I give you places, the hard rocks and dusty earth, the withered grasses and besieged forests. The cities and encampments, the ruins and modest abodes, the keeps and monasteries – enough to yield comforting footfalls, enough to frame the drama, and in so doing, alas, mystery drifts away.
If I was to speak to you now of countless realms, jostling in the ether, and perhaps setting each one as an island in the mists of oblivion, might the imagination spark anew? Draw close, then. The island that is Kurald Galain and Wise Kharkanas abuts realms half seen, rarely sensed, within which mystery thrives. Let us unfold the world, my friend, and see what wonders are revealed.
A war upon death. The wayward adventures of the Azathanai. Foolish youth and bitter ancients …
* * *
In a place where the gloom never eased, there stretched a plain of wind-blown silts. Lying half buried in beds of the dun, fine-grained material, the detritus of countless civilizations cluttered every possible view, reaching out to the horizons. Godly idols crouched with their backs to the incessant wind, shouldering high dunes that curled round to make empty bowls in their laps. The statues of kings and queens stood tilted, hip-deep, with arms upraised or one hand reaching out as if to grant benediction. The tall backs of thrones thrust like tombstones from the flats. Here and there, foundation walls from crumbled palaces and temples made ridges and lines; rooms sculpted hollows, and cracked domes rose in polished humps.
Wings folded, the Azathanai Skillen Droe followed the set of tracks wending its way across this eerie, despondent landscape. Flight was out of the question, as the air was caustic above the plain, and riding the high, grit-laden winds was too excoriating, even for one such as he.
Instead, the tall, arched figure plodded shin-deep through the desiccated, lifeless silts, his reptilian eyes fixed on the ragged trench made by the one who had walked ahead of him. His mysterious predecessor was dragging something that did little more than glide over the deep furrows carved by its thick, bandy legs.
It had been a long time since Skillen Droe last visited this realm. Since then, the wreckage and ruins had proliferated. Most of the idols he did not recognize. Many of the statues portraying emperors, kings, queens and child-gods revealed features that were alien and, at times, disturbing to Skillen’s sensibility. And he could feel the push and tug of the wayward currents of invisible energy that he knew as the Sidleways, although he was not the Azathanai who had coined that name.
Forgotten monuments rode the Sidleways, inward from other realms. Like flotsam, fragments washed up here, as if this plain served a singular purpose as the repository of failed faiths, abandoned dreams and broken promises. Perhaps it was, as some of his kin believed, the corner of the mind, and the mind in question was the universe itself.
It was difficult to decide if the notion pleased or irritated him. If indeed the universe possessed a mind, it was a cluttered one. And if corners such as these thrived in that mind, then the custodian was asleep, or, perhaps, drunk. This river of semi-consciousness abounded in musing eddies and swirls, in spirals of relentless notions, spinning and spinning until they devoured themselves. Ideas rushed forward only to recoil from boulders in the stream, curling off to the sides and dissolving in the churning tumult. No, this was a mind in hibernation, where only vague memories and flashes of inspiration made the waters restless.
But mine is not the mind to impose rhythms upon the cosmic storm. This flesh does not yield itself to a surrendering, to what waits beyond it. I only play with the words of others, my throat tickled by some imagined instinct, spitting up the dregs of the countless poets I have devoured.
This plain is silent, mostly. These statues, once painted, now lean weathered and weary. The gods squat and pray for a prayer, yearn for a whisper of worship, and, failing all that, would be content enough with a pigeon settling to rest atop the head – but even that modest blessing is denied them here, in this corner of the mind, this vault of the Sidleways.
Through the wrack, he could make out something ahead. A structure of what looked like stone rose from the general ruination, enclosed by a low wall. The silts surrounding all of this seemed preternaturally level. Skillen could see what looked like a gatehouse to the right, an ornate arch of elegant, panelled stone. But he was approaching from one side, following the tracks that led to the stone wall directly before him.
Spreading his leathery wings, Skillen beat at the air for a moment, raising clouds. The Azathanai slipped forward, lifting higher with sharp, hard flaps, and then swiftly gliding closer. He saw the tracks resume in the yard of the house, wending round in a haphazard pattern to eventually intercept the stone-lined path from the gatehouse – and there, huddled upon the raised steps of the building’s entrance, was a lone figure that appeared to be brushing itself off, puffs of dust surrounding it.
