Part 7 (2/2)
The Source had given him so much knowledge, so much power power. He could have done such good with it....
He should find it, go to it, and bond with it once more.
”No,” he said, and shook his head. Even if he had surrendered to his need, he could not have gone to it. The Source lay at the bottom of the Inner Sea, sticking out of the head of a creature as large as a city.
Magadon recognized what was happening and fought, as he did every day, to keep hold of himself. His mental addiction to the Source had caused him to lose himself once. An entire year of his life had vanished into a haze. He would not allow it to happen again.
He took a deep, shaky breath, felt the oak at his back, the breeze on his face, and the clean air in his lungs, and heard the laughter of the caravaneers, and rode out the pull.
After a time, it pa.s.sed, more quickly than the day before. He was beating it. The realization strengthened him further.
Another chitter came from above. He looked up to find not two, but a row of six racc.o.o.n faces staring down at him, presumably the mother and all of her young. He could not help but smile at their wide-eyed, curious expressions. One of the young climbed over another and the mother chittered at them.
”Very well,” he said. ”I will be on my way, but only after I eat.”
The racc.o.o.ns continued to stare at him with bright eyes through their masks.
Magadon pulled a half-wheel of cheese and two mostly-brown apples from a leather bag in his backpack. He habitually ate alone, separating himself from the caravaneers. He did not quite feel up to companions.h.i.+p. He thought the men of the caravan decent fellows, but he needed meditation more than company. Or so he told himself.
The racc.o.o.ns chittered at him in irritation.
He took another bite of apple. ”You don't frighten me,” he said to them with a smile. ”I have seen angry eyes behind a mask before.”
He took another bite of apple and noticed the black, clawed nails that had once been his normal fingernails. He sank them into the apple to hide them.
Inexplicably, his contact with the Source had changed not only his mind but also his body, somehow stirring the blood of the archdevil father that polluted his veins. As his mental powers had expanded, his body had come to more closely resemble that of his diabolical sire. As had his proclivities.
Soon after his separation from the Source, the nightmares had begun. The Nine h.e.l.ls haunted his dreams. When he slept, he saw souls burning, writhing, screaming in pits of fire while leering devils looked on. The visions had grown worse over time. He felt as if they were moving toward some climax that would drive him mad. For months, he had feared sleep.
He had grown desperate, had sublimated his desire for the Source and his need to escape the dreams by turning first to drink, and when that did not stupefy him adequately, to drugs. He had lost himself for months. The dreams had not stopped, his need for the Source had not stopped, but he had been so dulled that they had bothered him less.
He scarcely remembered those days. He did remember that during the all-too-rare moments of clear-headedness, he had considered reaching out with his mind to Erevis or Riven, his friends, but had lacked the courage. His stupor had not dulled his shame over what he had become. He had not wanted his friends to know of it.
Besides, each of them had their own burdens to carry.
The visions of the h.e.l.ls had eventually left his dreams and invaded his waking hours. He'd hallucinated immolations on the city streets at midday, heard his father's voice in the call of street vendors, seen devils in the darkness of every alley. He was falling into madness, but could not stop the descent.
Blood of my blood, his father a.s.sured him in a voice smoother than Calis.h.i.+te velvet. I can end all this and give you what you want, what you need I can end all this and give you what you want, what you need.
Magadon had never been sure if the voice had been real or imagined, but he had been tempted. He awoke one night in a dust den, his s.h.i.+rt stained with blood-someone else's. He'd known then that he had to do something to save himself or he would die, in spirit if not in body.
Ironically, the Source, by expanding his mental powers, had given him the tool he needed. He used it, performing a kind of psychic chirurgery on his own mind, walling off most of the dark, addicted portions of his consciousness from the rest. He likened it to cutting off a gangrenous limb, but this was more like splintering himself. He'd had to divide himself to save the whole. He could not cut off all of the addiction or all of the dark impulses, but he had severed most of them from his core.
And it worked. Mostly.
He still dreamed of the h.e.l.ls. His body told him that he had not slept well in months, but his conscious mind did not remember. That was the important thing. He worried what kind of rot was occurring within him, unnoticed behind the mental wall, but he figured a man half-saved was better than a man wholly-d.a.m.ned.
A loud round of laughter from the merchants shook Magadon from his ponderings. One of the merchants, a brown-haired man with a pot belly and receding hairline, stood up and called over to him. Magadon thought he remembered his name was Grathan.
”Woodsman! We've a wager here. We all know that you never doff that hat.”
”Even when you sleep,” one of the men-at-arms shouted.
Grathan nodded. ”Even when you sleep. I say you've something even more peculiar than your eyes under it.”
Magadon's eyes-colorless but for the pupils-often drew comment. He had explained them to the merchants as a defect of birth, and he supposed it was, coming as it did from his fiendish blood. Most called them ”asp eyes” because they looked like single pips on the dice: an unlucky roll.
”A scar or somesuch, perhaps,” Grathan said.
”Or maybe a balder head than Grathan's,” shouted another of the merchants, bringing the rest to hoa.r.s.e laughter.
”That'd be bald, indeed! A scar'd be better.”
Grathan waited for the laughter to die down, then gestured at a young merchant who sat near him. ”Tark here says you wear it out of superst.i.tion, for luck or somesuch. Which is it? There are twenty silver falcons to the man with the right of it.”
Magadon pushed his floppy, wide-brimmed hat back on his head, though he took care to keep it over his horns.
”This hat?”
”None other,” said the merchant.
Magadon decided to amuse himself by telling them the truth. ”I wear it to hide the devil horns sticking from my brow. Or somesuch. And that makes you both as wrong as an orc in a dwarfhold, so you can add the twenty falcons to my fee.”
The merchants and men-at-arms loosed raucous guffaws.
”Has you by the danglies there, Grathan!”
Grathan laughed along with the rest, even toasted Magadon with his tankard. When the group quieted, he said, ”Done, sir. Such sum to you ... or somesuch.”
Magadon appreciated the turn of phrase. He tipped his hat in a salute.
”But the added fee only if you share a drink with us,” called Tark, who had a much more commanding voice than his willowy frame suggested. ”You abstain with such fort.i.tude that Noss here,” he jerked a thumb at a burly man-at-arms near him, ”claims you're an ascetic Ilmaterite monk in disguise.”
Noss's face wrinkled with puzzlement and he slurred through his beard. ”Huh? Ascetic? What is that, a drunkard?”
More laughter.
”A drink, sir,” seconded Grathan, and the others around the fire nodded and murmured agreement. ”Come, join us. Our journey is almost done and custom demands we share a drink with our guide while still on the road.”
Noss filled a tankard with ale and held it up for Magadon.
Magadon rehea.r.s.ed an excuse in his head, prepared to offer it, but surprised himself by changing his mind. It was was custom around the southern sh.o.r.es of the Inner Sea to drink with a guide while on the road; and more than that, he suddenly wanted company more than privacy. custom around the southern sh.o.r.es of the Inner Sea to drink with a guide while on the road; and more than that, he suddenly wanted company more than privacy.
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