Dust of Dreams

by Erikson, Steven

  Last had devised a trap for the lizard-rats—the orthen—and had headed off to check it, Asane accompanying him.

  At the top of a ramp and in a long but shallow antechamber, Nappet and Sheb had found a sealed door and were pounding at it with iron-headed sledges, each blow ringing like a tortured bell. Most of the damage they likely inflicted was to their ears, but since neither had anything to say to the other, they’d yet to discover it.

  Breath was exploring the Nest itself, the now empty, abandoned abode of the Matron, finding nothing of interest, although unbeknownst to her residual flavours flowed in through her lungs and formed glistening minute droplets on her exposed skin. Vague dreams of producing children dogged her, successive scenes of labour and birth, tumbling one upon the next like a runaway nightmare. What had begun as a diffuse irritation was quickly building to an indefinable rage.

  Breath had been living inside the Tiles since creating them, but even she could not find the meaning she sought in them. And now the outside world was seeping into her. Confusion swarmed.

  And then there was the K’Chain Che’Malle drone. Climbing, drawing ever closer to this hapless collection of humans.

  The ghost drifted amongst his family, haunted by a growing trepidation. His people were failing. In some ineffable, fundamental way, they were pulling apart. Even as he had wondered at their purpose, now each one—barring perhaps Taxilian—was doing the same. A crisis was upon them, and he could feel the growing turbulence. They would not be ready for Sulkit. They might even kill the drone. And then all would be lost.

  He recalled—once, a thousand times?—standing on the deck of a ship, witness to the sea’s surface spreading out smooth as vitreous glass on all sides, a strange quality suffusing the still air, the light becoming uncanny, febrile. And around him faceless sailors scrambling, pale as motes—bloody propitiations to the Elder God, the bawling bleat of goats brought up from the hold, the flash of sea-dipped blades and twisted blankets of blood floating on the seas—all around him, such rising fear. And in answer to all of this, he heard his own laughter. Cruel as a demon’s, and wide eyes fixed on him, for they had found a monster in their midst. And he was that monster.

  I called storms, didn’t I? Just to see the violence, to draw it round me like the warmest cloak. And even the cries of drowning mortals could not break my amusement.

  Are these memories mine? What manner of beast was I?

  The blood tasted … good. Propitiation? The fools—they simply fed my power.

  I remember a tribe, corpses cooling beneath furs and blankets, and the stains of spite on my hands. I remember the empty hole I found myself in, the pit that was my crime. Too late to howl at its depth, its lifeless air, the deadness inside.

  Betrayed by a wife. Everyone laughing behind my back. For that, all would die. So it must be, and so it was. And I fled that place, the home I destroyed in the span of a single night. But some holes cannot be climbed out of. I ran and ran, and each night, lying exhausted, I fell back into that hole, and I looked up at that mouth of light far above, and I watched it ever recede. Until it winked out.

  When you see my eyes now, all you see is that deadness. You see the black, smooth walls. And you know that, though I look back at you, I see nothing that makes me feel … anything.

  I am walking still, alone on the empty plain, and the edifice I approach looms ever bigger, a thing of stone and dried blood, a thing eager to awaken once more.

  Come find me.

  Asane came staggering back into the chamber where Taxilian and Rautos still crouched at the gutted wall. Gasping, frightened, she struggled to find her breath, as Rautos turned round.

  ‘Asane? What is it? Where is Last?’

  ‘A demon! One lives! It found us!’

  They could hear sounds now on the ramp, leather soles and something else—the click of claws, the flicking hiss of a tail brushing stone.

  Asane backed to the far wall. Rautos hissed, ‘Taxilian! Get Nappet and Sheb! Quickly!’

  ‘What?’ the man glanced back over his shoulder. ‘What is it?’

  Last appeared, looking faintly bewildered, but otherwise unharmed. Two dead orthen hung from a string at his belt. Moments later, the K’Chain Che’Malle loomed into view. Gaunt, but no taller than a man, thin-limbed, a tail that lashed about as if possessing its own will.

  The ghost felt the fear, in Asane and Rautos. But in Taxilian, who slowly straightened from the exposed machinery, there was wonder, curiosity. And then … excitement. He stepped forward.

