Forge of Darkness (Kharkanas Trilogy 1) (58 page)

Ribs was back around her legs, trembling. ‘Why is your dog so scared, Rancept?’

‘Memories of the Ay,’ he said in a mutter.

She had no idea what he meant. ‘Just take my hand and lead me across. We have things to do, and lounging in some buried temple isn’t one of them.’

‘Sorry, milady.’ A moment later he took hold of her right hand, with fingers gnarled and rough as roots. ‘Just step, the ground’s level.’

When he guided her forward, however, it was clear that he was taking a circuitous route. ‘What are we going around, Rancept?’

‘It don’t matter, milady.’

‘Tell me.’

‘Easier to look than describe. Very well, uneducated as I am, I’ll try. There’s a Dog-Runner witch squatting on the altar.’

‘What! Someone else is in here?’

‘She won’t bother you. Might be she’s dead but I don’t think so. She’s sleeping, I think.’

Sukul pulled up. ‘All right, you win. Tell me how to see.’

‘Close your eyes—’

At that nonsensical beginning she snorted, in spite of her fear.

‘Close your eyes,’ he said again, this time more forcefully. ‘Picture a cavern in your mind. Earthen walls, a sagging dome for a ceiling. Roots everywhere, even underfoot if you care to feel them. Pushed into the walls all around you are wolf skulls, but bigger wolf skulls than any you’ve ever seen. Big as horse skulls. Those are the Ay, who run with
the
Dog-Runners and give them that name. There’s hundreds of them here. The roots grip them like the hands of the earth itself.’

Ribs’s trembling had now taken her as well. Her mouth was dry and she felt currents tracking across her skin, caressing her face. ‘The air is moving,’ she whispered.

‘Yes. It never stops moving down here. I don’t know why, but I think it’s the magic’s doing, milady. This energy is restless. She was a powerful witch, I think.’

‘Tell me more,’ Sukul said. ‘About the witch.’

‘The altar she’s sitting on is hard-packed earth. Clay, mostly, along with pretty stones—’

‘Stones?’

‘Pushed in. Offerings. Garnet, onyx, skystone, various raw metals. Gold and the like. And animal claws and fangs, bits of carved ivory. A few feathers. Chipped stone tools. This is how the Dog-Runners give offering to a beloved one.’

‘I see it,’ she said suddenly, her breath quickening.

‘She’s cross-legged on the altar,’ Rancept went on. ‘Or she was at first. Her bones are transformed, into wood, into roots, and what’s left of her hide looks like bark. She grows out of the altar like a tree, milady, and all these roots – all the way up the passage and all around us here – they all grow out from her.’

She gasped. ‘And you cut through them!’

‘I wounded her, yes, in my ignorance. I wounded her deeply, milady.’

Sukul heard the anguish in his soft admission. ‘I’m sorry, Rancept. Has she eyes left? Does she look upon you now?’

‘They’re grown over, so I don’t know. I’ve troubled her dreams, though. I did that and I know it and if I could mend her, I would.’

‘If she still lives, Rancept, they’ll heal. The roots will grow back.’

‘No sign of that yet, milady.’

‘I have never seen a Dog-Runner. Describe her, please.’

He seemed grateful for the command. ‘Her face is polished wood, a deep brown that seems to hold gold in its depths. The wood has grown over the bones of her face. Once, that face would have been fair-skinned, the features heavy but open to all pleasures and joys – this is how the Dog-Runners are. They laugh with ease and weep with even greater ease. Every word is a confession and they do not understand dissembling. To speak with a Dog-Runner, milady, is to be humbled and to feel blessed. Many among the Tiste found resentment in that.’

Though she doubted he could see, she nodded to that observation, well understanding how it would be so. ‘We surrender nothing.’

‘There is wisdom in you, milady, beyond your years.’

But she felt anything but wise at this moment. ‘You believe the witch sleeps.’

‘I believe she is the one, yes.’

‘The one?’

