Sorrowing Vengeance

by David C. Smith

  The Chosen One had completed the awareness for him. “But our time is not yet. Thameron: it is still in the future, when these disguises that we wear will be discarded, and all humanity will wait between us. There is a man of ancient shadows whom you must meet. It is a destined thing, ro kil-su.

  “You are fear,” Asawas had told him. “You are the fear we have produced in the uncertainly of our humanness. You are the doubt that does not strive but, in its arrogance, is satisfied.”

  Within three days of leaving Lasura, he had come into the mountains and begun following a trail that he only sensed and did not physically see. When night came down, he looked at the stars, and it seemed to Thameron that he could feel the earth rumble and stretch beneath him, preparing itself. In the days, as he climbed into the mountains, the sun burned him, the sweat fell from him, but he did not feel any less strong or any less determined.

  When, on the afternoon of the fifth day, he scaled a gravelly steepness and paused, looked up and saw the open mouth of a cool cave, he understood that he had come to the end of the path he had begun in that other cave, on Odossos.

  The man of shadows came out of the cave and looked down and saw him. An expression of dread filled his features, followed by perplexity. As Thameron made his way up the incline toward him, Eromedeus asked him, “You? Are you the one I’ve been waiting for? You’re only a boy!”

  Panting from his labors, Thameron approached him proudly and wiped the sweat from his face. “I am Thameron,” he announced. “I am alone in coming to you.”

  “Alone?” Eromedeus shook his head, gestured down the mountainside in the direction from which Thameron had come. “How can you say that you are alone, when all humanity follows you?”

  * * * *

  That evening, as Eromedeus cooked some of the roots, herbs, and fruits he lived on and mixed them into a stew with meat he had obtained from bringing down a young deer, Thameron, reclining on a grass mat, asked him, “And if I offered to give up my life for you? Would your spirit answer to that and be released?”

  Eromedeus shivered his head. “No. That would not happen. Don’t you understand?”

  And, later, as they ate the stew and sipped cold water brought from a mountain spring: “I never intended to do evil,” Thameron confessed to Eromedeus. “I never intended to become a spirit of evil. Isn’t it odd that I can be aware of that?”

  “That doesn’t matter,” the shadowed one answered him. “That doesn’t matter. It will come.…”

  Outside, a storm, blowing in from the west, began to build.

  “The storm,” Asawas had told him, “does not know that it floods the land, yet many perish, despite the storm’s ignorance. Whether you know or do not know, whether you believe or do not believe—you are chosen. Men have hungered for your appearance.”

  “I was chosen,” Thameron said, “by the thing I sought to choose.”

  “Most people,” Eromedeus replied, “are chosen by the things they seek to avoid.”

  “But do we make these things happen? Are they us? Or do they happen despite us?”

  Eromedeus told him, “Don’t you realize that when people desire things, they never fully comprehend what they desire? That is the paradox of spirit trapped in flesh. One can desire strength and love the strength of brutality but not the strength of mercy or tolerance. Humanity,” he said, “ceased to ask questions long ago. It lives now with lies—and, living with lies, humanity divides some lies into truths and others into mistruths. It lives in darkness, this humanity that dwells below us like a carpet; yet, not knowing this, humanity divides some of the darkness into light and accepts the remainder as darkness. It has busied itself for many long years preparing for its own annihilation, Thameron. Can a father not pass his hatreds on to his sons, and never expect all sons everywhere to destroy one another? It demands of you, of the spirit in you, only the least you can do, not the greatest. That is one of the foundations of evil.”

  “You speak as though evil were not a mighty thing.”

  “Evil,” Eromedeus told him, “is a very simple thing, and in its simplicity it is mundane, and artificial, and unbalanced. Other­wise, human beings would not continually return to its lures. Good,” he continued, “is a very simple thing, as well, but in its simplicity, it is awesome. It demands that people forgive the most obvious in themselves.”

