Fall of Light (119 page)

‘A threat?’
Telorast laughed, the hissing mirth filling Kanyn’s skull.
‘Feed us another Thel Akai, then.’
A moment later she sembled into the body of a Tiste woman, onyx-skinned, radiant, and naked. ‘Look at me, Curdle! There are pleasures to be found in this modest morsel! Match me in kind, so that we may clasp hands and beam most becomingly! In that smug way of couples no matter what the world. Come, let us preen!’

Curdle blurred as well, drawing inward to coalesce into another Tiste woman, this one taller than her lover, heavier-boned.

‘You’re somewhat fat,’ Telorast observed, pouting.

Curdle smiled. ‘I like it. More weight to throw around. In a crowd of Tiste, others will step from my path. Is that civil war over yet?’

Telorast shrugged. ‘White-skinned and black-skinned, at odds. Armies on the march, blah blah.’

‘Nothing worth our attention, then.’

‘Oh, we should draw close when the clash comes. The black-skinned army bears odd weapons. Tiste iron quenched in Vitr.’

At that, Ardata stepped back, her breath hissing. Even Curdle flinched.

‘Madness!’ Curdle cried, reaching up to bury her hands in her thick black hair. Frowning suddenly, she began running her fingers through that hair. ‘Oh, I like this, though.’

‘A worthy mane indeed,’ Telorast observed, sidling closer to her lover.

Ardata hissed again, in frustration, and then said, ‘Telorast! About those weapons—’

‘Oh, never mind. They’re not killing dragons, are they?’

Kanyn Thrall settled his head back. The pain was building in waves, as if his broken leg now rested on the brazier the damned guest kept feeding, a wild grin on the fool’s face. Blood sizzled and melted fat popped and hissed on the embers. Eyes closed, he grimaced.

A moment later Ardata’s cool hand settled on his brow. ‘Sleep now, friend. I can at least give you that.’

And so the world went away for a time.

  *   *   *

Two uneventful days had passed since the Jhelarkan encampment. K’rul stood with Skillen Droe on a natural berm on which tufts of dead grasses made rows of tangled, brittle humps. The two Azathanai looked out over the pellucid, silvered sea of the Vitr as the sun died at their backs.

‘This leaks from somewhere,’ K’rul said after a time. ‘A fissure, some wellspring, a broken gate. It doesn’t bode well.’

‘When the Builders take notice they will do something about it.’

K’rul grunted. ‘Builders. They confound me.’

‘They answer to no one. They rarely speak at all. They are guided by forces too old for words. Too old, perhaps, for language itself. I see in them elemental nature, a knotting of implacable laws and principles beyond challenge. They are what all life struggles against, made manifest and so eternally unknowable.’

‘Living symbols? Animated metaphors?’ K’rul made a face. ‘I think not, unless termites and ants also serve your description. I believe the Builders to be essentially mindless.’

‘Then we do not disagree.’

‘You concern yourself with meaning. I suggest that they are without meaning.’ He nodded at the Vitr. ‘No different from this chaotic brew. Forces of nature indeed, but also possessing the same absence of will. Nature destroys and nature builds. Build up, tear down, begin again.’

‘They are the makers of worlds then.’

‘Worlds are born from the cinders of dead stars, Skillen Droe. No fire burns true. Something is always left behind.’ He glanced at his companion. ‘Or are you without such uninvited visions? The violent births, realm upon realm, age after age?’

Skillen Droe shrugged his sharp, angled shoulders.
‘I know them, yet deem them nothing more than our own birth memories, the eruption of light, the shock of cold air, the sudden comprehension of our innate helplessness. We enter the world unprepared and, if we will indeed prove to be mortal, we stumble to its end, also unprepared.’

‘And the Builders?’

‘The forces of nature will take note of us, on occasion, as if we were no more than flies buzzing before the face. Mortality is but a brief iteration, an enunciation of the ineffable; worthy of an instant’s wonder, until the after-image dims and fades before the eye, and then, aptly, forgotten.
’ Skillen Droe spread his wings.
‘This air is foul. But you were right.’

‘About what?’

