“Tanis doesn’t need our help, but others will.” He paused just before an impressive marble archway depicting the Lord of the Forest reaching for the Lady of the Rivers. Two long lines of Praetorians stood just beyond this portal, their ranks of shining armor extending far down the passage.
Felix gulped a swallow and stared at them. That is, until the zanthyr placed a hand on his shoulder. Then he gave a little jump and stared at the zanthyr instead.
“Dare not dissemble to the Empress, Felix di Sarcova. To do so would be your last mistake.” Phaedor turned and started off again.
Felix wasn’t so stupid as to try to lie to the Empress, and in any case, his attention had stuck on something else. “Wait—what did you mean by our help?” He caught up with the zanthyr beneath the arch and then followed him between the long lines of Praetorians, who didn’t even shift their gazes in challenge, yet whose presence so crowded the huge hallway that Felix felt smushed just walking between them.
As the zanthyr was approaching a pair of massive double doors guarded by four stone-faced Praetorians, he looked to Felix and advised in that low purr-growl, “Select wisely when to play your truths or you will miss your opportunity. These will be no trifling opponents you’ll face around this gaming table.”
Then he reached the doors and nodded to the Praetorians. The one in charge nodded smartly to the zanthyr and then looked to Felix. “And who have we here?”
The zanthyr placed a hand on Felix’s shoulder. “The Adept Nodefinder Felix di Sarcova, to see the Empress.”
“She hasn’t called for him.”
“She will soon.”
The Praetorian looked Phaedor over with a deep furrow between his brow. It was the look of a man poised on the brink of a precipice deciding whether or not to jump while an entire tribe of headhunters was chasing up behind him. At the conclusion of this potent deliberation, the soldier grumbled, “Do you vouch for him then?”
“Absolutely not.”
Felix started. Then he glared at the zanthyr.
“Are you armed, Sarcova?”
“Armed?” Felix protested. “No, I’m not—”
“All right, let’s have a look at you.”
Suddenly two Praetorians had Felix by the arms and another was pushing his legs apart.
Felix yelped. “Hey! What’s the big—”
“Find silence, boy.” The guard behind him started patting Felix all over—as in really, all over. His pats were more like the flails of a housekeeper enthusiastically pounding the dust from a rug.
Felix aimed a rather frantic glare in Phaedor’s direction, but the zanthyr was already passing through the doors. Felix was willing to bet he was armed to the teeth.
When the many probing hands had thoroughly explored every inch of Felix’s body, a final one shoved him forward. He stumbled into surreality then as he followed after the zanthyr into the palatial expanse that comprised the Empress of Agasan’s personal apartments.
Seventeen
“The truest wisdom may be found in knowing you know nothing.”
–Zafir bin Safwan al Abdul-Basir, Emir of the Akkad
Darshanvenkhátraman dreamed…
He stood on a marble-paved path gazing at a large fountain with a centaur at its gushing apex. The centaur stood over a reclining maiden, who lay with her back arched and her breast pressed against the point of his drawn bow, as if to willingly embrace the arrowhead about to pierce her heart.
“That’s how I feel when I’m with you,” Kjieran observed from Darshan’s right.
Darshan’s gaze tightened. The maiden wore an expression of rapture, but he didn’t think this was Kjieran’s meaning. He scanned the statue and then the surrounding gardens. “I don’t recognize this place.”
“I do.” Kjieran exhaled a melancholy sigh. “This is the Sormitáge.”
Darshan turned and studied him. What did it prove that he was dreaming of a place he’d never been? Unfortunately little, for both Kjieran and Pelas had spent many years at the Sormitáge. Either of them could be weaving its halls and gardens into his dreams.
He returned his gaze to the centaur and surprisingly found much to appreciate in the statue’s artistry. “This is a pleasant space for a haunting.” He flicked his gaze at Kjieran and then clasped his hands behind his back and strolled the path leading around the large fountain.
