I smiled and shook my head. “No need to apologize. He wouldn’t mind.”
Her blush deepened. At least she wasn’t acting manic anymore. I realized with some surprise that I actually kind of liked her. She seemed sweet enough, and she’d helped save my brother. Why had I hated her so much before?
Yatol got suddenly to his feet and left the tent, Shan trailing him. I watched them go in surprise, but didn’t think I had the right – or the strength, for that matter – to follow them. I turned back to Aniira.
“Why is he taking so long to recover?”
“He suffered, Merelin. Azik really hurt him.”
She lifted his hand, turning it palm up to reveal the grey spiderweb bruises. They seemed darker now than before, lacing all up his arms, even past his elbows. My gaze shifted to his neck, where the strange marks touched his jaw and wreathed his collar. I was almost ashamed when I glanced at my own wrists and found them completely healed.
“I don’t understand. Yatol…”
“Yatol is incredibly strong,” Aniira said quietly. Her gaze flicked up to mine. “I’ve never known anyone quite like him. It’s like he’s got the blood of some stronger race than ours in him.”
I frowned. Thanks for rubbing in how much better you know him than I do. It made me consider how little I actually knew about Yatol. Why did I think I had any chance with him at all? But down there in the dungeon, I was so sure…
Damian shuddered again, violently. I pulled one of the furs over him and laid my hand against his forehead.
“Hang in there, Damian,” I whispered in English. “This crazy girl here needs you. Well, both of us crazy girls do. Come on, pull through.”
I need her to need you.
Yatol returned a moment later with a bowl of stew and a few pieces of fruit. He sat down on the chest beside my pile of furs, beckoning me over with his head.
“You need to eat something. Being half-starved won’t help you heal.”
I inched toward him and took the bowl from his hands, sniffing suspiciously. It looked different than Tyhlaur’s stew, but it smelled all right. I took a few tentative bites and paused, waiting to see if I would pass out again like the last time I’d tried to eat stew. To my relief, I didn’t.
“Tyhlaur’s is better,” I said, smiling.
“I’ll tell him you said that.”
I ate a few more spoonfuls under Yatol’s concerned gaze.
“You didn’t bring me any, Yatol?” Aniira said playfully, standing up.
Yatol shrugged and lifted his hands. “Couldn’t carry any more. Sorry.”
She grinned and ducked out of the tent.
“Merelin…”
I stopped eating to glance up at Yatol. He sighed and bowed his head.
“You need to get your rest tonight. We have to leave in the morning.”
“Leave?” I echoed dumbly. “But Damian isn’t ready to travel yet. I don’t know if I am either.”
“You’re strong. You’ll be fine.” He hesitated. “We certainly couldn’t make Damian go, though.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, throat burning. “I can’t leave him.”
“He can’t come with us,” he said as gently as he could. “Not where we’re going.”
“But he’s been through so much for us! We can’t make him stay behind now!” I protested, ignoring how feeble my own logic seemed.
“He and Kurtis will stay with the army and help with the defense. I’ve already talked to Syarat, and Kurtis is willing. Excited even.” He shook his head. “The Ungulion host must be midway across the Perstaun by now. If we don’t go soon it’ll be too late.”
I nodded miserably. I knew he was right, I just didn’t know how I could do it.
Somehow I managed to finish the bowl of soup and one of the pieces of fruit. By then I was so tired I could hardly keep my eyes open. I had my chin propped up in one hand, drowsily gnawing on the last juicy bits of the fruit. Finally I gave it up, putting the hull of the fruit in the bowl and flopping back onto the furs. Yatol got to his feet.
“Good night, Merelin.”
* * *
When morning came, I felt infinitely better. I actually woke up refreshed, at least until I remembered that we were supposed to be leaving. That sucked away all my energy, and for almost ten minutes I sat in the semi-darkness beside Damian, holding one of his hands and wishing everything away. He still hadn’t woken up, and I couldn’t tell if he looked any better than he had yesterday. I hated leaving him in that condition.
