Fall of Light

by Steven Erikson

  ‘Wreneck.’

  ‘Milord?’

  ‘When your time comes … for vengeance. Find me.’

  ‘I don’t need any help. They stuck a sword in me and I didn’t die. They can try it again and I still won’t die. My promise keeps me alive. When you become a man, you learn to do what you say you will do. That’s what makes you a man.’

  ‘Alas, there are far fewer men in the world than you might think, Wreneck.’

  ‘But I’m one.’

  ‘I believe you,’ Lord Anomander replied. ‘But understand my offer before you reject it. When you find those rapists and murderers, they will be in a cohort, in Urusander’s Legion. There may well be a thousand soldiers between you and them. I will clear your path, Wreneck.’

  Wreneck stared at the First Son. ‘But, milord, I am going to do it at night, when they’re sleeping.’

  Caladan Brood grunted a laugh, and then spat into the fire. ‘It is a clever man who thinks hard on how to achieve his promise.’

  ‘I am loath to risk you, Wreneck. Find me in any case, and we can discuss the necessary tactics.’

  ‘You have no time for me, milord.’

  ‘You are a citizen of Kurald Galain. Of course I have time for you.’

  Wreneck didn’t understand that; he was not sure what the word ‘citizen’ meant. The bowl was empty. He set it down and pulled the furs closer about him again.

  ‘It nears dusk,’ said Lord Anomander. ‘Sleep, Wreneck. Tomorrow, we take you to Dracons Keep.’

  ‘And I will see again my promise to Draconus,’ Caladan Brood said.

  ‘Your meaning?’

  ‘Oh, nothing of import, First Son.’

  Wreneck settled back, warm inside and out, with only the occasional cramp from his stomach. He thought about Dark, and Light, and Creation, and Chaos. They struck him as big things, ideas that men such as Lord Anomander and Caladan Brood would speak of when they thought no one else was listening. He tried to imagine himself talking about such matters, when he was older, when the life he had lived had been set aside and a new life had taken its place. In that new life, he would think about serious things, but not, he suspected, things like Dark and Light and Creation and Chaos, because with those things, it sounded too easy to push them away, far enough away to keep them from hurting. No, the serious things he would think about, he decided as he closed his eyes, would be ones that mattered. Ones that worked to make him a better man, a man not afraid of feelings.

  He remembered his wail for his ma, after all the killing was over with and he was still alive and Jinia was hurt. That cry seemed to have come from a child, from Wreneck the child, but it hadn’t. Instead, it had been the birth-cry of a man, the man that Wreneck had become, and the man that he now was.

  The notion sent a shiver through him, though he wasn’t sure why. But it didn’t feel made up. It felt true, even if he wasn’t sure what made it true. But one thing I now know. I made it through all of childhood, and not once did I learn about surrendering.

  I swam across the icy stream without even knowing it, and now I am safe again, for a time. Here with Lord Anomander, who is the First Son of Mother Dark. And with the Azathanai, who even if he’s not good for anything else can at least make a fine bowl of broth.

  He closed his eyes, and moments later was fast asleep.

  In his dreams, the dying gods awaited him. They seemed without number. He stood in their midst, confused and wondering. They were, one and all, kneeling to him.

  * * *

  There was an old memory, but it was the kind that never went away, and ever seemed closer than one would expect, given the span of years that had passed since. There had been a column, filled with families, their livestock, and wagons heaped with everything that would be needed to break land and build homes. Ivis was young, just one more dust-covered child with more energy than sense. They had been journeying into the north, beyond the forest, and the horizon was far away. Ivis remembered his wonder at that, as if the world had simply unfolded.

  They had passed old cairns and tracks worn into battered swaths by wild herds. There had been stones and boulders in rows, not parallel as might line a road, but converging, often on the southern slope of a rise. Some of the cairns had sprouted dead saplings, many of them toppled after the past winter, when the winds had been fierce. These saplings had no roots. They had been hacked at the base into rough points, and driven into the heaps of stone. The mystery of such a thing was more enticing to Ivis than whatever truth he might have discovered, with a few questions to any of the adults – in particular the hunters. Instead of runs and blinds and kill-sites, he had chosen reasons more ethereal for all the strange formations they had found on the vast plain.

