Forge of Darkness (Kharkanas Trilogy 1) Page 22

  ‘My master states as his sole ambition the desire never to yield to ignorance, Lord. Knowledge is all the reward he seeks, and its possession is the measure of his own wealth.’

  ‘Does he hoard it then?’

  ‘He understands that others would use such knowledge, in unseemly ways. I have known my master since we were both children, Lord, and I can tell you, no secrets pass through his hands.’

  Henarald’s shrug was loose, careless, his eyes fixed on the floor somewhere to his right. ‘The secret of the Hust swords is in itself a thing without power. I held it close for … other reasons.’

  ‘To protect those who wield such weapons, yes, Lord. My master well understands that.’

  The hooded gaze flicked over at Kellaras for a moment, and then away again. ‘I will make Anomander a sword,’ Henarald said. ‘But in the moment of its final quenching, I will attend. I will see for myself this sorcery. And if it is blood, then,’ he sighed, ‘then I will know.’

  ‘She dwells in Darkness,’ said Kellaras.

  ‘Then I shall see nothing?’

  ‘I believe, Lord, you shall see nothing.’

  ‘I think,’ said Henarald, ‘I begin to understand the nature of her power.’

  * * *

  Outside the chamber, Kellaras found that he was trembling. In the fraught exchange just past, it had been Henarald’s promise of a return to childhood that most disturbed the captain. He could make no sense of it, and yet he suspected some dreadful secret hid within that confession.

  Muttering under his breath he pushed the unease away, and set out for the main hall at the corridor’s far end, where a hundred or more residents and guests of the house now dined, in a riotous clamour of voices and laughter, and the heat from the great hearth roiled in the chamber, filling the air with the heady smells of roasting pork. He would lose himself in that festive atmosphere, and should moments of doubt stir awake, he need only remind himself that he had won Henarald’s promise to forge a sword for his master, and then reach for another tankard of ale.

  Striding into the main hall, Kellaras paused for a moment. New, unfamiliar faces swirled on all sides, dust-grimed and weary. A troop of Hust soldiers had arrived, returned from some patrol, and voices were loud as kin called greetings across the room. He scanned the crowd, seeking out Galar Baras, and moments later found the man, standing close to a side passage and leaning against the smoke-stained stone wall. Kellaras began making his way over, and then drew up when he finally noted his friend’s intent gaze, which was fixed upon one of the newcomers, a woman of rank who seemed to be the centre of much of the attention. She was smiling, listening to a bent old man too drunk to stay upright without the aid of a high-backed chair. When her gaze finally slipped past him, Kellaras saw her stiffen slightly upon meeting Galar’s eyes.

  An instant later she was looking away again, and with one hand affectionately settling on the drunk’s shoulder, she eased past the old man and made her way towards another table, where her fellow soldiers were now settling in.

  A harried servant was edging through the crowd, drawing close to where Kellaras stood, and the captain accosted the young man. ‘A word, please. Who is that woman? The officer?’

  The servant’s brows lifted. ‘Toras Redone, sir, commander of the Hust Legion.’

  ‘Ah, of course. Thank you.’

  He was certain he had seen her before, but always from a distance – upon a field of battle – and of course helmed and girded for war. She was not one for attending formal events in the Citadel, preferring instead to remain with her legion. It was said that she had arrived to kneel before Mother Dark in sweat-stained leathers, with dust upon her face – he’d thought that tale apocryphal, but now he was not so sure.

  She sat now amongst her soldiers, a tankard in one hand, and for all the grime of hard travel upon her, he could see that she was beautiful, yet in a dissolute way, and when Kellaras watched her drain the flagon of ale and then reach for another, he was not surprised.

  He considered paying his respects, then decided that this was not the time, and so he continued making his way towards Galar Baras.

  ‘You look rattled, captain,’ Galar said when he drew close.

  Not half as much as you, friend. ‘I have just come from my audience with your lord.’

  ‘And did he speak to you of childhood?’

  ‘He did, though I admit to my failing to make sense of it.’

  ‘And the other matter?’

