Forge of Darkness (Kharkanas Trilogy 1)

by Steven Erikson

  But you’ll not find me. I’ll do that much for you, sir, because I tell you, taking my life will offer you no release, no peace.

  Instead, and this I vow, I will find something right to fight for, and set my life into the path of every murderer, every rapist, until I am finally cut down.

  The echoes of laughter reached through his silent promises and he cringed. His was the face of war. His was the body that raped the innocent. And every desperate whisper to the fallen was a lie, and the way ahead was filled with smoke and fire, and he moved through it like a standard, a banner awaiting the rallying cry of killers.

  There had been a boy once, not ugly …

  * * *

  Rint watched as the last stone was placed atop the cairn. Ville stepped back, slapping the grit from his hands. The short grasses on the hill glistened with morning dew, like diamonds scattered on the ground. Here and there flowering lichen lifted short stalks holding up tiny, bright red crowns, each one cupping a pearl of water.

  He thought again of that headless body and found it difficult to recall Raskan’s face. The moccasins were folded and bound and lying nearby. They would accompany the messenger to House Dracons. Rint’s gaze drifted over them, and then he spoke. ‘Headless and bared of feet, we yield what remains of Raskan. We leave him alone now, upon this hill. But he has no eyes with which to see, no voice to utter his losses, and not even the voice of the wind will mourn for him.’

  ‘Please, Rint,’ said Galak. ‘Surely there must be softer words for this moment.’

  ‘He lies under stone,’ Rint replied, ‘and so knows the weight of that. What soft words would you like to hear, Galak? What comforts do you yearn for? Speak them, if you must.’

  ‘He was a child of Mother Dark—’

  ‘His soul abandoned to foreign fate,’ Rint cut in.

  ‘He served his lord—’

  ‘To be made a plaything for his lord’s old lover.’

  ‘Abyss take us, Rint!’

  Rint nodded. ‘It surely will, Galak. Very well then, heed these soft words. Raskan, I give voice to your name one more time. Perhaps she left some of you in the embers of the morning fire. Perhaps you looked upon us through flames, or when the wind’s breath fanned the coals, and you saw us bearing your body away. I doubt you think of honour. I doubt you are warmed by what respect we muster for the body you left behind. No, I see you now as made remote to all our needs, to all our mortal concerns. If you look upon us now, you feel only a distant sorrow. But know this, Raskan, we who still live will carry your regrets. We will wear the burden of your untimely death. We will harvest the unanswerable questions and grow lean on what little they offer us. And still you will not speak. Still you will grant us no comfort, and no cause for hope. Raskan, you are dead, and to the living, it seems, you have nothing to say. So be it.’

  Ville was muttering under his breath through all of this, but Rint ignored him. Finished with his words he turned away from the cairn and walked over to his horse. Feren followed a step behind him and before he set foot in the stirrup her hand settled on his shoulder. Surprised, Rint glanced at her. ‘What is it, sister?’

  ‘Regret, brother, is gristle you can chew for ever. Spit it out.’

  He glanced down at her belly and nodded. ‘Spat out and awaiting a new mouthful, sister. But in you I have reason to pray. I look forward to seeing you a mother again.’

  She withdrew her hand and stepped back. He saw her lips part as if she was about to speak; instead she turned away, striding to her horse and mounting up.

  ‘None of us are unfamiliar with death,’ Galak said in a bitter hiss as he swung on to his horse. ‘We each face the silence as we must, Rint.’

  ‘Will you face it with every word in winged flight, Galak?’

  ‘Better that than harsh and cruel! It seems all you do is cut these days.’

  Rint settled into the saddle and took up the reins. ‘No, all I do is bleed.’

  They set out, pushing deeper into the ancient hills. The old lines of rise and descent had been carved through in places by thousands of years of hoofs from migrating herds, and down these tracks floods had rushed in the wet seasons, exposing bedrock and an endless wash of bleached bones and the crumbling cores of broken horns.

