Forge of Darkness (Kharkanas Trilogy 1) Read online

  ‘Is there a smaller grave?’ she asked, refusing to look too carefully at those cairns, not wanting her eyes to witness yet one more unpleasant truth.

  He shook his head. ‘The boy got away, at least to begin with. Our friends are just ahead, by the way. Trying to skirt the mudflat, and you need to be on foot to do that – no place for horses. I’m thinking the boy was being pursued and took his horse out on to it.’

  ‘And?’ She made her way towards him.

  ‘There’s a lake under that flat,’ he said. ‘A lake of mud and it’s deep. His horse wouldn’t have made it. Could be the boy went down with it.’

  ‘Have they seen us yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Step away, then.’

  He frowned at her and then moved behind the butte once more. ‘What are you thinking, milady?’

  ‘When that rider comes to Tulla Hold not even the castellan will be there. Does anyone know where we are?’

  ‘Sergeant Broot’s commanding in my absence. He’ll stare and blink and eventually that messenger will decide he’s got rocks for brains.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then the rider will leave, going back to wherever she needs to be. Done her duty and left the tale at the feet of Broot.’

  ‘I think we need to make sure, if we can, whether Orfantal is still alive.’

  ‘The boy was meant to be a hostage, milady?’

  ‘Yes, in the Citadel itself.’

  ‘And he was sent along with nothing more than a handful of caravan guards as escort?’

  ‘Yes.’ She hesitated, and then added, ‘There might have been reasons for that.’

  Rancept looked away again, his mouth hanging open as it always did, and the man’s ugliness now struck her as something tender, almost gentle. In that temple, in the vision in my mind, I could have made him beautiful. She wished she had. She wished, with sudden ferocity, that she had made him anew.

  ‘Castellan, can’t they heal you? Your nose, I mean.’

  He glanced at her. ‘Best way is to break it all over again.’

  ‘Why not try that?’

  ‘Ever had your nose broken, milady?’

  ‘No.’

  He shrugged, looking away once more. ‘Tried that. Six times.’

  She realized that his attention was fixed on the cairns, and that it had not been a casual regard. As she made to speak he strode over to the makeshift cemetery, edging down into the ditch. Ribs followed him, tail dipped and ears drooping. Sukul joined them. ‘What is it, Rancept? What have you found?’

  ‘Found? Nothing, milady.’ Yet he studied the cairns. ‘When they camped below the Hold and you decided to go down and visit them, you commanded me to have the cook prepare four days’ worth of decent meals, for seven people.’

  She looked at the cairns. ‘If there’s only one body under each one …’

  ‘Someone else got away,’ he said, nodding.

  ‘Then where did he go?’

  ‘Milady, this is something old Ribs here can answer. But we’re not equipped for more nights out here. So this is what I suggest.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I send him on, milady.’

  ‘To do what?’

  ‘Whatever needs doing.’

  ‘You told me – he’s just a dog!’

  Rancept shrugged. ‘That’s my suggestion, milady.’

  Sukul threw up her hands. ‘Oh, very well, whatever you say. He’s your dog, after all.’

  ‘We can take the road back to the Hold,’ Rancept continued, ‘but it might be that we’ll meet that rider.’

  ‘No, I don’t want that. Find us another trail back.’

  ‘As you wish.’

  ‘Rancept,’ Sukul asked, as a sudden thought struck her, ‘there aren’t any more secret temples hereabouts, are there?’

  ‘Nothing we’d call such, milady.’

  * * *

  Corporal Renth had ridden out from Kharkanas in the depths of night. He had been dispatched to deliver Hunn Raal’s command that the unit commanders were to ensure that no violence was initiated, and that all contact was to be avoided. All plans were on hold, and Renth was relieved to hear it. He had never been easy with how things were going; even the thought of letting highborn blood to achieve their aims left him sick with dread and guilt.

  It didn’t help that his captain was at his worst when drunk, shaking loose the reins on his bloodlust and saying terrible things about the highborn and anyone else who wasn’t Legion. Such guttural vehemence had a way of infecting those close to him. More than once, Renth had contemplated seeking out a soldier among Lord Anomander’s Houseblades, and betraying the whole cause.

