Chapter 11 #2
Artair finished the pastry—with liberal help from Cruncher-of-human-bones—then ate another, followed by three apples and a thick wedge of hard cheese.
He was drinking a cup of water from the stream when he realized that his eyelids were drooping and although Elver had been talking, he hadn’t heard a word of it.
He jerked upright, his heart racing. Elver blinked at him.
‘What’s bit you on the arse?’
‘I was nearly asleep!’ He stood up, startling the cub, who had been lightly dozing on his foot.
In this place, in this moment, I am safe.
The Other is contained. He cast around for the ropes and gathered them up before holding them out to the monster girl.
‘Please, quickly. Bind my wrists and ankles as you did before, and then run a rope from me to that tree there.’ The Other is contained, and I am safe.
Elver sighed, but she did what he asked, looping the rope around his wrists as he held them behind his back, and then his ankles too.
Artair tested the bindings, and when he was happy, she tied another rope around the sturdy pine tree that stood closest to their small fire.
When everything was done, Artair let himself relax a little.
He laid down on the ground, and as uneven and hard as it was, he felt himself beginning to drift immediately into sleep.
Elver had gone back to the far side of the fire, the cub now in her lap, and she was talking to the creature in a low voice.
Without her hood, and without the threat of humans nearby, she looked peaceful, the habitual angry crease in her forehead smoothed away.
Addersport made her angry, he realized, while the wood—any wood, perhaps—was her home.
He went to sleep thinking about this, the murmur of her voice becoming another soft sound of the forest.
Lucian woke up with a jerk, entirely disorientated. It took him a moment to realize what it was that was so strange, and then he was up and trying to run— he was outside, that was the feeling of fresh air on his skin, all he had to do was run…
The rope pulled taut and he fell back into the dirt.
‘Good evening,’ said the monster girl. ‘Let me reintroduce you to the concept of being tied up.’
Lucian growled at her, the scent of dirt filling his whole head. He pulled himself up into a sitting position. He was aware of a leaf sticking to his cheek, so he shook his head until it fell off. Everything ached.
‘Let me go,’ he said. He swallowed, trying to gather his thoughts.
They were outside, in a wood, and it was nighttime.
A small fire burned between them. The monster girl—Elver, he remembered—was sitting on the far side, watching him closely.
As well as the dirt, he could smell autumn, a powerful scent of rotting leaves and ripening fruit that he’d almost forgotten.
A thick wad of some emotion he didn’t care to think about threatened to close his throat.
He hurriedly swallowed it down. ‘If you wouldn’t mind, I would really appreciate it if you could untie these ropes and let me go, Elver. ’
‘I’m not going to do that.’
He sighed. Despite the bindings at his ankles and wrists, it was extraordinary to be outside. Just the movement of air against his skin felt like a gift. As it always did, the anger inside him began to build. What use was a breeze when you were still trapped?
‘I have no memory of being outside,’ he said. ‘The idiot whose body I share never sleeps outside, so I have never experienced it. Yet, I know that isn’t true. I know I had a life before this imprisonment . I have no memory of food either, yet I know I have eaten. Can you imagine what that is like?’
‘My heart bleeds for you, evil spirit.’
He laughed, a hollow sound in the open night. ‘A jih spirit calling me evil. A child of the serpent, no less. Why are we here, and why is the monk spending his time with a monster girl?’
She seemed to consider this. ‘We are going to visit a mage. She has taken something, and he’s trying to get it back.’
‘Taken something from him? He doesn’t have anything.’
‘He had friends.’
‘And who is this mage? What god is she dedicated to?’
Elver shook her head, indicating that she would say no more.
On the ground by the fire, there was an open sack of food and Lucian could see a bright green apple.
Food was a rare sight; the idiot monk never ate in his cell, after all.
Yet he knew what it was, and even had an idea of what it might taste like: a ghost of his forgotten life.
‘Give me a bite of that apple. Please, Elver. I ask you this as one jih creature to another. If I must be imprisoned, then let me at least experience a couple of simple pleasures. I’m tied up. I can’t hurt you.’
She looked at him for a long moment, and then slid the knife from her belt.
It was a wicked looking blade, the firelight moving across it in a liquid flash.
Lucian grinned unhappily. So that was it, then.
She’d slit his throat rather than deal with him.
At least he would be free of this endless torture—surely it would be better to be dead than trapped.
But to his surprise, she picked up the apple and cut it into slices, popping one in her own mouth before bringing one over to him.
She crouched, some distance away, and held out a single slice.
Lucian leaned forward as far as he could and took it carefully between his lips before crunching it between his teeth.
It was incredible—sweet and sharp and sour, the juice filling his mouth with flavour and sensation.
‘Thank you,’ he said, and he found that he meant it. ‘Thank you. You can’t know…’ He shook his head. He felt oddly ashamed. ‘So much has been kept from me.’
She leaned forward with another slice and he craned his neck to meet her. Something soft brushed his jaw—her hand, he realized—and in that instant—
A flash of impossible colour. He was young, his head not quite reaching the altar yet, and the space around him was silent and sacred.
Red candles were burning, dripping wax like blood onto the walls and the stone pillars, and somehow this was appropriate, somehow it excited him.
There was a smell, a wild and untamed funk tempered with spiced incense.
Someone began talking in a low voice. There were windows overhead of red glass, letting in an unholy light—
And it was gone. Elver had jumped back from him, her eyes wide, the slice of apple forgotten in the dirt. Instinctively, Lucian lunged after her, desperate.
‘What was that?’ he demanded. ‘What did you do to me, monster girl?’
‘Nothing! I…’ She had her knife in her hand again. ‘My touch is poisonous to humans. It shouldn’t hurt jih spirits. It doesn’t hurt Artair. But you just seemed to… pass out for a few seconds. Perhaps you are different?’
Lucian let his breath hiss through his teeth, his mind full of the images that had just been gifted to him. He knew that place. It was a place he had been. Which meant that he had just recovered a memory.
‘Do it again,’ he demanded. ‘I think your poison revealed something. Woke up a memory, or, I don’t know. Burned away whatever obscured it.’
‘No.’
The monster girl retreated to the far side of the fire again.
‘You have to,’ he spat. ‘Do it now, you hideous creature, or I’ll…’
‘Or you’ll what?’ The girl’s face had hardened, and when he held her gaze she didn’t flinch or look away. ‘Fall over at me again? I think you’ve forgotten who is tied up and who has the knife.’
He fell quiet, his mind racing. So she wouldn’t touch him again right now, but her guard couldn’t stay up forever.
The important thing was he had seen his past life.
Just a single moment, a brief shining glimpse of something he’d thought he’d lost entirely.
Perhaps everything could be regained. Perhaps all was not lost to him after all.
Lucian grinned wolfishly in the growing dark.