Palimpsest

The lamp at the peak of Nirali has burned for three hundred and sixty years. It has survived two earthquakes, four severe winters, and one siege that never fully materialized. The guild that tends it keeps a record of every interruption: there have been nine, the longest lasting four hours during the second earthquake, when the housing cracked and had to be resealed before the flame could be relit.

Sailors use it as a navigation point from as far as forty miles out to sea. For them it is a landmark like any other. The guild has never corrected this understanding. It has also never explained what the lamp was built for, which was not navigation.

— Maritime Records of the Northern Lands. Compiled by the Nirali Harbor Authority.

Chapter 38 Who am I

The two scouts hadn't set up a proper camp — only a low fire ringed with stones and two bedrolls thrown down beside it. They never quite looked settled, and yet, oddly, they seemed at once newly arrived and on the verge of leaving. But the fire had built up a fair amount of embers, which made it clear it hadn't been lit recently. Dawn did not seem to have broken long ago, and from the state of the men it was obvious they had gone without sleep. One of them sat with his back to the cave, rubbing his face; he had plainly only just woken.

The other was looking off at the mist-covered mountains lit by the sun a little way away. This one, clearly keeping watch, sat gripping his sword and trying to hold himself awake on the last of his energy. Though his eyes drifted now and then toward the cave, he did not seem able to gather his attention. As the first man woke, drew a little water from his waterskin, and splashed it on his face, Veylith realized there could be no better moment to attack. With one of them preparing to wake and the other to sleep, and both with their focus gone, the situation would have been far easier if they had not been at least thirty paces away. But there was no time to wait. Veylith pointed Ravah toward the nearer man; she herself would take the one farther off. Being seen was no great trick, but that hardly mattered. Their attention was scattered either way, and one on one the two of them could be brought down easily. The real problem was keeping it silent. The mountain road could not be far, and they had no wish to hurry along anyone approaching from it. The men carried no firearms, but each had a strong metal whistle.

As Kaelin leaned against the cave wall, trying to see out, Veylith all but threw up a wind behind her as she hurled herself forward. Ravah began to run in the same instant. Veylith ran dead straight while Ravah cut to the left, angling toward the nearer man. Neither of them had yet grasped what was happening, but the nearer one caught the sound of footsteps on the hard ground. He heard Ravah when she was halfway there and turned, while the farther man noticed Veylith rushing toward him.

When the man who had turned saw the muscular woman bearing down on him, his hands and feet tangled; he flung his waterskin aside and lunged for his sword. He managed to draw it before Ravah reached him and thrust toward her, but it was already too late. Ravah turned the blade aside with the baton in her left hand and drove the baton in her right straight into the center of his chest. She struck so hard that the blade at the baton's tip came out through his back. For a few seconds the man tried to speak, but he only made choking sounds, and he died before he could so much as fall. Then Ravah pushed her knee into his belly to draw the baton from his chest, and his body dropped in front of her.

Veylith's target, being farther off and already turned toward her, noticed her before she had even covered half the distance. His hand was already on his sword, but rather than draw it he reflexively threw his other hand toward the metal whistle at his throat. Seeing this, Veylith — still at a dead sprint — hurled one of the short knives in her hand at him with all her strength. The knife she threw pierced the hand reaching for the whistle and buried itself in his chest. Because it had all but nailed his hand to his chest, he could not move it, and in his panic he drew the sword in his other hand. With less than ten paces left between them, the man swung the blade almost on reflex, in sheer desperation. Veylith dropped instantly to her knees, slid beneath the sword, and with her one remaining knife laid a deep cut across his leg. Then she set her feet and, with one hard motion, managed to stop herself. Before the man could even turn, Veylith drove her elbow forward and landed a hard blow against his ear. His balance gone in an instant, he dropped his sword as well and crumpled to the ground. Without understanding what had happened, he began to writhe there, clutching his ear, as though he were about to pass out.

Having brought down the other man and come over to join her, Ravah glanced at Veylith when she saw the one still squirming on the ground. Veylith, wiping the blood from her knives with a strip of cloth she had torn from the man's clothing, said nothing at first. Then, finished, she tossed the cloth toward him, looked at Ravah, and said, "He won't be getting up for a long time." Then she turned to the man and added, "And that ear won't hear again."

"But why?" Ravah asked, making it clear this was not the thing she was actually wondering about. "We don't know anything," Veylith answered. "Who's after us, how many of them there are, how far back they are…"

"You think he'll talk?"

"Got a better idea? Other than just killing him."

Ravah did not answer, because she knew a chance like this would not come around again. As she kicked the man's sword away from him, she made sure the area was clear. Then she rolled him onto his back and pinned his good hand under her foot to stop him moving.

Veylith pinned the wounded hand the same way. There was bleeding at his chest, but since his hand had taken most of the blow it was not a particularly deep wound. The man, for his part, was moving as though his head were spinning. At last Veylith leaned down toward his hearing ear and asked, hard, "How many are after us?"

