The Pleasure of Memory (49 page)

She felt the heat of blood in her face. “Saaro,” she growled at him, “You’ll goddamned well face me when I’m talking to you!”

Maeryc only cocked his head halfway back toward her. Hunched and panting, his wild eyes scoured the water at her thighs. Then he straightened himself and slowly turned to face her, and much to her shock, he was grinning.

She pressed into him abruptly enough to send him staggering back. “You wipe that goddamned grin off your face or I swear I’ll slap it off!” she said.

The grin slowly faded. Maeryc threw a sharp stare up at Mawby, who stood just behind her. “Well,” he said, returning his eyes to her, “Are you going to give the order to move out?”

Her hand landed instinctively on her sword hilt. She was angry enough to spit fire. “What did you say to me?” she whispered at him.

Maeryc glared at her with his withered, faded eyes. His face was dirty and speckled with brilliant green algae. The skin on his lips was dried and split, and the rims of his nostrils caked with old snot. The sight of her strong, proud brother looking so befouled mortified her.

Yet, in the same instant, she experienced what her people called gret k’feyn, a moment of divine enlightenment. This was not her brother. Looking at this shell of a man before her, she finally understood. This was her brother’s flesh, but those were the eyes of the demon looking out from it, and that dark revelation liberated her.

She slugged him hard in the stomach. He doubled forward, coughing. Before he had time to recover, she was back on him, dragging him up by his mail. “Maeryc!” she yelled into his face, “You ever defy my command again, and I swear I’ll have you in chains! Do you understand me?”

Maeryc’s eyes flamed at her. He grabbed for his sword, but Mawby’s powerful hand crushed over his, locking it to the weapon’s hilt.

“You’re tired, Maeryc,” Mawby whispered into his ear, “You’re not acting yourself.”

“Go to hell, Mawby.”

“Maybe,” Mawby said, “Maybe we’ll go together, jh’ven? It’s your choice, not mine.”

Maeryc was clearly furious, though he didn’t attempt to escape Mawby’s hold.

Mawby then slipped his arm around the hack’s shoulder, ushering him back to the line as casually as if they were walking out of a tavern together. Judging by Maeryc’s flinch, Koonta was certain Mawby’s blade tip was parked just under the arm of Maeryc’s sleeveless mail.

“You better have a damned good explanation for this,” Koonta whispered to him as Mawby guided Maeryc past.

Maeryc looked at her. Dry lips sneered back from dirty teeth. Then his expression abruptly melted into a queer smile, a smile she knew was supposed to look natural. It was the same unsavory smile she’d seen too many times on the tarry faces of the demons, and it was the most horrifying sight she’d ever seen.

Maeryc laughed hoarsely and slapped Mawby’s chest with the back of his hand. “My apologies,” he said, “It’s this vile swamp. Has me uneasy, jh’ven?”

Koonta walked up behind them and retrieved the sword from her brother’s scabbard. Maeryc stopped and looked back at her.

“You ever defy my command again,” she said as she slid his blade under her belt, “And I’ll take your fingers as penance.”

Mawby then shoved Maeryc roughly into the line of warriors. Maeryc staggered backward and collapsed into the water. The other warriors backed away from him as the hack came up sputtering and painted in algae.

“What are your orders, Kad’r?” Mawby asked her. His eyes never left Maeryc.

For the first time that day, Koonta felt cold. She tried to hide her trembling from the warriors who stood watching them in silence, but they already knew what was happening here. They’d known it longer than she had. They understood her pain and they honored her with their silence.

“Maeryc,” she said carefully, “You’re relieved of duty.” She removed his insignia and handed it to Mawby. “Put it on, Maw. You’re Saaro now.”

“What?” Maeryc said, “You can’t do that! I told you I’m just tired, for gods’ sakes!” He stepped toward her, but Mawby quickly moved between them and threw a halting hand against his chest.

“You heard the Kad’r,” Mawby said, “Fall in!”

The shell that was once her beloved brother didn’t look at Mawby, but reserved the pressure of his gaze for her alone. As she watched him glaring at her, she wondered what would happen when the time came to
release
him. And she now fully understood the black truth, that it was a matter of ‘when’ and not ‘if’. How would she explain it to her family? How could she live with such a terrible weight?

