Forge of Darkness (Kharkanas Trilogy 1) (47 page)

He pointed. ‘There, that dark line to the north. Once, it was much closer.’

‘It ran away?’

‘Think of Kharkanas as a beast crawled up from the river. Perhaps to sun itself, or perhaps only to glower at the world. Think of the long-tailed, beaked turtles – the ones the river folk bring to the markets. Gnarled and jagged shells, a savage bite and thick muscles upon the long neck. Claws at the ends of strong limbs. Skin tough as armour. An ugly beast, Legyl, foul of temper and voracious. Hear its hiss as you draw close!’

She was squirming about on the narrow stone projection. ‘Where’s its eyes? I don’t see its eyes!’

‘But dear, we are its eyes. Here atop the Old Tower. We are the city’s eyes just as we are the world’s eyes, and that is a great responsibility, for it is only through us that the world is able to see itself, and from sight is born mystery – the releasing of imagination – and in this moment of recognition, why, everything changes.’

She sagged back. ‘But I don’t want to be its eyes, Master Rise.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I don’t know what I’m seeing.’

He helped her regain her feet. ‘That’s fine, because none of us do. Brush the grit from your clothes. You venture into a difficult area, this idea of “knowing”.’

‘I wasn’t going to ever fall,’ she said, slapping at the stains on her tunic. ‘Of course not. I had your foot.’

‘Ever.’

‘And you can be sure you may rely upon me, Legyl,’ said Rise Herat. ‘So, as you say, there are some things that can well be known. But tell me – did not the city seem alive to you?’

‘I could see everyone. In the streets. They were tiny!’

Taking her hand, he led her back to the trap door and the steep steps leading down to the level below. ‘Fleas from the mud, mites and ticks burrowing into the hide.’

‘It was buildings and stuff. Not a river turtle at all.’

‘I have shown you the city and to look upon the city is to look upon your own body, Legyl. And this Citadel … why, the eyes are set in the head and the head upon the body. This morning, you became the Citadel’s eyes. Is your body not flesh and bone? Is it not a place of heat and labour, the beat of your heart, the breath you draw? Such is wise Kharkanas.’

At the bottom of the steps she pulled free her hand. ‘Cedorpul’s a better teacher than you. He makes sense. You don’t.’

He shrugged. ‘I forget the narrow perch of the child’s mind. In pragmatism there is comfort, yes?’

‘I’m going to play in my room now.’

‘Go on,’ he said, gesturing her along.

The temple’s lone hostage scampered off, down the inner stairs to the next floor below. Rise Herat hesitated, and then turned about and made his way back up to the tower’s platform. His morning ritual, this private contemplation of Kharkanas, might still be salvaged. Cedorpul had ambushed him in the corridor outside his chambers, thrusting this young student into his care. Hasty words regarding lessons and then the young priest was gone.

More rumours, more agitation to rush up and down the hallways of the Citadel. The sanctuary of the Old Tower was Rise Herat’s place of strength amidst all this nonsense. Instead, he found himself left in charge of a girl he saw as almost feral and possibly simple-minded, so vast the temple’s neglect. Ever passed on to the next, scores of teachers and no lessons ever returned to, Legyl’s was an education of fragments, delivered in haste and out from airs of distraction. When he had looked down at her, however, he had seen sure intelligence in the large eyes staring back up at him.

As the court historian, he decided that history would be the lesson he delivered. Such ambitions proved short-lived, as her breathless scatter of comments and observations left him confused. She listened to his words as one might listen to a songbird in the garden, a pleasant drone in the background. Whatever she took in seemed randomly selected; but perhaps it was that way with all children. He rarely had any contact with them, and generally preferred it that way.

