We are made, and unmade, and so it goes on. For ever.
And I will never see my home.
With eyes the colour of weathered granite, the Letherii Marine Commander, Atri-Preda Yan Tovis, known to her soldiers as Twilight, looked down upon the sickly man. The gloomy hold of the ship was fetid and damp, the walkway above the keel smeared with puke and slimy mould. Creaks and thumps filled the air with the impact of every wave against the hull. The muted light of lanterns pitched about, making riotous the shadows. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Drink this.’
The man looked up, red-rimmed eyes set in a face the hue of whale fat. ‘Drink?’ Even the word seemed nearly sufficient to double him over yet again, but she saw him struggle mightily against the impulse.
‘I speak your language not well,’ she said. ‘Drink. Two swallows. Wait, then more.’
‘I’ll not keep it down,’ the man said.
‘No matter. Two, you feel better. Then more. Sick goes.’
With a trembling hand, he accepted the small patinated glass bottle.
‘Ceda make,’ Twilight said. ‘Made, generations ago. Sick goes.’
He swallowed once, then twice, was motionless for a moment, then he lunged to one side. Spitting, coughing, gasping, then, ‘Spirits take me, yes.’
‘Better?’
A nod.
‘Drink rest. It will stay.’
He did so, then settled back, eyes closed. ‘Better. Better, yes.’
‘Good. Now, go to him.’ She pointed towards the bow, twenty paces further along the walkway, where a figure leaned, huddled against the prow’s uplift. ‘Preda Tomad Sengar has doubts. Champion will not survive voyage. Will not eat, drink. Wastes away. Go to him. You claim much, his prowess. We see otherwise. We see only weakness.’
The man lying on the walkway would not meet her eyes, but he slowly sat up, then climbed awkwardly, unevenly to his feet. Legs wide to maintain his balance, he straightened. Spat into the palms of his hands, rubbed his palms together for a moment, then swept both hands back through his hair.
Taralack Veed met the woman’s eyes. ‘Now, you are the one looking ill,’ he said, frowning. ‘What is wrong?’
Twilight simply shook her head. ‘Go. The Preda must be convinced. Else we throw you both over side.’
The Gral warrior turned about and made his way, crablike, up the walkway. To either side of him, pressed together between crates and casks, were chained figures. Grey-skinned like their captors, almost as tall, with many bearing facial traits that revealed Edur blood. Yet, here they were, rotting in their own filth, their dull, owlish gazes following Taralack as he made his way forward.
The Gral crouched before Icarium, reached out a hand to rest it on the warrior’s shoulder. Icarium flinched at the contact.
‘My friend,’ Taralack said in a low voice. ‘I know this is not illness of the flesh that so afflicts you. It is illness of the spirit. You must struggle against it, Icarium.’ The Jhag was drawn up, knees to his chest, arms wrapped tight, the position reminding the Gral of the burial style practised by the Ehrlii. For a long moment, there was no response to his words, then a shudder racked the figure curled up before him. ‘I cannot do this,’ Icarium said, lifting his head to fix despairing eyes upon Taralack. ‘I do not wish… I do not wish to kill anyone!’
Taralack rubbed at his face. Spirits below, that draught from Twilight had done wonders. I can do this. ‘Icarium. Look down this walkway. Look upon these filthy creatures – who were told they were being liberated from their oppressors. Who came to believe that in these Edur was their salvation. But no. Their blood is not pure. It is muddied – they were slaves! Fallen so far, knowing nothing of their own history, the glory of their past – yes, I know, what glory? But look upon them! What manner of demons are these Tiste Edur and their damned empire? To so treat their own kind? Now tell me, Icarium, what have I procured for you? Tell me!’
The warrior’s expression was ravaged, horror swimming in his eyes – and something else, a light of wildness. ‘For what we witnessed,’ the Jhag whispered. ‘For what we saw them do…’
‘Vengeance,’ Taralack Veed said, nodding.
Icarium stared at him like a drowning man. ‘Vengeance…’
‘But you will not be given that chance, Icarium. The Preda loses faith in you – in me – and we are in grave peril of being thrown to the sharks—’
‘They ask me to kill their emperor, Taralack Veed. It makes no sense—’
‘What they ask,’ the Gral said, baring his teeth, ‘and what you shall deliver, are two entirely different things.’
