By the time Dominick had wrenched the bed out of its alcove, blurred images were playing before his eyes and he was panting, but the tension inside had not eased at all.
"Do something, damn you! Strike me with lighting if you wish. Just be here for me. Just"—He shoved the bed away—"Be. Here."
A metal piece of a chandelier smashed into the wall, and Dominick laughed as he watched the sunrays. Already broken by various metal pieces and glass shards, they hit this particular piece and started dancing on the wall itself.
The wall was illuminated now, even if it were just a tiny spot—even if it were just a piece of the old Master's red robe's hem, the Sun was shining on the wall.
"So that's the way it works, then?"
Dominick
Morning 8 of the First Quarter, Year of the Master 706
An hour later Mentors Ardelia and Nigel made only a vague attempt to stop him before Maxim's sickroom, and he rushed inside, barely slowing to kick the door open.
"Ah. So you come, at last. I have been expecting you."
Dominick halted in the small, Sun-lit room with bright yellow curtains, staring at the white-clad, frail old man on the bed. Suddenly, his own presently sweaty, ruffled hair and crumpled brown robe, and especially the whip he had waved at Nigel and Ardelia, seemed very out of place.
"You are making me feel like a loutish little peasant again," he said in a soft, controlled voice, all vehemence suddenly draining away from him to leave hollowness and shame.
"Am I now? Can anyone truly make you feel anything you disagree with, my son?"
I don't know, Dominick wanted to say. I don't want to think about it. I want to be angry, like a moment ago, so that I can shout at you and be done with it. But anger was a useless weapon against these sharp, all-knowing eyes. Looking at them, as well as listening to Maxim, more often than not made you wonder why exactly you were angry.
"Max." Dominick sat on the edge of the bed, watching a face that bore many wrinkles whereas eight years ago it had born almost none, and gray hair that had been almost black but was now almost silver. The stabbing wound and the consequent fever had made Maxim's skin pale and sallow, both on the face and the thin, bony hands—but, strangely, what worried Dominick the most was the thin white pajamas.
Had he ever seen the man in anything but a somber brown robe with starched cuffs and collar? Maxim looked ... smaller right now. The accursed pajamas seemed to have taken something away and taken it away irrevocably—something important. His dignity. His strength. Dominick clenched his fists around the whip's handle. He was a Mentor and a man, but were he a twelve-year-old snotty-nosed peasant, right now he would have cried.
Maxim watched him, saying nothing. He had that habit.
"Max." Dominick unclenched his fingers from the whip and drew his dagger. "I need to know."
"What do you need to know, my son?" The old man did not even look at the weapon, and Dominick sighed, laying it on the sheets.
"Start with why you said you were expecting me, while I was told you had refused to see me. And why the fools outside let me in so easily today. For all they know, I might be an accursed murderer going to finish the deed!" For all I know.
"Ah, one of the answers is easy. They let you in because I told them to do so, even though they were reluctant to obey." He cast a Dominick a sideways glance. "That is, I told them to do so if you showed persistence."
"You told me to not come."
"Yes, my son." Maxim took Dominick's dagger, the dagger that had almost killed him, in his weak, trembling hands. "Yes, I did." He played with the weapon, shifting it so that it would catch the Sun and make Sun spots on the wall. Like a child, playing with a toy. "But you came, and I am glad."
"Why?" Why are you playing with me?
"Dominick, my son, will you indulge an old man and accept 'I cannot tell you' as an answer?"
"Maxim, my father, I wonder if I would indulge you better if I answered 'yes,' or if I answered 'no.' "
Maxim laughed, a weak laugh, but behind it—behind the whiteness of his pajamas, behind the wrinkles and the frailty of his figure—his eyes were no less sharp than ever, and even sharper still.
They were both silent for a while, and the old man closed his eyelids, his breathing becoming as slow and regular as if he had drifted into sleep. The Sun spots on the wall jumped, disturbed, as Dominick pulled his dagger from his hand.
