But Draconus said, ‘You spoke of my Houseblades.’
‘As I rode in, sir, their standards were sighted from the north tower. They are upon the forest road, in column.’
‘Ah.’
‘My brother Anomander is with them.’
Kellaras started, facing Silchas Ruin.
‘Yet,’ said Draconus, ‘you still claim command.’
‘You well know his dilemma,’ Silchas said harshly. ‘She forbids him unsheathing his sword!’
‘It is your belief then, sir, that he will not break that covenant?’
‘He is the First Son of Darkness!’
A faint, sad smile creased the hard features of the Consort, and still he kept his gaze averted. ‘As you say. I imagine you know your brother’s mind in this. Very well. But I will have my Houseblades.’ He swung his head and fixed Silchas with a lifeless stare. ‘In my exile.’
The heartbreak burgeoning in Kellaras’s chest was fierce enough to steal his breath.
Silchas Ruin had the decency to bow. Or, perhaps, it was unintentional irony. If anything else, Kellaras would never forgive him. ‘Lord Draconus, will you accompany us, then?’
‘In a moment. The door is directly behind you. Await me in the corridor beyond.’
‘You will make your farewell to her?’
The question seemed to strike Draconus like a slap across the face. What had been lifeless in his eyes suddenly flared, if for but an instant. ‘Silchas,’ he said in a low voice, ‘have you lost your mind?’
As the commander hovered, as if uncomprehending of the wound he had driven into Draconus, Kellaras stepped forward and took Silchas by one arm. ‘Now, sir.’
He very nearly dragged Silchas back to the door. Fumbling, he somehow found the latch. The doorway spilled in a bloom of light that hurt his eyes, and then he pulled Silchas through. At the last moment, before he closed the door once more, Kellaras looked back at Draconus.
The Consort stood watching, a man bereft of love, who had just felt the cold kiss of honour upon his lips. The only man present who understood courage.
It was a sight Kellaras would never forget.
When they were gone, Draconus gestured wearily with one hand, and a moment later Grizzin Farl appeared from the darkness.
The Azathanai stepped close and laid a hand upon the Consort’s shoulder. ‘Forgive me, Draconus. I could not protect your love.’
‘You never could. Nor, it seems, can I.’
‘I did not know,’ sighed Grizzin, ‘that love could die so many deaths.’
Draconus grunted. ‘It has enemies beyond count, my friend. Beyond count.’
‘Why is that, I wonder?’
‘To those never touched by it, it is a weakness. To those in its bittersweet embrace, it lives a life besieged.’
‘A weakness? Surely a judgement born of envy. As to the siege of which you speak …’ Grizzin sighed again and shook his head. ‘What profundity can I find? After all, I fled my wife.’
‘Is your love stretched?’
Grizzin seemed to consider the notion for a moment, and then said, ‘Alas, not in the least. As for hers … I wager she could throw a pot across half a continent as easily as spanning a room.’
‘Well,’ Draconus said with a smile, ‘I have on occasion seen you duck at the slightest sound.’
‘Aye, her love is hard as iron.’
Neither man spoke for a few moments longer, and then Draconus moved forward, towards the door.
Grizzin turned but took no step to follow. ‘Draconus?’
The Consort seemed to flinch, but then he glanced back. ‘Yes?’
‘Where will you go?’
‘Far enough, I suppose, to hear its snap.’
Grizzin turned away quickly, to hide the sudden emotion that threatened to crumple his features. He blinked at the darkness. And heard the door open and then close. Only when alone did he whisper, ‘Forgive me.’
Then he set off to find her. There would be no stretching this love, nothing made so taut as to snap. The words he would bring to Mother Dark were a knife’s cut. He was, after all, the Protector of Nothing.
* * *
When citizens take to the streets of a city, driven there by something agitated and ineffable, a strange fever descends upon them in the course of their restive milling. As if it was a contagion carried on sullen currents of air – too vague and wayward to be a breeze or wind – this thief of reason longed for violence. There were times when a people collectively stumbled, staggering beyond the borders of the civil commons, out into light or plunging darkness, out into screams in the night or the blistering kiss of fire. At other times, this sidestep was something else, less obvious and far more profound. A revelation, breaking the fever with sudden cool air upon the brow and the last of the chills falling away, the sweat drying, a new day begun. A revelation, alas, that delivered a crushing truth to all who discovered it.
