Forge of Darkness

by Steven Erikson

  He would be coming up to the house from the south. Before him the road was empty, with dawn only now edging the sky.

  In the distance he heard shouts and then the clash of blades.

  Above a line of trees, he saw the freshly tiled roof of Andarist’s house. Cutting down from the road, he drove his horse hard across an open sward, and then through brush and into the shadow of the trees. Before him, as he rode towards the back of the house, he saw figures spilling to the sides at the run. He understood that Jaen had retreated into the house – his only choice, for there were scores of attackers.

  Cryl’s eyes fixed on a shuttered window on the main floor, to the left of the back door. He pushed his mount to even greater speed, riding straight for it.

  Someone shouted – they had seen him, but that did not matter. He was almost there.

  He kicked his boots free of the stirrups. He clambered up until he was perched on the saddle. At the last moment, as the horse veered of its own accord to avoid colliding with the back of the house, Cryl launched himself across the intervening distance, angling his shoulder down and protecting his face with his arms.

  He struck the shutters and wood exploded around him.

  Splinters lanced into him as he landed on the floor and skidded across slate tiles. Picking himself up, he drew his sword and rushed towards the front of the house. He could hear hammering against the front door and the sound of splitting wood. The rooms blurred past unseen as he ran.

  Enesdia screamed as the front door was battered down.

  Cryl plunged into the hallway – saw Enesdia. Ephalla had drawn a dagger and was standing before her mistress. A sword lashed out, the flat of the blade striking the maid’s forearm, breaking bones. Another blade punched into her chest, lifting her from the floor—

  Cryl rushed past Enesdia. He did not even register the faces of the figures before him. His sword flickered out, opened the throat of the man who had murdered Ephalla, tore free to bury half its length in the gut of a second attacker.

  ‘Run to the back!’ he shouted. ‘Get on the horse! Go!’

  ‘Cryl!’

  More attackers were pushing into the hallway.

  From somewhere off to his right, in another room, a window was being broken through. ‘Go!’ he screamed, flinging himself at the three attackers.

  He was a Durav. The blood was on fire in his veins. He split the face of one man, sliced through the kneecap of another. A blade stabbed deep into his right thigh. He staggered back, pulling himself free of the weapon. Strength poured out of that leg. Cursing, he stumbled. More were coming in, eager to reach him. He blocked a thrust, felt his blade slice up the length of someone’s arm. And then something slammed into the side of his head and the world flashed white. As he fell forward, twin punches met his chest, pushed him back upright. He looked down to see two swords impaling him.

  Another blade slashed, cut through half his neck.

  He saw himself falling, in the hallway, almost within reach of the entrance threshold and the hacked body of Lord Jaen lying beyond, where boots and legs crowded past and drew close. Someone stepped on his hand, breaking fingers, but he only heard the sound – the feeling was a sense of wrongness, but there was no pain.

  There was only a growing emptiness, black as the river. He waited for it to take him. He did not have to wait long.

  * * *

  They had caught the nobleborn woman in one of the back rooms, trying to climb out through a window, and dragged her into the main hall. And then the raping began.

  When Narad was pushed forward – his sword unblooded and hanging from his hand – the woman who had run with him laughed and said, ‘This one to finish her! She’s a beauty, Waft, and she’s all yours!’

  To the crass urgings of a dozen onlookers he was shoved to where she was lying on the hearthstone. Her clothes had been torn away. There was blood on the stone under her. Her lips were split from hard kisses and bites, and the once unmarred flesh of her body now bore deep bruises left by hands and fingers. He stared down into her glazed eyes.

  She met them unblinking, and did not turn away.

  The woman behind Narad was tugging down his trousers, taking him in hand to wake him up. Laughing, nuzzling the side of his neck, she pulled him down until he was on top of the nobleborn.

  He felt himself slide into a place of blood and torn flesh.

  Having delivered him, the woman stepped back, still laughing.

  The nobleborn woman’s body was warm under his, and for all the bruises it was wondrously soft. He reached to hold her tight – to the howls of the others – and he whispered in her ear, asking for forgiveness.

