by Martin Ash
‘But do you?’ asked the Golden Lamb.
‘I know as much as he!’ the man blurted out.
‘It’s not enough!’
‘No, he cannot know,’ I said. ‘Ask him. He cannot know.’
The Golden Lamb was sombre. ‘No. It is just possible that he could, or you could. It cannot suffice. There are too many possibilities, too many risks. It must end here, then.’
He gave a signal. Two of his men drew swords and stepped forward from the dais.
‘This is unjust!’ cried my double.
‘Give me a moment, please,’ I cried. ‘I’m trying. I simply cannot remember.’
‘I ask only that you be certain of yourself,’ replied the Golden Lamb. I looked at him - there was something in his intonation, his inflexion. An image flashed into my mind, a word, a combination of words... And...
I remembered. He had given me the final clue, the last vital aid to recollection, to help me see the words written before me as I stood in the parlour of my home in Hon-Hiaita only - how long ago was it? Two weeks? Three? More?
Go well and safely and be certain of yourself.
‘Well?’ said the Golden Lamb. ‘I see something in your face. But if you have words to say, I repeat, do not speak them in the hearing of the other.’
I nodded. Still hardly daring to believe, I whispered into the lieutenant’s ear: ‘With every breath comes change.’
He straightened, wheeled about and marched across to his master, who bent his head, listened, and then, saying nothing, came to me. He took my arm firmly and led me aside. My two guards came with us, but he gestured them back. I stood with the Golden Lamb in the portal through which my double had entered under guard, out of hearing-range of all others, including the Golden Lamb’s men. ‘I believe you are Ronbas Dinbig of Hon-Hiaita in Khimmur,’ he said in a subdued voice. ‘But there is one last element to the test, by which I can be quite certain. Tell me, who am I?’
‘I can scarcely believe it,’ I replied, ‘and even now half-believe that I may be the victim of some monstrous trick. But if that is not so then you can only be my friend and oftimes confederate, Viscount Inbuel m’ Anakastii of Kemahamek.’
‘Kill him!’ shouted the Golden Lamb.
‘No!’ I protested. ‘No, wait! I implore you!’
The two soldiers with swords had moved instantly to my double, who shrank back now in dread. But they hesitated at my outcry, seeking confirmation from their master. The Golden Lamb raised a hand, his unsettling reflective face turned toward me. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Hold him still, but let me explain.’
The Golden Lamb motioned with a nod to his men. He took my arm again and drew me through the portal. Once more guards made to follow and he signalled them away.
‘Inbuel, is it really you?’ I said when the door had closed upon the hall.
He lifted his hands, unfastening straps at his neck, and raised the golden helm. He tossed back his head, freeing the dark curling hair which had been flattened by the helm to his crown and brow, and grinned. ‘Sir Dinbig! Well met, I say! Well met indeed! How are you?’
He clasped my shoulders as I clasped his, still too shaken to gather my thoughts or respond in any way, and we embraced. Inbuel laughed, drew back, wiped sweat from his brow. ‘It’s hot in this damned helm. Now, you are bruised and the worse for wear, but not seriously harmed, I hope?’
I shook my head. ‘A predictable consequence of spending time in the company of one such as Feikermun. But tell me-’
‘No, tell me, first, why I should spare that sorry wretch in there. His antics have plainly served you nothing but ill.’ With a glance to the door he lifted his helm and replaced it over his head, commenting softly, ‘Apart from a select few, not even my own men know who I am.’
As he refastened the buckles I said, ‘You are right, he has served me ill. But he is not truly to blame.’
‘How so? His disguise is immaculate, I will say that.’
‘It is not a disguise. You were wrong, Inbuel, when you said that we were each disguised, for he is not. Ironically, he is the only one of us who has openly displayed his true self, naked and without guile. Yet it’s unacceptable.’
‘I fail to understand.’
‘That man who stands there beyond this door is not an impostor, Inbuel. He wears no mask. He is me, he is real, just as I am. He is dangerous, yes, undoubtedly so. But he was cast into this world unwillingly and unwittingly, as we all have been, but fully formed, an adult, with memories - my memories - intact. He almost certainly believes quite genuinely that it is I who am the impostor. And to my knowledge he has committed no crime. He exists, that is all, and is guilty only of that - which is to say that he is not truly guilty at all.’
