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The Meddler nodded. "My reason for seeking you is this. Your friends are preparing to come rescue you. Originally, all I hoped was to learn something of your situation, anything that would help them find you." "I am in a cottage," Plik said, "being tended by two who have no idea just how great a role you have played in their recent, unhappy lives. That's all I know. I haven't been outside. Oh! And the cottage is somewhere in the Old World. We reached it by some sort of gate, but as I was unconscious at the time, I have no memory of this." The Meddler rubbed his raccoon hands over his chest ruff. "Well, it would be nice if you knew more, but if you don't... Tiniel and Isende are well?" "Alive, but I think they are as much captives as I am. I have been extremely ill since my arrival, first with blood briar poison, now with querinalo. Needless to say, I have learned less than I would like." "Captives?" "Of some people they referred to as the Once Dead and, again, as the Twice Dead. I don't know anything more. I think I saw one of them, though. A doctor. Polite enough. Professional. Seemed completely alive to me." The Meddler straightened. "Alive! That's right. You need to make a decision, and, although time runs somewhat differently here than it does where your body is, you need to make that decision soon." "Decision?" 'To try and live or to stay here and let your body die. You're half dead already. In a way, you're already dead, your body just doesn't know it yet. If you don't return your spirit to its residence, the dying will be complete." Plik fell back into his body just a little and was met with a wash of pain. The surf sound had returned, and the pounding in his head was more than he could take. He slipped back to his cloud-pillowed refuge again. "Dying doesn't seem so bad," he said. "I doubt I can stop the others," the Meddler said, "even if I tell them the truth. They don't trust me, you see. Even if they do believe me..." "Believe you?" "If I tell them you have died," the Meddler said, and Plik knew he was being deliberately harsh. "Even if I tell them you have died, then they will still insist on knowing for themselves. Will you leave them nothing but sorrow as a reward for their efforts?" Plik fell back into his body again. A second time the pain, the pounding in his head, the burning heat that lit his skin, the freezing cold that drilled through his bones, a second time these drove him back to where there was no pain. "Will you?" the Meddler asked. Plik thought he would. What sorrow would they feel for him, maimalodalu, monster, rejected child of the only parent he had known? They were chance companions who had known him for a handful of moonspans. Surely their mourning would not be deep. Then Plik remembered, remembered how each and every one of them had sorrowed while Bitter struggled for his life. The sour raven was hardly the best of companions, but not a one of them had not glanced with almost every breath over to where the raven lay. Plik remembered the joy they had felt when Bitter had begun to move again, when he had first flapped wings still stiff from wounds, but slowly healing. Plik could no longer deny that his companions would mourn him. They would grieve all the more deeply for feeling they had somehow failed him. Time and again they would ask: "If we had come sooner?" "If we had fought harder?" "Would anything we could have done made a difference?" No matter how many times they were told that the choice had been his, they would not believe. And on Misheemnekuru a community that not so long before had lost several of its small number would also mourn, wondering once again if all contact with the world outside their islands must end in grief. Plik glanced at the Meddler. "I believe I must at least ,try to live." Then, taking a last sweet breath of painless air, he descended back into the tortured hell of his dying body. For a long, long while after, Plik was aware of nothing but that pain. Then, perhaps because he had been given some rest in the place of dying, he found he could sort through the pain, place it in categories. He remembered what Tiniel and Isende had told him about querinalo's nature. Burrowing through, he looked for the wick along which the fever burned. It was there, pulsing with the sound of the surf, a sound he now knew to be his own ability to sense the presence of magic. Plik saw that in order to preserve itself from being turned into ashes, the wick was sucking up his bodily strengths, feeding on them as a candle wick does on wax. Now, Plik began to isolate that wick from the rest of his body, sealing it within a cocoon woven from his desperate will to survive. He began within his core, preserving his vital organs and brain. Then, when these were safe, he moved to his extremities. As he worked, Plik realized something of great value. The disease was very like a fire. Deprive it of fuel, and it would smother and die. Once he had isolated it, Plik experimented with such a smothering, closing the cocoon segment by segment, imagining himself as squeezing out the air. The fires burned hotter as he forced them into more contained areas. With their heat the pain grew in intensity until Plik thought he must give up and let himself be consumed. But he remembered grief, and, holding on to the memory, he fought. Eventually, he fell unconscious, dead even to pain. When he woke, he heard Isende's voice. "The fever has definitely broken. He's through it!" "Once dead or twice?" Tiniel said, his voice bitter. "Stop it, idiot. He's alive. Alive!" "Alive to be a captive." "Alive." "Alive." Tiniel's voice softened, and Plik felt the young man's hand, gentle on his brow, and realized that testing touch had been there many times before over that long night's battle. "Alive," Tiniel repeated, and this time he sounded truly happy. Plik slept, clean, true sleep, not the unconsciousness of exhaustion. When he woke, he was aware that although he had come through querinalo he was not done with pain. Every muscle in his body, including those that moved his tail tip and his eyelids, ached from past convulsions. His throat was so raw he knew he had been screaming. A headache pounded beneath his brow, but after the pounding of the surf, it was almost welcome. He opened his eyes and found Tiniel watching him. Isende lay on a heap of blankets on the floor. She was snoring slightly, and Plik thought with almost parental affection that the young woman looked cute in a rumpled sort of way. "Once dead or twice dead?" Tiniel said as he had to his sister, but he redeemed himself with a self-mocking smile. "That's apparently the traditional question to ask someone who has survived querinalo." Plik motioned for water, and when he had drunk deeply, he replied, "If I knew what you meant, I'd answer." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |