Chapter 30. Regrets

abane’s feet idly kicked the legs of his chair as he tried once more to make a clean down stroke.  Blotches of ink stained the paper and his hands.  His ink-smeared face was earnest as he bit his lip to concentrate.  Pendaran rested on the couch nearby wrapped in blankets enchantments.  He could faintly hear Lemony chatting softly with Teleri and Uriel in the bedroom.  The monk was forced by necessity to stay close but the women had kindly withdrawn to give Pendaran and Mabane some quiet time for lessons. 

From this vantage, he was able to see over the boy’s shoulder as he scrawled on the angled surface of the little desk.  Mabane’s desire to please and resulting inability to relax made him press too hard on the quill.  But he was calm now, relaxing when he realized Pendaran was not mad at him for not doing it perfectly.

“That one looks much better,” he offered for Mabane had finally managed to make one stroke without burrs or splotches.  Considering the boy had never written a single letter in his life, he was doing well.  It did not help matters that Pendaran had to trim the quills himself and he was more than a little rusty at the task.  Canthans preferred brushes and their beautiful flowing characters required it.  Tyrian letter forms, however, became murky without quills.  Finding the appropriate quill feathers had required several trips on his behalf by the servants and some of their muddled attempts had proved quite amusing as he was now in possession of a variety of exotic and brightly colored plumes.  In a moment of playful hassling, he and Mabane had ended up the brightest of them threaded in their hair and he imagined he looked a little ridiculous at the moment.  Peacock plumes now wavered humorously above the boy’s head as he worked.  But he was relaxed and having fun so Pendaran indulged him and did not remove the scarlet and blue macaw feathers Mabane had stuck behind his ears.

Sensing the boy’s growing distraction, he decided it was time to take a break.  They had already spent three hours of the morning engaged in reading and phonetics.  Mabane was a quick study and had already grasped the concept that letters represented sounds.  He loved to listen to Pendaran read to him while his finger traced each spoken word on the page.  Mabane also liked to choose the book and chapter and was currently going through a ten year old fascination with gore and violence.  Today they had learned about Elonian harpies and Tyrian minotaurs and rather more about their feeding habits than Pendaran cared to know.

“Let’s clean up and get ready for supper.  We’ll do some more tomorrow.”

The boy should have started learning these things earlier.  No doubt his father would have been his first teacher as had been the case for Pendaran.  His thoughts wandered to Owain.  Twelve years had passed.  With the Searing and all that had happened after that, Pendaran had little time to spare for old hurts when so many new ones had come his way.

And it was complicated pain of a kind that could only come from blood.  His love for his elder brother was mingled with familial regret, sweetness mingled with bitterness.  Pendaran had not been the favorite child.  Given his druthers he would have been an actor and musician for he had no abiding love of magic for its own sake.  He had been a lazy and recalcitrant child, spending more time wandering in the woods around the estate than bent before a desk in study.  He had mastered his father’s legerdemain quickly, enjoying the flashy tricks because they impressed girls and made him welcome almost anywhere.  Even in his darkest hours after the Searing a few minutes of coin tricks could win him a bite of bread.  When it came to higher magic, however, Pendaran had resisted and his father accused him of being a bastard or a throw back to an early ranger ancestor that had polluted the Caradec bloodline.  It had been difficult to grow in his talented brother’s shadow.  Owain was destined to become Baron Caradec and Pendaran the eccentric performer, the pair of them duplicating the trajectory of their father and uncle.

“Are you sad, Master?” Mabane asked as he finished rinsing the ink off the quill in a clay jar of water.

“Yes, I am a little.”

He could not help thinking that his parents had wished Pendaran had died in Owain’s place.  Owain was their shining star, dutiful and talented.  Fate and two years difference had determined that one would burn brightly and die young while the other would sink to the depths of depravity and survive.  How ironic that Pendaran was the last surviving Caradec – the very one considered least suitable for the job.

