Pellin paused to drink from the waterskin Dukasti had given him and edged toward Igesia. “If you will permit it, Honored One, I would trade awareness with you. There is much you need to know, so much that I’m not confident I could speak it all.”
“And you wish to know what I have discovered of the forbidden desert.” Igesia smiled. “For time out of mind, we have intuitively understood the connection between the Maveth Desert and the Darkwater Forest, even if we have not known the cause.” He lifted his weathered arm, palm forward. Pellin grasped Igesia’s hand in his own.
The Honored One’s eyes leapt toward him and disappeared, and Pellin found himself confronted with the largest river of memories he’d ever seen. Only those of the rest of the Vigil and Custos could compare, but a mind less like the librarian’s would be hard to imagine. Whereas Custos had organized his memories as thoroughly as the library in Bunard, Igesia’s mind scarcely owned any organization at all. As Pellin watched, eddies appeared in the river to cut across the current and then actually ran backward against the flow.
How would he find anything?
“Come, friend,” Igesia’s voice sounded, and Pellin started. “Have you not heard that the children of Aer are like the wind? If you do not learn what you wish to know, it may be that you will learn something better.” The hint of the old man’s cackle surrounded him. With a sigh, Pellin plunged into the river.
The current swept his awareness away as he became Igesia.
He stood on the edge of the forsaken desert, the youngest of the southern Vigil. “It’s beautiful in its desolation,” he said. Qadim, the Honored One, stood at his side and nodded.
“You see well for one so young in the gift. To what would you compare the sword of the desert, Igesia?”
The encompassing sweep of his arm traced a path from horizon to horizon. “Not a sword, Honored One,” he said, “but the headsman’s axe. To let night fall on you in the desert is to place your head on the block.”
“And is that all you see?”
Igesia bowed. “Yes, Honored One. Should I see more?”
By way of response, Qadim placed parchment and charcoal in Igesia’s hands. “There is always more, my son. Draw and learn.”
Time skipped and he stood within a prison on the far eastern edge of the desert, sweating despite the chill of early morning. The man inside the prison no longer raved, but Igesia paused even so. Sana stood at his side, older in the gift by three hundred years. “Your opportunity awaits, Igesia, and I pray you will never have another.”
He swallowed dust. A hundred years in the gift had allowed him to see exactly five instances of those who had slipped through the marauding net of sentinels and spent a night within the borders of the desert. He’d never delved one before. Now he had been deemed experienced enough.
“Come,” Sana said. “The Honored One commands us to take the next step in your education. Touch him as you would any other.”
With a nod he beckoned the condemned man forward to the bars and placed his hand upon the dirt and grime of his wrist. As instructed, he plunged through the man’s memories and emotions, of crimes and kindnesses both real and imagined, until he found the vault. Within the man’s mind it appeared as a scroll written in a language he had never seen.
He paused, remaining in the delve to examine the writing at length. Elongated loops and whorls created a design that might have been written by wind. It tugged at him even as it mocked his ignorance, but his time studying the desolation of the waste had in no way prepared him for this. Foolishly, he had expected some insight into the nature of the vault, but nothing came. Still, the practice of patient observation was too ingrained to forsake. He remained in the delve until Sana, concerned at last, shook him loose.
The prison vanished, and now he stood on the edge of the desert, old and wrinkled as the thirteen bowed to his authority even as they objected to his decision. “Igesia, even the Honored One requires some measure of companionship,” Sadiq said.
“And when I do, Aer will bring you to me. The wind will whisper my need upon your heart even before I’ve felt it, and you will come. Besides, my guards will remain against the last need.” He turned to stare across the sand as a breeze lifted a puff of dust from a faraway dune. A sign? He didn’t know. “Calm yourselves, brothers. It was for this that Qadim chose me. It may be that my contemplations will yield some morsel of knowledge about our ancient task.”
“And if not?” one of the thirteen asked.
He shrugged. “Then not. Aer will decide.”
