The Burden of Memory

by Welcome Cole

  He knew without looking back that Seth rode several lengths behind him, the boy’s tired steed matching his own frantic pace despite the extra burden on its saddle. A pair of arms wrapped Seth’s chest from behind, and a pair of eyes worked over his shoulder. This was another boy, a different boy, a boy with yellow hair and blue eyes and no oteuryns.

  Another lurch of nausea, and with it Kaelif found himself standing. The horse and plains were gone. He was inside the dark keep itself.

  He watched himself dash up the wide wooden stairs lining the circular inner wall of the great tower. He flew up the steps three at a time with Seth and the unknown boy in tow as the castle fell away beneath him.

  He stopped a dozen stories above the earth at a thick, muscular door blocking the dark tower’s single room. He felt the heat of madness radiating from the room beyond the barred door as surely as if a fire raged within. Two Faev’gel Tower Guards in their skullish black helms and coarse armor flanked the entrance, barring entry with drawn swords and the reek of death.

  Kaelif marched up to them. A whispered lie and a nod toward the boy garnered him entrance. One of the guards slipped open the door and disappeared into the void beyond. A moment later, the unwelcoming door swung inward. Kaelif pushed the strange boy into the room, holding him convincingly by the neck.

  A man stood across the room with his back to them, framed in the tall, narrow window by the fading red of a dying day. He was robed in an extravagant lavender gown and a golden link belt. His reddish brown hair was unkempt and chaotic, cast loosely over his shoulders and back.

  Even from a dozen paces back, Kaelif felt the sour essence of lunacy smothering the air around this one. And as the sinister figure turned his buzzard’s eyes back toward him, the wretched horror of it all rushed in. Kaelif stood in the last place on earth any sane Vaemyn ever wanted to be. He stood before the lunatic king himself. He stood before Prae!

  He heard the vibrations of the Tower Guards skulking behind him. The taer-cael of their sludgy, unearthly hearts pulsed sickeningly in his mind. He wanted more than anything to turn his attention to them, to separate those grim heads from their stolen bodies, but the plan was long since cast and he couldn’t abandon it no matter how convincing the urge. This was the reason he’d been born. This was the reason he’d die. He was here to kill Prae.

  Before he could see the vision resolved, the world went dark and the ground again disappeared beneath him.

  ∞

  Someone grabbed him from behind. They eased him carefully to the ground, and he could offer neither assistance nor refusal.

  Moments later, he opened his eyes. It was dark. Points of orange light blurred in and out of focus, ripping into pairs and treys before melting back to one again. He dragged his forearm over his eyes and tried to take control of his vision. Something burned against the back of his throat, leaving him to wonder if he’d vomited.

  Voices hummed around him. He heard his name coupled with words of concern. Someone barked an order.

  He felt support at his waist, at his shoulders. He groped at the flat boulder serving as an altar before him as the hands hoisted him to his feet. The smell of humus and evergreen and oily torches choked the cool night air.

  He grew aware of something cold and hard in his hand. He looked down at it as he struggled to coax details out of the blurs. It was one half of the Drayma cylinder. He was back. He back was in the forest again.

  “It’s… it’s all right,” he said. The hoarseness in his voice disappointed him. “I’m all right now,” he pressed, passing nods to those supporting him, “I am. I’m all right.”

  “You’re sure, Kad’r?” It was Seth’s voice. “You look damned pale.”

  Kaelif looked down at the youth, who still held his left arm. “Ay’a, Seth. I’m sure. Let me go now. I’m all right.”

  One by one, the supporting hands abandoned him until he was standing on his own again. He looked up through a hole in the trees at the chaos of stars breaching the midnight sky. He was back at the rendezvous point deep in the forest, miles from the Snake’s Tongue River Base. He stood on a shallow knoll atop a long, thick rock that curled out from the hill’s head like the tongue of a beast. A wide, flat boulder squatted before him like a makeshift altar. A leather map of Calevia was unrolled across its surface. A crowd filled the clearing, their faces glowing up at him like phantoms in the spattering torchlight.

