Fall of Light

by Steven Erikson

  ‘Then where, in this chamber, is House Purake?’

  ‘Where it should be, in the Citadel!’

  Vanut smiled without much humour and said, ‘Not precisely true, Hish Tulla, as you well know. The First Son? Wandering the forest. Brother Andarist? Hiding in a cave with his grief. No, only Silchas Ruin remains in the Citadel, white-skinned and busy dismantling his brother’s officer corps. Who is left to the Houseblades beyond Silchas himself? Kellaras? Indeed, a fine warrior, but he is only one man who now walks with back bruised by Ruin’s incessant bullying.’ He pulled harshly on his pipe. ‘We all have our spies in the Citadel, after all. None of this should come as any surprise.’

  ‘White-skinned?’ Hish Tulla said in a deceptively calm tone.

  Venes Turayd snorted, reaching for the nearest jug of wine.

  Shrugging, Vanut Degalla glanced away. ‘At the very least, proof against Mother Dark’s blessing. Indeed, one might perhaps question Anomander himself, with his hair of white. Only the third and the least of the brothers, it would seem, remains outwardly pure.’ His brows lifted. ‘What are we to make of that?’

  There was silence for a time, broken only when Baesk stirred in his seat and said, ‘The question remains before us. Do we gather to defend Kharkanas, and all that we hold dear, or do we yield to Urusander, Hunn Raal, the High Priestess, and three thousand avaricious soldiers?’

  ‘Too simple,’ Vanut murmured. ‘There is another option.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Indeed, Baesk, one which you might well embrace, given your two young children and their uncertain futures. We have the choice of … biding our time. How long before those avaricious soldiers begin squabbling among themselves? How long before certain alliances are sought, tilting a feud’s outcome? Indeed, how long before Hunn Raal petitions for the glorious rebirth of House Issgin?’ He suddenly rose and faced Hish Tulla. ‘Do not misunderstand me, honoured host. I too believe we must indeed assemble our Houseblades on the day of battle, to attend to the defence of Kharkanas if necessary. No, what I suggest here is that we create a contingent plan. That we establish a place and the time in which to regroup, marshal our resources anew, and begin a much longer, far more subtle campaign.’

  ‘Yield a second throne,’ said Aegis, ‘only to immediately begin gnawing its frail legs.’

  Vanut Degalla shrugged. ‘Urusander expects this battle to decide matters. I suggest, should it come to that, we make the peace that follows a bloody one.’

  Standing nearby, in the falling off of light between two lamps, Sukul Ankhadu could see the horror slowly descend upon Hish Tulla’s features.

  Remorselessly, Vanut continued, ‘Will any House here refuse to attend the battle?’

  No one spoke.

  ‘Will all commit their Houseblades to the fight?’ Drethdenan asked, his placid eyes narrow and fixed on Vanut, as if he sought to read what hid behind the man’s benign expression. ‘And I would think, in this case, silence is no answer.’

  Trevok asked, ‘Who will command House Purake – Mother Dark’s very own Houseblades?’

  ‘Does it matter?’ Vanut retorted. ‘It is tradition that each of us commands our own, yes? As for matters of disposition upon the field, well, the Valley of Tarns offers few opportunities for complicated tactics. No, such fighting as might come will be straightforward.’

  ‘Lord Anomander will command,’ said Hish Tulla.

  ‘With Mother Dark’s blessing?’ Manalle asked.

  ‘She blesses none of this.’

  ‘Nor the proposed marriage,’ added Hedeg Lesser in a growl.

  ‘Leave that issue to one side,’ Vanut Degalla said. ‘It has no influence on the battle itself – would you not agree, Hish Tulla? If Anomander commands, he will commit to the battle.’

  ‘Of course he will,’ said Hish Tulla, her lips strangely pale.

  ‘You sow confusion, Vanut,’ said Lady Aegis, her brow furrowed. ‘Only to seemingly sweep it all aside.’

  Seating himself once more and reaching for his goblet of wine, Vanut sighed and said, ‘Many points of contention needed … airing.’

  Sukul noted Lady Manalle’s sudden scowl, and a flash of undisguised hatred in the woman’s eyes as they remained fixed upon Vanut Degalla.

  None here could call another friend.

