‘I mistook them for tears,’ Resh said, grimacing. ‘Once upon a time.’
‘When you were no more than a child, yes?’
‘I will grant Ruvera this: she gave me confusion’s face, and every line made sharp its denial.’
The witch ahead of them laughed again. ‘A face, and a groping hand that awakened nothing. But that was my revelation, not his. Now,’ she added, drawing up on the edge of the rise, ‘observe this new consecrated ground.’
Resh and Caplo joined her and stood, silent, looking down.
The depression was oval-shaped, five paces across at its widest point, and eight in length. Its sides were undercut beneath the flowing curl of long-bladed grasses, making the lone step down uncertain, but the basin itself was level and free of stones.
The strange feature was situated on a flat stretch, part of which had been broken and planted by the nuns a few decades past – without much success – and beyond which rose low hummocks, many of which bore springs near the fissured rocks of their summits. The endless leak of water cut deep channels into the sides of those hills, converging into a single stream that only broke up again among the furrows of withered weeds. But the depression remained dry, and it was this peculiarity that made Caplo frown. ‘Consecrated? That blessing is not yours to make.’
Ruvera shrugged. ‘The river god is dead. Lost to the curse of Dark. Betrayed, in fact, but no matter. The woman on her throne in Kharkanas has no regard for us, and we would do well to shrink from her attention. Husband, seek out and tell me what answers you.’
‘Did you make this pit by your own hand?’ Resh asked.
‘Of course not.’
Caplo grunted and spoke before Resh could answer his wife. ‘Then let us ponder its creation, with cogent reason. See the drainage channels from the hills beyond. They reach a level to match the land around the basin, and if not for the irrigation scars would plunge into the ground and course onward, unseen. Yet here, below the crust of the surface, there was buried a lens of wind-blown sand and silts. So. The springs fed their water and the water found its hidden path, cutting through that lens, sweeping it away, thus yielding a depression of the crust.’ He turned to Ruvera. ‘Nothing sacred in its making. Nothing holy in its manifestation. It was the same hidden seepage that defeated the nuns who sought to grow crops here.’
‘I await you, husband,’ said the witch, her face set as if denying Caplo’s presence, and any words he might utter.
‘I am … uncertain,’ admitted Resh after a moment. ‘Caplo’s reason is sound, but it remains mundane, if not shallow. Something else thrives beneath the surface. No gift of the river god. Perhaps not holy at all.’
‘But powerful, husband! Tell me you can feel it!’
‘I wonder … is this Denul?’
‘If the sorcery here heals,’ Ruvera said in a low voice, ‘it is the cold kind. The hardening of scars, the marring of skin. It refutes sympathy.’
‘I sense nothing,’ said Caplo.
‘Husband?’
Resh shook his head. ‘Very well, Ruvera. Awaken it. Demonstrate.’
She drew a deep breath. ‘Let us take this expression of power, and make it into a god. We need only the will to do so, to choose to shape what waits in promise. We perch on a precipice here, but a ledge remains, enough to walk on, enough to stand upon. And from this narrow strand, we can reach out to both sides, both worlds.’
‘You invent from shadows,’ Caplo said. ‘I have never trusted imagination – or if I once did, no longer. Make your idol, then, witch, and show me it is worthy of a bow and scrape. Or palsied genuflection. Make me kneel abject and humbled. But if I see the impress of your palms and fingertips in the clay, woman, I will refuse worship and call you a charlatan.’
‘The hag you still call Mother shows her teeth at last.’
To that, Caplo simply shrugged.
‘Ruvera,’ said Resh, eyeing her, ‘I see you hesitate.’
‘I have reached down before,’ she replied, ‘and brushed … something. Enough to feel its strength. Enough to know its promise.’
‘Then why decry the assassin’s presence, wife?’
‘It may be,’ she said, eyes on the depression, ‘that the power requires a sacrifice. Blood. My blood.’ She swung to Caplo. ‘Do not defend my life. We have lost our god. We possess nothing, and yet our need is vast. I am willing.’
