I gently wipe away the accumulated grime on Lav's face. His chin has never been able to grow much hair, luckily, and his skin wipes away an unnatural alabaster beneath the scraggly growth clinging precariously to his face. They haven’t taken him outside, not for months. I make gentle noises in the back of my throat, as if he’s a skittish horse, but outside stimuli changes nothing. He barely feels the hunger that has to be burning through him. His delicate cheekbones stand out sharp and prominent from his hollow cheeks. Sores fester on his back and legs.
Once I have him in new clothes and his chair gleaming again, I wash the floors and change his bedding. Halfway through, Nomman comes to the door, hesitates, and then retreats, though his shame floats through the air. Elina adds spices to the stew as she hums, her thoughts on herself rather than her sons.
When I finish, my fingers are raw and chafed, but the floor is spotless, Lav is clean, and the room feels like a room again instead of a cave. I wheel him out, the expensive chair paying for itself a dozen times over. Regardless of how light and frail he may be, lifting him from place to place was a trial. We make it to the table, Lav's place at the head of the table both a necessity and a symbol.
My lips twist. He’s at the head because his chair slides easily into the space, but it’s so much more than that. He’s at the head because, by the Creator, he’s the only reason I return to these awful memories. He’s at the head because this family would long ago have broken apart and scattered to the winds if not for the tortured soul slumped wearily in his chair. Nomman settles across from him at the other side of the table. While I view him as sitting at the head of the table, perhaps my father views the opposite, that he’s as the foot, as low as he can be placed. Judging by the condition I found him in, they haven't even bothered to put forth the effort to wheel him to the table.
The soup has grown cold, having sat too long while I finished my ministrations, and the meal is silent. A few times, Elina exchanges a pleasant word with Nomman, but I resist all efforts to be dragged into the conversation as I sip at the soup.
“I have a new form of love to try. I met an elderly couple from the Donirian envoy to the Khalintars,” I say suddenly into the silence. “Their love has lasted nearly five decades, almost fifty long years of dedication. Not once did I notice a negative thought, a single notion of enmity. Their love was beautiful.”
“When did you meet them?” Nomman asks, genuinely curious. “I thought you spent the last few months traveling to Donir with your master, not speaking with people here in Coin.”
“Do you really think I would ever travel to that shit hole of a kingdom?” I ask mildly. “I've been in Coin the entire time. The coalition would fall apart without me controlling the wayward idiots you’ve named Khals.”
“What?” Elina asks dumbly. I’ve had this conversation with my parents before. Eleven times before.
“Mother. Father,” I say after a moment, the words cutting off some vapid thing Elina drones on about, the words entirely devoid of the warmth that should accompany those titles. “You have... disappointed me.”
“Is this about Lav? We do everything that boy needs to survive, just like you ask,” Elina says, overly loud, as if speaking the words with volume somehow lends them validity, but her thoughts betray her. She secretly hopes he dies, as she always has. She can't bear to think of Lav as her son anymore. He’s a broken husk, nothing but a drain of resources. Everything would be better without him; she could travel, she could go with me on my journeys, she could really live again. Nomman doesn't feature prominently in those thoughts.
Nomman shoots Elina a glance, but hesitates. He knows shame, a deep and abiding guilt that he should be doing better by his oldest son. But he loves his wife, always has, and he believes that going along with her whims provides him the only path to happiness. Much of Lav’s condition stems from the bitch seated across from me, but Nomman’s guilt does little to satisfy the cold fire in my gut.
“You are going to do a better job,” I say, calm despite the storm raging in my breast. I reach into my mother's thoughts, excising those negative emotions, ripping them out like pages from a book. She cries out and clutches her head, and I ignore Nomman as he tries to comfort her. He doesn't understand why the woman he loves is doubled over, squeezing her temples as if any physical act could help with the feeling of having your mind brutalized. I understand the pain, distantly, a disquieting echo in the back of my thoughts: I have felt this pain as well. Someone once did the same to me, ripped thoughts and memories from my head. The pain is sickening, overwhelming.
I relish it.
The only person with the power to alter the minds and thoughts of others is the Shaper of Thought. Me. So I altered my own memories, taking things from myself. Why would I do so? The answer is plain. I’m protecting myself from something awful, or removing something unpleasant. Unlike most people in this world, I trust myself, and I know better than to meddle and pry into the memories I once deemed too unpleasant or powerful to exist.
I relish the pain because I can remember, even distantly, how awful it feels. So I know exactly what this bitch is going through as I yank out her dreams by the roots, burning away all emotion and leaving a void behind.
How could she cast aside her eldest son? How could she?
Into that absence, I pour my own love for Lav, my abiding sense of duty and purpose to the kin seated at the end of the table. I’ve tried this before. It will not last. The mind is resilient; no matter how powerful the blow, given enough time and the right circumstances, any mind can recover. Elina's mind has rediscovered this selfish, uncaring attitude half a dozen times despite my best effort to root it out and burn even the ashes of the ashes. Still, her mind recovers.
