The Crippled God

  ‘Surely they have sensed Mother Dark’s return,’ Yan Tovis replied. ‘Surely, they too understand that the diaspora is at last at an end.’

  ‘Just how many Tiste Andii do you imagine are left?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I do know this: those who live shall return here. Just as the Shake have done. Just as you have done.’

  ‘Good. First one gets here can have this throne and all that goes with it. Husband, start building us a cottage in the woods. Make it remote. No, make it impossible to reach. And tell none but me where it is.’

  ‘A cottage.’

  ‘Yes. With a drawbridge and a moat, and pitfalls and sprawl-traps.’

  ‘I’ll start drawing up plans.’

  Yan Tovis said, ‘Queen Sandalath, I beg your leave.’

  ‘Yes. Sooner the better.’

  The ex-Letherii officer tilted her head, wheeled and strode from the chamber.

  Captain Brevity stepped forward to face the throne and settled on one knee. ‘Highness, shall I summon the palace staff?’

  ‘In here? Abyss take me, no. Start with all the other rooms. Go on. You are, er, dismissed. Husband! Don’t even think of leaving.’

  ‘The thought had not even occurred to me.’ And he managed to hold his neutral expression against her withering scepticism.

  As soon as they were alone, Sandalath sprang from the throne as if she’d just found one of those ancient tacks. ‘That bitch!’

  Withal flinched. ‘Yan—’

  ‘No, not her – she’s right, the cow. I’m stuck with this, for the moment. Besides, why should she be the only one to suffer the burden of rule, as she so quaintly put it?’

  ‘Well, put it that way, and I can see how she might be in need of a friend.’

  ‘An equal of sorts, yes. The problem is, I don’t fit. I’m not her equal. I didn’t lead ten thousand people to this realm. I barely got you here.’

  He shrugged. ‘But here we are.’

  ‘And she knew.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘That bitch Tavore. Somehow, she knew this would happen—’

  ‘There’s no proof of that, Sand,’ Withal replied. ‘It was Fiddler’s reading, not hers.’

  She made a dismissive gesture. ‘Technicalities, Withal. She trapped me is what she did. I should never have been there. No, she knew there was a card waiting for me. There’s no other explanation.’

  ‘But that’s no explanation at all, Sand.’

  The look she threw him was miserable. ‘You think I don’t know that?’

  Withal hesitated. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘your kin are coming. Are you really certain you want me standing there at your side when they do?’

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘What you’re really saying is: do I want to be standing at her side when they arrive? A mere human, a shortlived plaything to the Queen of Darkness. That’s how you think they’ll see you, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘You’re wrong. It will be the opposite and that might be just as bad. They’ll see you for what you are: a threat.’

  ‘A what?’

  She regarded him archly. ‘Your kind are the inheritors – of everything. And here you are, along with all those Letherii and blood-thin Shake, squatting in Kharkanas. Is there anywhere you damned bastards don’t end up sooner or later? That’s what they’ll be thinking.’

  ‘Mael knows, they’ve got a point,’ he said, looking away, down the length of the throne room, imagining a score or more regal Tiste Andii standing there, eyes hard, faces like stone. ‘I’d better leave.’

  ‘No you won’t. Mother Dark—’ Abruptly she shut her mouth.

  He turned his head, studied her. ‘Your goddess is whispering in your ear, Sand? About me?’

  ‘You’ll be needed,’ she said, once more eyeing the lone amphora. ‘All of you. The Letherii refugees. The Shake. And it’s not fair. It’s not fair!’

  He took her arm as she moved to assault the crockery. Pulled her round until she was in his arms. Startled, terrified, he held her as she wept. Mael! What awaits us here?

  But there was no answer, and his god had never felt so far away.

  Yedan Derryg dragged the tip of the Hust sword, making a line in the crumbled bones of the Shore. The cascading wall of light flowed in reflection along the length of the ancient blade, like tears of milk. ‘We are children here,’ he muttered.

  Captain Pithy hawked phlegm, stepped forward and spat into the wall, and then turned to face him. ‘Something tells me we’d better grow up fast, Watch.’

