Echoes of memory, p.29
Echoes of Memory, page 29
Aris grabbed Kestrel’s shoulder and turned the young man so he was staring him in the eyes.
They pierced Kestrel.
“Cillia is still alive.”
He fell to his knees.
Chapter 44
“IF YOU’RE LYING TO me...” Kestrel tried and failed to choke back his tears. “If you’re lying to me...” his voice fell below a whisper.
Aris reached for Kestrel and put his hand in the young man’s. He focused on the memory of his recent conversation with Zebulon.
Kestrel silently took in his memories. He didn’t move nor make a sound for nearly five minutes. He had become stone.
“She’s really alive?” Kestrel’s voice was light as the wind when he found it again.
“Yes.”
“Cillia’s alive? My Cillia. She’s alive?”
“Yes, she is,” Aris replied.
Kestrel started sobbing.
Aris watched in silence.
It was an odd sight. He had lost count of how many families he’d had to tell of a loved one’s passing. It was a soul-crushing thing. Watching Kestrel was different though. This might be the first time he remembered informing someone that a loved one was alive. It was a welcome departure from the norm that crushed so many spirits.
Aris knelt in the sand in front of Kestrel to put a reassuring hand on the young man’s shoulder but Kestrel leaned forward and wrapped his arms around the General. Aris could feel the weight of failure being lifted from Kestrel with each tearful sob. When the young man finally broke free from the embrace, Aris felt that Kestrel had dropped a huge burden. He was physically different. His shoulders, once always turned downwards in disgrace, had straightened.
“Thank you,” Kestrel whispered as he let go of Aris.
Aris nodded and looked into the young man’s eyes. There was a fire in them, but not the dark consuming flames of guilt. Not anymore. No, they had changed to something else. They’d changed to smoldering embers of determination.
Aris stood and offered his hand to Kestrel who took it and raised himself. His very posture told of purpose.
“Let’s go find that coroner,” Kestrel said.
Immediately after he confessed to Kestrel four days previous, Aris returned with Kestrel to the hospital whose bowels Zebulon called home.
He had been unable to find him.
The pale coroner had been replaced with a handsome young blonde man, who seemed entirely too pretty and well-mannered to have such a looked-down upon position. The new coroner was clueless about his predecessor and what had happened to him.
He had spent the next three days tracking Zebulon. The General hadn’t expected to have such a hard time tracking Zebulon down, but he had finally found the man. Aris promised to inform Kestrel the moment he’d found the man, so when he had confirmed the hideout, he sent word for Kestrel.
“He’s in there?” Kestrel’s voice startled Aris. He had his metalvine raised before he realized who had spoken to him. The boy was as sneaky as a mountain panther. Aris chided himself for not catching Kestrel’s silent approach.
“Yes,” Aris replied, he glared at Kestrel who was smiling at the fright he had caused. “We’ll need to be careful. There are bound to be traps laid. I’ve already spotted two from here,” he said.
Kestrel nodded, his face resolute.
It was amazing how much had changed in the last three days. He felt as if a part of his soul had been restored. He couldn’t number how many times he had blamed himself for Cillia’s death. He was constantly going over what he could’ve done differently.
He was sure he had run that last argument through his mind at least a million times. It was his fault she had gotten killed.
But now she wasn’t dead.
Aris’ words had lifted a weight in his soul Kestrel hadn’t realized he’d been carrying. He had blamed himself for her death and had carried that, but he hadn’t known just how much that failure had informed everything else about his character.
Kestrel had trained like a madman so that he would never fail again. He had been afraid of ever loving again, lest he fail them like he’d failed Cillia.
He was free of that now.
He was going to find Cillia and save her.
His guilt had caused Kestrel’s stomach to knot at the site of Sephira’s younger cousins. They were nearly the same age as Cillia was and looking into their joyous, innocent faces had been too much for him to bear. Cillia would have loved the two precocious young girls. But she had been denied that family she desperately needed by her death.
All that had changed with Aris’ three little words.
“She’s still alive.”
Those words had freed Kestrel.
He could never repay Aris for what he’d done for him, but in the last three days, Kestrel had decided that even if it took the rest of his life, he would try. He owed everything to Aris.
But first, he needed to find Cillia and that search had led them here, to a half-collapsed inn on the edge of town abutting the Southernmost of the Kearn Foothills.
The ramshackle building had had its roof caved in during a landslide and the previous owners, who’d had a windfall of funds and wanted an excuse to build a new tavern, had abandoned the meager domicile without a second thought. They couldn’t get away from the addicts and prostitutes littering the area fast enough.
It was oddly fitting that the dissected inn would be the hiding place of one who cut open dead bodies for a living.
“Be careful Kestrel, the last time I talked to him, he had been on the verge of a breakdown. Who knows what sort of threats his mind is seeing now? He’s suffered at the hands of The Inquisitors so it may be anything.”
“The Inquisitors?” Kestrel asked.
“Yes. I strongly believe that the one who attacked you and Sephira was one of them. They are Givers who are tortured from childhood and share their pain with others. I’ve never felt their touch, but if the visions that I received from Dren are any indication, I never want to,” Aris replied.
