A memory of war and sola.., p.20
A Memory of War and Solace, page 20
“Stop, Tanith! Stand down, both of you,” Savat shouted.
I looked up at the three of them, wondering how I had wound up beneath them. I took a deep breath, willing the room to stop spinning. There was a tension in me that felt like a rope pulled to the breaking point.
It was then that the great window of colored glass exploded.
Sem followed the expanding cloud of bright splintered shards like a hurled stone. They landed with both feet planted firmly, the slaps of their wooden sandals muffled on the lush carpet.
Their face was bloodied and grim. Their arms and chest dripped red from a thousand wounds to stain the ruin of their clothes and rain upon the carpet. But their hands held their two swords at the ready, and they scanned the room looking for me.
Eelie stood in front of Savat, shielding him from the worst of the glass with their own body—their face and arms covered with fine cuts. Tanith roared in pain as they plucked finger-sized shards of glass and leading from their body, and turned to face the new threat.
Tanith closed with Sem, swords clashing in a whirlwind of inhuman speed. I couldn’t track their movements. They struck and spun and parried so fast that the blades hummed in the air.
Eelie pushed Savat to the carpet behind his chair and vaulted over it, drawing their own sword to join the melee.
I cried out a warning, but the sound was hardly free of my throat before their sword was in the fray, their own movements accelerated with their power. I tried to rise, still shaky and unstable, and found crushed glass under my knees, my feet, my hands. The lacerations burned and the flare of pain nearly broke through the fog that dulled my mind.
I tried to pull on that pain, but was not strong enough. I still couldn’t reach it. I tried to find the doorway in my mind into the Pairing with Sem, to draw on their pain, but couldn’t find its edges in the dark shadows. I was still wrapped in gauze and floating at the edge of a sea of drugged limbo. I screamed in frustration watching the three of them spin and flash, dancing across the carpet of shattered glass in a flurry of deadly steel.
Even slow as my perception was relative to their movements, I could see the shape the battle was taking. Eelie and Tanith were gradually widening their attacks, drawing Sem first here, then there to defend against two fronts. Soon, Sem would be forced to turn their back to one of them.
Sem was good. Even astonishing. But Eelie was at most half their age, and even if I couldn’t draw on it I could feel the shadow of the pain of Sem’s injuries through the Pairing bond. They were slowing. They had already fought an army, and now their storming of the castle had used much of their last strength. There was a limit, even for one of us.
I looked around desperately for some way I could help. There was nothing. I could barely stand, I had no weapon, and I had no power to enhance my speed or strength. I clenched my fists in the debris of glass and metal on the carpet, feeling the shards cut into my skin, feeling the pain rise.
I focused on the pain. Centered it. I let it flow like the blood that seeped from my body with each heartbeat. I rode the pain with each swell, a tide that pulled me ever forward, pulled me up. The pain was everything. I ground my fists through the broken glass and let it fill me.
And at last, I felt the finest thread of that pain sharp and precise, a needle pierced deep into my mind. I drew it in, the merest trickle of power, and let it fill my arms until they were near to flying apart. With a shout, I threw two fist-fulls of shattered glass and lead at Tanith and the missiles flashed through the air in a whip-crack. They struck them in the face and chest, and the nyssa howled in pain and fury as blood bloomed on their face.
Sem took advantage of the moment of confusion, stepping forward to deflect Eelie’s strike with their short sword and then pivoting cleanly, driving the long sword deep into Tanith’s chest. The nyssa fell wordlessly even as Eelie pressed forward in a rage.
I collapsed on my side, the little effort I had managed bringing me nearly to unconsciousness as the room began to spin again.
Eelie passed Tanith’s body and took up their sword in their off hand. Now it was Sem’s turn to fall back under their relentless attack. I tried desperately to find the Pairing bond, to feed some of my pain to Sem but I was flailing in the dark. I could sense it was there, but couldn’t touch it.
Eelie drove them back and back and back. Sem was flagging now, their strength waning. Each move was a little slower, a little more clumsy. They were bleeding from too many wounds to count, and I realized that the wounds were old, already drawn upon and of no use to them now.
Eelie had understood as well, and was avoiding injuring them anew until they could land a killing blow. They pressed their attacks methodically, each stroke a play for position, for control of the fight. They held their line and moved it step by deliberate step.
I watched helplessly, knowing the inevitable outcome and watching it play out before me.
Sem turned a low strike from Eelie’s sword and drove them back a step, raising their longsword for an overhead strike. Eelie raised their sword overhead to block it, but even as I watched them raise their guard, I realized the feint. Sem’s stance was widening. Their feet were too wide to support the overhead strike.
They dropped suddenly into a low strike that would have taken Eelie in the gut with their short sword.
But Eelie had seen it too. I had taught them the move, after all. They still held one sword in an overhand guard, but the second was thrust out low and straight, taking Sem in the heart.
I cried out in agony and disbelief as I felt the Pairing fade from my mind.
I scrambled to my hands and knees, shoving past Eelie and crawling over the broken glass to reach their body. The room still spun, and now the tears flooded my vision so that I made the last few feet blind, reaching them and cradling their small form.