Kjieran cast him a slight smile as they walked, perhaps reminiscent of happier times; for Kjieran’s smiles never touched his eyes—not in Darshan’s dreams. In his dreams, sorrow shadowed Kjieran’s gaze, sometimes so deeply that Darshan felt haunted by it all the waking day.
Only…on this day, the dream felt lighter, less angst-ridden and deluged by need. Or perhaps he was coming to accept the dreams. Certainly he found himself wishing for the night all the long day, yearning to return to Kjieran in whatever capacity he could be with him.
No…this should not be.
In his core, Darshan knew he shouldn’t maintain such attachment to a mortal. For that matter, he shouldn’t have bound Kjieran for the reasons he’d bound him—not to serve their purpose, but for his own selfish pleasure; because he’d wanted to share eternity with Kjieran, because he’d wanted this doomed creature to endure.
Unfortunately, what he wanted with Kjieran felt like an egregious violation of his purpose in so many ways, and yet true and correct in the only ways he could bring himself to care about.
“It’s dangerous for you, isn’t it?” Kjieran lifted his gaze to meet Darshan’s as he walked at his side. “What you feel for me.”
Darshan looked back to the path ahead. “Yes. Very.”
They walked with the sun at their backs. Darshan’s shadow fell much longer than Kjieran’s. They two were as the clouds that cast their shadows upon the land; together, yet separate. But Darshan had meant for them to be one, even as he and his brothers were one in the Void.
“I don’t understand how things can feel so right and wrong at the same time.”
Darshan cast him a sidelong eye. “Right, wrong…these concepts are foreign to me.”
Kjieran gave a forceful exhale. “How can they be foreign to you, my lord? They’re the most fundamental concepts of life!”
“For your race, perhaps. But what use would I have for such concepts?”
Kjieran seemed utterly befuddled by this question. “I can’t fathom not understanding right and wrong. Even Dore Madden knows which is which, I vow—he just doesn’t care one way or another.” Kjieran looked quickly back to him. “But I think you would care, if you understood them.”
Darshan arched a brow. “Very well. Enlighten me.”
Kjieran seemed startled by his easy willingness. He turned ahead again and swept a hand through his dark hair. “I…hardly know where to begin. We begin practically at birth. A child starts learning right and wrong the moment he reaches for his first toy.”
“And what makes an action ‘right,’ Kjieran? Surely there cannot be a single standard the realm wide.”
Kjieran frowned. “An action is right if it agrees with what is good or just.”
Darshan shook his head. “Right, good, just…one term defines another and that one the next until they circle back to the first. Your language reflects the inevitability of your lives.”
Kjieran radiated frustration. “It’s just the opposite. These words reflect a striving towards a better future. Something is just because it helps a man live longer, live happier. It’s right to the degree it assists his survival.”
“Ah, there is another meaningless word.” Rounding the fountain, Darshan seated himself on a stone bench and eyed his acolyte quietly. “Tell me, Kjieran, what use has an immortal for this idea of survival? Why would an immortal employ survival as a factor in formulating any reasonable decision or action, when his survival is never in question?”
Kjieran blinked at him.
“Right and wrong…these terms were developed by a race entirely mistaken in their purpose, deluded by false concepts
like hope and happiness into thinking there is more for them beyond the simplicity of death. An immortal has no need for wrong and right. Survival and its related concepts are not factors that apply to immortals in any possible sense.”
Kjieran’s expression faltered and then fell. He seemed to deflate a bit. “If immortals aren’t concerned with right and wrong, what does concern you, my lord?”
“Only purpose and its achievement.”
Looking defeated, Kjieran sank down beside Darshan. “I see your point, my lord.” But he was radiating disagreement.
One corner of Darshan’s lips twitched with a negating smile. “Do you?”
Kjieran glared off at the fountain.
Darshan crossed one knee and clasped his hands around it. “That your race talks of right and wrong and is so concerned with survival only proves that you’re not immortal, that you were never meant to survive—which is why you’re so fixated on the condition. Mankind ever seeks what it cannot possess; the polarities of energy call to their equal opposites.”
