Sechul Lath rose, arching to work out the aches in his body, and then stepped back as Errastas crawled partway into the hole. His companion emerged dragging out the crushed corpse of the unknown Jaghut who had lived in the tower. The splintered ends of bones jutted from bruised and bloody flesh, making the broken body and its limbs look like shredded sacks. Some falling chunk of masonry had crushed the skull almost flat.
Errastas pulled the corpse into full view and then straightened, anchoring his hands on his hips. ‘I felt his death,’ he said, face flushed, ‘like a hand on my cock.’
Turning, half in disgust, Sechul Lath scanned the sky. It looked wrong to his eyes, but in a way he could not fathom. ‘I see no searchers,’ he said.
‘We have time,’ Errastas agreed. ‘K’rul gropes. He has not yet seen our faces. He does not yet know his quarry.’
‘This is his gift you abuse,’ Sechul observed. ‘I will not welcome his ire when he discovers what we are about.’
‘I will be ready for him. Don’t worry. A man bled out is a man left weak and helpless.’
‘I am already weary of running.’
Errastas laughed. ‘Our flight is about to become frenzied and desperate, Setch. Draconus comprehended – there, at the very end, I am sure of it. And even now he travels to the Lord of Hate. Will he confess his role in that first murder? I wonder.’
‘If he chooses silence,’ said Sechul, ‘then he will make the Lord of Hate his enemy.’
‘Do you not relish the thought of those two locked in battle? Mountains would break asunder, and seas rise to inundate half the world.’ Errastas took hold of two broken limbs and resumed dragging the corpse towards the heap of tiles.
‘Just as likely,’ said Sechul, ‘they join in alliance, and seek out K’rul as well, and then all set themselves upon our trail!’
‘I doubt that,’ Errastas said. ‘Why would you even think the Lord of Hate feels any affinity for his murdered kin? I see him sitting across from Draconus, weathering the Suzerain’s furious tirade, only to then invite the fool to a cup of tea. Besides, Draconus must return to his precious woman, bearing his precious gift, and in exquisite ignorance will he give it to her.’ With the body now beside the stacks of tiles he had singled out, Errastas knelt. He selected the tile from the top of the stack nearest him and, finding a large enough wound on the body, pushed it inside. ‘There is no ritual beyond repetition and a chosen sequence, yet we deem ritual to be a vital component to sorcery. Well, this new sorcery, that is. Of course, ritual does not create magic – all we do with ritual is comfort ourselves.’
‘It is the habit that comforts,’ Sechul Lath said.
‘And from habit is order found. Just so. I see a future full of fools—’
‘No different from the past, then. Or the present.’
‘Untrue, brother. The fools of the past were ignorant, and those of the present are wilfully obtuse. But the future promises a delightful rush into breathtaking idiocy. I charge you to become a prophet in our times, Setch. Be consistent in your predictions of folly and you will grow rich beyond avarice.’
‘A fine prediction, Errastas.’
Errastas was busy covering tile fragments in gore, studding the torn corpse with the flat stones. ‘Nature mocks all certainty but the one it embraces.’
‘Can you keep hiding us, Errastas?’
‘I doubt it. We must truly flee the lands of the Azathanai and the Jaghut.’
‘Then do we travel to the Jheck? The Dog-Runners? Surely not the Thel Akai!’
‘None of those, for the borders they share with the Azathanai. No, we must cross the sea, I think.’
Sechul Lath started, and then scowled. ‘Whither fled Mael? He will not welcome us.’
‘Indeed not,’ Errastas agreed. ‘I think … beyond his realm, even.’
‘The High Kingdom? Those borders are closed to the Azathanai.’
‘Then we must bargain our way into the demesne, friend. There must be good reason why the King is so beloved among his people. Let us make this our next adventure, and discover all the hidden truths of the High Kingdom and its perfect liege.’
Sechul Lath looked down at his friend. Blood painted red the man’s hands, but upon the soaked tiles the same blood had etched arcane symbols. No two tiles were alike. The rank smell of outrage was thick in the air. ‘Errastas, I was wondering, where did all that earth and rock come from?’
