Dark Heart (Husk)

by Russell Kirkpatrick

  Moralye cleared her throat and began to read.

  ‘“You have heard it said that I sponsored rebellion amongst the First Men, and that the world suffered as a result. This is true. This is my apology.”’

  ‘He apologises?’ Conal said. ‘Apologises, then goes on to wreak destruction in Faltha not once but twice? I do not understand.’

  ‘In this context an apology is not, I suspect, a regretful explanation,’ Phemanderac said. ‘It is more likely to be a justification for debatable actions or beliefs.’

  Moralye nodded, then continued.

  ‘“However, true though this succinct summary of events may be, many of the details are false. Here I set on parchment a true record that no one can contradict, for none but myself and the Most High were present when much of what I relate came to pass. You may consider that I misremember involuntarily as self-justification for my own misdeeds. I have no defence to offer against such an assertion, save your own judgment. Read my words, then those of the perfidious Domaz Skreud. Judge for yourself. If you judge against me, I will hold no blame against you, rather against myself for failing to convince you.”’

  ‘Fetch a copy of the Domaz Skreud, please, Moralye,’ Phemanderac said.

  ‘I have one here,’ she replied. ‘I was instructed to gather everything relating to the lives of the First Men and the Rebellion. The Domaz Skreud is one of the most important of such documents.’

  She recommenced her telling. As Moralye read, Stella tried to shut out her feminine voice and imagine the words spoken in the Destroyer’s cultured tones.

  ‘“The writer of the Domaz Skreud claimed I was the youngest ever to receive the Fire of Life from the Most High. In this he is correct. I was but three years of age. What he does not know is that I tried to reject the Most High’s offering out of fear. I did not want to be known as a freak. I also considered myself too young. Yet the Most High forced the issue. No, he did not compel me to accept his infusion of Fire, but he placed me under duress using arguments both subtle and persuasive. After all these years I do not remember them in detail, but what I do remember tallies with the arguments he used when next we met.

  ‘“The Domaz Skreud names me as friendless during my growing years. Again, the writer is correct, but not because I refused friendship when offered. Just as I had feared, my peers were frightened of me and did not understand the Fire within me. Time after time I was rebuffed when I sought companionship. I made friends among the adults around me, but the Domaz Skreud does not mark this.

  ‘“Instead, the scroll outlines an incident that occurred when I was eighteen. The writer claims I fought with Garadh my cousin over the leadership of the Kerd Clan. Again, the statement is correct, but the supporting evidence is awry. It was not Garadh who was the gentle one, but I. It was not I who knocked my cousin to the ground, but he who delivered the felling blow. I left afterwards, yes, but only after Garadh refused all offers of reconciliation. I did not flee the scene of my guilt, as the scroll asserts, to begin fomenting rebellion; rather, I followed the immediate and unquestionable summons of the Most High.

  ‘“Consider the evidence. The words of the Domaz Skreud were written by one who was not privy to the events between Garadh and myself. I could not have supplied the writer with information, so who did? One who has a reason to appear justified before the world: Garadh himself.

  ‘“The Most High summoned me beyond the borders of Dona Mihst, beyond the cliffs where no man goes, and into the wilderness. For a year he fed me with strange fruit and debated with me, day and night, about his plans for the world and my place in them.

  ‘“This is what he said. He created the world and everything in it, but sought to retire from his creation and leave it for his creatures to enjoy, unencumbered by his guiding and ultimately deterministic hand. However, humans entreated him to remain and rule over them, and reluctantly he consented. A son and a daughter of men he raised to assist him in this task, giving them powers little inferior to his own. For many lifetimes of men this arrangement worked well, but the Son and Daughter secretly agreed to rebel against their Father and, with the help of humans, to drive him out of the world of men. In this they succeeded, as the Most High was reluctant to break the world in the clash of powers required to defeat his adopted children. He fled north with a remnant of the faithful, proudly calling themselves the Four Houses of the First Men. The truth is, your fathers and mine were refugees, as was your God. He fled, not I; his children rebelled, not I.

