Midnight Tides

by Steven Erikson

  His eyes narrowed on her, suspicious of her offer.

  She added nothing more. He would believe what he would believe, after all, no matter how genuine her intent.

  ‘She speaks true,’ Hull said. ‘We would not constrain you, Binadas.’

  ‘Very well. I shall inform Hannan Mosag of your impending visit.’

  They watched the Edur set off down the trail. In moments the trees swallowed him.

  ‘Do you see?’ Hull asked her.

  ‘I saw only conflicting desires and obligations,’ Seren replied, turning away.

  ‘Only, then, what you chose to.’

  Seren’s shrug was weary. ‘Oh, Hull, that is the way of us all.’

  He stepped close. ‘But it need not be so, Acquitor.’

  Surprised, she met his gaze, and wondered at the sudden earnestness there. ‘How am I supposed to respond to that?’ she asked. ‘We are all like soldiers, crouching behind the fortifications we have raised. You will do what you believe you must, Hull.’

  ‘And you, Seren Pedac? What course awaits you?’

  Ever the same course. ‘The Tiste Edur are not yours to use. They may listen, but they are not bound to follow.’

  He turned away. ‘I have no expectations, Seren, only fears. We should resume the journey.’

  She glanced over at the Nerek. They sat or squatted near the wagons, steam rising from their backs. Their expressions were slack, strangely indifferent to the dead kin they had left behind in his makeshift grave of rutted mud, rocks and roots. How much could be stripped from a people before they began stripping away themselves? The steep slope of dissolution began with a skid, only to become a headlong run.

  The Letherii believed in cold-hearted truths. Momentum was an avalanche and no-one was privileged with the choice of stepping aside. The division between life and death was measured in incremental jostling for position amidst all-devouring progress. No-one could afford compassion. Accordingly, none expected it from others either.

  We live in an inimical time. But then, they are all inimical times.

  It began to rain once more.

  Far to the south, beyond the mountains they had just crossed, the downfall of the Tiste Edur was being plotted. And, she suspected, Hull Beddict’s life had been made forfeit. They could not afford the risk he presented, the treason he had as much as promised. The irony existed in their conjoined desires. Both sought war, after all. It was only the face of victory that was different.

  But Hull possessed little of the necessary acumen to play this particular game and stay alive.

  And she had begun to wonder if she would make any effort to save him.

  A shout from Buruk’s wagon. The Nerek climbed wearily to their feet. Seren drew her cloak tighter about her shoulders, eyes narrowed on the path ahead. She sensed Hull coming to her side, but did not look over.

  ‘What temple was it you were schooled at?’

  She snorted, then shook her head. ‘Thurlas, the Shrouded Sisters of the Empty Throne.’

  ‘Just opposite Small Canal. I remember it. What sort of child were you, Seren?’

  ‘Clearly, you have an image in your mind.’

  She caught his nod in her periphery, and he said, ‘Zealous. Proper to excess. Earnest.’

  ‘There are ledgers, recording the names of notable students. You will find mine in them, again and again. For example, I hold title to the most punishments inflicted in a year. Two hundred and seventy-one. I was more familiar with the Unlit Cell than my own room. I was also accused of seducing a visiting priest. And before you ask, yes, I was guilty. But the priest swore otherwise, to protect me. He was excommunicated. I later heard he killed himself. Had I still possessed any innocence, I would have lost it then.’

  He came round to stand before her, as the first wagon was pulled past by the Nerek. She was forced to look at him. Hesitated, then offered him a wry smile. ‘Have I shocked you, Hull Beddict?’

  ‘The ice has broken beneath me.’

  A flash of anger, then she realized the self-mockery in his confession. ‘We are not born innocent, simply unmeasured.’

  ‘And, presumably, immeasurable as well.’

  ‘For a few years at least. Until the outside is inflicted upon the inside, then the brutal war begins. We are not born to compassion either – large wide eyes and sweet demeanour notwithstanding.’

  ‘And you came to recognize your war early.’

  Seren shrugged. ‘My enemy was not authority, although perhaps it seemed so. It was childhood itself. The lowered expectations of adults, the eagerness to forgive. It sickened me—’

  ‘Because it was unjust.’

