‘Historian. It’s late. Is it late?’
‘No, High Priestess, we are upon the sixth bell.’
‘Ah,’ she said in a vague murmur, and then gestured. ‘Will you sit? I sent them all away. Too much chattering. One day, I fear, our world will be inundated with a multitude of people with little to say, but all the time in the world in which to say it. The cacophony will deafen us all, until we are insensate, drunk on the trivial. Upon that day, civilization will die with little fanfare, much less anyone’s noticing.’
Herat smiled as he took a seat in the chair she had indicated. ‘They will but step over the cracks in the street, the rubbish upon their doorsteps, and make displeased faces at the foulness in the air they breathe and in the water they drink. Still, their prattle will prattle on.’
She wavered slightly where she stood, and Herat wondered if she was drunk, or in the fumes of d’bayang, the faint scent of which now reached him from the bedroom.
‘High Priestess, are you not well?’
‘Oh, dispense with the pleasantries – or will we make our own prattle? What have you gleaned of him? How solid does he stand?’
Herat glanced away, blinked at the tapestry scene. ‘If he could,’ he ventured, ‘he would straddle the gap. A warrior Silchas may be, but he has no stomach for crossing blades with those who were once his friends. Honour holds him to his brother’s side, but in his heart he shares a deep detestation for the Great Houses, and all the pretensions of the highborn.’
When he looked back to her, he found her studying him from beneath half-lowered lids. ‘Then he will serve, won’t he?’
‘To make the insult sting? Yes. His temper undermines him.’
‘What else?’
For a moment, he was not sure what she meant, but then he sighed. ‘The Court of Mages. There was a scene, High Priestess. Sorcery, yes, but Gallan discarded its value. He did not linger. Silchas made plain his frustration.’
‘And Endest Silann?’
‘He bled.’
‘I felt that,’ Emral Lanear said, turning away, as if moments from dismissing him and retreating once more to her bedroom. Then she halted and brought a hand to her face. ‘She rushes to him, to the wounds. For all that she seems to hide, Herat, she betrays a needful thirst.’
‘Then ignorance is not her flaw.’
The High Priestess flinched, and shot him a glower. ‘I would it were,’ she snapped. ‘To stand as a valid excuse. No, it is the alternative that wounds like a knife, against which we have no defence.’
‘None,’ said Herat, ‘but to ever raise the stakes.’ He well knew the alternative to which she alluded, as it was a flavour to sour every historian and every scholar, artist and philosopher. This dread fear, this welter of despair. The guiding forces of the world, not awkward in ignorance, but turned away, in indifference.
By this we name the Abyss, and see in our souls a place devoid of hope.
Mother Dark, are you indifferent to us?
If so, then our goddess has by nature become cold, and rules with a careless hand. By this, she reduces our beliefs to conceits, and mocks all that is longing within us. ‘Emral,’ said Herat, ‘if this is so’ – our indifferent mother – ‘then what point in saving Kurald Galain?’
‘I have had swift reply from Syntara.’
He frowned. ‘This proves a weak winter.’
‘It does,’ she agreed. ‘My overture is well received. Neither unrelieved darkness nor light will serve us. There must be a proper union, a balance of powers. That there be light in darkness, and darkness in light.’
‘Ah. I see.’
Her sudden smile was brittle. ‘I think not. By “darkness” she means all that is base – vices, in truth. Fear and evil, the malign essence of mortal nature. In “light” and “light” alone dwell the virtues of our nature. She swallows us with difficulty, and sees the balance as a war of wills, upon the field of each and every soul. Fear blinds, after all, as befits darkness made absolute, while purest light reveals courage, fortitude, and the gift of seeing both truthfully and clearly.’
‘Purest light will blind as surely as absolute darkness,’ Herat pointed out, scowling.
‘And so the admixture is invited.’
Herat grunted. ‘An alchemy of impurity.’
‘And thus the fate of all mortal beings, historian, shall be one of unending struggle.’
The historian shrugged, looking away. ‘She but articulates every age past, and every age to come. Still, to cast us into such a venal role …’
‘There is this thing,’ Emral Lanear said, ‘with betrayal. It becomes easier to stomach the second time around.’
