I have always been a liar. I cannot help what I am — and that is the first lie, the one I uttered to myself long ago. Others accepted it, by virtue of my talent, and in accepting it, they let me live the lie. Sweet of them, and such a relief — that I fooled them — and if my contempt now dogs their shadows, wherever I walk in their wake, well, it is no surprise.
Give me the lie and I will take it.
And then give it back to you. In vibrant otherworldly colours — that godly language uttered by ungodly tongues — and yearn for the adoration in your eyes. It’s what I feed on, after all. Give me what I need, to keep the lies alive. To keep me alive.
He kept his honest thoughts to himself, for himself. He risked nothing that way, because if artists were liars first and foremost, in close second were they cowards.
One day he would paint beauty. He would capture its essence, and once it was captured, at the pinnacle of his talent, he could lie back, close his eyes, and drift into death. He would be done, and done with the world. It would have nothing left to give him.
But for now, he would paint in blood.
The trail opened ahead, in tangled scrub and severed stumps, and beyond that was the raised river road.
I leave the wild behind me, with all its perils of raw truth and senseless death. I step into civilization, its shaped stones and lifeless wood, its sun-baked clay and its crowded streets filled with furtive moments we boldly name people. If he had a free hand, his fingers would awaken to paint the scene, in all its desultory glory, and so make things anew, in all the old ways.
If the colours are gods, then another god waits in the death of all colour; in black lines and swaths of drowned light. My hand and my eye are creators of entire worlds, creators of new gods. Behold, artist as creator and world upon world to unfurl, inscribe, delineate, destroy.
He clambered slowly up on to the road, wincing, and swung left — south — and set off.
To a wedding, where beauty was offered up to the sole promise of being sullied, made mundane by mundane necessities and the drudgery of day upon day, night upon night, the host of insipid demands that pulled flesh down, dulled the eyes, made puffy and irresolute the regard — no, he would never paint beauty. It was already too late.
But the scene haunted his mind. The flower petals upon the path, tears of colour already wilting and trodden upon, the bright eyes of the two now bound as one and the lascivious envy of the onlookers. Enesdia’s was a transient beauty, its perfect day almost done, almost in the past. Handfuls of crushed petals thrown into the river, riding the currents down and away. Tree branches hanging low over the water as if weighted with sorrow. The colours watery and muted, as if seen through cold tears. A sky empty of life. The Wedding of Andarist and Enesdia.
If he could — if he dared — he would steal her away. Lock her in a tower like some mad lover in a wretched poem fraught with twisted notions of possession. His hands alone knew the truth of her, and brother or not he would show her every one of those truths, in pleasures she had never imagined — oh, he knew the crimes of such thoughts, but thoughts lived well in realms of the forbidden — he’d seen as much in the eyes of every victim he painted. He could play out his defiance of taboos here in his mind, as he walked this road, and imagine the brush of his fingers as they painted skin and flesh, as they painted gasp and ecstasy, lurid convulsion and spent sigh. Before his talent everything would surrender. Everything.
There had been riders on the road. He saw scores of hoof prints in the dust and dirt, leading in both directions. But the air felt dead, empty, drained of urgency. Here and there, in faint streaks beneath the signs of riders, he saw the tracks of a carriage.
He was indeed behind the procession then, but despite all the traffic suggested by the hoofprints, Kadaspala walked alone and no one else was in sight.
The Wedding of Andarist and Enesdia. Painted with rage. The Wedding of Andarist and Enesdia. Erased by fury. He had the power of both, here in his hands. Such thoughts lived well in this forbidden realm.
Behold, artist as god.
Bruised and scraped and stung, he limped down the road beneath his burden of paints and brushes.
The smell of smoke rode the wind, the smell of dying colours.
Once the Houseblades were out of sight, Narad nudged his mount into a fast trot. Sweat trickled down beneath his shirt, but he felt chilled. He had seen the suspicion in that woman’s hard eyes. Corporal Bursa had sent him on to the road, while the troop travelled along a parallel track in the forest. They needed to know how many were ahead, and Narad now had good news for them. A full dozen Houseblades and an officer were riding back to Enes House.