CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE | Dalk
Iwondered if this was how Ark moved through the world now that his eyes had been damaged. I walked as if through mist, nothing seeming real or solid as I got into the shuttle with Valeria and Grim.
She and Grim were largely silent as the craft ascended. I was silent, too, the dull blade of grief chipping away at me in messy strokes when I thought of Taraken.
It sharpened when I thought of Fiona.
I would never, in all my life, forget the way she’d looked at me, crying her human tears for me, asking to come with me mere moments after she’d tried to pull herself out of reach. So terribly tender-hearted she was.
But not so tender-hearted that she would not hurt me.
She still wanted me. She’d said that much, at least. But she’d also said many other things. About how she would not leave her friends. About how she would not let me kill the one meant to be her mate.
About how she feared that we were running headlong into ruin.
She said she did not know how to go on. She did not know how to be with me without the security of the mate bond. It did not matter to her that I already felt that bond, felt it hard inside me, potent as blood and enduring as bone.
She would not have me if the Lavrika did not call me. And she would not have me if the Lavrika called me for someone else.
She was all I wanted and it did not seem to be enough.
My fist slammed into the floor of the shuttle. I gritted my teeth, enjoying the distracting thrum of pain and the metal-bang sound it had made. Valeria and Grim looked at each other, but they said nothing.
Slowly, I relaxed my hand from the aching fist, grasping my spear and squeezing it. I’d told Fiona that I needed to go back into the Sea Sands alone. But here I was, dragging her with me inside my own head and making myself all the more miserable for it.
My uncle was owed better. He was owed better than a nephew so stuffed with longing that there was no more room inside left for anything else.
Even now, as I tried to think of what Taraken’s death might mean, the swallowing sorrow of it, it felt dismal and distant. Like a far-off point blurred on the horizon, beyond the ripping agony of Fiona, the cut of having her so cursedly close, only to feel myself begin to lose her.
I have lost two people tonight.
Perhaps only one of them was ever mine at all.
The shuttle made short work of what would have been a days-long journey, and it was just before dawn that we landed at the settlement in the Sea Sands. At first this confused me, until it was explained that Taraken had been brought out of Gahn Fallo’s territory to see the healers at the settlement. It hadn’t done any good, though. He had suffered a great wound, gored by a dakrival while hunting, and no amount of Lavrika’s blood or medicine from the new women had been able to keep the killing fever away.
All of this was told to me by Gahnala Chapman, the fire-haired leader of the new women at this settlement and mate to my Gahn. She led me into a new enclosure that must have been built after I’d left. Instead of a tent resting directly upon the sand, it was raised up high, requiring one to step up onto a babkit-wood platform that formed the smooth floor of the large, flat-topped, hide-walled enclosure.
I froze upon entering the strange structure, my claws digging into the wood beneath my feet. Taraken was there, resting on a bed of hides in the centre of the room. There were odd contraptions belonging to the new women littering the space, presumably meant for healing, but none of them seemed to be in use. They had all been pushed off to the sides, nearer the walls, as if silently acknowledging that even their otherworldly powers would be of no use to my uncle now.
“We’ve got him very comfortable,” Gahnala Chapman said. “Our painkillers work pretty well for you guys, it turns out.”
I was not certain what a painkiller was, but I was glad that Taraken was not suffering. He did not even seem to be fully asleep. At the sound of Chapman’s voice, his head turned slowly towards us and he opened his eyes.
“Osho,” he croaked. And it nearly felled me. That single word. My dying uncle calling me by his brother’s name. Mistaking me for my own father.
“It’s the fever. And the painkillers,” Chapman said quietly. “They can cause some confusion. He’s had some lucid moments, though.” Her grey and black sight stars lingered on Taraken, then returned to me. “I’ll give you two some privacy.”
I jerked my tail in agreement, and she left, her flat foot-shells scuffing across the new wooden floor and then hitting the sand outside with a soft thud. Alone with my uncle, I finally advanced, sitting down beside him where he could easily see me.
“Not Osho,” I said. “His son. Dalk.”
Taraken’s sight stars shifted sluggishly.
“Dalk,” he said, as if tasting the sound. The taste must have been familiar to him, because there was recognition in his weary expression. “It has been too long, boy.”
“I’m not a boy,” I gruffly reminded him. It was an exchange we’d had many times. It hurt to have it now, when it would likely be the last. “There was business in the Deep Sky.”
