The Dark Defiles

by Richard K. Morgan

  Archeth hunched her shoulders, as if against cold. The new jerkin she’d acquired moved loosely on her. “I don’t think the Warhelms know that much more than we do. It’s all guesswork they’re doing. I described what Anasharal looks like, and Tharalanangharst says you couldn’t contain a Helmsman in something that size. It reckons that whatever’s left of Ingharnanasharal, whatever it did to itself, there’s probably not too much to Anasharal, either—just a bunch of basic conversational tricks wrapped around a core purpose and a plan, and then dumped into a containment vessel.”

  For Egar, the words might as well have been in another language for all the sense they made. Demons that weren’t really demons, demons that had a plan, demons that could help you, demons that couldn’t or wouldn’t. At least up on the steppe you had it clear—steppe ghouls, flapping wraiths, possessed wolves. You either killed them or they killed you, and that was all you had to worry about.

  Beside him, the dark woman went on framing boxes in the empty air.

  “See, that’s why Anasharal was vague so much of the time, why it couldn’t help us once we got up to the Hironish. It’s not really a Helmsman at all, it’s a, a pretense of one. It never actually had much knowledge, just enough of a sketch to drive its purpose. It’s like that talking map in the stableboy story or something, like a …”

  She dropped her hands. “I’m not explaining this very well, am I?”

  “Didn’t want to say anything.”

  She drew a deep breath. “Okay, look. Imagine the Empire wants to send a legate up to Ishlin-ichan, but there’s no one available. It’s important they impress the Ishlinak, get some treaties inked, but they can’t spare anybody for the job. So they decide to send an actor instead—”

  “Yeah, wouldn’t surprise me. They think we’re all fucking savages up there, who’s going to tell the difference?” Egar scrubbed both hands down his face, suddenly conscious again of how tired he was. He put his chin on his fists. “Actually, if the same bunch of clowns are running Ishlin-ichan as when I was last there, they really wouldn’t know how to tell the difference. You could send in a trained pig and they probably wouldn’t notice, as long as it was wrapped in silk and walked on its hind legs most of the time.”

  “Uh—yeah. Anyway.” Archeth cleared her throat. “So that’s it, that what the court does. They get an actor, they tell him exactly what documents they want signed. Exactly what he can and can’t agree to, and they make him memorize it. Then they teach him a bit of court etiquette, a couple of good stories to entertain the Ishlinak worthies, half a dozen reasons why the treaties are a good idea. But that’s it. In the end, he may look like a legate, he may even act like a legate some of the time. But he isn’t. He’s just an actor who’s memorized a few things in order to get something done.”

  “Right. So what was Anasharal trying to get done? Not find the Illwrack Changeling, that’s for fucking certain. So—what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you ask?”

  “She did ask,” the Warhelm’s voice, all just-this-side-of-sane amiability, dropping unannounced into the conversation like a ton weight of pallet-loaded stone through the roof. “And she was told as much as she needs to know.”

  They looked at each other. Archeth shrugged.

  Egar cast a murderous glance at the ceiling. “Bit like the lighting around here, huh? Just enough illumination in just the right places to get us where you want us to go.”

  “Your analogy is sound as far as it stretches, Dragonbane, yes. Though the guidance in this rather more important matter has been Ingharnanasharal’s, not mine. I merely attempt to extend and modify the model, so nearly as I am able to estimate its intended outcome.”

  Hard, echoing clank—they both twitched at the sound. The crane cable jerked, cranked upward and stopped, jerked again, then began to rise smoothly through the hatch.

  “Yeah, well.” Somewhat mollified—the Warhelm’s words had rinsed right out of Egar’s head while he was distracted by the cable, leaving only a vague comprehension that the demon seemed to have agreed with him. He struggled to retain some previous anger. “Like I said, had a commander like that once. And that fucker nearly got me killed. I’m not looking for a repeat performance.”

  “That is unfortunate. But I’m afraid Ingharnanasharal’s sacrifice appears to have been built on a mathematics of oblique chaining and cascade outcomes. Which is to say that if either of you knew what end was intended from your actions, your knowledge would damage the equilibrium of the model, in all probability to an extent that would prevent said end from ever being achieved. It is quite possible that Anasharal itself does not know the true purpose behind its actions, or at least has not been allowed to consciously know, for the same reasons that I cannot allow either of you to know now.”

