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May 8 - August 4, 2022
a child of ten or eleven years, a woman of youthful visage with unhuman eyes, and a bent old woman – and it is, in every detail, an illusion, for what lies within us is reversed. I am the child. The Tiste Andii has known thousands of years of life, and the girl … hundreds of thousands.
‘Experiences are the same. Between your two armies, indeed. But also … across the breadth of time. Among all who possess memories, whether an individual or a people, life’s lessons are ever the same lessons.’ The Tiste Andii’s now-violet eyes rested on Silverfox. ‘Even among the T’lan Imass – is this what you are telling us, child?’
What hapless victims are witness to on this night of nights is naught but cosmic sympathy for worthy Kruppe!’
Unfamiliar faces, gauging regard, every sense heightened in an effort to read the unknown. The natural efforts of society. Do we all possess a wish to remain unseen, unnoticed? Is the witnessing of our actions by others our greatest restraint?
‘Then he mocks his god! The Barghast know of Fener, the Tusked One. There is fire in his blood!’ ‘The fire of battle—’ ‘Of lust, scrawny pup!’
‘I wish us to become lovers, Whiskeyjack. Beginning tonight. I wish to awaken in your arms. I would know if you have feelings for me.’
‘Kruppe shivers when she so names them, ah … gods bless this grim beauty in its barrenland tableau, from which starry dreams so dimmed with time are as rainbow rivers in the sky!’
The air of the concourse blackened as fifteen hundred bows whispered as one.
What the soul can house, flesh cannot fathom.
The hand of vengeance stayed cold only so long. Any soul possessing a shred of humanity could not help but see the reality behind cruel deliverance, no matter how justified it might have at first seemed. Faces blank in death. Bodies twisted in postures no-one unbroken could achieve. Destroyed lives. Vengeance yielded a mirror to every atrocity, where notions of right and wrong blurred and lost all relevance.
A battle that made shields and armour useless, that made flailing swords futile. A soul hardened beyond humanity was the only defence, and for Itkovian that price was too high. I am the Shield Anvil. I surrender to what lies before me. Thicker than smoke, the grief unleashed and now lost, churning this lifeless air. A city has been killed. Even the survivors huddling in the tunnels below – Fener take me, better they never emerge … to see this.
We are all pushed into a world of madness, yet it must now fall to each of us to pull back from this Abyss, to drag ourselves free of the descending spiral. From horror, grief must be fashioned, and from grief, compassion.
‘Devious man. The answer to every facet of that question is yes. Would you now have me ask in kind?’
When frozen between life and death, in the glacial in-between, what can exist of mortal feeling? Not even an echo. Only memories of ice, of ice and no more than that. Gods below … such sorrow …
‘I’ll grant you he’s round and small and slimy, but clever, yes? Clever heats the blood all on its own, does it not? I have heard that, while you may look like a woman, you remain as a child in the most important way. Stir yourself with desire, lass! You’ve been consorting with the undead and the withered for far too long! Grasp the spear with both hands, I always say!’
We humans do not understand compassion. In each moment of our lives, we betray it. Aye, we know of its worth, yet in knowing we then attach to it a value, we guard the giving of it, believing it must be earned. T’lan Imass. Compassion is priceless in the truest sense of the word. It must be given freely. In abundance.
