The Woad to Wuin

by Peter David

  There was no viewing box or place of honor for Hecate and me to go to, since this had once simply been a private mansion belonging to wealthy people, and not a place for nobility to oversee festive gatherings and executions. Besides, Hecate wouldn’t have wanted to remain a reserved distance even if she’d had the opportunity. No, she wanted to be as close as possible; I could barely restrain her as she walked forward, almost pulling away from me in her eagerness.

  Not that I had any incentive to wait. The gem was as eager as Hecate. It throbbed and pulsed with heat against my chest as a thing alive, as if ever so anxious to get to the business that Hecate had prepared for it.

  Reshaping the world.

  Reshaping the world.

  Well …

  … was that such a terrible thing, really?

  Surrounded as I was by cheers, and with the steady burning of power waiting to be unleashed upon my chest, I felt alone as I pondered the question.

  Was it so terrible? Really? After all … we live in a world that could produce someone like me. How good a world is that, really? And a world without magic, without wonder, a world of cynicism … as I said to Hecate, that’s my world. Why should I wish to inflict that upon humanity? Doom everyone to such a … a lifeless and hopeless way to live?

  Do it. Do it. Slay Meander. Take that final step, close that last door while opening another one that you can step through into the great and glorious destiny that you’ve always deserved. And besides, as she said … what choice have you? To sacrifice yourself? For humanity? To hell with that. What has humanity ever done for you?

  My mind was made up. One choice, in the end, was no choice.

  Slowly I approached Meander. I drew my sword, and the sound of the metal scraping from the sheathe was enough to get another round of cheers and howls. I stood about three feet away from him and pointed the sword imperiously. “Meander!” I called out, loudly enough for my voice to resound throughout the courtyard. “You stand accused of crimes against me … against my family … and against my men. What say you?”

  He simply smiled at me.

  “What say you?” I repeated more loudly.

  Meander seemed to give the matter a good deal of thought, and then he simply shrugged and said, “It matters not.”

  “He chooses not to plead for his life because he knows he is guilty!” Hecate called out, once again stoking the crowd.

  And then, despite the heat of our surroundings, despite the lack of rain, despite the fact that we were more or less surrounded by desert … despite all that, I felt a wintry breeze rolling in.

  “Life … is not to be pled for,” King Meander in that whispery soft voice of his, speaking so quietly that everyone there had to strain to hear, which was no doubt what he desired. “Life is to be lived. And then it is over. And that is all.” The way that Meander regarded me, one would have thought that he was the one with the sword in his hand, that my life was at his mercy, rather than the other way round. “I am Meander of the frozen North. I am Meander, the Keepless King who has nevertheless kept his kingdom with him wherever he has gone in his travels. My soul is a frozen and shriveled thing, and its release will only benefit it. And yet, for all that,” and he stared at me pityingly, “I would not trade places with you for all the power, all the privilege …” and then he looked straight at Hecate, ” … or all the gods and goddesses fighting for their own, miserable survival in the world.”

  My blood ran cold, and I looked from Hecate to him and back again. She said nothing, just stood there looking regal and angry and utterly disdainful of the man before her.

  “Peacelord, the men are waiting.” It was Boar Tooth’s voice. He was standing quite near me, speaking softly near my ear, and I realized that long seconds had passed as I stood there, immobile.

  And the gem … gods, the gem burned. It was almost incandescent, except that none but I could see it or sense it, and the heat flowed through my veins, through my arms and legs and all of my body, building and building as if demanding release that was almost sexual in its cravings and longing.

  I turned, looked at Hecate, and whispered, “You wanted Meander. He was first choice.”

  And Meander heard me. None else did, but he did, and he laughed with royal scorn and said, “I knew better. Why didn’t you?”

  There was confused murmuring from the men who had no clue as to the dynamics of what was occurring, but instead saw only their Peacelord hesitating. And as I noted earlier, there is nothing that is a surer death to leadership than even the hint of uncertainty. Do what needs to be done, and do it quickly! The voice in my head urged me on, even egged me on, crying out, Coward! Fool! Hurry! Your enemy is helpless before you! Do what must be done lest your army realizes that you are but a poltroon, a sham, a shadow of a leader!

  It was no good. I was paralyzed by indecision, and then realized with growing dread that the consequences of that could be catastrophic. The relentless need of the gem for release was inexorable, building in wave upon relentless wave battering against the shoals of my resistance, and I had spent year upon year trusting my instincts, except every instinct was telling me to slay the helpless man who stood before me, and Hecate was telling me, and Boar Tooth was telling me, and the fact that every single damned person or entity was telling me to do one thing activated the fundamental perversity of my nature which insisted that I should do anything but what they were telling me to do.

  And I suddenly realized there was one creature in the place that had never lied to me … never betrayed me … never led me astray in any manner …

  My head snapped around.

  I looked at Mordant, indecision and fear and uncertainty warring within me.

  He stared straight at me and then very slowly, in an almost leisurely manner …

  … he winked at me.

  Just as my mother had winked at me.

