He had no intention of giving her a chance to get in a blow of her own before he struck; and as he would only get one try, he’d have to make that one count.
He eased his thoughts to utter blankness, aligning himself with the shadowless clarity of the world around him: flowed through space as translucent and silent as the air. He didn’t exist; he was a floating particle in the midst of other specks....
Idisio came to rest behind a large tree and stood still, eyes closed, listening: discovered he didn’t need to see her to see her. It was very like his visions of Tank, but in the moment and under his control.
The stranger had his arms loosely around her, and he was, incredibly, smiling—a beatific expression as though he’d never wanted anything more than to embrace a murdering lunatic. And she—leaned up against him, her entire body relaxed, her arms around his waist. Idisio had never seen her so—so calm. So motionless.
He withdrew into the protective haze of an aqeyva trance to think it over: comparing what he knew of her to this moment, going back over everything she’d said. In the dispassionate calm of trance, he tried to see if, after all, his perceptions of her had been skewed somehow. He searched for any indication that he’d missed a vital clue along the way.
I’m better at lying than you are, son... Humans... they’re meaningless. Insects... After so many years of being told to kill... it’s like breathing.
No. She was lying. Playing. Taunting the man with her apparent submission. Any moment now she would laugh, and he would scream, and—no. Not again. Never again.
Rage broke him out of the trance and into a sharp hunter-focus: she remained still, unsuspecting—relaxed—vulnerable. Gods only knew why she was choosing to play the role that convincingly, but it was a lie. She’d said it herself: she was a very, very good liar. And he would never understand the first quarter of anything she did, kind or cruel.
His hand rested on the hilt of the long Scratha dagger for a moment; but he understood, now, that a simple knife wouldn’t do nearly enough damage. A moment later, his vision narrowed in on something that would.
Yes. There.
Apparently ha’ra’hain also possessed that dark, compact spot of self-ness. Hers was larger and somehow heavier than Enia’s had been—which made it an easy target. In the white-edged mist of his rage, the irony of hitting her just there seemed incandescently appropriate.
Not willing to waste the only chance he might ever get, hoping desperately that he didn’t need to be in physical contact to get to that spot, he reached, fast and sure and hard; she thrashed upright in startled reflex a fraction of a heartbeat too late. He engulfed the dense mass like water flowing around a sinking stone, gathered himself around it like a net, and yanked it into himself with a brutal cruelty he hadn’t known himself capable of until that moment.
Her scream went past the human-audible range in moments. He savored the vibrating agony as it swept through the air; shame tried to get a foothold, lost, and faded away.
Apparently I’m not only capable of intentionally killing, I’m entirely capable of enjoying it, Idisio thought hazily. Then the orgasmic rush hit, as it had with Enia—but more, infinitely more, ecstasy doubled then tripled then quadrupled—and he howled, utterly lost to anything but that all-encompassing heat....
As the staggering intensity began to dim, memory of Deiq’s sardonic voice drifted into awareness, dragging the traces of shame along with it: We’re not that different. Not nearly....
I believe I might owe Deiq an apology or ten if I ever see him again. Gods....
A window shattered somewhere nearby. The disruption of sound, slight as it was, served to pitch Idisio sideways into awareness of the real moment. He was on his knees, leaning against the tree for support, and panting as though he’d run from Scratha Fortress to Bright Bay. The man was on the ground, whining wordlessly, his hands over his ears.
Ellemoa still stood, rigidly stiff.
Idisio hoisted himself sideways, too dizzy and disoriented to even think about rising from his knees, and stared, unable to believe his eyes. She’s standing. Oh, shit—
Her eyes had turned a lambent white; her hair was heavily streaked with pale grey and paler silver. She stared right at him. Her mouth moved, but no sound emerged. After a few moments, he realized that she had no voice left to speak with. He watched her lips shape words, over and over; he’d never been particularly good at reading lips, but intuition moved in to help this time:
Finish it. Finish it. Finish it....