Maeryc suddenly shoved Mawby’s hand away and rushed forward through the water. He stumbled to a stop before her, seizing her by the shoulders. As he looked at her, something about him changed. For just an instant, she was looking into the clear, knowing eyes of her brother again.

“Koo,” he whispered desperately, “Please! Don’t tell anyone. Don’t let our family know! Don’t let—”

He never finished his words. He stiffened sharply, as if taken by a seizure, and then stumbled backward through the water. He threw his hands to his head and began to shriek. His wail reverberated through the silence of the swamp as he clawed at his face and skull. Finally, he doubled forward and vomited violently into the murky green water.

The company watched him in stunned silence as he alternately retched and gasped for air. When he eventually lifted himself up from the mud and dragged a forearm slowly across his mouth, any evidence that Maeryc had ever lived in that shell was gone. His eyes were alive, but burning with someone else’s fire. It was the demon glaring at her now, the demon baring its dirty teeth at her without any attempt to conceal itself.

Mawby seized the hack and dragged it roughly back through the water. As he threw Maeryc’s remains into line, he said, “You make another move like that and I will slit your throat, I swear it before all that’s holy.”

Koonta felt all hope evaporate before her. She turned slowly away from the hack and began feeling her way through the fetid swamp. She felt sick and weak, and utterly useless.

As she walked through the thick algae, she pulled Maeryc’s sword from her belt. The hilt was made of hand carved witchwood wrapped in the richest leather in the style of their ancestors. It had their family name engraved gracefully along the length of the perfect steel blade. This had been her father’s sword before Maeryc inherited it. It’d served her people through three generations. It’d been a symbol of loyalty and pride and honor. But now...

She stopped. She held the sword out to her side and let it slip into the water without ceremony. As she watched the algae slowly fill in the break created by the act, she wiped her face and willed her pain back into the forbidden box. She looked over at Mawby, but couldn’t dwell there for fear if she did she’d never be able to pull away. Instead, she turned away from him and the company.

“Move them out, Maw,” she said as she resumed their march, “We’re nearly there.”

∞

The hatch squatting at the crest of the unnatural hilltop became vividly real as they approached it. Covered in twisted, scraggy overgrowth, the rounded hill was like a tumor swelling up from gangrenous flesh, and the hatch was a scab rotting at the top of it. As they made their way toward it, she somehow understood that their fates were to be divined up there on that wretched mass, that there would be no turning back after this. It was like how a deer must feel when it smells the approaching wolf, but still can’t see it. She only prayed that any decisions she made at this critical junction would be sound ones, decisions to make her family proud.

They were a hundred feet out from the hill when she halted her troops and ordered them into formation. She stood before them in the hot, wretched water with Mawby at her side. She knew there wasn’t a warrior in that line who wasn’t praying for escape from the damned swamp before night settled its full weight on them, but she was determined to do this right. There’d be no second chance.

“I want the base of the hill combed along the waterline,” she ordered them, “I want it thoroughly searched and I want it called clear before anyone sets so much as a toe landside.”

The troops collectively nodded. All except Maeryc, who only glowered angrily at her.

“If the fugitives have already exited the hatch,” she continued, purposefully avoiding his gaze, “We’ll have a slim chance of apprehending them before Boardtown. And if it rains, we’ll have as good as lost them. Given that, we’ll have to work quickly. When the mud line is clear, Mawby and I will counter-circle the hill up to the hatch while you remain in the water. Once we’ve cleared the grounds, we’ll make camp.”

She’d no sooner finished issuing her orders when a coarse breeze kicked up to whisper through the reeds. Wide eyes probed the dusk growing around them. A few of the warriors drew their swords.

“It’s only the goddamned wind!” she said as loudly as she dared, “If you need something to fear, fear me. Anyone who foils our efforts to track that hill will have something far worse than a dead man’s voice to contend with, jh’ven?”

The warriors shook their heads.

The island hill was larger than it looked from the distance, easily a full two acres in total land mass. The banks were dense with snakegrass, thorny milkweed, and woehag brambles with their venomous purple burrs. The center of the island was covered with patches of tough, scraggy boar grass scattered through the smelly mud and rocks.

