Perhaps, she suddenly realized, there was a way through this…She glanced about until she saw one of her Finadds. Walked over. ‘Prepare a delegation, Finadd. We will seek parley with this new enemy.’
‘Yes sir.’ The man rushed off.
‘Atri-Preda!’
Bivatt turned to see Brohl Handar approach. The Overseer did not, at this moment, look like an imperial governor. He was covered in gore, gripping his sword in one hand thick with dried blood.
‘It seems we are not too late after all,’ he said.
‘These are not Awl, Overseer.’
‘I see that clearly enough. I see also, Atri-Preda, that you and I will die here today.’ He paused, then grunted a laugh. ‘Do you recall, Bivatt, warning me that Letur Anict sought to kill me? Yet here I have marched with you and your army, all this way—’
‘Overseer,’ she cut in. ‘The Factor infiltrated my forces with ten assassins. All of whom are dead.’
His eyes slowly widened.
Bivatt continued, ‘Have you seen the tall soldier often at your side? I set him the task of keeping you alive, and he has done all that I commanded. Unfortunately, Overseer, I believe that he shall soon fail at it.’ Unless I can negotiate our way out of this.
She faced the advancing enemy once more. They were now raising standards. Only a few, and identical to each other. Bivatt squinted in the afternoon light.
And recognized those standards.
She went cold inside. ‘Too bad,’ she said.
‘Atri-Preda?’
‘I recognize those standards, Overseer. There will be no parley. Nor any chance of surrender.’
‘Those warriors,’ Brohl Handar said after a moment, ‘are the ones who have been raising the cairns.’
‘Yes.’
‘They have been with us, then, for some time.’
‘Their scouts at the least, Overseer. Longer than you think.’
‘Atri-Preda.’
She faced him, studied his grave expression. ‘Overseer?’
‘Die well, Bivatt.’
‘I intend to. And you. Die well, Brohl Handar.’
Brohl walked away from her then, threading through a line of soldiers, his eyes fixed on one in particular. Tall, with a gentle face streaked now in mud.
The Tiste Edur caught the man’s gaze, and answered the easy smile with one of his own.
‘Overseer, I see you have had an exciting day.’
‘I see the same on you,’ Brohl replied, ‘and it seems there is more to come.’
‘Yes, but I tell you this, I am pleased enough. For once, there is solid ground beneath me.’
The Overseer thought to simply thank the soldier, for keeping him alive this long. Instead, he said nothing for a long moment.
The soldier rubbed at his face, then said, ‘Sir, your Arapay await you, no doubt. See, the enemy readies itself.’
And yes, this is what Brohl Handar wanted. ‘My Arapay will fight well enough without me, Letherii. I would ask one final boon of you.’
‘Then ask, sir.’
‘I would ask for the privilege of fighting at your side. Until we fall.’
The man’s soft eyes widened slightly, then all at once the smile returned. ‘Choose, then, Overseer. Upon my right or upon my left.’
Brohl Handar chose the man’s left. As for guarding his own unprotected flank, he was indifferent.
Somehow, the truth of that pleased him.
In the city of Drene at this time, riots raged over the entire north half of the city, and with the coming night the mayhem would spread into the more opulent south districts.
Venitt Sathad, granted immediate audience with Factor Letur Anict – who awaited him standing before his desk, his round, pale face glistening with sweat, and in whose eyes the steward saw, as he walked towards the man, a kind of bemusement at war with deeper stresses – walked forward, in neither haste nor swagger. Rather, a walk of singular purpose.
He saw Letur Anict blink suddenly, a rapid reassessment, even as he continued right up to the man.
And drove a knife into the Factor’s left eye, deep into the brain.
The weight of Letur Anict, as he collapsed, pulled the weapon free.
Venitt Sathad bent to clean the blade off on the Factor’s silk robe; then he straightened, turned for the door, and departed.
Letur Anict had a wife. He had children. He’d had guards, but Orbyn Truthfinder had taken care of them.
Venitt Sathad set out to eliminate all heirs.
He no longer acted as an agent of the Liberty Consign. Now, at this moment, he was an Indebted.
Who had had enough.
Hetan left her husband kneeling beside the body of Toc the Younger. She could do no more for him, and this was not a failing on her part. The raw grief of an Imass was like a bottomless well, one that could snatch the unsuspecting and send them plummeting down into unending darkness.
Once, long ago now, Tool had stood before his friend, and his friend had not known him, and for the Imass – mortal once more, after thousands upon thousands of years – this had been the source of wry amusement, in the manner of a trickster’s game where the final pleasure but awaited revelation of the truth.
Tool, in his unhuman patience, had waited a long time to unveil that revelation. Too long, now. His friend had died, unknowing. The trickster’s game had delivered a wound from which, she suspected, her husband might never recover.
And so, she now knew in her heart, there might be other losses on this tragic day. A wife losing her husband. Two daughters losing their adopted father, and one son his true father.
She walked to where Kilava Onass had stationed herself to watch the battle, and it was no small mercy that she had elected not to veer into her Soletaken form, that, indeed, she had left the clans of the White Face Barghast the freedom to do what they did best: kill in a frenzy of explosive savagery.