  “Is that supposed to make us feel better?” snapped Archeth

  “It is the closest to an explanation that I can offer you. And you should be aware, kir-Archeth, that all my actions, now as before, are taken in your best interests. I hope that this will be enough, because I will not tell you more.”

  The Dragonbane brooded on the rising cable. The tone of the crane engine’s whine was notably deeper than it had been on the downward journey. Something heavy was coming up. Something that weighed hard at the machinery’s limits …

  He snapped his fingers. “Wait a minute! I thought you had to obey the Kiriath no matter what. You let ’Nam cripple and blind you because you had no choice, you said. And now his daughter can’t make you answer a simple question? How’s she any different?”

  There was a long pause, a quiet broken only by the burdened whining of the crane. At his side, Archeth looked away, into the tangled scrap at her feet. Her new boots gleamed softly in the low light.

  “Kir-Archeth Indamaninarmal,” said the Warhelm very gently. “Is half human. This … gives me some leeway.”

  They sat in silence after that, all three of them, while the cable ran and ran, and whatever it was bringing them climbed inexorably up out of the ocean’s depths below.

  BOOK II

  Goin’ Home

  Thus scattered across the North, but quickened to fresh Heroic Deeds by the Gathering Storm of War and their Beloved Empire’s Peril, the Sundered Company sought to gird themselves with Holy Rites and Weapons, then to hurry South and join the Serried Imperial Ranks, as Yhelteth stood once more, as it must, to defend Civilization against the Darkness …

  The Grand Chronicle of Yhelteth

  Court bard edition

  CHAPTER 26

  t takes them what feels like three or four days to walk in to the glyph cliffs, though it might be more. This far into the Grey Places, you can never really tell—day and night are not leashed to any guaranteed rotation, they come and go like cavalier guests in the house of an overly accommodating host, and you have to make your plans without them. You walk until you’re tired, you stop and eat and rest. You make camp when the light thickens and you sleep until you wake. If it’s still dark you go back to sleep or try to; if it’s not, you break camp and go on.

  Eventually, you get where you’re going.

  The entourage of ghosts and might-have-beens that you drag with you, like the swirl of harbor water flotsam in the wake of a departing ship, well—those you’ve long ago learned to live with, or you’ve gone insane trying. You’ve learned to think of them as unavoidable echoes, caused inevitably by your passage through the Grey Places the way your booted steps in some vaulted stone space cannot help but call forth the flat resounding ring of your footfalls. You might listen to those echoes, might even pay them some close, brooding attention if that’s the mood that takes you. But talking back to them leans in toward madness.

  There he is, told you he’d be along. Standing together at a crossroads and waiting for Ringil, a Venj who apparently never died, a Klithren who never needed revenge. Hoy, Shenshenath—we going bounty hunting, or what? I thought we said dawn. Tlanmar’s waiting. And who’s this? You fall out
with the other guy?

  You have me confused with someone else, Ringil tells them, walking straight past.

  But they follow on behind for a while anyway, muttering back and forth at each other.

  Cheeky fucker. I told you he was just another perfumed imperial mummy’s boy; they’re all the fucking same. I don’t know why we bothered with him in the first place.

  Venj, mate, the man’s just not in a great mood, that’s all. Not like you’re a portrait of good cheer yourself when you’re hungover, or some good-time girl’s just turned your purse inside out while you were asleep.

  That’s not the point. Thing about imperials is, it’s their fucking culture. They don’t stand by the same values we do; they don’t even understand them. You can’t trust any of them further than you can spit.

  Eventually, they fade out, voices growing less and less substantial, as if blown away by the breeze across the marsh. Gil knows better than to look around when that happens—sometimes the voice alone can trail you for an hour or more, speaking out of empty air at your side as if its owner hasn’t gone, is instead just trying out a magical cloak of invisibility from some Majak tale. And if you do give your attention, it’ll likely bring back the ghost in its entirety all over again.

  Some ghosts are harder to ignore than others.