  ‘My master will be most pleased. I see you have no drink in hand – I feel bold enough to assail the ale bench—’

  ‘Not on my account, captain. I cannot stomach it, I’m afraid. I see your surprise – what veteran cannot drink, you wonder? Why, I will answer you: a sober one.’

  ‘Does this prevent you from sharing in the festivities? I see you standing apart, as if outcast. Come, let us find somewhere to sit.’

  Galar’s smile was faint, with a hint of sadness in his eyes. ‘If you insist.’

  They made their way to a table, Kellaras choosing one close to the servants’ entrance where a score of used flagons crowded the surface. As they sat he said, ‘Can you explain, then, your lord’s obsession with becoming a child once more?’

  Galar Baras seemed to hesitate, and then he leaned close, one forearm pushing the flagons to one side. ‘It is troubling to us all, captain—’

  ‘Please, call me Kellaras.’

  ‘Very well. Kellaras. Something afflicts Henarald, at least in his own mind. He claims he is losing his memories, not of distant times, but of the day just past, or indeed the morning just done. Yet we do not see it, not yet in any case. There is an illness that takes smiths. Some believe it resides in the fumes from the forge, in the steam from quenching, or the molten drops of ore that burn the skin. It is called the Loss of Iron—’

  ‘I have indeed heard of this,’ Kellaras replied. ‘Yet I tell you, after my audience with your lord, I saw nothing afflicting his intellect. Rather, he speaks in abstractions, in the language of poets. When the subject demands precision, his wit sharpens quickly. This requires a facility, a definite acuity of the mind.’

  Galar Baras shrugged. ‘I reveal no secrets here, Kellaras. The rumour is long out – our lord feels afflicted, and the keenness of his intelligence, that you so surely describe, is to him evidence of the war he wages with himself, with the failings he senses besieging him. He strikes out with precision to battle the blunting of memories.’

  ‘I had first thought that he feared this return to childhood,’ Kellaras said, frowning. ‘But I began to suspect that he will welcome it, should it come to him. A release from all the fraught things of the adult world.’

  ‘You may well be right,’ Galar admitted. ‘Will you report to your master on this matter?’

  ‘He has promised Anomander a sword – do his skills fail him?’

  ‘No, we have seen nothing like that.’

  ‘Then Lord Henarald’s fears for his own health have no bearing on the commission.’

  ‘I thank you, Kellaras.’

  Kellaras waved the gratitude away. ‘Besides, I could tell you my master’s likely response should he hear of your lord’s assertions.’

  ‘Oh, and what would he say?’

  ‘I imagine he would nod most thoughtfully, and then say: “There is much to be said for a return to childhood.”’

  After a moment, Galar smiled, and this time there was no sadness to be found in it.

  * * *

  Kellaras drank his fair share of ale and offered up easy company that did much to ease the turmoil in Galar Baras’s soul, and when at last the captain rose, slurring his words of departure, and made his way unsteadily from the chamber, Galar was left alone once more, helpless to fend off the pain caused by the sight of Toras Redone.

  The room was quieter now; the candles little more than stumps, as weary servants cleared plates and tankards, with only a few tables still occupied. She still held command of one of those tables, alth
ough her compatriots were drifting off where they slumped in their chairs, and when she at last rose, wavering for but a moment, and made her way over to Galar, only then did he realize that he had been waiting for her. And that she had known it.

  ‘How fares your courage, Galar Baras?’ Alcohol had rounded her words in a way he well recalled.

  He watched as she took the chair Kellaras had been sitting in earlier. Stretching her legs out, the mud-caked boots edging towards his own leg upon the right, she folded her hands on her lap and regarded him with red-shot eyes.

  ‘You have come from the south?’ he asked.

  ‘Where else? Patrolling the Forulkan border.’

  ‘Any trouble?’

  She shook her head. ‘Quiet. Not like the old days. But then, nothing is, is it?’

  ‘We must all move on, yes.’

  ‘Oh, people do that, don’t they. Consider my husband – could he have gone any further away than he has? Glimmer Fate, seasonal forts, a handful of the lost and broken to command. This would be true service to the realm; you’d have to say that, wouldn’t you?’

