The Wounded Shadow Read online

Pellin nodded his approval. “Good, that was well-reasoned.” He pointed to Myra. “Let’s suppose it’s a fairly simple chair.”

  “A few days,” Mark said.

  “How long would it take you to destroy it?” Pellin asked. “How much time would you need to reduce all that work to nothing more than kindling for the fire?”

  Mark turned away from him to contemplate the woman only he could see. “But you have all those memories in your head. Couldn’t you just give her some of those?”

  Pellin’s heart ached to give his apprentice what he wanted. “Mark, the gift of domere doesn’t work that way. When I delve a person, when any of the Vigil touch another, we see the memories and emotions of that person’s life as a river. We reach into the river, grasp a memory, and become that person at that point in time. To accomplish our task we track that memory forward or backward until we can determine their guilt or innocence.” He shook his head. “But there’s no way for us to absorb all the memories that make up a person, just as there’s no way you could drink all the water in a river. We don’t have room enough in our minds to hold so much. Even as it is, taking only what we need, some of the Vigil lose control over their own minds at the end, too tired to maintain their own identity.”

  “What do we have to lose?” Mark asked. “What does she have to lose?”

  “Oh, Aer,” Pellin almost pleaded. “Mark, look at yourself. All of your memories are tied to your physical being. What would it be like to give Myra memories from a different body? You’re asking me to give her memories that will drive her insane.”

  Mark shrugged away his answer. “We have a saying in the urchins, Eldest. When is the best time to die?”

  Pellin shook his head. “When?”

  His apprentice gave him a rueful smile. “Later.”

  Behind the dwimor, Allta chuckled, his voice a rumble of amusement. “Well spoken.”

  Pellin pulled a deep breath that held hints of woodsmoke and ale and sighed his resignation. “I’ll try.” How could he deny the request of his earnest, kindhearted apprentice. “Allta, as gently as you can, please render her unconscious. I have some somnal powder in my pack.”

  He sat on the bed, waiting while Allta and Mark tried to coax water mixed with sleeping powder into a girl only one of them could see, a slip of a girl who would kill them all without a hint of remorse because she’d lost the ability to feel it.

  After seven hundred years of living, everyone he met reminded him of someone he’d met before. Several times he’d met descendants of nobles or gnath, people without a gift, who resembled a distant relative from antiquity so closely that he suspected the dead of walking his memories.

  Who would she resemble? Might he have seen or met some of her ancestors in his long sojourn? Deep within, so deep he might have denied it existed, lay the hope that he wouldn’t recognize anyone associated with her. What Mark had asked of him lay beyond his ability. Centuries with his gift hadn’t given him Aer-like wisdom—only experience, and all of it told him this was doomed to fail.

  “I think she’s ready, Eldest,” Allta said.

  Pellin stood and circled the young woman he could now see, committing her features to memory. Her heart-shaped face and dark hair would have been considered attractive in any time period, though the current fashion trended toward smaller facial features. He thumbed open one of her eyelids. Her irises, clear as glass, gave no hint of their original color. He would just have to trust to Aer that the memories he placed within the girl would feel right. “How tall is she, Mark?”

  The boy shrugged. “About my height, Eldest. Perhaps a finger’s width shorter.”

  Pellin pulled the other chair close and removed his gloves, though he made no move to delve the girl just yet. “You may as well be seated, gentlemen. This will take more than a moment.”

  He turned his thoughts inward and entered the construct that existed in his mind, a vast library of five levels and four wings emanating from a central open space. He lifted his arms, palms down, and floated. The strictures of Aer’s physical universe didn’t apply here, and he’d long ago found it quicker to fly than walk. When he’d first come to the Vigil, Formona and the others had instructed him on the construction of his sanctuary, how it might have to hold the accumulated delvings of a thousand years.

  He’d planned accordingly. Each wing held two hundred and fifty years of accumulated memories, divided into groups of five decades for each level. He flew along the hallways, his fingers brushing each door just long enough to get a sense of the physical appearance of the person within.

