Below the two men, the river’s surface was black, twisting with thick currents. Even now, the occasional charred tree trunk slid past, like the swollen limb of a dismembered giant. Ash-grey mud crusted the sheer walls that made up the banks. The boats moored to iron rings in the walls, near the stone steps that reached down into the water at intervals, looked neglected, home to dead leaves and murky pools of rainwater.
‘There is discipline lacking,’ murmured Prazek, ‘in our sordid post upon this bridge.’
‘We are looked down upon,’ Dathenar replied. ‘See us from atop the tower. We are small things upon this frail span. Witness as we betray errant curiosity, not suited to sentries at all, and in our pose you will find, with dismay, civilization’s slouching departure from the world.’
‘I too saw the historian at his lofty perch,’ Prazek said, nodding. ‘Or rather, his hooded regard. Did it track us out here? Does it fix still upon us?’
‘I would think so, as I feel a weight upon me. At least an executioner’s shroud offers mercy in hiding the face above the axe. We might splinter here under Rise Herat’s judgement, bearing as it does no less sharp an edge.’
Prazek was of no mind to argue the point. History was a cold arbiter. He studied the black water below, and found himself distrusting its depth. ‘A force to splinter us into dust and fragile slivers,’ he said, hunching slightly at the thought of the historian looking down upon them.
‘The river below would welcome our sorry fragments.’
The currents swirled their invitation, but there was nothing friendly in the sly gestures. Prazek shook his head. ‘Indifference is a bitter welcome, my friend.’
‘I see no other promise,’ Dathenar said with a shrug. ‘Let us list the causes of our present fate. I will begin. Our lord wanders lost under winter’s bleak cloak, and makes no bold bulge in his struggle – look out from any tower, Prazek, and you see the season unrelieved, settled flat by the weight of snow, where even the shadows lie weak and pale upon the ground.’
Prazek grunted, his eyes still fixed on the black waters below, half his mind contemplating that mocking invitation. ‘And the Consort lies swallowed in a holy embrace. So holy is that embrace, that there is nothing to see. Lord Draconus, you too have abandoned us.’
‘Surely, there is ecstasy in blindness.’
Prazek considered that, and then shook his head again. ‘You’ve not dared the company of Kadaspala, friend, else you would say otherwise.’
‘No, some pilgrimages I avoid by habit. I am told his self-made cell is a gallery of madness.’
Prazek snorted. ‘Never ask an artist to paint his or her own room. You invite a spilling out of landscapes one would not wish to see, for any cause.’
Dathenar sighed. ‘I cannot agree, friend. Every canvas reveals that hidden landscape.’
‘Manageable,’ said Prazek. ‘It is when the paint bleeds past the edges that we recoil. The wooden frame offers bars to a prison, and this comforts the eye.’
‘How can a blind man paint?’
‘Without encumbrance, I should say.’ Prazek waved one hand dismissively, as if to fling the subject into the dark water below. ‘So,’ he continued, ‘to the list again. The Son of Darkness walks winter’s road seeking a brother who chooses not to be found, and the Suzerain confides in the night for days on end, forgetting even the purpose of dawn, while we stand guard on a bridge none would cross. Where, then, the shoreline of this civil war?’
‘Far away still,’ Dathenar answered. ‘Its jagged edge describes our horizons. For myself, I cannot cleanse my mind of the Hust camp, where the dead slept in such untroubled peace, and, I confess, nor can I scour away the envy that took hold of my soul on that day.’
Prazek rubbed at his face, fingers tracking down from his eyes to rake through his beard. The water flowing beneath the bridge tugged at his bones. ‘It is said that no one can swim in the Dorssan Ryl now. It takes every child of Mother Dark down to her bosom. No corpse is retrieved, and the surface curls on in its ever-twisting smiles. If envy of the fallen Hust so plagues you, friend, I’ll offer no staying hand. But I will grieve your passing as I would my dearest brother.’
‘As I would your leaving my company, Prazek.’
‘Very well, then,’ Prazek decided. ‘If we cannot guard this bridge, let us at least guard each other.’
‘A modest responsibility. I see the horizons draw closer.’
