Shivering under his furs, Rint began to believe in the power of Night, in the inescapable breath of Mother Dark. Wherever the sun set, she would then rise, as if bound now to the raw truths of the universe. She had ceased being a Tiste. Even the title of goddess now seemed paltry and insufficient to evoke what she had become.
He did not understand how a mortal could make that journey, could become something
other
. But clearly she had done so. And Lord Draconus stood at her side and, Rint now suspected, shared something of the power his lover possessed.
The Azathanai met Draconus eye to eye, as equals, and even, on occasion, in deference. The Suzerain of Night: he had heard that title used for Draconus before, but it was not a popular one among the Tiste, who objected to its presumption, its arrogant impropriety. Well, as far
as
Rint was now concerned, they were all fools to denigrate Draconus’s claim to that title. Whatever it meant, it was a thing of power, brutally real and profoundly dangerous.
There was no question now in Rint’s mind that Draconus posed a threat. The highborn were right to fear the Consort and his influence in the court. They were right to want him ousted, and if not ousted, then brought down, discarded and driven away in disgrace.
Months past, Urusander’s agents had come among the Bordersword villages. They had argued their case – the need for a husband for Mother Dark, rather than a consort, and the obvious choice for that husband: Vatha Urusander, commander of the Legion. Those agents had gained little ground among the Borderswords. Their cause rode currents of conflict, and the Borderswords had lost their thirst for war. Those fierce fools had left in frustration.
Rint knew that his opinion counted for something among the loose council of his people, and he vowed that the next time such an agent visited, he would lend his support. Draconus needed to go. Even better, someone should kill the man and so end this deadly rise to power.
He had seen enough, here on this journey, to choose now to stand with Urusander. Hunn Raal and his comrades were not so blinded by personal ambition as Rint and his kin had believed.
No, the next time will be different
.
When Draconus announced that the contract had ended, concluded to the Lord’s satisfaction, Rint had struggled to hide his relief. Now he could take Feren away from all this: from the Lord’s cruel needs and the son’s pathetic ones. They would accompany Raskan as far as Abara Delack, because the man deserved that much – it was hardly Raskan’s fault that he served a beast.
They could now leave the lands of the Azathanai.
He rode hard to catch up to his sister, only to find his fears unfounded and, better still, that she was in good company.
* * *
‘I am not always cruel.’
Raskan spun round at the words. The saddle slipped from his hands and he staggered back. ‘No,’ he moaned. ‘Go away.’
Instead Olar Ethil drew closer. ‘Yours is an unhealthy fire,’ she said. ‘Let me douse it. Let me heal you.’
‘Please,’ he begged.
But this denial she received as an invitation. She reached out, as Raskan sank to his knees, and took his head in her hands. ‘Poisons of desire are the deadliest of all. I can cure you and so end your torment.’ She paused and then added, ‘It will give me pleasure to
do
so. Pleasure such as you cannot conceive. You are a man and so cannot know what it is to be sated – not in those few panting breaths following release that is all you can ever know – but the swollen bliss of a woman, ah, well, Gate Sergeant Raskan, this is what I seek and it is what I can offer you.’
The hands, pressed against the sides of his head, felt cool and soft, plump and yielding as they seemed to meld into his skin, and then the bones of his face, the fingers reaching through his temples. The heat of his thoughts vanished at their touch.
‘Open your eyes,’ she said.
He did so and found only her bared belly. It filled his vision.
‘Whence you came, Raskan.’
He stared at the scars and would have turned his head but she held him fast. He reached up to pull away her hands but found only her wrists – the rest had flowed into him, merging with the bones. In horror, he felt his fingertips track a seamless path from the skin of her wrists to his own face.
She drew him closer to her belly. ‘Worship is a strange thing,’ she said. ‘It seeks … satiation. Revelation is nothing without it. As you are fulfilled, I am filled. As you revel in surrendering, I delight in your gift. You need no other gods than this one. I am your only goddess now, Raskan, and I invite you inside.’
