Salu stopped his fidgeting and raised his chin, opening his eyes a tiny sliver, revealing the narrowest strip of his pale irises. ‘He does not get upset,’ he stated and Leopold leant closer with interest. ‘He acts a part, looking for a result, pretending he remembers how to be human.’ He then chortled happily. ‘And you play into his hands.’
‘Why would he bother with that?’
‘He is planting seeds ... setting a course ... tilling the soil … all such similar metaphors.’ He wafted his hand dismissively.
‘To what end?’
‘To get you to a certain point, of course.’ He then mumbled and rubbed his hands together, sucking at his lips. ‘I nearly killed your father once,’ Salu admitted, changing his tone and the topic with it.
‘What was that?’ was Leopold’s surprised response. Surely he must have misheard.
‘I tried to kill him one time ... a long time ago. I nearly succeeded.’
‘You tried to kill my father? When? When he was the Emperor?’
The old man nodded and returned his gaze to the floor, looking weary. ‘I am sorry for it. I have always been sorry for that … and other things. Sometimes, the world becomes a dream and my dreams become the world. I see no difference anymore.’
‘How can you doubt what you see? The world is real,’ Leopold stated firmly.
‘Are you sure?’ the old man asked, raising his old face in examination of the ceiling. His pale stubble had grown slightly since the start of the voyage, yet his thick, white hair had not, remaining close to his scalp.
‘Of course,’ Leopold replied.
‘Ah,’ the old man said with a sigh of acceptance. ‘Then I am glad I did not kill him.’
Leopold was not sure how to respond. ‘So am I. My mother taught me all life is precious.’
‘A lovely woman,’ Salu said, smiling broadly and nodding with his eyes shut tight, folded into his grin. ‘But she was mistaken.’
Leopold did not care for his final remark. ‘What do you mean by that? Life is precious. How could you disagree?’
‘Easily. There is nothing to agree with. She is wrong. Life is everywhere, nothing precious about it. You can’t stop it. It springs up at the slightest opportunity. It grows wild, untamed and uncontrolled like a weed.’
Leopold shook his head, perturbed. ‘While you continue to speak nonsense, tell me why you were glad you did not kill my father?’
‘It is not my right to do so,’ the old man said solemnly. ‘The world should take care of herself without my interference. Life ... death ... exist without my meddling and the balance should be maintained. I have hurt people. I hear their pain often, but I do not see them anymore. That is some solace to my tired old heart.’ He sat quietly in contemplation. ‘I’m glad I did not kill your father because otherwise you would not be here. We would not be together having this conversation. Events would have travelled a different course. Only the single, delicate path you followed led you here, to this precise moment, intersecting with mine.’
‘You call this a conversation? You have simple concepts, old man. And you confuse me. You contradict yourself by saying our lives are of value.’
‘Ah, I see your mistake,’ murmured the old man with his gentle, rasping voice. ‘Lives and life are very different things. Life is a dry and simple occurrence, without meaning on its own, scum in a pond. While lives are the result of us being here—what we do and experience. I am sorry. The difference is at first subtle, but in fact there are worlds between them. You are making the typical mistake, in that you have misled yourself into believing you are alive.’
‘Of course I am alive!’ Leopold scoffed.
His response amused the decrepit old magician. ‘The pond scum dreams of grandeur!’ He chortled at the thought.
Leopold blinked several times to be sure he was not going mad, such was his confusion. ‘I beg your pardon? I am not scum!’
‘Then you should act like it. Forget that you are sentient. It will distract you from the experience of living.’
Leopold scoffed. ‘No wonder Samuel kicks you when you’re sleeping. I can’t follow a word you are saying.’
‘That’s the problem with all of you,’ the old man said. ‘You expect to follow me when I am on a different road altogether. Make your own damned path! And how can you expect to understand what I am saying if all you are doing is listening to my words? They are just sounds you know, noises from an old man’s throat. You will never find meaning if you sit and wait for my words to strike you in the ear. Go out and dig it up yourself!’
