Fall of Light (9 page)

Their journey, he knew, was a search. For something, for a state of being, perhaps. And in that contemplation, that silent yearning, they found … nothing. He imagined them stepping forward into the clearing before the house, walking around, eyes scanning the worthless ground, the crooked stones and the withered grasses that would grow thick and green in patches come the spring. Finally, they crossed the threshold, walking over the flagstones hiding the mouldering corpses of the slain, and before them, in the chill gloom, waited the hearthstone, now a sunken altar, with its indecipherable words carved upon its stone face. He saw them looking around, imaginations conjuring up ghosts, placing one here, another there. They sought, in the silence, for faint echoes, the trapped cries of loss and anguish. They took note, without question, of the black droplets of blood everywhere, not understanding their meandering way, not understanding Endest’s own senseless wandering – no, they would seek some vast meaning in that trail on the stones.

Imagination was a terrible thing, a scavenger that could grow fat on the smallest morsels. Hook-beaked, talons scraping and clacking, it lumbered about casting a greedy eye.

But in the end, it all meant nothing.

His fellow acolytes then returned to the Citadel. They looked on him with envy, with something like awe. They looked to him, and that alone was like the reopening of wounds, because there were no worthy secrets hiding in Endest’s memories. Every detail, already blurring and blending, was meaningless.

I am the priest of the pointless, seneschal to the hapless. You see my silence as humility. You see the wear in my face as some burden willingly taken on, and so give me a gravity of countenance I hardly deserve. And in your debates, you ever turn to me, seeking validation, revelation, a pageant of wise words behind which you can dance and sing and bless the darkness.

He could not tell them the source of his weariness. He could not confess the truth, much as he longed to. He could not say,
You fools, she looked through my eyes and made them weep. She bled through my hands and saw in horror that it sanctified, dripping tears of power. She took hold of me only to then flee, leaving behind nothing but despair.

I will age as hope dies. I will bend to the weight of failure. My bones will creak to the crumbling of Kurald Galain. Do not look to my memories, my brothers and sisters. Already they twist with doubt. Already they take on the shape of my flaws.

No. Do not follow me. I but walk to the grave.

A short time earlier, while he sat on the bench of the inner garden, huddled against the bitter cold, beneath a thick cloak of bear fur, he had seen the young hostage, Orfantal, run alongside the fountain with its black frozen pool. The boy held a practice sword in one hand, and the dog, Ribs, ran beside him as if it had rediscovered its youth. Now free of worms, it had gained weight, that beast, and showed the sleek muscles of its hunting origins. Together, they played out imaginary battles, and more than once Endest had come upon Orfantal in his death-throes, with Ribs drawing close beside the boy as he lay on the ground, spoiling the gravitas of the scene with a cold wet nose snuffling against Orfantal’s face. He’d yelp and then curse the dog, but it was difficult to find malice in the love the animal displayed, and before long they would be wrestling on the thin carpet of snow.

Endest Silann was no indulgent witness to all of this. In the dull, half-formed shadows cast by child and dog, he saw only nightmares in waiting.

Lord Anomander had left the wretched house of his brother – scene of recent slaughter – in the company of the Azathanai High Mason, Caladan Brood. They had struck north, into the burned forest. Endest had watched them from the bloodstained threshold.

‘I will hold you to your promise of peace,’
Anomander had said to Brood, just before they left, when they all still stood in the house.

Caladan had regarded him.
‘Understand this, Son of Darkness, I build with my hands. I am a maker of monuments to lost causes. If you travel west of here, you will find my works. They adorn ruins and other forgotten places. They stand, as eternal as I could make them, to reveal the virtues to which every age aspires. They are lost now but will be rediscovered. In the days of a wounded, dying people, these monuments are raised again. And again. Not to worship, not to idolize – only the cynics find pleasure in that, to justify the suicide of their own faith. No, they raise them in hope. They raise them to plead for sanity. They raise them to fight against futility.’

Anomander had gestured back to the hearthstone.
‘Is that now another one of your monuments?’