  The drone was studying the chamber, as if searching for something. At the incessant clanging from above, it cocked its head. A moment later there were shouts of triumph from Nappet and Sheb—the door had opened, but the ghost knew that the surrender of that barrier had not come beneath their sledges. Sulkit had simply unlocked it. A moment later, he wondered how he knew this.

  Breath reappeared from a side passage. ‘Blueiron,’ she whispered, staring at the drone. ‘Like a … a Fulcrum. Taxilian, go to it—we need it.’

  ‘I know,’ he replied, licking dry lips. ‘Rautos, go up to Sheb and Nappet—keep them occupied up there. I don’t want them charging down here with swords out. Make them understand—’

  ‘Understand what?’ Rautos demanded.

  ‘That we’ve found an ally.’

  Rautos’s eyes widened. He wiped sweat from his face. A moment later, he backed up, then turned and set off up the ramp.

  Taxilian spoke to the drone. ‘Can you understand me? Nothing works. We need to fix it. We need your help—no, perhaps it’s the other way round. We’d like to help you bring all of this back to life.’

  Silence. The K’Chain Che’Malle seemed to be ignoring everyone in the chamber, its tentacled fingers writhing like seagrass at the ends of its arms. The rows of fangs glistened in its broad slash of a mouth. After a moment, the drone blinked. Once, twice, three times, each lid distinct. Then it walked in a hitching gait to where Taxilian had been working. It picked up the panel and deftly replaced it. Straightening, it turned and faced the ghost, eyes fixing on his.

  You can see me. The realization stunned him. And all at once he could feel something—my own body—and with it jarring pain in his hands, the ache of abuse. He could taste his own sweat, the acrid exhaustion of his muscles. And then it was gone.

  He cried out.

  Help me!

  Sulkit’s reptilian eyes blinked again, and then the drone set off, quickly crossing the room and vanishing down the ramp that led to the domed carapace—the chamber that housed this city’s mind.

  Taxilian barked a laugh. ‘Follow it!’ He hurried after the K’Chain Che’Malle. Breath fell in behind him.

  Once the three were gone, Asane ran to Last and he took her in his arms.

  Rautos, Sheb and Nappet arrived. ‘We got the door open,’ said Sheb, his voice overloud. ‘It just slid to one side. It leads outside, to a balcony—gods, we’re high up!’

  ‘Never mind that,’ growled Nappet. ‘We saw someone, way out on the plain. Walking. Seems we’ve found another wanderer.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Rautos, ‘maybe he’ll know.’

  ‘Know what?’ snapped Sheb, baring his teeth.

  Rautos gestured helplessly.

  Nappet was glaring round, hefting the sledge in his hands. ‘So where’s the fucking demon?’

  ‘It means no harm,’ said Last.

  ‘Too bad for it.’

  ‘Don’t hurt it, Nappet.’

  Nappet advanced on Last. ‘Look at the stupid farmer—found an animal to pet, did you? She’s not much—Breath looks a damned sight better.’

  ‘The demon isn’t even armed,’ said Last.

  ‘Then it’s stupid. Because if I was it, I’d be swinging the biggest damned axe I could find. I’d start by killing you and that hag you’re holding. Then fat, useless Rautos there, with the stupid questions.’

  ‘The first one it’d kill would be you, Nappet,’ laughed Sheb.

  ‘B
ecause I’m the most dangerous one here, aye, it’d try. But I’d smash its skull in.’

  ‘Not the most dangerous,’ corrected Sheb, ‘just the stupidest. It’d kill you out of pity.’

  ‘Let’s go and prepare the meal,’ Last said to Asane, still guarding her with one thick, muscled arm. ‘Sorry, Nappet, there’s not enough for you.’

  The man stepped closer. ‘Try and stop me—’

  Last spun. His fist hammered into Nappet’s face, shattering the man’s nose. In a welter of blood he reeled back. Teeth bounced on the floor. The sledge fell from his hands. After a moment he fell down, and then curled up, covering his broken face.

  The others stared at Last.

  Then Sheb laughed, but it was a weak laugh.

  ‘Come on,’ said Last to Asane.

  They left the chamber.

  After a moment, Sheb said, ‘I’m heading back up to the balcony.’

