Toll the Hounds Read online

  Bemused, he finally glanced her way. Was surprised to see a young, unlined face – the voice had seemed older, deep of timbre, almost husky – framed in glistening black hair, chopped short and angled downward to her shoulders. Her large eyes were of darkest brown, the outer corners creased in lines that did not belong to one of her few years. She wore a woollen robe of russet in which green strands threaded down, but the robe hung open, unbelted, revealing a pale green linen blouse cut short enough to expose a faintly bulging belly. From her undersized breasts he judged that she was not with child, simply not yet past the rounded softness of adolescence.

  She met his eyes in a shy manner that once again startled him. ‘We call you the Benighted, out of respect. And all who arrive are told of you, and by this means we ensure that there is no theft, no rape, no crime at all. The Redeemer has chosen you to guard his children.’

  ‘That is untrue.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘I had heard that no harm befell the pilgrims this close to the Great Barrow.’

  ‘Now you know why.’

  Seerdomin was dumbfounded. He could think of nothing to say to such a notion. It was madness. It was, yes, unfair. ‘Is it not the Redeemer who shows us,’ said the woman, ‘that burdens are the lot of us all? That we must embrace such demands upon our souls, yet stand fearless, open and welcoming?’

  ‘I do not know what the Redeemer shows – to anyone.’ His tone was harsher than he’d intended. ‘I have enough burdens of my own. I will not accept yours – I will not be responsible for your safety, or that of any other pilgrim. This – this . . .’ This is not why I am here! Yet, much as he wanted to shout that out loud, instead he turned away, marched back to the avenue.

  Pilgrims flinched from his path, deepening his anger.

  Through the camp, eyes set on the darkness ahead, wanting to be once more within its chill embrace, and the city, too. The damp grey walls, the gritty cobbles of the streets, the musty cave of a tavern with its surround of pale, miserable faces – yes, back to his own world. Where nothing was asked of him, nothing demanded, not a single expectation beyond that of sitting at a table with the game arrayed before him, the twist and dance of a pointless contest.

  On to the road, into the swirl of lost voices from countless useless ghosts, his boots ringing on the stones.

  Damned fools!

  Down at the causeway spanning the Citadel’s moat, blood leaked out from bodies sprawled along its length, and in the north sky something terrible was happening. Lurid slashes like a rainbow gone mad, spreading in waves that devoured darkness. Was it pain that strangled the very air? Was it something else burgeoning to life, shattering the universe itself?

  Endest Silann, a simple acolyte in the Temple of Mother Dark, wove drunkenly round the bodies towards the Outer Gate, skidding on pools of gore. Through the gate’s peaked arch he could see the city, the roofs like the gears of countless mechanisms, gears that could lock with the sky itself, with all creation. Such was Kharkanas, First Born of all cities. But the sky had changed. The perfect machine of existence was broken – see the sky!

  The city trembled, the roofs now ragged-edged. A wind had begun to howl, the voice of the multihued light-storm as it lashed out, flared with thunderous fire.

  Forsaken. We are forsaken!

  He reached the gate, fell against one pillar and clawed at the tears streaming from his eyes. The High Priestess, cruel poet, was shrieking in the nave of the Temple, shrieking like a woman being raped. Others – women all – were writhing on the marble floor, convulsing in unison, a prostrate dance of macabre sensuality. The priests and male acolytes had sought to still the thrashing limbs, to ease the ravaged cries erupting from tortured throats with empty assurances, but then, one by one, they began to recoil as the tiles grew slick beneath the women, the so-called Nectar of Ecstasy – and no, no man could now pretend otherwise, could not but see this the way it was, the truth of it.

  They fled. Crazed with horror, yes, but driven away by something else, and was it not envy? Civil war had ignited, deadly as that storm in the sky. Families were being torn asunder, from the Citadel itself down to the meanest homes of the commonry. Andii blood painted Kharkanas and there was nowhere to run.

  Through the gate, and then, even as despair choked all life from Endest Silann, he saw him approaching. From the city below. His forearms sheathed in black glistening scales, his bared chest made a thing of natural armour. The blood of Tiam ran riot through him, fired to life by the conflation of chaotic sorcery, and his eyes glowed with ferocious will.