The man began to writhe in pain and, with effort, fixed his eyes on Veylith, but he did not answer.

"The Hunter? Is that who's after us? What's the name?" Veylith went on, bearing more of her weight down on his hand, but the man, dying in his pain, would not speak. "Is there another ambush ahead of us?" she said, and the result was the same.

While Veylith and Ravah were questioning him, they realized the others had come up as well. They had seen the situation, but none of them said a word. Darian and Vaelra looked as though the sight disturbed them, yet they understood it for the necessary evil it was. Unlike Elis, they had not turned their faces away; they had taken ownership of what was being done. Tivver watched the man with a cruelty much like Ravah's and Veylith's. There was no unease or hesitation on his face. His hand resting on the small axe at his belt, he watched it all unfold — perhaps from closest of all. Kaelin stood just behind him, lost in thought, almost as if she did not see the man at all. Vaelra noticed this, but did not understand what it was.

As Veylith and Ravah pressed down harder on his arms, Veylith bent even lower over him. The cruelty on her face was enough to frighten even the others, but still the man would not talk; he only writhed in pain.

At this point there was not much left to do. She and Ravah exchanged a glance, and then she gripped her knife hard. At that moment Tivver, understanding what was about to happen, noticed Kaelin moving past him as he watched. Vaelra and the others saw her too, walking slowly toward the man. With no emotion on her face, perfectly calm, she came in a few steps to stand just behind Veylith. When she laid her hand gently on Veylith's arm — the one clenched tight around the knife — Kaelin made it ease at once. Veylith could not tell whether it was reflex or Kaelin's power, but all at once her muscles relaxed. Kaelin stood between Veylith and Ravah and looked carefully down at the man. Then she looked at Veylith's foot, crushing his right arm, and then directly into her face.

Though Veylith understood what she meant, she did not pull her foot back. "Are you sure?" she asked. But Kaelin only went on looking, saying nothing. At last Veylith slowly drew her foot off the man's arm.

Right after, Kaelin looked straight at Ravah. Without answering, Ravah pulled her foot away, in a sense setting the man free. And yet he was in no state even to rise. Both Veylith and Ravah kept their weapons gripped, ready to strike at any sudden move from him. Kaelin may have wanted this, but there was no question of them leaving her exposed.

Kaelin stepped to the man's right, swung her other leg over his body to his left — almost directly beneath his arm — and slowly lowered herself down onto it. Crouched crosswise over him, she leaned forward and did not stop until only a handful of space remained between them. She came nearly face to face with him, and the man looked at her with a strange expression.

Veylith, who was not at all pleased by this, had already taken her knife in a grip ready to move. "What are you doing?" she asked, and her voice came out angry without her meaning it to.

Without taking her eyes off the man, Kaelin answered in a whisper, "What I have to." Then she set her hand on his head, as though cradling it. In that moment she had no idea what she could or could not do, but once again she had chosen to trust her instincts. The thought that no better time than this might come kept pushing her forward. She closed her eyes. In the end her hand began to glow, the way it did whenever she used her power. It was not so bright in the daylight, yet it still managed to dazzle the eye.

Nearly all of them had assumed the man's pain would ease, and that perhaps he would talk because of it — though Veylith still thought the whole thing was foolish. But all of them were stunned when the man began to convulse far more violently than before. All at once he seemed to be in much fiercer agony, and on top of it he had begun to look about himself in fear. No one understood what was happening; they watched it unfold in astonishment. Only Darian's expression differed from the rest. He wore the same look he had given Veylith moments earlier as she tortured the man — as though he had taken ownership of it.

"How many?" Kaelin asked, her glowing eyes suddenly open, fixed on the man. None of them had ever heard a voice so cold and so frightening come out of her.

"More than forty!" the man cried, as if his life hung on the answer.

"Time?"

"A day at most," he answered again, his face wearing the look of someone afraid of Kaelin to the point of death.

"Ambush?" Kaelin asked again, but the man, though on the verge of fainting from the pain, this time gave no answer. At that she gripped his head tighter and asked once more, harder, "Ambush?"

"South east!" the man answered at last, and "half a day's travel," he added, almost begging. When Kaelin bore down on him a little more, he could not endure it any longer and passed out. Kaelin drew her hand back from his head and slowly rose to her feet again. She glanced at Veylith for a moment and began walking toward a tree a little way off.

"What was that just now?" Tivver asked, unable to hold it in, watching Kaelin as she passed him. "Sharing," Kaelin answered, and when she reached the tree she sank down at its base and leaned her back against it. She drew a deep breath, and as she let it out she looked up at the sky.

"I'm afraid we're going to need a better answer than that, darling," Vaelra said, coming to her side. She crouched beside Kaelin, who looked at them as though she had nearly faded out of herself, and laid a hand on her knee.

"In the dungeon where we got you out, I helped ease your pain — you remember, don't you?" Still gazing at the sky, Kaelin laid her own hand over Vaelra's.

