Age of empyre, p.29
Age of Empyre, page 29
part #6 of Legends of the First Empire Series
“Of course I have weight. Everyone—every thing has weight.”
“No, you don’t, because you don’t have a body. You have no more weight than a beam of light. Any heaviness you feel is something you’re carrying. Gifford, you can’t climb out with a burden. Don’t you understand? That’s the whole point of the Abyss. To get out, you must clean house. Can’t have so much as a dust bunny hiding under your bed. You need to lose it all: hate, fear, guilt, regret.”
Dust bunny? She’d been like this since forgiving Iver. This is Roan as if there had never been an Iver. This is the woman she was supposed to be before fate threw her off a cliff.
He shook his head. “I don’t have any of those.”
“You have something, and you won’t make it out unless you let go.”
Gifford looked down. The only thing he could clearly see were the three red points of light moving toward the base of the pillar. “Typhons,” he muttered. “Do you think Tressa and Tesh managed to climb high enough?”
“I don’t know,” Roan replied. She sat down on the little ledge beside him and dangled her legs off the edge as if she were sitting in one of her hanging chairs in a roundhouse.
“Have we?” He looked at her, at that brilliance. “Are we high enough, do you think?”
Roan looked down, leaning so far forward that Gifford held his breath. “I think so.”
Gifford was seized by a jolt of fear. “Can Typhons climb?”
Roan shook her head. “Doubt it, or they would have already.”
Gifford peered back down at the lights that moved in a whirling mist that might have been snow or fog. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
He tried to spot Tesh or Tressa, hoped to see them scaling the pillar somewhere below them but couldn’t see anything. “I don’t think either of them are going to make it. We shouldn’t have left them.”
“Gifford?”
“What?”
“Stop,” she said. Her eyes locked on him in that piercing manner.
“Stop what?”
Roan took his hand. She placed it between both of hers. “This isn’t about them. It’s about you.”
“Roan, there’s nothing.”
Gifford was telling the truth. He honestly couldn’t think of any guilt or regret that might be holding him back. In his whole life, he’d never hurt anyone—except the Fhrey that had been on the verge of killing Roan, and he didn’t have any guilt over that. His life was clean of mistakes—at least the sort that a person could feel regretful for. That was one of the benefits of being pitiful: He lacked the opportunity to be an ass.
“Is it me?” Roan asked. She said it gently, inviting him to be honest; letting him know with a squeeze of her hand and the acceptance in her eyes that he could admit anything to her. “Something about me? Is it that I killed Iver?”
“No!” Gifford shouted and took her hand in both of his. For a moment, he forgot they were on a tiny ledge so far above the ground that he couldn’t see the bottom. “I love you, Roan. I always have. As far as I’m concerned—you’re perfect. Now more than ever.”
“Then what is it?”
Gifford sighed. “I can’t imagine. I’ve been happy with you, I really have. Since the Battle of Grandford, my life has been far beyond my greatest hopes. I mean, I really thought—I couldn’t imagine that you—that anyone would . . .”
“Would what?” She put a lock of hair in her mouth and began to chew as she leaned closer, those eyes of hers boring in, trying to pry him open, trying to solve the puzzle.
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do. Tell me. What couldn’t you imagine?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess—well, okay, I couldn’t imagine that anyone would want to be with me, you know?”
“Why?” She stared at him, appearing dumbfounded. With anyone else, he would have known it was an act, and he would have accused her of pretending to be stupid. There were two problems with that, of course: Roan didn’t understand pretend, and she was anything but stupid.
She really doesn’t know.
He pointed up. “Because up there I’m a cripple.”
Roan’s brow furrowed, and she shifted her eyes side-to-side as she struggled to understand.
“Roan, how can you not see this?” he said in frustration. “Up there I’m grotesque, a hunchback who can’t talk or walk. I’m someone to be shunned, someone to throw rotten food at.”
Roan stopped puzzling. Instead, her eyes began to blink rapidly. Her lips trembled. “Who threw food at you?”
