‘The Azathanai built this, only to knock it down – not even a Thel Akai could so push these stones, uprooting them like this. I see about us the echoes of old rage. For all we know, our very own rock-gods were Azathanai.’
‘Then it is well that we lost faith.’
‘She hasn’t.’
Ravast frowned at that, and then sat up. ‘I would venture the opposite! It is no faith that makes anyone face death and only death. It is, if anything, surrender. Abjection. There is not a fool to be found who would worship death.’
‘Ah, but she marches not to kneel before the Lord of Rock-Piles, but to war against him.’
‘Might as well beat against a mountainside.’
‘Just so,’ Tathenal said, looking at the rubble around them.
‘There will be no Azathanai among the Jaghut’s company,’ Ravast said. ‘I suspect no more than a handful of fools. Other Jaghut, bound only by some kind of loyalty to the grieving brother. Perhaps a few Dog-Runners, eager to find a song in the deed. And we Thel Akai, of course, for whom such a summons is too outrageous to refuse.’
‘We refused it.’
‘In the name of flocks to keep, gardens to tend, nets to weave. And yet, Tathenal, look at us, here on this trail.’
‘We pursue her to bring her back. With weapons of reason, we will convince her—’
‘Hah! Idiot! She’s but extended our leashes, and knows the patience of the mistress. Look at us here, playing at freedom! But soon we will resume this trek, and she will take up the slack.’
There was a loud grunt from Garelko and they turned to see the man bolt upright, eyes wide. ‘Ah!’ he cried. ‘I dreamed a dragon!’
‘Was no dream, you fool,’ Tathenal said. ‘We met the beast this morning, and saw it off.’
Garelko squinted across at Tathenal. ‘We did? Then it was all real?’
Ravast stared at Tathenal. ‘That was a dragon?’
‘What else could it have been?’
‘I – I don’t know. A giant lizard. Winged. With a long neck. Snaking tail. And scales …’
The other two husbands were now studying him, with little expression. Ravast scowled. ‘By description,’ he muttered, ‘I suppose the comparison is apt.’
Groaning, Garelko stretched. ‘This fusion of dreams and truth has left me out of sorts. For all I know, I’ve not yet wakened, and it is my curse to see both of you haunting me even in my slumber. Pray there comes a day when there are as many girls born among the Thel Akai as boys. Then, a husband can stand alone, face to face with his wife, and there will be peace and everlasting joy in the world.’
Tathenal laughed. ‘You dodder, Garelko. The Tiste make such marriages and are no happier than us. The curse of your dreams has you yearning for the madness they espouse.’
‘Then wake me, I beg you.’
Sighing, Ravast slipped down from the slab. ‘I feel the leash grow taut, and would not welcome a whipping.’
‘You are long since whipped well and truly,’ said Tathenal.
‘Oh, roll over, will you?’
The three Thel Akai readied their gear once more, and in so doing Ravast was reminded again of his lost weapon. To a dragon, no less. Few would ever believe him, and the exhortations of his fellow husbands held little veracity. It was, in any case, an unpleasant notion, this proof of legends and old, half-forgotten tales.
Words momentarily exhausted, they made the trail in silence, and resumed their descent.
* * *
‘Beyond you, I am in need of allies.’
Skillen Droe glanced over at the cloaked figure trudging alongside him. ‘You will find few.’
‘There is a caustic sea, the essence of which is chaos.’
‘I know it.’
‘Mael does not claim it,’ K’rul said. ‘Indeed, none of us does. Ardata has ventured there, to its shoreline, and contemplates a journey into its depths. There is some risk.’
‘Is she alone?’
K’rul hesitated, and then said, ‘I cannot be certain. Ardata guards her realm jealously. It is my thought that we could appeal to that possessiveness.’
‘I will defend you, K’rul. But we are not allies. You have foolishly made yourself vulnerable.’
‘Very well.’
‘I will make this plain to her.’
‘Understood, Droe.’
They walked now along the edge of a vast pit. Its sheer walls were cracked, shattered as if from the blows of some giant hammer. The dusty floor of the crater showed crystalline outcrops that glittered with blue light. A steep ramp had been carved into the opposite cliff-side, curling round until it was out of sight, somewhere against the edge they skirted. Thus far, Skillen Droe could not see where the ramp debouched. There was something strangely protean about the dimensions of this pit, and the landscape surrounding it. They had been edging along it for some time now.
