Midnight Tides Read online

  Ah, unexpected… but interesting.

  Mael, Elder Lord of the Seas, was wide and squat, with deep blue skin that faded to pale gold at throat and bared belly. Lank blond hair hung unbound from his broad, almost flat pate. And in Mael’s amber eyes, sizzling rage.

  ‘Gothos,’ Mael rasped, ‘what ritual do you invoke in answer to this?’

  The Jaghut scowled. ‘They’ve made a mess. I mean to cleanse it.’

  ‘Ice,’ the Elder god snorted. ‘The Jaghut answer to everything.’

  ‘And what would yours be, Mael? Flood, or… flood?’

  The Elder god faced south, the muscles of his jaw bunching. ‘I am to have an ally. Kilmandaros. She comes from the other side of the rent.’

  ‘Only one Tiste Soletaken is left,’ Gothos said. ‘Seems he struck down his companion, and even now delivers him into the keeping of the Azath Tower’s crowded yard.’

  ‘Premature. Does he think the K’Chain Che’Malle his only opposition in this realm?’

  The Jaghut shrugged. ‘Probably.’

  Mael was silent for a time, then he sighed and said, ‘With your ice, Gothos, do not destroy all of this. Instead, I ask that you… preserve.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I have my reasons.’

  ‘I am pleased for you. What are they?’

  The Elder god shot him a dark look. ‘Impudent bastard.’

  ‘Why change?’

  ‘In the seas, Jaghut, time is unveiled. In the depths ride currents of vast antiquity. In the shallows whisper the future. The tides flow between them in ceaseless exchange. Such is my realm. Such is my knowledge. Seal this devastation in your damned ice, Gothos. In this place, freeze time itself. Do this, and I will accept an indebtedness to you… which one day you might find useful.’

  Gothos considered the Elder god’s words, then nodded. ‘I might at that. Very well, Mael. Go to Kilmandaros. Swat down this Tiste Eleint and scatter his people. But do it quickly.’

  Mael’s eyes narrowed. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I sense a distant awakening – but not, alas, as distant as you would like.’

  ‘Anomander Rake.’

  Gothos nodded.

  Mael shrugged. ‘Anticipated. Osserc moves to stand in his path.’

  The Jaghut’s smile revealed his massive tusks. ‘Again?’

  The Elder god could not help but grin in answer.

  And though they smiled, there was little humour on that glacial berm.

  ****

  1159th Year of Burn’s Sleep, Year of the White Veins in the Ebony, Three years before the Letherii Seventh Closure

  He awoke with a bellyful of salt, naked and half buried in white sand amidst the storm’s detritus. Seagulls cried overhead, their shadows wheeling across the rippled beach. Cramps spasming his gut, he groaned and slowly rolled over.

  There were more bodies on the beach, he saw. And wreckage. Chunks and rafts of fast-melting ice rustled in the shallows. Crabs scuttled in their thousands.

  The huge man lifted himself to his hands and knees. And then vomited bitter fluids onto the sands. Pounding throbs racked his head, fierce enough to leave him half blind, and it was some time before he finally rocked back to sit up and glare once more at the scene around him.

  A shore where no shore belonged.

  And the night before, mountains of ice rising up from the depths, one – the largest of them all – reaching the surface directly beneath the vast floating Meckros city. Breaking it apart as if it were a raft of sticks. Meckros histories recounted nothing remotely like the devastation he had seen wrought. Sudden and virtually absolute annihilation of a city that was home to twenty thousand. Disbelief still tormented him, as if his own memories held impossible images, the conjuring of a fevered brain.

  But he knew he had imagined nothing. He had but witnessed.

  And, somehow, survived.

  The sun was warm, but not hot. The sky overhead was milky white rather than blue. And the seagulls, he now saw, were something else entirely. Reptilian, pale-winged.

  He staggered to his feet. The headache was fading, but shivers now swept through him, and his thirst was a raging demon trying to claw up his throat.

  The cries of the flying lizards changed pitch and he swung to face inland.

