Fall of Light (53 page)

He was startled when Pelk twisted in her saddle, and nodded at him, even as she drew her sword.

Kellaras lifted the lance from its socket, half rose in the stirrups – still he could see nothing.

Then there were figures on the path twenty paces ahead, a furtive line of movement. Pelk reined in, and Kellaras moved up alongside her on the left, to guard her flank.

Faces mostly hidden in rough-woven scarves glanced their way, but the procession continued on, from left to right, northward into the forest. Kellaras saw hunting weapons – strung bows, spears.

‘Deniers,’ said Gripp Galas from behind him. ‘A hunting party.’

‘I gave no leave,’ Hish Tulla snapped. She raised her voice. ‘I give no leave! You walk upon Tulla’s Hold!’

The figures halted on the trail, and then, a moment later, one emerged from the south edge of the treeline, stepping on to the track, and then taking a half-dozen strides towards the riders. Drawing away the scarves, he showed a young, thin face. Behind him, hunters were fitting arrows to the strings of their bows.

Hish Tulla snarled under her breath, and then said in a low voice, ‘They would not dare. Are we a hunter’s prey?’

Kellaras edged his mount forward, lowering the tip of his lance. At the gesture the youth halted. ‘Clear the path,’ the captain commanded. ‘There is no reason for death on this day.’

The young man pointed at Hish Tulla. ‘She claims to own what cannot be owned.’

‘You are in a preserve, Denier, and yes, she does indeed own it.’

But the youth shook his head. ‘Then I claim the air she breathes, as it has flowed down from the north – from my homeland. I claim the water in the streams, for they journeyed past my camp.’

‘Enough of this nonsense!’ said Hish Tulla. ‘By your argument, whelp, you can make no claim to any beast dwelling in this forest. Nor to the wood for your fires at night. For they owned this long before you or I ever ventured here.’ She gestured with one mail-clad hand. ‘I hold to one simple rule. You may hunt here, but you will do me the courtesy of announcing your desire first.’

The youth scowled. ‘You would refuse us.’

‘And if I did?’

He said nothing.

‘You are a fool,’ Hish Tulla said to him. ‘You ask, so that I may say yes. Do you believe you are the first hunters to visit my land? I see none but strangers behind you. Where are my old neighbours, with whom I shared gifts, and with whom I exchanged words of respect and honour?’

The youth tilted his head to one side. ‘If you so desire,’ he said, ‘I will take you to them. They are not far. We came upon their bones this morning.’

Hish Tulla was silent for a long moment, and then she said, ‘Not by my hand.’

The hunter shrugged. ‘This, I think, would ease their grief.’

‘Have you found a trail?’ Gripp Galas suddenly asked. ‘The slayers – do you now track them?’

‘Too long past,’ replied the youth. He shifted his attention back to Hish Tulla. ‘We shall not be long here,’ he said. ‘This forest you call yours is of no interest to us.’

‘Then where do you go?’ Gripp asked.

‘We seek the Glyph, who walks beside Emurlahn.’ He pointed at Hish Tulla. ‘Tell the soldiers, the innocents of the forest are all dead. Only we remain. Their deaths did not break us. When the soldiers come again into the forest, we will kill them all.’

The young hunter returned to his troop, and moments later the last of them had filed across the track, vanishing into the trees.

‘What is this Glyph he speaks of?’ Hish asked.

Shrugging, Gripp said, ‘They are organized now.’

‘They cannot hope to cross blades with Legion soldiers.’

‘No, my love, they cannot. But,’ he added, ‘arrows will suffice.’

The breath hissed from his wife. ‘Then indeed we have descended into savagery. And yet,’ she continued after a moment, ‘the first acts of barbarity did not come from the Deniers, did they?’

‘No, milady,’ Kellaras replied. ‘In Kharkanas, I spent some time tallying reports of the slaughter. That young man was correct. The innocents are all dead, and their bones litter the forests of Kurald Galain.’

‘Yet Urusander claims to represent the commoners of the realm? How does he not choke on his own hypocrisy?’

‘He chose, my love, not to include the Deniers in his generous embrace.’ Gripp Galas leaned to one side and spat. ‘But to be fair, I would wager Hunn Raal was the one to set the Legion wolves upon these fawns.’

‘The distinction is moot,’ his wife retorted. She gathered up her reins. ‘Ride on, then. We but build upon our charge of outrage, and must hold to the faith that a day will come when we can unleash it. Captain Kellaras.’