  Rint could see the old blinds, constructed from piled stones, arcing in fragmented lines along slopes overlooking the old migration tracks. He could see signs of runs where beasts had been cut away from the main herd and driven off cliffs. Here and there, massive boulders rested atop hills, each one bearing painted scenes of beasts charging and dying, and stick figures wielding spears; and yet upon not one of these wrinkled tableaux was there a line denoting solid ground. Instead, these remembered hunts, these eternal images of slaughter, all floated in a dream world, uprooted and timeless.

  Only a fool would not see death in such art. No matter how enlivened the beasts depicted, they were all long gone, slain, carved up and devoured, or left to rot. To look upon them, as he did when he and his companions rode past, was to see a dead hand’s longing for life, but a life belonging to the past. Every scene was a broken promise, and upon these hills now had settled a pall of silence.

  If the dead spoke to the living, they did so in an array of frozen images, and this doomed them to themes of loss and regret. He well understood Feren’s warning. This was a gristle one could chew without end.

  Lifting his gaze, his eyes narrowed. The eastern sky was grey, smudging the line of the horizon. He thought back to the Jhelarkan’s words and felt something grow taut within him.

  ‘Is that smoke?’ Ville asked.

  Rint nudged his mount to a faster pace, and the others joined him. There was nothing worth saying. The chattering of speculation would simply give voice to fear and so fill the gut with bile. Smoke hung above Riven Keep. It could be as simple as a grass fire, spreading out across the plain.

  His home was in the village below the fortification. There he would find his wife and his child, and discover anew their place in his life. Nothing needed to be the same as it had once been. Their nights of indifference and hard silence would be behind them now. Rint finally understood the gift she was to him, and now that they had made a child he would look with clear eyes upon all that was precious and sacred.

  No longer would he flee her company, escaping into the wilds. He would make the future different from the past. For every person, change was within reach. He had made his journey and it would be the last one he would make. His future was at his wife’s side.

  I have sworn vengeance against Draconus. But I will join my sister and put away my sword. I, too, am done with this.

  By midday, they had ridden out from the hills on to flat land. The way ahead was wreathed in smoke. The smell did not belong to a grass fire. It was rank, oily.

  The four Borderswords broke into a fast canter.

  In his head, Rint uttered a list of vows to his wife and to his newborn child. The list began and ended with a vision of him standing with her, in a home emptied of his anger, the temper he could never quite control. And he saw the guardedness leaving her eyes, her hand leaving the grip of her knife which she had drawn countless times to defend herself against his rages. He saw a world of peace, floating as if painted on stone. The hand that could paint the past could paint the future. Rint meant to prove it.

  ‘Riders on our left!’

  At Ville’s shout Rint turned, rose on his stirrups. Directly north was the long line of a dust cloud.

  ‘Must be the hunting party,’ Galak said. ‘Abyss below! There was no one at Riven!’

  My wife. My child.

  The distant riders were converging on them, and Rint now saw that they were Borderswords. No. No. He pushed his mount into a gallop, fixed his eyes eastward, to that dark smudge that was Riven Keep. But the tower was mostly gone, only one wall rising to two-thirds its original height, black as charcoal against the grey sky.

  It was just one more damned argument. I rushed out, thinking only of escape
lest I tear the knife from her grasp. And there was the call, a summons from Lord Draconus, who wanted an escort into the west. I found Feren. I badgered her into joining me. We needed to get away.

  My wife’s face is burned in my mind. It was fear that made it a stranger’s face. It had always been fear that took away the face I knew.

  I was running. Again.

  Life was easier out there. Simpler. Feren was rotting, drinking too much. I had my sister to think of—

  All at once, there were more riders crowding them, the thunder of horse hoofs almost deafening. As if from a vast distance, Rint heard Ville shouting.

  ‘Traj! What has happened?’

  ‘Lahanis found us – she escaped the slaughter – the villagers, Ville – they’re all dead!’

  Someone howled, but even that sound was muffled, quickly swept away. The hammering of horse hoofs upon hard ground was a roar in Rint’s skull. Lahanis. He knew that name. A young woman, fast with her long-bladed Hust knife, but too young still to ride with the adults. A Bordersword in waiting who lived up the street.

  ‘Who attacked us, Traj? The Legion?’

