The Azathanai looked up and then away again, now studying the walls. ‘This light is pretty,’ she said. ‘I saw a fountain in the courtyard, but it seemed shallow. There is a dryness here that ill fits a mother’s home.’
Breath hissed from Resh’s nostrils in a rush, but a twitch from Sheccanto stilled the warlock, and then she said, ‘If you will not be a guest among us, Born of the Vitr, then we shall not delay you longer. It is your desire to speak with Mother Dark? We shall provide you a suitable escort.’
‘Your faith is empty,’ said T’riss. ‘But I expect you already know that. There was a spirit once, a god of sorts. From the river near here. It reached through the earth, pulsed in the well you bored in the courtyard. But now even the fountain is lifeless. In chaining and harnessing the power of the water, you bound the spirit and stole from it its life. The free shall live but prisoners shall die.’
‘It would seem,’ said Sheccanto – and now her trembling was beyond disguising – ‘that you lack the usual Azathanai tact.’
‘Tact?’ Still her eyes cast about in the chamber, more wandering than restless. ‘Mother, I am sure you mean amused condescension. Azathanai are amused by many things, and our superiority is not in question. Tell me, do we visit often? I imagine not, since the power that now grows from this realm called Kurald Galain is cause for consternation.’ She had slipped her feet from the odd grass moccasins she had been wearing, and now dug the toes of one foot into the deep plush of the wool rug. ‘Someone will come, soon, I expect.’
‘Is that someone not you, then?’ Sheccanto asked.
‘You are dying.’
‘Of course I am dying!’
‘No god sustains you.’
‘No god sustains any of us!’
‘This is wool. It is the hair of animals. You keep these animals for their hair, although some you slay – the newborn and the very old. There is a smell to the meat when it is old, but the meat of the young is most succulent. Mother, the bandit mothers opened the throats of their children – they would give you nothing. Many of your monks are old. Your cult is dying.’
Sheccanto sagged back in her chair. ‘Get her out of here.’
‘I accept your offer,’ T’riss said then. ‘I will be your guest, for this night and the next. Then we shall depart for Kharkanas. It is my belief now that Mother Dark has made a grave error in judgement.’ She turned back to the entrance. ‘Now, I will bathe in the fountain.’
‘Warlock Resh,’ said Sheccanto, ‘escort our guest to the fountain. Lieutenant, remain a moment.’
T’riss left her odd moccasins on the rug where she had kicked them off, and followed Resh from the chamber. As soon as the heavy curtains settled once more, Sheccanto rose from her chair. ‘They murdered their own children? Next time, employ stealth. Attack at night. Kill the mothers first. Your failure here is a grievous wound.’
‘We lost a generation to the wars,’ said Caplo, ‘and this cannot be replaced in a single day, nor from a single camp of wayfarers. Mother, they fought with the ferocity of wolves. We shall travel further afield next time, and employ the tactics you describe.’
Sheccanto was standing on the dais, tall and gaunt, a figure of wrinkled skin and prominent bones beneath her robes. Below the wattle of her neck, he could see the lines of her ribs, and the hollows beneath her jutting clavicles looked impossibly deep. Of course I am dying! This confession had shocked him. There was more to the Mother’s frailty than her two thousand years of life. It was said that there were great healers among the Azathanai. Caplo wondered if some desperate hope had been blunted in this meeting with T’riss.
‘I am not dead yet,’ Sheccanto said, and Caplo saw how her eyes were fixed on him, sharp as knife points.
‘Mother, it is my thought that T’riss is a damaged Azathanai. The Vitr has stolen much of her mind.’
‘All the more cause for concern, lieutenant. Mad she may be, but her power remains, and it is unmitigated by the restraint of reason. She seeks an audience with Mother Dark? You shall be the Azathanai’s escort. Keep your skills close to hand.’
‘Mother, for all my skills, I do not think it possible to assassinate an Azathanai.’
‘Perhaps not, and you may well die in the attempt. So be it.’
‘Is Mother Dark so dear to us?’ Caplo asked. ‘Besides, it would astonish me to discover that one who would assume the title of Mother of Night is incapable of defending herself.’
