Reaper's Gale Page 6

  ‘You’re a tender one, aren’t you?’

  ‘Don’t tell anyone.’

  ‘Master, about those vaults.’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘I think extensions are required.’

  Tehol used the tip of his right index finger to stroke the insect’s back – or, alternatively, rub it the wrong way. ‘Already? Well, how far under the river are you right now?’

  ‘More than halfway.’

  ‘And that is how many?’

  ‘Vaults? Sixteen. Each one three man-heights by two.’

  ‘All filled?’

  ‘All.’

  ‘Oh. So presumably it’s starting to hurt.’

  ‘Bugg’s Construction will be the first major enterprise to collapse.’

  ‘And how many will it drag down with it?’

  ‘No telling. Three, maybe four.’

  ‘I thought you said there was no telling.’

  ‘So don’t tell anyone.’

  ‘Good idea. Bugg, I need you to build me a box, to very specific specifications which I’ll come up with later.’

  ‘A box, Master. Wood good enough?’

  ‘What kind of sentence is that? Would good enough.’

  ‘No, wood, you know, the burning kind.’

  ‘Yes, would that wood will do.’

  ‘Size?’

  ‘Absolutely. But no lid.’

  ‘Finally, you’re getting specific.’

  ‘I told you I would.’

  ‘What’s this box for, Master?’

  ‘I can’t tell you, alas. Not specifically. But I need it soon.’

  ‘About the vaults . . .’

  ‘Make ten more, Bugg. Double the size. As for Bugg’s Construction, hold on for a while longer, amass debt, evade the creditors, keep purchasing materials and stockpiling them in storage buildings charging exorbitant rent. Oh, and embezzle all you can.’

  ‘I’ll lose my head.’

  ‘Don’t worry. Ezgara here has one to spare.’

  ‘Why, thank you.’

  ‘Doesn’t even squeak, either.’

  ‘That’s a relief. What are you doing now, Master?’

  ‘What’s it look like?’

  ‘You’re going back to bed.’

  ‘And you need to build a box, Bugg, a most clever box. Remember, though, no lid.’

  ‘Can I at least ask what it’s for?’

  Tehol settled back on his bed, studied the blue sky overhead for a moment, then smiled over at his manservant – who just happened to be an Elder God. ‘Why, comeuppance, Bugg, what else?’

  CHAPTER TWO

  The waking moment awaits us all upon a threshold or where the road turns if life is pulled, sparks like moths inward to this single sliver of time gleaming like sunlight on water, we will accrete into a mass made small, veined with fears and shot through with all that’s suddenly precious, and the now is swallowed, the weight of self a crushing immediacy, on this day, where the road turns, comes the waking moment.

  Winter Reflections

  Corara of Drene

  The ascent to the summit began where the Letheriibuilt road ended. With the river voicing its ceaseless roar fifteen paces to their left, the roughly shaped pavestones vanished beneath a black-stoned slide at the base of a moraine. Uprooted trees reached bent and twisted arms up through the rubble, jutting limbs from which hung root tendrils, dripping water. Swaths of forest climbed the mountainside to the north, on the other side of the river, and the ragged cliffs edging the tumbling water on that side were verdant with moss. The opposite mountain, flanking the trail, was a stark contrast, latticed with fissures, broken, gouged and mostly treeless. In the midst of this shattered façade shadows marked out odd regularities, of line and angle; and upon the trail itself, here and there, broad worn steps had been carved, eroded by flowing water and centuries of footfalls.

  Seren Pedac believed that a city had once occupied the entire mountainside, a vertical fortress carved into living stone. She could make out what she thought were large gaping windows, and possibly the fragmented ledges of balconies high up, hazy in the mists. Yet something – something huge, terrible in its monstrosity – had impacted the entire side of the mountain, obliterating most of the city in a single blow. She could almost discern the outline of that collision, yet among the screes of rubble tracking down the sundered slopes the only visible stone belonged to the mountain itself.

  They stood at the base of the trail. Seren watched the lifeless eyes of the Tiste Andii slowly scan upward.

  ‘Well?’ she asked.

  Silchas Ruin shook his head. ‘Not from my people. K’Chain Che’Malle.’