“Everyone.”
“I didn’t!” she shouted, her chest rising and falling, her eyes filling with tears.
“Okay—okay, not everyone, but a lot of people did . . . and worse.”
“They beat you?”
A bitter little laugh escaped Gifford. “Why do you think I wore long sleeves in summer? Couldn’t hide my face, though. Didn’t matter. People didn’t look at me—still don’t. When I walk—” He laughed again. “When I hobble by, people pretend I’m not there. They don’t like looking, don’t like seeing. Don’t know why. Maybe they’re afraid they can catch my condition. Even the nice people. Even Moya and Persephone . . . I can tell they’re pretending I’m normal—but I’m not. They look so embarrassed when they can’t understand what I say, as if it’s their fault I can’t talk. I pretend I don’t notice that they feel awkward, and we stand there both pretending—them that they don’t really want to be someplace else, and me, that I don’t know they want to get away.”
“I never felt that way.” Tears slipped down Roan’s face.
How I hate making you cry.
“I know, Roan. You never saw me as different. That’s why I fell in love with you. You were the only one who never knew I was crippled.”
“But everyone else did,” she said.
Gifford nodded.
“Even the nice ones,” she added. “Even your friends.”
Again, he nodded.
“That’s your rock,” she told him. “That’s the weight.”
Gifford stared at her. He stopped breathing. There was a pain rising in him, the sort of hot burning that comes after numbness when toes or fingers come back to life.
I pretended.
Roan was nodding, encouraging him to see, to accept. She squeezed his hand, knowing the anguish was rushing in, all of it coming back in a terrible, horrific assault.
“I pretended for so long, convinced myself that it didn’t hurt. But it did . . . it does. The pain is terrible.”
“You can let all that go,” Roan told him.
He looked at her through blurry eyes. “How?”
“Because now you know.”
“Know what?” he begged.
She took his face in her hands, and he felt as if the sun itself were smiling at him. “That you’re not a cripple. That you never were.”
Like any truth, upon hearing it, Gifford felt stupid. But feeling stupid next to Roan wasn’t like being a cripple, and he felt the weight fall as he reached out and hugged his wife, and light filled their world.
“I carried a boulder.” Roan kissed him. “You had the same weight, only in countless pebbles.”
The silent stillness of that place had been so deafening that to Tesh, wind whipping snow was loud. The flakes had grown big, and they flew in a turmoil, making it hard for him even to see Tressa, who lay only a few feet away. Wasn’t just the snow, Roan and Gifford were long gone, having ascended beyond what the snowstorm let them see. The only light at the base of the pillar was the distant but steadily growing glow of red that inched into view like a bloody sunrise.
“Go on, Tesh,” Tressa said. She was lying at the base of the pillar, her legs tucked under like a wounded fawn well on her way to being buried. Frosted in snow, her hair and eyelashes were dusted white. She appeared to be a very old woman, withered and wan.
“You say that as if I have a choice.” He shouted to be heard over the howling wind.
It’s screaming.
Tesh heard the cries carried past them as if lost, disembodied souls were being driven before the red glowing plows.
That’s where we all go. We melt, erode away, but still can’t escape the Abyss. Maybe not melt—maybe we freeze.
He looked at the icy snow. Maybe it wasn’t snow at all.
“You do,” Tressa told him, her voice already matching the raspy tone of the blasting snow.
“If I do, you do, too.”
“What’s my choice?” Tressa asked. “To climb up there and do what? Reunite with my beloved husband? Serve the queen?” She tried to laugh, ended up coughing, pretended to spit, then settled for a good long defiant stare through the whirling flakes that clustered on her face. “I’d rather stay anchored here by my pride than face that eternity. But you—you have Brin.” She lost her insolence just speaking the name, and Tesh could see a bitter shadow of envy pass through her eyes. “She’s a good woman, Tesh. A really good woman. If Konniger had ever shown me just a hint, even a suggestion that he could be so much as—as a blister on her foot . . .” She shook off a frown by biting her lower lip, then lifted her gaze and peered up at the pillar. “I’d be up there already. I’d climb that stone if I had to strip naked and kiss everyone’s ass who’d ever spat on me. You’re an idiot if you don’t see that. You’re down here, and she’s up there waiting. That’s just stupid.”