  ‘She saw standards, Ville! House Dracons! We ride to it now. We ride to war!’

  Blackened, scorched and in ruins, the village surrounding Riven Hill was beneath a shroud of smoke. He looked for his house, but the scene was jarring up and down, wheeling as vertigo took hold of him. He pitched to one side but was quickly brought up by a firm hand. Wild-eyed he looked across to see his sister – her face was wet with tears and the tears were black with dirt.

  She’s had her fill of those. But it’s over now. At least she saw her baby, and held it in her arms. A living thing, nestled in her arms. That’s why I led her away – no, the wrong face, the wrong woman. Where is my wife? Why can’t I remember her face?

  Then they were riding through the remains of the village, riding past bloated bodies. Feren’s fist, still holding him upright in the saddle – her knee stabbing into his thigh as she forced her horse to remain close – now tightened around a handful of cloak. If not for that grip, he would have fallen. He would have plunged down into the ashes, down among the dead.

  Where she waits for me. And the child. And my child. My family, of which I will never again speak.

  We ride to war—

  EIGHTEEN

  CALAT HUSTAIN PACED through the bars of light that shot through the slats of the window’s shutters, and such was the frown on his angular features that Finarra Stone remained silent, reluctant to speak. From the main hall outside the room and from the compound through the window behind the commander, there was a seemingly endless clamour of shouting and the thump of footsteps, as if chaos had arrived like a fever among the Wardens.

  ‘You will not be accompanying us,’ Calat said suddenly.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I will take Spinnock with me, but I want you and Faror Hend to ride to Yannis Monastery.’

  Finarra said nothing.

  Her commander continued pacing for a few moments longer, and then he halted and turned to face her. ‘Captain, if I were a man who was plagued by night terrors, the worst nightmare I could imagine befalling the Tiste is a descent into a war of clashing religions. Faith is a personal accord between a lone soul and that in which it chooses to believe. In any other guise it is nothing more than a thin coat of sacred paint slapped over politics and the secular lust for power. We each choose with whom to have our dialogue. Who dares frame it in fear, or shackle it in invented proscriptions? Is a faith to be so weak that its only definition of strength lies in raw numbers and avowals of fidelity; in words made into laws and pronouncements, all of which need to be backed by an executioner’s sword?’

  He shook his head. ‘Such a faith reveals in its violence of flesh and spirit a fundamental weakness at its core. If strength must show itself in a closed fist then it is no strength at all.’ He lifted a hand, made as if to punch the shutters of the window behind him, and then lowered it again. ‘You will deliver from me a message to Sheccanto. The Wardens defy the call to pogrom. Furthermore, if the brothers and sisters of the old orders should find need for assistance, they need only request it and we shall answer.’

  Finarra blinked. ‘Sir, does that include military assistance?’

  ‘It does.’

  ‘Commander, we hear word now that the Legion has assembled against the Deniers and their ilk. Indeed, that Urusander himself has taken to the field.’

  Calat Hustain resumed pacing. ‘Once you have delivered my message, captain, you are to send Faror Hend south. She is to ride to the Hust Legion, but avoid Kharkanas.’

  ‘And her message to Toras Redone, sir?’

  ‘I will give that to her myself, captain. I cannot risk you knowing the details, since once you have completed your mission at the monastery, you will ride north to intercept Lord Urusander. You will demand an audience with him.’

  ‘Sir, if they deem us their enemy then I may well be arrested.’

  ‘This is possible, captain, if all military propriety is dispensed with, and I admit I am no longer as confident in the upholding of such rules as I once was.’ He eyed her. ‘I understand the risk to you, captain.’

  ‘What do you wish me to ask Lord Urusander?’

  His mouth twisted slightly at the honorific. ‘Ask him: what in the name of the Abyss does he want?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘For all his flaws,’ Calat said, ‘Urusander is not a religious man. His obsessions are secular. Has he lost control of his Legion? I begin to wonder. Thus. I will know from him his intentions.’

  ‘When do you wish us to leave, sir?’

  ‘Immediately.’

  ‘Sir, given the nature of my message to Mother Sheccanto, is it wise for you to relinquish your command here, even for a short time?’