Rise looked out over Kharkanas. Thin smoke drifted above the cityscape, not yet lifting to the height of the tower. It softened all that lay beneath it, and he wondered at the loss he always felt when venturing into a vista, the way the vastness narrowed down to the immediate; the sudden insistence of details near to hand. There had been a time, a generation or so back, when the city’s artists had taken to the countryside, to paint landscapes, and to Rise Herat’s mind these paintings achieved what reality could not. A promise of depth and distance, yet one in which the promise remained sacred, for neither depth nor distance could be explored. To draw closer was to see only the brush strokes and dried paint upon the board; and with them the surrendering of the illusion.

Details cluttered the mortal mind, blinded it to the broader sweeps of history. He’d thought to reach this observation in his lesson with Legyl. It might have been, he now considered, that she was still rather
too
young for such concepts. But then, it was equally likely that age had little to do with comprehension. He need only descend the tower and plunge into the frantic world of the court to witness the same obsessions with detail and immediacy that sent Legyl Behust scurrying this way and that. If anything, he was, in making the comparison, being unkind to the child.

No matter. Thoughts unspoken left no scars upon others. The fate of the inner landscape of the one doing the thinking was, of course, entirely different. This was the procession, he knew, of the failing mind, and in that failure was found a place where many unspoken thoughts came to rest; and it was a place of prejudice, hatred and ignorance.

That said, he knew that he was a poor teacher. He wove his histories as if they were inventions, disconnected and not relevant. Worse, he preferred the sweeping wash of colour to obsessive detail, ineffable feeling over intense analysis, possibility over probability; he was, by any measure, a dreadful historian.

He could see a shadow upon the city below, not thrown down by the smoke; nor did it come from a cloud as the sky was clear. This was Mother Dark’s indrawn breath, stealing the light from the world. What, he wondered, did she do with it? Was it as the priestesses said? Did she devour it, feed upon it? When light goes, where does it go?

The landscape painters of old became obsessed with light, and reputedly that obsession drove many of them mad. But surely it was much worse if all light was stolen away. His thoughts turned to Kadaspala, the finest of all portrait artists – was it any wonder that he lived beneath a cloud of fear and flung his rage at the world? The priestesses promised gifts with the coming of darkness, and that none would be blind within it. Such gifts came from sorcery and so they were never free. Rise wondered at the cost awaiting them all.

He heard scrabbling from the stairs and turned to see Cedorpul climbing into view. The young priest was out of breath, his round face and round body seeming to bob loosely, as if filled with air. Behind him, as he stepped on to the platform, another figure loomed into view.

Cedorpul looked round. ‘She’s not here? Where is she?’

‘In her room. Playing.’

‘Abdication of responsibilities!’

Rise Herat tilted his head to one side. ‘My very thoughts when you left her with me, Cedorpul.’

The priest waved a hand and then spent a moment straightening his stained tunic. ‘These matters are beneath argument. Her whereabouts are known: that is all that is relevant here.’

The other priest edged past Cedorpul and stood looking out over the city.

‘Endest Silann,’ Rise said to him, ‘tell me what you see?’

‘It is less what I see than what I feel, historian.’

‘And what do you feel?’

‘Up here, it is as if the world’s weight falls from my shoulders. While in the corridors beneath us …’ He shrugged.

‘You are young,’ said Rise. ‘There is much for you to bear, but the gift of youth means you scarcely feel its weight. It distresses me to think that you are growing old before your time.’

Cedorpul said, ‘You’ve not yet heard. A rider has come in from one of the monasteries. Warlock Resh leads a party of Shake. They are escorting a guest, who will meet Mother Dark herself.’

‘Indeed? It is already known that she will grant an audience? This guest must be of considerable importance.’

‘From the Vitr.’

Rise turned to Cedorpul, studied the flushed face and bright blue eyes, wondering again at the lack of eyebrows or any other facial hair – did the man simply shave it all off, as he did from his pate? It seemed an odd affectation. ‘Nothing comes from the Vitr,’ he said.

‘We make bold claims at our peril,’ Endest muttered from where he leaned over the wall.

Rise considered for a moment, and then said, ‘It is said the Azathanai have fashioned stone vessels capable of holding Vitr. Perhaps entire ships can be constructed of the same material.’

