THE SOUL WEAVER

by Carol Berg

  With the darkness came the fire… fire that drove me to the edge of reason… that set my blood boiling in my veins. Choking, acrid smoke scorched my lungs, all the more horror because it smelled of my own seared flesh. My vision failed as my eyes charred in their sockets.

  The fire set the Three howling. They had felt no pain since they were transformed, but had only consumed it, lusted after it, for it fed their power. But this fire was their pain, as it was mine, as it was my father’s. Neither true flesh, nor blood, nor eyes were necessary, for all of the horror was in the memory of my father, at last made real for the ones who had caused it, and for me, because I had to be there to bring the Lords.

  Hold, my son. I will not pass it over… Whatever conies, the Three must have a taste of what they’ve wrought in the world.

  Ten years my father had lived with his death fire fixed in his conscious mind. I’d never really understood.

  It had been the most difficult thing I’d ever done to take my father’s hand, more difficult than leaving Zhev’Na, more difficult than enduring the firestorms in the Bounded or D’Arnath’s fire in my prison cell, more difficult even than allowing Notole, Parven, and Ziddari to enter my body and mind again. Once they were inside me, choking off every sensation of life, devouring every shred of humanity I’d regained, my craving for power was magnified a thousand fold. To touch my father’s hand would be to give it up all over again. And who knew what else I might be letting myself in for. His sword was out of the way, but his enchantments had come near killing me fifty times already. Though I’d spent a great deal of effort trying to convince myself that my father’s silence had been intended to prevent the Lords’ learning of his plans from me, it was almost impossible to relinquish the Lords’ cold comfort for something I couldn’t imagine. I had to trust him, and I wasn’t even sure who he was.

  He had made his decision on the night at the Lion’s Grotto, when he linked our minds together with his healing magic. His voice had been gentle at first, just as I remembered him, my true father. He told me of Ven’Dar’s belief that I was a Soul Weaver, so that what I’d done to Paulo and Ven’Dar had been no more a sign of my corruption than Ven’Dar’s word windings or his own healings. Though I was glad to hear him say such things, instead of how vile I was or how much he wanted me dead, I didn’t believe their theories. I knew what I was.

  As he explored what I knew and believed of the Bounded, and the story of my dreams and all my confusions, he was appalled at what he considered his failure with me. Unforgivable that I couldn’t see, he said. That I let it come to this pass. I should have been at Verdillon more often, and perhaps I could have come to understand what happened - and what was happening - to you.

  Whenever he grew angry, I had to distract him, for his touch became less sure, and his presence less substantial, and I very much wanted his help. But he came very quickly to the conclusion that there was no way to detach me from the Bounded. His first slight attempt at separation seemed to leave a gaping hole in my memory where someone named Ob was concerned, and my father said there would be nothing left of me if he proceeded, with no accompanying assurance that the Lords couldn’t use me anyway.

  Then Paulo must go back to the Bounded, and lead the Singlars through the portal to Valleor, I said. I prepared them before I left. They just await my word.

  It would give King Evard a greater mystery than he’s ever known, but unfortunately, I doubt these Singlars will fare better in the Four Realms than to chance their fate with you. That was my father speaking, so I knew he was still with me.

  Roxanne will see to them, I said.

  You care for these people a great deal.

  I just… I would not have them die because of me. They’re not evil.

  Neither are you, Gerick. You never were. If this new world is a reflection of you, then you must see that it is not just the oculus that defines what you are, but the goodness and strength and resilience of the Bounded, as well. This ocean of light… what a wonder… that, too, is a part of you.

  It was then he told me he needed to learn more of how the Lords controlled me. Perhaps something other than my death could disrupt their attachment. He asked me to open the door in my mind.

  I didn’t want him to see. If he could be D’Natheil while he looked, instead of my father, perhaps I wouldn’t care. There’s nothing you can do, I said. Just give Paulo a day, then do what you have to do. It’ll be too dangerous if you start poking around in my head. They’ll know.