‘Intentions precede our deeds, and then are left lying in the wake of those deeds. I am not the voice of posterity, Anomander Rake. Nor are you.’

‘Rake?’

‘Purake is an Azathanai word,’
Brood said.
‘You did not know? It was an honorific granted to your family, to your father in his youth.’

‘Why? How did he earn it?’

The Azathanai shrugged.
‘K’rul gave it. He did not share his reasons. Or, rather, “she”, as K’rul is wont to change his mind’s way of thinking, and so assumes a woman’s guise every few centuries. He is now a man, but back then he was a woman.’

‘Do you know its meaning, Caladan?’

‘Pur Rakess Calas ne A’nom. Roughly, Strength in Standing Still.’

‘A’nom,’
said the Son of Darkness, frowning.

‘Perhaps,’
the Azathanai said,
‘as a babe, you were quick to stand.’

‘And Rakess? Or Rake, as you would call me?’

‘Only what I see in you, and what all others see in you. Strength.’

‘I feel no such thing.’

‘No one who is strong does.’

They had conversed as if Endest was not there, as if he was deaf to their words. The two men, Tiste and Azathanai, had begun forging something between them, and whatever it was, it was unafraid of truths.

‘My father died because he would not retreat from battle.’

‘Your father was bound in the chains of his family name.’

‘As I will be, Caladan? You give me hope.’

‘Forgive me, Rake, but strength is not always a virtue. I will raise no monument to you.’

The Son of Darkness had smiled, then.
‘At last, you say something that wholly pleases me.’

‘Yet still you are worshipped. Many by nature would hide in strength’s shadow.’

‘I will defy them.’

‘Such principles are rarely appreciated,’
Caladan said
. ‘Expect excoriation. Condemnation. Those who are not your equals will claim for their own that equality, and yet will meet your eyes with expectation, with profound presumption. Every kindness you yield they will take as deserved, but such appetites are unending, and your denial is the crime they but await. Commit it and witness their subsequent vilification.’

Anomander shrugged at that, as if the expectations of others meant nothing to him, and whatever would come from his standing upon the principles he espoused, he would bear it.
‘You promised peace, Caladan. I vowed to hold you to that, and nothing we have said now has changed my mind.’

‘Yes, I said I would guide you, and I will. And in so doing, I will rely upon your strength, and hope it robust enough to bear each and every burden I place upon it. So I remind myself, and you, with the new name I give you. Will you accept it, Anomander Rake? Will you stand in strength?’

‘My father’s name proved a curse. Indeed, it proved the death of him.’

‘Yes.’

‘Very well, Caladan Brood, I will take this first burden.’

Of course. The Son of Darkness could do no less.

They had departed then, leaving Endest alone in the desecrated house. Alone, with the blood drying on his hands. Alone, and hollowed out by the departing of Mother Dark’s presence.

She had heard every word.

And had, once more, fled.

He shivered in the garden, despite the furs. As if he had never regained the blood lost all that time past, there at the pilgrims’ shrine, he could no longer fight off the cold.
Do not look to me. Your regard ages me. Your hope weakens me. I am no prophet. My only purpose is to deliver the sanctity of blood.

Yet a battle was coming, a battle in the heart of winter, upending the proper season of war. And, along with all the other priests, and many of the priestesses, Endest would be there, ready to dress wounds and to comfort the dying. Ready to bless the day before the first weapon was drawn. But, alone among all the anointed, he would possess another task, another responsibility.

By my hands, I will let flow the sanctity of blood. And make of the place of battle another grisly shrine.

He thought of Orfantal dying, in the moment before Ribs pounced, and saw the spatters of blood on the snow around the boy.

She had begun returning now, faint and silent, and with his eyes, the goddess etched the future.

That was bad enough by itself, but something he could withstand.

If not for her growing thirst.

Do not look at me. Do not seek to know me. You’ll not like my truths.

Step by step, this pilgrim makes a path.

  *   *   *

Bedecked in his heavy armour, Kellaras stood hesitating in the corridor when Silchas Ruin appeared. The commander stepped to one side to let the lord past. Instead, Silchas halted.

