by P. K. Lentz
I lift my head a little, finding it heavy, and see that the red light is cast by torches bracketed to the distant walls of a large cavern. Their flames are not the color I think fire should be, though I may be wrong. Over their hissing I hear another sound which I recognize as the echoing footfalls of someone moving toward me. Newborn instinct compels me to spring up and defend myself, but I am not yet capable. My new limbs are leaden.
A red-lit figure enters my field of vision, towering over me. I angle my eyes to look up at the arrival and find it to be a man similar in appearance to those lying inert around me. He crouches, putting his face over mine, and his upside-down smile suggests that he is pleased.
He sets a hand on my chest. I see it rather than feel it, since like him and all the rest, I wear a stiff breastplate.
"Welcome," he says. He whispers it, but the cavern turns it to a shout.
The spoken word sounds oddly foreign to me, but I understand it. After licking my lips and drawing fresh breath, I am able to answer.
"To where?" I return in the same tongue as he.
His smile fades. "A cave. Full of dead people. And a witch." He points. "We are not to disturb her."
The strangeness of his answer imbues me with the strength to sit up—almost. My new companion quickly slides an arm under my back and lends welcome assistance. Looking in the direction he pointed, past a dozen irregularly-spaced sleeping warriors, I see a woman sitting in a red-lit alcove. She is naked, her bare skin decorated with the finely painted characters of some arcane script. She kneels and gently sways, head lolling back and forth. Now and then her body jerks violently, as though a hot ember has landed on some part of her.
A second ago, I might have asked my companion how he knew she was a witch, but having seen her myself, there is no need; I would have guessed. I also would not dream of disturbing her, with or without his warning.
Something else my companion has said piques my more immediate interest.
"Dead?" I ask. I turn my gaze back to the cavern floor around us and know instantly that he is right. These men and a few women around me are not just sleeping.
He nods grimly. "One by one, we return to life." I surmise from his tone that he is only slightly less mystified by the occurrence than I. "I say return, but..." He hesitates, mouth twisting in thought.
Guessing the cause of his hesitation, I finish for him: "These bodies are not our own."
My companion's eyes, pink in the unnatural firelight, suggest I have stolen his thought. "We all felt thus."
I accept the hand he offers to help me rise and take another look around the cavern at the warrior-corpses on the floor. All lie on their backs, heads facing a common direction, arms straight by their sides. Someone has deliberately laid them—us—out. There are more than twenty bodies at present, but large swaths of empty space suggest there were at one time many more.
I draw the conclusion that the missing bodies already have risen and are the others to which my companion refers.
"Where did the rest go?" I ask.
He brings my attention to a dark spot at one end of the cavern. "The tunnel. I am to wait for four of you to rise. You are the second. When we number five, four will leave while the last remains here to greet the next batch of four, as I have done."
"Second?" My eyes sweep the chamber, but the only other presence to catch my eye is that of the witch, who frightens me and thus does not long hold my gaze. She is lost in her trance, and I wish it to remain that way. I see nothing else of note, but the cavern is large and its walls alive with pulsing shadows capable of hiding much.
"This way." My companion leads me toward the tunnel mouth. "I don't suppose you have a name," he asks as we pick our way over and between corpses. His hopeless tone tells me what answer he expects.
"No," I tell him, fulfilling expectation.
"None of us did. One man knew a few words in some other language than this one we seem inclined to speak. Another had visions of the sea."
"I know such a word," I inform him, proudly. It is a stupid thing to be proud of. "Wellspring. Does it have meaning to you?"
He ponders for the space of a few steps. "I understand it," he concludes. "A place to get water. Does it mean more to you?"
"I know not," I admit. "I suppose it must."
We reach a boulder not far from the black tunnel mouth. There, in its shadow, sits a figure clad as we are, in armor. Its back is against the big rock, greave-shielded shins drawn up beneath a pensively drooping chin. The chin is delicate, as are the limbs. A female.
She looks up, our eyes meet, and I freeze. Even in the faint crimson glow, and even in these bodies which are not our own, I know her.
Syllables form on my tongue. I cannot resist speaking them.
"Ayessa." The sound fills the cavern.
Like all the dead I have seen, she is physically beautiful. Her hair, which is tied back, is of some dark shade. Her eyes, their color unidentifiable in the low, flickering light, are wide and reflective over smooth cheeks that glow softly pink in the torchlight. It is not the face of the Ayessa I once knew, even if I cannot recall what other face she once wore. It is not her face that I know, not even her eyes, but it is her, of that I am sure. It is some power other than sight which informs me, something within her which screams out to me and makes me want to weep. With joy, I think, but maybe something else, too.
The woman I have named as Ayessa stares up at me, cold and confident. She evaluates me as a stranger might, her look containing no recognition. I blink a few times and realize that she is a stranger. We have no memories, and so what else can we be but strangers to anyone, including ourselves?
Yet I know her, I feel certain. Not only that. She is important to me... or was.
"Is that her name?" our male companion asks excitedly. "How do you know it?"
"That is her name," I say. "I know no more than that." The admission deflates me.
Our guide grabs the woman's arm and urges her to her feet, making her face me. Frowning, she complies. "Look at him," he insists. "If he knows your name, then maybe you know his. Think!"
She looks, and I think I catch a glimmer of something in her red-lit eyes, but she only shakes her head.
"Speak that word of yours to her," our companion suggests.
My chest constricts. I swallow to prepare my throat to speak the word which I suddenly feel certain must pertain to her: "Wellspring."
Ayessa's expression does not change, but a minute movement draws my eyes downward, where I see both hands ball into fists. Her jaw tightens. A heartbeat later, she relaxes, slowly shaking her head once more in defeat.
"Ah, well," our companion sighs. "At least one of us has a name. Perhaps another who has gone ahead will have one for me."
"Crow."
It is Ayessa who says this, the first word I have heard her speak. It is in the other language, the fragmentary one which has come up with us from the abyss, not the alien one in which we are comfortably and fluently conversing. I only stare at her red lips in wonder, picturing a black bird, until she answers our companion's quizzical look.
"Your hair," she explains to and of him. I look again and notice what I had not bothered to until now, that the man's hair is long and sleek and darker than Ayessa's. His appearance does call to mind that of the bird she named. Ayessa adds, in a tone just short of insult, "That, and you won't stop cawing."
The target of her annoyance laughs, a sound which graces the ears in this place of the dead. "Crow," he muses. "I suppose it will do until a better one comes along."
He turns sharp, appraising eyes on me. I know his intent and stop him with a raised hand.
"I will take no name," I tell him. "None other than the one which is truly mine."
Crow shrugs and yields to my wish. Ayessa resumes her seat. It is she who must be the one to give me my name, as I gave her hers. But for now, her lips remain sealed.
There is not much else for us to talk about, we whose present lives can be measure
d in minutes. And so we sit silently, each delving blindly into the abyss within, endeavoring to drag forth whatever might drift into reach. That is what I do, at any rate, with no success. I am compelled to stare at Ayessa, but manage to resist, mostly.
It is not long before the painted witch in her alcove spasms and groans, which Crow tells me is the sign of a new awakening. We scan the cavern floor and see a corpse begin to stir. Crow brings him to join us. He is a big man, a head and a half taller than me, with arms as thick as Ayessa's thighs. He has no name and no memory, and looking into his dark eyes stirs nothing inside me.
We require only one more to make our five, and within a short while we have him. After the customary non-introductions, Crow instructs that man in the task which had been his until now: wait for four more to rise, do not bother the witch, and pass along this task to the last among you.
For Crow, myself, Ayessa, and the hulking one, the dark tunnel mouth awaits.
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