Every so often we indulge, yet never on a particularly fabulous and fulminant scale as the overindulgences of the Christians. We don’t make battle on them. We feed upon them, yes. Yet, that is something characteristic, this scaling back of the group every so often. It is they who look for battle with us, they who endeavor slaughter. That is their direction. They have no comprehension of control.” He looked behind him at Beheim. “The two methods of reasoning have at their center a similar longing for harmony, a similar vision of an ideal peacefulness. From one viewpoint, this is viewed as a spotless white brilliance; on the other, as an endless obscurity. Yet, there are not many remarkable contrasts between these two obvious shafts. Truth be told, their sole qualification lies in the strategy for achieving harmony. Our technique, what is called malevolent, the activity of permit and force on a singular premise, a steady sort of rebellion with simply the loosest type of limitation, that is the most accommodating way, the way that causes the least aggravation. It has been contended that this is so simply because there are not really a large number of us as there are enthusiasts of the great. My response to that has consistently been, there will by no means at any point be as a considerable lot of us as there are currently of the great, for we will hold our own numbers down, we will collect the frail and administer against the victimizers of force. So which is really the acceptable? I ask you. Furthermore, which the insidiousness? The pompous, blackhearted, egocentric method of least agony? Or on the other hand the devout, song singing, benevolent method of war and destruction?” He returned toward Beheim. “The mystery of our goodness is this, youngster: not to mind. None of us give it a second thought. Not you, not Alexandra, not Agenor, no individual from the Family. Gracious, it can happen that a sort of caring might spring into reality when two or a few of us become captivated with the other, and in fact this is sweet, this is an enjoyment. However, it isn’t mindful as characterized by the Christians. It is a fun loving hallucination, an ensemble wherein we dress our desire, our narrow minded necessities. Furthermore, this fundamental absence of worry for other people, our practically complete self-assimilation, that is the thing that makes us less perilous and at last more humane than our enemies. They have been harmed, made frantic by the quest for those tricky eidolons: liberality and love for their fellowman. By differentiation to their propensity for mass viciousness for the sake of salvation, our own franticness is a soothing interruption.” Once again the whole patio seemed to glimmer into falsity, becoming briefly an ambiguous sketch of itself, nearly lost in grayness.The Patriarch held onto hold of Beheim’s shirtfront and pulled him erect so they stood up close and personal. “Evil,” he said, summoning the pith of the word by his threatening way to express it. “It is no sinister show play, it has no diabolical city as its capital. Evil is just what you are, Michel, an amazing stuff. It is the flavor of blood, it is the leeway feel of a depleted dinner limp in your arms, and as you lift your head, seeing the hollowed moon like a dead god cruising the dim between the forked appendages of a scaffold tree. You can deny what you are really going after short time, yet in the end your own inclination will overpower you. As it has done this evening. Also, on the off chance that you keep on denying, to oppose”— he pushed his face nose to nose with Beheim’s, turned down the volume to a savage murmur—”then, at that point you will disappoint me! That, my kid, is by a wide margin the most exceedingly terrible of the destinies that can encase you. That is something I ought to stay away from were I you.” He held Beheim up high at a safe distance. “Presently go! Do the job I have set you. What’s more, when you have completed, think on all I have said this evening.” He pushed Beheim away, and Beheim, wanting to outrage him further, strolled energetically toward the steps that drove away into the profundities of the palace. From behind him came the sound of chuckling, giggling so fluid and resounding he didn’t really accept that it might have given from a human throat, and in this way when the steps—as he mounted them—and the stone dividers started to blur into level, unrelieved dim, he didn’t stop for a second, however progressed forward, less dreading the inadequacy of the spot than what he may check whether he were to turn around. The ground stayed strong underneath his feet, and the air, however colder than it had been in the Patriarch’s chamber, was sweet to relax. As the last hints of structure blurred, walling him in featureless dim, he felt a twinge of claustrophobic frenzy, yet he kept up with his determination and cheered up in the way that the chuckling had blurred alongside all else; in the wake of strolling for a few minutes, nonetheless, and discovering no limit to the dim, he contemplated whether frenzy would not be more proper than poise. Evil, he thought, couldn’t track down a more fitting articulation than this limbo. Maybe it was one more pride of the Patriarch’s, a practical example of sorts. In any case, that was something of a jump. More probable the Patriarch had been diverted and had failed to remember how he had managed Beheim, overlooked him. Passed on him to meander, to turn into the phantom of this preeminent void. It was very conceivable, he chose, for the picture he had assembled of the Patriarch was oneof inconsistent, splendid rot. However at that point he understood that in conjuring up the Patriarch’s substance, he was just thinking about that last, more sophisticated pretense and was neglecting to include the diabolical evil spirit the man had appeared from the get go, the almighty tenant in Mystery. That animal would fail to remember nothing. He may claim to have forgotten to expand one’s nervousness; yet he would so get a kick out of each potential for torture that nothing would evade his psychological handle, however he kept 1,000 spirits hanging without a moment’s delay over the flames of his grand scorn. Beheim got his head free from these horrible contemplations and trudged on, steadily becoming as dark and endless to him as his encompass. In case there was an idea in his cerebrum, it comprised of a troubling, crude serenade, a silent beat of disappointment and purposelessness that continued walking time with his strides. He was weighty in his tissue, his heart, pervaded with exhaustion both physical and profound, and when finally he saw the dim start to clear and witnessed the dim states of pine trees and a slope, different slopes, and understood that he had gone through the imponderable, otherworldly stuff of the dividers of Castle Banat, really strolled through them, an apparition as a result if not in all actuality, and arrived at the spot to which his compelled by a sense of honor him, he felt not a whit of alleviation, just the tired acknowledgment that one more period of his experience was going to start