Down a Lost Road

chapter 6 – Dawn


When I first began to wake, I felt only quiet darkness, a thick, bodiless calm. Then the shadows began to recede, and a terrible fluttering brightness burned against my eyelids. I tried to lift my hands to cover them, but someone grasped my wrists and gently pressed them back to my sides. I thought I heard words but could not understand what they said. Then something moist and cool draped over my eyes, and a spicy soothing aroma hovered in a cloud over my head. I breathed deeply, letting the new darkness haze my vision. My head swam, and my body drifted numbly somewhere between sleep and waking.

“Merelin.”

I made a noise of protest and turned my head. The cloth lifted, and I forced my eyes to open. The light wasn’t so painful now, though everything seemed to bob between wretched brightness and deepest shadow. I was lying on a coarse blanket in a sort of cave, low and wide, with pale wind-carven walls and sandy floor. Yatol crouched next to a small fire, using a long ladle to stir something in a rough iron pot.

In the light I saw his face marred by a shallow, broad cut – a new injury. I wondered how he had gotten it. He had changed his bloodied and torn shirt for a clean one, pale grey with long sleeves that covered all the wounds I had seen before. But they were rolled back a little as he stirred, and I could glimpse the hint of a bandage beneath them.

He stabbed at the pot a few more times, then lifted out a piece of cloth, wringing it out and shaking it until it was cool.

“How do you feel?” he asked gently, laying the compress back over my eyes.

He held it there a moment, then as he withdrew his hand his fingertips brushed my cheek. A little flutter touched my heart. I pushed back the cloth and tried to sit up, wincing from a whole-body ache and grimacing at the sight of my bandaged hands.

“All right,” I said. “Sore, but all right. What happened?”

He stood without answering, rolling his sleeves back the rest of the way and going to the mouth of the cave. For some time he leaned against the wall staring out, and I could tell from where I lay that it was night.

“How did you know?” he asked.

“Know what?”

“To jump.” He turned to glance back at me. “To evade his hand.”

“I don’t know.” I wondered why I had – I could have killed myself. My cheeks burned and I murmured, “I’m sorry. I put you in danger.”

He gave a strange, thin laugh. “It’s not me you need to worry about putting in danger.”

What is that supposed to mean?

Yatol wandered back into the cave and sat down against the far wall, drawing up his knees and turning a curved knife around in his hands. I recognized it from the vision I’d had of him guarding my tent. That horrible vision. I leaned my chin on my knees and shuddered.

“Are you…” I faltered. “Um, are you okay?”

“Why?”

I didn’t know how to say it, so I just gestured dumbly at my own face. “And your arms. They looked hurt.”

He gave a sort of slanted shake of his head mixed with a shrug, a gesture somewhere between denial and affirmation that told me nothing. When he noticed me scowling he smiled wryly.

“Don’t worry about me.”

“Don’t worry? How am I supposed to not worry?”

“Just trust me.”

I stared at him. I wanted to laugh – I was that confused.

“How does trusting you have anything to do with it? I’m supposed to, what, trust you that you can do just fine getting yourself tort—”

I swallowed the word as it started to leave my mouth. It had popped into my head as a joke, but suddenly I got that punched-in-the-gut feeling and the blood drained from my face. He had gotten tortured. Really tortured. Not just the little intimidation routine I’d been put through. The thought made me sick. Before this, the concept had only existed for me in spy movies and depressing news clips.

Yatol turned away abruptly. I wondered if I’d offended him. For a long time I sat in silence, trying hard not to stare at him. I couldn’t process the contradiction I saw in him. The way he sat, the way he carried himself, body lean and muscled but marred from so many wounds, even the hard impassive look in his eyes – if that was all I could see of him I would have guessed him to be much, much older. But his face was so young. I could hardly imagine a way of life that would force someone that young to be so strong. And I’d just made light of all the pain he’d suffered – for me. To save my skin. Idiot.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. I don’t know if he heard me. “Yatol, what are we doing? I saw the others that night disappearing into the forest. Where are they now?”

