Trust Exercises

Chapter 7

Percy had never actually intended to survive jumping into that river. In fact, he had never intended to survive leaving Whitestone. He hadn't tried to escape to find the world outside of Whitestone, with some hope of growing up and making a kind of life for himself far away from that place. No, he had only meant to escape the Briarwoods, the ones who had been feeding him, clothing him, continuing to educate him, keeping him alive. They cared for him when he was sick, removed dangers from his presence like the bedsheets and sharpened wooden spoons, and even stopped the poor youth from doing anything stupid like tearing open his wounds, the poor, mad child -- when they'd found him undoing the stitching at his thigh one day Silas had threatened to smash his hands with a hammer to make him stop, and he'd openly wept and begged and all of them were, in their incredible mercy, moved by this display and took pity on him and only immobilized them with padding and tying them to a bedpost for the next several days. His survival wasn't possible without them, and life wasn't a fathomable outcome when he left castle Whitestone that night. He fully intended to die when he took his sister. He'd fully intended both of them to die there on the castle grounds, and he'd thought she knew, and that she agreed.

Of course the terror of being hunted proved to be too much. Even if he'd wanted to die, the scared-rabbit-animal part of his body wouldn't submit to being torn apart by wolves or shot down by arrows. It was the same part of his body that brought the more shrill edge to his screams, the same part of his body that hesitated when he twisted the killing knot into the thin sheet left to him, the same part of his body that believed Ripley when she wiped away his tears and said that next time it might be different. It was a part of his body that caused nothing but pain and needed to die, and it could agree that underwater the archers would have a hard time finding him and those wolves would lose his scent, and it was cold and deep enough that it would still numb him to the point he couldn't move in minutes, and he'd drown soon after.

Despite his social status relying on the support of the temple of the Dawnfather, he had not thought much about what would happen to him after he death, though perhaps he should have, given the necromantic powers of his captors that he didn't understand. Even as he prepared to die he didn't think about it. He did not think that the end of all of the de Rolos would mean that they would be reunited in death somehow. All he thought he knew was that he would be unable to suffer any longer, just physically unable to. And that would be enough.

So under Whitestone, while killing the Briarwoods, was not have been the first time he'd tried to kill his sister. And this gnawed at him, when she screamed at him about not coming back for her when she fell, for leaving her to die. That had been the plan the whole time. That had always been the plan the whole time. She was supposed to know. It was supposed to be both of them, shot down by archers, torn apart by wolves. And he futilely wondered if maybe in the years since she had forgotten, rewritten the plan in her own mind. But he knew that he'd been the only one who wanted to murder her, and she had never agreed to that, and only followed him because because he was her big brother who loved her, and she trusted him and he would keep her safe. The fact that she had managed to survive did not change that Percy had been a murderer of the de Rolos, too.

He had managed to survive jumping into that freezing river the first time but he had a second chance today, the water clear straight to the deep, deep rocky bottom. It had never been this clear. It seemed almost a shame to spoil it, with the dirt from his boots, so he began unlacing them, and set them aside. But by the time he got to the water's edge, his socks would also be dirty, so he peeled them off as well. His jacket and trousers and gloves were wool, which would be too protective to the cold water and slow down the process, so he proceeded to strip off these layers, and soon, he was wearing nothing -- the human body having little to insulate it in cold waters, and that suited him fine. All the pieces he left neatly folded and stacked at the water's edge, like he was only going for a swim. And he stepped forward, over the banks, over the small plants and damp pebbles, his toes reaching the icy water, the cold stabbing them and numbing them nearly immediately. And he stepped forward, one more step, and another, and another. The water lapped at his legs, at his hips, his waist, chest, tapping and pulling away from him like it was distressed at his presence, but watching it do this, it was no longer so clear. From his body into this water extended twists of fluid, first chalky white, then pinkish, then pulling away dark arterial red tendrils so dense and opaque he could not look down and see his feet. They were numb, his entire body growing numb. He pulled his hands out of the water and saw the naked tear straight through his left hand, and the new one pulling open on the right, and how those shapes ate his fingers and arms and his body was pulled away with the current like sand.

With a sucking sound from the water it pulled from red to black, the fluid expanding and running downstream, a plop, plop, plop sound running across the river, all the fish surfacing and rolling white belly-up as the corruption cascaded over them.

--

"Everything appears to have been cleared out."

Those hands lay on Percy's chest again, too close to his armpits. His mind bubbled at the new lights.

"Are you awake now?"

"Eh, he's just opening his eyes again, still looks like no one's home yet–" said another voice, deeper, one he didn't know. Percy turned his head to stare at the half-elf woman looming over him, and then coughed, not on purpose, but still in her face. She recoiled and wiped her cheek, staring at the sooty residue she'd rubbed off.

"Good morning," she said grimly.

"Sorry," he said.

"It's fine," she said, and he coughed again, pain jabbing through his already sore ribs.

"Is it over?" He asked, opening his eyes again. The cot he lay in was tall and narrow, and just behind the priestess stood a fabric privacy screen.

