The Pleasure of Memory (40 page)

“Your father’s family?”

“Another good guess.”

“What did it say?”

“It’s funny. I can still see her handwriting. It was so…so gentle, so feminine. I read it so many times that the parchment eventually fell apart from the abuse, but I’ll never forget it. They were the only words I’d ever know from my mother. The note said:

Forgive me, Be’ahm, for the burden of this horrid gift. Though I’m certain you won’t long think of it as a gift, but rather as a hateful pox bestowed upon you by a deserting mother.

Before you curse me, know that we are not the masters of our own fates. Nor are we the keepers of the voices hiding inside us. Rather it is the voices who keep us, the voices who determine our fates, the voices who bring with them such tragic joy. Those voices are the shadows of other times, my dear son, the shadows of those who have lived before us, shadows whose purposes are unveiled only at the pleasure of memory.

The silence left in the wake of his recitation was as deafening as an explosion.

After a moment, Chance said, “My gods above, what a strange and wonderful message.”

“Tragic joy,” Beam whispered back, “It’s the perfect description of my memories of her.”

“Did the message mean anything to you?”

Beam shook his head and adjusted his grip on the torch. “No. Shadows whose purposes are unveiled only at the pleasure of memory? She wasn’t in her right mind before she died.”

“What else was in the package?”

“Another box.”

“Another box? What kind of box?”

“A puzzle casket. It was beautiful, actually, despite being savage in manufacture. It was inlaid with gold, silver, and bloodstone. It was…”

“It was what?”

Beam probed the lump skulking at his breast beneath his shirt. Should he share this secret with a man he barely knew, a man who at times seemed like he’d be equally at home among the indwellers?

“It was what, Beam?”

“It was the same design as…”

“Beam, please. Don’t toil with me. The same design as what?”

Beam looked up at him, and as their eyes met, he experienced a sense of trust he couldn’t explain. The man wasn’t a thief. If anything, he was the polar opposite of a thief; his honesty was a burden.

“Are you suffering a brain fever or what?” Chance said.

The words stung. Beam thought of poor old Gerd lying dead in the path back in the Nolands with a ring of blood swelling beneath a cruel arrow. He saw the old man’s mouth agape and all four teeth in full view.

What kind of man was he that brought so much despair and ruin to those innocents unlucky enough to simply cross his path. A wave of guilt washed over him, cold as ice and utterly defeating, and for just an instant, he wanted to lie down in the dirt and never get up again. He was a bad omen, a pox to everyone he met. It should be him moldering back there in that dirty road, not poor old Gerd.

He was reeling the pouch out before he knew what he was doing. His hands were shaking as he loosed the leather tie and poured the red stone into a sweating palm.

“It was the same design as this,” he whispered as he held up the gem.

Chance’s eyes swelled at the sight of the sparkling red eye presented to him. He brought his torch in closer and leaned toward the proffered stone. “Calina’s love,” he whispered, “Another Blood Caeyl. It’s identical to the one on the sword, just a smaller version of it. Where did you find it?”

Reality flooded in to replace his grief. What was he doing? He quickly stowed the eye, and returned the pouch to the security of his shirt. He felt like he’d just wakened from a ridiculous dream. What was he thinking? Was he losing his mind? He couldn’t trust this man. Not now. Not yet!

“Beam?”

Beam looked at him.

“Where did you find the caeyl?”

“What?”

“The Blood Caeyl. Where did you find it?”

Beam stared at him. He didn’t know what he was doing. He suddenly felt like he was standing naked at the head of a parade with no memory of having been invited.

“Where did you find it?”

For a moment, Beam wasn’t sure what to do. The memories were swirling around his head. He felt short of breath, like everything around him was simply going to vanish. He thought back to Brother Dael, to the priory, to the calming prayers he’d been taught as a boy. He mentally whispered those soothing words. He imagined himself in a better place, a place of peace and safety…

“Beam, what’s wrong?”

“It…it began with the box,” Beam heard himself whisper.

“The box from your mother,” Chance said.

“Yes.”

“The puzzle casket.”

“Yes.”

“Go on.”

 Beam forced down a hard swallow. He steadied himself. Then he began, “At first, I couldn’t make sense of it. I mean, why would my mother leave me a puzzle casket, of all things? And the cryptic message in the note? It had to mean something, but what? The box itself was practically worthless.”

“The real treasure was inside.”

Beam looked at him. “Damn me, yes it was.”

“It doesn’t take an astronomer to figure it out,” Chance said, “It was a puzzle casket, after all. And probably not an easy one to crack.”

“A bloody understatement. I tried for months, maybe a year. I finally got fed up and found a sledge. I was ready to bust the goddamned thing to pieces. But, as I stood there with the hammer…well, I suspect I lost my nerve. Couldn’t bring myself to do it. It was all I had left of my family, of my mother, so instead I left it with Dael, packed it away and forgot about it. I think I kept it just to prove to myself I could. Like keeping it proved I wasn't completely lost after all.”

“What happened to it?”

“About six or seven years ago, I found it again. I’d been drinking. A lot. And womanizing. A lot. I was consorting with the wrong people and living beyond my means, as usual. I was in dire need of gold. Dael was dead by then, but I returned to the priory so I could at least eat. I was digging through my things in search of something I could hock, and there it was.”

Chance scowled.

“Don’t you give me that look!” Beam said as harshly as he could, “I was younger then.”

“And reckless.”

“Damn me, yes! Reckless.”

Chance looked at him for a moment. And then he said, “Please continue.”

