Forge of Darkness (Kharkanas Trilogy 1) (12 page)

For this reason Haut had often mocked the notion of contested territory, but he also cited Jhelarkan indifference or possibly, given their defeats at the hands of the Tiste, incapability in claiming new lands for their control. Besides, the land in question was now empty, of little worth except as pasture, and the Jhelarkan way of life did not include the maintenance of domestic animals. There was nothing to contest, and it seemed just one more of those pointless arguments neighbours fostered with each other, a stamping of feet and holding of breath, a fury that could end in the spilling of blood. Haut was right to mock such things.

In her memories she could find no hint that she had ever seen a Jheleck. The territory to the east seemed the demesne of conquering weeds and scrub, ruled by relentless winds polishing cracked bedrock. It had been a place she had been forbidden to explore, except from here, atop the Aerie, straining across blurring distances with her eyes and seeing only whatever her imagination could conjure to life. But then, this was how she explored everything beyond the keep. Haut had kept her inside ever since she had been delivered into his care, isolated, hostage to everything, and to nothing.

She knew now that the Jaghut had not quite understood the Tiste tradition of giving and receiving hostages; certainly they had never sent one of their own children eastward, and given how rare those children were, it was no wonder. In any case, Haut only spoke of her enforced imprisonment as one of education: he had taken upon himself the responsibility of teaching her, and if he was an unusually harsh master, well, he
was
Jaghut.

Her dolls remained in her room these days. It had been years since they last looked up at the sun in its sky, with their ‘O’ mouths and eternal smiles. Sometimes, surprise and pleasure just faded away. Sometimes, the world dwindled, down until it was no bigger than a small, shallow platform atop a tower, and goddesses ran out of games
to
play, gave up reaching down to adjust the posture of her insensate children. Sometimes, the hostages just died of neglect, and power over corpses was no power at all.

This day, however, she was a goddess gripped by something that might be fear, or perhaps alarm, and her heart was thumping fast in her thin chest as she stood alone on the platform, watching the score or so Jheleck drawing ever closer to the keep. There was no question that they were intent on accosting Haut, either with violence or threat – she could think of no other reason for defying the prohibitions, for crossing the border into Jaghut territory. Of course, it was a territory no longer held by anyone. Were these ancient enemies coming to claim it for themselves?

There had been no images of these creatures anywhere among the keep’s tapestries, statuary and friezes, yet what else could they be? Arriving from the east, from the Jhelarkan Range, and no grass-eating beasts of old – she could see black leather harnesses on their long, lean forms; she could see the glint of iron blades strapped on to their forelimbs, and serrated discs flashing from their humped shoulders. They padded forward like swollen dogs, with hides of black or mottled tan, their long-snouted faces only hinted at beneath their boiled leather headgear – like hounds of the hunt, but they were their own masters.

It was said that this northern strain was kin to the Jheck of the far south, though purportedly much larger. Korya was relieved by that thought, since these Jheleck were nearly as big as warhorses. Though resembling dogs, they were said to be intelligent, possessors of a sorcery she knew only as
Soletaken
, though for her that was nothing more than a word, as meaningless as so many other words Haut had uttered over the years of her captivity.

She knew her master was not unaware of this intrusion. Nothing came on to his land without his knowing it, no matter how light the footfall or how thin the rush of air. Besides, he had sent her up here a short time past, his command harsh and snapping – she had at first imagined some transgression on her part, a chore not completed, a book left open, but she knew enough not to question him. In words he could wound deeply, and if he possessed humour she’d yet to find it. Yet still she was shocked when she heard the keep’s massive iron gate thunder open, and when she saw Haut emerge, no longer wearing his ratty, moth-eaten woollen robe, but bedecked instead in ankle-length black chain, overlapping iron scales shielding his shins and booted feet, with more of the same stacked along the breadth of his shoulders. From the flared back rim of his helmet of blackened iron, chain hung down like braided hair. When he paused and twisted round, glancing up towards Korya, she saw more chain, webbing his face beneath the eye-holes, dangling in tatters around his massive, stained tusks.