‘But never to divide us, I pray.’ Prazek straightened, turning his back to the river and leaning against the wall. ‘I curse the poet! I curse every word and each bargain it wins! To so profit from beleaguered reality!’
Dathenar snorted. ‘An unseemly procession, this row of words you describe. This rut we stumble along. But think on the peasant’s language – as it wallows in its simplicity, off among the fields of fallow converse. Will the day begin in rain or snow? Does your knee ache, my love? I cannot say, dear wife! Oh and why not, husband? Beloved, the ache that you describe can have but one meaning, and on this morning lo! among the handful of words I possess, I cannot find it!’
‘Reduce me to grunts, then,’ said Prazek, scowling. ‘I beg you.’
‘We should so descend, Prazek. Each of us like a boar rooting in the forest.’
‘There is no forest.’
‘There is no boar, either,’ Dathenar retorted. ‘No, we hold to this bridge, and turn eyes upon the Citadel. The historian looks on, after all. Let us discuss the nature of language and say this: that power thrives in complexity, and makes of language a secret harbour. And in this complexity the divide is asserted. We have important matters to discuss! No grunting boar is welcome!’
‘I understand what you say,’ Prazek said, with a wry smile. ‘And so reveal my privilege.’
‘Just so!’ Dathenar pounded a fist on the stone ledge. ‘But listen! Two languages are born from one, and as they grow, ever greater the divide, ever greater the lesson of power delivered, until the highborn who are surely highbred are able to give proof of this, in language solely their own, and the lowborn who can but grunt in the vernacular are daily reminded of their irrelevance.’
‘Swine are hardly fools, Dathenar. The hog knows the slaughter awaiting it.’
‘And squeals to no avail. But consider these two languages and ask yourself, which more resists change? Which clings so fiercely to its precious complexity?’
‘Troop in the lawmakers and the scribes—’
Dathenar’s nod was sharp, a flush deepening to midnight on his broad face. ‘The educated and the trained—’
‘The enlightened.’
‘This is the warring tug of language, friend! The clay of ignorance against the rock of exclusion and privilege.’
‘Privilege – I see the root of that word, in privacy.’
‘A fine point you make, Prazek. Kinship among words can indeed reveal hints of the secret code. But here, in this war, it is the conservative and the reactionary that stand under perpetual siege.’
‘As the ignorant are legion?’
‘They breed like vermin.’
Prazek straightened and spread wide his arms. ‘Yet see us here, on this bridge, with swords at our belts, and bolstered in spirit by the eagerness of honour and duty. See how it wins us the privilege of giving our lives in defence of complexity!’
‘To the ramparts, friend!’ Dathenar cried, laughing.
‘No,’ his companion said in a growl. ‘I’m for the nearest tavern, and bedamned this wretched privilege. Run the wine down my throat until I slur like a swineherd!’
‘Simplicity is a powerful thirst. Words softened to wet clay, like paste squeezed out between our fingers.’ Dathenar’s nod was eager. ‘This is mud we can swim in.’
‘Abandon the poet then?’
‘Abandon him!’
‘And the dread historian?’ Prazek asked, smiling.
‘He’ll show no shock at our faithlessness. We are but guards huddled beneath the millstone of the world. This post will s
ee us crushed and spat out like chaff, and you know it.’
‘Have we had our moment, then?’
‘I see our future, friend, and it is black and depthless.’
The two men set out, quitting their posts. Unguarded behind them stretched the bridge, making its sloped shoulder an embrace of the river’s rushing water – with its impenetrable surface of curling smiles.
The war, after all, was elsewhere.
* * *
‘It can be said in no other way,’ Grizzin Farl sighed, as he ran a massive, blunt fingertip through the puddle of ale on the tabletop: ‘she was profoundly attractive in a plain sort of way.’
The tavern’s denizens were quiet at their tables, and the air in the room was thick as water, gloomy despite the candles, the oil lamps, and the fiercely burning fire in the hearth. Conversations rose on occasion, cautious as minnows beneath an overhanging branch, only to quickly sink back down.
Hearing his companion’s faint snort, the Azathanai straightened in his seat, in the pose of a man taking affront. The wooden legs beneath him groaned and creaked. ‘What do I mean by that, you ask?’