His hand tightened slightly around hers. ‘The Dog-Runners of the southwest speak of the Dreamer, the greatest witch of their kind – who remained behind when her people left. She stayed, to keep emptiness from the world.’

Sukul thought of Mother Dark, and that terrible hint of the Abyss that swirled around her presence in the sacred chamber where was found the Throne of Night. ‘She resists Mother Dark?’

She felt the motion of his shrug. ‘That might be so. That is beyond me.’

‘Rancept, are you a Denier?’

‘I do not stand against Mother Dark, milady.’

But that was not an answer; still, she knew that it was all he would give her, and she decided to respect that. Her question had been improper by any standards, made worse for coming from a child. ‘Forgive me,’ she said in a small voice.

‘Do you see all that I have described?’

‘Yes. I see it clear. I see the cavern, and all its roots coming from the walls – back to her, where she sits with a face of wood and eyes grown over and for ever closed. We stand inside the cavern, like errant thoughts inside a skull.’

The hand snapped tight, almost crushing the bones of her fingers and she winced.

‘My apologies, milady. But those last words were not your own.’

She thought about that and then nodded once more. ‘She dreams us. We are in her dreams and she is trying to make sense of us. Strangers inside her skull. In here, Rancept, our words could be her thoughts. In here, we are in danger of disappearing, of losing ourselves.’

‘Yes, milady. I believe you are right, and I have felt this before. We must leave.’

She pulled her hand free. She no longer needed his guiding clasp; she could see the tunnel continuing on at the far end; could see its upward slope. Yet, still her eyes remained closed. ‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘does this witch have a name?’

‘In the language of the Dog-Runners, she is named Burn. She dreams so that we may live. All of us: Tiste, Dog-Runner, Jaghut, Thel Akai, even the Forulkan. She dreams, to give us our freedom.’

She had been making her way forward while Rancept was speaking, and she felt him move alongside her, but at his last words she drew up. ‘Tell me, did you offer her anything?’

His mouth-breathing stuttered slightly. ‘I would have to be a Denier to do that, milady.’

Sukul thought back, to the time before he had taken her hand. Was
there
movement from him? Was he standing near the witch? She did not know. Reaching for her leather purse, she loosened the draw-strings.

‘Careful now,’ said Rancept, and she realized that he was watching her, somehow –
no, not ‘somehow’. He sees because he believes. In this temple Rancept worships. Yet, he chose to lead me here. There would have been other ways through, other paths. But he brought me here
.

She drew out a memory stone, found upon the banks of the Dorssan Ryl.
For the brother I lost to the wars
.

‘Milady. Sukul Ankhadu, I beg you. This gesture must not be a careless one. Will you bind Mother Dark to the Sleeping Goddess of the Dog-Runners?’

Her breath caught. ‘I am not a highborn, castellan. I am not a priestess.’

‘Does your faith lie with Mother Dark? No, do not answer me. If it does, however, then surely you shall bind these two women. More than this, you shall bind the Deniers and the Tiste. There is no more holy place than this temple, but it is lost to the Deniers. I alone know of it – do you understand me?’

‘And you are a man with secrets, yet bold or foolish enough to reveal this to me. Why?’

‘Truth?’

‘Truth, Rancept. Give me that at least.’

‘Tiste schooling is rubbish,’ he said.

She almost yelped her laughter, and it echoed loudly in the chamber. At the sound Ribs bolted past her and up the tunnel.

Beside her, the castellan’s astonishment was palpable to her senses.

‘Forgive me again, Rancept …’ and then her words faded away.

The air had changed in the chamber and she felt her skin prickling. ‘What is it?’ she asked in a frightened whisper. ‘What have I done?’

‘Put the stone away,’ said Rancept. ‘She is a Dog-Runner still, it seems.’

‘I don’t understand – what is this I’m feeling?’

‘Her blessing, child. What greater or more precious gift could you give her, but laughter? Breath of the Sleeping Goddess, you have healed her, Sukul Ankhadu.’

