Toll the Hounds Page 38

  The jungle resisted farming. Its soil disliked taming. The huge trees were impervious to fire and could turn the edge of an iron axe. Villages were growing too massive, devouring land, while every cleared area around them was exhausted. Rival tribes suffered the same, and before too long wars were unleashed. The dead ancestors demanded vengeance for transgressions. Murdered kin – whose bodies had been stolen and so could not be properly taken care of – represented an open wound, a crime that needed answering.

  Blood back and forth, said the two refugees. Blood back and forth, that is all. And when the enemy began destroying villages, burning them to the ground . . .

  No answer to the madness but flight.

  Nimander thought about all this as he led his mare by the reins along the dusty road. He had no ancestors to haunt him, no ancestors to demand that he do this and that, that he behave in this way but not in that way. Perhaps this was freedom, but it left him feeling strangely . . . lost.

  The two Dal Honese had built a new boat and paddled away – not back home, but to some unknown place, a place devoid of unblinking ghosts staring out from every wall.

  Rocking sounds came from the wagon and he turned to see Kallor swinging down on the near side, pausing to adjust his cloak of chain, then walking until he was alongside Nimander.

  ‘Interesting use of corpses,’ he said.

  ‘What use would that be?’ Skintick asked with a glance back towards them.

  ‘To frighten the crows? Not that any right-minded crow would look twice at those foul plants – they’re not even native to this world, after all.’

  Nimander saw Skintick’s brows rise. ‘They aren’t?’

  Kallor scratched at his beard and, since it seemed he wasn’t in any hurry to reply, Skintick faced forward once more.

  ‘Saemankelyk,’ said Nimander. ‘The Dying God . . . who will be found in Bastion.’

  The grey-haired warrior grunted. ‘Nothing changes.’

  ‘Of course it changes,’ Skintick retorted without turning round. ‘It keeps getting worse.’

  ‘That is an illusion,’ Kallor replied. ‘You Tiste Andii should know that. Your sense of things getting worse comes from growing older. You see more, and what you see wars with your memories of how things used to be.’

  ‘Rubbish. Old farts like you say that because it suits you. You hope it freezes us in our tracks so we end up doing nothing, which means your precious status quo persists just that much longer – enough for you to live out your life in whatever comfort you think you’ve earned. You won’t accept culpability for anything, so you tell us that nothing ever changes.’

  ‘Ah, the fire of youth. Perhaps one day, pup, you’ll be old – assuming your stupidity doesn’t get you killed first – and I’ll find you, somewhere. You’ll be sitting on the stone steps of some abandoned temple or, worse, some dead king’s glorious monument. Watching the young people rush by. And I’ll settle down beside you and ask you: “What’s changed, old man?” And you will squint, chew your gums for a time, then spit on to the cobbles shaking your head.’

  ‘Plan on living for ever, Kallor?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘What if your stupidity gets you killed?’

  Kallor’s grin was feral. ‘It hasn’t yet.’

  Skintick glanced back again, eyes bright, and all at once he laughed. ‘I am changing my mind about you.’

  ‘The Dying God has stolen Clip’s soul,’ Nimander said. ‘We’re going to get it back.’

  ‘Good luck.’

  ‘I suppose we will need it.’

  ‘I’m not the kind who helps, Nimander,’ Kallor said. ‘Even kin of Rake. Maybe,’ he added, ‘especially kin of Rake.’

  ‘What makes you think—’

  The man interrupted with a snort. ‘I see him in all of you – excepting the empty one you call Clip. You are heading to Coral. Or you were, before this detour was forced upon you. Tell me, what do you imagine will happen when you find your glorious patron? Will he reach out one perfect hand to brush your brows, to bless the gift of your existence? Will you thank him for the privilege of being alive?’

  ‘What do you know about it?’ Nimander demanded, feeling the heat rise to flush his face.

  ‘Anomander Rake is a genius at beginning things. It’s finishing them he has trouble with.’

  Ah, that stings of truth. Kallor, you have just prodded my own soul. A trait I inherited from him, then? That makes too much sense. ‘So, when I speak to him of you, Kallor, he will know your name?’

  ‘Were we acquaintances? Yes, we were. Did we delight in each other’s company? You will have to ask him that one. Caladan Brood was simpler, easier to manage. Nothing but earth and stone. As for K’azz, well, I’ll know more when I finally meet the bastard.’