  Much later, they told him that she had breathed out her last breath while under him, and Narad had then realized that on that morning, upon the hearthstone, beauty had died in his arms.

  * * *

  Kadaspala woke with a start. He sat up. In his mind there remained the echoes of screaming – a terrible dream he could not even remember. He rubbed at his face, looked down in the pale morning light to see that his bruised thigh had swollen to twice the size of the other. Groaning, he sank back down.

  But the faint echoes of the screams did not fade away. They did not fade at all.

  No. Oh, no no no no—

  Paint and brush boxes left lying on the ground, Kadaspala somehow found himself on his feet, limping through blinding waves of agony, scrabbling up into the road. Trying to run, leg dragging, lurching under him, his breaths raw in his throat.

  The sun climbed up through the trees. He hobbled on, wondering what madness had taken him. He could not have heard anything real. The distance was too far – he had been running on this road for ever. Leagues, tens of leagues – but no, the air was still cold from the night just past. Mist clung to the river’s surface like smoke.

  He could barely walk, much less run.

  When he came within sight of Andarist’s house, he halted. He could see the carriage, but the horses were gone. There was no movement – not a single Houseblade or servant. He limped forward.

  Bodies on the ground. His father’s Houseblades and others. He saw faces he had known all his life, each one flat as the thinnest paint, the eyes half-lidded and blank. And everywhere, in lurid hues, gaping wounds. When he brought his hands to his face, he felt only numbness, as if even sensation was in retreat.

  Fingers now stabbing the air, he staggered on.

  The front door of the house was broken, torn from its hinges.

  A sound was coming from Kadaspala, an inhuman sound, a sound of something sliding into a pit, an abyss, a fall into depths unending. The cry surrounded him, greeted the empty morning and its senseless light, and the blood on the earth made shadows beneath motionless bodies. He saw the open carriage door and more bodies beyond – more Houseblades, more strangers in filthy rags, eyes staring as dead eyes always did.

  A shape on the steps of the house, a thing in a fine woollen cloak as blue as midnight. Grey hair clotted with black gore. The fingers on the end of Kadaspala’s hand danced in frenetic motion, jerking slashes of the invisible brush, and all the while the cry continued, like a soul in retreat, a soul plummeting for ever.

  He stepped over his father’s body, and then over Cryl Durav’s. And saw Ephalla’s still, stained form.

  He came to stand before the hearthstone.

  This was not her. This … thing. Not her. Never her. I don’t know who this is. It’s not—

  The face was all wrong. The bloodless cheeks, the swollen lips cracked and torn. He had never seen this woman before. She was staring at the ceiling. He felt himself pulled over her, stepping forward, shifting to intercept that empty gaze. He heard his own howl of protest. Still he leaned closer, watching the play of his own shadow sliding up over her face. He met her eyes.

  The fingers of his hands curled into claws. The keening sound filled the chamber, ran wild, was trapped in corners, jolting free and careening against the ceiling. Its pitch was building, climbing ever
higher. A sound tasting of blood, a sound smelling of horror. He staggered back and fell to his knees.

  Enesdia.

  Don’t look at me like that. Don’t—

  His fingers reached up, as he stared at the forlorn figure sprawled on the hearthstone, and the invisible brushes stabbed.

  Deep into his eyes.

  Pain was a shock, rocking his head back, but the artist would not let go – the brushes dipped deeper, soaked in red paint. The cry was now shrieking in a chorus of voices, bursting from his mouth again and again. He felt his fingers grasp hold of his eyes, felt them clench tight, crushing everything.

  And then he tore them away.

  And darkness offered its perfect blessing, and he shuddered as if in ecstasy.

  The babbling in his skull fell away, until a lone, quavering voice remained. It is the one question that haunts every artist, the one question we can never answer.

  How does one paint love?

  The brushes had done their work. The gods of the colours were all dead. Kadaspala sat slumped, with his eyes in his hands.

  FIFTEEN

  ‘FIRST SON, TAKE the sword in your hands.’

  Kellaras stood near the door, his eyes on the magnificent weapon that Hust Henarald had unwrapped. It seemed to divide the table it rested on, as if moments from splitting the world in half. Lord Anomander, his face hooded as if in shadow, made no move to reach for the sword.