  ‘A victim of your war?’

  He glanced across at her, as if gauging the emotion behind her question, then said, ‘Most of the mountains from which the K’Chain Che’Malle carved their sky keeps are now beneath the waves, inundated following the collapse of Omtose Phellack. The cities are cut into the stone, although only in the very earliest versions are they as you see here – open to the air rather than buried within shapeless rock.’

  ‘An elaboration suggesting a sudden need for self-defence.’

  He nodded.

  Fear Sengar had moved past them and was beginning the ascent. After a moment Udinaas and Kettle followed. Seren had prevailed in her insistence to leave the horses behind. In a clearing off to their right sat four wagons covered with tarps. It was clear that no such contrivance could manage this climb, and all transport from here on was by foot. As for the mass of weapons and armour the slavers had been conveying, either it would have been stashed here, awaiting a hauling crew, or the slaves would have been burdened like mules.

  ‘I have never made this particular crossing,’ Seren said, ‘although I have viewed this mountainside from a distance. Even then, I thought I could see evidence of reshaping. I once asked Hull Beddict about it, but he would tell me nothing. At some point, however, I think our trail takes us inside.’

  ‘The sorcery that destroyed this city was formidable,’ Silchas Ruin said.

  ‘Perhaps some natural force—’ ‘No, Acquitor. Starvald Demelain. The destruction was the work of dragons. Eleint of the pure blood. At least a dozen, working in concert, a combined unleashing of their warrens. Unusual,’ he added.

  ‘Which part?’

  ‘Such a large alliance, for one. Also, the extent of their rage. I wonder what crime the K’Chain Che’Malle committed to warrant such retaliation.’

  ‘I know the answer to that,’ came a sibilant whisper from behind them, and Seren turned, squinted down at the insubstantial wraith crouched there.

  ‘Wither. I was wondering where you had gone to.’

  ‘Journeys into the heart of the stone, Seren Pedac. Into the frozen blood. What was their crime, you wonder, Silchas Ruin? Why, nothing less than the assured annihilation of all existence. If extinction awaited them, then so too would all else die. Desperation, or evil spite? Perhaps neither, perhaps a terrible accident, that wounding at the centre of it all. But what do we care? We shall all be dust by then. Indifferent. Insensate.’

  Silchas Ruin said, without turning, ‘Beware the frozen blood, Wither. It can still take you.’

  The wraith hissed a laugh. ‘Like an ant to sap, yes. Oh, but it is so seductive, Master.’

  ‘You have been warned. If you are snared, I cannot free you.’

  The wraith slithered past them, flowed up the ragged steps.

  Seren adjusted the leather satchel on her shoulders. ‘The Fent carried supplies balanced on their heads. Would that I could do the same.’

  ‘The vertebrae become compacted,’ Silchas Ruin said, ‘resulting in chronic pain.’

  ‘Well, mine are feeling rather crunched right now, so I’m afraid I don’t see much difference.’ She began the climb. ‘You know, as a Soletaken, you could just—’

  ‘No,’ he said as he followed, ‘there is too much bloodlust in the veering. The draconean hunger within me is where lives my anger, and
that anger is not easily contained.’

  She snorted, unable to help herself.

  ‘You are amused, Acquitor?’

  ‘Scabandari is dead. Fear has seen his shattered skull. You were stabbed and then imprisoned, and now that you are free, all that consumes you is the desire for vengeance – against what? Some incorporeal soul? Something less than a wraith? What will be left of Scabandari by now? Silchas Ruin, yours is a pathetic obsession. At least Fear Sengar seeks something positive – not that he’ll find it since you will probably annihilate what’s left of Scabandari before he gets a chance to talk to it, assuming that’s even possible.’ When he said nothing, she continued, ‘It seems I am now fated to guiding such quests. Just like my last journey, the one that took me to the lands of the Tiste Edur. Everyone at odds, motives hidden and in conflict. My task was singular, of course: deliver the fools, then stand well back as the knives are drawn.’

  ‘Acquitor, my anger is more complicated than you believe.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘The future you set before us is too simple, too confined. I suspect that when we arrive at our destination, nothing will proceed as you anticipate.’

