There could be wonder and joy among children, too. Too easy to see naught but gloom, wasn’t it? Wonder and joy. Naïve creations of beauty. He was not blind to such things, and, like any god, he understood that such gifts were pleas for mercy. An invitation to indulge that reprehensible host of flaws. Art and genius, compassion and passion, they were as islands assailed on all sides. But no island lived for ever. The black, writhing, worm-filled seas ever rose higher. And sooner or later, the hungry storms ate their fill.
Nature might well struggle for balance. And perhaps the egregious imbalance Ditch thought he perceived in his kind was but an illusion, and redress waited, stretched out to match the extremity. A fall as sudden and ferocious as the rise.
In his state of dreaming, it did not occur to him that his dreams were not his own, that this harsh cant of judgement belonged to a tyrant or even a god, or to one such as himself if madness had taken hold. But he was not mad, and nor was he a tyrant, and for all his natural inclination (natural to almost everyone) to wish for true justice he was, after all, wise enough to know the vulnerability of moral notions, the ease with which they were corrupted. Was he dreaming, then, the dreams of a god?
Blind as Kadaspala was, he could sense far too much of Ditch’s visions – he could feel the incandescent rage in the flicker of the man’s eyelids, the heat of his breath, the ripples of tautness washing over his face. Oh, this unconscious wizard stalked an unseen world, filled with outrage and fury, with the hunger for retribution.
There were so many paths to godhood. Kadaspala was certain of that. So many paths, so many paths. Refuse to die, refuse to surrender, refuse to die and refuse to surrender and that was one path, stumbled on to without true intent, without even wanting it, and these gods were the bemused ones, the reluctant ones. They were best left alone, for to prod them awake was to risk apocalypse. Reluctant power was the deadliest power of them all, for the anger behind it was long stoked. Long stoked and stoked long and long, so best leave them leave them leave them alone.
Other gods were called into being and the nature of that call took countless forms. A convulsion of natural forces, until the very sludge awakens. Wherever discordant elements clashed, the possibility was born. Life. Intent. Desire and need. But these too were accidental things, in as much as anything could be accidental when all the particles necessary for creation abounded, as they surely did. There were other ways of calling a god into being.
Gather a host of words, a host of words. Gather a host of words. Make them, make them, make them what? Physical, yes, make them physical, from the empty ether to the incision in clay, the stain on stone, the ink on skin. Physical, because the physical created – by its very nature before the eye (or the inner eye) – created and created patterns. And they could be played with played with played with. In numbers and sigils, in astral proportions. They could be coded inside codes inside codes until something is rendered, something both beautiful and absolute. Beautiful in its absoluteness. In its absolution, in its absolved essence, a thing of beauty.
Understand, won’t you, the truth of patterns, how pattern finds truth in the tension of juxtaposition, in the game of meaning meaning the game which is the perfect pattern of language in the guise of imperfection – but what value any of this any of this any of this?
The value is the body of text (hah, the body – the bodies) that in its absoluteness becomes sacred, and in sacredness becomes all that it portrays in its convivial ordering of the essentially meaningless. Patterns where none existed before. Creation from nothing. Awakening from absence of self. And what is the word the beautiful word the precious word and the perfect word that starts the game starts everything everything everything?
Why, the word is birth.
Bodies of text, all these bodies, all this flesh and the ink and the words and the words oh the words. Bodies and bodies, patterns inside patterns, lives and lives and lives all dreaming . . . all dreaming one dream.
One dream. One dream one dream one one one dream.
One.
A dream of justice.
‘Let the cosmos quake,’ Kadaspala whispered as he etched sigil inside sigil inside sigil, as he wove language and meaning, as the ink rode the piercing and flowed beneath skin pocket by pocket. ‘Quake and quiver, whimper and quaver. A god oh a god yes a god now a god soon a god a god awakens. Lives and lives cut down one and all, cut down, yes, by judgement’s sharp edge – did we deserve it? Did we earn the punishment? Are any of us innocent, any of us at all? Not likely not likely not likely. So, lives and lives and none none none of us did not receive precisely what we deserved.