He could kill him so easily. Just a quick snap with the dagger, and the thin, tired man would be gone. It was all so wrong, so unbalanced. A stab, and then the man was broken and the healer could not fix him for days, and then another stab, just a tiny little stab would be enough to finish him ... A stab with a tiny metal blade. A piece, a toy that humans had made, could undo humans. Such a fragile thing, a human. Such a fickle thing, a life. Dominick closed his fingers around the handle. A little thing, such a tiny, insignificant thing, but how much power it held.
And why was he, Dominick, thinking about all this? Gently, carefully, he pulled the white blanket to the old man's chin and wrapped the corners beneath his shoulders.
"You know, old man," he whispered to the sleeping figure, "the why-s are all your fault. You could have whipped them out of me so long ago. I should know, I have whipped some why-s out of people myself. But you did not do it, and I don't know what to do any more." He put the dagger back into its sheath. Why had he drawn it, anyway? "Probably don't even know who I am."
"Pretty normal for your age, actually." Dominick almost jumped at the calm, not-at-all-asleep voice. "I might have once been like that myself." The sharp eyes bore into Dominick's again, suddenly not weak and sick, but strong, authoritative, invading. A Mentor's gaze, which no one had applied to Dominick for years. What, in the name of the Master?
"Doubt, as you well know, is the path to a Mentor's undoing. But, Dominick, my boy, do you know what a Mentor is?"
Dominick remained silent.
"A Mentor's primary task, my boy, is to take care." Maxim reached out, propped a pillow in the corner where the bed met two walls, and raised himself to a sitting position. His movements were slow and deliberate, but he was not trembling. Suddenly the white pajamas did not matter so much.
"Your task is to keep those who are weaker than you, more stupid than you, more lost than you, on the straight path and away from the dark, devastating forest—and sometimes that means that you, my boy, have to step away from the path and into the darkness, so that you can find those wandering and bring them back. Talk to them if you have to, lie to them if you need, whip them if they will let you, do whatever else you see fit—but bring them back." He extended his hand towards the glass of water on the nightstand, but Dominick was faster, handing it to him. Despite his slowness and the transparent thinness of his limbs, the old man's shoulders were still broad, and somehow that made things better. Maxim drank, deeply.
"It is the path that is important, my son, or, rather, the system of paths that traverses the world, but you—you no longer have the luxury of staying on a path, even the hard, thorny one. It is a useful path, the path of thorns and trials. Nigel and Oliver walk it. Ardelia does. But you have strayed from it, for you have too much doubt in you. Well, doubt can be used. Now you have a choice. Will you be lost in the forest, or will you make finding the lost ones your priority? Will you break? Or will you build? Will you be a Mentor?"
"Old man." Dominick closed his eyes for a moment, running a hand over his forehead. The detector vibrated again in the other one. "I have been to other people's damn minds. I don't know what worse, darker forest there could be."
Like he had done eight years ago, Maxim bent his long, bony fingers, reached out, and knocked on Dominick's skull.
"Other people's minds are still a path."
"What are you aiming at, Max?" Dominick returned his gaze. "I know you. Such a speech on the edge of aberration has a purpose. What has gotten into you this time, old man?"
"Gotten into me?" Maxim placed his glass back on the nightstan
d, carefully, by himself. "Nothing ever gets into me, Son. It is all there already. Oh, well. I have a task for you, Mentor."
"Mentor, you say. Well, I should tell you something, Mentor. Just before I came to you, I vandalized the damn temple."
Maxim watched him calmly, not revealing any judgement or surprise. Dominick sighed.
"Max, if I were a Ber or the Head Mentor—if the power to elevate or fell Mentors belonged to me—I would not have let one such as I remain here for a single moment after"—he clenched a fist—"that night. Whatever happened then, old man? Did I try to kill you? Did I see a samodiva, Maxim? Samodivi, little peasants, Balkaene stones, accursed visions. Doubt. I dream of her at night, did you know? It is trouble waiting to happen, damn the Bers and the Head Mentor! Whatever you have told them about me, they should know better! I am damaged. Can't they see? Can't they do something? I am a danger to all that is good and right, Father!" His clenched fist met the nightstand. "I am confused and thus I am weak!"
