In the Heart of Darkness

'Yes,' she replied. And gave him a fresh sweet onion, as if it were another child.

'I was thinking of your face,' he said. 'And another's. The face of a young woman. Very beautiful, she was.'

His wife's lips tightened, slightly, but she never looked away.

'I have always told you I would not object to concubines, husband,' she said softly. 'I am not-'

'Hush, wife!' he commanded. Then, laughing: 'The farthest thing from my mind! Even if the woman in question was not the Emperor's own daughter-hardly a woman for a Rajput's concubine.'

His wife giggled. Sanga shook his head.

'I was not matching the two faces that way, dearest one. I was-ah! It is too difficult to explain!'

'The tickle, then!'

She was as good as her word. But, for all the gleeful torment, Sanga never did explain his thoughts to her. Not that night. Not for many nights to come.

They were too hard to explain. Too new. Too bound up with new secrets. Too twisted into the misty coils of the far distant future which he had glimpsed, in the chamber of Great Lady Holi and the being for which she was a mere vessel.

Eventually, his wife fell asleep. Sanga did not, for a time. He was kept awake by thoughts of lineage. Of the plain face of his wife; the lines of her face which he could see coiling through the faces of his children, alongside his own. Of the beautiful face of an emperor's daughter, destined to be the vessel for the perfect faces of future gods.

The lineage of his life. Life that was. Life that is. Life that will be.

He contemplated purity; contemplated pollution. Contemplated perfection. Contemplated onions.

Most of all, he pondered on illusion, and truth, and the strange way in which illusion can become truth.

And truth become illusion.

A Creation and Its Understanding

When the general finally left the Empress and walked out of the palace, the day was ending. Drawn by the sunset, Belisarius went to the balustrade overlooking the Bosporus. He leaned on the stone, admiring the view.

An urgent thought came from Aide.

There is more, now. More that I understand of the message from the Great Ones. I think. I am not sure.

Tell me.

They said to us-this also:

Find everything that made us.

Find passion in the virgin, purity in the whore;

Faith in the traitor, fate in the priest.

Find doubt in the prophet, decision in the slave;

Mercy in the killer, murder in the wife.

Look for wisdom in the young, and the suckling

need of age;

Look for truth in moving water; falsehood

in the stone.

See the enemy in the mirror, the friend

across the field.

Look for everything that made us.

On the ground where we were made.

Silence. Then:

Do you understand?

Belisarius smiled. Not crookedly, not at all.

Yes. Oh, yes.

I think I understand, too. I am not sure.

'Of course you understand,' murmured Belisarius. 'We made you. On that same ground.'

Silence. Then:

You promised.

There was no reproach in that thought, now. No longer. It was the contented sound of a child, nestling its head into a father's shoulder.

You promised.