The Born Queen - J. Gregory Keyes [78]
“Hold still,” the voice commanded.
Then he couldn’t move at all, although the trembling in his limbs continued.
Suddenly the needle through his mind began to wiggle, and he was standing in front of the fane of Saint Ciesel in the King’s Forest. The forest rose up around him like columns supporting the cloudy sky. The fane was a tidy little structure of gray stone with a low-vaulted roof.
He blinked. He was staring at a different fane, that of Saint Woth.
And then he didn’t have time to blink as he flashed from place to place and from time to time. He was nine, looking off the cliffs behind his house and smelling the sea. He was watching Zemlé pull off her shirt. He was relieving himself behind a bush off the Old King’s Road. He was watching Aspar kiss Winna.
Part of him understood that these were memories, but it all felt absolutely real: The weight of himself on his feet shifted—sometimes he wasn’t on his feet—the scents, the temperature of the air, and it all went faster and faster until his thinking mind suddenly stepped away from it all, watched it flow like a river. Not trying to recognize anything but just watching it ripple and move.
And after a moment he noticed another stream, deep and dark, running alongside him, almost touching, then joining and broadening the river.
What’s this?
But then even his ability to form questions disintegrated.
It took him a long time to understand when it was over, that he was back in one place and time, still shivering in the dark and paralyzed. He realized that the thing was talking to him again, and probably had been for some time.
“…going through it? Nonsense. I feel the bones. The bones are there. And blood in them, yes? In them. Ah, you’re back. Listen, mayfly. He doesn’t know me, not for sure. I like it that way. I think you will, too. So helpful, isn’t he? Do you ever wonder why he wants you to walk the faneway? Do you ever wonder that?”
Yes, Stephen tried to answer.
“Come, tell—ah, wait. I see. It’s already working. You may speak in response to my questions.”
He felt something like a knot untying in his throat, and he gagged and then vomited. He kept heaving long after there was nothing left in his stomach.
“Answer my question,” the darkness snarled.
“Yes,” Stephen replied through his gasping. “I’ve wondered.” He wanted desperately to ask who he was speaking to but found he couldn’t.
“Do you know who it is?”
I won’t tell you anything, he thought. “I won’t tell you that I think it’s the ghost of Kauron.”
He suddenly realized that he’d said what he was thinking out loud, and he groaned. What sort of shinecraft was this?
“Kauron?” it said. “That’s a name. That doesn’t mean anything. Do you know who he is?”
“That’s all I know,” Stephen said, feeling the words rush out of him. “He helped me find the mountain and the faneway.”
“Of course he did. No one wants you to walk that path more than he.”
Stephen didn’t bother trying to ask why.
“Well, walk it you will,” the voice purred. “I have no objection.”
Stephen felt the beat of wings and a rush of air. He uncoiled like a spring and then went loose, the shaking finally easing out of him.
Stephen lay there for a while, sick at heart, wondering how he ever could have imagined himself brave. It was the same old story: Every time he was close to feeling in command of himself and his world, the saints showed him something to shatter him again.
He opened his eyes and found that the witchlights were back with him. He was still somewhere beneath the earth but no longer in the vast open canyon where he had been abducted; nor was the river anywhere within sight, although he could hear it somewhere, far away.
He couldn’t hear anything that might be his companions either, even with his sedos-touched ears. He called experimentally, not expecting a response and not receiving one.
He tried not to think about the very plausible explanation that they were all dead. They couldn’t be, because that would mean Zemlé was dead, and she wasn’t.
So where was he?