  Gods stood tall, and with hands spread could command the sky. At night, the gleam of their eyes burned through the darkness with a cold light. And in looking down, they made clear their message: they were far away, and from that distance was born indifference. Still, once, long ago, these gods had not been far away. Indeed, they had sat with their mortal children, sharing the same fires. This was the age before the gods left the world, Ivis had told himself, before mortals had broken their hearts.

  The lines of boulders, the cairns upon the summits, the huge wheels – all of these had come in the wake of the gods’ leaving. The desperate mortals had looked up at the sky, witness to the dwindling fires of all that was now lost.

  It well suited a child’s mind to believe that the ones left behind, abandoned, would seek a new language, written in stone upon the plain, with which to call upon the gods. And, at least in the beginning of these notions, there had been little recognition of the desperation behind such efforts. The stars were far away, but not so far as to lose sight of the world below.

  The day had been bright, clear, when the Jhelarkan attacked the column. Invisible borders had been crossed by the homesteaders, although, as Ivis later understood, the Tiste were hardly ignorant of their transgression. Sometimes, among a people, there existed a certain arrogance. It had been built up, that arrogance, in a multitude of layers, making it strangely impregnable to the weaker virtues of fairness and respect. It spoke with deceit, and when that failed, with slaughter.

  But arrogance had a way of misunderstanding things. If the first Jhelarkan had seemed confused by notions of ownership; if they had not quite understood what it was that the Tiste expeditions were demanding, nor the claims they subsequently made – none of this was synonymous with weakness. In retrospect, Ivis now understood, the Jhelarkan had proved rather adept in grasping the new language thrust upon them, with its forts and outposts, its timber harvests and slaughtered beasts.

  A few shouts upon the other side of the column, and then screams, and Ivis, running back to the wagon where sat his mother and grandmother, his much younger cousins huddled in the protective clutch of arms that had, until that moment, done such a good job of holding off the cruelties of the world … Ivis, confused, frightened, seeing a horrifying shape lunge into the midst of his family, making the wagon rock, and another one, its huge jaws closing round the head of the ox in its traces, dragging the bellowing beast down on to its fetlocks.

  The blood that erupted from Ivis’s kin was like a sheet thrown out on the wind. The enormous wolf – soletaken – slaughtered everyone in the wagon. Then it was scrambling down, snarling and flinching at a spearthrust from a hunter Ivis could not see, and the refuge towards which the young boy had been running was but a heap of torn bodies.

  In his terror, he had run under the wagon, where he huddled. From above, the blood of his family drained down like rain between the slats, covering him.

  His memories of the rest of that attack were blurred, too vague to parse. The Jhelarkan had been a hunting pack turned war-band. They could easily have butchered everyone in the column. Instead, they had struck once, and then retreated. They had sought to deliver a message, in language most plain. Only years later, when the war had begun in earnest, did the Jhelarkan come to understand
that warnings never worked. Arrogance, after all, met such warnings with words like infamy. Arrogance responded with indignation. And this was the fuel for vengeance and retribution, the birth-cries of war, and the Tiste made it so, in ways wholly predictable and, he now understood, utterly contemptible.

  In the mind, death plays with the dead, to breed more death. The stronger death’s hold, the more foolish the mind. Why, I wonder, does history seem to be little more than a list of belligerent stupidities?

  How rare was it, he asked himself, that virtues changed the world? How brief and flitting such bright moments? But then, since when did love bend to reason? And how much vengeance is fed by the loss of someone dearly loved?

  The Jhelarkan lost the war. They lost their land. Righteousness was demonstrated with blood and battle. Justice was won with triumph, making a lie of both.

  In all of this was proved the indifference of the gods, and the language of stone boulders upon the plain was a language too simple to manage the complexities of the new world. His memory of that day, beyond even the murder of his family, belonged to the futility of the old ways. Those boulders no doubt still remained, serving now as monuments to failure. The Tiste claimed the land, and in a few short years the wild herds were all gone, and with the ground too poor for crops and too cold for livestock, the settlers eventually left their winnings, returning south.

