Scars of Cereba

By Rachel Emma Shaw

Love, loss and memory thieves...

With more than his memories trapped inside his head, Falon is struggling to keep control. His mind has fractured into three, but will he be able to put the pieces together again?

Delving deeper into the consequences of memory magic, Scars of Cereba picks off where Last Memoria ended, rejoining Falon and Sarilla in country that just can't quite forget its past, no matter what memories are stolen.

“Rachel has done it again with her incredible storytelling. This is a book that seriously needs to be read and appreciated for what it is. A blooming masterpiece.”
- Justine, Bookstagram’s Bookshelf Fairy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rachel Emma Shaw
• Release date: May 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005160579

Rachel Emma Shaw

Rachel Emma Shaw is a London based author. She started writing as an escape from her PhD in neuroscience and has never stopped. She lives in a house slowly being consumed by plants and loves being outdoors. She will frequently attempt to write her books in local parks, only to inevitably end up falling asleep in the sun. If you want her to hurry up and write more books then wish for rain. Her best work is done when it's stormy outside.

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Scars of Cereba

Book Two in the Memoria Duology

Rachel Emma Shaw

Copyright © 2021 Rachel Emma Shaw

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 9798593612052

To 2020.

At least you left me with plenty of time to write.

Sarilla

Memories are the balance of a knife edge since too many can be just as cruel as too few. After having been made to steal them for so long, I know all too well how easily you can lose yourself either way you fall. Sometimes only for a while. Sometimes for longer. I’m still trying to find my way back. Perhaps in writing this down, I will get there at last, but I doubt it.

Falon’s memories tease my fingertips as I consider where to start this ill-fated story. They flicker behind my eyes until I reach those of his imprisonment in Dranta. Hundreds of onlookers watch him in the memory. They heckle every insult they can think of, calling him Arvendon’s Bastard. Traitor. Murderer. To them, he is the scum who betrayed his country. The reprobate who killed his king. He is the dead man awaiting his fate, but they don’t know of the good intentions that led him there.

I don’t judge them for their ignorance. I envy it. If they knew the world as I do, then they would better see the shades of grey, but I doubt they would be happier for it. Instead, they move through their lives, blissfully unaware of what old age or death will eventually rob from them, only realising what they had to lose when it’s already lost. If then.

Hanging there beneath the pillar and having already endured it several times by that point, Falon understood the cruel imbalance of memories all too well. The first time was when I stole six months of his memories, destroying the man he was and creating someone new. The new Falon didn’t know what he had lost, but he was all too aware of the empty chasm I created in his mind by taking his memories away. It clawed at him and made him take on a king for the chance of getting them back.

The last time was the worst. It was the product of too many, rather than too few. It happened when I returned the old Falon’s memories to him. Perhaps it would have been fine if it had just been their memories in there, those of the old Falon and the new. Perhaps they would have found a way to contend with the chaos, but in hoping to escape, I gave him my own too, accidentally sealing all our fates.

In trying to set things to right, I made everything so much worse. I fractured Falon’s mind into three, and that miserable man dangling from the pillar, hounded by an entire city’s resentment, he is the result.

With so many memories, Falon was more lost in the chaos than he ever had been in amnesia’s void. For my sins, I was trapped in there with him. My consciousness entangled with both of theirs. That of the Falon he had been when I took his memories, and the Falon he became in the time it took me to put them back.

Two Falons when there should be one. The old and the new. The Fool and the Impostor. That was what they came to think of each other as. Perhaps they were, but whoever Falon was, whatever he became, while he was tied up beneath the pillar in Dranta and made to be the target for every ill-tempered citizen in the city, he was only a vessel for memories. A battleground of love and hate. One to be escaped, but never conquered.

It was impossible to know where the boundaries between us lay at first. Our only tether became our differences since they were our one way of knowing which of us was in control. The Falons would ask themselves if they were the one who loved me, or the one who hated me. I would just ask the gods to finally let me die.

ONE

I never used to dream before Sarilla stole my memories. Or at least, I never used to remember the adventures my mind embarked on at night. Everything changed when she put them back. Then, the dream streets we walk, we walk together, Sarilla, the Impostor and myself, the three of us united and merged in a way I can’t understand and that terrifies me. If I don’t figure out how to get her memories out of me soon, then I know I won’t like what we become.

By my calculation, close to a year has passed since my body was stolen from me and I was forced to exist as no more than a memory on her hands. A whole year, yet I have only been aware of the last three months of it.

