Lessons on a pragmatic life. Whatever we do as adults, we make in our children more of what we are. Is there no end to this? Scholars speak of progress, but I fear now that they are mistaken. This is not progress that we see, it is elaboration. Nothing of the old ways ever goes away, it just hides beneath modernity’s confusion.
No, her mother would have refused the charade. She would, indeed, have forced Urusander to act. In the name of honour. In the name of the soldier.
Renarr found herself the sole occupant of Urusander’s intended quarters, with not even a servant present. She wandered through the rooms, stirring the ashes of her regret. A single ember remains, and surely it shall burn me, and my name, for ever more. But some things we do not choose. Some things are chosen for us.
She heard the outer door open and then shut. Returning to the main room she saw Vatha Urusander. He seemed startled to see her, but only momentarily. He smiled. ‘I am glad to find you here, Renarr.’
‘Is she done with your company already?’
‘It has been a long time since we last slept. There are storms in our heads, and storms between us. Of the latter, I see a calm ahead. Of the former …’ He shrugged, and walked towards the window overlooking the broad sward behind the Citadel.
‘Will you deal with Hunn Raal?’ she asked, drawing closer to him.
His back was broad, but it now belonged to an ageing man. There was sadness in this detail.
‘Deal with him? I had ambitions there, didn’t I? He names himself my Mortal Sword. This should make plain who serves whom.’
‘And does it?’ She hesitated a few steps behind him, watching as he leaned forward close to the windowpane and looked down.
‘A keep’s refuse,’ he muttered. ‘How it backs the wall, below the chutes. I wonder, do we build houses simply to keep the garbage out? It should be buried.’
‘It buries itself,’ Renarr replied. ‘Eventually.’
‘Hunn Raal deems himself immune. Perhaps he is right in that. Leave him to Syntara. He’s her problem, not mine. Mother Dark has the right of it. We step back, saying little. The condition of our people is for them to decide. I considered setting forth my laws, my foundations upon which a just society could rise. But how soon before my words are twisted? My premises twisted and suborned? How soon before we, in our mortal natures, corrupt such laws, each time in answer to a wholly self-serving need?’
‘Have we seen the last of honourable men and women, Vatha Urusander?’
He straightened once more, but did not turn to face her. ‘The brutes are in ascension, Renarr. Against that, reason has no chance. You think the blood has ended? I fear it is only beginning.’
‘Then, sir, nothing has been solved.’
‘I am not the man to solve this,’ Urusander said. ‘But,’ he added after a moment, ‘you knew as much, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘What of my son?’
‘His judgement was in error.’
‘Error?’
‘A young man bereft of responsibility will yearn for it,’ she replied. ‘A young man will see the virtues of duty and honour as shining things, harsh and not subject to compromise. From such a position, he may well make mistakes, but they remain well meant.’
Still he would not face her. ‘Something in you is broken.’
‘Something in me is broken.’
‘My son killed the man you loved. He … misapprehended the situation.’
‘Yes.’
‘Yet, it seems, you have forgiven him.’
‘I wish,’ she said, ‘you had killed Hunn Raal. I wish you would stand behind your sense of justice.’
He grunted. ‘No exceptions, no compromises. Had I done what was right, each and every time …’
‘Instead, you did nothing, and now here you stand, Vatha Urusander. Father Light.’
‘Yes, my blinding gift.’ He was silent for a time, and then he said, ‘Have you seen it yet?’
‘What?’
‘My portrait. In the corridor on the approach to these chambers. Kadaspala did well, I think.’
‘I am afraid I did not notice it,’ Renarr said. ‘I give little regard to art, especially the compromised kind.’
‘Ah, then, are all portraits a compromise? In his sour moments, I think Kadaspala would agree with you.’ He leaned both hands on the windowsill. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it seems that I am not to be forgiven.’
‘Only your son.’
She saw him nod, and then he sighed and said, ‘Tell them, will you, of the likeness. So deftly, so honestly captured by that blind man’s hand.’
‘He was not blind when he painted you, I think.’
‘Wasn’t he? No, demonstrably not, as far as that goes.’
‘Vatha Urusander,’ said Renarr, ‘there will be justice.’
She saw him nod again, in the instant before her knife sank deep beneath his left shoulder blade, stilling the beat of his heart. Unblinking, she stepped back, leaving the dagger in his back. He tilted forward, forehead striking the leaded window, before his legs gave out and he fell to the floor at her feet.
Looking down, she saw the smile on his face. Peaceful, content, lifeless.
* * *
Nothing ends. There is matter and there is energy, and some believe these two the only things in existence. But a third exists. It infuses both matter and energy, and yet also stands alone. Let us call it potential. Only in the realm of potential can we act, to effect changes upon all existence. Indeed, it is the realm in which we live, we living things, in our stubborn battle with success and failure.
Yet the truth remains. Of the two, success and failure, only one ends the game.
Now, poet, I see the shock writ deep upon your lined face, and yet it must be clear to you, even in this moment of despair, that love was at the heart of this tale, and now we must once more settle back and take breath, steadying ourselves for what is still to come.
The warriors wallow in what they will, in all that they make of the world, which is little more than destruction and suffering. Recall the child with the stone, on her knees in the grass, a boy’s crushed face beneath her? Such is the glory of the belligerent.
Revel in it, if you’re of the mind to.
What comes next, my friend, is entirely another kind of glory.
What is the secret of sorcery? It is potential. Now then, on the dawn of magic’s burgeoning, let us see what they make of it.