Eyes in the Water Page 12

  “What do we do?” Brenol asked.

  Arman exhaled, returning the hos to Brenol’s palm. “We have the umbus look at it. And hope they have answers.”

  The juile’s tone did not instill confidence. Brenol stashed the hos back in his pocket. “What are you thinking about?”

  “More than I care to admit,” Arman replied reluctantly.

  Brenol frowned. “Arman. You can talk to me.”

  Arman studied the man before him. Brenol was clearly exhausted. His frame leaned forward like a tree weathering a heavy storm, and his hair was disheveled and dirty. His clothing hung loosely from hard use and smelled sharply of travel and sweat and campfire. The expression underlying his fatigue, though, was full of power and purpose. His eyes were focused and clear and set firmly within his somber face. The juile smiled, though Brenol could not see it.

  Suddenly, Arman rang with decision. I will tell Bren. I will tell him about the black fev—

  “Oh! I nearly forgot,” Brenol said, interrupting Arman’s near-resolution. He bent to his pack and pilfered through until he located Darse’s item. He stood and again extended out his hand to the juile.

  Arman tensed at the sight of the jekob nut resting in Brenol’s palm. It drew him back to a memory he did not care to relive, even if it had brought bounty in the end. He eased a breath through his lungs to steady himself and wished he had granted his weary body the mercy of more than a few hours of sleep. He flicked his fingers out in surrender and drove his mind beyond his present discomfort.

  “Buying wares from Caladia?” he finally asked. He stretched his arm out but paused and hovered over Brenol’s hand, as if undecided whether to touch the smooth nut or not.

  Brenol shook his head. A strand of copper escaped its band, and he pushed it behind his ear with an indifferent flick. “No. Darse brought it. Arista sent it to you.”

  Arman’s expression turned austere. “Did he say why?”

  “Not a word. He thought it was fairly important, though. Just unsure why she hadn’t sent it as seal if she’d needed it to get to you quickly. I was left with the sense that the whole thing was a bit strange.”

  “Indeed.”

  Indecision ended, and the scarlet nut disappeared into the juile’s possession. Brenol’s palm returned to his side, and his fingers resumed their silent tapping. The sharp crack of shell splintered the air, and he stopped. Soon a shower of strawberry-hued chunks fell to the white floor. Brenol leaned forward in curiosity and raised his brow at the distinct sound of paper being rolled open.

  “Everything ok, Arman?” Brenol asked the empty room. “There’s a note?”

  Arman’s voice was tight and sharp. “Do not speak of this message to anyone.”

  Hastily, the juile stepped sideways to the lantern. He extended the small paper until it kissed the tiny flame and curled in a soft amber. The remaining ash flittered to the floor.

  “Arman?”

  The juile softened his tone, but imperativeness still edged his speech. “Arista saw something disturbing she wanted to tell me about… I think it may be a piece to something I have been pondering.”

  Three help us, Arman thought, again unsure if he ought to tell Brenol.

  “Why the secrecy?” Brenol asked. “Does it have to do with the poisons?”

  Arman wanted to laugh, more due to pain than mirth. “I wish it did, Bren. I wish it did.”

  CHAPTER 8

  The world shall grow cold, and ice will slowly creep over all.

  -Genesifin

  It took two days for Darse and Colette to bury them all, and the labor was brutally hard. Dirt and death clung to their bodies, clothes, and nostrils. Their fingernails chipped, and their muscles ached from both the exertion and the chill. It was hellish, yet purpose drove them.

  Colette did not speak, but Darse observed her attentively. She was different, and not a soul could deny it. She housed a fire within where Darse before had only seen vacancy, pain, and hatred, and with each cadaver laid to rest, the flames grew steadier and stronger. So despite every urge he experienced to rush to Brenol, Darse could not begrudge either woman or maralane this needed task. Brenol would have to wait, or accomplish his work without them. The young man was capable—Darse knew this down to his bones—but to leave such weight on one man’s shoulders was not ideal.

