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‘Doesn’t matter. I’ll just take what I need. It’s important. Haut explained everything. Blood has been spilled. Hood’s wife slain by an Azathanai, corrupting all the sorcery K’rul unleashed. That needs answering, by a purifying form of sorcery, what Haut calls elemental. And the magic of Dark is elemental.’
‘And Light?’
‘The same.’
‘So Urusander and his legion have a right to the power they seek. A just cause for this civil war.’ When she said nothing, he gestured towards the stone house. ‘There it is. An Azath House.’
‘Doesn’t matter if the cause is just, if the way of achieving it is a crime.’
Arathan grunted. ‘Gothos would agree with you. In fact, something of that sentiment is at the core of his argument against civilization. The crimes of progress, of every self-serving rationale for destroying something in the name of creating something new, presumably better. He says a culture’s value system is in fact a shell game. It changes in the name of convenience. The stone is under one of the shells, meaning all the others are hollow, and therein lies the hypocrisy of a civilization’s pronounced set of values. Even the weight of those values – those stones – changes depending on the whims of the one running the game.’ After a moment of silence following his words, he glanced at Korya, to find her staring back intently. ‘What?’
‘It’s easy to find flaws. It’s much harder to find solutions.’
‘That’s because there aren’t any. Solutions, I mean. We are imperfect creatures, and the society we create cannot help but reflect those imperfections, or even exaggerate them. The spark of tyranny resides in every one of us. From this, we find tyrannical despots terrorizing entire nations. We are prone to jealousy, and from that, armies invade, lands are stolen and the bodies of victims are stacked like cordwood. We lie to hide our crimes and for this to work, historians need to glide over past atrocities. And so it goes, on and on. In the end, honesty is the enemy of us all. We wear civilization like a proud mask. But it’s still a mask.’
‘Gothos deserves a kick between the legs,’ Korya said, even as she faced the Azath House and set off towards the gateway. Something inside her had abruptly closed up, like the slamming shut of some hidden door.
Arathan saw the sudden flatness come to her eyes, but said nothing, even as he felt a faint pang of something that might be regret. As she approached the Azath House, he followed. ‘He’d not disagree with you.’
‘That’s no consolation.’
‘Perhaps not.’
‘And this is why I’m done listening to old men. Hope dies to ten thousand small cuts, and these men around us, Arathan, they are most terribly scarred.’ She shook her head, her hair, grown long, shimmering upon her shoulders. ‘Civilization is all about restraint. That’s what laws and rules are for. To check our more venal impulses—’
‘Until those laws and rules are twisted around them, becoming a travesty of justice.’
‘He’s made you old before your time,’ Korya said. ‘He shouldn’t have done that.’
‘Flawed and imperfect, even the Lord of Hate.’
‘I think I’m going to give up on you, Arathan. Go on, join Hood and Haut and Varandas and all the rest. But it seems to me, of all the enemies you might choose, death is the simplest. So, take your easy way out, and good luck to you.’
As she turned away, Arathan said, ‘Wait! What about the Azath House? It’s here, you’re only steps from the path! Did you come all this way just to turn round again? I thought you wanted to explore it?’
Korya hesitated, and then shrugged. ‘Fine, since I’m here.’
She passed through the gateway, on to the flagstoned path. Arathan followed her, remaining a step behind.
The yard to either side of the wending path was a tangled mess of sinkholes and humped mounds. A few small, scraggly trees surmounted the mounds, their branches twisted and bearing only a few of the last season’s leaves, wrinkled and black. The path made a sinuous approach to the two stone steps and narrow landing at the foot of a heavy, wooden door.
‘That looks solid,’ Arathan observed, eyeing the door.
‘When did it … appear?’
‘Gothos said a thousand years ago.’
‘That door isn’t a thousand years old, Arathan. Maybe a hundred, or even less.’
He shrugged. ‘The fittings are iron, blackened but no rust. And that doesn’t make sense, either, does it?’
All of the windows fronting the house were shuttered, again with
wood, and no light leaked from between the weathered slats.
‘No one lives here,’ Korya said. ‘It feels … dead.’
Stepping past her, Arathan walked up to the door. He made a fist and thumped on the thick planks of wood. There was no echo, no reverberation. He might as well have been pounding on a solid wall. Glancing back over a shoulder, he saw Korya still on the path, one hand held palm-up, and in that palm sat the acorn. There was speculation in her study of the yard to one side.
