Memory's Wake Omnibus: The Complete Illustrated YA Fantasy Series (37 page)

“How about I get this round?” Memory offered after looking into an empty glass. She left Clara and Will together, a little worried of what Clara would do with the opportunity. Memory would have to break it to Clara later on that Will already had a girlfriend. Or girlfae. Or whatever he called Mina.

As she waited to be served at the busy bar, a thin man with slicked back hair and oiled moustache approached and stood far too close to her. A friend hovered behind him, looking over his shoulder with a dopey smile.

“My lady,” the thin man said, holding a cup in a spidery hand and pausing for a sip. “That was a fine display of dancing you gifted us with before.”

“Yeah, right. Me and my two left feet don’t know much about dancing.”

“Would you be interested perhaps in some private dance sessions?” he suggested with a smarmy smile.

Oh gross.
Memory held up a hand between her and the man. “Sorry, mister, not interested.”

“Come now, don’t be like that. This is a time of celebration and free spirits.”

The man ran his finger down the length of Memory’s lifted arm.

Memory recoiled in disgust, but before she could react more, something hit the skinny man. His head hit the bar, his arm twisted behind his back, held down by Will.

“Will, stop!” Memory shouted. Everyone nearby fell silent, and Will withdrew his grasp. The thin man took his wrist in his other hand and rubbed it. His friend fawned over him. Another group of men hurried to their side.

“You brute. I was just speaking with the lady.”

Will growled.

The thin man shivered, but his voice rose in outrage. “You’ve made a big mistake. Don’t you know who I am? I’m Count Delaney, you fool! And I’ll see to it that you hang for this.”

Clara pushed through to the middle of the confrontation, wobbling slightly and red faced. “Don’t you know who this is? Do you not recognize your princess when you see her?”

“Clara, shush!” Memory said, too late.

Clara’s voice was only a little raised, but the entire tavern stilled, everyone looking their way.

Count Delaney looked amused for a moment, but his eyebrows started twitching as he looked at Memory again. He quickly took to a knee. Half the tavern followed him, the other half whispering and gossiping. Memory was glad no one here had camera phones, but already knew how fast gossip in Avall could spread.

“Hayes pulled me up in front of the whole Council for what had happened at the pub. Talking to me like I was a little kid, like they could ground me or something.”

Memory ranted, pacing back and forth. The space was small with grimy beige walls, spotted with old sticky tape, and a single bed made of metal framework that looked like a flattened cage. She could hear the noise of cars and a busy street outside. Thayl stood near the small window and looked out through the bars that covered it.

“Where are we? I feel I’m still in my prison cell.”

“This is where I grew up. Where you sent me. Trust me, it gives me the creeps too.” Memory folded her arms and dumped herself down on the bed with a huff. The mattress springs screeched.

Thayl assessed the dreamscape with a serious expression. “I’m sorry,” he said, simply.

“Sure you are.” This was the first dream they shared since she’d cut off his hand, which, she noticed, he had grown back in dream form. Until now she wasn’t sure it was still possible to share dreams, but whatever was linking them together had brought him into her head again, into her dream. They were still connected, just like he said. She wasn’t sure why it happened now, but he proved to be a sympathetic ear for complaining about the Wizard’s Council.

Disembodied voices carried through the room.

“This is not behavior befitting a princess of the Maellan line.”

“It is an embarrassment to your sister, the queen to be. We cannot have this sort of scandal on our hands while we try and reestablish a trusted ruler for Avall.”

“You can’t play dress up with him and think he’s a man. That boy is an animal, and the sooner you realize it the better. He is not proper company for a princess.”

Memory swatted at the air like the voices were flies that she could bat away. She grunted. “They don’t want me to see Will anymore. They have no right to tell me who I can and can’t be friends with.”

“They would disagree. They think meddling in other’s relationships is exactly their duty when it comes to the Maellan bloodline.”

“Right. You and Loredanna,” Memory said. “Wow, they haven’t changed at all. Talk about learning nothing from past experience.”

Thayl nodded grimly but kept his eyes on the cars passing by on the street below. Memory wondered what he must think of them.

“Would you laugh were I to say I have learned? You know, I told Loredanna we were running away together, that night, but instead I lured her to the witch, so her unborn child could be part of the ritual. I have learned, and could I have my time again I would have run away with Loredanna as I promised and forgotten my revenge. But my mistakes have all been made and paid for.”

“You knew I’d be part of the ritual? You would sacrifice a newborn baby for your revenge, but you expect sympathy from me that things went wrong for you?”

Memory gripped the edge of the bed, anger rising. The smell of smoldering plastics filled the room and small wisps of smoke rose around her, forming the shapes of carved runes.

“To me, back then, the offspring Loredanna carried were nothing but another man’s spawn. How could you know what it feels like to have another man’s children grow within your beloved? I despised what you were and fooled myself into thinking that justified the terrible ritual.” Thayl turned away from the window and looked at Memory, right into her eyes. “But now, I see you not as another man’s, but as Loredanna’s. You are so clearly the daughter of the woman I loved. In you I see her fire, her spirit, her natural compassion. You are a constant reminder of what I lost, the mistakes I made.” Thayl held his ghost hand up in front of his face. It flickered in and out of existence.

“Just because I’m blonde now,” Memory muttered.

An awkward silence spread between them, broken only by the dull roars of a dragon, competing with emergency sirens in the distance. The dragon often haunted her dreams.

