Fall of Light

TEN

The Court poet of Kharkanas departed the chamber, and in the silence that followed, it seemed to Rise Herat that Gallan had taken with him every possible word, every conceivable thought. Sorcery still roiled about in the room, heavy and sinuous as smoke from a brazier. Cedorpul, seated on a bench that lined one wall, had leaned his back against the worn tapestry behind him, closing his eyes. Endest Silann, sallow despite the ebon hue of his skin, sat on the edge of the old dais, his hands cupped in his lap and his eyes fixed upon them with peculiar expectancy.

Standing opposite the doorway through which Gallan had departed, Lord Silchas studied the swirls of magic that still drifted above the tiled floor. His arms were crossed, his features fixed and without expression.

‘The Court of Mages,’ said Cedorpul, his eyes still closed. ‘Well, it was a bold ambition.’

Rise Herat rubbed at his face, but everything seemed strangely numb to his touch, as if he was no more than an actor upon some stage, truths hidden behind thick makeup, while he stumbled through a play constructed of lies and penned by a fool.

‘Why does it still linger?’ Silchas asked.

‘Slipped the tether,’ Endest Silann replied after a moment, squinting down at his hands. ‘He left it to wander like a lost child.’

Silchas turned to the young priest. ‘His reason?’

‘To prove the conceit,’ Cedorpul answered when it became obvious that Endest would not. ‘That we can control this power. That we can shape it to our will. It is as elusive as darkness itself, a thing that cannot be grasped. The Terondai bleeds this … stuff. It fills every room in the Citadel. It commands the courtyard and stalks the streets beyond.’ He finally opened his eyes, revealing their red-shot exhaustion, and met Silchas’s stare. ‘Have you seen where it gathers, milord? About statuary, the monuments of the city’s squares, the caryatids shouldering the lintel stones of our proud public edifices. Around tapestries. In the taverns where bards sing and pluck their instruments.’ He waved a plump hand. ‘As if it possessed eyes and ears, and the ability to touch, or, perhaps, taste.’

‘The one you would make seneschal to this Court of Mages,’ said Silchas, baring his teeth, ‘simply flings it all back into your face, Cedorpul.’

‘It is his manner to mock our aspirations. A poet who ran out of words. An awakener of sorcery with nothing to say.’

‘How did he come by this power? To awaken the darkness?’

Endest snorted, and then said, ‘Forgive me, milord. He found the power in his words. In the rhythms, the cadences. Unmindful, he discovered that he was capable of uttering … holiness. Needless to say,’ Endest added, attention returning once more to his cupped hands, ‘the discovery offended him.’

‘Offended?’ Silchas prepared to say more, but then, with a helpless gesture, he swung round and walked to a sideboard where stood a large clay jar of wine. He poured full a goblet, and, without turning to face the others, he said, ‘And you, Cedorpul? How did you come by it?’

‘Could I answer you thus, I would be a relieved man.’

‘Thus?’

‘By prayer, milord, as befits a priest serving a goddess.’

Silchas drank down a mouthful, and then said, ‘If not born of the sacred, Cedorpul, then describe to me what mundane gesture enlivened the magic?’

‘Curiosity, milord, but not mine. The sorcery itself.’

Silchas spun round. ‘Then it lives? It possesses a will of its own? Darkness as sorcery, now manifest in our realm. What does it want of us?’

‘Milord,’ said Cedorpul, ‘none can say. There is no precedent.’

Silchas faced Rise Herat. ‘Historian? Have you perused the most ancient tomes, the mouldy scrolls and clay tablets and whatnot? Is there or is there not, here in the Citadel, the gathered literature of our people? Are we indeed in a time without precedent?’

A time without precedent? Oh, surely we are in such a time. ‘Milord, there are many myths recorded in our library, mostly musing on origins of various things. They seek to map an unknown realm, and where memory does not survive, then imagination serves.’ He shook his head. ‘I would not put much trust in the veracity of such efforts.’

‘Use what you will of them nonetheless,’ Silchas commanded, ‘and speculate.’

Rise Herat hesitated. ‘Imagine a world without sorcery-’

‘Historian, we are in the midst of its burgeoning, not its extinction.’

‘Then, in principle, magic is not in question. It exists. It has, perhaps, always existed. What, then, has changed? A burgeoning, you say. But consider our own creation myths, our tales of the Eleint, the dragons born of sorcery, and indeed the guardians of the same. In the distant past, if we give such tales any credence at all, there was magic in the world, beyond even what we see now. As a force of creation, perhaps, an ordering of chaotic powers and, possibly, emerging with the necessity of a will behind that ordering. Shall we call this a faceless god?’

‘And there,’ interjected Cedorpul in a weary tone, ‘is where you stumble, historian. Who created the creator? Whence the divine will that engendered divine will? The argument devours its own tail.’

‘And in that myth,’ Rise Herat said, ignoring Cedorpul, ‘many are made as one, and one as many. Tiamatha, the dragon of a thousand eyes, a thousand fanged jaws. Tiamatha, who makes from her subjects her own flesh.’ He paused, and then shrugged. ‘Too many of these oldest of stories invoke the same notions. The Dog-Runners will sing of the Witch of Fires, from whose womb every child is delivered, even as she dwells in each flicker of flame. Again, one who is many.’

Cedorpul made a disgusted sound. ‘Dog-Runners. Abyss take us, historian. They also tell of a sleeping world, earth as flesh, water as blood, and every creature but a conjuration of the sleeper’s dreaming.’

‘Troubled dreaming,’ Endest muttered.

‘What remains without precedent,’ Cedorpul insisted, ‘and what must therefore be examined as the source of this newfound sorcery in our realm, is the Terondai carved upon the floor of the Citadel. The gift given by Lord Draconus to Mother Dark.’

Rise Herat studied the rotund priest, noting the sheen of sweat upon the man’s brow and cheeks. If magic was indeed a gift, it did not sit well with Cedorpul. ‘The High Priestess believes that the gift was both unexpected and unwelcome.’

Shrugging, Cedorpul looked away.

After a moment, the historian turned back to Silchas. ‘Milord. For answers, we must look to Draconus.’

Silchas scowled. ‘Then send her back in there.’

‘The High Priestess has not been granted leave to enter the chamber, and her entreaties yield only silence.’

‘This avails us nothing!’

At Silchas’s shout, the others flinched. Barring Endest Silann, who simply looked up, frowning at the lord. ‘Faith and magic,’ he said, ‘are easily conflated. It comes from our need for belief, and for the efficacy of that belief. But so too is it a failure of imagination to, in turning to face one, set the back to the other.’

Silchas seemed to snarl without sound before saying, ‘Elaborate … with clarity, priest.’

‘There is an Azathanai statue,’ Endest said, ‘found at the north end of Suruth Common. Do you know it, milord?’

Struggling with his temper, Silchas managed a sharp nod.

‘A figure made up of faces. Upon the entire body, a multitude of faces, all staring outward with stubborn, fierce expressions. Gallan has told me the name of that work.’

‘Gallan cannot read Azathanai,’ growled Cedorpul. ‘He but invents his own knowledge, to better stroke his sense of superiority.’

‘What is the name of that sculpture, historian?’

‘Milord, it is named Denial.’

‘Very well. Continue.’

To Rise Herat, Endest Silann looked already ancient beyond his years, as if ill and nearing death. But when he spoke, his voice was soft, calm, preternaturally sure. ‘Faith is the state of not knowing, and yet, by choice, knowing. Every construct of reason propping it up plays a game, but the rules of that game are left, quite deliberately, incomplete. Thus, the argument has, to be crass, holes. But those “holes” are not synonymous with failure. If anything, they become a source of strength, as they are the places of knowing what cannot be known. To know what cannot be known is to find yourself in an unassailable position, proof against all argument, all dissuasion.’

‘And sorcery?’

Endest smiled. ‘Does it require faith to see magic? Well, perhaps, the faith that one can believe what one sees with one’s own eyes. If, however, one chooses not to believe what one can oneself see, or feel, or taste, then in that direction waits madness.’

‘This sorcery,’ said Cedorpul, leaning forward, ‘comes from darkness. From the Terondai. From the power of our goddess!’

‘Power she now uses, yes,’ said Endest Silann, ‘but it did not come from her. It is not derived from her.’

‘How can you know that?’ Cedorpul demanded.

Endest raised his hands, revealing the blood now dripping from them, from deep wounds piercing through the palm of each. ‘She is using it now,’ he said, ‘to attend this gathering, in spirit, if not in flesh.’

At that, Silchas moved to kneel before Endest Silann. ‘Mother,’ he said, head bowed, ‘help us.’

Endest shook his head. ‘She’ll not speak through me, Silchas. She but watches. It is,’ he added with sudden bitterness, ‘what she does.’

Straightening, Silchas made fists with both hands, as if about to strike the young priest seated before him. He struggled to keep his voice under control. ‘Then what does she want of us?’

‘I have no answer, milord, because I feel nothing from her. I am but her eyes and ears, whilst the blood flows, whilst the power bleeds.’ He twisted round to smile across at Cedorpul. ‘My friend, this power simply exists now. It is among us, for good or ill. Gallan, our would-be seneschal, rejects it, and for that I am relieved.’

‘Relieved? Why?’

‘Because, once tasted, it seduces.’

‘Endest,’ asked Rise Herat, with a sudden chill rippling through him, ‘does she taste it now, then?’

The priest looked down, as if faltering upon the cusp of his reply, but then nodded.

‘And … has it … seduced her?’

He needed no other answer, the historian realized, than the blood draining down from Endest’s hands.

* * *

There had been a desire, possessed of value, to assemble a cadre of mages. A court, to be more specific, of Tiste Andii practitioners. Whether it was talent or something else, many hands were now able to reach into that power, and to shape it, although the notion of control was, it turned out, dubious. There was something wayward, untamable, in this sorcery. Rise Herat understood Gallan’s warning, its bitter nuances, and, like the poet, the historian feared the magic now among them.

