Forge of Darkness

FIFTEEN

‘First son, take the sword in your hands.’

Kellaras stood near the door, his eyes on the magnificent weapon that Hust Henarald had unwrapped. It seemed to divide the table it rested on, as if moments from splitting the world in half. Lord Anomander, his face hooded as if in shadow, made no move to reach for the sword.

Kellaras could see his commander — the man he had always known — through the midnight pitch of his skin, and the long hair that had been black and was now silver, the hue of polished iron, yet capable of trapping every colour in its strands. The glow of the lanternlight was gold deepening to red, rippling like water as Anomander slowly leaned forward. The shadows within it were blue, on the very edge of inky black, and the way the hair fell reminded Kellaras of rain, or tears. He still struggled to comprehend this transformation.

Henarald spoke again, his features all sharp angles, a glitter in his eyes that might have been fear. ‘First Son, are you displeased? The blade is silent, its tongue severed at the root. If it howls for you, only you can hear it.’

‘I hear it,’ Anomander whispered.

Henarald nodded. ‘The weapon waits only for the blessing of Mother Dark.’

‘You will see nothing,’ said Silchas Ruin from where he leaned against the wall opposite Kellaras.

Henarald shook his head. ‘Then I shall hear that blessing, sir. Or taste it. Or touch it, like a rose melting on to the blade, and I will feel warmth in the turning away of light. My head shall fill with the scent of the holy.’

‘You shall emerge,’ Silchas said, ‘with the skin of midnight.’

The Hust Lord flinched.

Anomander straightened, and still he did not reach for the weapon. Instead, he faced Andarist. ‘Well, brother, what think you of this sword?’

Andarist was seated at one end of the table, like a man chained down against his will. His need to be gone from the city, to be on the road that would lead him to the woman he loved, was like sweat on his body, an emanation of impatience that seemed to crackle about him. His eyes flicked to the sword, and then up to his brother’s face. ‘I am a believer in names, Anomander. Power unfolds on the tongue. A word sinks claws into the mind and there would hold fast. Yet the Hust Lord tells us this blade is without a voice. Still, brother, you say that you hear its howl. I would know: by what name does this sword call itself?’

Anomander shook his head. ‘None. I hear only the promise of purity.’

‘In its will,’ said Henarald, ‘it demands the purest hand. To draw a weapon is to announce an end to uncertainty. It brooks no doubt in its wielder. It is, sirs, a sword for the First Son of Darkness. If he should deny it, in seeing weakness or flaw, or in sensing malign intent in its clear song, then I shall shatter it, and cast the shards across the world. No other shall claim this blade. Understand this of this sword: in the hands of a king, he is made tyrant. In the hands of a tyrant, he is made abomination. In the hands of the broken, he breaks all that he touches.’

The words hung in the small chamber, like echoes that wouldn’t die.

Hust Henarald stood tall before Anomander: an apparition of soot and weals, scars and mottled skin, and Kellaras was reminded of his first meeting with the Lord, when it seemed that iron hid beneath Henarald’s flesh and blood; that he was held in place by twisted bars still glowing from the forge. For all of that, Kellaras saw fear in the old smith’s eyes.

Silchas Ruin spoke into the heavy silence, ‘Lord Hust, what have you done?’

‘There is a secret place,’ Henarald said, ‘known to me. Known to certain Azathanai. There is a forge that is the first forge. Its heat is the first heat. Its fire is the first fire, born in the time before the Dog-Runners, in the time of the Eresal who have long since vanished into the grasslands of the south, where the jungles crawl down to unknown seas. There is no death in these flames. Often they have dimmed, but never have they died. It was in this forge that this weapon was made. One day, I knew — I know — I will be a child again.’ He turned to fix Kellaras with a hard stare. ‘Did I not say so, good sir?’

Kellaras nodded. ‘You did, Lord, but I admit, I did not understand then. I do not understand now.’

Henarald looked away, and to the captain’s eyes he seemed to deflate, as if struck to pain by Kellaras’s admission — his ignorance, his stupidity. One gnarled hand waved as if in dismissal. ‘The child knows simple things,’ he said in a near whisper. ‘Simple emotions, each one solid, each one raw. Each one honest in its bold certainty, no matter how cruel.’

It is the madness of iron. This weapon has been forged by a madman.

‘Purity,’ Henarald continued, uttering the word in the tones of a lament. ‘We are not ready for it. Perhaps we never will be. Lord Anomander, be sure in your reply to this — is Mother Dark pure in this darkness she has spun about herself? Is the darkness pure? Do doubts die where they are sown? For ever starved of light, with no soil to take their roots? Tell me, will her blessing be as that of a child?’

Slowly, Anomander shook his head. ‘Lord Hust, I cannot answer these questions. You must ask them of her.’

‘Are you not the First Son?’

Anomander’s shrug bespoke frustration. ‘What do children know of their parents?’

Andarist started at that, enough to make his chair creak. And then he rose. ‘Brothers, I must make ready. We are late as it is. I would come to her upon her second day in waiting, with the sun high and every shadow in retreat. Anomander, either take the sword or deny it. Be as simple as a child, even as Lord Hust said, and decide upon the cut.’

‘Every child wants, first and foremost,’ replied Anomander, and now at last Kellaras could see his master’s doubt. ‘But not all wants should find answer.’

‘I give you the blade,’ Henarald said. ‘The commission was accepted, as Kellaras is my witness. I bring it to you now. We are all honed well on promises, First Son, are we not?’

‘Then I would not dull your virtue, Lord Hust,’ said Anomander, and he reached down and closed his hand about the weapon’s leather-wrapped grip.

Silchas pushed away from the wall and clapped Andarist on one shoulder. ‘See? We are done as promised, O impatient groom, and so you can be off. But I must catch you up. Captain Scara Bandaris has petitioned my presence in the matter of a score of mongrels in the keeper’s yard.’

Anomander withdrew his hand from the sword. ‘Lord Hust, I will lead you now into the presence of Mother Dark, and by Darkness she will bless this weapon.’

‘I will find you at the gate,’ Andarist said to him.

His brother nodded. ‘Prazek and Dathenar await you below. I would have Kellaras with me.’

‘And I, Galar Baras,’ said Henarald, ‘who attends us without.’ Andarist followed Silchas out of the chamber.

These were fraught days and nights, ever since the mysterious meeting between the Azathanai woman and Mother Dark. The silts left by the flooding river still stained the foundations of the city’s buildings, truly the soiled hand of an ancient god. A dozen citizens had drowned, trapped in cellars or swept from their feet by withdrawing currents and then battered by stone and wood. The fisherfolk who plied Dorssan Ryl had all departed — not a boat remained in Kharkanas, and it was said that the forest now seethed with Deniers on the march — to where, none knew.

Within the Citadel there was confusion and discord. The High Priestess Syntara, skin bleached of all life and seeming health, was said to have fled, seeking sanctuary in some unknown place.

Kellaras understood little of it. He felt as if the world had been jostled, throwing them all about, and balance underfoot remained uncertain, as if even nature’s laws were now unreliable. The priesthood was in chaos. Faith was becoming a battlefield and rumours delivered tales of blood spilled in the forests, Deniers murdered in their huts. And in this time, as far as Kellaras could tell, his lord had done nothing. Planning his brother’s wedding, as would a father, if the father still lived. Awaiting his new sword, which he seems disinclined to hold, much less use.

Prazek and Dathenar get drunk every night, taking whores and priestesses to their beds, and if their eyes are haunted — when caught in a moment of reverie — then in that private silence is where dwells the frightful cause, and nowhere else.

Kellaras now walked with his lord, with Henarald and Galar Baras behind them, and the corridors seemed damp and musty, the tapestries smelling of mould, the stone slick underfoot. Kellaras imagined a swamp rising to take Kharkanas, a siege of water against soil and every wall undermined beneath placid surfaces.

The rumours swirling round Urusander’s Legion were, to the captain’s mind, the most disturbing ones of them all. Entire companies had departed their garrisons, and the standards of disbanded companies had been seen above troops in the outlands. Hunn Raal had left Kharkanas in the night and his whereabouts were unknown.

When faiths take knife in hand, surely every god must turn away.

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘What of her temples?’

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

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

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

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

‘When last did you have word of them?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘I spoke nothing of stains, sir.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘And you are without doubt?’

Shrugging, Silchas glanced away.

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

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

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

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

‘Then I withdraw the gamble at once.’

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

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

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

‘Think you Kagamandra can tame them?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Not knowingly, no.’

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

‘That would delight me, friend.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘He does, milady.’

‘Know you its contents?’

‘He is most protective of it.’

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

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

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

‘So we are to understand, milady.’

‘And is intended for the Citadel?’

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

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

Gripp said nothing to that.

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

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

‘So I understand.’

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

‘Yet you acquiesced.’