‘By darkness alone, she defends,’ Sheccanto replied. ‘By darkness alone, she preserves herself. And in that darkness she trusts but one man and that man does not belong to us. Indeed, I am told that he has left Kurald Galain. Westward, into the lands of the Azathanai. Old suspicions are awakened within me.’
Caplo studied her, the face now in profile, hawkish and sharp. ‘Suspicions you have not shared with your chosen assassin, Mother.’
‘Nor shall I, as no proof is possible. I will risk you, lieutenant, even unto losing you, for the sake of defending Mother Dark. It is not that we need her. We don’t. What we do need from her, however, is her gratitude – and her certainty of our allegiance.’
‘Paid in my blood.’
‘Paid in your blood.’
‘Not even the Azathanai can pierce the darkness enveloping Mother Dark.’
Ancient eyes fixed on his. ‘You cannot be certain of that. Does not her gift steal among her closest children? It is said Anomander has no need for light in his private chambers – servants report candles filmed with dust, their wicks not even blackened. Yet books are left lying opened on the map table, along with scrolls bearing his own handwriting. We have no path into this sorcery of hers, but this is not to say it is an obstacle to others.’
‘I am made uneasy, Mother, by this assignment. There are too many unknowns. Would it not be more prudent that I kill her here, in the monastery? Before she can pose any greater threat to our realm?’
‘Her presence here is known, lieutenant. The Wardens have given her into our care.’
Caplo nodded. ‘To persuade them to do so, we also made guarantee of the Azathanai’s safety. But these matters are all contingent. There is sufficient precedent for the unpredictability of our guest to make believable a tale of her initiating violence. Perhaps upon you, or among the monks. Yes, we may weather a period of indignation and accusation, but in the absence of details our word would stand, and prevail. As you taught me many years ago, an assassin seeks to control as much as possible the moment of assassination. I fear that very loss of control when in the Chamber of Night, in audience with Mother Dark and who knows how many other advisers in attendance.’
‘Those others, lieutenant,’ Sheccanto said, ‘will have uppermost in their minds the protection of Mother Dark, not the Azathanai.’
Caplo cocked his head. ‘It has been many years since you last left the monastery, Mother. I have seen Anomander fight, and even in a chamber the size of Mother Dark’s, it is my judgement that he would reach me before I could kill the Azathanai. If not him, then Silchas Ruin.’ At her steady glare he shrugged. ‘Perhaps it is a gift of Mother Dark’s sorcery that has earned them such skills. Or perhaps their talent is entirely natural. Either way, I wager my chances at success as very low; in which case, if I understand you, my life is to be sacrificed as a symbol of Shake loyalty.’
‘We were speaking of this T’riss posing a threat to Mother Dark. I ask that you hold yourself in readiness for such a possibility.’
‘Of course I shall.’
‘And I trust you will understand, should the moment come, that your sacrifice is entirely necessary. After all, we will be the ones delivering the Azathanai into an audience with Mother Dark.’
Caplo lifted his brows. ‘Absolution of consequences? And if no one survives the battle but T’riss?’
‘Then few would argue, lieutenant, that we are all lost. Now then, you will have other responsibilities when in Kharkanas. Hold still your thoughts while I explain.’
A short time later
, Caplo emerged into the courtyard and made his way towards the fountain. Warlock Resh was standing at a respectable distance from T’riss, who wandered naked through the knee-deep water, droplets glistening on her burnished skin. There were signs of sunburn upon her shoulders, the patches of peeling skin reminding Caplo of shedding snakes. Apart from the warlock and the Azathanai, no one else was within sight anywhere in the courtyard.
Children either flee the baring of flesh, or gawk. But it is unseemly to gawk. For me, I but admire.
He came up to stand beside Resh. ‘It is said that we are ever students, no matter our age.’
Resh grunted. ‘Lessons oft repeated, never quite learned. I see before me a new treatise on life.’
‘The critics will savage you.’
‘They shall be as midges upon my hide. Frenzied in scale, but the scale is small.’
