Shurq Elalle thumped the table. ‘That’s it! Thank you, Pretty. It was something one of those women said. Brevity or Pithy – one of them. That ice was beaten back, all right, but not thanks to the handful of mages working for the Shake. No – those foreigners are the ones who saved this damned island. And that’s why Brullyg can’t bar his door against them. It isn’t negotiation, because they’re the ones doing all the talking.’ She slowly leaned back. ‘No wonder the Shake won’t see me – Errant take us, I’d be surprised if he was still alive—’
‘No, he’s alive,’ Ballant said. ‘At least, people have seen him. Besides, he has a liking for Fent ale and orders a cask from me once every three days without fail, and that hasn’t changed. Why, just yesterday—’
The captain leaned forward again. ‘Ballant. Next time you’re told to deliver one, let me and Pretty here do the delivering.’
‘Why, I could deny you nothing, Captain,’ Ballant said, then felt his face flush.
But she just smiled.
He liked these inconsequential conversations. Not much different from those he used to have with his wife. And . . . yes, here it was – that sudden sense of a yawning abyss awaiting his next step. Nostalgia rose within him, brimming his eyes.
Under siege, dear husband? One swing of this fist and those walls will come tumbling down – you do know that, husband, don’t you?
Oh yes, my love.
Odd, sometimes he would swear she’d never left. Dead or not, she still had teeth.
Blue-grey mould filled pocks in the rotted ice like snow’s own fur, shedding with the season as the sun’s bright heat devoured the glacier. But winter, when it next came, would do little more than slow the inexorable disintegration. This river of ice was dying, an age in retreat.
Seren Pedac had scant sense of the age to come, since she felt she was drowning in its birth, swept along in the mud and refuse of long-frozen debris. Periodically, as their discordant, constantly bickering party climbed ever higher into the northern Bluerose Mountains, they would hear the thundering collapse of distant ice cliffs, calving beneath the besieging sun; and everywhere water streamed across bared rock, coughed its way along channels and fissures, swept past them in its descent into darkness – the journey to the sea just begun – swept past, to traverse subterranean caverns, shadowed gorges, sodden forests.
The mould was sporing, and that had triggered a recoil of Seren’s senses – her nose was stuffed, her throat was dry and sore and she was racked with bouts of sneezing that had proved amusing enough to elicit even a sympathetic smile from Fear Sengar. That hint of sympathy alone earned her forgiveness – the pleasure the others took at her discomfort deserved nothing but reciprocation, when the opportunity arose, and she was certain it would.
Silchas Ruin, of course, was not afflicted with a sense of humour, in so far as she could tell. Or its dryness beggared a desert. Besides, he strode far enough ahead to spare himself her sneezing fits, with the Tiste Andii, Clip, only a few strides in his wake – like a sparrow harassing a hawk. Every now and then some fragment of Clip’s monologue drifted back to where Seren and her companions struggled along, and while it was clear that he was baiting the brother of his god, it was equally evident that the Mortal Sword of the Black-Winged Lord was, as Udinaas had remarked, using the wrong bait.
Four days now, this quest into the ravaged north, climbing the spine of the mountains. Skirting huge masses of broken ice that slid – almost perceptibly – ever downslope, voicing terrible groans and gasps. The leviathans are fatally wounded, Udinaas once observed, and will not go quietly.
Melting ice exuded a stench beyond the acrid bite of the mould spores. Decaying detritus: vegetation and mud frozen for centuries; the withered corpses of animals, some of them beasts long extinct, leaving behind twisted hides of brittle fur every whisper of wind plucked into the air, fractured bones and bulging cavities filled with gases that eventually burst, hissing out fetid breath. It was no wonder Seren Pedac’s body was rebelling.
The migrating mountains of ice were, it turned out, cause for the near-panic among the Tiste Andii inhabitants of the subterranean monastery. The deep gorge that marked its entrance branched like a tree to the north, and back down each branch now crawled packed snow and enormous blocks of ice, with streams of meltwater providing the grease, ever speeding their southward migration. And there was fetid magic in that ice, remnants of an ancient ritual still powerful enough to defeat the Onyx Wizards.
