13. Khiann
KHIANN
The first thing he did when he opened his eyes was to check whether she was still there. Sometimes he just listened with his eyes still closed because she often told him stories even while he slept, and those stories were wonderful.
Annani.
He knew her name now. Annani. Daughter of Ahn and Nai. She had repeated it enough times for him to remember, despite how scattered his mind felt. It was still difficult to hold on to a complete thought, to follow it from start to finish before it dissipated like smoke on the wind.
The names of her parents, which she said with such gravity, were supposed to mean something to him, but he did not know who Ahn or Nai were. He was just glad he managed to retain the names in his fragmented mind from one waking to the next.
Annani was looking at him. "There you are, my love."
She always said that. Always called him her love, and he liked it, even though he did not know why she called him that. He was supposed to know, but he did not.
He wanted to say something to her, to thank her for her vigil and to ask why, but his throat refused to cooperate. It had scared him at first, but Annani had promised him it was temporary and that he would be able to talk once he got better.
Better from what?
Had he fallen sick, or had he been severely injured?
Annani had said something about stasis, but he did not know what it meant.
He did not know who or what he was, but he had the sense that his body should be doing better than it was. That it should heal rapidly and not at this agonizingly slow pace.
Then he thought of something that he was not sure would work, but he needed to try.
He raised his eyebrows.
The small movement took an absurd amount of effort, but he made it happen, which was not the case with his throat and his hands. He had enough strength in his fingers to squeeze Annani's hand in response to her questions, but he couldn't do much more than that.
Annani's beautiful eyes widened. "Did you just raise your brows on purpose?"
She was still holding his hand, so answering her was easy. He gave her fingers one squeeze.
"Do that again," she said. "Lift your eyebrows. Or just one. That will be enough."
He did it again with both because, for some reason, it was easier than isolating just one.
Then he lowered them, pulled them together into a frown, which was less difficult than raising them, held that for a moment, and then released it.
Annani let go of his hand and clapped in glee. "This is wonderful. I thought I saw you smiling earlier today, but I was not sure. Now I know that you actually smiled at me. Can you do it again?"
He felt the muscle move on the left and not on the right, and then the right came along after it.
Was he smiling?
Given Annani's response, he was.
She started laughing, and the sound was so beautiful that Khiann felt the tingling all the way down to his toes.
"That is the worst and most beautiful smile I have seen in the last five thousand years." She clasped his hand once more. "Do it again."
He repeated the smile.
Five thousand years.
She had given him the number that morning. He had understood the words, but the meaning escaped him.
He knew what a year was. There was summer and winter, a rainy season and a hot season, a season to plant and a season to harvest. He could imagine ten of them, even a hundred, but five thousand?
The meaning refused to take hold in his mind. It slid off him the same way his name had the first five or ten times he had heard it.
He knew a lot of time had passed because he did not recognize anything in this world, or rather this room, which was his only window to the world.
Light came from panels set into the ceiling, and he could hear his heartbeat amplified by some kind of device behind him.
Whoever had made the light and the devices had not been born in the same world Khiann had lived in.
He wished he could ask Annani where he was, or rather when, and what had happened to him, but his mouth did not produce sounds other than his breathing.
He was locked inside his unresponsive body, aching, confused, and lonely.
"Someone is here to see you," she said.
His heart started beating faster. He had asked her not to bring her son to see him, the one whom she called Kian. He could not face the male the way he was.
"It is Esag," she hurried to add, probably guessing where his mind had gone.
She had told him about Esag that morning.
He had been his squire and closest friend.
She had told him about the things he and Esag had done as young males, but it was all stories that had happened to someone else who might have been wearing Khiann's skin because the Khiann lying in this bed had no memories of any of that.
He now had a great deal of information. He knew his name was Khiann and his father's was Navohn, his mother's Yaeni.
He knew that the exquisite beauty sitting in the rocking chair next to his bed was Annani, daughter of Ahn and Nai.
He could recite this list of facts, but he could not grasp their meaning.
Was Esag going to add to the list of facts Khiann needed to remember?
He was not looking forward to seeing this friend's face crumble when the male realized that he did not remember him.
"He has been waiting to see you." Annani turned and waved her hand. "Esag, Khiann is awake. Come say hello to your old friend."