‘Name it for the realm,’ Gallan had said, earlier, when he stood in the centre of the chamber and the sorcery rose up to entwine his form, its serpent tendrils questing and probing like blunt-headed worms. ‘We become synonymous with this flavour, and the darkness from which it emerges.’

‘It is not the name that interests me,’ Cedorpul had retorted. ‘We would proclaim you seneschal. If words are your power in this new art, then lead us. We will all find our own paths, Gallan. The point is, there is need. You must see that. Neret Sorr now blazes with light. Syntara organizes against us, and would see a path burned into the heart of Kharkanas.’ He had stepped closer to Gallan then, his eyes fierce. ‘I have dreamed it, that golden road of fire.’

‘Dreamed it, did you?’ Gallan had laughed. ‘Oh, I do not doubt you, priest. Against the waking world, the mind finds its own realm, and fills it with myriad fears and dreads. Where else would one play so freely with dire possibility?’ He had raised a hand, and the tongues of smoky darkness had wreathed his arm. ‘But this? It has no answer to Liosan. Light is revelation. Dark is mystery. What marches upon us cannot be defeated. We – and the world – must ever yield. Imagine, my friends, what we are about to witness. The death of mystery, and such a bright world will come, blinding us with truths, humbling us with answers, scouring us clean of that which we cannot know.’

In some ways, the new world Gallan described well suited Rise Herat, who was by nature frustrated with things he could not know, with meanings at which he could only guess, and where his every effort to surmise trembled at the roots with doubt. Was this new future not an historian’s paradise? Everything explicable, everything understandable.

A world made mundane.

And yet, a part of him recoiled at the notion, for when he looked closely, he saw a future made stale, lifeless. The death of mystery, he realized, was the death of life itself.

Gallan had dropped his arm, watched as the magic drained away from his body. ‘Revelation shall surely bless us. Doubt lies bloody upon the altar. Into the channels it drains, drip by drip, and then ebbs. We shall make a thousand thrones. Ten thousand. One for every fool. But the altar remains singular. It will take any and every sacrifice, and thirst yet for more.’ He had then smiled at the historian. ‘Prepare to recount the future, Herat, and describe well the long lines, the glint of row on row of knives in waiting hands. And upon the other hand – why, I shall tell this to Kadaspala, so that he may paint it – place a tether, and upon the end of its modest length, name some private beast.

‘Praise the light! We march to slaughter!’ He grinned mockingly at Cedorpul. ‘Name it for the realm. The sorcery of Kurald Galain.’

And so, laughing, he had stridden from the chamber.

* * *

Rise Herat made his way to the private chambers of High Priestess Emral Lanear. He was thinking on the nature of conspiracy, which, among those who both feared and named it, seemed to always possess at its core a misguided belief in the competence of others, as weighed against the incapacities – real or imagined – of the believer. Therefore, he concluded, the belief in conspiracy was in truth an announcement of the believer’s own sense of utter helplessness, in the face of forces both mysterious and fatally efficient.

If he looked to his own role, now, as a conspirator against both Anomander and Draconus, he felt nothing of the competence and confidence that should have come to him, settling upon his shoulders like a vestment in some secret ceremony of the capable. The world might move to hidden players, to well-disguised schemes and venal cabals, but it did not move smoothly. Rather, in the confused and raucous clash of muddled plans and desires, the world but lurched, and often in the wrong direction.

History mocked the pretensions of those who believed themselves in charge – of anything, least of all themselves. There was no doubt, in Herat’s mind, that conspiracies arose, like poisonous flowers, in every age, snaring those moments of terrible consequence that, more often than not, ended in violence and chaos. If civilization was a garden, it was poorly tended, with every hand at odds with the next. Private desires fed the wrong plants, and made for all a bitter harvest.

At the very least, the paranoid were well fed, though by nature their ability to discriminate between diabolical genius and woeful incompetence was non-existent. It was grist, after all, offering sweet sustenance to a soul panicked by its own helplessness.

He shared with the High Priestess an assembly of sound justifications. They sought to save the realm, and to end the civil war. They sought, beyond the singular moment of violent betrayal, a peaceful future. Kurald Galain must survive, they told each other, and lives would have to be sacrificed in order to assure that survival.

But not mine. And not yours, Emral Lanear. Where, then, is our sacrifice? Nothing but the carcasses of our honour. Conspiracy will devour its own truths, and even should we succeed, we are left as nothing but husks, mortal forms to house ruined souls. Is that not a sacrifice? Will we not find victory a bleak realm of sour satisfaction, with ourselves haunted by the truth behind every lie?

Crowd me in the comforts of what we win … I see a man drunk upon the divan, eager to waste the years left to him.

And you, my dear? How will faith taste to your bloodied tongue?

The corridors of the Citadel held a kind of promise, in that there was light in the darkness. His eyes could see, although now even the torches had been dispensed with. Cedorpul asserted that the talent with which the Mother’s children could pierce the darkness was her gift to them for their faith in her. The notion pleased Herat in too many ways, and should he list them he would see plain his own desperation, as a man making a banquet of a morsel.

He paused in one passageway as a trio of young priestesses hurried past him, their hoods over their heads and eyes down. They swirled in their silks, almost shapeless, but the scents of their perfumes made for a heady wake as the historian continued on. A goddess of love would be welcome in these times, but the pleasures of sex could not be her only gift. Lust spoke a base language, and its role in the course of history, Herat well knew, was fraught with tragedy and war.

But we are cold in our desires, the High Priestess and I. There is no heat in our plans, and the poses we will create invite no caress. She takes no men to her bed, not any more. The gate, as Cedorpul might say, has closed.

Yet her priestesses still swim the deep carnal seas, and call it worship.

But Mother Dark is no goddess of love. We were mistaken in that, and now lust boils unabated. We rush forward, with no time to temper our deeds with thought. The reins have been plucked from our hands, and this road we descend is steep.

Let us hold on a while longer, to this delusion of control.

Reaching the door to Emral Lanear’s chamber, Herat gave a single tug on the silk cord hanging in its vertical niche in the wall. Hearing her muffled invitation, he opened the heavy door and stepped into the room beyond.

Until recently, there had been a full-length mirror of polished silver set against the wall opposite the door that had commanded the entire chamber with its play of motion and seemingly sourceless light. Rise Herat had found it disquieting, as the polish was far from perfect, and indeed there were strange dips and exaggerations in the reflection the mirror offered, making it an enemy to vanity. Of late, however, a thick tapestry had covered the mirror, as it did now. Initially, Herat had wondered at the gesture, but not for long. This was not the time, he understood, for catching glimpses of oneself, like flitting thoughts or hints of something that might be guilt.

The tapestry covering the mirror was an old one, depicting a scene from an unfamiliar court, a crowded throne room in which figures bedecked in barbaric furs were arrayed in a half-circle, their backs to the viewer, all facing a vaguely female form seated on a throne. This woman was either asleep or dead. The splendour of the throne room offered a stark contrast to the savages gathered there, displaying such riches as to make the chamber more like a royal vault than a court. For all Rise Herat’s knowledge of history, he could place neither the artist nor the scene.

But nothing of the past held any relevance, not any more. It had become a realm made perfect by virtue of being unreachable. For all that, its lure remained, as seductive as ever. Entire revolutions, he knew, could be unleashed in the name of some impossible, mostly imagined past. A creation fashioned as much from ignorance as from knowledge. Such dreamers invariably ended up wallowing in blood, and should they ever win their desire, their world proved to be one filled with repression and terror. There was too much anger, when the dream was revealed as being impossible, and when others failed to match the ideal, and before long many were made to kneel, broken by either fear or despair, while the bodies of those who refused to kneel made heaps in hastily dug pits.

Simple observations, my friends. I am not one for judgement, but one might whisper, now and then, to those dreamers, and say: dream not of the impossible past, but of the possible future. They are not one and the same. They cannot ever be the same. Know this. Understand this. Make peace with this. Else you fight a war you can never win.

Emral Lanear emerged from her bedroom beyond the reception chamber. She wore plain silks, of a hue of deep grey, its sheen like dull pewter. Her hair was drawn up, but roughly so – by her own hand rather than that of a handmaid. There were shadows under her eyes, the smudge of exhaustion that was as much spiritual as physical.

‘Historian. It’s late. Is it late?’

‘No, High Priestess, we are upon the sixth bell.’

‘Ah,’ she said in a vague murmur, and then gestured. ‘Will you sit? I sent them all away. Too much chattering. One day, I fear, our world will be inundated with a multitude of people with little to say, but all the time in the world in which to say it. The cacophony will deafen us all, until we are insensate, drunk on the trivial. Upon that day, civilization will die with little fanfare, much less anyone’s noticing.’

Herat smiled as he took a seat in the chair she had indicated. ‘They will but step over the cracks in the street, the rubbish upon their doorsteps, and make displeased faces at the foulness in the air they breathe and in the water they drink. Still, their prattle will prattle on.’

She wavered slightly where she stood, and Herat wondered if she was drunk, or in the fumes of d’bayang, the faint scent of which now reached him from the bedroom.

‘High Priestess, are you not well?’

‘Oh, dispense with the pleasantries – or will we make our own prattle? What have you gleaned of him? How solid does he stand?’

Herat glanced away, blinked at the tapestry scene. ‘If he could,’ he ventured, ‘he would straddle the gap. A warrior Silchas may be, but he has no stomach for crossing blades with those who were once his friends. Honour holds him to his brother’s side, but in his heart he shares a deep detestation for the Great Houses, and all the pretensions of the highborn.’

When he looked back to her, he found her studying him from beneath half-lowered lids. ‘Then he will serve, won’t he?’

‘To make the insult sting? Yes. His temper undermines him.’

‘What else?’

For a moment, he was not sure what she meant, but then he sighed. ‘The Court of Mages. There was a scene, High Priestess. Sorcery, yes, but Gallan discarded its value. He did not linger. Silchas made plain his frustration.’

‘And Endest Silann?’

‘He bled.’

