Midnight Tides

by Steven Erikson

  A numbed reply, ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Rae’d. Veb entara tog’rudd n’lan n’vis thai? List vah olar n’lan? Ste shabyn?’

  ‘The women want to know if I will eat them when I get older. They want to know what dragons eat. They want to know if they should be afraid. I don’t know what all that means.’

  ‘How can they be eaten? They’re—’ Udinaas stopped. Errant take me, they don’t know they’re dead! ‘Tell them not to worry, Found.’

  ‘Ki’bri arasteshabyn bri por’tol tun logdara kul absi.’

  ‘Ulshun Pral says they promised her to take care of me until she returns.’

  ‘Entara tog’rudd av?’

  The boy shook his head and replied in the warrior’s language.

  ‘What did he ask?’ Udinaas demanded.

  ‘Ulshun Pral wanted to know if you’re my father. I told him my father’s dead. I told him, no, you aren’t. My father was Araq Elalle. He died.’

  In Letherii, Feather Witch said, ‘Tell him, Udinaas.’

  ‘No. There’s nothing to tell.’

  ‘You would leave him to that… woman?’

  He spun to face her. ‘And what would you have me do? Take him with us? We’re not even here!’

  ‘T’un havra’ad eventara. T’un veb vol’raele bri rea han d En’ev?’

  The boy said, ‘Ulshun Pral is understanding you now. Some. He says there are holes and would you like to go there?’

  ‘Holes?’ Udinaas asked.

  Feather Witch snorted. ‘Gates. He means gates. I have been sensing them. There are gates, Udinaas. Powerful ones.’

  ‘All right,’ Udinaas said to Found.

  ‘I don’t like that place,’ the boy said. ‘But I will come with you. It’s not far.’

  They strode towards the mouth of one of the larger caves. Passed into the cool darkness, the rough floor sloping upward for twenty or so paces, then beginning to dip again. Into caverns with the walls crowded with painted images in red and yellow ochre, black outlines portraying ancient beasts standing or running, some falling with spears protruding from them. Further in, a smaller cavern with black stick-like efforts on the walls and ceiling, a struggling attempt by the T’lan Imass to paint their own forms. Blooms of red paint outlining ghostly hand-prints. Then the path narrowed and began a gradual ascent once more. Ahead, a vertical fissure from which light spilled inward, a light filled with flowing colours, as if some unearthly flame burned beyond.

  They emerged onto an uneven but mostly level sweep of blackened bedrock. Small boulders set end to end formed an avenue of approach from the cave mouth that led them on an inward spiral towards the centre of the clearing. Beyond, the sky shimmered with swirling colours, like shattered rainbows. A cairn of flat stones dominated the centre of the spiral, in the rough, awkward form of a figure standing on two legs made of stacked stones, a single broad one forming the hips, the torso made of three more, the arms each a single projecting, rectangular stone out to the side, the head a single, oblong rock sheathed in lichen. The crude figure stood before a squat tower-like structure with at least twelve sides. The facings were smooth, burnished like the facets of natural crystal. Yet light in countless colours flared beneath each of those surfaces, each plane spiralling inward to a dark hole.

  Udinaas could feel a pressure in the air, as of taut forces held in balance. The scene seemed perilously fragile.

  ‘Vi han onralmashalle. S’ril k’ul havra En’ev. N’vist’. Lan’te.’

  ‘Ulshun says his people came here with a bonecaster. It was a realm of storms. And beasts, countless beasts coming from those holes. They did not know what they were, but there was much fighting.’

  The T’lan Imass warrior spoke again, at length.

  ‘Their bonecaster realized that the breaches must be sealed, and so she drew upon the power of stone and earth, then rose into her new, eternal body to stand before the wounds. And hold all with stillness. She stands there now and she shall stand there for all time.’

  ‘Yet her sacrifice has stranded the T’lan Imass here, hasn’t it?’ Udinaas asked.

  ‘Yes. But Ulshun and his people are content.’

  ‘Vi truh larpahal. Ranag, bhed, tenag tollarpahal. Kul havra thelar. Kul.’

  ‘This land is a path, what we would call a road,’ Found said, frowning as he struggled to make sense of Ulshun’s words. ‘Herds migrate, back and forth. They seem to come from nowhere, but they always come.’

  Because, like the T’lan Imass themselves, they are ghost memories.