"The ritual? It's been over for twelve hours. You're in the infirmary," she said.

"Did it go wrong?" He tried to think of the last thing he could remember. Little stars and a brasier. Pike saying she couldn't fix him.

"No, if it went wrong you'd be much worse. Can you sit up?" asked the priestess. He tried, he honestly tried, but one hand was unsteady and putting all his weight on the other seemed to cause his entire body to cramp like it wanted to crush his bones into paste. "Markus, can you help me get him up?" He felt hands on both of his sides heave him into a sitting position against the wall, his muscles resistant but at least not having much choice in the matter.

"Wasn't this not supposed to hurt?" he asked.

"The purification doesn't," said the priestess, heading back to a nearby table and dipping her hands into the basin to scrub. "can't do much if you get heat exhaustion after -- serves us right doing it on a Whitestone native in the middle of winter I suppose. Do you not remember the ice bath?"

"The what?"

The dwarf had uncapped a jar and dumped some powder into a pitcher before letting it swirl around, then poured the mix into a cup and forced it into Percy's right hand.

"You feel like shit because you lost all your water. Put it back in and you'll be fine," said the dwarf, putting a hand on his shoulder. As he set the pitcher back on the beside table he said, "Just be sure to drink the rest of this. I've got other people to see." Percy nodded before the dwarf left behind another screen, the voices behind it strangely muted, possibly by a spell. He took a sip from what the dwarf had given him and even if it was clear straight to the bottom it did not taste like water. Staring at the bottom of it, he waited for the corruption from his lips to start staining it anyway, but it didn't, and just sloshed innocently.

"Still think we're trying to poison you, after all that?" asked the priestess.

"I had a strange dream," he said.

"Oh, child, those don't mean anything," she said, continuing to scrub.

"Aren't the faithful supposed to find that... meaningful, or something?"

"The first thing I gave you – the green one – it closes the inner eye. And not just during the ritual, for at least a week. If anything, god or demon, were trying to contact you, you wouldn't be able to tell."

He tried to pull the blanket further over himself, noticing that he was still completely naked under it, but the edges of the sheet had been tucked tightly at the corners and would require a lot of force to budge.

"A week?" he asked. The smart part of his brain, as much of that still remained, knew that Markus was right about the water so he still tried to drink even if his head pounded and he wanted to lay back down.

"With the amount we burned off... I've seen parents with young children beg for death after it. The pain of that is of a different nature than opium can take the edge off of. Just blinding the eye completely is the only thing that works, even if it cuts you off from spirits for a while, makes you unable to scry or send messages... but Pike told me you couldn't do anything like that, so it didn't seem relevant to warn you."

"I still should have known this," he said, groggily thinking about the earpiece he'd left with his weapons at the gatehouse. Even if it wasn't his own ability making it work, if what she was saying was true he wouldn't be able to use it at all for a while.

"You may be right. I'm going to send you with some vials of it when you leave. If Pike tells you to take one, please just do it. You won't recognize what's happening as 'pain' if you're not trained to recognize it, and by the time you figure it out it will be too late."

"Okay," he accepted quietly.

"If you want to tell me about this dream, you can," she said, "but if it's upsetting you, I'm probably not the person to tell. I don't know anything about you and I won't know what to tell you. But if you just want to tell someone, I'm here."

"I think I remember Pike saying I said everything during the... when I didn't remember things," said Percy.

"I hear lots of things from lots of people," said the priestess. "That doesn't mean I ever know anything about them, not really. People are far more than their worst moments."

"Oh," He said. Then, after a long pause, he said, "thank you."

The priestess silently toweled off her hands.

"Anyway," she started again, "I'm not going to say you need to be on bed rest but if you do decide to walk around, please take someone with you –"

"I'm not going to hurt myself," he interjected. If the dream didn't mean anything, then it didn't mean he would try -- except he remembered she had no idea what the dream was, because he had not told her, and, though it was absurd to think she should have been, he realized that she had not been there.

"That's not what I'm afraid of. You already collapsed once while you were here and even if we think we know why I don't want it happening again. Lay down immediately – on the floor if you have to – if you start feeling lightheaded or dizzy or see any strange flashes or smell anything that shouldn't be there. Come back here to rest when you get tired – you will be tired. Do you understand?"

He was tired right now. "I understand."

"Good." She set down her rag and stared at the basin. "Do you want me to get Pike for you?"

"She said there was something wrong with me," he said

"Yes. There is. I told you that, too."

He tried to finish that cup, even though after this one there was going to be another cupful of water, and then another. His eyes stung. It was probably all the smoke.

"It's not a moral judgement but you need to take care of it. Do you want me to get Pike?"

"I don't want to bother her right now," he said.

"All right. Your clothes are still being cleaned so there's a set of acolyte robes on the table there if you want to get dressed. Just tell Markus if you're leaving so he can get someone to go with you. I'll be around if you need me," she said, and when she crossed the threshold of the room's divider, Percy was left with silence.