‘I felt that,’ Emral Lanear said, turning away, as if moments from dismissing him and retreating once more to her bedroom. Then she halted and brought a hand to her face. ‘She rushes to him, to the wounds. For all that she seems to hide, Herat, she betrays a needful thirst.’

‘Then ignorance is not her flaw.’

The High Priestess flinched, and shot him a glower. ‘I would it were,’ she snapped. ‘To stand as a valid excuse. No, it is the alternative that wounds like a knife, against which we have no defence.’

‘None,’ said Herat, ‘but to ever raise the stakes.’ He well knew the alternative to which she alluded, as it was a flavour to sour every historian and every scholar, artist and philosopher. This dread fear, this welter of despair. The guiding forces of the world, not awkward in ignorance, but turned away, in indifference.

By this we name the Abyss, and see in our souls a place devoid of hope.

Mother Dark, are you indifferent to us?

If so, then our goddess has by nature become cold, and rules with a careless hand. By this, she reduces our beliefs to conceits, and mocks all that is longing within us. ‘Emral,’ said Herat, ‘if this is so’ - our indifferent mother - ‘then what point in saving Kurald Galain?’

‘I have had swift reply from Syntara.’

He frowned. ‘This proves a weak winter.’

‘It does,’ she agreed. ‘My overture is well received. Neither unrelieved darkness nor light will serve us. There must be a proper union, a balance of powers. That there be light in darkness, and darkness in light.’

‘Ah. I see.’

Her sudden smile was brittle. ‘I think not. By “darkness” she means all that is base – vices, in truth. Fear and evil, the malign essence of mortal nature. In “light” and “light” alone dwell the virtues of our nature. She swallows us with difficulty, and sees the balance as a war of wills, upon the field of each and every soul. Fear blinds, after all, as befits darkness made absolute, while purest light reveals courage, fortitude, and the gift of seeing both truthfully and clearly.’

‘Purest light will blind as surely as absolute darkness,’ Herat pointed out, scowling.

‘And so the admixture is invited.’

Herat grunted. ‘An alchemy of impurity.’

‘And thus the fate of all mortal beings, historian, shall be one of unending struggle.’

The historian shrugged, looking away. ‘She but articulates every age past, and every age to come. Still, to cast us into such a venal role …’

‘There is this thing,’ Emral Lanear said, ‘with betrayal. It becomes easier to stomach the second time around.’

‘You will turn upon her?’

‘Entice her with seeming victory, yes. But I will fight for the virtue of darkness, by striking from it, unseen.’

Rise Herat nearly choked on the statement, wondering if she even grasped its appalling hypocrisy. He squinted at the tapestry scene. ‘So, what is this, then? I know not the artist, nor the court and its players.’

Frowning, the High Priestess turned to the hanging. ‘Woven by an Azathanai, I was told.’

‘Whence came it?’

‘A gift, from Grizzin Farl.’

‘He arrived without much upon his back, High Priestess.’

She shrugged. ‘It is their way, I suppose, to present gifts from unknown places.’

‘And the scene?’

‘Muddled, apparently. The weaver sought to elevate a momentous event among savages. Dog-Runners, in fact.’

‘Ah, then the woman on the throne must be the Sleeping Goddess.’

‘I imagine so, historian.’

Rise Herat rose and approached the tapestry. ‘She grasps something in her right hand – can you make it out?’

‘A serpent aflame,’ Emral replied, joining him. ‘Or so Grizzin described it.’

‘That is fire? It seems more like blood. What does it signify?’

‘The gift of knowing.’

He grunted. ‘The gift of knowing that which cannot be known, I presume. But, I think, it is but half a serpent. There is the head, but no tail.’

‘The snake emerges from her palm,’ said Emral Lanear, before turning away once more.

Rise Herat swung to her, but could not catch her eye, nor, as she moved away, her expression. Fire … blood. Eyes that see, but reveal nothing. No different from what afflicts Endest Silann. Dog-Runners, you have a sister goddess in your midst. A moment later the breath hissed through his teeth. ‘High Priestess? Is Grizzin Farl still a guest of the Citadel?’

‘He is.’ She was standing near her bedroom door now, as if impatient to see him depart her company.

‘Where?’

‘The south tower, I believe. Historian-’ she added as he moved to leave.

‘Yes?’

‘Give some thought, if you will, on the matter of High Priestess Syntara.’

‘Why not?’ he muttered in reply. ‘As you say, Emral, it gets easier.’

She was through and into her bedroom before Herat closed the chamber door.

* * *

Lady Hish Tulla had announced her intentions shortly before their departure, and so now Kellaras and Gripp Galas waited beside their saddled horses. The chill of the early morning was burning away to a bright, stubborn sun, as an unseasonal warm spell loosened winter’s hold upon the forest. Kellaras watched the ex-soldier, Pelk, preparing two additional mounts.

A man with a crueller mind might well conclude that Hish was reluctant to let her husband go; that she had sought in desperation for a reason to accompany Gripp and Kellaras, for at least part of their journey. But the stifling sorrow that was now wrapped about Kellaras would not yield to such crass thoughts. Hish Tulla’s impatience with her fellow highborn was a sound reason for her decision. She and Pelk would ride to Tulla Keep, west of Kharkanas, returning to the company of hostage Sukul Ankhadu and Castellan Rancept, and there await a gathering of representatives from each of the Greater Houses. Such a meeting was long overdue, and already two riders had departed, bearing missives announcing the summons.

It seemed unlikely that any House would refuse the request. If the present need was not pressing then indeed nothing would move them. And yet, Kellaras wondered, who in the eyes of the highborn would prove the subject of their complaint, Urusander or Draconus? Or, for that matter, the House of Purake, and my lord, Anomander, who could well be seen to have abandoned his responsibilities? He understood, from Lady Hish Tulla’s words over the past two nights, at the dinner table, that her loyalty to Anomander was beyond question, but even she could not but struggle to defend his decision.

Gripp Galas’s assertion that Anomander did not trust his own brother, Silchas, still reverberated in Kellaras, like a hammer upon a shield, jarring his bones, weakening his faith. With this lever, Gripp would bend Anomander back to his proper role, as defender of Kharkanas and Mother Dark. Upon filial distrust, then, we are to awaken in Anomander the sting of honour. Is it any wonder that it does not sit well?

Lady Hish Tulla at last emerged from the house, wearing a heavy cloak over her armour. Striding to her horse, she swung up into the saddle and gathered the reins. She eyed her husband, and something in that regard seemed to pierce him, as he quickly turned away, attending to his mount’s tack one last time before setting his boot in the stirrup and pulling himself astride the beast.

Kellaras and Pelk followed suit. The captain sought to meet Pelk’s eye, seeking a flicker of something, anything, that might whisper of the two nights they had shared, but once mounted, the ex-soldier’s attention fixed upon the track awaiting them. After a moment, she loosened the sword in its scabbard at her hip.

The gesture startled Kellaras, and he turned to Hish Tulla. ‘Milady, do we ride into battle?’

Hish glanced across at him, but said nothing.

Clearing his throat, Gripp said, ‘Captain. There’s been movement in the stand outside the grounds. Wolves, perhaps, driven south by hunger. Or we have unannounced guests.’

‘Man or beast,’ Kellaras said, scowling, ‘I now fear I have brought them here.’ He hesitated, and then said, ‘Perhaps we are unwise to leave the keep-’

‘These are my lands,’ Hish Tulla said in a harsh tone. ‘Wolves will not try us, but if there are men and women hiding in this forest, I will face them. If they mean ill, their impudence will cost them dearly. No, Kellaras, I am not one to be bearded in my own den. See to your weapons, sir.’

After a moment, Kellaras dismounted again and reached for his surcoat of chain, which he had rolled and bound behind the saddle’s seat. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I will be but a moment.’

A short time later, bedecked and already sweating beneath his felt and chain, he swung back on to his horse, anchoring his lance in its seat. Even as he readied the reins, Pelk set out to take point, and they rode from the clearing, through the vine-tangled gateway, and on to the track that wended its way into the forest.

The sunlight was blinding where it struck patches of snow on the ground and the ice upon branches and twigs. Where such bright fires did not flare, all was in shadow, dull and devoid of colour. There was no sound nor, as far as Kellaras could see, any motion among the trees. They rode on, no one speaking.

Kellaras found himself welcoming the thought of battle. He would delight if given leave to unleash violence. There was a certain tension of the spirit that knew no other answer, and yearned for the sound of blades clashing, the heavy gasp of a body yielding to a sword or lance, the cries of the dying and wounded. It was easy, he reminded himself, to fall into a kind of lassitude, as often struck warriors when finding themselves in civil settings, constrained by the rules of peace.

The poets named it a melancholia, a hero’s affliction. Bards sang of the hollowness within, and the echoes that haunted the warrior whose deeds were long past, with weapons gathering dust and the nights growing ever longer.

In Kharkanas, I walked the corridors, fed the needs of flesh, saw and was seen. And yet, I may as well have been a ghost, a man half there, half somewhere else. And when, on rare occasions, I caught the stare of a fellow soldier, I saw the same in the hollow eyes before me. We but ape these civil pretensions, as we wait for the loosening of our leashes.

When the future promises that terrible freedom, we learn to abide. But when at last we are done with such things, when the promise dies and it comes to us that now, finally, no such freedom awaits us, then we are struck deep. We are done and it is done. The melancholia will take us and drag us down into its deathly mire.

Gripp Galas, how did you stand it?

Ah, well, no need to answer. I listened to your war with wood, the bite of your axe. Gripp was at the moment riding behind Lady Hish Tulla, taking up the rearmost position as they rode the trail. Kellaras did not turn to glance back, but he imagined a new life in the old man now, a sharpness to his eyes. Some things, he understood, could not be put away.

You know this, Hish Tulla, and you resent its truth. Even now, you feel him pulling away from you. I am sorry, and yet, it may be that I have just saved your husband. Still, I doubt you will thank me. Perhaps love blinded you to the warrior’s curse, or you came to believe your love could smother it. But in this winter you saw his pacing, his restlessness and agitation … or perhaps it was nothing more than his sudden age, his nights by the fire, the faint flickers of flames seeming to die over and over again in his sunken eyes.