‘Do you understand? Godling, to you I speak. Listen listen listen well. We are what you come from. The punished, the punished, the victims of justice, the victims of our own stupidity, yes, and who could say that none of us has learned our lesson? Who can say that? Look oh look oh look where we are! Godling, here is your soul, writ in flesh, in flesh, writ here by Kadaspala, who was once blind though he could see and now can see though he is blind. And am I not the very definition of sentience? Blind in life, I can see in death – the definition of mortality, my darling child, heed it and heed it come the moment you must act and decide and stand and sit in judgement. Heed and heed, godling, this eternal flaw.
‘And what, you will wonder, is written upon your soul? What is written here? Here upon the flesh of your soul? Ah, but that is the journey of your life, godling, to learn the language of your soul, to learn it to learn it even as you live it.
‘Soon, birth arrives. Soon, life awakens.
‘Soon, I make a god.’
And even now, the god dreams of justice. For, unlike Ditch, Kadaspala is indeed mad. His code struck to flesh is a code of laws. The laws from which the god shall be born. Consider that, consider that well.
In the context of, say, mercy . . .
She was out there, down in the basin, on her knees, head hanging, her torso weaving back and forth to some inner rhythm. After studying her yet again, Seerdomin, with a faint gasp, tore his gaze away – something it was getting ever harder to manage, for she was mesmerizing, this childwoman, this fount of corruption, and the notion that a woman’s fall could be so alluring, so perfectly sexual, left him horrified. By this language of invitation. By his own darkness.
Behind him, the Redeemer murmured, ‘Her power grows. Her power over you, Segda Travos.’
‘I do not want to be where she is.’
‘Don’t you?’
Seerdomin turned and eyed the god. ‘Self-awareness can be a curse.’
‘A necessary one.’
‘I suppose so,’ he conceded.
‘Will you still fight her, Segda Travos?’
‘I think so, yes.’
‘Why?’
Seerdomin bared his teeth. ‘Don’t you start with me, Redeemer. The enemy never questions motivations – the enemy doesn’t chew the ground out beneath its own feet.’ He jabbed a finger back at the woman kneeling in the basin. ‘She has no questions. No doubts. What she has instead is strength. Power.’
‘That is true,’ said the Redeemer. ‘All of it. It is why those haunted by uncertainty must ever retreat. They cannot stand before the self-righteous. Instead, they must slink away, they must hide, they must slip behind the enemy’s lines—’ ‘Where every damned one of them is hunted down and silenced – no, Redeemer, you forget, I lived in a tyranny. I kicked in doors. I dragged people away. Do you truly believe unbelievers will be tolerated? Scepticism is a criminal act.
Wave the standard or someone else will, and they’ll be coming for you. Redeemer, I have looked in the eyes of my enemy, and they are hard, cold, emptied of everything but hate. I have, yes, seen my own reflection – it haunts me still.’
No further words were exchanged then. Seerdomin looked back down to that woman, the High Priestess who had once been Salind. She was naught but a tool, now, a weapon of some greater force’s will, its hunger. The same force, he now suspected, that drove nations to w
ar, that drove husbands to kill wives and wives to kill husbands. That could take even the soul of a god and crush it into subservience.
When will you rise, Salind? When will you come for me?
This was not the afterlife he had imagined. My fighting should be over. My every need made meaningless, the pain of thoughts for ever silenced.
Is not death’s gift indifference? Blissful, perfect indifference?
She swayed back and forth, gathering strength as only the surrendered could do.
Monkrat walked through the pilgrim camp. Dishevelled as it had once been, now it looked as if a tornado had ripped through it. Tents had sagged; shacks leaned perilously close to collapse. There was rubbish everywhere. The few children still alive after being so long abandoned watched him walk past with haunted eyes peering out from filth-streaked faces. Sores ate into their drawn lips. Their bellies were swollen under the rags. There was nothing to be done for them, and even if there was, Monkrat was not the man to do it. In his mind he had left humanity behind long ago. There was no kinship to nip at his heart. Every fool the world over was on his or her own, or they were slaves. These were the only two states of being – every other one was a lie. And Monkrat had no desire to become a slave, as much as Gradithan or saemankelyk might want that.
