It hurt.
"I'm damaged," he murmured, putting his hand over his forehead. "Something's broken."
She wrote again. CRYSTAL.
He shook his head. "I don't understand."
A sigh. WHAT IS MY NAME?
He stared at her, trying to come up with it, and after a few minutes of casting about he found one that seemed to fit. "Naia?"
She nodded, and pointed back at her first question. WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER?
Again, he shook his head. "Where am I? What's happening to me?"
Naia considered him, weighing and measuring with her gaze, and something flashed in his mind: Naia on the ground, bleeding. He was looking down at her. She was weeping, and she could still speak.
She tapped the question a third time.
He was fighting, fighting both for memory and against it. He covered his face with his hands and struggled not to give in to the hysteria that was rising in his chest. Too much…there was too much in his head, and none of it made sense. It was like watching two movies at once, with the sound muffled and subtitles in both German and Japanese while a baby cried in the background. Too much. Too much.
Dizziness swept over him along with a wave of nausea, and if there had been anything in his stomach he would have been sick, but the way his back and shoulders hurt he had a feeling he had already lost whatever his last meal had been. He clamped his eyes shut in a futile effort to still the spinning, but it wasn't the landscape that whirled, it was his mind.
A touch on his arm. Naia pressed a cup of water into his hand, and he gulped it down almost too quickly. The coolness cleared his head a tiny bit but he looked up at her still without comprehension.
She held up the pad.
YOUR NAME IS ROWAN.
The world stopped.
The letters swam in front of his eyes as a dozen memories struck him at once, and he shoved himself backwards, trying to escape the words, pushing himself back against the wall and trying to get even farther away even though there was nowhere to go.
A scream choked him, but he no longer had the strength for it—he had already done this, he remembered, last night, on the ground before the pyre, just before the sky clouded up and the rain started. He had lain weeping in the grass as memory after memory forced its way back in, filling every square inch of space inside him and then more, and more, four hundred years of past becoming a second of present, and he had screamed forever as they clawed and tore at him.
"Oh, gods…Naia…I'm sorry…Kir…it's all my fault…I should have…oh god…"
This was wrong—memory shouldn't work like this, everything all at once. He couldn't differentiate between now and then, and what seemed like a year ago was only a day. There were months of extra memories that shouldn't be there; they weren't real. An entire year's history had been sewn into him, compressed into the span of two months, and now everything tumbled back and forth and over itself, and he had no idea what was true, and what was him, and what was invented…he couldn't stand it…too much…
He had to get control of this. It was going to kill him or at least drive him mad. He groped after his psychic energy, pushing it up into a barrier between this moment and everything else, creating distance. He'd done it before for other people, but it hadn't worked for himself before—but those shields shouldn't have been working either, and they were. He fed more power into the walls, as much as he could spare, and after a while the spinning slowed down and the panic subsided enough that he could at least put a thought together.
He made himself sit up despite his protesting muscles, but kept his eyes shut against the pain in his head. His fingers automatically sought the scars on one wrist, then the other, and felt for…something. Something that should be there. Why wasn't it there?
"All right," he muttered, speaking aloud to give himself a focus. "Obviously they broke down the natural boundaries separating long-term and short-term memory, and wiped everything they could from both, but of course they couldn't take everything from the long-term or we'd have to learn to walk and talk again. It's an imperfect system and it's so incredibly stupid. Too many variables. Mistake they made was trying to leave my mind intact enough to try and harvest from it again—I must have fought them the first time, and they couldn't get what they wanted so they had to leave more in there than usual. Only a matter of time before it broke down, another few months at the most and I'd be catatonic. I'm guessing that the memories themselves aren't in the crystals, but that they serve as an anchor for all the shields and new pathways, so when the stone is destroyed the matrix falls apart."
Naia was watching him, listening, and he looked up at her. "Do you remember everything?" he asked.
She tipped her head to one side, thinking, then shook her head and wrote, ONLY CLAN YEW.
"So they must still have your crystal."
A nod.
He made a disgusted noise. "They control us even after we're cast out. How very thoughtful of them."
He looked around the tent they were in, which seemed to have a flap in the back that led to another chamber; that must be where the Bard had been playing when he woke. "Do you have any weapons?" he asked.
Naia raised an eyebrow and shrugged. KNIVES, A FEW SPEARS. THEY LOCK UP ALL THE GUNS.
"I should have kept that one I grabbed."
Her eyebrow shot up even further. WHY?
He took a deep, determined breath. "Because I'm going back."
