DHID stood face-to-face with eternity. So close they could feel its breath on their lips. So close they could smell its fungal musk, its death perfume, embrace them, hold them. Agony. Sorrow. Pain. Each bloomed in eternity with them. Like weeds. Like galls. Like angels of deformation.
What are you rattling on about this time, asked Tyranos.
Fensoot closed the book he was reading. The book, Songs of the Cursed Mind, was written by Itahren Photh, musical historian and Death Cleric.
Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean it’s unimportant.
Oh I know enough about the Death Clerics.
Thanks to me.
You’re not becoming one of them, are you? My gods, it would kill our father were he to know.
I’m sure you’d like that. King Tyranos, is it?
When it happens, it will be bittersweet, Fensoot. You know how much I love our father.
Bittersweet.
Of course.
Now you’re the one sounding like Itahren Photh. It’s precisely one of the points he’s making on the chapter about legendary bards, DHID.
That lich?
He was never a lich, Tyranos. He was a seer. And his point was that things are never black or white, despite our predisposition to see the world as such. The world is much more murkier than that. The world is gray.
Each day you sound more and more like a lich yourself. Fine, you’re neither a white or black lich — you’re a gray lich.
I am not a lich.
You needn’t lie, Fensoot — I know what you do. You’re not just reading those books for the fun of it — you’re studying it.
To become a cleric.
Yes, precisely — a Death Cleric.
One must understand history…
Or be torn asunder, yes, yes, you’ve said as much many times over.
And it is worth repeating.
My point, my dearest brother, my gray lich, is that you are doing much more than simply understanding history. Perhaps this is one of your gray areas, then? A half-truth is a half-lie, too.
We can use the forces of darkness for good.
So you say. I’m just imploring you to be honest with yourself. Why so much necromancy then? Do you intend to keep father alive? You’d do that just to spite me, wouldn’t you.
It has nothing to do with father.
Oh, Fensoot, it has everything to do with our father. He is dying. And this troubles you greatly because then I, and not you, will be Torren’s king.
I never wanted to be king.
No, but you would do all you can to prevent me from becoming one. Just be honest about it.
Honest?
Yes.
You would like me to speak honestly?
Of course, Fensoot – who knows, it may become you.
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To read the rest of this review — and more by Steve Schmolaris — visit his website Bad Gardening Advice.
• • •
Steve Schmolaris is the founder of the Schmolaris Prize, “the most prestigious prize in all of Manitoba,” which he first awarded in 1977. Each year, he awards the prize to the best album of the year. He does not have a profession but, having come from money (his father, “the Millionaire of East Schmelkirk,” left him his fortune when he died in 1977), Steve is a patron of the arts. Inspired by the exquisite detail of a holotype, the collective intelligence of slime mold, the natural world and the suffering inherent within it — and also music (fuck, he loves music!) — Steve has long been writing reviews of Winnipeg artists’ songs and albums at his website Bad Gardening Advice, leading to the publication of a book of the same name.
