Authors: Steven Erikson
Grizzin watched the nobleborn leave the tavern. He saw how others looked up at the white-skinned brother of Lord Anomander, as if in hope, but if they sought confidence or certainty in Silchas Ruin’s mien, the gloom no doubt defeated that desire. Twisting in his chair, Grizzin caught the eye of the serving woman, and with a broad smile he beckoned her over.
* * *
High Priestess Emral Lanear stepped up on to the platform and looked across to see the historian near the far wall, as if contemplating a leap to the stones far below. She looked round, and then spoke. ‘So this is your refuge.’
He glanced at her, briefly, from over a shoulder, and then said, ‘Not all posts have been abandoned, High Priestess.’
She approached. ‘What is it you guard, Rise Herat, demanding such vigilance?’
Shrugging, he said, ‘Perspective, I suppose.’
‘And what does that win you?’
‘I see a bridge,’ he replied. ‘Undefended, and yet … none dare cross it.’
‘I think,’ she mused, ‘simple patience will see a resolution. This lack of opposition is but temporary.’
His expression betrayed doubt. He said, ‘You assume a resolve among the highborn that I have yet to see. If they stand with hands upon the swords at their sides, they are turned against the man who now shares her dark heart. Their hatred and perhaps envy of Draconus consumes them. Meanwhile, Vatha Urusander methodically eliminates all opposition, and I do not sense much outrage among the nobility.’
‘They will muster under Lord Anomander’s call, historian. When he returns.’
He looked her way once more, but again only for a moment before his gaze skittered away. ‘Anomander’s Houseblades will not be enough.’
‘Lord Silchas Ruin, acting in his brother’s place, is already assembling allies.’
‘Yes, the gratitude of chains.’
She flinched, and then sighed. ‘Rise Herat, lighten my mood, I beg you.’
At that he swung round, leaned his back against the wall and propped his elbows atop it. ‘Seven of your young priestesses trapped Cedorpul in a room. It seems that in boredom they had fallen to comparing experiences at their initiations.’
‘Oh dear. What lure does he offer, do you think?’
‘He is soft, one supposes, like a pillow.’
‘Hmm, yes, that might be it. And the pillow invites, too, a certain angle of repose.’
The historian smiled. ‘If you say so. In any case, he sought to flee, and then, when he found his path to the door barred, he pleaded his weakness for beauty.’
‘Ah, compliments.’
‘But spread out among all seven women, why, their worth was not much.’
‘Does he still live?’
‘It was close, High Priestess, especially when he suggested they continue the conversation with all clothing divested.’
Smiling, she walked to the wall beside the man. ‘Bless Cedorpul. He holds fast to his youth.’
The historian’s amusement fell away. ‘While Endest Silann seems to age with each night that passes. I wonder, indeed, if he is not somehow afflicted.’
‘In some,’ she said, ‘the soul is a hoarder of years, and makes a wealth of burdens unearned.’
‘A flow of blood from Endest Silann’s hands is yet another kind of blessing,’ Rise observed, twisting round to join her in looking out upon the city. ‘At least that is done with, now, but I wonder if some life-force left him through those holy wounds.’
She thought of the mirror in her chamber, that so obsessed her, and there came to her then, following the historian’s words, a sudden fear.
Does it steal from me, too? Thief of my youth? Or is time alone my stalker? Mirror, you show me nothing I would want to see, and like a tale of old you curse me with my own regard.
She shrugged the notion off. ‘The birth of the sacred in spilled blood – I fear this precedent, Rise. I fear it deeply.’
He nodded. ‘She did not deny it, then.’
‘By that blood,’ said Emral Lanear, ‘Mother Dark was able to see through Endest’s eyes, and from it all manner of power flowed – so much that she fled its touch. This at least she confessed to me, before she sealed the Chamber of Night from all but her Consort.’
‘That is a precious confession,’ Rise said. ‘I note your burgeoning privilege, High Priestess, in the eyes of Mother Dark. What will you do with it?’
She looked away. At last they had come to the reason for her seeking out the historian. She did not welcome it. ‘I see only one path to peace.’
‘I would hear it.’
‘The Consort must be pushed aside,’ she said. ‘There must be a wedding.’
‘Pushed aside? Is that even possible?’