  But Urusander deserved better. Renth knew that the ugliness belonged to Hunn Raal, and if there were no irony in a man of fallen highborn blood now spouting vicious hatred against his own kind, then irony was a dead weed in the field of souls, and who would be foolish enough to claim that?

  In his drunkenness, Hunn Raal revealed deeper currents; there was an ambition there that saw Lord Urusander as nothing more than a means to an end. The captain might well espouse the redress of justice when it came to the Legion and all who served or had once served in it, but something else lurked behind that pious fervour, and whatever that was, Corporal Renth did not trust it.

  Changes had come to Kharkanas. The priestesses and priests had crowded the corridors and hallways deep into the night, but it seemed they had nothing but questions to exchange, a worthless currency when no answers could be found. He’d had trouble making his way out of the citadel without being noticed.

  Out on the streets of Kharkanas, the residual mud of the river’s flooding earlier that day had smeared the stones and painted the walls of the torchlit buildings he rode past, as if making a sullied pronouncement bold as blasphemy. His unease had only deepened in his passage through the city to the bridge that would take him west of the river. Faith was ever on the edge of crisis, but it seemed that this fated arrival of the Azathanai, and the dark, disturbing miracles that followed, had pushed everything over the edge.

  Hunn Raal had argued that now, more than ever, was the time for Lord Urusander’s ascension. Once he stood at Mother Dark’s side, the unruly elements would be hammered into submission and whatever schism now threatened the faith could be addressed. It had seemed a contrary position, since he was in the process of dispatching riders out to all the units with orders to desist. Drunks had a way of spitting in two directions at once. The truth was, there was chaos in Kurald Galain and the sudden unleashing of bloodshed might shatter the entire realm, and Mother Dark with it. For all that, what had seemed relatively straightforward in Renth’s eyes was now murky and confused, and a belligerent, red-eyed commander was hardly an inspiring send-off. Loyalty to Urusander alone kept Renth’s hands on the reins, and his butt in the saddle.

  But a long ride through the night gave him too much time to think. Renth had no compunction about slaughtering the Deniers because he did not see them as Tiste at all. They had surrendered that name in their squalid worship of old gods. The Tiste needed to unify their faith, with Mother Dark upon the Throne of Night. Refusing allegiance to Mother Dark had long ago stripped the Deniers of her protection, and so they deserved whatever befell them. He doubted that any hoary, mud-spattered river god of old could protect those lost fools. Lord Urusander understood necessity, and he would do what was needed to unify the Tiste and to cleanse the realm.

  It was, in fact, simple. They would hunt down the Deniers and kill them. They would scour the last depths of the forests and root them out, and then feed their corpses to the river.

  But the highborn were another matter. When the time came, however, Renth would do as commanded. He was a soldier after all, and soldiers needed to set aside their conscience on occasion, when necessity demanded hard choices. Besides, after the deed was done even remorse could be chewed dry and spat out.

  The nearest of Raal’s allies were attempting to move unseen through the
Tulla Hills, just beyond the Old Forest. These units were his destination. Hunn Raal had scant faith in Captain Silann, but at least Esthala and Risp were there. Once Renth had delivered his message he would swing back, crossing the Dorssan Ryl once more, and then head northward to find the other units.

  Mid-morning found him riding at a slow canter along the road that wound through the hills. His eyes were grainy from lack of sleep, but he would push on regardless. He had met no one since leaving the Old Forest.

  He caught the sudden attention from his horse – the ears flicking forward – and looked up to see a small figure on the track ahead. A boy, filthy with mud, standing as if waiting for him.

  Perhaps some brat from the Deniers said to be living in these hills. Scowling, Renth gestured the boy from his path as he drew closer.

  But the boy remained where he was, in the centre of the road.

  ‘What is this?’ Renth demanded, reining in. ‘Do you wish to be run down? Get away!’

  ‘I am named Orfantal,’ said the boy, ‘of the House Korlas, and I claim the right of protection.’

  ‘Highborn?’ Renth snorted. ‘That I doubt.’

  ‘I was being escorted to the Citadel,’ the boy said. ‘But we were waylaid. Everyone else died.’