‘You will turn upon her?’
‘Entice her with seeming victory, yes. But I will fight for the virtue of darkness, by striking from it, unseen.’
Rise Herat nearly choked on the statement, wondering if she even grasped its appalling hypocrisy. He squinted at the tapestry scene. ‘So, what is this, then? I know not the artist, nor the court and its players.’
Frowning, the High Priestess turned to the hanging. ‘Woven by an Azathanai, I was told.’
‘Whence came it?’
‘A gift, from Grizzin Farl.’
‘He arrived without much upon his back, High Priestess.’
She shrugged. ‘It is their way, I suppose, to present gifts from unknown places.’
‘And the scene?’
‘Muddled, apparently. The weaver sought to elevate a momentous event among savages. Dog-Runners, in fact.’
‘Ah, then the woman on the throne must be the Sleeping Goddess.’
‘I imagine so, historian.’
Rise Herat rose and approached the tapestry. ‘She grasps something in her right hand – can you make it out?’
‘A serpent aflame,’ Emral replied, joining him. ‘Or so Grizzin described it.’
‘That is fire? It seems more like blood. What does it signify?’
‘The gift of knowing.’
He grunted. ‘The gift of knowing that which cannot be known, I presume. But, I think, it is but half a serpent. There is the head, but no tail.’
‘The snake emerges from her palm,’ said Emral Lanear, before turning away once more.
Rise Herat swung to her, but could not catch her eye, nor, as she moved away, her expression. Fire … blood. Eyes that see, but reveal nothing. No different from what afflicts Endest Silann. Dog-Runners, you have a sister goddess in your midst. A moment later the breath hissed through his teeth. ‘High Priestess? Is Grizzin Farl still a guest of the Citadel?’
‘He is.’ She was standing near her bedroom door now, as if impatient to see him depart her company.
‘Where?’
‘The south tower, I believe. Historian—’ she added as he moved to leave.
‘Yes?’
‘Give some thought, if you will, on the matter of High Priestess Syntara.’
‘Why not?’ he muttered in reply. ‘As you say, Emral, it gets easier.’
She was through and into her bedroom before Herat closed the chamber door.
* * *
Lady Hish Tulla had announced her intentions shortly before their departure, and so now Kellaras and Gripp Galas waited beside their saddled horses. The chill of the early morning was burning away to a bright, stubborn sun, as an unseasonal warm spell loosened winter’s hold upon the forest. Kellaras watched the ex-soldier, Pelk, preparing two additional mounts.
A man with a crueller mind might well conclude that Hish was reluctant to let her husband go; that she had sought in desperation for a reason to accompany Gripp and Kellaras, for at least part of their journey. But the stifling sorrow that was now wrapped about Kellaras would not yield to such crass thoughts. Hish Tulla’s impatience with her fellow highborn was a sound reason for her decision. She and Pelk would ride to Tulla Keep, west of Kharkanas, returning to the company of hostage Sukul Ankhadu and Castellan Rancept, and there await a gathering of representatives from each of the Greater Ho
uses. Such a meeting was long overdue, and already two riders had departed, bearing missives announcing the summons.
It seemed unlikely that any House would refuse the request. If the present need was not pressing then indeed nothing would move them. And yet, Kellaras wondered, who in the eyes of the highborn would prove the subject of their complaint, Urusander or Draconus? Or, for that matter, the House of Purake, and my lord, Anomander, who could well be seen to have abandoned his responsibilities? He understood, from Lady Hish Tulla’s words over the past two nights, at the dinner table, that her loyalty to Anomander was beyond question, but even she could not but struggle to defend his decision.
Gripp Galas’s assertion that Anomander did not trust his own brother, Silchas, still reverberated in Kellaras, like a hammer upon a shield, jarring his bones, weakening his faith. With this lever, Gripp would bend Anomander back to his proper role, as defender of Kharkanas and Mother Dark. Upon filial distrust, then, we are to awaken in Anomander the sting of honour. Is it any wonder that it does not sit well?