She nodded. ‘In creating the Terondai upon the Citadel floor, he manifested the Gate of Darkness. Whatever arcane powers he had, he surely surrendered them to that gift.’ After a moment she shook her head. ‘There are mysteries to Lord Draconus. The Azathanai name him Suzerain of Night. What consort is worth such an honorific? Even being a highborn among the Tiste is insufficient elevation, and since when did the Azathanai treat our nobility with anything but amused indifference? No. Perhaps, we might conclude, the title is a measure of respect for his proximity to Mother Dark.’
‘But you are not convinced.’
She shrugged. ‘She must set him aside. Oh, give him a secret room that they might share—’
‘High Priestess, you cannot be serious! Do you imagine Urusander will bow to that indulgence? And what of Mother Dark herself? Is she to divide her fidelity? Choosing and denying her favour as suits her whim? Neither man would accept that!’
Emral sighed. ‘Forgive me. You are right. For peace to return to our realm, someone has to lose. It must be Lord Draconus.’
‘Thus, one man is to sacrifice everything, but gain nothing by it.’
‘Untrue. He wins peace, and for a man obsessed with gifts, is that one not worthwhile?’
Rise Herat shook his head. ‘His gifts are meant to be shared. He would look out upon it as if from the wrong side of a prison’s bars. Peace? Not for him, that gift. Not in his heart. Not in his soul. A sacrifice? What man would willingly destroy himself, for
any
cause?’
‘If she asks him.’
‘A bartering of love, High Priestess? Pity is too weak a word for the fate of Draconus.’
She knew all of this. She had been at war with these thoughts for days and nights, until each became a wheel turning in an ever-deepening rut. The brutality of it exhausted her, as in her mind she set Mother Dark’s love for a man against the fate of the realm. It was one thing to announce the necessity for the only path she saw through this civil war, measuring the mollification of the highborn upon the carcass, figurative or literal, of the Consort, in exchange for a broadening of privilege among the officers of Urusander’s Legion, but none of this yet bore the weight of Mother Dark’s will. And as to that will, the goddess was silent.
She will not choose. She but indulges her lover and his clumsy expressions of love. She is as good as turned away from all of us, while Kurald Galain descends into ruin.
Will it take Urusander’s mailed fist pounding upon the door to awaken her?
‘You will have to kill him,’ Rise Herat said.
She could not argue that observation.
‘The balance of success, however,’ the historian went on, ‘will be found in choosing whose hand wields the knife. That assassin, High Priestess, cannot but earn eternal condemnation from Mother Dark.’
‘A child of this newborn Light, then,’ she replied, ‘for whom such condemnation means little.’
‘Urusander is to arrive to the wedding bed awash in the blood of his new wife’s slain lover? No, it cannot be a child of Lios.’ His gaze fixed on hers. ‘Assure me that you see that, I beg you.’
‘Then who among her beloved worshippers would choose such a fate?’
‘I think, on this stage you describe, choice has nowhere to dance.’
She caught her breath. ‘Whose hand do we force?’
‘We? High Priestess, I am not—’
‘No,’ she snapped. ‘You just play with words. A chewer of ideas too frightened to swallow the bone. Is not the flavour woefully short-lived, historian? Or is the habit of chewing sufficient reward for one such as you?’
He looked away, and she saw that he was trembling. ‘My thoughts but spiral to a single place,’ he slowly said, ‘where stands a single man. He is his own fortress, this man that I see before me. But behind his walls he paces in fury. That anger must give us the breach. Our way in to him.’
‘How does it sit with you?’ Emral asked.
‘Like a stone in my gut, High Priestess.’
‘The scholar steps into the world, and for all the soldiers that comprise your myriad ideas, you finally comprehend the price of living as they do, as they must. A host of faces – you now wear them all, historian.’
He said nothing, turning to stare out to the distant north horizon.
‘One man, then,’ she said. ‘A most honourable man, whom I love as a son.’ She sighed, even as tears stung her eyes. ‘He is all but turned away already, and she from him. Poor Anomander.’
‘The son slays the lover, in the name of the man who would be his father. Necessity delivers its own madness, High Priestess.’
‘We face difficulties,’ Emral said. ‘Anomander is fond of Draconus, and this sentiment is mutual. It is measured in great respect and more: it possesses true affection. How do we sunder all of that?’
‘Honour,’ he replied.
‘How so?’
