Fall of Light (The Kharkanas Trilogy, #2)

by Steven Erikson

Necessity, when spoken of in the forum of human endeavour, is more often a lie than not. Those who have laid claim to your life will use it often, and yet hold you at a distance, refusing you that time of contemplation, or, indeed, recognition.

What? No, I do not know King Tehol the Only. Will you interrupt me again?

‘she was profoundly attractive in a plain sort of way.’

‘If not the common subjects of Mother Dark, there are always her priestesses.’ ‘And wiggle the bent key? I think not.’ After a moment, Silchas Ruin frowned and leaned forward. ‘One of these barred gates is hers?’ Grizzin Farl raised a finger to his lips. ‘Tell no one,’ he whispered. ‘They’ve not yet tried the door, of course.’

‘There are mysteries to Lord Draconus. The Azathanai name him Suzerain of Night. What consort is worth such an honorific?

the sacred was not found, but delivered.

I am not the voice of posterity, Anomander Rake. Nor are you.’ ‘Rake?’ ‘Purake is an Azathanai word,’ Brood said. ‘You did not know? It was an honorific granted to your family, to your father in his youth.’ ‘Why? How did he earn it?’

‘K’rul gave it. He did not share his reasons. Or, rather, “she”, as K’rul is wont to change his mind’s way of thinking, and so assumes a woman’s guise every few centuries. He is now a man, but back then he was a woman.’

‘Pur Rakess Calas ne A’nom. Roughly, Strength in Standing Still.’

‘And Rakess? Or Rake, as you would call me?’ ‘Only what I see in you, and what all others see in you. Strength.’ ‘I feel no such thing.’ ‘No one who is strong does.’

Every kindness you yield they will take as deserved, but such appetites are unending, and your denial is the crime they but await. Commit it and witness their subsequent vilification.’

Tradition is the great slayer. It clings to its proof and it drowns in its own net, from which nothing ever escapes.

Each of us comes to the shore. In our own time and in our own place. When we are done with one life, and must begin another. Each of us will come to the shore.

The newborn sorcery is all raw power, and no obvious rules.’

What is the meaning of that etching upon the floor in the Citadel? This Terondai, that now so commands the Citadel?’ ‘Perhaps,’ she ventured, ‘Lord Draconus seeks to impose rules.’ His frown deepened. ‘Darkness, devoid of light. Light, burned clean of darkness. Simple rules. Rules that distinguish and define.

‘Then I will leave as soon as I am able. But for now, tell me what I can do to help you heal your friend.’ ‘No god looks down, captain, to add to your ledger of good deeds.’ ‘I will measure my own deeds, warlock, good and bad.’ ‘And how weighs the balance?’ ‘I am a harsh judge of myself,’ she said. ‘Harsher than any god would dare match. I look to no priest to dissemble on my behalf.’ ‘Is that a priest’s task?’ ‘If not, then I would hear more.’ But he shook his head, rising with a soft groan. ‘My own dissemblers have grown quiet of late, captain. I look for no sanction now, in what I do. And for the Shake, no god observes, no god judges, and in that absence – forgive us all – we are relieved.’

Until the night the Eresal came to them. In the shifting grasses, the eye is easily deceived. But this is no flaw of the beholder, no weakness of the witness. This is the blurring of magic. Who brought us this gift? This escape from extinction? There was talk of a mother who would rut everything in sight. A hoarder of seeds, a living vessel of hope. A Mahybe.

In the cave, his kin were coming, committing terrible slaughter in the blood-splashed chambers. He was one, bound here. He was many, and the many now came.

‘He retreats,’ Resh said in a frail gasp. He looked across at her, his eyes wide and frightened. ‘Understand me, captain, none of this was my doing. They but wait, now.’ ‘They?’ ‘I spoke of the revenant awakened by my wife – how one became many.’ ‘And this now afflicts Caplo Dreem?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Is it an illness? A fever?’ ‘I think … no. It is—’ He shook his head. ‘I cannot be certain. It is … an escape.’ ‘From what?’ She leaned back, released Caplo’s arm, and studied the warlock. ‘From death itself? He was going to die—’ ‘No longer. But I can say nothing more, captain.’

