Page 21 of Rogue Familiar

Regardless, Jadren had left a trail as clear as if he’d been riding a herd of elephants, so obvious even several days later that Selly could practically hear him swearing and stomping around in his perpetually foul mood. His presence was so vivid that it felt like he traveled along with them as a remanent of himself, almost visible at times. Here he’d stopped to pee against a tree. There he’d eaten lunch, leaving a few scraps of fruit peels on the ground, spoiled scion that he was, so accustomed to being picked up after. Because there was no one to witness but Vale—and Vale didn’t judge—she plucked up one of the rinds, picturing Jadren’s clever fingers removing it, imagining that she sensed his lingering presence in the moldering peel. She wasn’t so sentimental that she kept it, but she was crazy emotional enough to consider the thought before discarding it. Just trash, she told herself.

Jadren’s trail got more difficult to follow the deeper he penetrated into the marshes. The ground grew less forgiving—or more, depending on how you looked at it—with water filling in and absorbing the signs of passage. Even Vale’s deep hoofprints vanished behind them, the mossy turf springing into place as she looked back, the trailing gray mosses hanging from the blackly glossy trees muffling sound so that Selly began to feel like a remanent herself, a shade of someone not quite alive. If not for Vale’s vitally alive presence, she might have begun to doubt her own existence.

She hadn’t expected this sense of disassociation, but she should have. These marshes had been her refuge and her nightmare. Being alone in the depths of the wetlands of Meresin felt like returning home—and like falling backward. This had been the landscape of her madness. No wonder she’d thought of the magic-induced insanity as shades of shifting mist. As daylight fell away, victim to the deeper shadows of the twisted canopy and the lowering sun somewhere beyond, and as fog swirled in over the softly clicking, croaking waters, she imagined the boundaries of her mind similarly darkening and dissolving. In the marshes, there are few clear lines. Water becomes ground becomes bog becomes twisted roots. That silvery shape might be mist or moss. The next step could be shifting sands, solid ground, or a black and bottomless pond. There’s simply no solidity, no reliable, definable reality.

More than ever, she missed Jadren’s caustic wit and barbed demands. He’d teased her so relentlessly about being a crazy girl that she’d risen to the challenge, determined not to lose her shit. She was still determined, but… she found it difficult to hold onto the boundaries of her self in the trackless lands.

When Vale suddenly balked, she came to her senses, only just then realizing how far she’d drifted from the present. Night loomed in the shadows of the trees, a chill in the air. She shivered, from the gloom and at the temperature. The heat of the spring day had yielded entirely to the dank of nights not yet entirely free of winter’s grip. Irresponsible of her not to have been paying better attention. She should have made camp on dry ground by now, with a warming fire. She peered around at the surrounding glimmers of open water and water-logged ground. This wasn’t a place they could stop.

Patting Vale’s neck, hot and damp with sweat, she dismounted, wincing at the stiffness of being so long in the saddle, and at the sucking squelch of her boots in the muck. Vale was hock deep in it, poor guy, and must have been working hard to forge ahead. Once away from the warhorse’s body heat, she shivered harder. This wasn’t good at all.

How crushing the humiliation would be if her big talk and grand quest ended less than a day’s ride from House Phel.

Time to dig herself out of memories and focus on the present. With a hand on Vale’s bridle, mostly so she could grab on in case she foolishly put a foot down on unstable ground, she took a step forward. Vale nickered a protest, jerking his head back. Her fingers, numb with cold, slipped off the bridle and she went down.

And down.

Suffocating sludge closed over her head.

Jadren was heartily tired of waking up dead.

Or mostly dead. He supposed that someday his death would actually take instead of being temporary and he wouldn’t wake up at all. Or maybe he’d wake up in some paradisial land free from pain and suffering like some people insisted lay on the other side of the veil.

If he woke up dead and not in agony for once, then he’d know.

