… should have put it back, never should have taken it…
“Kosar, breathe, let it come, they’ll lose interest soon.”
… meant so much but I never told her, and look what happened, look what happened to her!
“Oh Mage shit,” A’Meer whispered, tortured by whatever guilty secrets plagued her own mind. Her grip on Kosar never eased.
Forgot again, always forget, never found it in myself to remember just that one special day for my mother, always let it slip away and then fooled myself that look in her eyes was a calm acceptance when I apologized, not disappointment, not sadness…
Kosar vomited, the sickness and rot of hidden memories and mistakes flooding his mind and purging his body. A’Meer still held him, groaning and cursing, fighting whatever foul thoughts had been dredged in her own mind. He heaved again and bent double, watching vomit speckle the pine-needle carpet, a big beetle scurrying away with its back coated in his stomach juices. All his bad thoughts crowded in and buzzed him like moths to a flame, some of them battering against his skull and knocking themselves away, others remaining there to fly in again and again, reminding him of all those bad things.
The whispering began to fade away at last. It did not vanish completely-it never would-but reduced in volume until it was a hush in his ears, and then a feeling deeper down, and then nothing, not disappearing, simply becoming too quiet and deep for him to want to hear.
“Why didn’t you warn me?” he said, spitting the foul taste from his mouth.
“How could I?”
Kosar looked up at A’Meer and saw that she had been suffering as well, face pale, eyes moist. He wondered what secret shame she had been facing only seconds ago; he did not wish to ask. He turned and looked in the direction the horses had taken. “The others?”
“If the things in these woods get them too, I’m hoping that the horses will go on while they’re remembering.”
“Bad things. All bad things for you?”
A’Meer nodded, looked away, turned and scanned the woods behind them.
“Why? Why? ”
“Perhaps it’s how they feed,” she said. “There are plenty of strange things we know about-skull ravens, tumblers-and some, like the mimics, that are little more than myth. There must be many more that are still hidden to us. Especially since the Cataclysmic War. It’s not just the landscape that’s suffered since then, changed.”
Kosar shook his head to rid himself of those rancid images and guilts. It only served to mix them up some more. “I can’t stand this,” he said, moaning and holding his head.
“Kosar, they’re here!”
A’Meer drew on her bow, let an arrow fly. Something screeched from between the trees, and Kosar saw a red flash behind some shrubs, twisting and wavering in the dappled forest light.
“Come on,” A’Meer said. “We have to catch the others!” She ran past him, grabbing his elbow and spinning him so that he was facing the right way. “Now!”
He followed her, imagining that he could leave those foul thoughts of his behind, stewing away into this weird forest floor along with his puddle of vomit.
What manner of things…? he thought. And then the idea came that they would prey on the Monks as well… and that, maybe, they would slow them down.
HOPE WAS SCREAMING. Not aloud, not through her mouth, because the slew of recollections was drowning any physical response. She was screaming inside.
And still the whispers made themselves known.
I slid the stiletto in too late, waited until he came, and maybe I enjoyed it? Maybe I wanted to feel him flooding into me, wanted to see the rapture in his face before his eyes sprang open at the pain, the realization of what I’d done to him? I could have done it sooner, but he was pounding into me, hard, harder, and then when he grunted I raised my hand and slid the blade into his back, pushed hard, so hard that it cut from his chest and pricked my neck… and his eyes opened, and I had killed him, he knew that already, could feel it, the blood bursting inside and stilling his heart, and even as I met his gaze I felt sick with what I had done. Not his fault. He hadn’t made me do anything. I had invited him in. And in his final exhalation, that last grumbling breath from his slack mouth, there hid none of the truths I believed would be there…
“Not me!” Hope hissed. “Not me! I didn’t do it, not on purpose-not me, it was… everyone before me!” Ancestors, she thought. They made me do it. Those real witches who mocked me by passing down their name to my pitiful, fraudulent self.
Her horse ran on, Rafe held her around the waist, and the opening up of the foulest corners of her mind continued.
He was a bad man anyway, he deserved what those things did to him, I could never have unlocked the door and forgiven myself if he escaped
…
I like it, I like it, I can’t help that, I can’t help that they’re alive when I eat them…
He’d have still paid me, still screwed me, even if he had known. .. it wasn’t my fault… by then nothing would have stopped him, not even the knowledge of what I had…
Hope cried through eyes shut tight.
Behind her, Rafe said nothing.
HE FELT THEthings in the shadows probing him, finding his mind and then scampering away in alarm. They spun away between the trees, dug themselves back down beneath the leaves and needles where they slept for years on end. They were terrified. They had found him, but as those unknown things plunged their tendrils deep into his mind, they discovered something else entirely.
The magic, new and fresh, yet with a history older than they could understand or accept.
Their shock turned to terror when it unveiled itself to them. Its own history-its failings, its shame, its eternal guilt-was laid bare, just for an instant, but long enough to force the creatures away. Perhaps to drive them mad.
Rafe did his best not to see.
TREY RODE HARD, Alishia slumped between his arms. Mother! he thought, wretched and alone. Mother! Sonda! He pulled a handful of the final fledge crumbs from his pocket, and though they were white and stale he swallowed them quickly, whimpering as forgotten deeds were laid out for him to view afresh.
“No!” he shouted, and the gone-off fledge plucked him from his mind and sent him hovering above the pounding horse. He looked down at himself, sitting upright and holding tightly on to Alishia, and he tried to lose himself in the void of her mind. If I get in there, he thought, they won’t be able to get at me. They’ll never reach the heart of me. If I can get in there…
But inside, touching Alishia and listening to her screams of mental anguish-and then hearing what came next-he began to wish he had stayed put.
I never lived, Alishia whimpered, never saw, never went out to experience! And here and now I’m dying, that thing as good as killed me, I would have known what was happening if I’d relished life rather than locked myself away, those books, gone to black and no more, only in my head. And they were only books! And now-
Her voice paused, humbled by the sudden, massive presence that arrived in the tattered remnants of her mind. Trey shrank back. Alishia did not even know that he was there. And then she screamed, driving him spinning helplessly through the forest, past the Monks pursuing them, losing himself as the fight went on around them.
Trey’s physical body slumped on the horse, the saddle slipping sideways again. His eyes turned up in his head. And then Alishia screamed out loud, a wretched wail that spooked their horse and made the whole forest hold its breath for an instant.
Trey’s eyes sprang open. And as the horse twisted and turned between the trees, he began to cry.
A’MEER TURNED AGAIN, knelt down as Kosar ran past her, fired an arrow. A Monk screamed as the shaft found its mark. She moved too fast for Kosar to see, pacing from tree to tree, loosing arrows and flitting across the ground like a shadow.
“Run hard!” A’Meer said. “Catch up. I’ll try to draw them off.”
“No, I-”
“Go!” She glared at him, then leaned forward and pushed him roughly away. “Just go, Kosar. If those mind-things got to Trey and Hope as well, they’ll need guiding. I’ll catch up with you. Life Moon be with you.” She slipped away between the trees, bent over. Her last few words had not sounded convincing.