Authors: Steven Erikson
The woman was now regarding the huddle of battered Seregahl. Her lip curled, but she said nothing.
The gate slammed open off to their right and a moment later a figure stumbled into view. Haut drew a sudden breath, and then stepped forward.
A Jaghut, his clothes rotted, his leathers stained with mould. Roots threaded his long, unkempt hair, and soil had mottled the skin of his face and arms. Five hundred years buried beneath the yard had not treated him well. Sighing, Haut drew closer, and then spoke. ‘Gethol, your brother will be pleased to see you.’
The Jaghut slowly shifted his gaze, glancing briefly at Haut and then away again. He brushed feebly at the dirt covering him. ‘Not dead yet then.’
‘He’s working on it.’
Gethol spat mud from his mouth, and then coughed and looked over to the Seregahl. ‘Five went down,’ he said. ‘That should do.’
‘The house has the old god?’
‘Well enough.’ Gethol coughed and spat again.
‘Ah,’ said Haut. ‘That is a relief.’
‘Where is Cadig Aval?’
‘Dead. Apparently.’
‘Yet there are living souls in the house. I could feel them.’
Haut shrugged. ‘There are, but not for much longer. Will that be a problem?’
‘How should I know? No, the house will prevail. This time.’
Returning his attention to the two Tiste in the tower window, Haut waited until he was sure that Korya was looking at him. He waved her down. A moment later both figures pulled back from the window, drawing the shutters closed.
Gethol asked, ‘Where is he then?’
‘In the Tower of Hate.’
Gothos’s brother grunted, and then said, ‘Why, it’s as though I never left.’
* * *
‘This fire is dying,’ Cred said, leaning closer to study the hissing pumice stones in the bronze bowl. ‘Not my magic, not my prowess, but the fire itself.’ He straightened and looked around. ‘See how the firelight dims everywhere? Something is stealing the heat.’
Brella scowled across at him. ‘Then we starve.’
‘Or learn to eat things raw, as the Dog-Runners do,’ said Stark.
‘They cook their food like anyone else,’ Brella retorted. She turned her attention to the younger woman. ‘A simple walk through the camp would have shown you that. Instead, you cling to ignorant beliefs as if they could redefine the world. I see belligerence settle in your face, so downturned, the frown and the skittish diffidence in your eyes – so like your mother, may the Sea Hoarder give peace to her soul.’
Cred grunted. ‘Stark’s mother would have defied the very water filling her lungs. Oh, but I admired her for that. In the days before magic, when helplessness haunted us all.’ He gestured at the ebbing glow in the brazier before him. ‘The ghosts of that time return. And all the driftwood gone from the strand, nothing but grasses in the plain inland. I sit here, facing all that I have lost.’
‘I am nothing like my mother,’ Stark said to Brella. ‘Just as you are nothing like your daughter.’
Grinning, Cred glanced over to see Brella’s scowl deepen. ‘Not my daughter any more,’ she said. ‘She casts off the name I gave her. So that she might command us all, and ever from a distance. Captain of a broken army. Captain of beaten refugees, the wreckage of a conquered people. What am I to her? Not her mother.’
‘The High King’s fleet did for our highborn,’ Cred pointed out. ‘You and your daughter come closest to anyone who might resurrect a claim to the royal line.’
Brella snorted.
Cred shook his head. ‘You held the Living Claim, Brella, and then gave it into my keeping. That is the responsibility of the Ilnap bloodline. By this one ritual, you assert your claim to the Lost Throne. Even your daughter does not deny this.’
‘“Captain.”’
‘She chooses that title because she sees no future awaiting us. This is why we’re here, Brella, vowing to march on death itself. The First Betrayal is the Last Betrayal. So it was prophesied.’
Hissing under her breath, Brella rose. ‘I am done with these pointless words. Defeat has become the nectar that sustains us, as would the vile smoke of d’bayang. She leads us on to the path of no return. So be it. But let there be no illusions. We do not lead, only follow. And where this will end, the Living Claim lives no longer.’
‘Curse the High King—’ began Stark, but Brella turned on her.
‘Curse him? Why? We did nothing but raid his coast, loot his merchants and send their ships to the deep. Year after year, season upon season, we grew indolent in our feeding upon the labour of others. Curse him not, Stark. The retribution was just.’
With that, she walked away.
