‘How can they, Hull Beddict, when they’re modelled on perfection?’
He shrugged, looked down and seemed to study his hands. ‘But in most ways our armour is indeed thick. Impervious to nuances, blind to subtlety. Which is why we’re always so suspicious of subtle things, especially when exhibited by strangers, by outsiders.’
‘We Letherii know our own games of deceit,’ Seren said. ‘You paint us as blundering fools—’
‘Which we are, in so many ways,’ he replied. ‘Oh, we visualize our goals clearly enough. But we ignore the fact that every step we take towards them crushes someone, somewhere.’
‘Even our own.’
‘Yes, there is that.’ He rose, and Seren Pedac was struck once more by his bulk. A huge, broken man. ‘I will endeavour to ease the plight of the Nerek. But the answer rests with the Tiste Edur.’
‘Very well.’ She stepped back and turned round. The children played on, amidst the lost shadows. She listened to Hull walk away, the soft crackle of his moccasined feet on the wood chips fading.
Very well.
She made her way into the village, onto the main avenue, across the bridge that led through open gates into the inner ward, where the noble-born Hiroth had their residences. Just beyond them was Hannan Mosag’s longhouse. Seren Pedac paused in the broad clearing just within the palisade wall. No children in sight, only slaves busy with their menial chores and a half-dozen Edur warriors sparring with a wide assortment of weapons. None spared the Acquitor any notice, at least not outwardly, though she was certain that her arrival had been surreptitiously observed and that her movements would be tracked.
Two Letherii slaves were walking nearby, carrying between them a net-sling bulging with mussels. Seren approached.
‘I would speak with an Edur matron.’
‘She comes,’ one of them replied, not glancing over.
Seren turned.
The Edur woman who strode towards her was flanked by attendants. She looked young, but there was in truth no way of knowing. Attractive, but that in itself was not unusual. She wore a long robe, the wool dyed midnight blue, with gold-threaded patterns adorning cuffs and brocade. Her long, straight brown hair was unbound.
‘Acquitor,’ she said in Edur, ‘are you lost?’
‘No, milady. I would speak with you on behalf of the Nerek.’
Thin brows arched above the heart-shaped face. ‘With me?’
‘With an Edur,’ Seren replied.
‘Ah. And what is it you wish to say?’
‘Until such time that the Tiste Edur offer an official welcome to the Nerek, they starve and suffer spiritual torment. I would ask that you show them mercy.’
‘I am sure that this is but an oversight, Acquitor. Is it not true that your audience with the Warlock King occurs this very night?’
‘Yes. But that is no guarantee that we will be proclaimed guests at that time, is it?’
‘You would demand special treatment?’
‘Not for ourselves. For the Nerek.’
The woman studied her for a time, then, ‘Tell me, if you will, who or what are these Nerek?’
A half-dozen heartbeats passed, as Seren struggled to adjust to this unexpected ignorance. Unexpected, she told herself, but not altogether surprising – she had but fallen to her own assumptions. It seemed the Letherii were not unique in their self-obsessions. Or, for that matter, their arrogance. ‘Your pardon, milady—’
‘I am named Mayen.’
‘Your pardon, Mayen. The Nerek are the servants of Buruk the Pale. Similar in status to your slaves. They are of a tribe that was assimilated by Lether some time back, and now work to pay against their debt.’
‘Joining the Letherii entails debt?’
Seren’s gaze narrowed. ‘Not direc— not as such, Mayen. There were… unique circumstances.’
‘Yes, of course. Those do arise, don’t they?’ The Edur woman pressed a fingertip to her lips, then seemed to reach a decision. ‘Take me, then, to these Nerek, Acquitor.’
‘I’m sorry? Now?’
‘Yes, the sooner their spirits are eased the better. Or have I misunderstood you?’
‘No.’
‘Presumably, the blessing of any Edur will suffice for these pitiful tribespeople of yours. Nor can I see how it will affect the Warlock King’s dealings with you. Indeed, I am sure it won’t.’ She turned to one of her Letherii slaves. ‘Feather Witch, please inform Uruth Sengar that I will be somewhat delayed, but assure her it will not be for long.’
