Fall of Light (108 page)

Outside, the harsh breathing of Houseblades surrounded the rocking, pitching carriage as men and women leaned shoulders to the wheels, pushing it through the deep snow covering the muddy road. The warhorses fought against the ill-fitting yokes, and all the arguments from two nights past, when the oxen were butchered to feed everyone, now returned to Wreneck as he listened to Horse Master Setyl cajoling the affronted mounts with tears in his voice.

‘She called me a child when I birthed Orfantal,’ Sandalath said to Sorca. ‘A child to birth a child.’

‘Nonetheless.’ Sparks flashed, smoke bloomed, rose, and then streamed out between the shutters of the window.

‘Captain Ivis undressed me.’

Sorca coughed. ‘Excuse me?’

Wreneck glanced down at the babe’s face, snuggled so sweetly in her blanket of fur. So little time had passed, so rare the occasions that her mother offered a tit to appease her hunger, and yet Korlat had gained twice her birth-weight – or so Surgeon Prok had claimed. She was sleeping now, as she often did, her round face black as ink, her hair already thick and long.

‘It was so hot,’ Sandalath continued. ‘His hands upon me … so gentle …’

‘Milady, I implore you, some other subject.’

‘There was nothing to be done for it. That needs to be understood by everyone concerned. The room is safe, the only safe place in the world, up the stairs –
slap slap slap
go the bare feet! Up and up to the black door and the brass latch, and then inside! Slip the lock, run to the window! Down and down the eyes fall, to all the people below, to the bridge and that black black
black
water!’

In his arms, Korlat stirred fitfully, and then settled once more.

‘Lord Anomander was braver then,’ Sandalath then said, in a harsher voice.

Sorca grunted. ‘Sorcery can unman the best of them, milady. Was it not the Azathanai who held out a staying hand? You wrongly impugn the First Son.’

‘Up into the tower, we’ll be safe there, where the flames can’t reach us.’

Korlat opened her eyes, looked up into Wreneck’s own, and he felt a heat come to his face. Those eyes, so large, so dark, so knowing, left him shaken, as they always did. ‘Milady, she’s awake. Won’t you take her?’

Sandalath’s gaze flattened. ‘She’s not ready yet.’

‘Milady?’

‘To take sword in hand. To swear to protect him. My son, my only son. I bind her, with chains that can never be broken. Never.’

The fury in her stare made Wreneck look away. Sorca tapped her pipe against the door’s wooden frame to loosen what was left in the bowl, then started producing clouds that a wayward gust through the shutters sent over Wreneck.

His head spun, and as Korlat’s eyes slipped behind veils of smoke, he saw her suddenly smile.

  *   *   *

The household staff and the company of Draconean Houseblades made for a desultory and decrepit escort to the Son of Darkness and his Azathanai companion as they slowly worked their way southward on the road to Kharkanas. Captain Ivis struggled against a sense of shame, as if the private matters of him and his kin had been suddenly and cruelly dragged into the light. The lone carriage and its occupants, trailed by two salvaged wagons loaded down with feed and camp gear, had to his eyes the bearing of a refugee train. Horses fought in their traces, the Houseblades cursed and stumbled as they pushed the conveyances through the heavy snow and now mud, and voices spoke – when they spoke at all – with harsh words, bitter and belligerent.

Amidst these foul moods, Ivis found his own plummeting as they trudged on into the deepening gloom. The fire’s embrace lingered like a heat beneath the skin, appallingly seductive, frightening in its intensity.
She was an Azathanai, said Caladan Brood. His kin, a sister and mother to the Dog-Runners. Olar Ethil by name. What has she done to me?

Looking ahead on the road, he squinted at the backs of Lord Anomander and his huge companion. They were speaking, but in tones too low to drift back to the captain.
Milord, we are awash in strangers, and these rising waters are cold. Civil war proves an invitation and we are now infected by the venal wants of outsiders. They take to us with contempt, ruining whatever cause we hold to, only to then impose themselves and their own. Until their flavour pervades. Until our every desire tastes awry, spoiled in the heat.

I would spit you out, Olar Ethil. And you, Caladan Brood. I would march into the past and bar the arrival of T’riss and her poisoned gifts. None of you are welcome. And all you gods of the forest, of the stream and the rock, the tree and the sky, begone from us!