‘Dragons have passed this way. You said that one or two would be drawn back to the gate. And the gate has indeed wandered and now awaits us to the north. And yes, Ardata remains.’
He turned to eye K’rul.
‘Just as you said. Tell me, does this ever-flowing blood of yours lend you a new sensitivity? Does your awareness now encompass this entire realm? In loosing your blood, K’rul, have you perhaps deceived us all, and now make claim to unimagined power and influence? You create a new realm with this magic. It seeps out and stains all within reach, and that reach spreads. And who stands at its heart? Why, only modest K’rul, dripping generosity. So, I must ask: have you usurped us?’

K’rul scratched at the stubble of his beard. ‘Oh, I suppose so, Skillen Droe. But temper your indignation, my friend, for the one who stands at the heart stands there in weakness, not strength.’ He grimaced. ‘I am not Ardata, with her webs and hunger. The centre of my empire, such as it is, demands no sacrifice.
I
am that sacrifice.’

‘To worship is to lap at your blood, then, where it drips from the dais.’

‘Errastas and Sechul Lath discovered a more brutal way of feeding on blood, couched in the language of violence and death. Their path opposes mine, but that makes it no less powerful. Indeed, perhaps, given its seductive qualities appealing to the worst in us, it shall overpower me in time.’ He paused, and then sighed. ‘I do fear that, and yet, what moves I make against them, I cannot do alone.’

‘Me, your ignorant, naïve ally.’

‘And dragons.’

‘And Ardata?’

‘I don’t know, to be honest. I am curious, of course. What holds her there, upon the shores of the Vitr, beneath the gate of Starvald Demelain? Is it simply the loss of the Queen of Dreams? Or is there something else, something more? A web, after all, can be more than just a trap. It can also be a means of holding everything together, keeping it from tearing itself apart.’

‘You ascribe to her motives far too much generosity of spirit, K’rul. She is Azathanai, no different from you or me in our manner of disguising secret purpose, hidden motivations, beneath our laudable gestures.’
A long-fingered, talon-clad hand waved languidly.
‘Like this one, and your unseen Empire of Weakness. I do not comprehend you, K’rul. What ruler seeks to rule an empire by asking for the empathy of its citizens?’

‘And if empathy – and compassion – are that empire’s only source of strength?’

‘Then, my friend, you and it are doomed.’

K’rul considered that. ‘Errastas’s path is a dead end.’

‘Errastas’s path places no value in where it ends, dead or otherwise.’

‘Yes, you may have a point there.’

‘I will help you, but only so far, K’rul. I have no interest in attending your eventual demise. But for what we must do, here and now, Ardata will be essential. And she does not like me.’

‘I will speak on your behalf, Skillen Droe, and seek from her …’ he smiled, ‘a little empathy.’

They turned away from the Vitr then, and set out, angling somewhat inland from the sea’s caustic bite, and continued walking northward.

It was in K’rul’s mind that Ardata would counter his request with one of her own. He wondered if Skillen Droe understood that.
But it is the dragons who will decide, and what could be more troubling than to elect dragons as the arbiters of what is just?

Night was settling upon the world, the first stars burning awake overhead. They continued on, both knowing without need for conversation that their walk would not end until they reached Starvald Demelain.

  *   *   *

He had helped Ardata set the Thel Akai’s broken bones, both of them as thick around as his wrists. Looking down upon them, as he pulled on Thrall’s massive foot whilst she guided the bones back beneath the ruptured skin, he had never felt so insignificant. Against a warrior such as this, he was no more than a child, and for all the sting of his sword, Kanyn Thrall could simply sweep him aside, dismissing him as if beneath notice.

It was an ugly feeling, this humility. The deeds of his past, which had seemed vast and weighty, were little more than the small measures of a small life. When she set to tending the punctures in the Thel Akai’s torso, he had gone outside once more, to retrieve Kanyn Thrall’s beloved axe.

Ignoring the two Tiste women – who were anything but – he made his way down to the strand of the Vitr. In the short time that the axe had been lying on the dead sand, the bitter fumes had mottled the iron, stealing its proud polish. He grunted lifting the weapon from the ground, and staggered more than once as he made his way back up the berm.

The temple’s scattered ruins, the tumbled blocks and toppled columns, had the battered appearance of some past violence, as if the resident god or goddess had ended faith in a frenzy of rage. He had found rotted bones here and there, lending weight to his notions. Faith and slaughter all too often settled into a deadly embrace. He had fled Kurald Galain on the cusp of such a war, and had no regrets about that part of his leaving. But that flight had not prevented the transformation of his skin. Initially white as snow, he was now sun-burnished a radiant gold. What had at first appalled him now appealed, though he did find himself looking, with considerable admiration, upon the onyx perfection of Telorast and Curdle.

