The Land's Whisper (30 page)

“I just… I just don’t think I can.”

Again, Gartoung waited. Brenol saw it happen
before the words came: Darse’s vision filled with image and memory
and his entire person reacted. His features grew taut and
horrified, and his mouth hung agape. The nightmare grasped the man
afresh.

Darse’s voice was soft, like a child
whispering away the monster with blankets bunched in fists and
heart in throat. “He is rubbing my scalp. He has a cream… It stinks
like urine and dead animal. He giggles. His fingers feel slimy. I
can’t escape them. The cream… it sinks into my mind. It smells
awful. Ugh. I feel it sifting through.”

Darse shuddered, and his voice became
frantic. “How is he in my mind? How? Fingering my thoughts for
something he might like—”

Suddenly Darse shrunk back, screaming with
unfeigned terror. He panted now, and his breaths came out in hyper
spurts. “The cream was like a knife. He wanted my memory. And he
cut it out. He did! He cut it out…but never broke my skin.”

He rasped in the air as if choking. “And my
memory—I can see it! We both see it. Like a foggy dream, playing
before him. He yanked it from my head and then it was gone. Gone.
Never cutting me—but the pain! Like he was digging out my brain
with a hatchet… So much pain… Gone.”

“And?”

Gartoung surveyed the stricken face with
solemn expression. Darse’s golden orbs stared ahead, glazed and
empty, and his frame sank into a weary slouch.

Brenol stepped back in a sudden sweep of
emotion, his stomach sour with grief. He did not glance again to
his friend’s destroyed countenance, just picked up his heels and
fled. The boy did not pass a hundred strides before sliding to a
halt and retching. The sun burned hot on his cheeks as he bent over
again. He wiped his damp chin, stripped himself of the shirt
clinging sickly to his skin, and, without concern for direction,
sprinted off.

Gartoung’s obsidian eyes flashed between the
two decisively, and his cool voice issued softly, “Tomorrow, Darse
Grey-Oak. Tomorrow.”

Darse’s features sagged at the prospect, and
he rolled his broken body to face away.

~

Brenol returned to their campsite toward
evening, pressed by the cooling air and his aching stomach. He
found Gartoung roasting onions on a spear before a fire, while
wrapped fish cooled on a fallen bough. The smell was enticing. His
gut twisted in a knot, guilty for craving food in the midst of
Darse’s pain.

“Brenol Tilted-Ash,” he said, without
turning his head to face the boy.

“How did you hear me?”

“Juile have many skills. Listening for the
unseen is not a useless hobby.”

“That is what you are? Juile?”

Gartoung stretched his body back and turned
to peer at the boy. “It is.”

Brenol’s natural curiosity flared up. “Are
you invisible?”

Gartoung’s olive face widened into a smile.
“That depends upon who you ask… But yes, humans would say that I am
invisible.” He rotated the skewer in his palm, revealing a lovely
char on the underside of the onion. “Selet is the one place I am
fully visible. Most juile choose to live here for that reason.”

Brenol chewed on the idea for a moment. “And
the lugazzi
?
”

“Like a glass of water.”

The boy raised an eyebrow and slid into
silence. Even the incredible could only hold his attention from the
worries of the present for so long.

Gartoung interrupted his brooding. “I think
Darse will be all right, Brenol Tilted-Ash.”

The popping of the flames seemed to be the
only sound for matroles.

“Did you know?” Brenol finally asked, gazing
probingly at his companion.

The juile shook his swarthy head, but it was
an expression of pity instead of answer.

“How did you know?” Brenol furrowed his
brow. “You did know, didn’t you?”

Gartoung tapped his wrist in a foreign
gesture, but his face was soft in sympathy. “I didn’t. But I’ve
heard of such horrors before…making the invisible seen. It is
despicable.”

“What had you heard?”

He sighed, spun his skewer a half turn, and
raised his eyes to the gaze that met his so hungrily. “There were
rumors for orbits—screams in the woods, wolves’ gossip—but no one
could ever pinpoint details.”

