Midnight Tides

by Steven Erikson

  ‘Oh, Errant, what has happened here?’

  He made to run—

  —and found his path blocked.

  A Nerek, and a moment later Hull Beddict recognized him. One of Buruk the Pale’s servants.

  Frowning, wondering how he had come to be here, Hull moved to step around the man – who sidestepped once more to block him.

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘You have been judged, Hull Beddict,’ the Nerek said. ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘Judged? Please, I must—’

  ‘You chose to walk with the Tiste Edur emperor,’ the Nerek said. ‘You chose… betrayal.’

  ‘An end to Lether, yes – what of it? No more will this damned kingdom destroy people like the Nerek, and the Tarthenal—’

  ‘We thought we knew your heart, Hull Beddict, but now we see that it has turned black. It is poisoned, because forgiveness is not within you.’

  ‘Forgiveness?’ He reached out to push the Nerek aside. They’re beating someone. To death. I think—

  From behind, two knives slid into his back, one under each shoulder blade, angling upward.

  Arching in shock, Hull Beddict stared at the Nerek standing before him, and saw that the young man was weeping. What? Why—

  He sank to his knees, weakness rising through him, and the storm of thoughts – the emotions and desires that had haunted him for years – they too weakened, fell away into a grey, calm mist. The mist rising yet higher, a sudden coldness in his muscles. It is… it is… so…

  Hull Beddict pitched forward, onto his face, but he never felt the impact with the cobbles.

  ****

  ‘Stop. Please—’

  The Tiste Edur turned, to see a Letherii step from where he had been hiding, round the corner of the warehouse. Nondescript, limping, a knout tucked into a rope belt, the man edged forward and continued in the trader tongue, ‘He’s never hurt no-one. Don’t kill him, please. I saw, you see.’

  ‘You saw what?’ Theradas demanded.

  ‘The woman, she stabbed herself. Look at the knife, see for yourself.’ Chalas wrung his hands, eyes on the bleeding, motionless form of Tehol. ‘Please, don’t hurt him no more.’

  ‘You must learn,’ Theradas said, baring his teeth. ‘We heed our emperor’s words. This shall be a day of suffering, old man. Now, leave us, or invite the same fate.’

  Chalas surprised them, lunging forward to drape himself over Tehol, shifting to protect as much of him as he could.

  Midik Buhn laughed.

  Blows rained down, more savage than ever, and it was not long before Chalas lost consciousness. A half-dozen more kicks dislodged the man from Tehol, until the two were lying side by side. With sudden impatience, Theradas slammed his heel down on a head, hard enough to collapse the skull and crush the brain.

  ****

  Standing on the far side of the bridge, Turudal Brizad felt the malign sorcery wash over him. The soldiers barricading the bridge had died in the grey conflagration a moment earlier, and now it seemed the terrible sorcery would reach out into the rest of the city. Into the nearby buildings, and, for the Errant, enough was enough.

  He nudged the wild power coursing through those buildings, angling it ever downward, slipping it past occupied rooms, downward, past the hidden tunnels of the Rat Catchers’ Guild where so many citizens huddled, and into the insensate mud and clays of the long dead swamp. Where it could do nothing, and was slowed, slowed, then trapped.

  It was clear, a moment later, that the Warlock King had not detected the manipulation, as the magic was surrendered, the poisoning conduit from the Crippled God closed once more. Hannan Mosag’s flesh would not suffer much more of that, fortunately.

  Not that it would matter.

  He watched as a score of Tiste Edur set off into the city, seeking, no doubt, the fleeing woman from their tribe. But nothing good would come of it, the Errant knew. Indeed, a most egregious error was in the offing, and he grieved for that.

  Reaching with his senses, he gained a vision of an overgrown, broken-up yard surrounding a squat tower, and watched in wonder and awe as a lone figure wove a deadly dance in the midst of five enraged Toblakai gods. Extraordinary – a scene the Errant would never forget. But it could not last much longer, he knew.

  Nothing good ever did, alas.

  Blinking, he saw that the Tiste Edur emperor was now leading his kin across the bridge. On their way to the Eternal Domicile.

  Turudal Brizad pushed himself into motion once more.

