Toll the Hounds Read online

  ‘Another part of the ritual?’ he asked.

  ‘Would I have so humbly asked if it was?’

  When she was gone, Spinnock Durav drew on his clothing once more, thinking back to his own ritual, servicing his sword with a lover’s touch, as if to remind the weapon that the woman he had just made love to was but a diversion, a temporary distraction, and that there was place for but one love in his heart, as befitted a warrior.

  True, an absurd ritual, a conceit that was indeed pathetic. But with so little to hold on to, well, Tiste Andii clung tight and fierce to anything with meaning, no matter how dubious or ultimately nonsensical.

  Dressed once more, he set out.

  The game awaited him. The haunted gaze of Seerdomin, there across from him, with artfully carved but essentially inert lumps of wood, antler and bone on the table between them. Ghostly, irrelevant players to each side.

  And when it was done, when victory and defeat had been played out, they would sit for a time, drinking from the pitcher, and Seerdomin might again speak of something without quite saying what it was, might slide round what bothered him with every word, with every ambiguous comment and observation. And all Spinnock would glean was that it had something to do with the Great Barrow north of Black Coral. With his recent refusal to journey out there, ending his own pilgrimage, leaving Spinnock to wonder at the man’s crisis of faith, to dread the arrival of true despair, when all that Spinnock needed from his friend might wither, even die.

  And where then would he find hope?

  He walked the gloomy streets, closing in on the tavern, and wondered if there was something he could do for Seerdomin. The thought slowed his steps and made him alter his course. Down an alley, out on to another street, this one the side of a modest hill, with the buildings stepping down level by level on each side, a cascade of once brightly painted doors – but who bothered with such things now in this eternal Night?

  He came to one door on his left, its flaked surface gouged with a rough sigil, the outline of the Great Barrow in profile, beneath it the ragged imprint of an open hand.

  Where worship was born, priests and priestesses appeared with the spontaneity of mould on bread.

  Spinnock pounded on the door.

  After a moment it opened a crack and he looked down to see a single eye peering up at him.

  ‘I would speak to her,’ he said.

  The door creaked back. A young girl in a threadbare tunic stood in the narrow hallway, now curtseying repeatedly. ‘L-lord,’ she stammered, ‘she is up the stairs – it is late—’

  ‘Is it? And I am not a “lord”. Is she awake?’

  A hesitant nod.

  ‘I will not take much of her time. Tell her it is the Tiste Andii warrior she once met in the ruins. She was collecting wood. I was . . . doing very little. Go, I will wait.’

  Up the stairs the girl raced, two steps at a time, the dirty soles of her feet flashing with each upward leap.

  He heard a door open, close, then open again, and the girl reappeared at the top of the stairs. ‘Come!’ she hissed.

  The wood creaked beneath him as he climbed to the next level.

  The priestess – ancient, immensely obese – had positioned herself on a once plush chair before an altar of heaped trinkets. Braziers bled orange light to either side, shedding tendrils of smoke that hung thick and acrid beneath the ceiling. The old woman’s eyes reflected that muted glow, murky with cataracts.

  As soon as Spinnock entered the small room, the girl left, closing the door behind her.

  ‘You do not come,’ said the priestess, ‘to embrace the new faith, Spinnock Durav.’

  ‘I don’t recall ever giving you my name, Priestess.’

  ‘We all know the one who alone among all the Tiste Andii consorts with us lowly humans. Beyond the old one who bargains for goods in the markets and you are not Endest Silann, who would have struggled on the stairs, and bowed each one near to breaking with his weight.’

  ‘Notoriety makes me uneasy.’

  ‘Of course it does. What do you want with me, warrior?’

  ‘I would ask you something. Is there a crisis among the faithful?’

  ‘Ah. You speak of Seerdomin, who now denies us in our need.’

  ‘He does? How? What need?’

  ‘It is not your concern. Not that of the Tiste Andii, nor the Son of Darkness.’

  ‘Anomander Rake rules Black Coral, Priestess, and we Tiste Andii serve him.’

  ‘The Great Barrow lies outside Night. The Redeemer does not kneel before the Son of Darkness.’

