5.Death of Chaos
CX
IT WASN'T THAT long on that late afternoon before I finally went back to Dayala, and ended up sitting on the stool again, looking down at her as she sat there cross-legged and open-eyed.
“I don't have any choice.” For all the concern about honesty, I couldn't lie, and I couldn't see that there was any real choice if I wanted to live with myself.
She looked at me with those deep eyes, and my tongue seemed to swell.
“All right, even ponies have choices. But I don't want to end up like Sammel, and that's not a real choice.” She just kept looking at me.
“What am I supposed to do? I've seen what power does. I know I have the ability to tap a lot of power. Am I supposed to beg and grovel to you and Krystal and Justen? 'Please save me. Please save me from myself.' I'll bet Justen didn't beg.”
I could feel a deep sadness welling up in the druid, but I waited.
“No. He and Creslin were forced. They had no choice.”
“And you? Did you force Justen? Like you're forcing me?”
“I chose. Justen would have been linked to someone. I chose to be that druid.”
“She also saved my life when I would have died,” added Justen, stepping into the room. “More than once. And she's suffered a lot of pain because I didn't choose to understand.” He laughed. “Like you, Lerris. It must run in the blood. Like self-serving pride.”
He looked at me, and I finally looked away. “You want to believe that you're always doing things to be good, Lerris. And you are good at heart. But you're also doing good things to get the praise you never got from Gunnar because you weren't perfect. And Gunnar couldn't praise you because he felt he wasn't perfect, and I have trouble because I'm not. All of that's self-deception. Why can't you tell Krystal you need to be praised?”
I just looked at him. He looked back at me again.
I couldn't. I just couldn't. If I had to ask for praise, it wasn't worth anything, and I couldn't voice that, either.
Then I looked at Dayala and back at Justen. They said nothing.
“If this link is so wonderful, why doesn't it happen more?”
“Because it could kill you both,” said Justen bluntly. “If one dies, so does the other.”
“Let me get this right. If you link us together the way you and Dayala are, it could kill us both. And I'm supposed to consider this as a solution?”
Dayala stood. “I will be back.”
Justen nodded at her, although I knew more had passed between them than the spoken words. He slipped onto the other stool.
“Well, Uncle Justen. Give me one good reason.”
“I can't. It would be my reason. You know who you are. You know who Krystal is. You know what you are. If I give you a reason, Lerris, then you will use that reason either to reject the link or to put the responsibility on us. You know who you are. You know what the link is, and what it does. You should know that it makes two people one, and that if they cannot stand each other inside it will destroy them. You also know that such closeness makes deception impossible, and most people cannot live without self-deception. Most people cannot face themselves. We will not make those judgments for you. You have to make those judgments, or you will blame me or Dayala, as you have blamed Recluce... and Krystal.” He sat on the stool and waited.
I walked over to the narrow window. All the barracks windows were narrow. From there, I could see the ruined walls of the harbor fort, and the sagging waterfront buildings across the narrow tip of the bay-and the long shadows.
All I wanted was to... to what? To be close to Krystal? So why had I pushed her away? Or had she pushed me away? Could I take her honesty, or was I supposed to be honest for her?
My eyes burned for a moment, and I shook my head. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair. I could walk away, but, even as I thought that, I knew I wouldn't have another chance, because Krystal would stay in Ruzor... and Justen and Dayala would die if they had to save the city-I'd seen enough to know that. And that wasn't fair, either.
I didn't have to be fair. Who had been fair to me? I'd been deceived, and maneuvered, and forced to choose between risking my life and losing Krystal. Why did I have to be fair? I didn't owe it to anyone.
So easy... just walk away and become the great Lerris. In time, who would know? Who would know? Who?
The faintest murmur slipped up the walls from the courtyard, so faint I could not make out the words.
So who would know if I left Ruzor and Kyphros? I would. I remembered the faces in the depths, and now they all had my face-even Shervan. It wasn't fair that he died, but he had.
Fair? I would have laughed, but my mouth was dry, even when I swallowed.
The waters of the bay were flat, without the slightest hint of whitecaps, and the hulls of the wrecked ships seemed more like enormous boulders, sunken remnants of a past that would not die.
Yet, though he had Sephya with him, Antonin died alone. And so did Gerlis, and Sammel]... because no one cared.
Was that what I wanted? I'd hated it when I felt no one in Recluce had cared. But why couldn't Krystal understand? Why wouldn't she?
I recalled Dayala's word-acceptance. A faint puff of warm air caressed my face, with an acrid scent, the scent of death, perhaps from townspeople, or more decomposing sailors' bodies.
I turned, but Justen sat there, waiting, not saying a word. The harbor seemed flat, the waves lifeless. Acceptance... of what? I took a deep breath.
Outside the air was still, acrid, hovering between life and death, it seemed.
I turned back to Justen and nodded.
“It takes two,” he said. “Dayala is talking to Krystal.”
He sat, and I waited, looking out beyond the breakwater, wondering how Krystal felt, wondering how it had come to this, wondering why love was so hard and took so much work and hurt so much.