  ‘I do not know those names,’ Nimander said. ‘Caladan Brood. K’azz.’

  ‘It’s of no real significance. We were allies in a war or three, that is all. And perhaps one day we will be allies once more, who can say? When some vast enemy forces us once again into the same camp, all on the same side.’ He seemed to think about that for a moment, then said, ‘Nothing changes.’

  ‘Are you then returning to Coral – where waits our father?’

  ‘No. The dust I kicked up last time will need a few centuries to settle, I expect.’ He was about to add something more when his attention was pulled away, and he stepped across Nimander’s path – forcing him to halt – to walk to the road’s edge, facing north.

  ‘I’d spotted that,’ Skintick muttered, also stopping.

  Fifty or so paces from the road, just beyond a strip of the alien plants and its row of wrapped effigies, was a ruin. Only one of the walls of the squarish, tower-like structure rose above man-height. The stones were enormous, fitted without mortar. Trees of a species Nimander had never seen before had rooted on top of the walls, snaking long, thick ropes down to the ground. The branches were skeletal, reaching horizontally out to the sides, clutching mere handfuls of dark, leathery leaves.

  Nenanda had stopped the wagon and all were now studying the ruin that had so captured Kallor’s attention.

  ‘Looks old,’ Skintick said, catching Nimander’s eye and winking.

  ‘Jaghut,’ Kallor said. And he set out towards it. Nimander and Skintick followed.

  In the field, the furrows of earth were bleached, dead, and so too the ghastly plants. Even the terrible clouds of insects had vanished.

  Kallor stepped between two corpses, but there was not enough room so he reached out to either side and pushed the stakes over. Dust spat from the bases as the scarecrows sagged, then, pulling free, fell to the ground. The warrior continued on.

  ‘We can hope,’ said Skintick under his breath as he and Nimander followed through the gap.

  ‘For what?’ Nimander asked.

  ‘That he decides he doesn’t like this Dying God. And makes up his mind to do something about it.’

  ‘You believe he is that formidable?’

  Skintick shot him a glance. ‘When he said he was allied with Anomander and those others, it didn’t sound as though he meant he was a soldier or minor officer in some army, did it?’

  Nimander frowned, then shook his head.

  Skintick hissed wordlessly through his teeth, and then said, ‘Like . . . equals.’

  ‘Yes, like that. But it doesn’t matter, Skin – he won’t help us.’

  ‘I wasn’t hoping for that. More like him deciding to do something for his own reasons, but something that ends up solving our problem.’

  ‘I’d wager no coins on that, Skin.’

  Drawing closer to the ruin, they fell silent. Decrepit as it was, the tower was imposing. The air around it seemed grainy, somehow brittle, ominously cold despite the sun’s fierce heat.

  The highest of the walls revealed a section of ceiling just below the uppermost set of stones, projecting without any other obvious support to cast a deep shadow upon the ground floor beneath it. The facing wall reached only hig
h enough to encompass a narrow, steeply arched doorway. Just outside this entrance and to one side was a belly-shaped pot in which grew a few straggly plants with drooping flowers, so incongruous amid the air of abandonment that Nimander simply stared down at them, disbelieving.

  Kallor walked up to the entrance, drew off a scaled gauntlet and rapped it against the root-tracked frame. ‘Will you greet us?’ he demanded in a loud voice.

  From within a faint shuffling sound, and then a thin, rasping reply: ‘Must I?’

  ‘The ice is long gone, Jaghut. The plains beyond are dry and empty. Even the dust of the T’lan Imass has blown away. Would you know something of the world you have ignored for so long?’

  ‘Why? Nothing changes.’

  Kallor turned a pleased smirk upon Nimander and Skintick and then faced the dark doorway once more. ‘Will you invite us in, Jaghut? I am the High—’

  ‘I know who you are, O Lord of Futility. King of Ashes. Ruler of Dead Lands. Born to glory and cursed to destroy it every time. Killer of Dreams. Despoiler of—’ ‘All right, enough of all that. I’m not the one living in ruins.’

  ‘No, but you ever leave them in your wake, Kallor. Come in, then, you and your two Others. I greet you as guests and so will not crush the life from you and devour your souls with peals of laughter. No, instead, I will make some tea.’

  Nimander and Skintick followed Kallor into the darkness within.