Finally I galvanized myself into action. Braided my hair, donned my sandals. Found my pouch and Yatol’s knife, which looked cleaned and polished. I considered taking my sand-hued cloak, but decided it would just be extra weight. When I was as prepared as I could get, I stepped out of the tent and almost walked into Yatol. He surveyed me briefly and nodded.
“Good. You’re ready.”
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
He ignored my implied complaint. “I’m going to get the last of our provisions. Wait here.”
He disappeared into a nearby tent, leaving me alone in anguish and uncertainty. I stood frozen, facing out toward camp so I wouldn’t see Damian, pale and weak, and so vulnerable. If I did, I’d lose all my nerve, all my courage. I’d go back into the tent and refuse to move, and I’d fail and let Yatol down, and my father and everyone else. They needed me to be strong. Damian needed me to be strong.
I peered around the camp to try to distract myself. Eventually I caught sight of Shan approaching from across the camp, striding along with that fierce, quick energy. His bald head swung this way and that, nodding at a few people, never smiling. In less time than I thought possible he was with me.
“So. I just get you healed and off you go again.”
I smiled faintly. “Believe me, I don’t want to go.” He moved to go into the tent, but I grabbed his hand. “Shan, take care of Damian.”
He fixed me with an intense gaze, then nodded. “I will.”
I released him and listened to the tent flap swinging behind him. It felt like hours passed as I stood there waiting for Yatol. I bounced a little on the balls of my feet, restless. What was taking him so long? And how could I be so anxious to leave, but at the same time want nothing more than to hide somewhere and never be found?
Finally I glimpsed Yatol returning, four waterskins slung over his shoulder and two bags of provisions dangling from his hands. His face seemed so somber. All I wanted was for him to smile, but he just met my gaze and dropped it again. Wordlessly he handed me one of the waterskins and a bag of provisions. I slung both across my chest, one to my right and one to my left. I felt a little awkward, kind of like a pack mule, but Yatol had three waterskins and a haversack on his back besides. When he’d gotten all of his gear adjusted, he took my arm.
“Do you want to say goodbye to anyone? Kurtis?”
Goodbye. It sounded so final. Tears tugged my mouth into a quavering frown. I couldn’t raise my eyes without giving away my grief.
“No,” I managed. “I can’t.”
“They’ve come to say goodbye to you,” he said gently.
I risked a glance past his shoulder, and saw Tyhlaur, Kurtis, Aniira and Enhyla all lingering nearby, watching in somber silence. I gave up trying to hold back the tears and ran to them, embracing each of them in turn. I wanted to say something to them, but couldn’t. They didn’t speak either, until I turned back to Yatol and heard Kurtis whisper,
“Godspeed, Merelin.”
I hesitated, then rushed on without looking back. Yatol laid his hand on my shoulder as we left the camp, while I struggled to stop crying. Finally the tears dried, leaving only a numbness in my heart. I sniffled once decisively, lifted my chin, and marched stolidly after Yatol.
Chapter 21 – Elekeo
The camp seemed nearer the Perstaun than I remembered. It seemed like we’d only just set out when we left the camp and the forest behind, stepping out into the stagnant desert. Yatol walked briskly an
d I had to jog to keep up with him. My legs were still sore and tired, but sheer self-preservation forced me to ignore it. Every few steps I glanced back at the forest, the tents vaguely silhouetted among the trees. When they passed out of view, I started lagging behind.
Yatol seemed to slow his pace a little for me, but each step sapped more of my energy. I felt strangely tired now – not only fatigued from the illness, but weary inside. So weary. I plodded on doggedly. Even the slower pace seemed excruciatingly fast. I bent my head and stared at the ground, but I hardly saw it.
Finally Yatol came back and halted me with a hand on my shoulder. I knew the concern that would have been on his face, but I still kept my gaze locked on the sand. Even the warm strength of his hand made no impression on me.
“Are you still worried about Damian, Merelin, or is something else holding you?”