Errastas shrugged. ‘No idea. Why?’
‘I don’t know. Nothing, I suppose.’
* * *
Korya could hear rain rushing down stone in a steady torrent. She opened her eyes. It was dark. She was lying on a floor of cold pavestones that felt greasy to the touch. There was a heavy animal smell to the air, reminding her of the Jheleck. Bewildered, struggling to find her memory, she sat up.
Varandas was seated at a table, hunched over something he was working on. The tower’s interior was a single chamber, with an old wooden ladder rising from the centre of the room, leading to the roof. Haut was nowhere to be seen.
She coughed, and then coughed again, and all at once she recalled sitting at the fire, setting an ember to the pipe bowl as Haut had instructed, and then drawing hot smoke into her mouth, and then down into her lungs. Beyond that moment, there was a void. She glared over at Varandas. ‘Where is he?’
The Jaghut glanced over. ‘Out. Why?’
‘I will kill him.’
‘There is a queue for that, mahybe. But he meant you little harm and the cause was just and indeed agreeable to all present—’
‘Not to me!’
‘Well, you excused yourself forthwith, as I recall. We had a passably benign evening. I even boiled up that pot of wrinkled things you imagined to be vegetables. While we did not partake of the broth, the exercise made work for my restless hands.’
She felt rested, virulently awake. ‘I will allow,’ she said, ‘it was a good night’s sleep.’
‘And a day,’ said Varandas. ‘In oblivion, time is stolen, never to be returned. Imagine, some people actually welcome the losses. They measure them out as victories against what, boredom? The banal consideration of their own mental paucity? The wretched uselessness of their lives? The sheer pall of their dyspeptic thoughts? I am considering a thesis. On the Seduction of Oblivion. My arguments will be senseless, as befits the subject.’
‘I did not think it possible,’ Korya said.
‘What?’
‘I now believe Haut to be exceptional among you Jaghut.’
Varandas seemed to consider the observation for a moment, and then he grunted. ‘I do not disagree, although I find the notion disagreeable. Tell me, has he explained why the Lord of Hate is so called?’
She picked herself up from the filthy stone floor. ‘No. I need to pee.’
‘There is a hole out back, but beware the crumbling edge.’
‘I’m not a man, you fool.’
‘Fret not. It is large enough to mean that you do not have to aim, dear.’
Moving near the table as she made for the doorway, she paused, eyes fixing on the objects arrayed in front of the Jaghut. ‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
‘Playing with dolls. Why?’
‘I recognize those,’ she whispered.
‘Of course you do. Your master bought a dozen for you the week you came into his care. I make them.’
She found it impossible to speak, but tears filled her eyes, and then she rushed outside.
Standing in the rain, Korya lifted her face to the sky. Oh, goddess, they were not your children after all.
From the doorway behind her, Varandas said, ‘He deems you his last hope.’
She shook her head. In the valley below, lightning was flashing and she heard the mutter of thunder through the rain.
‘The slayer of Karish,’ continued the Jaghut, ‘set you upon a trail. There was purpose in that. The killer wishes to stir us to life, or so Haut believes. But I wonder if that path was not made for you instead.’
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‘That makes no sense,’ she retorted, angered by the thought. ‘No one knows anything about me.’
‘Untrue. You are the only Tiste to ever live among the Jaghut. Your arrival awakened debate and conjecture, not just among the Jaghut, but also among the Azathanai.’
She faced him. ‘Why?’
‘He has made a sorcery for you—’
‘Who? Haut? He’s done nothing of the sort. I am his maid, his cook, his slave.’
‘Lessons in humility. But no, I was not speaking of Haut. I was speaking of Draconus.’
‘The Consort? I have never even met him!’
‘Ah. By “you” I meant the Tiste. Draconus has given the Tiste the sorcery of Darkness. He has walked the Forest of Night, and the very shores of Chaos itself. It is within you, mahybe, and your progress has been observed by many.’
‘That makes no sense. There is no sorcery in me.’
