Brent Weeks - Beyond the Shadows

“Acaelus sought to live in peace. He had a few lifetimes as a farmer, a hunter, an apothecary, a perfumer, a blacksmith—can you imagine? Yet though they were full lives—sometimes married, even with children—they were not fulfilled lives, for a man who denies what is essential to his being is a man who drills holes in the cup of his own happiness. How could he help but resent those he loved as they kept him from his calling? Here was a man who could lead armies, who could defeat invasions almost single-handedly. This man was compelled to farm? By his own love? Time and again, he returned to the battlefield because the evil was too great to be ignored. And sometimes he was victorious and there was no price to pay. And sometimes his wife died, but it was worse when his children died; his marriages never survived his children’s deaths. He was a man who never learned to forgive himself.”

Kylar was missing some essential piece that the Wolf thought he understood, but the man kept speaking, and Kylar was so hungry to hear more about his master that he didn’t dare interrupt.

“So in the end, he sought to defeat the power of the ka’kari by defeating love,” the Wolf said. “He thought that if he refused to love, death could take nothing from him. He deafened himself to love’s voice with killing and whoring and drinking. He became a wetboy because wetboys cannot love. He was ultimately successful, and the ka’kari abandoned him because he finally knew love’s antithesis.”

“Hatred?”

“Indifference. When Vonda’s life was threatened, Durzo was relieved. The path he took was a reasonable one—he kept the ka’kari out of young Garoth Ursuul’s hands—but the truth was that he didn’t really care if Vonda died. That was what broke the ka’kari’s bond.”

“But he came back. Even after I bonded the ka’kari.”

“Because he loved you, Kylar. He chose to die for you, to give up everything he still had—his sword, his ka’kari, his power, his life—for you. There is no greater love. Such a death was rewarded with new life.”

“By who? You?” Kylar asked. The Wolf said nothing. “The ka’kari? The God?”

“Perhaps it is just the way greatest magic works: justice and mercy entwined. It’s a mystery, Kylar. A mystery on a par with the question of why is there life at all? If you wish to answer the mystery by positing a God, you can, or you can say that it just is—and either way, be glad for it, for it is a gift. Or a most fortunate accident.”

Kylar felt suddenly small in the workings of a universe vast beyond comprehension, vast and yet perhaps not ambivalent even to Durzo’s suffering. One last life—a sheer gift. The ka’kari was even more strange and marvelous than he’d imagined.

“I thought …” Kylar shook his head. “I thought it was just amazing magic.”

The Wolf laughed, and even the ghosts in the room seemed startled. “It is amazing magic, it just isn’t just amazing magic. The most potent magics are tied to human truths: beauty and passion and yearning and fortitude and valor and empathy. It is from these that the ka’kari draw their strength as much as it is from the magic they are imbued with.”

“And the darker truths?” Kylar asked.

“All human truths. Vengeance and hatred and glorying in destruction and ambition and greed and all the rest have power. The trick to being truly powerful is that your character be in line with the magic you attempt. Meisters make terrible healers. By the same token, most green mages have too much empathy to make war. The more fully human you are, the greater the diversity of your talents. The more deeply you feel, the more potent your gifts. That, Kylar, is why you called the ka’kari. You ached for love. Not only did you want be loved, as do we all, but you wanted to lavish love on your beloved. You wanted it with your whole being and you thought it had been denied you forever.”

The way he said it embarrassed Kylar.

“Don’t be embarrassed,” the Wolf said. “What is more human than to love and be loved? Between loving and thinking that love was denied you, that tension amplified your power.”

“That tension’s with me still, isn’t it?” Kylar asked. “For my love will always be dangerous to those I love.”

“Clever, isn’t it? Your power is tied to your capacity for love. The creator of the ka’kari gave you a gift and built into it the means to keep it forever powerful. No mean trick, that.”

“A mean trick is exactly what it is,” Kylar snarled. “What the hell am I supposed to do?”

“It’s a problem,” the Wolf said, shrugging.

But Kylar wasn’t listening. He could feel the blood draining out of his face. “Oh my God,” he said. His heart was a thunder in his ears, a rock in his chest. He’d meant he was dangerous to those he loved because his enemies could always threaten them. That wasn’t what the Wolf meant. He’d been telling Kylar for five minutes and Kylar hadn’t understood. Breathless, Kylar asked, “You mean every time I’ve died someone I love has died for me?”

“Of course. That’s the price of immortality.”

Kylar’s throat constricted. He was suffocating. “Who …?”

“Serah Drake died when Roth killed you. Mags Drake died for Scarred Wrable’s arrow on the trail. Ulana Drake died when the Godking killed you.”

Kylar’s knees buckled. He wanted to throw up. He wanted to faint. Anything, anything to not be. But the moment stretched on and in the midst of the gale, he found himself thinking, thank the God it wasn’t Uly or Elene, and then he cursed himself for the thought. Who was he to weigh one life against another and be thankful that one should die, simply because he loved her less? He’d killed them. Count Drake had taken in a foul-mouthed, amoral guttershite and made him part of his family. And Kylar had murdered the Drakes through his carelessness, his arrogance. For every gift Count Drake had given Kylar, he’d repaid him with grief.

“And for my blasphemy? When I took money to be killed?”

“Jarl.”

Kylar screamed. He tore his cloak. He pounded the ground with his fists, but there was no pain here, no body to mortify. The tears rolled down his cheeks and there was no comfort. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know. Oh, God.”

The Wolf was astounded. “But of course you knew. Durzo left you a letter on his body. He explained everything. He told me he put it in his breast pocket.”

“I couldn’t read it! It was soaked with blood! I couldn’t read a damned thing!” Then the last revelation hit him. “Who is it this time?” he asked, desperately. “Who dies for me this time?”

The Wolf was aghast. His lambent eyes and scarred face softened, and he looked fully human for the first time. “Kylar. I’m sorry. I thought you knew. I thought you knew all along.”

“Please. I’ll trade back! Let me trade back.”

“It doesn’t work like that. There’s nothing either of us can do. This time it’s Elene.”

Kylar woke on a cold stone slab in a cold room. He didn’t open his eyes. If he could have willed himself never to wake again, he would have. He was still except for his breath and the currents of his life’s blood rushing through his veins. As always when he came back from the dead, his body felt wonderful. Absolutely whole, powerful, bursting with energy. He’d stolen a life and it came to him abundantly. He was overfull, spilling life in every direction. His health was a mockery.

Tears welled in his eyes and spilled down his cheeks to his ears. No wonder the Wolf had thought him a monster. He’d thought Kylar was throwing away the lives of those he loved and who loved him.

He lay on his back, but it only got worse, so he opened his eyes. The air was stale, dank. The ceiling was ornate, cool white marble. He was in a crypt. Only feet away, on slabs like his, were a man’s body and a woman’s. The man was big, holding a big sword. The woman’s throat had been cut, and from how she’d decomposed, Kylar guessed she’d been bled dry. The man had died around the same time, surely during the coup. They were Logan’s parents. Around them, the walls were filled with row upon row of Gyre corpses, stretching back centuries. Logan had put Kylar in his own family’s crypt.