  He studied her. ‘It is a great responsibility.’

  Abruptly she laughed, broke his gaze to look away. Her right hand drummed a rattle of taps on the tabletop and then fell still once more. ‘We all skirt the borderlands, as if to test our limits.’

  ‘Not all of us,’ he replied.

  She glanced at him, then away again. ‘You are a pariah in the Citadel. They think you arrogant and dismissive, but that’s not you, Galar. It never was.’

  ‘It seems I have little in common with the Citadel’s denizens.’

  ‘We chose you for that very reason.’

  He considered that, and then sighed.

  She leaned forward. ‘It wasn’t punishment, Galar. It was never that.’

  But it was, and he knew it.

  ‘You could at least take a priestess to your bed, you know. Leave the celibates staring at walls in their monasteries; that’s not the way for people like us. We’re soldiers and we have the appetites to match.’

  ‘And are you well fed these days, Toras?’

  As usual, his barb had no effect upon her. ‘Well enough,’ she replied, leaning back once more. ‘You probably would not understand this, but it is my very certainty that my husband has remained true that drives me to do as I do.’

  ‘You are right – I do not understand that at all.’

  ‘I am not his equal. I had no hope of becoming that, not from the very start. I walked the trench at his side, always. That’s not an easy thing to live with, not day after day.’

  ‘There was no trench, Toras. None saw you as his lesser – you command the Hust Legion, for Abyss’ sake.’

  ‘This has nothing to do with military rank, or achievements.’

  ‘Then what?’

  But she shook her head. ‘I have missed you, Galar.’

  All of this without once meeting his gaze. He had no idea if others were watching, or even striving to listen in on this conversation. He did not think it likely. Servants had brought rushes into the room to set out upon the floor. Someone was singing drunkenly, forgetting lines, and laughter echoed. Woodsmoke hung heavy, stinging his eyes. He shrugged. ‘What is to be done, then?’

  She rose, slapped him on the shoulder. ‘Go to your room. It’s late.’

  ‘And you?’

  Smiling, she wheeled away. ‘That’s the thing about courage, isn’t it?’

  He watched her return to her original seat, watched her pour full the tankard in front of her, and he knew that he would not spend this night alone. As he stood and made his way out of the chamber, he thought of his quarters in the Citadel, and the narrow bed he would not share with any priestesses; and then he thought of Calat Hustain, lying on a cot in some northern fort. Two men dwelling in solitude, because it was in their nature to choose it: to remain alone in the absence of love.

  And the woman these two men shared, why, she understood nothing.

  * * *

  Over the past three days, Kadaspala had been spared the company of Hunn Raal and Osserc. He’d not even seen them ride out, and Urusander had made no mention of where they had gone, or to what purpose. This was satisfying, as it left him to work on the portrait without suffering the assault of ignorant commentary, unsolicited advice, or inane conversations at the evening meal. Unshackled from the expectations of his cadre, Urusander was a different man, and their arguments over a host of subjects had proved mildly entertaining, almost enlivening, so much so that Kadaspala had begun looking forward to the meals they took at day’s end.

  Still, the situation galled him. Work left him impatient, irritated and dissatisfied. At each sitting’s conclusion he fought to keep from slumping in exhaustion, instead applying himself with diligence to the cleaning of his brushes, his mind tracking the lines of the charcoal studies he referred to again and again when gauging the image on the board – he did not have to actually look at the vellum sheets, so fiercely were they burned into his mind’s eye. Urusander’s face haunted him, as did each subject he painted, but this time it felt different.

  There was political intent to all works of art, but this one was too brazen, too bold, as far as he was concerned, and so he found his hand and eye fighting that overt crudity, with a shifting of tones, a deepening of certain lines, with a symbolic language only he understood.

  Painting is war. Art is war.

