Elizabeth Moon: Liar's Oath

Then her hands grasped his with a touch like fire. He could feel her power in his wrists, her magery only just weaker than his, her skill in using it as great or greater, for she had had the early training. Swift as light moving across the face of a cliff, picking out each hollow and ledge, her magery swept along his nerves, into the chambers of his mind. He could not sense what she found, but she recoiled in horror, eyes wide.

“You—you do not even know, do you?” Her voice was a whisper hardly loud enough to hear. Seri, after a quick glance at the Rosemage, stood alert, as if ready for battle.

“What is it?” Seri asked, not looking away from him.

“He . . . was invaded.” The Rosemage scrubbed her hands on her robe, as if to remove the touch of his skin. “I cannot tell when—or I might, but it would take longer. You were right; he has been drawing on Aris’s power, though I do not think he knew it. I am not sure how much Luap is left, to be honest.”

Luap felt something stirring uneasily deep in his mind, like a hibernating animal prodded in its den. What was it? He tried to explore, to do for himself what the Rosemage had done, and met a vague reluctance—no opposition to meet head on, but the sensation that things would go better if he didn’t bother. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said to the Rosemage, in a voice he hoped was reasonable. “I am the same Luap as always.”

“No,” she said, with a decisive shake of her head. “That you are not, whatever you are.”

He wanted to scream at her, insist on it, but Seri stood there, poised for anything he might do. She looked less angry than he would have expected to find that he had been stealing power from her beloved Aris, but he knew she was dangerous. He tried to gather his magery around him, the comfortable cloak he had had all these years, and the Rosemage stirred.

“No,” she said, as if she knew what he was thinking. “No, you cannot do that, not again. I won’t let you.”

The sleeping monster stirred again, then arose, flooding his mind with its anger. “You!” he said, not knowing or caring if he spoke his own thoughts or those of the thing within him. “You not let me? You old woman, I mastered your magery years ago, when first we met: you should remember that. And I can master it now.” It was in his hand, as reins in the hand of a master teamster; he could feel the power straining to be free, to strike. His light filled the chamber; his will—

And Seri came alight. He nearly gaped in astonishment. A peasant? Had she been mageborn all along? But her light met his and did not mingle; his eyes burned. Where had he seen such light before? He squinted against it, his eyes streaming tears.

“You will not harm her,” Seri said. “The gods will not permit it.”

“It is too late,” the Rosemage said. Luap looked at her; she struggled against tears. “I served one bad king: I killed him . Now I have served a bad prince through another exile. I will not kill you, Selamis, but I will serve you no longer. I will serve what remains of our people, and kill only those creatures of the dark. Fare well, Seri and Aris: if you ever come again to Fintha, I hope you bring peace between our peoples. As for you, Selamis, I can neither curse nor praise you; I pray instead that Esea’s light will show you what you have become, and the High Lord will judge fairly how far you consented.” She pushed past Aris, out into the corridor. Luap could not doubt it was for the last time, that she meant what she said. She had never said anything she did not mean. He wanted to scream after her, beg her to stay, but the shadowy presence inside him forbade it.

“What did I do?” he asked himself as much as those around him. “What went wrong?”

Seri, still alight, came near on one hand, and Aris on the other. “Perhaps,” Seri said, “it is what you did not do. Give me your hand.” He would have refused, but she had it already; Aris took his other hand, and they joined theirs. In that instant, he saw the thing within him, which like a soft maggot had found his hollow core, soothing and comforting him as it nestled there, growing to fill what emptiness it enlarged. Now a mailed and glittering malice, the self’s armor against self-knowledge, raised its claws in mock salute and leered. He knew it chuckled in delight, its long purpose fulfilled.

“NO!” Not so much scream as moan, with all the intensity of the feelings he had not felt for years. He squeezed his eyes against the sight, but for the eyes of the mind there are no lids. Shame scalded him. Seri’s light, and Aris’s, flooded his mind, left no shadowy corners, revealed everything Gird had revealed those long years before, but worse. Tears ran down his face; he remembered all too clearly trying to tell Gird he would have been a better king. Better? The presence in his mind mocked him: Could any have been worse? Had any kin of his, any of those royalties whose prerogatives he envied, ever been as feckless, as vicious, as to let such an enemy into such a sanctum? “I’m sorry,” he said; the echo of the many times he had said that reverberated through his mind.

He would have been glad to die, but death was not offered. “Is this what you wanted?” asked Seri. He shook his head; that was not enough. He had to answer aloud.

“No,” he said hoarsely. “It is not.”

“Did you know what you were doing?”

“No.” He remembered all the warnings, and how sure he had been that he knew better, that he had outgrown those warnings.

“Then throw that filth out,” she said. Luap stared at her; surprised he could see her through his tears. Throw it out? How could he? “You must,” she said, more gently, as if she could see every thought in his mind. “You must; no one else can.”

He had no more strength; he felt it running out of him like blood from a mortal wound. “I can’t,” he whispered.

“You were Gird’s friend,” Aris said, unexpectedly. “You can.” All those times he and the others had faltered to a halt in mud or hot sun, certain they could not march another step, and Gird had bellowed at them, rain or sweat running down his weathered face . . . and they had taken the next step, and the next. If Gird were here, would he dare say “I can’t”? No. He could almost hear the old man’s gruff voice, feel that hard fist once more. He had to try again. “Get out,” he whispered to the presence within him. “Get out !”

You’ll die came the response. Its sweet poison soothed; he felt himself responding as he had, unwittingly, all these years. You have no chance but me. Disgust at himself, and the memory of Gird, gave him strength to resist.

“Get OUT!” He felt Aris and Seri joining their power to his, yielding this one last time to his command as his magery proved too weak . . . and then the presence, whatever it was, fled away down the wind of his anger.

And left him once more empty, hollow, guilty, hardly able to stand. Seri and Aris supported him; as his strength returned, he could see them more clearly. No longer “the younglings” he had both admired and envied, but weathered and graying, well into middle age.

“I can’t—I don’t know what to do?” His voice came out rasping and feeble as an old man’s.

“You’ve made the right start,” Seri said. “Now you might try asking the gods.”

Luap winced. He had not, he realized, really asked the gods anything for a long time. He had never really wanted to know what the gods wanted of him. He had spent those times in the yearly festivals when prayers were normally offered giving complacent reports on his own genius, looking for praise in return. Now he had no choice; unpracticed as he was, he must ask. He let them lead him back to the great hall, and tried to fix his mind on the gods he hardly knew.