‘No ships,’ said Cedorpul. ‘Beyond that, we know little. A woman, but not Tiste.’

‘Azathanai?’

‘It would seem so,’ Endest confirmed.

‘They should approach the edge of the forest soon, I would judge,’ Cedorpul announced, moving to position himself beside his fellow priest. ‘We thought to witness their arrival from here.’

So much for a period of restful contemplation. ‘I trust all is being made ready below.’

‘Nothing grand,’ Cedorpul said. ‘This is not a formal visit, after all.’

‘No polishing of buckles?’ Rise asked. ‘No buffing of silver?’

Endest snorted.

Puffing out his fleshy cheeks, Cedorpul slowly shook his head. ‘Ill-chosen my company this day. I am assailed by irreverence. An historian who derides historical occasions. An acolyte who mocks decorum.’

‘Decorum?’ Endest twisted round on one elbow to regard Cedorpul. ‘How readily you forget, that before dawn this morning I dragged you out from under three priestess candidates. Smelling like a sack of stale wine, and as for the stains upon your robes, well, I remain most decorous in not looking too closely!’ To Rise Herat he added, ‘Cedorpul finds the candidates when they’re still waiting in the chaperon’s antechamber, and informs them that their prowess in bed must be tested—’

‘I avail myself of their natural eagerness,’ Cedorpul explained.

‘He’s found an unused room and now has the key for it. Swears the candidates to secrecy—’

‘Dear me,’ said Rise. ‘Cedorpul, you risk a future of scorn and righteous vengeance. I hope I live to witness it in all its glory.’

‘Endest, you have failed me in every measure of friendship of which I can conceive. Into the ears of the court historian, no less! It will be the two of you who curse me to the fate the historian so ominously describes!’

‘Hardly,’ countered Endest. ‘I envision a night of confessions – no, whom do I deceive? Dozens of nights and confessions by the hundred. Yours is a fate I do not envy—’

‘You seemed thankful enough for my cast-offs last night, honourable acolyte. And every other night at that. Who was it who said that hypocrisy has no place in a temple of worship?’

‘No one,’ replied Rise Herat, ‘as far as I know.’

‘Indeed?’ Cedorpul asked. ‘Truth?’

Rise nodded.

‘Oh my,’ Cedorpul said, and then he sighed. ‘These matters are beneath argument. Let us ignore, for the time being, the unfortunate circumstances driving the three of us into each other’s company, and enjoy the view.’

‘And what of young Legyl Behust?’ Rise asked him.

‘Surely there is a sound argument to be made regarding the educational value of play. Besides, that chamber beneath us is the traditional sanctuary of the Citadel’s succession of hostages. May she bar the door in all assurance of privacy. Until the noon bell at the very least.’

It occurred to Rise Herat, somewhat ungraciously, that he would have preferred the company of Legyl Behust.

Cedorpul pointed. ‘I see them!’

* * *

Sister Emral Lanear examined herself in the full-length silvered mirror. The faintly blurred woman staring back at her promised great beauty, and Emral longed for them to exchange places. With such a prayer answered, none could pierce the veil, and she need not guard herself at every moment, lest someone glimpse the tortured truths roiling behind her eyes; and in expression she would give nothing away.

The world held up its illusions. No one could see for ever, beyond horizons, through the thickest of forests and the solid mountains of rock, or into the depths of dark rivers, and so there were promises out there as well, inviting the longing reach, offering up vistas of grandeur. The illusions were borne by all who witnessed them in the name of sanity, perhaps, or hope. And so too could others see her: a
High
Priestess taking her station in the altar room, with the other High Priestess at her side, both standing as representatives of Mother Dark, whose own veil of darkness none could pierce – they could indeed see this and so find whatever illusions of comfort they desired.

There was no cause to resent their expectations. Yet, for all that, she wished the image before her to step out from the mirror, leaving a space into which Emral could then plunge. Illusions held up the world, and she was so tired of holding up her own.