Forge of Darkness (Kharkanas Trilogy 1) (97 page)

Almost directly below, a tower erupted in a blinding concussion, staggering her. As she stumbled against the stone wall she felt it
trembling
against her. From the doorway Varandas called, ‘Not too far, mahybe! The argument below grows fierce.’

Korya shivered, but the rain was suddenly warm. She decided that she had gone far enough and crouched down to empty her bladder.

Thunder shook the hillside again.

‘Make haste,’ Varandas said. ‘The argument approaches.’

‘Frightening me doesn’t help!’ she retorted.

The hillside was thumping, as if to giant footsteps.

She straightened and quickly made her way back to the doorway.

Haut had joined Varandas, and Korya saw that he was in his armour and helm again, and in his gauntleted hands he held his axe, all of him glistening as if oiled. A massive shape was clambering up the slope, straight for them.

‘Ware!’ Haut bellowed.

The figure halted, looked up.

Varandas raised his voice to be heard over the rain, ‘I dwell here, Azathanai, and I have guests. But you do not count among them in your agitated state. Begone, unless you would see Captain Haut displeased unto violence.’

The huge figure remained motionless, and silent.

But no, not entirely silent: Korya thought she heard sniffling sounds drifting up the slope.

‘You are driven from the valley,’ Varandas continued, ‘and you bear wounds and so would unleash your temper. There are plenty of towers about that are unoccupied, and they will suffer your fury with poetic indifference. Alter your path, Azathanai, and recall the lessons in the valley below.’

The creature sidled sideways along the hillside, seeming to use its hands as much as it did its feet to move across the ground. Every now and then one of those hands reared back and punched the earth, sending thunder through the hill. The tower swayed to each impact with an ominous grinding of stone.

Slowly, the rain obscured the Azathanai’s form, and then stole it away, although the thumping punches continued, diminishing with distance.

Glancing across at Haut, Korya saw him leaning on the axe. Water ran like a curtain from the rim of his helm, parting round the upthrust tusks but otherwise obscuring his face. She advanced on him.

‘Your name alone scared off a giant who’s been knocking down towers with his fists,’ she said.

Varandas grunted. ‘She accuses you, Haut, of notoriety. What say you in defence?’

‘Her,’ he replied. ‘
Her
fists.’

‘Very good,’ nodded Varandas, who then turned to Korya. ‘Thus, you
have
your master’s answer. I would continue to arbitrate this debate, but alas, I am getting wet. I go to light a fire in the hearth within—’

‘You don’t have a hearth within,’ said Korya.

‘Oh. Then I shall have to make space for one, of course. In the meantime, I suggest you thank your master for fending off the wrath of Kilmandaros. Why, I hear even her husband, Grizzin Farl, flees her temper. And now I see why.’ He then went inside.

Korya glared at Haut. ‘Who drove her from the valley?’ she demanded.

‘You should thank me indeed,’ he replied, ‘and be mindful of my courage these past few days. Twice now I have stood fast before the perilous ferment of a woman’s fury.’ He shouldered the axe. ‘As to your query, I suppose we shall find out soon.’

Something small and bedraggled darted out from the tower, scampered like a hare down the slope and was quickly lost from sight.

‘What was that?’

Haut sighed. ‘Varandas has been playing with dolls again, hasn’t he?’

* * *

With Arathan trailing his father, they rode among abandoned towers. The ground grew more uneven, the flatlands giving way to rounded hills. After a time, as the square edifices became more numerous, it occurred to Arathan that they were entering what passed for a city. There were no streets as such, nor was there any particular order to the layout of dwellings, but it was easy to imagine thousands of Jaghut moving to and fro between the towers.

The sky, a dull grey, was descending over them, and as they travelled onward the first drops of rain began falling. In moments, a deluge engulfed the scene. Arathan felt the water soaking through, defeating with ease the armour he wore, and a chill gripped him. He could barely make out his father ahead, the faded once-black cape like a patch of mist, Calaras like a standing stone that refused to draw nearer. The ground grew slick and treacherous and Hellar slowed her trot to a plodding walk.

