The ghost looked down and saw grey-green skin, long-fingered, scarred hands. He lifted them to touch his face, fingers brushing the tusks jutting from his lower jaw. ‘What must I do?’
But Veed was gone. He was alone in the chamber.
The J’an Sentinel, Sulkit, stood watching him. Waiting.
Icarium faced the throne. A machine. A thing of veins and arteries and bitter oils. A binder of time, the maker of certainty.
The flavours swirled round him. The entire towering city of stone and iron trembled.
I am awake—no. I am … reborn.
Icarium Lifestealer walked forward to take his throne.
The shore formed a ragged line, the bleak sweep of darkness manifested in all the natural ways—the sward leading to the bank that then dropped to the beach itself, the sky directly overhead onyx as a starless night yet smeared with pewter clouds—the realm behind them, then, a vast promise of purity at their backs. But the strand glowed, and as Yan Tovis dismounted and walked down her boots sank into the incandescent sand. Reaching down—not yet ready to fix her gaze on what was beyond the shoreline—she scooped up a handful. Cool, surprisingly light—she squinted.
Not crumbled coral. Not stone.
‘It’s bone,’ said Yedan Derryg, standing a few paces to her left. ‘See that driftwood? Long bones, mostly. Those cobbles, they’re—’
‘Yes,’ she snapped. ‘I know.’ She flung away the handful of bone fragments.
‘It was easier,’ he continued, ‘from back there. We’re too close—’
‘Be quiet, will you?’
Suddenly defiant, she willed herself to look—and reeled back a step, breath hissing from between her teeth.
A sea indeed, yet one that rose like a wall, its waves rolling down to foam at the waterline. She grunted. But this was not water at all. It was … light.
Behind her, Yedan Derryg said, ‘Memories return. When they walked out from the Light, their purity blinded us. We thought that a blessing, when in truth it was an attack. When we shielded our eyes, we freed them to indulge their treacherous ways.’
‘Yedan, the story is known to me—’
‘Differently.’
She came near to gasping in relief as she turned from the vast falling wall to face her brother. ‘What do you mean?’
‘The Watch serves the Shore in its own way.’
‘Then, in turn, I must possess knowledge that you don’t—is that what you’re saying, brother?’
‘The Queen is Twilight, because she can be no other. She holds the falling of night. She is the first defender against the legions of light that would destroy darkness itself. But we did not ask for this. Mother Dark yielded, and so, to mark that yielding, Twilight relives it.’
‘Again and again. For ever.’
Yedan’s bearded jaws bunched, his face still stained with blood. Then he shook his head. ‘Nothing’s for ever, sister.’
‘Did we really lack sophistication, Yedan? Back then? Were we really that superstitious, that ignorant?’
His brows lifted.
She gestured at the seething realm behind her. ‘This is the true border of Thyrllan. It’s that and nothing more. The First Shore is the shore between Darkness and Light. We thought we were born on this shore—right here—but that cannot be true! This shore destroys—can you not feel it? Where do you think all these bones came from?’
‘This was a gift to no one,’ Yedan replied. ‘Look into the water, sister. Look deep into it.’
But she would not. She had already seen what he had seen. ‘They cannot be drowning—no matter what it looks like—’
‘You are wrong. Tell me, why are there so few Liosan? Why is the power that is Light so weak in all the other worlds?’
‘If it wasn’t we would all die—there’d be no life anywhere at all!’
He shrugged. ‘I have no answer to that, sister. But I think that Mother Dark and Father Light, in binding themselves to each other, in turn bound their fates. And when she turned away, so did he. He had no choice—they had become forces intertwined, perfect reflections. Father Light abandoned his children and they became a people lost—and lost they remain.’
She was trembling. Yedan’s vision was monstrous. ‘It cannot be. The Tiste Andii weren’t trapped. They got away.’
‘They found a way out, yes.’
‘How?’
He cocked his head. ‘Us, of course.’
‘What are you saying?’
“In Twilight was born Shadow.”
