a question read in them clear for her to see. She nodded in slow motion.

“Do you think you can?” he asked.

No.
“Yes. I summoned a dragon. I can do the goddamned impossible.”

I can do this,
Memory told herself.
God, I hope I can do this.

Memory took her mind back, remembering how she felt the morning after Eloryn healed her, going over what happened between Eloryn and Roen in the wagon. The way Eloryn described the process.
There is magic in everything, an energy of life that can be spoken to. Our bodies remember what it is to be whole and healthy, and they want to be that way. The magic just gives the body the power to right itself. Reminding it how to be whole. Visiting the broken areas and helping to put them back together.

Eloryn had spent hours putting Roen back together from just a bruising. Why the hell did she think she could do this? No magic she’d tried worked the way she expected. She was more likely to blast Eloryn away than to help her. Numbly, she realized at this point Eloryn couldn’t be much worse off. Beneath thin bandaging, Eloryn still bled. Thayl’s words to her repeated in her head, and she cast them away. If this didn’t work, she didn’t want to think about what she could be losing.

Memory put a shaking palm onto Eloryn’s chest, tacky with blood, and one onto her forehead.

She took a deep breath. “Move back a bit, just in case.”

Roen stayed and held Eloryn’s hand.

This has to work. I hope you trust me, Lory.

She reached out to Eloryn with the furnace of magic within her.

It came faster and easier than she expected. The shock of the connection almost made her break away. Warmth, pulse, blood, muscle and bone. Pain. Surreal and abstract she sensed them. They engulfed her. She focused on the pain, feeling it herself, almost overwhelming. Willing it gone made it so. She imagined Eloryn’s pale skin flawless and whole. She mended what she felt torn with a giddy omnipotence, spending energy without guard. She gave her own blood to replenish what Eloryn had lost. At the fringes of her perception, she could taste consciousness. A dreaming mind thick with emotions, memories and an ocean of painful guilt.

Memory gasped back into herself, needing a world worth of air.

She pulled her hands to her aching chest, pressing them against her burning skin. She struggled away from her body’s demand to faint. Passing out could come later. She needed to know if it worked, first. The forest was still dusk lit and no one had moved. How long did that take? Did she do enough?

Roen stared, mouth opened, and Memory feebly clawed away the bandaging he’d done. She dug her hands underneath, feeling for skin, finding it smooth and unbroken.

Roen squeezed Eloryn’s hand, and Memory shook her gently, then harder, then roughly, calling her name.

Eloryn didn’t move.

“I don’t know, I thought I did something. Maybe I didn’t do it right. Maybe I didn’t get in far enough, like she couldn’t with me?” Memory rocked on her knees.

Roen’s head shook as if he was drunk. Knuckles cracked in a tightening fist.

“I can try again.” Memory moved flimsy arms back toward Eloryn, but Roen lifted them away.

“You can’t see yourself. You can’t try again.” Roen held her arms, and Memory found they were too weak to take from him.

Memory fell onto his bare chest, bridging Eloryn’s body beneath them. She let out in long, painful breaths what she couldn’t in tears. Roen brought his arms up around her, shaking from the cold, or something else.

“Mem?”

Memory and Roen jerked apart.

Eloryn stared up at Memory wide eyed. Fear, comprehension, and loss played across her face, taking her from relief to pain in seconds.

Eloryn flung herself around Memory, arms tight around her chest, face buried in her shoulder. Memory sat limp, arms hanging awkwardly, and Eloryn bawled.

“He’s dead, Mem, he’s dead. Alward’s dead.”

As Eloryn’s sobbing quaked through Memory’s body, empathy built like acid in her eyes. She wrapped her arms in a returned embrace and held as tightly as the weakness in her body allowed.

Eloryn wept wretchedly, and with the shared wetness of their faces, shared pain, and shuddering sobs shaking them both, Memory wasn’t sure whether she wept as well.

“Thayl said such horrible things. They couldn’t be true. I can’t believe his words about Alward,” Eloryn squeaked between gulping teary breaths.

Twice Memory had dreamt of Thayl. Twice she’d met him. Each time there had been things he’d said she also didn’t want to believe, and others she hoped weren’t lies. She could hardly tell which she wanted most. For now, for Eloryn, she would believe that he lied.

Eloryn felt more pain in her now than when the dragon had sunk its claws deep into her stomach.

A fury she had never known before overtook her pain. It burnt her tears away. It was her fault. Alward died because of her. If only she’d told him the mistake she made, instead of trying to hide it. Too scared of disappointing him, instead she’d got him killed when he’d done everything to keep her safe, had been everything to her.

Alward only ever took you in, kept you to himself because of the guilt he felt over what he had done.
Liar. Why would Alward kill her mother? And if that wasn’t true, could he have lied more? Could Alward still be alive?

Desperation ran riot through her with that small spark of hope. She had to know the truth.

“I have to see his body,” Eloryn said, pulling away from Memory. “I have to know he is dead, and if he is I need to bury him. No matter what happened, I still love him. I can’t just leave his body to whatever Thayl has planned.”

