“This is probably not the best place to discuss this, Rik,” she said. He knew this but the words had forced themselves out anyway. Some compulsion lay on him, some force within his mind.
“I have killed a lot of people,” he said. “I have a lot of strange dreams.”
She cocked her head to one side, concerned. “Go on.”
He tried to approach what was troubling him obliquely, like a hunter moving downwind of a deer. He was not really sure what it was, but he felt its presence as he could sense the presence of an animal in a bush, by the rustling of that which it displaced.
“When I was a soldier it was either me or them. The people I killed I mean. Most of the fights since then have been the same way. I thought about these things, but I never really thought about them, if you know what I mean?”
“No,” she said. He sighed and looked for another approach.
“When I was a kid, the Temple priests told me about heaven and hell. I sort of believed them. As I got older I stopped believing. One priest tells you that you go to hell if you murder someone, but another says it’s all right if you do it in the service of Queen and country. Some men can hold both those thoughts in their mind and believe both. I couldn’t — so one of them had to go.”
“I think I follow you now.”
“In the past few months, it all has become much more complicated. You don’t seem to take the Faith very seriously.”
“It’s hard to do so when you’ve watched it being constructed with your own eyes, Rik.”
“See, you say things like that. If I said them, I could be put to death for it. You say it like it’s just the simple truth.”
“The truth is rarely simple.”
“And then you say things like that. And you have talked to Angels.”
“And your point is?”
“My point is that I don’t know what’s happening anymore, either inside my head or outside it. I still hear voices sometimes, telling me to feed. I can remember what it was like to have the power in me, to be able to work magic so easily that it was like breathing. God help me, there are times when I want that again, more than anything in the world. And there are times I think I will be damned for it. That I am already damned for it.”
“I understand what you mean about wanting to work magic, Rik. I really do. On Al’Terra, it was like that for me, always, even from my earliest youth. I was the most gifted sorcerer at the Mazarian Academy. In my time I created things- towers, airships, spells- that are unthinkable in this world. I was constantly surrounded by magical energy that I could draw on in thousands of different ways. Being here is like being a fish on dry land. I can remember what it was like to have power, Rik, the power to destroy armies, to shatter kingdoms, to quiet earthquakes with words, to build cities by force of will.”
As she spoke her face was transformed, as if the clouds had parted and a ray of sunlight focused on her face. She raised a hand to her cheek and brushed away a strand of her long hair. “I can’t do that anymore, and I never will be able to, and it is like the loss of a limb. Worse, it is like the loss of all my limbs and going blind and deaf at the same time and remembering what it was like to be otherwise.”
“Would you go back? To Al’Terra. If you could?”
“There are times when I think that I would, Rik, even though it would mean my death or worse at the hands of the Princes of Shadow.”
“You knew them, didn’t you? You met them.”
“You are in a morbid mood today.”
“Apparently.”
“And you think this is an appropriate conversation to be having with an Inquisitor within hailing distance?” She sounded more amused than concerned, but there was something shifty and a little trapped about her eyes that worried him.
“Appropriate or not, it’s the one we are having.”
“Yes, I knew them. I went to school with some of them, studied sorcery alongside them.”
He felt like he was standing on the edge of some vast abyss. He had to restrain the urge to reach out and touch her, to satisfy himself that she was real. Today, for the first time in a long time, he saw her as someone who had stepped out of a legend. She had known saints and angels and devils. She had talked to them. And they were just like her. He had never been more aware of the distance that separated them, in time and space and understanding. He was sorry that he had started this conversation, and repelled and fascinated all at once.
“What were they like?”
“They were like you or me, at least to begin with.” He considered that. Scripture said they were incarnate devils, the very personification of evil. Asea’s manner said something quite different.
“What changed them?”
“I don’t know. I wish I did. We walked along the same road for a very long way, and then they chose a different fork in the path.”
“Did they really make a pact with the Shadow, and sell their souls to it for power?”
“There are times when I am not even sure there is a Shadow, Rik. Not in the sense that you have been taught.”
“The priests always used to tell us that was one of the snares the Shadow used to trap our souls.”
“And maybe they are right. Who can tell? I am not one of the Prophets. God does not talk to me. She never did.” He could see that her gaze was turning inward, as it often did, as she retreated from the prospect of answering his questions. He wanted answers desperately, and he pushed on.
“So you don’t think they made a pact with the Shadow?”
“Al’Terra was not the way the priests taught you it was, Rik. This I know. I was there. For reasons of politics, the Temple tells humans things that make them easier to control. But whatever else they were, the Princes of Shadow were real, and they were wicked, and I do not think it really matters whether they made a pact with the Shadow of God or not. The end result was the same.”
“And yet you say you were once like them, or they were once like you — what changed them?”
She looked at him long and hard. He said, “You told me never to apologise for asking questions. I am merely taking you at your word.”
“There are questions and there are questions, Rik, and there are ways of putting those questions that make them easier or harder to answer. There are ways of making questions weapons as well.”
“I did not mean them so.”
“I know that, but the effect may be the same whether you mean them or not. There are times when I ask myself what the difference was between myself and the Princes of Shadow, and there are times when I do not like the answer.”
“You are not like them. You are not some Lord of Darkness.”
“And you think that is what they are?”
“That is what I have always been told. If you know differently, I will listen.”
“Rik, you will get me burned for heresy yet. I could almost believe Inquisitor Joran put you up to this.” She said it as a joke but for a moment he could see her taking the idea seriously. She waited as if she expected him to say something. There was nothing he could say that would make any difference so he remained silent.
“The Princes of Shadow were like your father, Rik. They were eaters of souls. They devoured their fellow Terrarchs because they needed the power to work magic, and the energy that made magic possible was going away.”
She had alluded to this before but had never seemed to willing to go into details. “So the magic was fading before ever you came to Gaeia.”
She nodded. “In truth I hoped when we came through the Eye of the Sun that we might find the magic once again, a new world with all its magical potential untapped, but it was not so. There was less magic here than on Al’Terra.”
“Why did the magic go away?”
“No one really knows, Rik. My theory is that we simply used it up. Imagine a great forest. Woodcutters come and cut down the trees, to build their houses, to make their fires. It takes trees decades to grow, but more and more people come and build more and more houses. Eventually the forest is gone. Perhaps it was that way, or
