David Farland - Lords of the Seventh Swarm

That was the worst of it, how a husband paid for his meager attack by watching Karthenor’s men rape his wife. Thomas wished to God that Karthenor would just kill the man quickly. Thomas could do nothing to help these people. He struggled to cry out, to run. The Guide would not let him.

As Karthenor’s men came back to finish raping the woman, she decided to struggle. She now knew her husband could not save her; perhaps she believed Karthenor would kill her in any event.

Thomas had been holding her wrists, and he tussled with her. Her hands were thin, but strong from hard labor, and Thomas had been weakened by sitting imprisoned so long. She broke free for a moment, scratched at the eyes of her rapist, and Karthenor’s man responded with a vicious uppercut to the jaw, bouncing the back of her head against the floor, hard.

At the far side of the room, Karthenor sat near the fireplace holding the woman’s child in his lap. The babe was oblivious to the struggle and the scene of horror going on around him, and instead seemed fascinated by Karthenor’s golden mask. The lad kept touching Karthenor’s chin and laughing.

Karthenor had not seen the woman go limp. He said softly, “If she will not give it to you, just take it. Thomas, strangle her for me.”

All day, Thomas had worked to free his fingers, had wanted to strangle Karthenor. Now, despite his deepest hopes, the fingers seemed to work with a will of their own.

When the woman went limp in his hands, Thomas could not release her neck. Karthenor had ordered him to strangle her, and the Guide forced Thomas to continue the work until ordered to stop.

Karthenor came and sat beside Thomas at that moment, sat down, holding the, babe, who in the silence, in the warmth of the fire, simply lay back and studied Karthenor’s glowing face, like a pale moon in the darkness.

Karthenor watched Thomas, with a furrowed brow. “Do you know why I hate you, why I make you do these things?” Karthenor said at last.

“No,” Thomas answered, surprised his Guide left him free enough to speak. Perhaps the Guide considered the question to be more than rhetorical.

“I hate you … because you are Maggie’s uncle, and she has undone me. I was a powerful man under the dronon’s rule, one of their most trusted servants. They made me wealthy and came to my call. But Maggie tried to take that from me when she killed the Lords of the Sixth Swarm.

“Now I am a hunted man.”

Karthenor stared at the dead woman’s face. A bit of spittle had escaped her lips-Thomas was still choking her-and Karthenor wiped it off with his finger. “She was such a sweet girl. Her husband shouldn’t have angered me. I have no patience with such.

“May I tell you secret, Thomas?”

Thomas did not answer. His Guide saw no need for it.

“This woman, this child, this man,”-Karthenor waved expansively, the folds of his dark robe billowing out as if he wore priest’s garb-“they don’t matter. They don’t matter in the least. And the worst of it is, they have chosen not to matter.”

He waited, as if for Thomas to argue, but the Guide would not let Thomas speak.

“You see,” Karthenor said, “this man and woman are what we call Backwards. They have rejected technology. They’re doubling back on the path of evolution. They live here in this … house of stone and twigs, and they’ve chosen to do nothing with their lives. In two hundred years, no one will remember their names. They have taken their free agency, and they’ve chosen oblivion. It makes no difference whether they live or die. So, I’ve chosen to kill them. But this child-this sweet child shall live. In the morning, when we leave, I’ll take it with us, and we’ll dispose of it on some other world; where its life might take on meaning.

“You can let the woman go now, Thomas. She’s quite dead.”

Thomas released the woman’s neck, and she fell back to the dirt floor of her home. Thomas wanted to beg her forgiveness, tell her he was sorry. But it would not matter.

“Let me see your hands,” Karthenor whispered. Thomas held them up for inspection.

“Would you look at that? Months of incarceration, and still you have calluses on your fingers. You must be quite the musician, Thomas Flynn. Did you see the lute hanging from the rafters? Do you know how to play it?”

Thomas looked up. Indeed, he hadn’t seen it. “No. Yes,” he answered both questions in turn, as his Guide demanded.

“Calluses,” Karthenor whispered. “You see, Thomas, that’s why I like you so much better than I like them .” The barest nod indicated the dead shepherd and his wife. “You are a man who works, who strives to attain. I’ve heard you singing. You’ve a fine voice, a great talent. The universe is a better place because you are here.

“You could have stayed in your own world. You could have lived happily in Tihrglas. A talented man like you could have retired in some style. But you chose to leave that all behind, to grasp for something more. I like that in you, Thomas.”

Thomas wanted to spit in Karthenor’s face. The applause of this monster was an outrage.

“I see by your grimace that you do not care for me,” Karthenor said. “It does not matter. You and I are not so unalike, regardless of what you think. After all, I have questioned you under the influence of my Guide. I know your secret heart. You are a man who uses people, then discards them. You care nothing for your fellow men. You hold them in low regard. Perhaps not to the degree that I do, but you are not much better.

“Still, you make the unimportant ones serve you. You’re smart enough to do that, at least, but I fear, Thomas, that you lack vision.

“So I’ll teach you what the dronon have taught me. You see … this farmer, his wife-they served no purpose. But you and I are people who matter. We are the dreamers, the achievers, those who grasp. And by letting them serve us”-he waved at the corpse of the dead woman-“in however small a manner, we suddenly have given meaning to their meaningless existence.”

Karthenor looked into Thomas’s eyes and said, “Tell me all that you are thinking. Speak the truth, Thomas.”

“You’re a monster! You’re a monster to use such cold logic against me!”

“Yes?” Karthenor said.

Then, against every inclination Thomas had toward decency, he confessed, for his Guide uttered words he would never dare, “And yet, and yet, in one thing-you are right. We are much alike. Both of us take what we want from the world, in an effort to live our dreams. I debauch women and leave them alive to face their guilt. Perhaps, once, because of my callousness, I left a woman to die.” Even with the Guide on, Thomas could speak no more.

“Often farmers will plow a field, then leave it fallow after,” Karthenor said. “To leave behind the women you have debauched makes sense, for one might always return and gain more service from them.

“But let me enlarge your vision,” Karthenor said. “You are a simple man, from a backward planet, so I will try to speak in analogies you can comprehend: when a man owns a pig on your world, does he not use the whole creature? It is true that he feeds it, and cleans its pens, and gives it water-so that the casual bystander might be led to believe that he is a servant to his hog.

“But such a bystander would be shortsighted, wouldn’t he? No, the farmer has a greater goal. As the pig matures, he uses its dung to enrich his fields. He might let it root in stony ground, so that later it is easier to plant in that field. And when the pig is ready to slaughter, the farmer takes its flesh to eat, its skin to wear, its intestines to make casings for his sausage. He will eat the pig’s stomach, heart, liver, kidneys, brain, ears, blood. He will boil the bones to make soap, and feed scraps of the hog to his dogs. Those parts he does not find a use for, he will bury in the ground to fertilize his fields. Nothing is wasted. Do you understand? Nothing!”