I just wanted to sit down, but I knew Yatol would never let me. I could feel his gaze scrutinizing me as if he could see my soul. I shifted my weight and refused to look up.
“I’m thirsty.”
“You don’t have to ask my permission to get a drink.”
I uncorked my waterskin and lifted it to my lips. The water was warm but pure, and it tasted good in my sand-parched mouth. I took my time drinking a few long sips, letting the fluid trickle down my throat.
“It’s so far,” I said at last. “How can we go so far? I’m so tired already.”
I risked a glance at him, saw him furrow his brow.
“You seemed a lot better this morning.”
“I should just let them take me.”
“Merelin!”
The alarm in his voice startled me, but then I faded back into sullen obstinacy. “Well? What reason do you have to go into K’hama?”
“Your father charged me with your protection,” he said sternly, taking me by both shoulders. “If you go into K’hama, so do I.”
A faint glimmer of knowledge lingered at the back of my mind, just out of my reach. But it clung like terror to my throat, and I shuddered. I couldn’t meet his gaze – I tried to look at him, but the calm, resigned light in his eyes bewildered me. I shifted, clenching my hands, fighting the grief. For all I tried to stop them, the words came tumbling out of my mouth.
“But you won’t be coming to the very end.”
He let go of my shoulders, reached up and cupped my head in his hands.
“Merelin, listen to me!” he cried. “I’ll go anywhere with you. I’ll go anywhere for you!”
I found myself clinging to him, his arms tight around me. I was shaking and crying, terrified and ecstatic all at once. Did he really mean that? Oh God…what did he mean?
With my head still buried against his shoulder I asked, “But Yatol, how’re we going to get there? Will Akhmar come?”
He released me, turning away as if suddenly self-conscious. For what felt like ages he didn’t answer, just stared out at the horizon with his arms crossed.
“It depends,” he said finally, his voice so quiet I almost didn’t hear him. “At the most he could take us to the borders of K’hama, but not beyond. That realm is hateful to all the Brethren.”
He tarried a moment longer, then finally he beckoned me and started walking. I trudged after him. Everything lapsed back into that monotonous stream of nothingness, and I lost track of the time.
“Yatol,” I said after a while. “Aren’t we walking straight toward the Ungulion host?”
Yatol scanned the dusky sky – I wondered why – and then the horizon. “If what Tyhlaur and I discovered is still true, we should be able to skirt their edges. Of course, if they reformed their lines, we may end up heading straight into them.”
“How comforting,” I muttered. “And how – when – will we figure out which?”
“When we see them.”
I glowered at his back. We slogged on. Some strange apprehension began gnawing at the back of my mind, but I couldn’t quite identify it. Then all at once it hit me.
“Yatol,” I said, sprinting up beside him. “It was just morning. We haven’t been walking for that long…even if it feels like it. So where did the rest of the day go?”
He lifted his gaze to the gathering shadows. “Oh Merelin, do you think it’s already night?”
“What do you mean?” I asked, nervously grabbing his arm, terrified at seeing him so uneasy.
“You’re right. It should only be about midday.”
“Why is it dark now, then?”
“It’s happened before. There’s some kind of shroud of darkness that covers Mekaema when the Ungulion come, and then all the world is in darkness. The last time it happened, the Ungulion didn’t attack us with weapons but terror, poisoning our thoughts with despair and hate. They mostly failed, though some listened. And we lost our King because of it.”
“But that doesn’t make sense. I’ve seen it light out when Ungulion were around. Shouldn’t it have been dark then too?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I’ve seen them under the light too.”
“Maybe it’s only when a certain one is around, or some group of them.”
He turned to me, surprise and realization in his eyes. “Never thought about that. You may be right. It actually makes a lot more sense than my guess. Not that it’s any consolation.”
We ran on. The slow shadow stole over the sky, until everything was blanketed in the starless dark. It felt eerily like a dense black fog. I had never seen a night in Arah Byen completely without light, but this was no night.