‘Kurald Galain’s squall descends to a secular war,’ Caplo said. ‘A civil war. We can stand outside it, now. No sacrifice is necessary, Ruvera. I may not like you, but I will not see you cast away your life.’
‘Even to stand apart, assassin, will need strength.’ She waved vaguely northward. ‘They will demand we choose sides, sooner or later. Captain Finarra Stone remains as guest to Father Skelenal, and asks that we commit ourselves in Mother Dark’s name. But our family remains unruly. Our patriarch dithers. He has no strength. Sheccanto fares even worse. We must choose another god. Another power.’
Resh clawed at his beard, and then nodded. ‘It falls to us, yes. Caplo—’
‘I will decide in the moment,’ the assassin said. ‘A knife commits but once.’
Ruvera hissed in frustration, and then dismissed him with a chopping hand. Facing the depression again, she closed her eyes.
Caplo stood waiting, unsure whether to fix his attention upon the witch, or the innocuous depression before them. Beneath his heavy woollen cloak he closed gloved hands around the grips of his knives.
Resh’s sharply drawn breath drew the assassin’s attention upon the shallow basin, where he saw the withered grasses lining it stir, then flatten away from the edge, as if they were the spiky petals of a vast flower. The cracked soil in the centre of the pit now blurred strangely, forcing Caplo to blink and struggle to focus – but his efforts failed, and the blurring deepened, the mottled colours melting, smearing. And now something was rising from below. A body of some sort, lying supine. In the instant of its first appearance, it seemed but bones, peat-stained and burnished; in the next the skeleton vanished beneath the meat of muscles and the stretched strings of tendons and ligaments. Then skin slipped on to the form, rising from below like mud, and its hue was dark. Hair grew from that skin, covering the entire body, thickest beneath the arms and at the groin.
If standing, the creature would have been only slightly shorter than the average Tiste.
Caplo edged forward, tugged by curiosity. He studied the manifestation’s peculiar, bestial face – how the mouth and jaw projected, drawing out and flattening the broad nose. The closed eyes were nestled deep in their sockets, the brow half enclosing them thick and jutting. The forehead sloped back beneath the black, dense hair of the scalp. The creature’s ears were small and flat against the sides of the head.
He noted the rise and fall of its narrow but powerful chest the moment before the creature opened its eyes.
Lips stretched back, revealing thick, stained teeth, and from its throat droned a dull, broken sound. The apparition then shivered, blurred and suddenly broke apart.
Ruvera cried out, and Caplo heard Resh’s curse. The assassin’s knives were out, but the weapons were no answer to his confusion, as in the place where a body had been lying moments before there now appeared a dozen creatures, sleek and black, weasel-like but larger, heavier. Fangs glistened and eyes flashed.
And then a full score of the beasts swarmed out from the pit.
Caplo heard the witch shriek, but he could do nothing for her as three of the creatures lunged towards him. He leapt back, slashing out with his knives. One edge sliced hide, but then the hilt snagged in fur and savage jaws closed around his hand. They crunched down through the bones, and heavy molars began grinding and tearing through. Screaming, Caplo tore his hand from the creature’s mouth.
Another beast hammered into his midriff, claws ripping to get through his clothing. He staggered back, disbelieving. The third apparition’s canines punched through flesh as its jaws closed on his left thigh. The weight pulled
him down to the ground. He still held one knife, and twisting round, he drove the blade into the base of the beast’s skull, tore the weapon free and slammed it into the side of the animal clinging to his chest. The creature’s jaws, which had been striving to reach his throat, snapped shut, just missing the assassin’s neck. A wet cough sprayed blood out from its mouth. Rolling on to his side, Caplo stabbed again and felt death take his attacker.
The first apparition returned to bite into his upper arm, above the mangled hand. The pressure of those jaws crushed bones as if they were dry sticks. Caplo dragged it close with his arm and cut open its throat, down to the vertebrae.
He rolled again, pulling his arm loose from the now slack jaws. He staggered to his feet in a half-crouch, and, glaring, readied himself to meet the next assault. But the scene before him was motionless. He heard the barks of the creatures, but some distance away and fast dwindling. Warlock Resh knelt on the ground a few paces away, the carcasses of two beasts before him. His cloak had been shredded, revealing the heavy chain beneath it. Here and there, massive claws were snagged in the links, dangling like fetish charms.