  Kellaras could see his commander – the man he had always known – through the midnight pitch of his skin, and the long hair that had been black and was now silver, the hue of polished iron, yet capable of trapping every colour in its strands. The glow of the lanternlight was gold deepening to red, rippling like water as Anomander slowly leaned forward. The shadows within it were blue, on the very edge of inky black, and the way the hair fell reminded Kellaras of rain, or tears. He still struggled to comprehend this transformation.

  Henarald spoke again, his features all sharp angles, a glitter in his eyes that might have been fear. ‘First Son, are you displeased? The blade is silent, its tongue severed at the root. If it howls for you, only you can hear it.’

  ‘I hear it,’ Anomander whispered.

  Henarald nodded. ‘The weapon waits only for the blessing of Mother Dark.’

  ‘You will see nothing,’ said Silchas Ruin from where he leaned against the wall opposite Kellaras.

  Henarald shook his head. ‘Then I shall hear that blessing, sir. Or taste it. Or touch it, like a rose melting on to the blade, and I will feel warmth in the turning away of light. My head shall fill with the scent of the holy.’

  ‘You shall emerge,’ Silchas said, ‘with the skin of midnight.’

  The Hust Lord flinched.

  Anomander straightened, and still he did not reach for the weapon. Instead, he faced Andarist. ‘Well, brother, what think you of this sword?’

  Andarist was seated at one end of the table, like a man chained down against his will. His need to be gone from the city, to be on the road that would lead him to the woman he loved, was like sweat on his body, an emanation of impatience that seemed to crackle about him. His eyes flicked to the sword, and then up to his brother’s face. ‘I am a believer in names, Anomander. Power unfolds on the tongue. A word sinks claws into the mind and there would hold fast. Yet the Hust Lord tells us this blade is without a voice. Still, brother, you say that you hear its howl. I would know: by what name does this sword call itself?’

  Anomander shook his head. ‘None. I hear only the promise of purity.’

  ‘In its will,’ said Henarald, ‘it demands the purest hand. To draw a weapon is to announce an end to uncertainty. It brooks no doubt in its wielder. It is, sirs, a sword for the First Son of Darkness. If he should deny it, in seeing weakness or flaw, or in sensing malign intent in its clear song, then I shall shatter it, and cast the shards across the world. No other shall claim this blade. Understand this of this sword: in the hands of a king, he is made tyrant. In the hands of a tyrant, he is made abomination. In the hands of the broken, he breaks all that he touches.’

  The words hung in the small chamber, like echoes that wouldn’t die.

  Hust Henarald stood tall before Anomander: an apparition of soot and weals, scars and mottled skin, and Kellaras was reminded of his first meeting with the Lord, when it seemed that iron hid beneath Henarald’s flesh and blood; that he was held in place by twisted bars still glowing from the forge. For all of that, Kellaras saw fear in the old smith’s eyes.

  Silchas Ruin spoke into the heavy silence, ‘Lord Hust, what have you done?’

  ‘There is a secret place,’ Henarald said, ‘known to me. Known to certain Azathanai. There is a forge that is the first forge. Its heat is the first heat. Its fire is the first fire, born in the time before the Dog-Runners, in the time of the Eresal who have long since vanished into the grasslands of the south, where the jungles crawl down to unknown seas. There is no death in these flames. Often they have dimmed, but never have they died. It was in this forge that this weapon was made. One day, I knew – I know – I will be a child again.’ He turned to fix Kellaras with a hard stare. ‘Did I not say so, good sir?’

  Kellaras nodded. ‘You did, Lord, but I admit, I did not understand then. I do not understand now.’

  Henarald looked away, and to the captain’s eyes he seemed to deflate, as if struck to pain by Kellaras’s admission – his ignorance, his stupidity. One gnarled hand waved as if in dismissal. ‘The child knows simple things,’ he said in a near whisper. ‘Simple emotions, each one solid, each one raw. Each one honest in its bold certainty, no matter how cruel.’

