Forge of Darkness

  He had never given much thought to the Deniers. They were people of the forest and the river, of broken denuded hills. Their skin was the colour of whatever ground they squatted upon, their eyes the murky hue of streams and bogs. They were furtive and uneducated, bound to superstitions and arcane, secret rituals. He could not imagine them capable of the conspiracy of infiltration now being levelled against them.

  They approached the Chamber of Night, where the air in the corridor was unseemly cold, smelling of clay.

  ‘She is indeed assailed,’ said Henarald behind them.

  Anomander raised a hand and halted. He faced the Lord of Hust. ‘This is indifference, sir.’

  ‘No reverence given to stone and avenue, then? Even should they lead to her presence?’

  ‘None by her,’ the First Son replied, studying Henarald and the wrapped weapon cradled in the old man’s arms.

  ‘What of her temples?’

  ‘The priests and priestesses know them well, sir, and by their nightly moans and thrashing would sanctify by zeal alone. You will have to query them directly as to their measures of success.’

  ‘First Son, then it seems we are in tumult.’

  ‘Lord, where is to be found the Hust Legion?’

  Henarald blinked, as if caught off guard by Anomander’s question. ‘Afield to the south, First Son.’

  ‘When last did you have word of them?’

  ‘The commander departed from Hust Forge some days back.’ He turned to Galar Baras. ‘Were you not present at her leaving, Galar?’

  The young man looked suddenly uncomfortable, but he nodded. ‘I was, Lord. Toras Redone rides to the legion, but not in haste. At that time, there was nothing untoward upon the horizon.’

  Anomander’s gaze settled on Galar Baras for a moment, and then he swung round and resumed walking.

  Kellaras moved to catch up, hearing, behind them, Henarald address Galar Baras. ‘When we are done here, lieutenant, you will ride in haste to the Hust Legion.’

  ‘Yes sir. And what news shall I bring them?’

  ‘News? Has life in the city dulled you so, sir? Heed well my words if you choose to heed not the First Son’s. Civil war is upon us, lieutenant. Mother Dark calls upon the Hust Legion. Tell this to Commander Toras Redone: the scales are awry and Urusander steps blind, but each step remains one on the march. The weight of the Hust should give him pause, and perchance a moment of reflection and reconsideration.’

  ‘None of this is Urusander,’ pronounced Anomander without turning.

  Henarald snorted. ‘Forgive me, First Son, but only the man who knows well his warhorse gives it freedom of rein.’

  ‘If Hunn Raal is a warhorse, Lord Hust,’ said Anomander, ‘then pray Urusander’s boots are firm on the stirrups, for indeed does he ride blind.’

  They reached the doors and once more Anomander paused. ‘Lord Hust, it is as my brother Silchas said. Such is her power that you shall not leave the chamber the man who entered it.’

  Henarald’s shrug did little to convey calm. ‘My hide is too long whetted on iron and age, sir, to have me regret new stains.’

  ‘I spoke nothing of stains, sir.’

  The old man lifted his head sharply, as if affronted. ‘Shall I fear faith upon her threshold, First Son?’

  ‘This place above any other place, Lord Hust.’

  ‘Would I had never accepted,’ Henarald said in a frustrated rasp, his eyes glaring as they fell to the sword in his arms. ‘See how I hold this as if it were a child? Even unthinking, I betray a father’s terror, and you dare question my faith? I am unmanned too late to challenge this birth, and so must take every next step like a soul condemned. Galar Baras, will you bear the weight of an old man on this threshold?’

  ‘No sir, but I will bear the strength of my lord’s will and not easily yield.’

  Henarald sighed. ‘As the future carries the past, so the son carries the father. Will it take a sword such as this one to sever that burden, I wonder?’

  Anomander seemed shaken by these words, but he said nothing and turned, reaching for the latch.

  * * *

  When Silchas Ruin, coming upon the captain from behind, set a hand upon Scara Bandaris’s back, the man flinched and stepped quickly to one side. Seeing who stood behind him, he relaxed and smiled. ‘Ah, friend, forgive me. These pups have been snarling and squabbling all morning, and my nerves are fraught. Even worse, I must teach myself anew the cadence of the court, for I have been among soldiers for too long and have the bluntness of their manner upon me, like the dust of travel. Thus, you find me out of sorts.’