  ‘I am worried for my friend, Priestess. That is all.’

  ‘You cannot help him. Nor, it is now clear, can he help us.’

  ‘Why do you need help?’

  ‘We await the Redeemer, to end that which afflicts his followers.’

  ‘And how will the Redeemer achieve such a thing, except through chosen mortals?’

  She cocked her head, as if startled by his question, then she smiled. ‘Ask that question of your friend, Spinnock Durav. When the game is done and your Lord is victorious yet again, and you call out for beer, and the two of you – so much more alike than you might imagine – drink and take ease in each other’s company.’

  ‘Your knowledge dismays me.’

  ‘The Redeemer is not afraid of the Dark.’

  Spinnock started, his eyes widening. ‘Embracing the grief of the T’lan Imass is one thing, Priestess. That of the Tiste Andii – no, there may be no fear in the Redeemer, but his soul had best awaken to wisdom. Priestess, make this plain in your prayers. The Tiste Andii are not for the Redeemer. God or no, such an embrace will destroy him. Utterly.’ And, by Mother’s own breath, it would destroy us as well.

  ‘Seerdomin awaits you,’ she said, ‘and wonders, since you are ever punctual.’

  Spinnock Durav hesitated, then nodded. Hoping that this woman’s god had more wisdom than she did; hoping, too, that the power of prayer could not bend the Redeemer into ill-conceived desires to reach too far, to seek what could only destroy him, all in that fervent fever of gushing generosity so common to new believers.

  ‘Priestess, your claim that the Great Barrow lies beyond my Lord’s responsibilities is in error. If the pilgrims are in need, the Son of Darkness will give answer—’

  ‘And so lay claim to what is not his.’

  ‘You do not know Anomander Rake.’

  ‘We need nothing from your Lord.’

  ‘Then perhaps I can help.’

  ‘No. Leave now, Tiste Andii.’

  Well, he had tried, hadn’t he? Nor did he expect to gain more ground with Seerdomin. Perhaps something more extreme was required. No, Seerdomin is a private man. Let him be. Remain watchful, yes, as any friend would. And wait.

  If he had walked from the nearest coast, the lone figure crossing the grasslands of north Lamatath had travelled a hundred leagues of unsettled prairie. Nowhere to find food beyond hunting the sparse game, all of it notoriously fleet of foot and hoof. He was gaunt, but then, he had always been gaunt. His thin, grey hair was unkempt, drifting out long in his wake. His beard was matted, knotted with filth. His eyes, icy blue, were as feral as any beast of the plain.

  A long coat of chain rustled, swinging clear of his shins with each stride. The shadow he cast was narrow as a sword.

  In the cloudless sky wheeled vultures or ravens, or both, so high as to be nothing but specks, yet they tracked the solitary figure far below. Or perhaps they but skirled in the blue emptiness scanning the wastes for some dying, weakening creature.

  But this man was neither dying nor weak. He walked with the stiff purpose characteristic of the mad, the deranged. Madness, he would have noted, does not belong to the soul engaged with the world, with every hummock and tuft of grass, with the old beach ridges with their cobbles of limestone pushing through the thin, patched skin of lichen and brittle moss. With the mocking stab of shadow that slowly wheeled as the sun dragged itself across the sky. With the sounds of
his own breath that were proof that he remained alive, that the world had yet to take him, pull him down, steal the warmth from his ancient flesh. Madness stalked only an inner torment, and Kallor, the High King, supreme emperor of a dozen terrible empires, was, in his heart, a man at peace.

  For the moment. But what mattered beyond just that? This single moment, pitching headlong into the next one, over and over again, as firm and true as each step he took, the hard ground reverberating up through the worn heels of his boots. The tactile affirmed reality, and nothing else mattered and never would.

