The Born Queen - J. Gregory Keyes [156]
“Are you saying you are Choron reborn?”
“No. Imagine a plucked lute string. It vibrates side to side, a blur that appears wider than the string, and in doing so produces a tone. Let’s say Stephen is the farthest reach of that vibration on the left and Choron is the farthest reach of it on the right. But it’s the same string, the same tone. We’re one and always have been, even before the string was plucked.”
“This is a lot to ask me to take on faith.”
“Oh, I don’t care if you believe me. After all, you’re Revesturi, always questioning. That’s fine. And I won’t say there wasn’t some fiddling with things to bring them along. As Choron, I broke the law of death and made myself immortal, hoping to survive long enough to find the throne. Of course, my enemies found a way to destroy my body, but I already understood about my echoes in the past and future, and at some point they all understood about me, so together we managed—this. It’s all really very interesting.”
“So you aren’t Stephen anymore.”
“You really aren’t listening, are you?”
The fratrex frowned. “When you talk about Choron becoming immortal, breaking the law of death, being defeated—”
“Yes!” Stephen cried. “I was wondering how long it would take you. This is every bit as much fun as I imagined it would be.”
“You’re the Black Jester.”
“I never called myself that, you know. I think it was suppose to be a bit of an insult.”
“Saints,” the fratrex breathed.
“Phoodo-oglies!” Stephen breathed in imitation. “I just made that up,” he confided. “They aren’t real, either.”
“You can’t be the Black Jester and at the same time Stephen Darige,” he said. “Fratir Stephen is good, incapable of the evil things the Jester did. If you are whom you claim to be, I believe you have possessed Brother Darige. Either that or you are merely Brother Stephen gone mad.”
“That’s disappointing,” Stephen said. “You talked so fine about the intellectual purity of the Revesturi, about how your method of reasoning sets you apart from your rivals, and yet here you start with good and evil. It’s sad, really. Was Choron a good man? And yet I promise you, I walked into the mountains as Choron, and a few years later I was the Black Jester. The difference is in power; him you call Stephen is merely the Black Jester without it. But at our center we are the same. Good and evil are judgments, and in this case judgments made without understanding.”
“The Black Jester strapped razors on children’s heels and elbows and made them fight like cocks,” Fratrex Pell said.
“I told you, I was frustrated,” Stephen said. “Maybe to the point of being a little mad.”
“A little?”
“It doesn’t matter. Things have changed, and I see the way clearly now.”
“And what do you see?”
“The sedos throne is emerging again, as it never did in Choron’s time. In fact, it has already emerged in a sense—the waxing of the power has reached its peak. But the complete claim of it by any one person isn’t possible yet. I control a lot of it. The other Fratrex Prismo, whoever he is, also has a strong claim. The strongest is that of Anne Dare, because Virgenya left a shortcut to the power that privileges her heir—and founded a secret organization dedicated to making certain that heir would be led to it if the time ever came.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps she thought a descendant of hers would follow in her footsteps, deny the power, hide the throne for another two thousand years.”
“Maybe she would.”
“In the first place, that’s not enough this time. The law of death is broken. The Briar King is dead, and the forests of the world are dying, and when they are dead, we will certainly follow. But do you never see? Don’t you have visions?”
“Of course, at times.”
“But you haven’t seen what the world will become if Anne sits the sedos throne?”
“No. I’ve not sought such a vision, and none has come to me.”
“A three-thousand-year reign of terror that makes my small epoch look like a child’s party. And at the end of it, the world passes into nothingness.”
Pell looked troubled but shrugged.