The Seekers Of Fire Part 24

Morning 8 of the First Quarter, Year of the Master 706.

An hour later Mentors Ardelia and Nigel made only a vague attempt to stop him before Maxim's sickroom, and he rushed inside, barely slowing to kick the door open.

"Ah. So you come, at last. I have been expecting you."

Dominick halted in the small, Sun-lit room with bright yellow curtains, staring at the white-clad, frail old man on the bed. Suddenly, his own presently sweaty, ruffled hair and crumpled brown robe, and especially the whip he had waved at Nigel and Ardelia, seemed very out of place.

"You are making me feel like a loutish little peasant again," he said in a soft, controlled voice, all vehemence suddenly draining away from him to leave hollowness and shame.

"Am I now? Can anyone truly make you feel anything you disagree with, my son?"

I don't know, Dominick wanted to say. I don't want to think about it. I want to be angry, like a moment ago, so that I can shout at you and be done with it. But anger was a useless weapon against these sharp, all-knowing eyes. Looking at them, as well as listening to Maxim, more often than not made you wonder why exactly you were angry.

"Max." Dominick sat on the edge of the bed, watching a face that bore many wrinkles whereas eight years ago it had born almost none, and gray hair that had been almost black but was now almost silver. The stabbing wound and the consequent fever had made Maxim's skin pale and sallow, both on the face and the thin, bony handsa"but, strangely, what worried Dominick the most was the thin white pajamas.

Had he ever seen the man in anything but a somber brown robe with starched cuffs and collar? Maxim looked ... smaller right now. The accursed pajamas seemed to have taken something away and taken it away irrevocablya"something important. His dignity. His strength. Dominick clenched his fists around the whip's handle. He was a Mentor and a man, but were he a twelve-year-old snotty-nosed peasant, right now he would have cried.

Maxim watched him, saying nothing. He had that habit.

"Max." Dominick unclenched his fingers from the whip and drew his dagger. "I need to know."

"What do you need to know, my son?" The old man did not even look at the weapon, and Dominick sighed, laying it on the sheets.

"Start with why you said you were expecting me, while I was told you had refused to see me. And why the fools outside let me in so easily today. For all they know, I might be an accursed murderer going to finish the deed!" For all I know.

"Ah, one of the answers is easy. They let you in because I told them to do so, even though they were reluctant to obey." He cast a Dominick a sideways glance. "That is, I told them to do so if you showed persistence."

"You told me to not come."

"Yes, my son." Maxim took Dominick's dagger, the dagger that had almost killed him, in his weak, trembling hands. "Yes, I did." He played with the weapon, shifting it so that it would catch the Sun and make Sun spots on the wall. Like a child, playing with a toy. "But you came, and I am glad."

"Why?" Why are you playing with me?

"Dominick, my son, will you indulge an old man and accept 'I cannot tell you' as an answer?"

"Maxim, my father, I wonder if I would indulge you better if I answered 'yes,' or if I answered 'no.' "

Maxim laughed, a weak laugh, but behind ita"behind the whiteness of his pajamas, behind the wrinkles and the frailty of his figurea"his eyes were no less sharp than ever, and even sharper still.

They were both silent for a while, and the old man closed his eyelids, his breathing becoming as slow and regular as if he had drifted into sleep. The Sun spots on the wall jumped, disturbed, as Dominick pulled his dagger from his hand.

He could kill him so easily. Just a quick snap with the dagger, and the thin, tired man would be gone. It was all so wrong, so unbalanced. A stab, and then the man was broken and the healer could not fix him for days, and then another stab, just a tiny little stab would be enough to finish him ... A stab with a tiny metal blade. A piece, a toy that humans had made, could undo humans. Such a fragile thing, a human. Such a fickle thing, a life. Dominick closed his fingers around the handle. A little thing, such a tiny, insignificant thing, but how much power it held.

And why was he, Dominick, thinking about all this? Gently, carefully, he pulled the white blanket to the old man's chin and wrapped the corners beneath his shoulders.

"You know, old man," he whispered to the sleeping figure, "the why-s are all your fault. You could have whipped them out of me so long ago. I should know, I have whipped some why-s out of people myself. But you did not do it, and I don't know what to do any more." He put the dagger back into its sheath. Why had he drawn it, anyway? "Probably don't even know who I am."

"Pretty normal for your age, actually." Dominick almost jumped at the calm, not-at-all-asleep voice. "I might have once been like that myself." The sharp eyes bore into Dominick's again, suddenly not weak and sick, but strong, authoritative, invading. A Mentor's gaze, which no one had applied to Dominick for years. What, in the name of the Master?

"Doubt, as you well know, is the path to a Mentor's undoing. But, Dominick, my boy, do you know what a Mentor is?"

Dominick remained silent.

"A Mentor's primary task, my boy, is to take care." Maxim reached out, propped a pillow in the corner where the bed met two walls, and raised himself to a sitting position. His movements were slow and deliberate, but he was not trembling. Suddenly the white pajamas did not matter so much.

