An Affinity for Steel, page 98
He turned away from them, forcing his eyes on the stream, forcing himself to control his breathing. It tasted warm in his mouth, cold on his lips. He could feel their stares upon him, feel their shock. As though there were something wrong with him.
‘We are going to turn around,’ he uttered. ‘Do not be there.’
They left. He did not turn around. He didn’t have to. He could feel their fear seeping out of their feet and into the earth. They hadn’t even waited until they were out of earshot to start running.
Scared little animals. The very kind of animal they accused her of being. The very kind of beast they saw when they had looked at him.
They were the animals. Fearful, weak, squeaking rodents. Useless. Pointless.
He was strong. He saw it in his reflection in the stream. His face was hard. His eyes were hard. No apology, no weakness.
No pupils. He blinked. That can’t be right.
Falling to his knees seemed a bit too easy; his head pulled the rest of him to the earth. He rested on his hands and knees, staring at himself in the river. His breath poured out of him in great, unrestrained puffs that stirred the water, blurred his face in it.
The legged eels below the surface released their grips on the rocks, went drifting down the stream. Lenk ignored them; his image was no more clearer with them gone. He could make out flashes of grey, blue, each one a stark and solid colour that he had rarely seen in his hair or eyes before. Slowly, he leaned down farther, breath pouring out of his mouth to kiss the water.
And freeze it into tiny, drifting chunks of ice that were lost down the stream.
‘That … that definitely is not right.’
‘One would suspect,’ a deep voice spoke, ‘that you are a poor judge of that.’
He looked up immediately and saw no one to match the bass, alien voice. He was alone in the forest, even the birds and chattering beasts of the trees having fled to leave him bathed in silence. Just him, the stream, and …
‘Jhombi?’ he asked.
The squat reptile made no immediate answer, did not even look up from his lure bobbing in the water. Then, slowly, his massive head began to twist towards Lenk, staring at him with two immense eyes.
Lenk stared back, mouth gaping open; of all the words he could have used to describe the Owauku’s gourdlike eyes, ‘gleeful’ and ‘malicious’ had rarely come to mind. And ‘terrifying’, not at all.
‘Hello, Lenk.’ His … or its voice was like sap: thick and bitter in the air. ‘I see you’re experiencing some difficulty with your current plan? Perhaps I could be of help.’
Lenk shook his head, dispelling his befuddlement. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t think you spoke the tongue.’ He cast a glare into the forest. ‘I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked. Denaos has lied to me before.’
‘He has,’ the lizardman said, ‘but he didn’t this time.’
‘He said Jhombi didn’t speak the human tongue.’
‘Jhombi does not.’
Lenk stared as the lizardman’s green smile grew a bit larger and eyes shrank a bit narrower.
‘So,’ the young man said breathlessly, ‘you would be …’
‘I’d say that my name was unimportant, but that would be a lie. You’ve had far too many of those lately, haven’t you?’
‘I’d agree with you, but any bond of trust we might have would probably be shattered by the fact that I am speaking to someone wearing Jhombi’s skin like a costume.’
The creature laughed, not joylessly. Rather, there was plenty of mirth in his deep, booming chuckle, and all of it made Lenk’s skin crawl.
‘You are clever, sir. A bit macabre, but clever.’ He held up a hand. ‘Jhombi is fine, my friend. Not present, but certainly still alive and possessing all his skin. He was lured away long ago by a gourd of his people’s wicked brew. Not half as clever as you were, that one, not half as determined.’ He quirked a scaly eye ridge. ‘Or perhaps now that you’re giving up, you’re roughly on par?’
Lenk could but stare, tongue dry in his gaping mouth. ‘Are … you another one?’
‘A hallucination?’ The creature shook his bulbous head. ‘Would a hallucination admit to being such? After all, they only linger as long as you consider them real. I must linger, Lenk; not long, only enough to speak with you, but I must. After that, you can imagine me away.’