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

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

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

‘At the cost of your mount’s life.’

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

‘An unwelcome name,’ she replied. Then, catching once more that odd expression on Gripp’s lined face, she frowned. ‘Have you something to say to me?’

‘Milady?’

‘I was never so wrathful as to make you shy. Speak your mind.’

His eyes fell from hers. ‘Forgive me, milady, but it’s good to see you again.’

A tightness took her throat and she almost reached out to him, to show that his affection was not unwelcome and that, indeed, it was reciprocated, but something held her back and instead she said, ‘That leg is likely to collapse under you. I insist we summon a healer.’

‘It’s on the mend, milady.’

‘You’re a stubborn old man.’

‘Our time is short if we are to meet them.’

‘You see me standing ready, do you not? Very well, let us bring your unpleasant news to your master, and weather as best we can Andarist’s outrage at our martial intrusion. The boy will be fine here in the meantime.’

Gripp nodded. ‘It was ill luck, I wager, and not an attempt at assassination. The boy has little value after all, to anyone.’

‘Except in death on the road,’ she replied. ‘The unwanted child as proof of unwanted discord in the realm. I would we had for him another name. Come, we will ride for the Citadel gate.’

Galar Baras was blind, but he sensed Henarald still standing at his side. The darkness within the Chamber of Night was bitter cold and yet strangely thick, almost suffocating. As he stared unseeing, he heard the Lord of Hust draw a sharp breath.

A moment later a woman’s soft voice sounded, almost close enough for Galar to feel its breath upon his face. ‘Beloved First Son, what value my blessing in this?’

Anomander replied, but Galar could not sense from where the words came, or where he stood. ‘Mother, if we are but your children, then our needs remain simple.’

‘But not so easily met,’ she returned.

‘Is clarity not a virtue?’

‘You will now speak of virtue, First Son? The floor beneath your pacing holds firm underfoot, and you would trust in that.’

‘Until I trip, Mother.’

‘And you think this blade will ease your doubts? Or is it my blessing that will serve you thus?’

‘As a blade sliding into a scabbard, Mother, I would have both.’

Mother Dark was silent for a moment, and then she said, ‘Lord of Hust, have you thoughts on virtue?’

‘I know of virtues,’ Henarald answered, ‘but I fear my thoughts are little better than hounds nipping their heels, receiving only a hoof’s kick in reward.’

‘But dogged they remain… those thoughts?’

Henarald’s grunt may have been an appreciative laugh, but Galar could not be certain. ‘Mother Dark, might I suggest now, and here, that the finest virtues are those that flower unseen.’

‘My First Son, alas, paces not through a garden, but on hard stone.’

‘His boots strike expectantly, Mother Dark.’

‘Just so,’ she replied.

There was a frustrated hiss from Anomander. ‘If you have found new strengths, Mother, then I beg to know of them. If not in form then in flavour. In this realm of yours, so like a void desperate to be occupied, we all await the fulfilment of our faith.’

‘I cannot but retreat before your desires, First Son. The more I come to understand this gift of Darkness, the more I comprehend its refusal as necessary. The risk, I now believe, is to be found in the chaining of what must not be chained and the fixing in place of that which must be free to wander. After all, in the measure of every civilization, wandering must one day end; and when it ends, so too ends an unchanging future.’

‘If nothing changes, Mother, then hope must die.’

‘Lord of Hust, would you call peace a virtue?’

Galar felt the old man shift uneasily beside him, and suspected that the sword cradled in Henarald’s arms was growing heavy. ‘My peace is ever an exhausted peace, Mother Dark.’

‘An old man’s answer,’ she murmured, without derision or scorn.

‘I am that,’ Henarald replied.

‘Shall we consider exhaustion a virtue, then?’

‘Ah, forgive me, Mother Dark, this old man’s retort. Exhaustion is no virtue. Exhaustion is failure.’

‘Even if it wins peace?’

‘That is a question for the young,’ Henarald said, his tone sounding abrasive.

‘One day, Hust Henarald, you will be a child again.’

‘Then ask me again, Mother Dark, when that time comes, and I will give you the simple answers you seek, as seen from a simple world, a life lived simply as only a child can live, where a question can drift away before fades the echoes of its utterance. Ask the child and he may well bless you in the name of unknowing peace.’

‘First Son,’ said Mother Dark, ‘there is war in Kurald Galain.’

‘Give me leave to take up the sword, Mother.’

‘In my name? No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because, dear son, I am the prize. What is it you seek to protect? My sanctity? I yield its blunting borders. My virtue? That horse has flown and even the dogs have ceased their howl. My holiness? I knew a life of flesh and blood and not so long ago as to forget. In any case, I admit to not understanding the very notion of holiness. Where is the sacred to be found except in each and every one of us, and who can find it in anyone else when they cannot find it in themselves? The conceit is to look outward, to quest elsewhere and to dream of better worlds beyond this one. For ever at the edge of your reach, brushing the tips of your fingers, and how you all stretch and how you all yearn! I am the prize, First Son. Reach for me.’

‘You will not bless this sword, then?’

‘Dear Anomander, the weapon was blessed in its making. It waits for you, in the trembling arms of the Lord of Hust, for whom this exhaustion is neither peace nor virtue. A most restless child, that blade.’

‘Mother,’ said Anomander, ‘where has Draconus gone?’

‘He would bring me a gift,’ she replied.

‘It seems that is all he does.’

‘Do I hear resentment, First Son? Be careful. Draconus is not your father and therefore cannot suit being your target in such matters. Though there is no shared blood between you, nevertheless he is mine and wholly mine. As are you.’

‘You go too far,’ said Anomander then, in a rasp. ‘By title I call you so, as you ask of me, but mother to me you are not.’

‘Then wash the darkness from your skin, Anomander Purake.’

Her cold tone shivered through Galar Baras. Beside him, he heard Henarald gasping like a man in pain. Galar moved closer to him, felt contact, and reached to take the sword from his lord’s failing arms. As the full weight of the weapon settled in Galar’s hands, he grunted — it felt as if he was holding up an anvil.

Henarald sank to his knees beside Galar, shuddering uncontrollably.

Anomander spoke. ‘Devoid of sanctity, lost to virtue, and oblivious of all that’s holy, what manner of prize are you?’

‘If you would seek me, look inward.’

‘Perhaps that satisfies the priests, Mother, and you to see their feathers twitch above the vellum as if to mock the flight of your fancies. But I am a warrior and you name me your protector. Give me something to defend. Tell me not my enemies, for I already know them well. Advise no strategies, for that is my garden and it is well tended. Touch lips to no banner I raise, for all honour is found in the warrior at my side and my pledge to him or her. Give me a cause to fight for, Mother, to die for if need be. Shall we war over faith? Or fight in the name of justice or against injustice? A sword striking down the demons of inequity? A campaign to save the helpless, or just their souls? Do I fight for food on the table? A dry roof and a warm bed? The unfettered promise of a child’s eyes? Name yourself the prize if you must, but give me a cause.’

There was silence in the chamber.

Galar started at an oath from Anomander — close to his side — and he felt the sword taken hold of and then pulled from his hands, snatched away light as a reed.

Boots sounded behind him and suddenly the door was swung open and pale light spilled on to the stone floor around his feet. He looked across to see Kellaras, his skin the breath of midnight, stumbling into his master’s wake as Anomander strode from the chamber.

Galar crouched to help lift Henarald to his feet.

The old man seemed barely conscious, his eyes closed, his head lolling, and the spit hanging from his mouth had frozen solid. ‘What?’ the Lord of Hust whispered. ‘What has happened?’

I know not. ‘It is done, Lord.’

‘Done?’

‘The sword is blessed, Lord.’

‘Are you certain?’

Galar helped Henarald across the threshold, and then reached back to pull shut the door. He looked around and saw that Anomander and Kellaras were already well down the corridor. ‘All is well,’ he told the Lord of Hust.

‘The child… the child…’

‘He has it, Lord. In his hands. He has the sword.’

‘Take me home, Galar.’

‘I shall, Lord.’

The old man he helped down the corridor was not the old man who had walked into the Chamber of Night, and in this comprehension Galar did not for an instant consider the ebon cast to Henarald’s skin.

A soul made weary of life longed for sordid ends. Rise Herat climbed for the tower, his refuge from which any escape was downward, and the height of which reduced entire lives to smudges crawling on faraway streets, like insects examining the crevices between pavestones. He had earlier this day walked those streets, wandering through stained Kharkanas and its uneasy multitudes. He had looked upon faces by the hundred, watching people hide in plain view, or cleave close to companions and loved ones while offering suspicious regard to every stranger who dared look their way. He had witnessed smug wealth, worn like precious cloaks of invulnerability, and saw in those visages the wilful guarding of things that could not be guarded. He had seen the poverty that every concourse exhibited, figures like bent and tattered standards of ill-luck and failure, although to all others that measure of ill-luck was in itself failure. He had seen flashes of envy and malice in veiled glances; he had heard laughter loud enough to draw the attention of others, and knew it for the diffident bravado it was — that child-like need for attention like a weed’s root wanting water — but no confidence grew straight and bold from such things, and the eyes ever gave it all away, in pointless bluster and ready challenge.

