House of Chains

by Steven Erikson

  One proved not quite fast enough to avoid his scything blade, and Karsa would eat well this night. Thus, his sword’s virgin thirst was born of necessity, not the rage of battle. He wondered if the ghosts had known displeasure at such an ignoble beginning. They had surrendered their ability to communicate with him upon entering the stone, though Karsa’s imagination had no difficulty in finding Bairoth’s sarcastic commentary, should he seek it. Delum’s measured wisdom was more difficult, yet valued all the more for that.

  The sun swept its even arc across the cloudless sky as he marched on. Towards dusk he saw bhederin herds to the west, and, two thousand paces ahead, a herd of striped antelope crested a hilltop to watch him for a time, before wheeling as one and vanishing from sight.

  The western horizon was a fiery conflagration when he reached the place where they had stood.

  Where a figure awaited him.

  The grasses had been flattened in a modest circle. A three-legged brazier squatted in its centre, filled with orange-glowing pieces of bhederin dung that cast forth no smoke. Seated behind it was a Jaghut. Bent and gaunt to the point of emaciation, wearing ragged skins and hides, long grey hair hanging in strands over a blotched, wrinkled brow, eyes the colour of the surrounding grass.

  The Jaghut glanced up as Karsa approached, offering the Teblor something between a grimace and a smile, his yellowed tusks gleaming. ‘You have made a mess of that deer skin, Toblakai. I will take it none the less, in exchange for this cookfire.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Karsa replied, dropping the carcass beside the brazier.

  ‘Aramala contacted me, and so I have come to meet you. You have done her a noble service, Toblakai.’

  Karsa set down his pack and squatted before the brazier. ‘I hold no loyalty to the T’lan Imass.’

  The Jaghut reached across and collected the deer. A small knife flashed in his hand and he began cutting just above the animal’s small hoofs. ‘An expression of their gratitude, after she fought alongside them against the Tyrants. As did I, although I was fortunate enough to escape with little more than a broken spine. Tomorrow, I will lead you to one far less fortunate than either Aramala or myself.’

  Karsa grunted. ‘I seek a Jhag horse, not an introduction to your friends.’

  The ancient Jaghut cackled. ‘Blunt words. Thelomen Toblakai indeed. I had forgotten, and so lost my appreciation. The one I will take you to shall call out to the wild horses—and they will come.’

  ‘A singular skill.’

  ‘Aye, and hers alone, for it was, by and large, by her hand and her will that the horses came into being.’

  ‘A breeder, then.’

  ‘Of sorts,’ the Jaghut nodded amicably. He began peeling the hide from the deer. ‘The few of my fallen kin still alive will greatly appreciate this skin, despite the damage wrought by your ghastly stone sword. The aras deer are fleet, and clever. They never use the same trail—ha, they do not even make trails! And so one cannot lie in wait. Nor are snares of any use. And when pursued, where do they go? Why, into the bhederin herds, under the very beasts themselves. Clever, I said. Very clever.’

  ‘I am Karsa Orlong, of the Uryd—’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know. From distant Genabackis. Little different from my fallen kin, the Jhag. Ignorant of your great and noble history—’

  ‘Less ignorant than I once was.’

  ‘Good. I am named Cynnigig, and now you are even less ignorant.’

  Karsa shrugged. ‘The name means nothing to me.’

  ‘Of course not, it’s mine. Was I infamous? No, though once I aspired to be. Well, for a moment or two. But then I changed my mind. You, Karsa Orlong, you are destined for infamy. Perhaps indeed you have already achieved it, back in your homeland.’

  ‘I think not. No doubt I am believed dead, and nothing of what I did is known to my family or my tribe.’

  Cynnigig cut off a haunch and threw it on the flames. A cloud of smoke rose from the hissing, spitting fire. ‘So you might think, but I would hazard otherwise. Word travels, no matter what the barriers. The day you return, you will see.’

  ‘I care not for fame,’ Karsa said. ‘I did once . . .’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I changed my mind.’

  Cynnigig laughed once again, louder this time. ‘I have brought wine, my young friend. In yonder chest, yes, there.’

  Karsa straightened and walked over. The chest was massive, iron-bounded and thick-planked, robust enough to challenge even Karsa, should he choose to lift it. ‘This should have wheels and a train of oxen,’ the Teblor muttered as he crouched before it. ‘How did you bring it with you?’

