The Land's Whisper (54 page)

The air underground was stifling, but
nonetheless it was a relief to be out from the keening blasts that
had buffeted him the last few days of travel. He breathed in short
bursts and focused his eyes in the dim light upon the scrolls and
books.

Arman furrowed his brow in abrupt
surprise.

It’s not here.

He had not been searching for the scroll on
Heart Render,
but having sifted through the parchments, his
mind had finally tapped his consciousness awake.

The realization did not elicit despair, just
a new question to examine:
Why would someone remove it?

This place was concealed, though obviously
not impenetrable. Still, it gave pause. There were only a few who
knew of the scroll and
Heart Render
anyway. The sword was
not a topic for any but nurses and children. He and the line of
protectors had ensured as much.

Arman’s lips twitched in a grimace as
understanding began to settle. He had nearly missed it, it was so
subtle.

This is not Jerem’s work at all. These
ripples are from a different spider,
he thought grimly.
But
who? Who?

His mind continued its connections until he
nearly choked upon his breath.

The question is not ‘who’ but ‘what.’

Terror coursed through his limbs and turned
them rigid. The scrolls fell from his invisible fingers in a soft
papery scrape as he raised his hands to his face and rubbed his
shocked features vigorously. A cold pit settled in his gut. He had
never felt this degree of powerlessness.

Jerem and the deaths of the maralane were
nothing beside the possibility of this nightmare.

~

Brenol’s mind eddied and swirled.

How many moons? How many since the memory?
How many? Did Jerem return? Did Deniel return to save them? Did
Jerem collect more? Are the nuresti aware? Alive?

He could not focus or sit for long, pacing
like a parent with a missing child.
Shouldn’t have let them go
without me.

I’m going crazy,
he thought, but he
knew there had been no other option. Speed. Speed had been the sole
need.

I wish I had more memories. I wish…

Brenol glanced up to Darse, settling down at
the table for breakfast. The man nodded in greeting but did not
break the silence. Darse ate. Brenol fidgeted.

Once Darse had pushed his tray away, he
looked inquiringly at the boy. “Bren, when did you first get this
memory—the boxed nuresti?”

Brenol’s features clenched with regret. “It
was one of the first.”

He eyed him thoughtfully. “What made it
clear?”

“Colette. She was asking me about a memory
where she was in a box. She wanted to know what the other side of
it, Deniel’s part, held.”

“Do you know anything more than what you
told me outside the House of the Dead?”

“Nothing.”

“It just seems so strange.”

“What do you mean?” Brenol asked irritably.
People in boxes
is
strange.

“Why keep them? Why? He killed before when
they weren’t needed. Why hoard them like a collection?”

“He’s sick, Darse.”

Darse shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe.”

~

Within several days, the news arrived,
sending ripples through every span of the healing dome. The nuresti
had been found.

~

They were brought in stretchered, bodies
contorted. There had been seven total, but two were already dead in
their black, square coffins. Four humans and one juile
remained
.
They were emaciated, and their faces bespoke the
nightmarish horror they had experienced. Most had been unconscious;
their boxes had worked to somehow suspend bodily functions. They
were the lucky ones. Two had been awake before the rescue. Their
screams issued out hollowly from their shrunken figures, shrill and
electric. An opus of suffering. Little, besides sedation, could be
done to calm them, but the umbus were loath to continue the
regiment of narcotics and so allowed the wide-eyed nuresti to
remain awake, aware, and paralyzed by reality.

Brenol was both repulsed and fascinated by
the creatures peeled from the boxes. They had lived with the power
of the connection and then the helplessness of the caged.

How could they endure it? How can they get
past it now? Do they know that I knew? That Deniel knew?

He walked the gardens, hoping to make sense
of it all, clicking away his thoughts in code. Colette would join
him at times, though she maintained a shroud of silence. She had
known the life of the black coffin too, and the more she studied
the twisted souls, the more her memories solidified. It was a
suffering she found too grave to speak aloud.

She brooded through a dark string of her own
questions.
Did Den find me first? Or had he opened another box
before me? Did he leave them to save me?

