Fall of Light

by Steven Erikson

  ‘As for your soldiers, why, I would think each dreams an identical dream – no different from your own. A retinue of servants for each soldier, slaves even, as proof of that “recognition” you so desire. Every ploughed field will sprout some new estate, as your beloved soldiers scramble to carve out their rightful place in the new scheme. As for the peasants, why, their lives will not change. They were never meant to change, not by your reckoning, in any case. You would shake the order, but not so much as to send the framework down into crashing ruin. This war of yours, Hunn Raal, is but a shuffling of the pieces. That and no more.’

  ‘And what is it that you seek, High Priestess, if not the same, as you elbow your way to the table?’ He snorted behind his cup. ‘You dance well, but it is in the same fire as the rest of us.’

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘You can have that table, Hunn Raal, and all the new but grubby faces around it. What I seek is a new place, a new realm, in fact. One where Light rules, and Dark has no claim. I will make it here, in Neret Sorr.’

  ‘That wins us nothing, Syntara. They will marry. There will be unification through balance, Dark upon one side, Light upon the other.’ His expression grew ugly. ‘Now you sit here, seeking to change what we agreed upon, and I like it not.’

  She narrowed her gaze on him. ‘I sense how the power of my gift now infuses you,’ she said. ‘Who would have thought that Hunn Raal, this rough, rarely sober captain of the Legion, should find in himself a burgeoning sorcery? By title you should name yourself warlock and be done with it.’

  He laughed, collecting up the wine jug and leaning back on the cushions. He poured his cup full once more. ‘I’d wondered if you knew. It is … interesting. I explore it, but cautiously, of course. Risky to be headlong in such matters, as I am sure you have discovered.’

  ‘My comprehension is absolute,’ Syntara replied. ‘So much so that I advise you to be most careful in that exploration, Hunn Raal. You may in ignorance unleash something you cannot hope to control.’

  ‘Abyss take me, Syntara, but you have grown arrogant. Young women come to you, shining with dreams of a better future for themselves, for their wretched lives, and you set most of them to scullery, to waiting on you and your guests. Your High House Light looks suspiciously similar to every other noble household, and yet here you sit, spouting bland pretensions to justify your – apparently – near universal contempt for everyone else.’ He paused, drank deep, and then said, ‘I see now what Lanear saw in you. The beauty of your flesh belies an ugly soul, Syntara.’

  ‘No longer,’ she snapped. ‘I am purged. Reborn.’

  ‘Repeated, more like,’ he said, smirking.

  There would come a time, possibly soon, when she would no longer need this man. The notion calmed her down. ‘You have not yet asked, Hunn Raal.’

  ‘Asked what?’

  ‘The maid. Do you want her tonight? If so, she’s yours.’

  He set the jug and cup down, and then rose, carefully. ‘A man has needs,’ he muttered.

  She nodded. ‘I’ll send her to your chambers, then. You may have her, for a day or two. But no longer, lest the dishes pile up.’

  He stared down at her with his red-rimmed eyes. ‘You say I should name myself warlock, Syntara. I would offer some advice of my own, to you. You are not alone in this newfound power. Best, I think, we work together. Urusander weds Mother Dark. He is given the title of Father Light. The civil war ends on that day. As for you and Emral Lanear, well, fight with your temples all you want, just keep it civil.’

  She said nothing as he made his way out. Drunks made dangerous adversaries indeed. No matter. Warlock or no, he would never be her match.

  In her mind, she unleashed a momentary spasm of power. A side door was pushed open almost immediately thereafter, and the serving girl stumbled into the chamber, her eyes wide and frightened.

  ‘Yes,’ murmured Syntara, ‘that was me. Now, come closer. I need to look at your soul.’

  Even terror could not win out against Syntara’s will. She found the girl’s soul, and crushed the life from it. In its place, she planted the seed of herself, a small thing, that would control its newfound body, and lead it into untold horrors. Through the girl’s eyes now, Syntara could look out, whenever she chose to, and not even Hunn Raal would be the wiser.

  ‘Now then, warlock,’ she said in a low whisper, ‘let’s see the depths of your appetites, shall we? Things to use, things to abuse, things to twist my way.’

