Reaper's Gale

  ‘Depends on how much Kellanved and Dancer saw – and came to understand – when they left their empire and went in search of ascendancy.’ The sapper paused, then said, ‘They walked the paths of the Azath, didn’t they?’

  ‘Almost no-one knows that, Hedge. You sure didn’t . . . before you died. Which brings us back to the path you ended up walking, after you’d gone and blown yourself up in Black Coral.’

  ‘You mean, after I did my own ascending?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I already told you most of it. The Bridgeburners ascended. Blame some Spiritwalker.’

  ‘And now there’s more of you damned fools wandering around. Hood take you all, Hedge, there were some real nasty people in the Bridgeburners. Brutal and vicious and outright evil—’

  ‘Rubbish. And I’ll tell you a secret and maybe one day it’ll do you good, too. Dying humbles ya.’

  ‘I don’t need any humbling, Hedge, which is fine since I don’t plan on dying any time soon.’

  ‘Best stay light on your toes, then.’

  ‘You guarding my back, Hedge?’

  ‘I ain’t no Kalam, but aye, I am.’

  ‘For now.’

  ‘For now.’

  ‘That will have to do, I suppose—’

  ‘Mind you, only if you’re guarding mine, Quick.’

  ‘Of course. Loyalty to the old squad and all that.’

  ‘So what are damned pebbles for? As if I couldn’t guess.’

  ‘We’re heading into an ugly scrap, Hedge.’ He rounded on the sapper. ‘And listen, about those damned cussers – if you blow me into tiny pieces I will come back for you, Hedge. That’s a vow, sworn by every damned soul in me.’

  ‘Now that raises a question, don’t it? Just how long do all of those souls plan on hiding in there, Ben Adaephon Delat?’

  The wizard eyed him, and, predictably, said nothing.

  Trull Sengar stood at the very edge of the fire’s light, beyond the gathered Imass. The women’s song had sunk into a series of sounds that a mother might make to her babe, soft sounds of comfort, and Onrack had explained how this Eres’al song was in fact a kind of traverse, back into the roots of language, beginning with the bizarre yet clearly complex adult Eres language with its odd clicks and stops and all the gestures that provided punctuation, then working backward and growing ever more simplified even as it became more musical. The effect was eerie and strangely disturbing to the Tiste Edur.

  Music and song among his people was a static thing, fixated within ritual. If the ancient tales were true, there had once been a plethora of instruments in use among the Tiste Edur, but most of these were now unknown, beyond the names given them. Voice now stood in their stead and Trull began to sense that, perhaps, something had been lost.

  The gestures among the women had transformed into dance, sinuous and swaying and now, suddenly, sexual.

  A low voice beside him said, ‘Before the child, there is passion.’

  Trull glanced over and was surprised to see one of the T’lan, the clan chief, Hostille Rator.

  An array of calcified bones were knotted in the filthy long hair dangling from the warrior’s mottled, scarred pate. His brow ridge dominated the entire face, burying the eyes in darkness. Even clothed in the flesh of life, Hostille Rator seemed deathly.

  ‘Passion begets the child, Tiste Edur. Do you see?’

  Trull nodded. ‘Yes. I think so.’

  ‘So it was, long ago, at the Ritual.’

  Ah.

  ‘The child, alas,’ the clan chief continued, ‘grows up. And what was once passion is now . . .’

  Nothing.

  Hostille Rator resumed. ‘There was a Bonecaster here, among these clans. She saw, clearly, the illusion of this realm. And saw, too, that it was dying. She sought to halt the bleeding away, by sacrificing herself. But she is failing – her spirit and her will, they are failing.’

  Trull frowned at Hostille Rator. ‘How did you come to know of this place?’

  ‘She gave voice to her pain, her anguish.’ The T’lan was silent a moment, then he added, ‘It was our intention to answer the call of the Gathering – but the need in her voice was undeniable. We could not turn aside, even when what we surrendered was – possibly – our final rest.’

  ‘So now you are here, Hostille Rator. Onrack believes you would usurp Ulshun Pral, but for Rud Elalle’s presence – the threat he poses you.’

  A glitter from the darkness beneath those brow ridges. ‘You do not even whisper these things, Edur. Would you see weapons drawn this night, even after the gift of the First Song?’