No, he would remain his own world. It was easier that way. Ease was important. Ease was all that mattered.
Soon, he knew, he would have to escape this madness. Gradithan’s ambitions had lost all perspective – the curse of kelyk. He talked now incessantly of the coming of the Dying God, the imminent end of all things and the glorious rebirth to follow. People talking like that disgusted Monkrat. They repeated themselves so often it soon became grossly obvious that their words were wishes and the wish was that their words might prove true. Round and round, all that wasted breath. The mind so liked to go round and round, so liked that familiar track, the familiarity of it. Round and round, and each time round the mind was just that much stupider. Increment by increment, the range of thoughts narrower, the path underfoot more deeply trenched – he had even noted how the vocabulary diminished, as uneasy notions were cast away and all the words associated with them, too. The circular track became a mantra, the mantra a proclamation of stupid wishes that things could be as they wanted them, that in fact they were as they wanted them.
Fanaticism was so popular. There had to be a reason for that, didn’t there? Some vast reward to the end of thinking, some great bliss to the blessing of idiocy. Well, Monkrat trusted none of that. He knew how to think for himself and that was all he knew so why give it up? He’d yet to hear an argument that could convince him – but of course, fanatics didn’t use arguments, did they? No, just that fixed gaze, the threat, the reason to fear.
Aye, he’d had enough. Gods below, he was actually longing for the city where he had been born. There in the shadow of Mock’s Hold, and that blackwater bay of the harbour where slept a demon, half buried in mud and tumbled ballast stones. And who knew, maybe there was no one left there to recognize him – and why would they in any case? His old name was on the toll of the fallen, after all, and beside it was Blackdog Wood, 1159 Burn’s Sleep. The Bridgeburners were gone, dead, destroyed in Pale with the remnants mopped up here at Black Coral. But he’d been a casualty long before then, and the years since then had been damned hard – no, it wasn’t likely that he’d be recognized.
Yes, Malaz City sounded sweet now, as he walked this wretched camp’s main street, the squalling of gulls loud in his ears.
Gradithan, you’ve lost it.
There won’t be any vengeance on the Tiste Andii. Not for me, not for you. It was a stupid idea and now it’s gone too far.
History wasn’t worth reliving. He understood that now. But people never learned that – they never fucking learned that, did they? Round and round.
A fallen pilgrim stumbled out from between two hovels, brown-smeared chin and murky eyes swimming in some dubious rapture painting its lie behind them. He wanted to kick the brainless idiot between the legs. He wanted to stomp on the fool’s skull and see the shit-coloured sludge spill out. He wanted every child to watch him do it, too, so they’d realize, so they’d run for their lives.
Not that he cared.
‘High Priestess.’
She looked up, then rose from behind her desk, came round with a gathering of her robes, and then bowed. ‘Son of Darkness, welcome. Did we have anything arranged?’
His smile was wry. ‘Do we ever?’
‘Please,’ she said, ‘do come in. I will send for wine and—’
‘No need on my account, High Priestess.’ Anomander Rake walked into the small office, eyed the two chairs and then selected the least ornate one to sit down in. He stretched out his legs, fingers lacing together on his lap, and eyed her speculatively.
She raised her arms, ‘Shall I dance?’
‘Shall I sing?’
‘Abyss take me, no. Please.’
‘Do sit down,’ said Rake, indicating the other chair.
She did so, keeping her back straight, a silent question lifting her eyebrows.
He continued watching her.
She let out a breath and slumped back. ‘All right, then.
I’m relaxing. See?’
‘You have ever been my favourite,’ he said, looking away.
‘Your favourite what?’
‘High Priestess, of course. What else might I be thinking?’
‘Well, that is the eternal question, isn’t it?’
‘One too many people spend too much time worrying about.’
‘You cannot be serious, Anomander.’