  Yedan clenched his teeth, chewed on a half-dozen possible responses to her grim observation, before saying, ‘Yes.’

  ‘The faces in the wash,’ said Pithy, nodding at the eternally descending rain of light rearing before them, ‘there’s more of ’em. And seems they’re getting closer, as if clawing their way through. I’m expecting t’see an arm thrust out any time now.’ She hitched her thumbs in her weapon belt. ‘Thing is, sir, what happens then?’

  He stared into the Lightfall. Tried remembering memories that weren’t his own. The grinding of molars sounded like distant thunder in his head. ‘We fight.’

  ‘And that’s why you’ve recruited everyone with arms and legs into this army of yours.’

  ‘Not everyone. The Letherii islanders—’

  ‘Can smell trouble better than anyone. Convicted criminals, almost the whole lot. It’s a case of the nerves all around, sir, and soon as they figure things out, they’ll start stepping up.’

  He eyed the woman. ‘What makes you so sure, Captain?’

  ‘Soon as they figure things out, I said.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘That there’s nowhere to run to, for one,’ she replied. ‘And that there won’t be any bystanders, no – what’s the word? Non-combatants. We got us a fight for our very lives ahead. Do you deny it?’

  He shook his head, studied the play of light on the blade again. ‘We will stand on the bones of our ancestors.’ He glanced at Pithy. ‘We have a queen to protect.’

  ‘Don’t you think your sister will be right here in the front line?’

  ‘My sister? No, not her. The queen of Kharkanas.’

  ‘It’s her we’re gonna die protecting? I don’t get it, sir. Why her?’

  He grimaced, lifted the sword and slowly sheathed it. ‘We are of the Shore. The bones at our feet are us. Our history. Our meaning. Here we will stand. It is our purpose.’ Memories not his own, yet still they stirred. ‘Our purpose.’

  ‘Yours maybe. The rest of us just want to live another day. Get on with things. Making babies, tilling the ground, getting rich, whatever.’

  He shrugged, eyes now on the wall. ‘Privileges, Captain, we cannot at the moment afford to entertain.’

  ‘I ain’t happy about the thought of dying for some Tiste Andii queen,’ Pithy said, ‘and I doubt I’m alone in that. So maybe I take back what I said earlier. There could be trouble ahead.’

  ‘No. There won’t.’

  ‘Plan on cutting off a few heads?’

  ‘If necessary.’

  She muttered a curse. ‘I hope not. Like I said before, so long as they all realize there’s nowhere to go. Should be enough, shouldn’t it?’ When no answer was forthcoming she cleared her throat and said, ‘Well, it comes down to saying the right things at the right time. Now, Watch Derryg, you might be an Errant-shitting warrior, and a decent soldier, too, but you’re lacking the subtleties of command—’

  ‘There are no subtleties in command, Captain. Neither my sister nor me is one for rousing speeches. We make our expectations plain and we expect them to be met. Without complaint. Without hesitation. It’s not enough to fight to stay alive. We must fight determined to win.’

  ‘People ain’t stupid – well, forget I said that. Plenty of ’em are. But something tells me there’s a difference between fighting to stay alive and fighting for a cause bigger than your own life, or even the lives of your loved ones, or your comrades. A difference, b
ut for the life of me I couldn’t say what it is.’

  ‘You were always a soldier, Captain?’

  Pithy snorted. ‘Not me. I was a thief who thought she was smarter than she really was.’

  Yedan considered that for a time. Before him, blurred faces pushed through the light, mouths opening, expressions twisting into masks of rage. Hands stretched to find his throat, clutched empty. He could reach out and touch the wall, if he so chose. Instead, he observed the enemy before him. ‘What cause, Captain, would you fight for? In the manner you describe – beyond one’s own life or those of loved ones?’

  ‘Now that’s the question, isn’t it? For us Letherii, this ain’t our home. Maybe we could come to want it to be, in time, a few generations soaking our blood into the land. But there won’t be any time. Not enough for that.’

