Chapter 65. Womb of Evil

ou could break a few hearts with that face.”

Pendaran looked up from the washstand to see his father standing in the doorway of his bedroom.  Dashing as ever, Baron Caradec was clad in a stunning crushed velvet frock coat of wine red burgundy with gold trim.  A heavy medallion bearing the family crest of a mask and mirror rested upon his brocade encrusted breast.  It was odd gazing back into the past and seeing his father for what he was, a fallible human being.  It was the eve of the Wintersday Ball and the household was in fervor to arrive on time while appearing both relaxed and perfectly attired.

He had just finished shaving and the razor clattered out of his hand, startled as he was by his father’s sudden intrusion.  Immobilized by a strange mixture of shame and awe, he did not move as the man came forth to straighten Pendaran’s collar and pluck lint from the front of his black waistcoat.  He was oddly flattered to be the focus of his father’s attention for a change.

“You won’t upstage Owain this year, understand?”

“Yes, Father,” he swallowed, his ego immediately crushed.

“In fact, the less visible you make yourself, the happier I’ll be.”

Pendaran nodded, balling his fists but keeping his thoughts carefully concealed from the man.  He realized then that Owain had never been able to do that and it had infuriated both of them that the lay-about and drop-out had mastered it with ease.  Baron Caradec grasped Pendaran’s chin and turned his head, gazing upon his profile and smiling slyly.  He teased a few strands of hair loose and caused them to cascade untidily over Pendaran’s forehead.

“Women can’t resist a small blemish on a perfect rose,” his father laughed, “Don’t look so down, boy, if you play your cards right, Lady Winfried’s lasses will keep you busy this evening. You may learn a thing or two.”

“Father, I’m to be married,” he protested.

“I’ve never let that stop me,” he boasted and Pendaran felt a deep seated surge of hatred for the man.  Everyone knew Baron Caradec thought nothing of cheating on his wife.

“I love Clarissa,” he said quietly, angered that his father still grasped his chin, “And I love Teleri and Mabane and all the people who have come into my life since I rejected your path.”

“Love is a liability and an illusion. It has been the source of all of your suffering.”

“But also of joy.”

Baron Caradec frowned and released him.  Looking back he realized joy had long since drained from his father’s life.  At some point he had forgotten how to gaze upon the world with wonder or enjoy the simple delight of resting in the arms of his beloved.

“Once upon a time I might have walked your path, but no more.  You were granted everything a man could wish for, but you squandered it and spat in the god’s faces with your bitterness and lack of gratitude.  I pity you.”

“This one will not serve Abaddon.”

Pendaran opened his eyes to the shimmer of lavender flames suffusing the fleshy dimness of his prison.  Bathed in putrid slime, his body was drawn up in a ball, his knees pressed to his belly and his arms curled over them.  He could barely move within the confines of the strange womb-like structure and he had no memory of being placed there. Privation and pain were gone, but so too his freedom. Silvery filaments of pulsating membranes adhered to his face, giving him sustenance and air while robbing him of a voice.  He closed his eyes against the stinging fluid and thrust against the yielding warmth, succeeding only in sliding downward so that the curl of his back lay against the floor of the sack. 

“Then let him be absorbed, he is of no use to us.”

They all sounded the same to him, a strangely harmonic convergence of male and female voices as if they were composite beings.  They had been human once, of this he was certain, but they had lost their humanity and retained only the basest impulses.  They had put him here to transform him, to be reborn as one of them.  It was coming back to him now.

“Chosen One, serve the mightiest of the gods or dwell there until your being melds with the very substance of Torment.”

He wanted neither but he could not rail against them.  Say yes to their god and be drained of joy and free will, or stay imprisoned and be digested and eroded to nothing? Demon’s bargains; he knew them all too well.  Pendaran decided upon a middle path: delay.  All that remained to him was the hope that Zhou had been right, that help was coming.

“I must consider.  Your god does indeed sound mighty. Speak to me of his deeds.”

“Listen, then, for when we are done you shall love him as we do and we shall make you a Seer and you shall gaze upon the world with six eyes and know power greater than any you have known before.”

Pendaran closed his mind to the Margonite mesmer as the terrible creature warbled emphatically about its evil lord.  Subtly hidden from its probing, he locked away his hope and determination.   Silently he thanked Zhou.  One day he hoped to convey his gratitude in person.  He just had to hang on.