Glyph moved to settle into a crouch beside him. ‘I name you the Watch. In our old language: Yedan.’ Narad grunted. ‘I do little else.’ ‘No. For the time of night, when you wake. When you rise and walk the camp. The time of night when your haunts return to you. Your nerves tremble. A restless thing takes you, a thing you cannot name, unless you clothe it in your deepest fears. You wake and stand, when others would fight back into sleep, into losing themselves again. This is a terrible vigil, a solitary vigil. It is the vigil of one who stands alone.’

‘It seems you have already invented me, Glyph. Found a way to, well, hammer me into your way of seeing the world. I am an awkward fit, don’t you think? Best find another, someone else, someone with less … less history.’

They will soon be here.’ ‘All right. Coming from where?’ ‘From a holy shrine. From an altar black with old blood.’

‘I have been thinking on that, highness. On war. I have been thinking that it does not matter where the war is, or who fights it. Or whether we hold blood ties to the slayers, or not. It could well be on the other side of the world, fought by strangers, for reasons we cannot even understand. None of that matters, highness. It is our war nonetheless.’ ‘How so, Yedan Narad?’ ‘Because, in the end, nothing divides us. Nothing distinguishes us. We commit the same crimes, taking lives, holding ground, yielding ground, crossing blood-drenched borders – lines in the sand no different from this one here.

‘We all commit violence on ourselves, highness. It is more than just brother against brother, sister against sister, or any other combination you care to imagine. Our thoughts wage savage mayhem in our skulls, with no respite. We fight desires, wave banners of hope, tear down the standards of every promise we have dared utter. In our heads, my queen, is a world that is without peace, and by that description we define life itself.’

‘Highness, I must ask you – who set this world afire?’ She reached out to him, one soft gore-smeared hand touching the line of his jaw, lifting his gaze to her own. The rapists had done their work. There was no forgetting that. He remembered the feel of her broken body beneath him, and the ragged mess that had been her wedding dress. With dead eyes, she looked upon him, and her dead lips parted, to utter the dead words, ‘You did.’

‘When the fires take the sea,’ Narad said, seeing once again that terrible shoreline where he had walked. The hand on his shoulder held him with a savagely tight grip now, sending pain lancing through him. ‘Upon the shoreline,’ he said. ‘There, when you ask it of us, we will stand.’ ‘In whose name?’ Caladan asked. ‘Hers,’ Narad replied. The Deniers shouted, in fury, in outrage. But Narad opened his eyes and met Lord Anomander’s startled gaze. And said, a second time, ‘Hers.’ He watched as Caladan reached out, grasped hold of Lord Anomander’s left arm, and dragged the Son of Darkness out from the camp. As if a single additional word might shatter everything.

‘When Lord Anomander calls, will we answer?’ Narad looked across at Glyph. ‘He won’t have to, Glyph. That place I described? I fear we will already be there.’ Standing fast, upon the shores of peace. In her name. ‘Glyph?’ ‘Yedan Narad?’ ‘Your old language. Have you a name for a shoreline?’ The hunter nodded. ‘Yes.’ ‘What is it, then?’ ‘Emurlahn.’ Yes. There.

Forgotten monuments rode the Sidleways, inward from other realms. Like flotsam, fragments washed up here, as if this plain served a singular purpose as the repository of failed faiths, abandoned dreams and broken promises. Perhaps it was, as some of his kin believed, the corner of the mind, and the mind in question was the universe itself.

leathery wings,

shigal assassin ?

A Builder found me. I was … exploring.’ He paused for a moment, and when he resumed his tone changed, seeking something more conversational. ‘Mostly, I am ignored. But not this time, and not with this one.’ K’rul waved at himself. ‘It dragged me here. Well, at first it dragged me about the yard, as if wanting to leave me there, or there, or perhaps there. No place seemed to satisfy it. In the end, it left me on the doorstep, as it were, and then? Why, it vanished.’

‘I found a world in argument with itself. The delusion of intelligence, K’rul, is a sordid thing.’

‘Errastas seeks to usurp command of these gifts.’ He cocked his head and studied Skillen, and then added, ‘No. Command is not, I now think, the right word. Allow me to offer you one that you, in your present state, might better comprehend. He seeks to impose his flavour upon my gifts, and from that, a sort of influence. Skillen, I do not think I can stop him.’

Moments later, Iskari Mockras, you were little more than a speck, but still I trembled to your heat,

We are fragments of Tiam. Something like children, but too wise for that title.