‘Vengeance,’ Icarium said again, as if tasting the word, then he brought both hands to his face. ‘No, no, it is not for me. Already too much blood – more can achieve nothing. I will be no different than them!’ He reached out suddenly and grasped Taralack, dragging him close. ‘Don’t you see that? More innocent lives—’
‘Innocent? You fool, Icarium – can’t you understand? Innocence is a lie! None of us is innocent! Not one! Show me one, please, I beg you – show me that I am wrong!’ He twisted round in the Jhag’s iron grip, jabbed a finger towards the huddled forms of the slaves. ‘We both witnessed, did we not? Yesterday! Two of those pathetic fools, choking the life out of a third one – all three in chains, Icarium, all three starving, dying! Yet, some old quarrel, some old stupidity, unleashed one last time! Victims? Oh yes, no doubt of that. Innocent? Hah! And may the spirits above and below strike me down if my judgement is false!’
Icarium stared at him, then, slowly, his long fingers relaxed their grip on the Gral’s hide shirt.
‘My friend,’ Taralack said, ‘you must eat. You must keep your strength. This empire of the Tiste Edur, it is an abomination, ruled by a madman whose only talent is with a sword, and to that the weak and strong must bow, for such is the cast of the world. To defy the powerful is to invite subjugation and annihilation – you know this, Icarium. Yet you and you alone, friend, possess what is necessary to destroy that abomination. This is what you were born to do. You are the final weapon of justice – do not waver before this flood of inequity. Feed upon what you have witnessed – what we have witnessed – and all that we shall see on the voyage ahead. Feed on it, to fuel the justice within you – until it is blinding with power. Icarium, do not let these terrible Edur defeat you – as they are doing now.’
A voice spoke behind him. Twilight. ‘The Preda considers a test. For this warrior.’
Taralack Veed turned, looked up at the woman. ‘What do you mean? What sort of test?’
‘We fight many wars. We walk paths of Chaos and Shadow.’
The Gral’s eyes narrowed. ‘We?’
She grimaced. ‘The Edur now rule Lether. Where they lead, Letherii must follow. Edur swords make river of blood, and from river of blood, there is river of gold. The loyal have grown rich, so very rich.’
‘And the disloyal?’
‘They tend the oars. Indebted. It is so.’
‘And you, Atri-Preda? Are you loyal?’
She studied him, silent for a half-dozen heartbeats, then she said, ‘Each champion believes. By their sword the Emperor shall die. What is believed and what is true is not same,’ she said, strangely twisting Taralack’s own words. ‘To what is true, I am loyal. The Preda considers a test.’
‘Very well,’ the Gral said, then held his breath, dreading a refusal from Icarium. But none came. Ah, that is good.
The woman walked away, armour rustling like coins spilling onto gravel.
Taralack Veed stared after her.
‘She hides herself,’ Icarium said in a low, sad voice. ‘Yet her soul dies from within.’
‘Do you believe, my friend,’ the Gral said, turning back to the Jhag once more, ‘that she alone suffers in silence? That she alone cowers, her honour besieged by what she must do?’
Icarium shook his head.
‘Then think of her when your resolve falters, friend. Think of Twilight. And all the others like her.’
A wan smile. ‘Yet you say there is no innocence.’
‘An observation that does not obviate the demand for justice, Icarium.’
The Jhag’s gaze shifted, down and away, and seemed to focus on the slime-laden planks of the hull to his right. ‘No,’ he whispered in a hollow tone, ‘I suppose it doesn’t.’
Sweat glistened on the rock walls, as if the pressure of the world had grown unbearable. The man who had just appeared, as if from nowhere, stood motionless for a time, the dark grey of his cloak and hood making him indistinct in the gloom, but the only witnesses to this peculiarity were both indifferent and blind – the maggots writhing in torn, rotting flesh among the sprawl of bodies that stretched before him down the chasm’s elongated, rough floor.
The stench was overpowering, and Cotillion could feel himself engulfed in grief-laden familiarity, as if this was the true scent of existence. There had been times – he was almost certain – when he’d known unmitigated joy, but so faded were they to his recollection that he had begun to suspect the fictional conjuring of nostalgia. As with civilizations and their golden ages, so too with people: each individual ever longing for that golden past moment of true peace and wellness.
