Forge of Darkness (Kharkanas Trilogy 1)

by Steven Erikson

  What did she do to him?

  She had done nothing. He had arrived home already dead. No, that was not it. When he had come home, it was she who was dead. To him. Out on those marches, on those fields of battle, on those miserable, cold nights under indifferent stars, he had fallen in love with the idea of her: that ageless, perfect idea, and against that she could not compete. No mortal woman could.

  Her husband had been a fool, susceptible to delusion.

  The truth was, the bloodline was already weak, almost fatally so. And things would only get worse. It had been some other soldier, a youth who’d lost an arm to a horse bite long before he drew blade against an enemy, who’d come to Abara drunk and bitter – oh, he’d told his share of lies, but after it had happened, Nerys had made inquiries, had discovered the truth. No, he had not lost his arm defending a Son of Darkness. No, he had not been recognized for his bravery. But it was too late. He had found Nerys’s daughter. He had found Sandalath, just a young girl still, too young to regard him with proper scepticism, and his slurred words seduced her easily, his calloused hand found the parts of her just awakened, and he stole from them all their future.

  Bastard son.

  Nerys kept him – that pathetic father – in coin, in the village. Enough to ensure that he stayed drunk, drunk and useless. She had made him the offer, made clear the only bargain available to him, and of course he accepted. He would never see his son, never see Sandalath, never come up to the house, nor walk the estate’s grounds. He had his corner of the root cellar in Abara Tavern, and all the wine he could pour down his numb throat. She even arranged to send him whores, not that he could manage much with them any more, according to their reports. The wine had stolen everything; he had the face of an old man and eyes that belonged to the condemned.

  The door behind her opened and Nerys waited, without turning, until her daughter came up alongside her.

  ‘Do not say goodbye to him,’ Lady Nerys told Sandalath.

  ‘But he’s—’

  ‘No. There will be a scene and we won’t have that. Not today. We have had word. Your escort is taking a meal at the inn and will be with us soon. The journey awaiting you is long, daughter.’

  ‘I am too old to be a hostage again,’ said Sandalath.

  ‘The first time was four years,’ Nerys replied, repeating her part in this exchange almost word for word with the dozens of other times they had argued the matter. ‘It was drawn short. The House of Purake no longer exists as such – besides, Mother Dark has taken Nimander’s sons for her own.’

  ‘But they will take me back – at least let me go back to them, Mother.’

  Nerys shook her head. ‘There is no political gain in that direction. Remember your duty, daughter. Our bloodline is damaged, weakened.’ She held on that last word, to ensure that it cut in the manner that it should – after all, who was to blame for this last wounding? ‘We do not choose such things.’

  ‘I will say goodbye to him, Mother. He is my son.’

  ‘And my grandson, and in this matter his welfare is of greater concern to me than is yours. Save your tears for the inside of the carriage, where none can see your shame. Leave him to his play.’

  ‘And when he looks for me? What will you say then?’

  Nerys sighed. How many times did she have to say these things? Just this last time – I see the rider on the road. ‘Children are resilient, and you well know his education is about to begin in earnest. His life will be consumed by scholars and teachers and studies, and each night after dinner he will sleep and sleep deeply. Do not be selfish, Sandalath.’ She did not have to add again. ‘It is time.’

  ‘I am too old to be a hostage once more. It is unseemly.’

  ‘Consider yourself fortunate,’ Nerys replied. ‘You have served the House of Drukorlas twice, first among House Purake, and now, in the House of its rival.’

  ‘But House Dracons is so far away, Mother!’

  ‘Keep your voice down,’ Nerys hissed. She couldn’t see Orfantal any more – perhaps he had run behind the stables, which was just as well. Leave him to his adventures and his stained hands. In a very short time, a new life would take hold of him; and if Sandalath believed that the house behind them would soon be crowded with tutors, well, it did no harm to let her hold some comforting beliefs.