Owain had died in the first flush of adulthood.  In retrospect, he was too young to be thrust into battle, too green to face the might of trained warriors.  And it had been a cruel blow to his parents to have no more than his severed head delivered back to them.  The Orrians burned the corpses of the defeated to eliminate evidence of torture or mutilation.  Everyone knew that.

“I wish I could make you happy,” Mabane said sweetly.

Pendaran felt a surge of grief at those words, certain he had said the very same to his own parents at some point.

“You may grow up to become a powerful mesmer, but still you will never have the power to make others happy.  All you can do is find happiness for yourself and hope your joy ignites happiness others.”

“Like a cold?”

Pendaran chuckled.

“Yes, my son, in a manner of speaking.”

Mabane giggled, reassured by Pendaran’s laughter as he carefully put the quill back in the little wooden box with the others.  At some point, one of the servants had the presence of mind to leave a fresh ewer of water and a basin on the table beside the little writing desk so that Mabane could wash the ink from his hands and face.  The boy did not need prompting and was now attempting to get the sepia off of his skin.

“Are there other children here for you to play with, Mabane?”

“Yes.  Shen and Peng, but I don’t understand them.  They talk weird.”

Pendaran grinned.

“I’m glad.  Perhaps they can teach you some Canthan and then you’ll know something I don’t.”

Mabane seemed intrigued by this notion.

“You don’t know Canthan, Master?”

“There are a lot of things I don’t know, Mabane.  I think I will learn it, though, now that I’m going to live here.”

“You’re not going home?” he asked, a faint note of disappointment in his voice.  He dried his hands and dropped down on the couch beside Pendaran, his pale eyes searching his face.

“This is my home, now.  I love Tyria, but it is no longer a place where I can live in peace.”

“Is that why you were hurt?”

Pendaran wondered what, if anything, Mabane had been told about the attempt on his life.

“Yes.  It is the price I pay for being a scoundrel in the past.  I think you should change out of that ink splattered shirt and get ready for supper now.  And comb your hair.”

“Yes, Master.”

Mabane obediently rose and went to his bedroom while Pendaran seized the opportunity to pluck the feathers from his hair and restore his normal decorum.  He had no sooner done so when Zhou rapped on the door.  They had not spoken since the afternoon before and Pendaran was not eager to speak to him now.   He was conflicted and he had not yet sorted out how he felt about this new development.

“Come,” he called, not bothering to rise from the couch despite the close proximity of his cane and the fact that he had been sitting all morning and needed to move around now that his leg was asleep.

Zhou looked grim and tired when he entered, as usual clad in long robes of some dark or drab color.  Today it was charcoal gray, but no sash, and he moved stiffly as if he had been injured.

“I have nothing to say to you,” Pendaran said.  In his mind, there were no words that could encompass the betrayal, grief and disappointment this revelation had sparked.

“And I have much to say to you,” Zhou replied, sitting in the cushioned chair at Pendaran’s right.

“What if I don’t want to hear it? You spent at least a month grilling me for lying, and now I find out you’ve been lying to me?  Did you think I would never find out?”

“I knew we would eventually have this discussion.  It is natural that you would begin to wonder why I chose you as my student, particularly as you discovered what it is to become a teacher and a wizard.”

Pendaran grew angry as he observed the man’s inscrutable face, so composed and superior.  Is that what he had been like on the battle field?  Is that what Owain had seen in his last moments?

“I am capable of feeling pain, Pendaran. I believe your anger is justified, as well as your grief.  However, I have spent my tears for that phase of my existence, now I must make amends.  I will always regret who I was, just as you have regrets about your past.”

“So you saved me to save yourself, is that it?”

“Is not every act fundamentally selfish?  Do you not gain some pleasure or satisfaction by helping Mabane?  Yes, I saved you for selfish reasons, but I also care about you, Pendaran, you are as a son and brother to me.”

“My brother is dead thanks to you.”

“Your brother and I were engaged in war.  I never hated him, I never wished for his demise.  He challenged me in combat and I defeated him.”

“He was seventeen.  He never stood a chance.”

“I know, but neither could I lie down and let him kill me.  He did not deserve to die so young.  No one does.”

