Chapter 4: Domination

[Zerlina]

My heart- cold to everyone? How could he say such things? I was not cruel. Cruelty was something that the common man would have. I was a maiden of the gods. I could not be so imperfect. I needed to be marble. I needed to be unreachable. So long as I could maintain that, he could not realize my weakness. I tried frantically to recompose myself, but it was useless. Every moment I spent in that guise, I was hurting him.

“Gadriel…”I muttered but did not know what else to say.

I stared at his reflection in the pool and saw the pain in his eyes. I saw his rage begin to pull back and give way to sorrow. He was ashamed of what he was doing and so he slowly let go. I turned to face him, for I did not need the pool to see the truth in this man. His spirit was always open to mine and unless he closed up on purpose, I could always tell what he felt.

“I’m sorry…” I muttered, raising my head and looking at him with as much sincerity as I could, though I knew he saw only distance.

“Please, Llideah…tell me what I have to do to avenge my father…”

So he had not forgiven me… and now he wanted to kill the man who would unite the continent. I shook my head.

“I can’t tell you…”

“Because it’s not your place?” he asked, lowering himself so he was at level with me; no longer looking down.

“I want there to be peace. If you destroy Kani there will be none.”

“Peace? Have you not seen what his armies are doing? I know you have faith in him, Llideah, but you are being lied to. Everyone can see that. Why can’t you?”

“I see only the truth…” I answered, my spirit weak as dust “It’s impossible for him to lie to me…”

“You do not want to see the truth.” He put his hand on my cheek like he had so many times before “Please, Llideah, he has murdered my father. And thousands of others. Peace is the last thing that he wants, he’s only using you.”

He had me look in the pool once more, though this time he merely pointed to it. I gazed in and saw what I had feared. Fire, death, sickness, cruelty; it was all there, staring at me as plain as a reflection yet as deep as a valley. My hands shook as I saw what I had done. This was my doing wasn’t it? I had told Kani where to go…where his armies would be most successful. I had told him of the weaknesses of cities and of the land he marched on. Because of my blindness, so many were now dead. The vision evaporated, but instead of what I expected, I saw myself staring back, my hands red and stained with the blood of a thousand men, my soul blackened with murder and ignorance.

“…you will be used too…” I told him, finally, pulling my eyes away from the pool “…if you try to destroy Kani, it will be your death. Not only in this life, but in the next.”

His heart fell and he nodded “I have to destroy him. I owe it to my father and to my homeland.”

“Then there is no convincing you?” I asked; I did not want him to go.

“You must ask? Your intuition fails you, priestess…” he muttered, “Perhaps then your vision is incorrect.”

For the first time I wished it was so and that the goddess had lied to me. But I knew it was impossible. Whatever strength I had had now been stolen away from me, and I sat before Gadriel, as weak as I had been when we met, three summers ago. Just as he could not hide from me, I could not hide from him. We were like two fools, hiding from each other behind our own glass walls.

“You will not be able to destroy Kani unless you know of his weakness …” I began “… he is a descendant of a titan, and so he will not fall easily. If you wish to be successful, then you must use the weapon of a god.”

“Where shall I go then?”

“Ride north with all the speed you can. There will be a cavern where it is fabled that a ship of the gods once emerged and disappeared. Deep inside you shall find the forge of the immortals. If you have the fate stone you will be able to unlock an ancient chamber, in which you shall find the blade of Eithne. Only this will allow you to destroy him.”

“Where shall I find the fate stone?”

“I shall take you to it…Kani thinks that he has it in his possession but it is not so. I have it here still.”

Gadriel nodded “A wise decision.”

“I find it sense not to trust a man with immortality…”

He nodded

“Noah and I will ride north, then to Gracia. If I survive, then I will send word and meet you in the town square of Adinem. Do you know where that is?”

“I do…” I mumbled, one unstoppable tear drifting down my cheek.

“Do not worry.” He said, wiping it away with his thumb “We shall find each other, I promise.”

I gave him the fate stone and watched him leave. When he reached the passage, he lingered for a while, and for a moment I hoped he would turn back. He did not. We stared at each other in silence for a brief eternity; marble and fire now mortally seperated by Ishtar’s Pool.

The world is white, hazy, and it is only now that smoke gives way to what has remained hidden. They say you can never forget your life; you can only hide from it. Every thought, every feeling is the present, and though time may pass, you never truly lose yourself, for it is only your actions that slip into the eternal past.
It is the waking world that forbids us from crossing this smokey barrier, and so if only we allow the material illusion to slip away, the truth becomes as simple as walking across a shallow pool.