Hetan saw that Kilava stood near where a lone rider had fallen – killed by the weapons of the K’Chain Che’Malle, she noted. A typically vicious slaying, stirring in her memories of the time when she herself had stood before such terrible creatures, a memory punctuated with the sharp pang of grief for a brother who had fallen that day.
Kilava was ignoring the legless, one-armed body lying ten paces to her left. Hetan’s gaze settled upon it in sudden curiosity.
‘Sister,’ she said to Kilava – deliberate in her usage of the one title that Kilava most disliked – ‘see how this one wears a mask. Was not the war leader of the Awl so masked?’
‘I imagine so,’ Kilava said, ‘since he was named Redmask.’
‘Well,’ Hetan said, walking to the corpse, ‘this one is wearing the garb of an Awl.’
‘But he was slain by the K’Chain Che’Malle.’
‘Yes, I see that. Even so…’ She crouched down, studied that peculiar mask, the strange, minute scales beneath the spatters of mud. ‘This mask, Kilava, it is the hide of a K’Chain, I would swear it, although the scales are rather tiny—’
‘Matron’s throat,’ Kilava replied.
Hetan glanced over. ‘Truly?’ Then she reached down and tugged the mask away from the man’s face. A long look down into those pale features.
Hetan rose, tossing the mask to one side. ‘You were right, it’s not Redmask.’
Kilava asked, ‘How do you know that?’
‘Well, Awl garb or not, this man was Letherii.’
Hood, High King of Death, Collector of the Fallen, the undemanding master of more souls than he could count – even had he been so inclined, which he was not – stood over the body, waiting.
Such particular attention was, thankfully, a rare occurrence. But some deaths arrived, every now and then, bearing certain…eccentricities. And the one lying below was one such arrival.
Not least because the Wolves wanted his soul, yet would not get it, but also because this mortal had evaded Hood’s grasp again and again, even though any would see and understand well the sweet gift the Lor
d of Death had been offering.
Singular lives, yes, could be most…singular.
Witness that of the one who had arrived a short time earlier. There were no gifts in possessing a simple mind. There was no haze of calming incomprehension to salve the terrible wounds of a life that had been ordained to remain, until the very end, profoundly innocent.
Hood had not begrudged the blood on Beak’s hands. He had, however, most succinctly begrudged the heartless actions of Beak’s mother and father.
Few mortal priests understood the necessity for redress, although they often spouted the notion in their sermons of guilt, with their implicit extortions that did little more than swell the temple coffers.
Redress, then, was a demand that even a god could not deny. And so it had been with the one named Beak.
And so it was, now, with the one named Toc the Younger.
‘Awaken,’ Hood said. ‘Arise.’
And Toc the Younger, with a long sigh, did as Hood commanded.
Standing, tottering, squinting now at the gate awaiting them both. ‘Damn,’ Toc muttered, ‘but that’s a poor excuse for a gate.’
‘The dead see as they see, Toc the Younger. Not long ago, it shone white with purity.’
‘My heart goes out to that poor, misguided soul.’
‘Of course it does. Come. Walk with me.’
They set out towards that gate.
‘You do this for every soul?’
‘I do not.’
‘Oh.’ And then Toc halted – or tried to, but his feet dragged onward – ‘Hold on, my soul was sworn to the Wolves—’
‘Too late. Your soul, Toc the Younger, was sworn to me. Long ago.’
‘Really? Who was the fool who did that?’
‘Your father,’ Hood replied. ‘Who, unlike Dassem Ultor, remained loyal.’
‘Which you rewarded by killing him? You bastard piece of pigsh—’
‘You will await him, Toc the Younger.’
‘He lives still?’
‘Death never lies.’
Toc the Younger tried to halt again. ‘Hood, a question – please.’
The god stopped, looked down at the mortal.
‘Hood, why do I still have only one eye?’
The God of Death, Reaper of Souls, made no reply. He had been wondering that himself.
Damned wolves.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I have seen the face of sorrow
She looks away in the distance
Across all these bridges
From whence I came
And those spans, trussed and arched
Hold up our lives as we go back again
To how we thought then
To how we thought we thought then
I have seen sorrow’s face,
But she is ever turned away
And her words leave me blind
Her eyes make me mute
I do not understand what she says to me
I do not know if to obey
Or attempt a flood of tears
I have seen her face
She does not speak
She does not weep
She does not know me
For I am but a stone fitted in place
On the bridge where she walks
Lay of the Bridgeburners
Toc the Younger
Once, long ago, Onrack the broken committed a crime. He had professed his love for a woman in fashioning her likeness on the wall of a cave. There had been such talent in his hands, in his eyes, he had bound two souls into that stone. His own…that was his right, his choice. But the other soul, oh, the selfishness of that act, the cruelty of that theft…
He stood, now, before another wall of stone, within another cave, looking upon the array of paintings, the beasts with every line of muscle, every hint of motion, celebrating their veracity, the accuracy of genius. And in the midst of these great creatures of the world beyond, awkward stick figures, representing the Imass, cavorted in a poor mime of dance. Lifeless as the law demanded. He stood, then, still Broken, still the stealer of a woman’s life.