She dropped her pad, and scrambled for it, no doubt to tell him he was insane. He wasn't going to argue with that, but he explained, "This has to stop, Naia. Look at what they've done to you, and to everyone in the Clan. They've violated the very thing that makes us ourselves, and made themselves an army of malleable servants of their cause. They were willing to alter the memories of the whole village to make it seem like I'd been there a year. Not to mention…"
He couldn't think about that now. He couldn't think about Kir, or about Clan Cedar. All those Elves had died because the Council wanted him—they wanted to destroy the Agency, and Clan Willow, and were willing to murder dozens of their own people for the chance to murder even more.
And if it weren't for Kir, they might have succeeded. By the time Sethen's memories broke down and the past bled into the new, they would have had time to come up with a way to rape the last few memories from him.
Kir. Oh, love, I'm so sorry. I wish…I wish you were with me.
Naia was writing again: WHAT WILL YOU DO?
He couldn't answer at first; he was too lost in the sorrow of losing Kir, and in the bones-deep knowledge that he shouldn't be alone right now.
But he was alone.
He met Naia's eyes again, and asked what he knew was a futile question: "Do you know where we are? Are there any maps around here?"
Naia shook her head, but said, COUNCIL PROBABLY HAS SOME.
"You're right. They'd keep track of their enemies, and they had to have tracked Clan Cedar somehow. They might even have surveillance equipment—that would help explain how they keep such good track of everyone. I never knew to look for cameras, but I bet they're there."
He got to his feet, thankful that the tent's ceiling was taller than he was, and looked down at himself: they'd dressed him in what amounted to a Clan uniform, pieces taken from laundry and the clothing makers' mending baskets, no doubt. It fit pretty well, although he noticed that his body seemed to have changed subtly in the last few weeks. He didn't remember being this thin or having quite so much muscle in his arms. Probably from bashing people in the head.
He ran a hand through his hair, and made a face. "Bastards."
Naia looked at him quizzically, and he smiled thinly. "They cut our hair. I know you don't remember, but Elves in other Clans let theirs grow, sometimes all the way to the ground. Mine was about to here…" He gestured at his shoulders. "They won't recognize me when I get…"
He didn't realize he'd trailed off until Naia wrote, WHO?
Once again the memories were confused. He re
membered the Agency itself—remembered that they'd saved him, and that he worked there. He remembered places, events. Something weird about cupcakes. But…
The ache in his head redoubled. There weren't just two lives competing in him, there were three; there was Sethen, and Rowan, and…before that. He'd been someone else before. How many lives could there be in one life?
This was wrong. There was something missing. He needed to remember…to remember…
Just then, there was a flash of lightning in his head, and he fell back against the wall of the tent, legs no longer able to support him. Naia leaped up and took hold of his arms before he hit the ground, and eased him back onto the bed, but he barely felt the contact.
From someplace deep in his mind and heart, so deep he never would have known it was there, something pulled.
It pulled so hard that for just a second he saw double. He saw the tent, and Naia's worried face, but he also saw another tent, a different color, still raining, candles burning, the smell of frankincense…felt himself fall, the muddy earth against his face, agony battering his body from all sides, dozens of voices from all three lives and still more, a young male voice yelling "Get the maps!" and a woman cursing, fear all around him, his own and theirs, footsteps thudding on wet ground, and…sadness…such sadness…death…I felt it, it was there, they killed him, it's real…it's real…it's over…didn't want to believe it…we were looking for bones and they were killing him, all alone in the darkness, chained, alone…I should have been there…he shouldn't have gone without me…it's over…he's really gone…
He fought for awareness, but he didn't try to escape the vision; he clung to it, to the familiar and beloved warmth, even in the cold abyss of grief. He reached—across hundreds of miles, across time, across death that was not death—and even though he knew he couldn't project that far, he tried anyway:
[Hold on. Hold on, amori. Don't let go. I'll be with you soon—I have work I have to do, but then I'll be with you. Wait for me.]
Then he fell back into his body, and the vision evaporated.
This time he didn't scream, but he was willing, and grateful, to black out.
Part Twelve
"Halt!"
A half-dozen guns cocking.
Rethka was out in front, as she would be the ranking Guardian now. She was trying to look, and sound, all business, but there were a hundred questions in her eyes, most of which probably started with what the fuck?
He stared right back at her. "Take me to the Council."
She sputtered for a second, and then began, "Sethen, you are charged with a third-level violation of--"
"Oh, shut the hell up," he snapped. "You don’t even understand what you're saying, so what's the point? Yes, I'm guilty of a third-level violation of the Way, and I intend to violate a whole lot more. So take me to the Council. Now."
None of the Guardians had the slightest idea what to do with someone who wasn't afraid of them. They exchanged brief glances, then looked questioningly at Rethka, who gestured for them to surround him.
One of the others pulled a black bag from her belt and started to tentatively approach him, but he shot her a look full of daggers and said, "Just try it."
