A Secret Better Kept

Anyone searching for the truth is trouble, and this woman was no exception. She seemed nice enough, and probably was, but that didn’t mean much—it usually is the nice ones who have trouble clinging to them like flies on carrion.

I knew what she was after as soon as she knocked on my door. “You won’t find it here,” I said.

She was startled, and a little confused, so she ignored my words and went ahead with what she had clearly been planning to say. “My name’s Alkoury. I’m looking for the truth.”

“Like I said, you won’t find it here.” Maybe I should have closed the door in her face, but I live a long way from anywhere, and I thought I might as well hear her out before sending her away empty handed. So I let her in, offered her a drink, and waited for her to start asking questions best left unasked.

Alkoury jumped right into the heart of it. “What really happened in the Cave of Shadows?”

“No,” I said.

She ignored it. “Two men went into that cave, and only you came out, along with something… else. Something evil. It’s still out in the world, wreaking harm. We deserve to know what happened.”

“You don’t really want to know.”

“I do.”

“The truth is like a feral cat,” I warned her. “You might think that you want it, that you can handle it. You might try to tame it, or think that you own it. And then it scratches your eyes out.”

“I think you’re being too hard on feral cats.”

“Perhaps. But we’re not talking about cats.”

“I want the truth,” Alkoury insisted.

“Then you have to hunt it down and capture it.”

“Why not just tell me? Save me the trouble, and get a burden off your chest while you’re at it.”

I shook my head. “Some things are better off kept secret.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“I know. That’s why I won’t tell you.” I wouldn’t have told her anyway. Even those who believe in the value of secrets don’t always keep them. But Alkoury wouldn’t even have tried.

“I will find out,” she said. She probably would.

“Why do you even care?”

“It’s what I do. It’s more than that; it’s who I am. The world has been wondering what happened for ten years, and we deserve to know.”

“Surely it’s not the only secret in the world.”

Alkoury struggled for words. “It’s… I just… I need to do this. It’s pulling at me; I can’t just let it be. I have to know.”

“Like a geas,” I said softly. And my heart sank, for I knew all too well what that kind of irresistible pull can drive you to do. She would not give up, and she would find it.

And we would all be doomed.

So I made a bargain. Not to tell it; nothing would drive me to that. But I told her I’d give her the smallest hint of where to start.

“In exchange, when you’ve found it; you have to return here and speak with me before you reveal it.”

“So you can kill me rather than let it get out?”

“No. If that’s your worry, write it down and make provisions for it to be opened if anything happens to you, as long as you talk to me before telling anyone else.”

She agreed, and I gave her a name, not of someone who knew—I was the only one with that distinction—but of someone who might have known part of it, or where to find someone who knew part of it, or who was at least very observant. Alkoury would have found him anyway, eventually. From his piece of the thread, she would slowly, but not slowly enough, unravel the truth.

It was nearly a year before I saw her again. She had succeeded, if you can call it success. Her shoulders were slumped, and the idealism of one who seeks the truth had been replaced by the disillusionment of one who has found it.

“Congratulations,” I said.

Alkoury scowled at me. “There were three men, who went into the cave, and two came out.”

“That’s right.” She knew now, there was no reason not to confirm it.

“One created a monster, one became a monster, and one… one watched.”

“Yes.” It was an admission. I had been the one who had watched, who had done nothing to stop it.

“How do you think everyone will react when they learn that the beloved ruler of the country is behind the greatest working of evil in ten thousand years?”

“So you still mean to tell them.”

“How can I not?”

“With great difficulty,” I admitted. “It’s not easy to keep such a secret. But you can, if you chose to. You can go home and try to forget what you know, or spend your time thinking of it, but without telling anyone. Alkoury, how do you think people would react?”

“They’d be angry, of course, and lose their faith in the king. But after doing that, he doesn’t deserve their faith, or anything else. At worst he’d be dethroned, and that would probably be a good thing.”

I shook my head. “At best he’d be dethroned. Violently, in a civil war between those who believe you and those who don’t. That’s still the best case. Remember, the evil he created didn’t just affect this country. The rest of the world would be upon us. Or the countries that believed it would be, and some that didn’t would be against them, and the whole world would tear itself apart. Do you really want to be responsible for that?”