Arathan fought a desire to slip still further back, to lose sight of his father. The strangeness of this city offered an invitation to explore, while the rain promised the mystery of all that remained unseen and, perhaps, unknowable. He felt moments from cutting a tether and drifting away.

Ahead, Draconus drew up before a tower and dismounted. Taking the reins in one hand, he led Calaras in through the gaping doorway.

Arathan arrived. He slipped down from Hellar, intending to follow his father into the tower, but instead he hesitated, feeling a presence nearby. His warhorse’s ears flicked as she caught a sound off to the right – the splash of heavy feet thumping through the mud. Moments
later
, a huge form appeared: a woman, yet far more massive in girth and height than even Grizzin Farl. Her arms seemed over-long and the hands at the ends of them were huge and battered. Her long hair hung in thick braids, clotted with mud, as if she had fallen only moments earlier. She wore bedraggled furs black as pitch, also mud-stained. As she edged closer, seeming to squint at Arathan, he beheld a broad, flat face, the mouth wide and full-lipped, the eyes buried in puffy slits.

He saw no weapons on her. Nor was she wearing armour. She walked up and reached out, snaring thick fingers under the strap of his helm, and then dragged him close. He strained as she lifted him from the ground to peer into his face. Then, before he began choking, she lowered him down and released him. Saying nothing, she stepped past and made her way into the tower.

Arathan still felt her hard knuckles under his jaw. The muscles of his neck and back throbbed with pain. Fumbling, he unstrapped the helm and dragged it from his head, and then pulled off his leather cap. The rain pelting his head was like ice. He turned and looked out into the city, until Hellar nudged him.

Collecting up the reins, he led his mounts through the doorway.

Within was a single room, at least fifteen paces across. Calaras stood near the wall opposite, and his father had been emptying a bag of feed in front of him. Draconus had turned and straightened with the strange woman’s arrival.

She was divesting herself of her furs near the centre of the room, dropping them to the stone floor around her feet. Beneath them she was naked. ‘Of all your spawn, Suzerain,’ she said in a thin voice, ‘I sensed no madness in this one.’ She looked up with an almost shy glance and added, ‘I trust you killed all the others. A big stone to crush their skulls, and then you wrenched free their heads from their bodies. Dismembered and fed into the fires of the hottest forge. Until nothing but ashes remained.’

‘Kilmandaros,’ said Draconus. ‘You are far from your home.’

She grunted. ‘No one ever visits. For long.’ Her attention swung to Arathan as he edged his horses past her. ‘Is he awakened?’ she asked.

‘No,’ Draconus replied. ‘And yes.’

‘Then you did not save him for me.’

‘Kilmandaros, we met your husband upon the trail.’

‘And my son, too, I expect. With that wretched friend of his, who did what you asked of him.’

To that Draconus said nothing, turning instead to his son. ‘Arathan, ready us a small fire when you are done with your horses. There is fuel against the wall to your left.’

Discomforted, struggling to keep his eyes from the woman’s nakedness,
Arathan
set down his helm and concentrated on unsaddling Hellar and Besra.

‘We also met your sister in spirit, if not blood,’ Draconus said.

Kilmandaros made a hissing sound. ‘I leave her to grow fat on superstitions. One day the Forulkan will hunger for Dog-Runner land, and we will resume our war and, perchance, end it.’

‘You would make weapons of your followers?’

‘What other good are they, Suzerain? Besides, the Forulkan do not worship me. They have made illimitable law their god, even as they suffer its ceaseless corruption at their own hands. At some point,’ she said, moving close to stand directly behind Arathan, ‘they will deem manifest their right to all that the Dog-Runners own, and make of this law a zealotry to justify genocide.’

