Fall of Light (The Kharkanas Trilogy, #2)

by Steven Erikson

When you find a true friend, you will know it. There may be challenges in that relationship, but for all that, it thrives on mutual respect, and honours the virtues exchanged. You need no fists to make a space for yourself. No one clings to your shadow – even as they grow to despise that shadow, and the one who so boldly casts it. Your feelings are not objects to be manipulated, with cold intent or emotion’s blind, unreasoning heat. You are heard. You are heeded. You are challenged, and so made better. This is not a tie that exhausts, nor one that forces your senses to unnatural extremes of acuity.

Startled, she turned to see Haut. He stretched out one hand, as if to push away the ancient power. Instead, he twisted the hand until it was palm-up, uncurling his fingers.

With a piercing shriek, the leviathan lunged forward,

Then Haut moved away, clambering back down the rocky slope, muttering under his breath and waving both hands, as if fighting off a chorus of unspoken questions. Korya opened her hand and looked down at what she held. An acorn? A fucking acorn?

‘You never did well with pets, Haut. Especially other people’s pets.’ Haut scowled. ‘I warned Raest. Besides, in the end, he could not find dishonour in the tomb I raised for that idiot cat. In any case, this Tiste is not a pet.’

They watched him walk away, southward, towards the ruins of Omtose Phellack.

I shall think of pointlessness, in a pointed fashion.’

‘The Gate, which I suppose we must now call Kurald Galain, is an iteration of control,’ Caladan replied, ‘over a force that was and remains pervasive, existing as it does in opposition to Chaos.’ ‘To Chaos? Not Light?’ ‘Light, if you would consider this, is an absolution of Chaos. In its purity it finds order, with substance and hue. This is how Chaos seeks, in its own fashion, its own obliteration.’

In his blessing of the woman he loves with the power of Elemental Dark, Draconus imposed an impossible imbalance upon Creation. The world, First Son – any world – can hold only its necessary forces, and these in delicate balance. The Azathanai you have named T’riss had no choice, although in the boldness of her act she displayed nothing of the subtlety of our kind. It may be that the Vitr has damaged her in some way.’

No, the serious things he would think about, he decided as he closed his eyes, would be ones that mattered. Ones that worked to make him a better man, a man not afraid of feelings.

But one thing I now know. I made it through all of childhood, and not once did I learn about surrendering. I swam across the icy stream without even knowing it, and now I am safe again, for a time. Here with Lord Anomander, who is the First Son of Mother Dark. And with the Azathanai, who even if he’s not good for anything else can at least make a fine bowl of broth. He closed his eyes, and moments later was fast asleep. In his dreams, the dying gods awaited him. They seemed without number. He stood in their midst, confused and wondering. They were, one and all, kneeling to him.

civilization forgot its primary purpose: that of protection. The rules and laws twisted round to fashion constraints to dignity, to equality and liberty, and then to the primal needs of security and comfort. The task of living was hard, but civilization was intended to make the task easier, and in many ways it did – and does. But at what cost?’

‘What value this “civilization”, surgeon, if it dispenses with the virtue of being civil?’

‘Gothos walked into the heart of his city, to where the Jaghut who ruled collectively were all gathered. Among them, to be sure, there were great minds, and many who still held to the ideal of civilization. But then Gothos ascended the central speaker’s dais. He began his oration, and when, at last, he was done, he was met with silence. On that day, the Jaghut civilization ended. And in the days that followed, Gothos was named the Lord of Hate.’

Caladan Brood spoke then. ‘Lord Anomander, what will you do if one day you find yourself in the role of a king, or, indeed, a god?’ ‘Should such a day ever arrive,’ the First Son replied, ‘I will weep for the world.’

‘Faith is the state of not knowing, and yet, by choice, knowing.

‘This sorcery,’ said Cedorpul, leaning forward, ‘comes from darkness. From the Terondai. From the power of our goddess!’ ‘Power she now uses, yes,’ said Endest Silann, ‘but it did not come from her. It is not derived from her.’

