The Forgotten (The Lost Words: Volume 3)

by Igor Ljubuncic

  Bart began stomping, trying to shed the layers of dirt from his boots. One of the Borei nodded lazily at him, indicating all was well. Constance turned and flashed a quick, lukewarm smile. Bart had not seen her twitch a sincere muscle in months. Nor had they lain together since. That was another weapon that women wielded like sword masters.

  As the viceroy, he could only suffer in silence. He could not afford scandals with camp followers or other noblewomen. He did not doubt some might be willing to spread their legs for the sake of the realm and a whole lot of gold, the exact same reasons the Caytorean girl was there. If only he knew her story, her reasons.

  Major Paul exited the commanders’ shack and saluted smartly. Bart had promoted him for all his efforts and staunch loyalty; the man deserved that much. He hoped the letter he had sent home would not be lost in some rainstorm or tossed down the side of the road by the mail rider, who might decide he was better off swigging liquor in a roadside inn than braving the weather and bandits.

  The viceroy returned the salute. Major Kilian exited next, carrying a rolled order in his hands. A handful of adjutants followed, two of them arguing. They went quiet when they saw him, and a flutter of hands went up in greeting. Bart was pleased the military treated him as one of their own. From what he had been reading on Emperor Adam, this was a good sign.

  He approached the young woman who was carrying his heir. “How are you?”

  She made a calculating face, as if wondering how much truth to share. “My back hurts.”

  Bart raked his hair. “Do you know when you’re due?”

  Constance shrugged. “Midwife Irma thinks I’m due in about six weeks.”

  Six weeks. I must make a brave decision by then. Well, he wanted to think he was no longer the coward he used to be. But at a moment like this, the old feelings of feebleness and reluctance hugged him like old friends.

  He almost envied the men around him. He definitely envied the soldiers. This evening, they would get drunk until they could no longer remember their names, but he could not afford that luxury. No scorpion fights for him this year.

  At the riverbanks all over the estuary, men off duty were fishing, lazing, enjoying the favorable weather, the early bout of warm air and gentle sunshine, the song of birds, even the croak of frogs in the rushes. There was a coal barge pushing downriver, finally seen again after a year of absence. A few women had joined the soldiers, trying to restore normalcy to their torn lives.

  Bart could not do any of that. He had to remain distant, aloof, majestic, and take the collective burden of the nation into his heart. Sharing that tremendous weight with someone would be nice. Once, he had thought his wife would be his partner, his friend, someone he could confide in. Then, he had chosen a Caytorean mistress who was every bit as cold.

  Sometimes it seemed the Borei mahout was his best pal.

  A clerk approached from the main camp, and the guards challenged him. He looked like one of the retainers employed by the nobility, someone who had no noble blood himself but did his best to look the part. He pointed toward the viceroy. Bart frowned in annoyance. He was hoping to talk to Constance a little more, but it seemed that would not be. He nodded at the sentries, and they let the man pass.

  “Greetings, Your Majesty,” the clerk lilted, bowing with flair. “I have news you will find interesting.”

  I should send him to Commander Faas, he thought. Only his officers were too busy planning the siege right now. Well, any lieutenant could handle the secretaries and adjutants. But there was something in the man’s face that made Bart hesitate.

  “Out with it,” he snapped.

  The clerk maintained a rigid smile on his face. “I am not at liberty to share this information with anyone other than yourself.” His eyes darted toward Constance in case Bart had missed the meaning.

  Bart looked at the girl. She seemed suspicious, but that was nothing new. “Please,” he said.

  Reluctantly, she withdrew into their shack; it was a bit larger than the officers’ hovels, but still a damp, cold place. For a brief moment, Bart recalled how vulnerable their position around Somar was. There were no guarantees to the success of this campaign. He was glad his uncle had recruited and sponsored the Northern Army, and that they bore on the capital from two directions, outnumbering their foe two to one, but the victory was not certain.

  “All right, speak,” he told the messenger when they were alone. Junner’s guards were out of earshot.