Leopold shook his head. He wanted answers from the old man, not nonsense. ‘Why are you helping Samuel if he killed your brother?’
‘He did not kill my brother,’ Salu stated matter-of-factly.
‘Well, he certainly thinks he did.’
‘He doesn’t know everything—not yet. My brother travelled to another realm—a distant world. Samuel caused him to go I suppose, but it would take more than that to finish Janus. He probably enjoys being where he is.’
‘Why are you helping Samuel?’
‘I’m not helping anyone. I’ve always wanted to go to sea, and he supplied the means.’ He grinned innocently, his eyes becoming tinier slits. ‘I like the wind. It tells me much out here, unbridled from the sounds and scents of the land.’
‘Hmm,’ said Leopold. ‘Do you trust him?’
‘Trust is foolish. When I walk into the wall I trust myself to walk straight through it; does that ever happen? I bang my nose again and again! Silly thing, trust. It is waste, as are assumptions.’
‘Well, I don’t trust him.’
‘He doesn’t care whether you trust him or not.’
‘Do you know what he is planning?’ Leopold asked secretively.
The old man grunted—his laugh. ‘How could I? Even he does not know what he will do.’
‘I hear you talking, but I don’t understand what you say,’ Leopold remarked, annoyed.
‘Ah!’ interrupted the old man. ‘Then you are learning!’
‘How about this,’ Leopold continued. ‘Do you know what will happen to us?’
‘Of course,’ old Salu said firmly. ‘We will live—’ Leopold sighed relief. ‘—until we die,’ the man added, Leopold’s hopes falling completely. ‘All things come to an end, as they should, as shall we. Every flame burns to ashes, every rock grinds to dust, every wind calms ... every watery desire runs into the cracks of a dry river bed. Continue to associate our perpetual survival with success and you will meet with disappointment.’
‘That’s terrible,’ Leopold muttered.
‘No,’ whispered the old man with a hint of enthusiasm in his voice. ‘It is wonderful! Otherwise, what reason would we have to love?’
‘Are you completely mad?’ Leopold asked, frustrated.
Salu chuckled. ‘That depends. Are you real or am I talking to myself?’
****
Samuel was waiting on the balcony for Leopold when he emerged, and gestured for the young Emperor to approach.
‘Any sense from your roommate?’ asked the magician.
‘I get the feeling he knows everything we say and all that is going on around him, but that he is playing some infernal game of self-amusement. We just had a chat, and I am none the wiser. He is nearly as bad as you when it comes to riddles and nonsense.’
‘Oh?’ the magician said with interest. ‘What did he say?’
‘He said we are all going to die ... eventually.’ Samuel looked interested, and he scowled upon the last word, much to Leopold’s delight. ‘He said I was mistaken for thinking I was alive.’
‘He has a point.’
‘Not you, too?’ Leopold gasped.
‘Do you know what life is?’ the magician lectured.
‘Oh, here we go,’ Leopold moaned, thinking he had just escaped such talk.
‘At what stage does something become worthy of such a title?’ Samuel went on.
‘When it lives and breathes,’ Leopo
ld suggested, humouring him.
‘Fool, boy,’ Lord Samuel told him, and went on nonetheless. ‘Look at you. Is your hair alive? Is it part of you? What about your skin? Your bones? The boundaries between life and death are not well-defined as we believe. If I started snipping away the extraneous, at what stage would we find the real you. Would anything be left at all? Our sense of self is part of the illusion our minds press upon us.’
‘How about when it hurts?’ Leopold said, looking around the main deck for some excuse to run. ‘I know that anything that hurts is a part of me.’
The magician shook his head with disappointment and took a deep breath, as if explaining the obvious to a fool. ‘I could poke holes in your guts with a knife and you would never feel it—assuming I first prised open your skin and skilfully avoided your muscles, nerves, connective tissues and blood supply. Feeling has nothing to do with it. You need to stop seeing your self as an entity, like a dot riding on a current of time. You are everything that contributes to the experience from beginning to end: a web, a tapestry of lives. How can any single being exist when everything else it touches—living or not—is a part of it, and in turn part of something greater?
