‘They destroyed his corporeal body, yes. And imprisoned his soul.’
‘Scabandari Bloodeye,’ Rhulad said, shaking his head as if to deny all that he saw. ‘He cannot be dead. That skull is not—’
‘It is,’ Fear said. ‘They killed our god.’
‘Who?’ Trull demanded.
‘All of them. Elder gods. And Eleint. The Elder gods loosed the blood in their veins. The dragons spawned a child of indescribable terror, to seek out and hunt down Scabandari Bloodeye. Father Shadow was brought down. An Elder god named Kilmandaros shattered his skull. They then made for Bloodeye’s spirit a prison of eternal pain, of agony beyond measure, to last until the Abyss itself is devoured.
‘Hannan Mosag means to avenge our god.’
Trull frowned. ‘The Elder gods are gone, Fear. As are the Eleint. Hannan Mosag commands six tribes of Tiste Edur and a fragmented warren.’
‘Four hundred and twenty-odd thousand Edur,’ Rhulad said. ‘And, for all our endless explorations, we have found no kin among the fragments of Kurald Emurlahn. Fear, Hannan Mosag sees through stained thoughts. It is one thing to challenge Letherii hegemony with summoned demons and, if necessary, iron blades. Are we now to wage war against every god in this world?’
Fear slowly nodded. ‘You are here,’ he told them, ‘and you have been told what is known. Not to see you bend to one knee and praise the Warlock King’s name. He seeks power, brothers. He needs power, and he cares nothing for its provenance, nor its taint.’
‘Your words are treasonous,’ Rhulad said, and Trull heard a strange delight in his brother’s voice.
‘Are they?’ Fear asked. ‘Hannan Mosag has charged us to undertake a perilous journey. To receive for him a gift. To then deliver it into his hands. A gift, brothers, from whom?’
‘We cannot deny him,’ Trull said. ‘He will simply choose others to go in our stead. And we will face banishment, or worse.’
‘Of course we shall not deny him, Trull. But we must not journey like blind old men.’
‘What of Binadas?’ Rhulad asked. ‘What does he know of this?’
‘Everything,’ Fear replied. ‘More, perhaps, than Uruth herself.’
Trull stared down once more at the mouldy dragon skull at the bottom of the pit. ‘How are you certain that is Scabandari Bloodeye?’
‘Because it was the widows who brought him here. The knowledge was passed down every generation among the women.’
‘And Hannan Mosag?’
‘Uruth knows he has been here, to this place. How he discovered the truth remains a mystery. Uruth would never have told me and Binadas, if not for her desperation. The Warlock King is drawing upon deadly powers. Are his thoughts stained? If not before, they are now.’
Trull’s eyes remained on that skull. A blunt, brutal execution, that mailed fist. ‘We had better hope,’ he whispered, ‘that the Elder gods are indeed gone.’
Chapter Four
There are tides beneath every tide and the surface of water holds no weight
Tiste Edur saying
The nerek believed the tiste edur were children of demons. There was ash in their blood, staining their skin. To look into an Edur’s eyes was to see the greying of the world, the smearing of the sun and the rough skin of night itself.
As the Hiroth warrior named Binadas strode towards the group, the Nerek began keening. Fists beating their own faces and chests, they fell to their knees.
Buruk the Pale marched among them, screaming curses and shrieking demands, but they were deaf to him. The merchant finally turned to where stood Seren Pedac and Hull Beddict, and began laughing.
Hull frowned. ‘This will pass, Buruk,’ he said.
‘Oh, will it now? And the world itself, will that too pass? Like a deathly wind, our lives swirling like dust amidst its headlong rush? Only to settle in its wake, dead and senseless – and all that frenzied cavorting empty of meaning? Hah! Would that I had hired Faraed!’
Seren Pedac’s attention remained on the approaching Tiste Edur. A hunter. A killer. One who probably also possessed the trait of long silences. She could imagine this Binadas, sharing a fire in the wilderness with Hull Beddict. In the course of an evening, a night and the following morning, perhaps a half-dozen words exchanged between them. And, she suspected, the forging of a vast, depthless friendship. These were the mysteries of men, so baffling to women. Where silences could become a conjoining of paths. Where a handful of inconsequential words could bind spirits in an ineffable understanding. Forces at play that she could sense, indeed witness, yet ever remaining outside them. Baffled and frustrated and half disbelieving.