  Orfantal was destined for Kharkanas. Where the whispers of bastard would never reach him. Nerys had prepared the way for that arrival: the boy was a cousin from an outland holding, south of the Hust Forges. He was being given to the House of Purake, not as a hostage, but to serve the palace and Mother Dark herself. He would be schooled by the Sons of Darkness, as one in their retinue. Of course, the boy had been raised from a very young age by Sandalath, and often called her his mother, but that affectation would wear off in time.

  The horseman from House Dracons rode up, reining in behind the carriage. Remaining in the saddle, he bowed towards Lady Nerys and Sandalath. ‘Greetings and felicitations from the Consort,’ the man said. ‘I am named Ivis.’

  Nerys turned to her daughter. ‘Into the carriage.’

  But Sandalath was looking past the carriage, stretching to catch a last glimpse of her son. He was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Daughter, obey your mother. Go.’

  Holding herself as would someone with diseased lungs – shoulders hunched, caving in round the infection – Sandalath made her way down the stone steps. She had a way of seeming both old and impossibly young, and both states filled Nerys with contempt.

  Nerys tilted her head towards the escort. ‘Ivis, we thank you for your courtesy. We know you have ridden far this day.’

  Atop the bench at the front of the carriage the coachman was eyeing Lady Nerys, awaiting the signal. In the pale sky behind him a flock of birds winged towards the tree-line.

  ‘Lady Nerys,’ said Ivis, drawing her attention around, ‘we shall ride through the night and arrive at the house of my lord shortly after dawn.’

  ‘Excellent. Are you alone in this task?’

  He shook his head. ‘A troop awaits us east of Abara, milady. Of course, we respect the traditional possessions of your bloodline, and so would do nothing to displease you.’

  ‘You are most kind, Ivis. Please convey my compliments to Lord Draconus, for selecting such an honourable captain for this task.’ She then nodded to the coachman, who snapped the traces, startling the horse into motion.

  The carriage rumbled forward, bouncing over the uneven cobblestones, swinging on to the track that led round the back of the house. Halfway down the hill it would join the road into Abara, and from there it would take the north track, alongside the river, for a short distance before finding the branch leading northeast.

  Drawing her heavy cloak about her shoulders, faintly chilled in the shadow of the entranceway, Nerys watched until the rider and the carriage disappeared round the side of the house, and then she looked once more to catch sight of Orfantal. But still he was out of sight.

  This pleased her.

  Some other battle in the ruins. Another triumphant stand. Another knife in the back.

  Children dreamed the silliest dreams.

  * * *

  Standing in the shadow of the burnt-out stables, hidden from the steps of the house, the boy stared after the carriage. He thought he had seen her face, there in the small, smudged window, pale and red-eyed, as she strained to find him, but then the carriage trundled past, turning so that all he could see was its high back and strongbox, the tall wheels leaning and wobbling on old axles. And then, the strange rider in the soldier’s garb rode by, his horse kicking up puffs of dust once past the cobbles.

  Soldiers came to Abara. Some had missing limbs or only one eye. Others bore no wounds but died with knives in their chests, as if the weapon had followed them all the way from those distant battles they’d fought in. Darting silver, barely seen in the night, following, finding, at last catching up. To kill the man who’d been meant to die weeks, even months, earlier.

&n
bsp; But this soldier, who called himself Ivis, had come to take away his mother.

  He didn’t like to see people cry. He’d do anything to keep them from crying, and in his mind, in the imaginary world of strife and heroism that he lived in, he often voiced vows over the tears of a broken woman. And then fought his way across half the world in the name of that vow. Until it killed him, like a knife creeping up from the distant past.

  The boy watched the carriage until it was lost from sight. And his mouth then moved, voicing a silent word.

  Mother?

  There were wars far away, where hate locked weapons and blood sprayed like rain. And there were wars in a single house, or a single room, where love died the death of heroes, and weeping filled the sky. There were wars everywhere. He knew this. There were wars and that’s all there was, and every day he died, taken by that knife that followed him across the whole world, just as it had done to his grandfather.