The young woman named Feather Witch bowed and rushed off towards a longhouse. Seren stared after her for a moment. ‘Mayen, if I may ask, who gave her that name?’
‘Feather Witch? It is Letherii, is it not? Those Letherii born as slaves among us are named by their mothers. Or grandmothers, whatever the practice among your kind may be. I have not given it much thought. Why?’
Seren shrugged. ‘It is an old name, that is all. I’ve not heard it used in a long time, and then only in the histories.’
‘Shall we walk, Acquitor?’
****
Udinaas sat on a low stool near the entrance, stripping scales from a basketful of dried fish. His hands were wet, red and cracked by the salt paste the fish had been packed in. He had watched the Acquitor’s arrival, followed Mayen’s detour, and now Feather Witch was approaching, a troubled expression on her face.
‘Indebted,’ she snapped, ‘is Uruth within?’
‘She is, but you must wait.’
‘Why?’
‘She speaks with the highborn widows. They have been in there some time, and no, I do not know what concerns them.’
‘And you imagine I would have asked you?’
‘How are your dreams, Feather Witch?’
She paled, and looked round as if seeking somewhere else to wait. But a light rain had begun to fall, and beneath the projecting roof of the longhouse they were dry. ‘You know nothing of my dreams, Indebted.’
‘How can I not? You come to me in them every night. We talk, you and I. We argue. You demand answers from me. You curse the look in my eyes. And, eventually, you flee.’
She would not meet his gaze. ‘You cannot be there. In my mind,’ she said. ‘You are nothing to me.’
‘We are just the fallen, Feather Witch. You, me, the ghosts. All of us. We’re the dust swirling around the ankles of the conquerors as they stride on into glory. In time, we may rise in their ceaseless scuffling, and so choke them, but it is a paltry vengeance, don’t you think?’
‘You do not speak as you used to, Udinaas. I no longer know who speaks through you.’
He looked down at his scale-smeared hands. ‘And how do I answer that? Am I unchanged? Hardly. But does that mean the changes are not mine? I fought the White Crow for you, Feather Witch. I wrested you from its grasp, and now all you do is curse me.’
‘Do you think I appreciate owing you my life?’
He winced, then managed a smile as he lifted his gaze once more, catching her studying him – though once more she glanced away. ‘Ah, I see now. You have found yourself… indebted. To me.’
‘Wrong,’ she hissed. ‘Uruth would have saved me. You did nothing, except make a fool of yourself.’
‘She was too late, Feather Witch. And you insist on calling me Indebted, as if saying it often enough will take away—’
‘Be quiet! I want nothing to do with you!’
‘You have no choice, although if you speak any louder both our heads will top a pike outside the walls. What did the Acquitor want with Mayen?’
She shifted nervously, hesitated, then said, ‘A welcome for the Nerek. They’re dying.’
Udinaas shook his head. ‘That gift is for the Warlock King to make.’
‘So you would think, yet Mayen offered herself in his stead.’
His eyes widened. ‘She did? Has she lost her mind?’
‘Quiet, you fool!’ Feather Witch crouched down across from him. ‘The impending marriage has filled her hea
d. She fashions herself as a queen and so has become insufferable. And now she would bless the Nerek—’
‘Bless?’
‘Her word, yes. I think even the Acquitor was taken aback.’
‘That was Seren Pedac, wasn’t it?’
Feather Witch nodded.
Both were silent for a few moments, then Udinaas said, ‘What would such a blessing do, do you think?’
‘Probably nothing. The Nerek are a broken people. Their gods are dead, the spirits of their ancestors scattered. Oh, a ghost or two might be drawn to the newly sanctified ground—’
‘An Edur’s blessing could do that? Sanctify the ground?’
‘Maybe. I don’t know. But there could be a binding. Of destinies, depending on the purity of Mayen’s bloodline, on all that awaits her in her life, on whether she’s—’ Feather Witch gestured angrily and clamped her mouth shut.