Words knit the skein between and among women. And the language of gesture and expression, all merging to fashion a tapestry that, as every woman understood, could tear in but one direction, by deliberate vicious effort. A friendship among women knew but one enemy, and that was malice.
Thus, the more words, the tighter the weave.
Seren Pedac had lived most of her life in the company of men, and now, on her rare visits to her home in Letheras, she was viewed by women who knew her with unease. As if her choice had made her loyalty uncertain, cause for suspicion. And she had found an unwelcome awkwardness in herself when in their company. They wove from different threads, on different frames, discordant with her own rhythms. She felt clumsy and coarse among them, trapped by her own silences.
To which she answered with flight, away from the city, from her past. From women.
Yet, in the briefest of moments, in a meeting of two men with their almost indifferent exchange of greetings, she was knocked a step back – almost physically – and shut out. Here, sharing this ground, this trail with its rocks and trees, yet in another world.
Too easy to conclude, with a private sneer, that men were simple. Granted, had they been strangers, they might well be circling and sniffing each other’s anuses right now. Inviting conclusions that swept aside all notions of complexity, in their place a host of comforting generalizations. But the meeting of two men who were friends destroyed such generalizations and challenged the contempt that went with them, invariably leading a woman to anger.
And the strange, malicious desire to step between them.
On a cobbled beach, a man looks down and sees one rock, then another and another. A woman looks down and sees… rocks. But perhaps even this is simplistic. Man as singular and women as plural. More likely we are bits of both, some of one in the other.
We just don’t like admitting it.
He was taller than Hull, shoulders level with the Letherii’s eyes. His hair was brown and bound in finger-length braids. Eyes the colour wet sand. Skin like smeared ash. Youthful features, long and narrow barring the broad mouth.
Seren Pedac knew the Sengar name. It was likely she had seen this man’s kin, among the delegations she had treated with in her three official visits to Hannan Mosag’s tribe.
‘Hiroth warrior,’ Buruk the Pale said, shouting to be heard above the wailing Nerek, ‘I welcome you as guest. I am—’
‘I know who you are,’ Binadas replied.
At his words the Nerek voices trailed off, leaving only the wind moaning its way up the trail, and the constant trickling flow of melt water from the higher reaches.
‘I bring to the Hiroth,’ Buruk was saying, ‘ingots of iron—’
‘And would test,’ Hull Beddict interrupted, ‘the thickness of the ice.’
‘The season has turned,’ Binadas replied to Hull. ‘The ice is riven with cracks. There has been an illegal harvest of tusked seals. Hannan Mosag will have given answer.’
Seren Pedac swung to the merchant. Studied Buruk the Pale’s face. Alcohol, white nectar and the bitter wind had lifted the blood vessels to just beneath the pallid skin on his nose and cheeks. The man’s eyes were bleary and shot with red. He conveyed no reaction at the Edur’s words. ‘Regrettable. It is unfortunate that, among my merchant brethren, there are those who choose to disregard the agreements. The lure of gold. A t
ide none can withstand.’
‘The same can be said of vengeance,’ Binadas pointed out.
Buruk nodded. ‘Aye, all debts must be repaid.’
Hull Beddict snorted. ‘Gold and blood are not the same.’
‘Aren’t they?’ Buruk challenged. ‘Hiroth warrior, the interests I represent would adhere now and evermore to the bound agreements. Alas, Lether is a many-headed beast. The surest control of the more voracious elements will be found in an alliance – between the Edur and those Letherii who hold to the words binding our two peoples.’
Binadas turned away. ‘Save your speeches for the Warlock King,’ he said. ‘I will escort you to the village. That is all that need be understood between us.‘
Shrugging, Buruk the Pale walked back to his wagon. ‘On your feet, Nerek! The trail is downhill from here on, isn’t it just!’
