Alara Unbroken - Doug Beyer [116]
Mubin’s convulsions stopped, and his breathing slowed.
“He’s coming around,” said the healer. She touched Rafiq’s arm. “I’d advise you to make your peace.”
No, thought Rafiq. Not yet. “Every time,” he said.
“Every time I thought I was doing something right, old friend, I’ve done everything wrong.”
Mubin’s eyelids opened as slits. His eyes found Rafiq’s.
“How’s it going, old friend,” Mubin croaked.
Rafiq blinked rapidly. A lump was forming in his throat. “You’re doing well. It’s going to be fine.”
“Sure,” said Mubin. “I’ll be dancing. In no time.” “Don’t task yourself. Rest.”
“I’m fine. Growing pains.” The old rhox smiled. Purple contusions slithered up his cheeks.
“Mubin, I’m sorry,” Rafiq whispered. “I’ve failed at every turn.”
“It’s not about that, old friend,” said Mubin. “Your virtue … made you blind. While you looked into the sun, they stabbed you … You just never—”
Mubin gritted his teeth, and coughed black blood through them.
Rafiq hurried to wipe his lips, and pat the sweat on his brow. Mubin’s eyes closed, his head sagged, and he fell back into unconsciousness.
Mubin never woke up again.
“It’s time to go, Knight-General,” said the girl, Rafiq’s newly-assigned squire. She was the same young page who had once polished the faces of his sigils for him. She was more nursemaid than squire, he thought. He couldn’t remember her name.
“I’m not going to that thing,” Rafiq muttered. If Mubin were there, he wouldn’t try to make him leave his chamber. Not when he felt that way.
“You have to go, sir; you’re being honored,” she said. “You’re getting the Sigil of the Grand Laurel. I told you, remember?”
She was supposed to be very promising as a young knight-to-be, and she was of course humble to a fault when they were reintroduced. She admired him and his glorious deeds; it was an honor to see him again; it would be her privilege to serve as his attendant from now on. It made him feel sick inside.
“I don’t want any more sigils.”
“I’ll get your gown,” said Thilka, or whatever her name was. “Oh, the messenger was outside—do you know a couple called the Levacs? They say they had a baby. A daughter. And they want you to be her godfather.”
Rafiq wondered what he had said at Mubin’s funeral. Mubin’s body had been interred in the burial grounds behind the palace of Aarsil the Blessed, not far from the Twelve Trees of Valeron that the old rhox had helped dig up, and not far from the reliquary where he and Rafiq had first met so long ago. Rafiq barely remembered the ceremony. Had he given a speech? Had he raved like a lunatic? He hadn’t the haziest idea. He remembered the girl—Thenka or whatever her name was—escorting him to the carriage, and how he’d demanded she take him to the old watering hole in the neighboring village, and he remembered the painful hangover the next day.
The squire girl brought him his formal court-gown, and began the process of getting him inside it. He didn’t resist. He was watching a spot on the wall, where a spider was creeping up the wall. It moved a few inches, and then stopped, then turned, then moved a few more inches. Rafiq wondered if the spider was deciding on an overall course of action, or whether it was making turns at random and letting chance decide its destination. All his life he had tried to make the right and virtuous choices, he thought, but every time he felt that chance had twisted them beyond recognition. He had been the plaything of prophets, rulers, and demons. He had followed the path of virtue at every turn, and where had it gotten him?
The spider doubled back on its previous progress, crawling over a crack in the wood beams of the wall. There it stopped, and waited for something only a spider could understand. Then it zigzagged yet again and headed in a new direction.
It was worse than being a victim of fate. If his life had been just a sequence of random events, he might actually understand all the destruction, betrayal,