  But for now, he would hide in the shadows, in the stables that had caught fire, killing all but one of the horses. And maybe slink into the wood beyond the corral, to fight ever more battles, losing every time because the real heroes always did, didn’t they? Death always caught up, to everyone. And the day would rush past, as it always did.

  Until the call came from the kitchen, ending the world for another night.

  * * *

  Sandalath thought she had seen him, there in the gloom, ghostly against one of the last still-standing walls of the burnt-out stable, but probably had only imagined it. The footing of her mind was uncertain, or so her mother always said; and imagination, such as she’d bequeathed to her son, in abundance, was no virtue in these stressful times. The air inside the carriage was stifling, smelling of mould, but the hinges on the side windows had seized with rust and grime, and the only draught to reach her came from the speak-box leading up to a tube of wood that rose beside the bench where sat the coachman. She barely knew him – he had been hired from the village for this one task – and should she call up to him, to beg his help opening a window, well, that tale would soon fill the taverns – the fallen House and its cursed, useless family. There would be laughter, mockery and contempt. No, she would not ask anything of him.

  Sweat trickled beneath her heavy clothes. She sat as still as she could manage, hoping that would help, but there was nothing to do, nothing to occupy her hands, her mind. Too much rocking and jostling to resume her embroidery; besides, dust was already drifting in, sliced bright by thin spears of sunlight. She could feel it coating her face, and had there been tears on her cheeks – which she knew there were supposed to be – then the streaks would darken with dirt. Unsightly, shameful.

  She remembered her first time as a hostage; she remembered her time in the Citadel, the breathless excitement of all those people moving through countless sumptuous rooms, the tall highborn warriors who never seemed to mind the tiny girl underfoot. She remembered the wealth – so much wealth – and she had come to believe that this was her world, the one to which she had been born.

  She had been given a room, up a winding flight of stairs; there she would often sit waiting, flushed and excited, for the high bell announcing meals, when she’d rush down, round and round those ever-turning steps, to lunge into the dining room – and they would laugh in delight upon seeing her.

  For most of that first year it seemed that she had been the centre of attention in the entire Citadel, feted like a young queen, and always nearby were the three warrior sons of Lord Nimander, to take her hand whenever she reached up, whenever she needed to feel safe. She remembered her fascination with Silchas Ruin’s white hair, the glint of red in his eyes, and his long fingers; and the warmth of Andarist’s smile – Andarist, whom she dreamed she would one day marry. Yet the one she truly worshipped was Anomander. He seemed solid as stone, sun-warmed and smoothed by winds and rain. She felt him like a vast wing, protective, curled round her, and she saw how the others deferred to him, even his brothers. Anomander: most beloved by Mother Dark, and most beloved by the child hostage in the Citadel.

  The wars stole them away from her, father and sons all, and when Lord Nimander returned early on, crippled and broken, Sandalath had huddled in her room, frozen with terror at the thought of any of her guardians dying on some distant field of battle. They had become the walls of her own house, her own palace, and she was their queen, for ever and always. How could such things ever end?

  Outside the carriage window the single-storey buildings of the village rolled past, and before them fleeting figures moved here and there, many stopping to stare. She heard a few muted calls flung up to the driver, heard a muffled bark of laughter, a drunken shout. Breath catching suddenly, Sandalath leaned back to keep her face from the dust-streaked window. She waited for her heart to slow. The carriage bounced across deep ruts, pitching her from side to side. She folded her hands together, gripping hard, watching the blood leave her knuckles until she could see the bones.

  Her imagination was fraught. This was a difficult day.

  Abara had been a settlement known for its growth, its wealth, before the wars took all the young men and women; in the time when House Drukorlas was on the verge of becoming a Greater House. When Sandalath had finally been sent back, like a gift that had lost its beauty, its purpose, she had been shocked by the poverty of her home – the village, the grand family house and its tired, tattered grounds.