"And therein lies your greatest strength. For we have all become too certain, too set in our ways."
Dominick did not look at him, but strode to the window, staring at the temple at the other side of the street, barely controlling himself to not tear down the curtains. His breathing was uneven; his heart was beating too fast. The Sun was glaring at him, light reflecting from the rods at the temple's roof. The Sun had hit old Haralambi from Goritsa, long ago, and his heart had beaten exactly like this when Dominick had run to him and touched him.
"Drink some water."
Damn old Maxim, did he ever say a word that was not calm? But he drank.
"Did you try to kill me, you ask? Did you see a samodiva? How can I know?" A voice. A disembodied voice, for currently Dominick could not see its owner, shadows scampering before the young Mentor's eyes, his body nearly falling. A voice of harsh authority with the barest hint of softness.
"Damn you," Dominick murmured, and Maxim laughed.
"So are you a murderer, boy? Would you believe my answer, whatever I said? That night, I had my back turned to you often enough; I could not have seen all. Tonight, you stood with a knife raised above my bed. Did you try to kill me? Only you can know for sure. Did you see a samodiva? Ask your own eyes."
Damn Maxim thrice, he was not lying. Playing with words, yes. Withholding information, certainly. But not lying at all. Dominick was not the one, at least not the only one, trying to kill Maxim twenty-three days ago. That much he could infer from the old man's ambiguities. But he had thought about killing Maxim tonight, and perhaps that, in itself, made him a murderer.
Damn the corrupt, iniquitous Militia woman. Couldn't she have done her job properly with him? Damn the little Balkaene peasant and his stone. Even without the stone and its visions, the boy had reminded Dominick of too many things he had been trying to forget for eight years. Damn the Ber woman, too—the angry, beautiful young woman who looked like a samodiva herself, who had taken the stone from the peasant boy and let him go even before Maxim had awakened to say none was guilty. She could not just let a boy go like this. She had a responsibility! Damn them all, they all had roles in society and life, they all had a duty to the Master's world, and none of them fulfilled it properly!
Dominick had thought that he had been fulfilling his, for eight years. Apparently not, considering today.
"Old man, can't you see if I am guilty or innocent in my eyes? Can't your detector tell you?" Can't you, at least, be a proper Mentor?
"No. As I already said, we have become too set in our ways, and that, my boy, is our greatest fallacy. The world is changing, but we are not keeping up. Come here."
Dominick did, and listened to the old man's words.
Many hours later, he left Maxim's room, and set towards what Maxim had called "the dark, devastating forest."
Dominick
Evening 8 of the First Quarter, Year of the Master 706
It was not a forest, not in the physical sense, but it was dark, and not only with the darkness induced by mere lack of light.
Lack of light there certainly was. The Sun had set, the last twilight fading before the approaching night. The few rusty metal pylons, some of which still clung to the tarnished and broken glass of lanterns, bore witness to light long ago gone. But more than that was amiss. It tugged at Dominick's mind and quintessence as if with cold, slimy fingers, and he shivered with more than just cold.
Someone was not doing his or her job, Dominick tried to think. It was a familiar, mundane thought, and he clutched to it, wielded it like a whip against fears that a grown man was not supposed to feel. Someone, the City Executive responsible for the public affairs of this neighborhood, should send a maintenance crew to paint the pylons, install new glass for the lanterns, dry the muddy, sometimes knee-deep holes in the street, replace the broken cobblestones, gather the stinking trash, and put a roof over the gray, dilapidated warehouse that loomed over him like a headless beast.
Of course, the City Executive's work would not be enough. Glass, even clean, new, shiny lantern glass—even unbreakable glass—was just a beautiful material that let light in and out but never made light. Light came from fire, from the firepipes, and in a place like this the firepipes were dead. Dominick forced himself to walk further, as a gust of wind pulled the hood of his cloak, tousled his hair, and proceeded to batter the warehouse's walls until they groaned. It was a question of time that the place would die, too.
The other question was, would that time be enough?
