by JDL Rosell
The Drift Ose. Where he would become Recarnate. Or finally, truly die.
Twenty-Four
“This is it.” His father’s voice fell flat, as if they were in a small, closed room rather than an open, dead land. “From which we have distilled elixir all these long years. Where Oslef became what he now is.”
The Drift Ose. Erik watched the mist—or smoke, or whatever it was—curl up from its surface, and found he had nothing to say.
“Is that it?” Persey asked from behind him. Turning, he saw dismay plastered across her face.
“That’s it,” Tara said faintly from next to her. “The Pool of Remembrance. Where Er’Lothe found the truth of the world’s salvation.”
Looking at the small pool of water, it hardly seemed to warrant awe. Barely the length of a man and half as wide, so shallow a rat couldn’t have drowned in it, nothing about it screamed of religious grandeur or powerful magic. Yet he felt the same as her and thought he would have even without knowing its portent. In the silence of their surroundings, it might not have screamed, but it… hummed.
Persey seemed to feel it, too, as she rubbed at her ears and squeezed her eyes shut. “Too loud,” she muttered. “I don’t like it here.”
Tara she knelt and enveloped her. “It’s all right. We won’t have to be here long.” She looked to Erik to confirm it, but he shrugged. It could be a moment, or an eternity. Only his father might know.
But looking to him, he saw in his father’s eyes an unfamiliar reverence, and something about it scared him more than he could say. “This could be your salvation, Erik. This could be all of our salvation.”
Chills ran up his spine. Salvation, Recarnation—the words suddenly carried more weight than he liked. It didn’t help to remember what salvation Oslef had found. You don’t have a choice now, he thought. You decided long ago. “If you say so,” he said aloud.
“I understand you are afraid,” his father continued. “But you must take courage and meet this challenge with your mind focused and your thoughts unclouded. You have an opportunity, one not afforded to most. You can regain your life. You can take it back.”
Or lose it, he thought, but he couldn’t think of that now, not when he was so close. He felt dizzy and lightheaded, and his skin blazed with pain from his scarred burns and the harsh sunlight all day long. He just wanted to get it all over with. “Let’s just get to it,” he said, then started walking forward.
His father grabbed his good arm. His palm, rough from years of handling harsh substances, scraped against his skin, but Erik’s flinch was from more than that. “When you enter the pool, you must keep this place in mind. Remember every detail, every single one.” Then he gestured about, turning them in a slow circle. “Look, listen, feel. Remember the clouds like smoke trails. Remember the setting sun and the sky the color of rich, potent wine. Remember the still sea, caught in the middle of her tumultuous cycle and brought to a halt.” He kneeled and brought Erik down with him. His hand picked up sand and let it run through his fingers. “Remember the feel of the sand, its granules pink in the last light of day.” He let the sand run out and gestured to the pool. “Remember the Ose at the center of it all, how the smoke twists off its surface, and covers it with a shifting cloak of colors.”
“I—”
His father held up a hand. “Remember not only these, but also their place in the world. How the sand was once part of mountains, ground down by years of water and wind. How the waves have traveled all along the edges of the world, circling and circling, a thousand thousand times. How the sun is the gift of—of Qel’Amode—”
You believe it as little as I do. But they were both here. They believed in something about this place, something beyond what they knew, and that would have to be enough.
“—and how she must share the sky with her traitorous son, A’Qed, as he shoves her aside each night. Remember the cycles—what comes before, what comes after—and understand all this, too, is present in this single, still moment.”
Erik considered it all, not so much committing his father’s words to memory as trying to absorb it himself. He remembered how it had felt to feel everything in Zauhn and in the Barrows, to be in everything, and have it become him. He’d felt as they’d felt, heard their hidden melodies, understood them as they understood themselves. He tried to bring that awareness to the moment. Tried, and failed, but it was the best he could do.
When he could bear it no more, he rose, letting a handful of sand cascade to the beach. “I’m ready.”