‘You will have to elucidate at greater length, my friend, if you are to convince me that you have not taken leave of your senses,’ said Inbuel without harshness. So I proceeded to explain what I could, detailing the essence of my discoveries since he and I had last spoken in Hon-Hiaita and revealing the extraordinary origin of the man who was my double. I told of the bizarre role that Feikermun had played in his ‘birth’, and spoke too of the Avari, the amber, the Scrin, and the Citadel of Selph, including my unwilling ingestion of the gidsha root. ‘It’s all beyond my capacity to embrace intellectually,’ I said, ‘and almost certainly the drug still exerts an influence upon my senses, but the facts are what they are nevertheless. You have personally witnessed something of what is happening here, and of the strange and powerful magics involved. I have experienced much, much more. I believe it may be almost over - at least in regard to Selph’s influence - now that the Avari are free again. But not all is as it was.’
‘And there are now two of you, where before there was only one,’ Inbuel added. ‘It may be that he is not an impostor, but neither can he truly be said to be you. My test has proven that much, if you were not already aware of it. You can’t both continue to exist.’
‘To kill him out of hand would be an act of cold-blooded murder.’
‘Then what do you suggest?’
‘Hold him; give me time to think.’
‘It may not be possible. Battle rages outside. We could be obliged to move from here at any time. It is a hindrance and a risk to carry him with us.’
‘Let us speak to him,’ I said. ‘But first, tell me, what of yourself? I am beyond amazement that the Golden Lamb should be my old friend. Yet there are aspects to it, implications, that disturb me somewhat.’
‘Later,’ replied Inbuel evenly. ‘Let us deal with the matters most immediately at hand.’
We returned to the hall where my double waited between his guards. He looked cowed and wretched now, and watched us with imploring, suspicious eyes. I felt a stab of pity for him - and as I thought again of who he was I was visited by a strange and unsettling emotion.
The Golden Lamb addressed him. ‘Master Dinbig has explained something of your situation to me. He demonstrates unusual compassion, understanding and generosity of spirit in his words, and makes it plain that you are a victim of circumstances over which you had no control. He does not seek your death, yet both he and I are agreed that you cannot continue to live while he also lives - for you two are, in the truth of it, one and the same. An aberration, a paradox, an anomaly, an unreality that somehow has become real. We must find an answer to you.’
‘You believe yourself to be me,’ I said, ‘and in many ways you are. But you are not. You are not of this realm of experience. You are the unconscious creation of a man who, for an instant, assumed the aspect of a god. A demented god who did not know what he did, but in that instant he created a man. That man is you.’
I watched my double’s face carefully as I spoke. Perhaps I wished it, but I thought that something of what I was saying struck home. Earlier fire in his eyes had faded; the challenge and defiance in his posture were gone. I saw a tiny, shy flicker of inconsolable illumination. He was downcast, and again, more powerfully, I felt sympathy.
My double stared at me dazedly, swaying slightly. ‘I remembered... his having killed me. I did not know why. I could not understand. Over and over I have tried to understand it.’ He turned his head from side to side. ‘I thought he had chosen to let me live again. I thought he was my father, and my god. Yet he despised me, did not know me or wish to know me.’
‘Did you know him?’
‘No. Only inasmuch as I have just said. I wondered...’ He put his hand to his furrowed brow. ‘It has been so strange ...’
I nodded, studying him, and our eyes met. ‘Aye, it has.’
‘I have felt... I have not known where I belong. I have memories, but it has felt as if they are not truly mine. I have no feeling of place. I exist as if in a dream. Here, there, cast back and forth, not knowing why I act, believing myself to be someone but not knowing who that person truly is.’
I looked aside at Inbuel, the Golden Lamb. His face, of course, was hidden, but I believed he must have been experiencing something of what I felt. I could feel no anger against this poor creature standing before us. Kinship, rather, and empathy. He is I, I told myself again, and unsure of who he is or how or why he came to be. In that sense he was no different from any other born into this world.
But he had to go, to return somehow to the Citadel from where he had come. We could not both exist in the same world - and he was incomplete. Moreover, he was born out of Feikermun’s mind; he undoubtedly carried something of Feikermun with him: a darkness, a craving, a capacity for cruel excess... I could only speculate, but the fact was that, though I pitied him, I still feared him - as I had from the beginning. Even in his acceptance and sad resignation he threatened me.
‘What is to be done?’ he asked, looking from me to the golden-helmed figure at my side.
The answer came to me. ‘You have to return to the well.’
‘I do not know the way.’
Neither did I. When I had gone there I had been drawn, without knowing how. And it had been under the gidsha dream. Did I still dream? I could not tell. I said, ‘Do you acknowledge and accept the truth of what I have said?’
He hesitated for a moment, then nodded and said slowly, ‘It fits, though it is so strange. After all that has happened... yes, I can, without too much difficulty, accept it.’
