Fall of Light (145 page)

She considered this scene, caught as it was on the cusp of dawn, when night and day fell into their eternal, exhausted battle, against the backdrop of a bleeding sky, and wondered how it would be seen in posterity.
Necessity’s bared teeth, transformed into smiles of joy in the centuries to come. That vast span of wilful forgetfulness we call history.
Looking round the chamber, she saw but one other witness who might be asking the same questions.
Rise Herat. The historian. I once attended one of his lectures. A night of self-hatred, I recall, uttered in the lifeless tones of an anatomist lecturing surgeons. Only, the body on the slab was his own. He was past even enjoying the pain he inflicted on himself.

When the historian’s love of history dies … alas, there is nowhere to go, no place to which one might flee and then hide.

Unless one chooses to live a life insensate.
She glanced again at Hunn Raal, and saw how the man and the historian more or less faced one another, and as she noted this Vatha Urusander stepped forward, moving in between the two men as he approached the dais, and the woman who would become his wife.

He halted at the halfway point when Mother Dark suddenly spoke. ‘A moment, if you will, Lord Urusander.’

The man tilted his head, and then shrugged. ‘As much time as you need,’ he replied.

She seemed to consider that invitation for a breath or two, and then resumed. ‘This will be suitably written, as befits such an occasion. Two wounded halves … conjoined. The High Priestesses will speak, each on behalf of her … her aspect. And what is conjoined will be, one expects,
healed.’
She paused, studying each person present, and then continued with an air of impatience. ‘The elaboration can await its writing. What we are witness to here is a bargain sealed in blood. Many have died to see our hands joined, Vatha Urusander, and I am in no mood to celebrate.’

Renarr saw Syntara’s flash of anger, but then Urusander was speaking.

‘Mother Dark. On behalf of my soldiers, I once petitioned the highborn – and you – in the name of justice.’ He waved dismissively. ‘This was not a challenge to my faith in you.’

‘No,’ she said, ‘that challenge came from elsewhere. Tell me then, will you now deny the title of Father Light?’

‘It seems that I cannot.’

‘No,’ she agreed. ‘It seems that you cannot.’

‘But this was not what I asked for.’

‘Nor is this my answer to your request for justice.’

‘Then, Mother Dark, we are understood?’

‘We are, Vatha, as best we can be.’

He nodded then, and Renarr saw how the tension left his body.

‘Rise Herat,’ said Mother Dark.

The historian took a single step forward. ‘Mother Dark?’

‘Our priestesses here will reconvene with you. Take a side chamber. Together, the three of you should be able to invent an appropriate retelling of this fated and fateful union. Concoct, if you will, a marriage to celebrate.’

‘Then, Mother, there is to be no ceremony here?’

Ignoring the question, Mother Dark’s attention shifted then, fixed upon Renarr. ‘I do not know you,’ she said. ‘Only that you appeared a step behind Vatha Urusander. But this detail alone suffices. Will you voice a vow to never speak of what has taken place here?’

‘I eagerly await the official version, Mother Dark,’ Renarr replied. ‘And shall speak of no other. Why, already I see the gilt bright upon my memories of this glorious ceremony.’

Mother Dark’s lips creased slightly in what might have been a suppressed smile. ‘Do you so vow?’

‘I do,’ Renarr said, nodding.

Vatha Urusander said, ‘Mother Dark, Renarr is my adopted daughter.’

‘In title? What of your son?’

‘My son shall inherit as much of what I possess as he may desire. Renarr has refused all symbols of recognition, beyond my old man’s harmless affectation in naming her my daughter.’

‘She indulges you.’

‘Just so,’ Urusander answered.

Mother Dark’s gaze shifted now to Hunn Raal. ‘You name yourself the Mortal Sword of Light, and I see in your belt a sceptre fashioned of Elemental Light. When were you planning on placing that sceptre into the hands of its rightful possessor?’

Hunn Raal’s smirk tightened slightly, and then, with an easy shrug, he drew the sceptre from his belt and approached Urusander. ‘Milord,’ he said. ‘Father Light. This sceptre was forged in your name, for this day, and for all the days of your rule to follow.’

When he held it out, Vatha Urusander took it and immediately returned his attention to Mother Dark.

His smirk returning, Hunn Raal bowed and stepped back.