Leaning the axe against a broken block of limestone, he hesitated, and then settled down on the stone to watch the last of the light drain from the world.

Moments later the two women joined him, each taking a seat, one on either side, both close enough to brush arms and thighs.

‘Bold young warrior,’ murmured Telorast. ‘Tell me you like them nimble. She’d batter you bruised and senseless, while I, on the other hand, display more modest curves, but no less enticing, yes?’

‘I thought you two were lovers.’

‘Lovers, sisters, mother and daughter, these attributions are meaningless. Details from the past, and the past is dead. In this moment, there are only women and men. Mere proximity invites potential. Isn’t that right, Curdle?’

‘We’re always right, that’s true. How could it ever be otherwise? But this Tiste warrior here, he thinks highly of himself.’

‘Or once he did,’ Telorast observed, ‘but, alas, no more. Oh, Kurald Galain! How it delights in the vista of its own navel! Puckered horizons and root long since past drawing sustenance. But here you are, Tiste warrior, painted in Light, godly in youth, with nothing but clouds in your golden eyes.’

‘Blame Ardata,’ hissed Curdle. ‘She won’t use him in the proper way!’

‘She has a Thel Akai’s cock to play with, my love. Think on that.’

‘The prowess of Azathanai knows no bounds,’ Curdle said, nodding. ‘She must veer to fit him. Diabolical genius, but easily spoiled.’

‘Quickly bored.’

‘All sensitivity blunted. And now, Telorast, you went and nearly killed that giant cock!’

‘You didn’t want him in the first place!’

‘Didn’t I? Well, that’s true, I didn’t. But now that he’s useless, I’ve changed my mind!’

‘He’d split you in two, Curdle, even as bloated and big-boned as you’ve made yourself.’

‘I see plenty of flab on you, Telorast!’

‘Not flab. Roundness. There’s a difference. I don’t wobble when I walk. I sway.’

When he made to rise, both women reached out and pulled him back down.

‘We’re not done with you, warrior,’ Curdle said. ‘I’ve been watching you, you know. The blessing of Light is upon you. It defies the Vitr. That’s useful.’

‘Stop that,’ Telorast said. ‘You’re just confusing him.’

‘Confusion is good. It’ll make him more pliable. Warrior, at the least give me your name.’

‘Osserc, son of Lord Vatha Urusander, who is commander of the Legion.’

‘Son, lord, commander – shields to deflect, shields behind which to hide. Let us bring you out into the sunlight, Osserc.’

‘Enough of that, Curdle. Tell him something useful instead.’ Telorast rested a hand on his thigh. ‘A secret we can share. Just to show how generous we are. Tell him about the Grey Shore.’

Curdle flinched, and then leaned forward to glare at Telorast. ‘Are you mad? Our plans are perfect this time! Once we claim the throne, this Light-blessed creature will be our enemy!’

‘Liosan. Their name for Light, Curdle. Besides, this fool here isn’t going anywhere. Haven’t you worked that out yet? I just got here and I worked that out. Is the Vitr rotting your brain, sister? Is that it? Been here too long lusting after that Thel Akai?’

‘We were making eyes at each other. It was delightful! My brain hasn’t rotted. I’m not the one suggesting we blab about the Grey Shore.’

‘They’ll find another name for it,’ said Telorast. ‘They do things like that. We’re
Eleint,
remember?’

‘Someone really should kill the Suzerain.’

‘Agreed. This time, we’ll see it done. Find the right sword, point it his way, and see his black blood spray!’

‘I’m bored,’ said Curdle. ‘Fuck this warrior, my love. I want to watch.’

‘Do you?’

‘I said I did, didn’t I?’

‘The last time we did that the poor bastard got ripped to pieces.’

‘Not by
my
claws, Telorast!’

‘Well, it’s exciting when you watch!’

Curdle patted Osserc’s shoulder. ‘Don’t worry about anything like that happening, warrior. We were dragons then, and that’s different.’

Osserc cleared his throat, and said, ‘I have taken a vow of celibacy. Therefore I must decline the invitation. My apologies, uh, to you both.’

‘That vow needs breaking,’ Telorast said in a growl.

He saw, with some relief, that Ardata had emerged from the temple. She strode closer. ‘Leave off him, you two. I but tolerate your presence here and you’d do well to bear that in mind.’