The Malazan Empire, page 829
It was his responsibility, after all. Perhaps his sister had forgotten the oldest vows that bound the Watch. But he had not. And so he had done what was necessary.
There was no pleasure in the act. Satisfaction, yes, as would be felt by any wise, intelligent person who succeeds in sweeping aside a multitude of shortsighted sharks, thus clearing the water. But no pleasure.
To his right, as he walked the shoreline, the land was growing light.
But the sea to his left remained dark.
Sometimes the verge between the two grew very narrow indeed.
Shifting weight from one foot to the other, Pully stared down into the pit. Snakes swarmed by the hundred in that hole, sluggish at first but now, as the day warmed, they writhed like worms in an open wound. She tugged at her nose, which had a tendency to tingle whenever she fell back into the habit of chewing her lips, but the tingling wouldn’t leave. Which meant, of course, that she was gnawing away at those wrinkled flaps covering what was left of her teeth.
Getting old was a misery. First the skin sagged. Then aches settled into every place and places that didn’t even exist. Pangs and twinges and spasms, and all the while the skin kept sagging, lines deepening, folds folding, and all beauty going away. The lilt of upright buttocks, the innocence of wide, shallow tits. The face still able to brave the weather, and lips still sweet and soft as pouches of rendered fat. All gone. What was left was a mind that still imagined itself young, its future stretching out, trapped inside a sack of loose meat and brittle bones. It wasn’t fair.
She yanked at her nose again, trying to get the feeling back. And that was another thing. The wrong parts kept on growing. Ears and nose, warts and moles, hairs sprouting everywhere. The body forgot its own rules, the flesh went senile and the bright mind within could wail all it wanted, but nothing that was real ever changed except for the worse.
She widened her stance and sent a stream of piss down into the stony earth. Even simple things got less predictable. Oh, what a misery ageing was.
Skwish’s head popped up amidst seething snakes, eyes blinking.
‘Yah,’ said Pully, ‘I’m still here.’
‘How long?’
‘Day and a night and now it’s morning. Y’amby get what yer needed? I got aches.’
‘An’ I got reck’lections I ain’t ever wanted.’ Skwish started working herself free of the heaps of serpents, none of which minded much or even noticed, busy as they were, breeding in a frenzy that seemed to last for ever.
‘T’which we might want, iyerplease?’
‘Mebee.’
Skwish reached up and, grunting, Pully helped her friend out of the pit. ‘Yee, y’smell ripe, woman. Snake piss and white smear, there’ll be onward eggs in yer ears.’
‘It’s a cold spirit t’travel on, Pully, an’ I ain’t ever doin it agin, so’s if I rank it’s the leese of our perbems. Gaf, I need a dunk in the sea.’
They set off for the village, a half day’s journey coastward.
‘An ya tervilled afar, Skwish, did yee?’
‘It’s bad an’ it’s bad, Pully. Cold blood t’the east no sun could warm. I seen solid black clouds rollin down, an’ iron rain an gashes in th’geround. I see the stars go away an’ nothing but green glows, an’ them green glows they is cold, too, cold as th’east blooding. All stems but one branch, y’see. One branch.’
‘So’s we guessed right, an’ next time Twilight goes an’ seal barks on ’bout a marchin’ the Shake away from the shore, you can talk up an’ cut er down and down. An’ then we vote and get er gone. Er and the Watch, too.’
Skwish nodded, trying to work globs of snake sperm out of her hair, without much success. ‘Comes to what’s d’served, Pully. The Shake did ever ’ave clear eyes. Y’ can’t freck on an’ on thinkin’ th’world won’t push back. It’ll push awright. Till the shore breaks an’ breaks it will an’ when it does, we ever do drown. I saw dust, Pully, but it wasn’t no puffy earth. T’was specks a bone an’ skin an’ dreams an’ motes a surprise, hah! We’s so freckered, sister, it’s all we can do is laughter an prance into the sea.’
‘Goo’ anough fra me,’ Pully grumbled. ‘I got so many aches I might be the def’nition a ache irrself.’
The two Shake witches—the last left alive, as they were soon to learn—set out for the village.
