Tool took a step forward. ‘ Why? ’
‘The rage burns bright within you, doesn’t it?’
‘Abyss take it-I am done with fighting! I am done with all of it!’
‘On my tongue, Onos Toolan, is the taste of Imass blood.’
‘You want me to fight you? I will-do you imagine your puny arrows can take down an Imass? I have snapped the neck of a bull ranag. I have been gored. Mauled by an okral. When my kind hunt, we bring down our quarry with our own hands, and that triumph is purchased in broken bones and pain.’
A second arrow thudded into the ground.
‘Toc-why are you doing this?’
‘You must not pass.’
‘I–I gifted you with an Imass name. Did you not realize the measure of that honour? Did you not know that no other of your kind has ever been given such a thing? I called you friend. When you died, I wept .’
‘I see you now, in flesh, all that once rode the bone.’
‘You have seen this before, Toc the Younger.’
‘I do not-’
‘You did not recognize me. Outside the walls of Black Coral. I found you, but even your face was not your own. We were changed, the both of us. Could I go back…’ He faltered, and then continued, ‘Could I go back, I would not have let you pass me by. I would have made you realize.’
‘It does not matter.’
Something broke inside Onos Toolan. He looked away. ‘No, perhaps it doesn’t.’
‘On the Awl’dan plain, you saw me fall.’
Tool staggered back as if struck a blow. ‘I did not know-’
‘Nor me, Tool. And so truths come round, full circle, with all the elegance of a curse. I did not know you outside Black Coral. You did not know me on the plain. Fates have a way of… of fitting together .’ Toc paused, and then hissed a bitter laugh. ‘And do you recall when we met at the foot of Morn? Look upon us now. I am the withered corpse, and you-’ He seemed to tremble, as if struck an invisible blow, and then recovered. ‘On the plain, Onos Toolan. What did I give my life for? Do you recall?’
The bitterness in Tool’s mouth was unbearable. He wanted to shriek, he wanted to tear out his own eyes. ‘ The lives of children. ’
‘Can you do the same?’
Deeper than any arrows, Toc struck with his terrible words. ‘You know I cannot,’ Tool said in a rasp.
‘You will not, you mean.’
‘ They are not my children! ’
‘You have found the rage of the Imass-the rage they escaped, Tool, with the Ritual. You have seen the truth of other pasts. And now you would flee-flee it all. Do you really believe, Onos Toolan, that you will find peace? Peace in self-deception? This world behind me, the one you so seek, you will infect with the lies you tell yourself. Every child’s laugh will sound hollow, and the look in every beast’s eye will tell you they see you truly.’
The third arrow struck his left shoulder, spun him round but did not knock him down. Righting himself, Tool reached to grip the shaft. He snapped it and drew out the fletched end. Behind him, the flint point and a hand’s-width of shaft fell to the ground. ‘What-what do you want of me?’
‘You must not pass.’
‘ What do you want? ’
‘I want nothing, Tool. I want nothing .’ And he nocked another arrow.
‘Then kill me.’
‘We’re dead,’ Toc said. ‘That I cannot do. But I can stop you. Turn round, Onos Toolan. Go back.’
‘To what?’
Toc the Younger hesitated, as if uncertain for the first time in this brutal meeting. ‘We are guilty,’ he said slowly, ‘of so many pasts. Will we ever be made to answer for any of them? I wait, you see, for the fates to fit together. I wait for the poisonous beauty.’
‘You want me to forgive you-your kind, Toc the Younger?’
‘Once, in the city of Mott, I wandered into a market and found myself in front of row upon row of squall apes, the swamp dwellers. I looked into their eyes, Tool, and I saw their suffering, their longing, their terrible crime of living. And for all that, I knew that they were simply not intelligent enough. To refuse forgiveness. You Imass, you are. So. Do not forgive us. Never forgive us!’
‘Am I to be the weapon of your self-hatred?’
‘I wish I knew.’
In those four words, Tool heard his friend, a man trapped, struggling to recall himself.
Toc resumed. ‘After the Ritual, well, you chose the wrong enemy for your endless war of vengeance. It would have been more just, don’t you think, to proclaim a war against us humans. Perhaps, one day, Silverfox will come to realize that, and choose for her undead armies a new enemy.’ He then shrugged. ‘If I believed in justice, that is… if I imagined that she was capable of seeing clearly enough. That you and you alone, T’lan Imass, are in the position to take on the necessary act of retribution-for those squall apes, for all the so-called lesser creatures that have fallen and ever fall to our slick desires.’
