Forge of Darkness (Kharkanas Trilogy 1)

by Steven Erikson

  Spite’s smile broadened, and her hand tightened about Malice’s throat.

  When she couldn’t breathe, she began struggling, trying to scratch Spite’s face, but Envy lunged close and grasped her wrists, pushing her arms down. Malice kicked, but Spite moved round and sat on her. And the hand kept squeezing, and it was terrifyingly strong.

  Spite laughed, her eyes shining. ‘I dreamed this last night,’ she whispered. ‘I dreamed a murder far away. It was wonderful.’

  Malice felt her eyes bulging, her face growing impossibly hot. Blackness closed in around her, swallowing everything.

  * * *

  Envy heard something break in Malice’s neck and tore Spite’s hands away. Their little sister’s head lolled back, as if to show them the deep imprint on her throat – the ribbons made by the fingers, the white knobs made by knuckles and the crescent cuts from nails digging in.

  Neither said a word as they stared down at Malice.

  Then Spite grunted. ‘It didn’t work,’ she said. ‘Not like with Arathan. It didn’t work at all, Envy.’

  ‘I’m not blind,’ Envy snapped. ‘You must have done it wrong.’

  ‘I did what you told me to!’

  ‘No – the choking was your idea, Spite! From your dream!’

  ‘Now,’ whispered Spite, ‘now I’ve done it twice. I’ve killed twice, both times the same way. I choked them to death.’

  ‘That’s what you get for going too far in your dreams,’ Envy said. ‘I told you to stay closer to home. You look through too many eyes.’

  ‘I didn’t just look,’ Spite said. ‘I made him like it.’

  ‘That’s your power then. Father said we had powers. He said we had aspects, that’s what he said.’

  ‘I know what he said. I was there.’

  ‘You make them like it. I make them want it.’ Envy looked down at Malice’s body. ‘I wonder what her aspect was.’

  ‘We’ll never know,’ said Spite. ‘And neither will she.’

  ‘You killed her, Spite.’

  ‘It was an accident. An experiment. It’s Father’s fault, for what he said.’

  ‘You killed Malice.’

  ‘An accident.’

  ‘Spite?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What did it feel like?’

  * * *

  There was a niche under the foundations of the oven, where someone had pulled away a number of stones at the base as if to hide something, but nothing was there. It was just about big enough to fit Malice’s body, and once they pushed, sitting down and using their feet, and once a bone or two had snapped, they managed to get all of her inside. The stones that had been pulled away were the ones they always used to sit on. Now Spite and Envy pushed them back to at least block the niche.

  ‘Hilith is going to be a problem,’ Spite said. ‘She’ll want to know where Malice has gone.’

  ‘We’ll have to do what we said we’d do, then.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘We don’t have any choice. It’s not just Hilith, is it? It’s Atran and Hidast and Ivis.’

  Spite gasped. ‘What about the hostage?’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s a problem. We can’t stay here, anyway. Not for too long. Besides, look what Father’s done with Arathan. He took him away. For all we know, he’s killed him, cut open his throat and drunk all his blood. He’ll come back for us and do the same. Especially now.’

  ‘We should go to the temple, Envy. We should talk to him.’

  ‘No. He could reach through – you know he can!’

  ‘That’s not him,’ Spite said. ‘That’s only what he’s left behind. It wears his armour. It paces back and forth – we heard it!’

  ‘You can’t talk with that thing.’

  ‘How do you know? We’ve never tried.’

  Envy’s eyes were wide. ‘Spite, if we let that thing out, we might never get it back inside. Let me think. Wait. Can you give it dreams?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If I make it want something, can you make it like it?’

  Spite hugged herself, as if suddenly chilled despite the oven’s dry heat. ‘Envy. This is Father’s power we’re talking about. Father’s.’

  ‘But he’s not here.’

  ‘He’ll know anyway.’

  ‘So what? You said we’re going to have to run no matter what.’

  Spite sat back. She shot her sister a glare. ‘You said it would work, Envy. If she got close enough to death, the power would reach inside her and wake everything up.’

  ‘It’s awake in me.’