  Silchas looked down into the courtyard. ‘I see well the cause of your skittishness, Scara, and now fear that fleas ride you and so regret I ever came close.’

  Scara laughed. ‘Not as yet, Silchas, not as yet. But you see why I long to be quit of these rank charges. To make matters worse, none here in the Citadel will take the leashes.’

  ‘And so you importune my attendance on the matter. I understand your desperation.’

  ‘By any gauge, Silchas, my desperation cannot be measured in full. Tell me, did we ever expect the Jheleck to accede to our demand with these hostages?’

  ‘Some smug negotiator thought it a sharp retort, no doubt,’ Silchas mused, eyeing the score of filthy, snarling youths in the yard. ‘I would wager he rides an overburdened wagon into the hills even as we speak.’

  Scara grunted, and then said, ‘Such betrayal warrants tracking hounds, I say, and let him beg on his knees the presumption of his suggestions, as if I will show mercy.’

  ‘The scribes will see the end to us sooner or later, Scara, with numbers in column and fates aligned in ordered lists, and on that day it shall be you and I on the run, with howls on our heels and nowhere civil in which to hide our sorry selves.’

  Scara nodded agreement. ‘And under dark skies we shall fall, side by side.’

  ‘In companionship alone, I welcome such an end.’

  ‘And I, friend. But name yourself my salvation here, if you can, and I’ll know eternal gratitude.’

  ‘Careful, Scara. Eternity has teeth.’ He crossed his arms and leaned against one of the pillars forming the colonnade surrounding the keeper’s yard. ‘But I have for you a delicious solution, in which I hear echoes of old pranks and cruel jests from our days on the march and our nights before battle.’ He smiled when he saw his friend’s eyes alight in understanding, and then he nodded and continued, ‘It is said his familial estate is vast in expanse, feral upon the edges as befits its remote position, and given his pending marriage to a woman too beautiful and too young, why, I imagine dear Kagamandra Tulas will thrill to the challenge of taming these infernal whelps.’

  Scara Bandaris smiled, and then he said, ‘Lacking his own, why, no better gift could we give him to celebrate his marriage! I happily yield to your genius, Silchas. Why, we’ll envigour the old man yet!’

  ‘Well, let us hope his new bride serves that purpose.’

  ‘And here I pondered long on what gift to give our old friend on his wedding day,’ said Scara, ‘and had thought of a settee to suit naps and the like, of which no doubt he’ll need many in the course of his amorous first week or so.’

  Silchas laughed. ‘Generous in counting weeks, not days, friend.’

  ‘As his friend, could I be less generous?’

  ‘No less indeed. Now I regret the dismissal of the settee.’

  ‘It would fail in surviving a score of pups gnawing upon the legs, and so I could not give him a gift so easily destroyed. I would dread causing him guilt and grief. Why, then he might begin assiduously avoiding me, and that I would not enjoy, much.’

  Silchas nodded. ‘We do miss his bright disposition, Scara.’

  ‘Speaking of brightness,’ Scara said, eyeing the man before him, ‘I see your skin still resisting the caress of Mother Dark.’

  ‘I have no answer for that, friend. I knelt alongside my brothers and so pledged my service.’

 
‘And you are without doubt?’

  Shrugging, Silchas glanced away.

  There was a moment of silence, and then Scara said, ‘I am told Kagamandra now rides for Kharkanas.’

  ‘So I have heard. In the company of Sharenas.’

  ‘A wager that he has not once availed himself of her charms, Silchas?’

  ‘If you need coin you need only ask for it, sir. You dissemble and so risk our friendship.’

  ‘Then I withdraw the gamble at once.’

  ‘Tell me,’ said Silchas with a nod to the Jheleck hostages, ‘have you seen them veer yet?’

  ‘I have, to smart the eyes with foul vapours. These will be formidable beasts in their maturity, and do not imagine them not clever—’

  ‘I would not, as I can see how they regard us even now.’

  ‘Think you Kagamandra can tame them?’