His father rose more slowly, and pulled Erik into a tight embrace, while felt his gut twist, his heart beat, and his hands twitch. Then he let go and nodded, eyes shining, and stepped back. Erik avoided his eyes.
Then Tara had wrapped her arms about him, tight enough that his ribs cried out in protest. “Come back safe,” she whispered, and as abruptly pulled away.
Persey, for her part, stayed back. He raised a hand to her, and she raised hers back with a slight frown.
Erik swallowed, set his jaw, and turned to the Ose. He cleared his mind of his father, of Tara, of Persey, cleared his mind of everything but nervous anticipation and vague dread. But still, he hesitated, and turned back. “Should I remember you three with everything else here?”
His father smiled, a genuine smile. “If it helps you return.”
He nodded and turned back to the pool, then closed his eyes and let the impressions settle in his mind and weave together into a still scene. In the center of it was his father, smiling hopefully, looking as proud as he’d ever seen him. It was a singular picture of him, something he’d never seen before, might never see again.
Erik smiled and opened his eyes. He took one step, then two, and was at the edge of the Ose.
Then he stepped in, and the world roared and leapt from beneath him.
“Erik, keep your eyes open. Do you want to get jumped or what, you crazy bastard?”
His eyes jerked. “Sorry,” Erik muttered, and looked about. A forest, with normal trees, normal leaves and undergrowth, cast intermittently by the normal light of the moon. Normal? Why wouldn’t it be?
Something hit his arm, hard enough to hurt. Hurt. Shouldn’t everything be hurting? But he didn’t know why he'd thought that. “What’s with you?” the familiar voice from before said. “You hit some clovedust before this? Needed a bit of bravery, eh? I’d be lying if I said I didn’t take some liquid courage myself.”
The world went blurry for a moment as Erik looked to the figure, and he had to squint to even distinguish where eyes and mouth were. The man sighed and leaned forward, close enough to recognize.
“Take a little less next time, will you?” Oslef looked bemused and haughty. As one fucked up fellow to his apprentice.
“It’s not that,” Erik finally managed. His tongue felt thick, but he didn’t think he’d smoked or drank anything. “Let’s just keep going.”
Oslef shrugged and turned away, and Erik followed him through the woods. As to where they were going… What are we doing in the Brunnen Forest—yes, that was where they were—in the dark?
He felt himself for clues. A sword belted on one side, a hunting knife on the other, and boiled leather creaking all over. Are we fighting? Ambushing some enemy in the night? Considering the circumstances, he thought he’d better find out, no matter the embarrassment.
“Oi, Oslef,” he said, coming up next to him. “Ah… what are we doing here?”
Oslef stopped and stared at him. “Mother’s tits,” he moaned. “You’ll be more hindrance than help in a fight, won’t you? Have I got to do this myself?”
“What fight? Just tell me, Oslef. Er’Lothe’s honor, I’m not on anything, and I’ll hold my own. I’m just a bit… confused."
Something in him rippled as he spoke. It was the only way he could describe it; like he were in a pool and someone had dipped their fingers in his water. He didn’t think it would help his case to tell the Twice-Late Viscount about it.
“What do you
think?” Oslef clapped him on the shoulder and shook him. “We’re hunting lurchers, my friend. But, fek, I’d say you’re half-rotten in the brain by now. Maybe it’s you I ought to be gutting.”
He feigned a fist to Erik’s abdomen, and Erik jerked back, more disturbed at it than he felt he should have been.
Oslef just laughed. “Come on, the bastards will be gathering soon.”
Gathering? But he just continued after him.
And then they were there, crouching outside a clearing, watching dark forms move around its center. Erik blinked. Hadn’t they just been walking through the forest? But he couldn’t worry himself with that. Killing was their business now.
But a question occurred to him. “Why exactly are we here, Oslef? I mean, I know they’re lurchers, but what’s the point in hunting them? Let them come to us, I say.”
Oslef peered over at him with an inscrutable expression. “It’s a blighted thing to forget.” His chin turned downward, and his face was cast further in shadows. “About Ilyse and everything.”