He heard footsteps approaching, and then a male with a shock of red curls entered his line of sight.
He was tall and handsome, with the most incredible blue eyes, almost turquoise, like the shade of the sea over white sand. The red of his hair was not the flaming magnificence of Annani's, though. His was darker, curlier, and it fell forward over his forehead.
The male looked at him for a long moment. "You look terrible, Khiann."
That observation was not surprising. His body was one big ache. What was surprising was that this male, who was supposed to be his best friend, was insulting him.
"I mean it," Esag said. "You look like something they pulled out of a river.
" He walked away and returned a moment later with a white chair, set it down next to the bed, and sat on it backward, with his arms folded across the backrest, which put him lower than the bed and lower than Annani in her rocking chair.
"I've seen you look bad before, but this is a personal best."
"Esag," Annani said in an admonishing tone.
He turned to her. "I promised Khiann a very long time ago that I would always tell him the truth even if that truth was ugly." Esag returned his smiling eyes to Khiann's face. "Do you remember that?"
Khiann looked at those distinctive eyes and that unruly hair and searched for a flicker of a memory, but there was nothing.
"Do not stress," Esag said. "It will come back to you, and if it does not, I can tell you everything there is to know about you. We practically grew up together."
He started talking.
He talked about them flirting with girls in a tavern with wooden tables, and Annani laughed instead of being upset, which was endearing. He talked about long caravans to faraway places and the adventures they had shared.
The stories were so incredible that he suspected Esag was making most of it up, but he still envied the male he had been for having lived through whatever portion of it was real.
Then Esag stopped in the middle of a story about a tunic.
"This isn't working," he said. "You don't remember any of it, and I feel like a fool for prattling on."
"He enjoys hearing your stories, Esag," Annani said.
Khiann squeezed her hand.
"See?" She lifted their conjoined hands. "He squeezed my fingers, which is what we agreed means yes. He did that after I said he enjoyed hearing your stories."
Esag shifted on the chair. "Perhaps I should tell him about myself." He leaned his chin on his folded arms.
"I was promised to a girl named Ashegan," he said. "My father arranged it when I was five because her father was in metals and doing well, and my sisters' prospects for finding good matches depended on my union with the nasty Ashegan."
Khiann kept watching this male who claimed to be his best friend.
"She gossiped about everyone, never having a single kind word to say about anyone.
It does not sound so bad when I hear myself say it, but it was.
She talked from the moment she saw me until the moment I left, without ever asking my opinion about anything.
If I tried to insert a word in between hers, she took offense and cried.
Eventually, I realized I could simply nod at intervals, and she would never notice. "
Khiann shifted his eyes to Annani, and she nodded. "I know the story. That was the way things were back then. Family came first unless you found your truelove mate. That superseded everything."
"I loved Gulan," Esag said. "But she was not my truelove mate.
I know that now, but back then I was not sure.
I handled it about as badly as possible, which is a particular talent of mine, and I broke Gulan's heart.
I paid for it by carrying enormous guilt for five thousand years, not knowing what happened to her and assuming that she was lost along with everyone else I cared about.
I didn't know that by making her run away, I saved her life. "
Khiann wanted to ask what happened to all the people Esag cared about. Where had they gone? But he could not ask anything. All he could do was answer yes or no by squeezing Annani's fingers.
He felt for Esag, and it was not only sorrow for all he had lost. He liked the male, his directness, his truthfulness. There was a sense of affinity which explained why they had been best friends.
Khiann found the muscles in his face, the ones he had only now discovered, and he lifted the corners of his mouth.
Esag stopped talking.
He just looked at Khiann's mouth, and then his eyes started glowing.
"He's smiling at me," Esag said. "Fates. Look at that."
"It is a terrible smile," Annani said. "But it is beautiful."
"Do it again, you miserable specimen, and I'll tell you what your first curse word was and what your mother said when she heard you say it."
Khiann did it again.
"Donkey dung," Esag said. "Your mother said that you should say droppings, as befitting your pureblooded status, but you kept saying donkey dung like the merchant's son you were."
Khiann had no idea what any of that meant, but he kept smiling because it made Esag and Annani happy.