  ‘No. Yet, perhaps, better now than later.’

  Trull now saw that the two T’lan Bonecasters had moved up behind Hostille Rator. The singing from the women had ceased – had it been an abrupt end? Trull could not recall. In any case, it was clear that all those present were now listening to this conversation. He saw Onrack emerge from the crowd, saw his friend’s stone sword gripped in both hands.

  Trull addressed Hostille Rator once more, his tone even and calm. ‘You three have stood witness to all that you once were—’

  ‘It will not survive,’ the clan chief cut in. ‘How can we embrace this illusion when, upon its fading, we must return to what we truly are?’

  From the crowd Rud Elalle spoke, ‘No harm shall befall my people – not by your hand, Hostille Rator, nor that of your Bonecasters. Nor,’ he added, ‘that of those who are coming here. I intend to lead the clans away – to safety.’

  ‘There is no safety,’ Hostille Rator said. ‘This realm dies, and so too will all that is within it. And there can be no escape. Rud Elalle, without this realm, your clans do not even exist.’

  Onrack said, ‘I am T’lan, like you. Feel the flesh that now clothes you. The muscle, the heat of blood. Feel the breath in your lungs, Hostille Rator. I have looked into your eyes – each of you three – and I see what no doubt resides in mine. The wonder. The remembering.’

  ‘We cannot permit it,’ said the Bonecaster named Til’aras Benok. ‘For when we leave this place, Onrack . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ Trull’s friend whispered. ‘It will be . . . too much. To bear.’

  ‘There was passion once,’ Hostille Rator said. ‘For us. It can never return. We are children no longer.’

  ‘None of you understand!’

  Rud Elalle’s sudden shriek startled everyone, and Trull saw Ulshun Pral – on his face an expression of distress – reach out a hand to his adopted son, who angrily brushed it away as he stepped forward, the fire in his eyes as fierce as that in the hearth beyond. ‘Stone, earth, trees and grasses. Beasts. The sky and the stars! None of this is an illusion!’

  ‘A trapped memory—’

  ‘No, Bonecaster, you are wrong.’ He struggled to hold back his anger, and spun to face Onrack. ‘I see your heart, Onrack the Broken. I know, you will stand with me – in the time that comes. You will!’

  ‘Yes, Rud Elalle.’

  ‘Then you believe!’

  Onrack was silent.

  Hostille Rator’s laugh was a soft, bitter rasp. ‘It is this, Rud Elalle. Onrack of the Logros T’lan Imass chooses to fight at your side, chooses to fight for these Bentract, because he cannot abide the thought of returning to what he once was, and so he would rather die here. And death is what Onrack the Broken anticipates – indeed, what he now yearns for.’

  Trull studied his friend, and saw on Onrack’s firelit face the veracity of Hostille Rator’s words.

  The Tiste Edur did not hesitate. ‘Onrack will not stand alone,’ he said.

  Til’aras Benok faced Trull. ‘You surrender your life, Edur, to defend an illusion?’

  ‘That, Bonecaster, is what we mortals delight in doing. You bind yourself to a clan, to a tribe, to a nation or an empire, but to give force to the illusion of a common bond, you must feed its opposite – that all those not of your clan, or tribe, or empire, do not share that bond. I have seen Onrack the Broken, a T’lan Imass. And now
I have seen him, mortal once again. To the joy and the life in the eyes of my friend, I will fight all those who deem him their enemy. For the bond between us is one of friendship, and that, Til’aras Benok, is not an illusion.’

  Hostille Rator asked Onrack, ‘In your mercy, as you have now found it alive once more in your soul, will you now reject Trull Sengar of the Tiste Edur?’

  And the warrior bowed his head and said, ‘I cannot.’

  ‘Then, Onrack the Broken, your soul shall never find peace.’

  ‘I know.’

  Trull felt as if he had been punched in the chest. It was all very well to make his bold claims, in ferocious sincerity that could only come of true friendship. It was yet another thing to discover the price it demanded in the soul of the one he called friend. ‘Onrack,’ he whispered in sudden anguish.