  After they had completed the burials on the second day, they separated to bathe in Ziel. Darse ventured west several paces while Colette meandered down into a thick stand of trees. She scanned the area, stripped off her filthy clothing, and scampered in a huddle out to the water. Her dark hair fell over her shivering body like a blanket, and her arms hugged her small frame to help conceal its remaining nakedness. She lowered in and jerked her way out to the deep, skin dancing with pins and needles.

  The sharpness of the water did not diminish, yet its cutting freeze held an unforeseen relish. It smarted and awakened without subtlety, and it seemed an appropriate dovetail to finding the maralane. She smiled wryly and clamped down her chattering jaw. With determination, she inhaled and dipped beneath the surface to wash soil and scale from her hair and face. Despite the water’s sting, some tickling instinct pressed her to open her eyes. Her body shot back a hand span in the jolting realization that she was being watched.

  A maralane peered at her from not more than two arm lengths away. It was only a fish-child, but the princess’s heart still thundered with adrenaline as she stared back with wide eyes. She keenly felt her vulnerability and nakedness.

  The child held up a small hand—in greeting or assurance, Colette was left to guess. Yet it was not the motion but the girl herself that disarmed Colette. She was gorgeous. Her braids crowned her head in ivory and green, and her large almond eyes were a soft amber. Her tails came out in a fanfare of flowing beauty, and her scales glistened black and gray. The girl’s gentle gaze spoke of both simplicity and intellect, and she occasionally flicked her tails to remain stationary in Ziel’s undercurrents.

  Colette did not want to move. She remained under until her lungs heaved and smarted and her vision clouded with spots, but she was finally forced to kick her way to the surface. As she gasped in air, a small webbed hand squeezed hers. It was surprisingly warm but as smooth as polished marble.

  When the maralane did not surface, she ducked under again. The maralane smiled affectionately, and the lunitata was confounded. The maralane people were markedly disinterested in the upper-world, and to behave like this was far from characteristic.

  She drew close to Colette’s ear and whispered—her voice astonishingly clear in the water—“Thank you. Thank you for burying them. My family.”

  Death has melted their hardness too.

  Colette squeezed the maralane’s hand and granted a small dip of her head in the icy water. It was lacking, but her only way to reply.

  She rose to breathe once more, then dove back under to meet the girl.

  The child suddenly opened her mouth in a morose and bitter expression. “It wasn’t just the poison,” she said quietly. She leaned in to whisper in Colette’s ear. “Please remember us.”

  The words seeped into Colette, and sorrow stabbed at her with the unforgiving fierceness of a blade. As the webbed fingers caressed Colette’s frozen hand, she fought to choke down sobs that could never issue out in the water. She felt deadened to all her previous nuresti troubles in the wake of such anguish over the lake-people.

  Seeing the human’s grief, the maralane bent her young face forward to kiss the lunitata’s cheek, and then hand, with tender lips. The kisses were lighter than a fairy’s touch, but they made Colette’s insides weak with mourning. The child wistfully released her and brushed away, tails gracefully trailing. She was lost within the water’s darkness in moments.

  Colette emerged choking, like a babe seeking its first gasping breath, and forced her body to the shallows. She stood dripping and bare as the wind met her icy limbs but stared unblinking into the misty air, still removed from the concrete. Finally, s
he brushed the water off her face and stalked from the waters into the silence of the pressing wood.

  ~

  There were several more days of travel ahead of Darse and Colette, but the journey proved to be less taxing for both. Colette was a new woman. She did not speak much, but she shone with light, her head held erect and posture aright. The hunched figure full of hate was no more, although she still appeared to be tortured by some unnamed agony. Darse could not discern the ailment, but at least he could breathe easier knowing she was coming back to life.

  The two followed the mountainous paths around Ziel and by the second day had reached the eastern lugazzi territory beneath Brovingbune. A plateau spread before them as flat as a plate, and they tramped across its surface of waving, knee-high yellow grasses. The sun glinted brightly in their eyes but was not unpleasant, and the wind tugged at their clothing and toyed with the swaying reeds. A song of some unseen bird rippled through the air. Darse did not want to breathe lest he disturb the dense beauty of the moment. He drank each element in as though parched.

