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waken. I need you.”
Perfume curled into his lungs and with each breath there was memory. The oily coolness of mink was beneath his cheek. Its leathery odor mingled with rose attar and musk. The weight of blankets lay over him and the familiar smoothness of a linen sheet was drawn over his shoulder as he lay curled on his side. The sticky warmth of flesh on flesh was pressed against his back and an arm was curled around his ribs.
Revolted, his first instinct was to leap out of bed until he remembered that it was worse if she were awake. It was better to lie still and keep quiet, let her awaken in her own time and leave him in peace. The best he could hope for was that she would punish him with her absence.
“Quite a fall from grace,” came Haodrim’s voice. Pendaran did not reply, only gazed toward the ruddy light issuing through the cracked stained glass window. Tattered opulence was strewn around the chamber. Some were heirlooms belonging to Lady Miruene but others were things she had scrounged from the rubble, packrat and grave robber that she was. She liked to jest that she had wrested him from the wreckage as well and he was another of her gaudy jewels.
They dwelt now in a place that had once been a shrine to Lyssa. Miruene found it amusing to have the shattered altar cast out and replaced with a salvaged four poster bed. It was the place of Lyssa’s highest rites, she had reasoned, so he could look upon it as an act of worship when he labored there. Except that Pendaran hated her and he was already humiliated enough without having to admit that he had failed at the academy and pretty much the rest of life now that he thought about it.
Outside, the blasted landscape moldered beneath a deceptively serene blanket of snow like a corpse guiltily shoved in a shallow grave. Ruined fingers of masonry pointed accusingly at the sky that had laid them low. Without food and shelter he would last perhaps a day out there. And that was only if he was not captured by marauding Charr or Grawl first. Cowardice and need bound him to Miruene. He was a wastrel and a buffoon. This was the best he could hope for.
“Shall I wake her as well?” Haodrim asked cruelly.
“I don’t care,” Pendaran replied coldly, “This is the past. I am not a frightened young man any more.”
Oddly, he was comforted by that. He realized how easily he could dispatch Lady Miruene were they to meet now. No one would ever use him like that again.
“Revenge appears to be a recurring theme,” Haodrim said, stepping into view now to gaze through the broken glass. His ornate hood was drawn back and his snake-like coils of braids and their golden adornments gleamed like stars in the deep shadows. With his back turned, Pendaran could see the faint shimmer of brocade and the slithering curves of ancient some ancient script embroidered upon them. He gazed down at the floor covered in tatters of old tapestries and carpets. His clothes were mounded near the foot of the bed where Miruene often made him stand in the cold until he begged to be allowed under the blankets with her. When she had discovered his mesmeric talents were dismal and he could not possibly fight back, she had done far worse things. Anger burned through him and he sat up, thrusting her away and dragging one of the quilts off the bed to cover himself. He turned to face her but the bed was empty.
“This is the best you can do?” Pendaran asked, “I’m not sure what annoys me more, this memory or the fact that you think dredging up some old molesting hag is going to break my poor shattered soul.”
“I admit, I am at a loss,” Haodrim replied darkly, “Care to give me a clue?”
“What do you want?”
“I cannot control you and you have no sway over me,” Haodrim replied, “I think your offer to accept my help is wise.”
“Good, you can start by leaving me alone to die in peace.”
“The Mursaat is not going to kill you. That was never its intention. I am afraid you are stuck with me and I with you.”
Pendaran crossed the small chamber and eyed the tokens of a past that was alien to him now. Lady Miruene had lavished him with fine clothes, albeit clothes she often found on corpses. He opened the old wardrobe and gazed upon a princely array of silks and leathers that had adorned the wealthy and dead.
“Miruene used me. I suspect it is no accident that you chose this time and place to bargain with me.”
Haodrim’s dark gaze bored into him, his hawkish features shadowed now that his back was to the window.
“Or perhaps you chose this,” Haodrim said, “Your master professed a certain disdain for your libidinous tendencies, yet your dreams and memories are rife with them.”
Pendaran shrugged.
“Some might say I was resourceful.”
“Or stupid.”
He ran his hand over a waistcoat of burgundy suede, remembering how Miruene was fond of seeing him dressed in dark colors mixed with red. She sometimes threatened to make him learn necromancy and claimed that the scars she left upon his back were preparation for his training. She had taught him to enjoy pain where he had once known only gentleness.
