by Garon Whited
“I will, but there are things we will need and cannot make,” she cautioned. “Salt, for example. All our salt is imported. There are no salt mines and we do not have access to the sea. It is a major trade good.”
“Trade is a requirement. I get it.” I thought about it for a minute. “Hazir, do you know anyone in another city—Sarashda will do, but a completely different city would be better—who would love to be a trading partner to us? A merchant who owns his own caravan, perhaps, and has a full-sized store somewhere?”
“I can find one.”
“One who can keep a secret? A secret worth a lot of gold to him?”
Hazir’s look spoke volumes, all along the lines of Are you kidding me?
“Sorry. Silly question. Find me someplace and I’ll set up a special trading room for his shop.”
“I will see what I can do.”
“What about magical devices?” Leisel asked. “We still don’t have even one professional wizard.”
“I might be able to help with that,” said my altar ego. “I know a guy, sort of, who might want to live near this tower.” I knew exactly who he meant, but I was surprised. It hadn’t occurred to me the two of them might want to talk so soon. Then again, Rahýfel might need—or want—coaching in the fine art of becoming an energy-state being.
“Good thinking.”
“Great minds,” he pointed out. Leisel’s lips thinned.
“And if we’re wrong about the Temple’s military mood?” she asked. “What if they come back with a million men and flood them through the mountains like water in a cup of pebbles?”
“Then I’ll come back,” I replied, reasonably.
“In time?”
“Leisel, let me explain something. I’ve tried to change hearts and minds, but it’s not my forté. I think I started a process, here, but I’m limited. I don’t really understand people too well. I can be a club or a scalpel, but all I really do well is exert force. I understand force. Generate it, use it, transform it, apply it—I’m good at that. People have always been one of my weaknesses, which is desperately ironic, all things considered.”
As I spoke, I wondered how true it was. I used to get along easily with people. Hell, I played scoutmaster to undergraduates and poured them from occasional parties into their dorms. I was a medium-decent human being, not a distracted monster with no interest in mortals. Hell, people used to like me!
Okay, to be fair, a lot of people probably still like me. I don’t see it so much, these days.
But it’s like I woke up one morning and realized I needed glasses. How long had I lived with it before realizing it? I walk into the bathroom and my son is shaving—my baby boy is shaving? How long has this been going on? This has crept up on me while I wasn’t watching and now it surprises me. How? I’ve consumed the spirit of some appalling number of people. I should have a better grasp of human nature than anyone.
When did I change from friendly neighborhood driver-man to absent-minded professor? It’s like I’m growing more distant from the human condition. Is this an inevitable consequence of being a chaos-infested monster? Or is there an alternative? Can I learn to be… not human, but at least a little more human than I am? Or have I sacrificed too much of my humanity—my soul, if you will—to recover something of what I was? How much of one’s soul can a person sacrifice and still recover?
Or, equally concerning, should I try? I’m changing. Is it right and proper to… evolve? I’m not a human being anymore. Shouldn’t I embrace what I am and see what I have the potential to become? Or am I just a human being with a chaos infestation and the need to resist it, to remain as human as I can? It would help if I understood better what it means to be human.
When did I lose my ability to understand people? No, that’s wrong. I do understand people. Maybe it’s because I’ve consumed so many and understand them so well—as a whole. It’s not that people are my weakness—although an argument can be made—or that I don’t understand them. No, the trouble is I no longer like them. I know them too well.
Individually, humans can be a pleasure to be around. Unfortunately, they average much lower than I like. There are some days when the only thing I like about people is the taste.
“Mazhani?” Leisel prompted.
“Sorry. Had a thought. Hazir and his friends,” I continued, “can help with the people of the Empire by watching them and influencing them. You can help, too, by making this place the best it can be. At this point, all I dare hope for is you have a nice valley without too much trouble from outsiders. But if Hazir’s friends can’t divert the Temples and they call for a holy war, dropping a million men on your doorstep… Well, if there are any survivors, they can go back and explain how force isn’t their answer.”
“But you won’t be here!” Leisel protested, and, in so doing, told me what her real objection was.
“We’ll discuss that in private,” I suggested. “Hazir, do you have anything further to offer, suggest, or observe?”
“No, Mazhani.”
My altar ego piped up with, “It has been, as always, a pleasure to see you. I trust we will speak again.”
“How?” Hazir asked.
“Either in person, as we are now, or through Leisel. Or through the mirror,” he nodded toward the large one on the wall.
“I look forward to it.”
He rose, we exchanged parting pleasantries, and I opened a gate back to his rooms. It closed behind him and I turned to Leisel. She remained seated, but braced in her chair as for an argument or a blow. I thumped down into the other chair.
“You guys don’t need me for this, do you?” asked my altar ego.
“I don’t think so. Leisel?”
“No.”
He looked relieved and the sand fell into the table. We sat in silence for several seconds.
“Why do you have to go?”
It was a good question. The party line consisted of the avatar of the newest god going into the west to tame the barbarian hordes. Was that the line I wanted to take with Leisel? It would be safer if no one at all knew any different. Thing is, I like Leisel. I’m not sure I love her, but I am sure I could. Clearly, it’s not a love at first sight sort of thing, but it could grow into something better, stronger.
If I stayed.
So why am I going away? When it comes right down to it, it’s because I screwed up. And because I’m an incompetent coward. I drew enormous amounts of attention to this place and ruined it for my purposes. Now I can’t stay here without drawing even more attention to me, as well as an unwelcome scrutiny into my own nature and plans.
How hard is it to settle down and do research into killing gods?
“Leisel. Listen to me.”
“I always listen to you.”
“Do you remember when I offered to explain a lot of things you didn’t want to know?”
“Yes.”
