Reaper's Gale

  ‘Icarium, my friend—’

  ‘Can you not feel it, Taralack Veed?’ In his unhuman eyes, the gleam of anticipation. ‘This place . . . I have been here before – no, not this city. From the time before this city was born. I have stood on this ground—’

  ‘And it remembered,’ growled Taralack Veed.

  ‘Yes, but not in the way you believe. There are truths here, waiting for me. Truths. I have never been as close to them as I am now. Now I understand why I did not refuse you.’

  Refuse me? You considered such a thing? Was it truly so near the edge? ‘Your destiny will soon welcome you, Icarium, as I have said all along. You could no more refuse that than you could the Jaghut blood in your veins.’

  A grimace. ‘Jaghut . . . yes, they have been here. In my wake. Perhaps, even, on my trail. Long ago, and now again—’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘Omtose Phellack – the heart of this city is ice, Taralack Veed. A most violent imposition.’

  ‘Are you certain? I do not understand—’

  ‘Nor I. Yet. But I shall. No secret shall survive my sojourn here. It will change.’

  ‘What will change?’

  Icarium smiled, one hand resting on the pommel of his sword, and did not reply.

  ‘You will face this Emperor then?’

  ‘So it is expected of me, Taralack Veed.’ A bright glance.

  ‘How could I refuse them?’

  Spirits below, my death draws close. It was what we wanted all along. So why do I now rail at it? Who has stolen my courage?

  ‘It is as if,’ Icarium whispered, ‘my life awakens anew.’

  The hand shot out in the gloom, snatching the rat from atop the wooden cage holding the forward pump. The scrawny creature had a moment to squeal in panic before its neck was snapped. There was a thud as the dead rat was flung to one side, where it slid down into the murky bilge water.

  ‘Oh, how I hate you when you lose patience,’ Samar Dev said in a weary tone. ‘That’s an invitation to disease, Karsa Orlong.’

  ‘Life is an invitation to disease,’ the huge warrior rumbled from the shadows. After a moment, he added, ‘I’ll feed it to the turtles.’ Then he snorted. ‘Turtles big enough to drag down this damned ship. These Letherii live in a mad god’s nightmare.’

  ‘More than you realize,’ Samar Dev muttered. ‘Listen. Shouts from shore. We’re finally drawing in.’

  ‘The rats are relieved.’

  ‘Don’t you have something you need to do to get ready?’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘I don’t know. Knock a few more chips off your sword, or something. Get it sharp.’

  ‘The sword is unbreakable.’

  ‘What about that armour? Most of the shells are broken – it’s not worthy of the name and won’t stop a blade—’

  ‘No blade will reach it, witch. I shall face but one man, not twenty. And he is small – my people call you children. And that is all you truly are. Short-lived, stick-limbed, with faces I want to pinch. The Edur are little different, just stretched out a bit.’

  ‘Pinch? Would that be before or after decapitation?’

  He grunted a laugh.

  Samar Dev leaned back against the bale in which something hard and lumpy had been packed – despite the mild discomfort she was not inclined to explore any further. Both the Edur and the Letherii had peculiar ideas about what constituted booty. In this very hold there were amphorae containing spiced human blood and a dozen wax-clad corpses of Edur ‘refugees’ from Sepik who had not survived the journey, stacked like bolts of cloth against a bloodstained conch-shell throne that had belonged to some remote island chieftain – whose pickled head probably resided in one of the jars Karsa Orlong leaned against. ‘At least we’re soon to get off this damned ship. My skin has all dried up. Look at my hands – I’ve seen mummified ones looking better than these. All this damned salt – it clings like a second skin, and it’s moulting—’

  ‘Spirits below, woman, you incite me to wring another rat’s neck.’

  ‘So I am responsible for that last rat’s death, am I? Needless to say, I take exception to that. Was your hand that reached out, Toblakai. Your hand that—’

  ‘And your mouth that never stops, making me need to kill something.’

  ‘I am not to blame for your violent impulses. Besides, I was just passing time in harmless conversation. We’ve not spoken in a while, you and I. I find I prefer Taxilian’s company, and were he not sick with homesickness and even more miserable than you . . .’

