Melianarrheyal
Page 16
~*~
Mel grows more and more impatient to leave the cave, although we are going as fast as I can walk without spilling the water. “Will we soon reach the well?” she asks. “I weary of this unending darkness, and my mission must be finished.”
I shake my head. “Not yet,” I say.
“How soon?”
Again I shake my head. “I don't know. It took much longer the first time.”
“And you, conjurer? Will you not call the stone out of our way?” Her voice is cutting, so like his that it hurts. Somehow it is even worse – there is a wrathful edge to it that his lacks.
“No,” he says.
“Are you so eager to hinder me?” Her voice spits venom. It is unlike her to be so vicious. Although she hates the man, she much prefers to appear civil – and she still has need of him. He is our conjurer. He must summon the demon.
“Even if I could do such a thing – and that is not a task for conjury – it would surely collapse the cave. We should die, and never reach the city.”
So Mel must content herself with walking. She does not take it well: she is constantly on edge. She snaps at Ty, and she snaps at me, and she wants to move faster. She wants to be out of the cave, out of the darkness. She frightens me sometimes with her impatience. She drives me forward, always forward.
“Tell me truly, Arri, have you forgotten the path?” she asks me when we must be halfway through the cave. Her tone is soft, gentle, forgiving. It is gentler than it has been in days. But her eyes – she stares at me as though I had wronged her, and Mel will not be wronged. I find myself afraid.
I shake my head and take a step backward, away from her, toward the cave's wall. “I have not forgotten it,” I say. “We still travel the path I remember.” I remember it better the farther we go. I have walked these paths so many times that they are like home to me.
“How far is it, then?”
I shake my head again, helplessly. “I don't know. I don't know. Maybe half. I don't... I...”
“You don't know.”
I shake my head.
“And yet you claim to know what the right path is?”
“I know the turns we must make,” I say. “I know which paths to follow. I don't know how far it is between turns, or how long it will take to walk. It was much longer last time.”
“What comes next, then?”
“I don't know,” I say. “I need to feel each place to know where to turn.” I fear she will not believe me. I wish I knew how to make her understand that I am telling only the truth.
Ty puts a hand on my shoulder. I jump a little at his touch, surprised he is so close behind me. I want to bite his hand, to shrug it off. He puts his hand on my shoulder as though to protect me, but I need more protection from him than from Mel. She is my friend. He is nothing but a hired conjurer and a dead man walking. But I am indeed afraid – against my will – so I do nothing but to shrink down a little beneath his hand.
“Cease this,” he says. “He has said that he knows the path and that we have not strayed from it. He will not grow more honest if you question him further.”
Of course I cannot grow more honest. I am already honest. I am not lying. Why will she not believe me?
She turns those hate-filled eyes onto him now, but he doesn't seem to notice. “What do you care?” she asks him. “Perhaps you are content to stay in this darkness forever, but I have a mission to fulfill, and must reach daylight again.”
“Indeed. And I am hired to help you, so I must follow you. And your dog knows the way, so you must follow him. It must be very strange for you, following the one who always follows you – do you fear he may betray you, now that he has the power? Perhaps you don't know just how well-trained he is?”
“Arri shall guide me,” she says. “And if he does not, he too shall die in this darkness.”
I see the look in her eyes and I wonder if she doesn't perhaps hate Ty more than she hates the child, now. The thought worries me. I find suddenly that I do not want him to die.