Beam looked away. As he fingered the caeyl on the hilt of the sword dripping from his waist, he said, “Anyway, I suppose it brought on a bout of melancholy. I started thinking about my mother, which is odd since I couldn’t even tell you what she looked like by then. I could only remember her eyes and how good she smelled and a certain yellow robe she wore. Funny, isn’t it? The things you remember from childhood?”

“I don’t know about that. It’s different for me. I was born with the Birthsight.”

That slapped Beam back to the moment. “Bird sight?” he asked, though he wasn’t sure why he had. It would just lead to more aggravation.

“Birthsight,” Chance told him, “It means I was lucid from the moment of my birth.”

Beam shook his head. “I’m not even going to ask.”

“It’s a story for a different time. Please continue.”

“Anyway, I was playing with the box and thinking of my mother...”

“Yes?”

“I slid the complex panels this way and that, up and down and sideways, just like I’d done a thousand times before. And then, after a few minutes of farting with it, there was a click.”

“And it opened?”

“Opened? It literally fell apart in my hands. I mean, just like that. After all the years I’d spent working at it, on this particular day, when I really couldn’t have cared less, I opened it.”

Chance leaned into his staff. His face was just inches from Beam’s. “And so? What was in it? What’d you find?”

“What I found led me here.”

XIX

CHILDHOOD FRIENDS

HE OLD TREE’S BARK FELT LIKE HOPE AGAINST HER BACK.

It was as coarse and unforgiving as a boulder, and as heartening as a father’s embrace. Koonta couldn’t remember the last time she’d communed with a tree of such age and wisdom.

Roots as big as a Baeldon’s thighs burrowed into the earth along both sides of her legs, cradling her tightly against the trunk. The grooves in the ancient bark were nearly deep enough for her to slip her entire hand into. She had never rested in a more comfortable chair. She could’ve sat there all day in its cool shade, cradled in the natural seat formed between the roots.

She leaned her head back against the tree and gazed down her nose at the thick cricket grass covering the earth between her legs and the roots. She envisioned her prey crawling through the earth beneath her like worms escaping a bird. They might be directly below her at this very moment, resting and eating their midday meal just as she and her troops were doing. They might be looking up at them even now, wondering about her just as she considered them. They might be tired, and hungry, and desperate. They might be afraid, and so they had a right to be. She was coming for them.

“How’s your trail, Kad’r?”

She looked up to find the burly form of Mawby standing over her. A long stem hickory pipe jutted out from the clenched teeth of a broad grin. She’d been so mesmerized by the great tree that she hadn’t sensed his taer-cael. Hell, she should at least have smelled his tobacco.

“Trail’s good, Mawby,” she said, “You?” She pulled the wyrlaerd’s map over from the grass beyond the great root separating them and patted the earth for him to sit.

“Trail’s good as can be expected, I reckon,” he said as he dropped into a cross-legged repose with a grace that defied his size.

For a Vaemyn, the man was a mountain. Easily a head taller than the tallest warrior, he would outweigh the same by at least thirty pounds. Add in his heavy green field leather shirt and breeches, and the thick ring mail densely woven with grass and mud, and he looked twice as big. Except for his long, sandy, nearly brown hair and his oteuryns, he might have passed for a young Baeldon, though this wasn’t something anyone who knew him would ever feel safe saying out loud. More than a few adult Vaemysh warriors bore disfigured noses, prizes for having made that comparison known to Mawby when they were younger.

Mawby pulled the pipe from his mouth, blew out a cord of blue smoke, and squinted through it. He had a square face with a jaw like the foundation of a house, and deep, blue eyes that could see through to your soul. He was looking at the map she was rolling up on her lap.

Koonta tucked the map into her pack, and then leaned back into the comforting embrace of the tree again, and she closed her eyes. “I love this tree, Maw.” Her fingers traced the lines of the bark on both sides of her. “Wish we had giants like these back home.”

“Seems to me, that’s why we’re here, Koo. Get our trees back, jh’ven?”

“I expect so.”

“You look right at home there, all relaxed and at peace. I almost hate to ruin it by telling you we’re ready to move out.”

“This is a fough tree, Maw. There’s not an inch of them that can’t be used to make healing elixirs. It’s said their aura is so powerful that every minute you rest beneath one is the equivalent of ten minutes sleep.”

“Well, you might’ve told me that earlier,” Mawby said, patting the tree’s rambling root, “I could’ve used an hour’s nap myself.”

Koonta stretched her arms up over her head and arched her spine against the coarse bark. “Reckon we’d best be hitting the trail, then,” she said with a yawn, “We need to make the next hatch by nightfall.”

“We’ve known each other our whole lives, Koo.”

Her arms settled back to her lap as she considered his words. It was a curious statement, and strangely out of character. They were childhood friends. She was closer to this man than most of her own family. He could say just about anything to her without the need to buffer it with such a lead.

“What is it, Maw? Is there something you need to say?”

The large warrior shrugged and pulled the pipe from his mouth. His eyes wandered off into the sunny field beyond the tree’s dripline.

“Maw, I don’t have all day to wait. What is it?” She remembered his remark at the campfire the night before. He’d wanted to talk then. “Is this about last night?”

Mawby’s eyes gradually found hers, though he appeared reluctant to maintain the contact. “There’s something I’ve got to say,” he said too softly.

“You need permission to talk to me now?” She laughed at that. “Gods above, I’ve only been a kadeer ten minutes. Nothing’s changed. Just say it.”

“I’m not saying this between our ranks,” he said, “I mean, not as a feydeer to his commanding officer. I’m saying it between friends.”