Gartoung inhaled deeply, clearly perturbed.
“One man came into Tonkyon a few orbits ago. His mind was as
twisted as a warped tree. He spoke of a terror—blonde, tall, evil
eyes—who he referred to as Vicog, but he mainly talked in
incoherent babbles. The man was thinner than a reed and had yellow
eyes. Within days, he drowned himself in the Garz
.
”

Brenol let out a painful breath. “And Vicog?
Who is that?”

“A story. An old nurse’s tale. Something
told to children to keep them close. Vicog is a villain, the
stealer of souls. He emerges during the heart of winter and leaves
bodies without a cloud of breath.”

Brenol was filled with the image of Darse
grasping his soul in hands as if it were as tangible as a garment,
only to have it torn away by vicious fingers. The man was left with
a ragged strip of cloth in his shaking hands and eyes as gold as
the sun.

“The man who did this to Darse was not tall
and blonde,” Brenol said.

“No. I realized as much when you told me
your story the first night.”

“Will Fingers be caught?”

Gartoung flicked out his fingers. “I
informed the town
polina
about what Darse told us today. I
do not know any more as to the future.”

“What do I do?” Brenol finally asked in a
gulp.

Gartoung smiled gently, his expression kind
and encouraging. “Make Darse speak. It must come to the light… It
will be bountiful, and it has been bountiful, Brenol Tilted-Ash.”
He bowed deeply, even in his bent squat, and his robes swayed
gently.

The juile then plucked the skewer from the
flame. The smell wafted up into the boy’s nostrils, and he had to
force his hands into his lap to prevent them from grasping the meal
uninvited. Gartoung—noting the boy’s eagerness and beaming in
amusement—divvied out three potions onto thick, gray leaves.

Brenol felt his mouth water to the point of
drooling. “Why do you use my whole name?”

Gartoung answered only with a mischievous
smile before handing Brenol his leaf and whisking away to mete out
Darse’s.

~

“Tell me again.” Gartoung’s swarthy face
shone in the soft afternoon light. It did not betray emotion but
was set firmly in an expression that bespoke strength. The juile
appeared to have sufficient fortitude to offer Darse aid until the
end of time.

The man absently stroked the site where bone
had once protruded. The maddening itching had ceased, but the limb
was still too weak to bear weight, so Darse remained confined to
the prison of the canvas flaps. He stared with glassy eyes into the
monochrome world of green beyond the tent.

“Darse,” Gartoung compelled gently.
“Again.”

Darse glanced up with a flicker of defiance.
“And if I don’t?”

Gartoung swept his hand upon the opposite
forearm in a mysterious gesture. “Nothing. You can choose to carry
this darkness forever.” He met Darse’s golden gaze. “But I would
think you would care to rid yourself of its nastiness.”

Darse nodded his head slowly in agreement,
but his features stretched back in a grimace as though he was
fighting nausea. He opened his mouth reluctantly and then slowly
relayed the events of the barn again: Fingers, the cream, memories
lost forever.

“I felt humiliated.” His head sunk down with
the admission, and his cheeks burned pink.

“Yes?”

“My memories jumped before him like a moving
painting…a ghost picture of what I’d lived. I…I could hear the
voices. Tinny. Small. Like my life was nothing but a stupid little
picture. He just watched them and laughed. He laughed at them. And
I felt like I was a child… And I didn’t have them anymore… Gone.
Nothing.” He stared at his fingers, desolate. “All I have of the
memories now is him desecrating them.”

“How many? How many did he take?”

Darse looked up startled, as though emerging
from a trance. It was then that he realized the gravity of what
could have been. “Not all of them. He didn’t have time.” He paused,
nodding to himself. “But yes, he would have, had I been his
prisoner for long.” His eyes closed as the choice word
pet
echoed through his mind.
Pet, pet, pet.

“He stole them. He stole them. Stole
them…”

The situation suddenly fit with a new
clarity in Brenol’s mind. He did not know why he had not seen it
before, but Crayton now made sense.
The man without memories.
Left to be Fingers’s dog.
He pushed down the lump rising in his
throat as he recalled Crayton leaping and then himself reaching for
the rock, plunging the needle.

“And you remember which ones?”