  ‘“Here is a question for you. The Most High is the One God of the world, you First Men claim. What, then, of the fabled lands to the south, beyond Jangela, from whence your own legends claim you came? The Most High now dwells in the north, you say. Is he no longer the Lord of the southlands? Who is god to the people of the southern deserts, the original inhabitants of the world, ancient before the First Men were born? This is a question you cannot answer, and it ought to trouble you, along with the history of the Most High himself.

  ‘“The Most High knew that problems would arise as a result of his expulsion from the south. The world needed his touch to remain stable. Without him it would eventually fall apart. So he bided his time and nurtured his few faithful followers for a thousand years, until the day the gifted child he had been waiting for was born. So he explained to me; and, when he reached this point in the story, I fled from his face. Not in rebellion, but in fear, for I guessed what he would ask me to do.

  ‘“Which of you, when told you were the product of a thousand years of careful planning, and that your destiny was to confront two gods hardly less powerful than the Most High himself, would not quail? Yet I fled not because I considered myself unfit for the task, but because I knew I could do it. It was this sudden pride, revealed in me, that frightened me so.

  ‘“Wherever I fled, he sought me out. I hid in a cave: a great torrent of water bore me back into the world of light. I took refuge in a lightless forest: a swarm of insects ate the trees bare around me, exposing me to his harsh, merciless light. I made a boat and cast off from the southern coast, but was thrown back to shore by unnatural waves. The Most High tells us we have a choice whether to serve him or no, but it seemed he offered me nothing save service or death. I considered death, and wondered how to achieve it.

  ‘“‘You are my Right Hand,’ he said to me, day after day. ‘You are my only plan. I raised you to support me.’ His constant argument made me think I was monstrous even to consider going against his wishes. He wore at my will as the sea wears at a cliff. Yet I was not wholly opposed to his plan, not until the day he revealed its true extent. ‘I have raised you not only to support me, but in the fullness of time to replace me,’ he said. I was to become the Most High, while he enjoyed the retirement he had so long sought.

  ‘“I entreat you, reader, examine your heart. I was like you. Mortal, weak, susceptible to injury and disease, conditioned to accept a finite time in the world of men. How might I countenance being made into a god? Instead, I rejected the Most High and his impossible demands, just as you would have done.”’

  At these words Conal made an involuntary noise, betraying his thoughts to Stella. She kept her mind carefully blank, allowing the words to wash over her, all the while knowing who sat quietly somewhere in the background, awaiting their reading of his apology.

  ‘“From this point I was no longer innocent. My crimes began with deception and continued until, I admit with frankness, I became a monster, a parody of a human, and almost precisely what I had feared when the Most High first offered me godhood. How much further I will fall is unknown to me.

  ‘“I began my deception by asking the Most High how the puissance might be transferred to me. He explained that the Fountain set in the Square of Rainbows, the heart of Dona Mihst, was an upwelling of his power. The spray of the Fountain sustained the citizens of the Vale and, if drunk, the water would strengthen the drinker until he became as a god.

  ‘“‘But you have forbidden us to drink of the Founta
in,’ I said, puzzled. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘because your mortal body cannot yet bear my power. Yet all you need do is tarry for a millennium of years, and you will be strengthened by the Fire within you to withstand the Water of Life.’ ‘A thousand years?’ I exclaimed. ‘I live a thousand years, while everyone I know dies?’ ‘Yes,’ he answered, mistaking my emotion for one of exultation. ‘And what happens if I drink of the Fountain before this time?’ I asked.

  ‘“At this, the Most High was silent, finally discerning the temper of my heart. At any time he might have sought such knowledge directly from my mind: he is all-knowing, and nothing can be hidden from him. Yet he can himself limit his knowledge by choice, in the quest to allow his children freedom. Indeed, he must do this, or his followers become automatons, constrained to one future, unable to choose outside his knowledge. Thus he did not detect my rebellion until too late.