  ‘Me too. So, you had it the wrong way around.’

  ‘Maybe. You don’t look any more grown up.’

  Spite shrugged. ‘I don’t need to. Maybe when I do, I’ll grow. Everything feels in reach. Do you know, I could take down all of Kurald Galain, if I wanted to.’

  ‘We might have to,’ said Envy, ‘to cover our trail.’

  ‘Daddy will know.’

  ‘Remember Ivis killing that rut-mad hunting dog? How he came up behind it and sliced through the tendons of its back legs, with one slash of his sword?’

  ‘Sure I remember. That dog howled and howled, until I thought the sky would crack.’

  Envy nodded. ‘Father doesn’t scare me. We just need to give people a reason to be Ivis.’

  ‘Daddy’s the dog?’ Spite snorted. ‘Hardly. He’s got Mother Dark. No need to rut everything in sight, with her around.’

  ‘You don’t get my meaning, sister. You’re not subtle enough. You never were.’

  ‘Maybe you think that, but you don’t know anything about me.’

  ‘I know that you’re a murderer.’

  ‘Now, try saying it like you think it’s awful, Envy.’

  ‘You didn’t get my meaning, but what you said has given me an idea. But I need to work on it some more. First, though, there’s the people in the house to deal with.’

  ‘Tonight?’

  Envy nodded. ‘It has to be, I think.’

  Spite smiled knowingly. ‘You just want to know what it feels like.’

  To that, Envy only shrugged.

  A moment later and they were on their way, rushing down the hidden passages between the walls.

  Accidents happened, and when accidents happened, the most important thing to do was cover them up, and fast – but not so fast as to make mistakes and so give it all away. Hiding the truth was Envy’s special talent – among many special talents, she reminded herself. Spite was good at the practical matters, the things that needed doing. But she needed guiding. She needed direction.

  The night ahead was going to be glorious.

  * * *

  In the house of Draconus, there was war. Even in those rare moments when she was alone, when she no longer struggled on the battlements, Sandalath felt the title of hostage close about her, like clothes long outgrown, and their constriction was suffocating.

  House-mistress Hilith stalked the corridors day and night. As far as Sandalath could tell, Hilith slept when demons slept, which was never. The hag cast a huge, devouring shadow upon this house, and even that shadow had claws. At night, Sandalath dreamed of death-struggles with the woman, all blood, spit and handfuls of hair. She dreamed of pushing knife blades deep into Hilith’s scrawny chest, hearing ribs pop, and seeing that horrid face stretched in a silent scream, the black tongue writhing like a salted leech. She woke from these dreams with a warm glow filling her being.

  It was all ridiculous. Once Lord Draconus returned, Hilith’s empire would collapse in a heap of rubble and dust. In the meantime, Sandalath did her best to avoid the old woman, although certain daily rituals made contact inevitable. The worst of these were meals. Sandalath would sit at the end of the table opposite the unoccupied chair where Lord Draconus would have sat, had he been present. As hostage, she was head of the house, but only because the Lord’s three daughters were not yet of age. Sandalath rarely saw them. They lived like ghosts, or feral kittens. She had no idea what they did all day
. For all that, however, she felt sorry for them, for the names Lord Draconus had given them.

  It was the Lord’s practice to assemble most of his heads of staff for these repasts. When the household was intact, Ivis and Hilith would be joined by Gate Sergeant Raskan, Master of Horses Venth Direll, Armourer Setyl, Surgeon Atran and Keeper of Records Hidast. Among these notables only the surgeon was of any interest to Sandalath, although she’d yet to meet Raskan as he was riding with the Lord and his bastard son. Venth stank of the stables and often entered with horseshit under his boots and still wearing his stained leather apron. His hands were filthy and he rarely spoke, busy as he was shovelling food into his mouth. The few times he did say something, it was to complain to Captain Ivis about exhausted horses, listing the animals that went lame in accusing tones. Sandalath had heard from her maids that Venth slept in the stables. Setyl, the armourer, never spoke at all, for part of his tongue had been cut away by a sword thrust back in the wars. The scarring on his lower face was terrible to look at and he struggled to keep food in his mouth, and never met anyone’s eyes. The keeper of records, Hidast, was a small man with a sloping forehead and an oversized lower jaw, giving him a pronounced underbite. His obsession was with the household accounts, and the Lord’s vigorous expansion of Houseblades was a burden that he took personally, as if all of the Lord’s wealth in fact belonged to Hidast rather than Draconus. He looked on Captain Ivis with open hatred, but this was a siege he was losing. Most mealtimes Hidast complained of stomach pains, but every offer from the surgeon to treat his ailment was met with a rude shake of the head.