She’s crippled, Idisio thought, horrified. I did this. I don’t think she can heal—not from this much damage—she’s blind, and mute, and gods know what else.
Oh, gods. What have I done?
Her mouth kept moving: Finish it. Finish it. Finish it....
He stared at her, and thought of a dead girl in a cottage less than a mile away. Thought of the smell of sweetened ginger, and of her conviction that humans were insects; thought of his own accelerated healing abilities, and of the risk he took if he let her live: because if she did ever recover her strength....
He shut his eyes and opened other-vision; found what was left of that blackness and wrapped it in a tight grip—gently this time—and softly, softly, drew it from her, little by little.
She offered no resistance. Made no sound. Slowly, slowly, sank to her knees—graceful, swaying, as though this were nothing more than a dance in the rain—and folded to the ground beside the still-whimpering stranger.
She reached out one bone-thin hand, as she drooped into a final sprawl across the cold cobblestones, and gripped the man’s hand tightly. Just for a moment. Then her hand, along with the rest of her, went limp.
Lifeless.
Oh dear and holy gods—I did it. I really—I really— Thought shredded into incoherence.
A moment later, the stranger groaned and rolled to his knees, leaning over Ellemoa’s body; his hands caressing her in a vain, desperate attempt to shake her back to life.
“Oh, no,” he moaned. “No. No—gods!” He twisted to stare at Idisio, his face white as the stars and streaked with tears. “What have you done? What have you done?”
Before Idisio could answer, the man turned back to the corpse and dragged it up into his arms, hugging it against him, rocking back and forth and muttering; the words stifled both by his wracking sobs and by his mouth pressing against her hair.
“Saved your life,” Idisio said, rather drunkenly. He tried to stagger to his feet. The world spun in strange and unpleasant new ways around him, and he decided to stay close to the ground after all. “She was going to kill you.”
The man shook his head and sat back on his heels, still cradling Ellemoa’s body in his arms. “We all die sooner or later,” he said, ducking his head to draw the back of one hand clumsily across his face, wiping away tears and liquid snot. “She wouldn’t have killed me. Not right away. We had some time. Gods only know how long—but we had time.”
Idisio began to say, “You’re entirely mad, do you know that?”—and stopped as something occurred to him. “Oh, gods,” he said instead. “You’re Kolan, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” the man said. He shifted the limp form to rest against one arm and used the other hand to gently stroke Ellemoa’s tangled hair from her face. “And you’re her son. I’d like to say nice to meet you, but—” His voice choked off into an ugly mixture of cough and sob.
“I think she loved you,” Idisio said helplessly. “She tried to say you didn’t matter, but I think—I think she really did care. As much as she could care about—anything.”
“I know,” Kolan said. “If she didn’t, she would have killed me years ago.”
He sighed and stood, cradling Ellemoa’s body in his arms; looked down at Idisio for a long moment, then shook his head and turned away.
Idisio made no effort to stop Kolan as he walked away with the body of a madwoman finally at peace. The world was still spinning erratically around Idisio—and his eyes were suddenly too blurred
with tears to allow him to see much of anything at all.
“Goodbye, mother,” he whispered as the vague outline that was Kolan faded from his watery vision. “Goodbye.”
The faintest breeze wandered across his face, carrying a whisper that might only have been his imagination: Goodbye, my beloved son... Goodbye.
Chapter Seventy-Six
She could have killed me.
Kolan laid Ellemoa’s limp body on the grass where leaf began giving way to sand and set about gathering what driftwood he could find.
When her son attacked her—she could have drawn strength from me. She could have killed me, to save herself. I wouldn’t have fought. She knew that.
He built a carefully layered square out of the largest pieces of driftwood; arranged the rest neatly inside, tucking tangled nests of dried grass into the inner layers.
She didn’t even try to save herself.
Searching through the plants along the dune-line, he found wild lavender; after a moment’s consideration, he shook his head and passed that by. Instead, he gathered armfuls of sweet thistle and sea-oats, sand roses and morning spice-weed, and worked those, along with an armful of well-dried seaweed, into the bier, leaving plenty of clear space between the branches for airflow.
