“He was within me even then, and I didn’t know it,” Gamarron said. “Like a disease carried latent in the blood. He looked through my eyes and led my hands. Fogged my mind and made me see what he wished me to see.” The words floated on the silent air, the crunch of his footsteps in the gravel sounding a melancholy counterpoint. He was confessing, she realized, telling the same story that she had just dreamed of him. “So even as my own hands reached out to murder my friends… and my son… I thought I saw some great demon king full of fire and death. In the end, I suppose there was a demon in my holdfast that night. Me.”
Nira listened in silence, not knowing if he was aware of her consciousness, fearing that he’d stop speaking if he knew. “I can tell now when he rides me, when he is looking out of my eyes or controlling my actions. I feel an impatience, this terrible urgency where I’m willing to burn the world down to get what I want. What he wants. I have many faults, but impatience has never been one of them, so it confused me when I could not control my impulses. Had I stopped to think it through – to really review my own thoughts and circumstances – perhaps I could have figured it out sooner. But instead, I willingly forgot the things I’d rather not remember and let him launch me out into the world. I wish I could burn that chamber to a cinder and collapse the entryway, but now his eye is on me fully and he moves me like a marionette. I suppose once I had seen my holdfast whole and unburnt, he thought I couldn’t be trusted to do his will on my own anymore. I can’t even kill myself, and now that I understand what I’ve done… I wish to.”
A year ago, Nira would have scoffed at the idea of something unseen moving a man like a puppet. But she’d used the Pure Light to make men see whatever she wished even as she delved into their pasts and extrapolated their future, and now she believed. A welter of confused emotion washed through her. All the offensive, brutal things Gamarron had done to her, to Kest, to all of them, began to make sense… but she couldn’t just let go of her anger in a heartbeat. And seeing as how the old bastard is still dragging me off to who knows where, maybe there are more pressing concerns than figuring out how I feel.
She cleared her throat to let him know she was awake. “Killing yourself wouldn’t help us.”
He showed no hint of surprise. He’d probably known it the second she came awake. “It might,” he disagreed. “It wouldn’t fix anything I’ve done, but it would keep me from causing more harm.” He didn’t slow down. Nira wondered where they were headed. The black sands had given way to bare black stone under Gamarron’s feet, and she couldn’t see much else.
“Can you put me down?” she asked. “I can’t feel my arms.”
“No,” the old man sighed. “And if you struggle, I’ll likely hurt you to make you stop. I’ve been trying to exert some shred of control, but I can’t even scratch my nose unless he wills it. Only my mouth belongs to me, and even then, speaking isn’t easy. I have to concentrate. But I wanted you to understand, and either he isn’t able to stop me or doesn’t care to.”
Nira grunted. “So we can have a nice little talk. Wouldn’t want to miss my last chat with grandpa.” She didn’t want to sound so bitter, but she couldn’t help herself. “You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?”
He was quiet for a long time.
“Aren’t you?” she repeated more loudly.
“It seems likely,” he sighed. “You know it is not what I would wish.”
“I don’t know what you wish,” she lied. “All I know is what you’re doing.”
He said nothing, and the sound of his footsteps was the only thing she heard for many minutes. She thought hard, trying to see some shred of hope in her circumstances, trying to imagine some way to escape, but every thread led directly back to He’s going to kill me. Tears pricked at her eyes, and she slumped against Gamarron’s back. She wished it were Kest beside her instead of Guyrin. Not because he could save her, but because she wanted to see him one more time. In a better world, I’d have told him how I felt, and we’d be happy. Instead, we get stuck with an abusive Weaver, an insane chaos wielder, and this guy. Whatever he is.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“We’re in the foothills of the Sawridge Mountains,” Gamarron replied. “My guess is that he’s taking us back to the Great Scar. It’s not far. Normally these hills are swarming with demons, but I haven’t seen a single one.”
“Why did you bring me?” she asked, trying not to sound plaintive.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” he mused. “Tychus said something before he… before I killed him.”
She stiffened. “You killed Tychus? Why?”
“Because he was standing in the way, perhaps? Or possibly because he was saying things that Bakal didn’t want spoken.”
She gritted her teeth, wishing she could pound him with her fists. “You know, it’s pretty convenient to have an invisible demon lord that you can blame for making you do bad stuff. How about this, instead? You’re sick in the
