‘Sechul,’ Kilmandaros whispered.
‘You are too wise to doubt my words,’ said Draconus. ‘If there is dread in my eyes, then it now matches your own.’
‘Why do you not flee, Suzerain?’ she asked. ‘Hood will not turn from your complicity in the slaying of his wife!’
‘I will face him,’ said Draconus. ‘He is chained in the Tower of Hate.’
‘Then you had best hope those chains hold!’
Hearing her thump towards his father, Arathan opened his eyes and turned to watch her. He saw her hands close into fists and wondered if she might strike Draconus. Instead, she halted. ‘Suzerain, will you ever be a child in this world? You rush to every breach and would fling your body into the gap. You offer up your own skin to mend the wounds of others. But there are things not even you can repair. Do you not understand that?’
‘What will you do?’ he asked her.
She looked away. ‘I must find my son. I must turn him from this path.’
‘You will fail then, Kilmandaros. He is as good as wedded to his half-brother, and even now Errastas weaves a web around K’rul, and the sorcery once given freely to all who would reach for it is now bound in blood.’
‘He is poisoned, my son,’ she said, hands uncurling as she turned away. ‘The same for Errastas. By their father’s uselessness, they are poisoned unto their very souls.’
‘If you find them,’ Draconus said, ‘kill them. Kill them both, Kilmandaros.’
She put her hands to her face. A shudder rolled through her.
‘You’d best leave us now,’ said his father, his tone gentle. ‘No walls of stone can withstand your grief, much less soft flesh. For what it is worth, Kilmandaros, I regret the necessity of my words. Even more, I regret my complicity in this crime.’
To that she shook her head, though her face remained hidden behind her hands. ‘If not you,’ she mumbled, ‘then someone else. I know them, you see.’
‘They will seek to twist you with their words,’ Draconus said. ‘Be wary of their sharp wits.’
‘I know them,’ she repeated. Then she straightened and shook herself. Facing Arathan she said, ‘Son of Draconus, let not your longing blind you to what you own.’ She gathered up her sodden furs and turned to the doorway, and was motionless for a moment, staring out into the
hissing
torrent of rain. Her hands became fists. ‘Like the rain, I will weep my way across the valley,’ she said. ‘Grief and rage will guide my fists with thunder, with lightning, as befits the goddess of love. All must flee before my path.’
‘Be careful,’ said Draconus. ‘Not every tower is empty.’
She looked back at him. ‘Suzerain, forgive my harsh words. Your path ahead is no less treacherous.’
He shrugged. ‘We are ever wounded by truths, Kilmandaros.’
She sighed. ‘Easier to fend off lies. But none comfort me now.’
‘Nor me,’ Draconus replied.
She slung her furs about her, and then set out into the gloom beyond.
‘I wish,’ said Arathan into the heavy silence that followed the fading thud of her footsteps, ‘that you had left me at home.’
‘Grief is a powerful weapon, Arathan, but all too often it breaks the wielder.’
‘Is it better, then, to armour oneself in regrets?’ He glanced up to see his father’s dark eyes studying him intently. ‘Perhaps I am easily understood,’ Arathan continued, ‘and to you I can offer no advice. But your words of caution which you offered her, well, I think she gave them in return. You can’t fix everything, Father. Is it enough to be seen to try? I don’t know how you would answer that question. I wish I did.’
From somewhere in the distance sounded the rumble of thunder.
Arathan began preparing their evening meal.
Moments later a thought struck him, and it left him cold. He glanced over to see his father standing in the doorway, staring out into the rain. ‘Father? Have Azathanai moved and lived among the Tiste?’
Draconus turned.
‘And if so,’ Arathan continued, ‘are they somehow able to disguise themselves?’
‘Azathanai,’ said his father, ‘dwell wherever they choose, in any guise they wish.’
‘Is Mother Dark an Azathanai?’
‘No. She is Tiste, Arathan.’
He returned to his cooking, adding more chips to the fire, but the chill would not leave him. If a goddess of love had cruel children, he wondered, by what names would they be known?