And those rare gestures of recognition and kindness, they appeared like remnants left behind from a better age. The modern guise was indifference and self-absorption, with every face offering a mask of imperturbability and cynical pessimism.

Rise was an historian who wrote nothing down, because history was not in ages past, not in ages either gilded or tarnished. It was not a thing of retrospection or cogent reflection. It was not lines scratched on parchment, or truths stained deep in vellum. It was not a dead thing to reach back towards, collecting what baubles caught one’s eye, and then sweeping the rest from the table. History was not a game of relevance versus irrelevance, or a stern reordering of convictions made and remade. Nor was it an argument, nor an explanation, and never a justification. Rise wrote nothing, because for him history was the present, and every detail carried its own story, reaching roots into antiquity. It was nothing more than an unblinking recognition of life’s incessant hunger for every moment, like a burst of the present that sent shockwaves into the past and into the future.

Accordingly, he saw nothing that he had not seen before and would not see again, until such time as death took him away, to shutter at last his weary witnessing of the rancorous, motley mess.

He opened the trap door and climbed up on to the tower’s heat-baked, shadowless roof. Even solitude was an illusion. Conversations in clamour, lives crowding now in the ghostly haunts of memory, his mind’s voice babbled without surcease and could torment him even in sleep. It was easy for him to imagine the Citadel below as but an extension of that chaos, with the priests hunting faith like rat-hunters in the grain, with liars tending their seeds under lurid candlelight in all the small rooms that so cramped their ambitions, and the foragers who plucked rumours from the draughts as if whipping nets through the air.

If history was naught but that which was lived in the present, then it was history’s very unruliness that doomed the players to this headlong plunge into confusion. None of the future’s promises ever quite drew within reach; none resolved into something solid or real; and none made bridges to be crossed.

He looked down at the river, winding its way through Kharkanas, and saw it as a metaphor of the present — hardly an original notion, of course — except that to his eyes it was crowded beyond measure, with the swimming and the drowning, the corpses and those barely holding on, all spun about and swirling on unpredictable currents. Those bridges that reached into the future, where dwelt equity, hope and cherished lives so warmly swathed in harmony, arced high overhead, beyond all mortal reach, and he could hear the wailing as the flow carried the masses past every one of those bridges, into and out of those cool shadows that were themselves as insubstantial as promises.

Such shadows could not be walked. Such shadows offered no grip for the hand, no hold for the foot. They were, in truth, nothing more than ongoing arguments between light and dark.

He could fling himself from this tower. He could shock innocent strangers upon the courtyard below, or the street, or even the bridge leading into the Citadel. Or he could vanish into the depths of Dorssan Ryl. A life’s end sent ripples through those that remained. They could be vast, or modest, but in the scheme of this living history, most were barely noticed.

We are all interludes in history, a drawn breath to make pause in the rush, and when we are gone, those breaths join the chorus of the wind.

But who listens to the wind?

Historians, he decided, were as deaf as anyone else.

A soul made weary longed for sordid ends. But a soul at its end longed for all that was past, and so remained trapped in a present filled with regrets. Of all the falls promised me by this vantage, I will take the river. Each and every time, I will take the river.

And perhaps, one day, I will walk in shadows.

He looked out upon the haze of smoke above the forest beyond the city, the foul columns lifting skyward, leaning like the gnarled boles of wind-tilted trees. That wind made cold every tear tracking down from his eyes, and then gave him a thousand breaths to dry each one.

He thought back to the conversation he had just fled, down in a candlelit chamber far below. As witness he was but an afterthought, in the manner of all historians. Cursed to observe and cursed again to reflect on the meaning of all that was observed. Such a stance invited a sense of superiority, and the drudging internal pontification of the coolly uninvolved. But he knew that for the sour delusion of a frightened fool: to think that he could not be made to bleed, or weep, or even lose his life as the current grew wild with rage.

There were a thousand solutions, and each and every one was within grasp, but the will had turned away, and no exhortation or threat would turn it back.

‘We have lost a third of our brothers and sisters,’ Cedorpul had announced upon entering the chamber, and the candles had dipped their flames with his arrival — surely not the portent of his words. Behind him was Endest Silann, looking too young for any of this.

High Priestess Emral Lanear stood like a woman assailed. Her face was wan, her eyes sunken and darkly ringed. The strength of her title and eminent position had been swept away along with her faith, and every priest and priestess lost to Syntara clearly struck her as a personal betrayal.

‘Her cause,’ Cedorpul said then, his small eyes grave in his round face, ‘is not the Deniers’ cause. We can be certain of that, High Priestess.’

Rise Herat still struggled with the physical transformation among Mother Dark’s children in the Citadel, this birth of the Andii that even now spread like a stain among her chosen. Night no longer blinded, or hid anything from sight. And yet still we grope. He had always believed himself the master of his own body, barring those vagaries of disease or injury that could afflict one at any moment. He had not felt Mother Dark’s touch, but that she had claimed him could not be denied. There had been no choice in the matter. But I now know that to be wrong. People have fled her blessing.

When Emral Lanear said nothing in response to Cedorpul’s words, the priest cleared his throat and resumed. ‘High Priestess, is this now a war of three faiths? We know nothing of Syntara’s intentions. She seems to position herself solely in opposition, but that in itself offers modest cause.’

‘And probably short-lived,’ Endest Silann added.

Emral’s eyes flicked to the acolyte as if without recognition, and then away again.

The glance Cedorpul then turned on Rise Herat was beseeching. ‘Historian, have you thoughts on any of this?’

Thoughts? What value those? ‘Syntara sought refuge in Urusander’s Legion. But I wonder at the measure of their welcome. Does it not confuse their cause?’

Cedorpul snorted. ‘Is it not confused enough? Beating down the wretched poor to challenge the eminence of the highborn could not be more wrong-footed.’ He faced Emral again. ‘High Priestess, it is said they strike down Deniers in Mother Dark’s name. She must disavow this, surely?’

At that Emral seemed to wince. Shakily she drew out a chair from the table dominating the chamber, and then sat, as if made exhausted by her own silence. After a long moment she spoke. ‘The faith of holding on to faith… I wonder’ — and she looked up and met the historian’s eyes — ‘if that is not all we have. All we ever have.’

‘Do we invent our gods?’ Rise asked her. ‘Without question we have invented this one. But as we can all see, in each other and in such mirrors as we may possess, our faith is so marked and gives proof to her power.’

‘But is it hers?’ Emral asked.

Cedorpul moved forward, and went down on one knee beside her. He took hold of her left hand and clasped it. ‘High Priestess, doubt is our weakness as it is their weapon. We must find resolve.’

‘I have none,’ she replied.

‘Then we must fashion it with our own hands! We are the Children of Night now. An unknown river divides the Tiste and we fall to one side or the other. We are cleaved in two, High Priestess, and must make meaning from that.’

She studied him with reddened eyes. ‘Make meaning? I see no meaning beyond division itself, this ragged tear between ink and unstained parchment. Regard the historian here and you will see the truth of that, and the desolation it promises. How would you want me to answer our losses? With fire and brutal zeal? Look well upon Mother Dark and see the path she has chosen.’

‘It is unknown to us,’ snapped Cedorpul.

‘The river god yielded the holy places,’ she replied. ‘The birth waters have withdrawn. There is no war of wills between them. Syntara was not driven away; she but fled. Mother Dark seeks peace and would challenge none in its name.’

Cedorpul released her hand and straightened. He backed away a step, and then another, until his retreat was brought to a halt, against the tapestry covering the wall. He struggled to speak for a moment, and then said, ‘Without challenge, there can only be surrender. Are we so easily defeated, High Priestess?’

When Emral made no answer, Rise said, ‘“Beware an easy victory.”’

Emral looked up at him sharply. ‘Gallan. Where is he, historian?’

Rise shrugged. ‘He has made himself a ghost and walks unseen. In times such as these, no poet is heeded, and indeed is likely to be among the first to hang from a spike, in clacking consort with crows.’

‘Words win us nothing,’ Cedorpul said. ‘And now Anomander leaves the city, and with him his brothers. The Hust Legion is leagues to the south. The Wardens crouch in Glimmer Fate. The nobleborn do not stir, as if disaster and discord are beneath them all. Upon which threshold do they stand, and which step taken by the enemy is a step too far?’ He no longer held pleading eyes on Emral Lanear as he spoke, and Rise understood that the priest had dismissed her, seeing in the High Priestess an impotency that he was not yet ready to accept. Instead, he glared at the historian during the course of his tirade. ‘Is this our curse?’ he demanded. ‘That we live in a time of indifference? Do you think the wolves will hold back, when all they see before them is weakness?’