Events shifted within the delve again, and Pellin skipped along Igesia’s countless memories of days spent in observation of the Maveth Desert, its borders mapped so accurately he could almost pick the exact grains of sand that marked the boundary.
Pellin came out of the delve, shaking his head, prepared to speak, but Igesia still held his wrist and seemed in no hurry to leave his mind. Observation. Inwardly he sighed. His temperament ran more toward thought, but perhaps in this, Igesia saw more clearly than he. He placed his hand on the wrinkled skin once more.
A woman stood before him in the failing light of day. Despite her diminutive size, massive ropes as thick as hawsers bound her chest and limbs. At his side, three of the southern Vigil stood ready. Almawt, almost as old in the gift as he, stepped forward with the aid of the other two, his face a portrait in suffering.
“Are you convinced of the necessity of this?” Fatalan asked.
She hadn’t directed her question to any of them in particular, and though he occupied the position of Honored One, it wasn’t his place to answer, so he waited for Almawt to summon energy and composure enough to respond. “Necessity?” His pain turned the word into a growl. “I’m too old to pretend to such wisdom. Just as well to ask the desert. But whatever end comes to me will be a relief.”
“Would not a draught of paverin help you in your task?” Fatalan persisted.
Almawt managed a smile, though his eyes continued to speak of torment. “The wasting disease is almost done with me, sister. I do not wish my last memories to be clouded by the drug.” He stumped forward until he was within arm’s reach of the tightly bound girl—and he waited.
At the last, the light fled and the shadows jumped. The girl’s eyes dilated until the blue of her irises had all but disappeared. She blinked once and threw herself against her restraints, her lips pulled back from her teeth as she worked to attack Igesia’s dying friend.
He worked his way around her and placed one bare hand on her neck and jerked, the reflex curve of his old man’s back bending the wrong way. Igesia watched his eyes, but no sign showed his experience. Almawt’s body continued to jerk, flinching as though he fought physical attacks within the girl’s mind.
Without warning, he dropped, his hand falling away from the girl to clutch at his chest. Igesia leapt forward to come within their circle and reached for his friend, desperate to know his last thoughts. Warning cries surrounded him. It was death to be caught within the delve of the dying, and Almawt had obviously breathed his last, but his gaze shifted, struggling to focus. There were still fractions of a moment left before his light fled. Igesia’s hand brushed the skin of Almawt’s face.
He found Almawt waiting for him within his mind. “Words,” he said. Around them, thousands upon thousands of memories accumulated over a life of hundreds of years flooded out from behind their doors to flare and die. “There are words within the words.” An image of black writing appeared before him, a flash of utter blackness against the encroaching night of death.
Igesia broke the delve as Almawt’s last memories flared into nothingness. When he looked down, his friend’s eyes stared fixedly at a point beyond the horizon. The girl still struggled to free herself from her bonds, but her target had shifted. She no longer attempted to reach Almawt, but sought Igesia.
Pellin released his delve with Igesia once more, but this time he found the leader of the southern Vigil waiting for him, composed, but smiling as if he’d j
ust shared his favorite jest. “Words within words,” Pellin echoed. “Almawt’s memories of the writing are different, but what does it mean?”
“I have often wondered as much my friend,” Igesia said. Pellin watched Igesia’s mirth drop away. “The writing seen from outside the scroll is different than from inside.” He nodded toward Mark and Elieve. “And the writing on the exterior of her scroll different still, though the markings appear to be the same language.” The leader of the southern Vigil worked himself to a standing position on his frail, skinny legs and turned to face Mark. Slowly, as though acknowledging an equal, he bowed. “Do you know what you have made possible, young Mark?”
When Mark shook his head, Igesia smiled. “Here on the southern continent we have a saying that the subtlety of Aer is beyond reckoning. You have redeemed Elieve from the death that had claimed her, but what is more, she holds within her a black scroll.”
“She has been touched by the Darkwater,” Pellin said, “but we have seen many in the north with such.”