  ‘A highborn would be better protected than—’ He caught a flicker from the boy’s eyes and then something punched through the chain shirt he was wearing, stabbing under his right arm. Sudden cold slid between his ribs, from which fire erupted. A hand took hold of his weapon belt and dragged him down from the saddle. Flailing, trying to push away from that blade buried in him, Renth fell to the ground.

  He couldn’t speak. Strength left him in a rush. He stared up into the face of an old man, a face twisted with venom, though the eyes, fixed on his own, were empty as pits into the Abyss itself.

  ‘For Haral,’ he heard the man say, twisting the blade before tugging it back out.

  The effort jolted Renth’s body, but the motion seemed to have nothing to do with him. Haral? I know no one named Haral. He wanted to tell the man that. He wanted to explain the mistake that had been made, but nothing came from his mouth except blood. Hot, tasting of the iron that had taken his life. Bewildered and hurt, he closed his eyes for the last time.

  * * *

  Orfantal stared in horror, and when he saw Gripp spit into the dead man’s face, coldness filled his insides, and he knew it for the flood of fear. The old man had said they needed a horse. Because they were being hunted and people wanted to kill them both.

  They’d seen the rider coming up the road, and Gripp had sent him out after telling him to say the things he had said.

  Orfantal thought they were going to steal the horse at sword point, since they had no coin. But they would one day pay the man back, even give him a new horse, or two. They would make it right.

  Now he watched the old man rise from the body, using the dead rider’s cloak to clean the blood from his dagger. The horse had moved off a short distance and now stood trembling in the ditch. Murmuring under his breath, Gripp approached the animal and moments later held the reins. He faced Orfantal. ‘Now we ride to Kharkanas.’

  He scowled at whatever he saw in Orfantal’s face. ‘He was Legion and it was Legion that attacked us. They’re the enemy now, hostage. We’re in a civil war – do you understand me?’

  He nodded, though he didn’t – he didn’t understand anything any more.

  ‘I ain’t hiding the body,’ Gripp said. ‘I want them to find it. I want them to know. More than that, I want them to know it was Gripp Galas who did this, and it’s Gripp Galas who’ll come for them.’ He had drawn his knife with these words and now he handed Orfantal the horse’s reins and limped back to the corpse.

  He hacked off the head. Blood poured on to the dusty road. Gripp then carved his initials on the forehead. Once this was done he lifted the head by the hair and flung it on to the centre of the road.

  After using the cloak again to clean the knife he re-joined Orfantal. ‘Now, let me get up in the saddle before you – this knee is killing me.’

  All the heroes are dead.

  I am lost.

  We are all lost.

  The hand that reached down to pull Orfantal up was red, and the morning air filled with the smell of iron.

  PART THREE

  The proofs of your ambition

  ELEVEN

  ON ALL SIDES Arathan saw desolation. Beneath a colourless sky, houses huddled in their own ruin, and to look upon them was to draw inside all the details of failure, until they clogged his thoughts like greasy dust. Between the scattered buildings, low, smoke-blackened walls of stone rose from scorched grasses like smeared teeth. He weathered their skeletal grimaces as he hunched in the saddle, Besra plodding beneath him. The walls were without any order, and none of the haphazard enclosures they made held livestock.

  This was nothing like any village he had seen. Trapped between walls as if snared in a giant web, the houses were far apart, defying the notion of streets. They refused to face one another and there was something shameful in this unwilling regard, as if community offered no gifts and necessity was cause for resentment. Most doorways were without doors and the blackness they framed seemed strangely solid; even in surrender something remained that was impenetrable, mystifying. They did not invite inside with the lure of curiosity; he felt pushed away, and whatever remained in the hidden rooms, behind shuttered windows and beneath sagging ceilings, was a secret tale written in wreckage.

  This was the civilization of the Azathanai, desultory and forlorn. In its impoverishment it besieged the soul, and the most horrifying thing of all, to Arathan’s eyes, was that some of these houses were still occupied. He saw solid doors, latched shut, and the smudged ember-glows of candles leaking through shutters. He saw figures standing in shadows, beneath porches made of huge granite stones so perfectly cut that no mortar was needed, and he felt the unyielding pressure of strangers’ eyes upon him and his companions as they rode slowly through the settlement.

