Into The Dark Flame (Book 4) (2 page)

   Lakewander grew troubled and distant. 'My
mother. . . my mother was very beautiful, and a renowned artist. Her paintings were displayed in municipal galleries and private businesses and homes throughout the city. But she was given to fits of depression, alternating with periods of frenzied activity wherein she might become obsessed with some received idea or sudden illumination, which she would usually integrate with great success into her work. Some years ago she fell under the influence of the Souls. Quickly they became, more and then more, the predominant focus of her life. She ceased working, and one day gathered all her available artworks together and set them ablaze. She told us that such works were frivolous, that her life to date had been without meaning. No matter our remonstrations, after the city was destroyed by Ascaria she had herself encased in lead and placed out upon the Plain of Imprisoned Souls. She said that her life had to become her art, and vice versa. She believed she had been the recipient of a message from our Creator, who had told her in a vision that her suffering and eventual death would help cleanse us all of sin. Such, as I have said, is the reasoning of the Souls.'

   Lakewander paused, her eyes upon the ground. Her voice came again as a hollow whisper. 'It took her almost two years to die, Swordbearer. Every day I or my two brothers or our father would take food and drink to her. Every day we pleaded with her to change her mind. But she was resolute, and would not be swayed. One
day. . . one day my brothers could bear no more. My mother had ceased speaking, either because she had lost her voice through weakness or because she no longer wished to acknowledge us when we came. My brothers elected to cut her free. This they did, though she screamed at them to leave her be. When she emerged she was hardly more than a cadaver. Her limbs had wasted, she could barely stand. But she was angry, oh so angry.'

   Lakewander emitted a sob. She put her hand to her mouth, then to her brow. 'As we were bringing her home she somehow found strength. She took a knife and stabbed my youngest brother - her own son! The blade pierced his heart. He died instantly. She turned upon my other brother - truly she would have murdered us all had she been able. We overpowered her, but she screamed incessantly and begged us to let her return. Eventually we did. We were faced with the choice of convicting her for infanticide, in which case she would have been executed, or letting her go back to the Plain of Imprisoned Souls, where she would eventually die anyway. She went back, had herself encased in metal once more and put back upon the Plain. None of us visited her again. She remains there still. That is, what is left of her remains sealed within its metal
armature.'

   'I’m sorry,' said Leth in a murmur.

   'I can never forgive her,' Lakewander asserted, her voice quavering. 'That’s perhaps the worst part of it. Not only for the death of my brother, but for the terrible agonies she inflicted upon us all through her martyrdom. She declared that what she did was for our eventual good, yet the truth is she had no real thought for anyone. Not us, not herself. She was consumed by a belief, seduced by those who promulgated it. Like all such believers she became incapable of questioning or looking beyond it. She is gone now, but we must live with the memory of what she did: her own appalling suffering, and ours. I have tried, but I cannot find it within me to forgive her.' Lakewander turned her face to Leth. 'What kind of Creator can allow its people to suffer so?'

  
Perhaps a Creator who does not even know that he has created you
, thought Leth, but he said nothing. He glanced up at the Orb of the Godworld which blazed with a fabulous intensity high overhead. He shook his head slowly, then looked back at Lakewander. 'What of your other brother, the one who survived?'

   She smiled distantly, sorrowfully. 'He left us and became a wanderer and vagabond. He had been a great and noble spirit, a superb warrior, a young man greatly loved and who could inspire men and women alike, effortlessly. He was to have been the next Protector, after the transition of our father. But the events with our mother and younger brother changed him. His mood grew dark, he drank and brawled and shut himself away - things formerly alien to his nature. And then he left us, without notice or farewell. From time to time we hear reports of him. He has travelled widely, if aimlessly. The last we heard was that he had taken up with a Noeticist named Urch-Malmain, who is said to have penetrated all the secrets of the workings of the mind. He claims the ability to rid the mind of its store of painful experiences and to replace them with more palatable memories.'

   'An enviable talent,' commented Leth, and in his mind was the thought that he had heard the name of Urch-Malmain somewhere before.

  
'And a sinister one. Urch-Malmain takes away one's pain and substitutes it with fabrications of his own devising. Knowing what little I do of him, I see little to rejoice in there.'

   'How does he achieve this?'

   'Only he can tell you that, and I suspect he will not, even if you should find him. His methods are a closely guarded secret. It may be that he is a charlatan - many consider him so. Others deem him a diabolist of the blackest kind. I do not think my brother has fallen into good company.'

   Leth was pensive; his thoughts shifted. From considering Urch-Malmain and his manipulation of memory, he found himself thinking suddenly of Orbelon and the blue casket, of the mystery of Enchantment and its
strange flickering lights in the night, of the Karai and their so-called gods, of the monstrous slooths that had attacked Enchantment's Reach, of Mawnie in her madness, of Grey Venger and the mysterious Legendary Child, of Fectur's betrayal and of his, Leth's, feeling that the ground had been wrenched from beneath him and that he was being pitched into madness.

   And he thought of Issul.

   'Lord?' Lakewander's voice penetrated his haze. She had moved to kneel close before him. 'Now it is your face that is filled with sorrow.'

   He realized suddenly how afraid he was.
For himself, for Issul, for the children. And for Enchantment's Reach. He did not know if it existed anymore. He thought with horror of the feeling that had overcome him two nights before:
I do not even know if I am still alive!

   Leth gazed down into Lakewander's eyes. They were wide and limpid and pale blue-grey; her hand - he had not realised, but she had taken his in hers - her hand was warm, her touch soothing and tender. Her face was upturned to his, the lips slightly parted, and a look of such concern . . . How he wanted to take her in his arms, to feel her consoling lips upon his, her warm body against him, making him forget.
How he wanted her, needed her, as she must need him also. To love each other here, in delirious oblivion upon the soft grass. To forget. . . .