“Ilyse?” He could see her pale face, her shy, fleeting smile, her light hair framing her face. He smiled slightly to think of it. “Ilyse. That’s exactly what I’m saying. I should be home with her, not out here.”
“Erik,” Oslef said sharply, and he gripped him by the back of the neck and pulled him close. “That is why you’re here. To take revenge on the fek-brained bastards.”
“Revenge?” Erik asked stupidly. “For what?”
His head suddenly burst with pain, and Erik fell to the ground, dazed and confused. “Forget whatever you want," Oslef growled at him, "but don’t you fucking forget her.” He stood from the brush then, his sword in hand, a twisted smile on his face, staring down at Erik, while he tried to figure out what was going on. Without another word, Oslef turned and dashed at the gathered lurchers, while the nautded jerked around at the sight of him and ran to meet him.
Erik stood and tried to draw his sword, but his head reeled and his legs felt unsteady. “What do you mean?” he yelled after Oslef. “Why do we need to avenge her?” Ilyse—if anything’s happened to her, I’ll—I’ll—
“You won’t always be with me.”
He opened his eyes, and above him loomed the most beautiful face in the world. She glowed with daylight, beams playing across her face. The sun would have shone fully on her and lit her like a candle but for a curtain of waving branches and the white bell-blooms of a longhaired estar. But there were also shadows across her features, ugly things so foreign to her usual countenance.
“Of course I will,” he responded easily. “Here and in Shelter both.” He gave her his best smile, acting without thinking, and reached up to trace her jaw. He hardly dared believe she was truly there; she seemed an angel, or faerie, at least, even as he touched her. And, like those creatures, she seemed about to flee at any moment, to abandon her melancholy and him for the companionship of the woods.
She smiled faintly at him, a smile that looked strangely coy upside down. “And you always doubted. What made you change your mind?”
He twisted up onto all fours and brought his face close to hers, holding her coral-eyed gaze. “I’d believe in anything so long as it keeps me with you.”
“And our little one?” she said. Two beads of moisture, delicate as pearls, fled the corners of her eyes.
Little one? But he tried not to think and just brushed away her tears, one after another, before settling his hand on her cheek. “And our little one,” he agreed, “though our Little Mother will have to live a long life before joining us.”
Ilyse closed her eyes and smiled, and the unshed tears rested on her eyelashes. “Or our Flawed firstborn.”
Erik shrugged in concession.
She leaned her head into his hand. “You’ll never leave me,” she whispered.
You’ve already left me. The thought came unbidden, but he knew it was true. The spell was broken. Though Ilyse was still there before him, enchantingly beautiful in her sorrow, it was all a farce, a dream. He felt that he’d been cheated somehow. Even more, he felt he’d duped her.
She must have felt him shift for she opened her eyes and gazed at him, eyes shimmering with wistful knowing.
“Ilyse…”
The next moment, she whirled away. He did not even remember her pushing off his hand, or rising, but there she glided away into the forest, away from him.
He rose and ran after her. “Ilyse!” Her white dress billowed behind, catching in bushes and branches, tearing the delicate fabric. “Ilyse!”
But she didn’t look back, and disappeared behind a tree.
“Ilyse!” he shouted one more time and, reaching the tree, he turned around it.
It was not Ilyse. In her place stood a thin man, naked but for billowing chestnut hair across his body, tangled and ragged, hair impossibly long and coarse for a human, more like a wolf’s, or a lion’s mane. There were scars hidden in the hair, thin white ones, as well as four ugly red ones in the middle of his chest.
But the eyes struck him most of all. They were a distillation of light and dark. The pupils were large, the irises near black, and the whites of his eyes were shot through with purple veins. At the edges of his eyes, a faint glow permeated them, like an angelic aura emanated from within. Like a mooneyes.
“You,” Oslef said, his voice rougher than Erik remembered last, the word half-chewed.
“Me,” Erik responded numbly.