“What about your alleged feats on the battlefield?  Butcher of Orr?  What in the name of the gods were you doing in that cesspit?”

“I cannot to justify my actions.  Yes, I did present a very disturbing appearance in battle.  Fear was my primary tool and my fame only bolstered it.  I did wear the blood of my foes on my mask. I lusted unnaturally for the deaths of my opponents.  It was what I had been trained to do.  I knew no other path.  I served Orr because they flattered my prowess and training in ways that Kryta and Tyria would not.”

“Your answers do not satisfy me.”

“What answer will you give Mabane when he asks you the reason for your path of woe?  I take no pride in what I did, Pendaran.  Had I known where it would lead, I would never have set foot upon that journey.  Do you not feel that way about your own course?”

“But I never killed anyone who did not first attempt to harm me.”

“I never killed outside of combat.  Within the sphere of battle I was ruthless, but I did so with honor.”

“You clearly enjoyed it, as well.”

“Yes, I did.  I will always hate that part of me.  It led me to unconscionable acts of depravity and horror.  It doomed me, Pendaran.”

Pendaran bit back an angry retort upon feeling the keenness of Zhou’s grief and despair.  His regret was genuine, but there was something else.

“What do you mean?”

“I am to become an Envoy when I die,” Zhou replied, “a ferryman for the souls of the blessed.  I will glimpse paradise but never enter.  I will lose Shikai forever.”

“But you are not evil.”

“The gods do not honor those who kill for pleasure, it flies in the face of their works.  Life is a manifestation of their love and to delight in its destruction is the greatest of sins.”

“But surely you can be redeemed?”

“It is the work of my lifetime, yes.  I gave myself to Master Dojin, for he was a good man with vision, compassionate and respected.  I made myself a tool for his good works and turned my skills toward his preservation.  But I failed in the end, did I not?”

“You held off six assassins, Zhou, and killed two of them.”

“But the other four succeeded.”

Pendaran could not maintain his anger against the man.  He had grown to love him and in the face of his palpable anguish, he could feel nothing but compassion for him.

“I made a pilgrimage to an old priestess of Dwayna gifted with true sight many years ago.  She dwelt in Serenity Temple and it was a short journey from Nolani where my sister and master were staying.  She told me that to overcome my sins, I must repay in kind.  I would count the lives that I had stolen without honor and restore a parent or sibling for every one.  After that trip, Dojin helped me create the orphanage.

“But there was one other thing she said I must do before I cross the mists to receive judgment.  Find the brother of a man I had slain, she told me, and become that man’s brother in all but blood.  The night you cut yourself to release your pain, I recognized Owain in you.  That is why I made you my student, Pendaran.  That is why I initiated you and we will always be bound because of it.

“And yes, I was selfish, but that does not change the fact that I love you as a brother.  Nothing will change that, not time nor distance nor death.”

Pendaran bit his lip against unwelcome tears, looking away from Zhou’s gentle face in a failed attempt to maintain his anger and composure.

“I am learning that not all things that hurt us are to be avoided,” Zhou said quietly, “Grief honors what is precious.  If not for the jewel that led you to darkness, you would not have Teleri or Mabane at your side and I would never have met you.  I am sorry for my part in your pain, Brother, but I am grateful that I was accorded the honor of mending some measure of it.  And if this is too much to bear, then I will free you from our bond.  You never asked me to be your master and thus I can dissolve it at any time and set you free.”

“No, I want you to teach me, Zhou.”

“But the way is harsh and you will share in my trials and tribulations.”

“I want you to teach me, Zhou,” Pendaran said quietly.

“Please, Pen, do not ask me again without thinking this through.  You are distraught. You do not know what you are doing.”

“But you have to refuse me,” Pendaran replied through his tears, “Those are the rules, I’ve discovered.  And you have to mean them.”

Zhou was weeping now, his hands trembling upon his lap.

“I want you to teach me and now you can’t say no,” Pendaran said, “and you can’t dissolve it, either.”

“Then I am your master and I must teach you all that I know.”

“I forgive you, and you will not become an Envoy if I have anything to say about it.”