Or are these fears mine and mine alone? Dare I turn to see for myself? Is this a truth I need to confirm … to what end?

Should I survive this time, and come to some unknown future, will I too, chilled in the bone, stare into the fire, remembering its heat?

He was startled when Pelk twisted in her saddle, and nodded at him, even as she drew her sword.

Kellaras lifted the lance from its socket, half rose in the stirrups – still he could see nothing.

Then there were figures on the path twenty paces ahead, a furtive line of movement. Pelk reined in, and Kellaras moved up alongside her on the left, to guard her flank.

Faces mostly hidden in rough-woven scarves glanced their way, but the procession continued on, from left to right, northward into the forest. Kellaras saw hunting weapons – strung bows, spears.

‘Deniers,’ said Gripp Galas from behind him. ‘A hunting party.’

‘I gave no leave,’ Hish Tulla snapped. She raised her voice. ‘I give no leave! You walk upon Tulla’s Hold!’

The figures halted on the trail, and then, a moment later, one emerged from the south edge of the treeline, stepping on to the track, and then taking a half-dozen strides towards the riders. Drawing away the scarves, he showed a young, thin face. Behind him, hunters were fitting arrows to the strings of their bows.

Hish Tulla snarled under her breath, and then said in a low voice, ‘They would not dare. Are we a hunter’s prey?’

Kellaras edged his mount forward, lowering the tip of his lance. At the gesture the youth halted. ‘Clear the path,’ the captain commanded. ‘There is no reason for death on this day.’

The young man pointed at Hish Tulla. ‘She claims to own what cannot be owned.’

‘You are in a preserve, Denier, and yes, she does indeed own it.’

But the youth shook his head. ‘Then I claim the air she breathes, as it has flowed down from the north – from my homeland. I claim the water in the streams, for they journeyed past my camp.’

‘Enough of this nonsense!’ said Hish Tulla. ‘By your argument, whelp, you can make no claim to any beast dwelling in this forest. Nor to the wood for your fires at night. For they owned this long before you or I ever ventured here.’ She gestured with one mail-clad hand. ‘I hold to one simple rule. You may hunt here, but you will do me the courtesy of announcing your desire first.’

The youth scowled. ‘You would refuse us.’

‘And if I did?’

He said nothing.

‘You are a fool,’ Hish Tulla said to him. ‘You ask, so that I may say yes. Do you believe you are the first hunters to visit my land? I see none but strangers behind you. Where are my old neighbours, with whom I shared gifts, and with whom I exchanged words of respect and honour?’

The youth tilted his head to one side. ‘If you so desire,’ he said, ‘I will take you to them. They are not far. We came upon their bones this morning.’

Hish Tulla was silent for a long moment, and then she said, ‘Not by my hand.’

The hunter shrugged. ‘This, I think, would ease their grief.’

‘Have you found a trail?’ Gripp Galas suddenly asked. ‘The slayers – do you now track them?’

‘Too long past,’ replied the youth. He shifted his attention back to Hish Tulla. ‘We shall not be long here,’ he said. ‘This forest you call yours is of no interest to us.’

‘Then where do you go?’ Gripp asked.

‘We seek the Glyph, who walks beside Emurlahn.’ He pointed at Hish Tulla. ‘Tell the soldiers, the innocents of the forest are all dead. Only we remain. Their deaths did not break us. When the soldiers come again into the forest, we will kill them all.’

The young hunter returned to his troop, and moments later the last of them had filed across the track, vanishing into the trees.

‘What is this Glyph he speaks of?’ Hish asked.

Shrugging, Gripp said, ‘They are organized now.’

‘They cannot hope to cross blades with Legion soldiers.’

‘No, my love, they cannot. But,’ he added, ‘arrows will suffice.’

The breath hissed from his wife. ‘Then indeed we have descended into savagery. And yet,’ she continued after a moment, ‘the first acts of barbarity did not come from the Deniers, did they?’

‘No, milady,’ Kellaras replied. ‘In Kharkanas, I spent some time tallying reports of the slaughter. That young man was correct. The innocents are all dead, and their bones litter the forests of Kurald Galain.’

‘Yet Urusander claims to represent the commoners of the realm? How does he not choke on his own hypocrisy?’

‘He chose, my love, not to include the Deniers in his generous embrace.’ Gripp Galas leaned to one side and spat. ‘But to be fair, I would wager Hunn Raal was the one to set the Legion wolves upon these fawns.’

‘The distinction is moot,’ his wife retorted. She gathered up her reins. ‘Ride on, then. We but build upon our charge of outrage, and must hold to the faith that a day will come when we can unleash it. Captain Kellaras.’

‘Milady?’

‘Be certain that Lord Anomander understands. I will unite the highborn to this cause. I will see the matter of the Consort set aside, to wait for a later time. Now, we must unmask our enemy, and see the way before us clear and without compromise. Tell him, captain, that I swear to this: no political machination will stifle my distemper. There will be retribution and it will be just.’

They set out once again. Behind Kellaras, Hish Tulla continued. ‘Hunn Raal will hang. As for Urusander, let him plead his innocence before knowing eyes, beneath public regard. Upon that stage, he will fail to dissemble. Captain, was it not your lord who said that justice must be seen?’

‘He did, milady.’

‘Just so. Let it be seen.’

Kellaras remained alongside Pelk, even as she quickened her pace to draw some distance from Hish and Gripp Galas, as husband and wife had fallen to a low exchange of words. The captain glanced across at her. ‘They were tempted,’ he said.

She nodded. ‘Stone-tipped, the arrows they chose for us.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Uncommon pain, I’m told, when there is a sharp stone lodged deep in your body, cutting this way and that with your every breath. I would think,’ she added in dry tones, ‘that even a soldier could not fight on, through such pain. As weapons of war, it’s my thought, captain, that arrows will make warfare a thing not of honour, but of dishonour.’

He grunted sourly, thinking back to his own hunger for violence. ‘Perhaps, then, war’s true horror will be revealed for all to see, and make us one and all recoil.’

Her answering smile was guarded. ‘Shocking us into eternal peace? Captain Kellaras, you have the dreams of a child.’

Stung, he said nothing.

She shot him a look, her eyes widening. ‘Abyss take me, Kellaras – you thought that an insult?’

‘I – well-’

‘Discount the gifts in your heart if you must,’ she said, ‘but leave them free for me to hold, and hold I will, tighter than you could ever imagine.’

Her words set an ache in his chest. Blinking against the glare of sunlight on snow and ice, he rode on in silence.

Behind them, husband and wife bickered.

* * *

There was a time, long before Grizzin Farl had taken for himself the title of Protector, when he had made the blade of his war-axe the voice of his temper. He had been like a drunkard, with fury his wine. Youth had a way of carving everything into sharp relief, making divisive every world and every moment within it. Anger was his only answer to the revelation of injustice, and injustice was everywhere. In those times when exhaustion took him – when the ongoing battle against authority, tradition, and the churning cycles of habit made him stumble, stagger into some emptiness – he fostered for himself a façade of cynicism. The zeal of the axe-blade was quickly blunted, and the weapon proved heavy in his aching arms. With that cynical regard, he saw awaiting him a future of unrelenting failure.

Youth made rage and world-weariness into lovers, with all the passion and private heat that one would expect, when the blood was still fresh. Desire fed lust, and lust promised satiation, but it whispered clumsy words. Vengeance, a matching in kind between crime and punishment, as if justice could bring down the hands of a god, to make clear and certain every divide, and, by so doing, reduce the complexities of the mortal world into something simpler, easier to stomach.

He had soon found himself among the Forulkan, to see with his own eyes how such justice was meted, and in this time he began to awaken in unexpected ways. Perhaps it was nothing more than nostalgia that could lead one to yearn for some imagined simplicity, a world shaped in childhood, and then reshaped by remembrance into something idyllic. It was, indeed, all too easy to forget the confusion of a child’s world, where what was known was minimal, and therefore seemed but a simple and possibly more truthful representation of reality. Sufficient to serve that child and so give comfort to the child’s mind. But nostalgia was a dubious foundation to something as vital as a culture’s system of justice. Grizzin had seen quickly the flaws in this nostalgic genesis, as it proved to be the core of the Forulkan court.

Still young, he had revelled in the theme of vengeance within the Forulkan system. But before long his cynical regard saw too clearly the abuses, the subtle ways of undermining the very notion that the blade of justice hung over everyone. Instead, he saw how, among the privileged, escaping that shadow of retribution and responsibility had become a game. He had seen the evasions, the semantic twisting of truth, the deliberate obscuring of meaning, and the endless proclamations of innocence, each and all delivered with the same knowing glint in the eye.

The lovers of his youth grew strained.

One day, in the Great Court where sat the Seven Magistrates and the Seven Governors, and all the assemblies of guild and craft, and the commanders among the Deliverers, and the Company of Deliberators, Grizzin Farl had drawn his double-bladed axe, shaking it free of its blade-sheath.

The wine flowed sweet on that day, in torrents upon the tiled floor, gushing round the artfully carved legs of the benches and pews. It splashed high against precious tapestries, and into the niches housing the marble busts of famous adjudicators and philosophers. The Great Court was transformed into a drunkard’s paradise.

Rivers of wine, as red and deep as the throats slashed open, as the stumps of severed limbs, as flesh sliced away. Rage itself had recoiled from its lover’s sudden, inexplicable fury, as if in an instant a mirror had been thrown up between them, and rage saw itself truly for the first time. Whilst, behind the barrier, the cynic stalked the halls, wielding a dripping axe, and with a dry laugh announced a terrible freedom.

The Azathanai who would years later become the Protector, Defender of Nothing, was born in the wake of that slaughter. He had stepped out from the Great Court as a child from a bloodied womb, painted in all the hues of justice, gasping at the shock of cold air as it swept in from shattered windows, with stained glass crunching under his feet and distant cries from the streets below.

