Seeklight

He was lying upon some type of low couch. He righted himself and set his feet upon the floor. The room was in darkness except for what looked to be a small lamp upon a desk some meters away. As Daenek leaned forward, trying to make out anything else, the lamp tilted towards him, blinding him for a moment.

“I’m glad to see you’re awake,” came a voice from behind the desk. “Please don’t get up.”

Daenek shaded his eyes. Behind the glare of the lamp he could detect the outlines of the man who had spoken but nothing of his face. “What happened to the others who were with me?” said Daenek. His throat ached when he talked. “They’ve been taken care of.” Regret and anger mingled in Daenek’s chest at what had happened to them. “What about me?”

“You have no cause to worry.” The voice remained smooth, emotionless. “I accord you some respect, as the son of a great man. A man whose downfall I had the misfortune of aiding.”

“You’re the Regent.”

“Yes.”

Daenek leaned back against the couch and dug his fingers into the soft upholstery. Tensing, he began to gauge the distance between himself and the desk, then stopped. More of the black-uniformed men, the Regent’s personal militia, were probably only a fraction of a second away. And even more important, the man behind the desk might be the last source left for the answers he had come so far to find. “What do you want with me?” he said, relaxing only a fraction.

The glare-obscured face made no movement. “To talk,” he said. “I’ve spent years thinking of what I would say to you, when you finally came.”

Daenek’s voice tightened into a rasp. “Is that why you ordered the subthane to kill me when I turned seventeen?”

An amused note crept into the other’s voice. “I knew that you’d only be worth talking to if you escaped and made your way here. That would show how much of your father was in you. And as it now seems… please relax your disguise.”

Squinting, Daenek tried to discern the expression on the Regent’s face, but his features were still hidden by the lamp’s glare. After a few seconds, Daenek concentrated, then relaxed, letting the muscles and sinews that formed his mask shift back into the contours of his own face.

“Thank you,” said the Regent. His voice was oddly respectful.

“Yes… it is his face. You are the son of a thane.”

The last few words seemed to burn into Daenek’s chest. He waited, saying nothing.

The Regent spoke again. “To this day I regret the necessity of his death. He wanted great things.”

“Why was he killed?” Daenek’s throat felt tight around his words.

“The things he wanted were inconvenient to some—the Academy. Fearful to others—most of the men he thought supported him. Between those his dreams were pressed to death.”

Words came to Daenek without thinking. “What did he want?

That was so dangerous?”

A heartbeat’s pause. “He wanted the people of this world to be free. And powerful, and wise, and all the things men are at their best. Instead of fearful and ignorant—with that which separates them from beasts and stones dissolving in the acid of their own sloth.” The Regent’s voice had risen slightly, and now fell to its former pitch. “And so the ones for whom he was inconvenient had him killed and helped me take his place, and the ones who feared him and his ideas were grateful.”

“But he had his power!” cried Daenek. “He could command their minds, make people do what he wanted—

“So why didn’t he save himself?” said the Regent, almost sadly. “We were very careful, and it was too late before he knew.

And even in the last seconds, as the assassin aimed the gun, the thane might have welcomed his death, for his disappointment was very great. His last days were bitter with the realization that he had no power to do what he wanted—that he couldn’t command people to be free and wise and brave. What is missing from a man’s heart can’t be put there by another. Your father learned that. For Ms body to die was almost an afterthought.”

Daenek was silent, feeling everything that had been said ebb through him like the dregs of an ocean. There’s more, he wanted to say, there must be something else besides that, besides a black seed grown as big as a world—But no words came.

“I have something of yours,” said the Regent after several moments. “I’d like to keep it, if I may. As a remembrance of a great man.”

Looking up, Daenek saw something dangling from the Regent’s hand, glittering in the lamp’s harsh light. Daenek’s own hand went to his throat. The fine-linked chain and square of white metal wasn’t around his neck. “No,” he said, looking at it turn slowly above the desk. “It’s mine.”

“Come. I’ll trade you for it.”

“There isn’t anything I want.” Besides that, the thought flared inside Daenek. And whatever it unlocks. There must be more.