  ‘I didn’t. It brought me.’

  Games with words. Scowling, Karsa lifted the lid.

  A single carafe of crystal stood in its centre, flanked by a pair of chipped clay beakers. The wine’s deep red colour gleamed through the transparent crystal, bathing the otherwise empty interior of the chest with a warm, sunset hue. Karsa stared down into it for a moment, then grunted. ‘Aye, I can see that it would fit you, provided you curled up. You and the wine and the brazier—’

  ‘The brazier! That would be a hot journey!’

  The Teblor’s scowl deepened. ‘Unlit, of course.’

  ‘Ah, yes, of course. Cease your gawking, then, and pour us some wine. I’m about to turn the meat here.’

  Karsa reached down, then snatched his hand back. ‘It’s cold in there!’

  ‘I prefer my wine chilled, even the red. I prefer everything chilled, in fact.’

  Grimacing, the Teblor picked up the carafe and the two beakers. ‘Then someone must have carried you here.’

  ‘Only if you believe all that I tell you. And all that you see, Karsa Orlong. A T’lan Imass army marched by here, not so long ago. Did they find me? No. Why? I was hidden in my chest, of course. Did they find the chest? No, because it was a rock. Did they note the rock? Perhaps. But then, it was only a rock. Now, I know what you’re thinking, and you would be precisely correct. The sorcery I speak of is not Omtose Phellack. But why would I seek to employ Omtose Phellack, when that is the very scent the T’lan Imass hunted? Oh no. Is there some cosmic law that Jaghut can only use Omtose Phellack? I’ve read a hundred thousand night skies and have yet to see it written there—oh, plenty of other laws, but nothing approaching that one, neither in detail nor intent. Thus saving us the bloody recourse of finding a Forkrul Assail to adjudicate, and believe me, such adjudication is invariably bloody. Rarely indeed is anyone satisfied. Rarer still that anyone is left alive. Is there justice in such a thing, I ask you? Oh yes, perhaps the purest justice of all. On any given day, the aggrieved and the aggriever could stand in each other’s clothes. Never a question of right and wrong, in truth, simply one of deciding who is least wrong. Do you grasp—’

  ‘What I grasp,’ Karsa cut in, ‘is the smell of burning meat.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Rare are my moments of discourse—’

  ‘I had no idea.’

  ‘—which cannot be said for this meat. Of course you wouldn’t, since we have just met. But I assure you, I have little opportunity to talk—’

  ‘There in your chest.’

  Cynnigig grinned. ‘Precisely. You have the gist of it. Precisely. Thelomen Toblakai indeed.’

  Karsa handed the Jaghut a beaker filled with wine. ‘Alas, my hand has warmed it some.’

  ‘I’ll suffer the degradation, thank you. Here, help yourself to the deer. Charcoal is good for you, did you know that? Cleanses the digestive tract, confounds the worms, turns your excrement black. Black as a forest bear’s. Recommended if you are being pursued, for it will fool most, barring those who have made a study of excrement, of course.’

  ‘And do such people exist?’

  ‘I have no idea. I rarely get out. What preening empires have risen only to then fall beyond the Jhag Odhan? Pomposity choking on dust, these are cycles unending among short-lived creatures. I do not grieve for my own ignorance. Why should I? Not knowing what I have missed mean
s I do not miss what I do not know. How could I? Do you see? Aramala was ever questing for such pointless knowledge, and look where it got her. Same for Phyrlis, whom you will meet tomorrow. She can never see beyond the leaves in front of her face, though she ceaselessly strives to do so, as if the vast panorama offers something other than time’s insectile crawl. Empires, thrones, tyrants and liberators, a hundred thousand tomes filled with versions of the same questions, asked over and over again. Will answers deliver their promised solace? I think not. Here, cook some more, Karsa Orlong, and drink more wine—you see the carafe never empties. Clever, isn’t it? Now, where was I?’

  ‘You rarely get out.’

  ‘Indeed. What preening empires have risen only to then fall beyond the Jhag Odhan? Pomposity choking . . .’

  Karsa’s eyes narrowed on the Jhag Odhan, then he reached for the wine.

  A lone tree stood on ground that was the summit of a hill that in turn abutted a larger hill. Sheltered from the prevailing winds, it had grown vast, its bark thin and peeling as if it was skin unable to contain the muscular breadth underneath. Branches as thick around as Karsa’s thigh reached out from the massive, knotted trunk. Its top third was thickly leaved, forming broad, flattened canopies of dusty green.