  Syntara sent the girl to the captain’s quarters.

  There was value in keeping such creatures close at hand.

  Lowborn, ignorant. Such a pathetic soul, so easily snuffed out. No great loss.

  She would raise a temple, here in Neret Sorr. And set into its floor a Terondai, artfully recreating the sun and its torrid gift of fire. An emblem of gold and silver, a symbol of such wealth as to make kings ill. A temple to house a thousand priestesses, two thousand servants. And in the central chamber, she would raise a throne.

  The marriage was doomed. There was not enough left in Vatha Urusander to assure a proper balance. Perhaps, she reflected, he had never been what others believed him to be. There was little of value in commanding an army: the talents required seemed few, and the measure of respect accorded it woefully out of proportion.

  One need only look at Hunn Raal to see the truth of that. His talent, such as it was, served to feed the ambitions of others, clothed in the trappings of an acceptable violence. When she looked upon soldiers, she saw them as children, still trapped in their games of heroism, triumph, and great causes. But so much of that was delusion. Heroes fell into their heroism, mostly by accident. The triumphs were short-lived and, ultimately, changed nothing, which made those triumphs hollow. As for great causes, well, how often were they revealed to be little more than personal aggrandizement? The elevation of stature, the tidal swell of adoration, the penile gush of glory.

  Pray the servants tiptoe in to clean away the sordid stains, once that blazing light was past.

  The young woman would please him, she knew. Every hero of the male frame needed his compliant beauty, a creature excited by the stench of old blood on his hands, thrilled to see his wake where bodies lay piled in heaps. Why, she all but drooled at the prospect of his strong arms about her.

  The heroes marched back and forth in the courtyard below, day after day, clanking and boisterous in this serious posturing. They each stood, in ranks or alone, with blades within easy reach. This announced to all their dangerous selves. No, she understood them well enough. And like the fate awaiting Vatha Urusander, all would soon come to comprehend their own irrelevance.

  There has never been an age of heroes, or not one of which the poets sing in their epic tales. Rather, we but witness one age upon another, and another, each one identical in every detail but for the faces – and even those faces blur into sameness after a time. In recognizing that, is it any wonder Kadaspala went mad?

  Oh, they might point to the slaughter, the murder of his sister. But I believe it to be another kind of death that has broken our age’s greatest painter of portraits. When at last he realized that every face was the same. And it looked out at him, ox-dull, belligerent and unchanging. And what were once virtues were suddenly revealed for what they truly were: pride and pomp, preening and pretence.

  The age of heroes comes as a belief, and leaves unseen, as a conviction. Not even witnessed, it then finds resurrection in the past, the only realm that it can call home.

  There was nothing to weep for, no true loss to bemoan.

  She would raise a temple to Light, and by that Light she would reveal unwelcome truths, and by that Light, there would be no place to hide. And then, my friends, in that new age where heroes cannot be found, let us see what glory you might win.

  But fear not. I will give you a thousand mindless virgins to use. Of them, there is an inexhaustible supply.

  With my temple and the new age it will birth, I can offer this promise – a world where n
o lies can thrive, not even the ones you whisper to yourself. Only truth.

  Urusander wants pure justice? Well then, in the name of Light, I shall deliver it.

  * * *

  With sufficient pressure, even the most pastoral of communities could crack. Too many strangers, too many new and unpleasant currents of power, or threat, and neighbours came to acquire cruel habits. Suspicion and resentment thrived, and the unseen torrent that rushed deep, stirring up sediments, held all the violence waiting to happen.

  The town beneath Urusander’s keep had suffered too long. It had reeled to unexpected deaths, buckled to sudden losses, and the crowds of unfamiliar faces, most of them arrogant and contemptuous, turned moods dark and foul.

  Captain Serap avoided the Legion camps surrounding the town. Outwardly, she was contending with the grief of two dead sisters, and so her fellow soldiers remained at a distance, and this well suited her. If indeed she was suffering the loss of loved ones, it felt vague, almost formless. She had found a tavern on the high street, which, while it occasionally played host to off-duty soldiers, was more often than not crowded with villagers, whose brooding resentment hung thick and bitter in the smoky air.

