Only the Destined

CHAPTER SIX

Dust wandered down in the direction of the docks, signs filling the world around him. In the flight of birds, he saw that this was the route he had to take. In the bubbling of a stream, he saw that he would have to pass over the sea.

Then there were the images of Royce that stayed in front of him whenever he closed his eyes.

They had been there ever since he had inhaled so much of the priests’ smoke, seeing future after future. He had seen what would happen if nothing altered, had seen the violence and the pain and the death.

“And I chose,” Dust said to himself. The oddness of that took a moment to sink in. He was Angarthim, one of those who walked the world, setting the futures as the priests saw that they were supposed to run, giving those who needed to die over to the darkness that lay beyond life. Angarthim did not choose, did not seek to change fate.

“The priests did it first,” Dust whispered. He looked up to try to find confirmation that he was doing the right things, and found it in the way clouds shifted, forming patterns that seemed to mirror the designs of the sacred books.

The priests had tried to change things, had tried to alter things to avoid their own destruction in what was going to come. Things were no longer running on the course that the fates had set, and now someone had to choose, choose for everyone. That someone was Dust.

“I will stop this,” he said. “The devastation to come will be avoided. I will make the world better.”

Of course, to do that, he had to stop Royce. Dust had seen the futures, possibility after possibility lining up before him. He had seen a slender few where things turned out well, but the truth was that in too many, Royce’s actions brought about war and worse than war: they unleashed destruction on the land that had to be prevented.

Angarthim were not heroes; if anything, those who knew what they were seemed to think of them as monsters and murderers, not understanding that they were merely the well-trained hands of fate.

“I still listen to fate,” Dust said. It was just that now, instead of a single line given to him by the priests, all of the future was spread out in front of him to choose from. All of those possibilities seemed to point to the docks.

He walked down into the harbor town, and people stared, as people always stared. Children pointed, and some shrank back. A few men touched hands to weapons, and there was a time when Dust would have struck them down for doing it. The signs for death would have stood above them, and then…

“They didn’t stand above Royce,” Dust whispered to himself, trying to make sense of it all. They had been there together in a forest, him and the boy whose actions would simultaneously overthrow the old order and bring about destruction. They had been there, and nothing had told him to strike, to act.