  Endest fell to his knees in Anomander’s path. ‘Lord! The world falls!’

  ‘Rise, priest,’ he replied. ‘The world does not fall. It but changes. I need you. Come.’

  And so he walked past, and Endest found himself on his feet, as Lord Anomander’s will closed about his heart like an iron gauntlet, pulling him round and into the great warrior’s wake.

  He wiped at his eyes. ‘Lord, where are we going?’

  ‘The Temple.’

  ‘We cannot! They have gone mad – the women! They are—’

  ‘I know what assails them, priest.’

  ‘The High Priestess—’

  ‘Is of no interest to me.’ Anomander paused, glanced back at him. ‘Tell me your name.’

  ‘Endest Silann, Third Level Acolyte. Lord, please—’

  But the warrior continued on, silencing Endest with a gesture from one scaled, taloned hand. ‘The crime of this day, Endest Silann, rests with Mother Dark herself.’

  And then, at that precise moment, the young acolyte understood what the Lord intended. And yes, Anomander would indeed need him. His very soul – Mother forgive me – to open the way, to lead the Lord on to the Unseen Road.

  And he will stand before her, yes. Tall, unyielding, a son who is not afraid. Not of her. Not of his own anger. The storm, oh, the storm is just beginning.

  Endest Silann sat alone in his room, the bare stone walls as solid and cold as those of a tomb. A small oil lamp sat on the lone table, testament to his failing eyes, to the stain of Light upon his soul, a stain so old now, so deeply embedded in the scar tissue of his heart, that it felt like tough leather within him.

  Being old, it was his privilege to relive ancient memories, to resurrect in his flesh and his bones the recollection of youth – the time before the aches seeped into joints, before brittle truths weakened his frame to leave him bent and tottering.

  ‘Hold the way open, Endest Silann. She will rage against you. She will seek to drive me away, to close herself to me. Hold. Do not relent.’

  ‘But Lord, I have sworn my life to her.’

  ‘What value is that if she will not be held to account for her deeds?’

  ‘She is the creator of us all, Lord!’

  ‘Yes, and she will answer for it.’

  Youth was a time for harsh judgement. Such fires ebbed with age. Certainty itself withered. Dreams of salvation died on the vine and who could challenge that blighted truth? They had walked through a citadel peopled by the dead, the broken open, the spilled out. Like the violent opening of bodies, the tensions, rivalries and feuds could no longer be contained. Chaos delivered in a raw and bloody birth, and now the child squatted amidst its mangled playthings, with eyes that burned.

  The fool fell into line. The fool always did. The fool followed the first who called. The fool gave away – with cowardly relief – all rights to think, to choose, to find his own path. And so Endest Silann walked the crimson corridors, the stench-filled hallways, there but two strides behind Anomander.

  ‘Will you do as I ask, Endest Silann?’

  ‘Yes, Lord.’

  ‘Will you hold?’

  ‘I shall hold.’

  ‘Will you await me the day?’

  ‘Which day, Lord?’

  ‘The day at the very end, Endest Silann. Will you await me on that day?’

  ‘I said I would hold, Lord, and so I shall.’

  ‘Hold,
old friend, until then. Until then. Until the moment when you must betray me. No – no protestations, Endest. You will know the time, you will know it and know it well.’

  It was what kept him alive, he suspected. This fraught waiting, so long all was encrusted, stiff and made almost shapeless by the accretion of centuries.

  ‘Tell me, Endest, what stirs in the Great Barrow?’

  ‘Lord?’

  ‘Is it Itkovian? Do we witness in truth the birth of a new god?’

  ‘I do not know, Lord. I am closed to such things.’ As I have been since that day in the Temple.

  ‘Ah, yes, I had forgotten. I apologize, old friend. Mayhap I will speak to Spinnock, then. Certain quiet enquiries, perhaps.’

  ‘He will serve you as always, Lord.’

  ‘Yes, one of my burdens.’

  ‘Lord, you bear them well.’

  ‘Endest, you lie poorly.’

  ‘Yes, Lord.’