Kestrel’s eyebrows cocked. Who was Dren? He quietly asked the General.
“You’ve heard of my exploits during the assassination attempt upon the Emperor’s life right?” Aris asked.
“Of course. You’re quickly becoming a legend. In a few decades, you may be revered as a national hero for your actions,” despite Kestrel’s distaste for the government that had ignored him and had nearly killed Cillia, he couldn’t help but look up to Aris Ravenscroft.
Aris nodded his head and scoffed. “The problem with those stories is that they’re all a lie. I was there but the only thing that’s true about what they attribute to me is that I was the one who found out about the attempt on the Emperor’s life and sprang the trap,” Aris had a bitter tone in his voice. “But that’s as far as my involvement went. I wanted to capture the small band, and yes it was small. Not the force of fifty the stories have morphed it into, but Edrian Wolls...” Aris spat on the ground as he said that name. He didn’t have to worry about appearances here. “The Emperor forced me to work with Edrian Wolls and he had different ideas than I. It was his force that stopped them and at his word they mindlessly slaughtered the group. They killed everyone, down to a man. No doubt it was Edrian covering his pasty bum.”
Kestrel raised an eyebrow while he listened to the story. He wondered who else Aris had told. He might be the only one in the world besides Aris that knew the truth. He had hidden these memories deep. He wondered how many secrets Aris had hidden behind mazes of tortured memories as Wallace had instructed them to do.
“That fool killed them all. I wanted to capture and interrogate them, but he couldn’t lose face,” Aris growled.
“So who was Dren?” Kestrel asked, bringing the General back to the first question.
“He was the leader of the rebellion, and he also was a gifted Giver. As he died, I received his memories.”
Kestrel leaned forward, every muscle taut. His body clinched in attention.
Why?
“Tell me how it all happened,” Kestrel commanded the General.
Kestrel, who mere months ago was little more than a street rat, was bossing around one of the most powerful people in the Veaish Empire as if it were nothing.
Aris grinned. This child had no fear.
Aris let out something that sounded like a sigh mixed with a chuckle and then proceeded to detail the assassination attempt.
“And you’re sure that’s what happened?” Kestrel asked as Aris finished his story.
Aris nodded sternly. He was offended that the young man questioned his honesty.
“If your memory is spotty when it comes to Dren, then I know why,” Kestrel said.
Aris’ gaze pierced Kestrel. How had the young man known? It was impossible that he knew of the spottiness of the memories and how it felt like there were millions of holes in them.
It was impossible...Unless...
“I received the rest of his memories,” Kestrel replied.
“What?!” Aris whipped around to face Kestrel in the dark alleyway. “What did you say?” he demanded.
“I received the rest of Dren’s memories,” Kestrel replied, his breath low and heavy. He had been living with the man who had the other half of his alien memories for months and hadn’t known it.
He was a right fool for not catching that earlier.
How had he missed Aris’ connection to Dren and the memories that had started him down the path of becoming a Memory Mage? Could it have been that Aris Ravenscroft, the General in charge of Fiell’s city guards, had been propelled into this dark world by the unseen hand of Dren too?
It had to be.
“You have Dren’s memories?” Aris asked again, to which Kestrel nodded. “We’re going to have a long talk after we catch Zebulon. Understand?”
Kestrel nodded again.
The humongous implications of their newfound knowledge weren’t lost on him. This information could change everything.
Chapter 45
KESTREL WINCED WHEN the broken floorboard groaned loudly beneath his weight. He thought back to the recent revelation that he and Aris shared the memory of the deceased rebel leader Dren, and how they had promised to talk once they’d found where Zebulon had hidden young Cillia.
There was a mixture of fear and anticipation boiling in his heart. What did Dren know? What memories of Aris’s could fill the holes of the invading memories he had gained from the rebel leader?
Aris looked over to him and his slight glare told Kestrel to proceed with more caution. Kestrel wondered what danger the doctor posed. He couldn’t possibly be as dangerous as Aris seemed to think he was.
From what Aris had told him of the man, it seemed that there was nothing to worry about, but Aris had warned him of the dangers of a man pushed into a corner, and Aris had forced Zebulon’s hand.
Even one such as he may be dangerous.
They searched the rooms of the abandoned inn. They grimaced at the filth they saw there. There was an overwhelming odor of piss, blood, and narcotics that stained the walls. The combination of aromas was headache-inducing.
Why is everything abandoned? And why so recently? Aris’ skin prickled with gooseflesh. Something felt wrong.
An air of pain hung in the abandoned building.
“Why’s everyone gone?” Kestrel voiced Aris’ mental question. “It’s eery.”
“Keep an eye out. Something terrible happened here recently,” Aris said, following his policing instincts.
Kestrel nodded and followed silently.
Each new room opened to another disappointment and Kestrel began to doubt the credibility of the information that Aris had wrangled, but Aris knew the opposite was true. The fact that the place wasn’t crawling with the usual infestation of addicts, thugs, and murderers was a testament that something had happened there.
They were on the right track.
There. A noise. It was fainter than a whisper carried miles on the air, but Aris heard something.
“Did you hear that?” Aris whispered.