Of course, many people would say that the likes him deserved to end up in a place of eternal suffering and punishment for his many faults and transgressions, which meant he’d wake up in torment and… how would that be any different from the usual waking up to agony?

Dark arts, don’t let me find out, he thought to himself, aware that he couldn’t move his jaw to speak the words aloud. In fact, he couldn’t seem to move anything at all, not even his eyelids to see where he was. That couldn’t be good. Especially since he couldn’t seem to feel his eyelids at all. Pain, yes. He could sure feel that. As usual for the standard return-from-the-dead scenario, agony ruled, shimmering over him in waves like heat magic. He’d never understand why, if he had to be cursed with this self-healing thing, it couldn’t have come with a pleasurable sensation. Why couldn’t healing feel like an orgasm? Or, failing that, something sweet and soft, like the caress of Seliah’s fingertips over his skin, her pliant body sleeping with languid warmth beside him.

But no—healing had to hurt as badly as receiving the initial wounds. Even worse, really, as incurring injuries usually came as a surprise, swift shock fading into a blessed escape from consciousness. Healing, not so much. It took too long for his body to repair itself for shock and surprise to buffer anything, and his body flinging itself out of unconsciousness seemed to be part of that process.

Though, maybe that wasn’t true in this case. It occurred to him, in a bemused, fragmented way, that he was swimming back and forth through murky tunnels between consciousness and unconsciousness—and that his brains weren’t working at all properly.

Good and smashed them this time, didn’t you? Seliah asked. She was standing over him, fists on her hips as she raked him with a scathing look of disappointment, lip curled in disgust.

He tried to say something flippant, a bit of pointed sarcasm, and failed utterly. Instead, he wanted to beg her to hold him, to help him. Not something he could recall ever wanting, much less asking for. A bad sign. I think I might be fucked this time, he confided to her.

You think? She shook her head sadly. And you believe you’re qualified to protect me.

From myself, yes. He knew that much, though he couldn’t recall why it was true.

She didn’t seem to hear, pointing to something above. You really believed you could survive falling off of a fucking cliff, Jadren?

Oh right. He remembered the cliff. Kind of. Enough to be pretty sure it wasn’t his fault. I didn’t fall, he retorted indignantly. I was thrown!

She didn’t reply. Because she was gone. With the whole lack of working ears and eyes, it occurred to him that he couldn’t have seen and talked with her anyway. She hadn’t been there at all. And why would she be? He’d ditched her. Abandoned his familiar, the one person who could help him heal from this. If he really was nothing more than a pile of messed-up flesh at the bottom of a cliff, would his shattered pieces be able to come together? It was possible that he’d simply remain conscious in this pulped state. Ooh, unless wild animals ate him. Would he finally die if he were digested into little bits?

Regardless, it seemed he’d awakened in a place of eternal torment, no matter what the reality. Exactly what he deserved, and it appeared he’d done it to himself. He’d wanted death to take and this time it might just happen. Except that it was taking an excruciatingly long time.

A very, very bad sign.

~7~

Selly plummeted in slow motion, retaining enough of her wits and wiles to close her eyes and keep her mouth firmly shut. The marshes were full of such sinkholes and this wasn’t her first. Though she should have known better. Vale whinnied in alarm from a distance, which reassured her that the horse hadn’t fallen into the slimy pit with her. Good thing, as she didn’t know if she could’ve gotten Vale out again.

She’d been stupid to have kept going so late, to take a step in the dark on unfamiliar land. What were you thinking, crazy girl? Jadren’s ghost-voice asked bitingly. Oh, wait—let me guess—you weren’t thinking.

“Shut up, I’ve got this.” She couldn’t fail. Before when she’d wandered the marshes, out of her mind, she hadn’t cared what happened to her, and that unconcern had seemed to protect her. Now, she cared. Cared so ferociously it cut through her like a knife, spearing her heart as surely as Gabriel’s sword had impaled Jadren. Jadren. He needed her and she had to get to him.

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