  Three creatures had appeared, clambering through the pallid tufts of grass above the tideline. No higher than his hip, black-skinned, hairless, perfectly round heads and pointed ears. Bhoka’ral – he recalled them from his youth, when a Meckros trading ship had returned from Nemil – but these seemed to be muscle-bound versions, at least twice as heavy as the pets the merchants had brought back to the floating city. They made directly for him.

  He looked round for something to use as a weapon, and found a piece of driftwood that would serve as a club. Hefting it, he waited as the bhoka’ral drew closer.

  They halted, yellow-shot eyes staring up at him.

  Then the middle one gestured.

  Come. There was no doubting the meaning of that all-too-human beckoning.

  The man scanned the strand again – none of the bodies he could see were moving, and the crabs were feeding unopposed. He stared up once more at the strange sky, then stepped towards the three creatures.

  They backed away and led him up to the grassy verge. Those grasses were like nothing he had ever seen before, long tubular triangles, razor-edged – as he discovered once he passed through them when he found his low legs crisscrossed with cuts. Beyond, a level plain stretched inland, bearing only the occasional tuft of the same grass. The ground in between was salt-crusted and barren. A few chunks of stone dotted the plain, no two alike and all oddly angular, unweathered. In the distance stood a lone tent. The bhoka’ral guided him towards it.

  As they drew near, he saw threads of smoke drifting out from the peak and the slitted flap that marked the doorway.

  His escort halted and another wave directed him to the entrance. Shrugging, he crouched and crawled inside.

  In the dim light sat a shrouded figure, a hood disguising its features. A brazier was before it, from which heady fumes drifted. Beside the entrance stood a crystal bottle, some dried fruit and a loaf of dark bread.

  ‘The bottle holds spring water,’ the figure rasped in the Meckros tongue. ‘Please, take time to recover from your ordeal.’ He grunted his thanks and quickly took the bottle. Thirst blissfully slaked, he reached for the bread. ‘I thank you, stranger,’ he rumbled, then shook his head. ‘That smoke makes you swim before my eyes.’

  A hacking cough that might have been laughter, then something resembling a shrug. ‘Better than drowning. Alas, it eases my pain. I shall not keep you long. You are Withal, the Swordmaker.’

  The man started, and his broad brow knotted. ‘Aye, I am Withal, of the Third Meckros city – which is now no more.’

  ‘A tragic event. You are the lone survivor… through my own efforts, though it much strained my powers to intervene.’

  ‘What place is this?’

  ‘Nowhere, in the heart of nowhere. A fragment, prone to wander. I give it what life I can imagine, conjured from memories of my home. My strength returns, although the agony of my broken body does not abate. Yet listen, I have talked and not coughed. That is something.’ A mangled hand appeared from a ragged sleeve and scattered seeds onto the brazier’s coals. They spat and popped and the smoke thickened.

  ‘Who are you?’ Withal demanded.

  ‘A fallen god… who has need of your skills. I have prepared for your coming, Withal. A place of dwelling, a forge, all the raw materials you will need. Clothes, food, water. And three devoted servants, whom you have already met—’

  ‘The bhoka’ral?’ Withal snorted. ‘What can—’

  ‘Not bhoka’ral, mortal. Although perhaps they once were. These are Nachts. I have named them Rind, Mape and Pule. They are of Jaghut fashioning, capable of learning all that you require of them.’

  Withal made to rise. ‘I thank you for the salvation, Fallen One, bu
t I shall take my leave of you. I would return to my own world—’

  ‘You do not understand, Withal,’ the figure hissed. ‘You will do as I say here, or you will find yourself begging for death. I now own you, Swordmaker. You are my slave and I am your master. The Meckros own slaves, yes? Hapless souls stolen from island villages and such on your raids. The notion is therefore familiar to you. Do not despair, however, for once you have completed what I ask of you, you shall be free to leave.’

  Withal still held the club, the heavy wood cradled on his lap. He considered.

  A cough, then laughter, then more coughing, during which the god raised a staying hand. When the hacking was done, he said, ‘I advise you to attempt nothing untoward, Withal. I have plucked you from the seas for this purpose. Have you lost all honour? Oblige me in this, for you would deeply regret my wrath.’

