He raised a trembling hand toward his eyes, desperate for the truth and terrified of it. The pain burned so bright he could almost see by it. He could endure the pain, but at the thought of a life lived in darkness—constant, unrelieved darkness blacker than the deepest pit of Hull’s Hole—his heart quailed.
He slid the tips of his fingers over his eyes, yanked back at the stabbing pain, then forced his hand to the wound once more. The gash started at his temple and sliced clean across both eyes and the bridge of his nose. The skin wept blood and, when he steeled himself enough to test the eyeballs, he found that they were cut cleanly as half-sliced eggs. He jerked his hand away once more, rolled onto his side, vomited into the mud, and lay still.
Fir needles sifted the wind.
Smoke, thick and sickening.
A twist in his innards where Adare had planted the knife.
Though she had torn the blade free, he could feel the queasy shift of his own slick viscera.
“Might as well know the worst,” he muttered. His own words felt lighter than ash in his ears, sounded like something already dead.
Fingers slick with blood, he probed the wound, driving his hand in past the second knuckle, pushing through skin and muscle, hunting the worst until he passed out, darkness in his mind rising up to meet the great, encircling dark beyond.
When he came to, he knew he was going to die.
The contours of his wound were wrong. There was too much blood. The steel had sliced thin walls that were not to be sliced. He drew the knowledge around him like a warm cloak, closed bloody lids over the ruin of his eyes, and slept.
Cold.
Low call of an owl.
Dark beyond dark.
“Come on, ’Shael,” he muttered, teeth chattering. “Come on.”
Ananshael’s absence.
His whole body shaking, Valyn hauled himself from the frigid mud.
“There’s got to be a warmer place to die,” he groaned, crawling forward on hands and knees, groping blindly for some pile of leaves and needles, some swath of moss where he could lie down, finally, and quit.
No, he realized with a sudden shock. Not blindly.
As always, he could hear a thousand sounds, could feel the ten thousand strands of the air itself eddy around his scrabbling fingers, but there was more. His mind remained dark, but there were . . . layers to the darkness, shapes that were not shapes, form etched into the formless void left by his stolen sight.
Hemlock boughs?
Rotted pine?
The swift flick of a bat’s wing in passage?
He didn’t see them—there was nothing to see in the unending dark—he knew them.
Bruised and baffled, he tested the wound at his side. It continued to weep blood. It should have killed him, but he was not dead.
“How?” he demanded of the darkness.
No reply, just the slap of chop on the rock, the leaves shifting in the breeze, and beneath, the distant sobbing and cries left behind by the battle.
“How?” he demanded again, forcing himself to his feet.
As if in reply, threaded on the wind: the long, low cry of the owl.
Valyn closed his eyes and breathed. The wound at his side stretched, then tore, but he kept breathing in, hauling the cold night air into his lungs until he felt that he would burst, tasting it as it passed his tongue, drawing it through his nose, in and in, sifting the smells.
Moss and rotted leaves, balsam and wet rock, dead fish farther off, and smoke and steel and thousands of gallons of blood slicked on the lake. Deeper. Horseflesh, dead and alive, vomit and piss, festering wounds . . . Deeper. A thousand thousand hair-thin strands shifting and tangling until . . .
There.
Leather and sweat. Whisper of nitre. Anger.
Gwenna.
Copper and steel, wet wool and wariness.
Talal.
Blood and cold, resin and steel.
Annick.
Alive. All three. Though how he knew he could not say.
Lungs burning, he blew out the great breath, sagging into a pine’s jagged limbs.
When he had the strength, he tried a step, another, then tripped on an unseen snag and pitched forward. Pain like lightning up his arm. He stood again, stumbled a few steps, knew too late a tree stood in his way even as the broken branch bit into his shoulder, tossing him to the uneven ground.
It was pointless. The whole fucking thing was pointless. He couldn’t smell anyone, not at this distance. Certainly couldn’t sort his own Wing from the scents scribbled across his mind. He couldn’t see. His eyes were gone.
“You’re losing your mind,” he screamed, heedless of who might hear. “You don’t even know how to die.” His eyes wept hot blood. “Quit with the fucking bullshit. Just quit! Just lie down!”
