It was not long after the walk on the Pattern, where the flush of excitement
and sense of victory had not quite worn off. Bleys had led them to a special
shadow, an endless plain, one that was difficult to leave, but their efforts
resolved themselves as mathematical formulae under their feet.
They moved thus, the metaphorical
point of a pencil against paper, and could see the direct relationship of their
movements with the mathematics of Pattern. The lessons were complete,
the formulae more distracting now than educational, and Bleys had let Edan
move them to a series of low foothills dotted with brush and small caves;
it was one of the latter that his father directed him to go.
The light disappeared quickly, and the darkness became complete. Sound
was muted. Edan first imagined a large cave, then a tunnel, then a huge
chamber, for the distance he traveled was far beyond what he had expected.
He was not completely suprised when the sound of his father's horse fell
silent.
"Father?" he asked, sure that there was another lesson here, somewhere.
A gesture, and a small flame appeared in his palm; but the light only
illuminated himself and his horse, perhaps a few feet to each side, nothing
else.
Edan frowned, gave more power to the spell, finally abandoned the
small fire in favor of a blazing staff; but as bright as he made his light,
the darkness around him refused to yield. It was as if the darkness
absorbed the light and heat as fast as he could create it. His horse
snorted and voiced its protest as the heat became unbearable to it,
but still there was the dark.
Finally, he dropped his hand; the staff broke apart into fiery fragments
and disappeared. Darkness fell complete. Edan slid the palms of his hands
across his eyes, controlled his breathing, and waited.
Bleys's voice sounded almost next to his ear. "Darkness isn't something
you wait out until dawn," he said. "It's an element, like water or
fire. It obeys
its own rules. You have to become one with it."
Edan reached out with his mind, felt a part of himself seem to fray into
the blackness, and panicked; he came back to himself, his hands still
on his face. "I cannot," he said.
"Of course you can. You were starting to do it."
"No," Edan said, immediately. "I can walk the Pattern. I can face my demons.
But I cannot fight this."
"Why not? What are you afraid of?"
"To lose myself like this, it is... evil," Edan said. "The Merciful One has
turned his face from this place. I cannot embrace it."
His father sighed, and his next words sounded as angry as Edan had ever
heard him. "I blame your mother for this," he said. "She didn't waste any
time teaching you what you could and couldn't do, did she? Edan, do you
trust your mother?"
"What manner of question is that?" he asked, sharply.
"I didn't ask you to question me. Answer. Do. You. Trust. Your. Mother."
Edan's mouth worked silently, nonplussed. "Usually," he finally said.
His father snorted. "All right," he said. "Honest, anyway. You can
be damned sure that -she- knows how to see in the dark, no matter how
hard she protests. She's a fire-maid, daughter of an ancient, powerful
afrit. A magician in her own right. What do you think attracted me to her?"
Edan's fist clenched. "My mother is pure in the sight of the Merciful One,"
he said. His fist ignited into flame again, but he still didn't see his father.
"She renounced her tainted blood!"
A hand came out of the darkness, slapped against his flame; it shattered
like glass and vanished as though it had never been. "She's crippled you,"
Bleys said. "You can't deny who you are, Edan. You need to come to
grips with it. Otherwise, my boy, you'll never know peace, no matter how
hard you try. You have no idea of your potential. But as long as you sit
there and say 'I can't,' you'll always struggle against the heritage that you
yourself have embraced. You are -so much more- than this, Edan. There
are those who call themselves gods out in shadow that have only a fraction
of what you have. But if you limit yourself..."
"There is only one God," Edan started, brokenly.
"...and he has only the One Prophet," Bleys finished for him. "I know all
this. You're not listening. Power isn't automatically labelled good
or evil, Edan, it's in the use of it. You've got to start making your -own-
choices about what's moral and what's not, because you're now far beyond
the simplistic view of things that your mother holds. Don't look at me like
that. If she wants to deny herself, that's her mistake. But you graduated
from Julnar University the moment you took the Pattern."
"I..." Edan fell silent.
"Try it. Then you can decide. I promise, no one will come and rip out your
soul and throw it down to hell."
"You mock me," Edan said, sullenly. Then: "Tell me how."
"You have to breathe darkness... learn to hear the colors, smell the sounds...
you know what I mean."
"I cannot change my body in that way."
"Maybe you can, maybe you can't. But you don't have to. Let the spell do
the work."
Moments later, Edan could see him, darkly luminous against the blackness.
Each movement, a shift of a hoof, the creak of leather, all this refreshed
and refined the image. He was in a small cave, after all; the yawning
abyss of darkness he had felt was a trick. Of course. The image of
Bleys smiled. "Good. Now lead us out."
When they were back outside, Edan felt his father's hand on his shoulder.
"The purpose of this was to show you that you can't rely on Pattern, not
all the time. Try shifting shadow in pitch darkness, for example. Here, you
had to rely on sorcery. But you learned a larger lesson, didn't you? I
put you in a situation that you solved in a couple of minutes. I know
a couple of your uncles that would have taken a lot longer than that
to extricate themselves. If you accept what you are, your potential is
unlimited. I knew it would be." Bleys pointed two fingers, reached up
to poke Edan in the middle of the forehead.
"As long as you don't let this limit you."