Den and I nodded after we glanced at each other. "Thank you, sir."
The hours slipped late into the night. Outside, I could hear celebrations. Word was that messengers had already been sent to the neighboring cities to spread the good news. I remained in the little bedroom, refusing the offer to join in the merrymaking. They wanted me to share my tale of the cave. I balked at the idea.
Instead, I remained seated in the leather bound chair next to Elmiryn, compelled by some sense of duty. I had a bucket of soapy water and a brush with me, which I used to scrub the blood from my gambeson. Most of it came off, but some of the stains wouldn't wash out completely. With a sigh, I let it dry out on the windowsill.
I stared out the window to the city. Gamath was a collection of looming shadows. I tried to imagine it filled with people, with noise and ruckus and lights. The image was hard to form. All I could imagine were dark streets tainted by a wandering madness. My gaze shifted and my eyes fell on Elmiryn's face.
I reached a hand to her, and brushed my thumb along her forehead. She lay quiet as death.
Exhaustion claimed me. I fell asleep, curled in the chair and fought against the feelings of guilt that came riding on the laughter of the townsfolk.
____________________________
That following morning, I bathed, ate, and spent the remainder of the day reading. The healer returned to check Elmiryn, but again said there was nothing he could do. I fell asleep in the same chair as the night before last. The next day, it was the same thing, except that some of the peasant children came to sit with me. There were six of them, mostly boys beneath the age of ten I assumed. Opal offered to shoo them out, but I shook my head, asking only that I not be left alone with them.
They asked me about what happened with the guardian, but I mumbled my unwillingness to talk about that just yet. Opal redirected their attention by asking what my book was about, and before I knew it, I was reading Tobias' story aloud.
"Wind, mighty wind, with lungs filled with laughter, blew back his enemies and nary lost a breath. Arrows shot at him were lost in a sensuous dance of current and power, where their steel-eyed anger were turned to fly twice as fast toward their owners. The pirates cowered on the deck, and many perished beneath the heavy hail of death. Mariatu, leader of the spiteful men, barked a command to his lessers. His voice was lost in the vigor that was Wind's incredible howl.
An arrow struck across Mariatu's face and he fell, bloody and downed by his own bravado.
It was at that time that the Oleus Lamar, the dread ship of the Southern Seas, overturned with Wind's powerful suggestion.
Njord, god of wind and father to the seafaring life, whistled with pleasure at his Champion's deed. Atargatis, goddess of the ocean and mother to the seafaring life, swirled with displeasure–"
"Why would she be mad?" a boy asked loudly.
I looked at him blankly, only to find my expression mirrored by all those in the room. "What–?"
"Atargatis. Why is she mad? The pirates were bad, right?"
My eyes fluttered. "Um. ...Well, she's described as the 'mother of the seafaring life'. I think her love for sailors was indiscriminate."
"Indy-what?"
"I mean she didn't care. As a mother, she loved her children, good or bad. Njord didn't share that feeling. That was why he sent Wind to–"
"What's Wind's real name?"
Disgruntled by the new interruption, I tried to keep my displeasure from my voice. "He is only called Wind. They don't call him by anything else–"
"But Wind isn't a real name." I was surprised to find this one came from Opal. I think something in my look gave me away, as her expression turned thoroughly embarrassed.
"I didn't write the book! I just–"
"Maybe if you leave the funny words out, we can understand it better," A bucktoothed boy offered snottily.
My lips thinned.
I looked back at the book and pretended to read loudly. "Rocks fall. Everyone dies." I snapped the book shut. "Sorry, that's the end."
The boys gazed at me, taken aback. "But they were out to sea! How could–!?"
"I guess the writer ran out of big words." I offered dryly.
That was when Elmiryn moved.
An odd moan, held in by her tensed jaw dispelled the idea that it had just been a twitch of her arm. I inhaled sharply and rose to my feet, my hand quick to find place at the woman's forehead. She burned under my touch, and seemed to writhe in her sheets as if suffering by some horrid dream. I looked to Opal and she gave a cursory nod of the head before she proceeded to shoo the children from the room. As the last of them went, I held Elmiryn by the shoulders and gave her a small shake.