So they walked and hoped the pain and guilt
would ease. For them, and for all the nuresti.

~

The speed with which the nuresti pushed
themselves to regain mobility was astonishing, for within a mere
septspan, they were pressing their soft muscles to walk in tilted
gaits. Their weak frames paced the corridors like ghosts, pale and
quiet and eerie.

One morning, Darse had finished breakfasting
and was returning from the dining hall. His mind stirred with plans
to return Colette to her mother, and he barely gave heed to his
surroundings. As he swept around a corner, he shouldered a wiry
creature and stood aghast as it crumbled to the ground in a
whimper.

Darse immediately stooped with concern,
gently grasping the elderly nurest by the arm to help him to his
feet. Even aright, his back curved in an arch that refused to
straighten.

“I am so sorry. Are you hurt?”

The salt and pepper hair shook as the man
grimaced. “No. No.” He wiped his quivering hands upon his trousers
and raised his chillingly gold eyes to Darse.

Darse’s tongue parched to a cottony dry.
Yes, the rumors of the yellow-eyed nuresti had met his ears, but
the sight of this man was a nearly unendurable slap; he did not
have to imagine the torture these people had experienced.

“Perhaps I should ask if
you
are
hurt,” the man said. He gazed with concern upon the blanched face
of Darse.

“I…” Darse glanced around the hallway. It
felt so exposed, despite the absence of people. He spied a bench
along the wall and moved to sit, resting his head in both hands.
Finally, he looked up to the eyes that matched his own. “Jerem. He
took your memories?”

The grimace returned.

“I’m sorry… I have to know… Was there
another with him? A large man,” Darse paused to swallow, “who moved
his fingers constantly?” He searched the wizened face for
answers.

“I think I will join you,” the nurest said
softly, lowering his bent body to a sit. He sighed and stretched
his contorted limbs out before him. “I like stretching,” he said to
himself.

Darse watched silently.

The man raised his eyes to Darse. “I am
Goneal of Brovingbune, or so I am told. What is your name?”

“Darse.”

“Darse,” he repeated to himself. “We do not
know each other, do we?” The question was asked sincerely.

Darse shook his head. Goosebumps lined his
flesh.

“I just would not have known, you see. I
barely have a memory for each finger.” He held up his wrinkled
digits in showcase. “At least of my life before…”

Goneal inhaled as if steadying himself and
continued. “I do not remember any other man.” He gazed upon the far
wall in concentration. “Jerem did his work in Selet, I am told.
Making the invisible visible. I remember an old barn, but that was
brief. He had a room underground where he kept me. I was alone and
it was dark. Yes, very dark until he would come down with his
lantern. For days he would slice my mind apart.” He stopped as the
words brought a choke to his throat. “But no, he was always
alone.”

Darse nodded, unsure if this was the news he
wanted or not. It simply
was.

“Why do you need to know this?” Goneal
observed him with obvious concern. “You are upset.”

Darse nodded again and tried out his tongue,
hoping the words would manage to come. “It… It happened to me
too.”

Goneal’s eyebrows arched up in surprise.
“But not with Jerem?”

“No. The same place though—barn, at least—if
I were to guess.”

Goneal pressed his thin lips together in
compassion, patting Darse’s leg gently. “I am beginning to realize
that yellow eyes are not common?”

Darse laughed in wry surprise. “No, no. Not
in humans.” He found the action eased the tightness in his own
chest, and he began to breathe without constriction. Even his voice
loosened and issued more naturally. “I thought I had healed from
this whole thing. I thought I’d figured it out and was all right.”
He shrugged.

The golden eyes twinkled. “I’m glad to have
met you, Darse. You see, I was wondering if there was any way to
live without memory… But I see there is,” he patted him again,
“even if there is occasional distress as well.”

Darse smiled, but it twisted sideways as he
pondered the vast number of memories this stranger had lost. He
shuddered involuntarily.

“—your answers.”

“Excuse me?” Darse asked, realizing he had
not been listening.

“I hope you can find your answers.”

The statement struck Darse as odd. “Do you
not have questions?”

