The Burden of Memory

by Welcome Cole

  For a moment, Chance only looked at him. Even in the milky, indistinct light of the corridor, Mawby saw the blush in his face. Right now, right here, he was just a man. He wasn’t a caeyl mage and he wasn’t a god. He was just a man. Most importantly, he wasn’t the enemy.

  Chance shook his head and gazed off into the darkness. “I didn’t mean…”

  “Chance, you don’t have to explain. I don’t know if I can help, but I trust you enough to tell you anything. Ask me directly. What can I give you?”

  “Tell me what you know about the Demonslayer.”

  Mawby turned his attention to the glowing tent and envisioned the burning white form of the strange man imprisoned within the sword’s light. “Are you asking me to tell you about him?” he asked, looking back at Chance again, “About the half-breed?”

  Chance didn’t answer, but the perplexed face suddenly told him everything.

  “You mean the blade, don’t you?” Mawby said, “When you say Demon Slayer, you’re talking about the weapon, not the man.”

  “Of course,” Chance said, looking surprised, “My mentor taught me there were many blades, but Beam made it clear there was only one.”

  “Chance,” Mawby said carefully, “I don’t know how to approach this safely, so I’m just going to put it out there. You’ve got it wrong. The Demon Slayer our stories refer to is Praven Vaenfyl and his successor. It’s not a weapon. It’s a person. It’s a warrior-mage.”

  Chance shrank back. His hand found his mouth.

  “What is it? What has you so terrified?”

  “That can’t be right,” Chance whispered, “The Circle of Twenty has passed the stories of the Demonslayers down for more than ten centuries. How is it possible we could know so much about the Eyes and their Orders and yet be so far from the truth about the founder and his plans?”

  The mage looked he’d just learned the sun was actually the moon, like everything he’d known over his long life was actually a lie. Mawby understood exactly how he felt. He wanted to say something to him, to help him regroup, but he couldn’t find any words up to the task.

  He settled for a lie. “Maybe you’re right. The stories of my people have probably been diluted through the generations. The Council would know better than us.”

  “No,” Chance whispered, “No, you’re closer to the truth than we could ever be. You carry the truth in your blood.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that. I was nigh on thirty years old before I learned about my role in the order.”

  Chance climbed stiffly to his feet. He turned away and walked over to the tent. His face exploded in white light as he peeled back the roof blanket and peered down into it.

  Mawby walked up beside him. The caeyl blade was nearly invisible in the inferno blazing from its hilt. The man cloaked beneath the mercury skin lay on his side, propped up on an elbow with his head braced by a hand as if he watched Koonta sleep beside him.

  “Which is it, Mawby?” Chance whispered, “I need to know.”

  “I’m sorry, Chance. I just don’t understand what you’re asking.”

  “We have to know the truth. Which is the Demonslayer? The weapon or the man?”

  Mawby drank the pain offered from the man’s eyes and found comfort in it. Turns out, he wasn’t alone in his doubts and failure. Turns out they were all in this together. Turns out they fought the same inner foe.

  “Maybe the wielder and the weapon are one entity,” Chance pressed.

  Mawby put a hand on Chance’s shoulder. “That’s a tough nut to chew. By every description I’ve heard, he’s just a man, and not exactly a monk, either. He’s killed my people and raided our dead. What role could a rogue like that possibly have?”

  “Before I met him, I’d believed there were at least twenty Demonslayers,” Chance said, “I thought they were weapons and that his role was simply to find them for us.”

  “And now?”

  “And now I know he’s much more than that. I think not everything either of us knows is the truth, but I think when he comes out of this, he’ll know exactly the truth. And despite his many and varied flaws, I truly believe he’s going to save us.”

  “You’re telling me I should open my mind,” Mawby said, “Isn’t that right? You’re saying that what I think I know may not be the truth.”

  “Or maybe only part of the truth.”

  Mawby suddenly felt irritated and wasn’t sure why. “How can we solve a riddle when we don’t even understand the question?”

  “Tell me about your vision.”

  Mawby bristled. He pulled his hand from Chance’s shoulder.

  Chance turned to face him. “Tell me about your vision.”