“We don’t even know where he is,” Memory said.

Eloryn screwed up her face. Her body felt too healthy to be holding these dark feelings. The smell of wet leaves and her own blood on her dress were like the aftertaste of death. “If he is dead, he is only a body and no longer has will. He can be brought.”

“No way. Lory, you can’t be serious?”

Eloryn ignored Memory. Instead, she pleaded with the earth in timeless words of magic, trying to get it to listen, wishing for it. She spoke of Alward, the man who cared for her, taught her, kept her safe. She described every part of his face, his kind smile and ink stained fingers, and how she loved him like a father. She ended with the words she had not long ago taught to Memory. “Beirsinn fair nalldomh.”

She felt no connection to the magic within or around her, that vile poison still blocking her. “Beirsinn fair nalldomh!”

Nothing. She screamed, digging her hands into the earth. “Bring him to me!”

She crumpled forwards, her forehead to the ground. “Bring him to me!”

“Magic may not hear you child, but we can. Screeching such vulgar pain.” The voice held a regal level of distaste.

Finding herself surrounded by fae, Eloryn jumped to her feet.

At the same time, Memory’s savage guardian dropped to his knees. “Yvainne, Mina.”

Her body quivering from a whirlwind of emotion, Eloryn stared at him and the fae he knelt to. She couldn’t remember anything from when the dragon sheathed its talons into her chest until she woke up and grief consumed her. She floundered, trying to regroup her thoughts. Memory must have healed her, and done it incredibly well. Impossibly so. A shot of panic turned Eloryn around to find Roen. He stood behind her, bloody but alive. Eloryn blinked a double take, wondering where his shirt had gone.

Memory stood up next to Eloryn and spoke to the savage. “Will, do you know them?”

Will nodded.

Eloryn hadn’t even noticed his presence before, while anger and tears blurred her eyes. Had he come here for Memory again, or come with the fae? Up from his knees, he moved to stand with the sprites. A red-headed fairy with a young face leant into him and tangled a long fingered hand in his hair.

The gathered fae reflected the twilight tones in a shimmering silver glow. More than she could count, the wild gathering ranged in size and shape, from lithe seven-foot statures to tiny sparkling lights. A bizarre and twisted mix; some had animal eyes, some had antlers or claws, and more, with rough bark skin, glowing glitter, hooves or gossamer veins. Although clothing and hair billowed with its own life, they did not move. They stood unthreatening, and some even nodded respectful bows as Eloryn passed her eyes over them. Seelie fae.

The only threatening movements were the glares and whispers directed toward Memory, who wobbled on her feet and looked more grey and ill than she had after calling the dragon through the Veil. Guilt edged in amongst Eloryn’s other emotions.

“I’m sorry to have disturbed you,” Eloryn said with downcast eyes. Seelie they may be, but no less dangerous to anger.

“Your call was loud, but not futile. We are pleased to know you have want. It means we can bargain. You may call me Yvainne. I know who you are.” The tallest of the fae, waif thin, took an elegant step forward through a cloud of wafting silver hair.

“Bargain, for what do you wish to bargain with me?” Eloryn’s voice wavered. There were lots of stories regarding fairy bargains. Few of them ended well for the human side.

“We will bring you the body of your Alward.” Yvainne spoke like sweet chimes in a breeze.

So he is dead.
Eloryn’s heart shuddered. “And what in return?”

“You will take Thayl’s place on the throne, and renew the failing Pact with Maellan blood.”

“But if-” Memory started.

Yvainne cut Memory off, her voice turning hard. “Not you. Daring to carry cold iron.” If she was the type to spit, Yvainne looked as though she would now. “No matter what you may think, you do not belong in Avall. You. A vessel too full. Liable to spill and spoil all around.”

The fae hissed in unison.

Memory simply gaped.

Yvainne turned back to Eloryn. “That is our offer, Maellan. Do you take it?”

“No.” Eloryn swore she heard audible sighs from Roen and Memory, but she focused on Yvainne. Pain and fury inside had been startled into submission, but still smoldered throughout. The word she sought came to her. Revenge. That is what she wanted, never having imagined before she could want it. Thayl had killed Alward, and she wanted it paid back. If she could do that, then it was a small step to take the throne after emptying it. “No, not as the offer stands. I will make a bargain though, for one more thing in return.”

Yvainne smiled pleasantly, sending a tremor through Eloryn.

“Mem, you said Thayl showed you his memories of how my mother was killed?” Eloryn spoke over her shoulder, keeping her eyes on the fae. “I want to see Alward’s memory of the same. Provide that, bring me his body, and I will take the throne and renew the Pact.”

“Agreed.” A chorus of birdsong and bell called from all the fae, covering the protests of the friends at her back.

“This is our binding deal.” Yvainne suddenly stood with her hand on Eloryn’s chest. Eloryn gasped to feel the spark of connection relight within her.

