The Knave smiled. ‘Not that it was altogether without satisfaction. Poor fools! Their cruelties had been almost as great as mine, but idly practised, without purpose. The island seethed beneath them, yet still they drifted fecklessly through their masques and levees and futile festivals. Upon them I unleashed plagues and poxes and contentions unnumbered, and filled their graveyards. And then out of them I awoke some of them, those who had most offended me, and the loveliest. Them I led through many a rout of my own devising.’ He shook his head with nostalgic indulgence. ‘It is said memories of some still linger among the walls of my old home – you saw, perhaps? Even so. That was satisfying, of course; yet some artistic touch seemed called for, to cap the jest. So I took my hold over the slaves, and turned it into a stronger whip than their masters’. A cult of blood and revenge – with rites of such enormities that they left those who took part stripped of restraint or fear; for they had already done the worst. I became as a god among them, almost one of the Invisibles myself; and I lashed them into savage and merciless revolt. Triple irony!’ He tittered faintly. ‘That I, their tormentor, should win them their freedom! Though of course I saw to it that the aftermath was suitably bloody, that little peace has come to them down the years. A greater irony still, then, that they by their worship should set my faltering feet on the path to power.’
All this time nobody had spoken; it wasn’t hard to guess why. But at
that, abruptly, a head lifted, and a voice croaked ‘
To my astonishment – and by the look of the man, to his – it was Mall who had managed to speak. Bedraggled, blood-streaked, wan – but alive and awake. My heart almost literally leapt at the sight of her. The man whom she had called Don Pedro seemed to feel very differently. His dark glance flicked over her like a snake’s tongue, and he bowed, stiffly this time, almost guardedly.
‘The
She said nothing more, only struggled to hold her wavering gaze on him. He turned away from her in a billow of cloak, and to me once again. ‘I am Don Pedro, whom they name Petro; and as one of the Invisibles themselves have I become, and into my hand their powers are given.’ He clenched it, solemnly, slowly. ‘I had lived many centuries, when at last I took the great step. I had brought my inner purpose to blossom, come into my true strength. And yet next to the Invisibles I was still as nothing. To be feared, to be obeyed is much; yet those who obeyed were but the poor folk of a wretched island, easily cowed and driven. And god though they thought me, still I was no more than an intermediary, able in subtle ways to call upon the powers of the Invisibles, but wielding little that was mine. The powers of the Invisibles! They did but remind me more fully of my emptiness. The want of them burned within me, reduced my most refined joys to ashes. The agonies of a very race seemed too cheap a gift to console me for what I did not have! So I probed constantly, I summoned, questioned, bargained – till at last I understood that to gain my greater end I must first lose all I had. So I took the last step, the greatest. I loosed my bonds. I set the Inner World behind me, and cast myself adrift upon the currents of Time, in constant quest of some still closer, deeper, more fulfilling union with Death. I sought – and I found! Among the Invisibles themselves I found One forever hungry for dominion over the rest, and over a wider world – over all the worlds that might be, in the end. Yet even He could not assert it, not alone. Infinitely beyond mine was His strength; but my driving intelligence – that He lacked! Till He came to me and joined with me, poured himself into my hollow heart! I found – and for the first time in all my long life I tasted fulfilment! From the heights to the depths I was filled, I was complete and more than complete!’
He pressed his hand to his chest. ‘Thus blended, we became a greater One – greater than His fellows, and master among them. Able to bend their strengths to my will, to torment not merely mortal men but higher forces, and draw out their strength for my own. To put blood in Erzulie’s eye, searing fire in her thighs! To drive Agwe to a storming frenzy, to have Damballah shake the Earth within his coils! All must obey me when my drums beat, when my rite is chanted – when over my stone the lifeblood streams!’