  It was an atmosphere she welcomed; the heavy swirl of ill humour was now something she could wear, like a winter cloak, and beneath its suffocating weight she was muffled, muted inside and out.

  There was no desire to get drunk. No particular need for numb oblivion, and the wild flare of a night’s worth of lust, desire, and thrashing limbs in one of the upstairs rooms ranked low in her list of needs.

  The only gift she sought – the one she had found in this place – was solitude. It had always struck her as odd, how so many of her fellow soldiers feared isolation, as if stranded upon a tiny island with only their own self for company. Moments existed to be rushed through, filled to the brim with … with whatever. Anything within reach, in fact. Conversations crowded with nothing of worth; games where knucklebones rolled and bounced and wagers were made in bold gesture or wild shout; the hard muscle pulled close, or soft flesh depending on one’s tastes. A few might sit alone, working on knife edges or whatnot, while still others muttered a lifetime’s worth of confessions into their ale tankards, nodding as they gauged the worth of every returning echo. But all that this did was mark the time passed and make it nothing more than something to be filled.

  Lest the silence begin speaking.

  It was astonishing, Serap reminded herself, just how much the silence had to say, when given the chance.

  Sisters made a community, tightly bound and conspiratorial. That community mocked every need for solitude, if only to fend off the threat it posed. She should have missed it more than she did. Instead, she felt cut loose, set adrift, and now she floated on fog-bound water, where barely a ripple marred the blank surface.

  It was a strange realm, this muttering silence, this reflective pool that seemed so dismissive of pity, grief, and commiseration. She had no desire to reach down to break the mirrored perfection of the calm surrounding her. It was enough, she felt, to simply listen.

  Risp died in battle, far off to the west. Her first battle. Sevegg had died just outside Neret Sorr, slain by a wounded officer of the Wardens. That, too, had been her first battle. There were details, in the skein of war, which rarely earned mention – the truth of so many who died doing so in their first ever battle. It hinted too much of something unpleasant, something cruel lying in wait beyond the limits of civil contemplation. The silence whispered it to those who dared listen. ‘It is to do, darling, with the sending of innocents to war.’

  Well, of course. Who would do such a thing?

  ‘They do. Over and over again. Training is but the thinnest patina. The innocence remains. Even as each young soldier’s imagination builds proper scenes for what is to come, the innocence remains. Now then, sweet children, draw that blade and march into the press.

  ‘Here arrives the first shock. Faces twisted with intent. Others arrayed before you, each one seeking to end your life. Your life! What has happened here? How can this be?’

  Oh, it could be. It was. None of the trappings, girded and stout, could truly hide the white, unstained banners carried by so many into battle.

  But to think on it was to feel one’s own heart breaking, breaking and breaking. ‘Never mind those young faces striving to look fierce, or dangerous. Never mind the mimicry they attempt, to appear wizened, wearied, unaffected. All of that, darling, is a mask turned both inward and out, convincing neither. Focus with purpose here, upon those white, pristine banners.

  ‘And think, if you dare, of those who sent them into battle. Think, Serap, as I cannot. Must not. But if we draw too close, you and me, if we press on with this silent conversation, one of us will flinch in the end. And flee.

  ‘To silence’s end, closed out with empty conversations, or tankards of ale, or men into whose lap you will slide with laughter and promise. Into company, then, and the filling of this moment. Filling unto bursting, eager to flow over into the next moment, and the next…’

  Solitude demanded courage. She knew that now. The crazed revellers displayed their cowardice in that wild and insistent commune with anything and everything: that incessant need to blend in, and among, and keep forever at bay the howling silence of being alone. But she would not yield to contempt, for she could see in their need something she knew well.

  Despair.

  Despair is the secret language of every generation in waiting. And you find it in the face of every innocent soul, as it marches into its embattled future. While the rest of us, innocent no longer, look on with blank, indifferent eyes.

  She sat alone at her table, in the gloom and smoke, and on all sides, white banners waved in the silence.