Igesia, reseated, leaned forward, his old man’s eyes avid. “And how does the writing on their scroll appear?”
Pellin’s heart quickened as he replayed the memories of every scroll he’d seen. “The same,” he whispered. “It’s always the same.” His exhilaration faded. “But we can’t read it. We’re no better off than we were before.”
Igesia shook his head. “No, my friend. There is something different at work here. Never has the desert spoken before, nor the forest, if your memories are true.” He looked at Dukasti. “Prepare yourself, my young heir. Tonight I will attempt what Almawt attempted before me.”
Chapter 41
“Must you do this?” Pellin asked. “You could summon another to delve her.”
Igesia cackled as if Pellin had made a particularly apt jest. “Of course I could, old friend, but I am as Almawt was before me, used up and on the threshold of death. Perhaps we can wring some use out of these old bones of mine before I depart.”
“Is your time so close, then?” Dukasti asked.
Igesia nodded. “I am tired, son of my heart. Would you deny an old man his rest?”
Outside, the sand stretching away to the horizon flared as the setting sun painted it in streaks of shadow and orange. Pellin sighed. If the voice of the desert spoke through Elieve again, the death of the day would have Igesia’s passing to accompany it. “What must we do?”
“The border of the desert’s evil lies a few hundred paces from here,” Igesia said. “I placed a marker there.” The gaps in his joyful smile accentuated his mirth. “Let us see what wonders Aer will reveal to us this night.”
Mark stiffened, but Igesia shuffled over on his spindly legs to buss Elieve on the forehead. “Such a lovely girl,” he said.
Elieve smiled, and Pellin remarked how within the last week, the quality of her expression had changed from that of a child to that of a young woman.
“Thank you,” she said.
Even her voice had matured, settling into a lower register, as if she’d grown older physically as well as mentally.
Igesia leaned to one side to speak to Mark. “I will keep her as safe as I can, young Mark.”
Mark’s face clouded. No doubt he caught the ambiguity in Igesia’s reassurance. “That’s not quite a promise.”
Igesia’s expression sobered. “Such guarantees are evil, young Mark. They are beyond the scope of men. But I will do not only my utmost to guard her but also to provide healing, if I see a way.”
They left the shelter of Igesia’s home and walked west, toward the dying sun, with Igesia leading. Pellin looked back to see his guard searching the rolling dunes for threats, but each time his gaze passed over Elieve, it sharpened.
Though undoubtedly the oldest man in the world, Igesia still set a pace that had Pellin breathing hard. They climbed the shadowed side of a low dune and crested it in time to see the sun deepen from orange to red. “There,” Igesia pointed. A few dozen paces away at the bottom of the dune a ragged bit of yellow cloth clung to a short pole. “That’s the border.”
“How do you know that the sands haven’t shifted, Honored One?” Mark asked.
Igesia nodded. “The pole is quite long. It’s anchored to the bedrock beneath the sand. That was a worthy question, though. I can see why Pellin apprenticed you.”
Mark laughed. “He didn’t have a whole lot of choices at the time, Honored One.”
Igesia nodded as though Mark had uttered some deep wisdom. “Then allow me to restate, young Mark. I can see why Aer chose you. I have noticed that Aer often brings us to extreme circumstances to give us the opportunity to make the choice we should.”
“What happens when we don’t?” Mark asked.
Igesia sighed. “History is replete with the answer.”
“I haven’t had the opportunity to read much history, Honored One.”
Igesia’s voice lost its usual singsong, turning serious. “You should remedy that.”
“I will,” Mark said. At a look from the Honored One, he amended his answer. “If Aer wills.”
They arrived at the marker, the cloth hanging limply in the dead air. “A pace or two beyond should suffice,” Igesia said. “Allta, will you take Elieve in your arms? A wise man prepares for the unexpected and often receives a joyful surprise.” He shuffled around the big guard so that he was shielded from Elieve’s vision. “Be ready for anything, my friend.”
