Melianarrheyal

by G. Deyke

It is warm and dry here and there is food and we can eat and rest. Therrin sleeps nestled against Karr's flank for warmth and comfort, covered in blankets and moving only for food or water. She sleeps often.

  When she is awake enough to listen, Ty tells us stories to pass the time. He tells us the stories from his homeland now, from the Island. He tells us of the shining city under the sea – of the people who lived there, able to breathe the water or to make their own air, and of their love for glass and pearls and jewels and metal and all other things that shine and last forever. They could swim as easily as they walked, and spent much of their time in the water. Some of them made their homes on the cliffs, and loved to dive down to the ocean from these heights, he says.

  He tells us a story that came from those people, a story about a piece of fire that was trapped in a pearl. It was lost to a strong current and a young hero among them was sent forth to find it and bring it back. She had to travel all around the world to find it, and she told all the people she met what she was looking for, so that they might help her; and that is how the story came to the Island. If she ever found her fire-pearl she went straight home with it and told no one, for this is not part of the story. Some say that she died in her quest, with the pearl almost in her grasp. Ty doesn't know which is true.

  And he tells us about great beasts that live deep below the waves, and about those who have seen them, and fought them, and killed or been killed by them; and he tells us about the Sea-Father, who is greatly respected on the Island. He tells us so many stories that I sometimes think he must have told us everything he knows; but he is always ready with another tale.

  Sometimes when Therrin is sleeping he leaves the temple, saying that he needs to stretch his legs, but he is never gone for long. For myself I am glad to stay here, in this darkness and this warmth. I might be happy to remain here forever, with the images of the gods all around me and with Ty's stories to keep me awake.

  And though Karr is large and fierce, and could easily tear me apart, I don't fear that he might. He has been with Therrin all her life, in her mind, watching her. That is why they are already so close. And she counts us as friends (so she says), so he will protect us with his life, as he will protect her. He will not hurt me, if Therrin does not ask him to.

  (And even if he does – that is a death I would take. The dragon is pure, and fierce, and mighty; he is a force all his own; he has nothing to do with that. Even if he ripped me apart with teeth and claws, even if he devoured me, even if he burned the flesh from my bones: that is a death I would take.)

  But the curse is still here, and every time I see it I am still afraid. Against my will I think of her and of her vow to kill us. I do not doubt that she will fulfill that vow. She does not give up. When she is thwarted, she finds a new way and she tries again. She will not rest until we are dead. She will not.

  Perhaps she is tracking us already. Perhaps she knows already where we are, or whither we shall go next. She will have her revenge. She will kill us all.

  And she will not only kill us. She swore that she would kill us with her own hand, and I know she will be certain that we suffer when we die, as she suffered. She will not find it difficult. She has her little blue spells and she has her dagger and her poison and she has all the wealth and all the cunning and all the power of a noble. How could I choose to make an enemy of one such as her?

  She will stop at nothing. The might of Karr and of all the dragons of his world might protect us, but if she must kill them to reach us, she will. And she will succeed. She always succeeds.

  Not for nothing have I known her all these years. I know her so well. I can see her face in my mind: her golden hair, her delicate chin, her stormy gray eyes, the scar across her cheek. I cannot stop remembering her. She will not leave my mind.

  I remember the fervor with which she swore to end the life of Therrin's mother. She will not be wronged. Kerheyin was hers and so his lover must die. Now that same fervor must drive her to kill us, for we betrayed her to save that bastard child.

  We betrayed her.

  She had been hurting me since I knew her and so I betrayed her and now she will kill me.

  I remember how she clung to the light, in the tunnels under Therwil and in the Queen's sacred caves. I remember the fear in her eyes, and the tears. I remember her weakness. Her shoulders shook when she learned that Kerheyin was dead and she clung to me in the darkness and when I failed her she stabbed out my eye in her rage and her fear.

  She had so much fear and she always hid it and I never knew.

  A small part of me is sorry for her, my flower, the friend I never had. I want to be sorry for her fear and her pain. But a greater part cannot even think of her, not without my stomach clenching in fear. I want to ram my head into the stone walls so that I might stop, so that the thoughts might go away. I think of the pain and of my crushed and battered skull and of my thick blood smeared across the wall and I wish that I dared, for it seems so much better. It would hurt but it would be a clean real hurt and it would be nothing but stone and my own head and she would have nothing to do with it. Maybe I could beat the memories and the thoughts of her out of my head.