Play me with words, my friends, and see what comes of it. Mock my ideals, whisper of the fool before you, who came with such hopes. Behold this summoned tantrum, this child’s incandescence. Surely, by your wilful arts, your clever dismemberment of once lofty ideals, and by your own brand of cynicism, so filled with contempt, you gave birth to me, your new child, your Innocent. And should I bring flame to your world, be not surprised.

I walk as a lover spurned.

Until the moment of this vow, which I hold still. Never again will my heart arrive in innocence. Never again will I make the foolish loves of youth into a man’s ideal, and so suffer a longing for something that never was. Speak not to me of the balance of possessions, the imperatives of restitution, the lie of retribution and the hollow lust of vengeance.

In this denial, I pose no imposition. Do what you will. Ashes await us all. This lover of the world has set aside his love, for now and for ever more. See me as your protector, but one who values nothing, who yields with this eternal smile, and leaves you to glory in everything but justice. For justice you do not own.

When you brought down the hands of a god, I drenched them in mortal blood.

Pray the god found the wine bitter.

He had heard that in the decades since that time a cult had risen among the Forulkan, worshipping Grizzin Farl as a vengeful god. Indeed, as a god of justice. There would always be, he now understood, those for whom violence was righteous.

Sudden motion before him made the Azathanai lift up his head, though it seemed to weigh too heavy for this world. He saw Lord Silchas, sinking down into a chair the Tiste had drawn close. The pallid face seemed thin as paper, the red eyes like ebbing coals. ‘Are you drunk, Azathanai?’

‘Naught but memories, lord, to set a man’s mind afire.’

‘I imagine,’ said Silchas as he poured a tankard full from the pitcher on the table, ‘you have a surfeit of those. Memories.’

Grizzin Farl leaned back, only now hearing the muddy noise of the tavern crowd surrounding them. ‘My humour is plucked on this night, lord,’ he said. ‘A flower’s bud, wingless and without colour.’

‘Then you suit my demeanour well enough, Azathanai. The historian, Rise Herat, is looking for you.’

‘To the past I have nothing to say.’

‘Then you should find him equitable company. He awaits you in your quarters, I believe.’

Grizzin Farl studied the highborn. ‘There is a fever in this city.’

‘Kharkanas was never easy with winter,’ Silchas replied. ‘Even in the time before the darkness, the air would feel harsh, making our bones seem brittle. Alas,’ he added, pausing to drink, ‘I fared worse than most. I still do. Each winter I spend yearning for summer’s heat.’

‘Not all welcome the season of contemplation,’ Grizzin agreed.

Silchas snorted. ‘Contemplation? It gives rise, as you say, to fevered thoughts.’ Then he shook his head. ‘Azathanai, there is more to it. I would shake loose my limbs, and take hold of sword or lance. A lightness to come to my steps. Pale I may be, but my soul is drenched in summer’s flame.’

Grizzin glanced across, catching the blood-gleam in the warrior’s eyes. ‘It is said that Lord Urusander is expected to march before the thaw.’

‘Then I will raise my own heat, Azathanai.’ After a moment, in which he seemed to contemplate the prospect with avid anticipation, Silchas shrugged, as if dismissing the notion. ‘But I come here to you,’ he said, ‘with more purpose than just announcing the historian’s desire to speak to you. On this day I have witnessed sorcery, an unfurling of magical power. It seemed … unearned.’

Grizzin Farl collected up the jug and refilled his tankard. ‘Unearned?’

‘Need I explain that? Power too easily come by.’

‘Sir,’ said Grizzin, ‘you are a highborn. Noble in title, within an aristocracy of privilege in which the premise of what is earned or unearned matters not. Chosen by birth is no choice at all. Yet your kind cleave the child, by rules unquestioned, to cast one into privilege and the other deprivation. This civil war of yours, Silchas Ruin, poses a challenge to all of that. And now … sorcery, at the hands of anyone, provided they apply discipline and a diligence in its mastery … why, I see Urusander’s cause bolstered, at the expense of your own.’

Baring his teeth, Silchas said, ‘I am not blind to the imbalance! This magic will undermine us, perhaps fatally so. There is order in hierarchy, after all, and it is a necessary order, lest all fall into chaos.’

‘Agreed, chaos is most unwelcome,’ said Grizzin Farl. ‘Surely a new hierarchy will emerge, but by its own rules. You will see your old aristocracy shattered, sir. Will Lord Urusander take the magic into his own embrace, or simply seek out those adepts most likely to become masters? Will the new age see the rule of sorcerer kings and queens? If so, then any commoner can take the throne. Kurald Galain, my friend, totters upon a precipitous brink, yes?’

‘I still await words that comfort, Azathanai.’ Silchas drank from his tankard, and then, as a server arrived with a new pitcher, the lord reached across to drag it near. ‘You perturb the waters for your own amusement, I suspect.’

Grizzin Farl let his gaze slide away from the warrior opposite him, out into the tavern’s sullen crowd, the layers of pipe- and woodsmoke. Conversations were rarely worth listening to, when people were in the habit of repeating themselves, as if by each utterance they sought a different response. Find a truth and make it into a chant. Find a falsehood and do the same. Assemble truths and lies and name it faith. Taverns and temples, see the libations flow, and all the sacrifices made. Here is a truth. Wherever mortals gather, ritual will rise, and in each place of ritual, habit and gesture invoke a hidden comfort. In these patterns, we would map our world.

‘You do not deny it, then?’

Grizzin started, and then sighed. ‘My friend, forgive me for mocking your noble pretensions. I see them too clearly to do otherwise.’

‘Why do you call me friend? Why, more to the point, do I consider you the same?’

‘My words anger you, Silchas, and yet you indulge that anger for but a moment before you see through the red haze, and must accept the truth of what I say, no matter how bleak or uncomplimentary it proves. I do admire this in you, sir.’

‘When we converse, I feel the strain of my temper.’

‘It will not snap,’ Grizzin said.

‘If it did? You clearly do not fear it.’

‘I gave up on fear long ago.’

At that, Silchas leaned forward, eyes narrow. ‘Now that is an admission! Tell me, pray, how you managed it?’

A brief flash clouded Grizzin’s mind as he saw himself reflected in broken glass, staggering from a place of slaughter. ‘When we lash out,’ he said, ‘we do so from fear. Recall, if you will, your every breaking of temper, the shock of it once you have struck, once you have done damage. In a sane mind, the act makes one recoil, dousing the fires inside. And with it, the first fear dies, only to have a new one take its place – the fear of the consequences of your violence. Two arguments, but only one voice. Two causes, but only one response. When you at last understand this, my friend, then the voice that is fear grows most tiresome. It repeats itself and so proves its own stupidity, and if by its stupid words you are led into violence, a relinquishing of all control, then you can only be a fool. A fool,’ Grizzin Farl repeated, ‘gullible and not very bright. When you match the stupidity of your fear, you insult your own intelligence, and with it all belief in yourself.’

Silchas was studying him. ‘Azathanai, you must understand, an entire people can be consumed by such fear.’

‘And so it lashes out, often against itself – against kin, against neighbour. Fear, in such a time, becomes a wild fever, burning all that it touches. And yes, it is utterly stupid.’

‘Imagine, Azathanai, that fear when given the power possible in magic. You invite a world in flames.’

‘Where you will, perhaps, thrive?’

With a troubled expression now on his pale face, Silchas sat back once more. ‘You have swung me about, Azathanai, to winter’s worship. May the season never end.’

‘When will you summon the Hust Legion?’

Silchas blinked, and then shrugged. ‘Soon, I think. It is absurd. We assemble a rabble armed with insane iron, to fling against the realm’s finest army.’

‘And the Houseblades of the Great Houses?’

‘I am surprised this interests you.’

‘The Houseblades do not, to be honest,’ admitted Grizzin Farl. ‘But I see something awaiting the Hust Legion – too vague to be certain. Only a sense of foreboding, as if a fate is taking shape, a future as yet unimaginable.’

‘They may well be cursed now,’ Silchas said. ‘A legion made into our realm’s madness. There is no glory to be found walking from graves, Grizzin Farl. Nor from mining pits, or freshly dug barrows. Whatever spirit Hust Henarald imbued into the iron from his forges, the murder of three thousand men and women now taints it. So, you wonder why I still hesitate in summoning such an army?’

‘The fate awaiting them is beyond you, Lord Silchas.’

‘Indeed? Then who will deliver it?’

‘I am poor at prophecy,’ Grizzin Farl said. ‘Still, though I see nothing but a blur, I hear a voice, and words spoken in the tone of command.’

‘But not mine.’

‘No. The voice I hear belongs to Anomander.’

Silchas let out a sudden sigh. ‘Then he returns. Good. I am truly done with this. Tell me, Azathanai, are there any quicker paths to sorcery?’

The question ran like ice through Grizzin Farl. He dropped his gaze to the tankard in his hands, seeing the lurid play of lamplight upon the surface of the ale within. ‘None,’ he said, ‘you would welcome.’

‘I would hear them nonetheless.’

Grizzin Farl shook his head, and rose. ‘I have kept the historian waiting too long. My friend, discount my last words. They were ill advised. The days ahead will prove desperate enough, I wager, without the lure of such recourse.’ Bowing to the lord, the Azathanai left the table.

Protector of nothing, not this path, not any path. When next you find me, Silchas Ruin, I will of course yield to your demands, seeing in you the ambition which you will name necessity. The easier path is not one to welcome – I said as much – but in the slaying of fear, my warning will not stop you, will it?

Draconus. Caladan Brood. Unknown sister T’riss. See what we begin here. The wolves are awake, and we drip words in a trail of blood.

Let them find their own hunger, as they must.

But oh, see what we begin here.

Outside the tavern, in the street surrounded by the brittle city, the sky above looked strangely shattered, with dark and light and colours splaying out like shards, as if made of stained glass cast awry. Grizzin Farl studied it with watery eyes.

Cynicism and rage, both drunk upon the other. It’s enough to make one feel young again.

He set off for the Citadel. It was time to speak to the historian.