  The Eternal Domicile, a conjoining of destinations, for yet another sequence of tragic events to come. Today, the empire is reborn. In violence and blood, as with all births. And what, when this day is done, shall we find lying in our lap? Eyes opening onto this world?

  The Errant began walking, staying ahead of the Tiste Edur, and feeling, deep within him, the lurching, stumbling measure of time, the countless heartbeats, merging one and all – no need, finally, for a nudge, a push or a pull. No need, it seemed, for anything. He would but witness, now. He hoped.

  ****

  Seated cross-legged in the street, the lone High Mage of the Crimson Guard present in this fell city, Corlo Orothos, once of Unta in the days before the empire, cocked his head at the heavy, thumping feet of someone approaching from behind. He risked opening his eyes, then raised a hand in time to halt the newcomer.

  ‘Hello, half-blood,’ he said. ‘Have you come to worship your gods?’

  The giant figure looked down at Corlo. ‘Is it too late?’ he asked.

  ‘No, they’re still alive. Only one man opposes them, and not for much longer. I’m doing all I can, but it’s no easy thing to confuse gods.’

  The Tarthenal half-blood frowned. ‘Do you know why we pray to the Seregahl?’

  An odd question. ‘To gain their favour?’

  ‘No,’ Ublala replied, ‘we pray for them to stay away. And now,’ he added, ‘they’re here. That’s bad.’

  ‘Well, what do you intend to do about it?’

  Ublala squinted down at Corlo, said nothing.

  After a moment, the High Mage nodded. ‘Go on, then.’

  He watched the huge man lumber towards the gateway. Just inside, he paused beside a tree, reached up and broke free a branch as thick as one of Corlo’s thighs. Hefting it in both hands, the half-blood jogged into the yard.

  ****

  It was tearing him apart, striving to burst free of his skeletal cage, the minuscule, now terribly abused muscles. In their journey across Letheras, they’d left thirty or more dead Soletaken in their wake. And six Tiste Edur who’d come up from the docks eager for a fight.

  They’d taken wounds – no, the remnant that was Udinaas corrected, I’ve taken wounds. I should be dead. I’m cut to pieces. Bitten, torn, gouged. But that damned Wyval won’t surrender. It needs me still… for a few moments longer.

  Through a red haze, the old Azath tower and its yard came into view, and a surge of eagerness from the Wyval flooded him.

  The Master needed help. All was not yet lost.

  In a blur of motion, Udinaas was past the strange man sitting cross-legged on the street – he caught the sudden jerk of surprise from the man as they swept by. A moment later, plunging through the gateway.

  Into the yard.

  In time to see a mortal Tarthenal half-blood rushing to close on a fight where a lone swordsman was surrounded by the Toblakai gods, moments from buckling under a hail of blows.

  Then, past them all.

  To the barrow of the Master. The churned, steaming earth. Diving forward with a piercing, reptilian scream – and into the hot darkness, down, clawing, scraping – tearing clear from the mortal’s flesh, the body the Wyval had used for so long, the body it had hidden within – clambering free at last, massive, scaled and sleek-hided, talons plunging into the soil—

  ****

  The child Kettle squealed as the creature, winged and as big as an ox, rushed past her on all fours. A thumping splash, water spraying in a broa
d fan that rose, and rose, then slapped down on the now churning pool. Foam, a snaking red-purple tail slithering down then vanishing in the swirling maelstrom.

  She then heard a thud behind her and spun on the slick mud of the bank, the two swords still in her hands—

  —to see a badly torn body, a man, lying face down. The shattered ends of long bones jutting from his arms and legs, blood pulsing slowly from ruptured veins. And, settling atop him, a wraith, descending like a shadow to match the contorted body beneath it. A shadowy face looking up at Kettle, the rasp of words—

  ‘Child, we need your help.’

  She looked back over her shoulder – the surface of the pool was growing calm once more. ‘Oh, what do you want me to do? It’s all going wrong—’

  ‘Not as wrong as you think. This man, this Letherii. Help him, he’s dying. I cannot hold him together much longer. He is dying, and he does not deserve to die.’

  She crawled closer. ‘What can I do?’