We of the multitudes, we of the civil commons, we are the flesh and blood of an enslaved body. This sidestep carried us into the path of an executioner’s axe, and the head is no longer our master. It rolls unanchored, the echoes of the severing cut making it rock to and fro, at least for a time. Motion some might mistake for life. Flickering eyelids and eyes that could have flashed with intelligence, but the glitter is now no more than reflected light. The mouth hangs open, lips slack, the cheeks flaccid and sagging towards the floor.
Once enslaved, we wander without purpose, and yet a rage burns within us. This, we tell each other, was not our game. It was theirs. This, we cry to the gathering crowd, is our final argument with helplessness.
An end! An end to it all!
But mobs are stupid. Venal leaders rise like weeds between the cobblestones. They cut each other down, with nails and teeth. They carve out pathetic empires in a tenement building, or upon a corner where streets conjoin. Some rise up from the sewers. Others plunge into them. Bullies find crowns and slouch sated on cheap thrones. The dream of freedom is devoured one bloody bite at a time, and before too long a new head enslaves the body, and quiescence returns.
Until the next fever.
Surely, thought Rise Herat as he and Emral Lanear rode towards the open gates of Kharkanas, moments from pressing into the crowd, surely, there must be another way. An end to the cycle thus described. That sidestep belongs to a people beaten senseless by the careless onslaught of injustice. For there to be any change – any change at all – it seems the revolution must never end. Instead, it must roil like a storm feeding itself, on the very edge of calamity and loss of all control, tottering imbalanced but never quite falling. With none to rule, all must rule, and for all to rule, they must first rule themselves. With none to guard the virtues of a just society, each must embody those virtues of justice. But this demands yet more – ah, Abyss take me, I have indeed lost my mind.
My very own fever burns in my skull, that of hope and optimism. With love, even, like Endest Silann’s dragon, ever circling overhead.
The severed head on the floorboards is still making faces, still twitching. That glitter in the eyes is indeed the flicker of intelligence, dimming to be sure – as the armies prepare to meet – but alas, this remnant is without reason.
We man ramparts with nothing at our backs. We face a future that has no face but our own, older and no more the wiser. This weariness comes with the tide, rides in the current, and no eddy offers secure respite.
What had Silchas Ruin done? What had he said to Lord Draconus? Assuming the Consort deigned to meet the man. And what of these crowds, the faces now turning to regard us? Strangers. But even that word, ‘stranger’, arose from a time of kin-hearths and a half-dozen huts marking the very limits of a people, a realm, a temporary nest in the seasonal rounds – when we lived in nature and nature lived in us and no other divide existed beyond what was known and what was unknown.
Strangers. We’ve bred and multiplied into the isolation of anonymity, too many to count, no point in trying. Let my eyes
glaze over these unfamiliar faces before me. The alternative is too ghastly, should I see in each visage my own longing for something better, and for somewhere else, a place in which we all belonged. A place without strangers, a civilization of friends and family.
But the notion mocked him as soon as his mind uttered it. Civilization entrenched the old words, like ‘stranger’, replete with all the anachronistic fears that had spawned them in the first place. Different ways of doing things, forever jarring us with confusion – and when confusion takes us, every primitive thought returns, weak as an ape’s whimper, savage as a wolf’s snarl. We return to our fears. Why? Because the world wants to eat us.
His snort of bitter amusement was louder than he’d intended, drawing Lanear’s attention even as they drew up to the gateway.
‘Irony,’ she said to him, ‘is a cheap pleasure.’
* * *
The low outer wall of Kharkanas had been raised long ago to defend against spears and the belligerent press of savages. It was born in a time when warfare was simpler, a clash of mere flesh and peacock displays, where warriors stood as heroes who knew their legends were coming. Originally, Ivis saw as he rode at the head of the column, alongside Lord Anomander, Gripp Galas and Pelk, the wall had been little more than a berm, a mounded, sloped embankment of soil and rocks. The trench of its excavation had made the moat surrounding it, but the steep sides were long gone, and the dressed stone now surmounting the bank had the appearance of a row of discoloured, uneven teeth.
