Ashes Of Memory

by Aiden Bates

  Behind me, something whimpered. A child? I turned, and searched the shadows, hugging myself against the cold as I staggered down the alley searching. A few steps, and my foot caught on something. I went down, face first, and didn’t manage to get my hands out in time to catch myself. My head cracked against the cement, sending a bolt of pain through me that managed to reach my toes.

  Half-blind and confused, my head pounding, I rolled to my back and struggled to sit up. My body was heavy, full of lead and rocks. I’d tripped on an animal. It lay on its side. It was small, its white fur marred by patches of inky black. Blood, maybe. It’s small chest rose and fell irregularly, every few breaths bringing with it a pained whimper. A wolf. But not fully grown. Its tongue lolled out of its jaws, where it still had only the needle-teeth of a juvenile.

  Cautiously, my heart breaking for the poor thing, I crawled toward it. “Hey,” I rasped, “you okay, little guy?”

  I managed to get close enough to see that its eyes were half-closed. Beneath the lids, those golden eyes rolled and moved as if it were in a deep, disturbing dream. I put a hand to its fur. The flesh beneath was cold. Frozen by the darkness. I wished I had something to offer—a jacket, a blanket, anything—but we were both stuck here in the cold and dark together.

  Dread welled up inside me and spread to the ends of my limbs, down to my hands and feet like the reverse image of an electric current, freezing instead of burning, but buzzing under my skin. I stroked the poor pup’s fur, down the neck and to the trembling ribs. At the edge of my awareness, it all seemed familiar. Something was going to happen, but I didn’t know what, and the anxiousness of knowing and not-knowing drew a line of tension through me that stretched taut until it threatened to break.

  Please, no, I begged silently. Not this, please. Let me have peace.

  Under my fingers, the pup’s ribs cracked. White fur turned black. The scent of rot rose to assault my nose; corruption that stung at my brain and tried to sink hooks into me.

  I recoiled as squirming black things pressed up and out and began to pour from the body that was still whimpering—still living, suffering. Tears streamed down my face, leaving trails that stung my skin like acid.

  “You let him die!” a woman shouted.

  I looked up, and saw her accusing eyes burning like golden coals. She stepped over the pup, and her jaw distended, lengthening as her body bulged in an unseemly transformation. Her voice twisted to match, and came out laced with razors and jagged edges. “You should have saved him!”

  The creature descended on me, and the air in her wake became filled with images and sensations, like a cloak fluttering from her shoulders that enveloped us both as she tore into me, her jaws closing around my throat. Everywhere that she broke my skin and tore through muscle and sinew, the shadowy thoughts around her slipped into me, infected me. Reminded me.

  Bright blue eyes. Cold, icy. Burning with resentment.

  Words that offended creation itself, settling into my mind and rupturing like pustules, infecting every thought. Rotting away the links between one memory and the next.

  A handsome face, twisted with grief. Begging me for something I couldn’t understand, couldn’t give him.

  “Please don’t leave me.”

  “It’s okay,” a strong, deep voice insisted as I thrashed against whatever had me trapped. “Vance, it’s okay, calm down! You were dreaming.”

  “You don’t know that,” someone else said bitterly. “This is your fault.”

  “You think I don’t know that? Vance, please, stop. Please.”

  When I couldn’t get free of the creature with physical force, I reached for my magic instead. The moment I did, I sensed two presences. One that I knew instantly was Mikhail, and another that echoed down to the core of me as someone safe, someone important.

  I calmed, at least enough to get a hold on myself, and the last remnants of the dream, or vision, cleared from my sight as my mind woke up the rest of the way. I had a splitting migraine, and the walls of my psyche felt unstable and ready to collapse any moment—but with a few breaths and a familiar list of internal checks that were like reflexes at this point I managed to regain my balance.

  Tam’s face was close to mine. His strong hands held my arms pinned to my side and against something soft—a bed. I’d been moved. I had a vague recollection of a house. When I probed the memory, chunks of it came back at once.