‘This is a quarry, K’rul?’
‘The Builders, I would think. They have, they tell me, reduced entire worlds to rubble, leaving them to float in clouds that ever circle the sun – a sun not our own, one must assume.’
‘The pit is devoid of Sidleways. Its air is still. There is no energy left in it. To descend, K’rul, is to die.’
‘I have no answers to their endeavours, Droe, or the means by which they wield their power. The houses they build here disappear shortly after their completion.’
‘Only to reappear elsewhere, as if grown from seeds.’
‘Something drives them to do what they do,’ K’rul said, pausing to cough for a moment. ‘Or indeed, someone. We share that at least with the Builders – the mystery of our origins. Even the force that cast us down upon the realm, to find flesh and bone, seems beyond our ken. Have we always been? Will we always be? If so, for what purpose?’
Skillen Droe considered K’rul’s words for a time.
Beneath the gloomy sky, they walked on. Their pace was slow, as K’rul seemed to have little strength. If he still dripped blood from his sacrifice, the crimson drops did not touch these dusty silts. No, they bled elsewhere.
‘It is our lack of purpose, K’rul, which drives us onward. Sensing absence, we seek to fill it. Lacking meaning, we seek to find it. Uncertain of love, we confess it. But what is it that we confess? Even a cloud of rubble will one day accrete, making something like a world.’
‘Then, Skillen, if I understand you, beliefs are all we have?’
‘The Builders make houses. From broken stone they build houses, as if to gift the disordered world with order. But, K’rul, unlike you, I am not convinced. Who, after all, broke the stones? It is my thought that the Builders are our enemy. They are not assemblers of reason, or even purpose. Their houses are built to contain. They are prisons – the Builder who dragged you to that house sought to chain you to it, in its yard so perfectly enclosed by that stone wall.’
K’rul halted, drawing Skillen around. A pale hand reached up into the shadow of the hood, as if K’rul was setting fingers to his brow. ‘And yet, it failed.’
‘Perhaps you were still too powerful. Perhaps, the house was not yet ready for you.’
‘We have kin who worship such houses.’
‘Lacking meaning and purpose, they seek to find it. In the ordering of stone – does that surprise you, K’rul? Are the Builders our children, or are we theirs? If we are but generations, one preceding the other, then which of us has fallen from our purpose?
‘The Builders are building worlds of denial, K’rul. The question you must ask is this: for whom are they meant? And, it follows, is it our task to oppose them? Or simply watch, decrying the entropy that is their monument?
‘Worship? Only a fool worships what is already inevitable. If I cared – if I thought it would prove efficacious, I would tell our kin this. Your obeisance is pointless. Your adoration kisses a skull, and where you kneel, there is only dust. Your faith is in a god with no face.’
Once again, K’rul passed a hand over his hidden visage. ‘Skillen D
roe, you name me a fool, and rightly so.’
‘What inspired your gift, K’rul?’
‘Does it matter?’
Skillen shrugged his sharp, protruding shoulders. ‘I cannot yet say.’
Sighing, K’rul resumed walking, and a moment later they strode side by side again, skirting the endless crater. ‘I sought a breaking of the rules, Skillen. Oh, I know, what rules? Well, it seemed – seems – to me that they exist. More to the point, they do not answer to us. Look well on each of us. We Azathanai. On our habits, our proclivities and predilections, and how they serve our need to distinguish each of us from the others. But rules precede us, as cause precedes effect.
‘Some things we do share. For one, the habit that is our possessiveness, when it comes to our power. I admit, I found inspiration in the Suzerain of Night, when from love he gave a mortal woman so much of his own power. And, once it was done – well, he could not take it back.’
‘I was unaware of this. I am shocked by this news. I did not think Draconus so … careless. Tell me of his regrets.’
‘I do not know that he has any, Skillen. There is, I have found, something almost addictive in surrendering power. To become drunk on helplessness – well, it has ceased being so strange a notion. I heeded the Suzerain’s gift, and deemed it, in the end, too modest. That has since changed, as Draconus has gone yet further, but of that I will tell you later.’