  It was over more quickly than he would have thought, but he had two possibilities, neither of them good. “Mark.” He tried not to sigh. “I’m willing to make the attempt, and I will strive to make it work, but there is a choice to be made.”

  The boy’s eyebrows dipped as if in suspicion. “What choice, Eldest?”

  “Most of the memories held by the Vigil are from those who’ve committed some crime, not surprising, since that is the task Aer has laid upon us with our gift.”

  He didn’t have to finish. “You’re going to give her the memories of a criminal,” Mark said. A moment later he shrugged. “That would have described me a few short months ago.”

  “We don’t delve mere thieves,” Pellin snapped. “You know that.”

  Mark’s face went stony, and for a moment he resembled a Vigil guard. “I do know that. What’s the choice?”

  “Criminal or victim,” Pellin said. “They both resemble her, but the memories are old and partial, as we discussed before.”

  Mark stared. “You’re asking me to choose?”

  Pellin nodded. “It’s customary within the Vigil for the one who proposes a course of action to bear the cost of its decisions.” Behind him, Allta might have made a sound of disapproval.

  To his credit the boy didn’t try to argue or rationalize his way out of the responsibility. “Victim,” he said. “It will give her a better chance at healing. Besides, she’s seems to be one.”

  “Well enough,” Pellin nodded. He leaned forward, placed his hand on the dwimor’s arm, and opened the door to memories from a long dead girl. “May Aer have mercy on our souls,” he whispered.

  Chapter 4

  In the cavernous desolation of the girl’s mind, Pellin searched for her wellspring, the source from which the river of memory flowed for any soul walking the earth. At his feet, a pitiful trickle with a few solitary black strands flowed past him and disappeared only to reappear a few seconds later, the implanted memories that had turned the girl into Cesla’s tool. Each time it completed its cycle, he followed it a bit farther upstream until he found its source. He hadn’t told Mark this had been tried before. And before.

  And before.

  He did not require Custos or any other historian to tell him that failure waited.

  He had tried it himself.

  During the Wars for the Gift of Kings, as Agin and his kin ravaged the north, it had been Pellin’s duty to heal those volunteers who had fallen just short in their quest to become dwimor. He had taken the task upon himself. Even now, centuries later, he could still remember the bone-aching weariness that had come with the labor, how he’d forced himself to stay in the delve longer than he’d ever dreamed in his misguided attempt at healing.

  The stream with its black threads bubbled forth from the girl’s wellspring, and he sighed. He would have to destroy the memories Cesla had implanted in her mind while simultaneously releasing the chosen set of memories from his construct. He knelt, his hands poised on either side of the source of the girl’s identity and waited.

  When those black memories bubbled forth, he grabbed them, held them in one hand as he thrust his other as deep into her wellspring as he could. With a thought he slashed those memories of hatred and injustice and opened the door in his mind, letting the replacement memories stream forth, living her life again. Against reason, he hoped the swap would be enough to destroy her vault, but it remained.

&n
bsp; Her name had been Cerena Niwe, a girl from the northern part of Aille, near Treflow, when Pellin had been new enough to the Vigil to carry his years as any other man. In truth, Cerena’s memories carried slightly more chance of success than any other. When Pellin had delved her, the victim of a cleric’s unwanted attention, he had yet to master his gift. In his zeal he’d absorbed far more of her memories than he should have. That single delve had been the only one he’d been able to attempt that day. In the long years since, he’d learned to refine his search, to focus his gift to an edge sharper than any healer’s scalpel so that he only need absorb the memories required to determine innocence or guilt. In the first days of his service, he’d been a broadsword.

  He loosed the memories of a girl who’d been dead for nearly seven hundred years, pushing them as deep into the assassin’s wellspring as they could go. When the last memory flowed from his mind to hers, he closed the door within his construct and released his hold.