‘The wolves are true to their nature,’ Rise said in reply, ‘and indifference plagues every age and every time, priest. Our doom is to be driven to act when it is already too late, and to then give zeal to our amends. And we beat our brows and decry that indifference, which we never own, or loudly proclaim our ignorance, which is ever a lie. And old women drag brooms through the streets and graves are dug in even rows, and we are made solemn before the revealed fragility of our ways.’

Cedorpul’s eyes tightened. ‘Now even you advise surrender? Historian, you mock the value of past lessons, making you worthless in all eyes.’

‘Past lessons deserve mockery, priest, precisely because they are never learned. If you deem that stance worthless, then you miss the point.’

Anger darkened Cedorpul’s round face. ‘We blather on and on — even as poor dwellers in the countryside fall beneath blade and spear! At last I understand what we are — we who hide in this chamber. You know of us, historian, you must! We are the useless ones. It is our task to fritter and moan, to cover our eyes with trembling hands, and bewail the loss of everything we once valued, and when at last there is no one else left, they will crush us like snails under their marching heels!’

Rise said, ‘If the wolves are indeed loose among us, priest, then we surrendered some time ago. Yet you berate my mockery of lessons unheeded. Vigilance is an exhausting necessity, if one would protect what one values. We lose by yielding in increments, here and there, a slip, a nudge. The enemy never tires in this assault and measures true those increments. They win in a thousand small victories, and know long before we do when they stand over our corpses.’

‘Then climb to your tower,’ Cedorpul said in a snarl, ‘and leap from its edge. Better not to witness the dregs of our useless demise.’

‘The last act of an historian, priest, is to live through history. It is the bravest act of them all, because it faces, unblinking, the recognition that all history is personal, and that every external truth of the world is but a reflection of our internal truths — the truths that shape our behaviours, our decisions, our fears, our purposes and our appetites. These internal truths raise monuments and flood sewers. They lift high grand works as readily as they fill graves. If you blame one appetite you blame all of our appetites. We all swim the same river.’

‘In which,’ muttered Emral, ‘even the wolves will drown.’

‘“Destruction spares no crown and I say this unto the lords behind every door, from hovel to palace.”’

‘Gallan again!’ spat Cedorpul. He swung to Endest Silann. ‘Let us go. Like keepsakes, they will rest upon shelves even as the flames enter the room.’

But the young acolyte hesitated. ‘Master,’ he said to Cedorpul, ‘did we not come here to speak of Draconus?’

‘I see no point,’ the priest replied. ‘He is but one more keepsake. Mother Dark’s own.’

Emral Lanear stood as one who would at last face her accuser. ‘Do you now go to join Sister Syntara, Cedorpul?’

‘I go in search of peace. I see in you the tragedy of standing still.’

He left the chamber. Endest bowed to the High Priestess but made no move to depart.

Sighing, Emral waved a hand. ‘Go on, keep him safe.’

When he slipped out, looking more broken than ever, she turned to Rise. ‘You said nothing of value, historian.’

‘Daughter of Night, the other has made me hoarse.’

Emral studied the tapestry Cedorpul had been leaning against. ‘She is young,’ she said. ‘Rigour of health and polish of beauty are seen as righteous virtue, and by this Syntara triumphs. Over me, surely. And over Mother Dark, whose darkness hides every virtue and every vice and so makes of them both a singular aspect… and one that yields nothing.’

‘That may be her intention,’ observed Rise.

She glanced at him and then back to the tapestry. ‘You claim to have written nothing, historian.’

‘In my younger days, High Priestess, I wrote plenty. There are fires that burn bright and so make youthful eyes shine like torches. Any wood pile, no matter how big, will one day be gone, leaving only memories of warmth.’

She shook her head. ‘I see no end to the fuel, sir.’

‘For lack of a spark, it does rot.’

‘I do not understand this image here, Rise.’

He drew up alongside her and studied the tapestry. ‘Creation allegory, one of the early ones. The first Tiste heroes, who slew a dragon goddess and drank of her blood and thus became as gods. So fierce was their rule and so cold their power, the Azathanai rose as one to cast them down. It is said that all discord reveals a touch of draconean blood, and that it is the loss of our purity that wields the hand of our ills in all the ages since that time.’ He shrugged, eyeing the faded scene. ‘A dragon with many heads, according to this unknown weaver.’

‘Always the Azathanai, like a shadow to our conscience. Your tale is obscure, historian.’

‘A dozen or more creation myths warred for eminence once, until but one survived. Alas, the victor was not this one. We seek reasons for what we are and how we imagine ourselves; and every reason strives to become justification, and every justification a righteous cause. By this a people build an identity and cleave to it. But it is all invention, High Priestess, to make clay into flesh, sticks into bone, and flames into thought. No alternative sits well with us.’

‘What alternative would you have?’

He shrugged. ‘That we are meaningless. Our lives, our selves, our pasts and most of all, our existence in the present. This moment, the next, and the next: each one we find in wonder and near disbelief.’

‘Is this your conclusion, Rise Herat? That we are meaningless?’

‘I try not to think in terms of meaning, Daughter of Night. I but measure life in degrees of helplessness, and in the observation of this, we find, in totality, the purpose of history.’

She sent him away when she began to weep. He did not object. There was no pleasure in witnessing the very helplessness of which he had spoken, and so a single gesture had set him to flight.

Now he stood, upon the tower, and from the gate below there came the creaking of massive doors, and out on to the bridge rode two Sons of Darkness and their entourage. Pure was Anomander’s black skin, and pure silver his long mane, and as the day’s light died, Rise thought he could hear, on the wind, that sundering of light — there, in the rumble of horse hoofs — and before it, on the street, barely discerned figures scattered from its path.

The dog, a bedraggled mess of mud and burrs, was entangled in a chaotic web of roots, branches and detritus, just beneath the eastern bank of the river. It was limp with exhaustion, struggling to keep its head above the water, as the currents tugged at its limbs.

Unmindful of the bitter cold water and pushing through the current — the stony bottom beneath the undercut bank shifting with every step — Grizzin Farl worked his way closer.

The dog swung its head towards him and he saw its large ears dip as if in shame. Reaching its side, the Azathanai lifted clear his travel sack and flung it over the bank, and then reached down and gently extricated the hapless creature.

‘Most bravery, dear little one,’ he said as he pulled the dog from the water and rested it across the back of his thickly muscled neck, ‘is marked by a strength less than imagined, and a hope farther from reach than one expects.’ He took hold of the roots above and tested to see if they would hold their weight. ‘One day, friend, I will be asked to reveal the heroes of the world, and do you know where I shall take my questioner?’ The roots held and he pulled himself up, out of the dragging current. The dog, still clinging atop his shoulders, licked the side of Grizzin’s face and he nodded. ‘You are quite correct. A cemetery. And in there, before every marker of stone, we shall stand, looking down upon a hero. What think you of that?’

He clambered on to the bank and then sank down on to his hands and knees — since the crossing had proved more onerous than he had thought it would — and the dog slid and scrambled down from his shoulders. It came round in front of him and then shook the water from its fur.

‘Aai, foul creature! Did you not see how I struggled to keep my hair dry? This mane need only glance at water and forest to twist into hopeless snarls and tangles. Beastly rain!’

Faintly crossed eyes regarded him, head cocking as if the dog were considering Grizzin’s bluster, and finding it far from threatening.

The Azathanai frowned. ‘You are a most starved specimen, friend. I’d wager you share every meal and the servings unfairly apportioned. Have we rested enough? I see yon road venturing south and it beckons. It ventures north, too, you say? We shall see none of that with our backs, however, will we? No, with eyes and intention let us narrow the world before us.’

Collecting his sack, he climbed grunting to his feet, and when he set off the dog fell in beside him.

‘Providence well understands me,’ Grizzin said, ‘and knows how better I fare for wise and wisely silent company. Lacking the pleasure of hearing my own voice is a torture I would not wish upon my worst enemy — had I enemies, and a worst one among them, whoever they may be. But think of the dread such an enemy would feel to hear me draw near! A true nemesis am I to him, or her — but no, we shall swing wide of her, lest we envisage a face for this imagined foe, and a pot wielded by a less than dainty yet no less vengeful hand. Him, then, this enemy cowering before us. Do you see a single bone of mercy in me, friend? One you would care to snatch away and bury? Of course not. My heart is cold. My eyes are ice. My every thought is unyielding as solid stone.’

The dog ran off ahead for a dozen or so paces. Grizzin sighed. ‘I can make an enemy of mice, it seems. To speak is to wield a weapon, with which I bludgeon friend and foe, friend unto foe, I mean, and lacking victim, why, I but wave it fiercely in the air, bold enough to shy a god. Tell me dog, have you any wine?’