The man pursed his lips in thought. “I think
it is fairly clear why I was tinkered with and kept safe for
later.”

Darse raised his brow in question.

“No?” Goneal lifted his thin hands in genial
surrender. “Oh. Maybe it comes from knowing the man and living in
isolation for innumerable days.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, I
think he—Jerem—was convinced he could remove the nurest abilities.”
The man snorted. “I don’t remember much, but even now that seems
idiotic.”

Goneal nodded with a pained expression.
“Yes. Chilling. I would guess he was determined to rule over the
entire land. If he could figure out how to steal from one nurest,
he had all of us boxed away to dissect later… Had he succeeded,
Massada would have been his without qualification.”

“Oh,” whispered Darse. While he had known
that Jerem was collecting nuresti, the extent of the man’s
long-term plan made his heart drop. What they had stopped was far
beyond the torture of a single girl.

Goneal shook his head with misty eyes and
said softly, “Thank the Three he’s dead. Thank the Three.”

~

The company slowly grew stronger and
healthier. The brittle frames fleshed out gently under the natural
medicines of movement and nourishment, and the haunted faces
colored under the kiss of the hete sun. A hope seemed to balloon in
the soladrome; healing had begun.

~

The warm day had ushered in a comfortable
evening, and Brenol was out walking with Colette. The stars had
just emerged with a merry sparkle, but he could not make his quiet
heart match their ebullience. He walked silently and aimlessly,
eventually finding himself with the princess at the Davoc’s bank.
The air was filled with the first summer’s fragrances of grass and
pollen and lavender. Brenol sucked it all in: the sweetness, the
vitality, the freshness.

Colette glanced sideways at him. Her face
was tight and her insides knotted. She waited momentarily until
decision marked her features. She released Brenol’s hand, and he
looked to her questioningly. Without a word, she picked up her
skirts, left him, and waded into the water. Colette eventually
resigned the battle and let the fabric fall from her hands,
continuing to move out to the depths until she was clothed up to
her waist in its dark blanket. The river was calm, as it tended to
be this time of the season, and Brenol watched her wordlessly,
taking in her every motion. She began to whisper, and while it was
faint, Brenol heard every word.

“My time in the box…when I would wake and
shake from fear… That I was saved but they were left… Jer-Jerem’s
hands… Deniel dying…” Her voice choked, but even in the midst of
speaking she stood taller. “I feel so alone… I wish I still had my
da… I’m so scared of seeing Ma after all this…”

The water erased time. There were no longer
minutes, seconds. Time was now the soft current and eddy that
flowed around her. She breathed, occasionally whimpered, and
continued speaking, but above all drew in the life of the moving
waters.

It was an hour, maybe more, before she
picked up the folds of her dripping garments and left the water to
scramble up the bank. Then Brenol saw it. Her skin shone. It was
dim, but she emanated light like her mother. Brenol waited
silently, his eyes as wide as an owl’s.

She dropped her skirts from her pruned
hands, allowing them to smack against her wet knees and calves. She
scooped his hand into her damp one, leaned her head against his
shoulder, and spoke tranquilly, “Thank you for waiting. I feel much
better.”

Brenol’s tight shoulders eased fractionally.
He smiled gently. Somehow, he himself had found relief, as though
her new health had seeped into his own person. His heart glowed in
a soft comfort, and he was thankful.

“In good accord,” he breathed. “In good
accord.”

And they walked back to the soladrome,
hopeful that all would eventually be right with the nuresti, their
lives, and Massada. That all would be well.

The secrets of the water will meet air and
light.

-Genesifin

Brenol’s footfalls landed softly upon the
worn rug as he ambled his way to the window to gaze out at the lush
gardens. He would always remember his time here fondly: the
comfortable and worn feel of the umbu rooms, the smell of white
jasmine tea wafting through the air at meal times, the clean ivory
tile beneath his toes, the touch of Colette’s hand when they walked
in the cool dusk, the longing in his fingertips to caress her dark
tresses. Brenol sighed the contented sigh of one who enjoys but
knows it will end in the next breath.