  Outside, the storm hurried, thundering and hissing with lightning.

  Eromedeus told Thameron, “I speak to you of things you already know. Truth—goodness—recognizes itself, and is honest. Evil…evil never believes that it is evil, and wears a thousand disguises. It is time, Thameron, that you went out into the storm.”

  Thameron looked at the man of shadows, the Undying One.

  “Go out, Thameron, into the storm.”

  Thameron stood.

  Eromedeus remained sitting where he was. “I have lived for so long, I have almost forgotten how long it has been. And here I am, speaking with the one I knew would come, instructing him as though he were the boy he appears to be, and I his tutor.” He looked Thameron in the eyes. “Do you understand how complete­ly terrified I am of you?”

  “No.”

  Eromedeus gestured. “Go out—into the storm.…”

  * * * *

  Out from the deep winds of Time comes the Voice of a destiny, a Voice that is humanity’s voice, the voice that calls humanity to return to the pools of blood and the shadows of fire from which it was born: the pool is deep, the shadows are old, the fire burns with flames that burn forever. O humanity, born in a storm and wandering in a storm!

  Our hearts are writhing serpents’ nests, the storm is what we believe ourselves to be: thunder and noise, active with meaning, churning with rage, nurturing ourselves as we do ourselves all possible harm.

  O many-faced, all-voiced humanity, your enemy is astride your shoulder, it is held fast in your mirror, it breathes with your breath, quickens with your life, dreams with your dreams.

  O Time, your face is human.

  O Death, your name is Humanity.

  O humanity, reducing strong elements to dust: your name is blown on a tempest, you frighten the stars, you are ever-young, but old, and ignorant as some force of Nature.

  O humanity, your names are legion. And misery and defeat, anguish and rot, curl invisibly in the crib of the newborn beside the newborn, baby or hope or ambition.

  O humanity, your heart is a serpent’s nest, you call down the storming damnation of your arrogance, you laugh with pride to see the ruination of your ancestors’ hopes, you confound all things by making illusions into substances, and substances into illusions.

  This storm that rages, it rages by the will of humanity.

  This evil that walks in the shape of a man and speaks with the whispering voice of a man and laughs and worries and speaks of dreams: lo, this evil is yours, humanity.

  And these things that come, they come with cause, they come with our hearts’ blessings, and they come clutching our hopes and our pride and our illusions fast, presenting our sorrows to us as a happy gift.

  * * * *

  When he returned, dripping with rain that shimmered like clear blood, and reborn, glorying in the magnificence and the thunder and violence of the storm, Thameron found the troubled Eromedeus sitting by a small fire he had built near the mouth of the cave. Thameron stood by the fire and looked down at Eromedeus.

  The Undying One stared up at him with dark eyes.

  “Now, I understand,” Thameron told him. “I felt it, in the storm. The final…convulsion. I am evil.”

  “Yes,” Eromedeus averted his eyes. “You are neces­sary.”

  “Necessary.” Thameron crouched by the fire. He thrust his hands into the flames and held them there until they glowed red. He felt no pain. “Flame,” he whispered. “Here is humanity’s birth and death.”

  Eromedeus watched him critically.

  Thameron smiled at him. “If I offered now to give up my life for you, your spirit would no
t answer.”

  “Shall I, Humanity, give up my long existence to you, Fear?”

  “But if you will not give it up, Eromedeus, then I can take your spirit from you, and vanquish you.”

  “Evil can destroy Humanity, yes, if love is not present.”

  “This new prophet?” Thameron stood.

  Eromedeus nodded slowly. “We are the shadows of humanity, the imagination of humanity—you and I and him.”

  “Do you know what the storm told me?” Thameron asked Eromedeus.

  “I am afraid to know.”