Just beyond the warlock, Caplo saw a woman’s severed arm. The air reeked of shit, and, twisting slightly, he saw a long sprawl of lumpy intestines, stretching out as if they had been dragged. The nearest end plunged into a small huddled body, the legs of which had been chewed off at the knees.
‘Resh—’
The warlock reached out and tugged loose one of his short-handled axes from the nearest carcass.
‘Resh. Your wife—’
His friend shook his head, climbed drunkenly upright. ‘I will bury her here,’ he said. ‘Go back. Make your report.’
‘My report? Beloved friend—’
‘Leave us, Caplo. Just … leave us now, will you?’
The assassin straightened. He did not know if he would make it all the way back. His right arm streamed blood down through the torn flesh and shattered bones of his hand, making wavering strings between the ground and his fingertips. His left thigh felt swollen and hard, as if the muscle was turning to stone. Unlike Resh, he had not been wearing armour, and claws had torn across his ribs under his arms. Still, he turned away from his friend, raised his head, and slowly made for the trail.
My report. Blessed Mother and Father, Witch Ruvera is dead. A creature awakened, became many creatures. They were … they were uninterested in negotiation.
It seems, Mother and Father, that upon this land we would call our own, we are all but children. And this is the lesson here. The past waits, but does not invite. And to walk into its room yields only the death of innocence.
See me, Mother and Father. See your child, and heed the knowing in his eyes.
His blood was leaving him. He felt lightheaded, and the world around him was changing. The path vanished, the grasses growing higher – he fought them as he walked, struggling to pull his legs through the tangled blades. The winter had vanished and he could feel the weight of the sun’s heat upon his back. All around him, animals were walking the plain – animals such as he had never seen before. Tall, gracile, some banded, some striped or spotted in dun hues. He saw creatures little different from horses, while others bore impossibly long necks. He saw apes that looked like dogs, travelling on all fours, with thin tails standing high behind them. This was a dream world, an invented world that had never existed.
Imagination returns to haunt my soul. It arrives in a curse, ragged of edge and painfully sharp. Reason drip-drip-drips to spatter the grass. And what remains? Nothing but cruel, vicious imagination. A realm of delusion and fancy, a realm of deceit.
There is no paradise – do not mock me with this scene! The world is unchanging – admit to it, you fool! Raise up the hard truths of what truly surrounds you – the barren hills, the bitter cold, the undeniable heartlessness of it all! We know these truths, we know them: the viciousness, the cruelty, the indifference, the pointlessness. The stupid pathos of existence. For this, no reason to battle, to fight on. Empty my soul of causes, and then – only then – shall I know peace.
Cursing, he fought against the mirage, but still the grasses pulled at him, and he heard their roots ripping free to the tug of his shins.
Now he was in shadows, entering a forest. Tangles of brush clogged the clearings at its edge, and then he was among straggly pines and spruce, the air cooler, and in the gloom beneath thick stands he saw bhederin, hulking and heavy, small ears flicking and red-rimmed eyes fixing on him, watching as he stumbled past.
Somewhere nearby a beast was ripping apart the bole of a fallen tree. He could hear the claws gouging and splintering the rotted wood.
A moment later he came upon the creature, and it was identical to those from the basin. It lifted its broad head, tilted a wood-flecked snout in his direction, and then bared its fangs in a snarl, before bounding away, running in the manner of an otter. Caplo stared after it, noted the blood on its hindquarters.
You show me this? I will remember you. I swear it. We are not finished, you and I.
The ground underfoot grew hard, and then he was crossing a flat stretch of bedrock, its surface scraped and denuded. The blood draining from his hand made dull sounds as each drop struck the stone. Do I carry a brush? Does the paint drip? No. No brush – this flayed, heavy thing is what remains of my hand. No matter. The next rain will wash it all away.
It’s awake now. This thing of the past, this stranger who can become many. Pulled loose from the earth, reborn. And so very hungry.