‘Name it for the realm. The sorcery of Kurald Galain.’

One day, in the Great Court where sat the Seven Magistrates and the Seven Governors, and all the assemblies of guild and craft, and the commanders among the Deliverers, and the Company of Deliberators, Grizzin Farl had drawn his double-bladed axe, shaking it free of its blade-sheath. The wine flowed sweet on that day, in torrents upon the tiled floor, gushing round the artfully carved legs of the benches and pews. It splashed high against precious tapestries, and into the niches housing the marble busts of famous adjudicators and philosophers. The Great Court was transformed into a drunkard’s paradise.

He had heard that in the decades since that time a cult had risen among the Forulkan, worshipping Grizzin Farl as a vengeful god. Indeed, as a god of justice. There would always be, he now understood, those for whom violence was righteous.

‘Thyrllan itha setarallan. New child, born to the flames, I see your helplessness. Bethok t’ralan Draconus, does he even comprehend?

In eternity’s span, Light must ever fail. Waning, flickering, dying. But Dark abides, upon either side of life. ‘Tell all this to your High Priestess. Puncture her bloated presumption, Mortal Sword. If you seek domination in your absurd war, you will fail.’

‘The soldiers talked about you,’ she said. ‘You are missed, or, rather, were. A soldier killing himself in your tent has somewhat stained your reputation.’

Then the Jaghut said, ‘Hanako, I am named Raest.’ ‘Then welcome, Raest, to our fire.’ ‘Voice a single jibe, Hanako, and I might have to chop off your head. Just so you understand how this night will play.’

Petty tyrants from across the ocean, fleeing the High King’s incorruptible justice.

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.’ ‘You describe an unending journey, Raest, of a nature which would test a soul to its very core.’

This island was a manifestation of Mael’s whimsy, and Mael was in the habit of mocking the pretences of solid ground that rose like raised welts upon the perfect surface of his seas and oceans. He was also in the habit of peopling such lands with irritatingly poignant absurdities.

K’rul glanced at Skillen Droe. ‘What mountain? Lifted, where, precisely?’ ‘Into the sky, as Mael explained, K’rul. Hollowed out, a city resides within. I made use of K’Chain Che’Malle technology, testing its limits, as it were. As it is, it has proved a noble residence.’ ‘Residence?’ K’rul asked. ‘Who dwells within it?’ ‘Well, no one yet. The matter is rather confused at the moment, since I have lost track of it.’

They watched him walk back beneath the surface. Then Skillen pointed, and they saw a small sailing ship plying the shallows of the bay, a tiny craft no longer than K’rul’s foot. ‘Oh, really, now.’

‘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.’

The crimes of progress, of every self-serving rationale for destroying something in the name of creating something new, presumably better. He says a culture’s value system is in fact a shell game. It changes in the name of convenience.

civilization plays its game of convenient evasion. Us. Them. Meaningless borders, arbitrary distinctions. We Jaghut are a people. As a people we must share the full host of our collective crimes. Anything else is a conceit, and a lie.’

What is perceived is rarely the truth, and what is true is only rarely perceived.

her head. ‘Gothos’s Folly indeed.’ ‘There are dead people I need to see.’ ‘See the

And yet, it was too late to deny the reality of what was coming. He had promised the Shake to the First Son, but the summons, when it came, would see Lord Anomander – not the Shake – dislodged, made to move in order to achieve the meeting. And in that moment, Narad now knew, he would once more betray the man.

‘You, child,’ Glyph said, ‘have yet to walk the Shore. You remain possessed by hate, and it blinds you to the destiny awaiting us.’

A hunter spoke, ‘We are ready, lord.’ And this! Lord! They had given him a title, Lord of the False Dawn. Glyph did not understand it. He saw no significance in any dawn, false or otherwise. Nor could he determine who had first fashioned for him that honorific. It seemed to have sprung up from the frozen ground, or perhaps drifted down with the flakes of snow. He did not like it, but as with Narad, the Watch, there was no fighting this tide. Something now grasped them both, and its hands were cold and unyielding.

