My report. Blessed Mother and Father, Witch Ruvera is dead. A creature awakened, became many creatures. They were … they were uninterested in negotiation.
It seems, Mother and Father, that upon this land we would call our own, we are all but children. And this is the lesson here. The past waits, but does not invite. And to walk into its room yields only the death of innocence.
See me, Mother and Father. See your child, and heed the knowing in his eyes.
His blood was leaving him. He felt lightheaded, and the world around him was changing. The path vanished, the grasses growing higher – he fought them as he walked, struggling to pull his legs through the tangled blades. The winter had vanished and he could feel the weight of the sun’s heat upon his back. All around him, animals were walking the plain – animals such as he had never seen before. Tall, gracile, some banded, some striped or spotted in dun hues. He saw creatures little different from horses, while others bore impossibly long necks. He saw apes that looked like dogs, travelling on all fours, with thin tails standing high behind them. This was a dream world, an invented world that had never existed.
Imagination returns to haunt my soul. It arrives in a curse, ragged of edge and painfully sharp. Reason drip-drip-drips to spatter the grass. And what remains? Nothing but cruel, vicious imagination. A realm of delusion and fancy, a realm of deceit.
There is no paradise – do not mock me with this scene! The world is unchanging – admit to it, you fool! Raise up the hard truths of what truly surrounds you – the barren hills, the bitter cold, the undeniable heartlessness of it all! We know these truths, we know them: the viciousness, the cruelty, the indifference, the pointlessness. The stupid pathos of existence. For this, no reason to battle, to fight on. Empty my soul of causes, and then – only then – shall I know peace.
Cursing, he fought against the mirage, but still the grasses pulled at him, and he heard their roots ripping free to the tug of his shins.
Now he was in shadows, entering a forest. Tangles of brush clogged the clearings at its edge, and then he was among straggly pines and spruce, the air cooler, and in the gloom beneath thick stands he saw bhederin, hulking and heavy, small ears flicking and red-rimmed eyes fixing on him, watching as he stumbled past.
Somewhere nearby a beast was ripping apart the bole of a fallen tree. He could hear the claws gouging and splintering the rotted wood.
A moment later he came upon the creature, and it was identical to those from the basin. It lifted its broad head, tilted a wood-flecked snout in his direction, and then bared its fangs in a snarl, before bounding away, running in the manner of an otter. Caplo stared after it, noted the blood on its hindquarters.
You show me this? I will remember you. I swear it. We are not finished, you and I.
The ground underfoot grew hard, and then he was crossing a flat stretch of bedrock, its surface scraped and denuded. The blood draining from his hand made dull sounds as each drop struck the stone. Do I carry a brush? Does the paint drip? No. No brush – this flayed, heavy thing is what remains of my hand. No matter. The next rain will wash it all away.
It’s awake now. This thing of the past, this stranger who can become many. Pulled loose from the earth, reborn. And so very hungry.
Ruvera. You felt its slumbering power. You touched it with trembling hands, and thought to make it your own. But the past cannot be tamed, cannot be changed to your whim. The only slavery possible is found in the now, and its promise lurks among the ambitious – the fools so crowding the present and forever jostling, as if by will alone they could displace the undefended children, the children not yet born … They’ll put the rest of us in our place, to be sure, and if I am not among them, then I will stumble in shackles, just another slave. Another defenceless child.
Imagination was the enemy, but the bludgeon of will could defeat it, the stolid stupidity of every self-avowed realist incapable of dreaming could stifle it, like a pillow over a face. Chained to your desires, you would pull the world down to your pathetic level. Come then, make it barren and lifeless, colourless and unrelieved. I am with you. I see reason’s bloody underside. I see the value in this emasculation. The past is where imagination dwells – and we will have none of that. I surrender nothing, and by dispiriting the world, I become its master. I become the god – it is plain now, plain to me – the path awaiting us …
He shook his head, and the scene around him cavorted wildly. Stumbling, he fell to the hard ground, felt the brittle stubble of winter grasses stabbing the side of his face, the icy bite of frozen soil sinking into his cheek.
Reality’s kiss.
Someone was shouting. He heard the thump of footsteps fast approaching.
‘Revelation,’ Caplo whispered. ‘I hear the past calling. Calling.’
And it mutters, with a lick of withered lips, ‘Lead unto me each and every child.’
Revelation.
And then the women were all around him, and he felt soft hands. Smiling, he let himself drift away into darkness.
But not all the way.
* * *
Finarra Stone, captain in the Wardens, looked down upon the recumbent form of Caplo Dreem. The shutters, thrown back, offered up the uncertain light of the day’s dull overcast, filling the cell and settling a grey patina upon the man’s face. The sweat of fever gave that face the look of stained porcelain. After a long moment she turned away.
They had cut off the ruined right hand and forearm, sealing the stump with heat and some kind of pitch the colour of honey. The smell filling the room was that of burned hair and the suppurations of infection in the other wounds covering the assassin’s body.
She remembered her own battle against the same pernicious killer, not so
long ago. But then Lord Ilgast Rend had been there, with the gift of Denul.
No one expected Caplo to live out the day.
She looked across to Warlock Resh, who sat red-eyed and haggard in a chair facing the cot. ‘I saw the bite marks,’ she said to him. ‘Similar to Jhelarkan, but smaller.’