"Your task is to keep those who are weaker than you, more stupid than you, more lost than you, on the straight path and away from the dark, devastating foresta"and sometimes that means that you, my boy, have to step away from the path and into the darkness, so that you can find those wandering and bring them back. Talk to them if you have to, lie to them if you need, whip them if they will let you, do whatever else you see fita"but bring them back." He extended his hand towards the gla.s.s of water on the nightstand, but Dominick was faster, handing it to him. Despite his slowness and the transparent thinness of his limbs, the old man's shoulders were still broad, and somehow that made things better. Maxim drank, deeply.

"It is the path that is important, my son, or, rather, the system of paths that traverses the world, but youa"you no longer have the luxury of staying on a path, even the hard, th.o.r.n.y one. It is a useful path, the path of thorns and trials. Nigel and Oliver walk it. Ardelia does. But you have strayed from it, for you have too much doubt in you. Well, doubt can be used. Now you have a choice. Will you be lost in the forest, or will you make finding the lost ones your priority? Will you break? Or will you build? Will you be a Mentor?"

"Old man." Dominick closed his eyes for a moment, running a hand over his forehead. The detector vibrated again in the other one. "I have been to other people's d.a.m.n minds. I don't know what worse, darker forest there could be."

Like he had done eight years ago, Maxim bent his long, bony fingers, reached out, and knocked on Dominick's skull.

"Other people's minds are still a path."

"What are you aiming at, Max?" Dominick returned his gaze. "I know you. Such a speech on the edge of aberration has a purpose. What has gotten into you this time, old man?"

"Gotten into me?" Maxim placed his gla.s.s back on the nightstand, carefully, by himself. "Nothing ever gets into me, Son. It is all there already. Oh, well. I have a task for you, Mentor."

"Mentor, you say. Well, I should tell you something, Mentor. Just before I came to you, I vandalized the d.a.m.n temple."

Maxim watched him calmly, not revealing any judgement or surprise. Dominick sighed.

"Max, if I were a Ber or the Head Mentora"if the power to elevate or fell Mentors belonged to mea"I would not have let one such as I remain here for a single moment after"a"he clenched a fista""that night. Whatever happened then, old man? Did I try to kill you? Did I see a samodiva, Maxim? Samodivi, little peasants, Balkaene stones, accursed visions. Doubt. I dream of her at night, did you know? It is trouble waiting to happen, d.a.m.n the Bers and the Head Mentor! Whatever you have told them about me, they should know better! I am damaged. Can't they see? Can't they do something? I am a danger to all that is good and right, Father!" His clenched fist met the nightstand. "I am confused and thus I am weak!"

"And therein lies your greatest strength. For we have all become too certain, too set in our ways."

Dominick did not look at him, but strode to the window, staring at the temple at the other side of the street, barely controlling himself to not tear down the curtains. His breathing was uneven; his heart was beating too fast. The Sun was glaring at him, light reflecting from the rods at the temple's roof. The Sun had hit old Haralambi from Goritsa, long ago, and his heart had beaten exactly like this when Dominick had run to him and touched him.

"Drink some water."

d.a.m.n old Maxim, did he ever say a word that was not calm? But he drank.

"Did you try to kill me, you ask? Did you see a samodiva? How can I know?" A voice. A disembodied voice, for currently Dominick could not see its owner, shadows scampering before the young Mentor's eyes, his body nearly falling. A voice of harsh authority with the barest hint of softness.

"d.a.m.n you," Dominick murmured, and Maxim laughed.

"So are you a murderer, boy? Would you believe my answer, whatever I said? That night, I had my back turned to you often enough; I could not have seen all. Tonight, you stood with a knife raised above my bed. Did you try to kill me? Only you can know for sure. Did you see a samodiva? Ask your own eyes."

d.a.m.n Maxim thrice, he was not lying. Playing with words, yes. Withholding information, certainly. But not lying at all. Dominick was not the one, at least not the only one, trying to kill Maxim twenty-three days ago. That much he could infer from the old man's ambiguities. But he had thought about killing Maxim tonight, and perhaps that, in itself, made him a murderer.

d.a.m.n the corrupt, iniquitous Militia woman. Couldn't she have done her job properly with him? d.a.m.n the little Balkaene peasant and his stone. Even without the stone and its visions, the boy had reminded Dominick of too many things he had been trying to forget for eight years. d.a.m.n the Ber woman, tooa"the angry, beautiful young woman who looked like a samodiva herself, who had taken the stone from the peasant boy and let him go even before Maxim had awakened to say none was guilty. She could not just let a boy go like this. She had a responsibility! d.a.m.n them all, they all had roles in society and life, they all had a duty to the Master's world, and none of them fulfilled it properly!

Dominick had thought that he had been fulfilling his, for eight years. Apparently not, considering today.

"Old man, can't you see if I am guilty or innocent in my eyes? Can't your detector tell you?" Can't you, at least, be a proper Mentor?

"No. As I already said, we have become too set in our ways, and that, my boy, is our greatest fallacy. The world is changing, but we are not keeping up. Come here."

Dominick did, and listened to the old man's words.

Many hours later, he left Maxim's room, and set towards what Maxim had called "the dark, devastating forest."

END OF EXCERPT.

end.