The Forgotten (The Lost Words: Volume 3) (43 page)

Now, all of a sudden, everything was coming back to her slowly, a jumble of stories and texts, all of which seemed logical and starkly true. She no longer found any reason to doubt wild references to old wars between gods and monsters, the sundering of lands and magical weapons. Wicked songs, allegories, ages of wonders and myth, all of it suddenly seemed true and so very near her.

“Are you human?” she asked.

Calemore rolled his eyes. “A better, more perfect kind of human.” He smiled.

Nigella just watched him, wondering if she might die today. But Calemore was only smiling at her, seemingly amused by her terror.

I should have run far away
, she thought, bitter remorse choking her. She felt weakness in every limb, a sagging weight in her chest. Her breath came out short, strangled.

“I have come to the realms to restore my power,” he said. “You will divine for me what my enemies are planning. This is why it is imperative for you to unravel the book’s secret. You do understand the importance of the situation?”

She nodded dumbly.

Calemore stretched. “Excellent.”

It was a while before she mustered courage to speak again. “Why did you tell me this?” What was her role in his return? Was she just a disposable piece he would use and throw away once finished? Was anything he had ever done to her—with her—more than just a cruel jape?

What happens once he defeats his enemies? Do I go back to being an outcast?

“Do not worry. I reward those who serve me faithfully,” he said, reading her mind.

Nigella tried to smile, but she almost sobbed with terror.

Calemore made a sympathetic face. “Every day, my enemies grow stronger. They gather more followers, more power. They are adapting, becoming cleverer. Your talent so far has given me very little. I need you to really try hard, Nigella. Really hard. You show such promise. But you must not hold anything back.”

A tear escaped from the corner of her eye, dripped on the pillow. Calemore wiped it with his smooth finger.

“Do not cry. It’s all right. You are safe from harm.”

“What are you going to do to me?” she whispered, trying to keep the wail in the back of her throat from smothering her.

“Do? Nothing. Now you know, though,” he lectured. “Now you will be able to help me.”

She nodded, her tongue too heavy to speak. But there was clarity in her head now. The magical texts from
The Book of Lost Words
swirled like leaves picked up by a whirlwind, bobbing round and round and up on tiny, violent eddies. Nigella remembered the vague images, the sharp smells, the random sensations of frost and delight and dark places. Things she had told Calemore and things she had kept to herself.

A world of the unknown was forming before her like a mosaic, and the little chips danced in a wild wind, which tossed them around carelessly. Her hands groped, trying to catch them, piece by piece, and slowly, the hint of a future was forming.

If she had not liked it before, she truly feared it now.

I am helping Calemore build a dark, sinister world
, she thought. But what choice did she have? Give up now? Flee and hope he would never find her? Such a silly, useless notion.

The urgency to master the book grew stronger than ever. For herself. She had to know. She had to know. Calemore was being awfully nice to her, but something in her bones told her that mercy and compassion were two emotions he did not really understand, more like tried to show and practice. He promised her no harm, but she could only guess what the word “harm” really meant in his lexicon.

You cannot consider murder as murder if you do not have a concept of right and wrong
, she thought, almost inanely. Squashing a roach was not murder. Killing game for food was not murder.

So what was she?

There were so many more questions she wanted to ask Calemore, but she did not dare. She did not want to hear his
version of the past, his idea of goodness and justice. She knew her soul would be scarred by them.

I pledged myself to help, and I did not ask why
.

Whatever was going to happen, she would be an accomplice. She would help this White Witch achieve his plans. What did that make her?

She was beginning to understand the looks he gave her, the cruel, casual amusement in his eyes. It was the sort you spared an insect that delighted you with its little behavior, and you watched it squirm with a piece of fruit or burrow a hole in the dirt because you were bored and you had nothing better to do right then. His utter disdain, his total disregard for life and its value.

If she wanted to outlive this madness, she had to make herself more than a worthless insect. She had to match his cruelty, on his terms. She realized she could no longer indulge in her own pity, in her son’s success, her ugly teeth, or her apple pies. The gravity of her situation would not permit those anymore.

Could she do it, though? Yes, yes, she could. After being abused her whole life, breaking apart was easy, but there was bitterness too, and if she tapped into it, it suddenly would not stop gushing out.

I can do it
, she told herself, and steeled her heart.

“You once told me you would give me anything for my prophecies,” she said, feeling dizzy, crazy.

Calemore smiled. “Yes. So you want to be a queen, after all?”

Nigella rubbed her cheek dry. “No. Not yet. But there’s something I must ask you. Ten years ago, this man Rob, a Caytorean rich man, made love to me during the Autumn Festival. I got pregnant, with Sheldon. He was supposed to marry me. Instead, he cast me out of his mansion, left me with nothing.”

Calemore was grinning impishly, finding her story utterly entertaining. She almost lost courage then, but she rallied. She swallowed her dread, her disgust, the feelings of self-loathing and worthlessness, and plunged on, deeper into the sea of resentment and rejection that was her life.

“He humiliated me, abandoned me, and put my life at risk for nothing. He used me.” She looked up into those pale eyes. “I want you to kill him.”
I asked James the same thing once, and he turned me down, betrayed me. Maybe I should have James killed, too
.

The expression on his face did not change. He just blinked once, deliberately. “It will be done.” He chortled. “I like the way you think, Nigella. You are humble; you are withdrawn. You shy away from this world. Yet, you are the most courageous human I know. No one else would have dared ask me for such a simple, personal favor. It touches me.”