  Mawby thought about it, about the strange Vaemyn in the crystal chair, about Jhom’s attack on him. Even beyond the shame he’d feel at admitting what he’d seen, he simply couldn’t admit it. He took his vows seriously.

  Instead he settled for the truth. “I can’t,” he whispered.

  “Still trying to perfect your lying?”

  “I’m not lying. I just can’t tell you. I’m bound by oath not to reveal it to anyone, and I won’t. There’s a reason for such a promise that I don’t have to understand to obey. And it’s my wish that you don’t mention it to the others.”

  “As you will, Mawby,” Chance said with a sincere nod, “I understand. I don’t think most visions are meant to be shared. At least, not until they finally make sense.”

  “And when does that happen?”

  “Typically? Not until well after the vision becomes reality.”

  “That’s not what I wanted to hear, Chance. Not even close.”

  XVI

  THE FALL OF GRAEWIND

  FRISS REINED HER HORSE BACK TOO HARD.

  The animal danced to a violent stop, snorting and shaking its head in complaint. It’d been a screaming climb up a lumbering grade more than a mile long, and in her anger she’d shown the beast no mercy.

  She threw herself from the saddle before her mount fully stopped. Her horse snorted a final complaint before shaking loose its frustration and committing to lunch in the heady, waist-deep grass. Friss stormed through the grass, ripping angry handfuls of the maturing grain loose as she passed.

  Stopping at the edge of the hilltop, she saw the road and its cavalry occupants winding through the grass far below. Seized by another peal of anger, she heaved a handful of the grain down toward the distant army and released a vicious curse at them.

  Graen’s horse pranced to a less disagreeable stop several yards behind her. He was at her side in an instant.

  “Ah, let it go, Friss,” he said, squeezing her neck affectionately, “Abandon ye loveless brooding. For Calina’s love, ye waste precious will for the effort, simultaneously draining mine of hope in same bloody misstep.”

  “Bullshit!” Friss said, slapping his hand away, “Obstinate, short-sighted idiots, every one of them, and arguing contrary leaves mouth filled with shit in truth’s stead.”

  She cast an obscene gesture down at the column of Baeldonian soldiers snaking their way between the feet of the distant hills below. The fact they couldn’t see it only made the gesture that much less satisfying.

  “There,” Graen said, rubbing her shoulders again, “Feeling better for it, yea? Take ye liberty now and flame them bastards yet a final sign of ye affection, thus waving done to the entire bloody affair.”

  She shook free of him and waded through the grass another dozen paces down the slope. The distant outline of Graewind Castle squatted on an opposing hill nearly a half dozen miles southwest of them.

  “We’d have made this hill and twenty miles better by now if not for them rock-skulled behemoths down yonder. Cursed sons of whores picked me pockets for half day’s ride and better, did they not?” She spit into the grass.

  “Yea, truth to word,” Graen replied with a laugh, “And in further truth, ye can’t refill clock, so best kiss said grievance farewell and look on to next hour. Reckon we’ll find need’
s end to make up time where path allows. Ye wear yeself senseless, cursing so uselessly at yon bloody fools.”

  Friss dug a hand into her shirt and pulled out the folded pass given to them by Soolen Vicker the night before. “Good Ghanter’s kind note did as much good as taking glowing poker to cure sty in bloody eye.” She pitched the wadded parchment into the grass. “What count of officers passed it between they sorry selves before taking it for authentic?”

  “No fewer than half the Baeldonian army and several passing peasants, I reckon.” He laughed at his humor just as he was always did. No one enjoyed Graen’s wit half so much as Graen.

  “Every bloody officer in they goddamned ranks read cursed paper, yet still had brass enough to interrogate us like we’d be common smugglers.”

  “Friss, we are common smugglers. How long do ye plan to brew on this? Because if it looks to be half the day or better, I do believe I’ll catch me a quick nap. The grass looks mighty inviting this morning, short on sleep as night’s council left me.”

  “Do as ye see fit, Grae,” she said, not looking away from the army trickling through the crease between the low, snaking hills far below, “But I leave when good and bloody ready, and I swear by Calina’s tits, if ye sleep at said moment, I’ll not wake ye.”

