‘A’nom,’ said the Son of Darkness, frowning.
‘Perhaps,’ the Azathanai said, ‘as a babe, you were quick to stand.’
‘And Rakess? Or Rake, as you would call me?’
‘Only what I see in you, and what all others see in you. Strength.’
‘I feel no such thing.’
‘No one who is strong does.’
They had conversed as if Endest was not there, as if he was deaf to their words. The two men, Tiste and Azathanai, had begun forging something between them, and whatever it was, it was unafraid of truths.
‘My father died because he would not retreat from battle.’
‘Your father was bound in the chains of his family name.’
‘As I will be, Caladan? You give me hope.’
‘Forgive me, Rake, but strength is not always a virtue. I will raise no monument to you.’
The Son of Darkness had smiled, then. ‘At last, you say something that wholly pleases me.’
‘Yet still you are worshipped. Many by nature would hide in strength’s shadow.’
‘I will defy them.’
‘Such principles are rarely appreciated,’ Caladan said. ‘Expect excoriation. Condemnation. Those who are not your equals will claim for their own that equality, and yet will meet your eyes with expectation, with profound presumption. Every kindness you yield they will take as deserved, but such appetites are unending, and your denial is the crime they but await. Commit it and witness their subsequent vilification.’
Anomander shrugged at that, as if the expectations of others meant nothing to him, and whatever would come from his standing upon the principles he espoused, he would bear it. ‘You promised peace, Caladan. I vowed to hold you to that, and nothing we have said now has changed my mind.’
‘Yes, I said I would guide you, and I will. And in so doing, I will rely upon your strength, and hope it robust enough to bear each and every burden I place upon it. So I remind myself, and you, with the new name I give you. Will you accept it, Anomander Rake? Will you stand in strength?’
‘My father’s name proved a curse. Indeed, it proved the death of him.’
‘Yes.’
‘Very well, Caladan Brood, I will take this first burden.’
Of course. The Son of Darkness could do no less.
They had departed then, leaving Endest alone in the desecrated house. Alone, with the blood drying on his hands. Alone, and hollowed out by the departing of Mother Dark’s presence.
She had heard every word.
And had, once more, fled.
He shivered in the garden, despite the furs. As if he had never regained the blood lost all that time past, there at the pilgrims’ shrine, he could no longer fight off the cold. Do not look to me. Your regard ages me. Your hope weakens me. I am no prophet. My only purpose is to deliver the sanctity of blood.
Yet a battle was coming, a battle in the heart of winter, upending the proper season of war. And, along with all the other priests, and many of the priestesses, Endest would be there, ready to dress wounds and to comfort the dying. Ready to bless the day before the first weapon was drawn. But, alone among all the anointed, he would possess another task, another responsibility.
By my hands, I will let flow the sanctity of blood. And make of the place of battle another grisly shrine.
He thought of Orfantal dying, in the moment before Ribs pounced, and saw the spatters of blood on the snow around the boy.
She had begun returning now, faint and silent, and with his eyes, the goddess etched the future.
That was bad enough by itself, but something he could withstand.
If not for her growing thirst.
Do not look at me. Do not seek to know me. You’ll not like my truths.
Step by step, this pilgrim makes a path.
* * *
Bedecked in his heavy armour, Kellaras stood hesitating in the corridor when Silchas Ruin appeared. The commander stepped to one side to let the lord past. Instead, Silchas halted.
‘Kellaras, have you sought entry into the Chamber of Night?’
‘No, milord. My courage fails me.’
‘What news do you bring that so unmans you?’
‘None but truths I regret knowing, milord. I have word from Captain Galar Baras. He has done as you commanded, but in the observation of his new recruits, he reiterates his doubt.’
Silchas turned to study the blackwood door at the corridor’s end. ‘No counsel will be found there, commander.’
I fear you are right. Kellaras shrugged. ‘My apologies, milord. I sought but could not find you.’
‘Yet you stepped aside and voiced no greeting.’
‘Forgive me, milord. All courage fails me. I believe what I sought in the Chamber of Night was a gift of faith from my goddess.’