He wanted to cry out but no sound came from his throat.
She pressed his face against her belly, and he felt a scar open, splitting ever wider. Blood smeared his cheeks, leaked past his lips. Choking, he sought to draw a breath. Instead, fluids filled his lungs.
He felt her push his head into her belly, and then the edges of the gash tightened round his neck. His body was thrashing, but her power over him was absolute, even as the wound began to close, cutting through his neck.
His struggles stilled. He hung limp in her grip, blood streaming down his chest.
A moment later, in a sob more felt than heard, his body fell away. Yet he remained, blind, swallowed in flesh. And in his last moments of consciousness, he touched satiation and knew it for what it was. The blessing of a goddess, and, with it, joy that filled his being.
* * *
Olar Ethil wiped her bloodied hands on her distended belly, and then stepped over the headless corpse crumpled at her feet.
She went to the nearest tree and clambered up into its branches. The strange black lichen enwreathing those branches now gathered round her, growing in answer to a muttering of power from her full, blood-tinted lips. Thoroughly hidden now, she waited for the return of the
dead
man’s companions. She wanted to see the pregnant woman again, and that sweet wound on her cheek.
Not always cruel, it was true.
Just most of the time
.
* * *
‘It was boredom that had us riding half through the night,’ Ville was saying as they rode back to find Sergeant Raskan. ‘That and finding water. Without that spring we would’ve been in trouble.’
‘The sooner we’re gone from these lands the better,’ Galak said, glancing at the stone houses they rode past. ‘I don’t mind us riding all this way only to turn round and go back again. I don’t mind it at all.’
‘The tutor?’ Rint asked.
‘Quiet the whole way,’ Galak replied. ‘Seemed happy enough to see the monks.’
Something in the man’s tone made Rint look over at his friend.
But it was Ville who grunted and said, ‘Galak decided he didn’t trust the old man. Saw no reason for it myself.’
‘Something in his eyes,’ Galak said, shrugging. ‘Something not right.’
They reached the base of the hill.
‘I see his horse,’ Feren said. ‘Did he go back to sleep?’
Rint shook his head. The witch had wounded the poor man and a night of mead did not heal. It just offered the peace of oblivion. Nothing lasted, of course. The spirit struggled back to the surface, gasping the pain of living.
The four of them cantered up the hillside, crested its summit.
He saw Raskan, lying curled up – but something was wrong. The air stank of spilled blood. Reining in, Rint made to dismount, and then fell still.
The Borderswords were silent – their horses halted and the beasts jerking their heads, nostrils flaring.
Feren slipped down and walked over to where the headless body was lying. Rint saw her studying Raskan, and then the ground around the corpse. All at once she lifted her head towards one of the trees. Her sword scraped free.
Rint’s mouth was suddenly dry as dust. Eyes narrowing, he sought to see what Feren was staring at, but the snarl of lichen cloaking all the branches revealed nothing. Dismounting, one hand on his knife, he drew closer to his sister.
‘Feren?’
‘She’s there,’ Feren whispered.
‘What? I see nothing—’
‘
She’s there!
’
Rint looked down at the body. The severed end of Raskan’s neck looked pinched, and the cut was ragged. He did not think it came from
an
edged weapon. But then, what? A wave of cold swept through him and he shivered. He turned as Galak and Ville came up behind them. Both men had drawn their weapons, and they looked to all sides, their faces desperate, seeking an enemy though there was none to be found.
‘I just left him,’ Rint said. ‘There was no one about – he was alone up here. I swear it.’
‘She’s there!’ Feren cried, pointing with her sword. ‘I see her!’
‘There is nothing there,’ Ville said in a growl. ‘No woman, at least. Feren—’
‘Azathanai! Witch, come down and meet my sword! You so liked my blood – give me some of yours!’ Feren marched up to the tree and swung her sword at the tree’s gnarled bole. The edge rebounded with a metallic shout and the blade was a flash of dull silver flying out from Feren’s hand. The weapon spun past Rint and then landed, burying its point in the earth – where Raskan’s head would have been had it remained. Feren staggered back as if she had been the one struck, and Rint moved to take her in his arms.