When I started lagging behind, I realized with a chill of horror that Yatol’s footsteps didn’t just fade to silence like they usually did. It was like someone threw a blanket over them to mute the sound. And wearing his dark cloak he was almost invisible too. After I nearly lost him twice, I kept my pace matched to his.
The air hung oppressive over us, hot and dead still. As we ran, it began to throb, like a huge heart beating dull. Too low to be really heard, it registered more like a feeling than a sound. A constant pulse. It never grew louder either, just swelled until I felt nauseated. I put my hands over my ears.
“Yatol!” I wailed into the dark, and dropped to my knees.
I felt a hand on my shoulder and nearly screamed, but he called my name and I closed my mouth on the terror. Peering through the dark I just barely glimpsed his silhouette beside me. He stooped over, wincing against the murk.
“The Ungulion.”
“How close?”
“Still some distance. We may have slipped past them, but they could have sent another dispatch. Wait here. Don’t move.”
“Where are you going?” I cried, grabbing his hand. He didn’t answer, so I whispered, “How will you find me again?”
“I will.”
And suddenly he was gone. I knelt petrified. The ground throbbed with the same sullen pulse as the air. I didn’t want to be anywhere near it. I didn’t even want to stand on it. But slowly, in terror of the suffocating gloom, I eased myself down onto my stomach. I almost had to convince myself that the ground would be there, and not an empty nothingness. My heart raced.
Focus. Breathe.
I couldn’t see anything. Couldn’t tell where I was. Didn’t dare move even an inch alone. I had no sense of direction, no sense of distance. Yatol was gone and I was in the middle of the desert in pitch blackness, without even a wall to give dimension to the void. Nothing. Darkness.
Agonizing, endless moments passed. I found myself holding my breath. When I tried to breathe, it came in shallow gasps, like I was being crushed between cement slabs. And just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, the most heart-rending noise pierced through the shadows.
If despair were a sound, that was it.
I forced my eyes open. I heard the stumbling steps shifting in the sand before I saw the feet, then all at once the boots appeared about a foot from my face. Tattered black robes mingled with the night, barely visible except for a strange, surreal glow that tinged the edges. The sound rose
to a shuddering wail. Ungulion.
For some reason I wasn’t afraid. I didn’t even reach for Yatol’s knife. I sat up and held out my hand, and at the last moment the Ungulion saw me. He reeled to a halt, then almost mechanically spread his hands toward me. But even in the murk I could see them shaking. Abruptly he wrenched them back, and the rotting fingers tore at the black shroud over his head. He collapsed onto his knees in front of me.
“Why don’t you kill me?” I asked.
The blood-hue eyes fixed on me, and the lipless mouth parted to let out another despairing sob. I gasped as the rotting folds of the shroud faded, revealing a vision of some earlier glory. The image wavered like a mirage, and I could see the sands behind him, all tinged with an eerie grey-blue light.
A boy about my age gazed back at me. Sad amber eyes in a flawless pale face.
“Who are you?” I murmured.
The suffering eyes closed. He reached a hand to his forehead and touched the circlet that bound his dark curls. His fingers felt over thin golden band, like he had forgotten what it looked like. Then, as if he’d suddenly remembered, he wrapped his arms around his head and bowed over his knees with an anguished sob.
“Damned,” he moaned, the sound of his voice freezing my blood. The wail rose again. “All of us damned!”
I couldn’t speak, just sat staring. The boy dug his nails against his scalp, writhing as if he’d been poisoned, then he cast his gaze to the starless sky.
“We assaulted bliss, and, for that, given what we merited.”
“What did you merit?” I choked.
The appalling black shroud stole back over him. He didn’t need to explain. When the vision returned, tears like liquid silver were streaming down his cheeks.
“What happened?”
“Elekeo was my name, son of the king. My father devised a mighty plan, a devious plan, and took every boy and man to lay siege to n’Talanthis.” He paused, his plaintive voice threading off into the night. “We sought the life-gift he thought ought to have been ours! Some few of us refused to follow the king’s command. They said he would call down the wrath of the gods for his pride. They were slain at once. Happy they!”
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