  ‘Conversation. Is that what you call it? Then why are my ears numb?’

  ‘You know, I too am impatient. I’ve not cast a curse on anyone in a long time.’

  ‘Your squalling spirits do not frighten me,’ Karsa Orlong replied. ‘And they have been squalling, ever since we made the river. A thousand voices clamouring in my skull – can you not silence them?’

  Sighing, she tilted her head back and closed her eyes. ‘Toblakai . . . you will have quite an audience when you clash swords with this Edur Emperor.’

  ‘What has that to do with your spirits, Samar Dev?’

  ‘Yes, that was too obscure, wasn’t it? Then I shall be more precise. There are gods in this city we approach. Resident gods.’

  ‘Do they ever get a moment’s rest?’

  ‘They don’t live in temples. Nor any signs above the doors of their residences, Karsa Orlong. They are in the city, yet few know of it. Understand, the spirits shriek because they are not welcome, and, even more worrying, should any one of those gods seek to wrest them away from me, well, there is little I could do against them.’

  ‘Yet they are bound to me as well, aren’t they?’

  She clamped her mouth shut, squinted across at him in the gloom. The hull thumped as the ship edged up alongside the dock. She saw the glimmer of bared teeth, feral, and a chill rippled through her. ‘What do you know of that?’ she asked.

  ‘It is my curse to gather souls,’ he replied. ‘What are spirits, witch, if not simply powerful souls? They haunt me . . . I haunt them. The candles I lit, in that apothecary of yours – they were in the wax, weren’t they?’

  ‘Released, then held close, yes. I gathered them . . . after I’d sent you away.’

  ‘Bound them into that knife at your belt,’ Karsa said.

  ‘Tell me, do you sense the two Toblakai souls in my own weapon?’

  ‘Yes, no. That is, I sense them, but I dare not approach.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Karsa, they are too strong for me. They are like fire in the crystal of that flint, trapped by your will.’

  ‘Not trapped,’ he replied. ‘They dwell within because they choose to, because the weapon honours them. They are my companions, Samar Dev.’ The Toblakai rose suddenly, hunching beneath the ceiling. ‘Should a god be foolish enough to seek to steal our spirits, I will kill it.’

  She regarded him from half-closed eyes. Declarative statements such as that one were not rare utterances from Karsa Orlong, and she had long since learned that they were not empty boasts, no matter how absurd the assertion might have sounded. ‘That would not be wise,’ she said after a moment.

  ‘A god devoid of wisdom deserves what it gets.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  Karsa stooped momentarily to retrieve the dead rat, then he headed for the hatch.

  She followed.

  When she reached the main deck, the Toblakai was walking towards the captain. She watched as he placed the sodden rat in the Letherii’s hands, then turned away, saying, ‘Get the hoists – I want my horse on deck and off this damned hulk.’ Behind him, the captain stared down at the creature in his hands, then, with a snarl, he flung it over the rail.

  Samar Dev contemplated a few quick words with the captain, to stave off the coming storm – a storm that Karsa had nonchalantly triggered innumerable times before on this voyage – then decided it was not worth the effort. It seemed that the captain concluded much the same
, as a sailor hurried up with a bucket of seawater, into which the Letherii thrust his hands.

  The main hatch to the cargo hold was being removed, while other hands set to assembling the winches.

  Karsa strode to the gangway. He halted, then said in a loud voice, ‘This city reeks. When I am done with its Emperor, I may well burn it to the ground.’

  The planks sagged and bounced as the Toblakai descended to the landing.

  Samar Dev hurried after him.

  One of two fully armoured guards had already begun addressing Karsa in contemptuous tones. ‘—to be unarmed whenever you are permitted to leave the compound, said permission to be granted only by the ranking officer of the Watch. Our immediate task is to escort you to your quarters, where the filth will be scrubbed from your body and hair—’

  He got no further, as Karsa reached out, closed his hand on the guard’s leather weapons harness, and with a single heave flung the Letherii into the air. Six or more paces to the left he sailed, colliding with three stevedores who had been watching the proceedings. All four went down.

