by Sam Bowring
What is it like? said Bel. Without your power? The knowledge that, at any moment, from any direction, you could feel cold steel slide into you?
An axe struck the limply held blade from Losara’s hands. The Arabodedas who wielded it moved before him, glowering from under spiky brows. ‘They sent a scrap like you?’ he said in a disgusted tone, and raised the axe again. ‘What did they think you were going to do?’
The scene began to fade and the axe-head, now ephemeral, passed through him.
So, said Losara, because I wouldn’t make a great warrior, you are superior – is that your point?
Bel found himself unsure what his point had been.
Your strength is a talent, continued Losara, just like my magic. What’s the difference, really? Let us be fair, then, and see how you would manage in one of my memories.
Bel raced towards a copse of trees, marvelling at how it felt to travel through the grass in this strange shadow form. He could sense his power, great and deep, knew how to wield it – power that should have been his, he thought jealously.
I do not guard my knowledge from you, said Losara, as you did your swordsmanship. I am more interested in seeing how you use it, rather than watching you flounder about looking lost. Anyone can tell you that a fish thrown from a mountain will not fare well.
Bel entered the trees, and discovered a troop of Varenkai who had been ransacking the Fenvarrow supply carts. The mages in the group sensed his presence immediately.
I shall do better than you, I suspect, he said, stepping from the shadows. You, I now seem to recall, when faced with such clear enemies, chose instead to dally. He extended his hands, revelling in the power that sprang forth. Blue energy swept through the soldiers, and the mages’ light wards did not stand for more than moments. As they shattered, the mages screamed with the rest, their muscles melting and their brains boiling. Bel was ecstatic with what he wielded, but too quickly it was over.
You see? he said triumphantly. I do not flee to cogitate when faced with such a simple scenario.
No, said Losara. Instead you seize with gusto the opportunity to murder your own countrymen.
Do not twist things. We both know these are insubstantial figments, less than ghosts, and this but an exercise.
Our talents are not the sum of who we are. It is how we use them that defines us.
Bel grew angry. Why were they even having this conversation? Why had Losara not disappeared into him yet?
And you do not use yours as you could, he said, pausing instead to ponder every move. Ambivalent in the face of a single path, seeking ways to get lost in the brush.
There was a laugh then, but Bel was not sure if it came from him or Losara.
Yes, said Losara. I would not deny that your focus is mighty. Your sight narrows to your aim exclusively while the rest fades to unimportance. For a time I was worried that you are so directed . . .
. . . while you meander thoughtfully, reticent to take action.
Thinking about my options, Bel, about what course to take. That is the way of things when one is not a follower.
I am not a follower.
Self-denial . . . something new to me. All your life, you have done as others wished. Fahren –
It was never Fahren’s wish that I turn out a soldier.
– has been a guiding hand, steering you always, teaching you that the shadow is to be feared . . .
Just as you were taught by Battu, by Tyrellan, by Heron, to hate the light.
Naphur . . .
Whom I defied when I returned to the peacekeepers after Drel. Whom I wrested command from when we marched to conquer Fenvarrow.
That never happened, Bel. It was just a dream.
Maybe. Or maybe I could have won without resorting to any of this.
And in the end we both would have died. Is that what you want?
No.
Corlas . . .
Corlas never told me how to live.
Losara paused. I suppose he did not. Arkus . . .
Do not invoke Arkus when you have followed instructions from your own gods also . . . what of the pilgrimage you made?
As he said the words Bel experienced a rush of images, remembered travelling around Fenvarrow, taking in its beauty . . . but the sense of wonder disappeared quickly, not yet his emotion to possess.
You follow, Bel. How else can you pursue your end so vigorously and yet not even know what you fight for?
Around them, Crystalweb appeared.
Remember this place?
Of course. What does it have to do with anything?
Bel fell silent as he saw his past self walking along the raised path through white-barked trees. Following him were Jaya, Hiza, M’Meska, Fazel and Gellan, all of whom were taking in the surrounding sights with fascination. Rain broke across crystal leaves while the sun still shone, and refracted colours raced across branches and down thick trunks, into glimmering piles of broken shards that twinkled like dangerous treasure.
Look at your face.
Past-Bel seemed dour, annoyed.
You cannot understand what makes the rest of us marvel, said Losara. Even I, the disguised spy from Fenvarrow, am forced to take stock of a place such as this. Yet you feel nothing, do not appreciate what you fight for, cannot.
I don’t fight for weird trees and magical spiders, that’s for sure.
Nor for the architectural triumph of the Open Halls, or the golden sands of the Furoara . . . or a tiny fish in the Shallow Sea, or the towering Arkus Heights. Where does it begin with you?
If you enjoy my land so much, why do you resist joining me?
My own land is beautiful too.
What? Dankness and darkness?
Since you cannot admire your own, I hardly think you’re in a position to judge mine. Don’t you think we shadow folk like where we live?
Blades clashed again, and they were back in the battle, this time as it was happening at that very moment. A Mireform roared as swords fell upon him – Eldew was no longer his towering self, for he had taken much damage. An arrow sank into his beady white eye, but he blinked it out rapidly.