Again, the owl’s cry.
He listened to it fade, then shook his head.
“I’m done,” he said dully, the rage gone, snuffed out. Everything hurt. Everything wanted to quit. His hands hung wooden and useless at his sides. “I’m through getting up. I’m done.”
He took a long, unsteady breath, stared at the dark shapes sculpted from the deeper darkness, clamped a hand over the wound at his side, and got up.
GODS AND RACES, AS UNDERSTOOD BY THE CITIZENS OF ANNUR
RACES
Nevariim—Immortal, beautiful, bucolic. Foes of the Csestriim. Extinct thousands of years before the appearance of humans. Likely apocryphal.
Csestriim—Immortal, vicious, emotionless. Responsible for the creation of civilization and the study of science and medicine. Destroyed by humans. Extinct thousands of years.
Human—Identical in appearance to the Csestriim, but mortal, subject to emotion.
THE OLD GODS, IN ORDER OF ANTIQUITY
Blank God, the—The oldest, predating creation. Venerated by the Shin monks.
Ae—Consort to the Blank God, the Goddess of Creation, responsible for all that is.
Astar’ren—Goddess of Law, Mother of Order and Structure. Called the Spider by some, although the adherents of Kaveraa also claim that title for their own goddess.
Pta—Lord of Chaos, disorder, and randomness. Believed by some to be a simple trickster, by others, a destructive and indifferent force.
Intarra—Lady of Light, Goddess of Fire, starlight, and the sun. Also the patron of the Malkeenian Emperors of Annur, who claim her as a distant ancestor.
Hull—The Owl King, the Bat, Lord of the Darkness, Lord of the Night, aegis of the Kettral, patron of thieves.
Bedisa—Goddess of Birth, she who weaves the souls of all living creatures.
Ananshael—God of Death, the Lord of Bones, who unknits the weaving of his consort, Bedisa, consigning all living creatures to oblivion. Worshipped by the Skullsworn in Rassambur.
Ciena—Goddess of Pleasure, believed by some to be the mother of the young gods.
Meshkent—The Cat, the Lord of Pain and Cries, consort of Ciena, believed by some to be the father of the young gods. Worshipped by the Urghul, some Manjari, and the jungle tribes.
THE YOUNG GODS, ALL COEVAL WITH HUMANITY
Eira—Goddess of Love and mercy.
Maat—Lord of Rage and hate.
Kaveraa—Lady of Terror, Mistress of Fear.
Heqet—God of Courage and battle.
Orella—Goddess of Hope.
Orilon—God of Despair.
BY BRIAN STAVELEY
The Emperor’s Blades
The Providence of Fire
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Last time, I made a list of names.
It seemed like the right approach, given that so many people had helped me in so many ways as I was writing The Emperor’s Blades. This book is even bigger, and so one might expect a longer list, an even greater catalogue of names, but I’ve grown a bit suspicious of lists.
To make a list in the acknowledgments of a book is to say, I know my debts. And the truth is, I don’t, not even half of them. For every great idea that I c
an trace to an actual person, to a specific conversation over beers, there are scores, hundreds of wonderful thoughts that people—some friends, some utter strangers, some in writing, some in casual conversation—have laid into my arms like little babies.
I’ve raised these ideas as though they were mine, tried to take good care of them, tucked them tight between the covers of this book. Some of them have lived with me a long time, and I’ve grown incredibly fond of them, possessive even, so much so that it takes the occasion of this formal acknowledgment to tell the truth: I don’t know where they all came from.
Now, as they head back out into the world, I like to imagine that although they might be frightened at first, they will grow increasingly delighted at the sheer size of it all, the color, the freedom, that they might recognize the majesty of the place they came from. The world is so much larger than one writer’s mind, and though these ideas have lived with me awhile, I was never their final home.
First published 2015 by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
First published in the UK 2015 by Tor
This electronic edition published 2014 by Tor
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ISBN 978-0-230-77044-7
Copyright © Brian Staveley, 2015
Map artwork by Isaac Stewart
The right of Brian Staveley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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