  She grunted. ‘I will accept that, since it was without doubt the case in the village of the Warlock King. After all, the fallout was the conquest of the Letherii Empire.’

  ‘Do you take responsibility for that, Acquitor?’

  ‘I take responsibility for very little, Silchas Ruin. That much must be obvious.’

  The steps were steep, the edges worn and treacherous. As they climbed, the air thinned, mists swirling in from the tumbling falls on their left, the sound a roar that clambered among the stones in a tumult of echoes. Where the ancient stairs vanished entirely, wooden trestles had been constructed, forming something between a ladder and steps against the sheer, angled rock.

  They found a ledge a third of the way up where they could gather to rest. Among the scatter of rubble on the shelf were remnants of metopes, cornices and friezes bearing carvings too fragmented to be identifiable – suggesting that an entire façade had once existed directly above them. The scaffolding became a true ladder here, and off to the right, three man-heights up, gaped the mouth of a cave, rectangular, almost door-shaped.

  Udinaas stood regarding that dark portal for a long time, before he turned to the others. ‘I suggest we try it.’

  ‘There is no need, slave,’ replied Fear Sengar. ‘This trail is straightforward, reliable—’

  ‘And getting icier the higher we go.’ The Indebted grimaced, then laughed. ‘Oh, there’re songs to be sung, are there, Fear? The perils and tribulations, the glories of suffering, all to win your heroic triumph. You want the elders who were once your grandchildren to gather the clan round the fire, for the telling of your tale, a lone warrior’s quest for his god. I can almost hear them now, describing the formidable Fear Sengar of the Hiroth, brother to the Emperor, with his train of followers – the lost child, the inveterate Letherii guide, a ghost, a slave and of course the white-skinned nemesis. The White Crow with his silver-tongued lies. Oh, we have here the gamut of archetypes, yes?’ He reached into the satchel beside him and drew out a waterskin, took a long drink, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘But imagine all of it going for naught, when you pitch from a slippery rung and plunge five hundred man-heights to your ignominious death. Not how the story goes, alas, but then, life isn’t a story now, is it?’ He replaced the skin and shouldered his pack. ‘The embittered slave chooses a different route to the summit, the fool. But then,’ he paused to grin back at Fear, ‘somebody has to be the moral lesson in this epic, right?’

  Seren watched the man climbing the rungs. When he came opposite the cave mouth, he reached out until one hand gripped the edge of stone, then followed with a foot, stretching until the probing tip of his moccasin settled on the ledge. Then, in a swift shifting of weight, combined with a push away from the ladder, he fluidly spun on one leg, the other swinging over empty air. Then stepping inward, pulled by the weight of the satchel on his back, into the gloom of the entrance.

  ‘Nicely done,’ Silchas Ruin commented, and there was something like amusement in his tone, as if he had enjoyed the slave’s poking at Fear Sengar’s sententious self-importance, thus revealing two edges to his observation. ‘I am of a mind to follow him.’

  ‘Me, too,’ said Kettle.

  Seren Pedac sighed. ‘Very well, but I suggest we use ropes between us, and leave the showing off to Udinaas.’

  The mouth of the cave revealed that it had been a corridor, probably leading out onto a balcony before the façade had sheared off. Massive sections of the walls, riven through with cracks, had shifted, settled at conflicting angles. And every crevasse, every fissure on all sides that Seren could see, seethed with the squirming furred bodies of bats, awakened now to their presence, chittering and moments from panic. As Seren set her pack down, Udinaas moved beside her.

  ‘Here,’ he said, his breath pluming, ‘light this lantern, Acquitor – when the temperature drops my hands start going numb.’ At her look he glanced over at Fear Sengar, then said, ‘Too many years reaching down into icy water. A slave among the Edur knows little comfort.’

  ‘You were fed,’ Fear Sengar said.

  ‘When a bloodwood tree toppled in the forest,’ Udinaas said, ‘we’d be sent out to drag it back to the village. Do you remember those times, Fear? Sometimes the trunk would shift unexpectedly, slide in mud or whatever, and crush a slave. One of them was from our own household – you don’t recall him, do you? What’s one more dead slave? You Edur would shout out when that happened, saying the bloodwood spirit was thirsty for Letherii blood.’