On whether she’s a virgin. But how could that be in question? She’s not yet married, and Edur do not break those rules. ‘We did not speak of this, you and I,’ Udinaas said. ‘I told you that you had to wait because that is expected of me. You had no reason to think your message from Mayen was urgent. We are slaves, Feather Witch. We do not think for ourselves, and of the Edur and their ways we know next to nothing.’
Her eyes finally locked with his. ‘Yes.’ A moment, then, ‘Hannan Mosag meets with the Letherii tonight.’
‘I know.’
‘Buruk the Pale. Seren Pedac. Hull Beddict.’
Udinaas smiled, but the smile held no humour. ‘If you will, at whose feet shall the tiles be cast, Feather Witch?’
‘Among those three? Errant knows, Udinaas.’ As if sensing her own softening towards him, she scowled and straightened. ‘I will stand over there. Waiting.’
‘You do intend to cast the tiles tonight, don’t you?’
She admitted it with a terse nod, then walked to the corner of the longhouse front, to the very edge of the thickening rain.
Udinaas resumed stripping scales. He thought back to his own words earlier. Fallen. Who tracks our footsteps, I wonder? We who are the forgotten, the discounted and the ignored. When the path is failure, it is never willingly taken. The fallen. Why does my heart weep for them? Not them but us, for most assuredly I am counted among them. Slaves, serfs, nameless peasants and labourers, the blurred faces in the crowd – just a smear on memory, a scuffing of feet down the side passages of history.
Can one stop, can one turn and force one’s eyes to pierce the gloom? And see the fallen? Can one ever see the fallen? And if so, what emotion is born in that moment?
There were tears on his cheeks, dripping down onto his chafed hands. He knew the answer to that question, knife-sharp and driven deep, and the answer was… recognition.
****
Hull Beddict moved to stand beside Seren Pedac as Mayen walked away. Behind them, the Nerek were speaking in their native tongue, harsh and fast words, taut with disbelief. Rain hissed in the cookfires.
‘She should not have done that,’ Hull said.
‘No,’ Seren agreed, ‘she should not have. Still, I am not quite certain what has just happened. They were just words, after all. Weren’t they?’
‘She didn’t proclaim them guests, Seren. She blessed their arrival.’
The Acquitor glanced back at the Nerek, frowned at their flushed, nervous expressions. ‘What are they talking about?’
‘It’s the old dialect – there are trader words in it that I understand, but many others that I don’t.’
‘I didn’t know the Nerek had two languages.’
‘Their name is mentioned in the annals of the First Landings,’ Hull said. ‘They are the indigenous people whose territory spanned the entire south. There were Nerek watching the first ships approach. Nerek who came to greet the first Letherii to set foot on this continent. Nerek who traded, taught the colonizers how to live in this land, gave them the medicines against the heat fevers. They have been here a long, long time. Two languages? I’m surprised there aren’t a thousand.’
‘Well,’ Seren Pedac said after a moment, ‘at least they’re animated once more. They’ll eat, do as Buruk commands—’
‘Yes. But I sense a new fear among them – not one to incapacitate, but the source of troubled thoughts. It seems that even they do not comprehend the full significance of that blessing.’
‘This was never their land, was it?’
‘I don’t know. The Edur certainly claim to have always been here, from the time when the ice first retreated from the world.’
‘Oh yes, I’d forgotten. Their strange creation myths. Lizards and dragons and ice, a god-king betrayed.’
After a moment she glanced over, and saw him staring at her.
‘What is it, Hull?’
‘How do you know such things? It was years before Binadas Sengar relinquished such information to me, and that as a solemn gift following our binding.’
Seren blinked. ‘I heard it… somewhere. I suppose.’ She shrugged, wiping rainwater from her face. ‘Everyone has some sort of creation myth. Nonsense, typically. Or actual memories all jumbled up and infused with magic and miracles.’
‘You are being surprisingly dismissive, Acquitor.’
‘And what do the Nerek believe?’
‘That they were all born of a single mother, countless generations past, who was the thief of fire and walked through time, seeking that which might answer a need that consumed her – although she could never discover the nature of that need. One time, in her journey, she took within her a sacred seed, and so gave birth to a girl-child. To all outward appearances,’ he continued, ‘that child was little different from her mother, for the sacredness was hidden, and so it remains hidden to this day. Within the Nerek, who are the offspring of that child.’
