Forge of Darkness (Kharkanas Trilogy 1) (122 page)

‘Renegades from the disbanded units? Or would you have me offer up the pathetic possibility of Deniers with noble blood on their hands?’

‘It seems that I must do nothing but weather your scorn. Perhaps this is every mother’s lament.’

Anomander turned away, ‘My scorn, Mother, is not yet awakened. Indeed, you see before you a sleeping man, still lost to the night and troubling dreams. If I twitch, it but signals my helplessness. If I voice a moan, it is a sound empty of meaning. No brush of fingertips will prod me awake, and so I yearn for the knife’s sharp jab. The only question that remains is: who will wield that knife?’

‘If you imagine Urusander to be so treacherous,’ said Mother Dark, ‘then we are already lost.’

‘He harbours Syntara,’ said Anomander. ‘A new cult rises in Neret Sorr. It faces you as a rising sun challenges the night. And so I wonder, Mother, how many gauntlets do you need thrown down?’

‘Go to him, First Son.’

‘There is no need,’ Anomander replied. ‘He prepares to march on Kharkanas. We need but await his knock on the wood of the Citadel gates.’ He moved to the door. Before reaching for the latch, he glanced
back
at Mother Dark. ‘I have listened to your counsel, Mother. But what I do now is in defence of Kharkanas.’

The door closed quietly behind the First Son. Emral thought to follow but something held her back. She remained facing Mother Dark, but could think of nothing to say.

Grizzin Farl sighed. ‘My dear,’ he said, ‘your adopted son is a formidable man.’

‘If I had another path, less painful for him, I would choose it.’

‘For all of you, I would think.’

But she shook her head. ‘I am prepared to bear what will come.’

‘You invite a lonely existence,’ Grizzin said, with sorrow in his eyes as he regarded Mother Dark.

All at once, to Emral’s eyes, it seemed that Mother Dark transformed into something more solid than stone, and then just as quickly she seemed to fade, until she was almost insubstantial. ‘Azathanai, with what you have told me of the events taking place to the west … by solitude alone can I ensure a long existence, and a role in all that is to come.’ Her gaze shifted from Grizzin Farl and settled upon Emral. ‘High Priestess, make of your worship an unflinching recognition of the unknown, and, indeed, the unknowable. By devotion and acceptance of mystery, the chaos that haunts us all is made calm, until the sea itself becomes a mirror content with a placid reflection.’

Emral glanced at the Azathanai, and then returned her attention to Mother Dark. ‘I see no source of strength, Mother, in such surrender.’

‘It opposes our nature, yes. Do you know why I did not refuse the lusts of the priestesses? In that moment of release, time itself is abandoned, and in its place even the mortal body seems as expansive as the universe. In that moment, Emral, we find utter surrender, and in that surrender a state of bliss.’

Emral shook her head. ‘Until the flesh returns, with its aches and a deep heaviness inside. The bliss you describe, Mother, cannot be sustained. And if somehow it could, why, we would soon wear visages of madness, one and all.’

‘It was, daughter, a flawed dispensation.’

‘And now we are to embrace not flesh, but empty contemplation? I fear the void’s kiss will not seem as sweet.’

Mother Dark leaned her head back, as if exhausted. ‘I will,’ she said in a low mutter, ‘let you know.’

* * *

Orfantal stood in the centre of the room, looking round. ‘This is mine?’ he asked.

Silchas nodded.

There were scrolls upon shelves, and books bearing brightly coloured
illustrations
. At the foot of the bed was an ancient trunk and it was filled with toy soldiers, some made from onyx and others from ivory. Upon one wall, in a horizontal rack of blackwood, rested three practice swords, a buckler and, upon a peg beside them, a boiled leather vest. On the floor beneath it was a helmet with a cage-like visor to protect the eyes. Three lanterns burned bright and the light was harsh to Orfantal’s eyes, used as he was to a lone candle to fight the shadows of his room back in House Korlas.