  The servants had cleared the last of the plates and bowls from the table and jugs were brought to fill tankards with heady, steaming mulled wine. Ivis had said little during the meal, rebuffing efforts directed his way. His concentration had wavered from the conversations until his sense of them was lost, and in the fugue that followed, he let lassitude take hold. Some nights, words proved too much of an effort.

  He was, nevertheless, all too aware of Sandalath, seated upon his right. Impropriety was seductive. Unease and the notion of the forbidden proved spices to his desire. Still, he knew that he would do nothing, break no covenant. Barring the slaying of my lord’s daughters. The notion startled him, the truth of it shocking enough to sweep aside his lassitude.

  Yalad was speaking. ‘… and so a chilly week ahead is likely. The outer walls will be bitter cold, and that makes the timing propitious. It will force them closer to the heart of the house.’

  Ivis surprised everyone by speaking. ‘Your point, gate sergeant?’

  ‘Ah. Well, I was suggesting, sir, the closing off of the outer passages at that time, further reducing their avenues of escape.’

  ‘And why would that be a good thing?’

  Yalad’s brow clouded. ‘To better effect their capture, sir.’

  ‘They may be children, Yalad,’ said Ivis, ‘but they are also witches. What manner of chains do you think will hold them?’

  Surgeon Prok cleared his throat and said, ‘Falt, the herb-woman from the forest, could not stay long her last visit to me. The power of those two hellions proved too inimical. It infests the entire house. Sorcery abounds these days, gate sergeant, and it is as unruly as the season.’ He tilted his tankard towards Ivis. ‘The commander has the right of it. We have no means of containing them, barring immediate execution, which the commander will not sanction.’

  Leaning back, Yalad held up both hands. ‘Very well. It was but an idea.’

  ‘The situation is indeed trying,’ Prok offered by way of mollification. ‘At times, in my station, I catch a scuffle or drawn breath, and find myself fixing gaze upon this wall or that. I believe I have found a secret door, and have chocked it secure. But magic … well, it is difficult feeling entirely safe.’

  Ivis gestured to a servant. ‘Build up that fire again, will you?’

  Although unsettled by the discussion thus far, with its ponderings on witchery and murder, Sandalath was unaccountably relieved when Ivis stirred awake enough to engage in the conversation. He had been a distant, remote presence during the meal, seemingly unmindful of the company.

  There were ghosts in this house now, and no doubt in the courtyard and beyond, out upon the battlefield. There was a restlessness to the air that had little to do with the chill draughts as the winter wind fought its way through cracks and beneath doors.

  Upon her left, Sorca was refilling her pipe. The rustleaf was mixed with something, perhaps sage, that made for a pungent but not unpleasant scent.

  Sandalath noted, across from them, Surgeon Prok eyeing the woman. ‘Sweet Sorca,’ he said, ‘it is held by some of my profession that rustleaf is an inimical habit.’

  For a time it did not seem that Sorca thought the comment worthy of a response, but then she stirred slightly, reaching out to collect her tankard. ‘Surgeon Prok,’ she said, her voice so quiet as to make the man opposite her lean closer to hear, ‘it is a scribe’s fate to end the day with a blackened tongue.’

  Prok tilted his head to regard her, with a loose smile upon his features. ‘Often noted, yes.’

  ‘Is ink inimical?’

  ‘Drink down a bottle and you will surely die.’

  ‘Just so,’ she replied.

  They waited, until Prok’s smile broadened. He leaned back. ‘Let us imagine, if you will indulge me, that future where healing is at hand for all things, or, to be more accurate, most things, for as Lady Sandalath noted earlier, death remains hungry and none can halt its feeding, but merely delay it for a time. Why, amidst such curative boon, should we not expect a society at ease with itself?’ He tipped his tankard towards Sorca. ‘She thinks not.’

  ‘I heard no such opinion from our keeper of records,’ Yalad said.