“To adequately explain why I have to leave, I’ll have to tell you more than you want to know.”
“Is there no simple way?”
I thought about it. How do I sum up… everything?
“I made a mistake.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. Several, in fact. More than I like to admit.”
“How bad were these mistake?”
“I killed several million people who didn’t deserve it.”
“Oh,” she repeated, in a small voice.
“I suspect I destroyed the world, in fact, which brings my personal kill count up to an unreasonable and unspeakable number.”
“And you fear you have made mistakes here? Ones leading to something like this other you speak of?”
“Not exactly, but that’s part of it. No, I plan to try and undo my mistakes and save the world. Well, save my family and friends. The world gets to come along as part of the package.”
“I’m sorry? You say you’ve destroyed a world. How do you save it?”
“It’s complicated.”
“The idea of what you find compl
icated terrifies me.”
“Nonsense. You’re fearless.”
“There is a difference between courage and being without fear,” she corrected. “Courage is acknowledging fear and refusing to give in to it. Being without fear is foolhardy.”
“I stand corrected.”
“As for this quest you are on—am I capable of understanding it?”
“I think so. It’ll take a while to teach you everything you need to know to bring you up to my level of understanding, though.”
“Then don’t bother. There is a valley to govern. Very well, you must go and do… something. You must save something—a world, yes?”
“Yes.”
“If there is another world than this, and it needs you to save it, it would be wrong of me to even try and stop you. I accept the need. But I have a request.”
“Name it.”
“Come back.”
“Oh, that’s no trouble. You can call for me whenever you like.” I gestured at the wall mirror. “That can reach my mirror, no problem. If all else fails, talk to the sandy guy in the table. He can poke me wherever I am. I think.”
“I will,” she assured me, “but I meant for you to come back when you are finished.”
“I’ll try. I don’t know how long it will take.”
“Then do as you did with Renata. Did she not live longer elsewhere than here? Could you not live longer elsewhere and return tomorrow?”
“I’m not sure. The universe may not cooperate. Some of my experiments will require stepping outside a fixed temporal structure. The ticking clock between here and an Earth timeline will throw off a lot of my data collection. If I step outside that framework, I may hit a level of time slippage—”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
“Ah. Right. I can try, but I can’t promise it’ll work. There are things I have to do that may make it impossible. I don’t know. That’s why I have to do them, to find out how they work and how to use them.”
“Nothing is certain,” she agreed. “But you do promise to try?”
“I promise to try.”
“Good. Will you say goodbye?”
“No.”
She sighed sadly and shook her head.
“There is an old saying among lovers,” she told me. “It goes something like this. ‘You can have every beat of my heart, but the last belongs only to me.’ Trite, perhaps, but understandable. I’ve long thought warriors who are also lovers should phrase it differently, so I say to you: Every beat of my heart belongs to me, but the last one will always be for you.” She held up her hand, palm forward, and I matched it with mine. Unlike the usual greeting gesture, she intertwined our fingers and we held each other’s hand. “You will go away, but you will not be forgotten. I will live my life as I choose to live it, but, if it comes to the end and you have not been able to return, I will remember you.”
“And I shall remember you,” I admitted. “I think, though, you misunderstand why I will not say goodbye.”
“Why, then?”
“Because you asked me to come back. You—or Hazir, or the dusty guy—will want me here for my slaughtering skills. Possibly some other reason, but the reason doesn’t matter. If you ask me to be here, I will be.”
She smiled. It was a good smile. It reminded me how much I like her. She’s not beautiful, but she is pretty, especially when I can get her to smile.
Why does it suddenly hurt look at her? Because I care more than I think I do? Could be. Maybe I need to pay more attention to my black, unbeating heart instead of my head.
Leisel kissed me and went to manage her valley. I called Hazir to ask about the merchant with a spare room in his shop. He told me it might be a few days, even with his magic mirror to speed messages along. That suited me. While I waited to set up a secret shift-booth for trade, I had other things to do.
Let’s find me—no, let’s find us; I have a sleeping complication to think about. Let’s find us an Earth-world where I have some understanding of the societal basics and can avoid local complications. My own projects will complicate things more than enough.
I fired up the mirror and went shopping for worlds.
Consideration
I have a dream. It is not a nice dream. It is a nightmare of unending, immortal terror.
The infinitely branching tree of possibility is no longer branching. It runs straight and true, a highway with no exit, a railroad track leading to the inevitable, a river ending in the waterfall. There are no teeming billions of possible futures. There is only one, and I must pit my hands and head and heart against it.
Can the past be changed? If I am in the past, is not all before me the future? And is not the future subject to my will? Or is it changeable only in the sense of the details—the little ripples in the water of Time—while the current still carries me down the river to the sea?
This is not the dream.
The dream is of a loop, an unbroken circle of Time. It rolls forever, like some exercise wheel for a pet, while I run within it, returning to the beginning and the ending, eternal and immortal. Is this the first occasion when I have ventured into the past? Is this where I board the wheel and begin a journey of eternity? Is this where I will forever run, constantly moving forward to the day when I must return to the past to try once again to save the future, to change it, ruin it, and try again? Will I spend eternity in the same span of years, forever cycling around and around in an attempt to alter an unalterable fate?
If there is an all-powerful God, does He keep pets?
I am afraid.
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Nightlord: Möbius
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Garon Whited
Other books:
Dragonhunters
LUNA
Nightlord, Book One: Sunset
Nightlord, Book Two: Shadows
Nightlord, Book Three: Orb
Nightlord, Book Four: Knightfall
Nightlord, Book Five: VOID
Short Stories:
An Arabian Night: Nazin’s Dream
Clockwork
Dragonhunt
Ship’s Log: Vacuum Cleaver
The Power
The Ways of Cats
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