  It is the madness of iron. This weapon has been forged by a madman.

  ‘Purity,’ Henarald continued, uttering the word in the tones of a lament. ‘We are not ready for it. Perhaps we never will be. Lord Anomander, be sure in your reply to this – is Mother Dark pure in this darkness she has spun about herself? Is the darkness pure? Do doubts die where they are sown? For ever starved of light, with no soil to take their roots? Tell me, will her blessing be as that of a child?’

  Slowly, Anomander shook his head. ‘Lord Hust, I cannot answer these questions. You must ask them of her.’

  ‘Are you not the First Son?’

  Anomander’s shrug bespoke frustration. ‘What do children know of their parents?’

  Andarist started at that, enough to make his chair creak. And then he rose. ‘Brothers, I must make ready. We are late as it is. I would come to her upon her second day in waiting, with the sun high and every shadow in retreat. Anomander, either take the sword or deny it. Be as simple as a child, even as Lord Hust said, and decide upon the cut.’

  ‘Every child wants, first and foremost,’ replied Anomander, and now at last Kellaras could see his master’s doubt. ‘But not all wants should find answer.’

  ‘I give you the blade,’ Henarald said. ‘The commission was accepted, as Kellaras is my witness. I bring it to you now. We are all honed well on promises, First Son, are we not?’

  ‘Then I would not dull your virtue, Lord Hust,’ said Anomander, and he reached down and closed his hand about the weapon’s leather-wrapped grip.

  Silchas pushed away from the wall and clapped Andarist on one shoulder. ‘See? We are done as promised, O impatient groom, and so you can be off. But I must catch you up. Captain Scara Bandaris has petitioned my presence in the matter of a score of mongrels in the keeper’s yard.’

  Anomander withdrew his hand from the sword. ‘Lord Hust, I will lead you now into the presence of Mother Dark, and by Darkness she will bless this weapon.’

  ‘I will find you at the gate,’ Andarist said to him.

  His brother nodded. ‘Prazek and Dathenar await you below. I would have Kellaras with me.’

  ‘And I, Galar Baras,’ said Henarald, ‘who attends us without.’ Andarist followed Silchas out of the chamber.

  These were fraught days and nights, ever since the mysterious meeting between the Azathanai woman and Mother
Dark. The silts left by the flooding river still stained the foundations of the city’s buildings, truly the soiled hand of an ancient god. A dozen citizens had drowned, trapped in cellars or swept from their feet by withdrawing currents and then battered by stone and wood. The fisherfolk who plied Dorssan Ryl had all departed – not a boat remained in Kharkanas, and it was said that the forest now seethed with Deniers on the march – to where, none knew.

  Within the Citadel there was confusion and discord. The High Priestess Syntara, skin bleached of all life and seeming health, was said to have fled, seeking sanctuary in some unknown place.

  Kellaras understood little of it. He felt as if the world had been jostled, throwing them all about, and balance underfoot remained uncertain, as if even nature’s laws were now unreliable. The priesthood was in chaos. Faith was becoming a battlefield and rumours delivered tales of blood spilled in the forests, Deniers murdered in their huts. And in this time, as far as Kellaras could tell, his lord had done nothing. Planning his brother’s wedding, as would a father, if the father still lived. Awaiting his new sword, which he seems disinclined to hold, much less use.

  Prazek and Dathenar get drunk every night, taking whores and priestesses to their beds, and if their eyes are haunted – when caught in a moment of reverie – then in that private silence is where dwells the frightful cause, and nowhere else.

  Kellaras now walked with his lord, with Henarald and Galar Baras behind them, and the corridors seemed damp and musty, the tapestries smelling of mould, the stone slick underfoot. Kellaras imagined a swamp rising to take Kharkanas, a siege of water against soil and every wall undermined beneath placid surfaces.

  The rumours swirling round Urusander’s Legion were, to the captain’s mind, the most disturbing ones of them all. Entire companies had departed their garrisons, and the standards of disbanded companies had been seen above troops in the outlands. Hunn Raal had left Kharkanas in the night and his whereabouts were unknown.

  When faiths take knife in hand, surely every god must turn away.