A sword was belted at his hip, but he made no move towards its long, leather-wrapped grip, his gauntleted hands remaining down at his sides as he swung back to face the Jheleck.

Haut was a scholar. He complained endlessly of brittle bones and arthritic pangs; she believed he was ancient, though she had no proof of that. His contempt for warriors was matched only by his disgust for war and all its idiotic causes. She had never before seen the armour he was now clad in, nor the weapon he now bore. It did not seem possible he was able to move under the weight of his accoutrements, yet he did so with grace, an ease she had never before seen in him.

It was as if the Aerie shifted beneath her, the world slipping in its massive gears. Mouth dry, she watched as her master marched directly towards the Jheleck, who now positioned themselves in a ragged row facing the Jaghut.

Halting ten paces away, and then … nothing.

Surely the Jhelarkan could not form words, not from bestial throats such as they must have possessed. If they spoke, it was through other means, yet there was no doubt in her mind that a conversation was now under way. And then Haut reached up and drew off his helmet, his long black iron-streaked hair falling loose in greasy ropes, and she saw him tilt his head back, and she heard him laugh.

Deep, rolling, a sound that did not fit into Korya’s world, a sound so unexpected it could stagger a goddess high upon her perch. Like thunder from the earth itself, that laughter rattled through her, climbed skyward like the beating of wings.

The Jheleck seemed to blur then, as if engulfed in black smoke, and moments later a score of warriors now stood in place of the beasts; and they began removing their long-snouted headgear, unstrapping the blades from their wrists and sliding the lengths down through iron loops in their harnesses; the serrated discs now jutted behind their heads like cowls.

What she could see of their faces was little more than the dark smudge of black beards and filthy skin. Apart from the now-loose leather armour, they appeared to be dressed in furs and hides. When they came forward, they shambled, as if unsteady on two legs.

Haut whirled round, looked up at her, and bellowed, ‘Guests!’

* * *

A solitary Jaghut and a young Tiste hostage: in this household there were no servants, no cooks, no butchers, no handmaids or footmen. The keep’s vast storerooms were virtually empty, and though Haut was quite capable of conjuring food and drink through sorcery, he rarely did so, relying almost exclusively on regular visits by the Azathanai
traders
who plied on seasonal rounds the tracks linking all the still-occupied keeps.

In the absence of staff, Korya had learned to bake bread; she had learned to make stews and broths; she had learned to chop wood and mend her own threadbare clothes. Haut had proclaimed these tasks to be essential elements of her education, but she had begun to believe such chores were the product of less sanguine factors, beginning and ending with Haut’s own indolence, and his general dislike of company. It was, she often reflected, a wonder that he had ever accepted her presence, and the responsibility of taking her in.

As a people, the Jaghut rarely had anything to say to each other; they seemed perversely divisive and indifferent to such concepts as society or community. But this rejection was a conscious one; they had once dwelt in a city, after all. They had once built an edifice to civilization unequalled anywhere in all the realms, only to then conclude that it was all some kind of mistake, a misapprehension of purpose, or, as Haut described it, a belated recognition of economic suicide. The world was not infinite, and yet a population could aspire to become so; it could (and would) expand well beyond its own limits of sustainability, and would continue to do so until it collapsed. There was, he said, nothing so deadly as success.

Wisdom did not belong to mortals, and those whom others called wise were only those who, through grim experience, had touched the very edges of unwelcome truths. For the wise, even joy was tinged with sorrow. No, the world made its demands upon mortals and they were immediate ones, pressingly, ferociously so, and even knowing a reasonable course was not enough to alter a mad plunge into disaster.

Words were no gift, said Haut. They were tangled nets snaring all who ventured into their midst, until an entire people could hang helpless, choking on their own arguments, even as dissolution closed in on all sides.