“We must go, and let the Summer Court know what has passed. The body will be brought.” Yvainne turned, and sprites all around began blinking out of sight. Some sparkled away into tiny lights, and some skipped into the Veil.

Yvainne flicked her eyes to Will. “You stay. Keep watching that one.”

“Keep watching?” Memory whispered.

The red headed fairy at Will’s side glared hardest at Memory, and passed the glare briefly to Yvainne before vanishing.

“Wait, how is the memory shown?” Eloryn cried.

“With your blood on your hand, and the body of the man, know what you want in your heart and plunge that sinful blade into his.” Yvainne pointed to Memory and faded away.

Eloryn’s bones turned to wet rope. Binding deal made, she slumped back to the ground, waiting on what that would entail.

“What the hell, Lory?”

“Princess, you should not have.”

Only Will did not yell at her. The strange young man crouched beside the ancient oak’s trunk, blending into the shadows, watching with hurt eyes.

“It is done,” she said. The biggest decision she’d ever made. Maybe the only one she had ever made, that wasn’t just to follow another’s. She hoped she would not regret it too much.

Memory put a hand on her shoulder, squatting down next to her. When she spoke, her voice was devastatingly tired. “Is this going to be worth it? I get the revenge thing. I so do. Thayl, he told me…”

Memory’s words ended as Veil mist spread in curls below them, across the ground, leaving behind a man’s body as it passed.

Eloryn’s nose twitched, and her tears came again.

She found comfort that, in death, Alward looked at peace. Wavy graying blond hair he never managed to brush if she didn’t remind him, a thin face with kind eyes, the face she knew better than any other. No outward signs of injury. No torture. No expression of pain carried with him to death. He seemed to be asleep, but was no less dead for that.

She gripped the shirt at his chest in both hands with tearing strength and wept into it.

“You died for me. And lived for me,” she whispered into his cold body. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. What I am, my useless title that causes all this damage... I will make it mean something. I will own it. I will never, ever forget you.”

Eloryn knew she was watched, knew they all listened to her and waited for her. She still let herself cry some more.

Sitting up, she looked down into her hands. Plenty of her blood on them still. They shook visibly.

“Memory, I need your knife.”

“Are you sure you want to do this? Maybe sometimes it’s better not to know,” Memory stammered.

“Please, Mem.”

Memory placed the folded iron blade into her hands.

Eloryn delicately, slowly, pulled it open and held it point down above Alward’s no longer beating heart.

A silent snarl bared her teeth, and she rattled with erratic nerves, but could not push the blade.

Not only was her body stubborn, but her mind was in turmoil.

Roen knelt on her other side. “Are you sure?”

Eloryn nodded without really knowing.

From one side, Roen placed his hand onto hers. From the other, Memory did the same. And they pushed.

Eloryn cried out as though the blade pierced her own heart.

The three of them became ghosts; misty forms in a forest. Not this one, but another that they knew. The very place Eloryn and Memory had first met. Eloryn knew the trees well, having spoken to them, though here they were smaller, the brush thinner, making a small clearing. Alward ran toward them, more solid than them, or his dead body on the ground. He was young and fresh with the look of courageous purpose.

Wisp light filled the woods. A dozen men and women bearing weapons followed Alward through the dense trees.

He stopped and stared straight past Eloryn, Memory and Roen with a look of horror. All three followed his gaze.

A gruesome scene like an illustration from the books of blackest magic stood behind them.

Dark hooded figures circled Loredanna, turning on the forest floor in fits of hard labor. Young Thayl assisted anxiously as the baby came.

Behind them, swirls of Veil mist tore the air, outlining a hooded shape that held aloft another newborn. Screaming and wet from birth, blood spilled from the baby’s chest, a rune freshly carved into it.

“Stop. Stop this evil!” Alward yelled.

The leading figure loosed a disturbing chuckle from beneath the hood, and rolled the crying baby off long finger tips, letting it fall alone through the tumultuous Veil door.

Figures clashed around them, through them. Guards and chambermaids fought fiercely with those in hoods and cloaks, fighting for their Queen, and giving their lives.

Insubstantial as air, Eloryn, Roen and Memory stood back to back, watching the vision around them. Each swung sword or club made them flinch, only to pass harmlessly through.

Alward stood next to them, scroll in hand, reading words of power.

As more fighters fell, between individual battles, glimpses could be seen.

Thayl pulled Loredanna to her feet. No longer torn by labor, blonde hair stuck to her cheeks with sweat. Another newborn lay on the forest floor, lying silent as bodies fell around it.

Thayl scooped Loredanna up into his arms, turning his back on the battleground and the newborn. Loredanna struggled, weak with exhaustion. She cried out, reaching desperately for her baby that was left behind.

She flailed. “No! Let me go. My babies, I won’t leave them!”

Fingernails tore his cheek, and she ripped free of his hold, pushing past him, switching their places in the most fateful of moments.

Then she froze, arms still reaching toward her child, struck by a red bolt of magic.

Thayl cried out, catching her falling body.