Seren watched the merchant climb into the covered back, vanishing from sight, as the Nerek began scurrying about. A glance showed Hull and Binadas facing each other once more. The wind carried their words to her.
‘I will speak against Buruk’s lies,’ Hull Beddict said. ‘He will seek to ensnare you with smooth assurances and promises, none of which will be worth a dock.’
Binadas shrugged. ‘We have seen the traps you laid out before the Nerek and the Tarthenal. Each word is a knot in an invisible net. Against it, the Nerek’s swords were too blunt. The Tarthenal too slow to anger. The Faraed could only smile in their confusion. We are not as those tribes.’
‘I know,’ Hull said. ‘Friend, my people believe in the stacking of coins. One atop another, climbing, ever climbing to glorious heights. The climb signifies progress, and progress is the natural proclivity of civilization. Progress, Binadas, is the belief from which emerge notions of destiny. The Letherii believe in destiny – their own. They are deserving of all things, born of their avowed virtues. The empty throne is ever there for the taking.’
Binadas was smiling at Hull’s words, but it was a wry smile. He turned suddenly to Seren Pedac. ‘Acquitor. Join us, please. Do old wounds mar Hull Beddict’s view of Lether?’
‘Destiny wounds us all,’ she replied, ‘and we Letherii wear the scars with pride. Most of us,’ she added with an apologetic look at Hull.
‘One of your virtues?’
‘Yes, if you could call it that. We have a talent for disguising greed under the cloak of freedom. As for past acts of depravity, we prefer to ignore those. Progress, after all, means to look ever forward, and whatever we have trampled in our wake is best forgotten.’
‘Progress, then,’ Binadas said, still smiling, ‘sees no end.’
‘Our wagons ever roll down the hill, Hiroth. Faster and faster.’
‘Until they strike a wall.’
‘We crash through most of those.’
The smile faded, and Seren thought she detected a look of sadness in the Edur’s eyes before he turned away. ‘We live in different worlds.’
‘And I would choose yours,’ Hull Beddict said.
Binadas shot the man a glance, his expression quizzical. ‘Would you, friend?’
Something in the Hiroth’s tone made the hairs rise on the back of Seren Pedac’s neck.
Hull frowned, suggesting that he too had detected something awry in that question.
No more words were exchanged then, and Seren Pedac permitted Hull and Binadas to take the lead on the trail, allowing them such distance that their privacy was assured. Even so, they seemed disinclined to speak. She watched them, their matching strides, the way they walked. And wondered.
Hull was so clearly lost. Seeking to make the Tiste Edur the hand of his own vengeance. He would drive them to war, if he could. But destruction yielded only strife, and his dream of finding peace within his soul in the blood and ashes of slaughter filled her with pity for the man. She could not, however, let that blind her to the danger he presented.
Seren Pedac held no love for her own people. The Letherii’s rapacious hunger and inability to shift to any perspective that did not serve them virtually assured a host of bloody clashes with every foreign power they met. And, one day, they would meet their match. The wagons will shatter against a wall more solid than any we have seen. Will it be the Tiste Edur? It did not seem likely. True, they possessed formidable sorcery, and the Letherii had yet to encounter fiercer fighters. But the combined tribes amounted to less than a quarter-million. King Diskanar’s capital alone was home to over a hundred thousand, and there were a half-dozen cities nearly as large in Lether. With the protectorates across Dracons Sea and to the east, the hegemony could amass and field six hundred thousand soldiers, maybe more. Attached to each legion there would be a master of sorcery, trained by the Ceda, Kuru Qan himself. The Edur would be crushed. Annihilated.
And Hull Beddict…
She turned her thoughts from him with an effort. The choices were his to make, after all. Nor, she suspected, would he listen to her warnings.
Seren Pedac acknowledged her own uncertainty and confusion. Would she advocate peace at any price? What were the rewards of capitulation? Letherii access to the resources now claimed by the Edur. The harvest from the sea. And the Blackwood…
Of course. It’s the living wood that we hunger for, the source of ships that can heal themselves, that cut the waves faster than our sleekest galleys, that resist magic unleashed upon them. That is at the heart of this game.