‘All my hallucinations want to speak with me, lately. My mind must have a lot to say … Or is it the Gods that are trying to tell me something?’ Lenk dared a smile at the creature. It could hardly hurt, he reasoned. He would hate to gain a reputation for rudeness amongst his growing collection of mental problems.
‘Good to see you’ve kept a sense of humour about it. I can hardly blame you. Lunatics have a reputation for laughing uncontrollably for a reason.’
‘So you are a hallucination.’
‘No, but you are going mad.’ The creature sighed. ‘Mad and clever, I suppose you could answer me this question: do you suppose it will stop?’
The young man blinked. ‘Will what stop?’
‘All of it. All the madness, the suffering.’ The creature looked at him intently. ‘The voices.’ It nodded slowly, all mirth gone from its face. ‘I know. I can’t hear them, but I know. I know how they torment you, running endlessly: hot, cold, soothing, frightening, day in, day out, screaming, shrieking, demanding, whispering, whining, talking all the time.’
Lenk, having nothing else to respond with, leaned forward, unblinking, unbreathing, unmoving.
‘Will they?’
The creature stared back at him and shook his head. ‘One will.’
‘One? There are …’ Should have realised that, should have known that. He stopped cursing himself long enough to breathe. ‘Which?’
‘Scarcely matters. One whispers lies, the other whispers what you don’t want to hear. You think either of them will stop?’ It sighed deeply. ‘Or is it that you think the one with the sweet lies will be correct? The one that tells you that everything will be fine, that you’ll go back to the mainland and leave all this behind you, grow fat on a field with your slender shict bride and watch the sunset until your lids grow too heavy to keep up and you die feeding the horseflies.
‘And yet, everything isn’t fine, is it? You are still here. Your companions fear you to the point that they have difficulty following you even back to their precious civilisation. You feel sick without your sword, angry in the company of those who smile at you, experience silence from one voice only when the other speaks …’
The creature shook its head.
‘No, not fine, at all, I’d say. One could scarcely be blamed for fleeing, especially when the alternative is to stay here, amidst the intolerable sun and rivers that turn to ice.’
‘There is nothing here,’ Lenk replied, ‘nothing but lizardmen and bugs. What purpose is there in staying here?’
‘When was the last time you found a purpose by looking behind you? What awaits you there? Burned ruins of your old home? The graves of your family?’
‘What would you know of it?’ Lenk snarled, feeling his hands tense, restrained from strangling the creature only by curiosity and dread for the answer.
‘I know they will not be there when you return,’ the creature replied. ‘Just as I know what little family you’ve scraped together you only have by coming this far.’ It grinned broadly. ‘Go farther and who knows? Blood, yes. Death, most certainly. But in these, you find peace … Perhaps you’ll find the kind that lasts? The kind that lets you know who it is that speaks in your head and who it was that sent you on a road that began with the blood of your family? The kind where everything is fine at the end?’
Lenk swallowed hard.
‘Will I find it?’
‘Are you asking me if things will get better or if things will turn out the way you hoped?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Just as well. Much of the future is uncertain, save for this …’ It leaned forward slowly, eyes widening, mouth widening. ‘None of that matters.’
‘My happiness does not matter?’
‘You were not bred for happiness. You were bred to do your duty.’
‘I … wasn’t bred! I was born!’ Lenk nodded stiffly, as if affirming to himself. ‘My name is Lenk!’
‘Lenk what?’
‘Lenk … Lenk …’ He racked his brain. ‘I had a grandfather.’
‘What was his name?’
‘He was … he was my mother’s father! We were all born in the same place! The same village!’
‘Where?’
‘A … a village. Somewhere. I can’t …’ He thumped his head with the heel of his hand. ‘But, I knew! I remembered! Just a moment ago! Where …’ He turned to the creature, eyes wide. ‘Where did they go?’
‘It hardly matters. They won’t be coming back … not on the mainland.’