"Elmiryn...Elmiryn! Wake up!"
ELMIRYN________________________
What a mess, what a hurricane, what a muddy pit of a mind. She couldn't tell ass from elbow, and she tried so hard to. What at one point seemed a nose, turned out to be a knee; and what at one point seemed a foot, turned out to be her mouth. She got her name mixed up too, in a jumble of fonts that were and weren't there, which tumbled and swirled by image and sound in a black backdrop that seemed as infinite as her frustration. Seeing and not seeing. Feeling and not feeling. Being and not being...
She was completely and utterly lost.
At first, she believed in embers and the cry of steel beneath a hammer, but then she felt cold instead of heat, and tasted blood instead of sweat. At first she believed she were a man (ah, what a luxury it is to piss upright!) but that came under reasonable doubt when her concept of a body was lost to a memory of amorphous flesh that swam through liquid. Beneath these obnoxious collections of understandings, she recognized something pale and stale buried beneath it all. Ideas to do with royalty and war. Soiled innocence and malignant horror.
But those weak things were set aside. Surely, the truth of who she was and what she was about rested in the strongest memories?
And the most intriguing of them all came together in tentative lines that streaked her vision.
...Cold...
Her heart adopted a need for haste. She jogged and felt her feet sink into the ground with each step. Her sight was hampered by the curtain of white that surrounded her. But through the haze, a phantom danced, not far ahead. She was afraid she'd lose it. She shouted hoarsely through the screeching wind.
"Atalo! Reten na och!" Atalo! Wait for me!
Without the slightest warning, something stabbed into her back, something that managed to tear through the layers of her winter clothes. A thick arm wrapped around her neck and she heard a man mutter a prayer before he gripped her by the shoulder and flung her into the snowbank. She crashed onto hard packed ice. Her breath rushed past her lips, and for a moment she couldn't breathe in.
As she lay there and watched the tips of aspen trees dance as ghosts, she thought she saw the black stains of confusion that had plagued her seep into the fabric of reality. In these stains, she saw that terrible place where she had lost herself. Things squeaked through the little hole in her memory; names, songs, people who weren't people but just crudely sketched caricatures of another time and place. She pressed her eyes shut to block it out.
When she opened them again, she saw through the storm's veil, and peered up to see a warrior dressed in white furs stare down at her imperiously. He carried a small blade with him, stained with her blood. An Ailuran Cerrite, a hunter of criminals. She thought she recognized that face beneath the cowl's shadow.
...Duncan? Her peer? Her...comrade? She tried to tap into her memory, because something of that didn't sound right, but discovered an unnerving void.
That was when Atalo screamed and attacked Duncan. He came charging from the side, wielding a sharp rock as a makeshift weapon, but the Cerrite was fast. He deftly leaned to the side and dodged her brother's wild swipe before he grabbed the youth by the front of his clothes and pulled him roughly to the ground.
But she was already up on her feet, already half-crawling out of the snowbank when th
e Cerrite raised his blade for a killing strike. She was only partially aware of the fact that her veins burned, or that her head pounded. Her first concern was in saving her brother from his own foolhardiness.
With little grace, she lunged at Duncan's broad back, and her petite hands wrapped themselves around the Ailuran's large hand. She tried vainly to pry the warrior's fingers from his weapon. The man gave a low rumble and threw back his head, where it connected with her nose. Blood poured forth and she fell to the snow, dazed and with a ringing in her ears she didn't notice before.
There was a shout, and a series of muffled slaps that ended in a wet crunch. She heard Atalo groan. Soon, her white world was blessed with the image of her little brother. His broad face was turned pink and his tawny eyes squinted from his exertion. He knelt by her and cupped her face.
"Koah..." Sister... "Koah!"
"Koen," Brother, "Cajeck...ni aji...üle boeneh?" Idiot...what were...you thinking?
"Cerrite magat...eh? Koah, ni dana?" But the Cerrite...eh? Sister, what's wrong?