“Stupid, desperate, ignorant, what does it matter now? I would consider your choice equally as stupid, and it would appear, more damning.”
“I call a truce on such musings,” Haodrim rumbled.
“Very well, I’ll stick to constant loathing and cut the mockery.”
Haodrim’s face twitched and something resembling a grimace softened his features.
“Same.”
Pendaran sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed. Haodrim glanced around the room as if seeing it for the first time. His gloved hands picked up each item in turn; bits of jewelry and coffers, battered statuettes and brass figurines.
“Is it true that Margonites were human?”
“Yes.”
“What about the Mursaat?”
Haodrim laughed.
“Human? I doubt it. Even in my day, we knew not their origin, only that they serve the other side.”
“What side? Evil?”
Haodrim snorted bitterly.
“That would make my side good, would it not? Such a simplistic term. Yet, I assure you, in the eyes of humanity, there can be little more evil than the Mursaat.”
“Yet there were no Mursaat in Torment.”
“Of course not, it takes the human imagination to make such a place. No, the Mursaat hell would be far more efficient and well-oiled. It would be starkly beautiful, clean and orderly. Rather like a tomb.”
Pendaran watched anger simmer over Haodrim’s sharp features. It was the first time the Margonite had spoken openly and he was afraid to interrupt him.
“What is the Mursaat doing? And why?” Pendaran pressed after many long minutes of silence. Haodrim looked upon him and sighed.
“They are servants, automatons, as are all who serve the old ones. They were made by them.”
“What do you mean? Who are ‘they’?”
“They most often project into this world as dragons, perhaps because it is an awe inspiring form that most sentient creatures fear if not worship. Or perhaps that fear is imprinted upon us, an ancestral memory if you will. Some are very old, perhaps older than the world itself. These few govern the others. Did your father breed hunting hounds?”
“No, not really,” Pendaran replied, hesitating at the odd turn in the conversation.
“Pity, it would make my analogy simpler. Suffice it to say that their projects are often conducted in much the same way. They approach life with two basic views. When they see promise in a creature, some physically alter it to suit their whims while others gently guide and instruct. Just as when a breeder chooses to create a new type of hunting hound, perhaps he will breed back to wilder stock to regain the strength or cunning of the wolf. But be assured that if one of the litter displeases him, he will kill it rather than let that strain persist. The dogs that survive have little choice but to behave as they do. They are as they were shaped for good or ill.”
“They did this to humanity?”
“No, we were fortunate; we were nurtured by shepherds and guardians who valued free will over blind impulse and obedience.”
“Which I suspect might be true,” Pendaran replied, confused, “but the Searing was Abaddon’s doing under the guise of the Charr. You admitted that. The Mursaat, as far as I can tell, has limited its attention to a handful of creatures in the middle of nowhere. I would hardly call this an effective removal of humanity.”
Haodrim laughed bitterly.
“The Mursaat are fewer now. You would not have said such a thing in my day. We lived in terror of them with only the gods to protect us. They think of us as little more than chattel, a badly bred mistake that must be exterminated.”
“Why?” Pendaran asked, “If they are so powerful, how can we be a threat to them?”
“Humans do not always do as they were told. They are unpredictable and of times insolent. We are the equal of anything the others created even when those creations are vastly stronger. Humans are physically weak, but immensely cunning.”
“What has this to do with you and the Mursaat?” Pendaran pressed when Haodrim fell silent.
Haodrim gazed upon him disdainfully.
“Did you hear nothing that I said or do I need to spell it out for you?”
“I want the truth. I’m done fighting with you. Tell me or leave me alone.”
“The Mursaat have been charged with the destruction of our kind. Humanity is an experiment gone wrong, the slate is to be cleared,” Haodrim said slowly, his words clipped as if he were speaking to a child.
“I had gathered that much. If I were them, maybe I’d feel the same after seeing what Abaddon is capable of.”
Haodrim cursed angrily.
“He cannot be other than what he is! It is the nature of his power. He embodies it.”
“I see, so that makes it alright.”
“Idiot, you do not understand the way of things. A being of power, a god, is bound by different rules. Terrible rules. A facet cannot be destroyed without destroying the whole. He had to choose to become that creature or bring an end to the world itself.’
