Fall of Light (28 page)

‘But this is no healthy exchange, though it might at first seem so – after all, the act of giving will itself yield a kind of euphoria, a drunkenness of generosity, not to mention the salve of protectiveness, of paternal regard.’ Gothos leaned back again, drank more from the cup in his hands, and closed his eyes. ‘The island is unchanging. Bones and corpses lie upon its wrack on all sides.’

Arathan licked dry lips. ‘She was not like that,’ he whispered.

Shrugging, Gothos turned his head, to study the dull frozen fog on the window above the desk. ‘I do not know whom you mean, Arathan. When you find a true friend, you will know it. There may be challenges in that relationship, but for all that, it thrives on mutual respect, and honours the virtues exchanged. You need no fists to make a space for yourself. No one clings to your shadow – even as they grow to despise that shadow, and the one who so boldly casts it. Your feelings are not objects to be manipulated, with cold intent or emotion’s blind, unreasoning heat. You are heard. You are heeded. You are challenged, and so made better. This is not a tie that exhausts, nor one that forces your senses to unnatural extremes of acuity. You are not to be tugged or prodded, and your gifts – of wit and charm – are not to be denigrated for the attentions they earn. Arathan, one day you may come to call your father a friend. But I tell you this, I believe he already sees you as one.’

‘What gives you reason to so defend him, lord?’

‘I do not defend Draconus, Arathan. I speak in defence of his son’s future. As does a friend, when the necessity arises.’

The admission silenced Arathan.
And yet, is he not the Lord of Hate? From where, then, this loving gift?

Gothos reached out and ran his fingers, splayed out, down the icerimed glass of the window. ‘The notion of hatred,’ he said as if catching Arathan’s thoughts, ‘is easily misapplied. One must ask: what is it that this man hates? Is it joy? Hope? Love? Or is it, perhaps, the cruelty by which so many of us live, the unworthy thoughts, the revel of base emotions, the sheer stupidity that sends a civilization lurching onward, step by step into self-destruction? Arathan, you are here, far away from the Tiste civil war, and I am glad for that. So too, I suspect, is your father.’

The shadows stole into the chamber, barring the strange bars of the sun’s last light, streaming in through the streaks the lord’s fingers had left behind on the glass.

Arathan drank the tea and found it surprisingly sweet.

  *   *   *

‘It’s done,’ Brella said dully.

‘But the bleeding does not stop,’ Cred observed, edging closer.

‘I know,’ she mumbled, head dipping. ‘Too many here. Too many … drinking deep.’

‘See the boulder!’ Stark hissed. ‘It bleeds water!’

The stove’s heat made the rock’s face sizzle as the streams whispered down. ‘Brella!’ cried Cred, pulling her close in a rough embrace. ‘Stark, tear some cloth – make bandages! It pours from her!’

Korya stared down upon them. She could feel the spirits, swirling round the three figures below. They flowed into the water trickling down the stone, raced to sudden death in the fierce heat of the stove. Their death-cries were childlike. Others crowded about Brella, an eager mob. Twisting round, Korya glanced back across the fire-studded encampment. The monstrous emanation was drawing closer – she saw small fires dim in a broad swath marking its passing. She heard distant shouts as the sensitive among the army – the adepts – recoiled from its passage.

Brella was doomed. So too the fire-spirits bound to the pumice stones in the stove, and possibly Cred himself. The spirit reaching for them held the memory of global floods, of cold, unlit depths and crushing pressure. Of seas that boiled, and ice that cracked and shattered. Mountains reduced to rubble filled its throat. It crawled. It heaved itself forward, desperate for the taste of mortal blood.

K’rul. You damned fool. We stumble into this sorcery in ignorance. We imagine a world for the taking, filled with small powers eager to answer our needs. We are drunk on wonder, seeking satiation with no thought of the founts we find – or who guards them.

The camp seethed with motion now. A panic seemingly without source tightened throats, constricted chests, bringing pain to every breath drawn, every gasp loosed. She saw figures fall to their knees, hands at their faces. Fires winked out, snuffed by the growing pressure that it seemed only she could see.

‘Oh, enough.’ Korya spread out her arms.
See this vessel, old one! Come to me, as a crab finds its perfect shell! I can hold you. I am your Mahybe, your home. Refuge. Lair. Whatever.