* * *

Orfantal halted in the doorway. He saw the historian, Rise Herat, seated in a chair that had been positioned near the hearth, which was only now flickering into life. The room was chilly, unlit except for the lapping flames rising around the wood.

‘He’s here,’ said the historian, gesturing to the floor beyond his boots. ‘Do come in, Orfantal. Ribs arrived in such a pant I believe you have worn the beast out.’

Still clutching his wooden sword, Orfantal walked over. The dog lying before the hearthstone was fast asleep.

‘Too many battles for one day, Orfantal. He’s not as young as he once was.’

‘When I’m a warrior, I will have pet wolves at my side. Two of them. Trained for war.’

‘Ah, you see a long war ahead of us, then.’

Orfantal sat down on the edge of the hearthstone, with the heat against his left side. ‘Cedorpul says these things never go away. If not one reason, then another. Because we love fighting.’

‘It wasn’t always so. There was a time, Orfantal, when we loved hunting. But even then, I will grant you, there was a lust for blood. When the time came that we tamed those beasts we would eat, still the hunters went out. They were like children who refuse to grow up – there is a power there, in that ability to decide life and death. The innocence of the prey is irrelevant to such children. Their need is too selfish to consider the victims of their indulgence.’

Orfantal reached down to scratch behind Ribs’s ragged ear. The dog sighed in its sleep. ‘Gripp Galas cut a man’s throat open. From ear to ear. Then he hacked the head off, and carved something on the brow.’

Rise Herat said nothing for a long moment, and then he grunted. ‘Well. We are indeed in a war, Orfantal. Gripp Galas saved your life, did he not?’

‘He killed that man for his horse.’

‘He saw the need, one must assume. Gripp Galas is an honourable man. You were his responsibility. I would wager what you saw there was Gripp’s anger. We’re in a time when to be upon the other side is itself a crime, with death the punishment.’

‘Heroes don’t get angry.’

‘Oh but they do, Orfantal. They most certainly do. Often, it’s anger that drives them to heroic acts.’

‘What makes them so angry?’

‘The unfairness of the world. When it’s made personal, the hero becomes indignant, and filled with refusal. The hero will not abide what it seems must be. These are not thoughts. They are acts. Deeds. Something unutterable made manifest, and in witnessing, our breaths are taken away. We cannot but admire audacity, and the way in which it defies the rules.’

‘I don’t think Gripp Galas is a hero,’ said Orfantal. The fire on his left was building, flames wrapping round the cluttered shafts of wood. Soon it would grow too hot for him to sit where he was, but not yet.

‘Perhaps not,’ the historian said. ‘He is, I fear, too pragmatic a man for heroism.’

‘What are you doing in Grizzin Farl’s chamber?’

‘Awaiting his return. And you?’

‘Looking for Ribs. He comes here a lot. They’re friends, Ribs and Grizzin Farl.’

‘I recall hearing that the Azathanai plucked the beast from the Dorssan Ryl. Saved the dog’s life, in fact. This will forge a bond, I’m sure.’

‘Lord Silchas is Grizzin’s friend, too.’

‘Is he now?’

Orfantal nodded. ‘It’s the helplessness they share.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘That’s what Grizzin says. The white shadow to a brother’s dark power. That skin, he says, will undo Silchas, even though it’s unfair. People are driven to do things, says Grizzin, by what they think is lacking in them.’

‘The Azathanai has many things to say to you, it seems.’

‘It’s because I’m young,’ Orfantal explained. ‘He talks to me because I don’t understand what he’s talking about. That’s what he says. But I understand him better than he thinks. I dreamed once there was a giant hole in the ground behind me, and it kept growing, and I kept running to keep from falling in, and I ran through walls of stone, and mountains, and across the bottom of deep lakes, and then ice and snow. I ran and ran, to keep from falling into the hole. If it wasn’t for that hole, I could never have run through a stone wall, or all the rest.’

‘And so people are driven to do by what’s lacking in them.’

Orfantal nodded. He edged away from the growing flames, but the room beyond was still cold.

‘How proceed your studies?’

Shrugging, Orfantal reached down to stroke Ribs’s flank. ‘Cedorpul’s busy, with all that magic and stuff. I miss my mother.’

‘Your aunt, you mean.’

‘Yes. My aunt.’

‘Orfantal, have you met the other hostage in the Citadel?’

He nodded. ‘She’s young. And shy. She runs away from me, up into the safe room. Then she locks the door so I can’t get in.’

‘You’re chasing her?’

‘No, I’m trying to be nice.’

‘I suggest trying to be somewhat less … direct. Let her come to you, Orfantal.’

‘I miss Sukul Ankhadu, too. She drinks wine and everything. It’s as if she’s already grown up. She knows about all the Great Houses, and the nobles, and who can be trusted and who can’t.’

‘She is not aligned, then, with sister Sharenas.’

‘I don’t know.’ Finally, the heat was too much. Orfantal rose and walked a few paces from the hearth. ‘Cedorpul told me about the sorcery. The Terondai’s gift to all of the Tiste Andii.’

‘Oh? And have you explored the magic for yourself, Orfantal? I should warn you of the risks-’

‘I can do this,’ Orfantal cut in, raising his arms out to the sides. Darkness suddenly billowed, coalesced, making forms that made the historian recoil in his chair. ‘These are my wolves,’ Orfantal said.

From before the hearthstone, Ribs bolted, claws clattering and skidding on the flagstones as he pelted for the doorway.

The conjurations had indeed assumed wolf-like shapes, but tall enough at the shoulder to surpass Orfantal’s own height. Eyes glowed amber.

‘I can go into them,’ Orfantal continued. ‘I can jump right out of my body and go into them, both of them, at the same time – but they have to stay together when I do that. If I go into just one of them, I can still make the other one follow me, or do whatever I tell it to do. It feels strange, historian, to walk on four legs. Is this the same as what the Jheleck can do?’

‘Orfantal, if you would, send them away again.’

Shrugging, Orfantal dropped his arms. The blackness swirled, then dispersed like ink in water.

‘No,’ Rise Herat said, ‘that was nothing like what the Jheleck do. Theirs is an ancient magic, more … bestial, and wild. To witness it, I’m told, burns the eyes. Your … conjurations … they were subtler. Orfantal, have you shown anyone else this power of yours?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Best you do not.’

‘Why?’

‘You said that your soul can travel into them, yes? Then, consider them a last recourse. Should you find your life in danger. Should a mortal wound take you, in the body you now own, then, Orfantal, flee to your … friends. Do you understand me?’

‘Can I even do that?’

The historian shook his head. ‘I don’t know for certain, but it seems to be an option – from what you have just described. This secret, Orfantal – hold to it, for, should it become known, then your wolf-friends will be vulnerable. Tell me, must they be close when conjured into being?’

‘I don’t know. I could try to raise them in a different room, maybe, and see if that works.’

‘Experiment, but privately. Let none see. Let none know.’

Orfantal shrugged again, and then turned to the door. ‘Ribs ran away again.’

‘I begin to comprehend why.’

At that moment, heavy footsteps announced the return of Grizzin Farl. As the Azathanai entered the chamber, he tilted his head and sniffed the air. ‘Ah, well,’ he murmured, gaze settling on Orfantal. ‘My silent foil – will you join the historian and me in conversation?’

‘No, sir. I’m going to look for Ribs.’

‘Yes, he blurred past me in yonder corridor. Look for him in the furthest corner of the Citadel, or indeed in the stables outside.’

Nodding, Orfantal left the two and set out. He recalled Rise Herat’s words about hunters, and hunting, and the child mind that got trapped in all of that. But he wasn’t interested in using his wolves to hunt, and he wasn’t interested in hunting, either. There were no heroes among hunters, because killing was easy. Unless, of course, the prey decides it’s not innocent any more. And then stops being afraid. And decides that running is useless, because some appetites you can’t run away from, and a big hole behind you can be a mouth, too, getting bigger and bigger.

Wolves like mine … they aren’t afraid. They can turn. They can hunt the hunters.

What, I wonder, will that feel like?

* * *

‘She sees through the wounds in his hands,’ Rise Herat said. ‘That tapestry gift to Emral Lanear, it’s meant to show us that none of this is new. It’s happened before. The power in blood. What else, Azathanai, should we know?’

‘You fill me with sorrow, historian, with such anger.’

‘The gifts of the Azathanai are never what they seem.’

Belching, Grizzin Farl drew up another chair, and sat. ‘I have drunk too much ale.’

The historian studied the Azathanai, who was staring into the flames of the hearth. ‘Then indulge in loquaciousness.’

‘Indulgence is the sweet drink, yes. There is an Azathanai, a woman of flesh. Her name is Olar Ethil. Have you heard of her? No. Ah, well. Perhaps not by name, but recall your dreams, historian, those troubling ones, when a woman you know and yet do not know comes to you, often from behind. She presses herself against you, and offers a carnal invitation. You would think,’ he said, sighing, ‘that she is but the harbinger of base desires, a play of lust and, indeed, indulgence, particularly of the forbidden – however you might imagine it.’

‘Grizzin Farl, you know nothing of my dreams.’

‘Historian, I know what all men share. But, very well. Look instead into this fire. There are faces in the flames, or rather one face, offering myriad expressions. The Dog-Runners learned to worship that face, that womanly thing. Olar Ethil was wise. She knew the manner in which she would make herself known to them. Goddess of flames, awakener of heat. Lust, desire, bloodlust. She’ll warm your flesh, but burn your soul.’

‘A serpent grows from her hand, yes? She is the one in the tapestry.’

But the Azathanai shook his head. ‘Yes, and no. The Dog-Runners will speak of their goddess of the earth. They name her Burn, and they hold that she sleeps an eternal sleep. In her dreams, she makes the world of men. But Olar Ethil stands near, sometimes beside the Sleeping Goddess, sometimes barring the way to her. She is jealous of Burn, and steals the heat from her. Every hearth, every lick of flame, is stolen. The serpent is fire, and blood. Life, if you choose. And yet, at its core, it is a force of destruction.’

