The Prince of Exiles (The Exile Series) (32 page)

“I tell you this, because the Kindred do not fight the Empire because it is
logically
evil. If such were the case, we would have perished long ago. We fight because there is joy in our lives and the Empire would take that from us. The Empire stands diametrically opposed to the
why
of our existence. The Kindred are what the Empire will never be – we are free to rule our own lives. The
why
is everything, it is what connects us, what drives us. When I stand before a crowd to speak, or to rally the men before a battle, I do not give them reasons. I do not tell them which battle formations they need to remember, or remind them how to use their swords. These things are important, but they are secondary. No, when I stand before them, I tell them what I
believe
.”

He thrust out a hand here, and pointed to Raven’s heart.

“I tell them what is in there, hidden away though it may be at all other times. I tell them of the vision I see, of a free nation of men and women that all decide their own reasons for being. Men and women who, every one, get to decide their own
why
. That is the Kindred. That is being an Exile. That is why we fight.”

Raven opened his mouth to speak but found he did not have the words. Something about what Goldwyn had said, something about the fierce light in the man’s eyes, made his chest feel light and his soul feel proud simply for being there, present in a world with such a man who could feel such passion. The words had struck a chord inside him, one that echoed over and over.

But still he resisted it. He shook his head, and tore his eyes away. Belief or not, if they fought the Empire they would all die. Belief did not win wars, it did not topple nations. Belief did not make the Empress any less of a God.

Raven felt a hand on his shoulder, and looked up in shock to see Goldwyn sitting next to him – he had moved around the firepit to be by his side.

“It is this belief that makes you one of us, in your heart of hearts,” said Goldwyn. “It is this
why
that brought you here instead of back to the Empress, and it is what I see in you that gives me hope, and makes me glad that you are here with me, enjoying life while we still have it.”

Emotion welled up inside him, completely unexpected and utterly unstoppable, and then Goldwyn pulled back, and Raven looked away.

“I greatly look forward to out next conversation,” said Goldwyn, his youthful face and twinkling eyes soft and empathetic. Raven fled, unable even to say a proper goodbye or excuse himself with dignity. No, he simply stood and left, moving through the doors, making his way through the house. The last thing he heard was Goldwyn intoning his customary farewell:

“I will see you when you wake.”

Raven left the house, wandering aimlessly. In the end, he found himself back at his cabin, and he stayed there for the rest of the day. Night fell, and still he sat there, looking out into the distance, seeing nothing. When the morning dawned he did not leave. The next day passed, and then the next. He spoke barely a word to anyone, even when Leah and Tomaz came to see him. When they saw him, they did not press him, but left him to his silence, no doubt guessing what had happened. And so he sat, alone, looking out over the city of Vale, trying to understand what had so affected him.

It was as if he was searching for something nebulous, just out of reach, like a misplaced memory or a dying dream. There was something to the life Goldwyn had described; there was something to this
place
… it was like existing on the border between two worlds. If he were still young enough to believe in the old legends of faeries and spirits born of the mists, he would think this place their home.

That night he left and lay out in the grass to look up at the sky. When he’d been traveling south, he’d seen the stars for the first time – truly seen them, not just seen their impressions through the smog and clouds that covered the sky of Lucien. They were clear to the point of brilliancy – they shone down on the world, bright points of illumination floating above him in the blank, impossibly black tapestry of the sky, their light no more than pinpricks, yet together enough to light up the darkness of a world that slumbered in the absence of the sun.

He fell in love with the city, sometime in that span where he lived alone in the mountains of Vale. He began to find himself, in solitude, in silence, and in the night sky, and he began to long for something more to his life. Goldwyn had started it – had told him of the
why,
and in the silence, he became aware that a piece of him was missing. Maybe he had had it once, maybe he never had. But now that the world was quiet enough that he could listen, he could hear a cry from somewhere deep inside him. He needed something. He needed purpose. He wanted to believe in something, something greater than himself, wanted to believe in the dream Goldwyn had spoken of … a world of Exiles. A world of purpose and
why
.

And so he returned.

Goldwyn greeted him as if he’d been gone barely an hour. The Elder poured him a cup of
kaf
, and their conversation began again, though soon, unsurprisingly, they began to disagree once more.

“No,” Raven said stubbornly, “That doesn’t make sense.”

“All I am saying,” said Goldwyn lightly, “is that there is more to your mind than what you are consciously aware of. And because of that, we are not, as logically follows, entirely in control of ourselves. Life is, at its base, unpredictable.”

“Geofred has often told me,” Raven responded, refusing to give ground, “that there are many futures, and he can pick and choose which one he steers the world toward. That can’t be the case if things are random. Given the world as it is, there are some things that are
inevitable
. You must agree with that.”

“Hmmm … I remember you using that word ‘inevitable’ the first time we met,” said Goldwyn, raising his black porcelain cup to his lips and drinking slowly.