   Lakewander whispered, 'I am here, Lord.'

   Leth put his hand to her cheek. He recalled her naked in his bedchamber, her sinuous warmth against him, her lips, the way she had held him. He moved, to lower his lips to hers.  

   He hesitated - and tore his eyes away.

  
Issul, I will not forget! Not even for an instant!

  He stood, abruptly, releasing Lakewander's hand, and walked to the side of the road.

   'I wish only to help you,' Lakewander said.

   Leth turned around. She was kneeling upon the grass, watching him, her look both reproachful and consoling.

   'I know. I am sorry.'

   'There’s a storm raging within you.'

   'I’m not alone in that,' Leth said. He was uncomfortable with himself, knowing both that he had spurned her when she, as much as he, was in need of the warmth and comfort that only another human being could provide, and that he had also been barely a breath away from succumbing to her. 'Come, let’s eat now and be on our way.'

iii

   A short time later they came upon the Sufferer at the side of the road. This time Leth paid him little heed, apart from wrinkling his nostrils slightly as the smell of the man reached him. Then he stopped and looked back. Was he becoming so hardened and cynical? He slid from Swiftwind's back and approached the crouched and bound man. 'Sir, just say the word and I will release you now from this bondage.'

   The man had grown still and tense at Leth's approach. His head was cocked slightly, though he could not look up into Leth's face. He spat, but such was his posture that the spittle merely caught in a long liquid filament upon one of his knees. 'Scoundrel! Begone!'

   Leth returned to his horse. Lakewander made no comment as he came alongside her and for some time they rode in silence. Eventually Leth said, 'There are ghostly creatures in the walls of your home. Two nights ago one of them spoke to me.'

   'The Protectors. Yes.'

   'How many dwell there?'

   'I don't know. Many. Since the first days. They
are
Orbia, Swordbearer. Without them Orbia could not be. You should know that.'

   'I know nothing. I am not who you believe me to be.'

   Lakewander gave no reply. Leth said, 'In my own domain I have devoted much of my life to trying to understand the nature of gods. I have argued that belief must never become a permanent substitute for true knowledge. I have declared, as my illustrious forebears have declared before me, that those beings which many of our kind worship as gods are not gods; that we truly know nothing of them, not even that they exist in any real form, yet we have attributed to them the characteristics and personalities of deities. And now I find myself here, awaited by you and your people, a deity in your eyes. You believe me so, and I know I am not, yet I possess the qualities and abilities that you expect your god to possess. Which of us, then, is right?'

   'Can it be only one or the other?' Lakewander asked.

   'Oh yes. I know what I am. But I know, too, that if I so chose, I could masquerade among your kind as the god you believe and wish me to be. I could demand tribute, all the privileges of a deity. I would be false, but it would not matter to you.'

   'Were you false, we would know.'

   'Because I could not bear the Orbsword?' Leth shook his head in vehement dismissal. 'That is not enough. I bear it, and don’t know how. But I say to you again, I am no god.'

   Lakewander pursed her lips in contemplation. 'The end will be the same, no matter what. You bear the
sword, therefore you are able to slay Ascaria.'

   'And if I fail?'

   'If you fail, Ascaria wins. The end comes upon us.'

   A sudden thought struck Leth. 'You spoke earlier of your Creator. Do you know Orbelon?'

   'Orbelon? What is that?'

   'Beyond the rune through which I stepped there is a domain formerly occupied
by. . . a god. I can find no other word for him. I spoke with him many times. He--' he hesitated, almost stricken by what he was about to reveal, then changed tack. 'Have you, any of you, been there?'

   Lakewander was curious.
'Beyond the Sign? Of course not. How could we?' She waited, and when Leth said nothing, prompted him. 'Tell me of it.'

   'Without Orbelon it is a terrible, silent place,' Leth said. 'The only sound is the rush of your own blood through your veins, the storm of your breathing, the rhythmic deafening thunder of your own heart.'

   'And Orbelon? What of him?'

   'Orbelon is the place he occupies,' said Leth, and looked slowly around him. 'Don’t ask me to explain it. He is this place also. And yet he has gone.'

  
'How can I leave myself?'

   It had been Orbelon's question to him at their last meeting. But he had also said that, had Leth come a few moments later, he would not have found him. And it had truly been only minutes later that Jace had inadvertently opened the casket lid and cast them all into the blue domain.

   And Orbelon had not been there.

   Where had he gone?

   A few nights earlier, Leth recalled vividly, he had lain alone and sleepless upon his bed - the bed he normally shared with Issul - in their chamber in the Palace of Orbia. And he had seen, he was sure he had seen, Orbelon, standing in a shadowed corner of the room. It had been only for an instant, and then Orbelon's voice, husky and half-whispered,
'Ah, so close. . . .'
    

   But if Orbelon had put himself outside the casket, outside the Orb, outside
himself
, in that moment, could he not have done it again? Was that where he was now, in Enchantment's Reach? To what end? And why did he not return? He must surely know that Leth was not there.

   Leth was unaware of how closely Lakewander had been observing him.

   'The storm rages unchecked,' she said in a soft voice.

   He turned to her, his eyes wide and feverish. 'Has Orbelon been here? Does he know of you?'

   'We have not seen him, but perhaps we would not know. Is he our Creator?'

   'He would deny that he is. And yet, in a sense, he must be. Yet he has abandoned this world, and he has left me here and I do not know why.'

   'To help us,' said Lakewander. 'That’s why you have come, Lord Swordbearer. You are his representative.'