Nightingale

by David Farland

  "No, they're not," Monique said. "You simply project your own values on them, imagining that they're good. You know the statistics. At least one in every twenty kids in your school is a sociopath. Yet you imagine that they are all like you."

  Monique was right, Olivia knew. She loved pretty much everyone. It's what kept her working at the school for fifteen hours a day, five and six days a week, teaching during the days and helping with plays and concerts at nights. Everyone had dreams to fulfill, and she wanted to help make them all come true. And when she came home exhausted, she still had Mike to care for.

  Then there was her work with the PTA during the school year and with charitable causes during the summer.

  All week, Olivia had been running herself ragged, until she felt exhausted.

  Olivia got it from her mother.

  Her mom had worked her fingers to the bone, growing vast gardens up in Brigham City, planting melons and strawberries and corn and beans. At the end of each year, the family didn't eat a fiftieth of what they grew. Instead, Olivia's mother would drive her around at the end of each day, passing out fresh vegetables to the elderly, the indigent, and to the families of migrant laborers that came each year to harvest fruit from the local orchards.

  Olivia had learned young that the lasting joy in life comes from giving, not taking.

  She hoped that Bron might learn that, too. But she couldn't be sure that he ever would. How could he ever learn to love others, when the truth was that he feared them? He dared not get too close to them, let himself become vulnerable.

  "If you believe that sociopaths exist," Olivia said, "then Bron might be one. But I don't buy the argument that people are born without consciences. A child who is loved learns to love in return. Bron can't help it if his first foster mother couldn't stand to be touched...."

  Immediately Olivia knew that she'd said the wrong thing. Children who weren't able to bond with a mother were far more likely to exhibit sociopathic behaviors than others.

  "My god," Monique said. "You knew what he was the day you took him in! You're ... trying to fix him."

  "To help him," Olivia said. "I'll give him love, and maybe I can teach him how to love, at least a little."

  "Don't get your hopes up," Monique warned.

  "Why not?" Olivia asked. "You've got yours up. Your first instinct was to send him to his mother. Mine was to try to be his mother."

  That stopped Monique. Olivia had her, she knew. For a long moment she worked, mixing juices and then pouring them over the ice. "This is a dangerous game we're playing," Monique said. "Bron is a killer in the making. And if the enemy finds him—"

  "We'll just have to keep that from happening."

  Chapter 26

  Quicksand

  "You can't help where you come from, but you can choose where you will go."

  — Bron Jones

  Though his bed was softer than a dream, Bron slept little that night. His mind was churning with unanswered questions, whirling with excitement.

  Shortly after dawn, the chopper set down outside, and Monique said her goodbyes. She hugged Olivia like an old friend, shook Bron's hand and said, "Bron, I wish you well. I hope to see you again soon."

  He wondered if "soon" would ever come.

  "Where are we going?" Bron asked.

  "You'll go to the airport in Vegas," she said. "After that, you'll take a jet to New Orleans. It has all been arranged."

  "Will my mother meet us there?"

  "She has been notified that you're coming," Monique said. "Whether or not she comes, will be up to her. Bron, if she doesn't show, you should know something. Your mother is a frightened woman, for good reason."

  The helicopter rose above a blue ribbon of lake, following the channel as if it were a road. Bron suspected that between the roar of the engine and the baffling afforded by the privacy glass, the pilot couldn't hear anything they might say. Still, Bron turned up the volume on the stereo, and then began to grill Olivia. He said casually, "There is something wrong with Monique's eyes. When you look into them, she seems very, very old. But I don't think that she's any older than you."

  "You're observant," Olivia said.

  "I was thinking about the priest. He said that he was three hundred years old. If he was an old man, and he put his memories into the head of a young person that he captured... he could make younger copies of himself. He could live forever."

  Olivia's smile faltered. "That would be a very evil thing. Monique would never do that."

  "Is she your boss?"

  Olivia thought for a moment, bit her lip.

  "You can't keep me completely in the dark," Bron suggested. "I don't want to go stumbling into something by accident. I don't think that Monique would want that, either."