  I gasped, and had to keep them mentally distant. Things that had happened to someone else, that I only observed with dispassionate, passive interest.

  Bit by bit, Tam’s grip let up. “Are you here with us?”

  I gave a weak nod. “Water,” I rasped.

  “Got you,” Mikhail said, and came into view with a short, wide glass. He handed it to me as Tam let me sit up, and I gulped it down to wet my throat. I was hoarse. Probably from screaming.

  When the water was gone, I handed the glass back to Mikhail and put a hand to my forehead where the pain throbbed like someone excavating behind my eyes. With explosives. “Shit,” I muttered. “Sorry. I thought I could do it without a meltdown, I didn’t mean to—”

  “It’s not your fault,” Tam said gently. His hand found mine and squeezed it. “Really, it’s not. Don’t blame yourself. I’m just glad you’re awake.”

  “How long was I out?” I asked, more to Mikhail than Tam.

  It was Tam that answered, though. “Two hours. Is that... normal?”

  I met Mikhail’s gaze and he gave a shallow nod of confirmation. Not that I didn’t trust Tam to be able to tell time. I sighed. “Actually, that’s pretty good,” I said. “Last time, I was out for ten. Once I was out for three days. If anything, this is a good sign. It’s been a while since that happened, and I recovered pretty fast. I’m getting better at it, I guess.”

  Tam’s expression said he was borderline horrified for me. I hated that look on anyone, but for some reason it seemed worse coming from him.

  “I’ll make some tea,” Mikhail said, and went to my messenger bag, where I’d packed the mixture that I used to help recenter myself.

  “Thanks,” I told him. “That will help.”

  Mikhail eyed Tam. “Do you need some time to meditate?”

  I really did, if I was going to keep my head above water. But I knew that Tam wanted to know what I’d seen, sooner rather than later, and there was still a clock ticking silently in the distance. “I’ll be okay,” I said.

  Mikhail didn’t seem to like that answer, but he didn’t argue. “I’ll be back, then.”

  He left, and with my mind as raw as it was, I couldn’t have kept myself from feeling the complicated mix of guilt, worry, anticipation, and anxiousness coming off Tam in waves. “It’s okay to ask what I saw,” I told him.

  “If you’re not ready...” he said, but I knew that it was at the front of his mind. That he hoped I was, and hated that he hoped that.

  I took a few seconds to cobble together something like a mental shield, though it was unsteady at best. It at least dampened things down a little so I could tell where my emotions ended and his began. I pulled more of the blanket into my lap and buried my hands in it to warm them. “You... were right about the abyssal magic,” I said slowly, reviewing what I could remember. “And that it wasn’t the only magic at work. Someone set a trap. It would have to have been another esper. When I tapped into the mental plane—the place where psychic energy leaves an impression, kind of like an Etch-A-Sketch—I saw a lot of different versions of the night. Someone planted them, to hide their trail.”

  “I saw some of those, I think,” Tam said. His brows knit. “When I found you and Mikhail, you were putting out a lot of psychic energy.”

  I shuddered. “Sorry.”

  “No,” he said quickly, “I didn’t mean—I’m okay. I saw... well, it’s none of my business, maybe. So, were you able to get through the false impressions?”

  It took me a moment to answer. I sifted through the information mentally, probing the memories carefully
. Now that the trap was sprung, and I was reading the impressions from my own mind, there was no real danger—not like there had been in the house—but they were well-crafted. In only one of them, however, was there the acrid texture of abyssal magic.

  “It all happened fast,” I said, following the memory as closely as I could, my eyes still closed as I raised a hand as if I could touch the fabric of the images. “No one was expecting it. One moment, they were having dinner, I think, and then... then Haval must have sensed something because he got up and went to the back door—the sliding glass one, in the kitchen.”

  “That’s where they found him,” Tam murmured.

