Midnight Tides

  ‘It must be cut off,’ Hannan Mosag said.

  Uruth hissed, then shook her head. ‘No, Warlock King. You are forbidden to mutilate our son. Fear, did Rhulad die as a blooded warrior?’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘Then the prohibitions are all the greater,’ she said to Hannan Mosag, crossing her arms.

  ‘I need that sword!’

  In the fraught silence that followed that outburst, Trull Sengar spoke for the first time. ‘Warlock King. Rhulad’s body is still frozen. It may be, upon thawing, that his grip on the sword loosens. In any case, it seems clear the matter demands calm, reasoned discussion. It may in the end prove that our conflicting desires can be resolved by some form of compromise.’ He faced his father and mother. ‘It was our task, given us by the Warlock King, to retrieve a gift, and that gift is the sword Rhulad now holds. Mother, we must complete the task demanded of us. The sword must be placed in Hannan Mosag’s hands.’

  There was shock and horror in her voice as Uruth replied, ‘You would cut off your dead brother’s hands? Are you my son? I would—’

  Her husband stopped her with a fierce gesture. ‘Trull, I understand the difficulty of this situation, and I concur with your counsel that decisions be withheld for the time being. Warlock King, Rhulad’s body must be prepared. This can be conducted without attention being accorded the hands. We have some time, then, do you agree?’

  Hannan Mosag answered with a curt nod.

  Trull approached Udinaas, and the slave could see the warrior’s exhaustion, the old blood of countless wounds in his tattered armour. ‘Take charge of the body,’ he said in a quiet tone. ‘To the House of the Dead, as you would any other. Do not, however, expect the widows to attend the ritual – we must needs postpone that until certain matters are resolved.’

  ‘Yes, master,’ Udinaas replied. He swung round and selected Hulad and one more of his fellow slaves. ‘Help me with the sled’s tethers. With solemn accord, as always.’

  Both men he addressed were clearly frightened. This kind of open conflict among the Hiroth Edur was unprecedented. They seemed on the verge of panic, although Udinaas’s words calmed them somewhat. There were values in ritual, and self-control was foremost among them.

  Stepping past the Edur, Udinaas led his two fellow slaves to the sled.

  The waxed canvas sheathing the ice had slowed the melt, although the slabs beneath it were much diminished, the edges softened and milky white.

  Fear passed the harness over to Udinaas. The two other slaves helping, they began dragging it towards the large wooden structure where Edur corpses were prepared for burial. No-one stopped them.

  ****

  Seren Pedac gripped Buruk’s arm and began pulling him back towards the bridge. He swung her a wild look, but wisely said nothing.

  They could not manage the passage unseen, and Seren felt sweat prickling on her neck and in the small of her back as she guided the merchant back towards the guest camp. They were not accosted, but their presence had without doubt been marked. The consequences of that would remain undetermined, until such time as the conflict they had witnessed was resolved.

  The Nerek had extended a tarp from one of the wagons to shield the hearth they kept continually burning. They scurried from the smoky flames as soon as Buruk and Seren arrived, quickly disappearing into their tents.

  ‘That looks,’ Buruk muttered as he edged closer to the hearth and held out his hands, ‘to be serious trouble. The Warlock King was badly shaken, and I like not this talk of a gift. A sword? Some kind of sword, yes? A gift from whom? Surely not an alliance with the Jheck—’

  ‘No,’ agreed Seren, ‘given that it was the Jheck with whom they fought. There’s nothing else out there, Buruk. Nothing at all.’

  She thought back to that scene on the other side of the bridge. Fear’s brother, not Binadas, but the other one, who’d counselled reason, he… interested her. Physically attractive, of course. Most Edur were. But there was more. There was… intelligence. And pain. Seren scowled. She was always drawn to the hurting ones.

  ‘A sword,’ Buruk mused, staring into the flames, ‘of such value that Hannan Mosag contemplates mutilating a blooded warrior’s corpse.’

  ‘Doesn’t that strike you as odd?’ Seren asked. ‘A corpse, holding on to a sword so tight even Fear Sengar cannot pull it loose?’

  ‘Perhaps frozen?’

  ‘From the moment of death?’

  He grunted. ‘I suppose not, unless it took his brothers a while to get to him.’