Take a scintillating, flaring arm of the sun’s fire, give it form, a life of its own, and upon the faint cooling of the apparition, a man such as Rud Elalle might emerge, blinking with innocence, unaware that all he touched could well explode into destructive flames—had he been of such mind. And to teach, to guide him into adulthood, the singular aversion remained: no matter what you do, do not awaken him to his anger.
Sometimes, Udinaas had come to realize, potential was a force best avoided, for the potential he sensed in his son was not a thing for celebration.
No doubt every father felt that flash of blinding, burning truth—the moment when he sensed his son’s imminent domination, be it physical or something less overtly violent in its promise. Or perhaps such a thing was in fact rare, conjured from the specific. After all, not every father’s son could veer into the shape of a dragon. Not every father’s son held the dawn’s golden immanence in his eyes.
Rud Elalle’s gentle innocence was a soft cloak hiding a monstrous nature, and that was an unavoidable fact, the burning script of his son’s blood. Silchas Ruin had spoken to that, with knowing, with the pained truth in his face. The ripening harvest of the Eleint, a fecund brutality that sought only to appease itself—that saw the world (any world, every world) as a feeding ground, and the promise of satisfaction waited in the bloated glut of power.
Rare the blood-fouled who managed to overcome that innate megalomania. ‘Ah, Udinaas,’ Silchas Ruin had said. ‘My brother, perhaps, Anomander. Osserc? Maybe, maybe not. There was a Bonecaster, once . . . and a Soletaken Jaghut. A handful of others—when the Eleint blood within them was thinner—and that is why I have hope for Rud Elalle, Udinaas. He is third-generation—did he not clash with his mother’s will?’
Well, it was said that he had.
Udinaas rubbed his face. He glanced again at the tusk-framed hut, wondering if he should march inside, put an end to that parley right now. Silchas Ruin, after all, had not included himself among those who had mastered their Draconean blood. A sliver of honesty from the White Crow, plucked from that wound of humility, no doubt. It was all that was holding Udinaas back.
Crouched beside him, shrouded by gusts of smoke from the hearth, Onrack released a long sigh that whistled from his nostrils—break a nose enough times and every breath was tortured music. At least it was so with this warrior. ‘He will take him, I think.’
Udinaas nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
‘I am . . . confused, my friend. That you would permit this . . . meeting. That you would excuse yourself and so provide no counter to the Tiste Andii’s invitation. That hut, Udinaas, may be a place filled with lies. What is to stop the White Crow from offering your son the sweet sip of terrible power?’
There was genuine worry in Onrack’s tone, deserving more than bludgeoning silence. Udinaas rubbed again at his face, unable to determine which was the more insensate: his features or his hands; and wondering why an answer seemed to important to him. ‘I have walked in the realm of Starvald Demelain, Onrack. Among the bones of countless dead dragons. At the gate itself, the corpses were heaped like glitter flies along a window sill.’
‘If it is indeed in the nature of the Eleint to lust for self-destruction,’ ventured Onrack, ‘would it not be better to guide Rud away from such a flaw?’
‘I doubt that would work,’ Udinaas said. ‘Can you turn nature aside, Onrack? Every season the salmon return from the seas and heave their dying bodies upstream, to find where they were born. Ancient tenag leave the herds to die amid the bones of kin. Bhederin migrate into the heart of the plains every summer, and return to forest fringes every winter—’
‘Simpler creatures one and all—’
‘And I knew slaves in the Hiroth village—ones who’d been soldiers once, and they withered with the anguish of knowing that there were places of battle—places of their first blooding—that they would never again see. They longed to return, to walk those old killing grounds, to stand before the barrows filled with the bones of fallen friends, comrades. To remember, and to weep.’ Udinaas shook his head. ‘We are not much different from the beasts sharing our world, Onrack. The only thing that truly sets us apart is our talent for rejecting the truth—and we’re damned good at that. The salmon does not question its need. The tenag and the bhederin do not doubt what compels them.’
‘Then you would doom your son to his fate?’
Udinaas bared his teeth. ‘The choice isn’t mine to make.’
‘Is it Silchas Ruin’s?’