  My hero, my wonderful, sinewy boy, returned in triumph. Grace of Heaven Milacar, shaven head and fastidiously barbered chin beard, judiciously applied kohl on his eyelids, throws open his arms for an embrace and Ringil finds he still cannot make himself walk past this one without a word. He stutters to a hesitant halt. He won’t take the embrace, he knows already it’ll be cool and curiously lacking in human odor, but oddly solid in a way that living bodies aren’t, more like hugging a dead tree trunk than a man. But—

  Can’t really stop, Grace. I’m in a hurry.

  But you’ve only just got here, Gil. I know you’ve got the acceptance speech to make and everything, but surely you could do with—the glint of a lewd grin—relaxing a little before all that dreary Glades politicking. You must be positively rigid with tension, no?

  Joyous memories from Grace’s bedchamber come and catch him sharply under the heart. He seeks deflection so he won’t have to think about the way it ended.

  Last time I checked, you lived in the Glades, too, Grace.

  Eh? Milacar looks so genuinely offended it twitches a grin from Ringil’s lips. You really think I’d sell out that badly? I don’t know what you’ve heard, Gil, but the war hasn’t changed me the way it has Findrich and Snarl. I may go to a few client parties in the Glades now and then, but I haven’t fucking forgotten who I am.

  And the tragedy of the gap, between this Grace of Heaven and the real one, is abruptly too much for him to grin at. He turns away.

  Got to go, Grace. Give me a couple of days, yeah? I’ll, uhm, I’ll catch up with you.

  Now you promise me, Gil? Grace’s features crease in another lascivious smile. I’ll have a princely forfeit from you if not.

  He swallows. Promise.

  He marches away, steadfastly refusing to hear any more, but the phantom has in any case fallen silent. At his side, Hjel purses his lips and politely says nothing. It’s a basic courtesy of companionship in the Grey Places; he’s seen it in operation between members of Hjel’s band on the few occasions the dispossessed prince has brought men and women with him. You don’t ask, you don’t comment unless invited to.

  And you never, ever engage with someone else’s ghosts.

  Hjel has a few accompanying eddies of his own. A grave, wide-shouldered man in his fifties with some kind of big wind instrument slung across his back—he calls himself Moss, flickers in and out from time to time, and talks with obvious pride about the dispossessed prince’s accomplishments. In his weathered, cheerful features you can see something of Hjel. Then there’s a young woman whose eyes sparkle with happiness and who tugs at the dispossessed prince’s sleeve and talks about their children. A rot-toothed dealer in some substance Gil guesses must be similar to krinzanz. A young boy who seems lost. A lugubrious character in a butcher’s smock. Hjel is brutally short with most of them, somewhat less abrupt with the musician Gil assumes must be some version of his father.

  These distractions aside, the journey is uneventful and their pace consistent. Hjel seems pleased with their progress. At one point, he even takes Ringil off their path to look at some more of the long-jars, emptied and piled up inside a moss-grown stone circle.

  Since you’re so fascinated by these things, he says, and Ringil is struck by a powerful sensation that he’s been here before, that they’ve said and done all this before.

  Didn’t you already show me these?

  Hjel blinks. Not these ones, no. Don’t think so, anyway. Have a listen.

  As if acting out a dream, Ringil lifts one of the canisters to his ear. He can’t work out whether his memory is at fault, or Hjel’s, or if maybe this really is just another time and place with a rather severe resemblance to the last stone circle he stood in with the dispossessed prince and hefted a long-glass jar and held it to his ear and …

  Nothing.

  Like an idiot, he shakes the canister and listens again.

  Nothing. No chittering, seething whisper of unleashed horrors past.

  He looks up at Hjel and shakes his head, feeling oddly embarrassed. I, uhm, I can’t seem to—

  Guess you’ve aged since the last time, then.

  Something oddly hasty in those words, it’s a conclusion drawn fast to avoid further inquiry. Ringil’s eyes narrow.

  It’s not that long since you showed me the last time. Is it?

  Hjel shrugs. I thought not, but in the Margins who can be sure? Anyway, like the sage says, every chord played has a moment either side of it. On the one side sound, on the other silence. That the two are only separated by a moment does not mean that the sound can bleed across into the silence before the chord is played.

