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When I first heard of the title he had invented for himself I sought out the Old Language, seeking an alternative that would properly belong within the temple hierarchy. I found the title of “Destriant”, signifying the position of Chosen Priest – yet a priest belonging to no temple.
Then the Jaghut said, ‘Hanako, I am named Raest.’
Petty tyrants from across the ocean, fleeing the High King’s incorruptible justice.
‘Humility. Seek it within yourself, be as sceptical of your own superiority as your intellect is sceptical of the superiority of things other than itself. Turn your critical faculties inward, with ruthless diligence, and by that you will understand the true meaning of courage. It is the kind of courage that sees you end up on your knees, but with the will to rise once more, to begin it all over again.’
Ashes … they will tell you that something has burned, but what is the shape of that thing? For those who burned but faintly, some form remains, enough with which to guess. But for those who burned fiercely, ah, as you say, nothing but a heap of ashes, swiftly scattered on the wind.’
‘You have left spawn among the mortals,’ K’rul said to Vix. ‘They name themselves Trell, and make war with the Thelomen.’
‘I contemplate a third breed, an admixture of Thelomen, Trell and Dog-Runner, whom I shall name Barghast. I expect they will war against everyone.’
‘Deniers came into the camp yesterday. Hunters who’d come home to their forest camps to find their mates slaughtered. The children too. Those hunters have lost their black skin. They’re now grey, as grey as the Dog-Runners when they smear themselves in ash.’ She shrugged. ‘Rituals of mourning, only with the Deniers, it’s permanent.’
Point meme
is why I’m done listening to old men. Hope dies to ten thousand small cuts, and these men around us, Arathan, they are most terribly scarred.’
‘Hood, you will be the death of us all.’
‘Ah, Erekol, do join me, whilst I explain the lancing of boils.’ ‘I could do that as easily as some ancient hoary god trapped under a tree. One at a time, as I said.’ Hood studied her for a long moment. ‘I know something of your tale. Your … reasons. But have you not a surviving son?’ ‘Left in the care of others.’
As Gothos would tell you, civilization plays its game of convenient evasion. Us. Them. Meaningless borders, arbitrary distinctions.
‘The dead are unforgiving,’ the ghost replied in a thin voice. ‘Which is, I suppose, why we are known to be such miserable company.
What is perceived is rarely the truth, and what is true is only rarely perceived.
When next you see Jaghut, tell them this from Guardian Cadig Aval: “I told you so.” If brave, you may add “idiots” to my message.’
The flesh is a weary vessel, and that which crumbles soon becomes a prison to the soul. Death, accordingly, is a relief. Indeed, an escape.’
Her weapons invited the kind of death that was delivered with an embrace. Not for her the distance of an arrow or a lance. She would fight and don the blood of those she killed, and this red dress was one she yearned to wear.
‘You have stained your skin. That is good.’ She frowned. ‘I have done nothing.’ She raised a hand, squinting at it. Her skin was the hue of ash. Blinking, she looked across to Glyph. ‘You are the same. But I saw you smearing ash upon your faces when first I came among you. I considered doing the same, but then forgot. We are stained, but not by our doing.’
‘At the very least,’ Spinnock said, ‘before I offer up this kiss, tell us your name.’ ‘Telorast.’
Three strides through, in the cloakroom, a grimy child stood as if awaiting them. He stared up at Kagamandra without expression. He was dressed in a tattered deerskin tunic, his lower legs bare and his feet stained black by ash and the greasy stone tiles. ‘Ah, one of my hostages? Very well.’ Kagamandra approached the child and reached out a hand to rest it upon the thin shoulder. The boy bared his teeth and growled. Kagamandra snatched his hand back. ‘Jhelarkan hostages, milord,’ said Braphen. ‘This one is named Gear.’
POINT MEME
‘And now, this is all I see, here through the smoke. Faces like blank pages. I know none of them, yet imagine that I should. The confusion frightens me. I am stalked by what I once knew and haunted by the man I once was.
‘The realms are bound. Beaten and twisted. They tremble to the pressure and yearn to burst apart. Wrapped and folded, wrapped and folded, quenched in the fires of chaos. Within the Hust iron, my friend, Mother bless me, I imprisoned a thousand realms. A thousand and more.’
‘Why do you have to do something just because you can? Why do you have to show your power if you already have it anyway? Aren’t you even more powerful when you don’t bother toppling mountains, when you don’t bother showing off?’
