Pages of Pain by Troy Denning

Author:Troy Denning [Denning, Troy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 978-0-7869-6204-4
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Publishing
Published: 2012-01-10T00:00:00+00:00

DREAM GIRL

I thought him stronger than to sit ruby-faced with his salt-damp back to the ashen wall, wound fever burning in his eyes and a thief’s craving smoldering in his soul. For an hour (or a day or a week or a minute, for all it matters to us or him) he has been sitting there, staring at those crocodile sandals and that golden sword, wondering: do I dare, and do I dare? He has walked the narrow streets and breathed the yellow fog; he has cracked the jar of memories and split the gates of Sigil and dared disturb the multiverse, and now he frets over a giant’s booty?

Call him honorable, call him ethical if you like; it makes no difference to me. The Thrasson has taken himself to a place where there is only desire and action and consequence, and now he has gone off into the blinds to search for right and wrong and lost his way. There are no commandments or codes in the mazes; the madman who looks for guidance is more lost than the fool who does not; he imagines reasons to turn one way and not the other; he waits upon signs that have no meaning; he does not act for fear of offending deities that cannot see him and would not care if they could.

I call him a coward.

In the end, the Amnesian Hero will lace those sandals on his feet, and he will learn the name of his parent—but first he must agonize over his scruples. He must consider his honor and ask his gods for guidance, he must weigh the killing of the giant against his oath to deliver the amphora, and he must find sanction to claim the plunder. Until then, we are expected to wait while he deliberates, to watch through a mind clouded with fever and wine as he sits and thinks and argues—and I won’t abide that kind of drivel.

So I will tell you now what will happen. The Thrasson will put the sandals on the ground, then he will bare one foot and set it upon a rugged sole. He will feel an uncomfortable sizzling in the arch of his foot. A pair of ashen arms will sprout beside his ankle; they will take up the legging thews and wrap them about his calves, and a wispy voice will come on the wind:

“I offer you this advice, my son: when you reach the palace of King Aegeus, do not tell him at once whose blood flows in your veins. Say instead that you bear greetings and news from his friend in Troezen, King Pittheus. When he sees the sandals you wear and the sword that hangs at your side, he will ask where you came by them; if King Aegeus strikes you as a good and honorable man, you may tell him how you found them. In that manner, he will discover for himself that you are his son and will not doubt your claim to his city.

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