It seemed the beast would trot in advance of him down this road, in the manner of an animal that well knew a master. The smell of smoke was in the evening air, and Grizzin had seen the grey pillars above the forest for much of this day’s travel. He disliked the meaning of such details, since they reminded him of all the places he had protected in the past. Strangers stepped carelessly in every garden he had ever tended, and that was a sad admission on all sides. ‘For they value only what is theirs, and covet all that is mine, and should we meet we might invent economy, or theft, or both. Dog!’

The beast paused and looked back at him, ears cocked, eyes askew.

‘By the confusion of your vision, friend, I name you Providence. Is that too long a name for a scrawny thing like you? No matter. Perversity pleases me, unless it is too perverse, upon which I am known to bark a laugh. You can join me in this, if you care to. But I call you not to call you names, friend, but to tell you that I am tired and hungry and in my sack is a fish, or two, and I see certain herbs that entice my eyes. In short, since I see you fret impatient, we shall make camp in some suitable glade or clearing in the forest upon the left. Thus: keep an eye out for a likely roost.’

When the animal resumed its trot, Grizzin smiled and continued walking.

A short time later the dog loped into the line of trees and vanished from sight.

The Azathanai shrugged, not expecting to see its return. He was thankful for the brief companionship, however, and thought the animal well named for that brevity.

The creature suddenly reappeared, tail wagging. It halted just outside the forest’s ragged edge.

Grizzin stood on the road and squinted at the dog. ‘Can it be you gleaned my desire? Your stance is most expectant, yet you draw no nearer. Very well, show me a place to sleep and show me, indeed, that Providence can do no less.’

He moved down from the road and approached. The animal spun round and bounded back into the forest.

A short distance in waited a glade, the grasses thick and soft, barring in the centre where the blackened stones encircled an old campfire.

Grizzin ventured into the clearing, up to the old hearth, where he set down his sack. ‘You alter the course of this night’s conversation, friend,’ he said to the dog, now lying near the stones. ‘I did anticipate the pleasure of not being understood, thus freeing me to heights of appalling honesty and blue confession. Instead, I now fear fleas will carry the tale, and so must be circumspect. And I fear more the matching of wits with you, and losing the game, O Providence. Now, rest here while I collect wood, herbs and the like. We shall feast tonight, and then pick clean our teeth with fish spines, and make fresh our breaths with the twigs of bitter juniper. What say you?’

But the dog was already asleep, legs twitching as it swam through dreams.

Hish Tulla watched Gripp Galas gingerly lift himself on to the saddle of his horse. She met his eyes and he nodded. They rode out from the small courtyard, ducking as, Hish in the lead, they passed beneath the gate’s heavy lintel stone. The street they trotted onto revealed similar gates lining its winding length, and stationed before a number of them were guards, their eyes shadowed by the visors of their helms.

The river might have receded, but currents of fear lingered. She wondered how many of these guards they rode past had once been soldiers in Urusander’s Legion. Questions of loyalty haunted every street, even here where dwelt the highborn behind high walls. This matter of grievances irritated Hish, since they seemed so ephemeral. If by way of recognition of their service to the realm, these soldiers would now demand coin and land, then the matter of compensation could readily be addressed. Negotiations and honourable brokering could take the place of belligerence. But it was not that simple. From what she could determine, the soldiers yearned for something more, of which coin and land were but material manifestations.

Perhaps it was no more than a meeting of the eye, every station made level, as if birthright were irrelevant. A laudable notion, but one she knew to be unworkable. A realm of nothing but highborn would quickly crumble. Without servants, without workers of crafts — potters and weavers and carpenters and cooks — civilization could not function. But even here, this was not part of the new world as envisioned by the decommissioned soldiers. What they sought was only for them and what they sought was an elevation of their profession, to a level of social importance matching that of the highborn.

It was this that so disturbed her. Soldiers already possessed the means and the skills to impose violence or brandish its threat. To yield and heap wealth and land on them could only nurture the gardens of greed and ambition, and these were poison fruit that every highborn well understood.

Position and privilege imposed responsibilities. Unquestionably the defence of the realm was also a great responsibility. But defence against whom? With all enemies beyond the borders vanquished, who remains to stand in their stead, but those within our borders? An army is a fist poised to strike, but that clenching of fingers and focus of desire cannot be held for ever. It is made to strike and strike it must.

The poor Deniers of the forests and hills were now dying, but these were the lowest of the believers. How soon before the Legion struck the monasteries, and put to flame temples and abbeys? And who could not but see this in the most venal light? None were safe within the borders of Kurald Galain, from the very army created to defend them.

She thought of the highborn as the counterweight to Urusander’s Legion. But we present a sordid example, all things considered. Squabbling among ourselves, scrabbling for the highest elevation above our neighbours, and spitting venom upon the one who stands at Mother Dark’s side, as if questions of justice and propriety did not curdle on our own tongues! No, this was a wretched mess and in many respects the highborn had only themselves to blame. If a soldier risked her or his life, then it should be in defence of worthy things: family, promise, comfort and freedom from strife. But if a trench were cut across such virtues, where so many were left to scramble for the paltry leavings of those who most profited by that soldier’s sacrifice, then it was no wonder that scarred hands should itch.

They rode through the highborn district, with its clean cobbles and ornate gates, its blackwood carriages and healthy horses, its scurrying servants burdened beneath wares they did not own, and of which they would not partake. And the wealthy strolled — fewer than usual — through the dusk, warded by bodyguards, and, as always, contentedly unmindful of the world beyond their ken. She had travelled through the lower quarters of the city; she had seen the destitution and disease breeding in the airs of neglect. But such boldness was rare among her kin.

It would be easy to blame the dwellers for the filth in which they lived, and to see that wreckage as a symptom of moral weakness and spiritual failure; as, indeed, proof of the inequity of blood and the making of privilege a birthright. In the manner of horses, breeding would tell, and if nags struggled before creaking wagons and bore whip marks upon their flanks, and warhorses knew only fields turned muddy with blood and gore, and the upper terraces of the city offered dry even cobbles under well-filed, iron-shod hoofs, then surely this marked a natural order of things?

She had begun to doubt. Too comforting by far these assumptions. Too self-serving the pronouncements. Too inhuman the judgements. The trenches were deepening, and the eyes that looked up and across that gulf were hardening. The privileged had a right to fear these days, just as the dispossessed had a right to their resentment.

But Urusander’s Legion stood nowhere between that divide. They stood apart, wanting only for themselves, and they now gathered into ranks with weapons on hand, to take what the poor did not have and the rich had not earned.

She would be the first to scoff at the notion of hard work among her own kind. Tasks of organization were devoid of value without those being organized; without workers herded together with eyes downcast and the next day no different from this day and this life no different from the next one. She knew that she had been born to her wealth and land, and she knew how that inheritance had skewed her sense of the world, and of people — especially those in their hovels, who huddled in a fug of fear and crime and dissolution. She knew, and was helpless before it.

They approached the bridge and saw before them a large party of highborn, and Hish caught sight of Anomander — the silver hair, the mother’s legacy of his skin.

Gripp Galas rode up beside her on the concourse and said, ‘Milady, I am as unsuited to this company as the tale I bring to my master.’

‘Nevertheless, sir.’

Still he hesitated.

Hish Tulla scowled. ‘Gripp Galas, how long have you served your lord?’

‘Since he was born, milady.’

‘And how do you weigh the words you bring?’

‘An unwelcome burden on this day, milady. They journey to celebration.’

‘Think you your lord not aware of the violence in the countryside? He rides into smoke and ash this evening.’

‘Milady, the Deniers are a feint. The Legion but clears the field in preparation. They intend to march Urusander into the Chamber of Night. They intend, milady, a second throne.’

She studied him, chilled by the raw language of his assertion.

After a moment, Gripp continued, ‘I don’t know my master’s awareness of this situation. Nor do I know if my report will twist pleasure from his brother’s day. We all know a paucity of joyous memories and I wouldn’t assail this one.’

‘Must it always be paucity, Gripp Galas?’ Her question was asked softly and yet it seemed to strike him like a slap to the face.

He looked away, eyes tightening, and Hish Tulla sensed the gulf that stretched between her and him, a gulf he had acknowledged in acquiescing to the child Orfantal’s insistence that he deliver the boy to her first. This was a man who had stood in the highborn shadow: a servant, a bodyguard, his life subservient and dependent upon the very privilege he was avowed to defend. By this measure, one of mutual necessity, all of civilization was defined. The bargain was brutal and implicitly unfair and it sickened her.

Gripp said, ‘Milady, there’s enough to worry about without thinking too much. Too much thinking ain’t never but bred problems. A bird builds a nest, lays her eggs and feeds and defends her chicks, and there’s no thinking to any of it.’