  But this moment would not await all that might have been said, all that needed to be said, for Hostille Rator had turned to face his Bonecasters, and whatever silent communication passed among these three was quick, decisive, for the clan chief swung round and walked towards Ulshun Pral. Whereupon he fell to one knee and bowed his head. ‘We are humbled, Ulshun Pral. We are shamed by these two strangers. You are the Bentract. As were we, once, long ago. We now choose to remember. We now choose to fight in your name. In our deaths there will be naught but honour, this we vow.’ He then rose and faced Rud Elalle. ‘Soletaken, will you accept us as your soldiers?’

  ‘As soldiers? No. As friends, as Bentract, yes.’

  The three T’lan bowed to him.

  All of this passed in a blur before Trull Sengar’s eyes. Since Onrack the Broken’s admission, it seemed as if Trull’s entire world had, with grinding, stone-crushing irresistibility, turned on some vast, unimagined axis – yet he was drawn round again by a hand on his shoulder, and Onrack, now standing before him.

  ‘There is no need,’ the Imass warrior said. ‘I know something even Rud Elalle does not, and I tell you this, Trull Sengar, there is no need. Not for grief. Nor regret. My friend, listen to me. This world will not die.’

  And Trull found no will within him to challenge that assertion, to drive doubt into his friend’s earnest gaze. After a moment, then, he simply sighed and nodded. ‘So be it, Onrack.’

  ‘And, if we are careful,’ Onrack continued, ‘neither shall we.’

  ‘As you say, friend.’

  Thirty paces away in the darkness, Hedge turned to Quick Ben and hissed, ‘What do you make of all that, wizard?’

  Quick Ben shrugged. ‘Seems the confrontation has been averted, if Hostille Rator’s kneeling before Ulshun Pral didn’t involve picking up a dropped fang or something.’

  ‘A dropped – what?’

  ‘Never mind. That’s not the point at all, anyway. But I now know I am right in one thing and don’t ask me how I know. I just do. Suspicion into certainty.’

  ‘Well, go on, damn you.’

  ‘Just this, Hedge. The Finnest. Of Scabandari Bloodeye. It’s here.’

  ‘Here? What do you mean, here?’

  ‘Here, sapper. Right here.’

  The gate was a shattered mess on one side. The huge cyclopean stones that had once formed an enormous arch easily five storeys high had the appearance of having been blasted apart by multiple impacts, flinging some of the shaped blocks a hundred paces or more from the entranceway. The platform the arch had once spanned was heaved and buckled as if some earthquake had rippled through the solid bedrock beneath the pavestones. The other side was dominated by a tower of still standing blocks, corkscrew-twisted and seemingly precariously balanced.

  The illusion of bright daylight had held during this last part of the journey, as much by the belligerent insistence of Udinaas as by the amused indulgence of Clip. Or, perhaps, Silchas Ruin’s impatience. The foremost consequence of this was that Seren Pedac was exhausted – and Udinaas looked no better. Like the two Tiste Andii, however, Kettle seemed impervious – with all the boundless energy of a child, Seren supposed, raising the possibility that at some moment not too far off she would simply collapse.

  Seren could see that Fear Sengar was weary as well, but probably that had more to do with the unpleasant burden settling ever more heavily upon his shoulders. She had been harsh and unforgiving of herself in relating to the Tiste Edur the terrible crime she had committed upon Udinaas, and she had done so in the hope that Fear Sengar would – with a look of unfeigned and most deserving disgust in his eyes – choose to reject her, and his own vow to guard her life.

  But the fool had instead held to that vow, although she could see the brutal awakening of regret. He would not – could not – break his word.

  It was getting easier to disdain these bold gestures, the severity so readily embraced by males of any species. Some primitive holdover, she reasoned, of the time when possessing a woman meant survival, not of anything so prosaic as one’s own bloodline, but possession in the manner of ownership, and survival in the sense of power. There had been backward tribes all along the fringe territories of the Letherii kingdom where such archaic notions were practised, and not always situations where men were the owners and wielders of power – for sometimes it was the women. In either case, history had shown that such systems could only survive in isolation, and only among peoples for whom magic had stagnated into a chaotic web of proscriptions, taboos and the artifice of nonsensical rules – where the power offered by sorcery had been usurped by profane ambitions and the imperatives of social control.

  Contrary to Hull Beddict’s romantic notions of such people, Seren Pedac had come to feel little remorse when she thought about their inevitable and often bloody extinction.