‘All too often, in seeking to heal, we reopen wounds. Never a good idea, in my experience.’
‘There are two chambers to the heart, child, and so you were named in answer to your twin sister. Meaning, you two are in truth one, bitterly divided in the hopes of weakening your power. But poor Malice, who came after, what was left to her? Denied a place, denied a home … what other name could attend such a child?’
‘This child, Draconus, has taken the best of you. This child is made pure. All the love you harboured, that you so callously hoarded, and meted out with such reluctance – it now resides in this babe, given to a mother too broken to love her back.
‘She is mine,’ cut in Sandalath, her tone oddly without inflection. ‘The one that lived. Her name,’ she added, ‘is Korlat.’
‘Why, the one who would lose the most, milady, is surely the one who would fight the hardest.’
‘Yedan, who killed Draconus? Who chained him within a sword of his own making? I do not understand.’
In your language, Eleint, Menas is one name for Shadow. The name you seemed eager to attach to this narrow strand, this Emurlahn of ours. Your voice comes from the half-seen, in the place neither here, nor there, and in the gloom – as if barely sketched by a ragged, dry brush – I saw a throne …
Uskan leaned his head to one side and spat blood. ‘Those poor monks were defending a corpse. They killed eighteen soldiers. And all of it was for nothing. Amusing, sir? No. Fucking hilarious.’ He paused, a frown settling on his pale brow. ‘Did I say eighteen? Wrong. Make that … nineteen …’ Hallyd Bahann glared at him, until he realized that Uskan couldn’t see anything, because the man was dead.
‘Well, there are indeed some, even other scholars, who find comfort in the belief that past ages in history can be seen as phases of our childhood, thus absolving them of knowing any better, and thus absolving us, in the present, of any lingering sense that maybe, once, long ago, life was better than it is now.’
‘I am named Silanah. Should you choose to seek me out, find me before passion’s gate, where I am known to abide. Curious and … as ever … enticed.’
‘Our aspect? We don’t have an aspect!’ ‘I believe that we do. Neither extreme suits us, only that which dwells between the two.’ He shrugged. ‘Name it Shadow … to match the cast of our skin, yes?’
before him, and off to the right – those many eyes narrowed – the skeletal frame of a wheeled wagon. Even incomplete, it was massive, almost beyond comprehension.
‘Still, I’ll leave one of you. For the chains. Though I doubt you’d deem them a mercy.’
Kellaras saw the priest, Endest Silann, edge in behind her, his hands devoid of cloth or bandage, the wounds dripping freely to paint his fingers. His face belonged to that of an aged man.
Omens are for fools, but every truth of the future resides in the present, if only we have the will to see.
‘War never pleased me, High Priestess. It is crass, an admission of failure. It is, alas, the triumph of stupid minds.’
Sometimes, privilege needs a serious fucking over, to send the message home.
Infayen’s unease was momentary, and quickly forgotten with the arrival of Lord Urusander. Their commander was not one for speeches, but Infayen felt the sudden rise of excitement and anticipation. It was finally coming to pass. We march to Kharkanas, and there will be justice.
‘Sooner or later,’ she predicted, ‘you Shake must learn how to fight, to stand and not yield a step.’
What worth this civilization, when savagery thrives within it? When criminals abound in safety behind its walls?
Boys and girls in the end after all. Here I believed politics to be something lofty, clever and sharp with wit. But it is nothing like that.
‘In the meantime, old lover, let’s drink against the night and remember other nights from long ago, when we had nothing and everything, when we knew it all but didn’t know a fucking thing. Let’s drink, Ivis, to the sunken islands of our youth.’
‘I want to say how much I hate you right now.’ ‘Aye.’ ‘But it’s the opposite of hate.’ ‘I suppose it is, milady.’ ‘Don’t get killed.’
‘Ah, this is Hataras Raze. And here, Vastala Trembler. Bonecasters of the Logros clan of the Dog-Runners.’
They set out, at K’rul’s slow, halting pace. ‘We are afflicted with the stature of gods without the incumbent sense of responsibility. Our endless wandering is in fact an eternal flight from worshippers, no different from a father fleeing his wife and children.’
‘The K’Chain Che’Malle enslaved natural laws. They transformed their world with the tools of technology.’ ‘Indeed, and how have they fared?’ ‘Their war against nature is complete. Now they twist the very blood in their children, to make forms new and deadly.’
‘Give us distractions to craze the eye, deafen the ear, and dull the mind, and we can survive a lifetime of despair.