Nigella managed a tiny smile of her own. “When will you do it?”

Calemore looked up at the ceiling as if thinking, calculating. “In a few weeks.”

She nodded. Now that she had commissioned Rob’s death, she felt lightweight somehow, cleansed. She did not feel any guilt or fear. There was just a sense of resolution, ten years aged and seasoned with pale remorse.

Lying with him on the bed like this, after making love, she could almost pretend she was a normal woman, with a husband who cared for her and would protect her from harm. She could ignore the world outside. Almost.

Calemore still wanted his prophecies. She had to provide them.

Nigella had never thought she would be an instrument of destruction, but that seemed to be her fate. She was destined to
serve this beautiful, immortal thing, make his dreadful vision come true, and she knew it would be terrible. But perhaps her choice was not so bad this time. She had tried humans, and all they had given her was grief. False smiles, false friendships, betrayal.

Maybe Calemore was what she needed. After all, she was a half Sirtai living among people who hated magic and would probably kill her if they knew her skills and doings. Calemore was this mad, cruel king of all the lands, and, well, kings were supposed to be mad and cruel.

When he asked me if I wanted to be a queen, did he mean
his
queen?
she thought. A flutter of hope in her belly. Maybe. No.

There would be no more answers from him today, she realized. However, the book might hold some. So she spent the next hour lying on the bed, waiting for him to get bored and leave. When the door of her small house closed, she lit several lamps, and squinting in their jaundice glow, she set about reading
The Book of Lost Words
and trying to figure out what the future had in store for her, the world’s fate be damned.

CHAPTER 32

J
ames walked side by side with the two Sirtai, feeling somewhat confused and mistrustful. It was not as if he received a pair of magic wielders at his doorstep every day. Especially not one with a face painted blue.

This whole end-of-the-world story sounded too farfetched. He was not sure whether to believe Jarman, or what his motives might really be. To be sure, there was more to the tale than just pending death and destruction. The young wizard was hiding something, James could tell. The other one, well, he defined the word “secrecy.”

Worst of all, acknowledging the threat meant putting aside all he had been doing in the past year. His fight to survive at Pain Daye, his attempts to win over the Caytoreans, his marriage to Rheanna, his battles, they would all be meaningless now.

His two new advisers did not quite behave like one would expect from imperial adjutants. For that matter, neither did Lucas behave like a typical slave, but James was not quite sure how the islanders perceived power. Their culture was so much different from the realms’, it was risky assuming they thought and reasoned like any Caytorean or Eracian. Until he knew better, James made sure not to draw any hasty conclusions.

Jarman was polite, somewhat hesitant, eager, and a little clunky around other folk, as if he had learned about communication from a book. Lucas was stern, hard, almost frightening. You could not argue with him. Both oozed an air of confidence that left James feeling stupid. Perhaps the Sirtai did think themselves better than the people of the realms.

For the past three weeks, they would come to visit him a few hours every few days, talking to him about politics, about his decisions and future plans, and each time hinting a bit more on the sinister, magical things that lurked out there. So far they had stayed at their own inn, avoiding getting entangled too deeply in the local affairs, as if they did not matter to them. Now, though, they demanded their own floor at the mayor’s inn. That meant vacating some of his officers. A hassle, and maybe an affront, but definitely a test of his authority.

They were outside the city, in the wet fields north of the mining camp, close to the small forest called the Weeping Boughs. No one knew why the trees were called that, an old, dark growth of oaks and beech, their mossy bark slick with rain, their branches bare.

Mayor Alistair had organized a hunt in James’s honor. He claimed the forest had lovely boar, a small kind that was not dangerous for men or horses. Killing a few fat ones just before the winter sounded like a good opportunity to rekindle some of the comradeship with his noble followers, so James had acquiesced. They hunted while he talked.

He would have preferred to ride, but the Sirtai had refused horses. Instead, they walked, wearing galoshes to keep the wet mud away. James had a fancy red pair, with hide leggings going up to his thighs, but the color was lost under a black smear of earth and leaves. Lucas and Jarman had their robes trailing in the grass, soaked through, but they did not seem to mind.

Around, a host of bodyguards was following, some on foot, some mounted, swords drawn and crossbows held ready. Timothy plowed dutifully behind. Rob was there, too.

It was the kind of morning that made you feel depressed, with the sky a single drape of gray fading into a grainy mist about a mile away. The weather promised rain, but there wasn’t any, and the air was heavy and wet; James wanted to open his mouth and swallow a gulp. It was rather warm, too. He was sweating under his expensive coat.

Farther away, near the eaves of the forest, men were cursing and shouting, galloping in short strides around bushes and trees. Dogs were barking, saddle gear jangled, and it all sounded muffled and amplified at the same time. Eerie.

James brought his thoughts around back to the topic of the apocalypse.

“Why would this Calemore want to do that?” he asked stubbornly.

Jarman shook his head. “You are thinking like a human. The White Witch does not share the same sentiments as you. He does not perceive reality like you do.”

James wondered how his wife would handle these wizards. He had received a letter from her two days ago. Apparently, she had sent a rider to Pain Daye, and thereon wherever the rumor of her husband’s location took him. It seemed that Eybalen was peaceful and that her clerks had not abused her absence that much after all. He wished he could share her burden. His own work seemed complex, and it was only getting more so.

“How am I supposed to be thinking?” the emperor jabbed.

The young Sirtai pointed at Weeping Boughs. “Like a man hunting animals.”

James frowned. Three weeks since meeting these crazy men, he was still confused and unconvinced.