‘Are we birds, Gripp?’

‘No. The nest is never big or pretty enough, and the chicks disappoint at every turn. The trees don’t give enough cover and the days are too short or too long. The food’s short on supply or too stale and your mate looks uglier with every dawn.’

She stared at him in shock, and then burst out laughing.

Her reaction startled him and a moment later he shook his head. ‘I do not expect my master to do my thinking for me, milady. We must each of us do that for ourselves, and that’s the only bargain worth respecting.’

‘Yet you will take his orders and do his bidding.’

He shrugged. ‘Most people don’t like to think too hard. It’s easier that way. But I’m content enough with the bargain I’ve made.’

‘Then he would know your thoughts, Gripp Galas.’

‘I know, milady. I simply rue what he will lose in the telling.’

‘Would he rather you said nothing? That you wait until after the marriage?’

‘He would,’ Gripp acknowledged, ‘but will face what he must and voice no complaint, nor blame.’

‘You are indeed content with your bargain.’

‘I am.’

‘You remind me of my castellan.’

‘Rancept, milady? A wise man.’

‘Wise?’

‘Never thinks too hard, does Rancept.’

She sighed, eyeing the retinue once more. ‘I wish to be back in my estate, arguing with my castellan over his cruelty to his favoured dog. I wish I could just hide away and discuss nothing more significant than a dog’s wretched tapeworms.’

‘We would mourn your absence, milady, and envy the castellan your regard.’

‘Will you seduce me now, Gripp Galas?’

His brows lifted and his face coloured. ‘Milady, forgive me! I am always honourable in my compliments.’

‘I fear I mistrust men who make such claims.’

‘And so wound yourself.’

She fell abruptly silent, studying the man’s eyes, seeing for the first time the softness in them, the genuine affection and the pain he clearly felt for her. These notions only deepened her sorrow. ‘It is my fate to lose the men for whom I care, Gripp Galas.’

His eyes widened slightly and then he looked down, fidgeting with the reins.

‘In what comes,’ she said then, ‘take care of yourself.’

There was a shout from the party, and at once riders and carriages were crossing the bridge.

Gripp squinted at the group and then drew a deep breath. ‘It is time, milady. I thank you for the clean clothes. I will of course recompense you.’

She thought back to the torn, bloodstained garments he had been wearing on the night of his appearance at her door, and felt tears in her eyes. ‘I did not sell them to you, Gripp. Nor loan them.’

He glanced at her and managed an awkward nod, and then urged his mount towards the party.

Hish Tulla guided her warhorse into his wake. When he drew nearer, she would angle her mount to one side, seeking to join the procession at the rear. With luck, Anomander would not notice her arrival and so be spared embarrassment.

Instead, he caught sight of them both while still on the bridge, and as suddenly as the procession had begun moving it was stopped by a gesture from Anomander. She saw him turn to his brother Silchas. They spoke, but she and Galas — both now reined in — were too distant to make out the exchange of words. Then Anomander was riding towards them, with the attention of all the others now fixed upon the two interlopers.

Lord Anomander halted his horse and dropped down from the saddle. He strode to stand before Hish Tulla.

‘Sister of Night,’ he said, ‘our Mother’s blessing well suits you.’

‘In the absence of fair hues my age is made a mystery, you mean.’

Her comment silenced him and he frowned.

And so wound yourself. She evaded his eyes, regretting that she had made him stumble.

Gripp Galas spoke, ‘Forgive me, master-’

But Anomander raised a hand. Eyes still on Hish, he said, ‘I see the gravity your tale wears, Gripp, and would not discount it. I beg you, another moment.’

‘Of course, master.’ He clucked and guided his horse away, towards the head of the train.

Hish stared after him, feeling abandoned.

‘Will you dismount, Lady Hish?’

Startled, she did so and stood beside her horse’s head, the reins in her hand.

‘You gave no reply to my invitation, Lady. I admit to feeling shame at my presumption. It was long ago, after all, and the years have stretched a distance between us. But I still feel a child in your eyes.’

‘You were never that,’ she said. ‘And the shame was mine. See me here, yielding to the pity of your gesture.’

He stared at her, as if shocked.

‘I have been speaking with Gripp Galas,’ she said. ‘He is blunt in his ways, but I grew to appreciate his honesty.’

‘Lady,’ said Anomander, ‘Gripp is the least blunt man I know.’

‘Then I am played.’

‘No, never that. If he is made to guard his feelings, Lady Hish, he is known to grow discomforted. There is a tale, I expect, in his riding to you before me. The last I knew of him, he was on the road down from House Korlas, safeguarding a young hostage. It is not like him to disregard such a charge.’

‘Of course it isn’t,’ and she heard a faint snap to her retort. ‘The child is in my keeping for now, and yes, there is a tale, but it belongs to Gripp.’

‘Very well.’

‘I am not one for unbridgeable divides, Lord Anomander.’

He considered that and seemed to relax. ‘If you imagine him to view you as would a father, you have stepped wrongly.’

‘I begin to comprehend that,’ she replied, ‘and now all footing is uncertain beneath me.’

‘That said,’ Anomander continued, ‘I am confident in believing Gripp Galas to be generous of spirit, and so he would not burn to see you upon my arm at my brother’s wedding.’

‘Will he have a place to stand in witness to the ceremony?’

‘Always.’

She nodded. ‘Then, Lord, I am here to take your arm.’

He flashed a smile. ‘And girded for war, no less. I did not think me so formidable.’ Then, instead of waiting for her to draw near, he stepped forward, and his eyes met hers, and he said, ‘Lady, your beauty leaves me breathless as ever, and once again I feel a wonder at the privilege of your regard, now and all those years past.’ I fear Gripp might not be so pleased with my words here, but I speak only in admiration.’

All words left her, spun beyond reach.

‘Pity, Lady Hish Tulla? I only pity those who know you not.’ He offered his arm. ‘Will you honour me by accepting my invitation?’

She nodded.

His wrist was solid as iron, as if it could bear not only the weight of an entire realm, but also her every regret.

When Anomander dismounted before Hish Tulla, Silchas Ruin twisted in his saddle and waved Kellaras closer. Leaving the company of Dathenar and Prazek, the captain rode up to the white-skinned warrior.

Silchas was smiling. ‘For a beautiful woman, your lord will make even a groom wait.’

‘There was an invitation, sir,’ Kellaras replied.

‘We did not think that she would accept, else I would have attempted the same and set myself as my brother’s rival. We might have come to blows. Crossed swords, even. Scores of dead, estates in flames, the sky itself a storm of lightning and fire. All for a woman.’

‘A thousand poets would bless the drama and the tragedy,’ Kellaras observed.

‘They’ll sift the dust and ashes,’ Silchas said, nodding, ‘for all the treasures they can only imagine, and in vicarious ecstasy they’ll invite wailing mourners into their audience, and make of every tear the most precious pearl. In this manner, captain, do poets adorn themselves in a world’s grief.’ He shrugged. ‘But the feast of two brothers warring over a woman is one too many poets have attended already. ’Tis easy to grow obese on folly.’

Kellaras shook his head. ‘Even poets must eat, sir.’

‘And folly is a most pernicious wine, always within reach with sweet promises, with no thoughts of tomorrow’s aching skull. Alas, it is not only poets who attend the feast of our condition.’

‘True, sir, but they chew longer.’

Silchas laughed. And then, when Anomander stepped forward to take Hish Tulla’s hand on his arm, the Lord’s brother grunted and said, ‘What think you of that old gristle waiting in the wings?’

‘His presence disturbs me,’ Kellaras admitted. ‘Gripp Galas had other tasks and I fear his presence here marks failure.’

‘Let us hope not,’ Silchas said in a mutter.

Kellaras lifted his gaze, considered the northern sky. ‘I also fear for the estates upon the edge of the forest, sir. Too many fires and no rain in many days. Bogs are known to swallow flames but not kill them. Should the wind veer…’

‘The river god battles those flames, captain. It will only fail when dies the last Denier in the forest.’

Kellaras glanced across at Silchas. ‘The Houseblades but await the command, sir.’

Silchas met his eyes. ‘Will you risk your life defending non-believers, captain?’

‘If so commanded, sir, yes.’

‘And if Mother Dark deems the Deniers her enemy?’

‘She does not.’

‘No, she does not. But still I ask.’

Kellaras hesitated, and then said, ‘Sir, to that I cannot speak for anyone else. But I will not follow any deity who demands murder.’

‘Why?’

‘Because we know murder to be wrong.’

‘Is it as simple as that, captain? Are there not exceptions? Do we not draw circles in the sand and claim all outside them to be less than us, and by this distinction do we not absolve ourselves of the crime of murder?’

‘Sophistry, sir.’

‘Yet, as a warrior, captain, you have committed murder in the name of our people, and in the name of your lord.’