  But there’s a distracted look in the dispossessed prince’s eyes and he’s not looking at Ringil anymore.

  You trying to get profound on me here?

  Another shrug, moodier this time. It’s a simple enough proposition, I would have thought. You’re a warrior, you know how little separates dead from alive in battle. Mutilated from whole, disfigured from untouched. One moment a living breathing being, the next a corpse; one moment a sensing, feeling limb, the next a severed chunk of meat and a bleeding stump; one moment unblemished—

  Yeah, I get it. I’m not a fucking tent peg.

  Well, then. We step across these moments our entire lives. Occasionally, we’re aware of the change as the step is taken, mostly we aren’t.

  Ringil holds up the canister impatiently. Can you still hear this?

  Hjel catches the open end of the jar, tilts it deftly up to his ear, and listens. Lets it go again. Yeah, I can still hear it. My moment has not yet come.

  You are not changed.

  The dispossessed prince’s gaze is evasive again. That’s another way to look at it, I suppose.

  And I am. I am changed.

  You have aged, my lord black mage. Get over it.

  Stop fucking calling me that.

  Hjel sighs. Shall we go? By the look of that sky, we’re due some nightfall soon and it’s getting cold with it. Be good to get under canvas.

  There’s an opening there for a flirt—Ringil turns pointedly aside from it. He sets the canister down with exaggerated care, surprised at how much it feels like leaving something vital behind. He has to fight an impulse to try again, to pick the thing up and strain his ears once more at the opened end. He turns back instead and finds Hjel watching, waiting for him. Gestures irritably for the dispossessed prince to get moving, then tramps through the long grass after him at a coolish distance.

  When they’ve cleared the perimeter of the stone circle, he calls out to the other man.

  Just so you know, Hjel—all that shit you were talking about life and death? Most men don’t die that
fast on a battlefield—it’s not usually that clean.

  Hjel stops dead for a moment, but he doesn’t look around. I stand corrected.

  Yeah.

  THEY CAMP THE LAST NIGHT WITHIN SIGHT OF THE CLIFFS, THE LONG marching limestone gleam crossing the plain at the horizon, like the much-notched blade of some colossal sword out of legend, left lying somehow on its edge in the marsh, now that the battle here between the gargantuan forces that wielded such weapons is done. Ringil is morose with feelings of loss he can’t easily pin down, and Hjel is still holding back on whatever’s bothering him. It makes for a monosyllabic shared meal, and a lot of staring into the fire in silence.

  When Hjel retires to the tent, Gil doesn’t follow him for a while.

  He sits and stares instead at the distant line of the glyph cliffs, trying to sort out his memories, trying to separate out dream from truthful recollection, trying to decide if that’s even a meaningful line where the ikinri ‘ska is concerned.

  He remembers the first time he saw the cliffs. Remembers being led out of a nightmare through a fissure that opened in their base. He remembers that it was Hjel who led him out—or did he go first and Hjel follow behind, it isn’t clear now, he sees both in his mind’s eye, it seems to have happened a thousand years ago to another man entirely—and he remembers that the passageway was minutely worked over every inch of its surface with the glyphs of the ikinri ‘ska. He remembers stepping out of the fissure and turning to face the enormity of the endless marching cliffs he’d just emerged from, the staggering understanding that they, too, were worked over every inch with the same tiny script.

  It gets tougher after that.

  He remembers that Hjel left him then, but there was—wasn’t there?—something else in his place. Something hunched and hovering invisible at his shoulder, something he daren’t turn and look at. Something that reached out over his shoulder with lengthy, emaciated limbs and deftly tapped at glyph sequences here and there—and each touch left the sequence glowing faintly as if touched by bandlight. He remembers peering at the glyphs, remembers that somehow he knew which ones to read, where to look for them, how to interpret them. Hjel’s previous tutored examples—scratched into beach sand or road dust for him, chalked up on rock like some child’s imitation of what was carved out here—all of that fading out like the music as the curtain goes up on the main entertainment. All of that, stamped out, stamped through by something dark and massive, working through him.