‘I was told none of this! I don’t believe you! What you’re saying makes no sense, Yedan. Shadow was the bastard get of Dark and Light—commanded by neither—’
‘Twilight, Shadow is everything we have ever known. Indeed, it is everywhere.’
‘But it was destroyed!’
‘Shattered, yes. Look at the beach. Those bones—they belong to the Shake. We were assailed from both sides—we didn’t stand a chance—that any of us survived at all is a miracle. Shadow was first shattered by the legions of Andii and the legions of Liosan. Purity cannot abide imperfection. In the eyes of purity, it becomes an abomination.’
She was shaking her head. ‘Shadow was the realm of the Edur—it has nothing to do with us, with the Shake.’
Yedan smiled—she could not even recall the last time he had done that and the sight of it jolted her. He nodded. ‘Our very own bastard get.’
She sank down to her knees in the bed of crumbled bone. She could hear the sea now, could hear the waves rolling down—and beneath all of that she could hear the deluged voices of the doomed behind the surface. He turned away when she did. But his children had no way out. We held against them, here. We stood and we died defending our realm. ‘Our blood was royal,’ she whispered.
Her brother was beside her now, and one hand rested on her shoulder. ‘Scar Bandaris, the last prince of the Edur. King, I suppose, by then. He saw in us the sins not of the father, but of the mother. He left us and took all the Edur with him. He told us to hold, to ensure his escape. He said it was all we deserved, for we were our mother’s children, and was she not the seducer and the father the seduced?’ He was silent for a moment, and then he grunted and said, ‘I wonder if the last of us left set out on his trail with vengeance in mind, or was it because we had nowhere else to go? By then, after all, Shadow had become the battlefield of every Elder force, not just the Tiste—it was being torn apart, with blood-soaked forces dividing every spoil, every territory—what were they called again? Yes, warrens. Every world was made an island, isolated in an ocean of chaos.’
Her eyes felt raw, but not a single tear sprang loose. ‘We could not have survived that,’ she said. ‘That assault you described. You called it a miracle that we survived, but I know how—though I never understood its meaning—not until your words today.’
Yedan said, ‘The Watch commanded the legions, and we held until we were told to withdraw. It’s said there were but a handful of us left by then, elite officers one and all. They were the Watch. The Road was open then—we but marched.’
‘It was open because of Blind Gallan.’
‘Yes.’
‘Because,’ she looked up at him, ‘he was told to save us.’
‘Gallan was a poet—’
‘And Seneschal of the Court of Mages in Kharkanas.’
He chewed on this for a while, glanced away, studying the swirling wall of light and the ceaseless sweep of figures in the depths, faces stretched in muted screams—an entire civilization trapped in eternal torment—but she saw not a flicker of emotion touch his face. ‘A great power, then.’
‘Yes.’
‘There was civil war. Who could have commanded him to do anything?’
‘One possessing the Blood of T’iam, and a prince of Kharkanas.’
She watched his eyes slowly widen, but still he stared at the wall. ‘Now why,’ he asked, ‘would an Andii prince have done that?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s said he strod
e down to the First Shore, terribly wounded, sheathed in blood. It’s said he looked upon the Shake, at how few of us were left, and at the ruin surrounding us—the death of the forests, the charred wreckage of our homes. He held a broken sword in one hand, a Hust sword, and it was seen to fall from his grip. He left it here.’
‘That’s all? Then how do you know he commanded Gallan to do anything?’
‘When Gallan arrived he told the Twilight—he had torn out his eyes by then and was accompanied by an Andii woman who led him by an arm down from the shattered forest—he came down like a man dying of fever but when he spoke, his voice was clear and pure as music. He said to her these words:
“There is no grief in Darkness.
It has taken to the skies.
It leaves a world of ashes and failure.
It sets out to find new worlds, as grief must.
Winged grief commands me:
Make a road for the survivors on the Shore
To walk the paths of sorrow
And charge them the remembrance
Of this broken day
As it shall one day be seen:
As the birth of worlds unending
Where grief waits for us all
In the soul’s darkness.” ’
She slipped out from the weight of his hand and straightened, brushing bone dust from her knees. ‘He was asked, then, who was this Winged Grief? And Gallan said, “There is but one left who would dare command me. One who would not weep and yet had taken into his soul a people’s sorrow, a realm’s sorrow. His name was Silchas Ruin.” ’
Yedan scanned the beach. ‘What happened to the broken sword?’