  Atran was a clever woman, inclined to ignore Hilith while flirting with Ivis – to his obvious discomfort – and inviting Sandalath to join in the conspiracy of torturing the hapless master-at-arms. This had offered the only entertainment during these meals. In the captain’s absence, however, Atran seemed to sink into depression, taking to drinking to excess, in morose silence, and by the meal’s end she had trouble standing, much less walking.

  Sandalath had mapped out these people and their places in the household. It was all too complicated and fraught and rather ridiculous. The boredom that assailed her was relentless. She did not know how things would change once Lord Draconus returned, but she knew that they would, and she longed for that day.

  It was almost time for the evening meal. She sat alone in her room, waiting for her two maids to arrive. They were late and that was unusual but not unduly so. No doubt Hilith had found for them something that needed attention, and the timing was deliberate. Inconveniencing the hostage had become one of Hilith’s special pursuits.

  The house was quiet. Rising, she went to the window that overlooked the courtyard. Captain Ivis had not yet returned. Supper promised to be dreadful, with the surgeon getting drunk and Hidast and Venth taking turns to slander the master-at-arms in his absence, subtly encouraged by Hilith, of course. Sandalath could almost see the gleam of approval and satisfaction in the hag’s eyes, as the knives clinked and scraped and the prongs jabbed into tender meat.

  She hoped Ivis came back in time. His presence alone was like a fist thumping the table, silencing everyone but Atran. Sandalath was jealous of the surgeon’s ease in teasing the captain, making her lust almost playful in its obviousness, and she could well see the discomfort it caused in Ivis, which hinted that his eye was perhaps fixed elsewhere.

  Sandalath considered herself pretty; she had seen soldiers follow her with their eyes when she walked the courtyard, and she remembered how gentle his hands had been outside the carriage, when the heat of the journey had proved too much. He’d told her that he had a daughter, but she knew now that this was untrue. He was only being solicitous. She imagined that she’d needed that at the time, and it was this generosity in him that she found so compelling.

  But where were her maids? The bell was close to sounding. The first courses were even now being prepared in the kitchen and Sandalath was hungry. She would wait a short while longer and then, if neither Rilt nor Thool showed, why, she would go down to the meal dressed as she was, and do her best to ignore Hilith’s quiet triumph.

  She continued looking down on the empty courtyard.

  Oh, Ivis, where are you?

  * * *

  Hilith stepped out from her quarters and marched up the corridor. She saw dust where there should be no dust. Rilt was due for a whipping, on the backs of the thighs where it hurt the most and where the welts and bruises couldn’t be seen under the maid’s tunic. And Thool wasn’t fooling Hilith at all – the maid was meeting two or three Houseblades a night, behind the barracks, earning extra coin because she had ambitions of getting away from all this. But Hilith had found where Thool hid her earnings, and when there was enough to make it worthwhile she would steal that cache and say nothing. A little extra come the winter would suit her fine, and if that meant Thool spreading her legs ten times a night with tears in her eyes, well, a whore was what a whore did.

  Turning on to the corridor that led to the stairs she saw Spite on the floor ahead of her, crying over a blood-smeared knee. Clumsy whorespawn, too bad it wasn’t her skull. Nasty creature, nasty nasty. ‘Oh dear,’ she crooned, smiling, ‘that’s a nasty scrape, isn’t it?’

  Spite looked up, eyes filling with tears all over again.