‘It may seem, Onrack, that we are protected here, but that’s an illusion. The Refugium is a rejection of so many truths it leaves me breathless. Ulshun Pral, you, all your people—you have willed yourself this life, this world. And the Azath at the gate—it holds you to your convictions. This place, wondrous as it is, remains a prison.’ He snorted. ‘Should I chain him here? Can I? Dare I? You forget, I was a slave.’
‘My friend,’ said Onrack, ‘I am free to travel the other realms. I am made flesh. Made whole. This is a truth, is it not?’
‘If this place is destroyed, you will become a T’lan Imass once more. That’s the name for it, isn’t it? That immortality of bones and dried flesh? The tribe here will fall to dust.’
Onrack was staring at him with horror-filled eyes. ‘How do you know this?’
‘I do not believe Silchas Ruin is lying. Ask Kilava—I have seen a certain look in her eyes, especially when Ulshun Pral visits, or when she sits beside you at the fire. She knows. She cannot protect this world. Not even the Azath will prevail against what is coming.’
‘Then it is we who are doomed.’
No. There is Rud Elalle. There is my son.
‘And so,’ said Onrack after a long pause, ‘you will send your son away, so that he may live.’
No, friend. I send him away . . . to save you all. But he could not say that, could not reveal that. For he knew Onrack well now; and he knew Ulshun Pral and all the others here. And they would not accept such a potential sacrifice—they would not see Rud Elalle risk his life in their name. No, they would accept their own annihilation, without a second thought. Yes, Udinaas knew these Imass. It was not pride that made them what they were. It was compassion. The tragic kind of compassion, the kind that sacrifices itself and sees that sacrifice as the only choice and thus no choice at all, one that must be accepted without hesitation.
Better to take the fear and the hope and all the rest and hold it inside. What could he give Onrack now, at this moment? He did not know.
Another pause, and then the Imass continued, ‘It is well, then. I understand, and approve. There is no reason that he must die with us. No reason, indeed, that he must witness such a thing when it comes to pass. You would spare him the grief, as much as such a thing is possible. But, Udinaas, it is not acceptable that you share our fate. You too must depart this realm.’
‘No, friend. That I will not do.’
‘Your son’s need for you remains.’
Oh, Rud loves you all, Onrack. Almost as much as he seems to love me. I will stay nonetheless, to remind him of what he fights to preserve. ‘Where he and Silchas Ruin will go, I cannot follow,’ he said. And then he grunted and managed to offer Onrack a wry smile. ‘Besides, here and only here, in your company—in the company of all the Imass—I am almost content. I’ll not willingly surrender that.’ So many truths could hide inside glib lies. While the reason was a deceit, the sentiments stacked so carefully within it were not.
So much easier, he told himself, to think like a tenag, or a bhederin. Truth from surface to core, solid and pure. Yes, that would indeed be easier than this.
Rud Elalle emerged from the hut, followed a moment later by Silchas Ruin.
Udinaas could see in his son’s face that any formal parting would prove too fraught. Best this was done with as little gravitas as possible. He rose, and Onrack did the same.
Others stood nearby, watchful, instincts awakened that something grave and portentous was happening. Respect and courtesy held them back one and all.
‘We should keep this . . . casual,’ Udinaas said under his breath.
Onrack nodded. ‘I shall try, my friend.’
He is no dissembler, oh no. Less human than he looks, then. They all are, damn them. ‘You feel too much,’ Udinaas said, as warmly as he could manage, for he did not want the observation to sting.
But Onrack wiped at his cheeks and nodded, saying nothing.
So much for making this casual. ‘Oh, come with me, friend. Even Rud cannot withstand your gifts.’
And together, they approached Rud Elalle.
Silchas Ruin moved off to await his new charge, and observed the emotional farewells with eyes like knuckles of blood.
Mortal Sword Krughava reminded Tanakalian of his childhood. She could have stridden out from any of a dozen tales of legend he had listened to curled up beneath skins and furs, all those breathtaking adventures of great heroes pure of heart, bold and stalwart, who always knew who deserved the sharp end of their sword, and who only ever erred in their faith in others—until such time, at the tale’s dramatic climax, when the truth of betrayal and whatnot was revealed, and punishment soundly delivered. His grandfather always knew when to thicken the timbre of his voice, where to pause to stretch out suspense, when to whisper some awful revelation. All to delight the wide-eyed child as night drew in.
