Robert Hughes - The Prophet of Lamath

Vicia was perplexed. Heinox cackled, rolling himself in the brown earth, gently massaging his jaw into the soil.

“Three hundred years!” Vicia marveled. Then he slipped over to Heinox and asked, “How much is three hundred years?”

“You know I can’t count.”

“We’re going to have to learn how to do that. It seems to be very important.”

“I thought you were hungry.”

“I am!”

“Then let’s cut out this nonsense and eat these people!”

“Would you please have a little patience? I’ve never been a god before.”

“You aren’t one now.”

“How do you know?”

“We are a dragon, Vicia.

Dragons are not gods.”

“Am I a god?” Vicia asked the crowd.

“I believe in the Dragon, may he preserve us, may he hold—” they all began in unison, and Vicia looked smugly at his twin as the litany was repeated.

“They are people! Are you going to believe their word over that of your very own other head?” Heinox asked.

“My very own other head has been nothing but a nuisance lately!” Vicia snarled back.

“Very well then, be a god,” Heinox snorted, “but I intend to remain as fully dragon as it is possible for me to be—under the circumstances. Would you be quiet!” he roared at the droning devotees, and they stopped their recitation and looked up at him. “If you must do that, do it to yourselves. It’s getting on my nerves!”

“The—the creed displeases our Lord Vicia-Heinox—?”

“I am not your Lord, nor anyone’s Lord. I am not a god in any form, though I seem to be having difficulty convincing the other half of me of that.” The assembled monastics reeled in disbelief. One finally managed to stammer, “Then—the Divisionists are right?” This unleashed a flurry of loud discussion. “Heresy! Heresy!” the historian shouted. “You blaspheme the Dragon!”

“But he said himself—”

“The Dragon is testing us,” the leader cried, her own voice tinged with uncertainty.

“We must not let the Divisionists know he’s said this!” another shouted. “You know what kind of interpretation they would put on it!”

“I shouldn’t think the Divisionists will hear any of this conversation,” Heinox began, “whatever Divisionists are—” The dragon was interrupted by a chorus of amens and sighs of relief, but managed finally to finish,

“—for I intend to eat you all.” A sudden hush fell on the cultists.

“Come now, is it fair to devour all of them?” Vicia asked his bodymate. “They have been most entertaining.”

“But I am most hungry,” Heinox replied, Vicia dropped down to eye level with the leader, whose face was once again very pale.

“Just between us… are there many who worship me in Lamath?” She curtseyed slightly and murmured, “The Lord Dragon knows that all of Lamath worships him.” Her eyes were glazed, an expression of mixed fear and ecstasy playing across her features as she anticipated the joy of total union with her god.

Vicia rose high into the air and turned to Heinox. “It seems,” he said, “that if all of Lamath worships me—these few surely won’t be missed.”

“Is he sick?” Bronwynn whispered to Rosha, watching Pelmen sway to and fro in the saddle some twenty feet beyond them. Rosha shook his head and smiled to reassure the girl, but in fact his fears had all returned. The brief, glorious explosion of action experienced in the cave had given way once more to the hushed, cautious plodding of horses through yellowing .mulch, and the sparkling-eyed sorcerer appeared again to be a broken, tired fugitive. His mind seemed ever to be elsewhere, and Rosha bit his tongue to keep from crying out in protest.

Why? Why did they continue to journey into Lamath, if this was to be the outcome? Was this what Lamath did to a man? Bronwynn felt much the same. An hour after their rescue, the excitement began fading; three hours later it was all but forgotten. They retraced their steps until back on the right path, but she really didn’t notice. The thick trunks and the branches above had grown so monotonously common that she told Rosha she hoped never to see another tree as long as she lived. Depression settled on the band, enveloping even the horses. They no longer reacted to one another or to their riders, choosing to plod wearily forward as if shielded by blinders from the sight of anything save the dry ground ahead.

“Some magic forest!” Bronwynn spat, and Rosha grinned wryly.

“N-n-not happy, m-my Lady?”

“I’m not happy and I’m not your lady.” Bronwynn snarled, and he drew back, his face hardening, his soft expression of boyish curiosity giving way before her bitter mood. She kicked her pony savagely, impatient with its sluggish response. Quite suddenly Minaliss wheeled before them, and Pelmen, sitting straight in his saddle, stared at the two of them. Their horses slowed to a distinterested stop, unaware of their riders’ shock.

Bronwynn felt as if she really saw Pelmen now for the first time. As they watched, the transformation that had been taking place so gradually over the past few days raced to completion. They were eyewitnesses to the change.

What color had he been wearing? Bronwynn struggled to remember, but the memory got lost in the gentle drapes of a fish-satin robe of sky blue. It was the color of the cloudless horizon at noon on a hot summer’s day—it was dazzlingly blue. His face was gaunt. Had she never noticed that graying at his temples? The thick brownish hair that fell in waves—to his neck? Had she never before noticed eyes so blue they cut? His cheekbones were so high and hollow as to suggest twin cliffs, from which those blue beacons beamed out a message to all that saw them. And that strangely compelling message in his eyes seemed to say, “Trust me, for I know.” And Bronwynn trusted.

No longer the laughing magician—still less the mocking performer—Pelmen the Prophet regarded these two bickering children quietly. He said nothing for a long time. Then he smiled gravely.

“It is a magic forest, Bronwynn. But magic is not always pleasurable. It can wrap you in dark folds of gloom as easily as in colored light. It will steal from you as much as it gives, my Lady. The powers always balance.” He looked away, gazing toward the north and frowning slightly.

Bronwynn and Rosha glanced at one another, and she at last gave breath to the question they both were asking.

“What—has happened?” Pelmen looked back at her, his gaze steady and clear. For days his eyes had nicked from one point to another, settling on nothing, always in flight. Now he was at rest—and Bronwynn drew on that reservoir of calm, dispelling doubts and fears she didn’t realize until that moment she had harbored. He smiled again. “The Power has come,” he said.

“It has—taken you?”

“It has been given.”

“Do you—control it?” she asked fearfully. He was too different, this new Pelmen. She found herself trembling. She had been rescued from the dragon by this man… been tumbled from her horse by a thunderclap he had summoned… had chased him around a cave believing him to be her pet bird… and all that was manageable, somehow, for she had sensed in every instance that Pelmen was in control. Now she wondered.

“You have spent too much of your life close to political power, my Lady. You think too highly of control.”

“Then you don’t control it,” she said firmly, not questioning but demanding. He gazed at her in mute reply, and the hush between them was broken only by a telltale stirring in the trees above. “Then you are a slave to it,” she finally said tonelessly, feeling the dread like a cloak draping itself around her shoulders once again.

Pelmen glanced up at the wind in the trees, then back to the girl. “There are many kinds of slavery, my Lady. In most cases, one is free to choose what he will be in bondage to. A storm is coming from the north, and we must be in our tent before it strikes us.” He looked at Rosha. “Here we will camp.”