Merchant of Alyss by Locke Thomas

Author:Locke, Thomas [Locke, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Magic—Fiction, FIC009020
ISBN: 9781493401710
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2015-11-16T08:00:00+00:00

22

The first five days of their desert trek proved such a brutal trial Hyam could not even name which part of his body hurt the most. The heat was fierce, but worse still was the animal’s uneven gait. The desert beast was lumpish and ill-tempered. Whenever Hyam tended it, she would snap at him. She groaned and she spat and she stank. Hyam’s thighs became so chafed they blistered and bled. By the end of each day, his bones ached. Meda and Alembord and Shona were similarly afflicted. Each evening, the caravan’s drovers found great mirth in watching them dismount and stretch and groan.

His first two nights on the road, Hyam limped away from camp and opened the box given to him by the merchant who had yearned to follow the wizards’ path. The countless years had worn the exterior wood smooth. The box contained a simple ceramic bauble. Upon its creamy surface was painted a myriad of symbols that might have been Milantian script, but they flowed together in a pattern that left Hyam uncertain of their origin or meaning. At the center of this circular script was an eye. It seemed to glow in the moonlight, as though lit from within. The gleam strengthened as he studied it, until Hyam found himself able to leave behind the trek and the worries and the heartache. He plunged into its depths. And he remembered.

The bauble would not allow him to move forward, just as the merchant had said. But memories took on an astonishing clarity. He remembered with vivid detail whatever he called to mind. The love and the loving, the laughter, the feel of Joelle’s arms, the scent of her breath. It was all his once more.

But when he drew away, the world and Joelle’s absence attacked him.

Hyam knew the bauble held an addictive force. The memories were too perfect. Nothing unpleasant was contained in these recollections, not even the distress he had known over losing his magical abilities. Within the eye there was only the good, only the pleasurable, only the allure that drew him further and further into its depths.

On the third night, Hyam resisted the urge as long as he could. Then he limped over to where Meda slept, gave her the box, and told her to keep it from him and never open it herself.

Theirs was the only caravan departing Emporis for the yellow reaches. On their ninth morning outbound from Emporis, Selim took his tea and cold flatbread with Hyam’s group, offering fragments of desert wisdom to this heartsore stranger and his small company. “Winter is the time for such treks. Only because of these strange orders do we venture now, in the approach to high summer. Soon the yellow realm will be struck by winds so fierce the sand will etch flesh from bones, and then turn the bones themselves to more dust. And the heat will grow worse still. Either we reach our destination soon, or we and the animals perish.”

They slept the brief period permitted them, then rose while the moon was still a tight sliver to Hyam’s left.

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