  ‘The blood within you, child. A drop or two, no more than that. The blood, child, that has returned you to life. Please…’

  ‘You are a ghost. Why would you have me do this for him – and not for you?’

  The wraith’s red eyes thinned as it studied her. ‘Do not tempt me.’

  Kettle looked down at the swords in her hands. Then she set one down and brought the freed hand to the gleaming blue edge of the one she still held. Slid her palm a bit along the edge, then lifted her hand to study the result. A long line of blood, a deep, perfect cut. ‘Oh, it’s sharp.’

  ‘Here, push him onto his back. Lay your wounded palm on his chest.’

  Kettle moved forward.

  ****

  A blow had broken his left arm, and the agony as Iron Bars dodged around and between the bellowing Seregahl sent white flashes through his brain. Half blinded, he wielded his battered, blunted sword on instinct alone, meeting blow after blow – he needed a moment free, a few heartbeats in which to recover, to clamp down on the pain—

  But he’d run out of that time. Another blow got through, the strange wooden sword slicing as if glass-edged into his left hip. The leg on that side gave out beneath the biting wound. He looked up through sweat-stinging eyes, and saw the one-eyed Seregahl towering directly over him, teeth bared in triumph.

  Then a tree branch struck the god in the head. Against its left temple, hard enough to snap the head right over to bounce from the opposite shoulder. The grin froze, and the Toblakai staggered. A second impact caught it, this time coming from behind, up into the back of the skull, the branch exploding into splinters. The god bent forward—

  —as a knee drove up into its crotch – and forearms hammered its back, pushing it further down, the knee rising again, this time to crunch against the god’s face.

  The grin, Iron Bars saw from where he crouched, was entirely gone now.

  The Avowed rolled to one side a moment before the Toblakai landed atop him. Rolled, and rolled, stumbling to his feet finally to pivot round. And, rising to his name above the agony in his hip, straightening. Once more facing the Seregahl.

  Where, it seemed, one of their own kind was now fighting them – a mortal Tarthenal, who had wrapped his huge arms around one of the gods from behind, trapping its arms to its sides as he squeezed. The remaining three gods had staggered back, as if in shock, and the moment was, to the Avowed’s eyes, suddenly frozen.

  Two, then three heartbeats.

  The cloudiness cleared from the Avowed’s eyes. A flicker of energy returned to his exhausted limbs. The pain faded away.

  That mortal Tarthenal was moments from dying, as the other three stirred awake and moved forward.

  Iron Bars raced to intercept them.

  The odds were getting better.

  ****

  Two huddled shapes on the street. Tiste Edur standing around, still kicking, still breaking bones. One stamped down, and brains sprayed out onto the cobbles.

  Bugg slowed to a stagger, his face twisting with grief, then rage.

  He roared.

  Heads turned.

  And the manservant unleashed what had remained hidden and quiescent within him for so long.

  Fourteen Tiste Edur, standing, all reached up to clamp their ears – but the gesture was never completed, as thirteen of them imploded, as if beneath vast pressure, in horrible contractions of flesh, the wild spurt of blood and fluids, skulls collapsing inward.

  Imploded, only to explode outward a moment later. In bloody pieces, spattering the warehouse wall and out across the street.

  The fourteenth Tiste Edur, the one who had just crushed a head beneath his heel, was lifted into the air. Writhing, his eyes bulging horribly, wastes streaming down his legs.

  As Bugg stalked forward.

  Until he was standing before Theradas Buhn of the Hiroth. He stared up at the warrior, at his bloated face, at the agony in his eyes.

  Trembling, Bugg said, ‘You, I am sending home… not your home. My home.’ A gesture, and the Tiste Edur vanished.

  Into Bugg’s warren, away, then down, down, ever down.

  Into depthless darkness, where the portal opened once more, flinging Theradas Buhn into icy, black water.

  Where the pressure, immense and undeniable, embraced him.

  Fatally.

  Bugg’s trembling slowed. His roar had been heard, he knew. Upon the other side of the world, it had been heard. And heads had swung round. Immortal hearts had quickened.

  ‘No matter,’ he whispered.

  Then moved forward, down to kneel beside the motionless bodies.

  He gathered one of those bodies into his arms.

  Rose, and walked away.