I dredge up the feelings of attraction she once held for Nomman. Of love, there is no sign, as there has never been. She married him because he was young, handsome, and owned a plot of land in Coin itself. She wants to be powerful, to live a life of luxury and decadence amongst the elite of Coin. Nomman, however, has no ambitions. He can’t be pushed beyond a managerial position at the port office. He enjoys his work: the endless task of managing the ebb and flow of ships in the harbor, finding the space and the pattern in the myriad ships that sail up and down the Vein into Coin for trade or travel. Nomman loves his job, his wife, and his children; he’s content.
I bring to the fore the feeling of the elderly Donirian couple's love, pouring into Elina their unceasing regard for one another, their patience, and their happiness, the satisfaction the man feels looking on his wife, the way his eyes soften whenever they hold her, how his awareness and uncertainties fade in her presence. I take that feeling, the best I can, and insinuate it into Elina's thoughts, carefully, quietly, weaving the love and affection into her old attraction, subtly urging her mind to accept the emotion in all its wonder.
Once, I would have jammed the love into her brain as viciously as I ripped out her previous thoughts. I’ve tried my hand at pruning, carefully snipping away each emotion. That works, to varying degrees of success, but rarely do the feelings remain absent. It’s far more effective to torment the brain, scarring it so that the mind, as resilient as it is, resists even attempting to go near the source of that pain.
The removal of memories and thoughts must be brutal and swift, but the introduction of new thoughts and feelings... far from it. Forcing the mind to believe something it has never thought is nigh-on impossible. Instead, I use gentle, subtle nudges and suggestions.
It is almost as if I’m tending a forest, wild and untamed. A searing blaze in certain parts of the forest burns the vines and trees to their stubs. Left behind is little more than roots and ashes, empty and barren. In its place... I plant seeds. Shoving a foreign flower into an unfamiliar landscape will often result in growth native to the forest smothering the stranger before it can grow. Instead, I sow seeds in the scorched sections of the forest, hoping that one or two will grow into being and finally take over the native flora.
P
erhaps this love, a love tempered and strengthened over decades, a love that has never known betrayal, will finally be the seed that catches. Perhaps she will finally love her husband and her son over herself.
I finish after a few minutes, leaving Elina asleep on the table, her bowl of soup seeping out onto the ground. Nomman shakes her, frantically trying to wake his wife. I reach into his mind, burning away the surface thoughts and the last few moments carefully, then nudge him to sleep. He slumps down next to her, his head coming to rest on her shoulder. I stand, glancing around the homely little house.
Lav stares vacantly forward, his thoughts unchanging and unchangeable. I sigh, leaning over and kissing his forehead before standing and tousling his hair absently. He’ll be alright, for a while at least. Without a backward glance, I stride from the house.
***
“What happened to your brother, Bastian?” the Seer asks compassionately. I blink once, twice, adjusting to the sudden return to the present. “How did he come to be so broken?”
“I don't know,” I say honestly, but my mind turns from the conversation. The woman just did something to me. She read my memory as if I played the images before her, as if she hijacked my power and reversed it. It’s almost as if she has the power of the Shaper of Thought... “How did you do that?”
The Seer smiles down at me, her face just as magnanimous and welcoming as before. But something else lurks behind her eyes, a calculation, a guarded uncertainty that wasn’t evident before. I try to reach for my power, to read the thoughts behind that strange look, but my body is too weak. I can't even lift my arm, let alone draw energy to Shape.
“I am a Seer of many things,” she finally responds. “I can See things of the past, things of the present, and many things of the future. When I am in the presence of one with such strong emotions, I can often See the past they have lived. Your life has been one of misery and deceit, Bastian. And not just for those you have manipulated. I pity you.”
“You pity me?” I say with a trembling voice. “I pity you when your people realize who they have been harboring. Who they have been raising up. There is only one who can see into the past. There is only one who can grasp the events of the present. There is only one who can peer into the future. I know you, Master of Time.”
The woman looks taken aback for a moment, as if the accusation is so surprising she can't even comprehend it. Then, she laughs, a deep belly laugh of the kind that can only be gifted by genuine humor. She wipes tears from her eyes as she stands.
“For one so clever, you see so little,” she says. She turns, shoulders shaking with humor, and strides away.
That evening, Te'ial comes to me again, her face more guarded and her manner more reserved. I’ve hardly twitched a muscle since my confrontation with the Seer. The overwhelming anger allowed me to draw on Thought for a few moments, but my body and soul need far more time to recover than a day of soup and rest. I’m worse off than when I awoke, the last dregs of my energy drained and gone.
The captain reaches in with her strong arms and rights me, bringing the accustomed bowl to my lips. I try to find it in me to hate her, prodding at what remains of my pride, but I can't muster the effort. The landscape of my mind feels much like the ashes of Elina's mind after my visits, save for the fact that the entire forest has burned. I can't feel the emotions behind a thought, but rather they come to me raw, uninhibited, untainted by sentiment or sorrow. Even thoughts of Lav are clean and sharp, none of the old familiar despair rising to the fore.
I eat in the desultory fashion of the depressed, allowing Te'ial to put the sustenance in my body but uncaring as to why. She handles me gently, the bowl carefully pressed to my lips, the soup doled out in small, manageable swallows. When she finishes, she props me more comfortably against the bars facing the village.