  That wasn’t surprising. There was a burst of psychic magic, something sharp and expert. Haval dropped on the spot, and a second later slimy abyssal magic pushed into the house. Haval’s mind winked out, stopped making any impressions after that. Not even fear. I related all that to Tam before I opened my eyes. “I don’t think he suffered,” I said. “I know that’s not a comfort, but... it was instant.”

  Tam’s jaw was clenched, he was very still, but he gave the faintest nod. “And Sophia?”

  This was the part I worried about most. I wrung the blanket between my hands. “Um... from what I can tell, she... she wasn’t surprised at first,” I said slowly. “She reacted almost the same time Haval did, but then she... she moved Baz out of the kitchen.”

  “They found her in the living room,” Tam said, but there was an edge of accusation in his voice. “What do you mean she wasn’t surprised?”

  “I mean that when Haval sensed something outside,” I said, “he was suddenly worried, and a moment before he died, he was shocked. But Sophia wasn’t. She was... anxious. I can’t read what she was thinking exactly. It’s too easy to wipe that information out after the fact. I just know that she was more... resigned? But then later, there was another burst of psychic energy. A directed attack. That was when she showed any real sign of surprise. Dismay... betrayal. She was hurt, deep. And then nothing. She died like Haval did.”

  Tam absorbed that with growing anger that I could feel even through my shield. His lips trembled. “So you... you’re saying she knew?”

  I winced, both because I had to be the one to deliver the news and because the spike in Tam’s rage was almost doubled as his eyes flashed red-gold and his skin rippled as if he might shift any moment. “There was so much going on,” I said quickly, “I... could be wrong. I could be getting the real impressions mixed up with the false ones.”

  That was a lie. I knew which were real and which weren’t.

  Whether Tam believed it or not, he calmed himself some. There was a more pressing worry. “What about Baz? Was he alive when he was taken?”

  Hopefully, that news could provide something to hold onto. “He was,” I said. “He was scared, but they put him to sleep. The last impression I had of him was leaving through the back. And these people—I only sensed human and dragon minds. I don’t think it was the fae, or a vampire faction, or anything like that. The images of the people responsible are all muddied; I couldn’t point a finger at someone. But the way the magic felt—it was unrefined. Powerful, and skilled, but... Cabal magic, you can always tell. It’s clean, surgical. Well-developed because we’ve been refining our knowledge and technique for centuries. I think we can rule out an attack from a cabal.”

  “I don’t know if that’s better or worse,” Tam muttered. “It doesn’t give us much more of a chance of finding him.”

  I kept my face impassive to keep from showing the sting that gave me.

  Tam must have picked up on it anyway, though. He gave me an apologetic look. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he said, and combed his fingers through his hair, sagging. “You’ve given us a lot. Baz was alive, so they took him for a reason. Sophia... might have known it was going to happen. Damn it. I feel like such an idiot. She wasn’t from another weyr. It took a long time for her to earn the trust of the community after Haval introduced her. I would say we could look into her past, see who she’s connected to, but now I wonder if we ever knew who she actually was. I should have seen it, should have warned Haval away from her.”

  He put his face in his hands, and I had a powerful urge to reach out for him, to comfort him. It was visceral—seeing him crushed like this pulled at some hook embedded deep in my gut. With that impulse came flashes of memory, echoes that didn’t come from me, and weren’t coming off of Tam. At least, not now. Like I’d picked them up without realizing it before. His lips brushing mine, so clear that they tingled as if he’d just kissed me. Others followed, so quickly and so short-lived that I couldn’t quite grasp them before they faded, slipping through my psychic fingers—which were weak at the moment. I had to keep my hands still, and continued to wring the blanket to occupy them. The sight of him in pain was torturous, but I couldn’t do anything about it, and barely understood why it hurt so much.

  And I couldn’t help but think maybe I was partially responsible, as well. “I knew Sophia, too,” I said. “Right?”

  Tam took his hands from his face and drew in a steadying breath. He couldn’t look at me, but I didn’t think he was angry with me. “Yeah,” he said. “You came along when Baz was three.”

