Chapter Twenty-Six

Dryden sat completely still. It was daytime but little light filtered into the tent from outside. Shapes moved around him in his periphery, both outside the tent and within. He barely breathed. He was being watched closely. He had been here like this for hours. His old wounds were beginning to grow stiff from inactivity. His mind grew restless from boredom. Memories of Dau haunted him as he sat and waited. The demon and the pit. The last moment of Aisa as she fell away from him into the darkness, the words of her curse being written into the void as she disappeared. All he could do was be patient, but sitting frozen like this in the dark was the last thing he wanted to be doing.

“Head a little to the left,” The man said.

Dryden did as instructed, “How much longer is this portrait going to take?”

The man looked over at him from behind his canvas, “Most of the rest of the day, I expect. The more you move, the longer it will take.” The painter was a spindly middle-aged man with a long bent nose and a shallow chin. His name was Gaspar Davi and he was a modestly well-known artist from the Valit, one of the free cities of the west that lay between the kingdoms of Kalhovn and Gant.

Dryden settled back into his seat and posed the way he had been before. The flap of the tent opened behind Gaspar and Mar entered the tent.

“I heard you were sitting for a portrait,” Mar smirked at him, “Though I had not quite believed they could get you in one place long enough to do it.” The wizard was now wearing an eye patch that a doctor had got for him. He looked rakish with it, Dryden thought.

“Indeed. I would not have done so, except that General Haddock ordered me to. He informed me that people back home need heroes in dark times. Apparently, I am to be that hero.”

Mar chuckled dryly, “Well you were the only survivor of the massacre,” The wizard jabbed at him. It had been a sore spot for Dryden. He had not been the only one who had lived, but everyone kept referring to him as such, even when Captain Khathan or Mar were standing close at hand, never mind the small group of other sepoys that had escaped with Khathan. Many more likely were still alive too, only in captivity. They had found some who had been sold as slaves. They also knew that some were held for ransom. It stood to reason that many more colonists, civilians, and some officers may still be held. Calling him the sole survivor was ludicrous, yet that was exactly what was being done. A kind of legend had spread.

Dryden hated every single bit of it. He growled under his breath. He shifted in his seat.

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“Don’t. Move.” Gaspard chastised him as if he were scolding a child.

“Did you need something, Mar, or are you here only to look upon my suffering as children look on at a sideshow?”

“I wanted to speak to you of an epiphany I had.”

“Can it not wait?”

“No.”

“Very well, speak to me while I sit.”

The wizard found a seat on Dryden’s cot, “I would prefer to speak to you alone. You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t trust the ears of people I do not truly know.”

“Very well. Gaspar, we will break for ten minutes,” Dryden could not disguise the joy he felt in saying these words. The painter frowned but said nothing. He only put his paints and brush aside, and left the room. Dryden stood and stretched, rubbing his side where his ribs still ached. “What did you want to tell me?”

“We have found ourselves in this thing, this conflict we do not fully understand. We think ourselves pawns in this battle.”

“Is that all we are, merely pawns?” Dryden asked, with a small chuckle, “I happen to rather fancy myself a knight or rook or some such.”

“What if we are not pawns in this game at all, John, but ants who have happened to crawl upon the game board?” Mar’s face was darkened, “I speak not of our conflict with the Fyrins. I speak of what we saw in Dau.”

“What is it that you think, Mar? Speak plainly.”

“I think, John, that we are walking across the body of a dying god. The indigo flowers from which we derive sorcery are its corpse flowers. The demon pit, the people here, our empires fighting over the aethium, all of it, all of us are here to sup from the god’s carcass. We are maggots feasting upon the flesh of the divine.”

“A macabre thought, what brings it?”

“Only the things we’ve seen and heard and felt.”

“Think you that this god wants something of us?” Dryden asked.

“I do not know the minds of gods,” Mar replied, “I know only that it was happy enough to write your words of vengeance in stone. I know that it was willing to bring me back to achieve it. I have seen the river of Tizrun's blood pouring into the abyss. I have dreamt of falling forever into that blackness. You told me that Kal’kuris, a man of the elder blood of Vurun, wished the Ans to be gone along with us. What would you want, were you trapped and drained of blood? Would you seek freedom at any cost, even death?”

“I would seek freedom at any cost, yes. I have seen others make that choice too. Aisa made that choice, as did those of clan An-Zhigo.”

“They are not the first to die for freedom, they will not be the last.”

“Let us say you are right. This land is a dying god. It wants something from us, yet it hasn’t the means to tell us in ways we understand. It is meaningless. Even if we knew what it wanted, aside from revenge, what would we even do with that knowledge? We cannot kill it, nor hasten its demise. We cannot save it. We cannot slay the demons who suckle at its bleeding wounds. We can do nothing.”

“Perhaps we can ease its suffering or give it some measure of revenge. If nothing else, perhaps it will release us from its grip. Do you still feel the pull of your oath upon you, John?”

“It is as if I am being pulled along inexorably by a river of vengeance and I am only just able to keep my head above the surface.”

“Then that is what we will do. If nothing else, perhaps we can free ourselves of the blood oath you made, then only one curse will be left to bind us.”

“Is that all?” Dryden asked.

“Indeed, sir,” Mar answered, then he swept from the tent. A moment later the painter came back into the tent. Dryden sat. It took the rest of the day before the painting was roughly finished. Dryden did not care for it.