  But he told me how important it was to him and to my mother that we look for every possible solution. And if we were to find another answer, he needed to know everything - what I was and what I had been. What I had always been.

  If I allow it… you won’t tell her? I don’t want her to know.

  I promise. She knows your true heart, Gerick. She’s always known, and nothing will ever change her mind. No one in any world can match your mother for stubbornness. But there’s no need for her to know everything that’s been done to you. Whatever is between us here, will stay between us.

  All the words were very nice. He seemed to mean them. But I had no illusions about what would happen when I opened the door and introduced him to Dieste.

  Indeed, it was all he could do to stay with me. Rage and revulsion threatened to destroy my father and leave only D’Natheil, who very much wanted to stick a knife in my gut. Instead, he withdrew from my thoughts for what seemed like a very long time. When he spoke again, his inner voice was cold and hard, and I could hear only words, nothing of his intent or his true feelings any longer. You were right all along. You have to die. There is no other course. Nothing more about me not being evil. He had seen the truth - why I would rather die than go back.

  There’s always satisfaction in having your judgment confirmed by those deemed wiser than yourself, and to have the decision made was a relief. But I had thought he might tell me how he would go about it… or that he’d make it fast… perhaps even what it was like… after. As it was, he did not speak again before withdrawing from me completely.

  I opened my eyes to see him wrapping a rag around his bleeding arm. Paulo stood in the doorway of the ruin looking worried, and Roxanne was nowhere in sight.

  Events moved very quickly after that. I told Paulo he had to go back to the Bounded. He knew what that meant, and he promised to “see to things back there.” The Prince had taken his place by the door and stood looking out, as if we weren’t even there.

  Paulo squatted beside me, tracing a finger in the dirt. “It don’t seem fair,” he said, quietly. “I never thought he’d do it. Never.”

  I glanced at my father’s motionless back. “He tried to find another way. Honestly, he did. Take care of yourself, Paulo.”

  I appreciated that Paulo didn’t try to convince me to run away. We had already discussed this back in the Bounded. Though he didn’t want me to die, he had no alternatives to offer. But he shook his head. “It’s not over yet. Don’t you think it. The Lady’ll have a say about this.”

  “Where is she? Is she all right?”

  “She’s - ”

  “Get out of here, Paulo!” The Prince moved quickly, yanked on Paulo’s arm, and shoved him away from me. “One instant more and you’ll reveal your passage to our guests.”

  Pounding hooves from across the valley announced rapidly approaching riders. Ten or more.

  Raising a hand in farewell, Paulo passed through the portal again - little more than “thinking himself through” the protrusion of rock in the heart of the ruin. I’d forgotten to ask him about Roxanne.

  My father did not speak to me as we waited for the riders to arrive. Knowing what he had seen inside me - and knowing what was going to happen a day from now - I didn’t know what to say to him, either. Certainly nothing I said was going to change his mind about what he had to do. So I just sat in the corner and waited, wondering who was coming, wondering whether he would give Paulo the time he needed to save the Singlars, wondering whether he would
use his sword or his knife or some enchantment to kill me.

  The “guests,” Radele and his father Men’Thor and some of their men, were all for executing me right there in the ruins, and from the way the Prince talked, I thought he was going to do it. But then he told them that he was planning to make a public show of naming a successor and executing me, so that the Dar’Nethi would see clearly what was happening. So, they made me a prisoner instead, putting me in restraints that would prevent me using power.

  When I thought of all those I’d sealed into slave collars, I couldn’t complain about their bindings. The spell-ridden silver manacles that made it feel as if bars of red-hot iron had replaced the bones in my arms and back weren’t half so bad as the slave collars. But I thought it strange that my father would do such a thing to me, when I’d freed him from his collar in Zhev’Na. That irony must have been on his mind as well, for when I was tied to the horse, and he came up to put his own seal on the magic, he wouldn’t look me in the eye. And at the very moment his enchantment ripped through my mind and body like a flaming ax, I would have sworn I heard him whisper, “Forgive me.” But I was screaming, and after that I couldn’t think of anything for a long time.