‘Unfortunately,’ Varandas went on, ‘some of those observers possessed inimical thoughts, and unpleasant ambitions. They saw the precedent of the Suzerain’s manipulation of power. By the path you were set upon, there at the Spar, you were mocked. Draconus was too patient. Mother Dark is lost within his gift to her. The Tiste are blind to their own power.’
‘I did not know that cooking and washing floors could awaken sorcery, Jaghut.’
‘The greatest gift of education, Korya, is the years of shelter provided when learning. Do not think to reduce that learning to facts and the utterances of presumed sages. Much of what one learns in that time is in the sphere of concord, the ways of society, the proprieties of behaviour and thought. Haut would tell you that this is another hard-won achievement of civilization: the time and safe environment in which to learn how to live. When this is destroyed, undermined or discounted, then that civilization is in trouble.’
‘You Jaghut are obsessed with this, aren’t you? Yet you threw it all away!’
‘We were convinced of the inherent madness of codified inequity. All cooperation involves some measure of surrender. And coercion. But the alternative, being anarchy, is itself no worthy virtue. It is but an excuse for selfish aggression, and all that seeks justification from taking that stance is, each and every time, cold-hearted. Anarchists live in fear and long for death, because they despair of seeing in others the very virtues they lack in themselves. In this manner, they take pleasure in sowing destruction, if only to match their inner landscape of ruin.’ He moved out to stand beside her, huge and almost formless in the close gloom of the downpour. ‘We rejected civilization, but so too we rejected anarchy for its petty belligerence and the weakness of thought it announced. By these decisions, we made ourselves lost and bereft of purpose.’
‘I would think,’ she said, ‘that despair must stalk every Jaghut.’
‘It should have,’ Varandas said. ‘It would have, if not for the Lord of Hate.’
‘It seems that he was the cause of it all!’
‘He was, and so in return he took upon himself our despair, and called it his penance. He bears our hate for him and our self-hate, too. He holds fast to our despair, and laughs in our faces, and so we hate him all the more.’
‘I do not understand you Jaghut,’ Korya said.
‘Because you seek complexity where none exists.’
‘Where has Haut gone?’
‘He is upon the roof of my tower.’
‘Why?’
‘He watches the battle in the valley below.’
‘Battle? What battle? Who is fighting?’
‘We’re not sure. It is difficult to see in this rain. But come tomorrow, he will take you to the Lord of Hate.’
‘What for? Another lesson in humility?’
‘Oh, an interesting thought. Do you think it is possible?’
Korya frowned.
Lightning flashed again, and this time the sound of thunder rumbled through the ground beneath her feet, and she heard things rattling in the tower behind her. She was soaked through, and she still needed to pee. ‘Do you think he can see anything from up there?’
‘Of course not. I am afraid I am to blame, as I bored him witless talking about my new series of dolls. They please me immensely, you see, and soon I will set them free to find their own way in the world.’
‘I locked mine in a box,’ she told him.
‘To what end?’
Korya shrugged. ‘Perhaps to keep guard over my childhood.’
Varandas grunted. ‘That is a worthy post, I think. Well done. But not too long, I hope? We must all earn our freedom eventually, after all.’
She wondered if the Jaghut standing beside her, this maker of dolls, was perhaps mad. ‘So,’ she asked, ‘when will you set your new creations free?’
‘Well,’ he replied, ‘they need to wake up first.’
I was right. He’s mad. Completely mad.
‘Skin and flesh, blood and bone,’ Varandas said, ‘sticks and twine, leather and straw are all but traps for a wandering soul. The skill lies in the delicacy of the snare, but every doll is temporary. My art, mahybe, is one of soul-shifting. My latest dolls will seek out a rare, winged rock ape native to the old crags of a desert far to the south. I name this series Nacht.’
‘And what did you name the series you gave to me?’
‘Bolead. But I fear I made too many of them, especially given their flaws.’ He paused, and then said, ‘Creation involves risks, of course, but what is done is done, and by these words one can dismiss all manner of idiocy and atrocity. I utter the epigraph of tyrants without irony, are you not impressed?’