‘Whatever or whoever we are does not end at the perimeter of our skins, Leopold. That is a shallow view. Everything we know and do, everyone we love and hate, and everything that affects us—whether we know it or know—are part of us. We are fragments of a natural machine that churns on forever, with or without our input. If you want to learn who you are, Leopold, look outwards, beyond your skin, not into it. Behold the stars! There lies your soul, Leopold, forged from dust and fire. Life has no meaning beyond that, beyond change. We are fooling ourselves in looking deeper than that.’
‘Oh, just stop it!’ Leopold erupted. ‘I had enough of that talk out of him!’ He considered marching away, until he remembered Lomar’s advice. Swallowing his pride he stood his ground, if only to keep the magician close to him. ‘I’m sorry, Lord Samuel. It’s too much for me to comprehend.’
The magician laughed loudly and slapped him on the back. ‘That’s the spirit, Leopold! You’re doing fine. I’ll see you an emperor yet! It may take me to the end of the world, but we’re well on our way.’
With that, Lord Samuel turned around and departed, chortling to himself, leaving Leopold standing alone, more confused than ever.
****
One mid-morning, about two weeks since leaving the southern tip of the Spice Islands, Leopold was exploring the deepest bowels of the ship. He came to a strange door at the end of a featureless unlit corridor. These deepest chambers were visited infrequently and he had not seen any crew for some time.
He had been following old Salu as the fellow had been tapping his way around the passageways, keen to relieve the boredom and curious to see if the man had any destination in mind or was wandering aimlessly in the dark. Leopold lost sight of him and, lantern in hand, he meandered down a long and empty hall. That emptiness was remarkable considering the preciousness of space aboard the ship, uncluttered by even a single box.
He opened the creaking door and ventured carefully into the room beyond, finding it full of impenetrable blackness. Holding his lantern before him, Leopold was surprised to find someone sitting on the floor of the empty chamber. The figure was a hunched spectre in robes of black, and it was because of those robes that Leopold at-once recognised the magician.
Lord Samuel raised his chin to see who had disturbed him, not enough to lay eyes on Leopold in the doorway; just enough so that Leopold knew he had been noticed.
Leopold did not care what the magician was doing quietly in the dark and hoped to leave quickly. He stood there, feeling uncomfortable, and not knowing if he should retreat without speaking or offer some form of farewell. Emboldened, he said, ‘Should I go?’ The echo of his voice tarried in the musty chamber.
‘As you wish,’ was the magician’s reply. The sound came clearly and singularly. No echoes followed it across the room.
Leopold’s fears transformed to curiosity upon hearing the magician’s voice. He held his lantern higher to see if the walls held any hidden detail. ‘What are you doing here, sitting alone in the darkness?’ he asked. What secrets were hidden here with him? Was there something apart from his casket that he kept stowed away out of sight? And Leopold again peered into the stubborn shadows that lingered in the corners of the room.
‘Merely reminiscing,’ was Samuel’s response. He did not move when he spoke.
‘You?’ Leopold asked, stepping closer, his boots squeaking noisily on the timbers.
‘I have not always been like this, Leopold. At one time I was a man. I did love. Twice, in fact. The first time I was young and foolish. The second I was not so young, but more the fool than before, for I no longer had naivety as my excuse. I found the true love I had been seeking across time, and did not realise it until she was also lost to me. I know she still exists somewhere, in some form, waiting for me to join her. I often look for her, or speak to her, until I remember she is gone, but perhaps she sees me, hears me, too. I wonder if I will end up like Salu, disengaged from the world and half mad. Like me, does he speak to some loved one he lost many years before, hearing her sweet voice in his ear?’
‘Is that why you are like this? Vengeful and full of angst?’
‘No,’ Samuel stated with a sorry shake of his head. ‘I have being a magician to thank for that. The practice of magic comes with a price. My heart has become a fist of stone trapped within the bone prison of my chest. It squeezes blood dutifully through my veins, no memories of love or tenderness to soothe it.’
‘My father was not like you. He was a great and loving man. How can you say that magic is to blame?’