In the darkness of his captivity, long ago, someone had come to him, with gentle hands and yielding flesh. He so wanted to believe that it had been she, the one whose soul he had stolen. But such knowledge was now lost to him; so confused had the memory become, so infused with all that his heart wished to believe.
And, even if it had indeed been she, well, perhaps she had no choice. Imprisoned by his crime, helpless to defy his desire. In his own breaking, he had destroyed her as well.
He reached out, settled fingertips lightly upon one of the images. Ranag, pursued by an ay. In the torch’s wavering light both beasts seemed in motion, muscles rippling. In celebrating the world, which held no regrets, the Imass would gather shoulder to shoulder in this cavern, and with their voices they would beat out the rhythm of breaths, the huffing of the beasts; while others, positioned in selected concavities, pounded their hands on drums of hollowed-out wood and skin, until the echoes of hoofbeats thundered from all sides.
We are the witnesses. We are the eyes trapped for ever on the outside. We have been severed from the world. And this is at the heart of the law, the prohibition. We create ourselves as lifeless, awkward, apart. Once, we were as the beasts, and there was no inside, no outside. There was only the one, the one world, of which we were its flesh, its bone, flesh little different from grasses, lichens and trees. Bones little different from wood and stone. We were its blood, in which coursed rivers down to the lakes and seas.
We give voice to our sorrow, to our loss.
In discovering what it is to die, we have been cast out from the world.
In discovering beauty, we were made ugly.
We do not suffer in the manner that beasts suffer – for they surely do. We suffer with the memory of how it was before suffering came, and this deepens the wound, this tears open the pain. There is no beast that can match our anguish.
So sing, brothers. Sing, sisters. And in the torch’s light, floating free from the walls of our minds – of the caves within us – see all the faces of sorrow. See those who have died and left us. And sing your grief until the very beasts flee.
Onrack the Broken felt the tears on his cheeks, and cursed himself for a sentimental fool.
Behind him, Trull Sengar stood in silence. In humouring a foolish Imass, he was without impatience. Onrack knew he would simply wait, and wait. Until such time as Onrack might stir from his grim memories, recalling once more the gifts of the present. He would—
‘There was great skill in the painting of these beasts.’
The Imass, still facing the stone wall, still with his back to the Tiste Edur, found himself smiling. So, even here and now, I indulge silly fantasies that are, even if comforting, without much meaning. ‘Yes, Trull Sengar. True talent. Such skill is passed down in the blood, and with each generation there is the potential for…burgeoning. Into such as we see here.’
‘Is the artist among the clans here? Or were these painted long ago, by someone else?’
‘The artist,’ Onrack said, ‘is Ulshun Pral.’
‘And is it this talent that has earned him the right to rule?’
No. Never that. ‘This talent,’ the Imass replied, ‘is his weakness.’
‘Better than you, Onrack?’
He turned about, his smile now wry. ‘I see some flaws. I see hints of impatience. Of emotion free and savage as the beasts he paints. I see also, perhaps, signs of a talent he had lost and has not yet rediscovered.’
‘How does one lose talent like that?’
‘By dying, only to return.’
‘Onrack,’ and there was a new tone to Trull’s voice, a gravity that unnerved Onrack, ‘I have spoken with these Imass here. Many of them. With Ulshun himself. And I do not think they ever died. I do not think they were once T’lan, only to have forgotten in the countless generations of existence here.’
‘Yes, they say they are among those who
did not join the Ritual. But this cannot be true, Trull Sengar. They must be ghosts, willed into flesh, held here by the timelessness of the Gate at the end of this cave. My friend, they do not know themselves.’ And then he paused. Can this be true?
‘Ulshun Pral says he remembers his mother. He says she is still alive. Although not here right now.’
‘Ulshun Pral is a hundred thousand years old, Trull Sengar. Or more. What he remembers is false, a delusion.’
‘I do not believe that, not any more. I think the mystery here is deeper than any of us realize.’
‘Let us go on,’ Onrack said. ‘I would see this Gate.’
They left the chamber of the beasts.
Trull was filled with unease. Something had been awakened in his friend – by the paintings – and its taste was bitter. He had seen, in the lines of Onrack’s back, his shoulders, a kind of slow collapse. The return of some ancient burden. And, seeing this, Trull had forced himself to speak, to break the silence before Onrack could destroy himself.
Yes. The paintings. The crime. Will you not smile again, Onrack? Not the smile you gave me when you turned to face me just now – too broken, too filled with sorrow – but the smile I have grown to treasure since coming to this realm.
‘Onrack.’
‘Yes?’
‘Do we still know what we are waiting for? Yes, threats approach. Will they come through the Gate? Or from across the hills beyond the camp? Do we know in truth if these Imass are indeed threatened?’
‘Prepare yourself, Trull Sengar. Danger draws close…on all sides.’
‘Perhaps then we should return to Ulshun Pral.’
‘Rud Elalle is with them. There is time yet…to see this Gate.’
Moments later, they came to the edge of the vast, seemingly limitless cavern, and both halted.
Not one Gate. Many gates.
And all were seething with silent, wild fire.
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