It took Sarilla nine months to put back the memories she stole from me. Nine months where the Impostor was in charge. Let the gods take Sarilla for what she did. When she finally returned my memories, she put me back into a body that wasn’t just mine anymore. I was a co-owner, one of three and the only one with any sense.

I would have been better off if she never put them back. At least that way, I wouldn’t have to experience how low my life had sunk, but I was back now, and I would make her pay for what she did. As soon as I managed to get down from the pillar.

The skin about my shoulders stretched taut as I hung there, the weight of my body pulling it down, straining the binds about my wrists where they had fixed me to it. The heckles of Dranta’s citizens filled my ears and someone in the crowd pelted another rotten projectile. It hit my stomach and I groaned, curling up as tightly as I could, trying to protect my body. The reaction was second nature after three months of such hostility.

Was it too much to pray for rain? Anything to dispel the decomposing stench covering me from the rotting fruit. It might briefly turn away the crowd who kept gathering too since only Dranta’s most sadistic citizens would show up to torment me when it rained.

How long had I been on the pillar for this time? Two days? Three? Long enough for my wrists to have numbed from the weight of my body pulling against the chains.

My body. The other Falon was an impostor and Sarilla was even worse. She was a slovenly headmate. A parasite slowly draining my life from me. A plague I couldn’t be cured of. She was every bit the monster my father warned me about, and I had to evict her before it was too late. The only problem was that I didn’t know how to manage it.

Freedom. She claimed she wanted it, but then why trap her memories in me like she had? I wished I could grant freedom to her with a sword through her gut, as I had intended to before she stole my memories, but it wasn’t so simple now she was trapped inside me. Besides, there wasn’t a chance any of the guards would lend me their sword so I might do it anyway.

Another missile flew past my head, narrowly missing me, much to the annoyance of the young boy who threw it. From the mess he wiped from his hands, I was especially glad it hadn’t hit since it looked to have been particularly rotten. There had to be a heap of rotting fruit and vegetable somewhere, left to decay for the sole purpose of being hurled at me. The crowd had thrown so much these last months that a good portion of the city must have gone hungry as a result. It was a sign that the fine people of Dranta didn’t just hate the black-eyed freak Queen Meradia had ordered bound to the pillar. They despised me.

Still, they hadn’t grown bored yet, which was something. Queen Meradia would execute me for sure when that happened. The guards would cut me down, drag my body to the gallows, then throw the noose around my neck. And it wasn’t like they would have far to go. I could see the scaffold above the heads of the crowd. The more eager spectators liked to climb up it for a better vantage, balancing on the protruding wooden boards as far as they dared.

The noose below swayed in the breeze, wafting innocently as I watched, even though I felt no ripple of wind on my skin. Realising what that meant a moment too late, I cursed, but by then, I couldn’t stop the memory as it welled up in my mind. The man ascends the scaffold unaided, and I force myself to watch. I don’t want to see his execution, but I’m compelled to witness his end since my testimony condemned him. Did I do right in telling Renford about what I saw when I searched the man’s memories? As I watch the man as he shakes, the noose catching while they lower it about his neck, I don’t feel so sure. All around us, Dranta’s citizen’s cheer, eager for him to dance the dead man’s jig. Renford glances over at me and I meet his gaze and the approval within.

He is happy. He has what he wants, another pet to willingly raid the minds of his subjects. His to use whenever he pleases, the price he demanded I pay to ensure he spared the life of a man I now wish dead.

Falon. Where are you now? For all your promises of love, you only ever hated me. I see that clearly now that I’m trapped with the reminder of his disgust. His memories stain my hands, warring with my own and clouding my thoughts with his lies. I have them under control most of the time, but not always. Sometimes they slip through, forcing me to relive his deceit.

I thought about destroying his memories and being done with it, but I can’t. It’s not that I’m keeping them out of sentimentality, but because they are a reminder of the idiot girl I was. Enduring them is my way of ensuring that I never make her mistakes again. That next time, I remember that everybody lies. Renford would have no use of his pet memori if they didn’t.

***

The memory wrenched me to consciousness, forcing me into an awareness I didn’t want, trapped in a body that wasn’t mine. I cursed Falon as he slipped back down into the darkness, escaping the pain of existence he had dragged me into. Again.

Waiting for death was easier when oblivious to still being alive. If being trapped inside Falon could be called that. His body was a cage, a far cry from the oblivion I hoped for when I put my memories inside him. They were supposed to fade away, like they had from Cedral that time by the campfire, but for some reason, they hadn’t inside Falon. Either the gods hated me more than I realised, or the blackvine had altered Falon’s mind too much. But whatever the cause, my memories became trapped inside him, denying me the escape I longed for.