The city might as well be an upturned skull, the bowl soon to take our clattering selves, like so many errant thoughts. ‘Milord,’ he said to Anomander, ‘it is my thought to halt the Houseblades here, to encamp beyond the city’s walls. I would think the streets crowded enough.’
The First Son of Darkness seemed to consider the suggestion for a moment, and then he nodded. ‘Settle the household staff as well, then, until such time as I can make arrangements.’
‘Or Lord Draconus makes a reappearance,’ Ivis said.
‘That would be ideal,’ Anomander replied. ‘I see many standards upon the walls. It is clear that the highborn have gathered their forces.’
Gripp Galas cleared his throat and said, ‘Lady Hish Tulla can be persuasive.’
When Anomander reined in, the others followed suit, and the column halted on the road. The First Son of Darkness said, ‘Captain, should the opportunity arise, I will speak to Draconus. I am to blame for the loss of his keep.’ He hesitated a moment, and then added, ‘The daughters are not dead. So I am informed.’ He glanced at Caladan Brood – whose attention seemed fixed upon the city ahead – and continued, ‘Resolutions prove bloody, even unto the breaking of stone. What will others make of the rubble left in our wake? I fear a toppling of these flimsy walls. I fear fire and smoke dressing the buildings within. I fear for the lives of the Tiste.’
‘Milord,’ interjected Gripp Galas, ‘you would drag to your feet a host of ills, few of which belong there.’
‘The First Son of Darkness,’ said Anomander. ‘Is this title an empty one? Is the honour a conceit of the one who bears it? What of responsibilities, old friend? Too easily does title invite indolence, or worse, the cynicism that comes from moral compromise. Advisers will urge necessity, expedience, the pragmatic surrender that settles like a callus upon the soul.’ He looked to Gripp Galas, and Ivis could see the indecision in the Son of Darkness. ‘Is my hide so hardened now? I see the future newly fated, a momentum fierce as a spring flood.’
Gripp Galas’s expression flattened. ‘Milord, she refused you any choice. She still does. Even as Urusander’s Legion descends upon us. What would we have you do?’
‘Now that is the question,’ Anomander replied with a nod. ‘And yet, consider this. I am denied drawing my weapon, but what has this prohibition yielded? Does Urusander honour my constraint? Does Hunn Raal yield to Mother Dark’s plea for peace? Does the Liosan High Priestess counsel a gesture in kind? And what of the Deniers, victims honed into slayers, enemy now to all who would dare their forest home? No, Gripp, denied one choice, there remained many others, a hundred paths to reconciliation, and none taken.’
Ivis spoke, finding his own voice harsh and jarring, ‘Then meet Lord Urusander on the field, milord. Keep your sword sheathed and ask the same of him.’
‘Hunn Raal will defy you both,’ Gripp Galas said in a harsh tone. ‘He wants this. I suspect the High Priestess does as well. They will see the black waters of Dorssan Ryl turn red, to announce their ascension.’
‘But downstream of the city, surely,’ Anomander said in a mutter, once more facing Kharkanas. Crowds were assembling, lining the sides of the Forest Track Road where it plunged like an arrow to the city’s heart. Faces were fixed upon the Son of Darkness and his ambiguous retinue. Others among the citizenry had climbed the bank to appear on the wall.
Ivis turned about and nodded Gate Sergeant Yalad forward. ‘Prepare a camp, among the trees. See to the needs of our hostage and the household staff – it may be we have one last night to spend under the cold stars.’
‘Yes, sir. Captain?’
‘What?’
‘The Houseblades, sir. They’re ready for this fight.’
Abyss knows, so am I. ‘Temper their zeal, Yalad. We serve the wishes of Lord Draconus.’
‘Yes sir. But … should he remain absent …’
‘We will deal with that when the time comes. Go on now, gate sergeant.’
When Ivis returned his attention to Anomander, Caladan Brood was speaking.