Lady Hish Tulla at last emerged from the house, wearing a heavy cloak over her armour. Striding to her horse, she swung up into the saddle and gathered the reins. She eyed her husband, and something in that regard seemed to pierce him, as he quickly turned away, attending to his mount’s tack one last time before setting his boot in the stirrup and pulling himself astride the beast.
Kellaras and Pelk followed suit. The captain sought to meet Pelk’s eye, seeking a flicker of something, anything, that might whisper of the two nights they had shared, but once mounted, the ex-soldier’s attention fixed upon the track awaiting them. After a moment, she loosened the sword in its scabbard at her hip.
The gesture startled Kellaras, and he turned to Hish Tulla. ‘Milady, do we ride into battle?’
Hish glanced across at him, but said nothing.
Clearing his throat, Gripp said, ‘Captain. There’s been movement in the stand outside the grounds. Wolves, perhaps, driven south by hunger. Or we have unannounced guests.’
‘Man or beast,’ Kellaras said, scowling, ‘I now fear I have brought them here.’ He hesitated, and then said, ‘Perhaps we are unwise to leave the keep—’
‘These are my lands,’ Hish Tulla said in a harsh tone. ‘Wolves will not try us, but if there are men and women hiding in this forest, I will face them. If they mean ill, their impudence will cost them dearly. No, Kellaras, I am not one to be bearded in my own den. See to your weapons, sir.’
After a moment, Kellaras dismounted again and reached for his surcoat of chain, which he had rolled and bound behind the saddle’s seat. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I will be but a moment.’
A short time later, bedecked and already sweating beneath his felt and chain, he swung back on to his horse, anchoring his lance in its seat. Even as he readied the reins, Pelk set out to take point, and they rode from the clearing, through the vine-tangled gateway, and on to the track that wended its way into the forest.
The sunlight was blinding where it struck patches of snow on the ground and the ice upon branches and twigs. Where such bright fires did not flare, all was in shadow, dull and devoid of colour. There was no sound nor, as far as Kellaras could see, any motion among the trees. They rode on, no one speaking.
Kellaras found himself welcoming the thought of battle. He would delight if given leave to unleash violence. There was a certain tension of the spirit that knew no other answer, and yearned for the sound of blades clashing, the heavy gasp of a body yielding to a sword or lance, the cries of the dying and wounded. It was easy, he reminded himself, to fall into a kind of lassitude, as often struck warriors when finding themselves in civil settings, constrained by the rules of peace.
The poets named it a melancholia, a hero’s affliction. Bards sang of the hollowness within, and the echoes that haunted the warrior whose deeds were long past, with weapons gathering dust and the nights growing ever longer.
In Kharkanas, I walked the corridors, fed the needs of flesh, saw and was seen. And yet, I may as well have been a ghost, a man half there, half somewhere else. And when, on rare occasions, I caught the stare of a fellow soldier, I saw the same in the hollow eyes before me. We but ape these civil pretensions, as we wait for the loosening of our leashes.
When the future promises that terrible freedom, we learn to abide. But when at last we are done with such things, when the promise dies and it comes to us that now, finally, no such freedom awaits us, then we are struck deep. We are done and it is done. The melancholia will take us and drag us down into its deathly mire.
Gripp Galas, how did you stand it?
Ah, well, no need to answer. I listened to your war with wood, the bite of your axe. Gripp was at the moment riding behind Lady Hish Tulla, taking up the rearmost position as they rode the trail. Kellaras did not turn to glance back, but he imagined a new life in the old man now, a sharpness to his eyes. Some things, he understood, could not be put away.
You know this, Hish Tulla, and you resent its truth. Even now, you feel him pulling away from you. I am sorry, and yet, it may be that I have just saved your husband. Still, I doubt you will thank me. Perhaps love blinded you to the warrior’s curse, or you came to believe your love could smother it. But in this winter you saw his pacing, his restlessness and agitation … or perhaps it was nothing more than his sudden age, his nights by the fire, the faint flickers of flames seeming to die over and over again in his sunken eyes.
Or are these fears mine and mine alone? Dare I turn to see for myself? Is this a truth I need to confirm … to what end?
Should I survive this time, and come to some unknown future, will I too, chilled in the bone, stare into the fire, remembering its heat?
He was startled when Pelk twisted in her saddle, and nodded at him, even as she drew her sword.