  ‘The road leads here?’ Feather Witch asked in halting traders’ tongue.

  ‘Yes,’ Found said.

  ‘And comes from where?’

  ‘Epal en. Vol‘sav, thelan.’

  The boy sighed, crossed his arms in frustration. ‘Ulshun says we are in an… overflow? Where the road comes from has bled out to claim the road itself. And surround this place. Beyond, there is… nothing. Oblivion. Unrealized.’

  ‘So we are within a realm?’ Feather Witch asked. ‘Which Hold claims this place?’

  ‘A evbrox‘l list Tev. Starvald Demelain Tev.’

  ‘Ulshun is pleased you understand Holds. He is bright-gem-eye. Pleased, and surprised. He calls this Hold Starvald Demelain.’

  ‘I do not know that name,’ she said, scowling.

  The T’lan Imass spoke again, and in the words Udinaas sensed a list. Then more lists, and in hearing the second list, he began to recognize names.

  The boy shrugged. ‘T’iam, Kalse, Silannah, Ampelas, Okaros, Karosis, Sorrit, Atrahal, Eloth, Anthras, Kessobahn, Alkend, Karatallid, Korbas… Olar. Eleint. Draconean. Dragons. The Pure Dragons. The place where the road comes from is closed. By the mixed bloods who gathered long ago. Draconus, K’rul, Anomandaris, Osserc, Silchas Ruin, Scabandari, Sheltatha Lore, Sukul Ankhadu, and Menandore. It was, he says, Menandore who saved me.’ The boy’s eyes suddenly widened. ‘She didn’t look like a dragon!’

  Ulshun spoke.

  Found nodded. ‘All right. He says you should be able to pass through from here. He looks forward to seeing you again. They will prepare a feast for you. Tenag calf. You are coming back, aren’t you?’

  ‘If we can,’ Feather Witch said, then switched to Letherii. ‘Aren’t we, Udinaas?’

  He scowled. ‘How would I know?’

  ‘Be gracious.’

  ‘To you or them?’

  ‘Both. But especially to your son.’

  He didn’t want to hear any of this, and chose to study the faceted tower instead. Not a single path, then, but multiple doorways. At least twelve. Twelve other worlds, then? What would they be like? What kind of creatures populated them? Demons. And perhaps that was all the word ‘demon’ meant. Some creature torn from its own realm. Bound like a slave by a new master who cared nothing for its life, its well-being, who would simply use it like any other tool. Until made useless, whereupon it would be discarded.

  But I am tired of sympathy. Of feeling it, at least. I’d welcome receiving it, if only to salve all this self-pity. Be gracious, she said. A little rich, coming from her. He looked back down at the boy. My son. No, just my seed. She took nothing else, needed nothing else. It was the Wyval blood that drew her, it must have been. Nothing else. Not my son. My seed.

  Growing too fast. Was that the trait of dragons? No wonder the T’lan Imass women were frightened. He sighed, then said, ‘Found, thank you. And our thanks as well to Ulshun Pral. We look forward to a feast of Tenag calf.’ He faced Feather Witch. ‘Can you choose the proper path?’

  ‘Our flesh will draw us back,’ she replied. ‘Come, we have no idea how much time has passed in our world.’ She took him by the hand and led him past the stone figure. ‘Dream worlds. Imagine what we might see, were we able to choose…’

  ‘They’re not dream worlds, Feather Witch. They’re real. In those places, we are the ghosts.’

  She snorted, but said nothing.

  Udinaas turned for a final glance back. The boy, Found
, get of a slave and a draconic-blooded woman, raised by neither. And at his side this rudely fashioned savage who believed he still lived. Believed he was flesh and blood, a hunter and leader with appetites, desires, a future to stride into. Udinaas could not decide which of the two was the more pathetic. Seeing them, as he did now, they both broke his heart, and there seemed no way to distinguish between the two. As if grief had flavours.

  He swung round. ‘All right, take us back.’

  Her hand tightened on his, and she drew him forward. He watched her stride into the wall of flaring light. Then followed.

  ****

  Atri-Preda Yan Tovis, called Twilight by those soldiers under her command who possessed in their ancestry the blood of the long-vanished indigenous fishers of Fent Reach – for that was what her name meant – stood on the massive wall skirting the North Coast Tower, and looked out upon the waters of Nepah Sea. Behind her, a broad, raised road exited from the base of the watchtower and cut a straight path south through two leagues of old forest, then a third of a league of farmland, to end at the crossroads directly before the Inland Gate of the fortified city of Fent Reach.