  Voicing an oath, the second guard tugged at his shortsword.

  Karsa’s punch rocked his head back and the man collapsed.

  Hoarse shouts of alarm, more Letherii soldiers converging.

  Samar Dev rushed forward. ‘Hood take you, Toblakai – do you intend to war with the whole empire?’

  Glaring at the half-circle of guards closing round him, Karsa grunted then crossed his arms. ‘If you are to be my escort,’ he said to them, ‘then be civil, or I will break you all into pieces.’ Then he swung about, pushing past Samar.

  ‘Where is my horse?’ he bellowed to the crew still on deck. ‘Where is Havok! I grow tired of waiting!’ Samar Dev considered returning to the ship, demanding that they sail out, back down the river, back into the Draconean Sea, then beyond. Leaving this unpredictable Toblakai to Letheras and all its hapless denizens.

  Alas, even gods don’t deserve that.

  Bugg stood thirty paces from the grand entrance to the Hivanar Estate, one hand out as he leaned against a wall to steady himself. In some alley garden a short distance away, chickens screeched in wild clamour and flung themselves into the grille hatches in frenzied panic. Overhead, starlings still raced back and forth en masse.

  He wiped beads of sweat from his brow, struggled to draw a deep breath.

  A worthy reminder, he told himself. Everything was only a matter of time. What stretched would then contract. Events tumbled, forces closed to collision, and for all that, the measured pace seemed to remain unchanged, a current beneath all else. Yet, he knew, even that slowed, incrementally, from one age to the next. Death is written in birth – the words of a great sage. What was her name? When did she live? Ah, so much has whispered away from my mind, these memories, like sand between the fingers. Yet she could see what most cannot – not even the gods. Death and birth. Even in opposition the two forces are bound, and to define one is to define the other.

  And now he had come. With his first step, delivering the weight of history. This land’s. His own. Two forces in opposition, yet inextricably bound. Do you now feel as if you have come home, Icarium? I remember you, striding from the sea, a refugee from a realm you had laid to waste. Yet your father did not await you – he had gone, he had walked down the throat of an Azath. Icarium, he was Jaghut, and among the Jaghut no father reaches across to take his child’s hand.

  ‘Are you sick, old man?’

  Blinking, Bugg looked across to see a servant from one of the nearby estates, returning from market with a basket of foodstuffs balanced on his head. Only with grief, dear mortal. He shook his head.

  ‘It was the floods,’ the servant went on. ‘Shifting the clay.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Scale House fell down – did you hear? Right into the street. Good thing it was empty, hey? Though I heard there was a fatality – in the street.’ The man suddenly grinned. ‘A cat!’ Laughing, he resumed his journey.

  Bugg stared after him; then, with a grunt, he set off for the gate.

  * * *

  He waited on the terrace, frowning down at the surprisingly deep trench the crew had managed to excavate into the bank, then outward, through the bedded silts of the river itself. The shoring was robust, and Bugg could see few leaks from between the sealed slats. Even so, two workers were on the pump, their bared backs slick with sweat.

  Rautos Hivanar came to his side. ‘Bugg, welcome. I imagine you wish to retrieve your crew.’

  ‘No rush, sir,’ Bugg replied. ‘It is clear to me now that this project of yours is . . . ambitious. How much water is coming up from the floor of that pit?’

  ‘Without constant pumping, the trench would overflow in a little under two bells.’

  ‘I bring you a message from your servant, Venitt Sathad, who visited on his way out of the city. He came to observe our progress on the refurbishment of the inn you recently acquired, and was struck with something of a revelation upon seeing the mysterious mechanism we found inside an outbuilding. He further suggested it was imperative that you see it for yourself. Also, he mentioned a collection of artifacts . . . recovered from this trench, yes?’

  The large man was silent for a moment, then he seemed to reach a decision, for he gestured Bugg to follow.

  They entered the estate, passing through an elongated, shuttered room in which hung drying herbs, down a corridor and into a workroom dominated by a large table and prism lanterns attached to hinged arms so that, if desired, they could be drawn close or lifted clear when someone was working at the table. Resting on the polished wood surface were a dozen or so objects, both metal and fired clay, not one of which revealed any obvious function.