  ****

  The Eternal Domicile. A title of such profound conceit, as thoroughly bound into the arrogance of the Letherii as the belief in their own immutable destiny. Manifest rights to all things, to ownership, to the claiming of all they perceived, the unconscionable, brazen arrogance of it all, as if a thousand gods stood at their backs, burdened with gifts for the chosen.

  Trull Sengar could only wonder, what bred such certainties? What made a people so filled with rectitude and intransigence? Perhaps all that is needed… is power. A shroud of poison filling the air, seeping into every pore of every man, woman and child. A poison that twisted the past to suit the mores of the present, illuminating in turn an inevitable and righteous future. A poison that made intelligent people blithely disregard the ugly truths of past errors in judgement, of horrendous, brutal debacles that had stained red the hands of their forefathers. A poison that entrenched the stupidity of dubious traditions, and brought misery and suffering upon countless victims.

  Power, then. The very same power we are about to embrace. Sisters have mercy upon our people.

  The emperor of the Tiste Edur stood before the grand entrance to the Eternal Domicile. Mottled sword in his right, glittering hand. Dusty bearskin riding shoulders grown massively broad with the weight of gold. Old blood staining his back in map patterns, as if he was redrawing the world. Hair now long, ragged and heavy with oily filth.

  Trull was standing behind him, and so could not see his brother’s eyes. But he knew, should he look into them now, he would see the destiny he feared, he would see the poison coursing unopposed, and he would see the madness born of betrayal.

  It would have taken little, he knew. The simple reaching out for a nondescript, sad-eyed slave, the closing of hands, to lift Rhulad upright, to guide him back into sanity. That, and nothing more.

  Rhulad turned to face them. ‘The doors stand unbarred.’

  Hannan Mosag said, ‘Someone waits within, sire. I sense… something.’

  ‘What do you ask of us, Warlock King?’

  ‘Permit me and my K’risnan to enter first, to see what awaits us. In the corridor…’

  Rhulad’s eyes narrowed, then he waved them forward, and added, ‘Fear, Trull, Binadas, join us. We shall follow immediately behind.’

  Hannan Mosag in the lead, th
e K’risnan and the slaves dragging the two sacks immediately behind him, then Rhulad and his brothers, all approached the doors of the Eternal Domicile.

  ****

  Standing just outside the throne room’s entrance, Brys Beddict saw movement down the corridor, on this side of the motionless form of the Ceda. The Champion reached for his sword, then let his hand fall away as the First Consort, Turudal Brizad, emerged from the shadows, approaching nonchalantly, his expression calm.

  ‘I did not,’ Brys said in a low voice, ‘expect to see you again, First Consort.’

  Turudal’s soft eyes lifted past Brys to look into the throne room beyond. ‘Who waits, Champion?’

  ‘The king, his concubine. The First Eunuch and the Chancellor. And six of my guards.’

  Turudal nodded. ‘Well, we will not have to wait much longer. The Tiste Edur are but moments behind me.’

  ‘How fares the city?’

  ‘There has been fighting, Brys Beddict. Loyal soldiers lie dead in the streets. Among them, Moroch Nevath.’

  ‘And Gerun Eberict? What of him?’

  Turudal cocked his head, then frowned. ‘He pursues… a woman.’

  Brys studied the man. ‘Who are you, Turudal Brizad?’

  The eyes met his own. ‘Today, a witness. We have come, after all, to the day of the Seventh Closure. An end, and a beginning—’

  Brys raised a hand to silence the man, then took a step past him.

  The Ceda was stirring in the hallway beyond. Then, rising to his feet, adjusting his grimy, creased robes, he lifted the lenses to his face and settled them in place.

  Turudal Brizad turned to join Brys. ‘Ah, yes.’

  The silhouettes of a group of tall figures had appeared at the distant doors, which were now open.

  ‘The Ceda…’

  ‘He has done very well, thus far.’

  Brys shot the First Consort a baffled look. ‘What do you mean? He has done… nothing.’

  Brows rose. ‘No? He has annihilated the sea-god, the demon chained by Hannan Mosag. And he has been preparing for this moment for days now. See where he stands? See the tile he has painted beneath himself? A tile from which all the power of the Cedance shall pass, upward, into his hands.’