She started, recovered. Why, after all this time, could her brother still surprise her? ‘The woman with Gallan picked it up and threw it into the sea.’
His head snapped round. ‘Why would she do that?’
Yan Tovis held up her hands. ‘She never explained.’
Yedan faced the refulgent wall again, as if seeking to pierce its depths, as if looking for the damned sword.
‘It was just a broken sword—’
‘A Hust sword—you said so.’
‘I don’t even know what that means, except it’s the name for Ruin’s weapon.’
He grimaced. ‘It should have healed by now,’ he muttered, walking out on to the strand, eyes scanning the pallid beach. ‘Light would reject it, cast it up.’
She stared after him. Healed? ‘Yedan!’
He glanced back. ‘What?’
‘We cannot live here.’
‘No, of course not.’
‘But something is happening in Kharkanas—I don’t know if I can even go back there.’
‘Once she’s fully returned,’ Yedan said, swinging back, ‘the power should ease.’
‘She? Who?’
‘Don’t be obtuse, sister. Mother Dark. Who else arrives like a fist in our skulls?’ He resumed his search along the First Shore.
‘Errastas,’ she whispered, ‘whatever will you do now?’
Torrent scowled at the hag. ‘Aren’t you even listening?’
Olar Ethil straightened, gathering up her rotted cape of furs and scaled hide. ‘Such a lovely carpet, such a riot of richness, all those supine colours!’
The withered nut of this witch’s brain has finally cracked. ‘I said these carriage tracks are fresh, probably not even a day old.’
Olar Ethil had one hand raised, as if about to wave at someone on the horizon. Instead, one taloned finger began inscribing patterns in the air. ‘Go round, my friends, slow your steps. Wait for the one to pass, through and out and onward. No point in clashing wills, when none of it has purpose. Such a busy plain! No matter, if anyone has cause to quake it’s not me, hah!’
‘An enormous carriage,’ Torrent resumed, ‘burdened. But while that’s interesting, it’s the fact that the tracks simply begin—as if from nowhere—and look at the way the ground cracked at the start, as if the damned thing had landed from the sky, horses and all. Doesn’t any of that make you curious?’
‘Eh? Oh, soon enough, soon enough.’ She dropped her arm and then pointed the same finger at him. ‘The first temple’s a mess. Besieged a decade ago, just a burnt-out husk, now. No one was spared. The Matron took weeks to die—it’s no easy thing, killing them, you know. We have to move on, find another.’
Snarling, Torrent mounted his horse and collected the reins. ‘Any good at running, witch? Too bad.’ He kicked his horse into motion, setting out on the carriage’s weaving trail. Let the thing’s bones clatter into dust in his wake—the best solution to all his ills. Or she could just stand there and stare at every horizon one by one and babble and rant all she wanted—as if the sky ever answered.
A carriage. People. Living people. That’s what he needed now. The return of sanity—hold on, it dropped out of the sky, don’t forget. What’s so normal about that?
‘Never mind,’ he muttered, ‘at least they’re alive.’
Sandalath made it to the bridge before collapsing. Cursing, Withal knelt at her side and lifted her head until it rested on his lap. Blood was streaming from her nose, ears and the corners of her eyes. Her lips glistened as if painted.
The three Nachts—or whatever they were called in this realm—had vanished, fled, he assumed, from whatever was assailing his wife. As for himself, he felt nothing. This world was desolate, lifeless, probably leagues from any decent body of water—but oh how he wished he could take her and just sail out of this madness.
Instead, it looked as though his wife was dying.
Crimson froth bubbled from her mouth as she began mumbling something—he leaned closer—words, yes, a conversation. Withal leaned back, snorting. When she’d thought him asleep, she’d said the same lines over and over again. As if they were a prayer, or the beginning of one.
‘What’s broken cannot be mended. You broke us, but that is not all—see what you have done.’