  Graen laughed again. “Well, the Baeldon’s tea party left me dearly worn down, love. Suppose I just take me a quick snooze right up there in yon saddle? Will ye at least show courtesy enough to grab me horse’s reins when ye give up sulk and head back to bloody trail?”

  Friss ignored him. The stream of ant-sized Baeldons creeping their way along the road below didn’t look so intimidating from this roost. As she watched, she realized there were barely five hundred riders in the column, a number sure to disappoint the dearly hopeful Ghanter Soolen Vicker.

  “Looks like Graewind’s getting spot of rain.”

  She turned back to him. “What foolishness blather ye on about now, Grae?”

  He pointed due south. “Look yonder, love. A lonely rain cloud settles in over said keep. Moving fast as swarm of bloody bees, ain’t it?”

  Friss followed his finger. A line of black haze stretched out across the distant blue like smoke from a grease fire. It reminded her of the fetid smoke that always seemed to hang over Parhron City, her least favorite place in all of Calevia. But this odd smear of dark wasn’t anything so inanimate as smoke. It clung low against the horizon and drifted urgently and quite deliberately toward Graewind Castle.

  “What sings the devil now?” she whispered, “That ain’t no cloud. Migrating birds, mayhaps?”

  “Why, I’d be damned to know. Thicker than tar fumes, ain’t it?”

  “Yea,” she muttered, nodding. The sight gave her a rush of gooseflesh she couldn’t explain. She rubbed vigorously at her arms as she watched it.

  “Ugly thing, ain’t it?” Graen whispered as if reading her mind.

  “Ye’re right about said drift. Heading straight for yon keep. Damned thing’s crossed three or four miles since we set eyes to watch.”

  Graen trotted back to his horse and pulled a dented and scraped spyglass from his saddlebag. He was adjusting the focus even before he had it leveled at the smoke.

  “What do ye see?”

  Graen held the glass with the expertise of years of dutiful use. “Right as love, ye be. Ain’t no smoke at all. Damn me if it don’t look alive. A violent looking thing, too. Roiling through the sky like—”

  “Give me that!” She grabbed the glass away before he had a chance to lower it.

  Graen slapped a hand to his face, barking, “Damn me, love! Would ye like to take me eye along with?”

  “I asked what ye saw,” Friss said as she raised the scope toward the dark smear, “Don’t recall requesting bloody poetry recital.”

  Graen laughed behind her as she leveled the glass.

  The eyeglass was an exceptional instrument, a perfect marriage of glass and metal. With it, she could see the bloodshot veins in the beady eyes of a Pendt at a quarter mile. It’d come her way during a smuggling operation out of eastern Parhron a few years back. Seems the spyglass mysteriously escaped from a sealed crate and somehow found its way into a hiding place at the bottom of her saddlebag.

  She held her breath as the dark streak in the distance took form. It swirled with chaotic determination, like a swarm of bats driving back to their cave. As it drifted over Graewind Castle, dozens of streams of dark lines suddenly broke away and dripped earthward.

  “Looks like rain plumes falling away from it,” Graen said beside her.

  She lowered the glass just enough to see over it. “Calina help me, that ain’t nothing like rain.”

  “Ain’t I seeing it with me own eyes, Friss?”

  “Ye eyes deceive.” She raised the glass again. “That ain’t rain, I tell ye. Too thick. It…”

  “It what?”

  “It…”

  “It what, already?”

  “It’d be looking bloody solid.”

  “Solid? What did ye drink this morning, love?”

  She studied it through the glass for a moment longer before the cold realization seized her. Whatever was dropping from that cloud wasn’t just falling. It was moving, acting like it had a plan, coalescing into distinct tendrils of oily darkness that spilled toward the castle like a heavenly black spider dancing across the earth. This wasn’t just the effect of the wind. Whatever that was, it moved with deliberation.

  “Birds,” she said as she studied it, “Great birds. I’d guess meself moon geese. Or… or bats, mayhaps.”

  “Bats?” Graen laughed. “Ye have been drinking, naughty girl.”