I hadn’t ever held them, but I did now, rocking with them clutched to my chest as the pain of their loss came crashing down upon me. They had followed me across half the world, taken me out of obscure servitude and brought me to where I could learn all the things that I could become.
They had found me again when I had thought myself lost beyond any finding, and followed my lead without question when the world began its perilous slide towards chaos and madness. They had spent themself utterly in the effort to get me through Savat’s defenses and into this keep, and then found the strength somewhere to regroup with Feren and press the attack again to bring me out of bondage. Only to fall here.
Sobs wracked my body as the waves of pain and guilt washed over me. Sem was dead because I had pushed them to aid me. Because I thought I could right the world. Because…
Sem was dead.
The agony of that truth filled me and pushed every other thought from my mind. There was no room for anything else because the pain was everything.
And then I remembered the lessons that Sem had taught me.
First one:
Relax. Don’t fight the pain, don’t flee from it. Embrace it. Feel it.
I found every tension in my body and let it go. My shoulders sagged. My arms fell, releasing Sem’s body to my knees.The pain of their loss flared and I felt it, tears flooding my eyes anew.
Relax.
I slowed my breathing, the short gasps relaxing to deep breaths.
Feel it.
It hurt. Their death was real; my grief was real. I let it fill me and the power suffused every particle of my being.
I wound it into myself and wiped my blood clean of every trace of the drugs. I let it fill me and bring clarity to my mind and strength to my limbs. I let it heal me and my myriad cuts and abrasions flowed with fresh blood, forcing out fragments of broken glass and closing cleanly.
I gently lowered Sem’s body to the floor, brushing stray shards of glass from their clothes and skin. Their face was calm and at rest; at odds with the violence of their death. I leaned forward and kissed their forehead.
Then two:
From now on, you go nowhere without a blade.
I wiped my eyes dry. As I stood, my hands closed around the hilts of their swords. I held the short reversed in my left hand, blade tucked along my forearm. The long, I lifted in my right as I turned to face Eelie.
The cold, endless pain of Sem’s loss filled me like water from the deepest well. I overflowed with it. As I walked slowly towards Eelie, it ran in rivulets from my body with every movement. Glass shards shifted before me with each step, avoiding my bare feet.
Eelie’s eyes widened and they stepped backwards, their boots crunching on the ruins of the great window. Savat had regained his feet while I held Sem, and now he backed away, trying to placate me, but I couldn’t hear him. He moved as if in a dream, and I realized I had sped my reflexes unconsciously.
I held the longsword out, pointing at Eelie, and moved lightly towards them. I extended my foot and slid to the right, a sparkling wave of broken glass rippling away from my path as I moved. They turned, expecting a low strike as I stepped fast across with my left foot, turning my body and catching and lifting their blocking sword with the short. I completed my turn before they could bring their other sword down, and my longsword cut upwards across their forearm. Their sword clattered to the floor and they flinched back in pain.
Eelie took two steps back, backing off the carpet onto the polished stones before the roaring fireplace. They reached back and picked up the fire poker that rested in its holder upon the hearth, resetting their stance.
I kicked their fallen sword away and closed again, step by deliberate step. The cut on their arm closed as they drew on its pain. I paused my advance. They shouldn’t have been able to heal the wound entirely from its own pain.
I reached out then, and I felt it. There was a great wash of pain rolling from outside the wall. It was like the endless crashing of the sea, breaking upon the fortress with relentless pressure. I remembered then the horn calls I had heard. There was a battle happening outside the walls. The Torfallin army had arrived, and was locked in furious warfare with Savat’s Blackcoats.
Eelie smiled, and we were dancing once again. The air rang with the clash of metal as I turned their sword cuts with delicate twists of my blades and they battered away mine with the heavy poker.
The ground was mine—I still cleared each step without thought while the window fragments crunched and rolled beneath their boots. But they were more practiced with dual weapons. I had studied the technique in the Watch many years ago, but hadn’t kept up my skill.
With us both suffused with seemingly endless power, it came to a nearly perfect balance. Neither of us could gain the advantage no matter how we turned and twisted, seeking it.
“Why?” I asked. “Is it worth all this death, whatever your aims?”
“All this and more,” Eelie said softly. “You will never understand. I keep telling him that.”
“Eelie,” I said, trying to reach them with words. “It wasn’t your fault. What you went through… you did all you could. Medi’s death—”
At the mention of their dead sister, Eelie flew into a rage and I was ill prepared for it. A desperate, animal cry of agony ripped from their throat, and then I was turning blow after blow, backing away, trying to find enough of a pause to reset my stance.
Eelie battered my swords left and right with such a fury that I couldn’t stand my ground, even with the power from Sem’s death filling me. A wild strike to my left with the poker, and I lost my grip on the short sword. I tried to cross the long to defend, shifting to a two-hand grip but my left hand was still stinging and numb from the blow.
Eelie struck overhand with their sword and left to right with the poker and I turned both with little more than luck. As they spun away from me, I reset my guard, drawing my weight back over my left foot, expecting another sword blow.
Their sword flashed before me, but instead of striking, they lowered their weight to the left and brought the poker down on my right knee.
