by Aaron D. Key
“Dear Rael. I hope he enjoyed his visit to you … and the one to us previously.”
“You tortured him?” This part made sense now.
“And enjoyed it. What other chance would I have had? I blame him for everything that has happened to me. You know that Rael passed on the power to his descendants with conditions? If it had not been for him, the power would not have been reserved for those who had not killed. If that creature you know as Glant had killed me, there would have been nowhere for the power to go to. He would have been unworthy, having killed me with uncontrolled hatred, an unjustifiable act, and I would have been no more. The power saved his conscience and my life just to preserve itself. An interesting thought, that. Worth pondering when you get a few quiet minutes – not that that seems likely in the near future.
“Without Rael I would have died on this world, years ago, quite happily. Can you imagine being trapped inside someone else’s mind for what seemed like an eternity?”
I could not imagine it. I did not want to.
“Was it you who created that wall of pain?” I asked the question knowing that I shouldn’t, that the knowledge would not help me one way or another.
“I can’t claim that. It was something that happened when we both clashed in trying to control the environment. Have you ever tried to sing a duet with a tone-deaf partner? It doesn’t matter how beautifully you sing, the listeners will never be able to appreciate it. Using the power is like that. I knew what I was doing but I was hampered by someone who had never been trained and who wanted to make sure our people had a good life. I tried to ensure they were kept in control. The pain was the result of our conflict.”
I was silent. I could not imagine a life like this. I felt sorry for Aeth despite all the reasons I had to dislike him. I also knew that he was lying. At least some of the pain had been made by him deliberately, to stop the city folk roaming. I had heard it from his own lips.
“What do you intend to do now?” Aeth questioned me. He stood up in his uniform, his body thin and barely able to fill it; the skin on his hands was white and stretched, the skin of a corpse.
“What can I do to help?” I asked.
“I would like to die, Damon Ich. I would have chosen hands other than yours to carry out my dying wish, but you are all I have.”
“We could find you another body to live in,” I said recklessly. “Perhaps you would be happy again if you were in your own body, in control of your own destiny.”
“You don’t understand, do you? I have been driven mad. There is nothing left of me that I value anymore. I should have died. Everything since has been torture. You need to end my life.”
“I do not know how to let you die,” I said, confused and stricken by the misery of the man.
“You have to kill me,” Aeth said. “I didn’t expect you to be much use. I can read your mind as if it were glass, all your hopes and desires, your feeble attraction to Koa – as if he would be interested in you! You are a pathetic excuse of a man, but if you could try to make it quick, I would be grateful. I don’t suppose you have any weapons on you?”
His words stung but I looked down, unsure. I was dressed in the same clothes I had been given in the tower and was unarmed.
He took his cigarette out of his mouth and threw it on the floor. His boot screwed the remains into the pavement, and then he knelt before me. He took my hands in his cold hands and placed them around his neck, pushing them so I could feel his bones and sinews. My heart began to beat quicker. I was unsure. This did not feel right. I helped people. I did not help them to death.
“Squeeze, you bastard!” Aeth shouted in an incandescent rage.
“Are you sure this is what you want?” I said, finding it hard to swallow, as if it were my neck being squeezed.
“I would have been happy if I had died in that cabin all those years ago. This is my next best hope. Do you have courage for it or has your lifestyle robbed you of your manhood?”
“Don’t try to make me angry, Aeth,” I said slowly. “I won’t kill you in anger. If you are sure that you want to die, I will help you out of pity and compassion but not out of anger.”
For a second I remembered my sister and her urgent need for me to return to free her from the need to share the power. I was fairly sure the power would not reject me if I killed out of compassion. I wondered if she would be unhappy I had taken that risk.
He bowed his head silently and I took two breaths, trying to fight the distaste rising from my stomach. Out of pity and compassion, I repeated to myself and began to crush his bones beneath my hands. He did not fight, although I had expected some instinctive reaction. I wished that I had the strength or the technique to break his neck with a single snap. I had never needed to acquire this skill, so I had to rely on lack of oxygen to finish the job.
His body slumped against me and I did not let go. I could smell the remains of the bitter coffee on his breath and the stale smoke on his clothes. His face changed shape and colour subtly, and then there seemed to be a passing of spirit but I still did not let go. My jaws were clenched, my stomach knotted, my brow twisted, and I could not let go in case it was not finished, in case I had only increased his suffering.
“Damon Ich?” I heard a woman’s voice and, turning, saw Rael’s wife. She was even more beautiful in a feminine way than before; her skin luminous and clear, her hair loose and golden. She was very pregnant; her stomach swollen in front of her and her breasts full. This was both Elena from the tower and Rael’s wife. They were the same woman, though subtly changed in feature from some incomprehensible cause – perhaps because the memory that maintained her form was getting older, failing.
“You can let go now, Damon Ich. He is released. Poor Aeth, but you have stopped his suffering.”
* * *
I returned to the sunlit window ledge in a state of shock, numbed with the horror.