  ‘Looks old, doesn’t it?’ Cynnigig said as they climbed towards it, the Jaghut walking with a hooked, sideways gait. ‘You have no idea how old, my young friend. No idea. I dare not reveal to you the truth of its antiquity. Have you seen its like before? I think not. Perhaps reminiscent of the guldindha, such as can be found here and there across the odhan. Reminiscent, as a ranag is reminiscent of a goat. More than simply a question of stature. No, it is in truth a question of antiquity. An Elder species, this tree. A sapling when an inland sea hissed salty sighs over this land. Tens of thousands of years, you wonder? No. Hundreds of thousands. Once, Karsa Orlong, these were the dominant trees across most of the world. All things know their time, and when that time is past, they vanish—’

  ‘But this one hasn’t.’

  ‘No sharper an observance could be made. And why, you ask?’

  ‘I do not bother, for I know you will tell me in any case.’

  ‘Of course I shall, for I am of a helpful sort, a natural proclivity. The reason, my young friend, shall soon be made evident.’

  They clambered over the last of the rise and came to the flat ground, eternally shadowed beneath the canopy and so free of grasses. The tree and all its branches, Karsa now saw, were wrapped in spiders’ webs that somehow remained entirely translucent no matter how thickly woven, revealed only by a faint flickering reflection. And beneath that glittering shroud, the face of a Jaghut stared back at him.

  ‘Phyrlis,’ Cynnigig said, ‘this is the one Aramala spoke of, the one seeking a worthy horse.’

  The Jaghut woman’s body remained visible here and there, revealing that the tree had indeed grown around her. Yet a single shaft of wood emerged from just behind her right collarbone, rejoining the main trunk along the side of her head.

  ‘Shall I tell him your story, Phyrlis? Of course, I must, if only for its remarkability.’

  Her voice did not come from her mouth, but sounded, fluid and soft, inside Karsa’s head. ‘Of course you must, Cynnigig. It is your nature to leave no word unsaid.’

  Karsa smiled, for there was too much affection in the tone to lend the words any edge.

  ‘My Thelomen Toblakai friend, a most extraordinary tale, for which true explanations remain beyond us all,’ Cynnigig began, settling down cross-legged on the stony ground. ‘Dear Phyrlis was a child—no, a babe, still suckling from her mother’s breast—when a band of T’lan Imass ran them down. The usual fate ensued. The mother was slain, and Phyrlis was dealt with also in the usual fashion—spitted on a spear, the spear anchored into the earth. None could have predicted what then followed, neither Jaghut nor T’lan Imass, for it was unprecedented. That spear, wrought of native wood, took what it could of Phyrlis’s life-spirit and so was reborn. Roots reached down to grip the bedrock, branches and leaves sprang anew, and in return the wood’s own life-spirit rewarded the child. Together, then, they grew, escaping their relative fates. Phyrlis renews the tree, the tree renews Phyrlis.’

  Karsa set his sword’s point down and leaned on it. ‘Yet she was the maker of the Jhag horses.’

  ‘A small role, Karsa Orlong. From my blood came their longevity. The Jhag horses breed infrequently, insufficient to increase, or even maintain, their numbers, were they not so long-lived.’

  ‘I know, for the Teblor—my own people, who dwell in the mountains of north Genabackis—maintain herds of what must be Jhag horses.’

  ‘If so, then I am pleased. They are being hunted to extinction here on the Jhag Odhan.’

  ‘Hunted? By whom?’

  ‘By distant kin of yours, Thelomen Toblakai. Trell.’

  Karsa was silent for a moment, then he scowled. ‘Such as the one known as Mappo?’

  ‘Yes indeed. Mappo Runt, who travels with Icarium. Icarium, who carries arrows made from my branches. Who, each time he visits me, remembers naught of the previous encounter. Who asks, again and again, for my heartwood, so that he may fashion from it a mechanism to measure time, for my heartwood alone can outlive all other constructs.’

  ‘And do you oblige him?’ Karsa asked.

  ‘No, for it would kill me. Instead, I bargain. A strong shaft for a bow. Branches for arrows.’

  ‘Have you no means to defend yourself, then?’

  ‘Against Icarium, no-one has, Karsa Orlong.’