“But he can’t just get away with it!”

“He has. I was the only one who ever had a chance to stop him, and I failed to take it.”

“People think he’s a good king! It’s not right.”

“No.”

Alkoury’s face fell into a tragic mask of disillusionment, and I knew she would not tell. It would be hard for her, even harder than it was for me. But she’d been able to find the truth, and she’d be able to hide it.

She realized a few minutes after I did. “I’ll keep the secret.”

“I know.”

The Truth About the Truth

I'm very sorry I couldn't post this last night; my internet was down.

You’ve heard of the Ethelgarnians, of course. Cruel, evil people they are, slaughtering their enemy’s children and drinking the blood. Disgusting barbarians. They’ve no mercy, no compassion; they care for nothing but butchery. Their queen is the worst of them, ordering people tortured to death for her own amusement and eating the flesh of her enemies. It’s hard living in Solingia, sharing a border with those savages.

Fortunately, the good Solingians marched on Ethelgarnia, and vanquished those evil beasts. After all, everyone knows that good always defeats evil. The hero always wins, and the winner is always the hero. What kind of world would it be, if it were otherwise?

In truth it is only that the winner gets to tell the story. Even if the defeated is still around to give their side, who will credit it? The loser is the villain, and villains lie. And if tiny doubts stir in the back of minds, they’re quickly squashed. The victor had the power to defeat the loser, and the doubters don’t want to be next. Might really does make right, in the eyes of the world. So I’m not expecting you to believe my story, you who know that my entertainment consists of watching torture and my meals consist of your children. You know because King Parthus, ruler of Solingia and leader of the Solingian army, told you. He’s the good guy. He won. So it has to be true.

There were two sides, neither good or evil, just two countries who could have used more land. One of them attacked the other, long ago. In Ethelgarnia they say Solingia attacked first; in Solingia they say the opposite. It’s been hundreds of years since anyone was alive to remember, hundreds of years of attacking back and forth and seeing each other as enemies and believing the other evil.

It’s not that Solingia and Ethelgarnia were really much different. They were both about the same size, both had a coast and some mountains and cities and a whole lot of farmland, both were full of people who wanted pretty much the same kind of thing. The stories told in each were even the same, for the most part, and in both, the good guys always won.

That’s just background, though. Everything went on pretty much the same way for a few hundred years. Sometimes one of the countries would have more power, sometimes the other. Despite the rhetoric, nobody ever really thought one would wipe out the other.

It was bad, that last war. I doubt any were good, but I don’t think they can have been worse. When I close my eyes I see the aftermath of the Battle of Tremtiaen, all the bloody, broken bodies with those beautiful mountains standing over them, under a flawless blue sky. And when my eyes are open, when I’m in the middle of something else and not thinking about it at all, I’ll suddenly see a spray of blood or rotting corpses or any number of horrors from that war.

We lost. I guess you’ve gathered that by now, but I need to say it anyway. We lost. Not just the war, as we’d lost plenty of the other wars, but everything. I had ruled a good country. We’d had cities, farms, towns, fields. They led us past them, when they brought those of us who survived back in chains. There weren’t many who’d survived. They killed my people. That’s the worst of it, except maybe the fate of those of us they didn’t kill.

I don’t mean me, really. Sure, it was awful being marched across the country in chains, being displayed and sold and bought. I ruled Ethelgarnia, and now I’m considered someone’s property. I hate it, I can’t say how much I hate it, but I’m tough, and I can survive, and I got luckier that I’d have expected. It’s a long fall from ruling a country to being a merchant’s piece of property, responsible only for defeating dust, but it’s so much better than it could have been, and I don’t forget it for an instant. The worst of it for me is that I couldn’t protect my people. Even those who survived, who were chained to me as we were marched across the country…. The people of Ethelgarnia were alive and free, and it was my job to keep them that way, and I failed.

Not much of a story, really. No evil, baby-eating monsters. No deus-ex-machina come down at the last minute to ensure the hero wins. No happy ending.

I guess that’s how you can know it’s true.