“I…” His throat trembled, the words struggling to get out. “I… hunt you.”
“Across the island,” Erik agreed.
“Others… in way,” the naked man struggled on. “Others…between.”
Erik could only vaguely understand what was happening. It seemed a dream. It is a dream, he reminded himself. But if he was dreaming, why did he have to dream this? He closed his eyes and willed Ilyse back to him, but nothing changed.
“I…” Oslef continued, “need you. Need you, broth… brother.”
Erik’s eyes snapped open. In a moment, years of frustration, of injustice and jealousy and betrayal, rose in him, burning through him.
“You? You need me? I have news for you, brother. You’re the one who sent me to this blighted dream world. You stabbed me, killed me. Me, who grew up with you, who was friends with you despite your fek-painted, pretentious manners and entitlement. How could you do that? No,” he held up a hand. “I don’t want to hear anything more. I don’t need anything from you. I took your life, just as you took mine. Mother knows it should lie at that.”
He turned around and began walking away, but something seemed wrong. There were distinct vibrations filling the air, under his feet, inside him. Vibrations that started soft but grew louder. Erik looked down and saw the world rippled with them. He swallowed and tried to keep upright as the ground moved in waves beneath him.
“I…” the man who was once the Twice-Late Viscount said from behind him, the word trailing off into a whimper. “I…” The whimper grew deeper, stronger, twisting into a full-throated snarl.
Erik spun and saw Oslef on all fours and barely a man anymore. His skin had split, revealing supple, black fur spilling across his face, his chest, his legs. His head reared back, and white fangs stabbed out from his mouth. His eyes were bone-white and shone like the full moon, utterly wild, humanity lost in those eyes.
He was halfway a mooneyes as he leaped.
But Erik wasn’t going to let Oslef kill him a second time. Snarling himself, he leaped at the beast, for in his blind hatred, he truly believed himself as feral and savage as the other. He believed he couldn’t be killed here, not with the strange twists and turns of the dream. He thought he could kill his old friend once more.
First came the blow of the lithe, muscled body, with all the force of the jump behind it. The impact took him in the shoulder and spun him to the ground with a sickening crunch, and Erik remembered what it was to be broken.
Then came the claws as Oslef’s front paws settled into his shoulder,
digging in through the seams of muscles and tendon. Erik felt his shoulders ripping and cried out, arching with the pain, before another paw forced his torso back down with crushing strength. He remembered what it was to submit.
Last came the teeth, settling into his throat. Erik felt an artery burst, felt his blood spilling around an incisor. His last ragged breath left in a hoarse scream, then it was cut off as well. His windpipe filled like a rain bucket in a torrent, and his body shook as he started to drown on land. He stared with fading vision at the beast that had once been his friend, rising from his neck with mouth bloody, its tongue licking it off. He remembered Ilyse wondering how good men turned bitter.
As he swallowed blood, he thought about how he thought he’d hate him, but he’d missed something. He’d missed a seed that weakened it, that weakened every man. He knew what it was like to lose control bit by bit, to lose all the life you’d ever had and known. He couldn’t help but pity his old friend who’d felt it, too.
But his weakness went deeper, he realized as liquid rushed into his lungs, death coming to the body that barely felt his. Guilt, with roots strong and gnarled, choked down his anger. He had made Oslef the way he was. In small ways, at first, through small jealousies. He’d had Ilyse, when Oslef had wanted her. He’d had a father who cared for him when Oslef had had nothing but disdain from his. He’d had at least the potential for a life, even if he’d never made good use of it. Then there was the greatest guilt of all. As Oslef had lain dying, Erik had tortured his mind into the state it was now. He had made him into this monster.
He stared into the beast’s bright eyes and wished he would end it.
He felt the ripples again, cascading through him, stronger even than the pain and his death throes. He closed his eyes and felt the world shake apart around him. This was how it ought to be, the end. He felt as alive as he ever had, in the throng of wild beats pulsing in and around him. A fine time to die, he thought.