He might have been tricking me. He was held here by the Golden Lamb and had won only a nominal reprieve from a sentence of death. He had nothing to lose by going along, or appearing to go along, with my words. Yet in his eyes, and in my heart, I saw and felt that he was sincere. Could I be fooling myself? Could he? The doubts were ever-present, and there was still no answer as to how we should proceed, but I gave myself over to instinct, to intuition, trusting that it would not fail me.
‘Then we must find the way back.’
The Golden Lamb lightly touched my arm and beckoned me aside. ‘You spoke of the root,’ he said in an undertone. ‘Would that open the way?’
‘It might. I’m not able to say.’
‘Have you any?’
I nodded. I still carried with me a small portion of the root and the other ingredients.
‘You think you are still under its influence.’
‘I do not know, but it would seem likely.’
‘But if he took it might it serve to return him to the place you have mentioned?’
‘It might, but...’
‘But what?’
‘There’s no way to be certain. To know whether it had been successful I would need to accompany him. I don’t know if I’m strong enough for that. I have taken so much of the root already.’
I feared the gidsha root. I was also afraid, without being certain why, of returning to the Well of Selph. To do so, it seemed to me, would be to defy immutable laws. I had been there, I had been again, and I had done what I had been asked to do. The gates of the Citadel were closing now. If I went back to the well I might not return, for the well was my death, as the road that led to it had been my life. I understood that I had journeyed beyond, had been permitted a glimpse of an unknowable otherness so that I could return the amber and release the Avari. This had been vital to compensate for Feikermun’s awful blundering, for he had turned the cosmos adrift and allowed chaos to run amok. Feikermun had been where he should not have been, and I had been given the privilege of following in order to set things to rights. But to go there again...
I sensed its consequences in my bones, and shrank away.
‘Is there something wrong, my friend?’ enquired Inbuel softly.
‘There has to be another way,’ I said. I looked back at my double, who regarded me without animosity but with a measure of uncertainty in his eyes. I commanded his fate, and he knew it. He professed himself willing to return to Selph but, if it proved impossible and he remained here, then the threat of his existence still held. I would have to kill him, for if I did not he would kill me in order to become me.
I heard Inbuel’s whisper, almost as if he read my thoughts: ‘It might be simplest if I ended it now.’
‘Could you do it? I cannot sanction it. I have told you it would be murder: he has committed no illegal act.’
‘What of those he will commit?’
‘Execute a man in advance for something you believe he may one day do?’
‘That is not how it is in this instance, my friend. You surely know that. We can say with utter certainty that, if he lives on, he will be a threat. He can surely act in no other way. He has knowledge he cannot be permitted to carry. Your own people, if they knew of his existence, would be obliged to hunt him down and kill him. I say if, for let us look at his situation. To survive he must kill not only you but me as well. He would then be you; no one else knows his true identity. Thus I am willing to act now to forestall all risk of such a development.’
‘He cannot be killed.’ It came to me as if for the first time, with a terrible resonance.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean it is impossible. Feikermun gave him life, then executed him. But he returned. I have seen him, I have been him, and I have seen that he can be other things. He has no control, but he cannot die. Where did you find him?’
‘My men came upon him in the backstreets close by. They believed he was tracking you.’
I looked back at my double. ‘What were you doing when you were apprehended by these soldiers?’
‘I do not know.’ He looked woebegone. ‘I found myself there. I came from... elsewhere. I don’t know where. This has been the pattern of my existence.’
Again I felt for him. Whatever he was doing, whatever his goals might have been, he was acting without real choice, compelled to follow what must have appeared a pre-ordained course, and never knowing why.
‘Were you looking for someone?’ asked the Golden Lamb.
My double hesitated, then said, ‘I think perhaps I was seeking my creator.’
It took a moment for that to sink in.
‘But you say you did not know him,’ I said.
‘I did not, yet I knew he must exist, for otherwise how could I exist? So I sought him, not knowing who he might be. I wanted to know.’
‘What of me?’
‘I sought you as well, in a sense. I had a suspicion you wished me harm. Yet instead it is you who have told me who I am.’
And in a sense, I thought, I too am your creator, for Feikermun could not have brought you into this world in such a form if he had not first held my image somewhere within himself. My brother; our creation. The thought set my mind slewing; I felt I had almost seen someth
ing, almost understood, and that then it had gone, flitted away from me, elusive to my grasp, shy of my comprehension.
‘... it’s all such a blur. And I ask myself, what has been the purpose of it all? I have come into this world knowing nothing; have sought the answer, the reason for my being; have found it, perhaps; and now I am to return to not-knowingness. Why?’
‘If you have found an answer, have understood the mystery of your origin, you have gained more than any man or woman known to me,’ said Inbuel.
My double looked at him for a long time. ‘But I do not want to die.’
‘You have recollection of your existence before you entered this world?’ I asked.