  ‘“Horrified by the bargain being offered me, I saw only one way out. I decided to drink of the water of the Fountain, thereby alerting my fellow men to the secrets of the Most High. I fled the desert, utilising every mite of power provided by the Fire of Life to outpace him. So profligate was I with the power, it burned out before I could control it. Yet I arrived in Dona Mihst ahead of the Most High.

  ‘“I began a rebellion. I do not repent of it. I explained as much of the truth as I could to as many people as were able to bear it, yet it was not enough, and many misinterpreted my words. Hence the half-truths contained in the Domaz Skreud.

  ‘“Enough men believed me to start the rebellion. Others latched on to me to promote their own causes. The Domaz Skreud records that many were at that time discontented by their remoteness from power in the Vale, and ascribes this awareness to me. This is not so. It became part of the rebellion, but I did not promote it. Nevertheless, I used it. I am guilty, but not in the manner the scroll suggests. I looked to lead men to knowledge of, not rejection of, the Most High. I hoped also that the Most High might reconsider his methods, and perhaps learn to understand what it is like to be mortal and afraid of oneself. To know what it is to doubt.

  ‘“I slew Sthane, the only man willing to stand against me when I finally came to drink of the Fountain, just as the scroll says. I regret this. But I do not regret drinking of the Fountain. And when the Most High appeared—too late—and in his anger loosed at me the Jugom Ark, his flaming arrow of justice, taking off my hand, I thought it a small price to pay.

  ‘“So I paid the price, and my fellow men learned the nature of the God who rules them all. Yet within a generation the Domaz Skreud became the accepted wisdom, and my sacrifice was maligned. Would you not be angry at such a turn of events? That an entire people ignored my attempt to save them, instead making of me their betrayer? Whatever it takes, I will put right the record. If matters require I liberate Falthwaite from its misapprehensions, I will not shirk from doing so.”’

  ‘Falthwaite? How long since Faltha was called that?’ Conal asked. No-one replied, and after a pause Moralye continued.

  ‘“I place this scroll in the archives of the newly built Hall of Scrolls in this new city, the replacement for all that was lost. It is protected and hidden by a keeping spell, one of many things I have learned in the last two centuries. It will be discovered only when a certain question is voiced within a certain distance of the document. That you are reading this means the question has been asked. You may even have asked it. Therefore you want to know whether I am who the scrolls say I am. My answer is yes—and no.

  ‘“I have one last plea. Watch your world. Some day the Most High will seek to raise another as his Right Hand, someone to confront the gods who usurped him. He will be as I was, young, naïve, unaware of what is being asked of him. He will rise to power rapidly. He will be confused. Frightened. But no one will listen to him, no one will offer him the help he needs; everyone will see him as the solution to their problems, and thus his own struggles will be ignored.”’

  Stella choked back a sob.

  ‘“He must not be allowed to succeed. The Most High suffered the rebellion of his children; he himself must confront and end that rebellion. If this Right Hand is alive in your time, bring this scroll to him. If I have not found a way to end my own life, bring him to me. I will prevent the Most High using humans to mend the mistake he himself made.”’

  ‘Put it down,’ Stella said. ‘Stop reading from the scroll. Please. I cannot listen to any more.’

  Moralye laid the scroll down on the table and looked up at her. Stella saw the woman’s face was white, possibly as drained of blood as her own.

  I was right about the Right Hand, said the voice in her head. It happened as I predicted.

  Yes, Leith was everything you said he was, and much more. Except he wasn’t the Right Hand. And he wasn’t like you. You never understood him.

  Stella took a deep breath, put her finger to her lips, waited until the others nodded, then worked her way out of the cubicle and bade the others remain where they were. Ena, of course, was forced to accompany her.

  We will talk of this, and many other things, he sent to her.

  I have no intention of ever meeting you face to face, she replied.

  She had a direction: his thoughts came at her as though borne on a breeze. Over there, in that far cubicle. She approached him carefully.