I should have known something like that would happen. After everything I did, all that I was, I didn’t deserve to be free, not even in death. The gods surely couldn’t let me escape so easily.

His skin was an ill-fitting dress. It stretched and pulled taut in ways that made me uncomfortable to examine. Straining Falon’s arms above his head, I tried to get some slight relief from the discomfort in his shoulders. The bindings fixing him to the pillar were too tight, but my efforts made no difference. Giving up, I slumped him back down, staring at the figures facing him in the crowd, the fine citizens of Dranta I had helped destroy the memori to protect.

I spotted a group of guards making their way towards the pillar. Had they come to cut Falon down? What would it be this time, back to the cell or over to the scaffold? Death would bring the oblivion I sought, and it would be a far more permanent one than whatever state I slipped into every time the Falons took control, forcing me into the darkness where I wasn’t yet dead, but I at least wasn’t Sarilla anymore. At least for a time. It was a shame that neither Falon had the necessary control over memories to make my temporary escape more enduring.

The darkness always ended too soon. A memory would slip through and break the control of whichever of them was in charge at the time. In so doing, it would drag me back into the waking nightmare of being trapped inside a body that wasn’t mine.

The old Falon loathed me for it, his hatred of me just as strong as it had been that day Renford ordered me to take Falon’s memories of his treason from him. I didn’t blame him for it. Not anymore.

Still, at least the Sarilla I had left behind was free. Wherever she and Havric were, she was better off without my memories since she would never have to live with the burden of what I had done. The thought of it made my confinement inside Falon somewhat easier to bear, since rather than being the miserable consequence of my miscalculation, it was instead a price I must pay for her freedom. A price I would one day finish paying and then be free too. Why was death so elusive to those who sought it, when it hounded fast enough after the ones who fled?

I stared at the noose longingly, the image transforming until I was watching a body swaying in the breeze. Sarilla’s brother is so covered in bruises that it doesn’t take much imagination to guess the beatings he must have endured before they strung him up and hung him beside Arvendon’s army. How long did King Renford have his guards beat their captive memori for before they put Rysen out of his misery?

I used to think of the memori as monsters, but since travelling with Sarilla, now I’m not so sure. She hasn’t used her ability once on Ced, Havric and I, though I know she’s had plenty of chances. Could it be that she isn’t what the world seems to think her? I almost wish she was a monster. That way at least, the sight of her family strung up there might not cause her so much pain that it’s breaking my heart to see it.

***

The memory faded as I reclaimed consciousness, struggling to readjust as the guards unbound me from the pillar. I dropped to the ground, only fully regaining control of the body I shared with Sarilla and the old Falon as the cobbles hurtled towards me. Rolling at the last second, I managed to avoid a more serious injury, but not the pain that burst down my arm as I hit the cobbles.

I grunted, biting back a curse as the guards grabbed me, hauling me upright and proceeding to drag me through the crowd. I was so distracted by the dizziness twisting my vision from a lack of food, that it took me a moment to realise that they were taking me back towards the prison, rather than over to the scaffold. When we got there, they deposited me in the same cell as had been my sanctuary since arriving in Dranta, if only because it was safe from decomposing vegetables and the constricting burn of a rope around my neck.

Taking stock of my body after its latest stint on the pillar, I examined the damage. There were a few fresh cuts from when rocks had been hurled instead of rotten fruit, but I was mainly no worse off than I had been when they had dragged me back out there.

Grabbing the jug of water that didn’t look to have been moved since I had last been in the cell, I downed what was left of the liquid inside, relishing every quenching droplet, not caring about the stale taste to the liquid. It beat trying to catch raindrops in my mouth while I dangled from the pillar, so I counted it as a blessing from Forta herself.

Staring about the cell, I looked to see if anything had changed. The solitude of my prison always struck me as strange. It didn’t fit with the anger of the crowd outside the palace gates, nor with the chaos in my mind that had me caught between the Fool battling for control and Sarilla fighting to give it up.

Gods, how he hated her. Could I really have loathed her like that too once, back when there was no divide between him and I?

I wished there was something I could do to help her. Anything to lessen the pain of what she was going through, but I couldn’t reach. She wasn’t listening. Neither of them were. Whenever I was in charge, I was alone without even the people in my head for company. We were trapped inside the same body, but still so far apart. Still, it was probably for the best where the Fool was concerned. It wasn’t like he had anything nice to say to Sarilla considering how much he loathed her for taking his memories and forming me in the process. It was a wonder the two of them didn’t feel more of a connection since the only person who hated Sarilla more than he did was herself. I didn’t share his contempt, but having once been him, I could at least understand it. Better than he could my forgiveness at any rate.