I’ll not see us point fingers elsewhere for the crimes we commit here. And yet, it shall come to pass. I am certain of it. The face of blame is never our own.

‘Captain.’

He glanced over to find Gate Sergeant Yalad now at his side, a figure draped in a scorched cloak, a face still singed from past flames. ‘What?’

The young man flinched slightly, then looked away. ‘Sir. Do – do you think they’re dead?’

Ivis said nothing.

Clearing his throat, Yalad continued, ‘The Houseblades fear … retribution.’

‘They’ll not return,’ Ivis snapped. ‘And even if they did, it was Caladan Brood who attacked them, not you, not me. Even there, what choice did any of us have? They would have seen us all dead.’ But even as he spoke, he thought of his own secret desire from months past – to see the Hold burned down, with both daughters trapped within.

Abyss take me, she must have touched my soul long before that night. Her fire, lit beneath my notice, where it smouldered on, feeding the worst in me.

Have we all been manipulated? This entire civil war? Perhaps indeed the blame lies elsewhere.

‘Sir, I meant retribution from Lord Draconus.’

Ivis started. He scowled. ‘Nothing upon you or them, Yalad. Make that plain. I will face Lord Draconus alone. I will take responsibility for what happened.’

‘Respectfully, sir, we don’t agree with that. None of us.’

‘Then you’re fools.’

‘Sir, what has happened to Lady Sandalath?’

‘She was broken.’

‘But … the other thing? The child—’

Ivis shook his head. ‘Enough. We will not speak of that.’

Nodding, Yalad fell back a few steps, leaving Ivis once more alone with his thoughts, which, he realized, proved an unwelcome return.
The child deserves no reprobation. Surely, among all things before us, birth must be deemed innocent. There is no culpability in conception, none that should stain her. Nor, I suspect, the unwelcoming mother.

Ah, Sandalath, you have become a most ill-used hostage, your fates arrayed before us in condemnation of our promises to protect you. The blame is mine, as I stood in place of Lord Draconus, and again and again I have failed you.

Now comes sorcery with a rapist’s cock, the blunt demand denying all mercy. Crown the need, bedecked in raiment, and glory in the release, and all the power it announces with an unwanted child’s cry.

What spirit, freed of its chains as the flames rose, laid you down upon the stone floor? Caladan Brood shies from all comment. But something fierce with outrage burns in that Azathanai. I would know its face. I would know its name.

What had happened to Sandalath in Dracons Hold was a far crueller embrace than the one Olar Ethil had given to Ivis. He knew with a certainty that the fire-spirit, the goddess of the Dog-Runners, had taken for herself no active role in Sandalath’s fate. And yet …
I felt her glee. And her turning of pain into vengeance invoked crimes I could not discern – perhaps even the crime of Sandalath’s fate. There was something old in all this, something full of ancient wounds and past betrayals.

We were all sorely used.
And so, with grinding inexorability, his thoughts returned to his sense of helplessness, and his gaze fixed once more upon the broad back of Caladan Brood.
Foolish Azathanai. You meddle among us, and we feel your contempt. But upon the day we have had enough of your torment, you will know the wrath of the Tiste. As did the Jhelarkan and the Forulkan.

Lord Anomander, let not these fools seduce you.

They were in darkness now, swallowed by the immanence of Mother Dark’s influence. Blind as indifference, this strange faith. The faint ethereal blue glow of the fallen snow made for a ghostly path, beckoning them into the last stretch of forest before the land opened out to the environs of the Wise City. Two, perhaps three days to the north gate.

Yalad returned. ‘Sir, our scouts flanking to east report birds.’

‘Birds?’

‘Many, many birds.’

‘How distant?’

‘Perhaps a third of a league, sir. They also say the snow beneath the trees has seen the passage of people.’

‘Which way?’

‘Every way, sir.’

‘Very well, collect a squad and pull out to the side. I will speak to Lord Anomander, and then join you.’

Nodding, Yalad moved off. Picking up his pace, Ivis hurried forward. ‘Milord!’

Both Anomander and Caladan halted and turned.

‘There has been a killing, Lord Anomander,’ Ivis said. ‘To the east, third of a league.’

‘You wish to investigate?’

‘Yes, milord.’

‘I will accompany you.’

Ivis hesitated, and then glanced back at the carriage.