‘Then I shall look with delight upon your pocked and wealed self.’
‘It is your secret admiration of savages, Caplo, which your words now betray.’
‘All betrayal will begin, or end, with words.’
‘Savage ones?’
‘I imagine so, Resh.’
T’riss had made her way to the far side of the fountain and now sat upon the broad ledge, face upturned to the sun and eyes closed.
‘If Mother Dark had rejected the element of Night and taken the element of Silence instead,’ mused Resh, ‘there would be peace everlasting.’
‘You suggest then,’ Caplo asked, ‘that all instances of violence involve some manner of betrayal?’
‘I do, and it shall be first and pre-eminent in my list of lessons never learned.’
‘The hawk betrays the hare? The swift betrays the fly?’
‘In a manner of speaking, most certainly, my sickly friend.’
‘Then we are all doomed to betray, since it seems implicit in the very act of survival.’
Resh faced him. ‘Have you not witnessed for yourself the anguish of philosophers? The glee of their guilt, the eager admonition of their selves and all kin? We have all betrayed the promise of everlasting peace, and was there not an age, long ago, when death was unknown? When sustenance itself was without cost or sacrifice?’
That notion was an old joke between them. ‘Warlock Resh,’ Caplo now replied, ‘all the philosophers I have seen are either drunk or insensate.’
‘’Tis the sorrows of loss, friend, and the wallows of recognition.’
‘’Tis weakness of will, I wager the more likely.’
‘A will crumbled helpless to the assault of revelation. When we are driven to our knees, the world shrinks.’
His eyes on T’riss, Caplo sighed and said, ‘Ah, Resh, but not all revelation arrives as an assault.’
‘You give me reason to drink.’
‘Then your reason is weak.’
‘And lo, I am the only philosopher brave enough to admit it.’
‘Only because you’re sober, and I always question the courage of sobriety.’
They both fell silent as T’riss rose once again and made her way over. Eyes flicking briefly to Caplo she said, ‘Your Mother advised against my murder, then? It is well. You would not like my blood on your hands, lieutenant.’
Caplo said nothing for a long moment, and then he cocked his head. ‘Guest, you surmise extreme conduct on our part. It is unseemly.’
She nodded. ‘It is.’
‘I am pleased that we agree—’
‘Murder always is,’ she continued. ‘I tasted the distrust in my friend, Faror Hend, upon your intervention. There were many levels to her displeasure.’
‘We mean you no harm,’ said Caplo, ‘but if we must, we will defend our own.’
‘I see much room for debate, lieutenant, as to what constitutes “your own”. Of course, you rely upon that ambiguity.’
‘Does that comment refer to me personally, or people in general?’
Beside Caplo, Resh seemed to flinch.
‘I do not know sufficient “people” to comment on them,’ T’riss replied, sitting down before them and running a hand through the warm water. ‘I believe you are a killer, and that you are both given reasons for the necessity, and assemble in private more of your own, bolstering such justifications as needed.’
Warlock Resh seemed to gag. Coughing, he said, ‘Guest, I beg you, constrain your power.’
‘You think this power is mine, warlock?’ Smiling, she rose. ‘I am weary. I see a monk in the doorway – will he suffice to guide me to my quarters?’
‘A moment, please,’ Caplo interposed, alarmed after a glance at his companion, who was gasping, half bent over. ‘If not your power, then whose?’
‘Your river god was dead. It is dead no longer.’
He stared in disbelief.
She met his eyes and this time held them. ‘Now you must contend with what you purport to worship, and give answer to the many things you have done in its name. Is it any wonder your friend quails?’
She set off across the compound.
Caplo stepped close to his friend. ‘Resh? Will you recover? Does she speak truth? What is it you feel?’
He looked up with savage eyes. ‘Rage.’
Thereafter, in the midst of panic and chaos tearing through the settlement, the Azathanai guest remained in her rooms, taking her meals in private. Upon the third morning she appeared in the compound. Summoning her grass horse, she mounted up and waited for the others.