  And what they would so desperately defend and preserve is both base and crude. Their own positions, the hierarchy of private privilege. They wage their own perpetual war, here among their own kind, and would keep it so – unsullied by newcomers, with all their crass habits and blunt words.

  It is no wonder Mother Dark blesses none of this.

  She had forgotten the goblet in her hand, and only now did she drink, watching as most of those at the table did much the same, with similar eagerness. A decision has been reached. Not a consensus, merely the illusion of one. And this is how they play, these people. The hunting hound settled down at her feet, chin upon the floor.

  I dream of magic in my own hands. I dream of scouring clean the entire world.

  Vermin abounds, and oh, how I would love to see it crushed. Not a corner in which to hide, not a hole deep enough.

  Draining her goblet, she leaned against the wall and let her eyes fall half closed, imagining conflagrations of some unknown, but eternally promising, future. While, at her feet, the savage hound slept.

  * * *

  ‘I am going to my favourite room,’ said Sandalath Drukorlat, her eyes oddly bright in the gloom of the carriage. ‘In a tower, highest in the Citadel.’

  Clutching the heavy baby in his arms and seated opposite its mother, Wreneck nodded and smiled. Broken people so often sounded no different from children, leading him to wonder what it was that had broken inside their heads. Rushing back into childhood was like trying to find something simple in the past, he supposed, but then, he was closer to such memories, and there was little back there that seemed simple to him.

  ‘I knew a man with only one arm,’ Sandalath continued. ‘He left me stones, in a secret place. He left me stones, and he left me a boy. But you knew that, Wreneck. He was named Orfantal, that boy. I pushed him out all wrapped up in a story I didn’t want anyone to know about. Much good that did me. It’s what women and men do, there in the high grasses.’

  Sitting beside Wreneck, the keeper of records, Sorca, cleared her throat and reached for her pipe. ‘Memories best kept to yourself, I think, milady, given the present company.’ She pulled out a button of compacted rustleaf and crumbled and tamped it into the pipe’s blackened bowl.

  Outside, the harsh breathing of Houseblades surrounded the rocking, pitching carriage as men and women leaned shoulders to the wheels, pushing it through the deep snow covering the muddy road. The warhorses fought against the ill-fitting yokes, and all the arguments from two nights past, when the oxen were butchered to feed everyone, now returned to Wreneck as he listened to Horse Master Setyl cajoling the affronted mounts with tears in his voice.

  ‘She called me a child when I birthed Orfantal,’ Sandalath said to Sorca. ‘A child to birth a child.’

  ‘Nonetheless.’ Sparks flashed, smoke bloomed, rose, and then streamed out between the shutters of the window.

  ‘Captain Ivis undressed me.’

  Sorca coughed. ‘Excuse me?’

  Wreneck glanced down at the babe’s face, snuggled so sweetly in her blanket of fur. So little time had passed, so rare the occasions that her mother offered a tit to appease her hunger, and yet Korlat had gained twice her birth-weight – or so Surgeon Prok had claimed. She was sleeping now, as she often did, her round face black as ink, her hair already thick and long.

  ‘It was so hot,’ Sandalath continued. ‘His hands upon me … so gentle …’

  ‘Milady, I implore you, some other subject.’

  ‘There was nothing to be done for it. That needs to be understood by everyone concerned. The room is safe, the only safe place in the world, up the stairs – slap slap slap go the bare feet! Up and up to the black
door and the brass latch, and then inside! Slip the lock, run to the window! Down and down the eyes fall, to all the people below, to the bridge and that black black black water!’

  In his arms, Korlat stirred fitfully, and then settled once more.

  ‘Lord Anomander was braver then,’ Sandalath then said, in a harsher voice.

  Sorca grunted. ‘Sorcery can unman the best of them, milady. Was it not the Azathanai who held out a staying hand? You wrongly impugn the First Son.’

  ‘Up into the tower, we’ll be safe there, where the flames can’t reach us.’

  Korlat opened her eyes, looked up into Wreneck’s own, and he felt a heat come to his face. Those eyes, so large, so dark, so knowing, left him shaken, as they always did. ‘Milady, she’s awake. Won’t you take her?’

  Sandalath’s gaze flattened. ‘She’s not ready yet.’

  ‘Milady?’

  ‘To take sword in hand. To swear to protect him. My son, my only son. I bind her, with chains that can never be broken. Never.’