  A man at peace, yes indeed. And that he had once ruled the lives of hundreds of thousands, ruled over their useless, petty existences; that he had once, with a single gesture, condemned a surrendered army of fifteen thousand to their deaths; that he had sat a throne of gold, silver and onyx, like a glutton stuffed to overflowing with such material wealth that it had lost all meaning, all value . . . ah well, all that remained of such times, such glory, was the man himself, his sword, his armour, and a handful of antiquated coins in his pouch. Endless betrayals, a sea of faces made blurry and vague by centuries, with naught but the avaricious, envious glitter of their eyes remaining sharp in his mind; the sweep of smoke and fire and faint screams as empires toppled, one after another; the chaos of brutal nights fleeing a palace in flames, fleeing such a tide of vengeful fools that even Kallor could not kill them all – much as he wanted to, oh, yes – none of these things awakened bitter ire in his soul. Here in this wasteland that no one wanted, he was a man at peace.

  Such truth could not be challenged, and were someone to rise up from the very earth now and stand in such challenge, why, he would cut him to pieces. Smiling all the while to evince his calm repose.

  Too much weight was given to history, as far as Kallor was concerned. One’s own history; that of peoples, cultures, landscapes. What value peering at past errors in judgement, at mischance and carelessness, when the only reward after all that effort was regret? Bah! Regret was the refuge of fools, and Kallor was no fool. He had lived out his every ambition, after all, lived each one out until all colour was drained away, leaving a bleached, wan knowledge that there wasn’t much in life truly worth the effort to achieve it. That the rewards proved ephemeral; nay, worthless.

  Every emperor in every realm, through all of time itself, soon found that the lofty title and all its power was an existence devoid of humour. Even excess and indulgences palled, eventually. And the faces of the dying, the tortured, well, they were all the same, and not one of those twisted expressions vouchsafed a glimmer of revelation, the discovery of some profound, last-breath secret that answered all the great questions. No, every face simply pulled into itself, shrank and recoiled even as agony tugged and stretched, and whatever the bulging eyes saw at the last moment was, Kallor now understood, something utterly . . . banal.

  Now there was an enemy – banality. The demesne of the witless, the proud tower of the stupid. One did not need to be an emperor to witness it – scan the faces of people encircling an overturned carriage, the gleam of their eyes as they strain and stretch to catch a glimpse of blood, of broken limbs, relishing some pointless tragedy that tops up their murky inkwells of life. Watch, yes, those vultures of grief, and then speak of noble humanity, so wise and so virtuous.

  Unseen by the ravens or condors, Kallor had now bared his teeth in a bleak smile, as if seeking to emulate the face of that tragically fallen idiot, pinned there beneath the carriage wheel, seeing the last thing he would see, and finding it in the faces of the gawkers, and thinking, Oh, look at you all. So banal. So . . . banal.

  He startled a hare from some scrub, twenty paces away, and his left hand flashed out, underhand, and a knife sped in a blur, catching the hare in mid-leap, flipping it round in the air before it fell.

  A slight tack, and he halted to stand over the small, motionless body, looking down at the tiny droplets of spilled blood. The knife sunk to the hilt, driven right through just in front of the hips – the gut, then, not good. Sloppy.

  He crouched, pulled loose the knife then quickly sliced open the belly and tugged and tore out the hare’s warm intestines. He held the glistening ropes up in one hand, studied them and whispered, ‘Banal.’

  An eye of the hare stared up sightlessly, everything behind it closed up, gone away.

  But he’d seen all that before. More times than he could count. Hares, people, all the same. In that last moment, yes, there was nothing to see, so what else to do but go away?

  He flung the guts to one side, picked up the carcass by its elongated hind limbs and resumed his journey. The hare was coming with him. Not that it cared. Later, they’d sit down for dinner.

  High in the sky overhead, the black specks began a descent. Their equally empty eyes had spied the entrails, spread in lumpy grey ropes on the yellow grasses, now in the lone man’s wake. Empty eyes, but a different kind of emptiness. Not that of death’s banality, no, but that of life’s banality.

  The same kind of eyes as Kallor’s own.

  And this was the mercy in the hare’s swift death, for unlike countless hundreds of thousands of humans, the creature’s last glimpse was not of Kallor’s profoundly empty eyes – a sight that brought terror into the face of every victim.