Dominick stopped where the street was crossed by another, wider street, its cobblestones even more used and broken, tracks of ox carts imprinted in the mud. A crossroad. According to Balkaene superstitious balderdash, a place soaked in wild Magic, and haunted.
At least, he had thought this to be superstitious balderdash. He wondered, now, as he stood alone, and darkness more corporeal than any darkness had the right to be pressed at him. For some reason, every temple of the Master was built at a crossroad. But not every crossroad had a temple.
Dominick shivered again, pulling the black cloak tightly around himself and the hood back to his head. A black cloak—a civilian color—and he wore black boots and gloves and trousers, too. He was so black that he almost blended with the darkness, and he felt ... different somehow from this morning's man in a brown Mentor's robe. That man might have vandalized a temple, but that was between him and the Master only; he would have never connected the peasant gibberish about crossroads to holy temples without even thinking that he deserved a whip.
But that was that man—a confused man, overcome with emotions, a man who thought that whipping or breaking temples was a key. A man who would wake drenched in sweat, the Mentor's detector torturing his hand, because a beautiful samodiva haunted his dreams. This man, now, the man in black, was calm. He blended with the crossroad's shadows like a mor, the detector in his hand still and silent, even though it had not been silent for many days.
Just a piece of cloth, a Mentor's robe, but shedding it seemed to have shed something more than that. For two years Dominick had been a Mentor—one of the youngest Mentors ever, for he had passed the Mentor's Trial and become a master and not an apprentice straight after his Judgement. For two years, he had met no trial but people's dirty thoughts and dreams as shown to him by the detector, treating them, successfully or not, with mere whipping. But mere whipping, as Maxim had said, was a path whose end Dominick had reached. It would not do, breaking temples. The detector could not lead him further. Further ahead, there lay the uneven ground where people got truly lost and he was their only hope; further ahead lay a place full of trials where he had to walk in shadows and walk alone.
It was liberating in a way. One who walked the dark forest should not fear crossroads. And he would not run from the samodiva any more. One who did not fear crossroads but haunted them like a shadowed mor had the right to seek her.
Somewhere in the sky something croaked, the voice shrill and harsh and lonesome; then a dark, dense shadow passed
through the crossroad, just as the yellow moon peeked from behind a storm cloud. Dominick's hand darted, gripping the empty air where his whip had been, then settled on the dagger hilt. A bird. It was just a bird. But a bird was one bird too many so close to a Factory.
So, the Factory was dying, too. When it had been strong, wild beasts would have kept well away from it. Wild beasts, humans, even plants—none thrived in proximity to massive Magic. But now even the smell, the pungent smell of what steel was before it became steel, which would have permeated the air so close to the Steel Factory in the Factory's good days, was weak and almost imperceptible.
Dominick walked on the wide road for a while, his right leg, not yet fully healed, throbbing as he stumbled through unseen holes and puddles. The City Executive should—He shook his head, the forced rational thought fleeing as a hundred meters away from him a tall, indistinct shape darker than even the darkness loomed into view. The City Executive could do nothing.
He turned and walked to the crossroad again, the Factory's walls now a constant presence, shadows pressing at his sight and mind even through his back, shadows dark, almost corporeal, heavy. He had been close to Factories before, and each time he had left as soon as possible, for the Factories seemed to reach out towards him.
Reached out with hot, suffocating fingers towards him who called himself a Mentor and thought that a name and a title would shield him; reached towards him who refused to see that even a Mentor was in the end small and powerless, no more than a human; towards him who would one day learn that a creature small and powerless was small and powerless whether or not it knew it. Him who would burn.
Dominick stumbled in yet another puddle, his brows damp with sweat despite the cold, his breaths fast and shallow. Muddy water sloshed around his boot, then found its way inside the boot, cold and biting. Cold. He stopped, his heartbeats slowly calming, the Factory's shadow suddenly less palpable on his back than ever before. He turned to look at it again—tall, dark, shapeless, looming above him like a dying giant who had not yet toppled but whose shadow still weighed with the memory of strength and threat. A giant still, and yet a cold, empty shape.
The Makers of Light Page 2