‘You Azathanai play at being gods.’

‘Yes. Some of us do. Power is seductive.’

‘Even the Dog-Runners deserve better. Is Burn too an Azathanai?’

‘I cannot even say if Burn exists, historian. The belief in her does, and that suffices. It will guide the believers, and give shape to their world. You must lean towards the pragmatic, Rise Herat. Motivations are mere ghosts, and if meaning rides in the wake of every deed, indulge it at your leisure.’ Grizzin Farl looked up, met the historian’s eyes. ‘What you choose to do can, without effort, be seen as a betrayal. Though you might name it the purest act of integrity imaginable.’

Rise Herat felt the blood pool in his gut, chilling his limbs. ‘Do you accuse me of something, Azathanai?’

Grizzin Farl’s brows lifted. ‘Not at all. I but question the validity of your role in life. The historian will dissect events, counting the ledger’s list of deeds, and seek meaning from invented motives. When you invite indulgence, I see how familiar to you its flavour.’

‘Mother Dark is as much a goddess as is this Olar Ethil,’ Rise Heart said. ‘Sorcery in the blood. There, on the throne, her eyes are closed. She might be sleeping. She might be dead. Still, through serpent eyes she sees the world. And, I am told, the blood’s taste is seductive. What has Draconus done?’

‘To your liege? Why, he has made her into a goddess. Do you name this love? Between lovers, worship is all sharp edges. Every embrace, no matter how heated, bleeds something. That woman behind you in your dreams, she means you ill. Or, in the next breath, blessing and revelation. The possibilities are endless, until you turn round.’

It was a wonder, Rise Herat reflected, that no one had as yet killed this Azathanai, so frustrating and infuriating was his conversation. He imagined that facing a sword-master would feel much the same, with every attack anticipated, every move effortlessly countered, and like the sword-master, Grizzin Farl was in no hurry to deliver the fatal wound. He scowled at the Azathanai. ‘Mother Dark is the absence at the centre of our worship. Is this by her choice, Grizzin Farl? Or does the blood – and her thirst – drive her farther and farther from mortal concerns? You say that Burn sleeps – did she choose to, or has she succumbed to some curse? You say that Olar Ethil inhabits the flames of the hearth – is this all that gods do? Simply watch?’

‘It may indeed seem that way, yes. But I already warned you against imagining motivations, inventing meanings.’

‘But she does nothing! No acts, no deeds! There is nothing to imagine or invent!’

‘And so the historian starves. But, soon to grow sated, yes? The enemy to order stirs in a distant camp. An army will march on Kharkanas. What, you wonder, will she do then? Where, you wonder, are those who will fight in her name? And, as for that name … what is the cause it represents? Assemble the beliefs, and paint in gold their many virtues. But that you cannot do, because she does not speak.’

Rise Herat glared at the Azathanai, who stared back with calm, sorrow-filled eyes.

After a moment, the historian looked away. ‘The High Priestess has not been given leave to visit the Chamber of Night.’

‘Nonsense,’ Grizzin Farl replied. ‘She chooses not to, because she has something she wishes to keep hidden from Mother Dark. But now the goddess makes use of poor Endest Silann, and deception grows harder to hide. You, sir, are doubtless in league with the High Priestess. You intend something, in Mother Dark’s name, but whatever it is, she must never know what you have done. Now,’ the Azathanai’s gaze suddenly hardened, ‘bend your deeds into worship.’

Rise Herat felt sick inside, as if he had fostered an illness of his own invention, to now lodge in his flesh, sour his blood, and bruise his organs. ‘Very well,’ he said in a dry, rasping voice. ‘Join me, Grizzin Farl. Let us go to the Chamber of Night. Let us speak to her.’

‘She remains with Draconus.’

‘Then we will speak to them both!’

The Azathanai pushed himself upright. ‘As you wish. Shall we collect up the High Priestess along the way?’

Rise Herat grimaced. ‘We can at least ask her.’

They departed the room. Behind them, the flames in the hearth devoured the last of the wood, and knew a time of hunger.

* * *

Emral Lanear, High Priestess of Dark, sat lost in a world of smoke. A vision blurred saw few cracks, and the future, laid out so smooth and perfect, proved no different from the present. This was the lure of d’bayang. There had been a time when ritual had surrounded its indulgence, and the dreamscape the smoke offered whispered messages both profound and quickly forgotten. The intent, she supposed, had to do with stepping aside, out of the flesh, outside the strictures of reality. Couched in ritual or not, it was an escape. The distinction, between then and now, belonged to intention.

Escape as ritual promises a return to the present, when the ritual is done. Escape as ritual is meant to seed the ground between the dreamscape and the real world. But here and now, I seek no return to any present, and I will make of the ground between a wasteland of despair. Mine is not an escape seeking discovery, but one born of flight.

She had once valued her own sobriety, the keen mind delighting in its wakefulness, its precious acuity. She had been unable to imagine wilfully surrendering such gifts, and had seen enough fools in her life to know, with dismay, the minds of company grown dull on alcohol or smoke. Fleeing without moving. Drowning in one’s chair. The bleary gaze, the comfort with confusion, the slow disintegration of time, and the slow losing of one’s place in its eternal stream.

But look at me now. With a future crowded with crimes, I make an island and clothe it in fog. Let time stream past; I yield no harbour.

It is delusion. Rise Herat saw well the desire in my eyes, which should have shamed me. But I am past shame, and that too proves an alluring escape.

Alas, a kind of crystal clarity remained in her mind, something immune to all her efforts at flight and evasion. Its light was guilt, painting her entire inner world. Not the d’bayang. That is too paltry a reason.

I am High Priestess to Mother Dark. And yet, in place of obeisance, vespers and rituals, I weave a web of spies, each one conducting subterfuge with her legs spread wide. Her mind was trapped in a cage of her own making, wherein every thought was cast into a construct of potential alliances, possible weaknesses, spilled secrets, and the option of coercion into a host of deceptions and machinations. By these efforts – this wretched course she had taken – she was seeing her world remade. She now weighed in terms of cold economy the value of each and every citizen of the realm. Collusion against opposition, strength against weakness, deceit against trust.

Like the d’bayang, this newly born way of thinking was in truth an inward spiral, with her own needs at the core. It was a world view that she now realized was far from unique, and, personal as it seemed, she but reflected the mien of countless others.

How many wealthy nobles, I wonder, see the world in the same way? Was it not, indeed, the means by which they acquired their riches, and with them their unshakable belief in their own superiority?

But, Mother forgive me, it is a cold realm I find.

The smoke warred against it, but feebly. With slurred words, it whispered lazy invitations into a refuge of ennui, to the sodden bliss of the insensate. Floppy limbs half beckoned in her mind, barely seen amidst the grey cloud. Over here … come … here waits oblivion.

Hardly a worthy goal for a spymaster. I lust for knowledge, yet refuse to taste it. I gather news and facts and secrets, and do nothing with them. I am like the Protector, Grizzin Farl, who claims to protect nothing. Just as the historian refuses to record history, and the goddess refuses the comforts of worship.

While arrayed against us, a general who would rather not lead, a commander who follows only his own drunken whims, and a high priestess still awaiting her god.

We are, all of us, nothing but impostors to our cause, because the cause we espouse is nothing more than the blind we raise to hide our own ambitions. This, I now believe, is the secret behind every war, every clash that sees blood spill to the ground.

The ritual of smoke could, on occasion, offer cruel insights.

Faintly, she heard the chime of the bell cord. Again? Am I to be afforded no rest, no luxury of escape? Senses blunted, her body leaden, she forced herself from the divan, found a cloak to hide all that felt exposed, and made her way from the bedroom into the outer chamber.

‘Enter.’

The historian’s appearance was no surprise, but the presence of Grizzin Farl was. Searching his expression, she found little given away. The Azathanai made a profession of secrets. Even so, she did not detect his usual façade of bluff amusement.

‘What brings you here?’ she asked them.

Rise Herat cleared his throat. ‘High Priestess. The Protector has agreed to guide us into the presence of Mother Dark.’

To what end? These words almost spilled from her, but she managed to hold them back. She would not give them the raw extremity of her own despair, or that of her fears. ‘I see. Are we to fling ourselves against her indifference one more time? Very well. Lead us, Grizzin Farl.’

The Azathanai bowed and then retreated into the corridor. Emral and Rise followed.

After a moment, as they walked, the historian spoke to her with atypical formality. ‘High Priestess, it is time to inform Mother Dark of the events occurring in her realm – yes, I well understand her usage of Endest Silann, but even there, we cannot know the fullest reach of her knowledge, or her awareness. More to the point, Endest resides here in the Citadel, and concerns himself little with what goes on beyond its walls. Is it not time for a full accounting?’

The question was doubly edged, and Emral understood that the historian was not unaware of this. He was, after all, one who chose his words carefully. ‘Your desires are ambitious, historian. But we will see. As you say, the effort is timely.’

Before long, they reached the ancient corridor that led to the Chamber of Night. The damage left behind by the Azathanai T’riss was still visible, in cracks and fissures latticing the stonework, in the slumped, uneven flooring. The passage was unoccupied, in itself a bleak statement of affairs. Approaching the door, Grizzin Farl hesitated, glancing back to his companions.

‘There has been a burgeoning within,’ he said. ‘A deeper and more profound manifestation of Dark. No doubt the effects of the Terondai, the Gate’s proximity.’ He shrugged. ‘I sense the changes, but can discern little else. Nevertheless, I hereby warn you both: what lies beyond this door is changed.’

‘Then,’ answered Emral Lanear, ‘it behoves the High Priestess to comprehend such a transformation, don’t you think?’

The Azathanai studied her, and something in his expression hinted of irony. ‘High Priestess, as it turns out, that which cloaks your mind may prove a benison.’

She frowned, but was given no chance to reply, as Grizzin Farl turned to the door, reached out to the latch, and swung wide the portal to the Chamber of Night.

The cold that flowed out was redolent with fecundity, and this alone shocked Emral Lanear.

