Kest was the first to recover, as he’d known the boy would be. The Beast Rider sprang at him with a cry, shock and anger in his face as he reached for the girl who meant so much to him. Gamarron shifted forward and to the side as smoothly as he ever had, wishing he could stop, and his shoulder intercepted the underside of Kest’s chin as he surged forward. The burly young man stumbled to one side, and a flick of Gamarron’s foot sent him tumbling down the slope toward the silent holdfast.
Renna twitched forward, but when he looked at her, she froze. Bereft of her bag of Weaver tricks, the skinny, long-faced woman seemed more pathetic than threatening. She held his gaze and backed away carefully. “Why are you doing this?” she grated at him, teeth bared.
His limbs would not obey him, but Gamarron found that with great effort he could still speak. “I’m not,” he grunted. “I am… controlled.” His heart sank. He had carried the seeds of this betrayal from the beginning without even knowing it. Before he ever left his homeland, this doom was assured. And yet, he could not for the life of him think what he should have done differently. Some tragedies are inevitable, I suppose. The thought did not ease his conscience.
Nira was struggling hard as her need for air became desperate, scratching at his hands and arms.
“The Chaos Shard,” he whispered to her, hope sparking in his heart. Maybe she can stop me.
She reached for her pocket, but his traitor body shifted one hand away from her throat just long enough to pinch hard on the nerves of her wrist, and her arm went slack. His hand clamped back down on her throat again, and he despaired. She would black out in seconds, and with Guyrin incapacitated and Renna weaponless, no one would be able to oppose him. He tried again to let her go, but the force animating his body overrode his will, leaving him a mere observer of his own actions.
How have I come to this? When did it begin? Even as he asked himself the question, he knew. It was right before that fateful night when Bakal had attacked his holdfast and burnt everything down. How odd to have such a clear memory of a thing that obviously never happened. He could still see in his mind’s eye the terrified faces of his vassals, friends, and demon-hunting companions as they braved the wrath of the enormous, flame-eyed demon king. His own son had been one of the last to fall. The roaring monster had cut down all his noble leaders with bare hands, leaving scorched flesh and melted skin wherever he touched. When Gamarron himself had faced the beast, unreasoning fear overwhelmed him, and he had fled into the night, the shrieks of the demon’s grating in his ears, demanding that he bring the Chaos Shard.
The memories had a sheen to them, a false shimmer of unreality like a heat illusion on the sands. In all those memories, he was standing to the side, yet when he thought of the terrified eyes of his people, the surprised O’s of their mouths and the grim, determined set of their jaws, it was him they were looking at. The hands that struck them down did not sear and melt – they were human. My hands. Covered in gore, relentless, striking down the ones who had trusted him. There was no demon lord in my holdfast. It was me.
As he made the admission to himself, a jagged shard of memory broke free in his mind, skewering him with sorrow. He remembered piling the bodies in the lee of the meeting hall, sobbing uncontrollably as he laid his son amid the carnage. A strangled cry broke from his lips now, as the girl he wished he could claim as his own daughter dangled limp in his hands. He wished he could close his eyes to it, forget again the madness of what he had done – but now that he saw the truth, it seared through him like the Pure Light itself. Oh stars, oh gods, whatever there is – kill me! Let it not be me who did this!
Never before had Gamarron wanted to die. Always he had scorned the weak-minded fools who wished to end their lives. At this moment, though, looking over the homes of those he had murdered in madness, he would have gladly commanded his heart to stop, if only to end the pain of knowing that he had done this. But his heart no longer obeyed his commands, and he knew that some new atrocity was on the horizon. Why am I doing this?!
Nira dropped to the black sand, unconscious. Kest had scrambled back up onto sure footing and wasted no time throwing himself at Gamarron. “What are you doing?” the boy cried, seeing Nira at his feet. “Why, why?” He drove his fists into Gamarron’s ribs, putting all of his weight into the blows. “We followed you!”
Gamarron felt his ribs creak and fracture, but he could do nothing except embrace the pain as the smallest shred of what was his due. His arms windmilled from his center up and out, knocking the Beast Rider’s blows aside and putting him off-balance. Gamarron felt his right foot shift behind and his hips pivot as he brought both hands into a double-fisted blow that caught the younger man right beneath the apex of his ribs. The force of it lifted Kest off his feet and bowled him over backwards, his feet flying up and over until he landed facedown in the sand. He lay still.
“This is not what I want,” Gamarron sighed, the words fumbling their way forth from a face that did not seem to