A long silence persisted between them, neither of them breaking their stare to so much as blink. When Lenk spoke, his voice quavered.
‘But they will here?’
‘I did not say that. What I implied was that there is nothing to gain upon returning to the mainland.’
‘And what is here, then?’
‘Here?’ The creature grinned. ‘Death, obviously.’
‘Whose death?’
‘A meaningful one, be certain.’ It twisted its yellow gaze toward the distant edge of the forest and the village beyond. ‘Ah … sunset will come soon and your precious farewell feast with it. I would be wary of these green creatures, Lenk. You never know what might be lurking behind their faces.’
The creature’s saplike voice felt as though it had poured over Lenk’s body, pooled at his feet and held him there staring dumbfoundedly at the creature as it strode away like a thing much larger than its size would suggest. Dumbstruck, the young man found the voice to speak only as the creature began to slip into the foliage, green flesh blending with green leaves.
‘Wait!’ Lenk called after it. ‘Tell me … something! Anything! Give me a reason to keep going!’ As the creature continued on, he took a tentative step toward its fading figure. ‘Tell me! Will Kataria kill me? Who killed my family? Who is it in my head? You never told me!’ He growled, his voice a curse unto itself. ‘You never told me anything!’
‘I know …’
Whatever pursuit Lenk might have mustered further was halted as the creature turned to look over its shoulder with a face not its own. Its jaws were wide, impossibly so, to the point that Lenk could almost hear them straining under the pressure.
Gritted between them, reflecting his own horrified visage that shrank with every horrified step he retreated, a set of teeth, each tooth the length and colour of three bleached knucklebones stacked atop each other, glittered brightly.
‘Ominous, isn’t it?’
The words echoed in his thoughts, just as the polished, toothy grin embedded itself in eyes that stared blankly, long into the sunset, after the creature had vanished and drums began to pound in the distance.
Twenty-Five
CONFESSIONAL VIOLENCE
Pagans had certain enviable qualities, Asper decided after an hour of lying in the mossy bed and staring up at the sun, enjoying the sensation of it as it bathed her.
First among those qualities was the confidence to lounge around in skimpy furs beneath the sun for hours on end, she decided. That was certainly a practice she’d have to abandon upon returning to decent society. Not too hard, she thought as she scratched a red spot on her belly, especially if meant fewer bug bites.
But she was possessed of the worrying suspicion that she would have more difficulty leaving behind the second quality she found so enviable: the complete confidence they had in their faiths. She had often wondered what it was about people with limited grasps of homesteading and hygiene that made them so sure of their heathen beliefs.
Only recently, though, was she wondering what it was they had that she lacked.
Perhaps, she reasoned, her faith permitted her a unique position to come to the conclusion. The creed of Talanite was to heal, regardless of ideological difference. The occasional attempt to convert the barbarian races from their shallow, false gods were largely carried out by the more militant faiths of Daeon and Galataur. The most she had ever seen of such attempts was the gruesome aftermath: the hacked bodies of shict, tulwar or couthi who had refused to give up their gods and chose to meet them instead. The most thought she had ever expended for them was a brief prayer and a silent lament for the futility of dying in the name of a faith that made no sense to her.
Of course, she reminded herself, you worship the sun. That seems pretty silly at a glance, doesn’t it? She sighed, wondering if those barbaric races had ever asked themselves the same question. Does Kataria ever wonder that? She doesn’t look like she does … then again, she doesn’t look like she ever pays enough attention to anything deeper than food … or Lenk.
She instantly cursed herself for thinking his name. The memories always began with his name. Like a river, they flowed from his name to that night when Kataria had dragged his unconscious body into the hut. The memories never got any easier to digest. Her heart never ceased to beat faster with every recollection.
It was seared into her mind, its heat every bit as intense as the one that ran through her arm that night.