Seren Pedac suspected that there was more to this journey, and to Clip’s presence, than she and her companions had been led to believe. We walk towards the heart of that ritual, to the core that remains. Because a secret awaits us there.
Does Clip mean to shatter the ritual? What will happen if he does?
And what if to do so ruins us? Our chances of finding the soul of Scabandari Bloodeye, of releasing it?
She was beginning to dread this journey’s end.
There will be blood.
Swathed in the furs the Andii had provided, Udinaas moved up alongside her. ‘Acquitor, I have been thinking.’
‘Is that wise?’ she asked.
‘Of course not, but it’s not as if I can help it. The same for you, I am sure.’
Grimacing, she said, ‘I have lost my purpose here. Clip now leads. I . . . I don’t know why I am still walking in your sordid company.’
‘Contemplating leaving us, are you?’
She shrugged.
‘Do not do that,’ said Fear Sengar behind them.
Surprised, she half turned. ‘Why?’
The warrior looked uncomfortable with his own statement. He hesitated.
What mystery is this?
Udinaas laughed. ‘His brother offered you a sword, Acquitor. Fear understands – it wasn’t just expedience. Nor was your taking it, I’d wager—’
‘You do not know that,’ Seren said, suddenly uneasy. ‘Trull spoke – he assured me it was nothing more—’
‘Do you expect everyone to speak plainly?’ the ex-slave asked. ‘Do you expect anyone to speak plainly? What sort of world do you inhabit, Acquitor?’ He laughed. ‘Not the same as mine, that’s for certain. For every word we speak, are there not a thousand left unsaid? Do we not often say one thing and mean the very opposite? Woman, look at us – look at yourself. Our souls might as well be trapped inside a haunted keep. Sure, we built it – each of us – with our own hands, but we’ve forgotten half the rooms, we get lost in the corridors. We stumble into rooms of raging heat, then stagger back, away, lest our own emotions roast us alive. Other places are cold as ice – as cold as this frozen land around us. Still others remain for ever dark – no lantern will work, every candle dies as if starved of air, and we grope around, collide with unseen furniture, with walls. We look out through the high windows, but distrust all that we see. We armour ourselves against unreal phantasms, yet shadows and whispers make us bleed.’
‘Good thing the thousand words for each of those were left unsaid,’ Fear Sengar muttered, ‘else we find ourselves in the twilight of all existence before you are through.’
Udinaas replied without turning. ‘I tore away the veil of your reason, Fear, for asking the Acquitor to stay. Do you deny that? You see her as betrothed to your brother. And that he happens to be dead means nothing, because, unlike your youngest brother, you are an honourable man.’
A grunt of surprise from Udinaas, as Fear Sengar reached out to grasp the ex-slave, hands closing on the wrapped folds of fur. A surge of anger sent Udinaas sprawling onto the muddy scree.
As the Tiste Edur then whirled to advance on the winded Letherii, Seren Pedac stepped into his path. ‘Stop. Please, Fear. Yes, I know he deserved it. But . . . stop.’
Udinaas had managed to sit up, Kettle crouching down at his side and trying to wipe the smears of mud from his face. He coughed, then said, ‘That will be the last time I compliment you, Fear.’
Seren turned on the ex-slave. ‘That was a rather vicious complime
nt, Udinaas. And I second your own advice – don’t say anything like that again. Ever. Not if you value your life—’
Udinaas spat grit and blood, then said, ‘Ah, but now we’ve stumbled into a dark room indeed. And, Seren Pedac, you are not welcome there.’ He pushed himself upright. ‘You have been warned.’ Then he looked up, one hand settling on Kettle’s shoulder. His eyes, suddenly bright, avid, scanned Seren, Fear, and then moved up the trail, to where Silchas Ruin and Clip now stood side by side, regarding those downslope. ‘Here’s a most telling question – the kind few dare utter, by the way. Which one among us, friends, is not haunted by a death wish? Perhaps we ought to discuss mutual suicide . . .’
No-one spoke for a half-dozen heartbeats. Until Kettle said, ‘I don’t want to die!’
Seren saw the ex-slave’s bitter smile crumble, a sudden collapse into undeniable grief, before he turned away.