  “It told me this: that humanity for some reason thinks Evil to be ignorant, and that gaining knowledge will awaken men to strive for Good. Why do people assume that? They don’t realize that Evil supersedes Good—that it encompasses all that Good com­prehends, and goes beyond it. Good is ignorant! When one sees and understands—feels as all of existence itself feels—he sees and understands and feels that all is Evil! All! Because it is touched by humanity! What then is mankind to think of Evil? Good and Evil are not opposites!”

  Trembling, Eromedeus stared at him.

  “They are the same thing! They flow from the same well! They breathe with the same soul! Only Good is transitory, and Evil is All! Order cannot defeat disorder! Unity cannot control discord! Substance cannot prevail over dissolution! This is the Evil they fear! Not some superstition or god or shadow—but the end that began with the beginning! All things in the world return only so that in some dark dusk, with the final tide, in that night, they will never return again!”

  Eromedeus groaned and pulled his face to his hands. “It cannot be! I have lived so long,” he groaned, “but I have lived only one life! Have I outlived my soul? Did my soul pass on one night or winter while I slept?”

  Thameron’s hands were still glowing hot. He walked around the fire and now crouched beside Eromedeus. The Undying One stared at the sorcerer’s hands, terrified of them.

  Thameron seemed to be only a curious boy. “So…you will not give up your spirit to me, Humanity. But I can take it from you.”

  “Has humanity suffered so much, for so long,” Eromedeus asked him, staring at the hands, the heat of them bringing tears to his eyes, “that it comes to this—the greatest suffering, accomplished by all that it fears?”

  “We are contained by the world, Eromedeus. Why should anything astonish us? Especially our eagerness to believe our own lies? Am I not…necessary…for humanity?”

  He leaned forward. Eromedeus scrambled away from him but could not move quickly enough to escape. Thameron took hold of him and knocked him down, then plunged his hands into Eromedeus’s chest, touched his heart and sent his fiery touch of pain all through the Undying One.

  Eromedeus shrieked and screamed, writhed terribly.

  “Damn you!” Thameron yelled at him. “Don’t you think that Evil can cry?”

  Outside, the storm continued all through the night, howling with a voice, and raining and thundering.

  Eromedeus shrieked and screamed, a humanity trapped by the monster it had accepted and could not escape—as Thameron’s hot hold tortured him all through the night…as the Evil One’s tears fell as heavily as the rain.…

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  When he came into the port city of Hilum, Asawas found that his increasing reputation had preceded him. Consistently, in his wanderings, he had warned his listeners to hear his words with their hearts; and he had explicitly told everyone that he was not Bithitu returned to the earth. Yet, throughout the empire, a hope had grown within the great body of religious believers, and it had been fostered to suit its own purposes by the Church: that Bithitu would, indeed, return one day to redeem the humanity that had punished and crucified him. Asawas, when questioned about this, had replied that this meant only that Bithitu would return in the hearts of mankind when all came to the awareness of the Light, and that this would be Bithitu’s redemption of an erring humanity. Yet the Church had adhered to a literal interpretation of the Prophet’s pledge; and so when the countryside of Athadia began to spread the word that a miraculous teacher and healer and prophet was within the empire, people assumed that Asawas was Bithitu recome.

  The storm that had blown across the fields the night before Asawas’s entry into Hilum had caused great distress within the city: for the rain that fell was not clear water but colored red like blood. Frightened people locked themselves inside their houses or in their shops; many took refuge within the main temple near the center of the city; and a large number of others began to gather in a throng outside the palace of Governor Abadon, calling on him to stop plans for the mobilization of the Eleventh Legion East. Abadon, alerted to the fact that starving Emarian troops on Omeria’s northern border had begun sacking farms and villages there, had sent word to his military commanders of the regiments there that they should prepare to contain this aggressive breach of international policy. The citizens of Mustala, south of Emaria’s border, were aware that the empire was engaged in conflict with the Emarians in the Low Provinces and feared the outbreak of a war proper. The red rain that fell during the night seemed to the Mustalans the most ominous and portentous of signs.

