Spear of Destiny by James Baldwin (room on the broom read aloud txt) 📗

flame, trailing smoky coils of darkness into the air. Her eyes were blazing white, bright pin-points burning through the curtain of shadow. They were kind... and sad.

“My sweet daughter.” Lahati’s voice was louder here, clearer. It brushed over our skin with a faint chill that defied the roaring heat that billowed up from beneath our feet. “I know you both suffered to come here. I beg you to forgive my weakness. The passage to my tomb was made to weed out Aesari and human plunderers, and challenge those Solonkratsu who seek me or Matir. But it was not meant to be so severe.”

“You saw all that?” I asked. “Then you had to have known about the Dragonrot. Why didn’t you warn us?”

“See it? Hector, I am dead. I see nothing but the slithering progress of time, and hear nothing unless someone calls to me over the chorus produced by the Caul of Souls.”

“It has a sound?” Karalti asked.

Lahati turned her head to her, the shadows of her face rippling like flames. “Yes. Millions of souls calling, singing, laughing. Since I last saw you, Herald, the chorus has become so much louder.”

I took a step forward. “If you pass on, does that mean that you’ll... that you’ll be gone? Like, will the Caul destroy you?”

Lahati cocked her head, as if puzzled. “Destroyed? No, Herald, of course not. The Caul does not destroy the souls of the dead.”

“Violetta and the vampire who tried to turn me... they told me that the Caul eats people’s souls after death.”

“Ahh...” The shade made a derisive sound. “That is nothing but Trauvin lies. Come, Paragons. Walk with me, and I will tell you what I know.”

Karalti pressed forward ahead of me, thrumming with nerves. I followed, and Lahati turned and swept toward the great five-petaled portal at the end of the antechamber.

“When the Nine were contemplating solutions to the Drachan, Devara, the Mother of all life in Archemi, asked a question of the world,” Lahati said, trailing darkness like a train as she led the way to her tomb. “She asked: ‘Would you be willing, in death, to stand guard against the Drachan and the Rostori and the other creatures of the Void for a term equal to the years you lived, before you move on to rejoin the planet and be reborn?’ And the world, devastated by the Drachan, said yes. The Caul is merely a station after death, Herald. Souls join it for a time, lend their strength to the magic, and once they have served their span, they move on. Unharmed. The Trauvin are the only eaters of souls in this world. Not even Rusolka the Mad would do such a thing.”

“Good to know.” A weight I hadn’t realized I’d been carrying slid from my shoulders. “I wonder if we’re doing the right thing. Bringing back the Warsingers, opening the Dragon Gates. Sometimes, I feel really sure about it. But other times, I wonder. Like, what if we’re actually just playing into Ororgael’s hands? Or the Drachan’s?”

“Those are valid questions,” the ancient queen replied. “When the Caul was created, we knew it was little more than a stop-gap measure against chaos. We hoped that if the Caul was ever unmade, it would happen only when the world was better prepared to face them. You, as the Paragon of the Sixth Age, must decide if the world is ready.”

“I don’t know if it is, grandmother,” Karalti said. “There’s so much we don’t know, and so much we lost. There are hardly any dragons left. Me and Hector have been all over the place, rediscovering ancient technology. Like the Warsingers, right? The world has nothing like the Warsingers any more.”

“No, but there is much that has been gained since my time. Perhaps the most significant difference is that we did not have great nation-states when the Drachan invaded. The Solonkratsu were numerous, but we were arrogant and indolent. The Mao’sak’ruwad, the empire of the Cat People, was a decadent, disorganized mess. It was split between bickering Priest-Queens who refused to cooperate with one another. When the Drachan first touched down on Archemi, the Aesari were tribal savages. They had powerful magics, but they were a species who lived in the present, with no perspective on the past or the future. The Drachan’s slaves were the first to rebel, and those slaves—humankind—have spread across the continent and the world since then. It is not just force of arms that will defeat the Drachan. It is the will, ingenuity, and determination of the world to survive that will shape the result of the battle.”

Karalti glanced at me. “I guess. But there’s a lot of evil humans, too.”

“Of course. And the presence of these evil people is to your advantage.” The pair of doors that led into Lahati’s burial chamber parted in front of her. “There is something you must understand about the nature of evil, my daughter. Evil is very dull. Very predictable. The only forms of creativity evil can manifest are cunning and deception. This is because all evil beings, whether they be human or Drachan, have exactly the same boring, repetitious desires. Consumption, power, wealth, attention, love, admiration, sex, safety... primitive, animal needs they pursue with single-minded boorishness at the expense of other living things. Why do you think they pursue these things?”

“Because they’re frightened?” Karalti said, uncertainly.

Lahati nodded. “Indeed. Specifically, they are frightened of lack. Of not having ‘enough’. There is never enough power, enough security, enough pleasure. They must have more and more of it. Search for those people who are aggressively hungry for power and never satisfied with what they have, and you will root out the evil in your midst.”

“The Drachan don’t seem scared of much,” I said. “None of the Void enemies we’ve fought even seem capable of fear.”

“On the contrary. They are the embodiment of fear,” Lahati replied