Her hair was the hue of iron. Her eyes blazed like clear winter skies, and her face could have been carved from the raw cliffs of Perish. Her physical strength was bound to a matching strength of will and neither seemed assailable by any force in the mortal world. It was said that, even though she was now in her fifth decade of life, no brother or sister of the Order could best her in any of a score of weapons: from skinning knife to mattock.
When Destriant Run’Thurvian had come to her, speaking of fraught dreams and fierce visions, it was as tinder-dry kindling to the furnace of Krughava’s inviolate sense of purpose, and, it turned out, her belief in her own imminent elevation to heroic status.
Few childhood convictions survived the grisly details of an adult’s sensibilities, and although Tanakalian accounted himself still young, still awaiting the temper of wisdom, he had already seen enough to comprehend the true horror waiting beneath the shining surface of the self-avowed hero known to all as the Mortal Sword of the Grey Helms of Perish. Indeed, he had come to suspect that no hero, no matter what the time or the circumstance, was anything like the tales told him so many years ago. Or perhaps it was his growing realization that so many so-called virtues, touted as worthy aspirations, possessed a darker side. Purity of heart also meant vicious intransigence. Unfaltering courage saw no sacrifice as too great, even if that meant leading ten thousand soldiers to their deaths. Honour betrayed could plunge into intractable insanity in the pursuit of satisfaction. Noble vows could drown a kingdom in blood, or crush an empire into dust. No, the true nature of heroism was a messy thing, a confused thing of innumerable sides, many of them ugly, and almost all of them terrifying.
So the Destriant, in his last breaths, had made a grim discovery. The Grey Helms were betrayed. If not now, then soon. Words of warning to awaken in the Mortal Sword all those blistering fires of outrage and indignation. And Run’Thurvian had expected the Shield Anvil to rush into Krughava’s cabin to repeat the dire message, to see the fires alight in her bright blue eyes.
Brothers and sisters! Draw your swords! The streams must run crimson in answer to our besmirched honour! Fight! The enemy is on all sides!
Well.
Not only had Tanakalian found himself unwilling to embrace the Destriant and his mortal pain, he was reluctant to launch such devastating frenzy upon the Grey Helms. The old man’s explanations, his reasons—the details—had been virtually non-existent. Essential information was lacking. A hero without purpose was like a blinded cat in a pit of hounds. Who could predict the direction of Krughava’s charge?
No, this needed sober contemplation. The private, meditative kind.
The Mortal Sword had greeted the dreadful news of the Destriant’s horrid death in pretty much the expected manner. A hardening of already hard features, eyes glaring like ice, the slow, building rise of questions that Tanakalian either could not hope to answer, or, as it turned out, was unwilling to answer. Questions and unknowns were the deadliest foes for one such as Mortal Sword Krughava, who thrived on certainty regardless of its relationship to reality. He could see how she was rocked, all purchase suddenly uncertain beneath her boots; and the way her left hand twitched—as if eager for the grip of her sword, the sure promise of the heavy iron blade; and the way she instinctively straightened—as if awaiting the weight of her chain surcoat—for this surely was news that demanded she wear armour. But he had struck her unawares, in her vulnerability, and this might well constitute its own version of betrayal, and he knew to be careful at that moment, to display for her a greater helplessness than she herself might be feeling; to unveil in his eyes and in his seemingly unconscious gestures enormous measures of need and need for reassurance. To, in short, fling himself like a child upon her stolid majesty.
If this made him into something despicable, a dissembler, a creature of intrigue and cunning manipulation, well, these were dire charges indeed. He would have to consider them, as objectively as possible, and withhold no judgement no matter how self-damning, no matter how condign.
The Shield Anvils of old, of course, would not have bothered. But absence of judgement in others could only emerge from absence of judgement in oneself, a refusal to challenge one’s own assumptions and beliefs. Imagine the atrocities such inhuman postures invited! No, that was a most presumptuous game and not one he would play.