Kellaras lifted the lance from its socket, half rose in the stirrups – still he could see nothing.
Then there were figures on the path twenty paces ahead, a furtive line of movement. Pelk reined in, and Kellaras moved up alongside her on the left, to guard her flank.
Faces mostly hidden in rough-woven scarves glanced their way, but the procession continued on, from left to right, northward into the forest. Kellaras saw hunting weapons – strung bows, spears.
‘Deniers,’ said Gripp Galas from behind him. ‘A hunting party.’
‘I gave no leave,’ Hish Tulla snapped. She raised her voice. ‘I give no leave! You walk upon Tulla’s Hold!’
The figures halted on the trail, and then, a moment later, one emerged from the south edge of the treeline, stepping on to the track, and then taking a half-dozen strides towards the riders. Drawing away the scarves, he showed a young, thin face. Behind him, hunters were fitting arrows to the strings of their bows.
Hish Tulla snarled under her breath, and then said in a low voice, ‘They would not dare. Are we a hunter’s prey?’
Kellaras edged his mount forward, lowering the tip of his lance. At the gesture the youth halted. ‘Clear the path,’ the captain commanded. ‘There is no reason for death on this day.’
The young man pointed at Hish Tulla. ‘She claims to own what cannot be owned.’
‘You are in a preserve, Denier, and yes, she does indeed own it.’
But the youth shook his head. ‘Then I claim the air she breathes, as it has flowed down from the north – from my homeland. I claim the water in the streams, for they journeyed past my camp.’
‘Enough of this nonsense!’ said Hish Tulla. ‘By your argument, whelp, you can make no claim to any beast dwelling in this forest. Nor to the wood for your fires at night. For they owned this long before you or I ever ventured here.’ She gestured with one mail-clad hand. ‘I hold to one simple rule. You may hunt here, but you will do me the courtesy of announcing your desire first.’
The youth scowled. ‘You would refuse us.’
‘And if I did?’
He said nothing.
‘You are a fool,’ Hish Tulla said to h
im. ‘You ask, so that I may say yes. Do you believe you are the first hunters to visit my land? I see none but strangers behind you. Where are my old neighbours, with whom I shared gifts, and with whom I exchanged words of respect and honour?’
The youth tilted his head to one side. ‘If you so desire,’ he said, ‘I will take you to them. They are not far. We came upon their bones this morning.’
Hish Tulla was silent for a long moment, and then she said, ‘Not by my hand.’
The hunter shrugged. ‘This, I think, would ease their grief.’
‘Have you found a trail?’ Gripp Galas suddenly asked. ‘The slayers – do you now track them?’
‘Too long past,’ replied the youth. He shifted his attention back to Hish Tulla. ‘We shall not be long here,’ he said. ‘This forest you call yours is of no interest to us.’
‘Then where do you go?’ Gripp asked.
‘We seek the Glyph, who walks beside Emurlahn.’ He pointed at Hish Tulla. ‘Tell the soldiers, the innocents of the forest are all dead. Only we remain. Their deaths did not break us. When the soldiers come again into the forest, we will kill them all.’
The young hunter returned to his troop, and moments later the last of them had filed across the track, vanishing into the trees.
‘What is this Glyph he speaks of?’ Hish asked.
Shrugging, Gripp said, ‘They are organized now.’
‘They cannot hope to cross blades with Legion soldiers.’
‘No, my love, they cannot. But,’ he added, ‘arrows will suffice.’
The breath hissed from his wife. ‘Then indeed we have descended into savagery. And yet,’ she continued after a moment, ‘the first acts of barbarity did not come from the Deniers, did they?’
‘No, milady,’ Kellaras replied. ‘In Kharkanas, I spent some time tallying reports of the slaughter. That young man was correct. The innocents are all dead, and their bones litter the forests of Kurald Galain.’
‘Yet Urusander claims to represent the commoners of the realm? How does he not choke on his own hypocrisy?’
‘He chose, my love, not to include the Deniers in his generous embrace.’ Gripp Galas leaned to one side and spat. ‘But to be fair, I would wager Hunn Raal was the one to set the Legion wolves upon these fawns.’