‘I have, but in the taking of life I appease no god’s command. The crime is mine and upon no other shoulders do I set it. If I did — if we all did — then no god could withstand the burden of those crimes. But more than that: we have not the right.’

‘Urusander’s Legion disagrees with you, captain.’

‘With sword I stand ready to make argument, sir.’

Lord Anomander and Lady Hish Tulla were on their horses now, and Kellaras saw Gripp Galas join them. A moment later the procession lurched into motion once more. The captain wondered if Andarist, ensconced in the lead carriage, had chafed at the delay, or sought explanation from his servant. His eyes then fixed on the sword now strapped at his master’s hip, encased in a lacquered blackwood scabbard. A weapon blessed by a goddess, forged to take life. But she refuses to tell him which life. Who will die in her name?

But the blade was un-named, and so it would remain until after Andarist’s ceremony. There would be no omens attending this marriage scene. If perfection were possible, Anomander would seek it for his brother and Enesdia. Or die in the attempt.

Beside him, Silchas said, ‘Andarist is the best among us.’

Kellaras understood the meaning of that ‘us’. Silchas was referring to his brothers, as if his thoughts had followed parallel tracks to the captain’s own.

‘For him,’ the white-skinned Andii continued, ‘we will bring peace to the realm. By all that follows, captain, you may measure the fullness of a brother’s love. Like you, Kellaras, Anomander will not murder in her name.’

It is well then that the sword has no voice.

As they rode out from Kharkanas and on to the north road, Captain Scara Bandaris arrived with his troop. Greetings were called out and jests followed. The sun was low in the western sky and the night promised to be warm.

Long before they came within sight of the estate the dog began to cower, casting glances back at Grizzin Farl, as if to question their chosen course down the road. By this sign, the Azathanai’s steps slowed, and it was with deep trepidation that he continued on.

He had no words with which to ease the dog’s growing distress, since he could find none for himself. The title of Protector was not an honorific, and not one he willingly chose for himself. The things he guarded against none could withstand, but he would be first to stand in their path, first to weather their storm, and first to bleed. He knew that few understood him, even among the Azathanai. And among the Jaghut, the Lord of Hate was the only one to turn away, avoiding his gaze.

The dog halted at a new track that led from the road, where brush had been cleared and stones left in piles to either side. When Grizzin Farl joined it, he reached down and settled a hand upon its sloped head. ‘I am sorry,’ he murmured, ‘but this is my path. My every desire is a conceit, and where the road ends is where it begins again. Providence, forgive me.’

He set off down the track. The morning air smelled of blood and putrefying meat, but the rot held that sweetness that told him that it was still relatively fresh. A day or two, no more. The dog stayed at his side as he came out upon the clearing. He studied the carriage with its open door, and then the bodies sprawled in the grasses. A fox stood over one, frozen in fear at the sight of the dog. An instant later it bolted, vanishing into the wood. The dog gave no sign of wanting to chase, instead pressing against the side of Grizzin’s leg.

He walked past the corpses, pausing every now and then to study one. He scanned the tracks of beaten-down grasses, the places where blood had spilled. Flies buzzed the ground and crows took wing, croaking as they fled his and the dog’s approach.

The estate’s entranceway was splashed black with gore and a body was lying on the threshold. Grizzin Farl continued walking, until he stood in front of the open door, and the grim offering before it.

A highborn Tiste by the richness of his garb, a man with grey hair. Crows had plucked holes through one cheek, to get at the tongue. He had fallen to at least a half-dozen wounds, and those attackers whom he had killed were heaped to either side of the steps, five in all, dragged out of the way by their comrades but otherwise ignored.

Grizzin ascended the steps and walked past more corpses on his way into the main hall. Here he found the body of a woman, a maid, and there, upon the hearthstone, another young woman, lying on her back. The blood about her left no question as to what had befallen her. He drew closer, seeing that she was upon an Azathanai hearthstone, and seeing now what the blood had obscured: she wore the traditional dress of a bride in waiting.

Hearing a sound to his right, Grizzin turned. A figure was huddled on the floor, in the far corner of the room. Its legs were drawn up under the chin, but one side of its face was pressed against the stone wall, with a stained hand up beside it, the blackened fingers splayed against the stone. Shadows hid any further detail.

Grizzin walked closer. A young man, dressed neither in the fashion of the attackers nor like those who had defended this house. There was dried blood crusting his face, blackening the entire cheek and filling the socket of his eye with darkness. He wore no helm and his hair was long, hanging in greasy strands over his brow. With each step the Azathanai took, the man flinched and pushed deeper into the corner, seeking to grind his head between the stones of the wall until skin tore.

‘I mean you no harm, friend,’ said Grizzin Farl. ‘We are alone in this place, and I would help you.’

The head swung round and Grizzin beheld what had been done to the man’s eyes.

His gaze dropped to the man’s hands, and then lifted again to that clawed, disfigured face. ‘Oh,’ he sighed, ‘that was no answer.’

The cry that broke from the man was that of a wounded animal. Grizzin moved forward. Ignoring the fists that beat at him, he took the man in his arms and held him tight, until the screams died away and the body ceased its struggles and then, slowly, sagged in his embrace.

After a time, the dog came to lie down beside them.

They had travelled through the night. Breaking fast in the saddle, they continued on as the sun climbed into the sky. When it was high overhead, the procession reached the last stretch of the road before the track.

Anomander, Hish Tulla and Silchas were in the lead, riding abreast. Behind them rode Gripp and at his side was Captain Kellaras. There was no telling how many others had since joined the procession: highborn and their servants and guards, cooks and their pot-wagons, the tent-bearers and the musicians, the poets and artists, apprentices of all sorts; Gripp had seen Silchas’s old war-time companion, Captain Scara Bandaris, moving to take up the rear with his troop. By tradition, none had spoken since the dawn, and the solemn air accompanied them as if to protect the day’s light and warmth, lest a voice shatter the peace.

Gripp’s thoughts were on the woman riding ahead of him, and when guilt drove those thoughts back he thought of the boy, Orfantal. There were fates within reach, and those beyond reach. A wise man knew the difference and Gripp wanted to be a wise man. He welcomed this silence, after the seemingly endless questions his lord had asked, seeking every detail from his recollections of the attack, the flight and the hunt and the escape that followed. Lord Anomander was never one to reveal his emotions, nor allow the extremity or depth of those feelings to tighten his throat or stilt the words he uttered. And so Gripp had no sense of his master’s reaction to his tale. At the end he but thanked Gripp for saving the hostage, and this drew Gripp’s thoughts back to the boy.

Orfantal should have been accompanying this procession, riding his nag of a horse and knowing nothing of death or murder, or fear, or nights of weeping in the cold. By luck more than anything else, his fate had been within Gripp’s reach. But there was a score Gripp needed to settle, in that boy’s name, and settle it he would.

They drew within sight of the track.

It was then that Gripp noticed the carrion birds wheeling above their destination. Cold dread filled him, sudden as a flood. Without awaiting command or offering explanation, he kicked his horse into a canter, and then a gallop, rushing past the startled trio at the column’s head. An instant later his lord and his lord’s brother were following.

Gripp yanked savagely to wheel his horse from the road on to the track. Ahead, he saw the carriage — but no tents, no pavilion, no festive standards and no figures awaiting them.

But there were bodies lying on the sward, and a beaten retreat was marked out in dead Houseblades and matted grasses, straight to the house, and there, upon the steps Behind him someone cried out, but he did not recognize the voice.

The world was impossibly sharp around him, yet shaking as if jarred by repeated blows — but those sounded in his chest, and each beat was a fist against the cage of his ribs. The wound on his back bled anew. If a heart could have tears, then surely they were red.

He rode to the house and was down from his horse before it had stopped its frantic skid in the gore-flattened grasses. Limping past the body of Lord Jaen, through the doorway. The splash of blood on the walls, thick as mud on the tiled floor. Stumbling into the room, eyes struggling to fight the gloom, the brutal plunge from light into dark. One last fallen Houseblade — no, that was the Enes hostage, Cryl Durav, his chest broken open by sword-thrusts, one leg caked in blood, one hand mangled as it seemed to reach back towards the centre of the house. His face was twisted and almost unrecognizable, swollen and lined as an old man’s. Gripp stepped past him.

‘No further, I beg you,’ said a deep voice from the shadows of the main chamber.

Gripp reached for his sword.

‘I have kin to the fallen,’ continued the stranger. ‘Sadly injured. Asleep, or perhaps unconscious — I dare not test the gauge between the two.’

Behind Gripp, boots sounded at the entranceway.

‘I am come late to this scene,’ the voice said, ‘but not as late as you, friend.’

Gripp realized that he had sunk down to his knees. His injured leg threatened to give way entirely and he set a hand down to steady himself. He heard his own breathing, too harsh, too dry, riding grief and fighting horror.