“The Seer told me...” Te'ial begins, her voice strange in the growing twilight. “I am better than my actions, Cursed. I grieve for your family. I grieve for my own. Though I will not like you... I cannot hate you.”
“Then call me by my name,” I say, meeting her eyes through the bars.
“I do not respect you that much, Cursed,” she says, a pale shadow of her customary smirk on her face. “I feel as if my head will hurt for weeks.”
“Worth a shot. I don't like you either. And yet, even after all this,” I mutter, wishing, though unable, to wave my arm around expansively to indicate the village, the captivity, the time... “I can't bring myself to hate you either. I'll see you in the morning. Captain.”
Her eyes narrow, but she merely nods.
“In the morning, Cursed.”
My eyes are already closed. I don't hear her walk away before I sleep.
***
“This is... unexpected,” the elegant woman speaks. “How can the boy hide such altruism behind the despicable facade he presents?”
“He is more complex than we realized,” the girl answers, her voice thoughtful. “Did you notice, in that memory, what he's done? He took some of his own knowledge and buried it inside his mind. There are memories and thoughts Bastian has lived that he can't remember. He removed them.”
“His sanity should be questioned,” the brutish foreign man responds. “Who willingly destroys their own thoughts?”
“If you never wanted to remove your own memories, you lived a life completely devoid of sorrow,” the Khalintari says wryly. “The impressive thing about it is the control. Who among us would have been comfortable breaking our own minds apart?”
Silence answers him for long moments, infinitely long in this place which is no place.
“Impressive or not, this revelation is perhaps more disquieting than our initial analysis,” the elegant woman picks back up. “At least before we knew who he was and could reasonably predict his actions. Now, we have no idea who this boy is.”
“Exactly,” the girl answers. Her voice is young, barely past adolescence. Even so, she speaks with the quiet authority of someone used to giving commands. And having them followed. “We don't have any idea. We haven't the faintest, for all our alleged omniscience. You wanted him killed before we knew anything about him at all. I would expect a more judicious approach in the future, Ulia.”
“Very well, Jynn,” the woman responds, somehow conveying the sense of being both chastened and rebellious.
“Who are you?” I ask.
The voices all cut off abruptly. I reach around blindly without knowing what I reach for. I feel foolish after a moment. The physical constraints of my flesh clearly have no meaning here. What does it mean to reach out a hand in a place where my body doesn’t exist? Instead, I conjure the memory of the voice of the girl, Jynn. I stretch out my mind and pull.
A flicker of an image, there and gone almost before my mind can comprehend it. A girl, a young woman, perhaps eighteen Summers, dressed in silver armor under a warlike black robe etched with silver inlay, her light brown hair bound in a long braid stretching out behind her. The girl flinches back, the light of her soul twisting free of my mental grasp without much difficulty. Still, I read surprise and the barest hint of fear before she can flit away.
“Who are you?” I shout into the darkness. I get the feeling of being watched, as if an entire multitude waits just outside the range of my sight. I stretch forward, but the feeling doesn’t fade. The voices remain quiet, but their silence is as conspicuous as their speech. I can feel them in their absence as much as their presence. “You won’t hide from me forever. I'll figure it out before long.”
“Wake up, Bastian,” the girl says, her voice very close behind. Even as I try to spin—
My eyes flutter, then open, the predawn light doing little to illuminate the dark jungle around me. The mark of my power glimmers fitfully on my thigh, but it soon fades into my skin and leaves me exhausted. The exhaustion is good, though. It’s the weariness of honest toil, the wholesome tiredness that comes with stretching yourself beyond your limits. I don’t feel the soul-wrenching despair in my bones. My musc
les respond to my command, bringing my hands up before my eyes. Though my filthy hands shake, I hold them up for several minutes before the trembling grows too great. I switch to my legs, raising them as high as I can, holding them aloft with the muscles of my stomach. I flex my legs at the knee and force every bit of my will into demanding they fold on my command.
Te'ial finds me with my arms up in the air, trembling mightily, but grimly satisfied as they hang longer than before.
“You know,” I say conversationally, my voice still a rasp from disuse. “You never recognize how much you take movement for granted until it’s gone.”
“I wouldn't know,” she says, sitting down with the bowl. She watches me for long moments, not interrupting as I return to bending my legs.
“I wish I didn’t,” I mutter, shoving at the ground and managing to prop myself up against the bars of my cage. She rearranges me a bit more to her liking, then brings the bowl to my lips again. I slurp the soup greedily. “Is there more?”
“You are to be given whatever you ask, aside from your freedom,” Te'ial responds, shrugging. “Do you wish for more soup?”
“And bread. We can soak it so that my jaw can grow used to chewing again. Also, could you perhaps bring me clean water and a cloth?”
“It will take more than that to get you clean,” Te'ial says, wrinkling her nose in disgust. Of course, I shit myself again in the night.
“Trust me,” I say, trying a smile but probably coming far closer to a grimace. “I have never smelled anything worse than me right now. Wiping myself clean is a start.”
The Crux of Eternity: Eternal Dream, Book 1 (The Eternal Dream Saga) Page 31