  The world, someone once said, gives back what is given. In abundance. But then, as Kallor would point out, someone was always saying something. Until he got fed up and had them executed.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Pray, do not speak to me of weather

  Not sun, not cloud, not of the places

  Where storms are born

  I would not know of wind shivering the heather

  Nor sleet, nor rain, nor of ancient traces

  On stone grey and worn

  Pray, do not regale the troubles of ill health

  Not self, not kin, not of the old woman

  At the road’s end

  I will spare no time nor in mercy yield wealth

  Nor thought, nor feeling, nor shrouds woven

  To tempt luck’s send

  Pray, tell me of deep chasms crossed

  Not left, not turned, not of the betrayals

  Breeding like worms

  I would you cry out your rage ‘gainst what is lost

  Now strong, now to weep, now to make fist and rail

  On earth so firm

  Pray, sing loud the wretched glories of love

  Now pain, now drunken, now torn from all reason

  In laughter and tears

  I would you bargain with the fey gods above

  Nor care, nor cost, nor turn of season

  To wintry fears

  Sing to me this and I will find you unflinching

  Now knowing, now seeing, now in the face

  Of the howling storm

  Sing your life as if a life without ending

  And your love, sun’s bright fire, on its celestial pace

  To where truth is born

  Pray, An End to Inconsequential Things

  Baedisk of Nathilog

  Darujhistan. Glories unending! Who could call a single deed inconsequential? This scurrying youth with his arms full of vegetables, the shouts from the stall in his wake, the gauging eye of a guard thirty paces away, assessing the poor likelihood of catching the urchin. Insignificant? Nonsense! Hungry mouths fed, glowing pride, some fewer coins for the hawker, perhaps, but it seemed all profit did was fill a drunken husband’s tankard anyway so the bastard could die of thirst for all she cared! A guard’s congenitally flawed heart beat on, not yet pushed to bursting by hard pursuit through the crowded market, and so he lives a few weeks longer, enough to complete his full twenty years’ service and so guarantee his wife and children a pension. And of course the one last kiss was yet to come, the kiss that whispered volumes of devotion and all the rest.

  The pot-thrower in the hut behind the shop, hands and forearms slick with clay, dreaming, yes, of the years in which a life took shape, when each press of a fingertip sent a
deep track across a once smooth surface, changing the future, reshaping the past, and was this not as much chance as design? For all that intent could score a path, that the ripples sent up and down and outward could be surmised by decades of experience, was the outcome ever truly predictable?

  Oh, of course she wasn’t thinking any such thing. An ache in her left wrist obliterated all thoughts beyond the persistent ache itself, and what it might portend and what herbs she would need to brew to ease her discomfort – and how could such concerns be inconsequential?

  What of the child sitting staring into the doleful eye of a yoked ox outside Corb’s Womanly Charms where her mother was inside and had been for near a bell now, though of course Mother had Uncle-Doruth-who-was-a-secret for company which was better than an ox that did nothing but moan? The giant, soft, dark-so-dark brown eye stared back and to think in both directions was obvious but what was the ox thinking except that the yoke was heavy and the cart even heavier and it’d be nice to lie down and what could the child be thinking about but beef stew and so no little philosopher was born, although in years to come, why, she’d have her own uncle-who-was-a-secret and thus like her mother enjoy all the fruits of marriage with few of the niggling pits.

  And what of the sun high overhead, bursting with joyous light to bathe the wondrous city like a benediction of all things consequential? Great is the need, so sudden, so pressing, to reach up, close fingers about the fiery orb, to drag it back – and back! – into night and its sprawled darkness, where all manner of things of import have trembled the heavens and the very roots of the earth, or nearly so.

  Back, then, the short round man demands, for this is his telling, his knowing, his cry of Witness! echoing still, and still. The night of arrivals, the deeds of the arrived, even as night arrives! Let nothing of consequence be forgot.

  Let nothing of inconsequence be deemed so and who now could even imagine such things to exist, recalling with wise nod the urchin thief, the hawker, the guard. The thrower of pots and the child and the ox and Uncle Doruth with his face between the legs of another man’s wife, all to come (excuse!) in the day ahead.