The Shamer’s War: Book 4

DAVIN My Name Is Davin My name is Davin. My name is Davin. My name is Davin. I kept repeating it to myself, over and over again. Trying to hold on to everything it meant: Dina’s brother. Melli’s brother. My mother’s son, and Nico’s friend. A human being. Not . . . . . . your name is murderer . . . . . . Not what the voices were saying. Not what they were whispering to me in the darkness when I was trying to go to sleep. . . . your name is murderer . . . your name is coward . . . I sat up in bed. My palms were sweaty and cold. I wrapped my arms around my head as though I was afraid someone would hit me, but I knew I couldn’t shut out the voices. They were inside me. They had sneaked in, burrowed in, the days and nights I had been locked in the Hall of the Whisperers, surrounded by stone faces with empty eyes and yawning mouths that kept whispering and whispering, over and over, hour after hour, until one would rather die than keep on listening. The house was dark. Darker still here in my small enclosure. I couldn’t stand the darkness anymore because I kept seeing things that weren’t there. Faces. Dead eyes. Dark blood seeping from a half-cut throat. . . . I leaped to my feet and yanked the curtain aside. Bluish slivers of moonlight came in through the cracks in the shutters, like pale knives. As soundlessly as possible I opened the door and went out. The trampled grass of the yard was damp and hoar-cold against the soles of my bare feet, but I had no time for shoes. I ran. Slowly at first, then more quickly, along the path to Maudi’s farm, past the old black pear trees in her orchard, up the next hill, and on up into the naked heights that seemed so close to the sky it felt as if I could pick the stars like apples just by reaching for them. I didn’t stop. I just kept running, so that my breath came in deep jerks and I could feel my heartbeat in every last inch of my body. I wasn’t cold, despite my bare feet; my blood was pumping too hard, and pure sweat was running down my back and chest inside the nightshirt. It took perhaps an hour before I had run the voices out of my head and the horror out of my body. Then I turned, trotting back to Yew Tree Cottage at a more leisurely pace. I stopped at the pump in the yard to wash the sweat from my cooling body, and to drink my fill. The cottage door was open. In the dark doorway, Mama was waiting. She didn’t say anything; just held out a glass of elderberry juice and a woolly blanket. She knew I would start shaking the moment I stopped sweating. For the briefest of moments she rested her hand against my cheek. Then she went back to the end room where she and Melli slept, still without speaking a word. It wasn’t every night I ran like this, but perhaps one out of two or three. It was the only thing that helped once the voices had hold of me. Mama woke up every time—not necessarily when I got up, but by the time I came back, she was always awake. It was as if she had some instinct telling her that one of her children was no longer in the house. I hadn’t told her about the voices, but she had probably guessed that my sleeplessness had something to do with the Sagisburg and the Hall of the Whisperers. In the beginning she had asked me if there was anything wrong, but I always said no, and now she had stopped asking. She was just there, waiting, with the blanket and the sweet elderberry juice, and then the two of us went back to bed. I lay down on the cot in my enclosure and wrapped myself in the blankets. My feet were hurting me now, but that didn’t matter. In my head there was only silence, and I fell asleep almost at once.