  ‘If that is your answer—’

  ‘No it ain’t. I’m working on it, sir. It’s called thinking things through. A cause, then. Can’t be some Tiste Andii queen or her damned throne, or even her damned city. Can’t be Yan Tovis, even though she brought ’em all through and so saved their lives. Memories die like beached fish and soon enough just the smell will do t’drive ’em away. Can’t be you neither.’

  ‘Captain,’ said Yedan Derryg, ‘if the enemy destroy us, they will march down the Road of Gallan. Unobstructed, they will breach the gate to your own world, and they will lay waste to every human civilization, until nothing remains but ash. And then they will slay the gods themselves. Your gods.’

  ‘If they’re that nasty, how can we hope to hold ’em here?’

  Yedan nodded at the Lightfall. ‘Because, Captain, there is only one way through. This stretch of beach. A thousand paces wide. Only here is the wall scarred and thin from past wounds. Only here can they hope to break the barrier. We bar this door, Captain, and we save your world.’

  ‘And just how long are we supposed to hold ’em back?’

  He ruminated for a moment, and then he said, ‘As long as needed, Captain.’

  She rubbed at the back of her neck, squinted at Yedan for a time, and then looked away. ‘How can you do that, sir?’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Stand there, so close, just watching them – can’t you see their faces? Can’t you feel their hatred? What they want to do to you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Yet there you stand.’

  ‘They serve to remind me, Captain.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Of why I exist.’

  She hissed between her teeth. ‘You just sent a chill right through me.’

  ‘I asked about a worthy cause.’

  ‘Yeah, saving the world. That might work.’

  He shot her a look. ‘Might?’

  ‘True, you’d think saving your world is a good enough reason for doing anything and everything, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘People being what people are … we’ll see.’

  ‘You lack faith, Captain.’

  ‘What I lack is proof to the contrary, sir. I ain’t seen it yet, in all my years. What do you think makes criminals in the first place?’

  ‘Stupidity and greed.’

  ‘Besides those? I’ll tell you. It’s looking around, real carefully. It’s seeing what’s really there, and who wins every time, and it’s deciding that despair tastes like shit. It’s deciding to do whatever it takes to sneak through, to win what you can for yourself. It’s also condemning your fellow humans to whatever misery finds them – even if that misery is by your own hand. To hurt another human being is to announce your hatred of humanity – but mostly your thinking is about hating back what already hates you. A thief steals telling herself she’s evening out crooked scales. That’s how we sleep at night, y’see.’

  ‘A fine speech, Captain.’

  ‘Tried making it short as I could, sir.’

  ‘So indeed you are without faith.’

  ‘I have faith that what’s worst in humanity isn’t hard to find – it’s all around us, sour as a leaking bladder, day after day. It’s the stink we all get used to. As for what’s best … maybe, but I wouldn’t push all my stacks of coin into the centre of the table on that bet.’ She paused and then said, ‘Thinking on it, there’s one thing you could do to buy their souls.’

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘Empty out the palace treasury and bury it ten paces up the beach. And make a show of it. Maybe even announce that it’s, you know, the Sword’s Gold. To be divided up at day’s end.’

  ‘And would they fight to save the soldier beside them? I doubt it.’

  ‘Hmm, good point. Then announce a fixed amount – and whatever is unclaimed on account of the soldier being dead goes back into the treasury.’

  ‘Well, Captain, you could petition the Queen of Darkness.’

  ‘Oh, I can do better. Sister Brevity’s the treasurer now.’

  ‘You are a cynical woman, Captain Pithy.’

  ‘In case saving the world don’t work, that’s all. Make getting rich the reward and they’ll eat their own children before backing a single step.’

  ‘And which of the two causes would you more readily give your life for, Captain?’

  ‘Neither, sir.’

  His brows lifted.

  She spat again. ‘I was a thief once. Plenty of hatred then, both ways. But then I walked a step behind your sister and watched her bleed for us all. And then there was you, too, for that matter. That rearguard action that saved all our skins. So now,’ she scowled at the Lightfall, ‘well, I’ll stand here, and I’ll fight until the fight’s left them or it’s left me.’

  Yedan studied her in earnest now. ‘And why would you do that, Pithy Islander?’

