I too seek power in my words.
Have I learned from them? This is how it seems. Is this how it is?
Stragglers. The sickened, the weakened, and then she was past them all, standing alone on the glass plain. The sun made the world white, bitter with purity. This was the perfection so cherished by the Quitters. But it was not the Quitters who cut down our world. They only came in answer to the death of our gods-our faith-when the rains stopped, when the last green withered and died. They came in answer to our prayers. Save us! Save us from ourselves!
Emerging from the heat shimmer, four figures, fast closing. Like wind-rocked puppets, every limb snapped back until broken, wheeling loose, and death surrounded them in whirlwinds. Monstrous, clambering out of her memories. Swirls of power-she saw mouths open-
‘ YIELD! ’
The command rushed through Badalle, hammered children to the ground behind her. Voices crying out, helpless with dread. She felt it rage against her will, weakening her knees. She felt a snap, as if a tether had broken, and all at once she lifted free-she saw the ribby snake, the sinuous length stretched out as if in yearning. But, segment by segment, it writhed in pain.
As that command thundered from bone to bone, Badalle found her voice. Power in the word, but I can answer it.
‘-to the assault of wonder
Humility takes you in hand-’
She spun back down to lock herself behind her own eyes. She saw energies whirl away, ignite in flashes.
‘ HALT! ’
Cracking like a fist. Lips split, blood threading down. Badalle spat, pushed forward. One step, only one.
‘-in softest silence
Enfold the creeping doubt-’
She saw her words strike them. Stagger them. Almost close enough, at last, to see their ravaged faces, the disbelief, the bafflement and growing distress. The indignation. And yes, that she understood. Games of meaning in evasion. Deceit of intent in sleight of hand.
Badalle took another step.
‘Yield all these destinations
Unbidden jostle to your bones
Halt in the shadow thrown
Beneath the yoke of dismay-’
She felt fire in her limbs, saw blinding incandescence erupt from her hands. Truth was such a rare weapon, and all the more deadly for it.
‘Do not give me your words!
They are dead with the squalor
Of your empty virtues
YIELD to your own lies!
HALT in the breathless moment
Your lungs scream
And silence answers
Your heart drums
Brittle surfaces
BLEED!’
They staggered back as if blinded. Blue fluids spurted from ruptured joints, gushed down from gaping mouths. Agony twisted their angled faces. One fell, thrashing, kicking on the ground. Another, a woman closer to Badalle than the others, dropped down on to her knees, and their impact with the crystalline ground was marked by two bursts of bluish blood-the Quitter shrieked. The remaining two, a man and a woman, reeling as if buffeted by invisible fists, had begun retreating-stumbling, half-running.
The fires within Badalle flared, and then died.
The Quitters deserved worse-but she did not have it in her to deliver such hard punishment. They had given her but two words. Not enough. Two words. Obedience to the privilege of dying. Accept your fate. But… we will not. We refuse. We have been refusing things for a long time, now. We are believers in refusal.
They will not come close now. Not for a long time. Maybe, for these ones, never again. I have hurt them. I took their words and made them my own. I made the power turn in their hands and cut them. It will have to do.
She turned round. The ribby snake had begun moving again, strangely mindless, as if beaten by drovers, senseless as a herd of cattle crossing a… a river? But, when have I seen a river?
She blinked. Licked salty blood from her lips. Flies danced.
The city awaited them.
‘It is what we can bear,’ she whispered. ‘But there is more to life than suffering.’
Now we must find it.
Darkness passed, and yet it remained. A splinter pure, promising annihilation. Onos T’oolan could sense it, somewhere ahead, a flickering, wavering presence. His stride, unbroken for so long, now faltered. The bitter rage within him seemed to stagger, sapped of all strength. Depression rose like flood waters, engulfing all sense of purpose. The tip of his sword bit the ground.
Vengeance meant nothing, even when the impulse was all-consuming. It was a path that, once started upon, could conceivably stretch on for ever. The culpable could stand in a line reaching past the horizon. An avenger’s march was endless. So it had been with the vengeance sought against the Jaghut, and Onos T’oolan had never been blind to the futility of that. Was he nothing but an automaton, stung into motion that would never slow in step?