  ‘A day or longer, at least. Granted, we don’t know the circumstances, but that does seem unlikely, doesn’t it?’

  ‘It does.’ Buruk shrugged. ‘A damned Edur funeral. That won’t put the Warlock King in a good mood. The delegation will arrive at precisely the wrong time.’

  ‘I think not,’ Seren said. ‘The Edur have been unbalanced by this. Hannan Mosag especially. Unless there’s quick resolution, we will be among a divided people.’

  A quick, bitter smile. ‘We?’

  ‘Letherii, Buruk. I am not part of the delegation. Nor, strictly speaking, are you.’

  ‘Nor Hull Beddict,’ he added. ‘Yet something tells me we are irredeemably bound in that net, whether it sees the light of day or sinks to the deep.’

  She said nothing, because he was right.

  ****

  The sled glided easily along the wet straw and Udinaas raised a boot to halt its progress alongside the stone platform. Unspeaking, the three slaves began unclasping the straps, pulling them free from beneath the body. The tarp was then lifted clear. The slabs of ice were resting on a cloth-wrapped shape clearly formed by the body it contained, and all three saw at the same time that Rhulad’s jaw had opened in death, as if voicing a silent, endless scream.

  Hulad stepped back. ‘Errant preserve us,’ he hissed.

  ‘It’s common enough, Hulad,’ Udinaas said. ‘You two can go, but first drag that chest over here, the one resting on the rollers.’

  ‘Gold coins, then?’

  ‘I am assuming so,’ Udinaas replied. ‘Rhulad died a blooded warrior. He was noble-born. Thus, it must be gold.’

  ‘What a waste,’ said Hulad.

  The other slave, Irim, grinned and said, ‘When the Edur are conquered, we should form a company, the three of us, to loot the barrows.’ He and Hulad pulled the chest along the runners.

  The coals were red, the sheet of iron black with heat.

  Udinaas smiled. ‘There are wards in those barrows, Irim. And shadow wraiths guarding them.’

  ‘Then we hire a mage who can dispel them. The wraiths will be gone, along with every damned Edur. Nothing but rotting bones. I dream of that day.’

  Udinaas glanced over at the old man. ‘And how badly Indebted are you, Irim?’

  The grin faded. ‘That’s just it. I’d be able to pay it off. For my grandchildren, who are still in Trate. Pay it off, Udinaas. Don’t you dream the same for yourself?’

  ‘Some debts can’t be paid off with gold, Irim. My dreams are not of wealth.’

  ‘No.’ Irim’s grin returned. ‘You just want the heart of a lass so far above you, you’ve not the Errant’s hope of owning it. Poor Udinaas, we all shake our heads at the sadness of it.’

  ‘Less sadness than pity, I suspect,’ Udinaas said, shrugging. ‘Close enough. You can go.’

  ‘The stench lingers even now,’ Hulad said. ‘How can you stand it, Udinaas?’

  ‘Inform Uruth that I have begun.’

  ****

  It was not the time to be alone, yet Trull Sengar found himself just that. The realization was sudden, and he blinked, slowly making sense of his surroundings. He was in the longhouse, the place of his birth, standing before the centre post with its jutting sword-blade. The heat from the hearth seemed incapable of reaching through to his bones. His clothes were sodden.

  He’d left the others outside, locked in their quiet clash of wills. The Warlock King and his need against Tomad and Uruth and their i
nsistence on proper observance of a dead blooded warrior, a warrior who was their son. With this conflict, Hannan Mosag could lose his authority among the Tiste Edur.

  The Warlock King should have shown constraint. This could have been dealt with quietly, unknown to anyone else. How hard can it be to wrest a sword loose from a dead man’s hands? And if sorcery was involved – and it certainly seemed to be – then Hannan Mosag was in his element. He had his K’risnan as well. They could have done something. And if not… then cut his fingers off. A corpse no longer housed the spirit. Death had severed the binding. Trull could feel nothing for the cold flesh beneath the ice. It was not Rhulad any more, not any longer.

  But now there could be no chance of secrecy. The quarrel had been witnessed, and, in accordance with tradition, so too must be the resolution.

  And… does any of it matter?

  I did not trust Rhulad Sengar. Long before his failure on night watch. That is the truth of it. I knew… doubts.