  ‘Because it’s the right thing to do, Yedan Derryg.’

  Rightness. The word was lodged in Yan Tovis’s throat like shards of glass. She could taste blood in her mouth, and all that had seeped down into her stomach seemed to have solidified into something fist-sized, heavy as stone.

  The Shore invited her, reached out and clawed at her with its need. A need it yearned to share with her. You stand with me, Queen. As you once did, as you shall do again. You are the Shake and the Shake are of the Shore, and I have tasted your blood all my life.

  Queen, I thirst again. Against this enemy, there shall be Rightness upon the Shore, and you will stand, and you will yield not a step.

  But there was betrayal, long ago. How could the Liosan forget? How could they set it aside? Judgement, the coarse, thorn-studded brambles of retribution, they could snag an entire people, and as the blood streamed down each body was lifted higher, lifted from the ground. The vicious snare carried them into the righteous sky.

  Reason could not reach that high, and in the heavens madness spun untamed.

  Rightness rages on both sides of the wall. Who can hope to halt what is coming? Not the Queen of Darkness, not the queen of the Shake. Not Yedan Derryg – oh no, my brother strains for that moment. He draws his wretched sword again and again. He smiles at the Lightfall’s lurid play on the blade. He stands before the silent shrieking insanity of hatred made manifest, and he does not flinch.

  But, and this was the impossible contradiction, her brother had not once in his life felt a single spasm of hatred – his soul was implacably incapable of such an emotion. He could stand in the fire and not burn. He could stand before those deformed faces, those grasping hands, and … and … nothing.

  Oh, Yedan, what waits within you? Have you surrendered completely to the need of the Shore? Are you one with it? Do you know a single moment of doubt? Does it? She could understand the seductive lure of that invitation. Absolution through surrender, the utter abjection of the self. She understood it, yes, but she did not trust it.

  When that which offers blessing predicates such on the absolute obeisance of the supplicant … demands, in fact, the soul’s willing enslavement – no, how could such a force stand tall in moral probity?

  The Shore demands our sur
render to it. Demands our enslavement in the glory of its love, the sweet purity of its eternal blessing.

  There is something wrong with that. Something … monstrous. You offer us the freedom of choice, yet avow that to turn away is to lose all hope of glory, of salvation. What sort of freedom is that?

  She had held that her faith in the Shore set her above other worshippers, those quivering mortals kneeling before fickle carnate gods. The Shore was without a face. The Shore was not a god, but an idea, the eternal conversation of elemental forces. Changeable, yet for ever unchangeable, the binding of life and death itself. Not something to be bargained with, not a thing with personality, mercurial and prone to spite. The Shore, she had believed, made no demands.

  But now here she was, feeling the desiccated wind rising up from the bone strand, watching her brother speaking to Pithy, seeing her brother less than a stride away from Lightfall’s terrible fury, drawing his sword again and again. And the First Shore howled in her soul.

  Here! Blessed Daughter, I am here and with me you belong! See this wound. You and I shall close it. My bones, your blood. The death underfoot, the life with sword in hand. You shall be my flesh. I shall be your bone. Together we will stand. Changeable and unchangeable.

  Free and enslaved.

  A figure edged up on her right, and then another on her left. She looked to neither.

  The one on the right crooned something melodic and wordless, and then said, ‘Ween decided, Queen. Skwish to stand with the Watch, an mine to stand with you.’

  ‘An the Shore an the day,’ added Skwish. ‘Lissen to it sing!’

  Pully moaned again. ‘Y’ain knelled afore the Shore, Highness. Y’ain done it yet. An be sure y’need to, afore the breach comes.’

  ‘Een the queen’s got to srender,’ said Skwish. ‘T’the Shore.’

  Crumbled bones into chains. Freedom into slavery. Why did we ever agree to this bargain? It was never equal. The blood was ours, not the Shore’s. Errant fend, even the bones came from us!

  Empty Throne, my certainty is … gone. My faith … crumbles.

  ‘Don’t my people deserve better?’

  Pully snorted. ‘Single droppa Shake inem, they hear the song. They yearn t’come, t’stand—’