He closed the book and set it down reverently upon the small table beside his cot, drawing the blanket up over his bare chest.
He could smell the sickness in the airless room.
His mind raced with thoughts he could barely follow through the delirium sweats.
Why was this book so precious to Blodyweth?
Why would the monk refuse to surrender it, to the point of it costing his life?
Why should the fate of kingdoms rest upon it when only the most learned could hope to read more than a single line of its supposed wisdom?
That posed another question: was it in fact a grimoire? Were those words he could not read in truth incantations scribed in the secret tongue of witchcraft?
As Alymere felt fresh beads of perspiration trickle down the too-smooth side of his face, he made a vow: if he had not learned its secrets before his two years and a day of servitude with Sir Lowick were at an end, he would bring the book with him to Camelot and present it to the king's mage, Merlin, along with the story of the maiden, the Summervale in the heart of the winter forest, the burning monastery and its blind guardians. If the book contained even a trace of magic, for good or ill, surely Merlin would know.
But until that day he would devote himself to learning its secrets. If nothing else, it would give him something to live for.
That night, in the depths of his fever dreams, he heard a haunting melody calling to him, and found himself dreaming of trees and the hunt, chasing a cloven-hoofed piper deeper and deeper into the darkness.
And whilst he tossed and turned in the grip of the dream, the black crow perched upon his windowsill, watching over him.
Twenty-Eight
Alymere drifted in and out of consciousness. His dreams were the worst of it, for in them he wore the face of a monster. His imagination defined him. He ceased to be the young aspirant and became the beast; the cloven-hoofed piper with wild hair and mischievous eyes. He tossed and turned, fever-sweats soaking his outline into the mattress and sheets beneath him. Light played tricks on his mind. There was a single mullioned window in his sick room, and as the sun moved across the sky it conjured the shadowy bars of a gaol all around him.
He was in no doubt that he ought to have died. As it was, he was far from assured of surviving his injuries. The first few weeks were excruciating, but he welcomed the pain, as it proved he was still alive. These bed-bound days were his transformation, the raw pink scar tissue his cocoon. When this agonising gestation was over, when the fevers finally broke and the pain subsided, he would be born into a second life. And, in the madness of delirium, he swore it would be glorious. He welcomed that rebirth, knowing he would be stronger for it, more vital, for he had walked into the very pit of Hell and emerged bearing the Devil's scars, marked but not beaten.
Mildew grew in the corner of his room, masking the smell of his sickness.
His uncle visited daily, sometimes hourly, during the worst of it, but he was not Alymere's only visitor. The woman, Gwen, came to him often, mopping his brow with a wet rag as she tried to take the sting out of the fever. He did not recognise her at first, thinking her an angel. As she took on a more earthly form, plainer and yet more divine for the hard-won creases of life worn into her face, he found himself remembering fragments, splinters of the days leading up to the fire. He saw himself emerging from the burning hovel and his nurse taking the babe from his arms. She was no great beauty, neither was she some reckless girl. She was his saviour. And he tried to tell her so, but the words wouldn't come. His voice cracked, so easily betraying him that it was easier to stay silent.
And always, when she finished pressing the cold wet rag against his brow she brushed his hair away from his eyes and leant down to tenderly kiss the smooth skin between his left eyebrow and the denuded arch where his right had been.
He could not feel it.
That was the bitterest crime of his new body; it robbed him of even the simplest pleasures.
Still, he closed his eyes, as though savouring this one moment of compassion. He closed his eyes not through any rush of feelings, but rather through fear that he might see his own ruined face reflected back at him in her eyes.
And so it went on, day and night, with no sign of his fever breaking or his strength returning.
What came was hunger; deep, gnawing, stabbing, spearing hunger pains. He could not bear to eat, and what he took in he could not hold down. So every mouthful of food, every morsel Alymere tried to digest, caused his stomach to cramp and shooting pains to twist his gut until he vomited it back up. The woman tried broth, but it was no better. The strings of meat and lumps of potato were too much for him. So, in the depths of his delirium she fed him not food, but water. As he shivered and convulsed beneath the piss-stinking blankets, she dripped water from the rag she mopped his brow with onto his tongue, knowing that even a mouthful would send his body into rebellion. Just a few drops at a time, never enough to quench his thirst, but enough, she prayed, to keep him alive.
When he was alone he turned again to the book, clutching it to his bare chest so that his sweat might seep into the skin that bound it, finding another way to bring them closer together. He felt the ridge of its spine against his left side, resting on his ribs. He felt nothing on his right. As he breathed he felt his breaths echoed in the book, as though it breathed with him, augmenting his strength with its own.
But he could still not read more than that first line.
At the height of the sickness, when surely his body was too frail to make it through until dawn, Gwen slipped naked beneath the blanket and pressed up against him. He could not feel her there at first, pressed up against his burned side, but as she moved against him she sighed and he felt her breath on the unburned skin of his neck. She raised her leg over his so that they touched from hip to toe. "Is this what you want?" she whispered in his ear. He turned, moving in to her. She was so cold against his hideous heat. In the near-dark he saw for the first time that she had flecks of yellow in her eyes. It made it seem as though a fire burned within her, too.
He reached out to touch her with his right hand, but felt nothing as his palm rested on her cheek; the skin dead where it had been torn away and fused with the infernal book. The fever tormented his mind. Through his one good eye he saw not Gwen, with her well-worn face and her sad smile, but Blodyweth in all of her radiant beauty. He gave himself to her, welcoming her like death, sure in the knowledge that this night was to be his last and that all of his pains would end here, in this bed, in the arms of the maiden who haunted his dreams. If this was love, he welcomed it. If it was not, he would cherish it still, for he had felt nothing like it in his short life.
On the window ledge the watching crow unfurled its wings and cawed raucously. The silver moon threw the shadow of its wings across the wall behind the bed, and as she straddled him, taking what should have been the last of his life into her, the four of them joined — Alymere the Burned, the beautiful maiden of the Summervale, the woman who now wore her face, and the crow — and when release came, so too did rebirth.
His fever broke within their communion and as he fell back, spent, her fingernails digging deep into the scars of his chest, she knew he would live, inside her and out.