"Of course I remember. Why?"

At this answer Kaelin bowed her head forward again and looked at Veylith. "I did the same for you, at Night Forge," she said calmly. Veylith dipped her head slightly, as if in confirmation. Then Kaelin began to let her eyes move over all of them at once. "The truth is, I've been doing this for every one of you without showing it — and I still am." In the end she had looked at Elis. "At least, it's the most I can do."

"That's not true at all," Tivver cut in, almost scolding her.

A proud little smile surfaced on Kaelin's face and vanished. Then she went on. "But the truth of it is that all the pain I took from you had nowhere to go. Ever since we fled the city, the pain that had gathered inside me began to rise to the surface."

"You've been carrying our pain this whole time?" Veylith asked, a note of guilt in her voice, moving closer to her. Then, kneeling down in front of her, she went on, "Why didn't you tell us?"

"Because I didn't yet understand why it was happening," Kaelin answered, with a brief glance at Darian. "I had never noticed it building up inside me before, because what I took from people wasn't their physical pain but their sorrows and their traumas." She sighed, and let out a bitter laugh. "For years I wrestled constantly with my own thoughts and my own unhappiness, without even knowing whether I was living or not. I'd thought it was normal — after all, why should a thirty-year-old woman, alone, working in a brothel, be happy? But it turned out that none of it was actually my pain, or my thoughts."

Trying to take in what she was hearing, Vaelra asked, "Isn't it a good thing that you've realized this?"

"It should have been, really," Kaelin replied at once, then fixed her eyes on the ground and went on, "but underneath all that pain and trauma that was never mine — who am I?"

None of them could answer her, because there was no answer to give.

Kaelin sighed again, breaking the silence, and turned back to them. "So this time, I decided to do the opposite."

"The opposite?" asked Ravah, standing behind Veylith.

"Instead of taking the pain in, this time I tried to push the pain gathered inside me back out. Even the fear and the helplessness I lived through in the caves went into it. And the result is right there," Kaelin said, looking at the man lying unconscious. All of them glanced at him in spite of themselves and turned back to her. "And now the pain and the fear I was carrying have almost disappeared." There was something wry in the way she said it, and something faintly melancholy too.

"Then why do you still look so unhappy, so full of regret?" Elis asked from the very back. They had not expected her to speak, but they did not find it strange either; they had come through real dangers together.

Kaelin looked at her and took in her body, which seemed so much better now. Then she turned her head to the sky again. "Because I haven't felt this good in years."

…

A few hours had passed since they came out of the caves, and it was almost noon. They had set out again with the provisions taken from the two scouts' camp, and had brought the scouts' horses along with them. Darian and Elis shared one horse, and this time Vaelra and Tivver rode together on another; the rest rode alone.

Ravah went at the very front, scouting the way, following a route that ran opposite the direction of the ambush they had been told about. For a while they had pressed northeast, but as the forest thickened and the ground grew rougher, they turned due east. Veylith was at the rear again, and like all of them she checked on Kaelin every so often as she rode behind Ravah. After the chase she had been through, it was clear she could handle her horse more easily now. Even so, when they had parted from the place, Veylith had given her the horse the two of them had ridden together, and had taken the tortured man's horse for herself.

They had not spoken since setting out, and the same was true of Tivver. None of them was judging her — perhaps no one but herself. Veylith had seen more than her fair share of war and violence; to her, it was simply something that had to be done. Yet she was still aware of the weight of everything this woman had lived through in such a short time. This was a woman who had never even left the city she was born in and had somehow managed to fare better than any of them. She had slipped out of the hands of the Wardens and the Ledger, watched someone she loved die, been hunted by soldiers, killed a man, broken a spell that touched the whole city and perhaps the whole continent, fallen into an ambush, and tortured a man… If only she could see for herself how strong she was, Veylith thought, watching her. What she could do — what all of them ought to do — was behave normally and wait for Kaelin to speak, or to come through it on her own. She needed a little room; but when she reached out her hand, they had to be there to take it.

After a few short rests and a fairly calm ride, the sun had sunk low toward the mountains that were beginning to shrink behind them. Ravah knew by now that they had to make camp for the night, but she still wanted to get over the high hill ahead of them, so as not to draw the eye of anyone following.

In less than an hour she had managed it, and beyond the crest she stopped in the middle of the thinning forest that sloped away downhill, waiting for the others. One by one they came up and ranged beside her, looking out at what lay before them. Green stretched as far as the eye could see, running on toward the distant hills. The sea, off to their right, had appeared at last, and met the foot of the high mountain ahead of them somewhere in the distance.

As the light dimmed further, Kaelin noticed a glow on the seaward face of the mountain — a red light, set quite high up, but burning bright. "what is that light?" she asked, not taking her eyes from it.

Veylith, whom Kaelin had not noticed standing beside her until that moment, answered in a calm, contented voice, 'That is the great red lantern of the city of Nirali.'