  Silchas nodded. ‘But amusing as it is for us to contemplate Tulas’s expression upon the receipt, I admit to having given your dilemma much thought, and I believe that Kagamandra alone could heel these hounds, and indeed, that he alone would take great pride in doing so.’

  ‘May he return to us enlivened then and so double the miracle.’

  ‘A gift in kind would indeed bless this gesture,’ Silchas said, nodding. He straightened from the pillar. ‘Now, I must re-join my brothers. And you, Scara?’

  ‘As it is, now that we have a solution here, I can leave my soldiers to oversee the pups until Kagamandra’s arrival. Once I have penned a worthy note to him, I shall ride north to those of my company I left in the forest. From there, we shall return to our garrison.’

  Silchas studied his friend for a moment. ‘You have heard of the other companies stirring about?’

  The query elicited a scowl. ‘I even argued with Hunn Raal, before he departed here. Silchas, I tell you this: I want none of this. I see how this persecution of the Deniers is but an excuse to recall Urusander’s Legion. The cause is unworthy.’

  ‘The Deniers are not the cause being sought, Scara.’

  ‘I well know that, friend. And I will not lie in saying to you that there are rightful grievances at work here. But such matters cannot be addressed by the sword, and I believe that Lord Urusander agrees with me.’

  ‘Be most cautious, then,’ Silchas said, his hand once more upon Scara’s back. ‘I fear Urusander is like a blind man led upon an unknown path, and the one who leads has ill ambition in his heart.’

  ‘They’ll not follow Hunn Raal,’ Scara said.

  ‘Not knowingly, no.’

  The captain shot him a quizzical look then, and a moment later his eyes narrowed. ‘I had best write that letter. Mayhap we shall meet on the north road beyond the gates.’

  ‘That would delight me, friend.’

  Two of the pups fell into a scrap just then, teeth flashing and fur flying.

  * * *

  Lady Hish Tulla sat in the study of her Kharkanas residence, contemplating the missive in her hands. She thought back to the last time she had met the three brothers, and the unease surrounding her imposition upon their grief at their father’s tomb. There had been rain that day and she had sheltered beneath a tree until the clouds had passed. She recalled Anomander’s face, a hardened visage when compared to the one she had known when sharing his bed. Youth was pliable and skin smooth and angles soft as befitted a memory of happier times, but on that day, with the rain still upon his unguarded features, he had seemed older than her.

  She was not one for self-regard. Her own reflection always struck her to strange superstition and she was wont to avoid instances when she might catch herself in a mirror or blurred upon contemplative waters: a ghostly shadow of someone just like her, the image seemed, living a life in parallel wherein secrets played out unseen, and all the scenes of her imagination found fruition. Her fear was to discover in herself an unworthy envy for that other life. Most disturbing of all, to her mind, was to meet the gaze of that mysterious woman, and see in those ageing, haunted eyes, her private host of losses.

  The missive trembled in her hands. Men such as Anomander deserved to be unchanging, or so she had always believed, and she would hold to that belief as if it could protect the past they had shared. His rumoured transformation within the influence of Mother Dark’s mystical power frightened her. Was there not darkness enough within the body? But it was only the memory that did not change, of the time before the wars, and if these days were spent assailing it, she knew enough to blame none other than herself.

  How would she see him this time? What might she say in answering this personal invitation from an old lover, to attend his arm upon the wedding of his brother? His face had hardened, defying even the soft promise of the rain; and now he would appear before her like a man inverted, with no loss of edges, and no yielding of the distance between them.

  She feared pity in his gesture and was shamed by her own weakness before it.

  Servants were busy downstairs, cleaning the last of the silts and refuse from the flood. The missive she held was days old, and she had not yet responded to it, and this in itself was impolite, and no rising water could excuse her silence. Perhaps, however, he had already forgotten his offer. There had been tumultuous events in the Citadel. As First Son it was likely that he felt besieged by circumstance, sufficient to distract him from even his brother’s wedding. It was not impossible, in fact, to imagine him late upon attendance and seeking naught but forgiveness in Andarist’s eyes. A woman upon Anomander’s arm at such a moment promised embarrassment and little else.