His reputation, as always, cowed them. He felt sorry for them, on one level; they had been taught fear, and hate, and mindless obedience.
That was really the only thing that was keeping him from killing them at this point.
The Guardians fell into their usual pattern around him, but it was he who set the pace, striding purposefully along the path toward the Temple. Along the way he saw others of the Clan peering out at them, and there was wonder and shock on their faces--how mad would he have to be to turn himself in?
Apparently word reached the Temple before they did; as they neared the white stone edifice, a tall figure in long robes was outside waiting for them. She was flanked by most of the remaining Guardians--except, by his count, the ones he had taken down during his initial escape with Kir. He knew all of their faces as well as he knew the face of the woman waiting for him: Valana, the High Priestess of Clan Yew, spokesperson for the Goddess Herself, giver of Her commandments unto the Clan.
He stood in front of her, and while the others bowed their heads out of deference, he bowed his only long enough to choose his words before lifting his eyes to meet hers directly, openly.
He heard a murmur. Eye contact with a member of the Council, especially the High Priestess, was a violation of the Way. Most of the time it was dismissed for the young who didn't know any better. For someone like a Guardian, it was a sure sign of direct insurrection--level three.
"Valana," he said, causing another ripple of discussion.
She looked at him rather the way one might examine a mixed-breed hound caught trying to mate with one's purebred Pomeranian. "Sethen," she said. "I must say I am surprised to see you again. I only hope that the Goddess has spoken to you and you understand now the gravity of what you have done. And that you must submit to the proper purifications immediately."
She took two haughty steps down from the Temple landing, probably to make herself seem compassionate and understanding of the plight of the common Elf, but it still left her two steps taller than he was, to illustrate who was in power here. Silly little mind games, all a play for control, and he'd been just as much a part of it as anyone.
"I must also request that you address me as High Priestess, and not by my familiar name."
Something in his smile made her take another step back up. "Very well, High Priestess," he said. "But in turn you will address me properly as well--in fact, I suppose I can forgive the oversight, for I believe you and I have not been properly introduced."
She was frowning, her usual serene demeanor crackling around the edges with uncertainty, but she still believed she had the upper hand. "Have we not?" she asked.
He smiled again, stepped forward, and bowed in the manner of his people.
Then, before the Guardians could even react, he drew his knife and seized the priestess around the neck, pulling the blade up to touch lightly against her throat. She shrieked and tried to fight, but he was much too strong for her; the Guardians took aim, but couldn't shoot for fear of hitting their beloved tyrant.
When he spoke, he addressed everyone in sight, from the Guardians to the other Temple personnel to the Elves sneaking out of their homes to watch. His voice echoed off the trees.
"I am Rowan, born of Clan Oak. I am SA-5 of the Shadow Agency, Texas branch. I have come to put an end to the slavery and the illegal use of mind-control magic on the part of the Council. It's time for all of us to stop living in fear and reclaim what is rightfully ours. By the time I walk out of this building again, you will all be free, or I will have been killed in the act of liberating you. This ends now."
He dragged the Priestess backwards with him through the Temple doors. "Get those shut and barred," he ordered the nearest Temple Guardian. "If anyone attempts to rescue her, I will kill them, and her too."
Then, he released his hold on the Priestess, lowering the knife; she gasped and pushed away from him, tears streaming from her red-ringed eyes.
"I will tell you nothing!" she all but wailed.
He reached up and yanked down one of the cloth hangings that draped either side of the main altar, then tore a strip from it and used it to bind the woman's hands. He shrugged. "I don't need you to tell me anything, Valana. You're a hostage, nothing more. In fact, you might consider being helpful, just so I won't feel the need to use you as a living shield to get out of here."
Her eyes went wide. "You wouldn't dare--"
"Wouldn't I?" He hissed at her, pressing the tip of the knife against her mouth. "You people stole my life, stole my memories, and left a year of lies in its place. You killed an entire Clan of innocents and you tortured me for the information to kill my family and friends. Your lackeys murdered my lover. You turned me into a monster to enforce your law--well, now the monster has come home to roost. Ask me, Valana, what I w
ill and will not dare, and you won't like the answer."
With that he took the end of the hanging and pulled her along through the Temple, into the Red Door. Once on the other side he threw the bolt home—the Guardians would probably open the outer doors as soon as he was out of sight, but the lock at least would keep them occupied for a few more minutes. He could tell by the thickness of the bolt that it was designed to stand up to a good deal of pounding.
He shoved open all the doors along the darkened hallway, and looked inside each one long enough to determine its purpose—he had to clamp down on nausea when he saw the torture chamber, the chains in the wall that he knew every Elf in the Clan had been hung from, including Kir…including himself, probably for far longer than the others. His memory of it was still vague, but he knew it had happened.
The Agency, Volume II Page 31