Her eyes had rolled shut. She took deep breaths and felt the cold air rasp down her dry throat. Her lungs felt starved. Pain stabbed down her arms, and she thought her veins would tear open. Atalo took her by the shoulders and shook her, his young voice turned shrill with fear.
"Koah! Koah! ...Elmiryn!!"
Who?
"Elmiryn wake up!"
That was her voice saying those things, but her lips weren't moving...and she didn't think to say that either. What was going on?
The pain faded, as did the cold. The wind's howl petered out to a whisper that tickled the back of her mind. She felt hands shake her, and tried to open her eyes. All she saw was blurry. Streaks of color. Like a bad painting. There was a figure hovering over her. She couldn't see their face.
"Atalo?" she rasped–but the voice she heard, she didn't recognize.
The shaking stopped. She thought she heard a sharp intake of breath.
"...What did you say?" There. Again. Someone used her voice. The person near her, maybe?
Her sight sharpened, and she saw a sky fitted with cobwebs and a boy that looked much like a girl. Tawny eyes blinked at her. Was it...him?
"Elmiryn?"
She reached a hand upward and took a lock of dark hair between her fingers. She half-expected the strands to smudge and smear on her fingers, like charcoal. Üle okém ia-gouta, koen. "Your hair's long, brother..." She heard a raspy voice that wasn't hers speak the words she thought of in a different language. She grabbed her throat harshly, felt her throat hum as she spoke, "What is this...? Where am I?" She fought to push herself up. The world rolled, and she felt nausea curl in her chest like a demon waiting to spring. "Atalo!" she shouted.
The other person, not her brother, she knew this now, pressed her back at the shoulders. "Elmiryn, stop–"
The grip on her tightened. Her mind whispered that this was reminiscent of something. From the dark of uncertain memories, she recalled a man's faint outline. His face was nondescript, but his armor, she recognized. Recognized it because she had worn the same armor. This man had hovered over her, had pressed down on her. Peer. Comrade. A name tickled her lips.
"Duncan."
His exact relationship to her she couldn't recall, but she remembered that he had tried this before. To sneak into her quarters at night when she was asleep. She didn't think he'd actually do it again, after the last time, but this fact hardly mattered. He was here now, the brute, and he was keeping her from her brother.
She twisted and leaned her right shoulder far back, so that Duncan's hand slipped at the abrupt shift in weight. She closed her grip around his wrist and, with a staying hand on his shoulder, turned it and twisted it backwards. She put as much pressure as she could muster on the joint, and used the leverage she exacted to sit upright. The man squealed.
But did Duncan ever squeal? Come to think of it, he seemed a little short, didn't he? Where were the white furs? The armor? And there was still that bothersome detail about the voice...
"El-Elmiryn!" Her captive cried. Their face was screwed up. Was that anger? Fear? "Atalo is dead! He was my brother! Those memories in your head aren't yours! They're mine!"
She tensed. "No, that's imposs–"
"Atalo and I were fleeing from the Cerrite for criminal evasion! They wanted to send him to war, but I took him and fled!" Large eyes, tawny eyes. They bored into hers. Tears shone, unshed. "Magat, tet koen lunam!!"
She let go. Stared. Strained her eyes to make sense of the moving picture in front of her. A person. An Ailuran. A girl, not a boy–yes of course, why was that ever in question before? The fair lips, the long lashes, the gentle jaw line. The hair, complexion, and eyes were the same as Atalo's...but it wasn't him...of course not...it was...
"Nyx." Elmiryn leaned forward unsteadily. She reached out a hand, perhaps too eagerly, because Nyx flinched away. The redhead didn't let this action stop her, though she took note of it (frowned at it), and let her hand swipe gently through the air before the girl's face. There was something two-dimensional about the Ailuran, and Elmiryn was half afraid that the room only extended as far as her arm–that the walls were an elaborate illusion someone had created to confuse her.
"I didn't know...you...I mean..." She squinted. "You looked like him. Then I thought you were–"
"Duncan." Nyx finished. Her voice was clipped when she said it, but the tension that had gripped her seemed to lessen a little. "I know who you're talking about. He was in the Fiamman army with you."
