Salute the Dark

She was still touching his face, and that seemed to hold him in place. Stenwold saw one of his hands clench and unclench, as though wanting to reach for his dagger.

‘I have sent her away to fulfil her purpose,’ Inaspe said, and then: ‘But that is sophistry. Ask yourself, does death represent part of Felise Mienn’s purpose? Her own death or the deaths of others?’

At last Destrachis relaxed, with the faintest, bleakest of smiles appearing on his face. ‘Well, of course,’ he replied blackly.

‘We are not blind, Destrachis. Our eyes see many things.’ Her voice had become very gentle. ‘You would go with her if you knew where she was bound. You would do that not because you are her healer, but because you wish only to be close to her.’

Destrachis made such a strange, wordless sound that Stenwold wished he had absented himself. This was something he should not hear.

‘Know this, noble doctor: we have removed her from your care not from our concern for her but because we value you yourself. Have you not foreseen that she would slay you, sooner or later, if you kept pace with her? You have given her a reprise, but you cannot save her from her purpose,’ Inaspe explained. ‘Instead, we choose to preserve you, in whom we have found such admirable qualities. If you seek a reward, for warding our wayward daughter, you shall have it. Prince Felipe Shah shall gladly bless you. Your part in her life is done, though, and we now save you for greater things. We welcome you as a servant of the Commonweal.’

Stenwold saw Destrachis rise to shout, to protest, but her hand was still on his face and something passed between them. Stenwold could explain it no more than as if Inaspe Raimm had somehow taken her own understanding and gifted it to the Spider, shining a light into his troubled mind. He opened his mouth again, and for a moment his face was just grief, all his buried emotion drawn to the surface by the woman that faced him.

‘She will die,’ he said.

‘All things die,’ she told him. Such a truism, it was the trite utterance of any street-corner philosopher, but coming from Inaspe Raimm it sounded different. ‘All things reach the end of their journey, be they trees, insects, people or even principalities. All things die so that others may take their place. To die is no tragedy. The tragedy is dying with a purpose unfulfilled. You have fulfilled your purpose, Destrachis. Now let Felise Mienn fulfil hers.’

A great sigh went through him. ‘Well, then,’ he said, and, ‘Well.’ He did not seem to have anything else to say. She took her hand away and he seemed to deflate, a ragged Spider-kinden man with greying hair. He looked so old, just then, older than any Spider that Stenwold had ever seen.

After Destrachis had left, locked up in his own thoughts, wrestling with what he had just been told, Stenwold came to sit before the self-proclaimed mystic.

‘My name is Stenwold Maker of Collegium,’ he announced, ‘but probably you knew that already.’

She smiled at him, almost conspiratorially. ‘How many ears have heard that name? How many mouths might have told me? Yes, Stenwold Maker, your name is familiar to me. It takes no magic to know it.’

‘And my purpose?’

‘I am not Prince Felipe Shah. This is his land, and therefore his is the right to summon you to audience. Which he will. I, however, have advised him on many things, and my words fall sweetly on him. I would therefore examine you, Stenwold Maker. I would assess you, inspect you.’

‘Are you going to tell me my future, O mystic?’ he asked wryly.

‘No, I am going to tell the future,’ she replied, thus silencing him. Immediately he became aware of movement all around him. A dozen or so Dragonfly boys and girls, all seeming perhaps fourteen years of age, had suddenly appeared, holding… mirrors? No, but sections of glass, coloured glass in broad, oddly shaped panes. As Stenwold stared at them, and without their even acknowledging his existence, they began to take to the air, flitting up to the wooden framework and hanging their burdens here and there about it. The pattern they created was bewildering, without any logic and yet precise. The separate plates of glass, two and three feet across, were aligned and linked until the open garden had become a patchwork glasshouse, with walls and roof of stained green and red and blue, and open patches where the glass did not reach. The entire operation, bizarre and intricate, was completed in just ten minutes as Stenwold watched, utterly confused.

He glanced at Inaspe when it was done, and saw that she, and the garden, and he himself, were all mosaiced in slashes of coloured light. The notional room had now become one bounded by colour, the sunlight being split around them into a prism of conflicting and complementing shades.

‘I have no idea what is going on,’ he admitted, bringing a wider smile to Inaspe’s face.