  “They’d be forming columns! Fly straight down at Graewind proper, don’t they? They—”

  “Bullshit, love. Birds don’t—”

  “They be birds, Grae!”

  “Sure, all right, then. How about I spare a wee peek of me own now?”

  A shock of blue sky exploded before her as Graen snatched the spyglass away, tit for tat. She immediately made a swipe for it, but he quickly outmaneuvered her.

  “Damn ye to hell, Grae!” she yelled at him, “Ye’d be one mean bitch’s forsaken son, ye know that, yea?”

  Graen leveled the instrument and efficiently extended it into focus. She made no further attempt to rescue it. Truth be told, he had eyes like an eagle. Much as she was loath to face it, every Watcher she knew was practically blind next to him.

  “Ye see it now, don’t ye?” she said, wrapping her arms around herself. Despite the full sun rising steadily to the east, the air had suddenly fallen chill.

  Graen didn’t respond.

  “Damn ye, Grae! Are ye seeing it or no?

  “Aye, ye’d be right, love. Them’s birds all right. And bloody big birds at that.”

  “Ah! A word spoken short of denying truth. Ye never listen to me. Ye act like a bloody—”

  “Lords of mine!”

  “What?”

  “Ah, me gods!”

  “What?”

  “Oh, Lords of Pentyrfal, help us!”

  “What? Talk to us, damn ye!”

  “They ain’t nothing like birds, love.”

  His tone scared her; she was afraid to look at the dark smear again.

  “For love’s pity.” His voice was more breath than sound. “Look! Oh me gods, look at that!”

  She barely pulled her eyes away from him, so firmly had his trepidation found its hold on her. She could’ve handled anything else in that moment, anything except that one thing, his fear.

  “By all the love in heaven, I don’t believe it! Look at that!”

  Friss’s eyes sliced across the grass, feeling their way cautiously up the next hill, then higher on toward the horizon. For a moment, she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything more than gape in terror.

  The tentacles of plummeting creatures now stretched all the way down to Graewind itself. They moved like spirals of distant tornadoes, black twisters, dozens of them, sp
inning manically about each other in an unholy dance. As the swaying columns thickened, the cloud itself grew smaller and less distinct, as if its substance drained out of it.

  “Alive!” Graen cried, “Me gods, that thing be alive! And… oh no!”

  “What?”

  “It… it changed direction. Calina’s love, it’d be coming toward us!”

  Friss backed away. Her breath fell out of her. One of the cloud’s black tentacles had broken off from the rest and was twisting skyward again, spiking directly toward them like a god-thrown spear. She felt her strength drain away as surely as if a door had opened in her guts.

  “Get ye horse!” Graen said quickly, “Get it, Friss! Get it now!”

  His voice startled her from her shock. In that instant, her natural instincts took hold. She grabbed Graen by his sleeve and pulled him roughly around to her. “No! We can’t! We’ll never outrun it.”

  “But Friss—”

  “Nay! Coming on too bloody fast, ain’t it? Get ye down in grass! Get down! Now!”

  She didn’t wait to see if her brother complied. She ran at his horse grazing a few yards back and slapped it across the rump as hard as she could. “Git!” she screamed at it, “Git! Git!”

  The horse danced forward in surprise, but stopped again and looked back at her. She rushed it again and slapped it harder, yelling “Hee ya! Git on, now!”

  This time the horse bolted. It tore off across the grass, throwing clods of dirt up in its wake. The terror of its sudden flight was enough for her own horse to bark a worried whinny and gallop off in pursuit of the other.

  “Friss, what in bloody hell are ye doing?”

  “Get down!”

  She tackled him before he could comply. They rolled into a pile beneath the deep grass.

  He struggled against her, but she fought him down into the dirt. “No,” she said, pinning him on his stomach, “Stay down! We can’t outrun them! We must hide. Hide here, under bloody grass.”

  “All right,” Graen said, grinning over his shoulder at her, “Not that it matters much now. Ye scared me sorry horse clear to next province.”

  “Stay down,” she said again, more to reassure herself than to convince him, “I’ll take a quick look.”