‘Trull was blind to his own truth,’ Fear said to her in a quiet voice. ‘I was there, Acquitor. I know what I saw.’
She refused to meet his eyes. Expedience. How could such a warrior proclaim his love for me? How could he even believe he knew me enough for that?
And why can I see his face as clear in my mind as if he stood here before me? I am haunted indeed. Oh, Udinaas, you were right. Fear is an honourable man, so honourable as to break all our hearts.
But, Fear, there is no value in honouring one who is dead.
‘Trull is dead,’ she said, stunning herself with her own brutality as she saw Fear visibly flinch. ‘He is dead.’ And so am I. There is no point in honouring the dead. I have seen too much to believe otherwise. Grieve for lost potential, the end of possibilities, the eternally silent demise of promise. Grieve for that, Fear Sengar, and you will understand, finally, how grief is but a mirror, held close to one’s own face.
And every tear springs from the choices we ourselves did not make.
When I grieve, Fear, I cannot even see the bloom of my own breath – what does that tell you?
They resumed walking. Silent.
A hundred paces above the group, Clip spun his chain and rings. ‘What was all that about?’ he asked.
‘You have lived in your tidy cave for too long,’ the white-skinned Tiste Andii said.
‘Oh, I get out often enough. Carousing in Bluerose – the gods know how many bastards have been brewed by my seed. Why—’
‘One day, Mortal Sword,’ Silchas Ruin interrupted, ‘you will discover what cuts deeper than any weapon of iron.’
‘Wise words from the one who smells still of barrows and rotting cobwebs.’
‘If the dead could speak, Clip, what would they tell you?’
‘Little, I expect, beyond complaints about this and that.’
‘Perhaps, then, that is all you deserve.’
‘Oh, I lack honour, do I?’
‘I am not sure what you lack,’ Silchas Ruin replied, ‘but I am certain I will comprehend before we are done.’
Rings and chain snapped taut. ‘Here they come. Shall we continue onward and upward?’
There was so much that Toc the Younger – Anaster, Firstborn of the Dead Seed, the Thrice-blinded, Chosen by the Wolf Gods, the Unlucky – did not wish to remember. His other body for one; the body he had been born into, the first home to his soul. Detonations against Moon’s Spawn above the doomed city of Pale, fire and searing, blazing heat – oh, don’t stand there. Then that damned puppet, Hairlock, delivering oblivion, wherein his soul had found a rider, another force – a wolf, one-eyed and grieving.
How the Pannion Seer had lusted for its death. Toc recalled the cage, that spiritual prison, and the torment as his body was broken, healed, then broken yet again, a procession seemingly without end. But these memories and pain and anguish persisted as little more than abstract notions. Yet, mangled and twisted as that body had been, at least it was mine.
Strip away years, course sudden in new blood, feel these strange limbs so vulnerable to cold. To awaken in another’s flesh, to start against muscle memories, to struggle with those that were suddenly gone. Toc wondered if any other mortal soul had ever before staggered this tortured path. Stone and fire had marked him, as Tool once told him. To lose an eye delivers the gift of preternatural sight. And what of leaving a used-up body for a younger, healthier one? Surely a gift – so the wolves desired, or was it Silverfox?
But wait. A closer look at this Anaster – who lost an eye, was given a new one, then lost it yet again. Whose mind – before it was broken and flung away – was twisted with terror, haunted by a mother’s terrible love; who had lived the life of a tyrant among cannibals – oh yes, look closely at these limbs, the muscles beneath, and remember – this body has grown with the eating of human flesh. And this mouth, so eager with its words, it has tasted the succulent juices of its kin – remember that?
No, he could not.
But the body can. It knows hunger and desire on the battlefield – walking among the dead and dying, seeing the split flesh, the jutting bones, smelling the reek of spilled blood – ah, how the mouth waters.
Well, everyone had his secrets. And few are worth sharing. Unless you enjoy losing friends.
He rode apart from the train, ostensibly taking an outrider flank, as he had done as a soldier, long ago. The Awl army of Redmask, fourteen thousand or so warriors, half again as many in the trailing support train – weaponsmiths, healers, horsewives, elders, old women, the lame and the once-born children, and, of course, twenty or so thousand rodara. Along with wagons, travois, and almost three thousand herd dogs and the larger wolf-hunters the Awl called dray. If anything could trigger cold fear in Toc it was these beasts. Too many by far, and rarely fed, they ranged in packs, running down every creature on the plains for leagues around.