Kestrel twisted his head in a ‘no.’
It had been the slightest sound, but Aris knew that he had heard something. He beckoned for Kestrel to creep silently behind him and he followed the sound that he soon recognized to be breathless whimpering.
They found the source of the noise in the partially collapsed kitchen.
Zebulon was flayed out on the ground, his fingers mutilated beyond recognition, and his body covered in bruises. He was so brutalized he was nearly unrecognizable.
Kestrel gagged at the sight. “How’s he alive?” he asked as he surveyed the scene.
Zebulon’s body was a horrifying patchwork of deep yellow and purple bruises and long-festering gashes.
The rusty smell of dried blood permeated the room.
Aris ignored the question and kneeled at the coroner's side. He began to ask the pale brutalized man what had happened to him, but through the dim lighting, he was able to see that Zebulon’s tongue had been removed.
It was no small miracle that the doctor still clung to life. Aris was sure that whoever had attacked the coroner had intended to kill him; surely he should be dead.
It was only his iron will that kept him breathing up until this point.
“I’m so sorry my friend,” Aris said, looking into Zebulon’s shell-shocked eyes. There was no recognition in them.
Whatever was left of Zebulon had been taken from him in the beating. Even if his body were to miraculously survive the ordeal, his mind would never again be the same.
“Who did this?” Kestrel grimaced with rage. He’d seen savagery on the streets, but nothing this inhumane. Nothing as horrifying as what had been done to Zebulon.
“I don’t know. But we need to find out before he dies,” Aris responded. “Come.”
Kestrel obeyed and kneeled beside Aris. After the initial shock of seeing the coroner’s mangled body wore off, he started to gag at the smell. The copper scent of blood mixed with the scent of Zebulon’s involuntary relief of his bowels and bladder the beating had caused made his stomach roil.
He turned his head and retched, barely holding in the vomit that churned in his stomach.
“You’ll eventually get used to it despite the desire to never do so,” Aris whispered sympathetically.
Kestrel nodded and turned back to look at the coroner, his face distorted in disgust at the sight, but he obeyed and laid his hand on the coroner’s bare chest as Aris had indicated. Doing his best to avoid the largest of the gashes that crisscrossed the pale man’s body.
“Tell me what you see,” Aris commanded Kestrel while he too laid his bare hand on the wounded man’s chest.
Visions flooded the duo.
Aris watched as he saw the coroner’s previous conversation with him. It felt like it had been ages ago, but the conversation had taken place less than two weeks prior. So much had happened since then.
It was strange seeing himself through the eyes of others. Did he really look like that? It was always odd seeing himself in someone else’s memories.
No, no time to focus on that.
He moved on.
Aris saw the doctor getting spooked during their conversation and was with him as he ran away.
He felt the cool mountain air whipping his face as he ran. He was used to the cold though, so it hadn’t bothered him. What had bothered him though was the consistent feeling that he had been followed to the General’s house. Why had he decided to turn to Aris Ravenscroft? What fool thought had convinced him it would be the best course? Why did he think Aris would help him, a lowly coroner?
Aris watched intently as he floated through the dying man’s memories.
His vision cut to the morgue.
Zebulon had gone to work that next day, but after he finished relieving himself in the lavatories and was exiting them he had caught sight of the man.
He wore dark robes. The same robes that those monsters who’d dragged him into this mess had worn all those years ago.
They knew what he’d done. They knew about the girl. He had to run. He had to escape. He needed to go.
He needed to go now!
Zebulon fled.
Kestrel gasped when the coroner’s memories washed over him.
It was a strange feeling having someone else’s recollections in your brain. It felt as if another person had taken up residence in his mind. Kestrel wondered if Aris or Wallace ever felt like they weren’t at home in their own minds after taking in the memories of someone else.
Upon touching Zebulon, Kestrel recalled his torture at the hands of one dressed the same as the Inquisitor that had killed Treall.
The Inquisitor had started with the coroner's fingers first. He said he enjoyed the symbolism of flaying open the hands of a man who used them to cut open the bodies of others for a living.
What symbolism there was to be found in such a brutal act was beyond Kestrel.
Though it wasn’t his memory, Kestrel’s heart rate spiked and his brow dripped sweat as he recalled the torture that Zebulon had faced. He could almost feel the pain of having his hands gashed open. He could almost taste the wet copper blood pouring from Zebulon’s mouth in his visions.
The beatings continued and Kestrel wanted to pull away. He wanted to do anything but watch the horror flowing through Zebulon’s memories but he clamped down and kept wading through the recollections of the dying man. He would relive these tortures a thousand times over if they could help him save Cillia.
Kestrel’s visions soon skipped back to before the attack and he watched the thin, pale, coroner flee from the Inquisitor and how he had wandered the streets, dodging from alley to shadowy alley, paranoid that the light would betray him to the inhuman monsters scouring the city for him.
Kestrel felt Zebulon’s chest-pounding. He had hidden the young girl well, no one would be able to find her, he had made sure of it but he held no false belief about his strength. He’d given in to the tortures of the Inquisitors years before, and he knew that if he were pressed, he would do so again.