  I try to think only of such things, to block out my memories. Whenever I begin to think of her, I try instead to picture the walls bleeding from behind the carvings. The blood pools up around us, thick and warm and glutinous. It paints my skin with red. My skin is gone, my pale skin with its freckles and its scars is ripped apart with singing pain and cast off of my hands like thin, torn gloves. Beneath it is redness and spasming flesh and it is falling apart, it is rotting and it is blackening and I am bleeding black sap. My hands tighten into fists and my dirty nails pierce my naked flesh and the blood wells up between my fingers.

  I remember my bleeding shoulder and I remember the pain in my eye and the liquid that trickled down my cheek. I remember the light that was the last light I saw with my own eye. I try to think only of the pain. I try to forget what came around it, who hit me, who stabbed me, who hurt me. That is what makes the memory bad. The hurt itself, the pain, the blood, is better. It is so much better and it is strong enough that maybe it can take over my mind and protect me. I hope.

  I know that she will kill us when she finds us – and I know that she will find us. Yet it is not death I fear. It is her, it is only her, her voice, her smile, her nearness, the very thought of her.

  No. No, I must not think of it. I must not even begin to think of it. I try again to lose myself in the thoughts of pain. My fingers will not rest. I am rubbing at my wrists, scratching, trying to pull away the skin, trying to lose myself before I remember.

  A large brown hand covered in rings closes on my wrist and pulls it away. I start, broken out of my reverie, and look up into Ty's face fearfully. His dark eyes are narrowed, his heavy brows drawn together.

  “Don't hurt yourself,” he says.

  I shiver and I give a slight nod to appease him. He releases my hand. I draw up my knees to my chin and loop my arms around them, and I watch the room around me. Ty is nearby, between myself and the hated curse. The Princess and the dragon are sleeping; I can see Therrin's face from here, twisted with fearful dreams.

  She wakes suddenly and sits up, gasping, her eyes wild. She must take a deep breath to calm herself before she can stand to fetch some water. She trembles as she drinks it.

  “Dreams?” Ty asks.

  She nods. “The temple was flooded with blood,” she tells us with a shaking voice.

  I start. Too late I remember that Therrin can feel my thoughts. I look down at the floor and I bite at my lips and I say quietly: “I forgot.”

  “What?”

  “I didn't think,” I say. “I forgot that you would know what I feel.”

  “Then – that was you?”

  I clench my blind eye shut and nod. I cannot help but to see her with my demon-eye, and she is watching me with an air of alarm. She is stronger now but still hot with fever. “Why?” she asks.

  I shake
my head. I don't know how to answer. I don't have an answer.

  “Please,” she says, “it's going to be all right. As soon as I'm better we'll go back to the Unnamed Lands and free the dragons, and everything will be all right again.”

  I shake my head. No. She can't understand. The fate of that world means so little to me. That is not my fear, my reason.

  “Listen – listen to me, Arrek.” She holds my hand, her long pale feverishly hot fingers wrapped around mine. “We will stop her when she comes, if she comes. She shan't kill us, any of us.”

  No, please no, don't speak of her, don't let the thoughts in. I tear away my hand and I try not to listen. The curse is watching, always watching. I cover my eyes with my hands. I won't think about it. I won't.

  “Arrek?”

  “Please,” I say (I think of its shadowy blackness, of it spreading, touching me, on my skin, in my mind), “your knife, the third treasure, the black knife, it can cut through anything, can't it? Can't it?”

  “I don't –” she starts, uncertain.

  “Cut it,” I say, begging, pleading. “Cut it apart, kill it, make it go away.”

  “What are you –”

  “The black shadow,” I rave, “the curse, the thing which follows me. Please, Therrin. Please, you have the knife; please try.”

  She is silent for a moment. I drop my hands and look at her: she is shaking her head.

  “No,” she says. “Remember what Ty said? If the noblewoman finds us, Curse will distract her and give us an edge. And she has proven her worth to us already, by showing us the way. I shall not be sorry to see her go, if only for your sake; but neither will I kill her.”

  “Please,” I beg, but Therrin only shakes her head.

  I can feel rage rising inside me and a part of me wants to hit her, to make her do as I ask, to make her see what her refusal is doing to me. She recoils as though I had. She looks at me, hurt and alarmed.

  A part of me is horrified. I can hurt her with only my mind. I can think of hitting her and she feels the blow. I hurt her. I didn't mean to hurt her.