  Rautos went to his pack and rummaged within it until he found some rags and a flask. He then went over to crouch, grunting, beside Nappet. ‘Let’s see what we can do here, Nappet.’

  Betrayal could lie dead, a cold heap of ashes, only to blaze alight in an instant. What drove me to such slaughter? They were kin. Companions. Loved ones. How could I have done that to them? My wife, she wanted to hurt me—why? What had I done? Gorim’s sister? That was nothing. Meaningless. Not worth all the screaming, she had to have seen that.

  Hurting me like she did, but I won’t ever forget the look in her eyes—her face—when I took her life. And I’ll never understand why she looked like the one betrayed. Not me. Gorim’s sister, that wasn’t anything to do with her. I wasn’t out to hurt her. It just happened. But what she did, that was like a knife stabbed into my heart.

  She had to know I wasn’t the kind of man to let that pass. I got my pride. And that’s why they all had to die, all of them who knew and laughed behind my back. I needed to deliver a lesson, but then, after it was all done, why, there was no one left to heed it. Just me, which didn’t work, because it made it into a different lesson. Didn’t it?

  The dragon waits on the plain. It doesn’t even blink. It did, once, and everything disappeared. Everything and everyone. It won’t ever do that again.

  You blink, you lose that time for ever. You can’t even be sure how long that blink lasted. A moment, a thousand years. You can’t even know for sure that what you see now is the same as what you saw before. You can’t. You think it is. You tell yourself that, convince yourself of that. Just a continuation of everything you knew before. What you see is still there. That’s what you tell yourself. That’s the game of reassurance your mind plays. To keep things sane.

  But think on that one blink—you’ve all known it—when all that you thought was real suddenly changes. From one side of the blink to the other side. It comes with bad news. It comes with soul-plummeting horror and grief. How long was that blink?

  Gods below, it was fucking eternity.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Turn this dark maddening charge

  All you I once knew snagged like moths

  In the still web of younger days

  Rise up from the fresh white foam

  In the face of my seaward plunge

  Howl against my wild run and these wild

  Blazing eyes—but I hear the call

  Of how life once had been and such heat

  In the crushed chirr of locusts rubbing

  The high grasses of a child’s road

  And the summer was unending

  The days refused to close and I played

  Savage and warrior, the heroic nail

  Upon which worlds pitched and wobbled

  Blue as newborn iron and these salt-winds

  Were yet to blow and sink corrosive teeth

  Into my stolid spine and my stiffened ribs

  That could take the golden weight

  Of a thousand destinies

  Where are you now, my unlined faces

  On those rich sighing summers

  When we gods ruled feral the wilding

  World? Hollow husks turning on

  Threads of tired silk so lost in my wake,

  And you that run with me in the blind

  Stampede—this charge we cannot turn

  And the sea awaiting us waits with its

  Promise of dissolution, the fraying of

  Youthful days, the broken nails, the sagging

  Ribs—the summers drifting away and away

  And forever away.

  BROKEN NAIL’S LAMENT

  FISHER

  S

  omeone was screaming in agony, but that was a sound warleader Gall had grown used to. Eyes stinging in the drifting smoke, he swung his horse round on the dirt track and unleashed a stream of curses. At least three raids were swarming out from the village in the valley, lances held high, grisly trophies bobbing and weaving. ‘Coltaine take those fools and crush them under his heel! Jarabb—ride down to that commander. He’s to form up his troop and resume scouting to the south—no more attacks—tell the fool, I’ll have his loot, his wives and his daughters, all of it, if he disobeys me again.’

  Jarabb was squinting. ‘That is Shelemasa, Warleader.’

  ‘Fine. Her husband and her sons—I’ll take them as slaves and then sell them to a D’ras. Bult’s broken nose, she needs better control of her warriors!’

  ‘They’re just following her lead,’ Jarabb said. ‘She’s worse than a rabid she-wolf.’

  ‘Stop chewing my ear,’ Gall said, wanting to pull a foot out of the stirrup and drive it into the man’s chest—too familiar of late, too smug, too many Hood-damned words and too many knowing looks. After Shelemasa was dealt with, he’d send the pup yelping and turn a blind eye to all the wounded looks sure to follow.