“We flee the Ungulion when we can,” he said, and his eyes flared, grim and bitter. “Yes, we run away. We can’t fight them. Our army doesn’t possess any weapons that can defeat them. We have only one defense before them besides flight.”

“What?”

He stared ahead, jaw tight, then he murmured, “It is a death gift.”

I knotted my brow, and wanted to ask him to explain, but the shadow in his eyes stopped me. Instead I said, “Are we going to find them?”

He shook his head.

“Why not?”

“They might wait for us, but it would be pointless for us to try to track them down. They can’t help us now, not where we’re going. Master Syarat, whom we spoke to the first night you were here, he told me where we must go now.”

“Where?”

He didn’t answer. I was getting used to his silence and figured I could expect an answer to only half the questions I asked – if I was lucky. He got abruptly to his feet, hauling the cauldron off the fire and settling it in the sand to cool off. The tiny fire had begun to dwindle. Just as I wondered if he planned on letting it go out, he pulled a handful of dried brush and twigs from a mound near the wall, and fed them carefully into the embers. A fresh brightness filled the cave, with a warmth that dispelled the night chill.

For the first time I noticed a few other iron skillets and pots stacked by the far wall, next to a tall stone urn and a few smaller clay jars. Yatol pulled out one of the smaller pots, scouring it with sand and then filling it with water from the urn. I wondered how long the water had been sitting there, but decided it would probably be rude to ask.

With the pot set to heat over the low flames, he dipped into a clay jar and scooped out a gourd full of something that – from where I sat – seemed to resemble cornmeal. I tried to guess what he was making. Grits? Corn pone? But he just threw the stuff unceremoniously into the pot, swirling it around with the ladle he had used to fish out my poultice. I grimaced. Okay, so maybe he wasn’t exactly the kitchen savvy kind of guy. Still, I was so hungry that I didn’t really care what the stuff tasted like.

I drifted back to sleep, then woke some minutes later to find Yatol still crouched silently by the pot, stabbing at it now and then with the ladle. I wondered if I should offer to help, then decided watching him try to cook was more amusing. Eventually he pulled two clay bowls from the stack of cooking equipment, blew the dust out of them, and slopped in two ladlefuls of…what was that, anyway? Gruel? He produced a couple of spoon-shaped utensils from somewhere, wiped them off on his shirt, and stuck one in each bowl.

He brought one over to me and deposited it in my hands. I peered curiously at the contents. It looked kind of like really lumpy, sticky grits. I tilted the bowl a little, but the mass didn’t move. Suddenly I realized Yatol was still standing there, watching me. I met his gaze, trying not to look skeptical. He lifted both hands, bowl and all, in an annoyed shrug.

“What?”

I bent my head to hide my wicked grin. But the more I tried to stifle it, the more it wanted to surface. Finally I dissolved into laughter, the image of him stabbing fiercely at the gruel popping into my mind every time I had almost managed to sober up. I risked a peek at his face and found him scowling at me.

“I’m sorry,” I gasped, cracking up again. “It’s just…it’s…”

He turned away suddenly. A little pain touched my heart, and I tried to be serious. I hadn’t meant to hurt his feelings… Yatol wouldn’t really get that upset about something so silly, would he? He covered a face with one hand, shoulders shaking. Laughing. After a moment he turned back to me, stern-faced, and pointed his bowl at me.

“No comments. At least I can make—” He paused, examining the gruel and sniffing it experimentally. “Something…edible.”

I grinned at him, and then the most amazing thing happened. He actually grinned back. A tingling rush of vertigo swept over me, and I dropped my gaze. For a second I even forgot that I was hungry. Of course, one glance back into the bowl and I wondered if I still was. Yatol had already set to eating his breakfast, and I really didn’t want to make him feel bad, so I tried a bite. It actually wasn’t terrible, despite its interesting texture. Could have used some milk and brown sugar, but at least it was “edible” as Yatol called it, and surprisingly filling.

When I finished I got painfully to my feet and hobbled over to him, handing him the bowl with an apologetic smile.