“What would you say it meant?” The Elder asked. He crossed the courtyard from where he had been standing, next to one of the tall pillars, to Raven’s side and simply folded his legs beneath him, sitting perfectly comfortably on his knees and ankles in front of the firepit.

“You want me to tell you what ‘inevitable’ means?” Raven asked to clarify.

“Indeed,” Goldwyn said with a nod.

“Well,” Raven responded slowly, having fallen into enough verbal traps in these conversations to be cautious of a misstep, “it is the negation of the word evitable. Which is a word that means avoidable. So, it would follow that inevitable means unavoidable. In other words it means something is certain.”

“Fairly said,” Goldwyn replied with an approving nod, his eyes grinning at Raven, all too cognizant of the extra care he was taking with his answers.

“But something remains unaddressed. Do see it?”

“No … no I can’t see it.”

“Let me elaborate,” said Goldwyn, leaning back on his heels and staring up at the misty morning sky.

“If something is
inevitable
, then the assumption is that a man, woman or child, even in seeking to avoid said something, can never escape it. Correct?”

“That would be the assumption, yes.”

Raven was watching the Elder closely, trying to follow this. The man’s mind was faster than anything he’d ever encountered, and if he didn’t pay full attention he’d be left behind in a matter of seconds.

“So, let’s assume you want to avoid a bad thing. No matter what you do, you will fail. Would you say this is so?”

Raven nodded.

“So this is a closed system, yes?”

Raven thought for a moment, and then nodded again.

“I suppose you could say that … there’s no way to escape from it, so yes.”

“Fair,” said Goldwyn, “but what if you then
opened
the system?”

“… introduced a new variable?”

“Yes.”

“As in … threw a rock into a pound.”

“Quiet a good analogy actually,” Goldwyn said, watching him eagerly.

“Then you would create ripples,” said Raven. “The previously closed system – the pond, just sitting there – would now be open, and in touch with the larger world around it.”

“Indeed! And what can you conclude from this?”

“I … I have no clue,” Raven said, again feeling quite dense.

Goldwyn, unperturbed, just nodded, and changed topics:

“Iliad holds a prophecy that says the Kindred must die, that in the end we must make way for a new and more glorious Empire.”

Raven froze and stared at the General.

“How do you know about that?”

“Ah,” Goldwyn said, suddenly saddened for the first time since Raven had met him. “I didn’t know about it … but you did, and now so do I. I have often assumed that was the secret that Iliad held. Crane offered to tell me when I became an Elder, but I asked him to hold off. I wanted to discuss it first with you.”

“Crane says Iliad isn’t a prisoner,” Raven said, watching the older man intently, temporarily ignoring the way he had been tricked in favor of discussing this topic. “But he’s certainly held like one.”

“Yes … something that I, if I had a say in it, would have strong words about. But alas, I am but one Elder. The others are unanimous on this point, and so I must concede.”

There was a moment of silence in which Goldwyn and Raven both looked off into the distance, eyes far away.

“In any case!” Goldwyn cried, breaking the silence irreverently. “There is a prophecy that the Kindred will be destroyed. Let us assume that the Kindred are, like your pond, a closed system. There is no way for them to avoid this inevitability. What then are we to do?”

“Well … I suppose you would do the metaphorical equivalent of what we did with the pond.”

“Throw a rock in,” said the General, gray eyes bright. “Indeed. And what would that rock be?”

“But how do you even know there’s a rock?” Raven asked, bewildered. “It’s not as if the pond could
ask
someone to throw a rock into it, if it could do that it would defeat the whole purpose. It’s on it’s own, it’s a closed system, no in or out.”

“Hmm yes … I suppose a pond could not do such things. But, in the world, involving people who
do
have the ability to reach outside themselves, what could that rock be?”

“But then it’s not a closed system,” Raven protested, exasperated.

“Isn’t it?” Goldwyn asked, eyes sparkling. “It may not be the
same
closed system, but it is
a
system, a
new
system, made of rock and pond together.”

“I don’t understand” Raven said. His head was hurting, a deep throbbing beginning to build behind his temples.

“Say the
Kindred
wanted to avoid something,” Goldwyn continued mercilessly. “The
Kindred
are to be inevitably destroyed says the prophecy. What could stop such a thing? What could be a rock that would break the pond, cause ripples, and change the shape of the thing, and make it no longer a pond? Or, at least, no longer a pond as it once was.”

“I don’t know Goldwyn,” Raven said, holding his head in his hands. This conversation was becoming ridiculous. He should have stayed away – why had he come back? He was being foolish. Dreams were for children.

“Consider this then – that which is inevitable for one thing, or one person, cannot be equally inevitable for all things or all people, or else it would be a redundancy. If the same exact future is determined for two things that also have the same exact past, then those things must
be
the same. So how is it that we have two things – the Empire and the Kindred – that must both be destroyed? How is it that the Eagle, who can see perfectly into the future, foresaw the death of the Kindred, while the original Prophet, the one who came across the sea with Aemon, foresaw the death of the Empire?”