  This was new. Hilith had never before seen any of these wretched daughters of the Lord ever cry. They’d been left to run wild, too privileged for a caning although Hilith longed to do just that – beat the things into being proper and meek. Children should be like frightened rabbits, since only that taught them the ways of the world, and showed them how to live in it.

  ‘It hurts,’ whined Spite. ‘Mistress Hilith, it might be broken! Can you look?’

  ‘I’m about to eat – do you think I want filthy blood on my hands? Go find the surgeon, or a healer in the barracks – they’ll love having you in there.’

  ‘But mistress—’ Spite rose suddenly, blocking Hilith’s path.

  Hilith snorted. ‘So much for broken—’ There was a sound behind her and she began turning. Something punched her back, pulled free and punched again. Pain filled Hilith’s chest. Feeling unaccountably weak, she reached out one hand to grip Spite’s shoulder, but the girl, laughing, twisted away.

  Hilith fell to the floor. She didn’t understand. She could barely lift her arms and her face was against the polished wood, and there was grit and dust between the boards. Rilt needed a whipping. They all did.

  * * *

  Envy looked at the small knife in her hand, saw how the blood from the miserable old witch sat on the polished iron blade in beads, like water on oil. Then she glanced down at Hilith who was lying on her stomach, head to one side and the eye that Envy could see staring sightlessly.

  ‘Stop gawking,’ Spite hissed.

  ‘We need a bigger knife,’ said Envy. ‘This won’t do for the men.’

  ‘It did fine for Hidast!’

  ‘He wasn’t much of a man, but Venth is. So is Setyl. Ivis—’

  ‘Ivis is away,’ said Spite. ‘I sent him into a dream. I can do that now. It’s easy.’

  They had been busy. Slaughter in the laundry room. Murder in the maids’ cells. Dead cook, dead scullions – the knife in her hand they had stolen months past and Envy had thought to find something better in the kitchen, but the ones in there were too big to wield. She wished she were stronger, but so far everything had worked, and as long as she could strike from behind, with Spite distracting the victim, being a murderer was easy.

  ‘The men will be trouble,’ she said again.

  ‘Stab them in the throat,’ Spite said. She dipped a finger into a pool of blood creeping out from Hilith’s body and smeared her knee again. ‘Atran’s next. Let’s go, before the supper bell sounds.’

  * * *

  She’d heard from Corporal Yalad that Ivis had wandered into the forest, and for Atran the night ahead had fallen through a hole, and somewhere down there was oblivion, luring her, tempting her to find it.
She decided that she wouldn’t wait for that first goblet of wine at the start of the meal, and so went into the surgery where she poured out a healthy measure of raw alcohol into a clay cup. She added a little water and then a small spoonful of powdered neth berries. She drank down half of the concoction and then stood, tilting back until she was against a wall, waiting for the burning shock to pass. Moments later she felt the first effect of the berries.

  A dab of the black powder on an unconscious man’s tongue could stand him upright in a heartbeat, but she had been using it for so long that her body simply expanded, smoothly, warmth filling her limbs. Drinking invited sleep but the powder kept her awake, wildly invigorated. Without the alcohol in her blood right now she knew that she would be trembling, nerves twitching, vision fluttering. She’d seen a man punch through a solid door when spiked on neth powder.

  The oblivion awaiting her was a delicious kind, especially when she could walk straight into it. The fall from the neth berries was swift and savage, and she would not move for at least a day from wherever she happened to collapse, but neither would she dream. And that was the bargain and she was content with it.

  Ivis was gone for the night. Whatever haunted him she could not touch, and though she made her love plain to see, he was simply uninterested in her, and it was that disinterest that so wounded Atran, straight down through her body like a spear pinning her soul to the ground. She knew he took women to his bed – if his tastes had been for other men, then she would have understood and it would not be so bad. But it was her that he had no feelings for.

  She was not ugly. A little too thin, perhaps, and getting thinner as the neth berries devoured her reserves, but her face was even, not too lined, not too wan or sunken. She had green eyes that men professed to admire, and the sharpness which had once made the same men uneasy was long gone, drowned away and for ever done with. Sharpness wasn’t a gift when bluntness was what was desired.