The Rats and the Ruling sea

5

I will ask you very plainly: has anything, ever, been more absurd, more whimsical, more devoid of probability and good sense? That I should be given to witness these events and record them, here in my palace of books and meditation and cold unsalted soup? That with an iron stylus I should scribble away the fair days and the foul, write past the stroke of midnight under a lamp burning the ooze of a giant beetle, gaze like a bird hypnotised by the sway of the cobra's hood at the events that shaped my life — their lives — all lives in unlucky Alifros?

Do I deserve this honour? By no means. I invite the reader to observe that I have never stated otherwise. So many deaths on the Chathrand, so many days of agony and despair, so many forms courage took, the sword through the fangs of the flame-troll, the gangrenous leg under the saw, the war in the brine-reeking darkness of the hold. But there are more fundamental questions. Who killed? Who refrained from killing? Who shielded reason, frailest blossom ever to open in the soul of man, from the hailstorms of violence and revenge?

Not me. Not this poor editor to whom the angels lend their vision for a time. I read, I write, I drink my cave-shrimp soup and pour my energies into a task for which I know I am unfit. No more can I offer history. No more do I covet for myself.

It seemed essential to me to clear this matter up. Now we may proceed.