She saw a shape taking form, ghostly, ethereal. Wormlike, and yet shouldered behind the blunt, eyeless head. The arms were gnarled and thick, planted on the ground like forelegs, and they were the only limbs visible, as the body snaked out, its distant end vanishing into the earth. The emanation towered over the entire camp, big enough to make a modest meal of the thousand souls cowering there.

Shelter first. And then you can feed.

The head lifted, questing blind, and then somehow Korya felt the old one’s attention fix on her. It surged forward.

Mahybe. A vessel to be filled. Was this to be her task in life? Deadly trap for every ambitious power, every hungry fool?

I will hold you inside. It’s the curse of every woman, after all—

Someone scrabbled up the boulder’s broken side, but she had no time to see who would join her in this fraught moment. The leviathan was coming, and she felt something inside her open up, gaping, widening—

‘Stupid girl,’ a voice beside her said.

Startled, she turned to see Haut. He stretched out one hand, as if to push away the ancient power. Instead, he twisted the hand until it was palm-up, uncurling his fingers.

With a piercing shriek, the leviathan lunged forward, swept down upon them like a toppling tower.

Winds roared in Korya’s skull. She felt the hard, wet stone slam against her knees, but she was blind now, deafened, and whatever had yawned wide inside her was now stoppered shut, ringing like a bell.

Moments later, in a sudden, disorienting shift, she heard the trickling of water, the faint hiss from the heat still bathing the boulder’s opposite side. She opened her eyes, feeling impossibly weak. The roaring was gone, leaving only echoes that drifted through the emptiness within. The leviathan had vanished. ‘W-what?’

Reaching down one-handed, Haut helped her upright. ‘I prepared you for this? Hardly. Here.’ He grasped her right hand and brought it up to set something small, polished and hard into its grip. ‘Don’t break it.’

Then Haut moved away, clambering back down the rocky slope, muttering under his breath and waving both hands, as if fighting off a chorus of unspoken questions.

Korya opened her hand and looked down at what she held.

An acorn? A fucking acorn?

From below, Brella was coughing, but with vigour. And then Stark said, in a faintly wild tone, ‘Can we drink that water now?’

  *   *   *

Varandas stepped in alongside Haut when the captain returned from the outcrop, and they continued on, with Burrugast trailing, towards Hood’s tent.

‘She’s ambitious, this Tiste girl of yours,’ Varandas said.

‘Youth is a thirst that will drink any old thing, once,’ Haut replied. ‘It is that fearlessness we observe with bemusement, and not a little envy. She has grown sensitive, too – I believe she saw the thing, saw the truth of it.’

‘And yet,’ muttered Burrugast behind them, ‘she invited it nonetheless. Foolish. Precipitous. Dangerous. I trust, captain, she’ll not be accompanying us on this march.’

‘I await an Azathanai to take charge of her,’ Haut replied.

‘They care nothing for hostages,’ Varandas said. ‘Nor prodigies. I can think of not one Azathanai who will accede to your wish.’

They were passing among the warriors and their small camps. The sudden, debilitating force that had descended upon everyone had left them shaken, confused, angry. Voices rose in argument, bitter with accusations, as men and women turned on the warlocks and witches in their company. Flushed with firelight, faces swung towards the three Jaghut striding past, but none called out. Overhead, winter’s stars glittered, the sky-spanning band assembled like a belligerent host.

At Varandas’s assertion, Haut shrugged. ‘Then a Dog-Runner, if the Azathanai will not have her.’

‘Send her home,’ said Burrugast. ‘You never did well with pets, Haut. Especially other people’s pets.’

Haut scowled. ‘I warned Raest. Besides, in the end, he could not find dishonour in the tomb I raised for that idiot cat. In any case, this Tiste is not a pet.’

Burrugast grunted. ‘What is she then?’

‘A weapon.’

Varandas sighed. ‘You leave it on the field, and invite anyone to come and collect it. This seems … irresponsible.’

‘Yes,’ Haut agreed, ‘it does, doesn’t it?’

Hood’s tent was small, of a size to suit a single occupant, with that occupant doing little more than sleeping. It had been raised on the floor of what had once been a tower, the walls of which had collapsed long ago. The low foundation stones roughly encircled the camp, with a few scattered blocks drawn up to provide seats around a desultory hearth. Cowled against the chill, Hood sat alone.

‘Hood!’ barked Burrugast as the three arrived. ‘Your self-proclaimed officers are here! Iron of spine and steeled with resolve, our hands twitch in anticipation of sharp salutes and whatnot. What say you to that?’

