Down a Lost Road (18 page)

“
You should have stayed,” I
whispered. “I tried to tell you to stay away.”

“
Oh, Merelin,” Damian said,
helpless.

I hardly heard him. I stood staring intently
at nothing, painfully aware of the tightness of my forehead, my
throat, my hands. Every ounce of strength I could muster I flung
out in a vain attempt to hold back the Ungulion. Closer…drawing
closer…
Pointless
. But I tried. I had to. I tried to bar
them from the shop, thinking them away with furious concentration
as if somehow that would work. I knew it didn’t. My knees turned
watery.

I reached out suddenly and seized Damian’s
hands, pressed the coin into his palm. Stared at him intently,
pleading. Felt their presence building around me. And then I saw
them. One strode out before me, and with his grotesque rotting hand
thrust Damian back. He collapsed into Kurtis, and both of them fell
against the door with the force. I couldn’t see either of them
now.

Quavering grey gloom enveloped me. Chanting,
low and incomprehensible, droned into my mind like an opiate.
Everything pulsed and vibrated to its rhythm. I felt two hands grip
my shoulders, the bony fingers prodding into the flesh by my neck.
The nails slid on my skin, and I felt a trickle of warmth down my
back. The shadow drew in closer, until I could no longer hear the
shrieking wind or pounding hail.

“
I’m sorry,
Yatol…”

I sank to the ground.

Shadow surrounded me. My gaze was caught and
held by an Ungulion’s eyes, the empty black stare lost in a dead
glow. I heard his voice within my head, rattling desolate threats
and cajoling with void promises. I couldn’t tear away. All had
vanished from my vision but the hollows of his eyes, the lifeless
blood-hue reflecting some hellish despair. All I heard was his
voice, his commands hammering relentlessly in my mind. The weight
of them beat me down.

Then through it all I heard a soft noise,
far away, as though in another world…a shout of rage and grief.
Damian.
No, no.
The Ungulion tore his gaze away, his words
fell silent. He straightened back and whirled about, fingers
outstretched. My tongue felt thick and numb. No sound would rise in
my throat. I wanted to warn Damian, to call out, but my body
wouldn’t obey. It shrank against the ground in hideous torpor.
Something deep inside of me screamed out, railed against my body,
lashed out against the cage of murk that caved in over me. My heart
called out to Yatol and Mykyl. Silence.

Suddenly, dazzling light. A single ray
pierced through the black, tinged the edges of the gloom. An
enraged chorus of shrieks and wailing rose from the shadow, and the
greyness churned and writhed away. Then the radiance broke through.
I felt myself lifted off the ground, then all faded.

* * *

Someone was talking. The murmuring voice
seemed to blend with the radiance dancing on my eyelids, and I
couldn’t distinguish who spoke or what he said. But I forced my
eyelids to move – a faint twitch when I meant to open them. The
voice fell silent, and I felt a firm but gentle grasp on my
hand.

“
Mer! Can you hear me?”
Damian, anxious but hopeful.

“
Speak further,” Yatol
said. “Call her back.”

His voice sounded strange, heavily accented.
Wait. Yatol…
and
Damian? Talking to each other?
That’s not
possible…
I struggled to move, to sit up or speak, but an
inhuman whimper was all I could force from my lips.

“
She tried to talk!” Damian
cried. “Didn’t you hear her? She can hear us! Thank
God!”

“
I knew she’d pull through.
Strong kid.” Was that Kurtis now? He sounded nervous. “How’re you
feeling, Damian?”

“
Better and better. I’m
just glad…”

His voice trailed off. Glad about what? If
only I could wake up…

A warm tingling pain flowed through my body,
like when your feet start getting their feeling back after falling
asleep. My fingers tightened, clenching a handful of sand that
trickled through and left me digging my nails into my palms.

“
She finally seems to be
getting the life back in her,” Yatol said, his voice no longer
accented.

“
Yes, she will recover
now.” I recognized this voice as well – Enhyla, calm and
reassuring. “And you? You have not said a word, yet you and she
bore the worst of the battle. Take a little of this.”

“
I don’t need it. I’ll be
all right. I need to sleep, but I’ll be all right.”