‘And by this, the Nerek justify their strange patriarchy.’
‘Perhaps,’ Hull conceded, ‘although it is the female line that is taken as purest.’
‘And does this first mother’s mother have a name?’
‘Ah, you noted the confused blending of the two, as if they were roles rather than distinct individuals. Maiden, mother and grandmother, a progression through time—’
‘Discounting the drudgery spent as wife. Wisdom unfurls like a flower in a pile of dung.’
His gaze sharpened on her. ‘In any case, she is known by a number of related names, also suggesting variations of a single person. Eres, N’eres, Eres’al.’
‘And this is what lies at the heart of the Nerek ancestor worship?’
‘Was, Seren Pedac. You forget, their culture is destroyed.’
‘Cultures can die, Hull, but the people live on, and what they carry within them are the seeds of rebirth—’
‘A delusion, Seren Pedac,’ he replied. ‘Whatever might be born of that is twisted, weak, a self-mockery.’
‘Even stone changes. Nothing can stand still—’
‘Yet we would. Wouldn’t we? Oh, we talk of progress, but what we really desire is the perpetuation of the present. With its seemingly endless excesses, its ravenous appetites. Ever the same rules, ever the same game.’
Seren Pedac shrugged. ‘We were discussing the Nerek. A noble-born woman of the Hiroth Tiste Edur has blessed them—’
‘Before even our own formal welcome has been voiced.’
Her brows rose. ‘You think this is yet another veiled insult to the Letherii? Instigated by Hannan Mosag himself? Hull, I think your imagination has the better of you this time.’
‘Think what you like.’
She turned away. ‘I’m going for a walk.’
****
Uruth had intercepted Mayen at the bridge. Whatever was exchanged between them was brief and without drama, at least none that Udinaas could determine from where he sat in front of the longhouse. Feather Witch had trailed Uruth after delivering the message from her mistress, and waited a half-dozen paces distant from the two Edur women, though not so far as to be out of earshot. Uruth an
d Mayen then approached side by side, the slaves trailing.
Hearing low laughter, Udinaas stiffened and hunched lower on the stool. ‘Be quiet, Wither!’ he hissed.
‘There are realms, dead slave,’ the wraith whispered, ‘where memories shape oblivion, and so make of ages long past a world as real as this one. In this way, time is defeated. Death is defied. And sometimes, Udinaas the Indebted, such a realm drifts close. Very close.’
‘No more, I beg you. I’m not interested in your stupid riddles—’
‘Would you see what I see? Right now? Shall I send Shadow’s veil to slip over your eyes and so reveal to you unseen pasts?’
‘Not now—’
‘Too late.’
Layers unfolded before the slave’s eyes, cobweb-thin, and the surrounding village seemed to shrink back, blurred and colourless, beneath the onslaught. Udinaas struggled to focus. The clearing had vanished, replaced by towering trees and a forest floor of rumpled moss, where the rain fell in sheets. The sea to his left was much closer, fiercely toppling grey, foaming waves against the shoreline’s jagged black rock, spume exploding skyward.
Udinaas flinched away from the violence of those waves – and all at once they faded into darkness, and another scene rose before the slave’s eyes. The sea had retreated, beyond the western horizon, leaving behind trench-scarred bedrock ringed in sheer ice cliffs. The chill air carried the stench of decay.
Figures scurried past Udinaas, wearing furs or perhaps bearing their own thick coat, mottled brown, tan and black. They were surprisingly tall, their bodies disproportionately large below small-skulled, heavy-jawed heads. One sported a reed-woven belt from which dead otters hung, and all carried coils of rope made from twisted grasses.
They were silent, yet Udinaas sensed their terror as they stared at something in the northern sky.
The slave squinted, then saw what had captured their attention.
A mountain of black stone, hanging suspended in the air above low slopes crowded with shattered ice. It was drifting closer, and Udinaas sensed a malevolence emanating from the enormous, impossible conjuration – an emotion the tall, pelted creatures clearly sensed as well.
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