So often it was rooted in childhood, in a time before the strictures of enlightenment had afflicted the soul, when what had seemed simple unfolded its complexity like the petals of a poison flower, to waft its miasma of decay.
The bodies were of young men and women – too young in truth to be soldiers, although soldiers they had been. Their memories of solace would likely have been scoured from their minds back when, in a place and a world they had once called home, they hung nailed by iron spikes to wooden crosses, uncomprehending of their crimes. Of course there had been no such crimes. And the blood, which they had shed so profusely, had yielded no evidence of its taint, for neither the name of a people nor the hue of their skin, nor indeed the cast of their features, could make life’s blood any less pure, or precious.
Wilful fools with murder in their rotted hearts believed otherwise. They divided the dead into innocent victim and the rightfully punished, and knew with unassailable conviction upon which side they themselves stood. With such conviction, the plunging of knives proved so very easy.
Here they had fought hard, he observed as he pushed himself into motion. A pitched battle, then an engaged withdrawal. Proof of superior training, discipline and a fierce unwillingness to yield without exacting a price. The enemy had taken their own fallen away, but for these young dead, the chasm itself was now their crypt. Saved from their crucifixions… for this.
There had been so many… pressing tasks. Essential necessities. That we neglected this company, a company we ourselves ensconced here, to defend what we claimed our own. And then, it must have seemed, we abandoned them. And in that grim conclusion they would, he admitted sourly, not be far wrong. But we are assailed on all sides, now. We are in our most desperate moment. Right now… oh, my fallen friends, I am sorry for this…
A conceit among the living, that their words could ease the dead. Worse, to voice words seeking forgiveness from those dead. The fallen had but one message to deliver to the living, and it had nothing to do with forgiveness. Remind yourself of that, Cotillion. Be ever mindful of what the dead tell you and everyone else, over and over again.
He heard noises ahead. Muted, a rhythmic rasping sound, like iron edges licking leather, then the soft pad of moccasined feet.
The natural corridor of the chasm narrowed, and blocking the choke-point was a T’lan Imass, sword-point resting on the rock before it, watching Cotillion’s approach. Beyond the undead warrior there was the dull yellow glow of lanterns, a passing shadow, another, then a figure stepped into view.
‘Stand aside, Ibra Gholan,’ Minala said, her eyes on Cotillion.
Her armour was in tatters. A spear-point had punctured chain and leather high on her chest, the left side, just beneath the shoulder. Old blood crusted the edges. One side of her helm’s cheek-guard was gone and the area of her face made visible by its absence was swollen and mottled with bruises. Her extraordinary light grey eyes were fixed on Cotillion’s own as she moved past the T’lan Imass. ‘They arrive through a gate,’ she said. ‘A warren lit by silver fire.’
‘Chaos,’ he said. ‘Proof of the alliance we had feared would come to pass. Minala, how many attacks have you repulsed?’
‘Four.’ She hesitated, then reached up and worked her helm loose, lifting it clear. Sweat-matted, filthy black hair snaked down. ‘My children… the losses have been heavy.’
Cotillion could not hold her gaze any longer. Not with that admission.
She went on. ‘If not for the T’lan Imass… and Apt, and the Tiste Edur renegade, this damned First Throne would now be in the possession of an army of blood-hungry barbarians.’
‘Thus far, then,’ Cotillion ventured, ‘your attackers have been exclusively Tiste Edur?’
‘Yes.’ She studied him for a long moment. ‘That will not last, will it?’
Cotillion’s eyes focused once again on Ibra Gholan.
Minala continued, ‘The Edur are but skirmishers, aren’t they? And even they have not fully committed themselves to this cause. Why?’
‘They are as thinly stretched as we are, Minala.’
‘Ah, then I cannot expect more Aptorians. What of the other demons of your realm, Cotillion? Azalan? Dinal? Can you give us nothing?’
‘We can,’ he said. ‘But not now.’
‘When?’
He looked at her. ‘When the need is greatest.’