* * *
The morning broke clear. Still wearing his armour and shouldering his axe, Haut led Korya down into the valley, and the Abandoned City of the Jaghut. Varandas had departed in the night, whilst Korya slept and dreamed of dolls clawing the insides of the wooden trunk, as she wept and told them again and again that she would not bury them alive – but for all her cries she could find no means of opening the trunk, and
her
fingers bled at the nails, and when she lifted her head she discovered that she too was trapped inside a box. Panic had then startled her awake, to see her master sitting beside the makeshift hearth Varandas had made in the night.
‘The wood is wet,’ he had told her as she sat up, as if she had been responsible for the rain.
Trembling in the aftermath of the dream, she had set about preparing a cold breakfast. The chamber stank of the smoke that had filled the tower the night before, since there had been no aperture to draw it away except for the entrance, where the rain had formed a seemingly impenetrable wall. As they chewed the dried meat and hard bread, Korya had glared across at her master and said, ‘I have no desire to visit anyone known as the Lord of Hate.’
‘I share the sentiment, hostage, but visit him we must.’
‘Why?’
Haut flung the crust of the bread he had been gnawing on into the hearth, but as there was no fire the crust simply fell among the wet sticks and soaked logs. The Jaghut frowned. ‘With your vicious and incessant assault upon my natural equanimity, you force upon me the necessity of a tale, and I so dislike telling a tale. Now, hostage, why should that be so?’
‘I thought I was the one asking questions.’
Haut waved a hand in dismissal. ‘If that conceit comforts you, so be it. I am not altered in my resolve. Now tell me, why do I dislike tales?’
‘Because they imply a unity that does not exist. Only rarely does a life have a theme, and even then such themes exist in confusion and uncertainty, and are only described by others once that life has come to an end. A tale is the binding of themes to a past, because no tale can be told as it is happening.’
‘Just so,’ Haut nodded. ‘Yet what I would speak of this morning is but the beginning of a tale. It is without borders, and its players are far from dead, and the story is far from finished. To make matters even worse, word by word I weave truths and untruths. I posit a goal to events, when such goals were not understood at the time, nor even considered. I am expected to offer a resolution, to ease the conscience of the listener, or earn a moment or two of false comfort, with the belief that proper sense is to be made of living. Just as in a tale.’
Korya shrugged. ‘By this you mean to tell me that you are a poor teller of tales. Fine, now please get on with it.’
‘It may surprise you, but your impertinence pleases me. To an extent. The young seek quick appeasement and would flit like hummingbirds from one gaudy flower to the next, and so long as the pace remains torrid, why, they deem theirs a worthy life. Adventure and excitement, yes? But I have seen raindrops rush down a pane of
glass
with similar wit and zeal. And I accord their crooked adventure a value to match.’
She nodded. ‘The young are eager for experience, yes, and seek it in mindless escapade. I grasp your point. Only a fool would bemoan an audience with someone called the Lord of Hate, if only to boldly survive the enticement of his regard.’
‘I pity all the future victims in your path, hostage. Now then, the tale, which I will endeavour to make succinct. What are the Azathanai? Observe the brevity of my answer: none know. Whence did they come? Even they cannot make answer. What is their purpose? Must they have one? Do
we
, after all? Do you see how the seduction of the tale invites such simplistic notions? Purpose – bah! Never mind. These things you must know: the Azathanai are powerful, in ways not even the Jaghut understand. They are contrary and ill-inclined to society. They are subtle in their proclamations, so that often what they claim to be is in fact the antithesis of what they are. Or seem to be, or not.’
Korya rubbed at her face. ‘A moment, master. Is this the tale?’
‘It is, wretched girl. I seek to give you knowledge.’
‘Useful knowledge?’
‘That depends.’
‘Oh.’
‘Now. The Azathanai. Even that name is in error, as it implies a culture, a unity of form if not purpose. But the Azathanai do not wear flesh as we do, trapped as we are within what was given us and what we can make of it. No, they can choose any form they wish.’