  ‘What would you have me do?’

  ‘Better. What would I have you do, Withal? Why, only what you do best. Make me a sword.’

  Withal grunted. ‘That is all?’

  The figure leaned forward. ‘Ah well, what I have in mind is a very particular sword…’

  Book One

  Frozen Blood

  There is a spear of ice, newly thrust into the heart of the land. The soul within it yearns to kill. He who grasps that spear will know death. Again and again, he shall know death.

  Hannan Mosag’s Vision

  Chapter One

  Listen! The seas whisper and dream of breaking truths in the crumbling of stone

  Hantallit of Miner Sluice

  Year of the Late Frost, One year before the Letherii Seventh Closure, The Ascension of the Empty Hold

  Here, then, is the tale. Between the swish of the tides, when giants knelt down and became mountains. When they fell scattered on the land like the ballast stones of the sky, yet could not hold fast against the rising dawn. Between the swish of the tides, we will speak of one such giant. Because the tale hides with his own.

  And because it amuses.

  Thus.

  In darkness he closed his eyes. Only by day did he elect to open them, for he reasoned in this manner: night defies vision and so, if little can be seen, what value seeking to pierce the gloom?

  Witness as well, this. He came to the edge of the land and discovered the sea, and was fascinated by the mysterious fluid. A fascination that became a singular obsession through the course of that fated day. He could see how the waves moved, up and down along the entire shore, a ceaseless motion that ever threatened to engulf all the land, yet ever failed to do so. He watched the sea through the afternoon’s high winds, witness to its wild thrashing far up along the sloping strand, and sometimes it did indeed reach far, but always it would sullenly retreat once more.

  When night arrived, he closed his eyes and lay down to sleep. Tomorrow, he decided, he would look once more upon this sea.

  In darkness he closed his eyes.

  The tides came with the night, swirling up round the giant. The tides came and drowned him as he slept. And the water seeped minerals into his flesh, until he became as rock, a gnarled ridge on the strand. Then, each night for thousands of years, the tides came to wear away at his form. Stealing his shape.

  But not entirely. To see him true, even to this day, one must look in darkness. Or close one’s eyes to slits in brightest sunlight. Glance askance, or focus on all but the stone itself.

  Of all the gifts Father Shadow has given his children, this one talent stands tallest. Look away to see. Trust in it, and you will be led into Shadow. Where all truths hide.

  Look away to see.

  Now, look away.

  ****

  The mice scattered as the deeper shadow flowed across snow brushed blue by dusk. They scampered in wild panic, but, among them, one’s fate was already sealed. A lone tufted, taloned foot snapped down, piercing furry flesh and crushing minute bones.

  At the clearing’s edge, the owl had dropped silently from its branch, sailing out over the hard-packed snow and its litter of seeds, and the arc of its flight, momentarily punctuated by plucking the mouse from the ground, rose up once more, this time in a heavy flapping of wings, towards a nearby tree. It landed one-legged, and a moment later it began to feed.

  The figure who jogged across the glade a dozen heartbeats later saw nothing untoward. The mice were all gone, the snow solid enough to leave no signs of their passing, and the owl froze motionless in its hollow amidst the branches of the spruce tree, eyes wide as they followed the figure’s progress across the clearing. Once it had passed, the owl resumed feeding.

  Dusk belonged to the hunters, and the raptor was not yet done this night.

  As he weaved through the frost-rimed humus of the trail, Trull Sengar’s thoughts were distant, making him heedless of the forest surrounding him, uncharacteristically distracted from all the signs and details it offered. He had not even paused to make propitiation to Sheltatha Lore, Daughter Dusk, the most cherished of the Three Daughters of Father Shadow – although he would make recompense at tomorrow’s sunset – and, earlier, he had moved unmindful through the patches of lingering light that blotted the trail, risking the attention of fickle Sukul Ankhadu, the Daughter of Deceit, also known as Dapple. The Calach breeding beds swarmed with seals. They’d come early, surprising Trull in his collecting of raw jade above the shoreline. Alone, the arrival of the seals would engender only excitement in the young Tiste Edur, but there had been other arrivals, in ships ringing the bay, and the harvest had been well under way.

