Pathways - Jeri Taylor [152]
Neelix glanced up at his father, who was watching carefully as Tixil completed his examination of the room. Finally Tixil turned toward them, eyes troubled. When he spoke, his voice was gentle. “I don’t know what to say, Neelix. I can’t see any indication that anyone’s been here in a long time.” He paused uncomfortably. “I don’t know if you’re a young man with a vivid imagination—”
“I saw him. He was here,” retorted Neelix firmly. Tixil nodded as though trying to give credence to this improbable statement. He glanced at Neelix’s father, then looked down at the floor, with some embarrassment.
“I apologize for bringing this up,” he began, clearly uneasy with the topic, “but I feel I must.” He hesitated, then continued. “Rhuludian crystals have become popular with a number of young people these days . . .”
Neelix heard his father gasp, and hated Tixil for raising this awful possibility. He stepped right toward his father. “I have never . . . never . . . touched those things. And I never would.”
Papa nodded solemnly, and looked up at Tixil in vindication, but Tixil made no comment. Finally he drew a deep breath. “I’ll have my men make a thorough search of the woods. See if they can turn up anything. I promise we’ll let you know the results.”
Neelix’s father nodded as though that were acceptable, but Neelix felt betrayed. “You don’t believe me,” he accused Tixil. “You think I imagined it, or hallucinated. But I didn’t. There was a man here, who’d been tortured. Whoever did that is still . . . out there. Somewhere.” He felt a chill at that last statement. The tortured man’s hoarse prophecy seared his mind. Someone was out there who would find him. He swallowed and took a deep breath.
And smelled the tiniest whiff of burnt meat.
“There—do you smell that?” Tixil and his father looked somewhat startled. “It’s like something burnt. That’s what they did to him, to his feet and legs.”
Tixil and his father obligingly turned their noses upward, sniffing carefully. But clearly they didn’t detect the acrid odor. Neelix wasn’t sure if he would’ve, either, had he not smelled it so strongly when he was here before. Both men looked somewhat embarrassed, and acknowledged that they smelled nothing.
His father put an arm around his shoulder and led him from the hut. Tixil followed, eyes carefully sweeping the room one last time.
It was in complete silence that they made their way back through the woods to home.
Tixil deposited them at their door and promised to contact them tomorrow. Neelix stared after him, as his power and authority receded in the distance.
Neelix felt alone and vulnerable. He had no appetite for dinner, and excused himself. He went to his room and got in bed, where he huddled like a small child, fearful of unknown monsters in the dark.
The smell of burnt flesh assailed him. He knew it wasn’t really there, that he was simply remembering its awful odor—he did know the difference between imagination and reality—but it made him faintly queasy nonetheless. Even here, in the bed of his childhood, there was no sanctuary.
He had no idea how long he’d been there when he heard a tap at his door. Night had fallen, and he was in some indistinct stage between sleep and wakefulness. At the sound of the knock, he was alert and tense.
“Neelix?” It was his father’s voice. Neelix got out of bed and padded to the door, opening it.
His father stood there with a man who looked vaguely familiar, but whom he couldn’t immediately identify.
“Do you remember Uxxin?” asked his father. “You met him at the weapons range the first time we went there.”
The memory registered in Neelix’s mind. The tall, erect man, spots black with age, tufts elaborately arranged. He was the one who’d spoken of the need for an armed citizenry.
But the tale he brought tonight was far more frightening than the as-yet-unfounded threat of the Haakonians.
Neelix sat with the two of them at their dining table—the scene of so much mirth and pleasure over the