“Yes, and so did you,” I said. “Because I threw that question right back at you, and you told me you wanted the fateweaver.” I stopped and held up my right hand, letting my sleeve fall back to reveal smooth white not-quite-flesh. “Well, here it is. Are you going to take it?”
Morden turned to face me, his hands still clasped behind his back. “What do you think?”
“I don’t think you care about it at all,” I said. “It was just a playing piece to you. Which means you weren’t telling the truth any more than I was.”
We looked at each other for a moment, then Morden nodded to himself, turned, and carried on walking. I fell into step beside him. “I find the question a useful one when discussing the Path,” Morden said. “The less sophisticated assume the purpose of such discussions is to probe an enemy’s weaknesses. The real value of the question is that it forces one to examine oneself.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ve been learning that.”
“I told you back then that a true Dark mage has purpose,” Morden said. “You had will, but you lacked a clear perception of yourself and your goals. That is no longer the case. You have an objective which you are determined to accomplish. You are also significantly more powerful. This is not a coincidence.”
“None of which answers my original question.”
“No.”
“The Council never really understood you, you know,” I said. “I sat in on God only knows how many strategy meetings where they were trying to predict what Richard’s cabal would do. They had Richard pegged as the would-be Dark Lord type. The Council have dealt with enough of them over the years that they’re pretty used to them by now. Dark mages who think the logical conclusion of their philosophy is for them to rule as many people as they can. Vihaela was even easier. She’s what you might call the smaller-scale version. Power over one person at a time.” I looked at Morden. “You, though? They could never find an explanation for your behaviour they were happy with. The best one they could come up with was the public face. Richard as the mastermind, you as his political representative. Their idea was that Richard had some kind of leverage over you that made it impossible for you to betray him.”
“They certainly spent more than enough time trying to discover what that leverage might be.”
“And got absolutely nowhere,” I said. I’d had to sit through innumerable frustrating interviews with Keepers convinced that I had the key to prying out Morden’s secrets. “Personally? I think they never found anything because there wasn’t anything to find. You were helping Richard voluntarily. But that didn’t answer the question as to why. All the time you were under Council arrest, you were taking an enormous risk. You could have been disappeared or ‘killed trying to escape’ at any time.”
“The risk was a little smaller than you think,” Morden said. “The Council can be ruthless when threatened, but so long as they feel that they are in control, their inclination is towards caution. Live prisoners can be made dead if need be; the reverse is not the case.”
“But in politics, there are always unpredictable elements.”
Morden smiled slightly. “What would be your explanation?”
“I think you were never driven by self-interest at all,” I said. “That was why the Council could never figure you out, and it was why you were able to work with Richard so easily. Richard wants to be in charge, and everything he’s done has been with a view to increasing his power. But you’ve been quite willing to give your own power up.”
“Have I?”
“Several times,” I said. “Take that raid you organised on the Vault. The other mages who went on the raid benefited from the items they took. Richard benefited because of his plans for Anne. But you lost your position on the Junior Council, and instead of fleeing afterwards, you let them take you into custody. And you didn’t take any steps to make sure Anne would be under your personal control. You let Richard and Vihaela handle all of it.”
“So what do you believe my motivations to be?”
“If you and Richard had both wanted to be the one in charge, one of you would have betrayed the other by now,” I said. “So as much as you like to talk about the Dark way, I don’t think accumulating personal power is your priority at all. Strange as it sounds, I think you’re actually an idealist. You want the Dark philosophy and mind-set to be spread and understood. What I don’t understand is why you launched that raid. You had what you wanted, you were on the Junior Council. Why sabotage it?”
“From the moment I joined the Council, efforts were made to remove me,” Morden said. “You were caught up in several of those plots yourself, and once you took over my seat you became the target of them in turn. What I suspect you may not have recognised is that removing me—or you—was never the primary objective. In the long term, the Council was not concerned with who sat in that seat; they were concerned with controlling its resident. If they had succeeded, the mages occupying it would have followed Light norms and constrained themselves according to Council beliefs. Within a generation they would have been Dark in name only, and treated with contempt by their former allies. That was the real danger.”
“And so you blew everything up?”
“The Council’s support of that goal was too strong to overcome by purely political means. It still is, to a lesser degree. That may change.”
I thought about that for a minute. Morden’s explanation wasn’t what I’d been expecting, but I didn’t have any reason to disbelieve it. I’d had the feeling for a while that Morden had been playing a completely different game to everyone else.
“But these are long-term concerns,” Morden said. “Yours are more immediate, I suspect. Why are you here, Verus?”
“I need to win a war with the Council,” I said. “I was wondering if you’d be willing to help.”
“Do you have something in mind?”
I gained a certain amount of respect for Morden in that instant that I was never to lose. It was the sheer lack of worry in his voice. I explained what I had in mind in two sentences.
Morden didn’t seem surprised. “And how do you plan to accomplish that?”
“Well, that’s the problem. I don’t think a frontal attack is a good idea.”
“Given the Council’s current state of readiness, I would agree.”
“Which is why I’m here,” I said. “I was hoping in your dealings with the Council you might have come across something I could use as a stepping-stone.”
“It should be possible,” Morden said. “I’ll need a day or two to look into things, but I have a target in mind that should suit your needs.”