He thought of that room again, and tried to imagine it blackened by smoke, the stone walls cracked, the bed in which he had slept nothing but a heap of ashes. Every thought of his past now came to him with a stench of burning, and the faint echo of screams.

‘Are you unwell?’

Orfantal shook his head.

The dog was still with them and now, having completed its exploratory circuit of the chamber, went to lie down beside a thickly padded chair in one corner. In moments, it was fast asleep, legs twitching.

There came a knock upon the door and a moment later a round-faced young man entered, dressed in stained robes. ‘Lord Silchas, I received your message. Ah, here then is young Orfantal, and already settled in. Excellent. Are you hungry? Thirsty? The first task is to show you the dining hall – not the one in the main chamber, but the lesser one where by weight of masonry alone we are not intimidated. Now then—’

‘A moment,’ interrupted Silchas. He turned to Orfantal. ‘I will take my leave now,’ he said. ‘As you can see, I yield to a good keeper. You are comfortable with this?’

Orfantal nodded. ‘Thank you, Lord Silchas.’

‘Cedorpul,’ said Silchas, ‘will it be you in charge of Orfantal?’

‘The historian has elected for himself that privilege, milord, and will be here shortly.’

‘Oh dear,’ Silchas said, smiling down at Orfantal. ‘Expect an education in confusion, hostage, but one that I am sure will achieve for you admirable resilience against the eternal chaos afflicting the Citadel.’

Orfantal smiled without quite understanding what the Lord meant, and then he went to the trunk to examine the toy soldiers.

Silchas grunted behind him and said, ‘I foresee an impressive knowledge of historical battles to come.’

‘Glory belongs to every boy’s dreams,’ said Cedorpul. ‘I am sure, however, that the historian will offer his share of unheeded wisdom in such matters.’

‘By this we ever trek familiar paths,’ said Silchas. ‘Goodbye, then, Orfantal.’

‘Goodbye, milord.’

After he had left, Cedorpul cleared his throat. ‘Now then, the dining
room
. I will not be so negligent as to let you starve. Also, I expect, given the bell that just sounded, that your fellow hostage, Legyl Behust, is even now haranguing the servers.’

With a longing glance at the soldiers in the trunk, Orfantal straightened and followed Cedorpul out of the room. Moments later the dog joined them, tail wagging and tongue lolling.

Glancing down at it, Cedorpul made a disgusted sound. ‘Worms. We’ll have to do something about that, I think.’

* * *

In the absence of light and in the death of every colour, draining his imagination and the scenes it desperately conjured, Kadaspala sat alone in the room he had been given. It was not a large room. With hands groping and feet shuffling he had explored its confines, and in his mind he painted its details in shades of black and grey: the cot where he lay down at night, which creaked with his restless turning, the rope netting of its mattress stretched and sagging beneath him; the quaint writing desk with its angled surface, ink wells and footpad; the water closet with its narrow, flimsy door and the latch that rattled loose in its fittings; the long side table that ran the length of one wall, where rested jugs and goblets of copper that stung the tongue harsher than the wine filling his mouth; the wardrobe with its weathered surface. They seemed, one and all, the leavings of a past life, and he thought of this room as a tomb, artfully arrayed to honour the memory of living, but shrouded in eternal darkness, in air that tasted dead.

There were few memories of the journey down to Kharkanas. They had taken his knife, and since leaving him here, after a cadre of healers arrived to fret and sigh, his only visitors were servants coming with food and later departing with the servings barely touched. One, a young woman by her voice, had offered to bathe him, and he had laughed at that, too empty to regret the cruelty of the sound, and the fleeing pad of her feet to the door had simply made him laugh all the harder.

In a world without tears, an artist was left with nothing to do and no purpose to hold on to. Anguish was a satisfying torment to feed creative impulses, but he felt no anguish. Longing that spoke no known language offered up an endless palette, but he longed for nothing. Wonder made the brush tremble, but all wonder was dead within him. He had been betrayed by every talent sewn into his sinews, scratched into his bones, and now that he had severed the threads to vision, he shared this darkness with lifeless gods, and this room was indeed a tomb, as befitted its occupant.