Kjieran turned with sudden defiance. “Does being immortal make you infallible? Is it so impossible you could be wrong—that is, incorrect?”
Darshan held his gaze with an edge darkening his. “Wrong…as I was wrong in trusting you, Kjieran?”
Kjieran clenched his jaw and rebelliously held his gaze. “If it speaks to my point, then yes.”
A smile hinted on Darshan’s lips. He looked his acolyte over approvingly. “You’ve become bold in death.”
Kjieran held his gaze with determination. “Wrong has another definition, my lord. We use it in describing things that are untrue. And these ideas you have of us…no matter what you think…they are wrong.”
*—*
The Prophet Bethamin stood staring at two long lines of postulants who had gathered in the north transept of his temple to receive his assessment. A score of men of varying ages and racial backgrounds were kneeling at his feet with bare chests and their newly shorn heads bowed.
A haze of incense diffused the daylight pouring in through the high windows. The sunbeams illuminated the postulants with a faint nimbus but draped the Ascendants standing behind them in shadows.
The temple shouted with silence. Yet for Darshan, the postulants’ thoughts shouted louder still. Some who knelt before the Prophet were common men hoping to Ascend and find a place on his temple staff; most were truthreaders gathered from across the realm and brought to Tambarré to be cleansed of elae’s corruptive taint.
Darshan stood before them, reading their thoughts, tasting the emotions that drained out of them like blood, staining the air with wavelengths of disharmony. From those hoping to Ascend, he tasted anticipation’s crisp edge on a thin note of uncertainty. From the Adepts, the darker tones of horror, grief, fear.
Always he tasted fear in the minds and hearts of men. The emotion was so prevalent he’d thought it as inseparable from their mettle as flesh and breath to corporeality. But Kjieran had told him that Adepts looked upon his Marquiin as monsters. Now he’d begun to wonder if the Adepts he’d come into contact with all radiated fear simply because they feared him.
Both conclusions had their merits; both held their weight when examined, but only one could be true, and he was coming to suspect it was the latter.
What other conclusions had he falsely formed?
Darshan clenched his jaw. The more he entertained Kjieran in his dreams, the more the Adept’s ideas had begun influencing his own.
A dangerous association, indeed.
And now…
Darshan stared at the line of truthreaders. If they were mortal, as he’d originally believed, then cleansing them of elae and elevating them to unto death was a merciful act and a true forwarding of his purpose.
But if their souls were immortal, as Pelas and Kjieran both claimed…if in observing solely their frail shells he’d missed the existence of the immortal being inhabiting those shells…if Adepts were actually meant to endure…then elevating them served no purpose at all.
What disturbed Darshan the most in this contemplation was the tiny, fragile voice that wanted it to be true; because if Adepts Returned, he might have a chance to find Kjieran again.
Yet if it was true...why, it called into question everything he knew! It redefined every action he’d ever taken, subverted his merciful cause into malefaction, made his existence in this realm purposeless.
Darshan quivered with violent negation of this idea.
His furious denial pulsed through the currents, making the Adepts in front of him cringe. He declared he would purge the thought immediately from his consciousness and attempted to do so…
But the idea lingered like an ill-conceived weed that no amount of strenuous digging could uproot.
“My lord?” One of the Ascendants dared approach him with clasped hands and downcast eyes.
Darshan knew the sun had moved from one side of the temple to the other while he’d been standing there. He didn’t need an Ascendant to tell him what the light plainly showed. He narrowed his gaze at the assemblage. “These men are not suitable to become Marquiin.”
The fear that had been radiating on the currents became hesitation, uncertainty… hope.
Hope. Ever with mortals comes this delusion of hope.
Yet hope too keenly and uncomfortably described the odd sensations he felt when he imagined finding Kjieran in the Returning.
Darshan clenched his jaw. These were treasonous thoughts he could not allow to continue. He returned his attention to the lines of initiates and their attending Ascendants, who were darting nervous glances at one another when they thought he wasn’t looking.