  That was a road she was about to take. In haste.

  Beside her, the local Finadd, a willow-thin, haunted man whose skin seemed almost bloodless, cleared his throat for the third time in the last dozen heartbeats.

  ‘All right, Finadd,’ Twilight said.

  The man sighed, a sound of unabashed relief. ‘I will assemble the squads, Atri-Preda.’

  ‘In a moment. You’ve still a choice to make.’

  ‘Atri-Preda?’

  ‘By your estimate, how many Edur ships are we looking at?’

  The Finadd squinted northward. ‘Eight, nine hundred of their raiders, I would judge. Merude, Den-Ratha, Beneda. Those oversized transports – I’ve not seen those before. Five hundred?’

  ‘Those transports are modelled on our own,’ Twilight said. ‘And ours hold five hundred soldiers each, one full supply ship in every five. Assuming the same ratio here. Four hundred transports packed with Edur warriors. That’s two hundred thousand. Those raiders carry eighty to a hundred. Assume a hundred. Thus, ninety thousand. The force about to land on the strand below is, therefore, almost three hundred thousand.’

  ‘Yes, Atri-Preda.’

  ‘Five thousand Edur landed outside First Maiden Fort this morning. The skeleton garrison saddled every horse they had left and are riding hard for Fent Reach. Where I have my garrison.’

  ‘We can conclude,’ the Finadd said, ‘that this represents the main force of the Edur fleet, the main force, indeed, of the entire people and their suicidal invasion.’

  She glanced at him. ‘No, we cannot conclude any such thing. We have never known the population of Edur lands.’

  ‘Atri-Preda, we can hold Fent Reach for weeks. In that time, a relieving army will have arrived and we can crush the grey-skinned bastards.’

  ‘My mage cadre in the city,’ she said after a moment, ‘amounts to three dubious sorcerors, one of them never sober and the other two seemingly intent on killing each other over some past slight. Finadd, do you see the darkness of the sea beneath those ships? The residents of Trate know well that dark water, and what it holds.’

  ‘What are you saying, Atri-Preda?’

  ‘By all means ride back with us with your soldiers, Finadd. Or stay and arrange your official surrender with the first elements to land.’

  The man’s mouth slowly opened.

  Twilight turned away and walked to the stairs leading down to the courtyard. ‘I am surrendering Fent Reach, Finadd.’

  ‘But Atri-Preda! We could withdraw back to Trate! All of us!’

  She stopped three steps down. ‘A third fleet has appeared, Finadd. In Katter Sea. We have already been cut off.’

  ‘Errant take us!’

  Twilight resumed her descent. Under her breath, she muttered, ‘If only he could…’

  All the questions were over. The invasion had begun.

  My city is about to be conquered. Again.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The old drainage trench had once been a stream, long before the huts were knocked down and the overlords began building their houses of stone. Rubble and foul silts formed the banks, crawling with vermin. But there in my chest some dark fire flamed in quiet rage as I walked the track seeking the lost voice, the voice of that freed watery flow, the pebbles beneath the streaming tongue. Oh I knew so well those smooth stones, the child’s treasure of comforting form and the way, when dried, a single drop of tear or rain could make the colour blossom once more the found recollection of its home – this child’s treasure and the child was me and the treasure was mine, and mine own child this very morning I discovered, kneeling smeared on the rotting bank playing with shards of broken pots that knew only shades of grey no matter how deep and how streaming these tears.

  Before Trate

  Nameless Fent

  Dreams could pass between the blinks of a man’s eyes, answered by wild casting about, disorientation, and an unstoppered flood of discordant emotions. Udinaas found he had slid down, was perched precariously on the ledge, his limbs stiff and aching. The sun had fallen lower, but not by much. Behind him, rising from a crumpled heap, was Feather Witch, the two halves of a broken tile falling from one hand to clatter on the stone a moment before sliding off into the brush and rocks below. Her hair disguised her face, hid the emotions writ there.

  Udinaas wanted to scream, let loose his grief, and the sourceless anger beneath it. But what was new in being used? What was new in having nothing to reach for, nothing to strive towards? He pulled himself up from the edge of crumbling stone, and looked about.