Cred returned his attention to the dying fire. ‘The sorcery within me is no weaker for this loss. How is such a thing possible?’
Shrugging, Stark unrolled her bedding and prepared for sleep, even though the day was barely half done. ‘Perhaps something feeds on what you offer.’
Cred frowned at the woman, and then nodded. ‘Yes, as I said earlier.’
‘No, not your magic, Cred. Just the fire, nothing else. Each day we lose more heat – where is the season of thaw? I see the sea flocks flying into the north. Crabs march the shallows, awaiting the next full moon. All around us, the world prepares its time of breeding and renewal. But not here, not in this camp.’
She settled down, drawing up the heavy furs until they covered her entirely.
Fixing his attention once more on the dying fire, Cred considered Stark’s words. If indeed the season was turning around them, then they had drifted inward. Stark had the truth of that. Curling down a spoke to settle on the hub, and at the very heart of that hub …
Hood.
He straightened.
It has begun.
* * *
Varandas squatted opposite Hood. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I am ending time.’
‘No wonder it’s taking so long.’ Varandas glanced away, seeing the approach of the lone Azathanai who had elected to join this hoary legion. ‘One comes,’ he said to Hood. ‘She has circled for days. Only now are her perambulations revealed as a spiral. Mayhap she will challenge you.’
‘I am proof against challenges,’ Hood replied.
‘Most dullards are. Let reason bludgeon you about the head and then, like a dazed fly, retreat in wobbling flight. The witless are known to defy, with piggy eyes and pressed lips. Making a knuckled fist of their face, they proclaim the stars no more than studs of quartz upon the night sky’s velvet cloak, or the beasts of the wild as simple fodder serving our appetites. They carve every asinine opinion in the stone of their obstinacy and take pride in their own stupidity. Why is it that there comes a time in every civilization when the idiots rise to dominate all discourse, with beetled brows and reams of spite? Who are such fools, and how long did they lurk mostly unseen, simply awaiting their day in the benighted light?’
‘Are you done, Varandas?’ Hood asked.
‘The witless have no comprehension of the rhetorical. They misapprehend unanswerable questions, since in their puny worlds of comprehension they possess none. Only answers, solid as lumps of shit, and just as foul.’ Varandas looked up then, at the arrival of the Azathanai. He nodded, but her attention was on Hood.
She spoke. ‘The dead are marching, Hood. Clever, I suppose. When all wondered how we would march into that realm, instead you bring that realm to us.’
‘Spingalle, I did not think you fled too far.’
‘I never fled at all,’ the Azathanai replied.
‘Where, then?’
‘The Tower of Hate. Penance.’
Varandas frowned up at her. ‘You know, if you truly sought to hide among us Jaghut, you should not have elected the form of a woman of such beauty as to take our breath away.’
She glanced at him. ‘Unintended, Varandas. But if my appearance still delights you, I can oblige you in kind.’
‘Make me a woman? I think not, and shall remain content with occasional misapprehension. Oh, and if you will indulge me, sidelong admiration of the impostor in our company.’
Jaghut tended towards the lean and bony, but Spingalle had defied that common form, and in the contrast that was her fullness she elicited universal wonder among the Jaghut, men and women both. Varandas studied her for a moment longer, and then with a sigh he returned his attention to Hood. ‘She is right. That was clever.’
‘Even the witless will shed a spark every now and then,’ Hood said. ‘Spingalle, I was under the impression that the Tower of Hate was solid.’
‘No fault of mine if you believe everything Caladan Brood tells you. But then, you were always a credulous lot, prone to the literal, inured to the figurative. But this molestation of time, Hood, it seems … unwise.’
‘Wisdom is overrated,’ Hood said. ‘Now then, Spingalle, will you indeed join us when the day comes?’
‘I will. Death is a curiosity. Even, perhaps, a hobby of mine. I confess to some fascination, admittedly lurid. This notion of flesh that passes, soft shells that decay once the spirit has fled, and how such an affliction haunts you all.’
‘Us mortals, you mean?’ Varandas asked. ‘I’ll have you know, Azathanai, that those Jaghut who by chance escape premature death invariably welcome an end when at last it arrives. The flesh is a weary vessel, and that which crumbles soon becomes a prison to the soul. Death, accordingly, is a relief. Indeed, an escape.’
She frowned. ‘But why confound a soul with the uncertainty of its immortality?’