There was no pleasure in the act. Satisfaction, yes, as would be felt by any wise, intelligent person who succeeds in sweeping aside a multitude of shortsighted sharks, thus clearing the water. But no pleasure.
To his right, as he walked the shoreline, the land was growing light.
But the sea to his left remained dark.
Sometimes the verge between the two grew very narrow indeed.
Shifting weight from one foot to the other, Pully stared down into the pit. Snakes swarmed by the hundred in that hole, sluggish at first but now, as the day warmed, they writhed like worms in an open wound. She tugged at her nose, which had a tendency to tingle whenever she fell back into the habit of chewing her lips, but the tingling wouldn’t leave. Which meant, of course, that she was gnawing away at those wrinkled flaps covering what was left of her teeth.
Getting old was a misery. First the skin sagged. Then aches settled into every place and places that didn’t even exist. Pangs and twinges and spasms, and all the while the skin kept sagging, lines deepening, folds folding, and all beauty going away. The lilt of upright buttocks, the innocence of wide, shallow tits. The face still able to brave the weather, and lips still sweet and soft as pouches of rendered fat. All gone. What was left was a mind that still imagined itself young, its future stretching out, trapped inside a sack of loose meat and brittle bones. It wasn’t fair.
She yanked at her nose again, trying to get the feeling back. And that was another thing. The wrong parts kept on growing. Ears and nose, warts and moles, hairs sprouting everywhere. The body forgot its own rules, the flesh went senile and the bright mind within could wail all it wanted, but nothing that was real ever changed except for the worse.
She widened her stance and sent a stream of piss down into the stony earth. Even simple things got less predictable. Oh, what a misery ageing was.
Skwish’s head popped up amidst seething snakes, eyes blinking.
‘Yah,’ said Pully, ‘I’m still here.’
‘How long?’
‘Day and a night and now it’s morning. Y’amby get what yer needed? I got aches.’
‘An’ I got reck’lections I ain’t ever wanted.’ Skwish started working herself free of the heaps of serpents, none of which minded much or even noticed, busy as they were, breeding in a frenzy that seemed to last for ever.
‘T’which we might want, iyerplease?’
‘Mebee.’
Skwish reached up and, grunting, Pully helped her friend out of the pit. ‘Yee, y’smell ripe, woman. Snake piss and white smear, there’ll be onward eggs in yer ears.’
‘It’s a cold spirit t’travel on, Pully, an’ I ain’t ever doin it agin, so’s if I rank it’s the leese of our perbems. Gaf, I need a dunk in the sea.’
They set off for the village, a half day’s journey coastward.
‘An ya tervilled afar, Skwish, did yee?’
‘It’s bad an’ it’s bad, Pully. Cold blood t’the east no sun could warm. I seen solid black clouds rollin down, an’ iron rain an gashes in th’geround. I see the stars go away an’ nothing but green glows, an’ them green glows they is cold, too, cold as th’east blooding. All stems but one branch, y’see. One branch.’
‘So’s we guessed right, an’ next time Twilight goes an’ seal barks on ’bout a marchin’ the Shake away from the shore, you can talk up an’ cut er down and down. An’ then we vote and get er gone. Er and the Watch, too.’
Skwish nodded, trying to work globs of snake sperm out of her hair, without much success. ‘Comes to what’s d’served, Pully. The Shake did ever ’ave clear eyes. Y’ can’t freck on an’ on thinkin’ th’world won’t push back. It’ll push awright. Till the shore breaks an’ breaks it will an’ when it does, we ever do drown. I saw dust, Pully, but it wasn’t no puffy earth. T’was specks a bone an’ skin an’ dreams an’ motes a surprise, hah! We’s so freckered, sister, it’s all we can do is laughter an prance into the sea.’
‘Goo’ anough fra me,’ Pully grumbled. ‘I got so many aches I might be the def’nition a ache irrself.’
The two Shake witches—the last left alive, as they were soon to learn—set out for the village.