  And suddenly the sword felt so light in my hand, and the power from the gem was completely focused within me as my indecision melted away, my resolve suddenly honed and shaped. The intensity of the gem burning in my chest was almost beyond my ability to bear, and somehow Hecate sensed it, because she fairly cried out, “Hurry! Hurry! Do it now! You know you must! You’re not that damned fool Beliquose! You’re not Meander! You’re Apropos! You know better than to sacrifice yourself!”

  “You’re right,” I said, and I whipped the sword around, and it struck home, carving through flesh and bone, blood flying, and stunned cries being ripped from the throats of everyone who was watching.

  Hecate gaped in utter bewilderment, staring uncomprehendingly at my blade which had run her through, front to back.

  “On the other hand,” I said coldly, “I have no trouble with the thought of sacrificing you.”

  Black liquid began to soak the front of her gown. Confused, horrified, terrified, she beat at the sword with her fists. And she screamed, “No! No no no no—!!”

  I shoved her back with the sword, the men around me stunned into immobility. “You didn’t overstate it at all, did you? You were indeed scared. Scared because it’s more than just a matter of you being weaker in this form. You’re actually mortal. You can be killed … like this …” And I twisted the sword in her chest and ohhhh, then did the howling reach a new level.

  Pain exploded behind my eyes, then, blazing agony from the gem, expressing its fury over what was occurring, and with an instinct that was not my own, battling my very body, I placed my foot against Hecate’s stomach and thrust as hard as I could. She slid off the sword, clutching at her chest, almost comically trying to shove the blood and guts back in where they came from.

  I turned and shouted to the men, who were standing there stunned and appalled, “My soldiers! My servants! This creature, the Lady Kate, is not what she appears to be!”

  Boar Tooth stepped forward, no less shocked than any of the others. “She appears to be a woman dying of a sword thrust to the chest!”

  I glanced back at her. “All right, yes, that part is indeed
more or less what it appears to be …”

  And then I cried out, cried out so loudly that my throat ached from the intensity of it, and images slammed through my mind. Images of … of …

  … a future, a great and glorious future, and there was Hecate with her arms draped around me, and me standing upon a reviewing stand and holding my sword on high while thousands of troops marched past me in perfect uniformity, and my power had surpassed anything that I had ever dreamt of, anything that anyone would have thought possible, and my eyes, I could see my eyes, and they were solid black, inhuman, but gods, the power that I was wielding, the majesty, the invincibility, it was mine, all mine, all it had required was my soul, and what a small sacrifice that would have been, because really, I wasn’t doing much of anything with the damned thing anyway …

  And then, like a mirror struck by a rock, the image shattered, fell away, and I could almost hear the tinkling of glass as it did so.

  I fell to my knees, gasping, the pain in the gem overwhelming, and Hecate was looking at me with such despair as the ground grew thick with her blood. Slake was at her side, trying to stanch the wound, uncomprehending but acting on instinct. He was looking at me with utter confusion, wanting to believe in his Peacelord, in his god on earth, not realizing that the true earthbound deity was dying in his arms.

  “Apropos …” Hecate managed to get out, blood bubbling up in her throat. “I … I loved you …”

  Despite the agony that seared every part of my body, I was still able to grunt, “You didn’t love me. You loved … a shadow of yourself.”

  She rallied, insanely trying to sit up, which made the blood spill even faster. Slake looked helplessly at her, tried to call for a healer, but with the dregs of the remarkable strength she still possessed, she shoved him away. Onto her hands and knees she went, crawling toward me, her voice fading fast with every hoarsely whispered phrase. “But that’s all … humans are … we were going to change that … bring you into your own … you could have been a god on earth … instead … you’ve … you’ve condemned the world to mundanity … guaranteed the eventual end of magic … you have no idea what you’ve done …”

  “Nor do I care,” I growled, and then once more I screamed as the pain lanced through me.

  And incredibly, the pupils actually faded from Hecate’s eyes as she breathed, “You will … you will …”

  I’ve heard people die before. In the past, there was always a gravely death rattle, and then they keeled over.

  Not this time. There was nothing soft or gravely or even subtle in what happened next. Instead Hecate unleashed a screech that was far more than a panicked reaction; it was a hopeless and frustrated protest against the injustice that had been done her. Her head pitched back, her eyes opened wide, and something … something … leaped out of her. Call it an incarnation of her power, call it her godhood, call it her essence or even her soul, call it what you will. To me it looked like a black cloud of hatred and distilled fury, pouring out of her mouth, her nose, her dead eyes, and from the gaping wound I’d left in her.

  Then it hurtled toward me, and for a heartbeat I thought it was attacking me. But then I realized … sensed … that it was not coming at me. No … I was drawing it to me. Or rather, the gem was. Literally burning with the desire, the gem reached out with power that I could not even begin to comprehend and yanked Hecate’s soul toward it like a spider drawing in a helpless victim.

  And victim it most certainly was. I saw the blackness that had been Hecate struggle for an instant, try to pull away, try to tear itself apart rather than submit to the demands of the gem, but it was too late. All the pain that the gem had inflicted upon me up until that moment had been as nothing compared to the excruciating torture that hammered through me as the gem latched on to the essence of Hecate and drew it in.