‘I cannot say how that was so. Your father, like all the Ancient Ones, was bound to Lin’s service under an eternal spell. Who can know why their master did not take their emotions? Perhaps to serve him better.’
Leopold regretted mentioning his father, for he found no pleasure in hearing the magician speak of him. ‘I find it hard to believe you were ever capable of feelings, Magician. You serve only your shallow desires. You bring us with you for selfish reasons. You keep dark secrets close to your heart. Your only remaining source of pleasure lies in witnessing others’ discomfort.’
Samuel raised his head from beneath his hood and met Leopold’s accusing stare. The air was still and cold. His eyes, silver pearls, reflected the lamplight. ‘Yes,’ was his reply.
‘And yet these men, the good Commander Riggadardian and Captain Orrell, the rest, they follow you without question—even to their deaths. Why do they do it?’
Samuel laboured to his feet, climbing from beneath some unfathomable weight. ‘They hope. They pray. Turians have no belief in gods—your father saw to that—a few have faith in me. They remember me from before and they hope a spark of my old self remains to deliver their salvation.’
‘Does it? Will you?’
‘Perhaps,’ the magician said, pouring his attention slowly over every inch of the room, searching for treasure, and finding it abysmally empty. ‘I will do what I will and if that brings about the goal they seek, then so be it.’
‘Why do you bring us with you? I have seen what you do; you could fly across the sea if you wished and be done with this infernal quest in moments. Why drag us with you when all we do is slow you down?’
‘Because I cannot do it alone. I need you all with me. The fate of mankind must be decided by man—something I can no longer claim to be.’
‘Do you need me? I thought it was only the promise you made to my mother and father that kept me with you. Or is that a lie, too?’
‘I have a purpose for you, Leopold. I would not break my word flippantly, but I do have a need for you that I cannot do without. In this case, it is convenient that the two are aligned.’
‘Oh,’ Leopold said, somewhat disappointed. He had been hoping the magician would hold some vestige of respect for the oath he made to his parents; it was not
so. ‘And what of Salu and Toby?’
‘I keep them with me out of hope. I sought Salu for so long that I cannot face the fact that I wasted all that time. What we will face is beyond me alone. I go to destroy Poltamir, last of the Ancient Ones, who has become the greatest magician in the world, and to convince his master, a king of demons, to return to being simply my son. Every day more devastation is unleashed upon the earth and humanity is further eroded. I need Salu’s strength and wisdom, and I am hoping Toby can help me find it. He is the only thing the old fool understands.’
‘Why don’t you take Salu’s strength, take his wisdom, as you did with my father?’
Samuel looked again to Leopold to deliver his answer. ‘I may well be forced to do that, but I am not a monster as you often suggest. Monsters enjoy the suffering of others. I do what I must. Besides, I take strength, but I cannot take wisdom: it must be learned.’
‘Is that why you killed the other magicians? To take their strength? You are behind the Truthseekers, I know it. You let Daneel murder Tulan, a man who was once your friend.’
‘I told Daneel to never let personal feelings interfere. His or mine. He did it because he believed it was right, because he had to, because Tulan being on this ship would only bring trouble.’
‘So it’s true? You do not deny leading the Truthseekers? You will not make a feeble attempt at nobility, to—to find reprieve in some desperate, selfish way?’
‘It is true. I will not deny it—not to you,’ was Samuel’s reply.
Leopold was dumbstruck by the man’s audacity. ‘But—but why?’
‘I once had great ideals, like you, Leopold, and I learned that sometimes we must choose the lesser of two evils. When the Circle of Eyes lost Cang, its leader, I stepped in and took over, both to make use of their power and to stop another from doing the same. How could I not? Rei’s Order were attracted to the magicians first, and once they had people in their sights, they killed everyone and everything. People sheltered the magicians at first, hoping for their magic to aid them, which was worse. My way, the magicians are pruned from the population. If not for my Truthseekers, Amandia would already be devoid of life.’
The Ancient Ones (The Legacy Trilogy Book 3) Page 22