‘Perhaps,’ ventured Hood, ‘to awaken in us the value of faith.’
‘And what value has faith, Hood?’
‘Belief exists in order to humble the mundane world of proofs. If mortal flesh is a prison, so too is a world too well known. Within and without, we desire – and perhaps need – a means of escape.’
‘An escape you name
faith.
Thank you, Hood. You have enlightened me.’
‘Not too much, one hopes,’ Varandas said in a growl. ‘Lest all wonder die in your lavender eyes.’
‘Beauty desires admiration, Varandas, until it tires of it.’
‘And does it now pall in your regard, Spingalle?’
‘Probably. Besides, too much flattery and the subject begins to doubt its veracity, or at the very least, its worth. And besides, what worth is it, Varandas, to be the object of aesthetic admiration? I but give shape to your imagination.’
‘A rare gift,’ Varandas replied.
‘Not as rare as you think.’
‘Your Jaghut guise has soured you, Azathanai. Our misery is infectious.’
‘This too is probable. Hood, the Azath House in your abandoned city has won a reprieve. Even the guardian ghost knows invigoration. Still, that was a risky endeavour.’
Hood shrugged where he sat before his cold flames. ‘Do me a favour, Spingalle, and spread the word. It will be very soon now.’
‘Very well. Varandas, I should never have slept with you.’
‘True, as I remain eternally smitten.’
‘Somewhat pathetic of you, and therefore decidedly unattractive.’
‘Such is the curse of one who loses. But seed this ground between us with hope, and see me flower anew, bearing the sweet scent of delight and anticipation.’
‘Varandas, we are about to war with the dead.’
‘Yes, well, bad timing is another curse of mine, one not so easily discarded.’
She nodded to them both, and walked away.
Varandas stared after her, and then sighed again. A moment later he said, ‘More guests are imminent, Hood. Led by none other than Gothos’s brother.’
‘Don’t be ridic— Ah, well, that was a possibility, wasn’t it? What does he want with me, I wonder?’
‘A fist to your nose, I should expect.’
Hood grunted. ‘Beats a long conversation. In any case, it wasn’t really my fault.’
‘Yes,’ nodded Varandas, ‘be sure to tell him that.’
* * *
Arathan found himself glancing sidelong at the Thel Akai woman again and again, as she prowled about the low wall enclosing the yard of the Azath House. Her sword was still wet with the blood of a slain Seregahl, and she moved with a grace belying her martial girth. He could not decide if he admired warriors. They had been part of his life for as long as he could remember. As a child he had at first sought to shy away from them, with their clunking weapons and rustling armour. The world never seemed so dangerous as to demand such accoutrements, but that was, of course, naught but the naivety of a child. He had long since learned otherwise.
Korya was arguing with Haut, but they had pulled away, to keep the exchange more or less private. The surviving Seregahl had marched off, limping and battered and, possibly, humbled. Death had a way of divesting the arrogant of their pretences. Even so, he did not expect the humility to last long.
The air was strangely still, yet it seemed to hold an echo of the chaos and carnage that had ripped through the yard not so long ago. The dust hanging in the air was reluctant to settle, or even drift away. If a breath could be held by inanimate nature, then surely it was being held now, and Arathan wondered why.
Snarling something, Korya wheeled from Haut and approached Arathan. ‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Go? Where?’
‘Anywhere, just away from here!’
They set out, leaving behind Haut, the Thel Akai and a Jaghut woman who now closed in on the captain, carrying in one hand a jug of wine.
‘And that,’ said Arathan as he fell in beside a swiftly striding Korya, ‘is what never makes sense.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘This dead civilization. This Omtose Phellack, the abandoned city. Look at that Jaghut woman now with your Haut. Sharing that jug. Wine? Where from? Who made it? Have you seen any vineyards?’
‘Sanad,’ said Korya after glancing back over a shoulder. Her scowl deepened. ‘An old lover of his, I think. They’re getting drunk together. Again. I don’t like Jaghut women.’
‘Why?’
‘They know too much and say too little.’
‘Well, I can see how that might irritate you.’
‘Careful, Arathan, I’m not in the mood. Besides, you have no idea what awaits me. You see before you a young woman, a hostage now orphaned, but I am so much more than that.’
‘So you keep telling me.’
‘You’ll see soon enough.’