There was the touch of a lament in her tone, but one so emptied of sentiment it cut like a dagger. A lament, yes, but infused with chill hatred, a knuckled core of ice. Complicated, aye, layered—unless he was just imagining things. The truth could be as silly as a childhood song sung to a broken doll, its head lolling impossibly with those stupid eyes underneath the nose and the mouth looking like a wound to the forehead—
Withal shook himself. The oldest memories might be smells, tastes, or isolated images—but rarely all three at once—at least in so far as he knew from his own experience. Crammed into his skull, a crowded mess with everything at the back so tightly pressed all the furniture was crushed, and to reach in was to come up with a few pieces that made no sense at all—
Gods, he was tired. And here she was, dragging him all this way, only to die in his lap and abandon him at the gates of a dead city.
‘… see what you have done.’
Her breathing had deepened. The blood had stopped trickling down—he wiped her mouth with a grimy cuff. She suddenly sighed. He leaned closer. ‘Sand? Can you hear me?’
‘Nice pillow … but for the smell.’
‘You’re not going to die?’
‘It’s over now,’ she said, opening her eyes—but only for a moment as she gasped and shut them again. ‘Ow, that hurts.’
‘I can get some water—from the river here—’
‘Yes, do that.’
He shifted her from his lap and settled her down on the road. ‘Glad it’s over, Sand. Oh, by the way, what’s over?’
She sighed. ‘Mother Dark, she has returned to Kharkanas.’
‘Oh, that’s nice.’
As he made his way down the wreckage-cluttered bank, waterskins flopping over one shoulder, Withal allowed himself a savage grimace. ‘Oh, hello, Mother Dark, glad you showed up. You and all the rest of you gods and goddesses. Come back to fuck with a thousand million lives all over again, huh? Now, I got an idea for you all, aye, I do.
‘Get lost. It’s better, you see, when we ain’t got you to blame for o
ur mess. Understand me, Mother Dark?’ He crouched at the edge of black water and pushed the first skin beneath the surface, listening to the gurgle. ‘And as for my wife, hasn’t she suffered enough?’
A voice filled his head. ‘Yes.’
The river swept past, the bubbles streamed from the submerged skin until no bubbles were left. Still, Withal held it down, as if drowning a maimed dog. He wasn’t sure he’d ever move again.
The descent of darkness broke frozen bone and flesh across the width of the valley, spilling out beyond the north ridge, devouring the last flickering flames from the burning heaps that had once been Barghast wagons.
The vast battlefield glistened and sparkled as corpses and carcasses shrivelled, losing their last remnants of moisture, and earth buckled, lurching upward in long wedges of stone-hard clay that jostled bodies. Iron steamed and glowed amongst the dead.
The sky above was devoid of all light, but the ashes drifting down were visible, as if each flake was lit from within. The pressure continued pushing everything closer to the ground, until horses and armoured men and women became flattened, rumpled forms. Weapons suddenly exploded, white-hot shards hissing.
The hillsides groaned, visibly contracted as something swirled in the very centre of the valley, a darkness so profound as to be a solid thing.
A hill cracked in half with a thunderous detonation. The air seemed to tear open.
From the swirling miasma a figure emerged, first one boot then the other crunching down on desiccated flesh, hide and bone, striding out from the rent, footfalls heavy as stone.
The darkness seethed, pulsed. The figure paused, held out a gauntleted left hand.
Lightning spanned the blackness, a thousand crashing drums. The air itself howled, and the darkness streamed down. Withered husks that had once been living things spun upright as if reborn, only to pull free of the ground and whirl skyward like rotted autumn leaves.
Shrieking wind, torn banners of darkness spiralling inward, wrapping, twisting, binding. Cold air rushed in like floodwaters through a crumbling dam, and all it swept through burst into dust that roiled wild in its wake.
Hammering concussions shook the hills, sheared away slopes leaving raw cliffs, boulders tumbling and pitching through the remnants of carnage. And still the darkness streamed down, converging, coalescing into an elongated sliver forming at the end of the figure’s outstretched hand.
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