Take a scintillating, flaring arm of the sun’s fire, give it form, a life of its own, and upon the faint cooling of the apparition, a man such as Rud Elalle might emerge, blinking with innocence, unaware that all he touched could well explode into destructive flames—had he been of such mind. And to teach, to guide him into adulthood, the singular aversion remained: no matter what you do, do not awaken him to his anger.
Sometimes, Udinaas had come to realize, potential was a force best avoided, for the potential he sensed in his son was not a thing for celebration.
No doubt every father felt that flash of blinding, burning truth—the moment when he sensed his son’s imminent domination, be it physical or something less overtly violent in its promise. Or perhaps such a thing was in fact rare, conjured from the specific. After all, not every father’s son could veer into the shape of a dragon. Not every father’s son held the dawn’s golden immanence in his eyes.
Rud Elalle’s gentle innocence was a soft cloak hiding a monstrous nature, and that was an unavoidable fact, the burning script of his son’s blood. Silchas Ruin had spoken to that, with knowing, with the pained truth in his face. The ripening harvest of the Eleint, a fecund brutality that sought only to appease itself—that saw the world (any world, every world) as a feeding ground, and the promise of satisfaction waited in the bloated glut of power.
Rare the blood-fouled who managed to overcome that innate megalomania. ‘Ah, Udinaas,’ Silchas Ruin had said. ‘My brother, perhaps, Anomander. Osserc? Maybe, maybe not. There was a Bonecaster, once . . . and a Soletaken Jaghut. A handful of others—when the Eleint blood within them was thinner—and that is why I have hope for Rud Elalle, Udinaas. He is third-generation—did he not clash with his mother’s will?’
Well, it was said that he had.
Udinaas rubbed his face. He glanced again at the tusk-framed hut, wondering if he should march inside, put an end to that parley right now. Silchas Ruin, after all, had not included himself among those who had mastered their Draconean blood. A sliver of honesty from the White Crow, plucked from that wound of humility, no doubt. It was all that was holding Udinaas back.
Crouched beside him, shrouded by gusts of smoke from the hearth, Onrack released a long sigh that whistled from his nostrils—break a nose enough times and every breath was tortured music. At least it was so with this warrior. ‘He will take him, I think.’
Udinaas nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
‘I am . . . confused, my friend. That you would permit this . . . meeting. That you would excuse yourself and so provide no counter to the Tiste Andii’s invitation. That hut, Udinaas, may be a place filled with lies. What is to stop the White Crow from offering your son the sweet sip of terrible power?’
There was genuine worry in Onrack’s tone, deserving more than bludgeoning silence. Udinaas rubbed again at his face, unable to determine which was the more insensate: his features or his hands; and wondering why an answer seemed to important to him. ‘I have walked in the realm of Starvald Demelain, Onrack. Among the bones of countless dead dragons. At the gate itself, the corpses were heaped like glitter flies along a window sill.’
‘If it is indeed in the nature of the Eleint to lust for self-destruction,’ ventured Onrack, ‘would it not be better to guide Rud away from such a flaw?’
‘I doubt that would work,’ Udinaas said. ‘Can you turn nature aside, Onrack? Every season the salmon return from the seas and heave their dying bodies upstream, to find where they were born. Ancient tenag leave the herds to die amid the bones of kin. Bhederin migrate into the heart of the plains every summer, and return to forest fringes every winter—’
‘Simpler creatures one and all—’
‘And I knew slaves in the Hiroth village—ones who’d been soldiers once, and they withered with the anguish of knowing that there were places of battle—places of their first blooding—that they would never again see. They longed to return, to walk those old killing grounds, to stand before the barrows filled with the bones of fallen friends, comrades. To remember, and to weep.’ Udinaas shook his head. ‘We are not much different from the beasts sharing our world, Onrack. The only thing that truly sets us apart is our talent for rejecting the truth—and we’re damned good at that. The salmon does not question its need. The tenag and the bhederin do not doubt what compels them.’
‘Then you would doom your son to his fate?’
Udinaas bared his teeth. ‘The choice isn’t mine to make.’
‘Is it Silchas Ruin’s?’