‘If I—’
‘Well, my pallid friend, I will tell you. Her beauty only arrived at second, or even third, glance. Was a poet to set eyes upon her, that poet’s talent could be measured, as if on a scale, by the nature of his or her declamation. Would frenzied birdsong not sound mocking? And so impugn that poet as shallow and stupid. But heed the other’s song, at the scale’s weighty end, and hear the music and verse of a soul’s moaning sigh.’ Grizzin reached for his tankard, found it empty. Scowling, he thumped it sharply on the table and then held it out.
‘You are drunk, Azathanai,’ observed his companion as a server rushed over with a new, foam-crowned tankard.
‘And for such women,’ Grizzin resumed, ‘it is no shock that they do not consider themselves beautiful, and would take the mocking chirps as deserved, while disbelieving the other’s anguished cry. So, they carry none of the vanity that rides haughty as a naked whore on a white horse, the woman who knows her own beauty as immediate, as stunning and breathtaking. But do not think me unappreciative, I assure you! Even if my admiration bears a touch of pity.’
‘A naked whore on a white horse? No, friend, I would never query your admiration.’
‘Good.’ Grizzin Farl nodded, drinking down a mouthful of ale.
His companion continued. ‘But if you tell a woman her beauty emerges only after considerable contemplation, why, I think she would not sweetly meet the lips of your compliment.’
The Azathanai frowned. ‘You highborn have a way with words. In any case, do you take me for a fool? No, I will tell her the truth as I see it. I will tell her that her beauty entrances me, as it surely does.’
‘And so she wonders at your sanity.’
‘To begin with,’ the Azathanai said, belching and nodding. Then he raised a finger. ‘Until, at last, my words deliver to her the greatest gift I can hope to give her – that she comes to believe in her own beauty.’
‘What happens then? Seduced, swallowed in your embrace, another mysterious maiden conquered?’
The huge Azathanai waved a hand. ‘Why, no. She leaves me, of course. Knowing she can do much better.’
‘If you deem this worthy advice on the ways of love, friend, you will forgive the renewal of my search for wisdom … elsewhere.’
Grizzin Farl shrugged. ‘Bleed to your own lessons, then.’
‘Why do you linger in Kharkanas, Azathanai?’
‘Truth, Silchas Ruin?’
‘Truth.’
Grizzin closed his eyes briefly, as if mustering thoughts. He was silent for another moment, and then, eyes opening and fixing upon Silchas Ruin, he sighed and said, ‘I hold trapped in place those who would come to this contest. I push away, by my presence alone, the wolves among my kin, who would sink fangs into this panting flesh, if only to savour the sweat and blood and fear.’ The Azathanai watched his companion studying him, and then nodded. ‘I hold the gates, friend, and in drunken obstinacy I foul the lock like a bent key.’
Finally, Silchas Ruin looked away, squinting into the gloom. ‘The city has gone deathly quiet. Look at these others, cowed by all that is as yet unknown, and indeed unknowable.’
‘The future is a woman,’ said Grizzin Farl, ‘deserving a second, or third, glance.’
‘Beauty awaits such contemplation?’
‘In a manner of speaking.’
‘And when we find it?’
‘Why, she leaves you, of course.’
‘You are not as drunk as you seem, Azathanai.’
‘I never am, Silchas. But then, who can see the future?’
‘You, it appears. Or is this all a matter of faith?’
‘A faith that entrances,’ Grizzin Farl replied, looking down at his empty tankard.
‘I have a thought,’ Silchas Ruin said, ‘that what you protect is that future.’
‘I am my woman’s favourite eunuch, friend. While I am no poet, I pray she is content with the love she sees in my eyes. Utterly devoid of song is hapless Grizzin Farl, and this music you hear? It is no more than my purr beneath her pity.’ He gestured with the empty tankard. ‘Men such as I will take what we can get.’
‘You have talked yourself out of a night with that serving woman you so admired.’
‘You think so?’
‘I do,’ said Silchas. ‘Your last request for more ale surely obliterated this evening’s worth of flirtation.’
‘Oh dear. I must make amends.’