‘Alas,’ said Silchas Ruin in a growl, ‘she makes faith into water, and pleasures in its feel as it drains from the hand. Even our thirst is denied us. Very well, Kellaras, I have your news, but it changes nothing. The Hust armour must be worn, the swords held in living hands. Perhaps this will be enough to give Urusander pause.’
‘He will know the measure of those in that armour, milord, and the fragility of the grasp upon those swords.’
‘You would spread the sand beneath your feet out and under my own, Kellaras, but I need to remain sure of each stride I take.’
‘Milord, any word of your brothers?’
Silchas frowned. ‘You think us eager to share such privacies, commander? Your lord will find you in good time, and yield no sympathy should your courage fail in his eyes. Now, divest yourself of that armour – its display whispers of panic.’
Bowing, Kellaras backed away.
Facing the Chamber of Night, Silchas Ruin seemed to hesitate, as if about to march towards it, and then he wheeled round. ‘A moment, commander. Send Dathenar and Prazek to the Hust, and charge them take command of the new cohorts, and so give answer to Galar Baras’s needs, as best we can.’
Startled, Kellaras asked, ‘Milord, are they to don Hust armour? Take up a Hust sword?’
Silchas Ruin’s face hardened. ‘Has courage failed everyone in our House? Leave my sight, commander!’
‘Milord.’ Kellaras quickly set off. As he marched up the corridor, he could feel Ruin’s baleful glare upon his back. Panic’s bite is indeed a fever. And here I am, the flea upon a thousand hides. He would return to his chamber and remove his armour, setting aside the girdle of war, but retain his sword as befitted his rank. Silchas was right. A soldier makes of his garb a statement, and an invitation. It was the swagger of violence, but inside that armour there could be diffidence and, indeed, great fear.
He would then set out and find Dathenar and Prazek where he had left them, upon the Citadel’s bridge.
Harbinger blades for those two, and a chorus of scales. Oh, my friends, I see you shrivel before my eyes at this news. Forgive me.
The Citadel’s darkness was suffocating. Again and again he found the need to pause and draw a deep, settling breath. In the corridors and colonnaded hallways, he walked virtually alone, and it was all too easy to imagine this place abandoned, haunted by a host of failures – no different, then, from any ruin he had visited out in the lands to the south, where the Forulkan left only their bones amidst the rubble. The sense of things still unfinished was like a curse riding an endless breath. It moaned on the wind and made stones tick in the heat. It whispered in the sifting of sand and voiced low laughter in the slip of pebbles between the fingers.
He could see this fortress devoid of life, a scorched shell that made Dark’s temple a bitter jest. Worshipped by spiders in their dusty webs, and beetles crawling through bat guano – a man wandering through such a place would find nothing worth remembering. The failings of the past cut like a sharp knife through any hope of nostalgia, or sweet reminiscence. He could not help but wonder at the impermanence of such places as temples and other holy sites. If nothing more than symbols of lost faith, then they st
ood as mortal failings. But if gods died in such ruins – if they felt a blade sink into their hearts, or slide smooth across their soft throats, then the crime was beyond any surrendering of faith.
Still, perhaps holiness was nothing more than an eye’s gift – upon these stones, or that tree, or the spring bubbling beneath it. Perhaps the only murder possible in such places was the one that left hope lying lifeless upon the ground.
Leaving his chamber and making his way towards the outer ward and the gate, beyond which waited the bridge, Kellaras was forced to cross the Terondai’s glittering pattern cut into the flagstones. He could feel the power beneath him, emanating in slow exudations, like the breath of a sleeping god. The sensation crawled across his skin.
He emerged into the chill night, where frost glistened on the stone walls and the lone Houseblade positioned at the gate stood huddled beneath a heavy cloak, dozing as she leaned against the barrier. Hearing his approach, she straightened.
‘Sir.’
‘You have closed the gate.’
She nodded. ‘I saw, sir, that the bridge was unguarded.’
‘Unguarded? Where, then, are Dathenar and Prazek?’
‘I do not know, sir.’
Kellaras gestured and she hurried to unbar the gate. The hinges squealed as she pushed on the portal. The captain passed through, on to the bridge. The bitter chill in this almost perpetual night was made all the more fierce by the black waters of the Dorssan Ryl. His boots cracked on ice as he hurried across the span.