  His thoughts could take him no further. Anguish rose in a flood, burning like acid. As if he had raised his own demon, hulking and hungry, and could only watch as it fed on his soul. Gnawing regret and avid guilt, remorse an unending feast.

  We are doomed, now, to give answer to his death, again and again. Countless answers, to crowd the solitary question of his life. Is it our fate, then, to suffer beneath the siege of all that can never be known?

  There had been strangers witnessing the scene. The realization was sudden, shocking. A merchant and his Acquitor. Letherii visitors. Advance spies of the treaty delegation.

  Hannan Mosag’s confrontation was a dreadful error in so many ways. Trull’s high regard for the Warlock King had been damaged, sullied, and he longed for the world of a month past. Before the revelation of flaws and frailties.

  Padding through the forest, mind filled with the urgency of dire news. A spear left in his wake, iron point buried deep in the chest of a Letherii. Leaden legs taking him through shadows, moccasins thudding on the dappled trail. The sense of having just missed something, an omen unwitnessed. Like entering a chamber someone else has just walked from, although in his case the chamber had been a forest cathedral, Hiroth sanctified land, and he had seen no signs of passage to give substance to his suspicion.

  And it was this sense that had returned to him. They had passed through fraught events, all unmindful of significance, of hidden truths. The exigencies of survival had forced upon them a kind of carelessness.

  A gelid wave of conviction rose within Trull Sengar, and he knew solid as a knife in his heart, that something terrible was about to happen.

  He stood, alone in the longhouse.

  Facing the centre post and its crooked sword.

  And he could not move.

  ****

  Rhulad Sengar’s body was frozen. A pallid grey, stiff-limbed figure lying on the stone platform. Head thrown back, eyes squeezed shut, mouth stretched long as if striving for a breath never found. The warrior’s hands were closed about the grip of a strange, mottled, straight-bladed sword, frost-rimed and black-flecked with dried blood.

  Udinaas had filled the nose and ear holes with wax.

  He held the pincers, waiting for the first gold coin to reach optimum heat on the iron plate suspended above the coals. He had placed one on the sheet, then, twenty heartbeats later, another. The order of placement for noble-born blooded warriors was precise, as was the allotted time for the entire ritual. Awaiting Udinaas was a period of mind-numbing repetition and exhaustion.

  But a slave could be bent to any task. There were hard truths found only in the denigration of one’s own spirit, if one was inclined to look for them. Should, for example, a man require self-justification. Prior to, say, murder, or some other atrocity.

  Take this body. A young man whose flesh is now a proclamation of death. The Edur use coins. Letherii use linen, lead and stone. In both, the need to cover, to disguise, to hide away the horrible absence writ there in that motionless face.

  Open, or closed, it began with the eyes.

  Udinaas gripped the edge of the Letherii coin with the pincers. These first two had to be slightly cooler than the others, lest the eyes behind the lids burst. He had witnessed that once, when he was apprenticed to an elder slave who had begun losing his sense of time. Sizzling, then an explosive spurt of lifeless fluid, foul-smelling and murky with decay, the coin settling far too deep in the socket, the hissing evaporation and crinkling, blackening skin.

  He swung round on the stool, careful not to drop the coin, then leaned over Rhulad Sengar’s face. Lowered the hot gold disc.

  A soft sizzle, as the skin of the lid melted, all moisture drawn from it so that it tightened round the coin. Holding it fast.

  He repeated the task with the second coin.

  The heat in the chamber was thawing the corpse, and, as Udinaas worked setting coins on the torso, he was continually startled by movement. Arched back settling, an elbow voicing a soft thud, rivulets of melt water crawling across the stone to drip from the sides, as if the body now wept.

  The stench of burnt skin was thick in the hot, humid air. Rhulad Sengar’s corpse was undergoing a transformation, acquiring gleaming armour, becoming something other than Tiste Edur. In the mind of Udinaas he ceased to exist as a thing once living, the work before the slave little different from mending nets.

  Chest, to abdomen. Each spear-wound packed with clay and oil, encircled with coins then sealed. Pelvis, thighs, knees, shins, ankles, the tops of the feet. Shoulders, upper arms, elbows, forearms.

  One hundred and sixty-three coins.

