Page 40 of Dark Destiny: A New Thread in the Tapestry

Five thousand years.

She had given him the number that morning. He had understood the words, but the meaning escaped him.

He knew what a year was. There was summer and winter, a rainy season and a hot season, a season to plant and a season to harvest. He could imagine ten of them, even a hundred, but five thousand?

The meaning refused to take hold in his mind. It slid off him the same way his name had the first five or ten times he had heard it.

He knew a lot of time had passed because he did not recognize anything in this world, or rather this room, which was his only window to the world.

Light came from panels set into the ceiling, and he could hear his heartbeat amplified by some kind of device behind him. Whoever had made the light and the devices had not been born in the same world Khiann had lived in. He wished he could ask Annani where he was, or rather when, and what had happened to him, but his mouth did not produce sounds other than his breathing.

He was locked inside his unresponsive body, aching, confused, and lonely.

"Someone is here to see you," she said.

His heart started beating faster. He had asked her not to bring her son to see him, the one whom she called Kian. He could not face the male the way he was.

"It is Esag," she hurried to add, probably guessing where his mind had gone.

She had told him about Esag that morning. He had been his squire and closest friend. She had told him about the things he and Esag had done as young males, but it was all stories that had happened to someone else who might have been wearing Khiann's skin because the Khiann lying in this bed had no memories of any of that.

He now had a great deal of information. He knew his name was Khiann and his father's was Navohn, his mother's Yaeni. He knew that the exquisite beauty sitting in the rocking chair next to his bed was Annani, daughter of Ahn and Nai. He could recite this list of facts, but he could not grasp their meaning.

Was Esag going to add to the list of facts Khiann needed to remember?

He was not looking forward to seeing this friend's face crumble when the male realized that he did not remember him.

"He has been waiting to see you." Annani turned and waved her hand. "Esag, Khiann is awake. Come say hello to your old friend."

He heard footsteps approaching, and then a male with a shock of red curls entered his line of sight.

He was tall and handsome, with the most incredible blue eyes, almost turquoise, like the shade of the sea over white sand. The red of his hair was not the flaming magnificence of Annani's, though. His was darker, curlier, and it fell forward over his forehead.

The male looked at him for a long moment. "You look terrible, Khiann."

That observation was not surprising. His body was one big ache. What was surprising was that this male, who was supposed to be his best friend, was insulting him.

"I mean it," Esag said. "You look like something they pulled out of a river." He walked away and returned a moment later with a white chair, set it down next to the bed, and sat on it backward, with his arms folded across the backrest, which put him lower than the bed and lower than Annani in her rocking chair. "I've seen you look bad before, but this is a personal best."

"Esag," Annani said in an admonishing tone.

He turned to her. "I promised Khiann a very long time ago that I would always tell him the truth even if that truth was ugly." Esag returned his smiling eyes to Khiann's face. "Do you remember that?"

Khiann looked at those distinctive eyes and that unruly hair and searched for a flicker of a memory, but there was nothing.

"Do not stress," Esag said. "It will come back to you, and if it does not, I can tell you everything there is to know about you. We practically grew up together."

He started talking.

He talked about them flirting with girls in a tavern with wooden tables, and Annani laughed instead of being upset, which was endearing. He talked about long caravans to faraway places and the adventures they had shared.

The stories were so incredible that he suspected Esag was making most of it up, but he still envied the male he had been for having lived through whatever portion of it was real.

Then Esag stopped in the middle of a story about a tunic.

"This isn't working," he said. "You don't remember any of it, and I feel like a fool for prattling on."

"He enjoys hearing your stories, Esag," Annani said.