He could well guess the refuge Dathenar and Prazek had found. Dereliction by officers was a grievous offence, and worse, the example it set could deliver a mortal wound to morale. Yet, in his heart, Kellaras could not blame his two friends. Their lord had abandoned them, and the one brother who remained to command the Citadel’s Houseblades often mistook birthright for wisdom: with this last command, written in the spinning of a heel, half the officers remaining to the Houseblades were divested of their colours.
Without question, Galar Baras and the Hust would welcome this gift, although Kellaras suspected that even his friend would be startled at the largesse, and perhaps wonder at Silchas Ruin’s unleavened generosity with respect to Anomander’s soldiers.
Attachment to any other force might be cause for envy, under the circumstances, but Kellaras was under no illusions, and he well knew the effect delivering this command would have upon Dathenar and Prazek. As good as banishment. And so it will seem, given their abandoning their post, and to be honest, I am loath to deny the connection. Officers, by the Abyss! No, it’s serendipitous punishment, enough to sober them to the quick.
The Gillswan was a tavern that made a virtue of its obscure location, down a curling slope to a loading dock and sunk into the foundations of a lesser bridge. The cobbles were uneven due to frost-heaving, all the more treacherous with the addition of frozen puddles filling the gaps left by missing stones. Despite this, the gloom failed in disguising the pitfalls, and Kellaras made his way to the low door without mishap. He pushed it open and felt smoky heat gust into his face.
Prazek’s voice crossed the cramped, crowded room. ‘Kellaras! Here, join us hogs in the swill! We are drunk in defeat, my friend, but see us welcome the woe and wallow of our fate!’
Kellaras saw his friends, leaning against one another on a bench backed by a wall. Ignoring the crowd of off-duty Houseblades, even those that called out in greeting, he made his way over to Dathenar and Prazek, pulled out a chair and sat down opposite them. Faces flushed, they smiled. Then Dathenar pushed a flagon towards the commander, and said, ‘It’s the beastly tongue that wags us this night, my friend.’
‘There is pomp to this circumstance nonetheless,’ Prazek said, lurching forward to rest his thick forearms on the table. ‘No highborn can truly sink into the hole of ignorance’s cloying mud. We poke our faces free again and again, gasping for air.’
‘If this fug be air,’ Dathenar said in a growl. ‘Besides, I am too drunk to swim, too bloated to drown, and too confused to tell the difference. We left the bridge – this much I know – and that is a crime in the eyes of our lord.’
‘Fortunate, then,’ said Prazek, ‘that our lord’s eyes are elsewhere.’
‘Unfortunate,’ corrected Kellaras, ‘since I must see in his stead.’
‘That will make any man’s eyes sting,’ Dathenar said.
‘I’ll not deny that,’ Kellaras replied, pointedly.
But neither man was in any condition for subtlety. With a broad, sloppy smile, Prazek waved one hand. ‘Must we take our posts again? Will you berate us with cold promises? At the very least, friend, build us a fine argument, an intricaspy – intricacy – of purpose. Hook fingers into the nostrils and drag out the noble horse, so we may see its fine trappings. Honour’s bridle—’
‘Pride’s stirrups!’ shouted Dathenar, raising his flagon.
‘Duty’s bit between the teeth!’
‘Loyalty’s over-worn saddle, so sweet under the cheeks!’
‘To take belch’s foul cousin—’
‘Friends,’ said Kellaras in a warning hiss, ‘that is enough of that. Your words are unfit for officers of Lord Anomander’s Houseblades. You try my indulgence. Now, be on your feet, and pray the cold night air yields you sobriety.’
Prazek’s brows lifted and he looked to Dathenar. ‘He dares it, brother! To the bridge, then! Torches approach from some dire quarter. ’Tis revelation’s light, to make every sinner cower!’
‘Not the bridge,’ Kellaras said, sighing. ‘You have been reassigned. Both of you. By command of Silchas Ruin. You are to join the Hust Legion.’
This silenced them. Looking upon their shocked expressions offered Kellaras no satisfaction.