  The man craned his neck. “My name is Orrell, and I am in service of Lord Rotger, formerly of Ubalar.”

  “I am sorry to hear he died,” Bart offered almost automatically.

  “Oh no, my master is not dead. He has just changed allegiance,” Orrell said.

  Bart felt the fine hair on his nape rise. He was not really sure if his life was in danger, but he was very, very alert. This man seemed to have walked through the entire camp, uncontested, and now he claimed he was…what? A traitor?

  Is this an assassination attempt? he wondered. And if so, should I scream for help, cower and beg, or try to fight? Was he willing to grapple another man and defend himself with his bare hands, to the death?

  “What do you want?” he asked instead. Orrell was standing a solid two paces away, outside the reach of anything but long swords, and he did not seem armed.

  The clerk raised a hand. Bart almost jumped. “Do not worry, Your Majesty. I am still loyal to the throne. My master does not know that, but I believe we can all benefit from my enviable position as his confidant.”

  “What do you want, Orrell?” Bart repeated, not liking this one bit.

  “I have useful news for you, Your Majesty.”

  Bart turned around. One of the Borei sensed his discomfort, and his stance changed. He did not rush forward, because he knew that might endanger the viceroy, but he seemed to understand.

  Orrell did not notice this, though. He looked like a man who could not believe his luck and thought brazen chance might see him suddenly wealthy. Bart had spent enough time at court to recognize extortion in the making. He almost relaxed. Spilling blood was not his strong suit, but he could practice diplomacy quite well.

  “You would maintain your function at your master’s side and keep us informed of his intentions?” Bart asked, stalling, buying himself time.

  The man rolled his eyes as if considering a thought that had never occurred to him before. It was a badly staged gimmick. “Yes. I was thinking, perhaps my lord’s lands, now that they are confiscated, since he’s a traitor, that they might be granted to a loyal subject instead? I would gladly share my other news as well.”

  A common soldier would probably punch Orrell in the mouth and then, later on, torture out everything he knew and knew not, without a penny spent. Bart was almost tempted to call the guards and let them seize this clerk. But that was not his way. Oh, he would berate Faas and Ulrich and all the rest of them for such slack security arrangements, but that would have to wait.

  “That might be arranged,” Bart suggested.

  Orrell was smiling now. “Your Majesty, I am risking my life here. I will need reassurances.”

  Bart agreed at length. “Sure. We can settle this after our meeting. We can draft an agreement. A discreet one. Outline the terms of your service. Only after we conclude our chance acquaintance.”

  The secretary nodded, his cheeks taut with smugness. “Good. In that case, Your Majesty, there’s something you must know.”

  The hair on Bart’s neck kept standing on end. “Yes?”

  Orrell tried to make a sincere, somber face. “Your wife, Sonya, is held in the city by General Pacmad, the chieftain of the Kataji tribe. She is alive and well.”

  Bart’s hand twitched, a signal. At that moment, a third Borei guard, who had kept unseen all this time, slithered close like a monkey and tackled the clerk to the ground. Then, he placed a knife against his throat.

  The entire garrison would be in chaos within seconds if anyone noticed the situation, Bart knew, am
azed by his calm reaction. “You are probably the stupidest blackmailer I have ever met,” he told the dazed man. “You presume to extort the viceroy of the realm? Take him away.”

  Before the siege camp exploded, Orrell was hustled away as if nothing had happened. Bart silently thanked his Borei friend.

  And then, he let his mind focus on the news.

  His life had just become a whole lot more complicated.

  CHAPTER 54

  Ewan had had the last volume of The Pains of Memory read to him twice now, but he still was not feeling any wiser. Meanwhile, the hollow feeling in his gut had intensified to what could only be described as a mild, gnawing pain, almost a blessed sensation in his otherwise senseless world. Only, he was worried. In the past, that prophetic magical clenching in his belly had never foretold good things to come.

  That meant he had to leave the Oth Danesh soon.

  North.