“She’s not up there anymore.” Tesh wiped the flakes from her eyes. Unlike real snow, these didn’t melt, maybe because unlike real skin neither of them was warm. “She’s gone.”
“You don’t know how long it’s been.”
“It’s been forever. You know that. Doesn’t even matter. I’ll still eventually end up here in Nifrel, and she won’t.”
A sudden burst of shrieks ripped past in the rosy distance. Tesh heard the first jarring footfalls, which made a terrible whump! sound.
“Oh.” Tressa nodded, acting as if she didn’t notice. “So that’s it. That’s your problem, eh? Even if you make it, you don’t, right? But you still have time. You’re still young. If you returned to Elan and lived a better—”
“I murdered five people who thought I was their friend. That’s not something to erase with an apology.”
The rising red light was bright enough to make the cliff walls look like they were covered in blood, and Tressa’s face appeared rosy.
“I believed it was justice,” Tesh said.
“Whose?”
“Mine, I guess.”
“Most of us call that revenge.”
“Yeah, I can see that now. Thanks for being there for me, Tressa.”
Whump.
The ground shook, and some snow fell off the upper ledges of the pillar, raining down with a hiss.
Tressa blinked away a ridge of snowflakes that had gathered once more on her lashes, and for a moment, she lost her hard edge. She was surrendering, giving up, and in that moment, Tressa revealed a woman who in another place and time might have been pleasing. “I’m not getting out of here, Tesh. Not ever. I’ll melt away, but if I had any light left, I’d give it to you. I would give you everything I had.”
Tesh couldn’t help himself. He reached out and hugged Tressa tight to his chest.
The Typhons who had so quaked the Abyss, stopped. For a very long time nothing happened. Then the Typhons slowly began to walk away. What they had come for was gone. The stars that had fallen had flown out again, and the hope that had briefly filled their world was gone. All that remained was the darkness of Tressa and Tesh and the bitterness that rendered them invisible.
Chapter Twenty-Four
News from the Tower
I still remember him the way he looked when he came to Dahl Rhen, young, arrogant, selfish, cruel, entitled. When I saw him again, I was surprised to learn that while half a decade of war and the loss of parents had utterly transformed me, it hadn’t changed him at all. — The Book of Brin
Mawyndulë stood staring at his room. This chamber-and-a-half filled with a bed, a small desk, some shelves, and a window that looked out on the Shinara River had been his home for the last thirty years. On the mattress was the formal asica he’d worn the first time he visited the Rose Bridge. Beside it lay the gray cloak, the terrible one made by Inga and Flynn—his badge of rebellion. He’d kept it all these years in the bottom of the chest in his closet. Why, he didn’t know. Looking at it now, he saw a pathetic thing; the sad efforts of children playing at being adults. On top was the gold chain Gryndal had given Mawyndulë on his twentieth birthday. He’d thought it was a necklace at first, but Gryndal had explained it was to be worn between a pierced ear and a pierced nose. Mawyndulë, who winced when having his toenails clipped, never got around to wearing the gift.
“Aren’t you excited to be moving?” Treya asked, her tone far too happy to suit him.
Mawyndulë knew he should be, but he wasn’t. He tried to sort out his feelings even as Treya sorted his belongings. This small space had always been his home, the place he’d lived for his entire life. As Treya excavated, he was shocked at how few artifacts she unearthed: an old pair of shoes he loved so much that he’d refused to discard them despite their holes, the winter cloak he’d worn on the night he and Makareta had come together in the Airenthenon, and a rock he had found on the banks of the Shinara that looked like a lumbering bear. They were all added to a small pile of clothing. The little glass fishbowl remained on the table beside his bed. His goldfish had died weeks ago, but he hadn’t replaced it. Mawyndulë discovered he both loved and hated the room, and he was bewildered how such contradictions could coexist.
