The Forgotten (The Lost Words: Volume 3) (74 page)

The Oth Danesh rubbed his face. “The books—”

Ewan raised a hand. “They are useless.” He folded the volume he was holding and tossed it away onto a desk. Raida
jumped as the book slammed onto the hard wood. Her head bobbed like a bird’s, trying to figure out what might be wrong.

Naman approached and knelt before his king. “Please. You must.” He gestured around him. “Is there nothing familiar? There must be something.”

“Perhaps you misinterpreted the prophecies,” Ewan said, knowing this meant the end of his illusion of finding out the truth about himself. “Perhaps I am not the king you want me to be.”

“But all signs are right,” Naman pleaded. “Everything you did is like the books, everything.”

Ewan stood up himself. “Maybe it’s just a coincidence.” But the empty tinge in his stomach told him otherwise.

Raida said something, a quick rattle of her tongue. Naman scowled. He bid her repeat. Ewan tried to figure out, and it sounded like,
The drape of time
.

“She begs you let her undress herself before you. She wants to show you her body,” Naman translated.

Ewan sighed.
Well, why not?
he thought. He had tried everything else. He might as well indulge a madwoman. He had nothing to lose. Those empty black sockets watched him as his spirit sagged further.

“All right. Let her do it.”

Raida stood up and slipped her blue dress off her shoulders. It rolled off her small breasts, then wreathed around her slim, bony hips. She pushed the fabric down, and the dress slithered down silently to pool at her feet.

Despite his best judgment, Ewan let his eyes wander over her skin, feeling as if he was defiling her with his gaze, even though she requested it. Her body made its tiny, minute twitches as he stared at her gangly frame. She was a woman, all right, much like Constance in build and size, only her skin was darker, and tattooed almost all over.

Ewan frowned. Black ink, darker than what most people used. Sharply outlined, made with a very precise needle, so you could make out individual dots. He blinked. At three paces apart, he should not have been able to see such precise detail, and yet, every single shape etched on her skin burned brightly before his eyes, like shiny resin.

The shapes looked like letters, and they ran around her belly and up her sides.
There must be more on her back
, he thought.

“Please ask her to turn around,” he said. Naman told her, and she spun around, still standing in a rigid, anticipatory pose.

Yes, there was more ink on her back, over the ripple of her rib cage, up and between her shoulder blades. Even the ridge of her spine was marked. The tattoos ended where her flesh was exposed to daylight, the soft line of tan and dirt marking her skin in two tones. It was a minute marker, barely visible after a long winter, but Ewan did not miss it.

Then, his eyes dropped down to her buttocks, and they were marked, too, as well as the backs of her thighs. The last shapes were sketched just above her knees. He blinked again. His head was hurting from those letters.

Letters
, he thought, and his belly rumbled. He found himself on his knees in front of Raida, and he could not recall approaching the girl. Startled, he realized his hands were resting on her hips. Her skin was warm to the touch, the ink shapes tiny, tiny bumps. Naman was watching with consternation, not quite sure what he was witnessing, but he knew it was important.

“Do not say a word,” Ewan warned him. Then he focused on the blind prophet and her marked skin. His fingers began moving, tracing the lines, up and down, following the light curves of her body, probing. Raida moaned once, then said something in her language.

Ewan was not paying attention. He was following the symbols like a man watching a painting, trying to figure out where the artists had placed the first brushstroke. He found it, the beginning of that fine black trail, just below her left breast.

The letters were alien, written in some language he had never seen before.

Or maybe he had, because he could read it.

Understanding flickered inside his head, like sparks rising off old gray ashes stirred by a sudden gust of wind. He felt excitement tighten his muscles, and they became steel. The sounds and images of the world around him faded, replaced by a soft, woolly darkness. All he could see was a canvas of human flesh, shuddering under his touch, and those letters, spinning, sparkling, becoming words and sentences.

The
very
last volume of
The Pains of Memory
, he knew suddenly.

Passed from one spiritual leader to another, from mother to daughter.

A message for him.

He began reading, his lips quivering with a language unheard for thousands of years.

I have written this
, he thought with delightful insight.
This is a message for myself, from me, my ancient me
. He had written this for himself so he could read it when he needed it again. An account of the time before the war, and the war itself, a first-person recounting, without any misinterpretation by human translators.

I have been fighting the gods and goddesses
, Ewan realized suddenly. He did not like that. Why would he fight them? And if he had, why had he tried so hard to defend them from Damian? Why had they not clamored against him in the Abyss? Maybe they could not recognize him?

He had fought alongside Damian, it turned out.

Some human factions had sided with them, while others had followed the gods. The war had continued for centuries, with magic and dreadful weapons that he could hardly grasp. But then, Damian had been betrayed, and his forces routed. They had been forced to flee from the Old Land, north and south and west.
Oth Danesh, my people
, he thought and read on. His fingers made their shameless trail over the girl’s skin. She was panting now and chanting incomprehensibly, but he did not care. This was the truth; this was the key to his mystery.

Not just Oth Danesh, other people, too. The nations of the Red Desert and the Singing Heights, the Badanese, many others. They had all been scattered away, banished away from the Old Land. A magical barrier was put in place to keep them there. No,
he
had placed the barrier. Ewan frowned. Yes, he had put the magical Veil there, but it was only meant to keep those with magic away. Them and the gods. Ewan smirked. No wonder the books had twisted the truth.

He had fled, fled north…

He paused reading.

North?

The real world grew more solid, but it was still a dark gray shadow.

“Give me the last volume,” he growled.

