Selitos stooped to pick up a jagged shard of mountain glass, pointed at one end.
“Will you kill me with a stone?” Lanre gave a hollow laugh. “I wanted you to understand, to know it was not madness that made me do these things.”
“You are not mad,” Selitos admitted. “I see no madness in you.”
“I hoped, perhaps, that you would join me in what I aim to do.” Lanre spoke with a desperate longing in his voice. “This world is like a friend with a mortal wound. A bitter draught given quickly only eases pain.”
“Destroy the world?” Selitos said softly to himself. “You are not mad, Lanre. What grips you is something worse than madness. I cannot cure you.” He fingered the needle-sharp point of the stone he held.
“Will you kill me to cure me, old friend?” Lanre laughed again, terrible and wild. Then he looked at Selitos with sudden, desperate hope in his hollow eyes. “Can you?” he asked. “Can you kill me, old friend?”
Selitos, his eyes unveiled, looked at his friend. He saw how Lanre, nearly mad with grief, had sought the power to bring Lyra back to life again. Out of love for Lyra, Lanre had sought knowledge where knowledge is better left alone, and gained it at a terrible price.
But even in the fullness of his hard-won power, he could not call Lyra back. Without her, Lanre’s life was nothing but a burden, and the power he had taken up lay like a hot knife in his mind. To escape despair and agony, Lanre had killed himself. Taking the final refuge of all men, attempting to escape beyond the doors of death.
But just as Lyra’s love had drawn him back from past the final door before, so this time Lanre’s power forced him to return from sweet oblivion. His new-won power burned him back into his body, forcing him to live.
Selitos looked at Lanre and understood all. Before the power of his sight, these things hung like dark tapestries in the air about Lanre’s shaking form.
“I can kill you,” Selitos said, then looked away from Lanre’s expression suddenly hopeful. “For an hour, or a day. But you would return, pulled like iron to a loden-stone. Your name burns with the power in you. I can no more extinguish it than I could throw a stone and strike down the moon.”
Lanre’s shoulders bowed. “I had hoped,” he said simply. “But I knew the truth. I am no longer the Lanre you knew. Mine is a new and terrible name. I am Haliax and no door can bar my passing. All is lost to me, no Lyra, no sweet escape of sleep, no blissful forgetfulness, even madness is beyond me. Death itself is an open doorway to my power. There is no escape. I have only the hope of oblivion after everything is gone and the Aleu fall nameless from the sky.” And as he said this Lanre hid his face in his hands, and his body shook with silent, racking sobs.
Selitos looked out on the land below and felt a small spark of hope. Six plumes of smoke rose from the land below. Myr Tariniel was gone, and six cities destroyed. But that meant all was not lost. One city still remained….
In spite of all that had happened, Selitos looked at Lanre with pity, and when he spoke it was with sadness in his voice. “Is there nothing then? No hope?” He lay one hand on Lanre’s arm. “There is sweetness in life. Even after all of this, I will help you look for it. If you will try.”
“No,” said Lanre. He stood to his full height, his face regal behind the lines of grief. “There is nothing sweet. I will sow salt, lest the bitter weeds grow.”
“I am sorry,” Selitos said, and stood upright as well.
Then Selitos spoke in a great voice, “Never before has my sight been clouded. I failed to see the truth inside your heart.”
Selitos drew a deep breath. “By my eye I was deceived, never again….” He raised the stone and drove its needle point into his own eye. His scream echoed among the rocks as he fell to his knees gasping. “May I never again be so blind.”
A great silence descended, and the fetters of enchantment fell away from Selitos. He cast the stone at Lanre’s feet and said, “By the power of my own blood I bind you. By your own name let you be accursed.”
Selitos spoke the long name that lay in Lanre’s heart, and at the sound of it the sun grew dark and wind tore stones from the mountainside.
Then Selitos spoke, “This is my doom upon you. May your face be always held in shadow, black as the toppled towers of my beloved Myr Tariniel.
“This is my doom upon you. Your own name will be turned against you, that you shall have no peace.
“This is my doom upon you and all who follow you. May it last until the world ends and the Aleu fall nameless from the sky.”
Selitos watched as a darkness gathered about Lanre. Soon nothing could be seen of his handsome features, only a vague impression of nose and mouth and eyes. All the rest was shadow, black and seamless.
Then Selitos stood and said, “You have beaten me once through guile, but never again. Now I see truer than before and my power is upon me. I cannot kill you, but I can send you from this place. Begone! The sight of you is all the fouler, knowing that you once were fair.”
But even as he spoke them, the words were bitter in his mouth. Lanre, his face in shadow darker than a starless night, was blown away like smoke upon the wind.
Then Selitos bowed his head and wept hot tears of blood upon the earth.
It wasn’t until Skarpi stopped speaking that I noticed how lost in the story I had become. He tilted his head back and drained the last of the wine from his wide clay cup. He turned it upside-down and set it on the bar with a dull thump of finality.
There was a small clamor of questions, comments, pleas, and thanks from children who had remained still as stones throughout the story. Skarpi made a small gesture to the barkeep who set out a mug of beer as the children began to trickle out onto the street.
I waited until the last of them had left before I approached him. He turned those diamond-blue eyes on me and I stammered.
“Thank you. I wanted to thank you. My father would have loved that story. It’s the…” I broke off. “I wanted to give you this.” I brought out an iron halfpenny. “I didn’t know what was going on, so I didn’t pay.” My voice seemed rusty. This was probably more than I had spoken in a month.
He looked closely at me. “Here are the rules,” he said, ticking them off on his gnarled fingers. “One: don’t talk while I’m talking. Two: give a small coin, if you have it to spare.”
He looked at the ha’penny on the bar.