  Olivia pursed her lips, "No, we wouldn't want that."

  "So tell me," Bron said, "what is Monique to you?"

  "She's highly respected, she's ..." Olivia fumbled to explain, "special. Let me put it this way. When I was a child, I loved music, and I chose to play the guitar and the violin, and to sing. You're learning the extent of my knowledge. I don't perform for others—it would draw too much attention. So I perform for myself, for my own enjoyment. Because of the narrowness of my training, I'm only a muse.

  "But you should know that a muse is more powerful than many other kinds of masaaks. For most masaaks, our powers are small. Some merchants can only draw from others, learn what others know. They might at most be able to sneak into a person's mind and learn their secrets. Thus, they can discover if a man is guilty of a crime, or steal valuable trade secrets, or learn the numbers that will let them access secret bank accounts.

  "People like that, they're really not merchants, are they? They're merely thieves. So we call them 'Thieves.' Most masaaks fall into this category.

  "Others can pull memories and send memories, and these are true merchants. But they can't do what we call 'deep training.' They can't go into the brain stem and follow the impulses from your ears to your fingers, so that you can train a child to play an instrument or learn to walk. That takes a muse. Even Monique doesn't have my gift for that."

  "So she's not more powerful than you?"

  "No, she's different from me. She's more like a priestess, dedicated to a cause."

  Olivia paused and took a deep breath, as if uneasy about revealing so much, and said, "Some of us never die, Bron. As you have guessed, there is a way for a merchant to cheat death. I could download all of my memories into a child, victimize someone. But there's a moral way to do it, too....

  "When Monique was only a child of thirteen, she volunteered for this. She wanted to learn the history of our people, as much as there was to know, and a wise old man who had stored that information agreed to give it to her.

  "But there was so much information, that her mind could not easily hold it all, so much information that only the most brilliant of us could have tried. So her teacher had to erase all of the information that she had stored to that point—nearly every memory that she held dear—and then he emptied his mind into hers."

  "What?" Bron asked. "So he taught her everything he'd learned in his lifetime?"

  "More than that," Olivia said, "for he'd had it done to him as a child, and it had been done to his teacher as well—for three thousand years the chain has gone unbroken.

  "Monique, if she desired, could tell you about her life as a prophetess in a temple in Greece, conversing with Homer. She speaks ancient Assyrian and Egyptian, and was a tutor to kings. She was there when Saladin re-captured Jerusalem, and fought beside Joan of Arc.

  "More importantly, she knows most of what can be known about our own people, and holds memories from before the dawn of recorded history."

  Bron wondered. "So, she gave up everything in order to do this?"

  Olivia nodded. "All of her hopes and dreams, all of her aspirations. She had to surrender herself completely. She is no longer a single person. So when she took time to think about you last night, it was to c
onsult the myriad voices in her head, compose a single plan of action."

  "She wanted this?" Bron asked, amazed.

  "Many of us would," Olivia admitted. "It's an honored position. She is the Weigher of Lost Souls, a creature far older and wiser than you or me. I offered myself when I was young, but I wasn't ... bright enough, and it was felt that as a muse, I had other gifts that could benefit the community."

  "What community?" Bron asked, for he imagined secret meetings of hooded Ael, held by moonlight deep in the forest.

  "Mankind," Olivia explained.

  "But you don't consider yourself human," Bron pointed out.

  Olivia grinned. "I consider 'mankind' to include both humans and masaaks."

  Bron asked slyly, "But the Draghouls don't?"

  "No," Olivia agreed. "They think of humans more like... food."

  "And how would they think of me?" Bron asked.

  Olivia closed her mouth secretively, and at last said, "As a prize. They would honor you and fete you to your face, but as soon as you slept, they would take you. You want nothing to do with them, Bron. You cannot make a deal with a devil without becoming one yourself."

  Bron chuckled. She sounded so over-dramatic.

  "Don't laugh," Olivia said in a tone that spoke of despair and heartbreak.