  Udinaas wiped sweat from his eyes then rose and walked, limbs aching, over to the cauldron containing the melted wax. He had no idea how much time had passed. The stench kept his appetite at bay, but he had filled the hollow in his stomach a half-dozen times with cool water. Outside, the rain had continued, battering on the roof, swirling over the ground beyond the walls. A village in mourning – none would disturb him until he emerged.

  He would have preferred a half-dozen Edur widows conducting the laying of coins, with him at his usual station tending to the fire. The last time he had done this in solitude had been with Uruth’s father, killed in battle by the Arapay. He had been younger then, awed by the spectacle and his role in its making.

  Attaching the handle to the cauldron, Udinaas lifted it from the hearth and carefully carried it back to the corpse. A thick coating over the front and sides of the corpse. A short time for the wax to cool – not too much, so that it cracked when he turned over the body – then he would return to the gold coins.

  Udinaas paused for a moment, standing over the dead Tiste Edur. ‘Ah, Rhulad,’ he sighed. ‘You could surely strut before the women now, couldn’t you?’

  ****

  ‘The mourning has begun.’

  Trull started, then turned to find Fear standing at his shoulder. ‘What? Oh. Then what has been decided?’

  ‘Nothing.’ His brother swung away and walked to the hearth. His face twisted as he regarded the low flames. ‘The Warlock King proclaims our efforts a failure. Worse, he believes we betrayed him. He would hide that suspicion, but I see it none the less.’

  Trull was silent a moment, then he murmured, ‘I wonder when the betrayal began. And with whom.’

  ‘You doubted this “gift”, from the very first.’

  ‘I doubt it even more now. A sword that will not relinquish its grip on a dead warrior. What sort of weapon is this, Fear? What sorcery rages on within it?’ He faced his brother. ‘Did you look closely at that blade? Oh, skilfully done, but there are… shards, trapped in the iron. Of some other metal, which resisted the forging. Any apprentice sword-smith could tell you that such a blade will shatter at first blow.’

  ‘No doubt the sorcery invested would have prevented that,’ Fear replied.

  ‘So,’ Trull sighed, ‘Rhulad’s body is being prepared.’

  ‘Yes, it has begun. The Warlock King has drawn our parents into the priva
cy of his longhouse. All others are forbidden to enter. There will be… negotiations.’

  ‘The severing of their youngest son’s hands, in exchange for what?’

  ‘I don’t know. The decision will be publicly announced, of course. In the meantime, we are left to our own.’

  ‘Where is Binadas?’

  Fear shrugged. ‘The healers have taken him. It will be days before we see him again. Mages are difficult to heal, especially when it’s broken bone. The Arapay who tended to him said there were over twenty pieces loose in the flesh of his hip. All need to be drawn back into place and mended. Muscle and tendons to knit, vessels to be sealed and dead blood expunged.’

  Trull walked over to a bench alongside a wall and sat down, settling his head in his hands. The whole journey seemed unreal now, barring the battle-scars on flesh and armour, and the brutal evidence of a wrapped corpse now being dressed for burial.

  The Jheck had been Soletaken. He had not realized. Those wolves…

  To be Soletaken was a gift belonging to Father Shadow and his kin. It belonged to the skies, to creatures of immense power. That primitive, ignorant barbarians should possess a gift of such prodigious, holy power made no sense.

  Soletaken. It now seemed… sordid. A weapon as savage and as mundane as a raw-edged axe. He did not understand how such a thing could be.

  ‘A grave test awaits us, brother.’

  Trull blinked up at Fear. ‘You sense it as well. Something’s coming, isn’t it?’

  ‘I am unused to this… to this feeling. Of helplessness. Of… not knowing.’ He rubbed at his face, as if seeking to awaken the right words from muscle, blood and bone. As if all that waited within him ever struggled, futile and frustrated, to find a voice that others could hear.

  A pang of sympathy struck Trull, and he dropped his gaze, no longer wanting to witness his brother’s discomfort. ‘It is the same with me,’ he said although the admission was not entirely true. He was not unused to helplessness; some feelings one learned to live with. He had none of Fear’s natural, physical talents, none of his brother’s ease. It seemed his only true skill was that of relentless observation, fettered to a dark imagination. ‘We should get some sleep,’ he added. ‘Exhaustion ill fits these moments. Nothing will be announced without us.’