She heard a grunt from Grizzin Farl, as if in acknowledgement of her own shock, as the darkness within was, from where they stood upon the threshold, absolute.

‘What awaits us?’ Rise Herat asked. ‘My eyes, though gift-given, cannot pierce this shroud. Grizzin Farl, what can you discern?’

‘Nothing,’ the Azathanai replied. ‘We must enter in order to see.’

‘Even the floor is lost to us,’ the historian retorted. ‘We could find ourselves plunging into an abyss. This chamber is negation, a realm devoid of all substance.’ He faced Emral Lanear, his eyes wide with alarm. ‘I now counsel against this.’

But Emral Lanear found herself shrugging, and then she stepped past the historian and, without giving Grizzin Farl a glance, continued on into the Chamber of Night.

She felt compacted earth beneath her feet, damp and cool through the thin soles of her slippers. The smell of deep decay and verdant life swarmed around her, as if the air itself was alive. We are no longer within the Citadel.

Grizzin Farl joined her, standing close upon her left, a presence more felt than seen. ‘He has taken this too far,’ the Azathanai said in a low rumble. ‘Gates possess two sides. By presence alone they divide worlds. The Terondai, High Priestess, issues into this place.’

‘And what place is this?’ Rise Herat asked from directly behind Emral.

‘Eternal Night, historian. Elemental Night. Name it as you will, but know that it is pure. It is essence.’

Emral could hear something like wind soughing through trees in the distance, but she felt no breath upon her chilled face. A moment later the Azathanai’s huge hand closed about her upper arm, and Grizzin whispered, ‘With me, then. I sense a presence ahead.’

They began walking, with Rise close behind them – he might have been gripping the Azathanai by belt or clothing. ‘How far?’ Emral asked.

‘Uncertain.’

‘Where sits Mother Dark’s throne?’ the historian demanded, his voice taut. ‘Have we lost her utterly now?’

‘Such questions will have to await answers,’ Grizzin Farl replied. ‘This realm sets itself against me. I do not belong, and now, more than ever before, I feel unwelcome.’

‘Can we return?’ Emral asked the Azathanai.

‘Unknown,’ came his disturbing response.

The feel of the earth beneath her was unchanging. There was not a single stone or pebble, nor a plant or any other protuberance rising from the level clay. Yet the redolence was cloying and thick, as if they walked a rain-drenched forest.

‘We have made an error,’ said Rise Herat, ‘entering this place. High Priestess, forgive me.’

Still they could see nothing, not even the ground upon which they walked. Yet, when the heavy sound of footsteps approached from directly ahead, it was but moments before Emral Lanear could distinguish the figure in growing detail.

It was monstrous, hunched and towering over even Grizzin Farl. Its hands hung down past its knees, the arms massive in their musculature. Its head was disproportionately small, the pate hairless, the eyes sunken deep.

Striding closer, and closer still. Moments before reaching them, it said, ‘Food.’

One heavy hand swung up, struck Grizzin Farl in the chest. The Azathanai was flung back, spinning in the air.

Another hand then reached out for Emral Lanear.

But Rise Herat was quicker, dragging her back by the cloak she wore, out beyond the demon’s grasping fingers.

She stumbled as the historian continued pulling her, tugging until she was turned round, and then they were running, blind, lost.

Behind them, the demon gave chase, each step a thump of thunder upon the ground. Distinctly, it said again, ‘Food.’

Warring against her benumbed senses, terror clawed its way free, making a hammer of her heart. She ran as she had not run since she was a child – but those memories were not ones of fear. Now, she felt herself overwhelmed, too vulnerable to comprehend. The way ahead was emptiness, and in that absence there was only the desolation that came with the realization that there was nowhere to hide.

Beside her, Rise Herat’s breaths were harsh and straining. For a moment, Emral Lanear almost laughed. The indolence of their lives in the Citadel had ill prepared them for this. Lying languid. Lungs full of smoke. Dreaming of chants and solemn processions. The poisons in betrayal’s gilded cup. Already, the muscles of her legs were losing strength, and it seemed the weight of her own body was growing too burdensome to bear.

Lithe child, where have you gone? Do you hide there still, beneath layers of adulthood?

Rise Herat stumbled, and suddenly he was gone from her side. Crying out, Emral Lanear slowed, twisting round-

She saw the demon lumber to where the historian had fallen. Its hands reached down to take hold of him.

Then there was blurred motion, a succession of meaty thuds, and it seemed that the darkness itself had coalesced into something solid, immensely powerful. It swarmed over the demon, and with each blow blood spurted. The demon reeled back from the assault, voicing a child’s bawl of frustration, shock and pain. Then it wheeled round and ran away.

Rise Herat remained on the ground, as if broken by some unseen wound, and when he propped himself up on one elbow, the effort clearly cost him dearly. Emral stumbled towards him, and then halted as their saviour lost the swirling darkness enwreathing it, and she found herself facing Lord Draconus.

‘High Priestess,’ the Consort said, ‘have you not yet understood how unwise it is to accept Grizzin Farl’s protection?’

Rise Herat coughed from where he now sat. ‘Milord, you saved our lives.’

Draconus glanced down to study the historian. ‘If you will wander strange realms, Rise Herat, you must first understand that your own has been made uncommonly sparse of predators – beyond your own kind, that is. Most realms are much … wilder.’ He lifted his gaze and met Emral’s eyes. ‘There are dangers. Tell me, would you as blithely enter a cave mouth in some mountainside?’

Grunting, Rise Herat managed to regain his feet, though he still struggled to find his breath. ‘Tales of old, told to children,’ he said. ‘The heroes plunge into caves and caverns again and again, and each time find peril.’

‘Just so,’ Draconus replied. ‘Yet this is no child’s tale, historian. And there is no story master to twist the fates and deliver unlikely succour. Leave the exploits of heroes upon the breath, where they can do little harm.’

Rise coughed and then said, ‘Hardly, milord. On occasion, fools like us are inspired by their deeds, only to find our own breaths lost.’

‘Lord Draconus,’ said Emral. ‘Can you lead us back to the Citadel?’

‘I can.’

Rise Herat finally straightened. ‘Milord, Grizzin Farl named this place Elemental Night, or Eternal Night. How has this realm come to be, upon the very threshold of the temple’s nave? What has happened to the Chamber of Night and its throne? Where is Mother Dark?’

‘Fraught questions,’ came a voice from one side, and a moment later Grizzin Farl appeared. ‘Draconus, old friend, must you make a map of mystery? By what you have scribed, powers will root to the place of their containment. These gates. You invite vulnerability. Chaos wanders in its hunt. Name me the gate able to flee?’

Seeming to ignore the Protector’s questions, the Consort said, ‘Mother Dark discovers the breadth of her realm-’

To which the Azathanai cut in sharply, ‘You give her this, and expect her to be unchallenged?’

‘Her challengers are no more,’ Draconus replied, finally facing the Azathanai. ‘Do you think I would be so careless in my preparations?’

Something in the Consort’s words clearly appalled Grizzin Farl, but he said nothing.

Draconus turned back to Emral Lanear. ‘She attends her places of faith, High Priestess. But in substance, she is stretched … thin. Thin as, you might say, Night’s own blanket.’

‘Can she be summoned?’ Emral asked. Or are we forsaken?

Draconus hesitated, and then said, ‘Perhaps.’

Rise Herat seemed to choke, and then said, ‘Perhaps? Milord! Her High Priestess asks – no, prays – for the presence of her goddess! Is Mother Dark now indifferent to her chosen children?’

‘I would think not,’ Draconus snapped.

‘Kurald Galain descends into bloody civil war,’ the historian retorted in a half-snarl. ‘Lord Draconus, your very station finds you upon a crumbling pedestal. Urusander means to make himself her husband, and has taken the title of Father Light. And where is Lord Anomander, her First Son? Why, off in the wilderness, tracking a brother who would not be found!’ Rise then whirled to face Grizzin Farl. ‘And you Azathanai! Now in our midst! A deceiver to guide us into this realm, and what of the one accompanying Lord Anomander? T’riss was but the beginning, but now your kind creep into our business. State it plain, Grizzin Farl, what do you here?’

The Protector was slow in responding. Watching the Azathanai, Emral waited to see where his eyes might take his gaze, and a part of her anticipated – with peculiar certainty – that he would find Lord Draconus before answering the historian. But he did not. Instead, Grizzin Farl lowered his head, choosing to study the ground. ‘It is my task, historian, to attend.’

‘Attend? Attend what?’

‘Why,’ the Azathanai looked up, ‘the end of things.’

In the silence that followed, it fell to Lord Draconus to finally speak. ‘High Priestess, historian, I will guide you now to the portal that leads back to the Citadel.’ He then faced Grizzin Farl. ‘You, however, will remain. We will have words.’

‘Of course, old friend.’

‘And I would know of this other Azathanai, who accompanies Lord Anomander.’

The answer to that would be easy enough, but neither Emral nor Rise Herat spoke, and after a moment it was clear that Grizzin Farl had said all he intended to say, at least in their presence.

‘Old friend.’ This Consort bears unseemly gifts, and reveals powers uncanny. How thin, I now wonder, does the Tiste blood run in you, Draconus?

Your ‘old friend’ gives nothing away. I should have expected as much.

So, the Azathanai gather to witness the end of us, and this leads me to a truth. Forgive me, Lord Anomander, for what is to come. Nothing here is your fault, and if we crowd round to take strength from your honour, it is because we lack it in ourselves. We will feed and may well grow mighty, even as we cut you down. She met the depthless eyes of Lord Draconus. ‘Please, then,’ she said. ‘Take us home.’

And Grizzin Farl, you have my thanks. For revealing what you could not reveal.

The highborn are right, though they understand it not. Still, they are right.

She studied Lord Draconus, as if seeing him for the first time. The enemy among us now guides us here in this Eternal Night.

If I can, Consort, I will see Lord Anomander turn against you, by every measure. If it lies within my power, I will see the First Son kill you, Draconus.

For what you have done.

The end of things. In this realm, the notion felt all too real.