  His colleagues would recoil in horror at such notions. But then, they were mostly fools. Only Gallan would understand. Only Gallan would nod and perhaps even smile. There were so many ways to wage a battle. Weapons of beauty, weapons of discord. Fields of engagement across a landscape, or in the folds of a hanging curtain. Lines of resistance, knots of ambush, the assault of colour, the retreat of perspective. So many ways to fight, and yet every victory felt like surrender – he had no power over a stranger’s eyes, after all, and if art could lay siege to a stranger’s soul, it was a blind advance against unseen walls.

  This portrait of Urusander – which he now sat facing, as the last of the night’s candles flickered and wavered – bore all of Kadaspala’s wounds, yet who might see that? No one, not even Gallan. One learns to hide the damage taken, and an eye pleased is an eye seduced.

  And Urusander was well pleased indeed.

  He was done. He would leave with the dawn. I have painted a man worthy of being her husband. They will see his strength, his resolute integrity, because these lie on the surface. They will not see the underside of such things – the cruelty beneath strength, the cold pride behind that stern resolution. The blade of judgement grasped firm in integrity’s hand.

  They will see in his stance his soldier’s discipline, and the burdens assumed without complaint. Yet see nothing of withered empathy or unreasonable expectation.

  In the tones they will find warmth with but a hint of the underlying metal, and in so seeing they will understand nothing of that melding of fire and iron and all that it promises.

  My power is vast, the talent undeniable, the vision sure and true. Yet all it leaves me is torment. There is but one god, and its name is beauty. There is but one kind of worship, and that is love. There is for us but one world, and we have scarred it beyond recognition.

  Art is the language of the tormented, but the world is blind to that, for ever blind.

  Urusander, I see you – I face you now – in the failing light, and you frighten me to the core.

  ‘You will not dine with me on this last night?’

  Startled, it was a moment before Kadaspala turned in his chair to face Lord Urusander. ‘For an instant, Lord, as you spoke, I thought I saw the mouth of your portrait shaping your words. Most … disconcerting.’

  ‘I imagine it would be, yes. You have fashioned a true likeness.’

  Kadaspala nodded.

  ‘Will you copy it yourself in the Hall?’

  ‘No, Lord. The Citadel’s artists will do that. They are chosen especially for their skills
at imitation. When they are done, this painting will be returned to you here – or wherever you end up residing.’

  To that Urusander said nothing for a time. He walked slowly closer to where sat Kadaspala, his hooded gaze on the portrait. Then he sighed. ‘Where I reside. Do I appear so displeased with my present abode?’

  ‘I saw nothing of that, Lord.’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t. Yet,’ and he gestured, ‘you would have me … elsewhere.’

  Faint bells chimed to announce dinner, but neither man moved. ‘Lord, it is a portrait of you, by the hand of Kadaspala, who has turned down a hundred commissions.’

  ‘That many?’

  ‘Those denied do not announce their failure, Lord.’

  ‘No, I suppose they wouldn’t. Very well, then, why did you accept this one?’

  ‘I had a thought.’

  ‘Indeed, and will you tell me that thought, Kadaspala?’

  ‘If anyone can prevent civil war’ – and he nodded towards the portrait – ‘it is that man.’

  Breath hissed from Urusander and his words were harsh with frustration. ‘This is all madness! If the nobility so resent the Consort, then they should challenge Mother Dark herself!’

  ‘They dare not, but this does not dull their disapproval – they cut and stab elsewhere, as befits their bold courage.’

  ‘You reveal little admiration for your kind, Kadaspala.’

  ‘I have painted the faces of too many of them, Lord, and so invite you to view that rogue’s gallery of venality, malice, and self-regard. My finest works, one and all, the very proof of my genius.’

  ‘Do you always paint what you see, Kadaspala?’

  ‘Not always,’ he admitted. ‘Sometimes I paint what I fear. All these faces – all these greats among the Tiste, you here included – you may think they are about each of you. Alas, they are just as much about me.’

  ‘I would not challenge that,’ Urusander replied. ‘It must be so with all artists.’

  Kadaspala shrugged. ‘The artist is usually poorly disguised in his works, revealed in each and every flaw of execution. The self-confession is one of incompetence. But this is not my failing. What I reveal of myself in these works is less easily discerned. And before you enquire, Lord, no, I have no interest in elaborating on that.’