‘Master, you describe gods, or demons, or spirits.’
Haut nodded. ‘All of your descriptions are apt.’
‘Can they be killed?’
‘I do not know. Some are known to have disappeared, but that is all that can be said of that.’
‘Go on, master. I am intrigued in spite of myself.’
‘Yes, the hint of power is always seductive. So. Among the Azathanai there was one who now names himself K’rul.’
‘Now? By what name was he known before?’
‘Keruli. The transformation lies at the heart of this tale. Among the Dog-Runners, the name of Keruli is understood to be living, of the present, as it were. But in passing, in turning about and striding into the past, Keruli must become K’rul.’
‘Keruli died and so became K’rul? Then the Azathanai can die after all.’
‘No. Rather, yes. This is difficult enough without your questions! I’d rather you threw some more wood on the fire.’
‘What for?’
‘Yes, I am aware that it is not burning. But fire marks the passage of
time
in that it demonstrably offers us the transition of one thing into another. It is like the music that accompanies a bard’s voice. Without the damned flames between us it seems the tale must stall, like a word half uttered, a breath half drawn.’
‘You were telling me about an Azathanai named K’rul.’
‘Not even his fellow Azathanai understand what he did, or even why. Perhaps he but tests his own immortality. Or perhaps ennui drove him to it. Here we skirt the chasm of intentions. He gives no answer to entreaty.’
‘What did he do?’
‘He bled, and from the wounds he opened upon himself, in the blood itself, he gave birth to mysterious power. Sorcery. Magic in many currents and flavours. They are young still, vague in aspect, only barely sensed. Those who do sense them might choose to flee, or venture closer. In exploration, these currents find definition.’
‘It is said,’ Korya ventured, ‘that the Jaghut possess their own sorcery. As do the Dog-Runners, and the Thel Akai, and even the Forulkan.’
‘And the Tiste?’ Haut asked.
She shrugged. ‘So Varandas said, but I have never seen anything of that.’
‘You were very young when you left Kurald Galain.’
‘I know. I admit, master, that I am sceptical of Tiste magic.’
‘And what of Mother Dark?’
‘I don’t know, master. Anything can be worshipped and made into a god, or goddess. It just takes collective fear – the desperate kind, the helpless kind, the kind that comes from having no answers to anything.’
‘Then is the absence of belief the same as ignorance?’
‘As much as the presence of belief can be ignorant.’
Haut grunted, and then nodded. ‘The blood leaks from him, in thin trickles, in heavy drops, and so his power passes out into the world and in leaving him becomes a thing left behind, and so Keruli became known as K’rul.’
‘The Dog-Runners expected him to die.’
‘They did. Who does not die when bleeding without surcease?’
‘But he lives on.’
‘He does, and now at last, I suspect, the other Azathanai begin to comprehend consequences of K’rul’s gift, and are alarmed.’
‘Because K’rul offers anyone a share in the power they once held only for themselves.’
‘Very good. What value being a god when each and every one of us can become one?’
She scowled. ‘What value being a god when you bully all those with less power than you? Where is the satisfaction in that? If it exists at all, it must be momentary, and pathetic and venal. Might as well pull
the
legs off that spider on the wall behind you – it’s hardly worthy of a strut, is it?’
‘Hostage, are not all gods selfish gods? They make their believers cower, if believers they choose to have; and if not, then in the hoarding of their power they become remote and cruel beyond measure. What god offers gifts, and does so freely, without expectation, without an insistence upon forms and proscriptions?’
‘That is K’rul’s precedent?’ Korya asked, and the very notion made her breathless and filled with wonder.
‘Long ago,’ Haut said, groaning as he climbed to his feet, ‘there were Jaghut markets, back when we had need of such things. Imagine the consternation in such a market, should one hawker arrive bearing countless treasures, which he then gave away, asking for nothing in return. Why, civilization could not survive such a thing, could it?’