‘If not the common subjects of Mother Dark, there are always her priestesses.’
‘And wiggle the bent key? I think not.’
After a moment, Silchas Ruin frowned and leaned forward. ‘One of these barred gates is hers?’
Grizzin Farl raised a finger to his lips. ‘Tell no one,’ he whispered. ‘They’ve not yet tried the door, of course.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘My flavour hides in the darkness, whispering the disinclination.’
‘Do you think this white skin announces my disloyalty, Azathanai?’
‘Does it not?’
‘No!’
Grizzin Farl scratched at his bearded jaw as he contemplated the young nobleborn. ‘Well, curse my miscalculation. Will you dislodge me now? I am as weighty as stone, as obstinate as a pillar beneath a roof.’
‘What is your purpose, Azathanai? What is your goal?’
‘A friend has promised peace,’ Grizzin Farl replied. ‘I seek to honour that.’
‘What friend? Another Azathanai? And what manner this peace?’
‘You think the Son of Darkness walks alone through the ruined forest. He does not. At his side is Caladan Brood. Summoned by the blood of a vow.’
Silchas Ruin’s brows lifted in astonishment.
‘I do not know how peace will be won,’ Grizzin continued. ‘But for this moment, friend, I judge it wise to keep Lord Draconus from the High Mason’s path.’
‘A moment, please. The Consort remains with Mother Dark, seduced unto lethargy by your influence? Do you tell me that Draconus – that even Mother Dark – is unaware of what goes on outside their Chamber of Night?’
Grizzin Farl shrugged. ‘Perhaps they have eyes only for each other. What do I know? It is dark in there!’
‘Spare me the jests, Azathanai!’
‘I do not jest. Well, not so much. The Terondai – so lovingly etched on to the Citadel floor by Draconus himself – blazes with power. The Gate of Darkness is manifest now in the Citadel. Such force buffets any who would seek to pierce it.’
‘What threat does Caladan Brood pose to Lord Draconus? This makes no sense!’
‘No, I see that it does not, but I have already said too much. Perhaps Mother Dark will face the outer world, and see what is to be seen. Even I cannot predict what she might do, or what she might say to her lover. We Azathanai are intruders here, after all.’
‘Draconus has
had more congress with Azathanai than any other Tiste.’
‘He surely knows us well,’ Grizzin Farl agreed.
‘Is this some old argument, then? Between Draconus and the High Mason?’
‘They generally avoid one another’s company.’
‘Why?’
‘That is not for me to comment on, my friend. I am sorry.’
Silchas Ruin threw up his hands and leaned back. ‘I begin to question this friendship.’
‘I am aggrieved by your words.’
‘Then we have evened this exchange.’ He rose from his chair. ‘I may join you again. I may not.’
Grizzin watched the nobleborn leave the tavern. He saw how others looked up at the white-skinned brother of Lord Anomander, as if in hope, but if they sought confidence or certainty in Silchas Ruin’s mien, the gloom no doubt defeated that desire. Twisting in his chair, Grizzin caught the eye of the serving woman, and with a broad smile he beckoned her over.
* * *
High Priestess Emral Lanear stepped up on to the platform and looked across to see the historian near the far wall, as if contemplating a leap to the stones far below. She looked round, and then spoke. ‘So this is your refuge.’
He glanced at her, briefly, from over a shoulder, and then said, ‘Not all posts have been abandoned, High Priestess.’
She approached. ‘What is it you guard, Rise Herat, demanding such vigilance?’
Shrugging, he said, ‘Perspective, I suppose.’
‘And what does that win you?’
‘I see a bridge,’ he replied. ‘Undefended, and yet … none dare cross it.’
‘I think,’ she mused, ‘simple patience will see a resolution. This lack of opposition is but temporary.’
His expression betrayed doubt. He said, ‘You assume a resolve among the highborn that I have yet to see. If they stand with hands upon the swords at their sides, they are turned against the man who now shares her dark heart. Their hatred and perhaps envy of Draconus consumes them. Meanwhile, Vatha Urusander methodically eliminates all opposition, and I do not sense much outrage among the nobility.’
‘They will muster under Lord Anomander’s call, historian. When he returns.’