‘I fear tragedy in that tale.’
‘Again, a modest one. If not for what I was driven to do. So, together now, Draconus and K’rul, we come to threaten the realm with devastation. By our gifts. By the helplessness we so coveted. Understand, it did not seem that way, not to begin with. The acts were … generous. Was this, in fact, our purpose? The mystery of our existence, solved by simple sacrifice? By yielding so much of ourselves?’
‘You have given to mortals the gift of sorcery. But it is not mortals who now threaten you, is it? You spoke of Errastas, and the flavour of influence he seeks to impose upon your gifts. You say that you cannot stop him. If that is true, what do you now hope to achieve?’
‘Ah. And this, old friend, is why I sought you out. I admit, I considered your remorse. The burden of regret you carry, so fierce as to drive you from our company.’
‘You would use me so?’
‘I would rather you did not see it that way, Skillen. Consider this, instead, yet one more gift. From me to you. Nothing substantial, as we might measure it, but sufficient to give purpose.’
‘You offer me purpose? Born of old crimes? Name me this gift, then. And consider well before you speak, since I am contemplating rending you limb from limb for your temerity.’
‘Redemption.’
Skillen Droe was silent – even in his thoughts – as his soul seemed to recoil from that word. Rejection and disbelief, denial and refusal. Such impulses needed no language.
K’rul seemed to comprehend at least some of that, for he sighed and said, ‘Errastas seeks to impose a kind of order upon my gifts, and make of chance a secret assassin to hope and desire. Droe, there are gates, now. They await guardians. Suzerain powers. But I cannot look to the Azathanai. Draconus would seek them among the Tiste, but I deem that dubious and, indeed, fraught. No, I knew I must look elsewhere.’ He hesitated, and then said, ‘Old friend, Starvald Demelain has opened on to this realm, twice now. There are dragons among us – the boldest of the kin, no doubt. Ambitious, acquisitive.’
‘You would bargain with them? K’rul, you are a fool! To think they would welcome my presence! I am the last they would yearn to see!’
‘I disagree, Droe,’ K’rul replied, with anger in his tone now. ‘I told you. I am not done with my gifts. This yielding rises from a tide to a flood. We need no other treasure to dangle in the bargain. In all instances but one, Skillen, the dragons will fight for what we offer.’
‘You would unleash such battles? Will you see Tiam herself manifest on this realm?’
‘No, we will find them as they are – singly, dispersed and eager to keep it that way. As for Tiam, again I have an answer, a means of preventing her. I believe it will work, but once more, in this I will truly need your help. Indeed, our powers must be combined.’
‘I see now. Your gift of redemption to me, and from this, my gratitude to you, and from that, my power conjoined to yours. You have thought far, K’rul, with me like a loyal hound at your heel every step of the way.’
‘I considered only the means by which I could win your allegiance.’
‘And have you contrived similar manipulations for those others whose alliance you seek? What of Ardata, then? Ah, of course, the chaos of the Vitr, so close in substance to the lifeblood of dragons.’
‘Chaos is necessary,’ K’rul said, ‘to balance what Errastas seeks.’
‘Who else waits unknowing in the wings? Mael? Grizzin Farl? No, not him, unless it is to send him among your enemies. Kilmandaros? Nightchill? Farander Tarag? What of Caladan Brood – I would have thought that the High Mason, above any of us, would have been your first choice in this. With Brood at your side, not even Errastas could—’
‘Caladan Brood is, for the time being, lost to us.’
Skillen Droe studied K’rul – they had, at some point in the past few moments, halted once again. ‘In what manner is he lost, K’rul? Does he play High King somewhere? Then I will fly to him and drag him from his pathetic throne. What of Mael? Does he hide still beneath the waves, building his castles of sand?’
‘Caladan Brood yields not to earthly ambitions, Droe. But he is bound to another cause. It may walk in step with our own, but no more in the manner that Draconus does, with his own singular efforts. As for Mael, well, we are not on speaking terms for the moment.’
Skillen’s laugh was a hiss, harsh and almost painfully dry. ‘So I am third among your choices.’
‘No. Without you, Skillen Droe, I have no hope of achieving what I seek.’
‘That much I do comprehend, K’rul. Very well, you have made me curious. Tell me, what scheme have you concocted to keep each and every dragon from charging into battle with me, upon first sight?’