Naman handed it to him. He could not see his tutor, but
The Pains of Memory
was a clear outline in his hands. He flipped it open at the page where the map of the Old Land had been sketched. Most of it resembled the realms, he realized now. He had not seen it before, but he could see it now.

A nation that has no names for its cities and its foes, a nation that has books meant to be read from the last volume. So why not
maps meant to be pored over upside down?
North, south. South, north.

His fingers squeezed and raked and trailed white marks on Raida’s skin. She was shouting and screeching now, he thought, but he could not stop.

He had promised to return, to defeat the gods and goddesses and take their place. Then, there was his signature. Cale-more. His brain reeled. Calemore. Kala Meh. He remembered his struggle with the Oth Danesh guttural pronounciation. Kala
Mer
. That was him. The king, the champion.

Or that
would
have been him.

But he was in the wrong place.

The real world snapped back. Raida collapsed on the floor, her skin covered in sweat. She was panting, but she did not seem hurt, maybe blissful even. He ignored her. She was meaningless.

His head was spinning, new thoughts coming to life. White clothes, the scepter, this hall with its heads, the terror of the Oth Danesh people, none of them belonged to him. None of it was his memory, his legacy. They belonged to Calemore, Damian’s first son.

He knew now. There was a sharp stab in his gut.

He might already be too late.

“The nation will not go to war,” he declared. “I will go alone.”

Naman was cowering in the corner, his skin pale. “As you command.”

Ewan rose to his feet. He leaned forward and picked up the smooth glass rod. He knew what it was now and how it was meant to be used. He surely would need it in the upcoming battle.

The Oth Danesh had gotten one thing right—the war was not over yet.

Ewan threw the white skin cloak on the ground. For a moment, he looked for something to burn the vile cloth. There was nothing handy, so he dashed out of the ugly palace and began running. There was a ripple of terror around him, men and women fleeing to the sides of the road and going prostrate, but he ignored them all. They were irrelevant, meaningless, a remnant of an ancient feud. They did not matter. Ewan had to stop a much bigger threat.

Soon, he left the city of Kamar Doue and was tirelessly sprinting toward the realms.

North.

CHAPTER 55

“W
e need reinforcements, now!” Master Hector shouted. To see the old man unnerved was a troubling sight.

For five hours now, the Red Caps were engaging the mixed Athesian and Caytorean legions around Ecol, pressing hard, south and east. They had come in full strength just before dawn, marching in silence, wreathed in the early morning mist like ghosts.

The southern fort was in their hands yet again, only this time they had not burned it.

James glanced at the chaotic battlefield. He nodded. Malik scribbled a quick order. A messenger snatched it from the extended hand and ran to his horse at the bottom of the observation post. Soon he was galloping toward Colonel Gilles’s cavalry regiment, waiting midway between the front lines and the city, a force almost a thousand strong.

The emperor turned to watch the carnage near the occupied garrison. The Red Caps were driving a wedge into his defense, pushing almost parallel to his position. Behind the thick row of defenders with spears and swords, a carpet of archers was taking almost direct aim at the women, trying to pin them down with arrows. The enemy was firing back from the fort’s wall and its corner towers.

“Relentless and disciplined,” the old sergeant remarked, his voice bitter.

James sniffed hard, trying to keep his frustration down. The thing was, he was running out of brilliant ideas. No matter how he tried to counteract, Princess Sasha just kept pushing on. He looked at the tall wooden platforms raised all about the city. Men were kneeling and taking aim. Shafts wobbled in high arcs, some trailing smoke behind them. Then, they hailed down on the enemy, but the women were holding their shields up, ever up, and the arrows snapped and clattered away.

“We should pull back to the city,” Captain Nolan said.

James shook his head angrily. “No. We cannot abandon the siege line. If we do, the Third and the Seventh will be overrun.” He wanted to raise the looking glass and look east, but there was no need. He could see the battle develop all too clearly, the blot of enemy troops spreading like ink. They might soon conquer the abandoned manor house and the mines. His legion was waiting there in reserve, and it looked like it might be needed soon.

Warlord Xavier was engaged heavily around the fort, together with Nicholas’s troops. They were truly earning their pay and proving their loyalty now. James glanced at the city. He had a handful of volunteers and city watchmen as the last line of defense, but he doubted they could drastically change the outcome of the battle.

“Is there any chance we can push through the enemy formation and sap that bridge?” he asked.

Master Hector grimaced. “Not easily, no.”

He swore quietly. The enemy had control of the river crossing and was easily shuffling its forces between the two banks as needed, keeping the defenders busy. If they could destroy the bridge, Sasha would not be able to beef up either of the two
forces and would have to press on with whatever she had. But the destruction of the bridge was a sweet, distant prospect.

The cavalry crashed into the mayhem around the southern fort. Men rushed to get away from being trampled. With lances leveled, the horsemen pushed into the human wall. They could not bring their speed to bear, but the mass of their fierce armored animals was enough to cause a dent in the enemy advance. The arrow rain slackened for a while.

“The Third is buckling,” Master Hector declared ominously, looking at his own troops lose cohesion and valor as the Red Caps tore into their right flank. A trickle of Parusite troops was already marching toward the manor house. The First Legion was moving to engage. “With your permission, sir?” the old man pleaded.

James agreed reluctantly. The man slammed a leather-padded helmet onto his leathery face and began walking down from the observation post. Hector’s elite, a modest force of two hundred men, was waiting patiently, watching the rout of their comrades in impotent distress. Soon, they left a muddy pulp in their wake as they plodded away.