‘They are two men who hold honour above all else. It is the proof of integrity, after all, and they choose to live that proof in all that they do.’ He faced her again. ‘A battle is coming. Facing Urusander, Anomander will command all the Houseblades of the Greater and Lesser Houses. And, perhaps, a resurrected Hust Legion. Paint this picture I offer, High Priestess. The field of battle, the forces arrayed opposite one another. Where, then, do you see Lord Draconus? At the head of his formidable Houseblades – who so efficiently annihilated the Borderswords? He will stand on his honour, yes?’
‘Anomander will not deny him,’ she whispered.
‘And then?’ Rise asked. ‘When the highborn see who would stand with them in the battle to come? Will they not in rage – in fury – step to one side?’
‘But wait, historian. Surely Anomander will blame his highborn allies for abandoning the field?’
‘Perhaps at first. Anomander will see that defeat is inevitable. Thus, there will be the humiliation of the surrender to Urusander, and he cannot but see the Consort’s gesture as the cause of that. A surrender forced by Draconus’s pride, and when the Consort remains unrepentant – he can do no other, as he will see the surrender as a betrayal, as he must; indeed, he will understand it as his own death sentence – then, Lanear, we see them set upon one another.’
‘The highborn will acclaim Anomander’s disavowal of that friendship,’ she said, nodding. ‘Draconus will end up isolated. He cannot hope to defeat such united opposition. That battle, historian, will be the last of the civil war.’
‘I love this civilization too much,’ Rise said, as if tasting the words for himself, ‘to see it destroyed. Mother Dark must never know any of this.’
‘She will never forgive her First Son.’
‘No.’
‘Honour,’ she said, ‘is a terrible thing.’
‘All the more egregious our crime, High Priestess, in forging a weapon in the flames of integrity, a fire we will feed until it burns itself out. You see him as a son. I do not envy you, Lanear.’
A voice screamed in her mind, rising up from her wounded soul. The pain that birthed that scream was unbearable. Love and betrayal on a single blade. She felt the edge turn and twist.
But I see no other way! Must Kharkanas die in flames? Will Urusander’s soldiers be made into crass thugs, and as thugs take power unopposed, unchecked? Are we doomed to make lovers of war into our rulers? How soon, then, before Mother Dark reveals a raptor’s eyes, with talons gripping the arms of the throne? Oh, Anomander, I am sorry.
Roughly, she wiped at her eyes and cheeks. ‘I will trap the crime in my mirror,’ she said in a broken voice, ‘where it can howl unheard.’
‘And to think how Syntara underestimates you.’
She shook her head. ‘No longer, perhaps. I have written to her.’
‘You have? Then it begins in earnest.’
‘We will see. She is yet to reply.’
‘Did you address her as an equal, High Priestess?’
She nodded.
‘Then you make your language
familiar,
in the ancient sense of the word. She will preen in that plumage.’
‘Yes. Vanity was ever the breach in her walls.’
‘We assemble a sordid list here, Lanear. When fortresses abound, we make sieges life’s daily habit. In such a world, we each stand alone at day’s end, and face in fear our barred door.’ The strain deepened the lines on his face. ‘A most sordid list.’
‘Each one a single step upon the path, historian. No longer can you hold to this post, high above the world. Now, Rise Herat, you must walk among the rest of us.’
‘I will write none of this. The privilege is gone from my heart.’
‘It is just the blood on your hands,’ she replied, without much sympathy. ‘When it is all said and done, you can wash them clean in the river below. And in time, as that river flows on and on, the truth will be dispersed, until none could hope to discern your crimes. Or mine.’
‘Then I will see you kneeling at my side on that day, High Priestess.’
She nodded. ‘If there can be whores of history, Rise, then we are surely in their company.’
He was studying her, with the face of a condemned man.
See now, woman? The mirrors are everywhere.
* * *
Step by step, pilgrims made a path. Seeking a place of tragedy deemed holy, or a site sanctified by nothing more than a truth or two scraped down to the bone, the ones who sought out such places transformed them into shrines. Endest Silann understood this now: that the sacred was not found, but delivered. Memory spun the thread, each pilgrim a single strand, stretched and twisted, spun, spun into life. It did not matter that he had been the first. Others among his priestly kin were setting out, into the face of winter, to arrive at the ruined estate of Andarist. They walked in his footsteps, but left no blood on the trail. They arrived and they stood, looking upon the site of past slaughter, but did so without comprehension.