‘… on the day I am needed, Anomander Rake.’
‘And until then?’
Brood gestured to the forest. ‘This close to the city … there are many wounds in the earth. I will heal what I can.’
‘Why?’
The question seemed to surprise the Azathanai, and then he shrugged and said, ‘Anomander, ours remains a strained friendship. For all that we have travelled together, we know little of each other. Our minds, the paths our thoughts take. Yet you continue to intrigue me. I know your question was not meant to convey your indifference to such wounding. Rather, you but reveal a hint of your growing despair.’
‘You offered me peace.’
‘Peace, yes, but no peaceful path was promised.’
‘If I stand aside, sword not drawn, will you seek to convince me that none of the blood to be spilled will stain my hands? I should hope not. If I choose peace for myself, Brood, stolid as a stone in a stream, will I not make the currents part? How minor this perturbation – my paltry will? Or will the stream divide, split asunder, to seek different seas?’
Caladan Brood cocked his head. ‘Does it matter? Does what you choose make any difference?’
‘This is what I am asking you, Azathanai.’ Anomander waved back at the forest edge. ‘Does your healing?’
Brood considered for a moment. ‘I appease the ego. The goodness that comes of it is incidental to a dying forest, a fatally wounded earth. Nothing talks back to me. Nothing voices its gratitude. Though I would have it otherwise, if only to make myself feel—’
‘Better?’
‘Useful.’
The distinction seemed to have some impact on Anomander, for he flinched. ‘Off you go, then, until you are … needed.’
With a faint bow, Caladan Brood swung round and made his way towards the spindly treeline where even now the Houseblades were preparing camp.
At that moment, two riders emerged from the city, horses cantering up the Forest Track Road. Eyes narrowing, Ivis identified Lord Silchas Ruin – astride a white mount – and an officer of Anomander’s own Houseblades.
Now, there would be words. The notion – its obviousness – struck him as nonetheless ominous. This is the madness of it all. Mundane conversations, fragments of meaning and dubious import. All the things left unsaid. If we could assemble our words, merge those inside and out, we would be startled to find that we speak but a tenth of what we think. And yet, each of us presumes to expect tha
t the other understands – indeed, hears both the spoken and the unspoken.
Mad presumption!
‘Milord?’
‘Ivis?’
‘Pray you free the words, let them tumble, with not one left unspoken.’
Anomander’s gaze narrowed as he studied Ivis. ‘My brother approaches, along with my captain, Kellaras.’
‘Just so,’ Ivis replied, nodding. He saw Gripp Galas studying him. Pelk, too. He wondered what they saw, what they thought they saw. He wondered at his own log-jam of unuttered words, and his reluctance to kick it loose.
My own courage in this matter fails me. Yet I ask of it him. Lord Anomander, you are the First Son of Darkness. The time has come to show it. I beg you, sir, make us all braver than we are.
* * *
Wreneck climbed down from the carriage, almost slipping on the ice coating the slatted step. He turned about quickly and drew his small knife, to begin hacking away the sheath of ice. ‘Beware, milady,’ he called up as Sandalath prepared to dismount, her bundled daughter crooked in one arm.
‘I see, child,’ she said, evincing once more the new haughtiness that had come to her.
Wreneck chipped away, eager to finish and turn about – eager to set his eyes at last upon the great city of Wise Kharkanas. But that glory would have to wait. The last flat sheet of white ice broke free, slipped away. ‘There, milady,’ he said, returning the knife to his belt and reaching up to offer her his arm.
She took it delicately, and then settled much of her weight upon it, making Wreneck come near to staggering as he adjusted his footing. A moment later she stood beside him, her gaze bright upon the city behind him. ‘Ah, I can see my tower. The Citadel beckons. I wonder, is Orfantal at a window? Can he see his mother at last? I am sure that he can – I feel his gaze upon me, his wonder at what I carry. My present to him.’
Korlat looked three years old now, though she voiced no sounds, sought nothing that might be words in that mysterious language of babies. Yet her eyes never rested, and even now she peered out from the folded blanket, like a thing feeding on all that it saw.
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