  ‘Enough, Udinaas,’ Seren said, finally succeeding in lighting the lantern. As the illumination burgeoned, the bats exploded from the cracks and suddenly the air was filled with frantic, beating wings. A dozen heartbeats later the creatures were gone.

  She straightened, raising the lantern.

  They stood on a thick mouldy paste – guano, crawling with grubs and beetles – from which rose a foul stench.

  ‘We’d better move in,’ Seren said, ‘and get clear of this. There are fevers . . .’

  The man was screaming as the guards dragged him by his chains, across the courtyard to the ring-wall. His crushed feet left bloody smears on the pavestones. Screams of accusation wailed from him, shrill outrage at the shaping of the world – the Letherii world.

  Tanal Yathvanar snorted softly. ‘Hear him. Such naivety.’

  Karos Invictad, standing beside him on the balcony, gave him a sharp look. ‘You foolish man, Tanal Yathvanar.’

  ‘Invigilator?’

  Karos Invictad leaned his forearms on the railing and squinted down at the prisoner. Fingers like bloated riverworms slowly entwined. From somewhere overhead a gull was laughing. ‘Who poses the greatest threat to the empire, Yathvanar?’

  ‘Fanatics,’ Tanal replied after a moment. ‘Like that one below.’

  ‘Incorrect. Listen to his words. He is possessed of certainty. He holds to a secure vision of the world, a man with the correct answers – that the prerequisite questions were themselves the correct ones goes without saying. A citizen with certainty, Yathvanar, can be swayed, turned, can be made into a most diligent ally. All one needs to do is find what threatens them the most. Ignite their fear, burn to cinders the foundations of their certainty, then offer an equally certain alternate way of thinking, of seeing the world. They will reach across, no matter how wide the gulf, and grasp and hold on to you with all their strength. No, the certain are not our enemies. Presently misguided, as in the case of the man below, but always most vulnerable to fear. Take away the comfort of their convictions, then coax them with seemingly cogent and reasonable convictions of our own making. Their eventual embrace is assured.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Tanal Yathvanar, our greatest enemies are those who are without certainty. The ones with questions, the ones who regard
our tidy answers with unquenchable scepticism. Those questions assail us, undermine us. They . . . agitate. Understand, these dangerous citizens understand that nothing is simple; their stance is the very opposite of naivety. They are humbled by the ambivalence to which they are witness, and they defy our simple, comforting assertions of clarity, of a black and white world. Yathvanar, when you wish to deliver the gravest insult to such a citizen, call them naive. You will leave them incensed; indeed, virtually speechless . . . until you watch their minds back-tracking, revealed by a cascade of expressions, as they ask themselves: who is it that would call me naive? Well, comes the answer, clearly a person possessing certainty, with all the arrogance and pretension that position entails; a confidence, then, that permits the offhand judgement, the derisive dismissal uttered from a most lofty height. And from all this, into your victim’s eyes will come the light of recognition – in you he faces his enemy, his truest enemy. And he will know fear. Indeed, terror.’

  ‘You invite the question, then, Invigilator . . .’

  Karos Invictad smiled. ‘Do I possess certainty? Or am I in fact plagued by questions, doubts, do I flounder in the wild currents of complexity?’ He was silent for a moment, then he said, ‘I hold to but one certainty. Power shapes the face of the world. In itself, it is neither benign nor malicious, it is simply the tool by which its wielder reshapes all that is around him or herself, reshapes it to suit his or her own . . . comforts. Of course, to express power is to enact tyranny, which can be most subtle and soft, or cruel and hard. Implicit in power – political, familial, as you like – is the threat of coercion. Against all who choose to resist. And know this: if coercion is available, it will be used.’ He gestured. ‘Listen to that man. He does my work for me. Down in the dungeons, his cellmates hear his ravings, and some among them join in chorus – the guards take note of who, and that is a list of names I peruse daily, for they are the ones I can win over. The ones who say nothing, or turn away, now that is the list of those who must die.’

  ‘So,’ said Tanal, ‘we let him scream.’