  The fury in her stare made Wreneck look away. Sorca tapped her pipe against the door’s wooden frame to loosen what was left in the bowl, then started producing clouds that a wayward gust through the shutters sent over Wreneck.

  His head spun, and as Korlat’s eyes slipped behind veils of smoke, he saw her suddenly smile.

  * * *

  The household staff and the company of Draconean Houseblades made for a desultory and decrepit escort to the Son of Darkness and his Azathanai companion as they slowly worked their way southward on the road to Kharkanas. Captain Ivis struggled against a sense of shame, as if the private matters of him and his kin had been suddenly and cruelly dragged into the light. The lone carriage and its occupants, trailed by two salvaged wagons loaded down with feed and camp gear, had to his eyes the bearing of a refugee train. Horses fought in their traces, the Houseblades cursed and stumbled as they pushed the conveyances through the heavy snow and now mud, and voices spoke – when they spoke at all – with harsh words, bitter and belligerent.

  Amidst these foul moods, Ivis found his own plummeting as they trudged on into the deepening gloom. The fire’s embrace lingered like a heat beneath the skin, appallingly seductive, frightening in its intensity. She was an Azathanai, said Caladan Brood. His kin, a sister and mother to the Dog-Runners. Olar Ethil by name. What has she done to me?

  Looking ahead on the road, he squinted at the backs of Lord Anomander and his huge companion. They were speaking, but in tones too low to drift back to the captain. Milord, we are awash in strangers, and these rising waters are cold. Civil war proves an invitation and we are now infected by the venal wants of outsiders. They take to us with contempt, ruining whatever cause we hold to, only to then impose themselves and their own. Until their flavour pervades. Until our every desire tastes awry, spoiled in the heat.

  I would spit you out, Olar Ethil. And you, Caladan Brood. I would march into the past and bar the arrival of T’riss and her poisoned gifts. None of you are welcome. And all you gods of the forest, of the stream and the rock, the tree and the sky, begone from us!

  I’ll not see us point fingers elsewhere for the crimes we commit here. And yet, it shall come to pass. I am certain of it. The face of blame is never our own.

  ‘Captain.’

  He glanced over to find Gate Sergeant Yalad now at his side, a figure draped in a scorched cloak, a face still singed from past flames. ‘What?’

  The young man flinched slightly, then looked away. ‘Sir. Do – do you think they’re dead?’

  Ivis said nothing.

  Clearing his throat, Yalad continued, ‘The Houseblades fear … retribution.’

  ‘They’ll not return,’ Ivis snapped. ‘And even if they did, it was Caladan Brood who attacked them, not you, not me. Even there, what choice did any of us have? They would have seen us all dead.’ But even as he spoke, he thought of his own secret desire from months past – to see the Hold burned down, with both daughters trapped within.

  Abyss take me, she must have touched my soul long before that night. Her fire, lit beneath my notice, where it smouldered on, feeding the worst in me.

  Have we all been manipulated? This entire civil war? Perhaps indeed the blame lies elsewhere.

  ‘Sir, I meant retribution from Lord Draconus.’

  Ivis started. He scowled. ‘Nothing upon you or them, Yalad. Make that plain. I will face Lord Draconus alone. I will take responsibility for what happened.’

  ‘Respectfully, sir, we don’t agree with that. None of us.’

  ‘Then you’re fools.’

  ‘Sir, what has happened to Lady Sandalath?’

  ‘She was broken.’

  ‘But … the other thing? The child—’

  Ivis shook his head. ‘Enough. We will not speak of that.’

  Nodding, Yalad fell back a few steps, leaving Ivis once more alone with his thoughts, which, he realized, proved an unwelcome return. The child deserves no reprobation. Surely, among all things before us, birth must be deemed innocent. There is no culpability in conception, none that should stain her. Nor, I suspect, the unwelcoming mother.

  Ah, Sandalath, you have become a most ill-used hostage, your fates arrayed before us in condemnation of our promises to protect you. The blame is mine, as I stood in place of Lord Draconus, and again and again I have failed you.

  Now comes sorcery with a rapist’s cock, the blunt demand denying all mercy. Crown the need, bedecked in raiment, and glory in the release, and all the power it announces with an unwanted child’s cry.

