Forge of Darkness (Kharkanas Trilogy 1) (94 page)

‘Of course not.’

‘Where is Sechul Lath?’

‘Near, but he has no wish to speak with you.’

‘If I find that you deceive me here, Errastas, I shall hunt you down, and with far greater efficacy than these helpless trackers.’

‘No doubt. But I tell you the truth. I have made no rivals, neither of Night’s aspect, nor of any other’s.’

Draconus was silent, studying Errastas.

‘I swear it!’ the Azathanai laughed. ‘Look at me! Do you think I would willingly repeat the ordeal I have suffered in the making of this
Teron
? How do you imagine I bound so much power to those crushed leaves? You above all others will comprehend the limits of wood, the atrocious absence of subtlety in stone, and the infuriating elusiveness of water and air. Did you truly think Night would readily yield to such binding? And by what coin could I make such purchase?’ He stepped back and essayed a grand bow. ‘See how I wear my wealth, O Lord?’

All at once Draconus staggered as if struck.

Before them Errastas, still in his bowing pose, was fading, like a ghostly apparition. Behind him the roof of the house suddenly slumped, collapsing inward in a dusty crash.

Bats thundered in, a chaotic maelstrom descending upon the site. Ducking, buffeted by wings, Arathan moved to the shelter of Besra’s side – but the beast was tossing its head in fright, dragging him across the ground in its panic. The warhorse Hellar, however, stood fast, and though Besra could with ease drag Arathan, it was drawn up short when the lead between it and Hellar snapped taut. Sheltering between the two beasts, Arathan covered his head, crouching low.

A sudden concussion erupted.

Moments later the air was clear – entirely empty, as if the bats had simply vanished.

Shaken, Arathan looked up, and then across to where stood Draconus.

His father had the bearing of a wounded man. His broad shoulders were hunched, his head lowered. For all his girth and height, he suddenly seemed frail. Then Arathan heard Draconus whisper a single word, a name that he had heard before.

‘
Karish
.’

All at once Arathan remembered the scene between his father and Olar Ethil: the sudden sheathing of verbal knives, the dismissal of threats. ‘
An Azathanai has committed murder
.’ A woman among the Jaghut.
Her name was Karish and Father knew her, enough to be shocked by the news, enough to grieve and seek comfort from his old lover
.

‘Your gift to Mother Dark,’ said Arathan, ‘is soaked in blood.’

When his father said nothing to that, he continued, ‘Errastas needed it, he said. To achieve what you wanted. Now he wears his raiment plainly, and in that boldness he reveals his thirst for more … more blood, and the power that comes from it.’

‘She will make this gift pure,’ Draconus said, without turning. ‘When Night unfolds once more, it will scour clean the binding – it will purge this poison.’

‘And so hide the crime from her eyes. You will not tell her, will you, Father?’

‘Nothing stays broken for ever.’ These whispered words were like a promise. He turned to face Arathan. ‘You think to hold this secret over me?’

Arathan shook his head. He felt suddenly exhausted and wanted only to turn away from all this. ‘Kurald Galain,’ he said, ‘is not for me. Neither is Mother Dark, nor you, Father. None of it is for me. Offer her your flawed gift if you must. I care not. I wish I could spit out this secret we now share, and if Errastas were here to read my thoughts at this moment, he might have cause to fear.’

Draconus snorted. ‘Most creatures of this world understand that fear can be a virtue. Errastas does not. If you seek him, he will wait for you and know your every thought. It is not a worthy path, Arathan. You are not ready to challenge Errastas.’

‘Who hunts him, Father?’

‘I don’t know.’

Distrusting that reply, Arathan shifted his attention back to the ruined house, where the dust was slow to settle. ‘Who once lived there?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Errastas used it. I would know the workings of his mind.’

Draconus strode back to Calaras. ‘Leave it, Arathan.’

‘You told Olar Ethil that you would seek the Lord of Hate. Will you still do so, Father?’

‘Yes.’ Draconus pulled himself into the saddle.

‘Will you lie to him as well?’

To that Draconus said nothing. Instead, he kicked his warhorse into motion.

Arathan chose Hellar instead of Besra and mounted up, and then set off after his father.

Draconus had grown so large in Arathan’s eyes. Now he grew small again. His father broke the women he loved, and yet feared that Mother Dark would break him. He was but a Consort; resented by the highborn and feared in the Citadel. He had forged an army out of his Houseblades and so earned the suspicions of Urusander’s Legion. He stood as a man beset on all sides.

Yet he leaves her, seeking out not a gift of love, but one of power. He thinks love is a toy. He thinks it shines like a bauble, and he makes every gesture a demand seeking love in return. Therefore, each and every thing that he does must be a thing of many meanings
.

But he does not understand that this is his private language, this game of bargaining and the amassing of debts no one else comprehends
.

I begin to understand the many lives of my father, and in each guise new flaws are revealed. I once vowed to hurt him if I could. A foolish conceit. Draconus knows nothing but hurts
.

Did you love Karish once? Tell me, Father, will the blood of one lover feed the next? Is this the precedent Errastas spoke of? Or did he speak as a god, flush with the lifeblood of a mortal?

Arathan fixed his eyes on his father, who still rode ahead. In days past he would have spurred his mount until he was at his side, and they would converse like a father and son in search of each other, and every wound would be small and every truth would weave its way into the skein between them. He would think this both precious and natural, and value the moments all the more for their unfamiliarity.

Now he chose to remain alone, riding in a reluctant wake, on a path he no longer desired. His thoughts reached back to his memories of Feren – not the bitterness of their departure, but those times when he had shared her warmth. He wished he could surrender to her again. Night after night, if only to show his father a love that worked.