‘Have the remaining Houseblades prepare camp, captain,’ Anomander said, shaking loose his cloak as he adjusted his sword-belt. ‘Defensive perimeter and pickets.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘It may be that companies of the Legion are foraging, or perhaps hunting down yet more Deniers,’ said Anomander, frowning at the fire-scorched line of trees verging the eastern side of the track. He hesitated, and then glanced at the Azathanai. ‘I would have you remain here, High Mason.’

‘As you wish,’ Caladan replied with a grunt. ‘But the blood upon the ground has frozen, and of the bodies you will find, none remain alive.’

‘How long past?’ Anomander demanded.

‘Days, perhaps.’

‘Are we observed?’

‘A curious question. In the immediate, no, none look out from yonder wood.’

‘And in the other?’

‘First Son, if we sense unblinking regard settled upon us, in each of our moments, beginning to end, what then might we do differently?’

Anomander frowned. ‘Best we comport ourselves with such an audience in mind, whether it exists or not.’

‘Why?’

‘I hold that such witnessing does indeed exist, unflinching and beyond the mechanisms of deceit, and that in our eagerness to dissemble, we yield it little respect.’

‘And what witness might this be?’

‘Nothing other than history, High Mason.’

‘You name an indifferent arbiter, subject to maleficence in its wake.’

Anomander made no reply. Gesturing to Ivis, he said, ‘Let us find this killing ground, captain.’

They strode back to Yalad and the waiting squad. Weapons were drawn, but through the shroud of gloom the faces arrayed before Ivis were difficult to distinguish, beyond the faint glitter of their eyes. ‘Thank you, gate sergeant. Remain here and see to the camp. The Azathanai suggests that we are in no danger, but I will have you diligent nonetheless. Pickets and a perimeter.’

‘Yes sir.’ Yalad waved a Houseblade forward. ‘Gazzan was the scout who spied the birds, sir.’

‘Good eyes in this perpetual darkness,’ Ivis commented to the young man.

‘Heard them first, sir. But it’s odd, how they fly with no hearkening to the night.’

After a moment, Lord Anomander said, ‘You mean to say, sir, that the creatures behave as if it was still day.’

‘As it indeed is, milord. Late afternoon.’

‘Perhaps,’ ventured Ivis, ‘Mother Dark has blessed all life within her realm with this dubious gift.’

At a nod, Gazzan set out, leading them into the forest.

Eyes upon us, named history or otherwise, can still make a man’s skin crawl.
‘Milord.’

‘Out with it, captain. I well see your dismay.’

‘These Azathanai now among us … they make me uneasy.’

‘It is my suspicion, Ivis,’ said Anomander in a low voice, ‘that they have always been among us. Unseen for the most part. But in their machinations we are tossed and turned like blindfolded fools.’

The notion rattled Ivis. He combed through his beard, felt ice crystals beneath his fingernails, and then spat to one side. ‘I would we turned on them, milord, if what you say is true.’

‘You would either way,’ Anomander retorted, with some amusement in his tone.

‘My lord’s keep is in ruin,’ Ivis said in a growl. ‘An ancient edifice and ancestral home, brought down in a single night. Was there no other means of dealing with the daughters? Fire and smoke, the tumbling of walls, and such a maelstrom of sorcery as to make me sick with fear for the future.’

Anomander sighed. ‘Just so, Ivis. Yet, did I not bait him? The fault is mine, captain, and I will make that plain to your lord.’

‘You dismiss the threat posed by Envy and Spite.’

‘As any sober reflection would lead us to do, Ivis. No matter their power, their minds remained those of children. The sorcery indeed lent claws to their impulses, a lesson we are all obliged to heed, given the child within each of us. But in truth, old friend, I anticipated an emasculation, a reducing of the threat in a manner more civilized than what we were witness to.’ He shook his head. ‘It was a brutal night, and the shock of it reverberates still.’

‘Sorcery, milord, lacks all subtlety.’

‘As will any force wielded without restraint. And here, Ivis, you set your knife-point into the heart of my dread. I despise the use of the fist, when a caress would better serve.’

‘These Azathanai see it differently, milord.’

‘So it seems. And yet T’riss affected a simple touch, and see now its consequences. I have thought,’ Anomander added with a bitter laugh, ‘my loyalty’s abiding would have seen off this silver hue upon my mane, but she would see me set apart, and that I must now live with.’

‘There was a spirit, milord, within the fire—’