“Why did he defeat it in the first place?”
“Because Glint told him how it might be accomplished. She told him to split the facet of the defeated dragon and perhaps in fracturing it, weaken the whole and preserve the many. Thus Abaddon split the crystal eight ways, giving himself and each of his disciples a facet.”
“One for each god? But eight?”
“Two abused their power and were soon overthrown by the others, much to Abaddon’s dismay. He allowed them to be sealed away in the Mists where they might not do further harm in this realm.”
“You are claiming that Abaddon was the leader and progenitor of the gods. I find that difficult to swallow.”
“These were desperate times. Hounded on all sides, humanity was being pushed to the brink of extinction despite putting up a long and bloody fight. Abaddon and the others appealed to Glint, their matron and guardian, to save them. She offered a way and he took the risk. Perhaps she did not know what would happen when a mere human was infused with the energies of a defeated foe. In the end, however, it became clear that one human, even a godly one, could not contain it without going mad. The facet was split and shared among the others. They vowed to be equals and use their might to protect the last surviving members of their race.”
“By leaving.”
Haodrim laughed.
“A truce was called. If the human gods withdrew, then the dragons would as well. The dragons would sleep so long as the gods departed from the mortal realm. Abaddon believed it was a ruse, a blatant attempt by the dragons to weaken them all and catch them off-guard.”
Pendaran waited again while Haodrim stared out of the window onto the ruined landscape of Ascalon.
“What happened? I suspect Abaddon lashed out somehow and ruined it.”
“No, he agreed in the end. They withdrew, but the Mursaat continued their slaughter. They were not dragons, you see, and they were thus excluded from the agreement. Glint intervened and awakened Abaddon, for he was their leader and she was our protector. In a fury of destructive rage, he released the Titans and soon the dragons were awakened and it seemed the world would once more be swept into war with humanity’s fate in the balance.
“Once more there was an attempt to make a truce, but the war raged on and Abaddon feverishly worked to make a force of warriors that could withstand the Mursaat and drive them back.”
“You?”
“Among others. I was a high priest of his greatest temple, a gifted seer skilled in the subtle arts. I gave of myself to him and to the cause of preserving humankind little knowing I would soon be engaged in a brutal holy war.
“The Mursaat were overwhelmed by the Titans, their attention and energies consumed by driving them back into the void and sealing them away. Perhaps out of fear, the dragons demanded a truce, but their terms were brutal and they would not back down. If the gods punished Abaddon and sealed he and his servants away as well as withdrawing from the mortal realm, the dragons would withdraw and cease interventions of any kind.”
“I see.”
“Now the gods strove against Abaddon, perhaps afraid or jealous of his immense powers. He had, after all, summoned the Titans and awakened the rage of the dragons once more. Abaddon, however, would not leave the mortal realm willingly and soon humanity was forced to take sides. Temples were smashed, holy people were slain. In his desperation, Abaddon graced his most devout followers with a facet of his powers so that we might better lead the faithful in battle in the event he was forced to withdraw in defeat.
“The Five won, of course. They fashioned a prison for him and cast him there in chains. They could not destroy him, of course, without risking the destruction of the world. Now that he was helpless, their greatest concern was that someone might find him and do just that. Thus, Abaddon was to be forgotten. His followers were gathered up and cast into his prison along with his name and any memory of his existence.”
Once more Haodrim grew silent, but he lingered, hesitating to leave.
“I am not convinced that Abaddon had good intentions. I have seen his works.”
“That was never my intention,” Haodrim sighed, “but you see now why the Margonites were bitter and vengeful. Our gifts were used to protect and elevate humankind. My dreams revealed secrets that saved my people on many occasions. Then, one day I am a blasphemer and an enemy. The priests of the other Five cast me into the darkness to endure centuries of horrors.”
“So you were never cruel or abused your powers before that?”
Haodrim’s features hardened and rage flashed in his dark eyes.
“Only to my enemies, the Mursaat. I knew no greater joy than cutting them down.”
Pendaran watched the man pace, his agitation evident in the sharpness with which he turned and the clenching of his fists.
“You dreamed?”
“I was a seer.”
“You dreamed things that came true?”
Haodrim glared at him.
“Yes. That was the gift Abaddon bestowed upon me.”
“And now? Do you dream now?”
“I am no longer mortal. I do not dream.”
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