Darse looked directly at Gartoung.
“Something about home and my da. And the small people—visnati were
they? He took all of those. He liked them. Visnati.” He tested the
word on his lips as if he were a baby learning speech. “I don’t
remember. There are a few flashes I could see, ugh
,
as he
chewed on his lip. He was so pleased… But no, they are all gone. I
have chunks missing. My time here in Massada…it doesn’t make sense
to me entirely.” He sucked in air between his teeth. “It was like
watching my life disappear a breath at a time, and now I’m left
with what we saw between us—and even those scraps are tainted with
his foul flavor.” Darse’s lips curled back in palpable loathing. “I
should have killed him when I had the chance.”

Brenol had never heard such venomous hatred
in his friend’s voice; it turned his blood to ice.

“Darse?” asked Gartoung.

“What?” Darse said curtly.

“You can say it.”

Darse looked as if he had swallowed a
scorpion. “I don’t need to.”

“You do, but I will give you the day.”

Darse sighed and unhinged his tensed body
upon the tarp-bed. He sullenly shifted his back to them and feigned
sleep until they left him to his thoughts.

~

Brenol jerked his head up, surprised to find
Gartoung approaching. It was well into the night, and he had left
his companions slumbering—or so he had thought. The boy’s eyes
flickered around nervously, as though proof of his guilt lay in the
shadowy space of the glade.

“Are you well?” Gartoung asked gently. His
voice was as smooth as oil.

Brenol winced, but the expression was hardly
noticeable beneath the dim glow of the stars.

“Bren?”

The boy breathed and allowed his fingers to
open from their tight fists. Chunks of bark showered to the earth
in a soft sigh. Brenol swept his palms across his pants and finally
attempted to speak. “Sometimes I…sometimes I get these feelings. A
tug.”

Gartoung waited patiently, but the silence
only seemed to tighten Brenol’s lips. The juile waited still
longer. Finally, he asked, “Is it only at night?”

Brenol shook his head. His copper hair
appeared slate in the darkness. “No, but usually. It becomes really
bad when I’m alone… If I wake up…it…” The boy’s voice trailed into
the night.

Gartoung peered at him thoughtfully. “Are
you scared?”

Brenol did not speak, for he feared his
voice would break.

“What do you do when you feel this tug?”
Gartoung asked.

The boy turned away. He had thought—but no,
Brenol could never tell Gartoung the horrible desires that hounded
him. He could never reveal that at least a handful of times he had
woken and stolen from the fire, truly intending to flee back to
Veronia. That this very night even, he had stopped himself only by
gripping a random tree in his path, as though his clenched teeth
and fierce fingers could stave off the insatiable craving for the
nuresti power.

I can’t tell anyone,
Brenol thought.
He knew none would accept him if they knew how close he came to
abandoning Darse and leaving Colette to her fate—or how often.

Nearly every day.

“What can I do?” the juile asked.

Brenol turned to face him. He smiled, but he
could not hide his exhaustion. “I’m okay. I think once Darse gets
better…”

The sentence lingered in the air as the two
pondered the troubling situation. The boy shrugged his shoulders.
“I’m going back to go sleep. Thank you, Gartoung.”

“In good accord,” he replied, watching as
Brenol crept back slowly to his bed roll.

~

Gartoung visited Darse the next day, and
again the man relived the events. And again the following
afternoon. Brenol found the monotony of the days—and the moments
contained within—maddening. He was just as much a prisoner as
Darse, only tied by loyalty instead of injury; a bitter plight
regardless of the circumstances.

How many times does Darse have to live
it? Just let him forget it,
he seethed, but he held his tongue.
In truth, even his young eyes could perceive something
happening.

Over a day it was not much, but within a
septspan Darse had begun to eat again. Another, and he slept
without screeching out and grasping the dark with clammy hands.
Another, and he did not fidget when Brenol looked at him. His
now-whole leg no longer twitched in angst, and when Gartoung called
on him to speak, the man parroted out the tale, no longer bellowing
in horror. He was not fully well, but he would live.

~

Gartoung squatted upon his heels as he had
so many times before, waiting for Darse to speak of the darkness.
Yet this time, the juile’s dark brown eyes firmly held Darse’s
golden gaze.

“Darse, it is time.”

Like a switch, Gartoung’s tone generated a
new response in the man. His chest sunk in, back bent forward, and
head slumped. Brenol stared.

Gartoung spoke again, “You can say it,
friend.”