The Jaghut had rejected that path. Defying the eternal plea for communication among peoples, in the name of understanding, peace or whatever, they had stopped talking, even with each other. And their city was abandoned, home now to a single soul, the Lord of Hate, the one who had laid bare the brutal truth of the future awaiting them all.

This was the history Korya had learned, but that had been another age, when she was a child, and it was the child who made answer to the bewildering tale told her by Haut, with her dolls, a family, perhaps even a society, and in that society there were no wars, and no arguments and no feuds. Everyone smiled. Everyone looked on in surprise and wonder at the perfect world their goddess had created for them, and the sun was always bright and always warm. There was, she knew, no end to the dreams of children.

The Jheleck had brought food: meat still dripping blood, jugs of thick, dark wine, leather bags holding sharp stones of crystallized sugar. At Haut’s command she brought forth salty bread from the stone cupboard forming the back wall of the kitchen, and dried fruit from the cellar; and the fire was lit in the main hall and the high-backed chairs drawn in from the walls, their legs making furrows in the dust closing in on the long table from all sides. Tapers were dipped and awakened to smoky flame, and as the twenty-one Jheleck crowded in, flinging off pungent furs, barking in their sharp tongue, the vast room grew steamy and redolent with old sweat and worse. Rushing back and forth from back rooms and storage cupboards, Korya almost gagged again and again upon plunging into the fug; and only when at last she could sit down, upon Haut’s left, drinking deep from the flagon of bitter wine pushed her way, was she able to settle into this new, heady world.

When the Jheleck spoke the Jaghut language, their accent was hard, all edges, yet clear enough to Korya’s ears, even if it carried with it a snide tone of contempt. The visitors ate the meat raw, and before long Haut himself joined in, his long-fingered hands slick with gore as he tore at the flesh, his inner teeth seeming to disengage from the flanking tusks when he chewed – something she had never seen before. Most of the animal products consumed in this house were of the smoked or dried variety, old and tough until soaked in wine or broth. Her master was regressing before her very eyes; she felt off-balanced, as if Haut had become a stranger.

Through it all, however, even as the wine softened the scene, she took in every word, every gesture, desperate to make sense of this gathering.

Guests
.

They never had guests. Traders simply visited, and those that stayed overnight camped outside the walls. On much rarer occasions, another Jaghut arrived, to pick up on some obscure argument with Haut – a reluctant, pained exchange of words – and then was gone again, often leaving in the dead of night, and Haut’s mood would be foul for days thereafter.

The Jheleck had ignored her upon seating themselves and settling into their feast. Wine was guzzled like water from the well. Comments in two languages were flung back and forth. Belches and grunts accompanied every mouthful. There were no women among the warriors, leading Korya to wonder if this was some sect, a gaggle of priests or a brotherhood. Among the Thel Akai could be found monks sworn to weapons they themselves had fashioned from raw ore; perhaps these Jheleck were similarly avowed – they had not discarded their blades, after all, whereas Haut had divested himself of his martial gear as soon as he strode into the chamber.

The warrior seated on her left crowded against her, his heavily muscled
shoulder
and arm jostling her again and again. The Jheleck opposite seemed amused by her discomfort when he finally took notice. ‘Sagral,’ he suddenly barked, ‘ware your lumpy self, lest you end up in her lap.’

Raucous laughter greeted this comment, while Haut simply grunted, reaching for a jug of wine. Pouring himself another cup, he then said, ‘Careful you do not awaken her temper.’

The one who’d spoken lifted shaggy eyebrows. ‘You’ve suffered it, then, captain?’

Captain?

‘I have not, but she is Tiste and she is a young woman. I have waited for its coming since she first arrived, and still I wait. I am certain that it exists, although no amount of abuse I hurl at her has managed to sting it awake.’

Sagral leaned hard against her, thrusting close his broad, scarred face. ‘Anger is a sign of sharp wits, nay, of intelligence itself.’ His black eyes fixed on her. ‘Is it so?’ he asked. ‘Have years of Jaghut nonsense obliterated every spark? Assuming you had any to begin with?’