Reave the Just and Other Tales by Stephen R. Donaldson Page B

He was bleeding from several wounds when Mohan Gopal finally stumbled into convulsions and died.
    Everyone died. More from malice than from any wish to spare him pain, I did not let the poison touch Fetim: I wanted him to watch the way his friends were taken.
    Saliandra was the last, of course. The wine let her live long enough to experience the ruin of her life and everything she had loved. Although her suffering was extravagant, however, it could not turn her against her lover. She expired in his arms, with his name on her lips.
    For that reason, he felt the loss of her all the more severely.
    Alone on the River Kalabras, covered by darkness, in a vessel peopled by corpses, he rose to his feet and cried out at the stars, “The fault is mine!”
    I peered at him more closely. “Say what?”
    “They were my friends. She would have married me. He would have been proud to call me his son-in-law. And I am the cause of their deaths. There is no one more despicable. Knowing what would befall them, I allowed them to make me the object of their goodness. Truly, I deserve to be accursed.”
    “Well.” This was gratifying. “I was wondering when you were going to see the truth.”
    Instead of answering, he took a fallen dagger from the deck and plunged it toward his breast.
    I turned the blade. He bruised himself, but did not pierce the skin.
    “You are the worst of the curse,” he said brokenly, “the most malefic of all djinn. If you had permitted me to die, only the clan of the al-Hetal would have paid the price of my folly. Because of you, the graveyards of Niswan are crowded with my victims, and the honest and loving people of
Horizon’s Daughter
have been slaughtered. By preserving my life, you wreak abominable evil.”
    Recognizing the justice of what he said, I demanded nonetheless, “Whose fault is that? It wasn’t me who tried to take advantage of Rashid. It wasn’t me who preferred slavery to resistance. I’m not the one who said, ‘You are the only friend I will ever desire,’ when what he should have done was jump ship as soon as he could stand.”
    Again he did not answer. Rather, he took a length of line and climbed to one of the felucca’s yards. There he bound the line to the yard and also to his neck, then cast himself down.
    I caused one of the knots to fail. Additionally, I adjusted his impact on the deck so that he was not seriously harmed.
    “Help me,” he beseeched. “I must put an end to myself, or I will cover the world with ruin wherever I go.”
    “You know who I am,” I replied. “I’m part of the curse. I can’t help you. If I tried, the great father of djinn would tear me apart and scatter every portion of my being to the four winds.” After a moment, I added foolishly, “You’ve got to stop thinking like a normal man. You’ve got to start thinking like one of the accursed.”
    He drank a large flagon of the tainted wine while he considered what I had said. His bitten features seemed to undergo a number of changes, passing from self-pity and anger to emotions which were more obscure. Then he commanded peremptorily, “Repeat the curse.”
    I complied. “‘In the name of the great father of djinn, let all those he loves be killed. Let him be readily loved—and let all those who love him die in anguish. Let all his seed and all his blood—’”
    “Enough. I have heard enough.” He consumed more of the wine. Now it seemed to have no effect upon him. “I have received both decency and love aboard this vessel, and those who gave it to me have been poisoned. I must ‘start thinking like one of the accursed.’ Very well. Do your work, djinn. I will do mine.”
    He did not speak again that night. The River Kalabras bore the ship of the dead through the dark, and he rode the vessel alone, as though he were its rightful master.
    Two days later, the current carried
Horizon’s Daughter
past the teeming waterfront of Qatiis, the crystal city where the Padisha devoted himself