Skillen glided over the wall and settled lightly on the pathway. At his arrival, the seated figure looked up, but its face remained hidden beneath a heavy hood of coarse wool.
‘Skillen Droe, I did not think you would come.’
Not yet choosing to reply, Skillen turned to face the gatehouse. A Sidleways current was pouring through it, although the torrent of energy stirred not a grain of dust or silt. After a moment feeling its power burnishing the scales of his brow, cheeks and needle-fanged snout, Skillen faced the house once more. The stream swept round him and flowed into and through the huge wooden door behind the figure seated on the steps.
The hooded man might have nodded then, as the hood shifted slightly. ‘I know. It is an answer, of sorts.’ One pale hand gestured back to the house behind him. ‘Drains. Repositories. Bottomless, it seems. Possibilities, forever rushing in. Vanishing? Who can say? Some thoughts,’ he continued, in a musing tone, ‘escape the peculiar. Evade the particular. They tear free and so cease their private ways. And the river swells, and swells yet more. Skillen, old friend, what have you been up to?’
‘It is risky,’ Skillen ventured, in a wave of scents and flavours.
The seated, hooded man sighed. ‘I imagine so. All that you offer, while in that dread stream … will it simply fill the house, do you think? Your manner of speaking here, flowing past me and through this absurd wooden door – your words: do you fear their immortality as they seep into mortar and stone?’
‘K’rul. Why here?’
‘No reason,’ K’rul replied. ‘Rather, no reason of mine. You saw the tracks? A Builder found me. I was … exploring.’ He paused for a moment, and when he resumed his tone changed, seeking something more conversational. ‘Mostly, I am ignored. But not this time, and not with this one.’ K’rul waved at himself. ‘It dragged me here. Well, at first it dragged me about the yard, as if wanting to leave me there, or there, or perhaps there. No place seemed to satisfy it. In the end, it left me on the doorstep, as it were, and then? Why, it vanished.’ K’rul rose and brushed more dust from his robes. ‘Skillen, you might find an easier converse if you stood not on the path. This Sidleways is particularly potent, is it not?’
Skillen glanced about the yard, noting those smudged places where the Builder had deposited K’rul. There was no discernible pattern in that map. After a moment, he edged off the stone pathway. ‘What waits inside?’
K’rul shook his head, the motion making the hood fall back, revealing a drawn, bloodless face. ‘Like the others, I would imagine. The rooms … upside down. One walks upon an uneven ceiling, a confusion of buttresses and steep ramps leading down … or is it up? To wander within is to know inverted thoughts. The displacement of perspective may well hold a message, but it is lost on me.’
But Skillen barely heard the words, so appalled was he by K’rul’s condition. ‘What afflicts you?’
‘Ah, you have travelled far, then. Is isolation such a comfort? Forgive me that question, Droe. Of course, there is peace to be found in not knowing, in not being, in not hearing, and not finding. Peace, in the way of becoming forgetful, while to others, mostly forgotten.’ K’rul managed a wan smile. ‘
But still, I would know: if you have been, then where? And if not, then, why?’
‘I found a world in argument with itself. The delusion of intelligence, K’rul, is a sordid thing.’
‘And this towering form you now present to me? Do you wear the guise of these … creatures?’
‘One of their breeds, yes. I played the assassin,’ Skillen replied. ‘Subtlety is lost on them. They raise a civilization of function, mechanical purpose. They are driven to explain all, and so understand nothing. They refuse artistry. But artistry hides in the many shades of one colour. They have rejected the value of the common spirit in all things. They cleave to one colour, and heed but one shade. The rational mind can play only rational games: this is the trap. But I did take note, K’rul, of the arrogance and irony implicit in their worship of demonstrable truths.’ He paused, and then added, ‘They are coming.’
K’rul barked a laugh, harsh enough to cut the air. ‘Do you recall, I once spoke of possibilities? Well, I have made a gift of them. Or, rather, gifts. Magic, requiring no bargaining with the likes of you or me. And already, those gifts are being abused.’