“I’ll have the tailor up to take proper measurements for your new clothes,” Treya said. “You’ll want something special for your coronation.”
He frowned at the word. All it did was remind him that someone had blown the horn and no one knew who, or what, he would have to fight.
“I don’t care what I wear.” He flung himself down on the bed, making the gold chain chime.
“Of course you do,” Treya said. “A new fane needs to project dignity to his people.”
“I don’t think I’m going to be fane.”
Treya stopped. She’d been down on her hands and knees, going through the back boxes of his closet, but crawled out and stood to face him. “Why do you say that?”
“Because it’s true. I’ve been challenged. Whoever blew the horn did it knowing they could beat me. Why else would they? It has to be a Miralyith—Vidar or Jerydd probably. I’ve threatened both with execution if I became fane. I’d blow the horn if I were them.” Mawyndulë saw this as the best case. He still harbored fears and suffered nightmares that he might face an undead, charbroiled father. He almost voiced this concern to Treya but held back. He didn’t want her to think him a coward.
Treya, he’d come to realize over the last few days, was his only living friend. Not that he had many to start with. Gryndal was on that list. Makareta transcended it. Then there was Imaly, but she had only pretended to be his friend. She’d done a fine job. Even after everything, he still craved her approval. Mawyndulë wanted Imaly to change her mind about him. He felt he still might prove his worth, show her how wrong she’d been and regain her respect. Mawyndulë also knew this was a fantasy. He’d never had her respect. He ought to have killed her that night in the Airenthenon, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He hated the ugly Curator. She had stolen his soul, killed Makareta and his father, and yet . . . she was still the closest thing he’d ever had to a mother.
“You’ll be fine,” Treya said. “You have strength, you have skill, and you have youth on your side. Those others are dusty old Fhrey. Their bodies and minds cannot compete with yours.”
“Dusty?” he said, amused. “I thought I was the only one who said that.”
Treya smiled at him, an odd, embarrassed look.
“What?” he asked.
Treya looked around the room at the disarray that was Mawyndulë’s life. She took a breath and bit her lip.
“What is it?”
“I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore. Your father is dead.”
“What doesn’t matter?”
“I just . . .” She hesitated. “It’s been so long. It feels strange to think that I could . . .” She stopped again, looking like she was suffering indigestion.
“Could what?”
“It’s a secret, and I’ve kept it for so long that breaking my silence is scary.” She had both hands on her stomach as she looked toward the window as if she wanted to go there, but she didn’t move.
Maybe it is an upset stomach. Perhaps she needs to vomit.
“But like I said, it doesn’t matter now. Lothian is gone, and my vow was to him. That was the agreement we had. I would be allowed to be near you, to nurse and raise you, but I could never do more than that. I could never tell you the truth.”
Treya’s expression became pained, and the hands that had lain against her stomach came up and pressed to her cheeks. She shook her head and looked away. “I’m sorry, but—”
“Mawyndulë!”
He gasped. The voice did not come from the room, not from Treya certainly. This was the harsh, demanding voice of a dusty old Miralyith. “Jerydd?”
“I didn’t catch you on the privy, did I?” the old kel asked. “Or on top of some terrified junior councilor’s wife?”
“Of course not!”
Treya stared, confused.
Mawyndulë shook his head and waved a hand at her, then pointed back at the closet. She nodded and went back to work.
Mawyndulë stood and walked to the window. This was it, Jerydd was letting him know he planned to—
“What’s going on back there?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Tragedy or comedy?”
“That’s yet to be determined.”
“Why haven’t you contacted me?”
There were many reasons. The biggest being that Mawyndulë was fairly certain Jerydd knew full well what had happened. The kel was playing some form of mind game, a means of flustering his opponent before the battle. He could hear it in his voice: the confidence, the lack of any true outrage. His cordial manner was evidence he knew more than Mawyndulë did.