“Are you back? How did you get on with Aeth?” Glant said. He sounded sad and dispirited. I doubted that he knew that he was free, in full possession of mind and body.
“Aeth is gone,” I said.
There was silence. I felt trembling in the silver light that surrounded Glant’s form as if he was desperate to try and read my mind, to know if I told the truth. Instead he looked inside himself and knew it was true. I gathered this from the silence, from the pattern of his breathing.
“He is gone,” he whispered. “Am I free to be myself again? I never thought it could be. I didn’t think it could be done. Aeth said it couldn’t be done unless he died. Did you kill him?”
He sounded slightly scared now.
“He said he wanted to die,” I reassured him. “He asked me to kill him and I did what he asked.”
Even as I said it, I questioned myself. Had that been the right thing to do? Why had I agreed to do it, without even trying to help him? I had been so sure it was the right thing. Had I been too sure of myself?
“I don’t understand,” he said. “We have shared each other’s thoughts for years. I never knew he wanted to die.”
There was doubt in his voice: doubt that I was honest. I was beginning to question that myself. Had I given way to his request because it had been the easy way out? My mind was still in turmoil from the fact I had killed a man. If I was truthful, it was also because Aeth had said Koa would never love me, and I wondered what he knew.
* * *
The next few days were a blur of activity. I was there at all the meetings in which the people of the city decided how they were going to govern themselves. Their ideas seemed sensible. Glant also raised some useful points, which were considered fairly, if with a sense of shock.
There were a few faces I recognised but many more I didn’t. The future discussions took place in the open woodland. Pale faces exposed to the sun with joy. Koa explained to me that a small group, including him, Herai, Monta, and Cailo, were going to
travel with me to make sure I got home safely. They pretended that they wanted to see what life was like in Herron to see if they would prefer that. I secretly believed they wanted to make sure Glant had really left them and was safely ensconced in Herron, never to trouble them again. I felt at a loss because for the first time in my life arrangements were being made for me. I had always made my own decisions, my own preparations. Now I was just a small part of this process.
I did not understand why but I was not myself. I struggled to think straight. I was nervy and jumpy. I could feel time stretching around me, stretching around my neck with tension, as if trying to stop me breathe. I knew what it meant.
There was some problem with time that I had aggravated by releasing Glant from his past. I was still me but my ability to plan, my ability to see the future as a series of steps that followed on one after the other quite logically, was almost all lost. I had spent all my previous years in a normal state: of tomorrow following on from today, remembering things from the past with no appreciation for the cleverness of this simple arrangement. Glant had been responsible for bringing Rael to me, just as he could turn out to be responsible for this latest complication, although he was not claiming it. Or was it because I had killed a man and the power was debating whether I was fit to hold it anymore?
What I did not understand, and I considered it most closely, was why Aeth had despised me so vigorously. He despised my feelings for Koa, even though I would have struggled to explain these clearly, but he had arranged a meeting with a man who loved him in his cabin at night, so that didn’t make sense. I wondered if he had tried to interest Koa in a similar meeting. Perhaps that was why he didn’t think I stood a chance, although I had understood from Koa’s earlier declaration of “not wanting to talk about it” that something had happened between them.
CHAPTER NINE
Back in Herron
They were ready to leave. They had not discussed the journey with me and I had not prepared for it. Six of us including Glant were going to travel back. Perhaps I could have bypassed the effort of walking for us all, but I had not been asked to do it, and I was confused. It looked as though we were going to walk back – the slow way. At least this gave me a few extra days in which I could think about the problem with time, and I would get to spend time with Koa, or so I had thought.
It turned out that the four companions from the city were a close- knit group, leaving me and Glant to walk the lonely miles together. They all wore heavy cloaks apart from Monta, which I could understand, remembering the darkness they were used to. It was a strange procession. I remembered their names, though under the cloaks they were undistinguishable. Koa was there. Monta was there with his friend Herai. Cailo, I recognised him as the man who had been torturing Rael, although Glant claimed responsibility for that. I determined to keep a close eye on him once he reached Herron.
Glant was quiet, and though I could hear the low murmur of conversation from the others I couldn’t catch enough of it to join in. For a while I walked in silence and realised that the desert path veered one way and then the other in a constant subtle zigzag. There was a dry taste to the air, not quite an aroma. It reminded me of Monta’s memories of walking in the desert. He had been happy to be alone. I would have been too but not like this, excluded, avoided – and making conversation with Glant was hard work.
I gradually worked to fall behind Glant and felt better when Koa instantly drifted beside me.
“How are you finding the escape from your stone walls?” I asked.
“This is not exactly what I expected. It’s a bit boring so far,” he answered from underneath his heavy hood. He pulled it back a bit so I could see his face. He had lost the beard. I preferred it. It was easy to think that he was interested in me because he was too kind, too considerate of his fellow man.
“There is the tower,” Monta called out.
“We do not need to go there, do we?” Koa asked unhappily.