“Such important... business,” he said, his breathing laboured. “When Gahn Fallo... said he would have you back... at any time...”
I shifted slightly, remembering Fiona telling me something very similar. That if I wanted a reprieve, Gahn Fallo would likely let me come back here and send someone else in my stead. That I had no real reason to stay in the Deep Sky.
“Not just business,” I acknowledged and not without some bitterness. “A woman.”
Taraken’s sight stars, which had always been so keen, even into his elder years, looked milky now with age and fever. They pulsed so weakly.
“A woman,” he asked on a rattling gasp. “Pretty?”
“So pretty that I seem to lose all sense around her.”
He tried to laugh, but it came out as a husky whistle.
“Yes, go ahead and laugh,” I told him grimly even while I felt a flood of affection for him. “The Lavrika has not summoned me and I yearn for someone who may not even be mine.”
“I... understand.”
I gawked at him, wondering if this was some trick of the new women’s medicine. Taraken had never had a mate. And he’d never talked about loving a woman, either.
“You understand?” I asked slowly. “You understand what it’s like to want someone so completely you feel like you will merely... merely fall apart and cease existing if you cannot have her? You understand what it is like to tell her, to her face, that if the Lavrika called another man for her then you would gut him before he could even try to claim her?”
There was no confusion, no hesitation in his reply.
“Yes,” he said. “Though that would have meant... killing my own brother. And that... I would have never... done.”
I frowned at him for a moment, wondering if he’d lost track of the conversation. He’d called me by his brother’s name, after all. Maybe that was stuck in his mind for some reason.
But he looked at me and he saw me as Dalk. And all at once I knew just what he meant.
“My mother,” I said, feeling strangely dizzy even though I was not standing. “You... You loved her?”
“Yes. Still... do. For this day... And all days.”
Stricken, I stared at him, my mind’s eye running over my life with stark new understanding. All those times Taraken had helped my mother, had helped me. All those times he had made sure we were safe and fed after the death of my father, when I’d thought he was merely doing an uncle’s duty, or the duty of a man to his dead brother’s wife. All those times he’d made me stay up late so I could learn to mend my own things so that my mother would not have to. All those times when he was furiously angry with me because I’d done something to disrespect or displease her.
All those times he’d warned me about jealousy. About the way it would kill a man even where he stood.
“Did you ever tell her?” Even as I asked the question I knew he hadn’t. He was too much like me. Too content to shove down his feelings until they were hot and hard as embers in his guts. Even I might have never told Fiona what I wanted, what I felt, if she had not managed to drag it out of me.
My mother had not been the dragging type. She was not stubborn. She was not loud. She was quiet. Gentle. And it suddenly hurt me very badly, to think of her without my father, and to think of Taraken without her, the two of them bleeding invisible pain out of their bodies where the other could not see.
Taraken was more like a father to me than Osho had been, him having died when I was so young. So there was no feeling of betrayal at Taraken’s revelation. I did not feel disgusted, or that he had done something wrong by loving my mother, his brother’s mate. I felt only the ghostly bruise of regret at the fact that a man could be strong and good and worthy and still not get what he wanted most. Could still not get what he deserved.
“No,” he said, answering my question with a wheezing breath. “Never... told her. Think... that is why the Lavrika... never came for me. There could be no mate bond for another... beyond what... I already felt...”
His sight stars grew suddenly forceful, nearly as clear as I’d seen them last, when he was fit and healthy. He seized my wrist in a powerful grip.
“Do not be like me, boy,” he hissed urgently. “If you want a chance... at a mate... you must forget her. Do not... let the Lavrika pass you by... because you are busy... loving... someone else. Forget her!”
I placed my hand over top of his where he held my arm.
“Could you have forgotten her?” I asked him softly. His grip went suddenly slack, his sight stars dispersing with weary pain.
“No.” He looked away from me, up toward the ceiling of the tent. “Sometimes... when the sun rises... I still expect... to hear her greet me. To hear her... say my name.” He returned his gaze to me, and he smiled, but the smile was very tired. “If you... cannot forget her... there is... only one thing for it.”
“And what is that?” I asked, wary but hopeful he might actually have some advice that could help me.
“If you... cannot forget her... then you must... love her. Love her... this day... all days... even if it hurts.”