When I was young and naïve, I thought to master the Power by toying with geometries beyond human understanding. I was nothing, but I stepped before the Power and presented myself as a sacrifice, as a science experiment. The Power utilized me, and though I have failed, it will try again, for I surprised it. I showed it what mankind is capable of. This spell burned into my flesh is too strong to die now. The Power will find a new subject to toy with.
What an interesting phenomenon. Look at the laboratory rat. What a clever thing. This rat’s pathetic mind discerned new avenues that the observer, even with its far superior intellect, could never see. Of course not, it is hard to see when you are on such a lofty perch. Behold the rat’s tricks. The rat dies, but the experiment is incomplete. We will train more. The experiment will begin again. There will be more rats. The rats must be fed.
The madness I have wrought is nothing compared to what will come. Please forgive me for what I have done.
The ink had run in spots, as if his tears had watered the paper as he’d been writing. Faye slowly returned the letter to the stack. “I don’t get it,” she lied. Not understanding everything was not the same as not understanding anything at all.
“Very few members of the Society ever saw that, and among those who did, most dismissed it as the ravings of a madman. I disagreed.” Jacques put his glass on the table between them. The usual affable, pleasant demeanor he tended to wear was gone, having been replaced with the face of a very cold, very discerning investigator. “Mad? Perhaps, but driven mad because he understood just what he had unleashed upon mankind. I see in that letter the same thing I saw in the letters of criminals giving their deathbed confessions, a stark realization that actions have consequences.”
“You ain’t really worried about what the Spellbound does…” Faye muttered. “You’re worried about what the Power is up to.”
“Sivaram thought his actions, killing in order to steal magic, pleased the intelligence behind the Power. We are talking about a being which feeds off of us, uses us, changes us, gives blessings and takes them away without a shred of anything we recognize as logic or decency. It would appear that Power is an advocate of evolution, let the strongest survive, and let the weakest perish. Magicals were a new step in evolution, one brought about by the Power. The Spellbound was one of those magicals taking evolution into his own hands, and it seems that the Power approved. Sivaram said he did not believe in gods.” Jacques snorted. “Heh. It seems to me he found one that believed in him. And it is neither a merciful nor wrathful god, but rather an ambivalent intelligence that cares only about itself.”
Faye had never thought of the Power that way, and it made her a little uncomfortable. “I’m gonna stick with Jesus, thanks.”
“I ask you, Faye, what happens to us if the Power decides to take this experiment to the next stage? What happens if you, the second generation of this spell, continue to further its goals?”
“I don’t—”
“It will create more like you, probably many more. And they will steal magic from anyone who is weaker than they are. At least the Chairman is an orderly form of destruction. This other path is one of utter chaos. We can contend against the enemy with understandable goals, but it is nearly impossible to fight one that exists only to cause chaos. Now do you understand why I voted the way that I did?”
Maybe. Yes, but Faye still didn’t like that one bit. Anybody else who voted to kill her would have to deal with her veto power, which would probably consist of a round of 12-gauge buckshot to their face. “And what if you’re wrong, and the Power is right? I told y’all what the Chairman said about the Enemy coming to eat the Power. I can feel it myself once in a while, like a big weight hanging over us all. Maybe the Power was trying to save both us and it.”
“So we should tolerate a known risk in order to protect against a risk that may not even exist? The Chairman was the king of lies. Why should I expect him to be any more truthful in death than when he was in life? You wish to risk this because it is your life which is at stake. You are biased. Perhaps you can control the Spellbound curse, perhaps not. That still remains to be seen. You have been in this world for such a short time. Those letters you read from Sivaram span over thirty years. It took decades to wear him down and turn him into the monster that he became.”
“But I won’t do that.”
“And why would you not? Strength of character? Love for your fellow man?” Jacques gave a bitter laugh. “Sivaram loved his family and his people with all of his heart, but the curse wore him down eventually. It cut him to the soul, stole his humanity, and soon everyone around him, especially those with magic, were in danger. They were mere vessels holding the Power he sought… And he took that Power, oh, did he take so very many lives.”
“I’d never do anything to hurt my friends!” but even as the words left her mouth, she felt the sting of doubt.
“The Spellbound does not get to have friends, or family, or comrades, or lovers. The Spellbound is alone. The Spellbound is a force. Sivaram started out as a pacifist and a scholar and look where he wound up. You have been known to us for only a short time, but already look how many other Actives you have killed.”
“And every one of them deserved, it too.” Faye snapped. “You can think I’m dangerous all you want, but I’m also the best we’ve got. If it hadn’t been for me, the Chairman would still be around. If it hadn’t been for me, Washington D.C. would’ve gotten squished by a demon. You think I’m dangerous, Jacques? Well, so is a gun.” She gestured rudely at his coat. Of course, she hadn’t bothered to check, but she assumed he had one on, as any properly attired gentlemen should. “Being dangerous is their job. Ain’t much call for one that’s not dangerous, now is there?”
Jacques looked her square in the eye. “Look out the window.”
Faye did, and it nearly took her breath away. The beautiful farmland they had been passing through was gone, and now as far as her eye could see was nothing but a swath of sick, grey dirt. An odd, uncomfortable feeling settled into the pit of her stomach. “What is this?”
“This was part of the battlefield left over from the battle which you have heard referred to as Second Somme. A geographic misnomer, to be sure, but that is the name which has stuck.”
Of course Faye had heard of Second Somme. She’d even seen a glimpse of it, since that was the personal hell which Mr. Sullivan had consigned himself to after she’d shot him in the heart. “It’s lifeless.”
“Worse than Oklahoma was?”
“Yeah. That was a drought. Sure it was a drought caused by magic, but this is different.” Faye shivered. There wasn’t even a breeze that could blow a tumbleweed across that grey bit of hell. Not that a tumbleweed could’ve grown there, either.
“It has been a generation, but look at it still. This land was defiled by magic, utterly ruined. The eastern half of my country was a muddy wasteland of trenches and barbed wire as far as the eye could see, but all of that, other than the occasional unexploded artillery shell that some poor farmer still occasionally turns over with a plow, has gone back to normal. This place, it never has, and never will. Too much magical energy was used here. Too much Active blood was spilled. The land was changed.”
She could feel the cold in her bones. There weren’t even buzzards, and the only thing close to plant life were broken, petrified tree stumps that had been that way since she’d been a baby. “It’s just dead, ain’t it?”