  His imagination recoiled from the poison of this place, from all the rejections – the casting away of pointless possessions, the indifference to weed-snarled yards and the broken barrows of burnt wood that had once been buildings. This was not his world and to breathe of it, to look upon it and take inside each and every detail, whispered of madness.

  The day’s lifeless light was failing. Lord Draconus led them through tumbled gaps in the walls, cutting through the centre of the settlement. The horses walked as if exhausted by grief, and upon the dusty neck of Besra, the flies barely crawled.

  When his father reined in opposite an oversized house of stone and timber, Arathan felt his spirits flinch. It stood a short distance away, somehow more alone than all the others, and upon its granite facade the grey stone had been carved in endless, meaningless patterns of what seemed to be circles or rings. The sawn ends of the wood rafters, forming a row above the squat, wide door frame and marching on to the very ends of the front wall to either side, all bore similar shapes, like the imprints left behind by raindrops on mud. Three low walls reached for the building but all seemed to have shattered or crumbled with the effort. The air around the house felt dead and cold.

  ‘You might think,’ said Draconus, half turning to regard his bastard son, ‘that your thoughts are your own.’

  Arathan blinked.

  Behind him, Sergeant Raskan whispered something like a prayer, and then cleared his throat. ‘My lord, is this sorcery, then, to so plague our minds?’

  ‘The world around you speaks your language,’ Draconus replied. ‘It can do no else. All you see bears the paint of your words.’ He paused, and then grunted, ‘I wager none of you noted the flowers amidst the weeds, or the dance of the swifts above the old spring. Or how the sky, for but a moment, was like the purest porcelain.’

  Unwilling to turn, to look upon Feren who rode at Rint’s side, Arathan stared at his father, fighting with the meaning of his words. ‘We are invited,’
he said.

  ‘Indeed, Arathan. You begin to comprehend the curse of the Azathanai.’

  ‘The Jheleck do not raid here any more.’

  Draconus shrugged. ‘See you anything of value?’

  A figure now stood in the doorway of the strange, carved house. Not tall but thin, and, from what Arathan could make out, barely clothed – and that clothing was little more than rags of the skins of small animals. All at once, to Arathan, the scene seemed perfect – perfectly rendered, and nothing was accidental. Nothing ever is.

  Rint spoke and his voice sounded clumsy and rough amidst a sudden, fragile elegance. ‘Do we make camp here, Lord Draconus? You mentioned a spring and we have great need of water.’

  Draconus nodded. ‘The horses will find it for you, but we shall camp just beyond the village, on the hill at the crossroads up ahead.’ He dismounted.

  Arathan did the same, trying not to shiver and struggling not to gasp: for all the perfection closing tight around him, it seemed the air surrounding the carved house could not feed his lungs.

  Studying him, Draconus said, ‘Draw nearer to me, Arathan, if you wish to remain.’

  Rint and Feren had moved away. Raskan was hastening to gather up the reins of the other horses, his movements strangely panicked to Arathan’s eyes.

  Stepping closer to his father, Arathan found that he could once more fill his chest with sweet, blessed air. He returned his attention to the figure in the doorway. ‘Who is he and how can he live in … in this?’

  ‘Azathanai, of course,’ Draconus replied, and then sighed. ‘I know, the name is meaningless. No, it is more than that: it is misleading.’

  When it seemed that he would not explain, Arathan asked, ‘Are they gods?’

  ‘If they are,’ his father said after a moment’s thought, ‘they are gods in waiting.’

  ‘Waiting for what?’

  ‘Worshippers. But this confuses things, I would wager. Belief creates, Arathan. So you have been taught. The god cannot exist until it is worshipped, until it is given shape, personality. It is made in the crucible of faith. So claim our finest Tiste philosophers. But it is not that simple, I think. The god may indeed exist before the first worshipper ever arrives, but it does not call itself a god. It simply lives, of and for itself. Far to the south, Arathan, there are wild horses, and from birth until death they remain free. They have never tasted an iron bit, or felt the command of reins or knees or heels, and in that freedom, not once in their lives do they surrender their fear of us.’