  But another part is filled with triumph, because – though I could never have the courage to actually hit her – I am strong enough to hurt someone who won't help me. I made her listen. I showed her, didn't I? She has to listen now. She has to.

  But she doesn't. She goes back to Karr's side and she whispers to him. I am afraid that he will punish me for hurting her (I didn't mean to! I didn't!) but he if he does anything, it is nothing I can see. She curls up against his flank again, warm and comfortable, and she does not speak to me again for days.

  I return to the thoughts of pain and horror. It is a soothing way to keep the memories at bay. I can rest like this, whenever Ty isn't telling his stories, whenever I am left to think for myself.

  At last she says: “Please stop.”

  I look up at her, woken from my bloody reverie.

  “Karr has helped me to shield my mind, so I no longer feel your feelings and I don't see the...” she shakes her head, her face twisted with distaste. No, it is deeper than distaste. I don't know what it is. “Those things you think,” she says. “It is better now. And really it's...” she stops, tries again. “It's not my place to stop you. But...” she stops again.

  I listen. I don't want to. I don't want to know.

  “I still know when you're thinking these things, even if I don't see it myself. I know that when you're sitting there smiling and calm and peaceful it means that your mind is filled with horror.”

  I am drowning in blood, fighting against the tide. It floods my lungs and stops my breath. There is a fire in my chest and I try to gasp for air but there is nothing to breathe but thick irony blood.

  “Please...” Yes, yes. I am listening. I can listen to her voice. I can listen to her voice like fingernails sliding down glass. I can hear her with my ears ripped from my shattered skull and torn to pieces. I can be in both these worlds at once. I have no reason to stop. I won't let the memories nearer.

  “I don't know what's wrong with you,” she goes on quietly. “You're all afraid and hurt by everything when your eyes are open and you can see what's really there – even when there's nothing bad – but when you see only the horrors in your mind you can be calm and smiling as though everything were all right. In all my time traveling with you I could count the times I've seen you smile with the fingers on one hand, but now you are always smiling with these visions of pain running through your mind.”

  The temple is collapsing and the slabs of stone are falling and crushing me and piercing my flesh. I am pinned to the ground and I cannot move at all and I am alive with pain. Blood is trickling out of my arms, my sides, my legs. I cough violently and it spurts from my mouth. I am coming apart, leaving myself empty and broken. I want to rip myself open, to feel the skin tear.

  “I don't know what's wrong with you,” she repeats. She kneels down and she takes my cheeks in her hands and holds my face still so that she can look me in the eye and I cannot look away. I try to shrink away under her touch but she holds me still. Her hands are hot and her eyes still bright with fever. Her face looks older – has she already passed me? I don't know. I can't know.

  “Listen to me,” she says, insisting. Yes, I am listening. I am listening!

  “I have seen you afraid and suffering and I felt for you. I've seen the fear in your eyes and I know it's real. I can understand that there is pain in your past and that you had to recover.”

  No, don't speak of it. Don't bring it back.

  “But this has gone on long enough.”

  I want to twist my head away, to escape her steely grip. I want to tell her that she's hurting me. I don't think she knows her strength. But I won't speak.

  “I've known you how long now? – Almost a season?” I don't know. It all runs together in my mind. I don't want to think of it. I don't want to think of anything.

  “And in all that time, you've gotten no better. Your fears have only been growing. And now this – you're always worse and worse. This must stop.”

  I try to turn away from her, but her grip tightens. “Listen to me. I don't know just what happened to you, but it is in the past. She is not here. You are safe right now. Why do you have to pollute that safety with your fears? There is nothing here that can hurt you! Why can't you just be glad that she's not here, instead of always looking for her behind your shoulder?”

  No. No, please no. Don't let them in. Don't speak of that. Don't make the memories come back. Don't let her into my mind.

  I want to scream at her, to yell that what she asks is impossible, that it is too much to recover from so quickly, that I don't know if I can ever be better, that she is lucky I am still here at all with the curse always there and watching me. But I am too afraid. I shut my blind eye tightly and I wait in silence until she lets me go.

  I hope, now, that we may leave soon. Maybe whatever is happening around me will be enough distraction, then, so that I needn't return to my little visions. I don't want to upset Therrin further. I will appease her if I can. But while we are waiting here in darkness, with nothing to fix our thoughts on but the past, and with the curse always nearby me, this is the best that I can do.