  ‘You didn’t? Then allow me to make it plain. Are we to live our lives in constant fear – present circumstances notwithstanding? Are we to flinch from all that we might touch, or ingest? From that cloud we must pass through should we cross, say, Sorca’s wake down a corridor? Or, in her instance, the ink with which she plies her trade? To what extent, one wonders, does equanimity confer health and well-being? A soul at ease with itself is surely healthier than one stressed with worry and dread. What of the overly judgemental among us? What ill humours are secreted internally by embittered comparisons of moral standing? What poisons attend to self-righteousness?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ ventured Yalad, ‘with sorcery making redundant the need for gods – with all their necessary configurations of sin and judgement – we will indeed turn to the mundane truths – or seeming truths – of health and well-being, upon which one might rest such notions as justice, blame and righteous punishment. In a way, is it not a simpler way of thinking?’

  Prok stared at Yalad with undisguised delight. ‘Gate sergeant, I applaud you. After all, the mind of a god and the manner in which it assays judgement and punishment is by nature beyond our understanding, and in such a wayward world as ours, why yes, that surely serves as perversely comforting. But in contrast, as you say, we in a godless world are invited to judge one another, and by harsh rules indeed. Cast down your judgement! And if Sorca does not kneel to your reasoned distemper, why, pronounce banishment, and by this wetted cloth wash thy hands of her!’

  ‘In such a world,’ murmured Yalad, ‘I see the powers of healing withheld from those deemed undeserving.’

  Prok’s eyes were suddenly keen. ‘Just so. The future, my friend, offers no respite for the unwell, the impure, the flawed and the peculiar. By its habits a society may well be judged, but more sure our assessment, I wager, when we judge its treatment of the habituated and the wilfully non-conforming.’ The surgeon refilled his tankard. ‘You are witness to my vow, then, by what powers Denul invests in me, and by what skills and learning I may possess, that I will heal without judgement. Until my dying day.’

  ‘Bless you,’ said Sorca, behind a cloud of smoke.

  Nodding in acknowledgement, Prok continued. ‘On the field of battle, the surgeon has no regard for the allegiance of the soldier in dire need. It is, in fact, a point of pride among my ilk to dismiss the political world and its ambitions, and seek to heal all who can be healed, and, failing that, to mourn only
the tragedy of the argument’s harvest. Few, after all, would appreciate a surgeon’s history of the world, wherein each successive chapter recounts ever the same litany of broken bodies and shallow triumphs.’ He waved dismissively, and then added, ‘But history teaches us nothing new. And should I choose to look ahead, to what is yet to come, why, I see a future made most toxic, born on the day society sets the value of wealth above that of lives.’

  Sandalath started. ‘Surely, surgeon, that could never come to pass!’

  ‘Cruel judgement – the poor deserve to be poor, and in the failing of their spirit, why, illness is only just. Besides, who would want to invite a burgeoning of these un-worthies, who in their poverty fall to endless breeding? As for the misfits, so stubborn in their refusal to conform, let them suffer the consequences of their own misdeeds!’

  ‘If that awaits us,’ Sandalath said, ‘I’d rather be quit of it than witness such corruption. What you describe, surgeon, is simply horrible.’

  ‘Yes, it is. While I am content for payment of my services little more than the meeting of my needs, I do fear a time when we measure all services against a stack of coins.’

  ‘Prok,’ interjected Ivis, ‘do you know the tale of the Lord of Hate?’

  The surgeon simply smiled. ‘Commander, tell us, please, for can we not but wonder at the naming of such a lord?’

  ‘I have it from Lord Draconus himself,’ Ivis began. ‘Told to me when we were on campaign. There was a Jaghut, named Gothos. Cursed with preternatural intelligence and a relentless nature, his eye was too sharp, his wit too keen. In this, Prok, he was perhaps much like you.’

  The surgeon smiled and raised his tankard in salute.

  Ivis eyed Prok with an expression of faint distaste. After a moment, he continued. ‘Gothos began an argument, and found himself unable to halt his pursuit of it. He spiralled down, and down. Was he seeking truth? Or did he desire something else? A gift of hope, or even redemption? Did he dream of finding, at the very end, a world unfolding with the natural beauty of a rose?’

  ‘What was the argument?’ Sandalath asked.