  Over the next day and night I kept telling myself I was a fool even to think about my father any more, much less believe he had some plan that might keep me alive. Yet those two words kept popping into my head every time I saw him. He brought one group of bloodthirsty, superior Dar’Nethi after another to gawk at me, and he’d tell them how corrupt I was, and how I’d tried to murder my mother. But then he’d call up D’Arnath’s magic again, the white fire that made me want to crawl out of my own skin, and I couldn’t put two sensible thoughts together.

  The interesting thing was that he never told the damnable gawkers the real evils he’d seen in me, only the things they already believed. And he would always finish with the same speech. “When the time comes for his execution, he’ll call on the Lords to come for him. It doesn’t matter what he claims now, but when the moment arrives, he’ll do it. That will demonstrate what he really is. If, at that moment, I were to reach out my hand and offer him freedom from his depravity, what would you wager that he’d take it?”

  He would never answer his own question, and just about the time I would begin to think that perhaps he was trying to tell me something, he’d slam me with the fire again. After ten times or twenty on that endless day, I believed that the only thing he was telling me was that I was going to be dead sooner rather than later. And I didn’t care in the least.

  But, of course, when the time came, after Radele and Men’Thor were dead, and I was chained to a stone, trying to make sure my skull hadn’t actually cracked in two as it felt, I remembered what he’d said all those times. If he wanted me to summon the Lords, using the oculus would be the way to do it. I could tell the Three I was desperate, that I was ready to surrender, that I would do anything for power and to escape my father’s sword. It wouldn’t be hard to be convincing. But I dared not take too long to decide; the Lords would feel my doubts and know it was a trick.

  When I could move my head without passing out, I looked at the Prince for some signal that would tell me what he wanted me to do, but he showed no interest. I warned him, and he turned his back on me. But behind him… behind him was my mother, and if he’d brought my mother, then he cared very much about what was going to happen. I had to trust him.

  So I reached into the orb and called on the Lords to come and save me. They came. In the instant they joined with me, I felt as if I were back in Zhev’Na, bursting with all those things I’d hidden and ignored and buried in myself for so long: the smell of the blood I had taken, the taste of the pain I had inflicted, the intoxication of causing horror to feed my pleasure and my power. Though the remembrance disgusted me, though I loathed what I had been and had tried everything I could to leave it behind, I hungered for more. My hands quivered with the desire for power, and my soul craved the emptiness the Lords had given me, the freedom from confusion and pain and fear. I’d had more than my fill of pain and confusion.

  No more of it! I flicked away my father’s sword and ignored his accusations. Why should I die? I was what I was. Better to live with power… The Lords were congratulating me, welcoming me back, drowning me in their lusts and hatreds, and my four years of denial were erased in the first instant of my listening. When my father threw the mask in front of me, I remembered nothing of duplicity, nothing of an imagined plan, nothing of deception. My body begged for the touch of gold, for the vile ecstasy as the mask embedded itself in my flesh. My feeble human eyes burned for their diamonds that would see everything and nothing.

  Yet even as my hand raised the mask to my face, my mother took up the tether that bound me to her. She called my name as if to remind me who I was. “I know your true heart! You do not belong with the Lords!”

  I almost spat it back at her. If not in Zhev’Na, then where do I belong?

  But no sooner had I voiced the question, than I realized that, for the first time in my life, I knew the answer. I know your true heart… Everything my parents had tried to tell me suddenly made sense. Everything I had learned and felt in the past months settled into place. I belonged in the Bounded, where my broken people were just learning how to live. I was one of them, broken, too. And if this was so, then perhaps, like them, I was not evil.

  For that one astonishing moment, this novel possibility quieted my pain and hunger and the enticements of the Lords. Thus, when my father whispered, “Come into me,” I heard his voice. When he said, “My dear and beloved son,” I believed him. And though it was one of the hardest things I’d ever done, when he reached out his hand, I took it.