  ‘I will know the truth of the new threat posed by the Vitr,’ he replied. ‘I will see for myself what remains of this dragon.’

  She heard the faint scepticism in his tone and glanced away. ‘Sir, for what it is worth, I do not doubt a word of Sergeant Bered’s report.’

  ‘And the Azathanai?’

  ‘A sword and a woman’s armour were found beside the carcass, sir. Faror Hend has examined them and judges both well suited to the Azathanai.’

  Calat Hustain sighed, and then shook his head. ‘I will see for myself. In the meantime, Ilgast Rend will command here, with the able assistance of Captain Aras.’

  This detail still left Finarra with a sour taste in her mouth. Ilgast Rend was not a Warden. Even more disturbing, he had ridden in with Hunn Raal, only to become ensconced at Calat’s side for the past few weeks.

  ‘Find Faror Hend, captain, and send her to me. Ready your mounts.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  She stepped out into the main hall of the longhouse and into the midst of Wardens and servants rushing to and fro. The faint touch of panic among her comrades was disturbing, and she began to comprehend something of Calat Hustain’s unease: his evident disequilibrium. Were there Deniers among the Wardens? Fanatic worshippers of Mother Dark who would shed no tear at the slaughter of non-believers? Even here, she realized, this war could tear friend from friend, brother from sister.

  Finarra saw Spinnock and Faror Hend seated at the far end of the long table dominating the hall. They were drawn close together, presumably to better hear each other through the cacophony as the rest of the table was being used by Wardens laying out the trappings of their armour for one last inspection. Finarra could see how Faror Hend had positioned herself to ensure that there would be incidental contact between her and her cousin. A spasm of resentment rushed through the captain, which she struggled to shake off.

  Perhaps Calat Hustain had seen what she herself had seen. He had been explicit in telling her that he was taking Spinnock Durav with his company on their expedition to the Vitr. And he was sending Faror onward, down to the Hust Legion. But avoiding Kharkanas, where her betrothed is likely to be. A curious detail. I wond
er what it means.

  She made her way over to them. Was that a flash of guilt in Faror’s eyes when she looked up?

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘The commander wishes to speak with you, Faror.’

  ‘Very well.’ She rose, nodded cautiously to her cousin, and then made her way from the table.

  Finarra pulled out the vacated chair and settled in it. ‘Spinnock, it seems you are to return to the Vitr without us.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Your cousin and I are being sent elsewhere. It may be some time before we see each other again.’

  The young man’s face displayed disappointment, but she saw no guile in that expression: no hint of darker regrets quickly hidden. Was he truly blind to his cousin’s unnatural attentions? ‘It would seem,’ she said, ‘that Calat Hustain no longer considers you a raw recruit, Spinnock. You are well measured by your deeds in saving my life, and it would not surprise me to hear of your promotion in rank before too long.’

  His only response to that was an enigmatic smile.

  * * *

  Calat Hustain said, ‘It is my understanding that your betrothed rode with Sharenas Ankhadu to Kharkanas.’

  Faror Hend nodded. ‘So I have been told, sir.’

  ‘In his zeal to discover your fate at the Vitr, Kagamandra Tulas revealed the virtues for which he is well known.’ The commander eyed her. ‘In failing to cross paths, Warden, you have missed an opportunity.’

  She frowned. ‘I would not think it the last, sir.’

  ‘That does not help me now, however. Does it?’

  It took a moment, but then she understood him. ‘Sir, my betrothed was elevated and now counts himself a noble.’

  ‘But he began as a captain in the Legion.’

  ‘Yes sir. He did.’

  ‘Then where, I wonder, does his loyalty lie?’

  ‘Perhaps, sir, Lord Ilgast Rend could better offer an opinion on that matter.’

  ‘You will ride with your captain to the Yannis Monastery, Warden, where she will deliver a message on my behalf. Immediately thereafter, you will part ways with her and ride to the Hust Legion encampment. While I have no doubt that Commander Toras Redone remains loyal to Mother Dark, it does not necessarily follow that she now sends her soldiers against Deniers. You will ascertain her stance and then return to me.’