By the time he managed that much, the stars were turning toward morning. He went along the lower beach, gathering the whitest, least broken assortment of shells he could find; gathered a number of largish rocks and shellrock fragments as well, and slid those latter carefully through the lattice of branches to rest in a rough pile at the bottom of the bier. The shells he set aside.
Returning to Ellemoa’s still form, he knelt beside her, tracing a hand along the side of her cool, slack face. His eyes blurred with tears.
“You only thought you knew how much you gave me,” he murmured; dashed his vision clear with the back of one hand and scooped her up before his nerve could fail him entirely.
He laid her out across the low bier, arranged her with hands folded and eyes closed; set the most beautiful shells he’d found across her brow, chest, and stomach, and set the rest in random patterns around the edges of her body, framing her with the bones of the sea.
He tucked his flawed blue-green marble under her hands, put a single, perfect white sea-rose over them, then stepped back to survey his work.
Someone coughed, not close by but near enough. Kolan turned without haste and found the blackreed retter standing a hefty stone’s throw away, watching him without expression.
“Won’t be enough,” the man said. “That’s hardly enough to heat water, what you got there. Won’t do for putting a body to ash.”
“I know,” Kolan said. He turned back to the bier. Kneeling to pray seemed—pompous, somehow, and out of place for the situation. She hadn’t believed, hadn’t lived by any of the Creeds; hadn’t, by any stretch of human standards, been a good person.
She didn’t even try to fight.
He sighed. “At least you saw the sun again,” he said aloud. “Even if you died in the dark, the way you always feared—at least you walked through sunlight once more, before the end.”
He raised his hands. Red-orange flame rippled along his fingers. Behind him, the retter grunted. Kolan read a dour satisfaction in that small sound, and his own mouth twisted in a bleak smile for a moment; then he stepped forward and thrust his hands deep into the pile of sticks beneath Ellemoa’s body.
Closing his eyes, he drew in a long breath: collected every memory of every day since their shared imprisonment began, every moment of rage and pain and fear and frustration, and blew it out along with his breath.
Burn, he commanded: wood, stone, shell, and flesh obeyed.
He pulled clear and staggered back, as lightheaded and breathless as though he’d just blown out a thousand candles at once. His hands itched. Looking down, he found a fiery rash of blisters spreading from fingertip to elbow on each arm. Heat hammered at him, a yellow-red glare searing across his vision. He backed up several more steps, gasping, whimpering a little as the pain of scorched flesh registered; but he’d suffered worse, in the darkness under Bright Bay—and usually at her hand.
Why don’t you want to kill her? the woman outside of Kybeach—the gerho merchant’s renegade wife—had asked, furious with bewilderment. After what she’s done to you—why don’t you want her dead?
As Ellemoa’s flesh began to char and melt in Kolan’s summoned fire, Kolan murmured, “She never really wanted to do those things to me. For all that she enjoyed hurting me—she hated it, at the same time, and couldn’t ever let anyone know; it wasn’t safe. But I knew. I always knew....”
From a few steps away, the retter cleared his throat and said, quietly, “My boy says you’re a soapy?”
“Yes,” Kolan said. He wiped a hand across his face. “I was, anyway. What I am now... I don’t entirely know.”
“Well, you’re human enough to grieve for your dead,” the man said pragmatically. “And caring enough over one as you just admitted hurt you to set her up with a fair pretty bier and light the gods’ own blaze for her pyre, however you managed the trick. I figure you’re holy enough yet to be praying over her in one form or another.”
Kolan stared at the fierce flames. The heat had grown so intense that it dried the tears leaking from his eyes as they emerged. “Yes,” he said. “You’re right. Thank you.”
He drew a deep breath, then began reciting the Creeds: every single one. It wasn’t hard; he’d said them over and over, in the darkness, a reminder of what he clung to, a circular path to keep him within the bounds of sanity as madness hammered at his soul.