‘Foolish,’ Draconus pronounced. ‘I am told that there are Jaghut among the Dog-Runners now, assuming thrones of godhood and tyranny. Did the Forulkan not suffer sufficient humiliation against the Tiste, that they would now make bold claims against both Dog-Runner and Jaghut?’

‘That depends,’ she said, ‘on what I whisper in their ears.’

Feeling the breath of her words on the back of his neck, Arathan quickly went to the other horse and began removing the tack.

She came close again.

‘Tyranny breeds,’ Draconus said from across the room, ‘when by every worthy measure it should starve.’

‘Scarcity begets strife, Suzerain, is what you meant. It was hunger that sent my children against the Tiste—’

‘Hunger for iron. The need was manufactured, the justification invented. But this is a stale argument between us. I have forgiven you, but only because you failed.’

‘And so I weigh your magnanimity, Suzerain, and find it light on the scales. But as you say, this is behind us now.’

When her hand slipped round, over Arathan’s left hip, and slid down to his crotch, Draconus said, ‘Leave off, Kilmandaros.’

The hand withdrew and Kilmandaros moved away. ‘The night is young,’ she said, sighing. ‘I know his desires and would satisfy them. This is between him and me, not you, Suzerain.’

‘I have words that will drive you away,’ Draconus said.

‘You would do that to me? And to him?’

‘Arathan will cease to concern you, I’m afraid. But that is a consequence of what I must tell you, not its purpose.’

‘Then leave it until the morning.’

‘I cannot.’

‘You never did understand pleasure, Draconus. You make love fraught when it should be easy, and fill need with intensity when it should be
gentle
. Perhaps one day I shall proclaim myself the goddess of love – what do you think of that, O Suzerain? Would not this aspect welcome you, as love welcomes the night and as a caress welcomes the darkness?’

Finished with the horses for the moment, Arathan carried the cook-pack to the centre of the chamber. Here he lit a lantern and set out a pot, utensils and food. Sometime in the past four pavestones had been removed to make a firepit. Lifting the lantern, Arathan looked up, but the light could not reach high enough for him to see the ceiling. Still, he could feel an upward draught. He made his way over to the supply of fuel his father had indicated, and found a few dozen large, seasoned dung chips.

Through all of this, and even when he returned to the firepit, he felt her eyes tracking him.

‘What think you, son of Draconus?’ she asked him. ‘Would I make you a good goddess of love?’

He concentrated on lighting the fire, and then said, ‘You would offer a vastness of longing none could satisfy, milady, and so look down upon an unhappy world.’

Her breath caught.

‘Come to that,’ he said, watching smoke rise from the tinder, ‘you may already be the goddess of love.’

‘Suzerain, I will have your son this night.’

‘I fear not. His is the longing that afflicts the young. You offer too much and he yearns to be lost.’

Arathan felt his face grow hot. His father could track every thought in his mind, with a depth of percipience that horrified him.
I am too easily known. My thoughts walk well-worn paths, my every desire poorly disguised. I am written plainly for all to see. My father. This Azathanai woman. Feren and Rint. Even Raskan found no mystery in my tale
.

One day, I will make myself unknown to all
.

Except Feren, and our child
.

‘By your words,’ said Kilmandaros, ‘you reveal the weakness of the Consort. You are found in love, Draconus, yet fear its humiliation. Indeed, I am this fell goddess, if in looking into your eyes I see a man made naked by dread.’

‘In the company of Errastas, your son has committed murder,’ said Draconus.

Arathan closed his eyes. The flames of the small fire he crouched over reached through his lids with light and heat, but neither offered solace. He could hear her breathing, close by, and it was a desperate sound to his ears.

‘By what right do you make this accusation?’ she demanded.

‘He and his half-brother are the slayers of Karish. They found power
in
her blood, and in her death. They now walk the lands stained with her blood, and as my son noted to me earlier, they bear it proudly. Perhaps your son less proudly, since he would not show himself to us. No matter. That which Errastas made for me was forged in blood.’