  Bron didn't want to hurt her feelings. He became solemn. "So any Masaak can become a Draghoul?" Bron asked, "or an Ael?"

  "That's a tough question," Olivia said. "Most people can be on either side, but not all. You can try to convert a person who is evil to the core, one who lacks the capacity for love or selflessness, but in time they'll slip back into their old ways. And there are good people in the world, too Bron, people so giving, so honorable that the Draghoul can't really control them. All of their hateful thoughts, their selfish ideals, can never gain root in such people."

  Bron had always been taught that people are basically the same. "Are you saying that the Draghouls are different from us?"

  "I'm saying that some Draghouls lack the capacity for compassion. They were bred that way. Pit bulls were bred to attack, while Labrador retrievers were bred to lick your hand. The same is true with the Draghouls. They've been bred for ruthlessness. For more than five thousand years, the Draghouls have been perfecting their lines. You can try changing them, but it's not easy."

  They had crossed over the dam now and were heading into the desert. Down below, Bron could see rusted-out trailer homes along a highway, where dead cars rotted in yards where no children played at all.

  "That priest we met, Father Leery," Bron said. "Tell me about him. I mean, he's a priest, but once he was a Draghoul?"

  "Yes," Olivia said. "He was a stalker, before he became converted."

  Bron wasn't sure how he felt about a priest who could rip out your memories, one who would sneak into your house at night to do it. He wondered if the man was a true believer, or if he simply used his frock as some kind of ridiculous disguise.

  "So one of your people captured him," Bron asked, "and possessed him?"

  Olivia smiled. "It was the other way around. He caught one of us, one who stored special memories, and when he saw what was in the man's mind, he left the Draghouls."

  "What kind of memories?" Bron asked.

  "Memories of visions," Olivia said. "Would you like to know what Saint Francis of Assisi knew after he saw god? Would you like to know what Peter witnessed on the Mount of Transfiguration? Or what Moses saw in the burning bush? Or Mohamed? It's powerful stuff. That's why Draghouls want to destroy it.

  "Bron, there's a war going on. A war for information. The Ael want to preserve it, to spread it among those who would use it for good. But if we're captured, the light we have in us will be snuffed out forever."

  "So do you believe in God?" Bron asked. He felt odd about it, as if he was asking if she believed in Santa Claus.

  Olivia bit her lip, trying to decide how to answer. "Let's just say ... the universe is far more vast and strange than humans can imagine. You're about to enter a far larger world."

  "Do you think the priest would show me what he's seen?"

  "I think he'd like to, but you're not ready for it. Let yourself grow a little."

  Bron wondered about that. Could the priest prove that there was a God? And what if he did? How would that knowledge change a man?

  "Do the Draghouls have muses, too?" Bron asked.

  "They do," Olivia admitted. "You might learn music from them, if you liked—but they're more likely to train you in the finer arts of assassination. Avoid them. These people have no love for one another, no affection. If you meet them, do not confuse solicitation for kindness. They're at their most dangerous when they are at their most subtle."

  Bron wondered at that. Father Leery had turned Blair's old acolytes into poppets. Could such creatures be trusted?

  Bron tried to rest on the helicopter flight to the airport in Las Vegas, but he was too anxious. He'd never traveled outside of Utah, except for a short trip to Idaho. He had no idea what to expect once his plane landed in Louisiana.

  The flight to New Orleans was uneventful, and they touched down a few minutes late, arriving in the early afternoon. Olivia called Mike while they taxied in from the runway. He didn't expect them home for a day yet. Olivia pretended that they were still on a lark up in Salt Lake. She didn't tell him about their trip to New Orleans.

  Neither Bron nor Olivia had packed any luggage, so they simply walked out of the airport.

  As they neared the baggage claim, they found people lining the exit. Some were limousine drivers, men in fine gray or black uniforms, each holding a sign with a name, such as "Mr. Brandt." Others were family members, bearings signs like "Welcome home from Afghanistan, Dad!" A few cabbies with ragged hair held signs.