But let us not forget the K’Chain Che’Malle. Living, breathing ones. Tool – or perhaps it was Lady Envy – had told him that they had been extinct for thousands of years – tens, hundreds of thousands, even. Their civilization was dust. And wounds in the sky that never heal; now there’s a detail worth remembering, Toc. The huge creatures provided Redmask’s bodyguard at the head of the vanguard – no risk of assassination, to be sure.
The male – Sag’Churok – was a K’ell Hunter, bred to kill, the elite guard of a Matron. So where is the Matron? Where is his Queen?
Perhaps it was the young female in the K’ell’s company.
Gunth Mach. Toc had asked Redmask how he had come to know their names, but the war leader had refused him an answer. Reticent bastard. A leader must have his secrets, perhaps more so than anyone else. But Redmask’s secrets are driving me mad. K’Chain Che’Malle, for Hood’s sake! Outcast, the young warrior had journeyed into the eastern wastelands. So went the tale, although after that initial statement it was a tale that in truth went nowhere, since virtually nothing else was known of Redmask’s adventures during those decades – yet at some point, this man donned a red-scaled mask. And found himself flesh and blood K’Chain Che’Malle. Who did not chop him to pieces. Who somehow communicated to him their names. Then swore allegiance. What is it, then, about this story that I really do not like?
How about all of it.
The eastern wastelands. A typical description for a place the name-givers found inhospitable or unconquerable. We can’t claim it so it is worthless, a wasted land, a wasteland. Hah, and you thought us without imaginations!
Haunted by ghosts, or demons, the earth blasted, where every blade of grass clings to a neighbour in abject terror.
The sun’s light is darker, its warmth colder. Shadows are smudged. Water brackish and quite possibly poisonous. Two-headed babies are common. Every tribe needed such a place. For heroic war leaders to wander into on some fraught quest rife with obscure motivations that could easily be bludgeoned into morality tales. And, alas, this particular tale is far from done. The hero needs to return, to deliver his people. Or annihilate them.
Toc had his memories, a whole battlefield’s worth, and as the last man lef
t standing he held few illusions of grandeur, either as witness or as player. So this lone eye cannot help but look askance. Is it any wonder I’ve taken to poetry?
The Grey Swords had been cut to pieces. Slaughtered. Oh, they’d yielded their lives in blood enough to pay the Hound’s Toll, as the Gadrobi were wont to say. But what had their deaths meant? Nothing. A waste. Yet here he rode, in the company of his betrayers.
Does Redmask offer redemption? He promises the defeat of the Letherii – but they were not our enemies, not until we agreed the contract. So, what is redeemed? The extinction of the Grey Swords? Oh, I need to twist and bend to bind those two together, and how am I doing thus far?
Badly. Not a whisper of righteousness – no crow croaks on my shoulder as we march to war.
Oh, Tool, I could use your friendship right now. A few terse words on futility to cheer me up.
Twenty myrid had been killed, gutted and skinned but not hung to drain their blood. The cavities where their organs had been were stuffed solid with a local tuber that had been sweated on hot stones. The carcasses were then wrapped in hides and loaded into a wagon that was kept apart from all the others in the train. Redmask’s plans for the battle to come. No more peculiar than all the others. The man has spent years thinking on this inevitable war. That makes me nervous.
Hey, Tool, you’d think after all I’ve been through, I’d have no nerves left. But I’m no Whiskeyjack. Or Kalam. No, for me, it just gets worse.
Marching to war. Again. Seems the world wants me to be a soldier.
Well, the world can go fuck itself.
‘A haunted man,’ the elder said in his broken growl as he reached up and scratched the savage red scar marring his neck. ‘He should not be with us. Fey in darkness, that one. He dreams of running with wolves.’
Redmask shrugged, wondering yet again what this old man wanted with him. An elder who did not fear the K’Chain Che’Malle, who was so bold as to guide his ancient horse between Redmask and Sag’Churok.
‘You should have killed him.’