Elmiryn shifted in the bed. Her eyes fluttered as she felt the room give a nasty lurch. The colors smudged. The walls seemed unstable. She covered her face with her hands and groaned. "...What happened? Where am I?" She pulled her hands away from her face to stare at them. They seemed a little large didn't they? Or was the bed too big? No, no, the blankets were too thick. They were going to crush her legs. Elmiryn kicked away the sheets and hugged her knees to her chest.
She felt so small.
"We're at the tavern." Nyx explained. "You've been unconscious almost three days." There was a pause, and the girl added in a mumble. "I waited for you to wake up."
The woman closed her eyes.
"...You might have to wait a little longer."
ELMIRYN________________________
Elmiryn's hands still tingled with the feeling of her companion's throat in her hands, the pulse against her thumb, the light sheen of sweat that had made her palms cool when the air kissed it. Involuntarily, she imagined how the throat would hum under her hand if the girl could speak without impediment. Maybe it was indeed possible to catch sound by hand? To possess that voice and keep it as a pet, when the nights got cold and the hours long...it was such an enticing idea. Once it was in her possession, she could use it when she didn't feel like being herself.
Then moral sensibilities, stunted, but still present, objected.
Nyx had carried her unconscious body more than a mile, and had remained at her side when she was comatose–what kind of repayment was strangulation?
But those memories...those precious, vivid memories. They were so real to Elmiryn, more so than the world she drifted through now. In them, she had felt connection; in them, she had a voice that carried sincerity.
At seeing that these things were no longer hers to have, she had hollered for wine, and drank half-a-bottle's worth with little pause. Then she vomited it all up, because the thought entered her mind that the wine was all blood. She had tried to stand, and lost her balance. Nyx tried to keep her in bed but Elmiryn became agitated, wild-eyed, and asked why the covers were so dangerously heavy.
That first day, she refused to lay in the bed. Instead, she sat in the corner, on the floor, and alternated between drinking rum and water. Food was repulsive to her. She thought the steak they gave her had pulsed in her mouth, and the rice felt like ants on her tongue.
All the while her heart beat heavy in her chest, and whispered Atalo's name. Elmiryn wondered if she were dr
inking to make the feeling buoyant and easy to grasp, or to drown it in poison. But the moments were already slipping from her–fading in that harrowing fashion her own memories had. She wanted them back. She wanted the realness, the emotion, the intensity back. Even if it made her like this–vulnerable, flustered, weak–Elmiryn wanted them back.
But those things weren't hers, they were Nyx's.
She tried to ignore the envy that burned her.
Then came an irresistible opportunity.
"Elle, you aren't well enough for something this dangerous!" Nyx exclaimed.
Elmiryn faced the windows and fixated on the light from the candles reflected on the glass. It was so early in the morning, the sun hadn't risen yet. Still, she could see campfires and torches winking in the distance. People were returning. She fitted her shoulder guards and let a crooked smile appear on her face. "So you think," she breathed.
"I don't think, I know!" Nyx argued. Her voice was strained. She sounded on the verge of tears. "For heaven's sake, look at you! You keep squinting like you can hardly make out what you're seeing!" The redhead turned and made to leave. She plucked up her bow and quiver as she went. Nyx blocked the doorway. She trembled, but still glared up at Elmiryn. Big, sweet eyes. Watery eyes. Drowning eyes. "Watch it, or you'll go blind," the warrior warned.
Nyx swallowed and asked in a whisper, "It's gotten worse, hasn't it?"
Elmiryn giggled a little. She moved her companion to the side with a light shove. "But Nyx. I thought you knew. Why do you have to ask me?"
The girl huffed–chased her down the stairs and babbled about irresponsibility and stubbornness. It was so odd, how Elmiryn's entire world had become an elaborate presentation of untruths, while this one girl and her one voice still sung vibrant and clear.
When it was apparent that the warrior would not change her plans, Nyx sighed and said, "Oh sweet Aelurus...fine then! We'll go–"
"No." The bounce and jump of Elmiryn's voice was absent. All that was left was steel. She looked Nyx in the eye and felt something gnaw at her. "You aren't coming with me."
Eikasia: Tributaries Page 19