Harm no living creature, from beetle to boy; all have their place and purpose in the eyes of the gods....
The retter murmured each one along with him, missing a word or phrase now and again, or hesitating as though he’d learned a different version. Kolan kept his gaze on the flames and his attention on his recitation, focusing as tightly as though he were trying to copy a line without blotching the page.
Obedience to the gods requires a clean heart and a dedication to one’s given tasks....
The sky beyond the flames paled as he spoke, and a vibrant orange blush began to build to the southeast, as though the dawn had chosen to reflect the conflagration before him.
Seek not the chaos of the world outside, but be content with the inner truth and strength the gods will always give to those who truly seek it....
As he reached the fiftieth of the Creeds, a ghostly whisper arose, circling his inner ear with a familiar bleak humor: You and your Creeds....
He smiled, and went on regardless.
Within every man is a monster and within every monster is a man. Before you pick up your knife to attack another, use that knife first to excise your own flaws....
She whispered the words along with him, far from devout but not as mocking as she’d been in life, either; and from that point on, her voice, faint and fragile enough that it seemed a hefty sea breeze would dissolve it, followed along with his, word for word.
As the heat of the fire faded and dawn grew around him, his eyes remained dry and his voice steady. He finished the hundredth and final Creed as the bier sank into a pile of glowing coals and ash:
Those whom the world sees as the least worthy of love, the gods always place first.
“May the gods hold her soul gently,” the retter said quietly, then bowed to Kolan with profound reverence and turned away.
“They will,” Kolan said, not caring if the man heard him. “They will.”
Sunlight streaked the air. A dawn sea breeze, rising, blew the ashes out to sea: leaving behind only a single, clear glass marble.
Chapter Seventy-Seven
The closest gate to Peysimun Mansion turned out to be the Red Gate; and that turned out to be closed and heavily guarded, even under daylight. Four guards faced the outer city, their attention roving along the stretch of iron fencing to either side of the gate. Two more stepped out from the thick-walled gua
rdhouse to face Tank as he led Sin toward them.
“Morning, s’ieas,” he said, smiling at them with false cheer. Not showing his true feelings was a lifelong habit, the more so when his mood was as brittle and dark as the remnants of a fierce fire; and guards, especially, weren’t safe to show that kind of anger around.
He wanted out of this place. Away from anything to do with nobles or people with power; away from any chance of encountering Wian, who he’d managed to avoid on his way out of Peysimun Mansion. Walking to the East Gate, while it would have put him closer to the Copper Kettle and been a shorter walk overall, meant going through noble-held territory for most of the distance.
Tank wanted to walk among ordinary people for a while, and remember what simple meant. It might ease his thundering headache and black mood.
The guards nodded at him, surveying him with care. The taller, a lean woman with a round face, said, “Morning, s’e. Planning to travel through this way, are you? Not something I’d recommend, myself.”
He looked at the four guards and the long stretch of fence: open iron fencing for a goodly distance to either side of the gate, and thick, spear-tipped stone from there on. He looked at the blank, dirty back walls of buildings beyond the bars, and the drifts of trash caught against fence and buildings alike. A shift in the breeze brought a foul smell wandering past his nose.
“Not a good area, I take it,” he said dryly.
She shook her head. “Not these days,” she said. “Most of the rat-chaff blew up along this stretch of town over the past few years. I’m imagining King Oruen will send us through to clear it at some point, but that’s not today. And if you’ll pardon the boldness, s’e, that horse and that sword will be worse than useless out there.”
He looked through the bars of the fence, a slow smile working across his face. “Sure to be a fight on the way through, is that it?”
“No question. Your boots alone—” She stopped, her own expression creasing from dour to amused. “Huh,” she said.
“Any chance you could spare someone to walk this beast over to the East Gate, and I’ll come round the long way to collect him?”
Bells of the Kingdom (Children of the Desert Book 3) Page 49