Skillen waited, withholding every scent, every flavour. There was sorcery in the spilled blood of Azathanai. K’rul had very nearly bled himself dry. The gesture was that of an unbalanced mind.
The man before him made an ambiguous wave of one hand, and said, ‘Errastas seeks to usurp command of these gifts.’ He cocked his head and studied Skillen, and then added, ‘No. Command is not, I now think, the right word. Allow me to offer you one that you, in your present state, might better comprehend. He seeks to impose his flavour upon my gifts, and from that, a sort of influence. Skillen, I do not think I can stop him.’
‘What else?’
‘Starvald Demelain,’ K’rul said. ‘The dragons are returning.’
Skillen Droe continued to stare at K’rul, until the man looked away. The loss of blood, so vast, so profound, had broken something inside this man. The notion made Skillen Droe curious, in a morbid way. ‘I heard your call, K’rul, and so here I am. I preferred you as a woman.’
‘My days of birthing are done, for a time.’
‘But not, it seems, your bleeding.’
K’rul nodded. ‘The question is: who will find me first? Errastas, or – should she emerge from Starvald Demelain – Tiam? Skillen Droe, I need a guardian. You see me at my most vulnerable. I could think of none other than you – none other so determined to remain apart from our worldly concerns. And yet, what do you offer me? Only a confession. Where have you been? Elsewhere. What have you been doing? Setting traps. Still … I do ask, Skillen.’
‘I am to blame for the dragons—’
‘Hardly!’
‘—and I do not fear Errastas, or any other Azathanai.’
K’rul answered that mockingly. ‘Of course you don’t.’
Skillen Droe made no reply.
K’rul shook his head. ‘Please excuse that, Skillen. At the very least, I must tell you what he has done.’
Skillen Droe released a sigh heavy with indifference. ‘As you will.’
‘Will you protect me?’
‘Yes. But know this, K’rul. I still preferred you as a woman.’
* * *
It had begun with a conversation, in the way that the uttering of words, on easy breath, lodged like seeds, grew and then ripened in the minds of all who would later claim to be present. A conversation, Hanako reflected, to elucidate the absurdity of everything that followed. This was the curse among the Thel Akai, where only silence could stop the onrushing flood of those things, countless in number, upon which the battered survivors might look back, nodding at the signs, the precious omens, and all those casual words slipping back and forth.
But silence was a rare beast among the Thel Akai, and from this tragic truth, the lifeline of an entire people trembled to a thousand cuts. Surely, before too long, it would snap. Even as he and his kin tumbled down in helpless mirth.
Too often among his kind, laughter – unamused and disabusing – was the only response to pain, and this notion twisted Hanako round, once again, to the clear-eyed affirmation of the absurd.
He sat upon the sloped side of a boulder, streaming blood from more wounds than he dared contemplate. His heaving chest had slowed its frantic gasps. The blood he had swallowed – his own – was heavy in his stomach, boiling like bad ale. From the huge boulder’s other side and so out of sight, Erelan Kreed was working his knife through tough hide, humming under his breath that same monotonous and tuneless scale of notes, like a cliff-singer slapping awake his vocal cords, making the sounds of stretching and tightening, bunching and tickling. Kreed was known to drive village dogs mad whenever the fool was busy at something.
The hand with the knife had a voice. The other hand, pulling away that rank skin of fur, answered with its own. The sob of sagging muscle and folds of fat made a wet chorus. Of all creatures known to Hanako, only flies could dance to this song, were any bold or desperate enough to brave this chill, mountain air.
Before Hanako, on the roughly level terrace that had marked their camp, Lasa Rook was only now gaining her hands and knees, her fit of laughter finally relenting. When she lifted her head to look at him, he saw the thick glitter of tears in her eyes, the wet streaks that ran down through the dust on her rounded cheeks, and the now dirty mucus tracking down from her nostrils. ‘What,’ she asked brightly, ‘still nothing to say? A pronouncement, if you please! The moment begs for a word, if not two! I beseech you, Hanako! ‘Twas but a slap or two from the Lord of Temper, and still you bridle!’