  So when Asawas came down the muddy road toward the gates of Hilum, many villagers and farmers who lived outside the city walls were anxious to speak with him and follow him and have him clarify the meaning of the red rain.

  Asawas led his growing throng into the center of Hilum, where he stepped onto the marble wall of a great fountain located before the Temple of Bithitu and faced the frightened and expectant people.

  “You say to me,” Asawas announced to them that morning, “that you fear the red rain is a portent of what will come? You fear violence, bloodshed, death, and an evil storm loosed upon the world? I say to you, ‘Where is your faith?’ Where is your faith in On, the one true god, that you cannot turn the bloody water into clear rain water?”

  With that, Asawas drew back the sleeve of his tattered robe and plunged his right arm into the shimmering red water of the fountain. Within moments, the discoloration began to lighten so that, as the people continued to watch, the water in the fountain turned completely pure. Awed gasps and some cheers met Asawas’s miracle. The prophet lifted his arm high so that all in the square could see that the water on his arm was clear, not bloody red.

  “Where is your faith?” he demanded of his crowd. “If you believe in a future of blood, then you shall have a future of blood! Where is your faith?”

  Immediately many in the crowd surged forward, offering Asawas dishes, bowls, and pitchers filled with red water. “Ikbusa! Prophet! Chosen One! Show us again! Prove to us that you have the faith! Lead us to the faith!”

  Asawas dipped his hand into every dish, bowl, and pitcher to leave them full of clear, good, trustworthy water. With cupped hands, he sipped some of the water he had just transformed, then raised his arms and showed his smiling, wet face to the people.

  “Where is your faith? Where is your faith? You, too, could change the dark water clear! Be of honest faith!”

  Cheers and prayers answered him.

  From the roof of the Temple behind Asawas, the Master, Anasiah, stood with several young priests, and saw and heard, and was not pleased. “This man,” he muttered, “is extremely dangerous.” Anasiah listened a while longer, then ordered one of his predicants, “Get you to Governor Abadon. Alert him to this.”

  In the street before the fountain, Asawas continued to speak to the ever-increasing numbers of people. Asawas told them of On, the one true god, who exists in humanity’s heart and not in men’s temples. He told them that faith in On was within their own hearts but that they could not listen to their own hearts if they listened to other things. And he told them of the days to come.

  “We have seen signs of discord and disruptuion!” he said. “What shall we do about these things? What are these changes and dangers about? What are we to make of them? I tell you this: if your hearts are clean and honest, your spirits will be as clean and honest
as the water is now in this fountain. Would you dream of a better world without fear and anger and jealousy and lies! Then look at your neighbor! Look at the woman beside you and the man beside you and the child! Listen to me! Ask yourself this: is this one beside me a thing, or is it a person? Are other people things, or are they people? The spirit awakens when you see them as people, not things, not tools, not slaves, not servants! Are you a thing to the person next to you? Let the spirit open within you!”

  Murmurs passed through the crowd as heads nodded and people spoke in agreement.

  “These things that come,” he warned them, “mark the coming of On, which is us! The one god is ourselves! If I am a man, and not a thing, and part of God, then what are you, and the one standing next to you? Where is your faith? Show me your faith! Is your faith in the Temple? Is your faith in the Church? Is your faith in gold? Is your faith in your power and your station? Then you who have lifted yourselves above others, you will be the first to fall! If you take money from your neighbor to glorify yourself or your church, your business or your army, how can you be human?

  “Here is what is coming! You have suffered the storms! More storms come! The haughty among us will suffer just as you do! Where is your faith? Is it in gold, or in a church, or is it in your heart and in the heart of the person next to you?

  “You have allowed the masters you worship to possess you! You have done what you have done to the earth and to your brothers and your sisters because to you they are things, not people! Shall I order a man to work for me and not treat him like my brother? Shall I demand that a woman cook for me and not treat her as I would my own mother? How dare I do that? Where is my faith?”