“Didn’t die yet, I see,” he remarked, straight-faced.

“Not yet,” I said. “It wasn’t half bad. Thanks.”

The corner of his mouth quirked in a smile and he got suddenly to his feet, kicking sand over the fire. I flinched, expecting darkness, but a dusky light filtered in from the mouth of the cave. I hadn’t realized it was that close to morning. Of course, now that I thought about it, Yatol had just given me breakfast. I turned away abruptly to hide a blush and a smile – he tried to make me breakfast in bed.

Yatol scoured the two bowls with sand – apparently that made them clean – and stacked them by the pots and jars. Dishes taken care of, he went to the back of the cave, where a broad wooden chest languished against the wall, sand-strewn and moldering with disuse. I hadn’t even noticed it before. What else didn’t I know about this place? I’d thought at first that it was just some natural cave, but apparently it was a well-provisioned hideout of some sort. Interesting.

As Yatol shoved back the lid I wandered over, curious to see what it held. To my surprise, its contents were perfectly preserved, almost as though they had just been stored. Yatol pulled out a few articles of clothing, holding them briefly before dumping them into my arms. Then he quickly began filling two small leather pouches with various items from the chest and the clay jars, food and flint and a bunch of other things I couldn’t identify off-hand. He placed one of the pouches on top of my lump of clothes and glanced up at me with a bland look.

“Put those on.” He got to his feet. “I won’t be far.”

He stopped to fill a few leather sacks from the water urn. I watched him sling them over his shoulder and disappear from the cave, then went to the entrance and peered out after him. He strode off, but I frowned when I saw that he masked a limp.

After I convinced myself that no one else was around, I hid in the shadows of the back wall to change my old clothes for the new. They seemed almost medieval in style, the cream tunic and tan pants made from some sort of soft fabric, like cotton or fine linen. The tunic fell long, nearly to my knees, and I could just make out the remnants of worn embroidery around the cowl neck. All the pieces were basically big squares, even the sleeves that fastened close around the wrists with wide leather bracers. The pants fit curiously too, but I managed to tie in the too-large waist with the braided belt.

With the bandages on my injured fingers I just barely got the bracers and belt tightened. I couldn’t manage all the other ties and knots, so I ignored the lacing on the pant legs and left them wide and long. I gazed wistfully at my well-worn sneakers, then sighed and tugged on the flimsy sandals.

I glanced down at myself and almost laughed, wondering what I would look like to anyone who knew me on Earth. The thought jarred me like an electric shock. I dropped my old clothes in the sand and sat down beside them shaken. The words kept turning over and over in my mind – on Earth. I tried to tell myself to get a grip, that this wasn’t the first time I’d thought about it, that I’d been able to get back home before and I would be able to again. It didn’t matter. I pulled up my knees and bowed over them.

Yatol’s voice outside cut into my thoughts and I jumped up, brushing the unbidden tears from my eyes. I managed to redo my hair in a messy ponytail and tossed my clothes into the chest.

“Yeah, I’m ready,” I called.

Yatol appeared in the mouth of the cave and took one look at me. I thought I saw him wince, then as quickly as he had come he turned and left, running a hand through his hair. As he turned away the strangest expression flashed across his face. It hit me like a blow to the stomach, or that cold cringing feeling you get when you see someone aggravate a wound. I ran to catch up with him.

“Yatol? What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

He paused long enough for me to join him. His eyes shone with some deep grief, maybe even a twinge of regret that made me strangely uneasy. I wondered if I’d done something wrong. If somehow I reminded him of someone else.

I swallowed and let my gaze follow his, across the barren sand toward the distant horizon. A pale light filtered across the land, the gentle advent of dawn. And I thought of home, where dawn was always full of birdsong and glistening treetops. Here there was only empty desert and empty silence, mimicking the void I felt inside.

“Yatol, what is this place called?”

“Arah Byen.” He gestured to the lightening horizon, where a dim orb lingered just above the land’s rim. “All that is the ara.” He pointed to the sphere itself. “And that is Olte.”