Ruvera. You felt its slumbering power. You touched it with trembling hands, and thought to make it your own. But the past cannot be tamed, cannot be changed to your whim. The only slavery possible is found in the now, and its promise lurks among the ambitious – the fools so crowding the present and forever jostling, as if by will alone they could displace the undefended children, the children not yet born … They’ll put the rest of us in our place, to be sure, and if I am not among them, then I will stumble in shackles, just another slave. Another defenceless child.
Imagination was the enemy, but the bludgeon of will could defeat it, the stolid stupidity of every self-avowed realist incapable of dreaming could stifle it, like a pillow over a face. Chained to your desires, you would pull the world down to your pathetic level. Come then, make it barren and lifeless, colourless and unrelieved. I am with you. I see reason’s bloody underside. I see the value in this emasculation. The past is where imagination dwells – and we will have none of that. I surrender nothing, and by dispiriting the world, I become its master. I become the god – it is plain now, plain to me – the path awaiting us …
He shook his head, and the scene around him cavorted wildly. Stumbling, he fell to the hard ground, felt the brittle stubble of winter grasses stabbing the side of his face, the icy bite of frozen soil sinking into his cheek.
Reality’s kiss.
Someone was shouting. He heard the thump of footsteps fast approaching.
‘Revelation,’ Caplo whispered. ‘I hear the past calling. Calling.’
And it mutters, with a lick of withered lips, ‘Lead unto me each and every child.’
Revelation.
And then the women were all around him, and he felt soft hands. Smiling, he let himself drift away into darkness.
But not all the way.
* * *
Finarra Stone, captain in the Wardens, looked down upon the recumbent form of Caplo Dreem. The shutters, thrown back, offered up the uncertain light of the day’s dull overcast, filling the cell and settling a grey patina upon the man’s face. The sweat of fever gave that face the look of stained porcelain. After a long moment she turned away.
They had cut off the ruined right hand and forearm, sealing the stump with heat and some kind of pitch the colour of honey. The smell filling the room was that of burned hair and the suppurations of infection in the other wounds covering the assassin’s body.
She remembered her own battle against the same pernicious killer, not so
long ago. But then Lord Ilgast Rend had been there, with the gift of Denul.
No one expected Caplo to live out the day.
She looked across to Warlock Resh, who sat red-eyed and haggard in a chair facing the cot. ‘I saw the bite marks,’ she said to him. ‘Similar to Jhelarkan, but smaller.’
He grunted. ‘Hardly. A wolf’s canines in the mouth of a weasel. Even a bear would run from such a beast.’
‘Yet they were the ones that fled, warlock.’
He licked chapped lips. ‘We’d killed five of them.’
She shrugged, glancing back to Caplo. ‘He would not have accounted for even one more. Leaving just you, surrounded, beleaguered on all sides. Armour or no, warlock, they would have taken you down.’
‘I know.’
When he said nothing more, she sighed. ‘Forgive me. I intrude upon your grief with my questions.’
‘You intrude with your presence, captain, but give no cause for the bitter taste in my mouth.’
‘It is said the Jheck of the south are a smaller breed.’
‘Not Jheck,’ Resh replied. ‘They were as I described them. Some animal long since vanished from the world.’
‘Why do you say that?’
He leaned forward and rubbed at his face, knuckling hard at his eyes. ‘Dispense with the scene itself, if you would understand its significance. Ruvera, my wife, discovered something ancient, buried. It slept in the manner of the dead. We believe that sleep to be eternal, do we not?’ And he looked up at the captain, his small eyes squinting.
‘Who can say?’ she replied. ‘Who can know? I have heard tales of ghosts, warlock, and spirits that once were flesh.’
‘This is a world of many veils,’ Resh said, ‘only one of which our eyes are meant to pierce. Our vision strikes through to what seems a sure place, solid and real and, above all, wholly predictable – once the mystery is expunged, and be sure: no mystery is beyond expunging.’
‘Those are not a warlock’s words,’ Finarra observed, studying him.
‘Aren’t they? By my arts do I not seek order, captain? The rules of what lies beyond the visible, the tactile? Find me answers to all things, and at last my mind will sit still.’
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