‘It may seem, Onrack, that we are protected here, but that’s an illusion. The Refugium is a rejection of so many truths it leaves me breathless. Ulshun Pral, you, all your people—you have willed yourself this life, this world. And the Azath at the gate—it holds you to your convictions. This place, wondrous as it is, remains a prison.’ He snorted. ‘Should I chain him here? Can I? Dare I? You forget, I was a slave.’
‘My friend,’ said Onrack, ‘I am free to travel the other realms. I am made flesh. Made whole. This is a truth, is it not?’
‘If this place is destroyed, you will become a T’lan Imass once more. That’s the name for it, isn’t it? That immortality of bones and dried flesh? The tribe here will fall to dust.’
Onrack was staring at him with horror-filled eyes. ‘How do you know this?’
‘I do not believe Silchas Ruin is lying. Ask Kilava—I have seen a certain look in her eyes, especially when Ulshun Pral visits, or when she sits beside you at the fire. She knows. She cannot protect this world. Not even the Azath will prevail against what is coming.’
‘Then it is we who are doomed.’
No. There is Rud Elalle. There is my son.
‘And so,’ said Onrack after a long pause, ‘you will send your son away, so that he may live.’
No, friend. I send him away . . . to save you all. But he could not say that, could not reveal that. For he knew Onrack well now; and he knew Ulshun Pral and all the others here. And they would not accept such a potential sacrifice—they would not see Rud Elalle risk his life in their name. No, they would accept their own annihilation, without a second thought. Yes, Udinaas knew these Imass. It was not pride that made them what they were. It was compassion. The tragic kind of compassion, the kind that sacrifices itself and sees that sacrifice as the only choice and thus no choice at all, one that must be accepted without hesitation.
Better to take the fear and the hope and all the rest and hold it inside. What could he give Onrack now, at this moment? He did not know.
Another pause, and then the Imass continued, ‘It is well, then. I understand, and approve. There is no reason that he must die with us. No reason, indeed, that he must witness such a thing when it comes to pass. You would spare him the grief, as much as such a thing is possible. But, Udinaas, it is not acceptable that you share our fate. You too must depart this realm.’
‘No, friend. That I will not do.’
‘Your son’s need for you remains.’
Oh, Rud loves you all, Onrack. Almost as much as he seems to love me. I will stay nonetheless, to remind him of what he fights to preserve. ‘Where he and Silchas Ruin will go, I cannot follow,’ he said. And then he grunted and managed to offer Onrack a wry smile. ‘Besides, here and only here, in your company—in the company of all the Imass—I am almost content. I’ll not willingly surrender that.’ So many truths could hide inside glib lies. While the reason was a deceit, the sentiments stacked so carefully within it were not.
So much easier, he told himself, to think like a tenag, or a bhederin. Truth from surface to core, solid and pure. Yes, that would indeed be easier than this.
Rud Elalle emerged from the hut, followed a moment later by Silchas Ruin.
Udinaas could see in his son’s face that any formal parting would prove too fraught. Best this was done with as little gravitas as possible. He rose, and Onrack did the same.
Others stood nearby, watchful, instincts awakened that something grave and portentous was happening. Respect and courtesy held them back one and all.
‘We should keep this . . . casual,’ Udinaas said under his breath.
Onrack nodded. ‘I shall try, my friend.’
He is no dissembler, oh no. Less human than he looks, then. They all are, damn them. ‘You feel too much,’ Udinaas said, as warmly as he could manage, for he did not want the observation to sting.
But Onrack wiped at his cheeks and nodded, saying nothing.
So much for making this casual. ‘Oh, come with me, friend. Even Rud cannot withstand your gifts.’
And together, they approached Rud Elalle.
Silchas Ruin moved off to await his new charge, and observed the emotional farewells with eyes like knuckles of blood.
Mortal Sword Krughava reminded Tanakalian of his childhood. She could have stridden out from any of a dozen tales of legend he had listened to curled up beneath skins and furs, all those breathtaking adventures of great heroes pure of heart, bold and stalwart, who always knew who deserved the sharp end of their sword, and who only ever erred in their faith in others—until such time, at the tale’s dramatic climax, when the truth of betrayal and whatnot was revealed, and punishment soundly delivered. His grandfather always knew when to thicken the timbre of his voice, where to pause to stretch out suspense, when to whisper some awful revelation. All to delight the wide-eyed child as night drew in.