In the months to come, she would swell with the child they had made, and in her village she would fend off the questions and turn away from all the cruel comments stalking her. Her brother would come to blows defending her honour. And all of this would play out in Arathan’s absence, and he would be judged accordingly. Such venom never lost its virulence.

If he had been older, he would have fought for her. If he’d had any other father – not Lord Draconus, Consort and Suzerain of Night – he would have found the courage to defy him. Instead, the father made himself anew in his son.
And I bow to it. Again and again, I bow to it
.

None of this armour he wore made him strong. It but revealed the weakness of flesh.

Feren. One day I will come for you
. He would weather the scorn of
her
neighbours, and they would ride away. They would find a world for their child.

A world that did not feed on blood.

* * *

Korya and Haut walked. Low square stone towers studded the landscape, crouched against hillsides, rising from ridges and crowding hilltops. They filled the floodplain to either side of the old river, their bulky shapes shouldering free of the tree-line where the forest had grown back, or hunched low on sunken flats where marsh grasses flowed like waves in the breeze that swept down the length of the valley.

As they passed among them, skirting the high edge of the valley’s north side, Korya saw that most were abandoned, and those few that showed signs of habitation were distant, and it seemed that Haut’s route deeper into the now dead Jaghut city deftly avoided drawing too near any of them.

She saw no evidence of industry, or farming, or manufacture. There were no outbuildings to be seen, either for storing food or stabling animals. For sustenance, these Jaghut must have supped on air.

Her thighs and calves ached from all the walking. The silence from Haut was oppressive and there was a steady pain behind her eyes and blood had soaked through the pad of moss between her legs. She awaited a word from him, something to snap at and so feel better, but he strode ahead without pause, until she felt as if he’d bound an invisible leash round her neck and was simply pulling her along like a reluctant pet. She wanted him to tug on that leash, draw her too close and so come within reach of her claws.

Not that she had any. Nights of cooking over campfires had made scorched and smudged bludgeons of her hands. And for all her vehemence, her strength was gone, withered away by this seemingly endless trek. Her clothes and hair were filthy and stank of smoke.

Another square tower was just ahead, and this one Haut was making no effort to avoid and so she assumed that it too was abandoned.
Another monument to failure. How I long for Kurald Galain!

When her master reached it, he halted and turned to Korya. ‘Prepare camp,’ he said. ‘Tonight we will sleep within, since there will be rain.’

She glared up at the cloudless sky, and then at the Jaghut.

‘Will the child doubt the adult in all things?’ he asked.

‘I trust,’ she said as she dropped the pack from her shoulders, ‘that was rhetorical.’

Haut pointed at a stunted tree outside the gaping entrance to the tower. ‘That shrub is called ilbarea.’

‘It’s dead.’

‘It does appear that way, yes. Collect a bag full of its leaves.’

‘Why?’

‘I see that you are in discomfort and ill-humour and so would remedy that. Not as much for your sake as for mine, since I have no desire to dodge barbs all night.’

‘I have questions, not barbs.’

‘And to grasp each one is to behold thorns. Collect the driest of the dead leaves and know that I do this for both of us.’

‘You just said—’

‘Bait to test your mood. The trap is sprung yet you still profess to a backbone and raised hackles. I will see you calmed and no longer so sickly-looking.’

‘Well, we can’t have your sensibilities so offended, can we?’ She rummaged in her pack and found a small sack that had once held tubers – ghastly tasting things even when boiled to a mush: she had thrown the rest away after the first night.

‘It is better,’ said Haut, ‘when you cook with enthusiasm.’

‘I thought we were hunting murderers,’ she said as she walked over to the shrub. ‘Instead we just walk and walk and get nowhere.’ She began plucking the dry, leathery leaves. ‘This will make wretched tea.’

‘I’m sure it would,’ he replied behind her. ‘Once you have filled the bag, we shall need a fire. There should be a wood pile behind the tower, in the yard. I have held on to a single bottle of wine and for that you will thank me, once you rediscover a thankful mood.’

‘I suggest you hold your breath while awaiting its arrival,’ she said, tugging at the leaves.

He grunted. ‘I have failed you with too much shelter, I now see. You are resilient in civil settings, yet frail in the wilds.’

‘You call this wild, master?’

‘You would deem it civilization, hostage?’

‘Civilization on its knees – if that roof proves dry to the nonexistent rain. I am far from enamoured, master, exploring this legacy of surrender. But this is only the wildness of neglect, and that is ever sordid for the tale it tells.’

‘True enough, there is nothing more sordid than civil failure, in particular its way of creeping up on one, in such minute increments as to pass unnoticed. If we are to deem civilization a form of progress, then how should it be measured?’

She sighed. Still more lessons. ‘You would engage an ill-tempered woman in debate, master?’

‘Hmm, true. Woman you are. Child no longer. Well, as I am bored, I will gird my armour and march into the perilous ferment of a woman’s fury.’

She so wanted to dislike him, but again and again it proved impossible. ‘The progress of civilization is measured in its gifts to labour
and
service. We are eased by the coalescing of intent, willingness and capability.’

‘Then how does one measure the stalling of said progress? Or indeed, its decline?’

‘Intent remains. Willingness fades and capability is called into question. Accord dissolves but blame is impossible to assign, leading to malaise, confusion and a vacuous resentment.’ The bag was stuffed full. Eyeing the shrub she was startled to see that upon every branch she had stripped bare new shoots had appeared, just as brown as the leaves they replaced. ‘What a ridiculous tree,’ she said.

‘Its disguise is death,’ said Haut. He had removed his gauntlets and was shrugging out from his surcoat of mail. ‘Give me the ilbarea, thus freeing your hands to collect wood.’

‘That is kind of you, master. But I wonder, if I am to be a mahybe, a vessel to be filled, why fill it with mundane tasks and seething frustration?’