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‘’Til the soap upon the tiles.’
‘Such an ironic death should have made him famous.’
‘His body of work put paid to that.’
‘Quoth me another line or three!’
‘ “Too dark this dawn! Too bright this sunset! Too gloomy this day, too starlit this wretched night!”’
‘Too miserable this fool who sees nothing good in anything.’
‘He was suicidal, as I said. Four years the span of his career, as he unleashed all that was
within him, broken of heart, blind to the insipid self and all its false confessions – broken of heart, said I? Empty of heart, too obsessed with the trappings of rejection to focus upon the object itself. She said no and before her breath left the word he was off, epic visions filling his head, the ordeal stretched out like a welcoming lover. Hark well the willing martyr and make jaded your eye upon his thrashing agony – this is a game played out to its gory end, with an audience evermost in mind.’
‘In the offing a bronze, I should think. Or a painting, broader than high, a swept vista—’
‘Done, and done, too, the bronze.’
‘What? Varanaxa? Gallan’s mocked hero? But that man was an invention! A fiction! Gallan’s public snipe at his fawners!’
‘I posited no distinctions.’
Prazek sniffed. ‘The broken heart of a poet gets pumped dry fortnightly.’
‘From a healthy one, nothing worthwhile bleeds. So some would claim. But it is these appetites of which we should steer well wide, yet not canted too cynical. Instead, invite a curiosity as to the self-made victim and his self-wounded self. What urge spurs the cut? What hunger invites the bite upon one’s own flesh? This is death turned inward, the maw and the wound made one, like lovers.’
‘Varanaxa,’ sighed Prazek. ‘For that epic farce, Gallan was vilified.’
‘He cares not.’
‘More to the fury of his enemies, that!’
‘And herein hangs a lesson, should we dare pluck it.’
Prazek squinted ahead, to the train’s foremost riders: Commander Toras Redone and at her side Captain Faror Hend. ‘Suicidal indifference?’
Dathenar shrugged, and then said, ‘I am wary.’
Galar Baras had ridden back along the column, driven to distraction no doubt by three thousand soldiers marching in silence. There were no stragglers, few conversations, the weapons and armour mute. The sound of the Hust Legion was a dull drum roll that brooked no pause, a slow thunder drawing ever closer to Kharkanas.
The thaw that had been whispered on the south wind the past few days was now dying away, and the snow crunched beneath boot and hoof, a growing bite to the air as the morning lengthened.
‘That confounded ritual,’ said Dathenar in a frustrated growl. ‘I awakened on thin ice. But which way to crawl? No shoreline beckons with high tufts of yellow grass and the stalks of reeds. To shift a hair’s breadth is to hear the ice creaking beneath me. My eyes strain to read this placid, windswept mirror – is it clouds that promise more solid blooms? The grey sky warning of treacherous patches? Do I lie upon my back, or face-down? Still, through it all, something writhes in my gut, my friend, in anticipation of blood.’
Prazek shook himself. ‘What has changed? Nothing. Everything. The ritual tattooed a mystery upon our souls. Blessing or curse? We remain blind to the pattern. And yet, as you say, there is anticipation.’
Dathenar gestured at the unoccupied walls ahead. ‘See the fanfare awaiting us? Bitter indifference castigates us, Prazek.’
‘No matter, friend. Was I not speaking of love?’
‘You were, the heart under siege. Though I cannot fathom your reason for this sudden crisis.’
‘Criminals,’ Prazek said. ‘No punishment allows for the tender caress, the meeting of hands in soft clasp, the hesitations that linger, the confessions that release.’ He paused. ‘A stillborn twin, now the repository of sorcery, and she who would mine it left broken and filled with self-loathing. So Wareth would take her into his arms. Yet he too allows himself no worth, indeed, no right. Can I not wonder, friend, at those who hold that love is a privilege?’
Dathenar grunted. ‘Every god of the past claimed it a benison. A reward. By its fullness are our mortal deeds measured. Doled out like heavenly coins, as among the Forulkan.’
‘Indeed, and consider that. How can this currency so define itself? Value rises in scarcity of love, plummets in surfeit? The gods played at arbiters, yet demanded love’s purest gold in coin. Who then to measure their worth? I challenge the right of this, Dathenar.’