‘Ah now, Burrugast,’ Varandas pointed out, ‘an unseemly challenge rides your greeting. Beloved Hood, Lord of Grief, pray do not let him sting you to life. The drama alone might kill us all.’

‘They but followed me here,’ said Haut, sitting down opposite Hood. ‘Worse than dogs, these two. Why, just yesterday I found them both upon the western shore, rolling in rotten fish. To hide the scent, no doubt.’

‘Ha,’ said Varandas, ‘and what scent would that be?’

‘A complex odour, to be sure,’ Haut allowed, adjusting himself atop the blockish stone. ‘Hints of derision, mockery. Smudges of contempt. The flavour of rooks on a leafless branch, looking down upon a raving fool. The glitter of sordid patience. Flavours of sorrow, but already turned bitter, as if grief deserves not a face, nor a purpose. And, at the last, wisps of envy—’

‘Envy!’ snorted Burrugast. ‘This fool would elevate his personal pain, and make it a plague to take us all!’

‘This fool would stand for us, in our stead, against a most implacable enemy. That we now join him marks the honesty we have each faced, the thing in our souls that cries out against the void. Envy, I say, in seeing courage not found in ourselves. This is a wake I will walk, and so too will you, Burrugast. And you, Varandas. The same for Gathras, and Sanad. Suvalas and Bolirium, too. We defiant, miserable Jaghut, alone in the futures awaiting us – and yet, here we are.’

Making a vaguely helpless gesture with one hand, Varandas lowered himself into a crouch, close to the fire. ‘Bah, there’s no heat from these flames. Hood, you would have done better with a mundane lantern. Or one of those Fire-Keepers who tend their charge. These flames are cold.’

‘Illusion,’ said Haut. ‘Light has its rival, and so too heat. We fend off darkness as a matter of course, and since when did an icy breath bother us?’

‘They seek a commander for this enterprise,’ said Varandas. ‘Hood offers nothing.’

Haut nodded. ‘Just my point. This hearth and the light it yields – not real. Nor is the station of command – neither real, nor relevant. Hood pronounced his vow. Was it meant to be answered? Do we all gather as if summoned? Not by our Lord of Grief, surely. Rather, by the nature of the enterprise itself. One Jaghut gave voice, but the sentiment was heard by all – well, all of us here.’

Burrugast growled under his breath. ‘How then to command this army? By what means are we to be organized?’

In answer, Haut shrugged. ‘Do you need a banner? An order of march? What discipline, Burrugast, do you imagine necessary, given the nature of our enemy? Shall we send out scouts, seeking the dread border – when in truth it is only found in our minds, between self and oblivion?’

‘Then are we to sit here, rotting, befouling the land around us, until age itself creeps over us, stealing souls one by one? You call this a war?’

‘Call it
all
a war,’ Haut said.

‘Captain,’ Varandas said, ‘you have led armies, seen fields of battle. In your past, you knew the privations, the brutal games of necessity. You won a throne, only to flee it. Stood triumphant on a mound of the slain, only to kneel in surrender the following dawn. In victory you lost everything, and in defeat you won your freedom. Of all who would join Hood, I did not expect you.’

‘Ah, you old woman, Varandas. It is in that very curse – my most martial past – where hides the answer. To a warrior, war is the drunkard’s drink. We yearn unending, seeking the numbness of past horrors, but each time, the way ahead whispers of paradise. But no soldier is so blind as to believe that. It is the unfeeling that we seek, the immunity to all depravity, all cruelty. The only purity in the paradise into which we would march is the timelessness it promises.’ He shook his head. ‘Beware the lustful ambitions of old warriors – it is our thirst that makes politics, and we will drink of mayhem again and again.’

Burrugast thumped his thigh in frustration and faced Hood. ‘Yield us a single word, I beg you. How long must we wait? I will see this enemy of yours!’

Hood lifted his gaze, studied Burrugast for a long moment, and then Varandas who still crouched, and finally Haut who sat opposite him. ‘If you have come here,’ he said. ‘If you would follow.’

‘I cannot decide,’ said Burrugast. ‘Perhaps none of us can. A war is already being waged, in our minds. Should reason win, you will find yourself alone.’

Hood smiled then, without much humour. ‘If so, Burrugast, then I will still tend to this fire here.’

‘The illusion of fire – the illusion of life itself!’

‘Just so.’