The Bear

PART TWO

Despair. It is a trap or it is the awful truth, the stark and undeniable realization of ultimate futility.

My legs are now strong, but I stand on shifting flats of mud. I am straight now in posture but crooked in vision, for I have glimpsed the horizon, and it is a dark place. Not for any dactyl demon, not for any goblins or trolls or powries, but dark by the incessancy of mankind's foibles. In Weakness… In Pride, they will call themselves god In Envy, they will kill their neighbor In Wrath, they will lay waste to the fields In Sloth, they will let their neighbors starve In Avarice, they will steal all unto themselves In Greed, they will horde excess In Lust, they will damn consequence.

The Book of Jhest was my companion, words copied by my father, wisdom garnered by the generations of Jhesta Tu mystics over the centuries, their reflections of the simple truths of the world. The book, my companion, resides in me still with passages I had thought unraveled but which reveal to me new secrets as my experience grows. Once I read "In Weakness" and saw a world not worth redeeming, and then I was the Highwayman. Then, with Cadayle by my side, I considered the passage as a warning against my own limitations and darker potential.

Now I fear it as inevitability.

For I have come to profoundly fear that there is no lasting goodness, nor can there be. With great hope did my father return from Behr, the Book of Jhest in hand, the song of the Jhesta Tu on his lips, and Sen Wi beside him.

They killed him for his optimism, for his idealism, for his hope that there was a better way.

How many hours, how many days, how many weeks, how many months, did he toil to copy those words? How many times was a page discarded because a single symbol was penned wrong?

The permanence of wisdom etched on fragile parchment so easily lost. And will the concerted effort of a future king collect them all and destroy them? And will all the followers, the Book of Jhest etched into their thoughts, be gathered and slain?

Inevitably so.

And what then is left? What worth art and the just swing of sword What small steps might man move forward When a single man of ill design Of lust and greed may just consign To the ashes the work of those before And halt their march forevermore?

That is my despair, that the accumulation of justice and goodness is an illusion, a temporary stay. One King Yeslnik will erase the gains of Dame Gwydre; one Father De Guilbe will chase away the call of Cormack's justice. A Gwydre or a Cormack might win, but eventually will a Yeslnik claim the throne or will a De Guilbe steal the church. And then the darkness settles, and justice is scattered, and the memory of Sen Wi dies with me, and the memory of Bran Dynard is lost in the ashes of Garibond Womak.

Is it no more than a circular road? Can the work of good men do no more than stretch it to the shape of an ellipse? For so long I dared not believe so, but now I see no other possibility.

In that case, then what is the point?

I do not know. The mud shifts below my feet. In Pryd Town, the Highwayman was a selfish man. In the cold north, under the tempting optimism of Dame Gwydre, the Highwayman found wider purpose.

But on a road in the east, in the death of Jameston Sequin and the betrayal by Affwin Wi, I was reminded all too clearly of the circle that is the fate of man.

The mud shifts again.

I know that I want my mother's sword. For that I will fight. I know that I demand the brooch Father Artolivan entrusted to me. For that I will fight. These are my two immediate certainties, and my third, Cadayle, awaits. Would that I could fix the world!

But another Yeslnik will claim the throne.

And another De Guilbe will steal the church.

And the flames of an Abellican ruby consume the Book of Jhest.

Sometime, somewhere, out there just over the dark horizon. -BRANSEN GARIBOND