  Control was ever an illusion, and its maintenance could only persist when in isolation. Not to say, of course, that the Letherii system was one of unfettered freedom and the liberty of individual will. Hardly. One imposition had been replaced by another. But at the very least it’s not one divided by gender.

  The Tiste Edur were different. Their notions . . . primitive. Offer a sword, bury it at the threshold of one’s home, the symbolic exchange of vows so archaic no words were even necessary. In such a ritual, no negotiation was possible, and if marriage did not involve negotiation then it was not marriage. No, just mutual ownership. Or not-somutual ownership. Such a thing deserved little respect.

  And now, here, it was not even a prospective husband laying claim to her life, but that prospective husband’s damned brother. And, to make the entire situation yet more absurd, the prospective husband was dead. Fear will defend to the death my right to marry a corpse. Or, rather, the corpse’s right to claim me. Well, that is madness and I will not – I do not – accept it. Not for a moment.

  Yes, I have moved past self-pity. Now I’m just angry.

  Because he refused to let his disgust dissuade him.

  For all her notions of defiance, that last thought stung her.

  Udinaas had moved past her to study the ruined gate, and now he turned to Clip. ‘Well, does it yet live?’

  The Tiste Andii’s chain and rings were spinning from one finger again, and he offered the Letherii slave a cool smile. ‘The last road to walk,’ he said, ‘lies on the other side of the gate.’

  ‘So who got mad and kicked it to pieces, Clip?’

  ‘Of no consequence any more,’ Clip replied, his smile broadening.

  ‘You have no idea, in other words,’ Udinaas said. ‘Well, if we’re to go through it, let’s stop wasting time. I’ve almost given up hoping that you’ll end up garrotting yourself with that chain. Almost.’

  His last comment seemed to startle Clip for some reason.

  And all at once Seren Pedac saw that chain with its rings differently. By the Errant! Why did I not see it before? It is a garrotte. Clip is a damned assassin! She snorted. ‘And you claim to be a Mortal Sword! You’re nothing but a murderer, Clip. Yes, Udinaas saw that long ago – which is why you hate him so. He was never fooled by all those weapons you carry. And now, neither am I.’

/>   ‘We’re wasting time indeed,’ Clip said, once more seemingly unperturbed, and he turned and approached the huge gate. Silchas Ruin set out after him, and Seren saw that the White Crow had his hands on the grips of his swords.

  ‘Danger ahead,’ Fear Sengar announced and yes, damn him, he then moved from his position just behind Seren’s right shoulder to directly in front of her. And drew his sword.

  Udinaas witnessed all this and grunted dismissively, then half turned and said, ‘Silchas Ruin’s earned his paranoia, Fear. But even that doesn’t mean we’re about to jump into a pit of dragons.’ He then smiled without any humour. ‘Not that dragons live in pits.’

  When he walked after the two Tiste Andii, Kettle ran up to take his hand. At first Udinaas reacted as if her touch had burned him, but then his resistance vanished.

  Clip reached the threshold, stepped forward and disappeared. A moment later Silchas Ruin did the same.

  Neither Udinaas nor Kettle hesitated.

  Reaching the same point, Fear Sengar paused and eyed her. ‘What is in your mind, Acquitor?’ he asked.

  ‘Do you think I might abandon you all, Fear? Watch you step through and, assuming you can’t get back, I just turn round and walk this pointless road – one I probably would never leave? Is that choice left to me?’

  ‘All choices are left to you, Acquitor.’

  ‘You too, I would say. Except, of course, for the ones you willingly surrendered.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You admit that so easily.’

  ‘Perhaps it seems that way.’

  ‘Fear, if anyone should turn round right now, it is you.’

  ‘We are close, Acquitor. We are perhaps a few strides from Scabandari’s Finnest. How can you imagine I would even consider such a thing?’

  ‘Some stubborn thread of self-preservation, perhaps.

  Some last surviving faith of mine that you actually possess a brain, one that can reason, that is. Fear Sengar, you will probably die. If you pass through this gate.’

  He shrugged. ‘Perhaps I shall, if only to confound Udinaas’s expectations.’

  ‘Udinaas?’

  A faint smile. ‘The hero fails the quest.’