Beyond the Shadows - Brent Weeks [217]
He said the word like it had power, like he was calling a dead man back to life. And it was life. Even with all the luxury and the fulfillment of every whim, Dorian had lived these last months hunted. There had been no rest, only stupor. There had never been communion, not even with Jenine.
The two hundred Vürdmeisters were getting nervous at Solon’s approach. They could smell the potency of his Talent, and even to Wanhope’s nostrils it reeked. He hated it. It smelled of light, scouring, revealing, shaming light. But the Vürdmeisters wouldn’t attack Solon, not without the Godking’s word. Solon ignored them. The man always did have brass balls. “Dorian,” he said. “Dorian.”
Dorian had spoken a prophecy over Solon once. Ten, twelve years ago? It ended: “Broken north, broken you, remade if you speak one word.” The cheeky bastard was asserting that the word was “Dorian”? He was turning Dorian’s own prophecy back on himself? Solon had a little grin twisting his lips in the way Dorian knew so well. A laugh burst out of Wanhope and then was strangled in a sob. It sounded insane to his own ears.
He looked down the hill. Moburu had closed with the Cenarians holding Jenine, and the ferali was plowing through them in a cloud of black dust, tearing them apart, sticking their bodies to its flesh—growing.
Inside, Neph was working to give Khali flesh. The goddess would enslave all Midcyru, maybe all the world. Enslave and destroy. Without a body, she had turned Khalidor into a cauldron of filth, a culture of fear and hatred. What could she do with a body? The best thing Dorian could do was stop him. Godking Wanhope could stop Neph. He knew Neph. He knew how Neph would fight. The girl was a tangent, a distraction in the big picture. Dorian was too important, his skills too valuable to go after a girl when the real battle—the battle that would determine the fate of nations, perhaps of all Midcyru—was only paces away. Dorian would go inside as Godking Wanhope one last time. He would take the vir one last time, and destroy all Neph had wrought. He would destroy Khali’s works—and he would die. His fighting would be done at last. Unable to live well, he would at least die well.
Besides, Jenine was dead to him.
“Dorian,” Solon said. “Dorian, come back.”
Jenine was dead to Godking Wanhope, she was dead even to Dorian—but she wasn’t dead. This delusion was the same temptation that had snared him a hundred times: allow this present evil for some grand, future good. To change an entire nation, to undo the evil his father had wrought, he had taken a harem, raised krul, slaughtered children, raped girls, and started a war. In fact, he’d accomplished most of the things for which he hated his father, and in far less time. The truth was, Dorian had always been more interested in being known as good than in simply being good. And he was about to do it again. No wonder he’d been so willing to throw away his prophetic gift at Screaming Winds: he’d seen then what he was going to become.
“Go inside, kill the usurper,” Godking Wanhope ordered his Vürdmeisters. “I’ll follow momentarily.” They went inside instantly. They might even obey. It didn’t matter. He couldn’t keep them here. They might try to stop him. “You too,” he told his bodyguards, and they, too, obeyed instantly.
With his stomach revolting at even touching his Talent, weak and frail as it was, Dorian readied the weaves, not giving himself time to think. He knew these weaves; he’d used them once as a young man. It was probably too little, too late. There was no way he could pay for what he’d done. He should just smash Neph and die.
No, that was the same old voice he’d obeyed too many times. Every time he decided to think about the temptation, he fell into the temptation. Now was the time to act. To simply do good, whether or not anyone ever knew, whether or not it was enough.
With a deep breath and as much Talent as he could hold, he ripped the vir out of himself. Parts of his Talent ripped away with it, as he cut deep, deep. It ripped so many parts open that he knew