  The air of the two-walled chamber was frigid, the stones sheathed in amber-streaked hoarfrost. Where the other two walls should have been rose black, glimmering barriers of some unknown substance, and to look upon them too long was to feel vertiginous – Nimander almost pitched forward, drawn up only by Skintick’s sudden grip, and his friend whispered, ‘Never mind the ice, cousin.’

  Ice, yes, it was just that. Astonishingly transparent ice—

  A figure crouched at a small hearth, long-fingered hands working a blackened kettle on to an iron hook above the coals. ‘I ate the last batch of cookies, I’m afraid.’ The words drifted out inflectionless from beneath a broad-brimmed black felt hat. ‘Most people pass by, when they pass by. Seeing nothing of interest. None draw close to admire my garden.’

  ‘Your garden?’ Skintick asked.

  ‘Yes. Small, I know. Modest.’

  ‘The pot with the two flowers.’

  ‘Just so. Manageable – anything larger and the weeding would drive me mad, you see.’

  ‘Taking up all your time,’ Kallor commented, looking round.

  ‘Just so.’

  A long stone altar provided the Jaghut with his bed, on which pale furs were neatly folded. A desk sat nearby, the wood stained black, the chair before it high-backed and padded in deerskin. On a niche set in the highest wall squatted a three-legged silver candlestick, oxidized black. Beeswax candles flickered in guttered pools. Leaning near the altar was an enormous scabbarded greatsword, the cross-hilt as long as a child’s arm. Cobwebs coated the weapon.

  ‘You know my name,’ Kallor said. ‘But I have not yet heard yours.’

  ‘That is true.’

  Something dangerous edged into Kallor’s voice as he said, ‘I would know the name of my host.’

  ‘Once, long ago, a wolf god came before me. Tell me, Kallor, do you understand the nature of beast gods? Of course not. You are only a beast in the unfairly pejorative sense – unfair to beasts, that is. How is it, then, that the most ancient gods of this world were, one and all, beasts?’

  ‘The question does not interest me, Jaghut.’

  ‘What of the answer?’

  ‘You possess one?’

  The hands reached out and lifted the kettle from the hook as steam rushed up round the long fingers. ‘This must now steep for a time. Am I unusual in my penchant for evading such direct questions? A trait exclusive to Jaghut? Hardly. Knowledge may be free; my voice is not. I am a miser, alas, although I was not always this way.’

  ‘Since I see little value in this particular matter,’ said Kallor, ‘I would not bargain with you.’

  ‘Ah, and what of the Others with you? Might not they be interested?’

  Clearing his throat, Skintick said, ‘Venerable one, we possess nothing of worth to one such as you.’

  ‘You are too modest, Tiste Andii.’

  ‘I am?’

  ‘Each creature is born from one not its kind. This is a wonder, a miracle forged in the fires of chaos, for chaos indeed whispers in our blood, no matter its particular hue. If I but scrape your skin, so lightly as to leave but a momentary streak, that which I take from you beneath my nail contains every truth of you, your life, even your death, assuming violence does not claim you. A code, if you will, seemingly precise and so very ordered. Yet chaos churns. For all your similarities to your father, neither you nor the one named Nimander – nor any of your brothers and sisters – is identical to Anomander Dragnipurake. Do you refute this?’

  ‘Of course not—’

  ‘For each kind of beast there is a first such beast, more different from its parents than the rest of its kin, from which a new breed in due course emerges. Is this firstborn then a god?’

  ‘You spoke of a wolf god,’ Skintick said. ‘You began to tell us a story.’

  ‘So I did. But you must be made to understand. It is a question of essences. To see a wolf and know it as pure, one must possess an image in oneself of a pure wolf, a perfect wolf.’

  ‘Ridiculous,’ Kallor grunted. ‘See a strange beast and someone tells you it is a wolf – and from this one memory, and perhaps a few more to follow, you have fashioned your image of a wolf. In my empires, philosophers spewed such rubbish for centuries, until, of course, I grew tired of them and had them tortured and executed.’

  A strange muffled noise came from the hunched-over Jaghut. Nimander saw the shoulders shaking and realized the ancient was laughing.

  ‘I have killed a few Jaghut,’ Kallor said; not a boast, simply a statement. A warning.