  But he could not abandon them just yet. He still did not have answers to the riddle of his identity, to the questions of his assumed former life. Naman had still not kept his promise of finding and returning Doris’s babies. That was the one thing that held him back in this cursed place.

  I wear white clothes. I wield this glass scepter. My people dread me and will not look me in the eye, and they have been awaiting my return for countless generations. And now that I am here, my journey is just as dark as it has always been.

  Ewan wished he could decipher the ancient symbolism that kept the Oth Danesh nation divided and their cities unnamed. He wished he could understand their sacrifice, their strange habits, and most of all, their fear. Only, each day brought more despair and more confusion.

  He looked at his tutor. Naman had recovered from his disease and gained back the lost pounds of flesh and fat, his skin oily once again. Day after day, they sat locked in the palace, trying to figure out the meaning of words written thousands of years before by lunatics. There was no other way to describe those morbid books.

  The last volume spoke of a war.

  A war that had never ended, it seemed.

  Ewan only knew that he had been defeated in that war, and the Oth Danesh, as his people, as well as several other nations and clans, had been banished from the Old Land, then kept from returning by a magical barrier. He recalled those strange stone blocks weathering the wind and dust in the sandy plains of the Red Desert. Now, the magical boundary was down, and the nation could migrate north once again, to resume their war against their ancient foes. Ewan was meant to lead them since he had his scepter again, just as prophesied.

  Who are my enemies? he thought.

  Maybe the book referred to him literally. Not himself, Ewan the orphan boy from the Safe Territories, but someone like himself, someone with powers like his own. Or maybe his lost soul, which could have been restored from the Abyss through his birth. Ewan had never met his parents, so he knew nothing of his real blood.

  Damian once claimed to be my father, he remembered.

  Ewan so desperately wanted to recall this past life, but then, he dreaded the moment his memories might flood back. If he had truly done those terrible things in his previous incarnation, then he did not want to be that man. He did not want to be what the Oth Danesh wanted him to be. The soul of the person described in The Pains of Memory forever belonged in the Abyss, and it should never have been returned to the world of the living.

  I don’t want to be the king of these people. I am not that man.

  So what was he doing in the world? Why had the Abyss returned him? That was a mystery even darker than his legacy among these people. Beyond the gods even. He knew about the gods; he had seen them locked in the Abyss. They could die, just like any human. He was invulnerable, and even when he had tried giving up his own life to save everyone from Damian, he had been thrown back. The gut feeling told him he was not yet done.

  He would be glad if all this turned out to be just a nightmare. A mistake. Even if it meant he would never learn what he was.

  As far as Naman was concerned, there was nothing else. They had finished reading the books, and that was what they knew about him. Now, they waited for him to issue the battle cry and head north, to resume a war against unknown enemies begun many thousands of years ago.

  Who?

  From what little history he knew, the realms had seen the rise and fall of kingdoms and empires and nation-states countless times. It was only in the recent centuries that Eracia, Caytor, and Parus had been formed. Before that, there were few books that described the events in any accurate detail. The old enemies might have long been destroyed. Or they might have migrated to distant lands, embraced a new religion, turned away from their old ways. They could be scattered throughout the realms, unaware of their ancestors. To Ewan, it all sounded crazy.

  Naman was pacing the palace hall, working cramps out of his fat limbs. Raida was sitting on the floor, her arms wrapped in bloody bandages. Ever since the day he had brought the scepter from the bottom of the lake, she would cut herself whenever he refused to bed her. Ewan thought he should feel pity for her, but there was little sympathy left in him for this madness.

  His stomach cramped.

  Ewan was holding the last volume in his hands, staring at a random page, the letters familiar now, although he had to focus on each word to understand the text. There was nothing there that shed any light on his real purpose, on his identity. His soul refused to reveal its old secrets.

  “This is a dead end,” he declared morosely.