  * * *

  Only after the pain of the fire began to recede did the Lords begin to bargain. They writhed and squirmed within our shared mind like snakes in a kettle, but I drew up power as they themselves had taught me and held them still.

  “Young Lord,” wheedled Notole. “I have nurtured you in the ways of power. All this” - I could envision her hand waving across the black velvet landscape revealed by the waning flames - “is but more food for your talent. You will be the greatest of the Lords, feared and worshiped in every world, able to take any soul at your whim, to eat or use as you desire. You will stand with one foot in one world, and one foot in another, and laugh while Parven and Ziddari grovel for your favors. Release me, and I will draw you back to Zhev’Na to take your rightful place.”

  We were one - my father, the Lords, and I - a single vessel passing through this midnight realm toward a horizon alive with streams and veils of colored light. Strange that I could see, though I had no eyes, and I could walk… or fly or move somehow… though I had no limbs, no physical substance at all. My senses were all blurred together, so that I tasted the rich darkness and heard the song of the light.

  “I will not bargain,” I said. Not if this strange venture would destroy the Lords. Soon, surely, my father would tell me where we were and what we were doing.

  “Crush this mortal being who dares contain you,” growled Parven. “No more should a cavern contain the sky, than this pitiful D’Natheil imprison the Destroyer. There is still time to cast him off. Let him pursue dissolution if such is his wish, but the Four of Zhev’Na are at the brink of triumph. We made you what you are - strong and powerful and ruthless - now we call in our debt. You swore an oath never to oppose us. Cast him off! Travel the winds of the world with us.”

  “I have no wish for your companionship,” I said. “And I’ve not taken up arms against you. You chose to come at my call. But I am a Soul Weaver, and I control this place where you reside. I yield my father the choice of destination, not you.”

  “But you don’t even know where that is, do you, boy?” snarled Ziddari. “Tell him, D’Natheil. Tell your son where he and his futile hopes are bound.”

  My father took a long time to answer. He seemed very distant, though I had given him control of our shared mind. “I take him to th
e only place he can be free of you. I take you where you can no longer destroy what is beautiful.”

  His thoughts trailed away. The geysers of colored fire - closer now - shattered at their peak into cascades of music and color that aroused such deep and fundamental longing that every past desire, even my craving for power, paled in comparison. What was this place?

  “He’s killed you, young Lord,” said Ziddari, his voice as cool and mocking as it had ever been. “When we pass that barrier, there is no going back. Never again. No wind on your face, no solid horseflesh powering you across the earth, no exploring the wonders of the world at your will. No chance to do those things you’ve never done. You’ve never sailed on the ocean, never scaled a mountain peak. You’ve never even had a woman. Shall I tell you of these things, quickly, before they’re lost forever? Quickly, before your body rots, forfeit to D’Arnath’s revenge? Shall I show you what you’ve chosen to leave behind?”

  Into our mind came one vision after another: women, riches, sailing and adventure, wine, food, and every pleasure, commonplace or exotic, that a physical being could enjoy. Each one was replete with sounds and smells, and tastes, and sensations, and it was true, I’d never experienced even a tenth of it. I was only sixteen, and I was dead.

  “Now tell me why your father has murdered you. He should have made this journey before you were born. This yearning you feel is his, for he is tired of existing where he doesn’t belong. But you, young Lord, have not even begun to know what is to be found in the world… ”

  And then he bombarded me with another round of visions, this time of his own pleasures, corrupt, brilliant, loathsome, depraved, exciting, a world of power and enchantment where I could do anything I wanted - and never to end, for I would be immune from ordinary death.

  “Now tell him, D’Natheil. Tell him why he has to die. Tell him why he cannot live forever.”

  “Tell me,” I whispered, suddenly confused. My progress toward the barrier of light slowed, and the fading visions of warmth and pleasure left me cold and empty. Alone. Dead. A shudder of terror swept through me. “Father… ”