  ‘The tea is ready,’ the Jaghut said, pouring dark liquid into four clay cups that Nimander had not noticed before. ‘You might wonder what I was doing when the wolf god found me. I was fleeing. In disguise. We had gathered to imprison a tyrant, until our allies turned upon us and resumed the slaughter. I believe I may be cursed ever to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

  ‘T’lan Imass allies,’ Kallor said. ‘Too bad they never found you.’

  ‘Kron, the clan of Bek’athana Ilk who dwelt in the Cliffs Above the Angry Sea. Forty-three hunters and a Bonecaster. They found me.’

  Skintick squatted to pick up two of the cups, straightening to hand one to Nimander. The steam rising from the tea was heady, hinting of mint and cloves and something else. The taste numbed his tongue.

  ‘Where is mine?’ Kallor demanded. ‘If I must listen to this creature I will drink his tea.’

  Smiling, Skintick pointed down to where the cups waited on the ground.

  Another soft laugh from the Jaghut. ‘Raest was the name of the Tyrant we defeated. One of my more obnoxiously arrogant offspring. I did not mourn his fall. In any case, unlike Raest, I was never the strutting kind. It is a sign of weakness to shine blinding bright with one’s own power. Pathetic diffidence. A need that undermines. I was more . . . secure.’

  He had Kallor’s attention now. ‘You killed forty-three T’lan Imass and a Bonecaster?’

  ‘I killed them all.’ The Jaghut sipped from his own cup.

  ‘I have killed a few T’lan Imass,’ he said, the intonation a perfect mimicry of Kallor’s own claim a few moments past. ‘Tell me, then, do you like my abode? My garden?’

  ‘Solitude has driven you mad,’ Kallor said.

  ‘You would know all about that now, wouldn’t you, O Lord of Failures? Partake of the tea, lest I take offence.’

  Teeth bared, Kallor bent down to retrieve his cup.

  The Jaghut’s left hand shot out, closing about Kallor’s wrist. ‘You wounded that wolf god,’ he said.

  Nimander stared
as he saw the old man struggle to twist free of that grip. Veins standing out on his temple, jaw muscles bunching beneath the beard. But there was no pulling loose. There was no movement at all from that withered, green hand.

  ‘When you laid waste to your realm,’ the Jaghut continued. ‘You wounded it terribly.’

  ‘Release me,’ Kallor said in a rasp. And with his other hand he reached back for the grip of his sword.

  All at once the Jaghut’s hand fell away.

  Kallor staggered back and Nimander saw a white impression of fingers encircling the old warrior’s wrist. ‘This is not how a host behaves. You force me to kill you.’

  ‘Oh, be quiet, Kallor. This tower was an Azath once. Shall I awaken it for you?’

  Wondering, Nimander watched as Kallor backed towards the entrance, eyes wide in that weathered, pallid face, the look of raw recognition dawning. ‘Gothos, what are you doing here?’

  ‘Where else should I be? Now remain outside – these two Tiste Andii must go away for a while.’

  Heat was spreading fast, out from Nimander’s stomach. He cast a wild look at Skintick, saw his friend sinking slowly to his knees. The empty cup in his hand fell away, rolled briefly on the damp ground. Nimander stared at the Jaghut. ‘What have you done?’

  ‘Only what was necessary.’

  With a snarl Kallor spun round and stalked from the chamber. Over his shoulder he said, ‘I will not wait long.’

  Nimander’s eyes were drawn once more to the walls of ice. Black depths, shapes moving within. He staggered, reached out his hands—

  ‘Oh, don’t step in there—’ And then he was falling forward, his hands passing into the wall before him, no resistance at all.

  ‘Nimander, do not—’

  Blackness.

  Desra wandered round the wagon, drawing up to halt beside the ox. She set a hand on its back, felt the beast’s heat, the rippling with every twitch shedding the biting flies. She looked down into the animal’s eye, saw with a start how delicate its lashes. ‘You must take the world as it is.’ Andarist’s last words to her, before the world took him.

  It wasn’t hard. People either had strength or they didn’t. The weak ones left her disgusted, welling with dark contempt. If they chose at all it was ever the wrong choice. They let the world break them time and again, then wondered – dull-eyed as this ox – why it was so cruel. But it wasn’t the world that was the problem, was it? It was stepping into the stampede’s path over and over again. It was learning nothing from anything. Nothing.