  Ena said nothing, but seemed tense. Stella put her finger to her lips again. ‘No noise,’ she whispered in the girl’s ear.

  No intention of meeting me? But you have already met me, and recently.

  The man in the cubicle had his back to her, his body turned in the opposite direction from his seat, his gaze intent on the place she had come from. Even from behind she could tell who he was. He had not seen her approach in the dark, as she had not carried a lantern. She eased herself into the seat opposite him. Ena let out the tiniest squeak as she sat down. A splinter, perhaps.

  He froze, then turned to face her.

  ‘Heredrew,’ she said. ‘We need to talk.’

  ‘Greetings, Bandy,’ he said, seemingly unperturbed. ‘Or, should I say, Stella. And hello to your young friend.’

  ‘Heredrew,’ she said, thinking swiftly, her thoughts swirling over the horror growing beneath. Ena was a child, but might remember or even understand the most inconvenient thing. ‘I need to establish something. Are you the master, or merely a servant?’

  ‘You think I might be a servant? Disabuse yourself of the notion.’

  ‘Then put out your hand.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Either one will do. I will know who you are when I touch it—or when I do not.’

  ‘I will save you the trouble,’ Heredrew said. He leaned a little closer and turned his head so none outside the cubicle could see his profile. Instantly his face changed. It was subtle, his disguise, but effective. Sitting before Stella was the face that had haunted her nightmares for years.

  So much for keeping Ena ignorant.

  Every muscle in Stella’s body strained against her will, begging her to flee. Her stomach rose into her throat. She commanded herself not to weep, or shriek, or vomit. She had not realised she would need such self-control, or that she possessed it.

  ‘You knew I was alive,’ the man opposite her said gently. ‘Why struggle with the knowledge now?’

  ‘Do you need to ask?’ she said through clenched teeth. She began to doubt her ability to make it through this confrontation. ‘And why was your first word to me not an apology?’

  The man’s face shifted and he was again Heredrew. ‘I hope you don’t mind me restoring my disguise. Remember, the face you know me by is itself an illusion. You have seen my real face, I think, and I doubt you wish to see it again.’

  A hint of bitterness in his voice. Good. Anything she could use, she would use.

  Courage, now. She waited, saying nothing. This man is proud.

  ‘How can words express sorrow?’ he said eventually. ‘I will not lie and say I regret bringing you back from the dead, despite the h
orror I have inflicted on you. But I will apologise to you for striking you down, and for using you shamefully in front of your friends. I will find a time and a place where such an apology is meaningful. You shall have it then.’

  ‘And so I am expected to believe that evil has whitewashed himself so easily?’

  ‘Of course not,’ the man snapped. ‘By your lights I remain evil. By my own, I am changing. Losing one’s hands is a chastening experience. I am being forced to change. Who is to judge whether that change is for the better? I happen to think there is no “good” apart from the benefit to the interests any act of goodness serves.’

  ‘Hence the difference between you and me,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, there are differences,’ he agreed. ‘You may not view them in the future as you do now. Time will tell the story, as always. But there are also similarities, my queen. You and I are the only—’

  ‘Don’t you call me that!’

  She all but spat the words at him. Her body had begun to shake, a delayed reaction to the discovery. She tried to keep her hands still, but she had no doubt he was aware of her fragility. Ena would be frightened. Perhaps she had been foolish to confront him so soon. No time to regret this choice. Keep him off balance.

  ‘I am not your queen. I never was, I never will be. I have some questions to ask you, and that will be the end of it.’

  ‘Questions you can ask me alone of anyone alive, because of the similarities you and I share. Very well, I will answer as many as I can. But do not be deceived: I answer them not because I am good; and if I cannot answer them it is not because I am evil. I am prepared to help you because I want your help. I have questions I would like you to answer. Turn and turn about?’

  She held his gaze for a long moment. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Here is my first question. Hold still.’

  A look of puzzlement crossed his regal features as she leaned towards him.