‘Kellaras, have you sought entry into the Chamber of Night?’

‘No, milord. My courage fails me.’

‘What news do you bring that so unmans you?’

‘None but truths I regret knowing, milord. I have word from Captain Galar Baras. He has done as you commanded, but in the observation of his new recruits, he reiterates his doubt.’

Silchas turned to study the blackwood door at the corridor’s end. ‘No counsel will be found there, commander.’

I fear you are right.
Kellaras shrugged. ‘My apologies, milord. I sought but could not find you.’

‘Yet you stepped aside and voiced no greeting.’

‘Forgive me, milord. All courage fails me. I believe what I sought in the Chamber of Night was a gift of faith from my goddess.’

‘Alas,’ said Silchas Ruin in a growl, ‘she makes faith into water, and pleasures in its feel as it drains from the hand. Even our thirst is denied us. Very well, Kellaras, I have your news, but it changes nothing. The Hust armour must be worn, the swords held in living hands. Perhaps this will be enough to give Urusander pause.’

‘He will know the measure of those in that armour, milord, and the fragility of the grasp upon those swords.’

‘You would spread the sand beneath your feet out and under my own, Kellaras, but I need to remain sure of each stride I take.’

‘Milord, any word of your brothers?’

Silchas frowned. ‘You think us eager to share such privacies, commander? Your lord will find you in good time, and yield no sympathy should your courage fail in his eyes. Now, divest yourself of that armour – its display whispers of panic.’

Bowing, Kellaras backed away.

Facing the Chamber of Night, Silchas Ruin seemed to hesitate, as if about to march towards it, and then he wheeled round. ‘A moment, commander. Send Dathenar and Prazek to the Hust, and charge them take command of the new cohorts, and so give answer to Galar Baras’s needs, as best we can.’

Startled, Kellaras asked, ‘Milord, are they to don Hust armour? Take up a Hust sword?’

Silchas Ruin’s face hardened. ‘Has courage failed everyone in our House? Leave my sight, commander!’

‘Milord.’ Kellaras quickly set off. As he marched up the corridor, he could feel Ruin’s baleful glare upon his back.
Panic’s bite is indeed a fever. And here I am, the flea upon a thousand hides.
He would return to his chamber and remove his armour, setting aside the girdle of war, but retain his sword as befitted his rank. Silchas was right. A soldier makes of his garb a statement, and an invitation. It was the swagger of violence, but inside that armour there could be diffidence and, indeed, great fear.

He would then set out and find Dathenar and Prazek where he had left them, upon the Citadel’s bridge.

Harbinger blades for those two, and a chorus of scales. Oh, my friends, I see you shrivel before my eyes at this news. Forgive me.

The Citadel’s darkness was suffocating. Again and again he found the need to pause and draw a deep, settling breath. In the corridors and colonnaded hallways, he walked virtually alone, and it was all too easy to imagine this place abandoned, haunted by a host of failures – no different, then, from any ruin he had visited out in the lands to the south, where the Forulkan left only their bones amidst the rubble. The sense of things still unfinished was like a curse riding an endless breath. It moaned on the wind and made stones tick in the heat. It whispered in the sifting of sand and voiced low laughter in the slip of pebbles between the fingers.

He could see this fortress devoid of life, a scorched shell that made Dark’s temple a bitter jest. Worshipped by spiders in their dusty webs, and beetles crawling through bat guano – a man wandering through such a place would find nothing worth remembering. The failings of the past cut like a sharp knife through any hope of nostalgia, or sweet reminiscence. He could not help but wonder at the impermanence of such places as temples and other holy sites. If nothing more than symbols of lost faith, then they stood as mortal failings. But if gods died in such ruins – if they felt a blade sink into their hearts, or slide smooth across their soft throats, then the crime was beyond any surrendering of faith.

Still, perhaps holiness was nothing more than an eye’s gift – upon these stones, or that tree, or the spring bubbling beneath it. Perhaps the only murder possible in such places was the one that left hope lying lifeless upon the ground.