Interlude
The Last Mistake
1
LOCKE’S FIRST experience with the mirror wine of Tal Verrar had even more of an effect on the boy’s malnourished body than Chains had expected. Locke spent most of the next day tossing and turning on his cot, his head pounding and his eyes unable to bear anything but the most gentle spark of light.
“It’s a fever,” Locke muttered into his sweat-soaked blanket.
“It’s a hangover.” Chains ran a hand through the boy’s hair and patted his back. “My fault, really. The Sanza twins are natural liquor sponges. I shouldn’t have let you live up to their standard on your first night with us. No work for you today.”
“Liquor does this? Even after you’re sober?”
“A cruel joke, isn’t it? The gods put a price tag on everything, it seems. Unless you’re drinking Austershalin brandy.”
“Auffershallow?”
“Austershalin. From Emberlain. Among its many other virtues, it doesn’t cause a hangover. Some sort of alchemical component in the vineyard soil. Expensive stuff.”
Falselight came after many hours of half-sleep, and Locke found himself able to walk once again, though the brain within his skull felt like it was attempting to dig a hole down through his neck and escape. Chains insisted that they would still be visiting Capa Barsavi (“The only people who break appointments with him are the ones that live in glass towers and have their pictures on coins, and even they think twice”), though he consented to allow Locke a more comfortable means of transportation.
It turned out that the House of Perelandro had a small stable tucked around the back, and in this smelly little stall there lived a Gentled goat. “He’s got no name,” Chains said as he set Locke atop the creature’s back. “I just couldn’t bring myself to give him one, since he wouldn’t answer to it anyway.”
Locke had never developed the instinctive revulsion most boys and girls felt for Gentled animals; he’d already seen too much ugliness in his life to care about the occasional empty stare from a docile, milky-eyed creature.
There is a substance called Wraithstone, a chalky white material found in certain remote mountain caverns. The stuff doesn’t occur naturally; it is found only in conjunction with glass-lined tunnels presumably abandoned by the Eldren—the same unsettling race that built Camorr, ages past. In its solid state, Wraithstone is tasteless, nearly odorless, and inert. It must be burned to activate its unique properties.
Physikers have begun to identify the various means and channels by which poisons attack the bodies of the living; this one stills the heart, while this one thins the blood, and still others damage the stomach or the intestines. Wraithstone smoke poisons nothing physical; what it does is burn out personality itself. Ambition, stubbornness, pluck, spirit, drive—all of these things fade with just a few breaths of the arcane haze. Accidental exposure to small amounts can leave a man listless for weeks; anything more than that and the effect will be permanent. Victims remain alive but entirely unconcerned by anything. They don’t respond to their names, or to their friends, or to mortal danger. They can be prodded into eating or excreting or carrying something, and little else. The pale white sheen that fills their eyes is an outward expression of the emptiness that takes hold in their hearts and minds.
Once, in the time of the Therin Throne, the process was used to punish criminals, but it has been centuries since any civilized Therin city-state allowed the use of Wraithstone on men and women. A society that still hangs children for petty theft and feeds prisoners to sea-creatures finds the results too disquieting to bear.
Gentling, therefore, is reserved for animals—mostly beasts of burden intended for urban service. The cramped confines of a hazard-rich city like Camorr are ideally suited to the process. Gentled ponies may be trusted never to throw the children of the wealthy. Gentled horses and mules may be trusted never to kick their handlers or dump expensive cargoes into a canal. A burlap sack with a bit of the white stone and a slow-smoldering match is placed over an animal’s muzzle, and the human handlers retreat to fresh air. A few minutes later the creature’s eyes are the color of new milk, and it will never do anything on its own initiative again.
But Locke had a throbbing headache, and he was just getting used to the idea that he was a murderer and a resident of a private glass fairyland, and the eerily mechanical behavior of his goat didn’t bother him at all.
“This temple will be exactly where I left it when I return later this evening,” said Father Chains as he finished dressing for his venture outside; the Eyeless Priest had vanished entirely, to be replaced by a hale man of middle years and moderate means. His beard and his hair had been touched up with some sort of brown dye; his vest and cheap cotton-lined half-cloak hung loosely over a cream-colored shirt with no ties or cravats.
“Exactly where you left it,” said one of the Sanzas.
“And not burned down or anything,” said the other.
“If you boys can burn down stone and Elderglass, the gods have higher aspirations for you than a place as my apprentices. Do behave. I’m taking Locke to get his, ahh…”
Chains glanced sideways at the Lamora boy. He then mimed taking a drink, and held his jaw afterward as though in pain.
“Ohhhhhhhhhhhh,” said Calo and Galdo in pitch-perfect unison.
“Indeed.” Chains settled a little round leather cap on his head and took the reins of Locke’s goat. “Wait up for us. This should be interesting, to say the least.”