  I felt as if my skin was crisping and burning from within, as if I was being incinerated from the inside out. I had no idea what Slake or Boar Tooth or any of the others were doing at that moment. For all that I was aware of them, they might just as well not have been there at all.

  It wants my soul … it wants my soul … we want your soul, we deserve it, you took from us, we want it back, WE WE …

  The image of the gems sprang to my mind, light bending through them and splintering off in a thousand different directions, and that was how I felt just then. As if the light of my mind, of my spirit, was fractured and hurtling off down infinite paths. I felt the voices within me, each crying out for dominance, empowered by the dark essence that had been Hecate, pulling away from one another so emboldened, so strong by the influx of new and greater power, that they couldn’t wait to be quit of one another, even as the still-audible screams of Hecate resounded within my head. And I, Apropos, had a part of me invested in each and every one of them, and knew beyond any doubt at that moment that something horrible was about to happen, and that I was going to be spiritually ripped into a hundred pieces. I would be everywhere and nowhere all at the same time, and I couldn’t begin to fully comprehend it, but I knew I sure as hell needed to prevent it.

  The men had snapped from their paralysis, and there was confused shouting and questions being hurled all about as I staggered to my feet and looked around desperately for some clue as to what I could possibly do. And then I saw it. It seemed to be calling to me, drawing it to me like an insect, which was perfectly appropriate since it was a flame. The torches on the wall were summoning me, and I lurched toward the nearest one, formulating a desperate plan. My head, my body, felt as if there was some massive force within them that was about to burst out, and I had no desire to be around when they did.

  The world was blurring before me, and suddenly one of the biggest blurs was directly in my path. “You bastard!” came Boar Tooth’s voice, bellowing at me from the haze that was growing before me. “You cut down a helpless woman!”

  He must have been relatively incensed at the deed, considering he must have forgotten I was invulnerable when he attacked. Nevertheless I brought my sword up, still thick with the blood—or whatever it was—of Hecate’s that adorned it. The two blades slammed into one another. I deflected his easily and shouted, “You speak to me of killing helpless women?” even as I slammed him aside.

  And then I knew I was out of time, my body preparing to burst under the stress of whatever forces were being channeled through it, and the part of me that was still Apropos—whatever that was—cried out, Get it out of us! Get it out get it out get it out … !

  I grabbed the torch from its place, felt the heat pouring off it, and something dark and sinister within me cringed back, howled a warning mixed with defiance, tried to stop me from doing what desperation had driven me to do. Uttering a quick prayer for strength without the slightest idea of to whom I might be addressing it, I reversed the torch, braced myself, promised myself I would not scream, and then broke that promise in spades as I jammed the torch against my chest.

  There were outcries from everyone around me, who must have been utterly convinced by that point that their beloved Peacelord, their god upon earth, had gone completely out of his mind. Their opinions were of no consequence to me at that point. All that mattered to me was the excruciating agony of the flame against my chest. There is no more horrific smell than the aroma of burning meat when you know that what you’re smelling is you.

  And yet I kept it there. I was becoming effectively blind, all the world now one great fog, bodies moving this way and that with no pattern or logic. A haze of red had descended upon me, and still I kept the flame where it was, ruthlessly blackening and blistering the skin all around the Eye of the Beholder. “Bastard!” I heard again, which told me that Boar Tooth was coming up behind me, and I collapsed just in time to hear the hiss of his sword as it passed in a brutal arc above my head. Crumbling to the ground wasn’t much of a challenge; it was miraculous that I had managed to stand for as long as I had.

  The others started screaming at me as well. All those men who had cried such huzzahs
in my name were now shouting out that same name in rage. How could I have done such a thing, they demanded. How could I simply have cut down my beloved consort right there, like … like a barbarian …

  Hypocrites … stupid, hypocritical sacks of shit … That refrain kept going through my mind. The pack of bastards, voicing dismay at my actions, when their casual brutalities had been far more numerous, and for far less reason. Kate … Hecate … she hadn’t even been human. She’d been a … a thing … masquerading as a female. But these men who condemned me now with such vituperation had assaulted men, women, and children with equal abandon and utter joy, and with no regard for rightness or morality or anything except filling their own purses and indulging their own lusts. And all in my name, in the name that they now cursed.

  I saw them for what they were more clearly than ever I had seen before, and that awareness fanned the flames of my own hatred, for them … and for myself in indulging their activities and …

  Flames …

  … flames, the opposite of ignorance. Within flames lay knowledge, and purity, and cleansing. Shadows flee from flames, darkness runs scurrying under rocks and into crannies as the light generated by fire comes for it. All these things that I had been told, or variations of them, flooded through me, and even though I was biting upon my lip so hard that I nearly bit it in two, still I kept the flame pressed against the Eye of the Beholder.

  And it was gone.

  Just like that, the Eye of the Beholder fell from my chest, the tentacles of skin that had entwined themselves around it sundered by the flame. The Eye clattered to the ground …

  … and shattered.

  Shattered.

  I stared at it, even though I could barely see straight. It was impossible. I’d been told by everyone concerned that the damned thing could not be destroyed, and yet a simple fall had caused it to splinter into a hundred fragments. I had been lied to. But then, what else was new in my life?