  ‘A child’s sense of injustice is ever self-serving, Hull. I couldn’t fool myself with that indignation. Why are we speaking of this?’

  ‘Questions I forgot to ask. Back then. I think I was a child myself in those days. All inside, no outside.’

  Her brows rose, but she said nothing.

  Hull understood anyway. ‘You might be right. In some things, that is. But not when it comes to the Edur.’

  The second wagon trundled past. Seren studied the man before her ‘Are you so certain of that?’ she asked. ‘Because I see you driven by your own needs. The Edur are the sword but the hand is your own, Hull. Where is the compassion in that?’

  ‘You have it wrong, Seren. I intend to be the sword.’

  The chill in her bones deepened. ‘In what way?’

  But he shook his head. ‘I cannot trust you, Seren. Like everyone else you shall have to wait. One thing, however. Do not stand in my way. Please.’

  I cannot trust you. Words that cut to her soul. Then again, the issue of trust stood on both sides of the path, didn’t it?

  The third wagon halted beside them. The curtain in the door window was dragged aside and Buruk’s deathly face peered out. ‘And this is guidance? Who blazes the trail? Are we doomed now to wander lost? Don’t tell me you have become lovers once more! Seren, you look positively besieged. Such is the curse of love, oh, my heart weeps for you!’

  ‘Enough, Buruk,’ Seren said. She wiped the rain from her face and, ignoring Hull, moved past onto the path. Nerek stepped to either side to let her pass.

  The forest trail was flanked by Blackwood trees, planted to assert Edur possession of these lands. Rough midnight bark that had been twisted into nightmarish images and arcane script by the shadow wraiths that clung to every groove and fissure in the rugged skin. Wraiths that now rose into view to watch Seren and those following in her wake.

  There seemed more than usual. Flowing restless like black mist between the huge boles. Scores, then hundreds, crowding either side of the trail. Seren’s steps slowed.

  She could hear the Nerek behind her, low moans, the clack of the wagons slowing, then halting.

  Hull came alongside her. ‘They have raised an army,’ he whispered.

  There was dark satisfaction in his tone.

  ‘Are they truly the ancestors of the Edur?’

  His gaze snapped to her, feverish. ‘Of course. What else could they be?’

  She shook herself. ‘Urge the Nerek onward, Hull. They’ll listen to you. Two days remaining, that’s all—’ And then she fell silent.

  For a figure was standing upon the trail. Skin the colour of bleached linen, tall as an Edur, a face obscured by dark streaks, as if bloodstained fingers had drawn down the gaunt cheeks. An apparition, the dull red eyes burning from those deep sockets dead. Mould hung in ragged sheets from rotting armour. Two scabbards, both empty.

  Wraiths swarmed at the figure’s feet, as if in worship.

  A wagon door clattered and Buruk staggered out, wrapped in a blanket that dragged the ground behind him as he came to Seren’s side.

  ‘Barrow and Root!’ the merchant hissed. ‘The tiles did not lie!’

  Seren took a step forward.

  Hull reached out a hand. ‘No—’

  ‘Would you have us stand here for ever?’ she snapped, pulling herself free.
Despite the bravado of her words, she was terrified. Ghosts revealed themselves in childhood tales and legends, and in the occasional fevered rumour in the capital. She had believed in such apparitions in a half-hearted way, an idea made wilfully manifest. A whispery vision of history, risen as harbinger, as silent warning. A notion, then, as much symbolic as actual.

  And even then, she had imagined something far more… ephemeral. Lacking distinction, a face comprised of forlorn hints, features blurred by the fading of their relevance. Half seen in currents of darkness, there one moment, gone the next.

  But there was a palpability in the tall conjuration standing before her, an assertion of physical insistence. Etched details on the long, pallid face, the flat, filmed eyes watching her approach with fullest comprehension.

  As if he has just clambered free of one of the barrows in this forest. But he is not… is not Edur.

  ‘A dragon,’ the apparition said in the language of the Tiste, ‘once dragged itself down this trail. No forest back then. Naught but devastation. Blood in the broken earth. The dragon, mortal, made this trail. Do you feel this? Beneath you, the scattering of memory that pushes the roots away, that bows the trees to either side. A dragon.’ The figure then turned, looked down the path behind it. ‘The Edur – he ran unseeing, unmindful. Kin of my betrayer. Yet… an innocent.’ He faced her once more. ‘But you, mortal, are not nearly so innocent, are you?’

