A short time later, Caplo emerged into the courtyard and made his way towards the fountain. Warlock Resh was standing at a respectable distance from T’riss, who wandered naked through the knee-deep water, droplets glistening on her burnished skin. There were signs of sunburn upon her shoulders, the patches of peeling skin reminding Caplo of shedding snakes. Apart from the warlock and the Azathanai, no one else was within sight anywhere in the courtyard.
Children either flee the baring of flesh, or gawk. But it is unseemly to gawk. For me, I but admire.
He came up to stand beside Resh. ‘It is said that we are ever students, no matter our age.’
Resh grunted. ‘Lessons oft repeated, never quite learned. I see before me a new treatise on life.’
‘The critics will savage you.’
‘They shall be as midges upon my hide. Frenzied in scale, but the scale is small.’
‘Then I shall look with delight upon your pocked and wealed self.’
‘It is your secret admiration of savages, Caplo, which your words now betray.’
‘All betrayal will begin, or end, with words.’
‘Savage ones?’
‘I imagine so, Resh.’
T’riss had made her way to the far side of the fountain and now sat upon the broad ledge, face upturned to the sun and eyes closed.
‘If Mother Dark had rejected the element of Night and taken the element of Silence instead,’ mused Resh, ‘there would be peace everlasting.’
‘You suggest then,’ Caplo asked, ‘that all instances of violence involve some manner of betrayal?’
‘I do, and it shall be first and pre-eminent in my list of lessons never learned.’
‘The hawk betrays the hare? The swift betrays the fly?’
‘In a manner of speaking, most certainly, my sickly friend.’
‘Then we are all doomed to betray, since it seems implicit in the very act of survival.’
Resh faced him. ‘Have you not witnessed for yourself the anguish of philosophers? The glee of their guilt, the eager admonition of their selves and all kin? We have all betrayed the promise of everlasting peace, and was there not an age, long ago, when death was unknown? When sustenance itself was without cost or sacrifice?’
That notion was an old joke between them. ‘Warlock Resh,’ Caplo now replied, ‘all the philosophers I have seen are either drunk or insensate.’
‘’Tis the sorrows of loss, friend, and the wallows of recognition.’
‘’Tis weakness of will, I wager the more likely.’
‘A will crumbled helpless to the assault of revelation. When we are driven to our knees, the world shrinks.’
His eyes on T’riss, Caplo sighed and said, ‘Ah, Resh, but not all revelation arrives as an assault.’
‘You give me reason to drink.’
‘Then your reason is weak.’
‘And lo, I am the only philosopher brave enough to admit it.’
‘Only because you’re sober, and I always question the courage of sobriety.’
They both fell silent as T’riss rose once again and made her way over. Eyes flicking briefly to Caplo she said, ‘Your Mother advised against my murder, then? It is well. You would not like my blood on your hands, lieutenant.’
Caplo said nothing for a long moment, and then he cocked his head. ‘Guest, you surmise extreme conduct on our part. It is unseemly.’
She nodded. ‘It is.’
‘I am pleased that we agree-’
‘Murder always is,’ she continued. ‘I tasted the distrust in my friend, Faror Hend, upon your intervention. There were many levels to her displeasure.’
‘We mean you no harm,’ said Caplo, ‘but if we must, we will defend our own.’
‘I see much room for debate, lieutenant, as to what constitutes “your own”. Of course, you rely upon that ambiguity.’
‘Does that comment refer to me personally, or people in general?’
Beside Caplo, Resh seemed to flinch.
‘I do not know sufficient “people” to comment on them,’ T’riss replied, sitting down before them and running a hand through the warm water. ‘I believe you are a killer, and that you are both given reasons for the necessity, and assemble in private more of your own, bolstering such justifications as needed.’
Warlock Resh seemed to gag. Coughing, he said, ‘Guest, I beg you, constrain your power.’
‘You think this power is mine, warlock?’ Smiling, she rose. ‘I am weary. I see a monk in the doorway — will he suffice to guide me to my quarters?’
‘A moment, please,’ Caplo interposed, alarmed after a glance at his companion, who was gasping, half bent over. ‘If not your power, then whose?’
‘Your river god was dead. It is dead no longer.’
He stared in disbelief.
She met his eyes and this time held them. ‘Now you must contend with what you purport to worship, and give answer to the many things you have done in its name. Is it any wonder your friend quails?’
She set off across the compound.
Caplo stepped close to his friend. ‘Resh? Will you recover? Does she speak truth? What is it you feel?’
He looked up with savage eyes. ‘Rage.’
Thereafter, in the midst of panic and chaos tearing through the settlement, the Azathanai guest remained in her rooms, taking her meals in private. Upon the third morning she appeared in the compound. Summoning her grass horse, she mounted up and waited for the others.
Mother Sheccanto was confined to her bed. She had lost all control over her body and could not move, not even to lift a hand. Her lungs were filling with fluid, her breaths came in shallow rasps and her eyes, Caplo recalled, darted like trapped birds.
The hawk betrays the hare. The swift betrays the fly. God was bent to our will; and God now rages.
Riders had already gone out to Yedan Monastery, by Resh’s command, and word had come back the night before their departure for Kharkanas. Father Skelenal was on his way. Sisters had collapsed. The thirteen eldest among them had died. And in the Great Well of the Ancient God, the water boiled. The steam made a column that could be seen from the forest edge south of the convent.
When Warlock Resh announced that he would remain, awaiting the arrival of Skelenal, T’riss had turned to him and said, ‘You will not be needed here. Your Mother will recover most of her faculties. She will speak in private with her lifebound mate. You will accompany me, Warlock Resh.’
‘Why?’ he had demanded, and it had shocked Caplo to realize that his companion had not even questioned the Azathanai’s right to command him.
‘Who dwells in the forest north of Kharkanas?’ she asked him.
Resh shrugged. ‘Cast-offs, half-wild folk. Poachers, criminals-’
‘Deniers,’ Caplo said.
T’riss said, ‘Your Mother and Father need to prepare.’
‘For what?’ Caplo asked.
‘For what I must show Warlock Resh, lieutenant. It shall begin in the forest, but also upon the river itself, and in the streets of Kharkanas — until such time as Mother Dark awakens to the challenge.’
‘What will you say to her?’ Resh demanded in a harsh voice.
‘To Mother Dark?’ T’riss gathered up the makeshift reins. ‘I expect there will be no need for words, warlock. With my presence, she will understand.’
‘Do you threaten her?’ Caplo asked.
‘If I do, lieutenant, there will be nothing you can do about it. Not you, not her guardians. But no, I myself pose no threat to Mother Dark, and upon this you have my word, to weigh or discard as befits your nature. What I bring is change. Will she welcome it or resist it? Only she can answer that.’
In silence they had ridden out from the monastery, on to the south road that would take them on a route well to the east of Yedan Monastery, before entering the much diminished easternmost arm of Youth Forest.
The last words T’riss spoke, just outside the monastery gates, were, ‘I understand now the mystery of water. In peace it flows clear. When I stand before Mother Dark, turmoil will come to the water between us. But the promise remains — one day it shall run clear once again. Hold to this faith, all of you, even as chaos descends upon the world.’ She faced Resh and Caplo. ‘The river god tells me Dorssan Ryl’s water is dark, but it was not always so.’