  Despite all efforts to seal himself in the experience, he spied Colette casting a strange look upon him. He waited and feigned ignorance, but the glace came again.

  She finally spoke. “Darse?”

  The idyllic beauty seemed to cower back and hide at the intrusion of words. He wished he could hoard it up in his arms. He sighed quietly; solace was so fleeting.

  “Yes?” Darse responded.

  “Why do you choose to live in Granoile?”

  Something lay hidden in her voice that Darse could not pinpoint. He looked at her curiously. Her eyes were clear but stoic. He rubbed his hands together as he realized that the inquiry elicited annoyance within him. Many unsettling questions ushered in with it.

  Why should I care what she thinks?

  He responded flatly but not unkindly. “I like the frawnish. They’re an interesting people.”

  “That was not what I meant.”

  Darse sighed, perturbed by the bizarre sensitivity he felt at her probing. “What is it, Colette?”

  “I meant…” Her emerald eyes met his and held him with a strange power. “Why do you separate yourself here?”

  Oh.

  If she had elbowed him solidly in the gut it would not have been as painful.

  “They will never accept you as their own,” she continued, although the man’s eyes now drifted off into the sea of flowing gold. “Nor,” she added, “do I really think you want them to…”

  Darse lidded his eyes and felt his face burn at her words. Insight into the world around him had left him blind to his own blundering person. His tongue refused to move, so he pressed forward silently, wondering when his insides would solidify again.

  Colette reached sideways to squeeze his hand. They walked with hands folded together for several minutes. He seemed to grow easier with the gentle consolation of her touch, even if he refused to reply. Colette allowed the peace to ease back in between them.

  She finally spoke, hesitantly, but with tenderness, “I’ve seen the manner in which you gaze at my mother.”

  Darse forced his feet to maintain movement although his legs suddenly felt stiff and numb. His face flushed yet again, now to a deep crimson, and his heart thundered terribly in his eardrums. His reaction left little doubt as to the accuracy of her statement—for either of them.

  “Darse?” Colette’s voice was pleading and soft. “I’ve seen the way she looks at you too.”

  The man could not feign indifference, even his weak attempt at it, any longer. He halted and released her hand. “She has no affection for an old man spit from the portals,” he said coldly. “It doesn’t matter that I was born here. I’m still foreign.”

  Colette smiled and tilted her head forward with raised brows. “She shares a roof with foreignness. She’s lived with a nurest, a keeper—whatever it is that I am. But she has lost too much. She needs love, Darse.”

  Darse remained silent.

  “I don’t think it’s as complicated as you believe,” she added tenderly.

  His thoughts raced and returned to the same fact that forever haunted him, that refused to dislodge from the tracts of his mind. He harbored dread at what the words would bring but suddenly found his fears tumbling forth from his mouth regardless. “The black fever,” he whispered hoarsely. “The icar. I am cursed. My name and line are nothing but a blight upon this world.” Darse’s gold eyes grew fierce. “I see the glances. I know their meaning. I am a torment. They wish me away because I remind them of the fever. I only bring fear.”

  He allowed his pack to slide from his shoulders to the swaying grasses. It thudded softly, and he raised his hands to cup his face. His chest caved inward in weariness. Massada had helped him in so many ways, but too long had the weight of his past burrowed into his soul. He suddenly felt pocked by its devouring darkness.

  The lunitata tugged both hands gently from his features and held them tightly in her own. “You were but a baby. How could you be the cause of this plague?” She shook her head in negation, and her light cast shimmers like a pocket mirror scattering the sun’s reflection. “Wherever this started, it certainly was not with you.”

  And it will not end with him either. The eerie voice of premonition resounded in her ears and shook her down to her bones. She cowered back from the voice—too real, too dark—but maintained a firm grasp on Darse’s large hands.

