The Malmillard Codex by K.G. McAbee

confusion was greater than before.
His memories overlay and intermingled with those of another man,
and he had great trouble, each time he awoke, deciphering just who
and what he was.
    He wanted to tell Madryn about his dreams.
But she was in them, always; a part of every scene, every moment.
Val had to find out what she felt for Lord Valaren Starseeker. He
had to follow the dreams to the end…and hope that he would remain
at the end.
    At last Val awoke and stayed that way for
some time, drinking tiny sips of water, wincing as each wave of
pain shot through his battered head. By sunset he had recovered
enough to walk a few steps, his muscles sore, his head still tender
from the glancing blow it had received when the mainmast had broken
free and landed atop them.
    "You saw it coming and threw your body over
mine," Madryn told him as they paced slowly up and down the beach,
Val's strength returning with every step. "Not satisfied with
saving my life once, you had to go and do it again. Now what am I
to do with you?"
    Val looked over at her face, so near to his
own. They were walking—stumbling, rather, in his condition, he
thought wryly—back toward the fire that had been started from the
ruins of the Atria . A savory smell wafted towards them…fish
sizzling on heated stones.
    Madryn looked straight ahead. Val examined
her profile: straight nose, firm chin, high forehead, and amber
hair in a thick braid down her back. She had taken a swim earlier,
washed most of the grime and blood away.
    Val's mind whirled in confusion. He looked
at Madryn and saw another woman overlaying her, a faint ghost of a
woman in midnight blue and gold, even as his odd and fragmented
memories of Valaren Starseeker overlay those of the slave
Valerik.
    What had happened to him after that blow to
his head? Why did he have memories of a man he'd never met? Were
the dreams he'd been experiencing, ever since that strange
confrontation in the alley in Karleon, now simply becoming more
accessible?
    "Madryn," he began, hesitant, not sure if he
could tell her about what was happening within his head, "when the
mast hit us—"
    "And you saved my life?" she interrupted
with a sidelong grin. It split her profile most intriguingly from
his viewpoint, and he was overcome with a brief but sharp memory of
that smile in different days. He remembered her crooked grin across
a table from him—from him? From Lord Valaren, surely?—after beating
him at chess. It had been a hotly contested game, and Madryn had
beaten him after hours of move and countermove.
    But how could he remember something that had
happened to another man? Had Lord Valaren Starseeker somehow come
back, possessing a slave's mind as he had possessed their bodies in
life? For Starseeker was dead, Val knew…
    And Madryn had desired Lord Valaren
Starseeker. Val was convinced of that, not only from things she had
told him, but from fragments of that other man's memories that
flashed like comets across his sleeping mind. Madryn had wanted him
with a passion that matched the slave Valerik's for her. But Lord
Valaren had not wanted her…not, at least, in that same way.
    This too Val knew from the alien images that
thronged in his mind, overlaying and intermingling with his own
thoughts.
    Why had Madryn, to Val the most incredible
of women, wasted her passions on one such as Lord Valaren? How had
Val gained these memories, memories of a man that he knew he never
was, could never have been? Where had they come from? And what, in
the names of all the gods whose names he did not know…what was he
going to tell Madryn?
    ***
    The dark voice gave a whinnying laugh. "The
storm was a bit much, was it not?"
    Cold answered with an invisible shrug. "It
was necessary. The meeting in the alleyway taught the part. Now the
stage is set for the play to be acted."
    The globe floated within a thin inky mist.
Tendrils of the mist wavered and fought for position, twining and
twisting together like disembodied fingers of