I thought there was something peculiar about the sun, but couldn’t quite place it. As I gazed absently at it I said, “So, ara is the dawn? And this is, what, the Dawn-Land?”

“In a manner of speaking. Of course, it’s only really true in this region, but no one thinks of that anymore. We’ve called it that since the beginning.”

Even in the balmy warmth, I shivered, then pointed to two pale objects hovering by the opposite horizon.

“Are those moons?”

“Yes. Maka and Hyot.”

“We have only one. It’s much bigger than those.” I shuddered again. “I used to think I wanted to walk on the moon. It seemed so far away, so impossible. And now, I’m walking here…somewhere in the universe I don’t even know where. I can’t even tell which way the Earth is from here.”

Yatol didn’t offer any explanation, only smiled and started to walk. Suddenly something struck me as funny. I put my hands to my head and stared up at the strange heavens, and laughed for all the confusion in my heart. And then I dropped to my knees on the dusty ground and just cried, sobs racking my whole body while a sick pang tore at my heart. I heard Yatol’s quiet footsteps coming toward me, then felt his hands light on my shoulders.

As if I wasn’t confused enough, my stomach flip-flopped. I covered my face with my hands but couldn’t stop the tears. And suddenly I found his arms around me, strong and comforting. I couldn’t keep crying, not with him holding me. The sobs faded to a few racking breaths, and I let my head lean against his shoulder. All too soon he released me, dropping his hands to his thighs and rocking back on his heels to look at me. I felt suddenly embarrassed and couldn’t meet his gaze.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I can’t explain what I don’t really understand myself. Legends say that once the sun governed our days and nights, but not anymore. The light of Mekaema isn’t like the light shed by sun or moon, but it provides for us.”

I gazed up through burning eyes at the strange sky, starless overhead but strangely luminous. Even at its darkest point, at the zenith, the light dazzled my eyes. Strange, strange world. I lowered my eyes, and through the wavering curls of heat I glimpsed the silhouette of a dark fortress. I scrambled to my feet.

“That place…that tower. What is it?”

“That,” said Yatol, “is the place we just escaped. It is called the Gorhiem Bolstoed.”

“It’s hideous,” I said. I wanted to say something else, but a deep fear clung to my throat and drowned my voice.

“If we hadn’t escaped, they would have broken us, and then executed us.” He turned away, beckoning me. “Too many of my people have already stained those floors with their blood. Our blood! It used to be ours, until the Ungulion came in force in my father’s day, and drove out our defenses.” He pointed to the horizon ahead of us. “They hold another Citadel, too, in the land that is dark.”

“Is it always dark?” I asked, running to catch up with him. I kept trying to work out how that was possible, but couldn’t. “The planet doesn’t rotate?”

He glanced at me over his shoulder, a little half-smile quirking his mouth. “I don’t know. They forgot to teach us that in the academy. But I do know that Mekaema always touches this face of the world, and so they call it blessed. The other side, the dark side, always opposes Mekaema. Of course, the sun-side isn’t totally dark or cold. We still get a little light and heat from Olte, but not enough to sustain us.”

That explained why I had been able to gaze at it, then, and I said as much. “But if Olte gives so little light, how do things live here?” I scowled at the desert. “I mean, where things actually live.”

“Mekaema’s light brings warmth, light and darkness in their proper times. But the dark face of the world is cursed, and feared. It is called the Morsta Khay, but we call it K’hama, the Void. The myths say that when the Ungulion came, they brought with them a huge rock that became the cornerstone of their Citadel, and that the world shuddered when it was established.”

“Like an asteroid?”

By the look on his face I could tell the word held no meaning for him. I tried to imagine the Citadel, flooded in darkness on the other side of the world. I slowed up, staring in dread toward the horizon.

“Yatol…we’re going there, aren’t we? That’s what I’m doing here. We’re going to the Citadel.”

Yatol swung around and came back to me, clasping my shoulders and looking me in the eyes. “Merelin, let it pass. We aren’t going to the Citadel. Not now.”

“But I know…” I still stared past him, dazed. “I have to go.”