  Olivia halted and searched their signs, their faces. Bron looked eagerly for something that might have his name on it. At the back of the crowd, an old coot with gray hair raised his hand for a brief flash, splaying his fingers just a bit. He didn't show any suction cups, so Bron figured that he wasn't a masaak. In fact, he suspected that the man was just waving to someone behind him, but Olivia grabbed Bron's hand and headed in the old man's direction.

  When they reached him, the old man said in a heavy Cajun accent, "Come to see some big gators? You picked da right spot, by gar."

  He reached out to shake Bron's hand, and that's when Bron felt the suction cups on his fingers. Bron didn't have time to flash his own sizraels. The old man pulled his hand away as if Bron's touch had burned.

  "Sorry," the old man said. "I was tinkin' dat you is someone else."

  He turned to hurry away, but Olivia said, "We'd love to the see gators." She grabbed his hand, flashed her sizraels, and the man halted, looked at Bron in confusion, then shook hands again. This time Bron gave him the sign.

  There was so much to learn about masaak etiquette.

  The old man smiled in relief. "Le's go, then!"

  Bron felt nervous. "Are we going to see my mother?"

  "Mebbe," the old man said. "That jus' maybe." He said it as if he didn't trust Bron and Olivia, as if he was still making up his mind.

  They stepped outside, and sultry air hit them in a wave. As they headed to the parking lot, Bron studied the old man. He had a week or two of white stubble on his chin, and a large wart under his right eye, but he had the same coloration as both Olivia and Bron—skin that was slightly olive in complexion, as if they shared Greek ancestry, but this man's face was broad and heavy of brow, while his hair was as coarse as a brush.

  He looked weathered, beaten.

  He led them to an old red Ford pickup, dinged and rusted in spots. A couple of aluminum lockboxes sat in the back. The old fellow flipped one open and said, "Dass is whar you stow yar chut chuts." Bron had no idea what "chut chuts" were, so he just stared blankly. The old man nodded toward Bron's school backpack.

  Olivia put her purse in the lockbox, and Bron dropped in the backpack. Before the old man closed the box, h
e nodded to the cell phone in Olivia's pocket, "Toss dat phone in dare, too, beb."

  Olivia set the phone in. Bron's was already in his backpack, so he got in the truck's cab.

  Bron took the middle, and when the old coot got in, he reached under his seat and pulled out a huge, old revolver. The fellow took off the safety, set it down on his lap, and then started the truck with a grin.

  Bron swallowed hard. He couldn't keep his eyes off the gun. He tried to break the silence.

  "So, what's your name?" Bron asked.

  The old fellow smiled. "It doan matta." He dismissed the question, then let out a nervous sigh.

  They rode in silence for over an hour, skirting the towns, heading down back roads past dilapidated houses with huge yards. Many of the homes had tattered barns, with a swaybacked mule here and there.

  The roads looked like a kill zone. Bron spotted dead turtles and frogs everywhere, with an occasional skunk or raccoon or coyote or beaver or rabbit. He'd never seen so many dead animals in so short a time.

  "Sure are a lot of dead animals on the road," Bron said, trying to get the driver to open up.

  The old coot didn't speak. He neither asked questions nor answered them, and so Bron figured that the old guy just wasn't the type for conversation.

  Or maybe he was just too scared. The old guy didn't trust them, that was for sure.

  At last the truck pulled onto a dirt road that bordered a swamp. A sign just before the turnoff said, "Black River," and soon they reached a broad river whose water was darker than coffee.

  The man pulled up beside a small wooden dock, where an old silver motorboat was chained. He got out, still carrying the gun, and Olivia and Bron tumbled out of their door.

  The old fellow waved his gun at them, motioned toward the boat. "Ya all go climb 'board, now."

  He let them take the lead, then stood by the pickup for a moment, eyeing the road behind, making sure that no one followed.

  Bron walked over the uneven ground toward the boat, a little worried. He'd heard about the dangers of the swamps—gators and cottonmouths and rattlesnakes, and he began to wonder if he'd encounter any of those things.