  Naman spun around, his gray braid flying like a whip. “You must remember,” the guide insisted. There was fear in his voice. It had been two months since Ewan had fulfilled the prophecy, and yet the nation remained in Kamar Doue. They were not going to any war yet, and that worried everyone. The people were restless. While they would never dare disobey their king, the atmosphere of abject misery was suffocating. Ewan was almost tempted to gulp air just to reassure himself he could still breathe if he wanted. No matter what, he would not relent.

  “There’s nothing to remember,” he countered, his own voice tainted with anguish. All this time, all this effort, all this pain, for nothing. He had let Doris down. He had subjected himself to humiliation and terror in return for riddles that told a grisly tale of a lifetime he refused to accept.

  The Oth Danesh rubbed his face. “The books—”

  Ewan raised a hand. “They are useless.” He folded the volume he was holding and tossed it away onto a desk. Raida jumped as the book slammed onto the hard wood. Her head bobbed like a bird’s, trying to figure out what might be wrong.

  Naman approached and knelt before his king. “Please. You must.” He gestured around him. “Is there nothing familiar? There must be something.”

  “Perhaps you misinterpreted the prophecies,” Ewan said, knowing this meant the end of his illusion of finding out the truth about himself. “Perhaps I am not the king you want me to be.”

  “But all signs are right,” Naman pleaded. “Everything you did is like the books, everything.”

  Ewan stood up himself. “Maybe it’s just a coincidence.” But the empty tinge in his stomach told him otherwise.

  Raida said something, a quick rattle of her tongue. Naman scowled. He bid her repeat. Ewan tried to figure out, and it sounded like, The drape of time.

  “She begs you let her undress herself before you. She wants to show you her body,” Naman translated.

  Ewan sighed. Well, why not? he thought. He had tried everything else. He might as well indulge a madwoman. He had nothing to lose. Those empty black sockets watched him as his spirit sagged further.

  “All right. Let her do it.”

  Raida stood up and slipped her blue dress off her shoulders. It rolled off her small breasts, then wreathed around her slim, bony hips. She pushed the fabric down, and the dress slithered down silently to pool at her feet.

  Despite his best judgment, Ewan let his eyes wander over her skin, feeling as if he was defiling her with his gaze, even though she req
uested it. Her body made its tiny, minute twitches as he stared at her gangly frame. She was a woman, all right, much like Constance in build and size, only her skin was darker, and tattooed almost all over.

  Ewan frowned. Black ink, darker than what most people used. Sharply outlined, made with a very precise needle, so you could make out individual dots. He blinked. At three paces apart, he should not have been able to see such precise detail, and yet, every single shape etched on her skin burned brightly before his eyes, like shiny resin.

  The shapes looked like letters, and they ran around her belly and up her sides. There must be more on her back, he thought.

  “Please ask her to turn around,” he said. Naman told her, and she spun around, still standing in a rigid, anticipatory pose.

  Yes, there was more ink on her back, over the ripple of her rib cage, up and between her shoulder blades. Even the ridge of her spine was marked. The tattoos ended where her flesh was exposed to daylight, the soft line of tan and dirt marking her skin in two tones. It was a minute marker, barely visible after a long winter, but Ewan did not miss it.

  Then, his eyes dropped down to her buttocks, and they were marked, too, as well as the backs of her thighs. The last shapes were sketched just above her knees. He blinked again. His head was hurting from those letters.

  Letters, he thought, and his belly rumbled. He found himself on his knees in front of Raida, and he could not recall approaching the girl. Startled, he realized his hands were resting on her hips. Her skin was warm to the touch, the ink shapes tiny, tiny bumps. Naman was watching with consternation, not quite sure what he was witnessing, but he knew it was important.

  “Do not say a word,” Ewan warned him. Then he focused on the blind prophet and her marked skin. His fingers began moving, tracing the lines, up and down, following the light curves of her body, probing. Raida moaned once, then said something in her language.

  Ewan was not paying attention. He was following the symbols like a man watching a painting, trying to figure out where the artists had placed the first brushstroke. He found it, the beginning of that fine black trail, just below her left breast.