Part 37 (2/2)
It was the words no one had truly spoken to me and meant since the death of my mother. It was the words that could have filled my life with meaning.
And I looked at the face of the man who said them, and screamed, ”I don't care! I don't care! I DON'T CARE! I DON'T CARE I DON'T CARE I DON'T CARE! I DON'T CARE! I DON'T.
CARE! I DON'T CARE! I DON'T CARE! I DON'T C--”.
And then the blinding white light exploded.
The world crashed and smoked around me, and burned into my inner eye was the image of a cloud going up and up and up, spreading outward in all directions like a giant toadstool. Something burned at the side of my head, and then nothingness enveloped me.
I welcomed it.
Chapter 4 The Trinity Test.
I floated peacefully, wondering if I was dead, hoping that I was, because if I was simply dreaming or sleeping, then inevitably I would have to awaken. And I had no desire to do so.
I saw an image floating toward me. It was my mother. She was shaking her head, and she looked disappointed in me, but also appeared to understand. ”It's all right,” she whispered to me. ”Everything is all right.”
”What happened? Am I...” I hesitated to ask. ”Am I dead?”
”Oh, no, my love. No, you're not dead.”
”Then... then what...?”
”You were warned, my love. Warned about intensity of emotion. Warned about what it could do, especially when it came to unleas.h.i.+ng of power.”
”But... but I don't...” I was trying to understand. ”The sword. I... didn't pull the sword. It shouldn't have...”
”Ah, that's the problem with destructive power,” she a.s.sured me.
”You think you control it. You think, 'As long as I don't intend to use it, it won't be used.' But it does get used. In this case, because of the intensity of your denial. You wanted Veruh gone.”
”No.”
”You wanted all of them gone. All of them. Their laughter, their pity, their knowledge of what a complete and utter fool you'd been. It ripped a hole in your heart greater than any that had ever come before. Your antipathy for their very existence, your revulsion for your own, was so overwhelming that it activated the demon sword even when you weren't planning to do so. But because it was still within the sheath, the energy built and built and then just... just released. And now they're gone. Just like that.”
”No,” I whispered. I wanted to push her away, but I felt as if I had no body with which to do so.
”It's all right. Don't be concerned. You were right. Eventually they would have just killed each other anyway. Gone to war in a long, protracted power struggle. By unleas.h.i.+ng the power of the ultimate weapon, you avoided that war. You did them a favor.”
”A favor?”
She smiled at me with all her mother love. ”Yes, my dear. It was for the best. It truly was.” She patted my face. Her hand felt cold. All around us was pure, stark, white nothingness. ”There's only one problem.”
”Just one?” ”The power is unleashed now. More power than the demon sword even knew it was capable of. It loves that power now. It wants to release it again. And again.”
”I'll... I'll destroy it!”
”You can't.”
”Throw it into the sea!”
”If you wish,” she said. ”But the seabeds s.h.i.+ft, tides come in and out. Sooner or later, the weapon will surface. Who knows who will have it then? Anyone could acquire the power. Anyone at all.”
”It could... it could obliterate the world...”
She considered that a moment. ”Yes,” she decided. ”Yes. It could. That would be... interesting...”
”But... you said I'm not dead. It didn't destroy me?”
”No. You are its master. For the moment, in any event.”
”So I'm... unscathed?”
”I didn't say that, my love,” she said sadly. ”Such power as you unleashed does not come without a price. A pound of flesh, as it were. The sword chose the price. And you will have to live with it.”
I started to sob. I had never felt so miserable. She clucked disapprovingly. ”Oh, now, Apropos...”
”I ruined it, didn't I, Mother,” I said.
”Yes. But that's all right, my love. You ruin everything.”
The last words had been said with a deep, fearsome growl, and it was no longer my mother standing there, but Aulhel, and he was laughing, loud and long, and others began to join in, also laughing at me, and my head was swimming in laughter and humiliation, and then I awoke.
I was lying right where I had been, except that sunlight was streaming down upon me. That should not have been possible. This was the shadow town, where the sun never shone.
The buildings were gone.
All gone.
There was a faint ringing in my ear. I reached up automatically to touch it, and came away with dried blood on my fingertips.
My right ear was gone.
Something sharp had violently cut it away.
The ringing... which nowadays is reduced to faint background noise, but I can still detect every now and then... continued. Among my possessions was a small tapestry I had been given. It showed me as older, grim-faced...
and missing an ear.
Was it all fate, then? Had all of this been completely out of my hands? Could it truly have been that, no matter what I had done, the same appalling fate awaited me and everyone who had been near me?
Could the G.o.ds truly be that cruel?
Sadly, I knew the answer to the last question instantly. And that was enough to answer all the ones previous to it.
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