  Kaelif dragged the sweat from his brow and leaned into the map. Someone pushed a field lamp in closer. He picked up a tiny round stone resting atop the symbol denoting Prae’s keep. Moments ago, it’d been aflame with the red light of a Blood Caeyl. Now it was dark and colorless, the crimson fully faded to a milky gray. His knife and pendant rested on the rock exactly as he’d left them.

  He looked out at the Vaemyn crowding the clearing before this stage. There were two-dozen military members of Lamys te’Faht gathered, and another spattering of civilians, all the Eyes within a day’s ride of the camp. Most wore the same stunned expression he was sure his own face must bear. Some of the attendees sat on the ground. Others stood only by the assistance of their brethren. He hadn’t been the only one to experience a vision. The Drayma’s message had projected to them all. Everyone standing before him had seen their own personal variation of the message. This was the gift of the Blood Caeyl.

  “This isn’t what we swore into!” a voice yelled out from the crowd, “By gods above, it is not!”

  Kaelif quickly identified the source. Radix K’tvan stood at the epicenter of the crowd holding up a fellow who’d just vomited. He was a tall Vaemyn, taller than most any other here. He was a Fael’eer in the Vaemysh military as well as a high-ranking member of the order of Lamys te’Faht. The man was widely respected by his peers, and yet, there’d never been a drop of love lost between Kaelif and him.

  Radix sent his challenging eyes across the glazed expressions of his peers. “This is not what we swore into!” he again called out to them, “Not murder! Not assassination. We’re not Pendts, for gods’ sakes!”

  Voices swelled up through the crowd, a disorganized rumble of dissent and support. Accusations of dark magic and demonic influence rolled through the assembly.

  “This isn’t right!” Radix continued, “This is not our way! We’re protectors, not traitors!”

  The crowd went into a roar.

  Kaelif pounded the boulder with a rock. Quiet!” he demanded, “You must be quiet now! Listen to me!”

  The voices faded to scattered murmurs. Kaelif quickly scanned the forest encircling the small clearing. Though they had sentries infiltrating the surrounding woods for miles, he couldn’t shake his fear of discovery. This was no ordinary clandestine meeting of his Order. Radix was right to a certain degree; they’d officially crossed over into the land of treason now.

  He turned back to the crowd and studied the eyes glittering in the torchlight below him. He had to tread carefully. The smell of impending panic was heavy in the night air. None of them had been prepared for this when they opened the ancient Drayma, him included. They expected documents, guidance from the past, ay’a. But so dire a collective vision? Never.

  Kaelif was their leader, their Yahn Kaly’va, just his ancestors had been for more generations than anyone knew. Yet, how could he ease their shock and fear when he bore the same burden himself? Despite his family’s centuries of loyalty and duty, nothing in his life had prepared him for this. He could only plead faith and allegiance, and hope their convictions held.

  In that instant, ancestral memories surfaced from some primitive place in his mind. He suddenly remembered an ancient cleric warrior, remembered a battle with a demon, remembered the plans of a hundred lifetimes set into motion over generations. He remembered the voices whispering beneath the vision.

  He held the black half-tube up to the lamplight. The Drayma spoke him. It awakened those memories, and with those spectral voices, he suddenly knew the truth. More importantly, he knew his duty.

  “We call
ourselves Lamys te’Faht,” he said with conviction renewed, “Though the word ‘faht’ has faded from our modern tongue, we’ve always taken it to mean faithful, similar as it is to our modern word ‘fah’te’. But that’s not right. We’ve been wrong in that assumption. We’ve been misled by a deception planted among us centuries ago.”

  He waited patiently for the voices to subside. He waited until every tongue was perfectly quiet, until only the murmur of wind tickling through the highest leaves above them broke the nocturnal silence of the forest.

  “The true meaning, the original meaning of ‘faht’ is father. We are the Eyes of the Father. We are the eyes of our creator, of our prophet. We are the Eyes of Praven Vaenfyl.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Radix again shouted from the midst of the crowd, “Are you telling us our entire existence has been a lie? That all these centuries of loyalty at the risk of our lives and our families have been based on a myth? I don’t believe it!”