I screamed as I felt bone and sinew shatter and tear, and I collapsed, my vision going white with pain. My breath was gone and I thought I would suffocate. I couldn’t pull air into my lungs and with every heartbeat, fresh agony shot like fire through my body. I was shaking and even though I lay inches from the broiling hearth, I felt cold as ice.
A quiet, calm compartment of my mind, built up of books and learning and reason kept a running diagnosis as if I were tending a patient. Shock. Severe crushing trauma to right leg. Multiple complex fractures to the lower thigh and knee joint. Probably torn collateral ligaments. The litany continued in my mind.
I lay face down against the stone, both swords lost. I couldn’t stand… couldn’t move… couldn’t breathe. My ears were ringing and my vision was beginning to go black around the edges. All I knew was the heat of the fire on my left, the chill of shock creeping over me, the hard stones beneath my face, and the roiling fury of pain that was consuming me.
I saw Eelie’s boots step up just inches from my face. I could tilt my head just enough to see them raising the poker over their head to strike the death blow. Their face was twisted in a visceral, primal rage.
I looked down again, waiting for the end. Defeat holds its own kind of peace. My eyes found the subtle, twisting whorls of purple within the stones and I traced them. It was difficult… my vision was growing hazy and dark, and the dancing orange firelight reflected off the polished stone and obscured the lines. But I ran my finger along that path, trying to trace it to its end. The fine threads of purple that spiraled and flowed like veins in the stone and held my focus.
Stone has an affinity for itself. It remembers.
I pulled on the storm of pain that ravaged my body, let it wash like a cleansing white heat through my chest and down my arm to my fingertips tracing that vein. I wove it in and out of the spaces in-between like a running stitch, and with a smile of satisfaction, pulled it tight.
A ring of angry coruscations a pace across erupted beneath Eelie’s feet, and they dropped through the Bridge, falling dizzyingly up out of the floor of the cell far below in the dungeons of Sind. Their eyes were wide with shock as they fell past me. As I watched them reach the peak of their fall beneath me, I released the Bridge and let it close them away even as gravity reasserted itself and they fell back down towards the stone floor.
SIXTEEN
I poured what was left of the pain back into my leg. It wasn’t enough to heal the damage, but I was able to pull the larger pieces of my bones roughly into alignment and dull the pain enough that I could catch my breath and pull myself up to sitting. Still, it took me several minutes to get upright.
Every breath, every slightest shift of muscle, sent new shocks of pain radiating from my leg. I slid backwards until I could rest my back against the stone wall beside the fireplace. The pain was almost more than I could stand. I reached out my senses to the battle raging outside the wall.
I had no idea how long Eelie might remain contained in the cell. The guard had locked it behind me, and I had rarely seen him except when he came with food or to help me to the bucket. But Eelie could easily break out of the cell with their power. I siphoned off a trickle of power and Delved downwards to try to find their mind.
I found them unconscious, at least for now, likely knocked out by their fall. With any luck, no one would visit that cell for some time.
“Arin,” Savat said.
I looked up and he was bending over me, concern in his face. I pulled on the pain and suffering that raged outside and gasped with the first flash of fresh pain that came from piecing my leg back together.
Savat said something to me, but I lost his words in the intense spikes of agony as I pushed and pulled with my power, trying to fit the various bone fragments into place. If I could align everything, I could coax them to knit back together. I had done the same for several soldiers, but the flares of white-hot pain with each adjustment I made was too distracting to continue except in small moves. My face was beaded with icy sweat. I knew that I was in danger of slipping deep into shock and passing out. I focused on doing what I could, my breath hissing through my teeth with each movement.
“Arin, I’m sorry. This was never my goal. All this… anger. This destruction. It should not have happened this way. I’m sorry for your friend.”
“How should it have happened?” I gasped, tears coming fresh to my eyes. “What of all the dead soldiers? What of all of them out there now, dead and dying and maimed?”
Savat’s eyes widened. He shook his head. “What do you care for them? They are not of your kind…”
I laughed desolately, and immediately regretted it as new torture stabbed from my leg. “Not of my kind? Are they not people? Or—ah,” I gasped, “do you mean that I am not a person?”
“No… I—” he shook his head again. “I meant only that they would kill you readily enough given the chance. Why care for their wellbeing?”
“Some would,” I said quietly, “except for the ones that wouldn’t.” I took a slow fortifying breath and shifted again, trying to find a position where the pain was less. “Is that your great work then? To fuel an endless war until everyone who might challenge you is dead?”
Savat sighed, and stood, pacing slowly before me as if trying to find the words. “The war was never the purpose. It is necessary, but not for the usual kind of power that drives people to such means.”
“None of them know what it’s really for, do they, your armies or your nyssén?” I asked.
“Some do,” Savat said softly. “Tanith did. Eelie…” He turned to me suddenly, not meeting my eyes. “Is—Does Eelie live? Did you kill them?” He sounded like he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.
“They live. They are safe; Unconscious and contained for now.”
I saw him relax then.
“Eelie knows. They—It was always my plan. But they were the first to see the truth of it, and to join me. They helped me build my real army.”
