Forge of Darkness (Kharkanas Trilogy 1) (61 page)

This was the civilization of the Azathanai, desultory and forlorn. In its impoverishment it besieged the soul, and the most horrifying thing of all, to Arathan’s eyes, was that some of these houses were still occupied. He saw solid doors, latched shut, and the smudged ember-glows of candles leaking through shutters. He saw figures standing in shadows, beneath porches made of huge granite stones so perfectly cut that no mortar was needed, and he felt the unyielding pressure
of
strangers’ eyes upon him and his companions as they rode slowly through the settlement.

His imagination recoiled from the poison of this place, from all the rejections – the casting away of pointless possessions, the indifference to weed-snarled yards and the broken barrows of burnt wood that had once been buildings. This was not his world and to breathe of it, to look upon it and take inside each and every detail, whispered of madness.

The day’s lifeless light was failing. Lord Draconus led them through tumbled gaps in the walls, cutting through the centre of the settlement. The horses walked as if exhausted by grief, and upon the dusty neck of Besra, the flies barely crawled.

When his father reined in opposite an oversized house of stone and timber, Arathan felt his spirits flinch. It stood a short distance away, somehow more alone than all the others, and upon its granite facade the grey stone had been carved in endless, meaningless patterns of what seemed to be circles or rings. The sawn ends of the wood rafters, forming a row above the squat, wide door frame and marching on to the very ends of the front wall to either side, all bore similar shapes, like the imprints left behind by raindrops on mud. Three low walls reached for the building but all seemed to have shattered or crumbled with the effort. The air around the house felt dead and cold.

‘You might think,’ said Draconus, half turning to regard his bastard son, ‘that your thoughts are your own.’

Arathan blinked.

Behind him, Sergeant Raskan whispered something like a prayer, and then cleared his throat. ‘My lord, is this sorcery, then, to so plague our minds?’

‘The world around you speaks your language,’ Draconus replied. ‘It can do no else. All you see bears the paint of your words.’ He paused, and then grunted, ‘I wager none of you noted the flowers amidst the weeds, or the dance of the swifts above the old spring. Or how the sky, for but a moment, was like the purest porcelain.’

Unwilling to turn, to look upon Feren who rode at Rint’s side, Arathan stared at his father, fighting with the meaning of his words. ‘We are invited,’ he said.

‘Indeed, Arathan. You begin to comprehend the curse of the Azathanai.’

‘The Jheleck do not raid here any more.’

Draconus shrugged. ‘See you anything of value?’

A figure now stood in the doorway of the strange, carved house. Not tall but thin, and, from what Arathan could make out, barely clothed – and that clothing was little more than rags of the skins of small animals. All at once, to Arathan, the scene seemed perfect – perfectly rendered, and nothing was accidental.
Nothing ever is
.

Rint spoke and his voice sounded clumsy and rough amidst a sudden, fragile elegance. ‘Do we make camp here, Lord Draconus? You mentioned a spring and we have great need of water.’

Draconus nodded. ‘The horses will find it for you, but we shall camp just beyond the village, on the hill at the crossroads up ahead.’ He dismounted.

Arathan did the same, trying not to shiver and struggling not to gasp: for all the perfection closing tight around him, it seemed the air surrounding the carved house could not feed his lungs.

Studying him, Draconus said, ‘Draw nearer to me, Arathan, if you wish to remain.’

Rint and Feren had moved away. Raskan was hastening to gather up the reins of the other horses, his movements strangely panicked to Arathan’s eyes.

Stepping closer to his father, Arathan found that he could once more fill his chest with sweet, blessed air. He returned his attention to the figure in the doorway. ‘Who is he and how can he live in … in this?’

‘Azathanai, of course,’ Draconus replied, and then sighed. ‘I know, the name is meaningless. No, it is more than that: it is misleading.’

When it seemed that he would not explain, Arathan asked, ‘Are they gods?’

‘If they are,’ his father said after a moment’s thought, ‘they are gods in waiting.’