‘Hack it to pieces!’ called a troop leader. ‘Arrows do no good!’
Eldew cut gaps in the line of soldiers attacking him, but others filled them quickly, closing in from all sides. As his legs were slashed from under him, he collapsed to the ground to pool amorphously. He was overwhelmed, and tried to escape his muddy remains as a worm-like thing.
‘Get it!’ screamed the troop leader, and the forest of surrounding feet began to stomp. Eldew dodged once, twice, and then slithered under a heel that came down hard upon him.
What is in his mind’s eye? said Losara. His last thoughts as he departs this world?
Eldew stood at the edge of Swampwild as dawn broke, the shadows just beginning to soften. Green hills stood lump-like above the bog, netted together by willow and bridge, rotting slowly and ripe with the smell of wet wood. There were ten types of moss underfoot, twenty types of ferns, and all manner of things in the mud and water. How his home pulsated with life, an unfelt heartbeat, yet the air was still enough to hear a dewdrop falling into a pool twenty paces away . . .
What makes you think I care, said Bel, that your monsters romanticise some muck-hole? Do you expect me to be sympathetic to this one, who butchered a whole village for no good reason?
Losara sighed. You accuse me of thinking too much, but you do not think enough . . . and you call yourself a leader . . .
And so I am.
Then why, when you were offered the Throneship . . .
A meeting room in the Open Halls barracks where Bel, Gerent Brahl and Fahren sat at a table.
‘The people will surely rally to you,’ said Brahl. ‘I could not imagine a more natura
l figurehead.’
Bel nodded. ‘And when the time comes, I will gladly lead the charge. However, I was born to fight, not to rule.’
You said it yourself, Bel.
Do not use my own recollections against me. I was there, you know. Let us see how this continues.
‘You have heard Fahren speak of what I must accomplish,’ said Bel. ‘I have been charged by Arkus himself to retrieve the Stone of Evenings Mild. Thus, for a time at least, my path leads elsewhere.’
‘I agree,’ said Fahren. ‘A direct order from Arkus should not be ignored.’
There, said Bel, I obey my god. And if you’re somehow suggesting you would not do the same, why not cede that you have no loyalty and give in right now? As for how this relates to my supposed following, a strong sense of purpose means a strong sense of self. Do not seek to make me believe that knowing one’s place in the world is indicative of weakness.
You are skilled, it seems, at remembering things the way you want to. Do you not recall your other thoughts that day, considering the Throneship? The fact that you like being special, but not the burden it arrives with . . . how you rush towards your goals to get them over and done with . . . how the Throneship does not appeal because it would be a lasting responsibility . . . are those the marks of a true leader?
Bel did not like how comprehensively Losara was becoming privy to his past, even to thoughts he’d had at the time. He needed to turn this back on his counterpart’s head.
Perhaps you chose to become a ruler, he said, but you have never been a strong one, never had conviction, never liked to see yourself win. Here . . .
Past-Losara stood with Tyrellan on the parapets of Holdwith, looking north over a field strewn with Kainordan corpses. The shadowmander ran back and forth sniffing at the dead, leaping to capture the crows that shared its interest. Losara sighed, his void-like eyes haunted and haunting at the same time.
Look at you. You have won this bout, yet are you gladdened?
‘How terrible,’ said Losara, ‘that we must exchange such violence.’
Could it be, said Bel, that you cannot accept success because a part of you knows it isn’t right? Look at this . . .
Battu, Tyrellan, Lalenda and Losara sat in Skygrip’s dining hall, while Grimra swirled over plates of delicacies. Losara reached for an anemone and put it in his mouth.
You know they are poison, yet you eat them anyway.
‘I’m so glad you like them,’ Battu said.
Losara swallowed. ‘Ah, but I am being rude. Would you like them passed to you?’
‘Oh, no,’ waved Battu, sitting back in his chair and patting his stomach. ‘I am . . . quite full. Please, if you are enjoying them, have more.’
You don’t understand your own motivations, as you sit there letting Battu think he’s won, when really you’re about to turn the tables on him. You think to yourself, ‘Why this charade? What do I hope to gain?’
I remember.
Do you want to know why, Losara?
Tell me.
Because THE BLAZES WITH BATTU. Because I, the missing part of you, would relish the expression on his face when he realises his plan has failed, and he is the one who’s actually been tricked. It should have been fulfilling to fool such an opponent, but you are incapable of appreciating it, so instead you sit there going blank. You have no passion, no heart for your work.
You are calling me weak because I don’t enjoy pain? Here . . .
The academy hall at Holdwith. Losara placed a hand on a lightfist’s head as he channelled. She gave a small sigh, and died in his lap.
I killed again and again to build the shadowmander. I did not like to but I did it anyway, because I know what’s at stake for my people. That is strength, Bel, which goes beyond your childish need for personal satisfaction. It takes compassion, which you once rather laughably accused me of lacking, to really consider the effects of one’s actions. You have no compassion, you know it only as a word. You do not know guilt . . .