Funny, she had almost forgotten about her arm, at least for a moment. She had almost forgotten the night prior to that, when it burned at the sight of that hooded face and skeletal grin, the confusion of waking up amidst a tribe of sentient reptiles, she could hardly think of anything else.
Of course, he changed that entirely.
Naturally, she had fallen to her knees beside him, running practised hands over his body, checking flesh for wounds, bones for breaking, skin for fever. She had ignored it all at that point: Kataria’s shrieking demands, Denaos’ cautious stare, the Owauku’s incomprehensible babble. All that mattered, at that point, was her charge, her patient, her companion. At that point, she could ignore everything.
Everything except her arm.
She was too well-used to it: the aching, the burning. She could feel it coming, feel it tense, feel it hunger beneath her skin. The scream that had torn itself from her lungs had been cleverly disguised, the pain concealed beneath a command that they all leave. They might have suspected something by the second and third screams, too shrill to be commanding.
But they left, left her alone.
With him.
The arm might have been merciful in waiting until the others had gone to erupt. Or it might simply not have been able to contain itself. She didn’t care any more now than she did then; thinking on it brought far too much fear now, far too much pain then. There was no slow eating away this time; the arm simply burst into crimson, the bones black beneath the suddenly transparent red flesh, pulsating, throbbing, burning.
Hungering.
It had pulled itself of its own volition, for a reason she could not bring herself to fathom, towards Lenk. And try as she might to tell herself there was likewise no fathoming why she let her body follow its burning grasp, she had to live with the fact that, at that moment, she had simply let go.
There was no thought for what might have happened next, had her hand clenched on his throat, had he become twisted and reduced to nothing, like those who had felt the crimson touch before. There was no thought for what her god, his god or any god might have said of it. There was only pain, only hunger.
And a blessed, unconscious meal before her. A relief from pain, from the agony that racked her.
But where her hand had slid slowly and carefully towards him, his was swift and merciless. It snapped out suddenly from the sand, without a snarl or curse or even any indication that Lenk had known what was about to happen. Her body went from burning to freezing in an instant as his fingers wrapped about her throat. Her arm fell at her side limply as he opened eyes that weren’t his and spoke with a voice that belonged to someone else.
‘Do not think,’ it had said, ‘that it will ever stop if you do it.’
It could have been Lenk, she thought, probably was him. He was feverish, if not enough to cause a hallucination, and he was starved and beaten. Trauma was known to cause such changes in personality, she knew from experience, and the fact that he remembered nothing of waking up would support this. But the eerie sensation that it was something more, some madness that gripped him, gripped her, too.
Fear had made her recoil and hold her arm away from him as his slipped from her throat and he fell back into feverish slumber. Or maybe it was compassion, a sudden shock of shame that made her spare her friend. Maybe she had finally claimed some victory over the arm.
Maybe.
The pain was too intense to think, though, the burning from her arm and the cold from his grasp conspiring to plunge her into agony. There she remained, huddled against the hut’s wall, choking on her sobs so that no one outside would hear her.
The pain passed, after it had thrust her into agonised sleep and she had awoken to find her arm whole again and Denaos standing over her. She had no idea what he had seen. He stared at her with what looked like concern, but that was a lie.
It had to be.
It was greed, she was sure, the presence of an opportunity to gain an advantage over her for whatever vileness he was planning that kept him around. It was greed that made him lean down and brace her up and offer her water. It was greed that made him ask with such feigned tenderness if she was all right. It was greed that she used to justify cursing at him and driving him out again that she might tend to Lenk and go through the ordeal of forgetting everything.
She had not forgotten, of course. She never would.
She spoke of the event often, posing questions and theorising answers with brazen frequency, but never to anyone with a mouth to reply with. Any time she was alone for a moment, she asked the same questions, as she did now.
‘Why?’
And answers now, as they had then, did not come.
‘Why him?’ Her tone was soft, inquisitive; all her previous indignant, tear-choked anger had long boiled out her mouth and soaked into the earth. ‘What is it about him that you want?’