Minala stepped close. ‘You bastard. I had thirteen hundred. Now I have four hundred still capable of fighting.’ She jabbed a finger towards the area beyond the choke-point. ‘Almost three hundred more lie dying of wounds – and there is nothing I can do for them!’
‘Shadowthrone will be informed,’ Cotillion said. ‘He will come. He will heal your wounded—’
‘When?’
The word was nearly a snarl.
‘When I leave here,’ he replied, ‘I am returning directly to Shadowkeep. Minala, I would speak with the others.’
‘Who? Why?’
Cotillion frowned, then said, The renegade. Your Tiste Edur. I have… questions.’
‘I have never seen such skill with the spear. Trull Sengar kills, and kills, and then, when it is done and he kneels in the blood of the kin he has slain, he weeps.’
‘Do they know him?’ Cotillion asked. ‘Do they call him by name?’
‘No. He says they are Den-Ratha, and young. Newly blooded. But he then says, it is only a matter of time. Those Edur that succeed in withdrawing, they must be reporting the presence of an Edur among the defenders of the First Throne. Trull says that one of his own tribe will be among the attackers, and he will be recognized – and it is then, he says, that they will come in force, with warlocks. He says, Cotillion, that he will bring ruin upon us all.’
‘Does he contemplate leaving?’ Cotillion asked.
She scowled. ‘To that he gives no answer. If he did, I would not blame him. And,’ she added, ‘if he chooses to stay, I may well die with his name the last curse I voice in this world. Or, more likely, the second last name.’
He nodded, understanding. ‘Trull Sengar remains, then, out of honour.’
‘And that honour spells our doom.’
Cotillion ran a hand through his hair, mildly surprised to discover how long it had grown. I need to find a hair hacker. One trustworthy enough with a blade at my neck. He considered that. Well, is it any wonder gods must do such mundane tasks for themselves? Listen to yourself, Cotillion – your mind would flee from this moment. Meet this woman’s courage with your own. ‘The arrival of warlocks among the Tiste Edur will prove a difficult force to counter—’
‘We have the bonecaster,’ she said. ‘As yet he has remained hidden. Inactive. For, like Trull Sengar, he is a lodestone.’
Cotillion nodded. ‘Will you lead me in, Minala?’
In answer she turned about and gestured that he follow.
The cavern beyond was a nightmare vision. The air was fetid, thick as that of a slaughterhouse. Dried blood covered the stone floor like a crumbling, pasty carpet. Pale faces – too young by far – turned to look upon Cotillion with ancient eyes drained of all hope. The god saw Apt, the demon’s black hide ribboned with grey, barely healed scars, and crouched at her lone forefoot, Panek, his huge, faceted eye glittering. The forehead above that ridged eye displayed a poorly stitched slice, result of a blow that had peeled back his scalp from just above one side of the eye’s orbital, across to the temple opposite.
Three figures rose, emerging from gloom as they walked towards Cotillion. The Patron God of Assassins halted. Monok Ochem, the clanless T’lan Imass known as Onrack the Broken, and the renegade Tiste Edur, Trull Sengar. I wonder, would these three, along with Ibra Gholan, have been enough? Did we need to fling Minala and her young charges into this horror?
Then, as they drew closer, Cotillion saw Onrack and Trull more clearly. Beaten down, slashed, cut. Half of Onrack’s skeletal head was shorn away. Ribs had caved in from some savage blow, and the upper ridge of his hip, on the left side, had been chopped away, revealing the porous interior of the bone. Trull was without armour, and had clearly entered battle lacking such protection. The majority of his wounds – deep gashes, puncture holes – were on his thighs, beneath the hips and to the outside – signs of a spear-wielder’s style of parrying with the middle-haft of the weapon. The Edur could barely walk, leaning heavily on the battered spear in his hands.
Cotillion found it difficult to meet the Edur’s exhausted, despair-filled eyes. ‘When the time comes,’ he said to the grey-skinned warrior, ‘help shall arrive.’
Onrack the Broken spoke. ‘When they win the First Throne, they will realize the truth. That it is not for them. They can hold it, but they cannot use it. Why, then, Cotillion of Shadow, do these brave mortals surrender their lives here?’
‘Perhaps we but provide a feint,’ Monok Ochem said, the bonecaster’s tone as inflectionless as Onrack’s had been.
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