‘I could but wince,’ he said, sighing, ‘at seeing the stitch in your side.’
‘It was your seeming impatience that so struck me,’ she replied, drawing a muscled forearm across her mouth to sweep up the mucus and dirt, leaving it to glisten in the fine, almost white, hairs of her wrist. She then lifted and swept back her mass of wavy, golden hair. ‘But that is the curse of youth, after all. Berate me for my insensitivity, Hanako, and we can shudder down into our familiar roles.’
From behind the boulder, Erelan Kreed’s perfidious song ended abruptly. Stones grated underfoot, and then the warrior emerged, dragging the cave-bear’s skin behind him. ‘You complained of the night’s chill, Hanako,’ he said. ‘But now, in the months and perhaps years to come, you will be able to keep warm at night … as you chew the lord’s hide into suppleness.’
Lasa snorted, and so was forced to clean her nose yet again. ‘A suppleness the lord knew well. As well as his own skin. But years, Erelan? More like decades. The lord’s manifestation here, Hanako, is unmatched in my memory. It’s a wonder he managed to find a cavern big enough to home him.’
‘More the wonder that we did not even see it,’ said Erelan, ‘since it lies not twenty paces above us.’
‘And so the boulder that would so hide Hanako’s morning toilet did proffer the lord a most squalid gift, upon the very threshold of his abode.’ Even as she said this, she offered Hanako the breathtaking smile that had already ensnared three husbands.
‘I proffered no such gift,’ Hanako replied. ‘That unleavened loaf now resides in my left boot.’
This comment made Lasa Rook fold over once again, her laughter so intense that she struggled to breathe.
Stepping past Hanako, Erelan slapped a bloody hand down on the young warrior’s shoulder. ‘Next time you decide to wander off, pup, at the very least carry a weapon. You’ve not the claws or fangs to equal a bear. Still, the rolling embrace was a fine mummery to start this day.’ He then thrust something in front of Hanako’s face, making him flinch back. ‘Here, the lord’s lower jaw – it pretty much fell away. You came as close to tearing it off as to make a cutter hesitate to take coin.’
Sighing, Hanako accepted the trophy. He stared down at the jutting canines, remembering how they felt as they scored across his scalp. The thin white rings of the tongue-nest, lined up in parallel rows, were delicate as seashells.
‘As for
the tongue,’ Erelan continued, ‘why, we have us breakfast.’ With that, the warrior continued on, stepping round the prostrate form that was Lasa Rook, and crouched down before the hearth. He had tucked the thick severed tongue through his belt, and now he drew it out to settle it atop a stone of the hearth, where it began sizzling. ‘The Lord of Temper’s run out of things to say, ha ha.’
There were many misfortunes to take and give shape to a Thel Akai’s life, but Erelan Kreed’s feeble witticisms were among the cruellest of curses. They were enough to dampen Lasa’s ground-kicking mirth, and once more she sat up, her reddened eyes fixing upon the slab of meat now sizzling on the rock, her expression settling somewhat.
Stifling a groan, Hanako pushed himself upright. ‘I am for the stream,’ he said.
‘Then we’ll see what needs threading,’ Lasa said, nodding.
Impatient youth? Yes, I see that, Lasa Rook. Given our purpose, and that joyous decision that so started us on this march, the bear might well have saved me the journey. Sighing yet again, Hanako skirted his way along the terrace until he came to the tumbling fall of water and its momentary pool that filled the bowl it had worn in the stone shelf. His few clothes were sodden rags now and he left them on the ground as he stripped down.
The water was clear, clean and stunningly cold. The shock against the lacerations covering most of his body quickly gave way to blessed numbness as he stood beneath the falls. Hanako, who so hates the cold these days. So quickly chilled by an unseasonal breath of wind. Hanako, who once crawled across a frozen lake, what has become of you? There was an old saying among the Thel Akai. ‘Born in the mountains, she longs for the valleys. Born against the sea, she longs for the plain. Born in the valley, she sets eyes upon the snow-clad peaks …’ And so on, as if the point already made could never be made to perfection, and the axe swings eternal against the tree, until the leaves raining down bury us. There we stand, senseless to the tremble in our hands, blind to the mulch against our eyes.