  The army was on the move. Something had changed. He saw haste below. ‘We must return,’ he said.

  ‘To what?’ Harsh, bitter.

  ‘To what we were before.’

  ‘Slaves, Udinaas.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve tasted it now. I’ve tasted it!’

  He glanced over at her, watched as she sat straighter, dragging the hair from her eyes, and fixed him with a fierce glare. ‘You cannot live like this.’

  ‘I can’t?’

  She looked away. Not wanting to see, he guessed. Not wanting to understand.

  ‘We’re marching to Trate, Feather Witch.’

  ‘To conquer. To… enslave.’

  ‘Details,’ he muttered, climbing cautiously to his feet. He offered her a hand. ‘Mayen wants you.’

  ‘She beats me, now.’

  ‘I know. You’ve failed to hide the bruises.’

  ‘She tears my clothes off. Uses me. In ways that hurt. I hurt all the time.’

  ‘Well,’ Udinaas said, ‘he doesn’t do that to her. Not that there’s much… tenderness. He’s too young for that, I suppose. Nor has she the power to take charge. Teach him. She’s… frustrated.’

  ‘Enough of your understanding this, understanding that. Enough, Indebted! I don’t care about her point of view, I’m not interested in stepping into her shadow, in trying to see the world how she sees it. None of that matters, when she twists, when she bites, when she pushes… just stop talking, Udinaas. Stop. No more.’

  ‘Take my hand, Feather Witch. It’s time.’

  ‘I’d rather bite it off.’

  I know. He said nothing.

  ‘So he doesn’t hurt her, does he?’

  ‘Not physically,’ he replied.

  ‘Yes. What he does to her…’ she looked up, searching his eyes, ‘I do to you.’

  ‘And you’d rather bite.’

  She made no reply. Something flickered in her gaze, then she turned away even as she took his hand.

  He drew her onto her feet.

  She would not look at him. ‘I’ll go down first. Wait a bit.’

  ‘All right.’

  An army kicked awake, swarming the forest floor. To the north, the ashes of home. To the south, Trate. There would be… vengeance. Details.

  *
***

  A flicker of movement downslope, then… nothing.

  Trull Sengar continued scanning for a moment longer, then he settled back down behind the tree-fall. ‘We have been discovered,’ he said.

  Ahlrada Ahn grunted. ‘Now what?’

  Trull looked to the left and the right. He could barely make out the nearest warriors, motionless and under cover. ‘That depends,’ he muttered. ‘If they now come in force.’

  They waited, as the afternoon waned.

  Somewhere in the forest below was a Letherii brigade, and within it a mage cadre that had detected the presence of Tiste Edur positioned to defend the bridge. Among the officers, surprise, perhaps consternation. The mages would be at work attempting to discern precise numbers, but that would prove difficult. Something in Edur blood defied them, remained elusive to their sorcerous efforts. A decision would have to be made, and much depended on the personality of the commander. Proceed in a cautious and measured way until direct contact was established, whereupon a succession of probes would determine the strength of the enemy. There were risks, however, to that. Drawing close enough to gauge the sharpness of the enemy’s fangs invited a bite that might not let go, leading to a pitched engagement where all the advantage lay with the Tiste Edur. Uphill battles were always costly. And often withdrawal proved bloody and difficult. Worse, there was a good chance of an all-out rout, which would lead to slaughter.

  Or the commander could order the mage cadre to unleash a sorcerous attack and so lay waste the forest reaches above them. Such an attack, of course, served to expose the mages’ position to those Edur warlocks who might be present. And to the wraiths and demons attending them. If the attack was blunted, the cadre was in trouble.

  Finally, the commander could choose to pull back. Yield the bridge, and return to the solid defences of High Fort, inviting a more traditional battle – the kind the Letherii had fought for centuries, against enemy forces of all sorts, and almost invariably with great success.

  Was the commander overconfident and precipitous? If so, then Trull Sengar and his fifty warriors would either be slaughtered or forced back to the other side of the bridge, either result proving tactically disastrous for Hanradi Khalag and his advancing warriors. A contested crossing of the bridge would force Fear and Hanradi into unveiling the full extent of the sorcerous power accompanying the army – power intended to shatter the defenders of High Fort. Conversely, a cautious or timid commander would elect to retreat, and that would ensure an Edur success.