  Jarabb tried a smile which faltered as Gall’s scowl deepened. A moment later the young Tear Runner kicked his horse into motion and rode hard for the shouting, yipping raids.

  Above the sickly smears of smoke the sky was cloudless, a canopy of saturated blue and a baleful sun that seemed to boil in the sky. Flocks of long-tailed birds swooped and cut in erratic patterns, too terrified to land as Khundryl warriors swarmed the ground in all directions. Fat, finger-long locusts crawled through the ruined fields.

  The advance scout troop was returning from up the road, and Gall was pleased to see their disciplined, collected canter, lances shod and upright. Which officer was that one? Making out the leather-wound hoop dangling from the man’s weapon, he knew who it was. Vedith, who had crushed a town garrison early on in the campaign. Heavy losses to his raid, but then, hardly surprising. Young, in that stupid, foolhardy way, but worth taking note of—since he clearly had firm command of his warriors.

  A gesture while they were still some distance away halted all the riders behind Vedith, who then rode up to Gall and reined in. ‘Warleader. A Bolkando army awaits us, two leagues distant. Ten thousand, two full legions, with a supply camp crawling with three times that number. Every stand of trees within a league of them has been cut down. I’d wager they’ve been in place for three or four days.’

  ‘Stupid Bolkando. What value fielding an army that crawls like a bhederin with its legs cut off? We could dance round it and strike straight for the capital. I could drag that King off his throne and plant myself in it sloppy as a drunk, and that would be that.’ He snorted. ‘Generals and commanders understand nothing. They think a battle answers everything, like fists in an alley. Coltaine knew better—war is the means, not the end—the goal is not to wage slaughter—it is to achieve domination in the bargaining that follows.’

  Another scout was riding down from the north, her horse’s hoofs kicking up clods of dirt from the trampled plough-furrows. Hares scattered from her path as she cut through the trampled crops. Gall squinted at her for a moment, and then shifted round in his saddle to glare southward. Yes, there, another rider, in foaming gallop, shouting as he wove through Shelemasa’s whooping mob. The Warleader gr
unted.

  Vedith had taken note of both riders. ‘We are flanked,’ he said.

  ‘What of it?’ Gall asked, eyes narrowing once more on this young, clever warrior.

  The man shrugged. ‘Even should a fourth element march up our backsides, Warleader, we can slip through the gaps—they’re all on foot, after all.’

  ‘Like a slink between the claws of a hawk. But nothing here can even hope to pluck our tail. Vedith, I give you command of a thousand—yes, fifty raids. Take the north army—they’ll be on the march, dog-tired and choking on dust, likely in column. Give them no time. Sweep and cut, leave them in disarray, and then ride on to their baggage train. Take everything you can carry and burn the rest. Do not lose control of your warriors. Just cut off the enemy’s toes and leave them there, am I understood?’

  Grinning, Vedith nodded. ‘I would hear from that scout,’ he said after a moment.

  ‘Of course you would.’

  Gall saw that Jarabb had caught Shelemasa and both were now riding in the wake of the south scout. He spat to get the taste of the smoke out of his mouth. ‘Duiker’s eyes, what a sorry mess. No one ever learns, do they?’

  ‘Warleader?’

  ‘Would the Bolkando have been content if we had treated them as badly as they treated us? No. Of course not. So, how in their minds did they justify such abuse?’

  ‘They thought they could get away with it.’

  Gall nodded. ‘Do you see the flaw in that thinking, warrior?’

  ‘It’s not hard, Warleader.’

  ‘Have you noticed that it’s the ones who think themselves so very clever that are the stupidest of the lot?’ He tilted in his saddle and loosed a loud, gassy fart. ‘Gods below, the spices they use round here have raised a typhoon in my bowels.’

  The scout from the north arrived, the sweat on her face and forearms coated in dust. ‘Warleader!’

  Gall unslung his own waterskin and tossed it to her. ‘How many and how far away?’

  She paused to drink down a few mouthfuls, and then said above the heavy blows of her horse’s breath, ‘Perhaps two thousand, half of them levies, lightly armoured and ill-equipped. Two leagues away, in column on a too-narrow road.’