  “If I had been able to tell, I would have said something,” I told him. “So, she had everyone fooled. Even me. I probably wouldn’t have invaded her thoughts but... she must have convinced herself of whatever we needed to. Or, maybe someone got to her later.”

  “That doesn’t make it better,” he said bitterly.

  I sighed. “I just mean... there’s no point wasting time thinking about if you could have stopped it, or known something was going to happen. It will just make you feel worse. Baz was alive, and I got a clear sense of his mind. I could...”

  Tam looked up at me as I trailed off before I said something I would regret. A sense of hope built in his mind, strong enough that I could sense it through my shield. “Vance,” he said, “I can’t ask you... not after this.”

  I swallowed, and wished Mikhail would come back with that tea. There was such a powerful mix of shame and need in Tam’s eyes. And it was so familiar, but I couldn’t place where I’d seen it before. I just knew that I had, and wondered why, and when, and what had happened after I saw it.

  Somehow, I thought that whatever we had before I became the utter mess I was now... I was never really able to say no to him.

  Worse, I was pretty sure that was the reason I was like this. Because I’d said yes to something reckless, just like I wanted to this time.

  “It will take time to get another esper,” I said, as the rational part of my brain told me this was a terrible idea. “Time that you might not have. Baz... I don’t remember him as well as I wish I did. But he’s a kid. He was scared. I could feel it so clearly. All that confusion. I wish I could tell you what they were planning. I can’t. But I think I can probably locate Baz.”

  Tam bowed his head. “Vance, I... I can’t ask you to do that. You don’t know what happened. It was my—”

  “Don’t,” I said, cringing inwardly from whatever he was about to confess. “Look... I know it’s not smart, but I can’t just turn my back on a kid like that. Not when I can help. Whatever happened before, I don’t remember much of it and I’m not sure I want to. And I know that you and I... that we had something. This isn’t about that either, though. It’s just about him, all right? I’ve been cooped up in a library ever since I recovered—if you can call it that—and treated like I’m useless, like I’m not even a mage anymore. Everyone handles me with kid gloves, and I get why, but I’m still an esper; still a mage. I’ll help, because what the hell else am I good for?”

  Tam finally looked up. There was a disconcerting degree of softness in his expression. “Somehow I thought you’d have changed more,” he said. “People say our memories make us who we are. I’m not so sure that’s true.”

  I didn’t know how to respond to that. Luckily, I didn’t have to. Mikhail came back in with a large mu
g steaming with hot water. He paused, looked at the two of us, and raised an eyebrow. “I missed something.”

  I gave him a lopsided, apologetic grin. “So... remember when I was just going to come and take a look?”

  His shoulders sagged. He came to the side of the bed and handed me the mug, then sank into the chair on the other side of the bedside table, shaking his head. “Gods damn it, Vance. You’re going to be the death of both of us.”

  5

  Tam

  “Don’t be stupid,” Mikhail was saying about an hour later, after Vance caught him up on at least most of our conversation. We had eventually left the guest room in my place where Vance had recovered, and now gathered in my kitchen where Vance munched on leftovers from my fridge and was on his second cup of tea. If it weren’t for the circumstances, it would almost be like old times. “Of course I have to come with you, what if you have another episode? What is Tam going to do, club you over the head and hope you wake up put together again?”

  They’d been arguing this for about the last half hour.

  Vance put his fork down on the plate of special fried rice I’d found for him. “I need you to stay here,” Vance insisted, “and try to get a hold of Sophia’s spirit. Carefully. And that’s going to take time that we don’t have.”

  “That assumes that her spirit is even intact,” Mikhail grumbled. “If she was killed with abyssal magic, there might not be a soul left to interrogate, and even if there were, it could be in bad shape.”

  “Which is why I need you to find out,” Vance said patiently.

  “Call in someone from Custodes Lunae,” Mikhail countered. “They’ll send someone more qualified anyway.”