But King Diskanar was not a fool – he was not the one harbouring such aspirations. Kuru Qan would have seen to that. No, this gambit was the queen’s. Such conceit, to believe the Letherii could master the living wood. That the Edur would so easily surrender their secrets, their arcane arts in coaxing the will of the Blackwood, in binding its power to their own.
Harvesting the tusked seals was a feint. The monetary loss was part of a much larger scheme, an investment with the aim of generating political dividends, which in turn would recoup the losses a hundredfold. And only someone as wealthy as the queen or Chancellor Triban Gnol could absorb such losses. Ships crewed by the Indebted, with the provision of clearing those debts upon the event of their deaths. Lives given up for the sake of children and grandchildren. They would have had no trouble manning those ships. Blood and gold, then.
She could not be certain of her suspicions, but they seemed to fit, and were as bitterly unpalatable to her as they probably were to Buruk the Pale. The Tiste Edur would not surrender the Blackwood. The conclusion was foregone. There was to be war. And Hull Beddict will make of himself its fiercest proponent. The queen’s own unwitting agent. No wonder Buruk tolerates his presence.
And the part she would play? I am the escort of this snarled madness. Nothing more than that. Keep your distance, Seren Pedac. She was Acquitor. She would do as she had been charged to do. Deliver Buruk the Pale.
Nothing will be decided. Not by us. The game’s end awaits the Great Meeting.
If only she could find comfort in that thought.
Twenty paces ahead, the forest swallowed Hull Beddict and Binadas Sengar. Darkness and shadows, drawing closer with every step she took.
****
Any criminal who could swim across the canal with a sack of docks strapped to his back won freedom. The amount of coin was dependent upon the nature of the transgression. Theft, kidnapping, failure to pay a debt, damage to property and murder yielded the maximum fine of five hundred docks. Embezzlement, assault without cause, cursing in public upon the names of the Empty Throne, the king or the queen, demanded three hundred docks in reparation. The least of the fines, one hundred docks, were levied upon loitering, voiding in public and disrespect.
These were the fines for men. Women so charged were accorded half-weights.
If someone could pay the fine, he did so, thus expunging his criminal record.
The canal awaited those who could not.
The Drownings were more than public spectacle, they were the primary event among a host of activities upon which fortunes were gambled every day in Letheras. S
ince few criminals ever managed to make it across the canal with their burden, distance and number of strokes provided the measure for wagering bets. As did Risings, Flailings, Flounderings and Vanishings.
The criminals had ropes tied to them, allowing for retrieval of the coins once the drowning was confirmed. The corpse was dumped back into the river. Guilty as sludge.
Brys Beddict found Finadd Gerun Eberict on the Second Tier overlooking the canal, amidst a crowd of similarly privileged onlookers to the morning’s Drownings. Bookmakers swarmed through the press, handing out payment tiles and collecting wagers. Voices rang in the air above the buzz of excited conversation. Nearby, a woman squealed, then laughed. Male voices rose in response.
‘Finadd.’
The flat, scarred face known to virtually every citizen swung to Brys, thin eyebrows lifting in recognition. ‘King’s Champion. You’re just in time. Ublala Pung is about to take a swim. I’ve eight hundred docks on the bastard.’
Brys Beddict leaned on the railing. He scanned the guards and officials on the launch below. ‘I’ve heard the name,’ he said, ‘but cannot recall his crime. Is that Ublala?’ He pointed down to a cloaked figure towering above the others.
‘That’s him. Tarthenal half-blood. So they’ve added two hundred docks to his fine.’
‘What did he do?’
‘What didn’t he do? Murder times three, destruction of property, assault, kidnapping times two, cursing, fraud, failure to pay debt and voiding in public. All in one afternoon.’
‘The ruckus at Urum’s Lenders?’ The criminal had flung off his cloak. He was wearing naught but a loincloth. His burnished skin was lined with whip scars. The muscles beneath it were enormous.
‘That’s the one.’
‘So what’s he carrying?’
‘Forty-three hundred.’
And Brys now saw the enormous double-lined sack being manhandled onto the huge man’s back. ‘Errant’s blessing, he’ll not manage a stroke.’
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