Y ou cannot go any farther.
My eyelids fluttered.
It was foolish of you to come here, lost child.
Darkness. My head felt like knives were plunging into my skull. Tepid, shallow water soaked my back. The sound of the distant fighting had grown very dull. I sat up.
Before me was a set of double doors. They were dark wood, punctuated by gold hinges and copper filigree decorations. A golden lion loomed above it, surrounded by swirling metalwork flowers.
And with that sight, as it always did, came the thought: You don’t want to go here anymore.
You can retreat, the voice said. It took a few minutes for me to assign markers of recognition to it—gender, age. A woman. My mother, I realized. Perhaps it will let you leave if you turn around now.
Turning back suddenly seemed like a very smart idea. Why wouldn’t I?
For a moment, I couldn’t remember why I had come here to begin with.
Funny thing, memories, the voice said. Losing them is the ultimate absolution, right?
And isn’t that what you’ve always wanted, Maxantarius? Another voice
—deeper. Familiar. Brayan’s?
I looked up, above the door. A night sky spread out above me, somehow superimposed over the ruins—endless, like I could see all of it at once without even turning my head. Streaks of light crossed between violet stars. Sometimes those streaks would explode in tiny sparks, the stars fizzling out in their wake.
I frowned, struggling to cut through the fuzziness in my brain.
No, these weren’t stars. That wasn’t the physical world—it was the layers of magic above me. My body was in one place, my consciousness in another. I could feel each one of those little explosions, like ripples on a pond, barely tapping into the depths beneath. And there, beyond the door, a massive pillar of light pierced the darkness. If every explosion of stars above was a tiny splash in the sea, this was a tidal wave.
Tisaanah. Her presence was as unmistakable as the sight of her face.
But even from here, I could tell that the magic she wielded was unstable
—weighted on only one side of a delicate scale. It was out of control, just as the magic we had shared in Klasto’s home had been, but magnified thousands of times over.
I leapt to my feet and went to the door. This fucking door had separated me from my memories, from my magic, and now from Tisaanah.
No more.
The pain in my head grew unbearable as I grabbed the handle.
You don’t want to go here.
Yes I do, I said, and threw it open.
 |
TELL ME, my ashen son, do you know how much a million memories weigh?
How about one?
It weighs enough to break a spine. It weighs enough to break a soul.
I knew this voice. How?
My mind was filled with a thousand walls. Ahead, the tear grew wilder, more out of control.
I pushed forward, and the first of many memories assaults me.
CRACK.
You stand in the parlor of a beautiful house you once called home. A dark-haired woman and a dark-eyed man huddle close, whispering, tense. Brayan stands beside you.
War.
War. The word rippled through a hundred memories, cascading through my home, Korvius, the Orders, as a series of walls shatter.
Crack.
Your sister, a shy girl with curls in her hair, sits on a window sill with a knife in her hand. You take the knife from her. “Go to sleep,” you tell her. “I promise I’ll take over your watch.”
Remember now how she looked at you? Like the possibility of danger under your watch was simply impossible.
I took another step towards that tear of light. Crack.
You are at the top of the Towers, talking to a man you once admired deeply. He offers you a contract. You are angry at your brother. You are desperate to prove yourself.
“Don’t,” I call into the void, but the younger version of myself draws the knife across his flesh, anyway.
I had to stop out of sheer exhaustion. My head hurt so much I thought it couldn’t possibly be anything but death.
Turn back, a voice pleaded. I knew it right away, this time. My younger sister, Marisca. Turn back before you see it.
But that wasn’t an option. Tisaanah was still ahead. I knew where I had to go.
I continued on.
|
WITH EVERY STEP, I pushed through another wall. Claimed another memory.
You open your eyes and hear a voice in your head that is not your own.
Crack.
You strike down opponent after opponent in sparring. Then your own captains. You feel nothing but pride.
Crack.
You are in your first battle since your bargain—since Reshaye. You turn yourself over to it, delirious with your own power.
Reshaye tells you, {This is everything you have ever wanted.}
Here is the thing that will later make you seethe with anger at yourself: it is right. You are an incredible killer, and it is everything you ever wanted.
Here, I hesitated. Dread loomed over me like a long shadow. I knew something worse was coming.
But I needed to reach that light ahead, and I couldn’t do that without pushing forward. So I kept walking, and the walls kept breaking.
Crack.
Your youngest sister looks just like you. She is your favorite, and you are hers. She strives for your attention and respect just as you strive for your elder brother’s, but you love her more—you are determined not to squander this. When you are home on leave, she snaps her fingers and shows you the nearly invisible fragment of lightning. You are overjoyed. She will be your apprentice. You will teach her like your brother taught you, but you will be a better teacher in every way. You were thrilled that day. And so was she.
Crack.
The city is called Sarlazai—
I almost stopped right there. Right at the recollection of the name. But I couldn’t.
—and so many of your friends are dying here. The death has begun to weigh on you. You do not wish to hurt these people.
But you remember the rest, don’t you? The silver gaze of someone you thought loved you. How easily she betrayed you. The blood of thousands on your hands.
So easy. A single moment and so much changes.
|
I SAW TISAANAH NOW. I was close enough to make out her silhouette, kneeling in the water. The wild stream of magic tore from between her cupped hands. It was so out of control that it stretched the stitches of the world that surrounded us. If she didn’t have help, and fast, it would burn her up.
I approached her, wincing as several more memories flooded my mind. She looked up at me. Her face was burned, the skin blistering at the tip of her nose and the curve of her cheeks.
I fell to my knees before her. Crack.
You are at home. Drunk. You are gardening. You find it satisfying to clip away dead petals the way that you wish you could clip away the dead parts
of yourself.
An old friend, lover, enemy arrives. She has brought someone with her. You turn around and see for the first time a young woman with spotted skin and mismatched eyes, wearing a ridiculous nightgown. You do not know it yet, but your whole life has now changed.
And changed again, with every secret you tell her.
And changed again, with every day that you fall a bit more in love with
her.
We had tried to do this, or a much smaller version of it, at Klasto’s shop.
Even that had hurt her. What if I did the same thing here? What if I couldn’t control what I offered her, and the force of it killed her?
It’s possible, a bodiless voice said, and I recognized it immediately as Kira. It would not be the first time you destroyed what you loved most.
But I looked up to the sky, and the tear in magic that stretched its length. If we didn’t control this, the resulting eruption of power would kill everyone here. And yet, I still hesitated.
Why are you afraid, Maxantarius? the voice asked, and this one… this one, for the first time, was myself. Do you hope that you might never see the moment when everything changed, the moment before meets after?
Perhaps such a moment is in the Arch Commandant’s office, with your blood on a contract.
Perhaps it is in the ashes of Sarlazai, with your lover in your arms.
Perhaps it is in the moment when you let yourself believe in a foreign stranger’s dream.
Or perhaps it is here, right now, in the choice that you make today.
A realization came to me, one that I had been grappling with for the last ten years. There was no single moment when everything changed. No single before and after. There was just… life. A million decisions and a million consequences.
All this time, I had thought I had been erased of my past. But I had been wearing it all over me, as permanent as the tattoos on my skin.
One final door remained in the back of my mind. One final barrier I could not break.
How much does a memory weigh?
Too much to carry alone.
Tisaanah looked into my eyes and took my hands.