‘Waiting for what?’

‘Worshippers. But this confuses things, I would wager. Belief creates, Arathan. So you have been taught. The god cannot exist until it is worshipped, until it is given shape, personality. It is made in the crucible of faith. So claim our finest Tiste philosophers. But it is not that simple, I think. The god may indeed exist before the first worshipper ever arrives, but it does not call itself a god. It simply lives, of and for itself. Far to the south, Arathan, there are wild horses, and from birth until death they remain free. They have never tasted an iron bit, or felt the command of reins or knees or heels, and in that freedom, not once in their lives do they surrender their fear of us.’

Arathan thought about that, but found no words for those thoughts.

His father continued, ‘What falls under our hand, Arathan, we bend to our will. The horses we ride worship us, as if we were gods. But you and I, we can taste the bitterness of that, because if we are gods then we are unreliable gods. Imperfect gods. Cruel gods. Yet the horse is helpless in the face of all that and can only yearn for our blessing. Should its master beat it, still it yearns, seeking what all living things seek: the grace of being. Still, its god ever turns away. You may pity that horse,’ Draconus continued after a moment, ‘but not its desire.’

The grace of being
. ‘Then what god would break us?’ Arathan asked.

Draconus grunted a second time, but it seemed to be a pleased grunt. He nodded to the figure in the doorway. ‘Not this one, Arathan.’

But Arathan’s thoughts had marched on, relentless upon a fraught path.
Do gods break those they would have as worshippers? Do they set upon their children terrible ordeals, so that those children must kneel in surrender, opening their souls to helplessness? Is this what Mother Dark will do to her children? To us?

‘Most Azathanai,’ Draconus continued, ‘have no desire to be worshipped, to be made into gods. The confession of the helpless is written in spilled blood. The surrender that is sacrifice. It can taste … bitter.’

He and his father were now alone, facing the house and its dweller. Dusk fell around them like dark rain, devouring everything else, until the rest of the village took on the texture of worn, fading tapestries.

The figure then stepped out from the doorway, and a light came with him. It was not a warm light, not a light to drive back the gloom, and it hovered over the man’s left shoulder, a pallid disc or ball, larger than a man’s head, and if the man reached up, it would have remained beyond his touch, just past his fingertips.

That globe followed the man as he approached.

‘Cold and airless is his aspect,’ muttered Draconus. ‘Stay close to me, Arathan. A step away from my power and the blood will freeze and then boil in your flesh. Your eyes will burst. You will die in great pain. I trust such details impress upon you the importance of remaining close?’

Arathan nodded.

‘He has not yet decided on a name,’ Draconus added. ‘Which is a rather irritating affectation.’

The man was surprisingly young, perhaps only a handful of years older than Arathan himself. Here and there, in almost random fashion, ring-like tattoos adorned his skin, like the scars from some pox. His narrow, nondescript face bore no marks, however, and the eyes were dark and calm. When he spoke, his voice made Arathan think – incongruously – of pond water beneath a thin sheet of ice. ‘Draconus, it has been how many years since we last met? On the eve of the Thel Akai’s disavowal—’

‘We’ll not speak of time,’ Draconus said, and the words rang like a command.

The man’s brows lifted slightly, and then he shrugged. ‘But one way, surely, this refusal? After all, the future is the only field still to be sowed, and if we are to stay our hands here, what point this meeting? Shall we throw our seeds, Draconus, or make blunt fists?’

‘I did not think it would be you delivering the gift,’ Draconus replied.

‘Oh, that gift. You surmise correctly. Not me.’ And with that he smiled.

Arathan’s father answered with a scowl.

The stranger’s laugh was low. ‘Indeed. Impatience besets you, to no avail. You must trek farther still. The next village at the very least.’

‘The next, or do you but mock me?’

‘The next, I think. There has been much talk of your … request. And the answering thereof.’

‘Already I have been away from the court for too long,’ Draconus said in a frustrated growl.