She started as the huge man knelt in front of her, and somehow – though still her eyes remained shut – she saw the glitter of tears on his cheeks. ‘The roots no longer bleed,’ he said gruffly. ‘I thank you, milady, with all my heart.’

‘For this learning,’ she heard herself say, ‘I make payment with pleasure.’

She felt his wry smile and smiled in return.

He rose and together they headed into the passage ahead.

When he took her hand again she welcomed it, though both knew
she
no longer needed any guidance from him. No, this was more like friendship, and the notion startled Sukul, so that she almost laughed again. Instead, she sent her delight back down the tunnel, back into that wondrous chamber, where flesh and wood were one, and eyes grown shut could see all there was to see.

As they clambered back towards the surface – where dawn’s pale light made a plate of silver-blue above and ahead of them – Sukul said, ‘Rancept, the Deniers who remain must be told of this temple. They deserve that much.’

‘There is no need,’ he replied. ‘I shared her dreams below – yes, it is plain now and I will not dissemble. I am a Denier – though I deeply dislike that name. No matter. In sharing those dreams, I saw a truth, newborn and wondrous.’

‘What did you see?’

They rose into the light of dawn and he looked back at her with a half-smile transforming his twisted features – an expression she had never before seen on him and one that she thought would stop the hearts of the castellan’s guard should they ever witness it – and he said, ‘Burn dreams of a river, milady. She dreams of a river.’

* * *

Gloved hands gripping the rope, Risp made her way down the crevasse. Unfamiliar twinges assailed her shoulders and back. Climbing was not a common activity among the Tiste – a better excuse than her general unfitness, she decided. Below her the lantern anchored the rope, resting on broken rock. The air was dusty and chilled by eternal shadow, and she felt a kind of belligerence in this place, as if the stone walls resented her intrusion.

Just nerves, she told herself. And anxiety. The light had revealed no obvious body on the floor below, but it was clear that the crack extended to either side for unknown distances. Risp was certain that no cold corpse awaited her; the clenching of her gut was proof of her conviction. Men like Gripp Galas possessed that infuriating luck that seemed to ride the shoulders of old soldiers. He’d never fall in battle. When death took him he would probably be lying on a woman in some rank bordello.

She worked her way over a sloping bulge in the stone wall that showed signs of scraping, a few spots of blood now dried and black as ink, and two body-lengths below that she reached the bottom, boots scrabbling for purchase on the loose stones. More blood, spattered amidst dislodged rubble.

Looking back up the crevasse, Risp wondered how Gripp had ever managed to climb back out. She then turned and crouched, untying the lantern and taking the handle in hand. The smell of scorched leather
came
from her glove and she could feel the handle’s heat. Ignoring the faint discomfort she straightened and set out to explore.

No body, but she’d already guessed as much. The fissure narrowed quickly at one end. In the other direction – eastward, she judged – the crevasse continued on, down a sloping, choked floor littered with dry branches, and the remnants of bird nests built from twigs, mud and snarls of goat hair.

She made her way forward. A dozen paces along, the walls leaned inward, tightening the passage so that she had to angle sideways to go further. Feeling the stone pressing in on her front and back triggered a momentary panic, but she fought it down and pushed ahead. The crevasse widened again and here the fallen rocks formed a slope leading upward. She made out a bloody handprint on a stone halfway up it.

Risp followed the obvious trail. The crevasse broadened out still more, and now huge broken boulders filled the space. Dust was scraped clear here and there, on obvious hand- and footholds. Dawn’s light revealed the surface only a dozen paces onward. Moments later she scrambled into the clear. The road was thirty paces to her left, the span in between a wash of sand on which Gripp’s bootprints were visible. One leg had been dragging.

Dousing the lantern, she walked to the road, scrambled up the bank and swung left. Just beyond the bend waited her troop, the soldiers dismounted and still busy building cairns over a row of bodies on the far side of the road. Her sergeant, she saw, was still at the crevasse, squatting and peering down. At a word from a nearby soldier he twisted round to see her approaching on the road.