‘It was on this day,’ said Neerak, the first hunter to have spoken to him. His eyes were wide. ‘By the spring, lord, yesterday, I saw my own reflection, where we keep the ice clear. Pale, but not as pale as the Liosan. Pale, in the way that I have always been. But see my hands now, my forearms – has a plague come among us?’ A plague. ‘We chose neither,’ Lahanis said. ‘We defy the Andii. We defy the Liosan. We have made ourselves apart.’ ‘But on this day?’ Neerak demanded, spinning to face her. ‘Why? What has changed?’ Glyph answered. ‘I spoke with the Watch. I asked him, do we begin our war today?’

‘The war claims us now,’ he said. He collected up his bow. ‘By the blessing of the Watch, we are made into slayers of men and women. Come, then. This forest is our home. Time to defend it.’

The Watch withers in his solitude, a prince dreaming of his sister. She will know the sword in her hand, and she will rise at the day’s end, and so be known as Twilight. Neither monk nor nun, but one of the blood. The Shake must have a queen. Upon the shore … a queen.’ Her eyes widened and she stiffened in the nurse’s arms. ‘Oh bless me! My children do not deserve that!’

‘At the very least,’ Spinnock said, ‘before I offer up this kiss, tell us your name.’ ‘Telorast.’

‘Jhelarkan hostages, milord,’ said Braphen. ‘This one is named Gear.’

‘Loss of freedom delivers its own pain. This is an army that ritually scalds itself every dawn. The soldiers fill their days with talk of freedom – some even seek to run away – but now, at last, they begin to see. There will be no freedom, neither here nor there – out beyond the campfires, beyond the pickets. No freedom at all, Faror Hend.’

‘They said it was a curse,’ Rance said. ‘What was?’ ‘The termite infestation, sir. A curse upon the family, and the father in particular. Careless with his cock.’ ‘Excuse me?’ ‘The rooster in his yard, sir. It used to escape, terrorizing the younger children.’

‘She is perhaps wiser than we think,’ Prazek observed after making a scene of swallowing. ‘This sausage mocks the pretence. But,’ he added, spearing another piece, ‘I am assured that it lodges in the pit of the belly, and remains silent, if not unobtrusive, until the moment of its rebirth into the world.’

A new world is coming, and there will be beings in it with such power as to topple mountains—’ ‘Why?’ She frowned. ‘Why what?’ ‘Why topple mountains?’ ‘Because we can! To show our power!’ ‘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?’

‘She is mine,’ cut in Sandalath, her tone oddly without inflection. ‘The one that lived. Her name,’ she added, ‘is Korlat.’ ‘Milady—’ ‘She is filled with love,’ Sandalath continued, ‘but not mine.’

‘Sir?’ ‘Describe my talents, as you see them.’ ‘Well, sir. You conduct a reign of terror over your Houseblades, but you’re fair about it, in that you don’t count favourites. So, even while we all hate you, it’s a disciplined hate, and when you issue orders, we obey. And why wouldn’t we? You’ll be at the forefront of any nasty work, because you’re nastier than all the rest of us, on account of you being angry all the time—’

‘I trust you all understand,’ he said to her, ‘that the hate is entirely mutual.’ ‘Of course, sir.’ ‘But having said that, I’d step into a blade’s path for every damned one of you.’ ‘That too, sir, is mutual.’ He grunted. It would have to do.

‘Her name was Latal Menas.’ ‘Who?’ ‘The dragon, my prince. She was all grief and rage. The path led her here, into our realm. Or, perhaps, through it. When Tiamath last sembled, when the conflagration awakened and all that they kept apart was now one, the Suzerain took the life of Latal’s mate. It was the death of Habalt Galanas, prince, that has precipitated this.’