  Letherii, the white-skinned peoples from the south.

  He could imagine the anger of those in the village he now approached, once he delivered the news of his discovery – an anger he shared. This encroachment on Edur territories was brazen, the theft of seals that rightly belonged to his people an arrogant defiance of the old agreements.

  There were fools among the Letherii, just as there were fools among the Edur. Trull could not imagine this broaching being anything but unsanctioned. The Great Meeting was only two cycles of the moon away. It served neither side’s purpose to spill blood now. No matter that the Edur would be right in attacking and destroying the intruder ships; the Letherii delegation would be outraged at the slaughter of its citizens, even citizens contravening the laws. The chances of agreeing upon a new treaty had just become minuscule.

  And this disturbed Trull Sengar. One long and vicious war had just ended for the Edur: the thought of another beginning was too hard to bear.

  He had not embarrassed his brothers during the wars of subjugation; on his wide belt was a row of twenty-one red-stained rivets, each one marking a coup, and among those seven were ringed in white paint, to signify actual kills. Only his elder brother’s belt sported more trophies among the male children of Tomad Sengar, and that was right and proper, given Fear Sengar’s eminence among the warriors of the Hiroth tribe.

  Of course, battles against the five other tribes of the Edur were strictly bound in rules and prohibitions, and even vast, protracted battles had yielded only a handful of actual deaths. Even so, the conquests had been exhausting. Against the Letherii, there were no rules to constrain the Edur warriors. No counting coup. Just killing. Nor did the enemy need a weapon in hand – even the helpless and the innocent would know the sword’s bite. Such slaughter stained warrior and victim alike.

  But Trull well knew that, though he might decry the killing that was to come, he would do so only to himself, and he would stride alongside his brothers, sword in hand, to deliver the Edur judgement upon the trespassers. There was no choice. Turn away from this crime and more would follow, in waves unending.

  His steady jog brought him past the tanneries, with their troughs and stone-lined pits, to the forest edge. A few Letherii slaves glanced his way, quickly bowing in deference until he was past. The towering cedar logs of the village wall rose from the clearing ahead, over which woodsmoke hung in stretched streams. Fields of rich black soil spread out to either side of the narrow, raised tra
ck leading to the distant gate. Winter had only just begun to release its grip on the earth, and the first planting of the season was still weeks away. By midsummer, close to thirty different types of plants would fill these fields, providing food, medicine, fibres and feed for the livestock, many among the thirty of a flowering variety, drawing the bees from which honey and wax were procured. The tribe’s women oversaw the slaves in such harvesting. The men would leave in small groups to journey into the forest, to cut timber or hunt, whilst others set out in the Knarri ships to harvest from the seas and shoals.

  Or so it should be, when peace ruled the tribes. The past dozen years had seen more war-parties setting out than any other kind, and so the people had on occasion suffered. Until the war, hunger had never threatened the Edur. Trull wanted an end to such depredations. Hannan Mosag, Warlock King of the Hiroth, was now overlord to all the Edur tribes. From a host of warring peoples, a confederacy had been wrought, although Trull well knew that it was a confederacy in name only. Hannan Mosag held as hostage the firstborn sons of the subjugated chiefs – his K’risnan Cadre – and ruled as dictator. Peace, then, at the point of a sword, but peace none the less.

  A recognizable figure was striding from the palisade gate, approaching the fork in the trail where Trull now halted. ‘I greet you, Binadas,’ he said.

  A spear was strapped to his younger brother’s back, a hide pack slung round one shoulder and resting against a hip; at the opposite side a single-edged longsword in a leather-wrapped wooden scabbard. Binadas was half a head taller than Trull, his visage as weathered as his buckskin clothes. Of Trull’s three brothers, Binadas was the most remote, evasive and thus difficult to predict, much less understand. He resided in the village only infrequently, seeming to prefer the wilds of the western forest and the mountains to the south. He had rarely joined others in raids, yet often when he returned he carried trophies of coup, and so none doubted his bravery.