  The crowd fell onto Radix’s objections like a mob of chickens on a frog. Kaelif again struck the boulder with the rock. “Quiet down! Quiet! Listen to me!”

  Seth rushed in beside him and slammed his sword against the stone. “Enough!” he shouted over the fading ring of steel, “Enough, damn you! Stop being children! Listen to the Kad’r!”

  Even Kaelif flinched at the demands of the young man. The shock of hearing one so young and innocent demand the attention of his superiors had a stifling effect on the members. The voices hushed, the collective attention of the crowd returned to him.

  Kaelif held a hand up over the flickering faces. “It’s not a lie!” he said, “The Drayma has pulled these memories from my heart and mind. Praven was our founder, the architect of this grand order. In that essence, he is our father. He was a visionary, a seer, the first high cleric warrior. Nothing is happening now that wasn’t predestined.”

  “Predestined?” Radix called out, “You’re saying that whatever comes of this debacle, whatever our outcome, it was meant to be? It doesn’t make sense. It means we can’t make a wrong decision or a right one.”

  “No!” Kaelif shouted back, “Praven knew Lamys te’Faht wouldn’t be called to act until this precise moment in time. He knew our forefathers would bear the responsibility of maintaining the order for dozens of generations without ever having to serve it. Our existence, our devotion, the dedication of our ancestors was all his design to keep our secret guild armed and ready for this exact moment. The outcome isn’t preordained, only our role in it.”

  The crowd expressed doubt.

  Seth again slapped his sword against the rock. “Enough!” he yelled as he beat his blade against the altar, “Are you fools? Shut up and listen!”

  The voices died out, leaving only the distant ring of metal simmering through the dark forest. Kaelif gripped the boy’s shoulder and smiled at him. The boy was one of the very rare young ones among them, and yet veiled beneath that youthful innocence was the wisdom of the ages.

  Radix pushed his way through the crowd. He stopped directly below Kaelif, directly before the elevated rock stage. Then he turned back toward the crowd with his hands raised. “If our forefathers had known we’d be called upon to be murderers, they never would’ve followed the Order! This was no vision. This was some obscene hallucination induced by the demons, nothing more. We’ve been deceived!”

  “It was a vision!” Kaelif demanded, looking down at him, “It was His vision. We’ve been gifted with His ancestral memory saved in the heart of a Blood Caeyl. Yes, we’ve been commissioned to be assassins, as unsavory as that proposition is. But our targets are hacks, every one. Hacks planted by the demons themselves! It’s hacks that control the Council of Fates, which means the demons control the Council of Fates! It’s hacks that control the Tower Guards, which means the demons control Prae! The inhabitants of those shells were murdered by the wyrlaerds.”

  The crowd rose up, but Kaelif quickly called them back into silence.

  “We all know the dark truth!” he yelled down to them, “A hack can’t be recovered, but only released. We aren’t charged with killing our own, we’re charged with saving them.”

  “No!” Radix yelled up at him, “Our ancestors were charged with watching our leaders, not murdering them!”

  “They’re not our leaders anymore. They’re shells, and you damned well know it.”

  “What of the demons? What of Prae? How do you suggest we stop them? They have the Blood Caeyl! What does Praven’s memory say about that?”

  Seth rushed to the boulder’s edge and threw a finger down at Radix, charging, “Your question lacks faith, sir!”

  Radix bristled. “What did you say to me?”

  “Your question. Lacks. Faith!”

  “Who the hell do you think you’re talking to, boy?”

  “I know exactly who I’m talking to,” Seth shouted at him, “You’re my Fael’eer. You’re my commander in this army. In this mortal world you rank over all of us here!”

  “You’re goddamned right! I’ll have your ass busted to—”

  Seth slammed his sword against the stone. “You’re my leader in our mortal army! But in a world ruled by a madman and his demons, in a world where faith is our strength, you don’t stand any taller than the least of us!”

  Radix’s face blossomed red even in the torchlight. “You’re pressing your luck, boy!”