She thrashed in his grip, glaring up at the tree. ‘Murderer! Olar Ethil, hear me! I curse you! In the name of an innocent man, I curse you! By the blood you took from me, I curse you!’
Rint dragged her back. He shot a glare at Ville and Galak. ‘Wrap up the body and throw it on the horse! We need to leave!’
The woman in his arms fought savagely, her nails raking deep gashes across his forearms. All at once he remembered a child, thrashing in blind fury, and how he had to hold her until her rage was spent in exhaustion. She’d clawed him. She’d bitten him. She’d been terrible in righteousness. A cry broke from his throat, filled with anguish at all that was lost, and for all that never changed.
His cry stilled her sudden as a breath, and then she was twisting round in his arms and embracing him, and now it was her strength that he felt, and his weakness that he gave in return.
‘But where’s the head?’ Ville shouted, half panicked.
‘It’s gone!’ Feren snapped.
Brother and sister held each other tight, and all at once Rint knew that they were doomed, that their lives were now wrapped round this moment, this wretched hill and these haunted trees – the headless body of an innocent man. Awaiting them he saw only blood and murder, cascading down like rain. He saw fires and could taste the bite of smoke in his throat.
He heard Ville and Galak carrying the body to the horse, and then Ville cursed when he saw that the mount had yet to be saddled. ‘Set him down! Set him down, Galak!’
Feren pulled herself free. Rint stood, arms hanging as if life had been torn from his embrace, and now only empty death remained, watching
dully
as his sister stumbled over to her sword. She tugged it free and sheathed it, every motion febrile, moving like a woman who knew eyes were fixed upon her – but in chilling hunger, not admiration. His chest ached to see her this way again.
When she had found her husband – his body and his useless, pathetic escape from the hardships of grief – when that man had simply left her alone and with staring eyes and open mouth shouted out his cowardice in a voice that never came and would never come again – she had moved as she did now, busying herself with tasks, with necessities.
He felt tears filling the beard on his cheeks.
Something sailed down from the tree’s black canopy and thumped on the ground almost at Rint’s feet. He looked down to see a clay figurine, slick with fresh blood. And from the impenetrable tangle overhead he heard a soft laugh.
Rint straightened. Ville and Galak had saddled the mount and were heaving the corpse over it. They took up leather strings to tie Raskan’s hands to his feet, one man to either side of the animal as they passed the string ends under the horse’s belly. They tied the strings to the laces from the moccasins – Lord Draconus’s own – and cinched tight the knots.
Rint stared at the heels, at how the thick hide was unevenly worn.
Just like his boots
.
‘Feren,’ he said, ‘lead them down the hill.’
‘Rint?’
‘Take them, sister. I won’t be long.’
But she drew close, her eyes wide with fear. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘Something meaningless.’
Whatever she saw in his face seemed to answer her needs and after a moment she turned away, hurrying back to her horse.
Rint went to his own horse and rummaged in the saddle bags. As his friends mounted up and rode away, Ville leading Raskan’s horse with its lifeless burden, Rint drew out a flask of oil. They would have dry whetstones for the rest of this journey and would have to be mindful of rust and dulled edges, but there was nothing to be done about it.
He walked up to the tree, collecting wood, grasses and dried leaves along the way.
‘I know,’ he said as he built up the tinder round the base of the tree. ‘I know I but send you back into the flames. And in fire there is doubtless no pain for one such as you.’ He splashed oil against the bole of the tree, emptied the flask. ‘Unless … the desire behind the fire has power. I think it does. I think that is why a raider’s firing a house is a crime, an affront. Burning to death – malicious hands touching the flame to life – I think this has meaning. I think it stains the fire itself.’