Mother Sheccanto was confined to her bed. She had lost all control over her body and could not move, not even to lift a hand. Her lungs were filling with fluid, her breaths came in shallow rasps and her eyes, Caplo recalled, darted like trapped birds.
The hawk betrays the hare. The swift betrays the fly. God was bent to our will; and God now rages.
Riders had already gone out to Yedan Monastery, by Resh’s command, and word had come back the night before their departure for Kharkanas. Father Skelenal was on his way. Sisters had collapsed. The thirteen eldest among them had died. And in the Great Well of the Ancient God, the water boiled. The steam made a column that could be seen from the forest edge south of the convent.
When Warlock Resh announced that he would remain, awaiting the arrival of Skelenal, T’riss had turned to him and said, ‘You will not be needed here. Your Mother will recover most of her faculties. She will speak in private with her lifebound mate. You will accompany me, Warlock Resh.’
‘Why?’ he had demanded, and it had shocked Caplo to realize that his companion had not even questioned the Azathanai’s right to command him.
‘Who dwells in the forest north of Kharkanas?’ she asked him.
Resh shrugged. ‘Cast-offs, half-wild folk. Poachers, criminals—’
‘Deniers,’ Caplo said.
T’riss said, ‘Your Mother and Father need to prepare.’
‘For what?’ Caplo asked.
‘For what I must show Warlock Resh, lieutenant. It shall begin in the forest, but also upon the river itself, and in the streets of Kharkanas – until such time as Mother Dark awakens to the challenge.’
‘What will you say to her?’ Resh demanded in a harsh voice.
‘To Mother Dark?’ T’riss gathered up the makeshift reins. ‘I expect there will be no need for words, warlock. With my presence, she will understand.’
‘Do you threaten her?’ Caplo asked.
‘If I do, lieutenant, there will be nothing you can do about it. Not you, not her guardians. But no, I myself pose no threat to Mother Dark, and upon this you have my word, to weigh or discard as befits your nature. What I bring is change. Will she welcome it or resist it? Only she can answer that.’
In silence they had ridden out from the monastery, on to the south road that would take them on a route well to the east of Yedan Monastery, before entering the much diminished easternmost arm of Youth Forest.
The last words T’riss spoke, just outside the monastery gates, were, ‘I understand now the mystery of water. In peace it flows clear. When I st
and before Mother Dark, turmoil will come to the water between us. But the promise remains – one day it shall run clear once again. Hold to this faith, all of you, even as chaos descends upon the world.’ She faced Resh and Caplo. ‘The river god tells me Dorssan Ryl’s water is dark, but it was not always so.’
It was not always so. The oldest of our scriptures say the same. This Azathanai has resurrected our god. This Azathanai has spoken with our god. But what does she promise the Tiste?
Chaos.
When they rode into the forest, however, Caplo had seen nothing unusual, nothing to give credence to the Azathanai’s portentous words. He had turned to the warlock riding beside him, a question on his lips, but Resh forestalled him with an upraised hand.
‘Not yet. It grows. Things stir. Dreams plague a thousand shadowed minds. Something is indeed awakening. We shall see its face upon our return.’
Caplo owned nothing of the sensitivity possessed by Warlock Resh and many of the others in the faith. Sheccanto once told him that even as a child he had knelt before pragmatism; and in so doing had surrendered his capacity for imagination. There existed a dichotomy between the two, and as forces of personality they often locked in combat. For some, however, there was an accord. Dreams defined the goal, pragmatism the path to it. Those who possessed that balance were said to be talented, but it did not make their lives any easier. The blunt of mind, who lived lives in which obstacles rose up before them with every step, were quick to raise similar obstacles before their ‘talented’ associates, and were often adamant in their belief that it was for the best, and justified their views with such words as ‘realistic’, ‘practical’ and, of course, ‘pragmatic’.
Caplo held much sympathy for those who would, by advice and by ridicule, rein in the unfettered dreamers of the world. He saw imagination as dangerous, at times deadly in its unpredictability. Among the many victims he had murdered, it had been the creative ones who caused him the most trouble. He could not track them upon the paths of their thinking.