“Maybe,” Drakis said. “Maybe we could just-pretend.”
Mala looked away from him. “What?”
“Look, I–I don’t know what happened to us, and we’re all dealing with our own pasts,” Drakis said, taking a step closer.
Mala tightened her grip around her knees.
“I know there are a lot of things in my own past that absolutely terrify me,” he went on. “I’ve seen things. . done things. . you know that I have. . that are. .”
Drakis ran out of words, unable to express his self-loathing. “Up until now I’ve been able to push all these memories aside. I keep telling myself that I’ve got to take command, I’ve got to be in control and get everyone to safety-and that I’ll think about my unthinkable past later. I haven’t stopped-haven’t really let any of us stop-long enough to deal with our own thoughts and memories. We’ve been running away from ourselves as fast as we could, dreading being caught by our own pasts as much as any Inquisitor the Empire has sent after us. Now we’ve stopped, and we have nowhere left to run from ourselves.”
Mala turned her gaze back on him once more, her eyes both pleading and reserved.
Drakis offered his hand out in front of him. “Now all I know is that you are here. . and I am here. . and together we’re stuck in this hole. You need someone to hold you, and I need someone to hold. So if we can’t forgive our pasts or forget them, maybe we can just pretend-for a while at least-that I still love you and you still love me. Let’s pretend that all that happened before was just a bad dream and that all that matters is what’s happening right here and now.”
Mala did not move.
“We are who we are,” Drakis said quietly extending his hand once more. “But for today, can we pretend to be those people we were before we remembered?”
Mala reached out her small, dirty hand slowly, taking his large hand in hers. He climbed up onto the stone bier next to her and slowly, carefully, put his arms around her. She turned into him, leaning against his body and turning her face into his chest.
He held her there for many hours, doing his best to pretend that she loved him.
All the while, she shrank from his touch.
CHAPTER 28
Drakis opened his eyes to a dream.
He sat facing walls that were the white of fine marble illuminated by soft balls of light floating in perfect stillness at set distances between narrow, fluted pillars. Carefully shaped trees and plants adorned the octagonal space in hues of green, augmented with brilliant flowers in orange, blue, yellow, and crimson. The pillars drew his eyes up toward a glorious and intricate ceiling twenty feet above him. Clouds drifted past the intricate latticework formed between the arches high overhead.
Somewhere in the distance, he could hear the soft echoes of musical pipes playing a gentle melody.
Mala was still at his side, though sleep had taken her at last, too. She leaned against him, quiet at last.
Drakis closed his eyes. So this is what peace feels like, he thought. Free from care or pain. Free from responsibilities. Free from your own past. He smiled and shifted slightly to relieve a muscle that was threatening to cramp in his lower back.
He seriously considered whether it might be possible to remain in this one spot forever. He supposed that eventually he would need to find water and food and other such bothersome necessities of life, but for now the relief that he felt in this one place was acute. He had been in pain for so long that it was not until now-when he let it go-that he realized just how large a burden it had been to him.
The hollow tones of the pipes continued to drift over him, carried from a distance on a gentle, sweet breeze.
Five notes. . Five notes. .
He wondered how he’d got here. He remembered finding Mala in the woods. He remembered following her into the glade, the rock fountain in the middle and drinking from it. His memories became more confused after that and it seemed like too much of an effort to remember. Then he remembered being in the terrible cell with Mala and. .
He shifted once more, frowning. He didn’t know how he got from that horrible cell to this place, but he knew that he didn’t care. For now, he thought, it is enough to just sit here, drink in the peace, rest, and listen to the sweet sounds of the. .
Nine notes. . Seven notes. .
He sat upright suddenly, his eyes open.
The song. . that song.
The distant pipes were playing the melody that had so often troubled his dreams and even his waking hours of late. He had tried so hard to push it from his thoughts for so long that he could scarcely mistake it now. It must be the dwarf, he thought. Jugar had been humming the tune around the Ninth Throne of the Dwarves when they first took him as a prize. It had to be him!
The peaceful, languid tones suddenly annoyed Drakis. That damnable little beast! He would be the one to spoil this.
Mala roused slowly, blinking as she awoke. “Drakis? What happened? Where are we?”
Drakis pushed himself off the stone-the same stone they had sat upon in the roach cell, he realized, as his bare feet landed on a soft green material that blanketed the floor. His practiced eye glanced around him, searching for something that might be used as a weapon, but other than the large stone bier itself in the middle of the tall room and the small trees that seemed to be growing right out of the flooring, there was nothing that presented itself to him as useful in combat.
He took in a deep breath and blew it out slowly. This was not a battlefield; indeed, there was something about this place that was so far removed from everything he knew about life that he found himself increasingly anxious in the midst of absolute peace.
“A land of peace and rest?” the young boy said. “Even if there were such a place, you won’t know what to do when you get there.”
“What do you know about it?” his brother whispered gruffly beside him as they pushed the wheel of the mill with a dozen other slaves. “There is a land of peace and freedom. .”
“That’s not what Drakosta says.” I’m twelve, Drakis thought as he heard his young self speak. That young boy was me. Drakosta was still alive then and would not be beaten to death by Timuran for two years yet. “He says that it’s all a story someone made up.”
“Well that’s not what Mom says,” Polis answered back, sweat pouring from his forehead. “It’s north-in Vestasia maybe-beyond a sea of water and even a sea of sand. That’s where we’re going, Drak. . you and me together. No one will ever make us work again. You wait and see.”
I had a brother, Polis. Which brother was that? And was that our mother who told those tales or was it someone we only thought was our mother because the elves always tried to make us believe we were in families even when our parents were dead, when several sets of parents were dead and our memories of each were successive lies. .
“Drakis! What is it?”
Drakis shook himself back into the present. Mala stood in front of him. The soft tune continued to play.
“Come on,” he said as he turned toward the tall arched doors of translucent glass and pushed them open with a violent shove.
The room beyond was a small, circular garden enclosed by a glass dome overhead. A fountain murmured in the center of the garden, whose appearance mildly shocked Drakis as it was identical to the one he remembered being in the glade just before his thoughts faded.
“This is it,” Drakis said. “This is where you brought me when you found me in the Hyperian Woods.”
Mala cocked her head, her eyes narrowing above her cheekbones. “What are you talking about? I couldn’t find you in the woods. .”