“There is no God. Not your God. Not any god. Not really.”
“Then, for you, there is no God. So what? What will you do? What will you be? What do you want?”
“I want to kill,” whispered the excantor. “I want to steal. I want to lie.”
“Yes! Yes!” said the god-speaker eagerly. “So do I. But especially to kill! How I long to run down the streets of our city, my claws dripping with fiery blood, gnashing fragments of green-gray flesh in my fangs. How I would kill, in my rage and greed! What evil glory there would be in that! I saw your daughters outside.”
“Be quiet!” shrieked the excantor.
“They are there, and would be easy to kill. Shall we kill them together, you and I? I will if you will.”
“Be quiet,” begged the excantor.
“If you go down that long, fiery path, you will have many things, but quiet will not be one of them. Nor will daughters or mates. You will be alone, in the dark, on your hoard, listening to yourself until your fire goes out.”
“I can’t believe in your way. I can’t believe in your God.”
“As if I asked you to! Belief. If the God exists, he needs your belief no more than the rain does, or the sea, or trees, or anything that is real. If he is not, he needs your belief no more than does up-downness or dark-lightness or anything that is unreal. You do the God no favors by believing in him. You do yourself no favors. Whom are you looking to please with this belief? Me? I am the one who just offered to help you kill your children.”
“What am I supposed to do?” whispered the excantor.
“Choose,” said Danadhar firmly. “What will you do? What will you be? What do you want?”
Now the excantor lay quiet on the stones. He wasn’t breathing smoke anymore. His face seemed to be returning to its former shape. He closed his burning eyes.
There was silence in the jail.
The excantor shook off the god-speaker’s hands and stood up. He turned to face Danadhar who stayed crouched there on the stones, looking patiently up at him.
“I don’t need you,” the excantor said.
“No,” Danadhar agreed. “What will you do?”
“Leave here. I cannot fight my own ruthen-kin anymore. I will not.”
“What will you be?”
“Not a soldier. Not a jailor.” He looked at his hands. “I would like to build something. I love the smell of sawn wood even more than the smell of blood.”
“What do you want?”
“To be free.”
“Go and be free, my son. Leave here and build something.”
The ex-excantor nodded slowly. He took off his belt of office and dropped it on the jail floor. “Thanks be to you, Saint Danadhar,” he said.
“Enough of that kind of talk,” said Danadhar. “Get out of here, now. Remember me to your children, eh?”
“Are they really outside?”
“They are, with their mothers and your co-mates. They’re all very worried about you. Go.”
The former excantor nodded and left.
“Free us, Saint Danadhar,” whispered someone. Then all down the corridor the shouts broke out, “Free us! Free us, Saint Danadhar!”
“Shut up!” roared Danadhar, and silence fell.
“I find that kind of talk very disgusting,” Danadhar continued, “and I will not countenance it. No! Absolutely not! Saint Danadhar will not free you. No saint will ever free you. Stop hoping for it.”
He bent down and scooped up the keys from the golden belt. He walked over to the door through which Deor and Kelat were still watching him.
“Little Cousin,” said Danadhar, “you tried to do me a favor just now.”
Deor snorted. “Thanks for noticing, mandrake.”
Danadhar stood back a step then smiled a long, wicked smile. “Is that offensive? I’m sorry, ruthen: I didn’t mean it so.”
“It’s nothing,” Deor said. “Ruthen, I spoke in haste: forgive me.”
“I’ll do a little better than that.” Danadhar went through the keys and found the one for their cell. He unlocked it.
Deor released the bar and backed away from the door. The Gray One stood in the doorway.
“Here are the keys,” Danadhar said, handing them to Deor. “Do with them what you will.”
Deor rushed past him and unlocked the nearest cell. “Pass them on,” he said, handing the keys to one of the freed prisoners, and turned back to Danadhar who was still standing at the door.
“May I know your name, ruthen?” Danadhar said politely.
“Deor syr Theorn, cousin to the Eldest of the Seven Clans Under Thrymhaiam. My blood is yours, ruthen.”
“Thanks! I hope I never have a use for it. And . . . ?”
“This gentleman is Prince Uthar Kelat, son of the Vraidish King.”
“Kelat. Kelat.” Danadhar continued in Ontilian, “It seems to me a man of that name came to speak to the God’s evil avatar some time ago. I tried to talk him out of it.”
“That was me, God-speaker,” Kelat said. “I wish I had listened to you.”
“Oh!” Danadhar’s eyes glanced aside in separate movements, which Deor recognized as a sign of embarrassment. “I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you.”
“It’s nothing, great Danadhar. I cannot say my blood is yours; my blood belongs to my king. But my spear is yours, to strike where you say or keep it sheathed.”
“Sheathed, then, new friend. There has been too much killing in the city in the past year. But we must get you your spear and whatever else you came with. And whoever else. Is there someone over there?”
“Over in the corner is my harven-kin, Morlock Ambrosius.”
“‘Was,’ you mean,” Danadhar corrected mildly. “That’s a day I’ll never forget, though it was so long ago. If—Ruthen Morlock! It’s true!”
The god-speaker rushed past Kelat and stopped to stand uncertainly before Morlock.
Deor hoped that Morlock wouldn’t spoil this odd reunion with any gibberish about the inner lives of dead fish.
The crooked man looked up and met Danadhar’s blood-colored eyes. He stood and said conversationally, “Ruthen Danadhar. I greet you.”
“Ruthen Morlock,” the Gray One whispered. “It has been long since we last met. I have tried to keep faith with the truths you showed me on that day.”
Deor glared at Morlock, but the crooked man shrugged uneasily. “I showed you no truths. I’m glad you saw some, though.”
Danadhar nodded humbly and grinned his terrifying grin. “Yes. Yes. No one shows us. It is up to us to see. You are still my teacher, ruthen. Although—you seem no older than you did on that day.”
“I am, though” Morlock said. He looked around the cell. “Where is Ambrosia?”
“The woman who was here? The Olvinar has her, I fear,” Danadhar said sadly.
“The Olvinar? That is your Adversary—the anti-God?”
“Yes. He came first two years ago. He brought gifts and made friends. He called himself Lightbringer, but I perceived that was a lie. For I reasoned with myself this way, ruthenen: if the God chose to appear in an avatar of evil, showing us the consequences of doing what we must not do, why shouldn’t the Olvinar appear in an avatar that seems good, tempting us to do what is wrong, as if we will not suffer from it? Also, his conversation seemed somewhat shifty to me. He only tells truths to mask his lies.”
“Hm. I knew a man like that once. His name was not Lightbringer, though.”
“He is like you in form, but taller, with white hair and a beard.”
Morlock looked at Deor, a little panic showing in his colorless bright eyes.
“Morlock,” Deor said. “Don’t worry. If you’re thinking what I’m thinking, Ambrosia is his own daughter—his favorite, from what I understand. What harm could come to her?”