  The appointed time was drawing near. She had things to do here in the house. The cellar stores had all been ruined and the sunken room was now a quagmire of bloated, rotting foodstuffs and the small furred bodies of mice that had drowned or died mired in the mud. Furthermore, on the day of the flood her handmaid’s elderly grandmother had died, perhaps of panic, before the rush of the dark waters into her bedchamber, and so there was grief in the damp air of the rooms below, and a distraught maid deserving of consolation.

  Instead of attending to all this, however, she sat in her study, dressed not in the habit of the mistress of the house, nor in the regalia of feminine elegance proper to attending a wedding. Instead, she was girded for war. Her armour was clean, the leather supple and burnished lustrous with oil. All bronze rivets were in place and each shone like a polished gem; every buckle and clasp was in working order. The weapon at her side was a fine Iralltan blade, four centuries old and venerated for its honest service. It wore a scabbard of lacquered blackwood banded at the girdle in silver, with a point guard, also of silver, polished on the inside by constant brushing against her calf.

  A cloak awaited her on the back of a nearby chair, midnight blue with a high cream-hued collar. The gauntlets on the desk before her were new, black leather banded with iron strips that shifted to scales at the wrists. The cuffs remained stiff but servants had worked the fingers and hands until both were supple.

  In the courtyard below, a groom holding the reins of her warhorse awaited her arrival.

  There could be insult in this, and she saw once again the hard face of Anomander, and behind it Andarist’s fury. Sighing, she set the invitation down on the desk and then straightened, walking to her cloak. She shrugged it over her shoulders and fixed the clasp at her throat, and then collected the gauntlets and strode into the adjoining room.

  The old man standing before her was favouring a leg, but he had refused her offers of a chair. The boy behind him was fast asleep on a divan, still in his rags and wearing filth like a second skin. She contemplated the child for a moment longer, before settling her gaze on Gripp Galas.

  ‘On occasion,’ she said, ‘I wondered what had happened to you. Anomander gives loyalty as it is given him, and yours was above reproach. You did well to ensure your master and I had privacy in our times together, even unto distracting his father when needed.’

  Gripp’s eyes had softened as if in recollection, but the surrender was momentary. ‘Milady,
my master found other uses for me, in the wars and thereafter.’

  ‘Your master risked your life, Gripp, when what you truly deserved was gentle retirement in a fine country house.’

  The old man scowled. ‘You’re describing a tomb, milady.’

  The boy had not stirred throughout this exchange. She studied him again. ‘You say he bears a note on his person?’

  ‘He does, milady.’

  ‘Know you its contents?’

  ‘He is most protective of it.’

  ‘I am sure he is, but he sleeps like the dead.’

  Gripp seemed to sag before her. ‘We lost the horse in the river. We nearly drowned, the both of us. Milady, he knows it not, but the note he carries in its tin tube is now illegible. The ink has washed and blotted and nothing can be made from it. But the seal impressed upon the parchment has survived, and surely it is from your own estate.’

  ‘Sukul, I wager,’ mused Hish Tulla. ‘He is of the Korlas bloodline?’

  ‘So we are to understand, milady.’

  ‘And is intended for the Citadel?’

  ‘For the keeping of the Children of Night, milady.’

  ‘The children,’ said Hish, ‘have all grown up.’

  Gripp said nothing to that.

  Now and then, as their gazes caught one another, Hish had sensed something odd in Gripp’s regard, appearing in modest flashes, or subtle glints. She wondered at it.

  ‘Milady, the boy insisted that we find you first.’

  ‘So I understand.’

  ‘When I would have gone straight to my master.’

  ‘Yet you acquiesced.’

  ‘He is highborn, milady, and it was my service to protect him on the journey. He is brave, this one, and not given to complaint no matter the hardship. But he weeps for dying horses.’

  She shot him another searching look, and then smiled. ‘As did a child of Nimander, once, long ago. Your horse, I recall. A broken foreleg, yes?’

  ‘A jump that child should never have attempted, yes, milady.’

  ‘At the cost of your mount’s life.’

  Gripp glanced away, and then shrugged. ‘He is named Orfantal.’