  He blinked against the light of the room, his eyes still remembering the phantom darkness of the girl’s empty mind. Allta and Mark looked at him, waiting, he supposed, for some sign of success or failure. The girl lolled in her chair, her body limp against her restraints.

  “The memories are deep within her wellspring,” he said. “It will take a while for them to come forth.” He sighed. “Her name is Cerena. Cerena Niwe.”

  Mark looked at the girl, his expression so still it might have been mistaken for indifference had Pellin not spent nearly every waking hour with him for the past few months. “Shouldn’t we know more about her? So we can be her friends?”

  Pellin had been about to say “It won’t matter,” but Mark’s earnestness stopped him, filling him with an obscure sense of shame, as though he’d surrendered in the face of evil. This girl, whoever she had been, was a victim of evil’s deception. Who was he to say that finding her, an incredible unlikelihood, had not been arranged by Aer? Even if the threefold God hadn’t set their paths to cross, this girl sat as a living metaphor for the entire continent, a land being force-fed evil until it succumbed.

  “She’s from a village near Treflow,” Pellin said. “Aenwold. Her father was a grain merchant. When he died, the local priest offered to take her on as his secretary to help her family. It was rare in those days for anyone outside the priesthood to know how to read or write.”

  Mark nodded. “You said she was a victim. Let me guess, the priest had other interests besides her clerical skills.” He shook his head. “The church.”

  Pellin felt the stab of the boy’s disgust, recognized that emotion by his own long familiarity with it. Unlike his apprentice, Pellin did not believe Aer was indifferent to suffering, and he had an answer for this. “To some people the church, then and now, offered easy access to power, Mark. They joined her ranks out of the desire to exercise that power or to obtain some measure of wealth.” He shook his head. “It is the same with any organization, though it is most often associated with the nobility.”

  “Then the church should cleanse itself,” Mark said without taking his eyes from the girl.

  Pellin nodded. This too was an argument he knew well. “And many agree with you—I, for one. But remember what the church is, lad—a collection of lost souls who have recognized their plight, many of whom can no more heal themselves of their moral disease than a man or woman can cure themselves of the wasting sickness. They come to Aer, Iosa, and Gaoithe for that healing. Some receive it quickly while others struggle with their weaknesses their entire lives, carrying that fight all the way to their grave.”

  Mark opened his mouth to object once more, but Pellin held up a hand. “But in this case, your desire for justice was fulfilled.” He pointed at the unconscious girl. “I have her memories up through her victimization by the priest because I was called upon by the Archbishop of the Merum to determine the truth.”

  “She was a victim, you said. What happened?” Mark asked.

  “After I determined the priest’s guilt, Cerena was freed from his dominion and paid recompense. Because it was early during my time with the Vigil, and I still had the energy for such, I checked on her a few times over the years. Amazingly, though I am not aware the priest asked for such, it seemed she forgave him and moved on. She married and had children and lived to the end of her days.”

  “And the priest?”

  Pellin nodded. “He also lived to the end of his days.”

  “Doesn’t everyone?” Mark said.

  Despite himself, Pellin laughed. “It’s an old phrase that means someone has lived a long life. I don’t know that the priest enjoyed it so much, though he might have been grateful for it. I never saw him again. The Archbishop kept him under penance until the day he died, working alone in the fields near Cynestol.”

  Mark nodded in satisfaction. “It’s strange to think she’ll have the chance to relive her life centuries after it happened.”

  If only, Pellin thought.

  Chapter 5

  Pellin watched the girl, breathing shallowly and still bound to the chair, his heart grieving what he had done. “She will wake at any moment,” he said to Mark. “It is difficult to say just what her reaction will be. To her own eyes, she will certainly look different than she remembers. Blindfold her, and have a gag ready. We don’t want to draw any more attention than we have to.”

  Mark nodded as he took from his bag the cloth that all of the urchins carried to shield their eyes from lamp and daylight before going out to steal at night. He tied it firmly over the girl’s eyes and waited. “How many times has this been tried?” he asked.

