She ran her tongue along the front of her upper teeth. Of all the times for him to be drunk…
“The Gia'3' rannts have left us,” he said, feigning heartbreak. “The grand experiment is over. They’ve gone to seek blue-skinned wives and have cold-blooded little babies.”
“Listen to me,” she said, leaning closer to him. She closed the booth’s stained curtain so the owner and his meager clientele would stop staring. “I know how you used my father for your own selfish ends. I know how you betrayed Indreyah, and how it gained you nothing. I know you have tried to use me as you used Vod. But I do not condemn you for any of this.”
“What else do you know, child?” he asked, pouring dark wine into his cup.
“I suspect…” she said, “that it was you who stole the baby Vod from his parents before the fall of Old Udurum. You who gave him to that human couple to raise.”
Fellow smiled. “You have learned a few things from me… a few things only. Did I not ask you to stay and learn more? Did I not?”
“Focus,” she told him, taking the goblet from his hand. He watched it move down the table but made no attempt to grab for it. “Listen to me. Do you know there is a war brewing? Vireon, Andoses, and three other Princes are making an alliance with Mumbaza as we speak. My mother plans to lead her legions to join Dairon’s. They will march to Shar Dni, and together they will invade Khyrei. They even plot a rebellion in Yaskatha.”
Fellow nodded and sighed. “War is a season like any other… a sad season, yes, but it has its day…”
“Tell me what you know of this Ianthe the Claw, and this Elhathym who commands the dead.”
His wrinkled eyes narrowed, looking beyond the walls of the tavern. “She is old…” he said. “Old as I am… and she remembers. He is… older than either of us.” Then his voice fell to a gentle whisper. “He has come back from the void… taken a man’s form again… after millennia. She brought him back.”
“They are of the Old Breed,” Sharadza said. “I knew it.”
“More fearsome than their considerable legions is their sorcery,” he said. “Men cannot stand against such dark powers. They have traveled the Outer Worlds… breached the realms of Living and Dead… and the elements are their playthings. The Dwellers in Shadow serve them – ghosts, demons, wraiths… and worse things.”
“You made my father into the Giant-King,” she said. “You shaped his life so that he would be both Man and Giant. You tried to stop Ianthe, didn’t you? You tried to balance the world by giving it Vod of the Storms. And for a while it worked…”
He stared into her face, grinning without pleasure. “Nothing lasts, child. Not in this world.”
“What about you? You have lasted. You wanted Vod to do what you feared to. Now you have a second chance. Come with me. Help me destroy her. And him… both of them. Before it’s too late.”
His face soured. “It is already too late,” he said. “You have seen the patterns. The patterns never change. Though I tried and tried… anm back. they never change.”
“What do you mean? You have re-shaped the world again and again. You have changed the patterns.”
“No,” he said. “I’ve only complicated them. Added a tiny flourish here or there. The river flows on. I stand on the shore making ripples with stones.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Give me that wine,” he said. “I’ll show you.”
Reluctantly she handed him the full goblet. He poured half its contents onto the oaken table. It spread into a dark puddle, the color of half-dried blood. He stirred it with his forefinger.
“Look…” he said, his eyes growing large.
She stared at the puddle. The light of the table’s candle flickered there, danced, and begain to swirl. The reflected flame broke into a tiny flood of colors, and visions danced on the surface of the wine.
An ancient plain, dotted with the raging fires of war. Shaggy men rush upon each other with stone axes, clubs, and their own gnashing fangs. Blood spills like rain across the blackened earth. Women flee from savage oppressors, brought down like forest deer. Children perish like blossoms trampled beneath the feet of red-handed primitives. Along the horizon, strange piles of stone rise toward the moon, the early temples of some dark God.
The scene shifts to another plain, outside a walled city. Men with spears, swords, and axes, armored in leather and bone, tear each other to bits. Torn standards droop from poles driven deep into the ground. The gates of the city collapse inward and the blood-mad conquerors rush inside, spilling the guts of defenders, pulling women and children from stone huts and setting fire to gardens. The red sky mirrors the flames devouring the streets, and piles of severed heads rise in the central plaza.
The colors diverge, cascade, and blend into a new dream. Two armies clash along a river; it runs red with their blood. The men ride horses now, and wrap their bodies in plates of bronze, fantastic helms perched on their heads. They impale one another, hack off limbs, open bellies and split skulls like melons. Their flags whip furiously in the wind, and their generals watch from distant hills, ordering more men to their deaths. A village burns nearby, scattered with blackened corpses. Some are tiny.
Flames consume the vision, giving birth to a new one. A tall proud city built of marble, jade, and crystal. Along the perfection of its streets, red war flows like a tide of disease, invaders cutting down the white-robed citizens and once more bringing the scourge of fire. Groves of divine beauty become the killing grounds of a wizened people; children twitch on the end of lances; warriors toss women between them like blood-soaked trophies of silk and skin; a vast library holding the knowledge and histories of eons goes up in flames while the gauntlets of men rip the living hearts from their enemies.
“Enough!” Sharadza cried out. “Stop it!”
Iardu wiped away the wine with the edge of his sleeve, and the vision with it.
Tears ran along her numb cheeks, and she looked at him stunned and wordless.
“You see?” he said.
“Why did you show me those horrors?” She wiped at her eyes. She was tired of weeping.
“Sharadza, dear girl… I have spent thousands of years trying to cure men of this disease that afflicts them. This thing they call war. They worship it even above their own gods. It dwells within them, girl. It is part of their inherent nature. I have educated them… inspired them… terrified them. I have re-shaped their kingdoms and their religions. I have even re-shaped their bodies into a multitude of diverse forms. Still this pattern emerges. It is who they are.”
“I don’t believe it,” she said.
“Even the blue-skinned Udvorg in their isolated kingdom engage in bloody tribal feuds. War is a part of human nature – they are made to slaughter themselves periodically. I no longer have any hope that I can prevent it. Or that I even should.”
“When did you give up, Iardu? When did you stop trying to re-shape the world? You made Vod. You shaped him so he could build the City of Men and Giants.”
“I made giants… out of men long, long ago.”
“And later you re-united them. You are still shaping the world. You re-shaped me.”
He grunted. “You are not the world, Sharadza. You are only one lovely girl.”
“ The part is the whole,” she reminded him. “ There can be no separation.”
Now he smiled at her, his eyes red and swollen. His head fell back against the booth wall.
“How can you be so blind to your own teachings?” she said. “When you change one person… one being… one life, you change everything.”
“And nothing.”
“ All is One… There can be no distinctions. Success and failure are illusions. You taught me to reject duality. Whatever victories or defeats you have endured in the past do not matter. The only question before you now is, will you help me?”
He stared at her, a new expression in his old man’s face. Or maybe one she had simply never noticed before. Was it… love?
He sighed and drank the last of his wine in three large gulps.
Now Fellow was gone and Iardu sat across the table. His face looked far younger than Fellow’s, and his eyes were flares of prismatic light, unable to settle on a single color. His pointed beard was short and silver-gray, as was his mustache. A robe of orange-red silk hung upon his narrow frame, and on his chest a living blue flame danced without heat, strung like a burning sapphire from a silver neck-chain. He was handsome in an ageless way, his gold-brown skin inhumanly smooth. Rings of ruby and emerald lined his fingers; his nails shined white as pearls. His