‘F-for abandoning our posts?’ Prazek asked in disbelief.
‘No. That crime stays between us. The matter is more prosaic. Galar Baras has terrible need for officers. This is Ruin’s answer.’
‘Oh,’ muttered Dathenar, ‘it is indeed. Ruin, ruinous answer, ruin of all privilege, ruin of life. A command voiced with distinction – alas, we hear it all too well.’
‘Our privilege to do so,’ nodded Prazek, ‘in language less than obscure.’
‘More than plain, brother.’
‘Just so, Dathenar. See me long for sudden complexity. Wish me swathed in obfuscation and euphoric euphemism. I would flee to the nearest lofty tower, worthy of my hauteur. I would sniff and decry the state’s sordid … state, and then frown and announce: the wine is too tart. Too … too, far too … tart.’
‘I’ll whip the servant, brother, if that pleases you.’
‘Pleasing is dead, Dathenar, and dead … pleasing.’
Dathenar groaned and rubbed at his face. ‘Prazek, we should never have left unguarded the bridge. See what fate we let cross, when a mere switch would have sent the hog running. So be it. I yield to simple fate and name her just.’
Prazek pushed himself upright. ‘Commander Kellaras, we are, as ever, at your call.’
Grunting, Dathenar stood as well. ‘Perchance the sword has a bawdy tale, to amuse us in our perfidy. And the armour – well, it is said to be loquacious to a fault, but I’ll not begrudge the warning voice, even should we fail in heeding it.’
Standing, Kellaras gestured to the door. ‘Step carefully once outside, friends. The way back is uncertain.’
Both men nodded at that.
THREE
‘THERE WILL BE JUSTICE!’
When that call came, echoing down the long, foul tunnels, Wareth thought it a sour joke. Belatedly, he comprehended the earnestness in that cry. And when he dropped the heavy pick in his hands, the sudden absence of that familiar weight almost made him stagger back a step.
He was alone, at the far end of a deep vein. The words whispered their echoes as if the iron ore itself was speaking to him in the darkness. He remained motionless, drawing in the chill air, as the ache in his hands slowly faded. The past was a cruel and remorseless pursuer, and in this place ?
?? for Wareth and for all the others down these shafts – it muttered of justice more often than not.
Again the call sounded. Close around him, the rock wept its unceasing tears, making glittering runnels around patches of luminescence, pooling at his feet. If those words iterated a promise, it was far too late. If a summons, then far past time. He had yet to turn round. The way ahead, just visible in the gloom, was a blunted, battered wall. He had been beating at it for weeks now. It had served him well, as a place where he could, with his back to the world, live out his wakeful existence. He had grown to admire the vein’s stubborn defiance, had come to grieve its shattering surrender, piece by piece.
The pick Wareth had wielded was a fine tool. Iron tamed and given shape. Iron domesticated, subjugated, forged into a slayer of its wild kin. This was the only battle he fought, and he and the pick fought it well, and so the wild ore retreated, shard by shard. Of course, the truth was, the vein did not retreat. It simply died, in buckets of rubble. This was the only war he knew how to win.
The cry sounded a third time, but fainter now, as the other miners worked their way to the surface, rising sunward. He thought to retrieve his pick, to resume his assault. The wild stood no chance. It never did. Instead, he swung round, to make his way back to the surface.
More often than not, justice was a word written in blood. The curiosity that tugged him onward, and upward, made him no different from anyone else. That righteous claim needed a victim. It depended on there being one, and this fed a kind of lust.
Hunched over, he made his way up the shaft, his boots splashing through the pools made by the weeping rock. The trek took some time.
Eventually, he stood at the mine’s ragged entrance, blinking in the harsh sunlight. Sharp pains stabbed at his lower back as he straightened to his full height for the first time since rising from his cot that morning. Sweat streamed from him despite the air’s wintry bite, mixing with dust and grime as it ran down his bared torso. He could feel his muscles slowly contracting to the cold and it seemed as if simple light and clean, bitter air could cleanse him, scouring skin, flesh, bone and down into his very soul, and so yield the miracle of restitution, of redemption. In the wake of that notion came mocking derision.