In a clearing in Drel Forest, Bel lay unconscious while around him were the mounded dead – huggers and soldiers who had been in his troop.
. . . although you imagined you did, after your comrades were slain in Drel. But that was something else – your worry over the weaver’s influence, your failure to achieve clean victory and thus return to celebration, your fear at losing control, the discovery of the fact that you enjoy killing so much . . . guilt is about accountability to others, yet all these concerns are about yourself. I, however, know that I am accountable for my actions. And I’ve become, if not comfortable, at least accepting of who I am.
The ruined village of Valdurn, just after Bel and his party had fought the Mireforms . . . Losara’s disguise had been dropped and he was reaching towards Bel, attempting to snatch the Stone.
I was not the one who sought Evenings Mild, said Losara. And here I try to take it from you, so that we may never find ourselves floating inside it having this argument. I was not afraid to remain who I was. It was you who wanted this, you who could not live without it.
I was following instructions from Arkus!
And in the end . . .
Elessa rode through the battle, levitating behind her a furious Bel, who was trying to kick in the heads of the enemies they passed.
. . . you did not even make the decision to enter. You had to be forced.
Bel felt himself losing the thread, wasn’t even sure what they were talking about any more.
You really believe yourself on the side of right? he snapped. Look at your land, covered by a Cloud of unnatural occurrence – that’s not the way the world was made!
Do you consider it wrong to live in a house that someone has built? Do you think things constructed are not part of the world?
I take a dim view of a land rife with barbarism . . .
A younger Losara leaned against Skygrip’s entry arch as a struggling Vortharg was brought to Grimra to be devoured.
. . . ruled by tyrants . . .
Battu grew angry with his student, and sent little Losara crashing to the floor.
And look . . .
A young Arabodedas man tried not to cry as he was led from his hut by conscriptors, forced to join the final charge.
Outside Holdwith, Grimra circled a pile of dead lightfists in a pit not yet closed over, and dived down to take a large bite.
Assidax ran her tongue over pointed fangs, as she directed her army of ghouls and skeletons across the plains at the Shining Mines.
Fazel, undead but not yet burnt, just shy of the border on the shadow side, sent magic into a thrashing blade he had captured, extracting information against both their wills.
Heron, in the throne room, begged Battu for release, and he laughed at her.
What are these things, said Losara, of which you have no personal knowledge, and no shared memory with me?
Bel wasn’t sure – they had simply come when required.
Do you use the shadowdream against me? A dangerous game to play, Blade Bel.
Would you like to go further back, perhaps? See how Fenvarrow has attacked Kainordas for a thousand years?
Only if we can also see how Kainordas has attacked Fenvarrow. You want to use the dream – let’s use it, then.
A flotilla of barges brimming with blades and lightfists worked its way down the Dragon’s Sorrow. They passed the Hinter Swamplands and entered the Dimglades Delta, where the going became ponderous, and soldiers leaned on poles to poke the vessels through the shallow mire. At the edge of the Delta was a town populated by pixies and goblins, from which shouts rang out as the approach was spotted. Barges nudged the banks and soldiers poured into the town, quickly and vastly outnumbering its denizens.
Never rebuilt, said Losara.
Recompense, I imagine, for s
ome other atrocity.
And recompense for some other, and some other, and some other, way back into the folds of forever. You lecture me on right and wrong, Bel? You really think Kainordas is good and Fenvarrow evil?
Elessa sat in a tavern room somewhere, alone and disconsolate, looking in the mirror and trying not to touch her own face.
You condemn our use of undead, yet when it suits your own purpose, apparently there’s no issue.
Battu and Fahren were walking over a bridge of light in the Morningbridge Peaks.
You showed me Battu the tyrant – but you seem to forget that he was cast out, rejected by the Dark Gods for his nefarious and self-serving ways. Yet you took him in and made him one of your own.
And who’s this? replied Bel, as a spectral weaver bird flitted onto the bridge. Could it be someone cast out from our side, someone your lot took in?
Why, yes – the difference being that we took the weavers without a great need to.
Because you share their love of evil acts.
Because we accepted them for what they are, even though they were created by our greatest enemy.
At least Arkus can admit when he’s made a mistake.
Then they were back in the barracks, again with Brahl and Fahren, who were now talking about what to do regarding Thedd Naphur.
Brahl licked his lips. ‘I could arrange for something to . . . befall him,’ he said.
Murder, Bel, of the rightful heir to the Throne – something you were a party to considering.
We didn’t do it.
Only because you found another way. And you, personally, I now recall, were all for it.
We could ill afford one such as Thedd.
Why do you think Fenvarrow’s ‘tyrants’ are chosen for their strength? At least we are open about our process.
We were operating under unusual circumstances.
During which you broke every moral you profess to defend. Look at this . . .
Fahren, in his tent, stared down in horror at the prostrate Querrus, whose eyes were empty, a trickle of spittle oozing from his mouth.
‘Forgive me,’ murmured Fahren. He waved a hand over Querrus, who stiffened for a moment, then fell still. Fahren reached down to close his eyes, then opened the ground beneath to swallow him up.