‘Husband,’ said Mother Dark. ‘Will you now join me here, and take your throne?’

Urusander hesitated, and then said, ‘Wife, I am unused to the ways of rule, much less faith.’

‘Rule is but a flavour, a scent in the air, Urusander. Little different from your habits of command in your legion. I have found that it is best maintained by selective silence.’

‘I have found it so, as well,’ Urusander replied. ‘Although, on occasion, those under my command begin to presume too much. I have, thus far, been reluctant to effect … discipline. Such acts must be unequivocal and perfectly timed.’

‘Then you understand the nature of rule as well as I do. It is, as you say, a shame when the ones being ruled lose sight of the example we would set. Now, as to faith, well, seek no guidance from me, Urusander, for I have surely failed in that test. I expect, however, our priestesses will find the days and nights ahead to be busy ones, as they fulfil, with zeal, the fullest transcription of their responsibilities, and all the observances they deem sacred in our names.’

‘I share your confidence,’ Urusander replied. ‘And in the end, I am certain that we will be told the manner of worship to be expected and, presumably, demanded from our believers.’

‘Probably,’ Mother Dark agreed. ‘We can but eagerly await such delineations, and the time when you and I need not worry over our missteps born of ignorance.’

After a moment, Urusander resumed his approach to the dais. Mounting it, he paused in front of his throne and then, seeing the slotted scabbard awaiting the sceptre, settled the object into its place. Turning, he faced Mother Dark.

When she held out her right hand, he raised his, bringing it up beneath hers. Their hands clasped briefly before parting once more.

Facing the chamber, Mother Dark and Father Light stood for a moment, as if posing for posterity, before both sat down on their thrones.

‘That’s it,’ muttered Hunn Raal beside Renarr. ‘Done.’

She turned to him. ‘Recall his assertion,’ she observed.

‘His what?’

‘He names Osserc his heir, Hunn Raal. We have witnessed, and so it is, as you say, done.’

Something dark flitted across his expression, then was gone, his smile returning. ‘Ah, the boy. Yes indeed. Well, he was the pup in my shadow, and should he ever return …’ Shrugging, Hunn Raal turned away.

Closer to the thrones, both High Priestesses were speaking with their deities, quietly, for the moment at least.

Swinging round to follow Hunn Raal, Renarr found herself facing the historian.

‘I would know more about you,’ he said to her. ‘For the official version.’

‘Invent what you need,’ Renarr replied.

‘I would rather not misrepresent you.’

‘You would have me the detritus to cling to, amidst the flood of lies?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Perhaps later, historian,’ she said as she reached the door ‘I will give you all that you need, and more.’

  *   *   *

Renarr did her best, then, to walk away from all of it. Vatha Urusander had been given a series of opulent rooms, as if anticipating a delay in the consummation of his marriage to Mother Dark, and it was in these rooms that she found her momentary refuge.

Witnessing the battle had left her drained. The sorcery had been shocking, appalling. It had been unfortunate that Hunn Raal had not only survived but prevailed, inasmuch as he had been the last one left standing.

In the company of the men and women who sold their bodies, and the near-feral pack of children swarming the ridge, Renarr had watched the sordid consequences of the failed magicks as soldiers clashed in the valley below. She had tried to imagine her mother down there, in the press, commanding her company in the slaying of fellow Tiste. But that proved difficult. Something about it did not – could not – fit, and it was some time before she realized that her mother would never have participated in such a travesty.

Military honour was bound to service. The virtue of honour could not stand alone, could not stand for itself. Service sustained honour, when nothing else could. Tearing it away from all that gave it meaning reduced the soldier to a thug, a bully. She had, with that realization, stepped back, her attention shifting to all the children gathered now along the crest to watch the killing below.

They were a neglected, contrary lot. Weak and brutal, small but hardened, broken but sharp-edged. And like any broken thing, they existed in the realm of the discarded. When they looked up, they saw women eager to lift their skirts and men exposing ornate painted codpieces. They saw other men and women walking the camps, swords belted at their hips, coarse in humour and coldly practical in their needs.

Lessons on a pragmatic life. Whatever we do as adults, we make in our children more of what we are. Is there no end to this? Scholars speak of progress, but I fear now that they are mistaken. This is not progress that we see, it is elaboration. Nothing of the old ways ever goes away, it just hides beneath modernity’s confusion.