It took them nearly an hour of painstaking search before she allowed them to set foot on land. When she gave the signal, the warriors stumbled forward through the aggressive foliage and collapsed in the less offensive gravel further up the muddy bank. They wasted no time peeling off their soggy boots and saturated breeches, sparing no modesty in the pursuit of dryness and comfort.

At the very pitch of the hill sat their purpose. Standing nearly three feet high, the hatch base was composed of perfectly fitted, interlocking stone blocks seated without benefit of mortar in the Baeldonian tradition. A round, rusting iron hatch was mounted atop the base. It was easily six feet across and split down the middle, exactly like the previous two. However, this one was different in that the hinges were hidden, contained on the inside of the hatch, so that there was no purchase for a lever to pry them open even if they’d had the proper tools and tackle. Two matching thick iron handles sat a foot apart from each other on either side of the seam.

Koonta'ar and Mawby took the first watch. She sat down on the hot surface of the stone base encircling the rusted iron hatch. Mawby joined her a few minutes later. He helped her shuck her boots before attending to his own needs.

“Well,” she whispered as she massaged a pale, wrinkled foot, “That’s a bit of good news. It seems they haven't left the tunnels yet.”

Mawby stood beside her. He placed a bare foot on the warm rock beside her and leaned an elbow into his knee. “Unless they've passed this one for the next hatch,” he said quietly.

“I don’t believe it. This is the one, Maw.”

“What makes you so certain?”

“It's the closest exit to Boardtown. Moving onto the next would cost them an extra two days. This is where I would exit.”

Mawby nodded his head. A few green flecks of dried algae flittered from his brownish hair. He twisted around and looked down at the camp. Even in the settling gloom, the form of Maeryc was undeniable. He still stood in the water with his hands knotted at his sides and his eyes burning up at them.

“And what about him?” Mawby asked.

“Keep two pairs of eyes on him at all times.”

“Ay’a. And?”

“Don't underestimate him. He’s stronger than we think.”

Mawby rubbed the tired flesh between his eyes. “I’ve no doubts about that.”

She looked up at him. He was clearly three shades of exhausted. His eyes were hollow, his normally chiseled, granite face now appeared as washed-out as a mudslide. She took little comfort in the knowledge that she must look at least as bad as he did.

“Mawby?” she whispered.

“Kad’r?”

“I want you to swear something to me.”

“Anything. You only have to name it.”

She slipped a hand onto his forearm and looked up at him. “Swear to me you won’t let the demon get the caeyl.”

“You know I won’t, Koo.”

“Swear that if anything happens to me, you’ll seize it, that you’ll steal it into safe hands. Not to Prae or Goelvar. Take it to Kaelif Ro’eb. You’ll likely find him at the Snake River siege base just south of Graewind Castle. If you don’t find him there, take it to Fael'r Braelon in Vaen. She’s the only council member we can trust.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to you, Koo. Not while I’m able to draw breath.”

“Promise me, Mawby. Promise me you’ll do it.”

“I told you I won’t let—”

“Swear it, Maw!”

For a moment, Mawby just looked at her. Then he nodded solemnly and said, “Ay’a, I swear it.”

Koonta looked off into the darkening sky. The waning moon floated just above the horizon behind a narrow slash in the approaching storm clouds, its milky white surface stained disturbingly brown behind the steamy swamp gases. As she studied it, she wondered if the world hadn’t already fallen to the powers of the Wyr.

“We should bind him.”

Mawby’s voice startled her from her thoughts. “What?” she asked.

“Bind him. Strike preemptively.”

“No,” she said without hesitation, “We can’t show our hand. Not just yet. I don’t think the demon suspects we know yet.”

“Once it suspects, it’ll send its lackeys after us. Maybe even the prodes. How long do we wait?”

“Prodes,” she whispered on a shudder, “How did it come to this?”

Mawby’s face was bloodless and jaundiced under the corrupted moonlight. “You needn’t worry, Koo,” he said as he pretended to study the night, “I’ll do whatever I have to. The bastards won’t get the caeyl.”

“And Maeryc?”

He seemed to shrink a bit at that. But, then he looked her straight on and said, “I’ll release him when the time delivers itself. I won’t suffer him to linger, I promise it.”

His voice was thick and sore, like the dark whisperings shared among the survivors of a funeral, and in that moment she wanted nothing more than to hold her old friend, to find comfort in him and give him comfort back.