Her hair was the hue of iron. Her eyes blazed like clear winter skies, and her face could have been carved from the raw cliffs of Perish. Her physical strength was bound to a matching strength of will and neither seemed assailable by any force in the mortal world. It was said that, even though she was now in her fifth decade of life, no brother or sister of the Order could best her in any of a score of weapons: from skinning knife to mattock.
When Destriant Run’Thurvian had come to her, speaking of fraught dreams and fierce visions, it was as tinder-dry kindling to the furnace of Krughava’s inviolate sense of purpose, and, it turned out, her belief in her own imminent elevation to heroic status.
Few childhood convictions survived the grisly details of an adult’s sensibilities, and although Tanakalian accounted himself still young, still awaiting the temper of wisdom, he had already seen enough to comprehend the true horror waiting beneath the shining surface of the self-avowed hero known to all as the Mortal Sword of the Grey Helms of Perish. Indeed, he had come to suspect that no hero, no matter what the time or the circumstance, was anything like the tales told him so many years ago. Or perhaps it was his growing realization that so many so-called virtues, touted as worthy aspirations, possessed a darker side. Purity of heart also meant vicious intransigence. Unfaltering courage saw no sacrifice as too great, even if that meant leading ten thousand soldiers to their deaths. Honour betrayed could plunge into intractable insanity in the pursuit of satisfaction. Noble vows could drown a kingdom in blood, or crush an empire into dust. No, the true nature of heroism was a messy thing, a confused thing of innumerable sides, many of them ugly, and almost all of them terrifying.
So the Destriant, in his last breaths, had made a grim discovery. The Grey Helms were betrayed. If not now, then soon. Words of warning to awaken in the Mortal Sword all those blistering fires of outrage and indignation. And Run’Thurvian had expected the Shield Anvil to rush into Krughava’s cabin to repeat the dire message, to see the fires alight in her bright blue eyes.
Brothers and sisters! Draw your swords! The streams must run crimson in answer to our besmirched honour! Fight! The enemy is on all sides!
Well.
Not only had Tanakalian found himself unwilling to embrace the Destriant and his mortal pain, he was reluctant to launch such devastating frenzy upon the Grey Helms. The old man’s explanations, his reasons—the details—had been virtually non-existent. Essential information was lacking. A hero without purpose was like a blinded cat in a pit of hounds. Who could predict the direction of Krughava’s charge?
No, this needed sober contemplation. The private, meditative kind.
The Mortal Sword had greeted the dreadful news of the Destriant’s horrid death in pretty much the expected manner. A hardening of already hard features, eyes glaring like ice, the slow, building rise of questions that Tanakalian either could not hope to answer, or, as it turned out, was unwilling to answer. Questions and unknowns were the deadliest foes for one such as Mortal Sword Krughava, who thrived on certainty regardless of its relationship to reality. He could see how she was rocked, all purchase suddenly uncertain beneath her boots; and the way her left hand twitched—as if eager for the grip of her sword, the sure promise of the heavy iron blade; and the way she instinctively straightened—as if awaiting the weight of her chain surcoat—for this surely was news that demanded she wear armour. But he had struck her unawares, in her vulnerability, and this might well constitute its own version of betrayal, and he knew to be careful at that moment, to display for her a greater helplessness than she herself might be feeling; to unveil in his eyes and in his seemingly unconscious gestures enormous measures of need and need for reassurance. To, in short, fling himself like a child upon her stolid majesty.
If this made him into something despicable, a dissembler, a creature of intrigue and cunning manipulation, well, these were dire charges indeed. He would have to consider them, as objectively as possible, and withhold no judgement no matter how self-damning, no matter how condign.
The Shield Anvils of old, of course, would not have bothered. But absence of judgement in others could only emerge from absence of judgement in oneself, a refusal to challenge one’s own assumptions and beliefs. Imagine the atrocities such inhuman postures invited! No, that was a most presumptuous game and not one he would play.