He sat upon the cot, painting the air with one finger, brushing lines of black knotted with touches of grey to give shape to the creaking of the ropes under him. There was little talent in perfect rendition. Setting
banal
reality upon a board or canvas made sordid the modest virtue of craft; as if perfect brush-strokes and obsessive detail could exist as something beyond technical prowess, and could in fact announce profundity. He knew otherwise and it was this contempt that sat like swirling ripples marking the surface of his dissolution, turgid but hinting of life.

In the world he had left behind, an artist needed to tie contempt down and make the bindings tight, and take damp cloth to where it bled through. To let it loose was to attack both artist and audience, and he had neither the strength nor the will for such a thing: even the sentiment left him exhausted.

He had descended into madness, there in the chamber of the house his memory dared not revisit. He was not yet certain that it had departed. Blindness made a mystery of everything just out of reach. He had decided to wait, and upon the only canvas left to him paint sounds upon the ephemeral walls of this crypt: the creaks and faint echoes; the muted slap from people passing by the door, those footsteps so urgent and so pathetic; the dull repetition of his own breath and the sullen thump of his heart; the languid surge and ebb of the blood in his veins.

All in shades of black and grey, upon the insubstantial but exquisitely absolute walls of his blindness.

Once he was done, perfectly rendering this chamber, he would reach outside, to wander the corridors, recording everything.
There is a new history coming, my friends. History as seen by a blind man. I will find Rise Herat, who gives us his delicious version as told by a man who says nothing. I will find Gallan, who sings unheard and walks unseen by any. Together, we will set out to find our audience, who heeds us not. And by this, we perfect the world and raise for posterity every grand monument to stupidity
.

I see towers and spires. I see bold bridges and the palaces of the privileged. I see forests where the highborn hunt, and where poachers are hanged by their necks beneath trees. I see jewels and stacked coins inside guarded fortresses and upon the walls stand earnest orators, crying down the paucity of all. I see their lies catch up to them, in flames and vengeance. I see a future laden with ash and soot-coated pools, and gibbets groaning. And all that I see, I will paint
.

And all the historian would not say, keeps him mute
.

And the weeping poet will walk away, to hide his absence of tears
.

And everything ends
.

He heard himself laugh, a low cackling sound, and quickly etched its wavy, juddering lines with his finger. The streaks hung there in the darkness, slowly fading as the echoes dwindled.

The blind man paints history. The voiceless historian mimes the tale. The poet dispenses with music, dancing in discord. There is no
rhythm
to these brush-strokes. There is no beginning and no end to this tale. There is no beauty in the song
.

And this is how it is
.

My friends, this is how it is
.

* * *

At the Citadel gate Hish Tulla and Gripp Galas found three of Anomander’s officers awaiting their lord. Kellaras, Dathenar and Prazek were girded as for battle, and as Gripp went to collect Anomander’s horse from the stables Hish Tulla waited a few paces away from the Houseblades.

There was no conversation under way. Of the three, only Kellaras bore the ebon hues that were a legacy of his time in the Chamber of Night, and it seemed that this had made a tension among the three, as if loyalty itself was perhaps no thicker than skin.

Gripp returned with Anomander’s mount and his own. ‘Both had been left saddled,’ he said to her in explanation.

‘Distress is a flavour,’ Hish said, ‘that none welcome but none can avoid.’

At her comment, Dathenar grunted in amusement. ‘Wail for the world’s end, milady, when even the grooms lose sleep.’ He gestured grandly. ‘Observe our befuddled state in this courtyard, and imagine the same throughout Kurald Galain. I have had many thoughts on civil war in the times leading to this, but not once did I imagine it so shrouded in confusion.’

‘It is the failure of certainty that has you reaching for the sword at your side,’ Hish replied. ‘We all strike out from a place of fear.’

Before Dathenar could answer, Lord Anomander appeared in the doorway of the Citadel and strode towards them, unconsciously cleaving a path through the disordered ranks in the compound. Arriving, he reached for the reins of his horse.