Escape, or summons. The matter was yet to be determined. Magic burned bright in this strange realm, but flowed untethered. Currents charged nowhere, clashed without purpose.

shall make this sorcery mine. Moments later, as he sailed the high winds rising from the walls of mountains that faced the western sea, Dalk Tennes caught the scent of freshly spilled blood.

‘Iskari Mockras! Arak Rashanas, my foul brother, lusts after you! I pursue him! Too many insults, too many betrayals! There were crushed eggs making a path to your high perch! He leaves you to yearn and doubt my seed’s power! I will kill him!’ Rearing upright, the beast’s heart tumbling out from his grip, Erelan staggered a step, and then clutched the sides of his head. ‘I took her again, Arak Rashanas! She will yield my spawn in this new world! They are born with the hate of you in their hearts – this I swear!’

‘You mock me, but I tell you, there is no place in all the world which they have not seen, have not explored, have not interfered with. The Jaghut were right to oust the one they found hiding in their midst. You might think us Thel Akai immune, but there is no telling if an Azathanai hides among us – they choose the flesh they wear, you know—’

‘The Builders make houses. From broken stone they build houses, as if to gift the disordered world with order. But, K’rul, unlike you, I am not convinced. Who, after all, broke the stones? It is my thought that the Builders are our enemy. They are not assemblers of reason, or even purpose. Their houses are built to contain. They are prisons – the Builder who dragged you to that house sought to chain you to it, in its yard so perfectly enclosed by that stone wall.’

‘I sought a breaking of the rules, Skillen. Oh, I know, what rules? Well, it seemed – seems – to me that they exist. More to the point, they do not answer to us. Look well on each of us. We Azathanai. On our habits, our proclivities and predilections, and how they serve our need to distinguish each of us from the others. But rules precede us, as cause precedes effect.

‘Some things we do share. For one, the habit that is our possessiveness, when it comes to our power. I admit, I found inspiration in the Suzerain of Night, when from love he gave a mortal woman so much of his own power. And, once it was done – well, he could not take it back.’

So, together now, Draconus and K’rul, we come to threaten the realm with devastation. By our gifts. By the helplessness we so coveted. Understand, it did not seem that way, not to begin with. The acts were … generous. Was this, in fact, our purpose? The mystery of our existence, solved by simple sacrifice? By yielding so much of ourselves?’

‘Errastas seeks to impose a kind of order upon my gifts, and make of chance a secret assassin to hope and desire. Droe, there are gates, now. They await guardians. Suzerain powers. But I cannot look to the Azathanai. Draconus would seek them among the Tiste, but I deem that dubious and, indeed, fraught.

I knew I must look elsewhere.’ He hesitated, and then said, ‘Old friend, Starvald Demelain has opened on to this realm, twice now. There are dragons among us – the boldest of the kin, no doubt. Ambitious, acquisitive.’

‘Chaos is necessary,’ K’rul said, ‘to balance what Errastas seeks.’

‘Oh, the first time yielded but one dragon, and it is already dead.’ ‘Dead?’ ‘Well, as dead as dragons are able to get.’ ‘Who killed it?’ ‘I’m not sure. Its carcass rots on the shore of the Vitr.’ ‘Which dragon? Name it!’ ‘Korabas Otar Tantaral.’ ‘Korabas!’ ‘But don’t worry,’ said K’rul. ‘I’m not done with her just yet.’

But whatever barriers the silence posed, there was nothing personal to them. They stood not in answer to any particular threat. They faced out upon every imaginable quarter, standing fast against both presence and absence. This was, Arathan had come to believe, not the silence of an embittered man. It accused no one, acknowledged not a single enemy, and because of this, it infuriated all.

Sorcery seethed through that sprawling camp. Foodstuffs were conjured from earth and clay. Boulders leaked sweet water without surcease. Fires burned without fuel.

Haut had explained about the blood, the unseen torrents that now flowed through all the realms. The madness of a lone Azathanai named K’rul. The sacrifice of a foolish god. Hood’s grief and torment was nothing compared to what K’rul had unleashed upon the world, and yet here in this absurd camp, with its thousands of strangers now crowding close, Korya had begun to sense the collision now under way.

‘This, then, is friendship. A family you choose. What you give to it, you give freely. What you withhold from it, measures its depth. There are those who know only distant relations – associates, if you will.