  Rautos Hivanar still silent and standing now at his side, Bugg scanned the objects for a long moment, then reached out and picked up one in particular. Heavy, unmarked by pitting or rust, seamlessly bent almost to right angles.

  ‘Your engineers,’ Rautos Hivanar said, ‘could determine no purpose to these mechanisms.’

  Bugg’s brows rose at the man’s use of the word ‘mechanism’. He hefted the object in his hands.

  ‘I have attempted to assemble these,’ the merchant continued, ‘to no avail. There are no obvious attachment points, yet, somehow, they seem to me to be of a piece. Perhaps some essential item is still buried beneath the river, but we have found nothing for three days now, barring a wheelbarrow’s worth of stone chips and shards – and these were recovered in a level of sediment far below these artifacts, leading me to believe that they pre-date them by centuries, if not millennia.’

  ‘Yes,’ Bugg muttered. ‘Eres’al, a mated pair, preparing flint for tools, here on the bank of the vast marsh. He worked the cores, she did the more detailed knapping. They came here for three seasons, then she died in childbirth, and he wandered with a starving babe in his arms until it too died. He found no others of his kind, for they had been scattered after the conflagration of the great forests, the wildfires sweeping out over the plains. The air was thick with ash. He wandered, until he died, and so was the last of his line.’ He stared unseeing at the artifact, even as its weight seemed to burgeon, threatening to tug at his arms, to drag him down to his knees. ‘But Icarium said there would be no end, that the cut thread was but an illusion – in his voice, then, I could hear his father.’

  A hand closed on his shoulder and swung him round. Startled, he met Rautos Hivanar’s sharp, glittering eyes. Bugg frowned. ‘Sir?’

  ‘You – you are inclined to invent stories. Or, perhaps, you are a sage, gifted with unnatural sight. Is this what I am hearing, old man? Tell me, who was this Icarium? Was that the name of the Eres’al? The one who died?’

  ‘I am sorry, sir.’ He raised the object higher. ‘This artifact – you will find it is identical to the massive object at the inn, barring scale. I believe this is what your servant wanted you to realize – as he himself did when he first looked upon the edifice once we had brought down the walls enclosi
ng it.’

  ‘Are you certain of all this?’

  ‘Yes.’ Bugg gestured at the array of items on the table. ‘A central piece is missing, as you suspected, sir. Alas, you will not find it, for it is not physical. The framework that will hold it together is one of energy, not matter. And,’ he added, still in a distracted tone, ‘it has yet to arrive.’

  He set the artifact back down and walked from the chamber, back up the corridor, through the dry-rack room, out onto the terrace. Unmindful of the two workers pausing to stare across at him as Rautos Hivanar appeared as if in pursuit – the merchant’s hands were spread, palms up, as if beseeching, although the huge man said not a word, his mouth working in silence, as though he had been struck mute. Bugg’s glance at the large man was momentary. He continued on, along the passage between estate wall and compound wall, to the side postern near the front gate.

  He found himself once more on the street, only remotely noticing the passers-by in the cooler shade of afternoon.

  It has yet to arrive.

  And yet, it comes.

  ‘Watch where you’re walking, old man!’

  ‘Leave off him – see how he weeps? It’s an old man’s right to grieve, so leave him be.’

  ‘Must be blind, the clumsy fool . . .’

  And here, long before this city was born, there stood a temple, into which Icarium walked – as lost as any son, the child severed from the thread. But the Elder God within could give him nothing. Nothing beyond what he himself was preparing to do.

  Could you have imagined, K’rul, how Icarium would take what you did? Take it into himself as would any child seeking a guiding hand? Where are you, K’rul? Do you sense his return? Do you know what he seeks?

  ‘Clumsy or not, it’s a question of manners and proper respect.’

  Bugg’s threadbare tunic was grasped and he was dragged to one side, then flung up against a wall. He stared at a battered face beneath the rim of a helm. To one side, scowling, another guard.

  ‘Do you know who we are?’ the man holding him demanded, baring stained teeth.