Divine Voice
Change darkens and lightens around her, alternate in hope and in fear to be:
Hope knows not if fear speak truth, nor fear whether hope be not blind as she:
But the sun is in heaven that beholds her immortal, and girdled with life by the sea.
--Swinburne, "England: An Ode"
"You should come with us," says the blond, and Hardin wants, wants so achingly hard, to believe him.
But the last time he dared to dream of freedom--And you will set me free?--he was betrayed. And he cannot face that again; he cannot live with another lie. He cannot survive the death of hope again.
What was he, once? How long has he lived in fear?
John Hardin looks out of his cell, to the three prisoners, battered and bruised, pale from the dungeons and knife-point thin from the lack of food, who stand behind the man who is reaching out to him with fingers that will cut.
"The gods themselves have crafted our meeting," says the blond with a voice that is at once musical and discordant, as if someone else were singing through his mouth.
And it is that voice, beautiful and terrible, frail and frightening, that decides him. There is something so very raw in it as to be unnatural. More than merely human. But not divine, either.
He sounds like a prophet.
So Hardin puts his hand against the wall and slides, agonizingly slowly, to his feet.
And for the first time in three years, he begins to hope.
"An effective plan, do you not think so?" Sydney's voice is soft, melodious as it has been for so very long.
But Hardin shakes his head, his arms crossed, his heart heavy. "I mislike it, Sydney. Too much relies upon the duke."
But Sydney looks up at him, those eyes agleam with that sick knowing certainty. When he speaks, his voice has those harsh, un-melodic notes again. There's madness there, he thinks, that shows how truly Mullenkamp was the Dark Mother they call her.
"The plan will work. It will cost us much, but we will prevail in the end."
Where the gods will speak, he will not gainsay, so he commits the layout of the manor to his memory. And, in one quiet, little-used corner of his heart, he begins to hope.
"You sought to help the Duke... your father?" This was your plan? You are cruel.
"Delta-ecksis!" The gods are cruel.