  The Teblor warrior grunted. ‘I had an argument with Icarium, which neither of us won.’ He tapped his stone sword. ‘My weapon was of wood, but now I wield this one. The next time we meet, even Mappo Trell’s treachery shall not save Icarium.’

  Both Jaghut were silent for a long moment, and Karsa realized that Phyrlis was speaking to Cynnigig, for he saw his expression twist with alarm. Ochre eyes flicked momentarily up to the Teblor, then away again.

  Finally, Cynnigig loosed a long sigh and said, ‘Karsa Orlong, she now calls upon the nearest herd—the lone herd she knows has come close to this area in answer to her first summons. She had hoped for more—evidence, perhaps, of how few Jhag horses remain.’

  ‘How many head in this herd?’

  ‘I cannot say, Karsa Orlong. They usually number no more than a dozen. Those that now approach are perhaps the last left in the Jhag Odhan.’

  Karsa lifted his gaze suddenly as the noise of hoofs sounded, rumbling through the ground underfoot. ‘More than a dozen, I think,’ he murmured.

  Cynnigig clambered upright, wincing with the effort. Movement in the valley below. Karsa swung around. The ground was shaking, the roar of thunder on all sides now. The tree behind him shook as if struck by a sudden gale. In his mind, the Teblor heard Phyrlis cry out.

  The horses came in their hundreds. Grey as iron, larger even than those Karsa’s tribe had bred. Streaming, tossing manes of black. Stallions, flinging their heads back and bucking to clear a space around them. Broad-backed mares, foals racing at their flanks. Hundreds into thousands.

  The air filled with dust, lifting on the wind and corkscrewing skyward as if to challenge the Whirlwind itself.

  More of the wild horses topped the hill above them, and the thunder suddenly fell away as every beast halted, forming a vast iron ring facing inward. Silence, the dust cloud rolling, tumbling away on the wind.

  Karsa faced the tree once more. ‘It seems you need not worry that they near extinction, Phyrlis. I have never seen so many foals and yearlings in a herd. Nor have I ever before seen a herd of this size. There must ten, fifteen thousand head—and we cannot even see all of them.’

  Phyrlis seemed incapable of replying. The tree’s branches still shook, the branches rattling in the hot air.

  ‘You speak true, Karsa Orlong,’ Cynnigig rasped, his gaze eerily intent on the Thelomen Toblakai. ‘The herds have come together—and some have come far indeed in answer to the
summons. But not that of Phyrlis. No, not in answer to her call. But in answer to yours, Karsa Orlong. And to this, we have no answer. But now, you must choose.’ Nodding, he turned to study the horses.

  ‘Karsa Orlong, you spoke earlier of a wooden weapon. What kind of wood?’

  ‘Ironwood, the only choice remaining to me. In my homeland, we use bloodwood.’

  ‘And blood-oil?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Rubbed into the wood. Blood-oil, staining your hands. They can smell it, Karsa Orlong—’

  ‘But I have none.’

  ‘Not on you. In you. It courses in your veins, Karsa Orlong. Bloodwood has not existed in the Jhag Odhan for tens of thousands of years. Yet these horses remember. Now, you must choose.’

  ‘Bloodwood and blood-oil,’ Cynnigig said. ‘This is an insufficient explanation, Phyrlis.’

  ‘Yes, it is. But it is all I have.’

  Karsa left them to their argument and, leaving his sword thrust upright in the ground, walked down to the waiting horses. Stallions tossed their heads at his approach and the Teblor smiled—careful not to show his teeth, knowing that they saw him as predator, and themselves as his prey. Though they could easily kill me. Among such numbers I would have no chance. He saw one stallion that was clearly dominant among all others, given the wide space around it and its stamping, challenging demeanour, and walked past it, murmuring, ‘Not you, proud one. The herd needs you more than I do.’ He spied another stallion, this one just entering adulthood, and made his way towards it. Slowly, approaching at an angle so that the horse could see him.

  A mane and tail of white, not black. Long-limbed, muscles rippling beneath its sleek hide. Grey eyes.

  Karsa halted a single pace away. He slowly reached out his right hand, until his fingertips settled on the beast’s trembling bridge. He began applying pressure. The stallion resisted, backing up a step. He pushed the head further down, testing the flexibility of the neck. Still further, the neck bowing, until the horse’s chin almost rested in the space between its breast bones.