  Her father had just died, before her return, a wound brought back from the war gone suddenly septic – striking him down before any healer could attend; a tragic, shocking death, and for her, a new emptiness to replace an old emptiness. Her mother had always kept her husband – Sandalath’s father – for herself. She spoke of her selfishness as her reason for sending her daughter from the room, or keeping closed a door. There was talk of another child, but no child had come, and then her father was gone. Sandalath remembered him as a tall, faceless figure, and most of her memories of him were the sound of his boots on the wooden floor in the chamber above her bedroom, pacing through the night.

  Now her mother never spoke of him. She was a widow and this title seemed to carry with it all the wealth it would ever hold, but it was the solitary kind; it embraced no one but Nerys herself. Meanwhile, poverty gnawed inward on all sides, like undercut riverbanks in a spring flood.

  The young warrior who came to Abara, one-armed and soft-eyed, had changed her world, in ways she only now understood. It was not simply the child he gave her, or the nights and afternoons out under the sky, in meadows and glens on the estate, when he taught her to open herself up and draw him inside. He had been a messenger from another world, an outside world. Not the Citadel, not the house where dwelt her mother, for ever awaiting her husband. Galdan’s world was a hard place of violence, of adventure, where every detail glowed as if painted in gold and silver, where even the stones underfoot were one and all gems, cut by a god’s hand. She understood it now as a world of romance, where the brave stood firm in the face of villainy, and honour held vigilance over tender hearts. And there was love in the fields, in a riot of flowers and hot, bright summer days.

  This was the world she whispered about to her son, when she told him old tales, to show him who his father was, and where he had lived, the great man he had been, before she snuffed out the candle and left Orfantal to sleep and dreams.

  She was forbidden from speaking the truth, the ignominy of the discoveries about Galdan’s real past, or the fact that Nerys had sent the young man away, exiled into the lands of the Jaghut, and that word had come back that he had died, the circumstances unknown. No, such truths were not for her son, not for his image of his father – Sandalath would not be so cruel, could not. The boy needed his heroes. Everyone did. And for Orfantal, his father would be a man impervious to infamy, unsullied by visible flaws, the obvious weaknesses that every child eventually saw in their living parents.

  In her creations, as she spoke at her son’s bedside, she remade Galdan, building him from pieces of Andarist, Silcha
s Ruin, and, of course, Anomander. Mostly Anomander, in fact. Down to his very features, his way of standing, the warmth of his hand closing upon that of a child – and when Orfantal awoke in the night, when all was dark and quiet and he might become frightened, why, he need only imagine that hand, closing firm about his own.

  Her son asked her, where had he gone? What had happened to his father?

  A great battle against the Soletaken Jheleck, an old feud with a man he’d once thought his friend. A betrayal, even as Galdan gave his life defending his wounded lord. His betrayer? Dead as well, stalked by his treachery – they said he took his own life, in fact – but no one ever speaks the tale, not a word of it. All the Tiste grieved over the sad events, and then vowed that they would speak of it no more, to mark their honour, their grief.

  There were things a child needed to believe, sewn like clothes, or even armour; that he could then wear until the end of his days. So believed Sandalath, and if Galdan had stolen her own clothes, with his sweet lies, only to leave her shivering and alone … no, Orfantal would not suffer the same. Would never suffer the same.

  The carriage was a cauldron. She felt fevered with the heat, wondering who would tell her son stories at night. There was no one. But he could reach out in the darkness, couldn’t he, to take his father’s hand. She need not worry any more on that matter – she had done what she could, and her mother’s rage – Nerys’s bitter accusation that Sandalath was too young to raise a child – well, she had proved otherwise, had she not? The heat was suffocating her. She felt ill. She thought she had seen Galdan, in the village – she thought she had seen him, stumbling as if to chase down the carriage, and then he’d fallen, and there had been more laughter.

  Her imagination was unfettered, the heat driving it wild, and the world outside her window had transformed into something blinding white, the sky itself on fire. She coughed in the dust of that destruction, and horse hoofs were pounding now on all sides, voices raised, hoofs stuttering like drums.