  ‘Spinnock it shall be, then. When you leave, please send for him – not with haste, when he has the time.’

  ‘Lord, expect him at once.’

  And so Anomander sighed, because no other response was possible, was it? And I, too, am your burden, Lord. But we best not speak of that.

  See me, Lord, see how I still wait.

  Incandescent light was spilling from the half-open doors of the temple, rolling in waves out over the concourse like the wash of a flood, sufficient in strength to shift corpses about, milky eyes staring as the heads pitched and lolled.

  As they set out across the expanse, that light flowed up round their shins, startlingly cold. Endest Silann recognized the nearest dead Andii. Priests who had lingered too long, caught in the conflagration that Endest had felt but not seen as he rushed through the Citadel’s corridors. Among them, followers from various factions. Silchas Ruin’s. Andarist’s, and Anomander’s own. Drethdenan’s, Hish Tulla’s, Vanut Degalla’s – oh, there had been waves of fighting on this concourse, these sanctified flagstones.

  In birth there shall be blood. In death there shall be light. Yes, this was the day for both birth and death, for both blood and light.

  They drew closer to the doors of the temple, slowed to observe the waves of light tumbling down the broad steps. Their hue had deepened, as if smeared with old blood, but the power was waning. Yet Endest Silann sensed a presence within, something contained, someone waiting.

  For us.

  The High Priestess? No. Of her, the acolyte sensed nothing.

  Anomander took his first step on to the stone stairs.

  And was held there, as her voice filled them.

  No. Be warned, Anomander, dear son, from Andii blood is born a new world. Understand me. You and your kin are no longer alone, no longer free to play your vicious games. There are now . . . others.

  Anomander spoke. ‘Mother, did you imagine I would be surprised? Horrified? It could never be enough, to be naught but a mother, to create with hands closed upon no one. To yield so much of yourself, only to find us your only reward – us slayers, us betrayers.’

  There is new blood within you.

  ‘Yes.’

  My son, what have you done?

  ‘Like you, Mother, I have chosen to embrace change.

  Yes, there are others now. I sense them. There will be wars between us, and so I shall unite the Andii. Resistance is ending. Andarist, Drethdenan, Vanut Degalla. Silchas is fleeing, and so too Hish Tulla and Manalle. Civil strife is now over, Mother.’

  You have killed Tiam. My son, do you realize what you have begun? Silchas flees, yes, and where do you think he goes? And the newborn, the others, what scent will draw them now, what taste of chaotic power? Anomander, in murder you seek peace, and now the blood flows and there shall be no peace, not ever again.

  I forsake you, Anomander Blood of Tiam. I deny my first children all. You shall wander the realms, bereft of purpose. Your deeds shall avail you nothing. Your lives shall spawn death unending. The Dark – my heart – is closed to you, to you all.

  And, as Anomander stood unmoving, Endest Silann cried out behind him, falling to his knees in bruising collapse. A hand of power reached into him, tore something loose, then was gone – something, yes, that he would one day call by its name: Hope.

  He sat staring at the flickering flame of the lamp.

  Wondering what it was, that loyalty should so simply take the place of despair, as if to set such despair upon another, a chosen leader, was to absolve oneself of all that might cause pain. Loyalty, aye, the exchange that was surrender in both directions. From one, all will, from the other, all freedom.

  From one, all will.

  From the other . . .

  *

  The sword, an arm’s length of copper-hued iron, had been forged in Darkness, in Kharkanas itself. Sole heirloom of House Durav, the weapon had known three wielders since the day of quenching at the Hust Forge, but of those kin who held the weapon before Spinnock Durav, nothing remained – no ill-fitting, worn ridges in the horn grip, no added twists of wire at the neck of the pommel adjusting weight or balance; no quirk of honing on the edges. The sword seemed to have been made, by a master weaponsmith, specifically for Spinnock, for his every habit, his every peculiarity of style and preference.

  So in his kin, therefore, he saw versions of himself, and like the weapon he was but one in a continuum, unchanging, even as he knew that he would be the last. And that one day, perhaps not far off, some stranger would bend down and tug the sword from senseless fingers, would lift it for a closer examination. The water-etched blade, the almost-crimson edges with the back-edge sharply angled and the down-edge more tapering. Would squint, then, and see the faint glyphs nested in the ferule along the entire blade’s length. And might wonder at the foreign marks. Or not.