The smoke cleared. The urge that came to Memory to comfort Thayl irritated her. He deserved whatever he got, and she reminded herself of how he ruined her life, her soul. She was the one who deserved comfort and answers.

“And you’re a reminder of what I’ve lost,” Memory said. “I need to know more, about what you did to me. Like how, or why, are some of my memories coming back now? Could my soul be coming back, too? I have to find some answers. Can you tell me more about what happened, how the ritual worked?”

“I could. But why would you believe me?”

“Because I’m asking you, because you owe me. You owe Loredanna. You’ve got a lot to make up for and not much else to lose.”

Thayl laughed wryly. “You are right there. But you might be disappointed in what I can tell you. I know nothing of magic. In my youth I never studied the lore. I was never a talent. The only power I ever had was what I stole from you through Providence’s ritual, and I used it like a weapon. Your raw power was all I required. I didn’t try to understand it.”

“You’ve got nothing for me? What about Providence? Would she know? Where is she?”

“You don’t want to meet her. At first I thought her just an old woman,” Thayl scoffed. “I could not conceive she could hold such evil. It took me a very long time to realize that she was more than she seemed.”

“Then show me. Do your flashback thing and show me what happened,” Memory demanded, not sure if she really wanted to see.

Thayl turned back to the window, head shaking slightly. “So be it.”

A scene emerged in front of Memory, but Thayl kept his back to the vision. It showed the forest clearing the ritual took place in. Bodies lay scattered on the ground, including her mother’s. It must have been just after Memory had been dropped through the Veil and Alward and baby Eloryn had fled. A young Thayl knelt with his hands clasped around his face. Behind him stood a hunched figure, covered in robes so nothing showed but undulating skeletal fingers spotted with blood.

“You still thirst for revenge? You would do anything for it?” An old woman’s voice came from under the robe’s heavy hood. The witch, Providence.

“I would do anything, give anything. My need for vengeance is now tenfold.” The young Thayl lifted his head from his hands, stood and looked squarely at her.

“With this knife,” Providence drew a blade. Memory felt a pang of pain in her chest. The serrated edge was still wet with blood.
My blood
. “We do sacrifice.”

A girl was brought out. She was tied and blindfolded, being hauled by two men wearing cloaks like Providence. The girl looked similar to Thayl with bundles of wild dark hair and handsome face.

“No,” Thayl shouted. “No, I will not!”

Providence raised the knife. More of her men moved to hold Thayl back. “It has already begun. You have given your permission and made your bargain.”

“But why? Why her? There must be another way.”

“No other way. No other chance. She is the only link that will enable you to venture into Hell and steal the power of the mature Maellan girl. The power you’ll need to gain your revenge.”

Thayl sobbed, looking over at his sister. The girl, blindfolded, recognized his voice and was begging him for help. Providence uttered words that Memory didn’t understand, like the words Eloryn used for her magic, before slitting the throat of the young girl in one smooth, brutal motion. Blood flowed from the gaping wound as she choked and the men held her upright. Memory had to look away. When she looked back, young Thayl sat staring blankly at the girl’s limp body as Providence carved symbols into his hand with the twice bloodied blade.

She spoke technically, as though the explanation would console him. “The doorway must be tied to the Maellan child. We cannot tie it to a place. We do not know what the hellish lands beyond Avall look like to do so. With the child’s blood, your blood and your sister’s blood all tied, we can focus the doorway to find the Maellan child when she is older, the age of your sister, when her magic has grown strong, ready to steal.”

The doorway opened, and the young Thayl, feral in his loss and anger, stepped through with determination.

The older Thayl finally spoke again and let the vision fade. “When I stepped through that Veil door, I didn’t know what I would find. I barely trusted the witch’s words and hoped I would die myself. I welcomed Hell. But instead, I found you as promised. My hand was drawn to you and the feeling of the flow of power as I stole your essence, I cannot explain it. Then your boy showed up.”

“Will. He stopped you, before you could take all of… me.”

“If he hadn’t, I wonder if I would have been more powerful. I may have been able to defeat all of the Wizard’s Council much sooner. There would have been more death, more destruction, and I am sure that I would have achieved my goal. Then have had that power set to Providence’s goal.”

“What was her goal? What did she get out of all this effort and bloodshed?”

“There was a covenant, a debt,” Thayl said. “She would help me destroy all of the Wizard’s Council for my revenge, and then I would repay the debt to her.”

“Repay it? How?”

“I never discovered what I was to do for her. Some of the Wizard’s Council still lived, so she had not fulfilled her side, so I had no reason to follow through with mine.”

Memory tried exercising her dream control skills and summoned a vision of the witch back into the room. She stood frozen like a mannequin and Memory walked around her, trying to peak under the hood to see who was underneath. The shadowed face just revealed a normal-looking old woman, with a spatter of blood on her wrinkled lips.

“She’s one scary old lady that’s for sure. I bet she would have answers for me, but I’ll be damned if I want to be in the same room as her.”

Thayl looked from Memory to the frozen vision of Providence with a frown. “I am sorry that I don’t have answers for you. Though there is one thing Providence told me that you should know. If you travel through to Hell, there is no guaranteed way to return. She would say it is easy to get from here to there, but not the other way around. The only way I managed to come back was because Providence maintained the gateway at this end.”