  What spirit, freed of its chains as the flames rose, laid you down upon the stone floor? Caladan Brood shies from all comment. But something fierce with outrage burns in that Azathanai. I would know its face. I would know its name.

  What had happened to Sandalath in Dracons Hold was a far crueller embrace than the one Olar Ethil had given to Ivis. He knew with a certainty that the fire-spirit, the goddess of the Dog-Runners, had taken for herself no active role in Sandalath’s fate. And yet … I felt her glee. And her turning of pain into vengeance invoked crimes I could not discern – perhaps even the crime of Sandalath’s fate. There was something old in all this, something full of ancient wounds and past betrayals.

  We were all sorely used. And so, with grinding inexorability, his thoughts returned to his sense of helplessness, and his gaze fixed once more upon the broad back of Caladan Brood. Foolish Azathanai. You meddle among us, and we feel your contempt. But upon the day we have had enough of your torment, you will know the wrath of the Tiste. As did the Jhelarkan and the Forulkan.

  Lord Anomander, let not these fools seduce you.

  They were in darkness now, swallowed by the immanence of Mother Dark’s influence. Blind as indifference, this strange faith. The faint ethereal blue glow of the fallen snow made for a ghostly path, beckoning them into the last stretch of forest before the land opened out to the environs of the Wise City. Two, perhaps three days to the north gate.

  Yalad returned. ‘Sir, our scouts flanking to east report birds.’

  ‘Birds?’

  ‘Many, many birds.’

  ‘How distant?’

  ‘Perhaps a third of a league, sir. They also say the snow beneath the trees has seen the passage of people.’

  ‘Which way?’

  ‘Every way, sir.’

  ‘Very well, collect a squad and pull out to the side. I will speak to Lord Anomander, and then join you.’

  Nodding, Yalad moved off. Picking up his pace, Ivis hurried forward. ‘Milord!’

  Both Anomander and Caladan halted and turned.

  ‘There has been a killing, Lord Anomander,’ Ivis said. ‘To the east, third of a league.’

  ‘You wish to investigate?’

  ‘Yes, milord.’

  ‘I will accompany you.’

  Ivis hesitated, and then glanced back at the carriage.

  ‘Have the remaining Houseblades prepare camp, captain,’ Anomander said, shaking loose his cloak as h
e adjusted his sword-belt. ‘Defensive perimeter and pickets.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘It may be that companies of the Legion are foraging, or perhaps hunting down yet more Deniers,’ said Anomander, frowning at the fire-scorched line of trees verging the eastern side of the track. He hesitated, and then glanced at the Azathanai. ‘I would have you remain here, High Mason.’

  ‘As you wish,’ Caladan replied with a grunt. ‘But the blood upon the ground has frozen, and of the bodies you will find, none remain alive.’

  ‘How long past?’ Anomander demanded.

  ‘Days, perhaps.’

  ‘Are we observed?’

  ‘A curious question. In the immediate, no, none look out from yonder wood.’

  ‘And in the other?’

  ‘First Son, if we sense unblinking regard settled upon us, in each of our moments, beginning to end, what then might we do differently?’

  Anomander frowned. ‘Best we comport ourselves with such an audience in mind, whether it exists or not.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I hold that such witnessing does indeed exist, unflinching and beyond the mechanisms of deceit, and that in our eagerness to dissemble, we yield it little respect.’

  ‘And what witness might this be?’

  ‘Nothing other than history, High Mason.’

  ‘You name an indifferent arbiter, subject to maleficence in its wake.’

  Anomander made no reply. Gesturing to Ivis, he said, ‘Let us find this killing ground, captain.’

  They strode back to Yalad and the waiting squad. Weapons were drawn, but through the shroud of gloom the faces arrayed before Ivis were difficult to distinguish, beyond the faint glitter of their eyes. ‘Thank you, gate sergeant. Remain here and see to the camp. The Azathanai suggests that we are in no danger, but I will have you diligent nonetheless. Pickets and a perimeter.’

  ‘Yes sir.’ Yalad waved a Houseblade forward. ‘Gazzan was the scout who spied the birds, sir.’

  ‘Good eyes in this perpetual darkness,’ Ivis commented to the young man.

  ‘Heard them first, sir. But it’s odd, how they fly with no hearkening to the night.’