‘None.’
‘What?’
‘Abyss take us, Skillen! Name me one dragon that could defeat you in single battle?’
‘Then you see me fighting each and every one?’
‘Not necessarily. And if so, be sure not to kill them. No, Skillen, you still don’t understand why I so need you. When we step on to the mortal realm, they will know that you are among them once again. Skillen Droe, I need you, as bait.’
Skillen reached out, and down, closing a massive, scaled hand around the front of K’rul’s cloak. He lifted K’rul up until his companion’s face was close to his own. The hood fell back, and Skillen was pleased to see the faintest flush fill K’rul’s thin cheeks.
‘I’d rather you not drop me from this height,’ K’rul said in a tight, strained voice.
‘You said Starvald Demelain has opened twice. How many dragons are we talking about?’
‘Oh, the first time yielded but one dragon, and it is already dead.’
‘Dead?’
‘Well, as dead as dragons are able to get.’
‘Who killed it?’
‘I’m not sure. Its carcass rots on the shore of the Vitr.’
‘Which dragon? Name it!’
‘Korabas Otar Tantaral.’
‘Korabas!’
‘But don’t worry,’ said K’rul. ‘I’m not done with her just yet.’
SIX
THE NAILS ON GOTHOS’S HAND, WHERE IT RESTED ON THE stained tabletop, were amber-hued and long, more like talons, and as they tapped a slow syncopation, one falling after the other, Arathan was reminded of stones in the heat. The vast table had been dragged in from some other now abandoned abode. Devoid of accoutrements, it stretched out like a weathered plain, with the sunlight that played out across its surface making a slow crawl to day’s end.
Arathan stood near the entrance, leaning
against the doorway’s warped frame, to gather as much of the courtyard’s chill air as he could. Within the chamber, braziers had been laid out, four in all, emanating a dry heat, caustic and enervating. Against one side of his body, he could feel winter’s breath, while upon the other, the brittle heat of a forge.
Gothos had said nothing. Beyond the clicking of his nails, and the almost mechanical rise and fall of his fingers as they tapped, he yielded nothing. Arathan was certain that Gothos was aware of his arrival, and by indifference alone offered invitation to join the Jaghut at one of the misshapen chairs crowding the table. But Arathan knew that no conversation would be forthcoming; this was not so much a mood afflicting Gothos, as yet another of those times characterized by obstinate silence, a belligerent refusal to engage with anyone.
One could, unfettering the imagination, conjure up a chorus of bridling emotions to fill such silences. Condescension, arrogance, contempt. In its company, it was easy to wince to the bloom of shame, with the sting of irrelevance at its heart. Arathan suspected that the Jaghut’s bitter title – Lord of Hate – was derived from these spells, as in frustration fellow Jaghut threw up walls of indignation, pocked with murder-holes from which they might let loose their own missiles, and make of the whole thing a clattering war, a feud raised up against a multiplying nest of imagined insults.
But whatever barriers the silence posed, there was nothing personal to them. They stood not in answer to any particular threat. They faced out upon every imaginable quarter, standing fast against both presence and absence. This was, Arathan had come to believe, not the silence of an embittered man. It accused no one, acknowledged not a single enemy, and because of this, it infuriated all.
A month had passed since Lord Draconus, his father, had left Arathan in the keeping of the Lord of Hate. A month spent struggling with the endless, impossible nuances in the Jaghut language – its written form, at least. A month spent in the strange, baffling dance he’d found himself in, with the hostage Korya Delath.
And what of this army camped beyond the ruined city, the gadflies to Hood, as Gothos called them? Each night, it seemed, another few figures marched in – Thel Akai from the north, Dog-Runners and Jheck from the south. Upon the strand of desolate beach two days to the west, long wooden boats had pulled up, disgorging blue-skinned strangers from some offshore strew of islands. There was a war among those islands, and the ships – Arathan had been told – were battered, fire-scarred, the wooden decks stained black with old blood. The men and women wading ashore were, many of them, wounded, flateyed and too exhausted to be wary. Their leather armour showed damage; their weapons were notched and blunted, and they walked like people who had forgotten the stolid certainty of unmoving earth beneath their feet.