“
I will not permit you to
sleep until you have drunk this! Yatol, I know what you faced.
You’ve faced it alone before, and it’s beginning to take its toll
on you. Come, drink.”

My lips felt numb and thick, but I forced
them to move. “Drink it, Yatol…”

“
What did she say?” Damian
asked.

Finally I managed to force my eyes open.
Enhyla’s hut. Blurry, I could see Damian crouching beside me,
glancing over his shoulder at the back wall where Yatol stood with
Enhyla. Yatol said nothing, only took the shallow dish from Enhyla
and lifted it to his lips. He winced as he swallowed, and Enhyla
smiled grimly. I turned my gaze away and saw Kurtis hunched against
the near wall, hugging his legs and looking more like an
overwhelmed child than a college professor.

So. Here we all were.

I might have been excited by the thought,
but somehow all I felt was disappointment. Not at being back in
Arah Byen – I couldn’t think of anywhere I’d rather be. I was
disappointed in myself. I’d gone back with a mission, and I failed.
Didn’t learn anything. Walked into a trap. Put Yatol and Damian in
danger.

I gathered all my strength and forced myself
into a half-sitting position, bracing myself on my arms while my
vision clouded and refocused. Yatol came to my side, and I found
myself sitting upright, supported by both him and Damian.

“
Yatol…what’s the matter
with me?” I murmured.

Yatol motioned to Enhyla, who refilled the
dish and brought it over.

“
Drink this. It tastes
terrible, but it will make you feel better.”

“
Is this what he made you
drink? What’s it for?”

“
It will restore some of
your strength,” Enhyla said. “With their touch the Ungulion can
drain away the very life of a man. And the effects remain long
after the battle has ended. Sometimes it takes only one touch to
work this slow, foul slaying. But for stronger souls, they can
endure it twice, maybe three times before it begins. When it does,
it will slowly sap his strength away until he falls asleep, and
then he will wake no more.”

I turned horrified eyes from him to Yatol,
but he only held the dish out to me, eyes lowered, face perfectly
still. I took the dish and swallowed down its contents, grimacing
at the acrid taste.

“
What was he saying?”
Damian said. “What was that stuff you drank? Merelin, what language
are you speaking?”

I stared blankly at him, not comprehending
his question. And suddenly I realized why Yatol sometimes spoke
with an accent and sometimes without. I couldn’t tell any
difference between the languages in my mind, but Damian and Kurtis
were as helpless as I’d been my first night in this world. I
laughed. I couldn’t help it. It just bubbled out of me, and I saw
Yatol laughing silently beside me.

“
Sorry, Damian,” I said. “I
didn’t even realize it. It’s Arathi, the language of Arah Byen.
Don’t ask how I learned it – it just came to me. Literally. I
didn’t know I was speaking it at first.”

I explained to him about the medicine, and
then glanced over at Kurtis. He was staring in awe at Enhyla’s hut.
I didn’t see him the same way now as I had when we sat in Gorley
Hall only a few hours before. Somehow, here, I felt less like a
child. Like I had some kind of status or title that put me on an
equal footing with him – or a higher place. And his name, which I
couldn’t force myself to say before, now rolled easily off my
tongue.

“
Kurtis? Are you
okay?”

He shifted a wide grey-eyed gaze to me.
“This place, it’s real. Just like you said. I never knew if I could
believe it. And after that…that horrible…”

I’d almost forgotten. His words jarred the
memory back into my thoughts. And just like that a great cold-water
bucket of anxiety dumped over me.

“
What happened in Mr.
Dansy’s shop?” I asked Yatol. “Is Mr. Dansy all right? How did we
all end up here? Damian and Kurtis went through the portal?” The
thought disturbed me strangely. “But Kurtis won’t be able to handle
it, will he? I mean, this is the only time for him, isn’t
it?”

“
Yes. It was the only
choice we had.”

He turned away abruptly, leaving the hut
with Enhyla following after him.

“
Damian? Will you tell
me?”

“
Tell you what?”

I’d forgotten, again. Trying to keep two
languages straight was confusing. Sometimes one was bad enough.