  The weapon would be kept, as a trophy, as booty to sell in some smoky market, or it would rest once more in a scabbard at the hip or slung from a baldric, resuming its purpose which was to take life, to spill blood, to tear the breath from mortal souls. And generations of wielders might curse the ill-fitting horn grip, the strange ridges of wear and the once-perfect honing that no local smith could match.

  Inconceivable, for Spinnock, was the image of the sword lying lost, woven out of sight by grasses, the iron’s sheath of oil fading and dull with dust, and then the rust blotting the blade like open sores; until, like the nearby mouldering, rotting bones of its last wielder, the sword sank into the ground, crumbling, decaying into a black, encrusted and shapeless mass.

  Seated on his bed with the weapon across his thighs, Spinnock Durav rubbed the last of the oil into the iron, watched the glyphs glisten as if alive, as ancient, minor sorcery awakened, armouring the blade against corrosion. Old magic, slowly losing its efficacy. Just like me. Smiling, he rose and slid the sword into the scabbard, then hung the leather baldric on a hook by the door.

  ‘Clothes do you no justice, Spin.’

  He turned, eyed the sleek woman sprawled atop the blanket, her arms out to the sides, her legs still spread wide. ‘You’re back.’

  She grunted. ‘Such arrogance. My temporary . . . absence had nothing to do with you, as you well know.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘Well, little, then. You know I walk in Darkness, and when it takes me, I travel far indeed.’

  He eyed her for a half-dozen heartbeats. ‘More often of late,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’ The High Priestess sat up, wincing at some pain in her lower back and rubbing at the spot. ‘Do you remember, Spin, how all of this was so easy, once? Our young bodies seemed made for just that one thing, beauty woven round a knot of need. How we displayed our readiness, how we preened, like the flowers of carnivorous plants? How it made each of us, to ourselves, the most important thing in the world, such was the seduction of that knot of need, seducing first ourselves and then others, so many others—’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ Spinnock said, laughing, even as her words prodded something deep inside him, a hint of pain there w
as no point paying attention to, or so he told himself, still holding his easy smile as he drew closer to the bed. ‘Those journeys into Kurald Galain were denied you for so long, until the rituals of opening seemed devoid of purpose. Beyond the raw pleasure of sex.’

  She studied him a moment from beneath heavy lids. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Has she forgiven us, then?’

  Her laugh was bitter. ‘You ask it so plain, as if enquiring after a miffed relative! How can you do such things, Spin? It should have taken you half the night to broach that question.’

  ‘Perhaps age has made me impatient.’

  ‘After the torture you just put me through? You have the patience of lichen.’

  ‘But rather more interesting, I hope.’

  She moved to the edge of the bed, set her bare feet on the floor and hissed at the stone’s chill. ‘Where are my clothes?’

  ‘They burned to ash in the heat of your desire.’

  ‘There – bring them over, if you please.’

  ‘Now who is impatient?’ But he collected up her priestly robes.

  ‘The visions are growing more . . . fraught.’

  Nodding, he held out her robe.

  She rose, turned round and slipped her arms into the sleeves, then settled back into his embrace. ‘Thank you, Spinnock Durav, for acceding to my . . . need.’

  ‘The ritual cannot be denied,’ he replied, stroking her cut-short, midnight-black hair. ‘Besides, did you think I would refuse such a request from you?’

  ‘I grow tired of the priests. Their ennui is such that most of them must imbibe foul herbs to awaken them to life. More often, of late, we have them simply service us, while they lie there, limp as rotting bananas.’

  He laughed, stepping away to find his own clothes. ‘Bananas, yes, a most wondrous fruit to reward us in this strange world. That and kelyk. In any case, the image you describe is unfairly unappetizing.’

  ‘I agree, and so, thank you again, Spinnock Durav.’

  ‘No more gratitude, please. Unless you would have me voice my own and so overwhelm you with the pathos of my plight.’

  To that, she but smiled. ‘Stay naked, Spin, until I leave.’