  A short while later, two soldiers entered the tavern. There had been a time, not long ago, when Urusander’s discipline was like a fist closed about his legion. Propriety and courtesy ruled the behaviour of his charges, when on duty or not.

  But Hunn Raal was no Vatha Urusander. The lessons the captain had learned from his battles in the past fell upon the wrong side of propriety, and made mockery of courtesy. Of course, he was far from alone in this sour aftermath, where cynicism and contempt stalked the veteran soldier, and if she gave it some thought, Serap found herself skirting dangerous notions about the worth of things, and the true cost of war.

  The newcomers swaggered in, inviting challenge. They were not entirely sober, but neither were they as drunk as they let on.

  Settled back in her chair, in shadows, Serap remained undetected by the two men as they strode to the bar.

  ‘I smell Deniers,’ one of the soldiers said, gesturing at the barkeep. ‘Ale, and none of that watered-down piss you’re offering everyone else in here.’

  ‘There’s but one keg,’ the barkeep said, shrugging. ‘If you don’t like what I serve, you can always leave.’

  The other soldier grunted a laugh. ‘Aye, we could. Not saying we will, though.’

  Farmhands at a nearby table were pushing back their chairs. Brothers, Serap decided, four in all. Burly, too poor to drink enough to get drunk, they now stirred, disgruntled as bears.

  The barkeep set two tankards down and asked for payment, but neither soldier offered up any coins. They collected their tankards and drank.

  The four brothers now stood, and the scrape of chairs brought the two soldiers around. Both men were smiling as they reached for their swords.

  ‘Want to play, then?’ the first soldier asked, drawing his blade.

  On seeing the weapon, the brothers hesitated at their table. None carried weapons of any sort.

  Serap rose, stepped out from the gloom. When the soldiers saw her, their expressions went flat. She approached them.

  ‘Sir,’ the second soldier said. ‘It wasn’t going anywhere.’

  ‘Oh but it was,’ Serap replied. ‘It was going right where you wanted it to go. How many are waiting outside?’

  The man started, and then of
fered her a lopsided grin. ‘There’s been rumours, sir, of Deniers, hanging out in the town. Spies.’

  The first soldier added, ‘Had a squad-mate get stabbed nearby, sir, just the other night. He never saw who jumped him. We’re fishing for knives, that’s all.’

  ‘Hebla got himself stuck by a fellow soldier,’ Serap said. ‘The man cheats at knuckles, a game none of the locals can afford to play with Legion soldiers. What company are you two in?’

  ‘Ninth, sir, in Hallyd Bahann’s Silvers.’

  ‘His Silvers.’ Serap smiled. ‘How Hallyd likes his pompous nicknames.’

  The second soldier said, ‘We’ll be sure to let our captain know how you feel about them nicknames, sir.’

  ‘Is that a prick of the blade, soldier? Well then, when you do tell Hallyd, be sure to hang around, in case your mention reminds him of when I laughed outright in his face. Silvers, Golds! Why not shave your heads and call yourself Pearls? Or, for the more useless ones in your company, the Shiny Rocks? Well, I’m afraid my laughter snapped his temper, the poor man. Easily done, of course, as you will find.’

  She watched them, noting how both men struggled to work out how they might respond to her. The prospect of violence was not far away. After all, if this officer had insulted their commander, might they not earn Hallyd’s backing should that officer’s blood be spilled? Indeed, had she not just provoked them, calling into question their company’s honour?

  When the first soldier adjusted the grip of his sword, Serap smiled and stepped close to him, one hand reaching up as if to caress the side of his face. Seeing his confusion, her smile broadened, even as she drove her knee up and into his crotch.

  Whatever crunched there sent the man to the filthy floor like a dropped sack of turnips.

  Serap was already turning, sending her left elbow into the face of the second soldier, breaking his nose. The rush of pleasure she felt as the man’s head snapped back was almost alarming. In a flash, she realized that her own fury had been building for some time, seeking an outlet – any outlet.

  She was now moving back, to acquire the proper distance. A kick with the side of her boot, at a downward angle, to strike the brokennosed soldier’s left leg, just below the knee, yielded another satisfying pop. Howling, the man collapsed.