I thought of the silent, empty tower filled with power but nothing else and was tempted until I remembered the stairs with their treacherous coating. Elena said she was trapped there but then she had left as if to prove that she had lied.
“There is nothing, no one there now,” Glant said mournfully. “Elena was never real. Just a ghost we summoned up to learn about you.”
We moved on.
Later Glant asked, “What will become of me, Damon Ich? Is there any hope for me?”
“I don’t know,” I said brutally. In my mind hope was generated from within. You couldn’t bestow it on another like a gift. If he did not know how to generate it, he would have no hope.
It grew colder. Even though I had left the desert and returned, it had not forgiven me my desertion of the path. I had no protection from the elements anymore. When we stopped walking for the night I was provided with a blanket. This sort of protection pleased me more because it relied on nothing more than forethought – well within the capability of every man. I was left to sit next to Glant, alone in company until Glant disappeared discretely, as everyone was doing one at a time.
“Hello, Damon Ich.” Monta sounded embarrassed as he sat down beside me. “I have not yet had chance to say I am glad you survived.”
“I did,” I answered. “And you survived too.”
“I heard that Glant ran away from the fight as Elena did. It is a strange way to win battles, but it seems to work for you.”
“That’s what counts,” I said flippantly. “I see that nothing will make you believe in my abilities, but I can live with that if you can.”
“I don’t need to rely on you anymore, do I?” He laughed but then he grew more serious. “They say that Glant is reformed, almost totally unrecognisable as the man we feared.”
“I believe that is true,” I said cautiously.
“There was another part to him you killed, an evil part. Sometimes Glant was kind,” Monta admitted thoughtfully. “Sometimes he was beyond evil. Normally good to Koa but just now and again he would do something spiteful and brutal that made no sense, unless it was the evil part of him resenting the kindnesses shown by the other part. Koa tried to be a friend. He suffered for it, but we were all grateful for his influence on occasions.”
Glant came back into the light of the fire. On the opposite side from us, Koa offered him some food and started a conversation. Monta watched him carefully.
“I hope that what you think is true is really true and we will have nothing more to fear from Glant once we reach your home. I’m interested to see this place Koa has told me about. It was a great sacrifice to the city to let Koa go,” Monta said slowly. “He had to argue his case many times before they would give him their blessing.”
“I can see that,” I said thoughtfully. I wondered what he was trying to tell me. Had I been selfish in tempting Koa with a vision of sunshine when he had been so long trapped in the dark? I had hoped for more than friendship when I had tempted him deliberately, I knew, although it looked now as if this was a foolish hope. But was it? What did Monta mean by Koa trying to be a friend? How had Glant seen the friendship?
Two days passed in walking.
“We are nearly at the desert’s edge,” Glant said mournfully. “Beyond there is no path but you know the way?”
I realised that he had been this way before. Been to Herron before. That did not fit in with Monta’s story – in which Glant had been an outsider. I could feel the absolute desolation in his heart at the thought of reaching Herron. He saw himself as a prisoner, although his captivity was unexpressed. I was unsure what his status would be once we arrived, but to all who saw him he would be Aeth’s murderer and the tyrant of Aeth’s people.
The desert wall was a tiny slit on top of the horizon but as we walked it grew until it towered above us. There was no physical presence there. The wall was a barrier constructed completely out of power. I did not know the history behind it but ma
rvelled at its construction. A single person could not have made this. It was a united effort from a civilisation all endowed with the power. I wondered what had driven them to this necessity.
We passed the wall and at once I felt stronger. There was no longer a block between my mind and me. I felt the full strength of the power and realised that it had been hiding behind the desert’s curtain.
Around us the scene was shifting. The desert wall was replaced with golden stone. I could smell the welcoming hint of lake, the tinge of marsh, and the overwhelming aroma of plants. I had woken up and used the power to call us back.
At first there was no one else there, and then gradually they came and just stared as if disbelieving what they saw. Ann appeared at the bottom of the tower and ran over. Her presence and joy seemed to break the spell.
“Damon Ich, welcome home,” my sister said in waves of relief. It was real relief too. I felt it like the strong emotion of love, catching at my throat. “Thank goodness you’re back, and alive.”
Her arms were around me, although the embrace felt hollow, as though I were a ghost.
The other city dwellers were murmuring in amazement and being greeted by Herron inhabitants. Glant was silent and avoided.
We were back inside the walls of Herron at twilight as the molten sun set behind the golden stones and lit up the sky with unreal fire. The sight was impressive. As I looked, Glant seemed to change too, lit up by the light of the sunset. His grey hair took on a hint of gold. The dry, pasty skin I remembered reflected back the light as if there was a sheen there. I must have imagined it, I thought, but then the problem with time, which had been controlled in the desert like a low-grade headache, suddenly exploded into a full-scale migraine. I couldn’t see beyond the blinking patterns in front of my eyes. The pain was like a hole gently being screwed into my head, deeper and deeper. Was this Glant’s doing? I seemed to be the only one affected.
I felt my last strength give way. I sat on the grass in a patch on sunlight and did not know where I was.