‘Very.’ She set out towards the side of the tower, out of the Jaghut’s sight.
Almost directly below, a tower erupted in a blinding concussion, staggering her. As she stumbled against the stone wall she felt it trembling against her. From the doorway Varandas called, ‘Not too far, mahybe! The argument below grows fierce.’
Korya shivered, but the rain was suddenly warm. She decided that she had gone far enough and crouched down to empty her bladder.
Thunder shook the hillside again.
‘Make haste,’ Varandas said. ‘The argument approaches.’
‘Frightening me doesn’t help!’ she retorted.
The hillside was thumping, as if to giant footsteps.
She straightened and quickly made her way back to the doorway.
Haut had joined Varandas, and Korya saw that he was in his armour and helm again, and in his gauntleted hands he held his axe, all of him glistening as if oiled. A massive shape was clambering up the slope, straight for them.
‘Ware!’ Haut bellowed.
The figure halted, looked up.
Varandas raised his voice to be heard over the rain, ‘I dwell here, Azathanai, and I have guests. But you do not count among them in your agitated state. Begone, unless you would see Captain Haut displeased unto violence.’
The huge figure remained motionless, and silent.
But no, not entirely silent: Korya thought she heard sniffling sounds drifting up the slope.
‘You are driven from the valley,’ Varandas continued, ‘and you bear wounds and so would unleash your temper. There are plenty of towers about that are unoccupied, and they will suffer your fury with poetic indifference. Alter your path, Azathanai, and recall the lessons in the valley below.’
The creature sidled sideways along the hillside, seeming to use its hands as much as it did its feet to move across the ground. Every now and then one of those hands reared back and punched the earth, sending thunder through the hill. The tower swayed to each impact with an ominous grinding of stone.
Slowly, the rain obscured the Azathanai’s form, and then stole it away, although the thumping punches continued, diminishing with distance.
Glancing across at Haut, Korya saw him leaning on the axe. Water ran like a curtain from the rim of his helm, parting round the upthrust tusks but otherwise obscuring his face. She advanced on him.
‘Your name alone scared off a giant who’s
been knocking down towers with his fists,’ she said.
Varandas grunted. ‘She accuses you, Haut, of notoriety. What say you in defence?’
‘Her,’ he replied. ‘Her fists.’
‘Very good,’ nodded Varandas, who then turned to Korya. ‘Thus, you have your master’s answer. I would continue to arbitrate this debate, but alas, I am getting wet. I go to light a fire in the hearth within—’
‘You don’t have a hearth within,’ said Korya.
‘Oh. Then I shall have to make space for one, of course. In the meantime, I suggest you thank your master for fending off the wrath of Kilmandaros. Why, I hear even her husband, Grizzin Farl, flees her temper. And now I see why.’ He then went inside.
Korya glared at Haut. ‘Who drove her from the valley?’ she demanded.
‘You should thank me indeed,’ he replied, ‘and be mindful of my courage these past few days. Twice now I have stood fast before the perilous ferment of a woman’s fury.’ He shouldered the axe. ‘As to your query, I suppose we shall find out soon.’
Something small and bedraggled darted out from the tower, scampered like a hare down the slope and was quickly lost from sight.
‘What was that?’
Haut sighed. ‘Varandas has been playing with dolls again, hasn’t he?’
* * *
With Arathan trailing his father, they rode among abandoned towers. The ground grew more uneven, the flatlands giving way to rounded hills. After a time, as the square edifices became more numerous, it occurred to Arathan that they were entering what passed for a city. There were no streets as such, nor was there any particular order to the layout of dwellings, but it was easy to imagine thousands of Jaghut moving to and fro between the towers.
The sky, a dull grey, was descending over them, and as they travelled onward the first drops of rain began falling. In moments, a deluge engulfed the scene. Arathan felt the water soaking through, defeating with ease the armour he wore, and a chill gripped him. He could barely make out his father ahead, the faded once-black cape like a patch of mist, Calaras like a standing stone that refused to draw nearer. The ground grew slick and treacherous and Hellar slowed her trot to a plodding walk.
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