He was the same hothead I used to be. A fool clinging to hate when it brought him nothing but misery, but it wasn’t his fault. When Sarilla took his memories, she took from him the time he needed to grow. I had been given the chance to change.

There was nothing I could do to stop the Fool from raging or Sarilla from breaking. I wanted to fix them both, but I could no more repair Sarilla than I could bridge the fracture cleaving the Fool and I apart.

Sitting at the small table in the cell that had been my home for a few months now when I wasn’t on the pillar, I stared at the manuscript that had been my last attempt to fix us. Its dirt-marked pages were exactly as I had left them when I finished writing down the account of how we ended up like this. I had needed to relive the memories to write it all down, but doing so had made it impossible to stay in control.

My jailer making his way past my cell pulled my attention from the pages. I caught the quarter loaf of bread he threw my way before moving on, distributing the midday meal with the same lack of enthusiasm as he ever had.

I raised the loaf to my mouth, only to still as my hands transformed before my eyes, the past and the present blurring together. My skin paled as the dirt streaking it sharpened, becoming darker as one of her memories takes over my vision. The marks on my arms are so many now. They writhe and reach hideously up to my elbows. No wonder Renford insists on my keeping them hidden. Why couldn’t Falon and the others have let me keep my gloves on? It’s the only way I’m spared the constant reminder of what I am. Without them, I can’t hide from the evidence of the crimes etched on my hands.

***

He’s got that look in his eyes again, the jailer said, stopping before Falon’s cell. I barely noticed him. I was too occupied with being dredged out of the darkness once more, forced back into a consciousness that, unlike both of the Falons, I didn’t want and could happily have done without.

The ripe stench of urine and unwashed bodies assaulted Falon’s nostrils as the groans and coughs of the other prisoners filled his ears. If they thought prison was bad, then they should try being trapped inside another’s body. Only then would they know the true meaning of confinement.

I was desperate for it all to be over, even to the point where I had considered taking Falon’s life to hasten it. I had imagined how I would do it. The garment of clothing I might fashion into a noose. The pieces of straw I could wedge down his throat to stop his breath.

Without realising what I did, I moved Falon’s hand and gripped the pen he had been using to record our memories and make sense of this prison of the mind we were trapped in. I turned the nib until it was pointing at his skin, the arrow shaped tip sharp enough to cut through flesh. Maybe even pierce it. It wouldn’t take much.

Digging it into his skin, I watched his blood as it welled up and dribbled down his arm, before dripping to the floor.

Don’t he look like he wants to suck all the memories right out of us? the smaller jailer asked the bigger one, distracting me from what I was making Falon do and causing me to glance up at them. You don’t think he can… you know… do that thing with the black stuff. I heard it comes out of the ground and can get you anywhere.

What use are these bars then? the larger guard asked, the wavering in his voice betraying the bravado of his statement.

I tried to tune them out and focus on the pen, but the sight of the bars before Falon morphed. They changed to those of another prison on another day, and I knew from the hatred and rage rising with the memories who they belong to. I ignore the guard’s mockery as I stare out of the cell, still at a loss for how I ended up here. I had been so careful in concealing my true intentions, so how had I been discovered?

"What sort of idiot falls in love with a memoria, eh?" the jailer asks, laughing at me as he passes by.

Apparently, Sarilla isn’t the only one my lies convinced.

Is that why the king has locked me up, not because he’s discovered that I’m here to kill him, but because I won the affection of the half-niece he loves to loathe? I wouldn’t put it past him. He’s so twisted by affection for her that I doubt he’s even aware how wrong it is.

Still, at least if that’s why he ordered my arrest, then he hasn’t uncovered the truth of why I came here and I might still have a chance, enough to kill him and every last one of the memori pets he’s using against his own people.

***

Dragging my mind back out of the mulch it turned into whenever Sarilla was in charge, I reclaimed control, cursing as I realise what Sarilla had been doing before my memories had risen up and cast hers back down into the darkness.

Cursen damn her. Death would come for me a lot sooner if Sarilla had her way. Surely the Impostor could see now how dangerous she was?

I gripped my hand over the wound, willing the bleeding to stop as I toss the pen out of the cell. Was it any wonder that I was terrified of what might happen every time I was forced to leave her in control?

Makes you wonder though, don’t it? the paunchier of the jailers said, moving closer to the bars. "What the memori did to him. I heard he went to them before the fighting in Oresa even began, begged them to make him like them.