  Taken aback, Seren said nothing.

  Behind her, Hull Beddict spoke, ‘Of what do you accuse her, ghost?’

  ‘A thousand. A thousand upon a thousand misdeeds. Her. You. Your kind. The gods are as nothing. Demons less than children. Every Ascendant an awkward mummer. Compared to you. Is it ever the way, I wonder? That depravity thrives in the folds of the flower, when its season has come. The secret seeds of decay hidden beneath the burgeoning glory. All of us, here in your wake, we are as nothing.’

  ‘What do you want?’ Hull demanded.

  The wraiths had slipped away, back among the trees. But a new tide had come to swarm about the ghost’s tattered boots. Mice, a seething mass pouring up the trail. Ankle deep, the first reached Seren’s feet, scampered round them. A grey and brown tide, mindless motion. A multitude of tiny selves, seized by some unknown and unknowable imperative. From here… to there.

  There was something terrible, horrifying, about them. Thousands, tens of thousands – the trail ahead, for as far as she could see, was covered with mice.

  ‘The land was shattered,’ the apparition said. ‘Not a tree left standing. Naught but corpses. And the tiny creatures that fed on them. Hood’s own legion. Death’s sordid tide, mortals, fur-backed and rising. It seems so… facile.’ The undead seemed to shake himself. ‘I want nothing from you. The journeys are all begun. Do you imagine that your path has never before known footfalls?’

  ‘We are not so blind as to believe that,’ Seren Pedac said. She struggled against kicking away the mice swarming around her ankles, fearing the descent into hysteria. ‘If you will not – or cannot – clear this trail, then we’ve little choice—’

  The apparition’s head tilted. ‘You would deliver countless small deaths? In the name of what? Convenience?’

  ‘I see no end to these creatures of yours, ghost.’

  ‘Mine? They are not mine, mortal. They simply belong to my time. To the age of their squalid supremacy on this land. A multitude of tyrants to rule over the ash and dust we left in our wake. They see in my spirit a promise.’

  ‘And,’ Hull growled, ‘are we meant to see the same?’

  The apparition had begun fading, colours bleeding away. ‘If it pleases you,’ came the faint, derisive reply. ‘Of course, it may be that the spirit they see is yours, not mine.’

  Then the ghost was gone.

  The mice began flowing out to the forest on either side of the trail, as if suddenly confused, blinded once more to whatever greater force had claimed them. They bled away into the mulch, the shadows and the rotted wood of fallen trees. One moment there, the next, gone.

  Seren swung to Buruk the Pale. ‘What did you mean when you said the tiles didn’t lie? Barrow and Root, those are tiles in the Hold of the Azath, are they not? You witnessed a casting before you began this journey. In Trate. Do you deny it?’

  He would not meet her eyes. His face was pale. ‘The Holds are awakening, Acquitor. All of them.’

  ‘Who was he, then?’ Hull Beddict asked.

  ‘I do not know.’ Abruptly Buruk scowled and turned away. ‘Does it matter? The mud stirs and things clamber free, that is all. The Seventh Closure draws near – but I fear it will be nothing like what all of us have been taught. The birth of empire, oh yes, but who shall rule it? The prophecy is perniciously vague. The trail has cleared – let us proceed.’

  He clambered back into his wagon.

  ‘Are we to make sense of that?’ Hull asked.

  Seren shrugged. ‘Prophecies are like the tiles themselves, Hull. See in them what you will.’ The aftermath of her terror was sour in her throat, and her limbs felt loose and weak. Suddenly weary, she unstrapped her helm and lifted it off. The fine rain was like ice on her brow. She closed her eyes.

  I can’t save him. I can’t save any of us.

  Hull Beddict spoke to the Nerek.

  Blinking her eyes open, Seren shook herself. She tied her helm to her pack.

  The journey resumed. Clattering, groaning wagons, the harsh breathing of the Nerek. Motionless air and the mist falling through it like the breath of an exhausted god.

  Two days. Then it is done.

  Thirty paces ahead, unseen by any of them, an owl sailed across the path, silent on its broad, dark wings. There was blood on its talons, blood around its beak.