They stood watching as the last ruddy light faded from the desert sky and stars to the east winked into view.
“You’ve returned already,” Elieve said in a voice that carried no hint of youth or innocence.
Pellin nodded, as much for Igesia as for the thing that spoke using Elieve’s voice. “I have. You promised knowledge. What do you have to offer?”
“Much,” the voice said, “but first tell me of your world.”
By the first light of the moon, Pellin saw Igesia nod, urging him to continue. “We are peoples of two continents,” Pellin said.
“Only two?” the voice asked. “Still, the possibility cannot be ruled out. What of your rulers or governors?”
Caution filled Pellin at the question. He sensed pitfalls, but surely the intelligence in the desert would have learned of the gift of kings from those few unfortunate souls it had corrupted in the past, just as it must have known of the two continents peopled by man. “We are governed by those Aer has gifted to rule, though we are not immune to envy and strife and the wars that accompany them.”
“It is as I said so long ago,” Elieve said in that other voice.
Pellin assayed a question in the pause that followed. “Who are you?”
“I have many names,” the voice said, laughing at some hidden jest. “As many as I could gather.” Elieve’s laughter scaled upward, and Mark’s hand tightened on his dagger.
“I don’t understand,” Pellin said. He kept his gaze fixed on Elieve, but in his peripheral vision, he saw Igesia reach forward to touch her.
The Honored One’s eyes widened at the contact, and Elieve jerked in Allta’s grip. “You think to try me at last, stripling?” Elieve howled with laughter. “Long you have teased me at the edge of my power. Come then.”
Elieve offered no struggle, but tension in Allta’s arms and legs showed he expected violence any moment. Mark, his face stricken, held one of her hands and put his mouth to her ear. In the silence, Pellin could hear him whispering over and over. “You are loved. I love you.”
Time lengthened and stretched, and the space between Pellin’s heartbeats became an eternity as Igesia and Elieve stilled until they might have been nothing more than statues of themselves. All the while Mark held Elieve’s hand and whispered his devotion into the night.
The moon rose, separating itself from the horizon to shine on Igesia, but there was no hint of the old man’s internal struggle.
“Eldest,” Allta called to him an hour after sunset, “what do we do?”
Inside, Pellin railed against his ig
norance and helplessness. “Nothing. Until we have some means of relieving our ignorance, we will have to wait.”
“If the corruption of the desert takes Igesia, Eldest, I will be hardpressed to protect you all.”
Dukasti stepped forward, drawing the long curved dagger from his waist and handing a shorter one to Pellin. “We will protect ourselves as we can, Allta,” he said. “I think the Honored One might have foreseen these circumstances. He is too old and frail to constitute a threat to you, even if the desert takes him.”
They waited as the moon rose. Shadows fell across the faces of those locked in combat in their strange tableau, Igesia, older than any living and Elieve, harboring an intelligence far older still. Mark’s encouragement never wavered.
Pain, a sliver of glass in Pellin’s heart, stabbed him. Almost certainly, Elieve’s mind would be extinguished during Igesia’s fight. She would lose the memories, her own this time, which she had gathered. If she lost all of them, which was likely, there would be no rebuilding her. The sweet girl that Mark’s love had created would be gone. Pellin wept.
Hours later, Igesia’s strained whisper broke the silence. “Touch her.”
Allta spoke before Pellin could move. “Eldest, there’s no way to know who speaks.”
Dukasti nodded his agreement, his dark hair catching the moonlight. “Allow me, Eldest. The Vigil cannot afford to lose both the Honored One and the Eldest at the same time.”
Pellin caught Dukasti’s arm as he reached for Igesia. “Nor can the south afford to lose both Igesia and his heir. Consider, during the hours of his delving, Igesia has offered no word or hint of his struggle. Now he does. Only three conclusions are possible.”
Dukasti shifted in the moonlight. “He has won or lost his struggle with the desert, or the issue has yet to be decided.”
The Wounded Shadow Page 31