No, her mother would have refused the charade. She would, indeed, have forced Urusander to act. In the name of honour. In the name of the soldier.

Renarr found herself the sole occupant of Urusander’s intended quarters, with not even a servant present. She wandered through the rooms, stirring the ashes of her regret.
A single ember remains, and surely it shall burn me, and my name, for ever more. But some things we do not choose. Some things are chosen for us.

She heard the outer door open and then shut. Returning to the main room she saw Vatha Urusander. He seemed startled to see her, but only momentarily. He smiled. ‘I am glad to find you here, Renarr.’

‘Is she done with your company already?’

‘It has been a long time since we last slept. There are storms in our heads, and storms between us. Of the latter, I see a calm ahead. Of the former …’ He shrugged, and walked towards the window overlooking the broad sward behind the Citadel.

‘Will you deal with Hunn Raal?’ she asked, drawing closer to him.

His back was broad, but it now belonged to an ageing man. There was sadness in this detail.

‘Deal with him? I had ambitions there, didn’t I? He names himself my Mortal Sword. This should make plain who serves whom.’

‘And does it?’ She hesitated a few steps behind him, watching as he leaned forward close to the windowpane and looked down.

‘A keep’s refuse,’ he muttered. ‘How it backs the wall, below the chutes. I wonder, do we build houses simply to keep the garbage out? It should be buried.’

‘It buries itself,’ Renarr replied. ‘Eventually.’

‘Hunn Raal deems himself immune. Perhaps he is right in that. Leave him to Syntara. He’s her problem, not mine. Mother Dark has the right of it. We step back, saying little. The condition of our people is for them to decide. I considered setting forth my laws, my foundations upon which a just society could rise. But how soon before my words are twisted? My premises twisted and suborned? How soon before we, in our mortal natures, corrupt such laws, each time in answer to a wholly self-serving need?’

‘Have we seen the last of honourable men and women, Vatha Urusander?’

He straightened once more, but did not turn to face her. ‘The brutes are in ascension, Renarr. Against that, reason has no chance. You think the blood has ended? I fear it is only beginning.’

‘Then, sir, nothing has been solved.’

‘I am not the man to solve this,’ Urusander said. ‘But,’ he added after a moment, ‘you knew as much, didn’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘What of my son?’

‘His judgement was in error.’

‘Error?’

‘A young man bereft of responsibility will yearn for it,’ she replied. ‘A young man will see the virtues of duty and honour as shining things, harsh and not subject to compromise. From such a position, he may well make mistakes, but they remain well meant.’

Still he would not face her. ‘Something in you is broken.’

‘Something in me is broken.’

‘My son killed the man you loved. He … misapprehended the situation.’

‘Yes.’

‘Yet, it seems, you have forgiven him.’

‘I wish,’ she said, ‘you had killed Hunn Raal. I wish you would stand behind your sense of justice.’

He grunted. ‘No exceptions, no compromises. Had I done what was right, each and every time …’

‘Instead, you did nothing, and now here you stand, Vatha Urusander. Father Light.’

‘Yes, my blinding gift.’ He was silent for a time, and then he said, ‘Have you seen it yet?’

‘What?’

‘My portrait. In the corridor on the approach to these chambers. Kadaspala did well, I think.’

‘I am afraid I did not notice it,’ Renarr said. ‘I give little regard to art, especially the compromised kind.’

‘Ah, then, are all portraits a compromise? In his sour moments, I think Kadaspala would agree with you.’ He leaned both hands on the windowsill. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it seems that I am not to be forgiven.’

‘Only your son.’

She saw him nod, and then he sighed and said, ‘Tell them, will you, of the likeness. So deftly, so honestly captured by that blind man’s hand.’

‘He was not blind when he painted you, I think.’

‘Wasn’t he? No, demonstrably not, as far as that goes.’

‘Vatha Urusander,’ said Renarr, ‘there will be justice.’

She saw him nod again, in the instant before her knife sank deep beneath his left shoulder blade, stilling the beat of his heart. Unblinking, she stepped back, leaving the dagger in his back. He tilted forward, forehead striking the leaded window, before his legs gave out and he fell to the floor at her feet.