‘Milady?’

‘Be certain that Lord Anomander understands. I will unite the highborn to this cause. I will see the matter of the Consort set aside, to wait for a later time. Now, we must unmask our enemy, and see the way before us clear and without compromise. Tell him, captain, that I swear to this: no political machination will stifle my distemper. There will be retribution and it will be just.’

They set out once again. Behind Kellaras, Hish Tulla continued. ‘Hunn Raal will hang. As for Urusander, let him plead his innocence before knowing eyes, beneath public regard. Upon that stage, he will fail to dissemble. Captain, was it not your lord who said that justice must be seen?’

‘He did, milady.’

‘Just so. Let it be seen.’

Kellaras remained alongside Pelk, even as she quickened her pace to draw some distance from Hish and Gripp Galas, as husband and wife had fallen to a low exchange of words. The captain glanced across at her. ‘They were tempted,’ he said.

She nodded. ‘Stone-tipped, the arrows they chose for us.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Uncommon pain, I’m told, when there is a sharp stone lodged deep in your body, cutting this way and that with your every breath. I would think,’ she added in dry tones, ‘that even a soldier could not fight on, through such pain. As weapons of war, it’s my thought, captain, that arrows will make warfare a thing not of honour, but of dishonour.’

He grunted sourly, thinking back to his own hunger for violence. ‘Perhaps, then, war’s true horror will be revealed for all to see, and make us one and all recoil.’

Her answering smile was guarded. ‘Shocking us into eternal peace? Captain Kellaras, you have the dreams of a child.’

Stung, he said nothing.

She shot him a look, her eyes widening. ‘Abyss take me, Kellaras – you thought that an insult?’

‘I – well—’

‘Discount the gifts in your heart if you must,’ she said, ‘but leave them free for me to hold, and hold I will, tighter than you could ever imagine.’

Her words set an ache in his chest. Blinking against the glare of sunlight on snow and ice, he rode on in silence.

Behind them, husband and wife bickered.

  *   *   *

There was a time, long before Grizzin Farl had taken for himself the title of Protector, when he had made the blade of his war-axe the voice of his temper. He had been like a drunkard, with fury his wine. Youth had a way of carving everything into sharp relief, making divisive every world and every moment within it. Anger was his only answer to the revelation of injustice, and injustice was everywhere. In those times when exhaustion took him – when the ongoing battle against authority, tradition, and the churning cycles of habit made him stumble, stagger into some emptiness – he fostered for himself a façade of cynicism. The zeal of the axe-blade was quickly blunted, and the weapon proved heavy in his aching arms. With that cynical regard, he saw awaiting him a future of unrelenting failure.

Youth made rage and world-weariness into lovers, with all the passion and private heat that one would expect, when the blood was still fresh. Desire fed lust, and lust promised satiation, but it whispered clumsy words. Vengeance, a matching in kind between crime and punishment, as if justice could bring down the hands of a god, to make clear and certain every divide, and, by so doing, reduce the complexities of the mortal world into something simpler, easier to stomach.

He had soon found himself among the Forulkan, to see with his own eyes how such justice was meted, and in this time he began to awaken in unexpected ways. Perhaps it was nothing more than nostalgia that could lead one to yearn for some imagined simplicity, a world shaped in childhood, and then reshaped by remembrance into something idyllic. It was, indeed, all too easy to forget the confusion of a child’s world, where what was known was minimal, and therefore seemed but a simple and possibly more truthful representation of reality. Sufficient to serve that child and so give comfort to the child’s mind. But nostalgia was a dubious foundation to something as vital as a culture’s system of justice. Grizzin had seen quickly the flaws in this nostalgic genesis, as it proved to be the core of the Forulkan court.

Still young, he had revelled in the theme of vengeance within the Forulkan system. But before long his cynical regard saw too clearly the abuses, the subtle ways of undermining the very notion that the blade of justice hung over everyone. Instead, he saw how, among the privileged, escaping that shadow of retribution and responsibility had become a game. He had seen the evasions, the semantic twisting of truth, the deliberate obscuring of meaning, and the endless proclamations of innocence, each and all delivered with the same knowing glint in the eye.

The lovers of his youth grew strained.

One day, in the Great Court where sat the Seven Magistrates and the Seven Governors, and all the assemblies of guild and craft, and the commanders among the Deliverers, and the Company of Deliberators, Grizzin Farl had drawn his double-bladed axe, shaking it free of its blade-sheath.