  Pellin stepped into the river that comprised his own long life, panning for those memories. “In the lore of the Vigil, it’s been recorded at least a dozen times, though it’s certain that it has been attempted more often. Those who hold the gift of domere are no less human than anyone else. We have no desire to commit our failures to pen and parchment.”

  “Has it ever worked?” Mark asked. He kept his gaze on the girl.

  “No,” Pellin whispered.

  His apprentice nodded slightly, his face somber. “Is there a prayer you could offer for her?”

  He shook his head, though Mark still hadn’t looked away from the girl. “There is nothing in the liturgy that covers circumstances such as these.”

  “Is it possible to surprise Aer?” Mark asked.

  “No.”

  “Then He knew this would happen?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then there must be some prayer you can offer for her that He will hear,” he said, his face tight.

  “And do you believe He cares?” Pellin asked.

  “Who can speak for Aer?” Mark said. “But I care.”

  A knot formed in Pellin’s throat that refused to loosen. “Perhaps this will suffice.” He raised his hands and recited the Exordium, the preface to each liturgical prayer in the church. Afterward, he lifted his voice, both in benison to the girl and in pleading to the threefold one. “Into your hands, O Aer, we commend this one, and we plead that where she found disease, she will find healing. Where she found hatred, she will find love. Where she found sorrow, she will find joy.” He paused, knowing Mark would remember every word. The boy would test events against the words of his prayer, but Pellin had committed himself to this. “And where this poor soul found death, Aer, we pray she shall find life.”

  Mark turned at last from his contemplation of the girl. “That sounded like the prayer for the dead.”

  He nodded, knowing Mark would recognize it, expecting no less. “I changed it to something more appropriate.”

  “Thank you. I used to hear that prayer in Bunard whenever one of the urchins died, mostly in the winter. The priests always rushed through it.” He shrugged, but something savage worked its way free from his indifference. “It was cold, and there was no reason for them not to. No one stood in attendance, and the priest couldn’t know I was there, hidden in the shadows.”

  A sound came from the chair, like the softes
t mewing of a kitten. The girl lifted her head first, then tried to move her arms. A grunt, the prelude to struggle, sounded low in her throat. Mark darted forward to untie the ropes around her arms and legs. Allta drew his sword, the whisper of steel against leather soft in the room

  Her head swiveled toward the sound.

  “Do you know your name?” Mark asked.

  She shook her head at first, then cocked it to one side. “Ce . . . Ce . . . Ce . . .”

  “Your name is Cerena,” Mark said.

  The girl nodded, and for an instant, improbable impossible hope flared in Pellin’s chest.

  But then her legs twitched and she raised her arms, one trailing the other in uncoordinated jerks to rip the blindfold from her eyes. She held her shaking hands in front of her face, settling for an instant before the momentary expression of calm fled and her visage crumpled. She gasped, drawing breath to scream, but Allta was quicker. He placed a cloth infused with somnal syrup over her nose and held it there until her limbs went slack.

  “Is this what happened before?” Mark asked in a small voice.

  Pellin sighed, nodding. “Her memories of Cerena’s physical body, no matter how close to her own, aren’t hers, and her mind cannot reconcile the difference.”

  “You ended up killing them all, didn’t you?”

  He didn’t bother to dodge the accusation or offer the claim that others had made the decision to create the dwimor and that he had only tried to heal them. Mark probably wouldn’t care. He was certain he didn’t care himself. As Eldest of the Vigil he carried the responsibility of past decisions as well as his own. “Yes, usually with the apothecaries’ aid, but in the end all of them died by our hand. There is no need for us to be present for this, Mark.” He turned. “Allta.”

  “No,” Mark said. “There will be time to kill her later.”

  “Why?” Pellin asked.

  Mark turned to him, his eyes bright with tears in the lamplight of the room. “Because she’s a victim. Cesla emptied her mind as if he were pouring water from a pitcher.”