  “This is a new world!” Seth said to the crowd now, “This Order is responsible for saving everything we know, and Kaelif is the Father in that Order! He is our appointed Kaly’va, not Radix K’tvan! He’s the one we listen to now, not the Fael’r!”

  Radix grabbed the boulder as if he was going to climb up after Seth. “You mind your tongue, boy! I’ll see you in irons!”

  “Your family has sworn allegiance to Lamys te’Faht for a thousand years,” Seth said directly to him again, “A thousand years of duty and fealty based solely on faith. To turn away from it now will shame every generation who preceded us and abandon all who follow. To be Eyes of our Father demands we keep our faith. To be Eyes of our Father means we do what is required of us. It means we stand like warriors, and not scurry into the bushes like shimlins from the owl.”

  Seth stopped. He was breathing hard. He was pale and panicky, as if the realization of what he’d done suddenly boiled through him. Kaelif put an arm around him. Every pair of eyes was locked on them, though no one spoke, not even Radix.

  After a moment, Kaelif said carefully, “Seth’s right. Every generation of us has lived their entire lives knowing we could be called to duty at any moment. We didn’t know how or why or when we’d be called, and we never hoped to hear that calling, but it doesn’t matter. We’ve existed in the belief that someone far wiser and more powerful than any of us understood the truth. So do we stop now? Do we freeze up like children because we can’t see what’s behind the trees? Or because we don’t like the message?”

  Dozens of torch lit faces looked up at him from the shadows. A worried murmur passed through the crowd, but then quickly faded.

  “No,” Kaelif pressed, “No, we fulfill the tasks assigned to us with the hope… no, with the conviction that ours is just one part in a greater story. We’re each one finger on a divine hand. We fulfill our destinies and we let those hidden behind the dark trees fulfill theirs. We will defeat this scourge because we are destined to do exactly that!”

  He then looked down at Radix standing at the base of the rock face before the knoll. “I’ve had my vision just as you have. The difference is that I’ve heard the voice of the Father and I believe.”

  There was no talking in the crowd now, no movement, only the taer-cael of their collective heartbeats pulsing up from their stunned faces. Kaelif felt the threat of panic grip him. For just an instant, he feared he was too late.

  Then someone called out, “Kaelif’s right! Don’t forget who we are!”

  Another voice answered the first, “We’re Lamys te’Faht! This is our duty!”

 
; Another voice shouted out its agreement. And then another. Soon the entire crowd was chanting its support. Kaelif thought it most surreal, like a dream that might not be a dream at all, or a bubble of hope that might pop on a harsh breath.

  Radix slowly scanned the crowd cheering behind him. Then he turned his glowering eyes up to Kaelif. “It seems you’ve convinced them,” he said over the cacophony of the membership, “I reckon we’ll see.”

  “No,” Kaelif said back, “I reckon you’ll see.”

  XV

  THE CONFESSION

  MAWBY CAREFULLY SQUEEZED THE WET RAG OVER KOON’TA’S MOUTH.

  The parched flesh of her tongue and lips instantly absorbed the few miserable drops he dared offer her. Her skin was chalky, almost white, and her flesh so shriveled against her bones that her cracked lips drew back into a hideous grimace.

  But it was her eyes that grieved him the most. Eyes once so brilliantly blue, eyes that could stop a warrior or a lover dead in their tracks, now withered and lost like dirty stones at the bottoms of dark puddles. She looked like a corpse mummified by the desert sun.

  He cupped her hand carefully against his bent knee. The fingers were skeletal, the skin so transparent that all the veins flamed horridly beneath it. He tenderly traced the outlines of her bones with his fingers.

  “There’s something I need to tell you,” he whispered as he stroked the lines of veins on her hand, “Something I should’ve told you a long time ago. Something… something I would’ve told you if I were half the man I ought to be.”

  A spasm of grief wrenched him so that he nearly lost his breath. He threw a hand to his eyes. It was no time for weakness. She had to know the truth so she could be free, so she wouldn’t spend the next life wandering the earth looking for the answer. Telling her would free her.