“
I asked Yatol what
happened, back there. He just said you and Kurtis coming here was
the only choice he had, but that was all.”

Kurtis shook his head fiercely. “I can’t
think about it. My God, how awful it was!”

Damian nodded, taking a moment to gather his
thoughts before he spoke. He kept his eyes fastened on the fire,
his expression void.

“
These
things
came
in,” he said, carefully. “They started surrounding you, and I felt
like my legs were paralyzed. You know how in dreams, when you’re
trying to run or move and your legs won’t obey? It felt like that,
and I had to convince myself it was all real. Then the wind picked
up, and it sounded like there was going to be a tornado or
something. There was hail and lightning, and the noise was just
deafening.”

“
They were Ungulion. Could
you hear them?”

“
Hear them?” He hesitated.
“Not physically, no.”

“
You felt it, though,”
Kurtis broke in. “You could feel it in your mind, even though you
knew they weren’t speaking to you.”

“
Exactly. It was the most
horrible thing, like it could drive you mad. Then, one of them
pushed you out of our sight…”

He bit his lower lip, and I couldn’t tell if
he was angry or upset. When his eyes hardened and flashed, I knew
it was both, that the anger and the grief were the same.

“
I knew you’d given it to
me to keep it safe, but I did the only thing I could think of. I
thought they were going to kill you, so I showed them that I had
it. It distracted the Ungulion enough to make him leave you alone.
Then, I don’t really know what happened next. There was this huge
burst of light, and…Yatol was it? Well, he was there,
somehow…”

“
I’ll never forget that,”
Kurtis said. “He was standing there and the whole force of them
moved in on him and Damian. But then Damian was gone, and then I
must have passed out or something. I woke up here. Damian was here
already. Then, it seemed like ages later, but all I saw was more
light, and then you and Yatol were here. And the older man ran into
the light, and we heard what seemed like a lot of voices, then the
light was gone and we’ve been trying ever since to bring you two
back.”

I frowned. “Damian, they came at you?”

He reached into his pocket, pulled out the
little circle. “Don’t worry, I’ve got it here. I doubt I would if
Yatol hadn’t shown up just then.”

I took Pyelthan from him, holding it briefly
before slipping it back into my pouch.

“
I’m so sorry, Damian. I’m
sorry you got dragged into this. You should never have been made to
take that passage. I chose it, but you didn’t have a
choice.”

I met his gaze, and realized it wasn’t true.
He didn’t say a word, but his eyes said it clearly enough – he
did
choose it. I nodded, then turned my attention to
Kurtis.

“
You too, Kurtis. I wish I
could have left you ignorant of all of this.”

Kurtis relinquished his death grip on his
legs and came – awkwardly and unbalanced – to sit by Damian and
me.

“
Don’t apologize, Merelin.
This is just so surreal. But, in some strange way, I think I
wouldn’t want to be anywhere else right now. If we can help you in
any way, you know we would do it, don’t you?”

“
That’s what I’m afraid
of,” I said miserably. I glanced toward the doorway, the ivy
tendrils now hanging still. “Wait here. I’ll be right
back.”

“
Wait here?” Damian said
with a short laugh. “You don’t think we’d go wandering off, do
you?”

I smiled and pushed through the green
curtain. I ran a little way into the forest, stopping every few
steps to listen for Yatol’s voice. With dusk drawing near, the
shadows under the trees deepened and I couldn’t see anything
clearly. I thought about calling out for him, but I’d just opened
my mouth when I felt a presence behind me. A subtle light framed my
arms, silver-blue. My heart leapt, and I spun around and collapsed
on my knees in the same motion. And suddenly I found myself in
tears.

“
Mykyl!”

Mykyl placed a gentle hand on my head –
gentle as a bolt of lightning. An icy shock of power rushed through
me, then a sort of calmness, stilling me.

“
Child, do not
weep!”

“
Is Yatol all right? I
don’t know where he went.”

“
He is speaking to Enhyla.
Do not be troubled.”

“
How did he know? He came…
We would have been lost if he hadn’t!” I thought a moment, gazing
up at him. “We
all
would have been lost.”