‘Such gestures fill the imagination of the bearer,’ the man said, ‘but the same cannot be certain of the recipient. I fear a great disappointment awaiting you, Draconus. Perhaps even a hurt, a deep wound—’

‘I am not interested in your prophecies, Old Man.’

Arathan frowned at that strange name, so contrary to this figure facing them.

‘Not a prophecy, Draconus. I would not risk that in your presence. Rather, I fear the value you have imbued in this gift of yours – it is, perhaps, dangerous in its extremity.’

‘Who awaits me in the next village?’

‘I cannot even guess,’ Old Man replied. ‘But a few will gather. Curious. This usage of Night, Draconus, was without precedent, and the fury of the believers is something to behold.’

‘I care not. Let them worship stone if it pleases them. Unless,’ he added, ‘they would challenge me?’

‘Not you, nor the hand with which you wielded your desire. Instead, Draconus, they weep and seek redress.’

‘As I expected.’

Old Man was silent for a long moment, and then he said, ‘Draconus, be careful – no, we must all be careful now. In the healing they seek, they reach deeply into the Vitr. We do not know what will come of this.’

‘The Vitr? Then they are fools.’

‘The enemy is not foolishness, Draconus, but desperation.’

‘Who so reaches?’

‘I have heard Ardata’s name mentioned. And the Sister of Dreams.’

Draconus looked away, his expression unreadable. ‘One thing at a time,’ he muttered.

‘Much to make right, Draconus,’ Old Man said, smiling once more. ‘In the meantime, my child approaches.’

‘So you ever say.’

‘So I shall say until I need say it no more.’

‘I never understood why you were content with mere reflection, Old Man.’

The smile broadened. ‘I know.’

He turned round then and walked back to his house, the globe
following
and taking with it the bitter cold, the empty promise of dead air.

Halfway back, Old Man paused and looked back. ‘Oh, Draconus, I almost forgot. There is news.’

‘What news?’

‘The High King has built a ship.’

Arathan felt a sudden pressure, coming from his father, an invisible force that pushed him away, one step, and then another. He gagged, began to crumple—

And then a hand pulled him close. ‘Sorry,’ Draconus said. ‘Careless of me.’

Half bent over, Arathan nodded, accepting the apology. Old Man had vanished within his strange house, taking the light with him.

‘I’m never good,’ said Draconus, ‘with displeasing news.’

* * *

The noses of the horses found the spring readily enough, and Rint leaned forward over the saddle horn to study the stone-lined pond. As Draconus had predicted, there were swifts wheeling and darting above the still waters, and now bats as well. Beside him, Feren grunted and said, ‘What do you make of that?’

A statue commanded the centre of the pool. A huge figure, sunk to its thighs, roughly hacked from serpentine as if in defiance of that stone’s potential, for it was well known that serpentine wore well the finest polish – not that Rint had ever seen a solid block anything near the size of this monstrosity, more familiar with small game pieces and the like. None the less, this seemed a most artless effort. The torso and every limb were twisted, the stone seeming to shout its pain. The scum of dried algae stained its thighs, evidence of the spring’s slow failing perhaps. The face, tilted skyward atop a thick, angular neck, offered the heavens a grimace, and this face alone bore signs of a skilled hand. Rint stared up at it, mesmerized.

Raskan moved past the two Borderswords, leading the horses to the pond’s roughly tiled edge.

Sighing, Feren slipped down from the saddle, dropping the reins of her mount so that it could join the other beasts in drinking from the pool.

‘I think it’s meant to be a Thel Akai,’ Rint finally said.

‘Of course it’s a Thel Akai,’ Feren snapped. ‘All that pain.’ She held in one hand three waterskins and now moved to crouch down at the edge, and began filling them.

Feeling foolish, Rint pulled his gaze away from the giant’s tormented face and dismounted. He collected more waterskins from where they hung flaccid from his saddle.

‘What I meant was,’ Feren resumed, ‘why raise a statue in the middle of a watering hole? It’s not even on a pedestal or anything.’