“Cast these men from my temple.” He made his voice resound with disapproval. His censure rippled the air, flattening the flames in the near braziers into a precarious flickering and sputtering. The Ascendants uniformly cringed.
“Nonbelievers.” Darshan’s outrage brought dust showering down from the high vaults to sparkle in the streaming sunlight. “They sully my halls.”
Relief flooded the currents. The Ascendants gaped at him.
“But…m-my lord,” one of them was bold enough to stammer, “we scoured the Middle Kingdoms—”
The Prophet silenced him with a glare of such icy reprimand that he and all of the other Ascendants instantly fell and hugged the floor. The lines of postulants were staring at him open-mouthed, too stunned to realize they should be prostrating themselves also.
Darshan rested a hand behind his back and held out the other. “To become Marquiin, an Adept must have embraced my faith.” He raked his gaze across his prostrate staff. “You bring me captives. My Marquiin must be captains!”
“Forgive us, kind lord!” the Ascendants murmured pathetically.
“I sent you forth to spread my Word, but what do you bring me in return for the power entrusted to you?”
The Ascendants murmured hasty words of supplication.
“Your mandate is to disseminate—broader, farther. Let neither borders nor kings stop you from spreading my word. Be industrious in your proselytizing; bring my truth to the masses!”
“Your will be done, Lord above Lords, Fire of All Hearts…” The Ascendants intoned the Prophet’s list of titles and continued on with the ritual chant.
Darshan departed.
Halfway back to his chambers, a familiar voice spoke into his mind, Brother…
Darshan’s gaze tightened. Shailabanáchtran. He let the fullness of his displeasure slice across the bond.
I would approach, if you will receive me.
Darshan’s skeptical grunt echoed back to him from the empty passageway. Shail might’ve adopted a propitiative tone, but Darshan didn’t for a moment believe him penitent. He told his brother where to meet him.
Shail was waiting for him when he reached a sundrenched terrace, and he wasn’t alone.
Darshan emerged from the shadows of an arcade with dark disapproval cloaking his expression. “You’re looking inordinately ple
ased with yourself, Shailabanáchtran. You take a foolish risk coming here if you intend to continue on a path in denial of our purpose.”
“Then I suppose that can’t be the path I’ve chosen, can it?”
Darshan’s immediate mistrust rippled the currents. He looked over the adolescent girl who was Shail’s hostage. “What’s this?”
Shail’s smile dripped malice and condescension in equal measure. “This is Nadia, a prized truthreader to add to your collection—so few of them are females, you know. Call her a conciliatory gift.”
Darshan misliked Shail’s superior smile. “What would I want with her?”
“I think you'll find her full of intriguing facts about all manner of things, but especially our brother's recent activities.” He took Nadia by the shoulders and moved her towards Darshan. “Perhaps after hearing what she has to say, you’ll reconsider your anger.”
Darshan looked her over doubtfully. “And Pelas?”
Shail summoned a portal. “He won’t be bothering us for a very long time. As I explained to you, my methods are effective. Well…” he looked Darshan over with a mocking smile, “enjoy your present,” and he departed through his portal.
***
To Nadia, it all felt a blur.
One moment she was anticipating a rather triumphant return to Faroqhar, and the next she was tumbling into unreality—from utter, disorienting darkness, to a frozen wasteland, to the even chillier arms of Shailabanáchtran, and then, bound in goracrosta and held again in an interminable, frightening darkness until…
Blinded by the glaring light of mid-afternoon, Nadia blinked through watering eyes at a shadowed form that was approaching down an arcade. Her muddled mind wondered if Shail had taken her to some other realm, for the man coming towards them hardly seemed human. She strained to focus her eyes, strained to focus her thoughts through the goracrosta’s mind-numbing bite.
He emerged into the light like a god in human form. Taller even than Shail, he wore white pants low across broad hips that yet seemed too narrow to support his shoulders. A wide-sleeved white robe draped his arms but left his muscled chest bare. A gold torque collared his neck, and wavy black hair cascaded down his back.
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