The wine flowed sweet on that day, in torrents upon the tiled floor, gushing round the artfully carved legs of the benches and pews. It splashed high against precious tapestries, and into the niches housing the marble busts of famous adjudicators and philosophers. The Great Court was transformed into a drunkard’s paradise.

Rivers of wine, as red and deep as the throats slashed open, as the stumps of severed limbs, as flesh sliced away. Rage itself had recoiled from its lover’s sudden, inexplicable fury, as if in an instant a mirror had been thrown up between them, and rage saw itself truly for the first time. Whilst, behind the barrier, the cynic stalked the halls, wielding a dripping axe, and with a dry laugh announced a terrible freedom.

The Azathanai who would years later become the Protector, Defender of Nothing, was born in the wake of that slaughter. He had stepped out from the Great Court as a child from a bloodied womb, painted in all the hues of justice, gasping at the shock of cold air as it swept in from shattered windows, with stained glass crunching under his feet and distant cries from the streets below.

Play me with words, my friends, and see what comes of it. Mock my ideals, whisper of the fool before you, who came with such hopes. Behold this summoned tantrum, this child’s incandescence. Surely, by your wilful arts, your clever dismemberment of once lofty ideals, and by your own brand of cynicism, so filled with contempt, you gave birth to me, your new child, your Innocent. And should I bring flame to your world, be not surprised.

I walk as a lover spurned.

Until the moment of this vow, which I hold still. Never again will my heart arrive in innocence. Never again will I make the foolish loves of youth into a man’s ideal, and so suffer a longing for something that never was. Speak not to me of the balance of possessions, the imperatives of restitution, the lie of retribution and the hollow lust of vengeance.

In this denial, I pose no imposition. Do what you will. Ashes await us all. This lover of the world has set aside his love, for now and for ever more. See me as your protector, but one who values nothing, who yields with this eternal smile, and leaves you to glory in everything but justice. For justice you do not own.

When you brought down the hands of a god, I drenched them in mortal blood.

Pray the god found the wine bitter.

He had heard that in the decades since that time a cult had risen among the Forulkan, worshipping Grizzin Farl as a vengeful god. Indeed, as a god of justice. There would always be, he now understood, those for whom violence was righteous.

Sudden motion before him made the Azathanai lift up his head, though it seemed to weigh too heavy for this world. He saw Lord Silchas, sinking down into a chair the Tiste had drawn close. The pallid face seemed thin as paper, the red eyes like ebbing coals. ‘Are you drunk, Azathanai?’

‘Naught but memories, lord, to set a man’s mind afire.’

‘I imagine,’ said Silchas as he poured a tankard full from the pitcher on the table, ‘you have a surfeit of those. Memories.’

Grizzin Farl leaned back, only now hearing the muddy noise of the tavern crowd surrounding them. ‘My humour is plucked on this night, lord,’ he said. ‘A flower’s bud, wingless and without colour.’

‘Then you suit my demeanour well enough, Azathanai. The historian, Rise Herat, is looking for you.’

‘To the past I have nothing to say.’

‘Then you should find him equitable company. He awaits you in your quarters, I believe.’

Grizzin Farl studied the highborn. ‘There is a fever in this city.’

‘Kharkanas was never easy with winter,’ Silchas replied. ‘Even in the time before the darkness, the air would feel harsh, making our bones seem brittle. Alas,’ he added, pausing to drink, ‘I fared worse than most. I still do. Each winter I spend yearning for summer’s heat.’

‘Not all welcome the season of contemplation,’ Grizzin agreed.

Silchas snorted. ‘Contemplation? It gives rise, as you say, to fevered thoughts.’ Then he shook his head. ‘Azathanai, there is more to it. I would shake loose my limbs, and take hold of sword or lance. A lightness to come to my steps. Pale I may be, but my soul is drenched in summer’s flame.’

Grizzin glanced across, catching the blood-gleam in the warrior’s eyes. ‘It is said that Lord Urusander is expected to march before the thaw.’

‘Then I will raise my own heat, Azathanai.’ After a moment, in which he seemed to contemplate the prospect with avid anticipation, Silchas shrugged, as if dismissing the notion. ‘But I come here to you,’ he said, ‘with more purpose than just announcing the historian’s desire to speak to you. On this day I have witnessed sorcery, an unfurling of magical power. It seemed … unearned.’