  Sudden bounties were unquestioned. Extravagance unworthy of celebration. The hunter knew only hunting, and was indifferent to the fear of the prey. Indifferent, as well, to the white crow that sailed in its wake.

  ****

  A random twist of the wind drew the remnants of the pyre’s smoke into the village. It had burned for a day and a night, and Trull Sengar emerged from his father’s longhouse the following morning to find the mist drifting across the compound bitter with its taint.

  He regretted the new world he had found. Revelations could not be undone. And now he shared secrets and the truth was, he would rather have done without them. Once familiar faces had changed. What did they know? How vast and insidious this deceit? How many warriors had Hannan Mosag drawn into his ambitions? To what extent had the women organised against the Warlock King?

  No words on the subject had been exchanged among the brothers, not since that conversation in the pit, the stove-in dragon skull the only witness to what most would call treason. The preparations for the impending journey were under way. There would be no slaves accompanying them, after all. Hannan Mosag had sent wraiths ahead to the villages lying between here and the ice-fields, and so provisions would await them, mitigating the need for burdensome supplies, at least until the very end.

  A wagon drawn by a half-dozen slaves had trundled across the bridge, in its bed newly forged weapons. Iron-tipped spears stood upright in bound bundles. Copper sheathing protected the shafts for fully half their length. Cross-hilted swords were also visible, hand-and-a-half grips and boiled leather scabbards. Billhooks for unseating riders, sheaves of long arrows with leather fletching. Throwing axes, as favoured by the Arapay. Broad cutlasses in the Merude style.

  The forges hammered the din of war once more.

  Trull saw Fear and Rhulad stride up to the wagon, more slaves trailing them, and Fear began directing the storage of the weapons.

  Rhulad glanced over as Trull approached. ‘Have you need of more spears, brother?’ he asked.

  ‘No, Rhulad. I see Arapay and Merude weapons here – and Beneda and Den-Ratha—’

  ‘Every tribe, yes. So it is now among all the forges, in every village. A sharing of skills.’

  Trull glanced over at Fear. ‘Your thought
s on this, brother? Will you now be training the Hiroth warriors in new weapons?’

  ‘I have taught how to defend against them, Trull. It is the Warlock King’s intention to create a true army, such as those of the Letherii. This will involve specialist units.’ Fear studied Trull for a moment, before adding, ‘I am Weapons Master for the Hiroth, and now, at the Warlock King’s command, for all of the tribes.’

  ‘You are to lead this army?’

  ‘If war should come, yes, I will lead it into battle.’

  ‘Thus are the Sengar honoured,’ Rhulad said, his face expressionless, the tone without inflection.

  Thus are we rewarded.

  ‘Binadas returned at dawn,’ Fear said. ‘He will take this day in rest. Then we shall depart.’

  Trull nodded.

  ‘A Letherii trader caravan is coming,’ Rhulad said. ‘Binadas met them on the trail. The Acquitor is Seren Pedac. And Hull Beddict is with them.’

  Hull Beddict, the Sentinel who betrayed the Nerek, the Tarthenal and the Faraed. What did he want? Not all Letherii were the same, Trull knew. Opposing views sang with the clash of swords. Betrayals abounded among the rapacious multitude in the vast cities and indeed, if rumours were true, in the palace of the king himself. The merchant was charged to deliver the words of whoever had bought him. Whilst Seren Pedac, in the profession of Acquitor, would neither speak her mind nor interfere with the aims of the others. He had not been in the village during her other visits, and so could judge no more than that. But Hull, the once Sentinel – it was said he was immune to corruption, such as only a man once betrayed could be.

  Trull was silent as he watched the slaves drag the weapon bundles from the cart bed and carry them off to the armoury.

  Even his brothers seemed… different somehow. As if shadows stretched taut between them, unseen by anyone else, and could make the wind drone with weighted trepidation. Darkness, then, in the blood of brothers. None of this served the journey about to begin. None of it.

  I was ever the worrier. I do not see too much, I see only the wrong things. And so the fault is mine, within me. I need to remain mindful of that. Such as with my assumptions about Rhulad and Mayen. Wrong things, wrong thoughts, they are the ones that seem to be… tireless…