A dog trotted out from the shadows of one corner, where Gripp could now make out huddled forms. The half-starved creature halted before him, and then sat with ears laid back. Gripp frowned. He knew this dog.

‘Ribs,’ he heard himself say. ‘I missed you at the Hold. You and Rancept both.’

A scrabbling sounded from the corner and a moment later a figure staggered into view, both hands held out and groping in the air. ‘ Who comes? ’ the figure shrieked. The cry echoed in the chamber and Gripp flinched. No question could sound more plaintive; no need could sound so helpless, and yet none answered.

Behind Gripp stood Anomander — a presence sensed but not seen, but Gripp did not doubt. His lord spoke. ‘Kadaspala-’

The blind man lunged towards Anomander, and only then did Gripp see the dagger in Kadaspala’s hand.

He rose swiftly and grasped hold of Kadaspala’s wrist, and twisted hard.

Another shriek rang through the room, and the knife clattered on the stones. Gripp forced Kadaspala to the floor and held him there as he would a raging child.

Straining against the hold, Kadaspala lifted his head, and blood-crusted sockets seemed to fix unerringly upon Anomander. The mouth opened and then closed, and then opened once more, like a wound. Red teeth offered up a ghastly smile. ‘Anomander? I have been expecting you. We all have. We have a question, you see. Just one, and we all ask it — all of us here. Anomander, where were you? ’

Someone began howling at the hearthstone, a braying, hoarse howl that erupted again and again.

Kadaspala struggled and tried to reach for his knife on the floor. Gripp dragged him back and threw him down on to the pavestones. He set the weight of one knee on the man’s chest and then leaned close. ‘Another move like that,’ he said, ‘and I’ll cut you down. Understand me, sir?’

But Kadaspala’s mouth was gaping, as if he could not breathe. Gripp drew his knee away. Still the man gaped, those horrid sockets bleeding anew. All at once, Gripp understood what he was seeing. He cries. Without sound, without tears, he cries.

Another figure stood in the gloom. Huge, brooding. Gripp looked up and his voice was a rasp, ‘Who is that? In the shadows? Come forth!’

‘It is only Grizzin Farl,’ the stranger replied, stepping closer. Though tears glistened in his red beard, he somehow smiled. ‘I am known as the Protector.’

Gripp stared up at the giant, unable to speak. Shattered by that smile, he tore his gaze away and looked across to his lord.

Anomander stood with his head turned, his eyes fixed upon the prostrate form of Andarist. He was motionless, as if carved from onyx. His brother’s howls continued unabated.

Silchas appeared, halted a half-dozen paces back from the hearthstone. He stared down at Enesdia’s body, lying motionless and ruined beside Andarist. Behind him came others. None spoke.

Beneath Gripp, Kadaspala continued his silent, horrifying weeping. The fingers of his right hand made small scribing patterns against the floor. Shudders rippled through the man, as if fevers burned in his skull.

When Anomander drew the sword from the scabbard at his side, Andarist lifted his head, his howls cutting off abruptly, although the echo of the last lingered for what seemed an impossibly long time.

Anomander walked towards Andarist, his strides uneven — as if he was drunk — and halted near the hearthstone. Before he could speak, Andarist shook his head and said, ‘I will name it.’

Anomander stiffened at his brother’s cold pronouncement.

Silchas spoke. ‘Andarist, the weapon is not yours-’

‘The wound is mine and I will name it!’

Beneath Gripp, Kadaspala cackled softly, and held his head cocked, to better hear the words being spoken now by these three brothers.

Anomander said, ‘And if I name my future, Andarist, will you doubt me? Will you challenge me?’

‘Not now,’ whispered Silchas to Andarist. ‘Not on this day, I beg you.’

‘Where were you?’ Kadaspala asked again, in a broken voice. ‘Blind in the darkness — I warned you all but you refused to heed me! I warned you! Now see what she has made!’

On his knees, Andarist moved up alongside Enesdia’s body. With tenderness that was aching to witness, he gathered her up in his arms and held her head against his breast. He did all this without once breaking his gaze upon Anomander. ‘I will name it,’ he said.

‘The sword is drawn, brother, as you can see. I am awakened to vengeance, and so shall this weapon be named. Vengeance.’

But Andarist shook his head, one hand stroking Enesdia’s hair. ‘Anger blinds you, Anomander. You take hold of vengeance and you believe it to be pure. Remember Henarald’s words!’

‘The road is true,’ Anomander said.

‘No,’ said Andarist, and tears glistened in streams down his cheeks. ‘Vengeance deceives. When you see its road to be narrow it is in truth wide. When you see it wide the path is less than a thread. Name your sword Vengeance, brother, and it will ever claim the wrong blood. In this blade’s wake, I see the death of a thousand innocents.’ He paused, looked round woodenly, as if not even seeing what met his eyes. ‘Who is to blame for this? The slayers who came to this house? Those who commanded them? The lust of battle itself? Or was it a father’s cruelty to his child a dozen years ago? A stolen meal, a dead mother? An old wound? An imagined one? Vengeance, Anomander, is the slayer of righteousness.’

‘I need not reach to a childhood’s tragedy, brother, to know who has made himself my enemy on this day.’

‘Then you shall fail,’ Andarist said. ‘Vengeance is not pure. It rewards with a bitter aftertaste. It is a thirst that cannot be assuaged. Leave me to name your sword, Anomander. I beg you.’

‘Brother-’

‘Leave me to name it!’

‘Then do so,’ Anomander said.

‘Grief.’

The word hung forlorn in the chamber, amidst breaths drawn and then surrendered, and it stung like smoke.

‘Andarist-’

‘Take this name from me, Anomander. Please, take it.’

‘It has no strength. No will. Grief? Upon iron, it is rust. In fire, it is ash. In life, it is death. Brother, I will take nothing from that word.’

Andarist looked up with bleak eyes. ‘You will take my grief, Anomander, or never again shall I look upon you, or call you brother, or know your blood as mine own.’

Anomander sheathed the sword. ‘Then you shall but hear the tales of the justice I will mete out in your name, and the vengeance I will exact — which I here swear upon the still body of your beloved, and upon her father’s cold flesh.’

Andarist lowered his head, as if his brother had just vanished before his eyes, and Gripp Galas knew that he would not look up — not until Anomander had departed this place.

Silchas stepped into the chamber, and as Anomander marched past him he reached out and spun his brother round. ‘Do not do this!’ he cried. ‘Take his grief, Anomander! Upon your blade, take it!’

‘And so dull every edge, Silchas? I think not.’

‘Will you leave him to bear it alone?’

‘I am dead in his eyes,’ Anomander said in a cold tone, pulling free. ‘Let him mourn us both.’

Beneath Gripp Galas, Kadaspala laughed softly. ‘I have him now,’ he said in a hiss. ‘His portrait. I have him, at last, I have him. His portrait and his portrait and I have him, on the skin. On the skin. I have him. Wait and see.’ And the mouth beneath those empty sockets twisted with joy, and with the fingers of his hand he began painting the air.

From the hearthstone Andarist wept, and then words spilled from him, loose and filled with despair. ‘Will no one share my grief? Will no one mourn with me?’

Silchas said, ‘I will bring him back.’

But Andarist shook his head. ‘I am blind to him, Silchas. Choose now.’

‘I will bring him back!’

‘Then go,’ whispered Andarist.

Silchas rushed from the chamber.

Kadaspala struggled free of Gripp, pushing with his feet. He rose, tottering, fingers cutting at the air. ‘Listen to them!’ he shrieked. ‘Who sees here? Not them! Only me! Kadaspala, who has no eyes, is the only one who can see!’

‘Kadaspala,’ called Andarist. ‘I hold your sister in my arms. Join me here.’

‘You weep alone,’ the man replied in a voice empty of all sympathy. ‘She was never for you. You made for her this path, with your pathetic words of love and adoration, and she walked it — to her death! Look on me, O forgotten Son of Darkness, for I am your child, your malformed, twisted spawn. In these holes see your future, if you dare!’

‘Enough,’ growled Gripp, advancing on the fool. ‘Your mind is broken and now all you do is lash out.’

Kadaspala spun to face him, grinning. ‘I am not the one wielding vengeance, am I? Run to your master, you grovelling cur of a man. There’s more blood to spill!’

Gripp struck him, his blow sending the artist sprawling. He moved forward again.

‘Stop!’

He looked over to see Hish Tulla, and stepped back. ‘My pardon, milady. I am dragged across a jagged edge. It cuts upon all sides.’

Kadaspala was lying on the floor, quietly laughing and muttering under his breath.

Hish Tulla walked up to Andarist. ‘Do you see my tears?’ she asked him, kneeling and resting a hand against the side of his face. ‘You do not mourn alone, Andarist.’

And she took then the last brother into her arms.