He seemed to be studying her desk – not the things scattered on its surface, but the desk itself. ‘That’s too small for you,’ he pronounced.
She glanced at it. ‘You are deceived, alas. It’s my disorganization that’s too big. Give me a desk the size of a concourse and I’ll still fill it up with junk.’
‘Then it must be your mind that is too big, High Priestess.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘there is so little to think about and so much time.’ She fluttered a hand. ‘If my thoughts have become oversized it’s only out of indolence.’ Her gaze sharpened. ‘And we have become so indolent, haven’t we?’
‘She has been turned away for a long time,’ Anomander Rake said. ‘That I allowed all of you to turn instead to me was ever a dubious enterprise.’
‘You made no effort to muster worship, Son of Darkness, and that is what made it dubious.’
One brow lifted. ‘Not my obvious flaws?’
‘And Mother Dark is without flaws? No, the Tiste Andii were never foolish enough to force upon our icons the impossibility of perfection.’
‘“Icons”,’ said Anomander Rake, frowning as he continued studying the desk.
‘Is that the wrong word? I think not.’
‘And that is why I rejected the notion of worship.’
‘Why?’
‘Because, sooner or later, the believers shatter their icons.’
She grunted, and thought about that for a time, before sighing and nodding. ‘A hundred fallen, forgotten civilizations, yes. And in the ruins all those statues . . . with their faces chopped off. The loss of faith is ever violent, it seems.’
‘Ours was.’
The statement stung her. ‘Ah, we are not so different then, after all. What a depressing realization.’
‘Endest Silann,’ he said.
‘Your stare is making the legs of my desk tremble, Lord Rake – am I so unpleasant that you dare not rest eyes upon me?’
He slowly turned his head and settled his gaze upon her.
And seeing all that was in his eyes almost made her flinch, and she understood, all at once, the mercy he had been giving her – with his face turned away, with his eyes veiled by distraction. But then she had asked for his regard, as much out of vanity as the secret pleasure of her attraction to him – she could not now break this connection. Marshalling her resolv
e, she said, ‘Endest Silann, yes. The reason for this visit. I understand.’
‘He is convinced he was broken long ago, High Priestess. We both know it is not true.’
She nodded. ‘He proved that when he sustained Moon’s Spawn beneath the sea – proved it to everyone but himself.’
‘I reveal to him my confidence,’ said Rake, ‘and each time he . . . contracts. I cannot reach through, it seems, to bolster what I know is within him.’
‘Then it is his faith that is broken.’
He grimaced, made no reply.
‘When the time comes,’ she said, ‘I will be there. To do what I can. Although,’ she added, ‘that may not be much.’
‘You need not elaborate on the efficacy of your presence, High Priestess. We are speaking, as you said, of faith.’
‘And there need be no substance to it. Thank you.’
He glanced away once more, and this time the wry smile she had seen before played again across his features. ‘You were always my favourite,’ he said.
‘Me, or the desk you so seem to love?’
He rose and she did the same. ‘High Priestess,’ he said.
‘Son of Darkness,’ she returned, with another bow.
And out he went, leaving in his wake a sudden absence, an almost audible clap of displacement – but no, that was in her mind, a hint of something hovering there behind her memory of his face, his eyes and all that she had seen there.
Mother Dark, hear me. Heed me. You did not understand your son then. You do not understand him now.
Don’t you see? This was all Draconus’s doing.
‘This ain’t right,’ gasped Reccanto Ilk, each word spraying blood. ‘When it comes to screaming women, they should be leaving the bar, not trying to get in!’
The ragged hole the shrieking, snarling, jaw-snapping women had torn through the tavern’s door was jammed with arms stretching, fingers clutching, all reaching inward in a desperate attempt to tear through the barrier. Claws stabbed into the Trell’s tattooed shoulders and he ducked his head lower, grunting as the demons battered at the door, planks splintering – but that Trell was one strong bastard, and he was holding ‘em back, as he had been doing since that first rush that nearly saw Reccanto’s precious head get torn off.
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