  The man looked back at the princess, unaware of her ruminations. He feared his voice would crack, but when he spoke he found it merely small. “I… You would have me?”

  Colette laughed, dispelling the quivering dread that tickled her insides. “You have any doubt?”

  He responded with a morose half-smile. She met his gaze seriously. “I would have you as a father. I would have you for my mother. And I would not simply permit it. I desire it… And ask it.”

  Darse marveled at the strong woman before him. Her face was engraved with power and decision and bursting with light. She was not the creature who had left Veronia with soul bent and heart wrought. Colette was alive.

  Abruptly, Colette dropped to her belly before him and burrowed her head in the ground in marked humility. She drew her index and middle fingers to her lips, kissed them, and with a graceful sweep touched them to his foot like a butterfly lighting between blossoms. The hand then retracted the space of three digits and lay palm open before him. Her prostrate form remained motionless, save the dark tresses that swept as one with the whipping yellow grasses around her.

  Darse had never been the recipient of the crushing pardon before, but he had seen it. It was not a common spectacle, and it drew sharp inhales when it did occur. The surrounding crowd would watch rapt as the procumbent Massadan awaited either forgiveness or a crushing blow. He had seen both, and the memory of the vulnerable hand breaking beneath the fury of a boot had left him cringing for seasons. And now Colette offered the same eloquent apology for a grave wrongdoing, and his acceptance was a free choice.

  Darse knelt immediately and scooped up her hand—cool from the wind and soil—and raised her up. He cupped her cheek in his palm and found his heart churning in confusion. “You’ve done me no wrong.”

  “I have, I have.” Her eyes streamed with remorse, but she kept her face up with a simple dignity. “I’ve been deadened by anger and greed and hatred. And my selfishness is a burden too heavy for me to endure.”

  He nodded, understanding. The weight of one’s own choices could drown a soul. “But you have done nothing to me.”

  Her gaze remained straight and focused. “I know it doesn’t make sense entirely, but you saved me from Jerem. At great personal cost, too… And I waited too long to truly accept the gift of life.”

  Darse sighed softly. “I do not think you owe me anything, Colette. Truly. But I give you what you ask. I’d never withhold forgiveness from you.”

  “Your mercy is my bounty,” she replied.

  He labored to his feet and offered her his hand. She
took it easily and lithely drew herself aright, brushing blades of gold from her blue attire.

  “Let’s not speak of these things again,” he said.

  She assented with a graceful movement of her chin, and in the tilt, Darse could see that he need not have made such a request; the woman before him was far too regal and composed to dwell on the past any longer. She had made amends—more with herself than with any other—and would not trouble herself with guilt and tail dragging. Even now, she was forging ahead with a blazing heart.

  They continued on, pausing briefly for refreshment at a stream, and then strode together in silence until the shadows fell long. They made camp, settled before a golden brazier, and sat with hands laced together to watch the stars and moons emerge.

  ~

  Colette awoke gently. She opened her eyes, for a moment disoriented as to where she was, and soon found her mind align. She breathed in softly. Darse lay about a stride away, deep in slumber. The simple clearing was cool with night, and the fire had long ago died. The stars twinkled lightly, and the sky seemed to extend out eternally.

  Colette remained quiet and unmoving. The reality of the passing of the maralane ached in every recess of her soul, but she rested and allowed the sorrow to simply be. She felt peaceful and was glad she had not spoken of her underwater encounter to Darse. She wanted a few moments to let the grief air in her.

  But yes, I will tell Bren when we arrive. Her memory tugged her back to the delicate, graceful hand, the girl’s kiss upon her cheek. A silent tear slid down her face. He will understand.

  Darse stirred and shifted in his blankets, and as though the sound were a trigger, she felt the greed for the nuresti connection slowly creep into her.

  No, she panicked. It can’t be. I can’t want these things after seeing the maralane. After knowing their fate. I can’t.

  Yet her body refused to relent. Her blood burned hot, and her skin slicked to a sheen. “Get the antidote,” the addiction within ordered. “No one else needs it like Veronia. Get it.”