‘They were shattered,’ the Betrayer said. ‘Long ago. Fragments scattered across a battlefield. Why would anyone want them? Those broken shards can never be reunited. They are, each and every one, now folded in on themselves. So, I wonder, what did he do with them?’
The figure walked into the forest and was gone.
‘This,’ Trull whispered, ‘is not a dream.’
****
Udinaas opened his eyes. The stench of the seared corpse remained in his nose and mouth, thick in his throat. Above him, the longhouse’s close slanted ceiling, rough black bark and yellowed chinking. He remained motionless beneath the blankets.
Was it near dawn?
He could hear nothing, no voices from the chambers beyond. But that told him little. The hours before the moon rose were silent ones.
As were, of course, the hours when everyone slept. He had nets to repair the coming day. And rope strands to weave.
Perhaps that is the truth of madness, when a mind can do nothing but make endless lists of the mundane tasks awaiting it, as proof of its sanity. Mend those nets. Wind those strands. See? I have not lost the meaning of my life.
The blood of the Wyval was neither hot nor cold. It did not rage. Udinaas felt no different in his body. But the clear blood of my thoughts, oh, they are stained indeed. He pushed the blankets away and sat up. This is the path, then, and I am to stay on it. Until the moment comes.
Mend the nets. Weave the strands.
Dig the hole for that Beneda warrior, who would have just opened his eyes, had he any. And seen not the blackness of the imprisoning coins. Seen not the blue wax, nor the morok leaves reacting to that wax and turning wet and black. Seen, instead, the face of… something else.
Wyval circled dragons in flight. He had seen that. Like hounds surrounding their master as the hunt is about to be unleashed. I know, then, why I am where I have arrived. And when is an answer the night is yet to whisper – no, not whisper, but howl. The call to the chase by Darkness itself.
Udinaas realized he was among the enemy. Not as a Letherii sentenced to a life of slavery. That was as nothing to the peril his new blood felt, here in this heart of Edur and Kurald Emurlahn.
Feather Witch would have been better, I suppose, but Mother Dark moves unseen even in things such as these.
He made his way into the main chamber.
And came face to face with Uruth.
‘These are not the hours to wander, slave,’ she said.
He saw that she was trembling.
Udinaas sank to the floor and set his forehead against the worn planks.
‘Prepare the cloaks of Fear, Rhulad and Trull, for travel this night. Be ready before the moon’s rise. Food and drink for a morning’s repast.’
He quickly climbed to his feet to do as she bid, but was stopped by an outstretched hand.
‘Udinaas,’ Uruth said. ‘You do this alone, telling no-one.’
He nodded.
****
Shadows crept out from the forest. The moon had risen, prison world to Menandore’s true father, who was trapped within it. Father Shadow’s ancient battles had made this world, shaped it in so many ways. Scabandari Bloodeye, stalwart defender against the fanatic servants of implacable certitude, whether that certitude blazed blinding white, or was the all-swallowing black. The defeats he had delivered – the burying of Brother Dark and the imprisonment of Brother Light there in that distant, latticed world in the sky – were both gifts, and not just to the Edur but to all who were born and lived only to one day die.
The gifts of freedom, a will unchained unless one affixed upon oneself such chains – the crowding host’s uncountable, ever-rattling offers, each whispering promises of salvation against confusion – and wore them like armour.
Trull Sengar saw chains upon the Letherii. He saw the impenetrable net which bound them, the links of reasoning woven together into a chaotic mass where no beginning and no end could be found. He understood why they worshipped an empty throne. And he knew the manner in which they would justify all that they did. Progress was necessity, growth was gain. Reciprocity belonged to fools and debt was the binding force of all nature, of every people and every civilization. Debt was its own language, within which were used words like negotiation, compensation and justification, and legality was a skein of duplicity that blinded the eyes of justice.
An empty throne. Atop a mountain of gold coins.
Father Shadow had sought a world wherein uncertainty could work its insidious poison against those who chose intransigence as their weapon – with which they held wisdom at bay. Where every fortress eventually crumbled from within, from the very weight of those chains that exerted so inflexible an embrace.
In his mind he argued with that ghost – the Betrayer. The one who sought to murder Scabandari Bloodeye all those thousands of years ago. He argued that every certainty is an empty throne. That those who knew but one path would come to worship it, even as it led to a cliff’s edge. He argued, and in the silence of that ghost’s indifference to his words he came to realize that he himself spoke – fierce with heat – from the foot of an empty throne.
Scabandari Bloodeye had never made that world. He had vanished in this one, lost on a path no-one else could follow.
Trull Sengar stood before the corpse and its mound of rotting leaves, and felt desolation in his soul. A multitude of paths waited before him, and they were all sordid, sodden with despair.
The sound of boots on the trail. He turned.
Fear and Rhulad approached. Wearing their cloaks. Fear carried Trull’s own in his arms, and from the man’s shoulders hung a small pack.
Rhulad’s face was flushed, and Trull could not tell if it was born of anxiety or excitement.
‘I greet you, Trull,’ Fear said, handing him the cloak.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Our father passes this night in the temple. Praying for guidance.’
‘The Stone Bowl,’ Rhulad said, his eyes glittering. ‘Mother sends us to the Stone Bowl.’
‘Why?’
Rhulad shrugged.
Trull faced Fear. ‘What is this Stone Bowl? I have never heard of it.’
‘An old place. In the Kaschan Trench.’
‘You knew of this place, Rhulad?’
His younger brother shook his head. ‘Not until tonight, when Mother described it. We have all walked the edge of the Trench. Of course the darkness of its heart is impenetrable – how could we have guessed that a holy site hid within it?’
‘A holy site? In absolute darkness?’
‘The significance of that,’ Fear said, ‘will be made evident soon enough, Trull.’
They began walking, eldest brother in the lead. Into the forest, onto a trail leading northwest. ‘Fear,’ Trull said, ‘has Uruth spoken to you of the Stone Bowl before?’
‘I am Weapons Master,’ Fear replied. ‘There were rites to observe…’
Among them, Trull knew, the memorization of every battle the Edur ever fought. He then wondered why that thought had come to him, in answer to Fear’s words. What hidden linkages was his own mind seeking to reveal, and why was he unable to discern them?
They continued on, avoiding pools of moonlight unbroken by shadows. ‘Tomad forbade us this journey,’ Trull said after a time.
‘In matters of sorcery,’ Fear said, ‘Uruth is superior to Tomad.’
‘And this is a matter of sorcery?’
Rhulad snorted behind Trull. ‘You stood with us in the Warlock King’s longboat.’
‘I did,’ agreed Trull. ‘Fear, would Hannan Mosag approve of what we do, of what Uruth commands of us?’
Fear said nothing.
‘You,’ Rhulad said, ‘are too filled with doubt, brother. It binds you in place—’
‘I watched you walk the path to the chosen cemetery, Rhulad. After Dusk’s departure and before the moon’s rise.’
If Fear reacted to this, his back did not reveal it, nor did his steps falter on the trail.
‘What of it?’ Rhulad asked, his tone too loose, too casual.
‘My words, brother, are not to be answered with flippancy.’
‘I knew that Fear was busy overseeing the return of weapons to the armoury,’ Rhulad said. ‘And I sensed a malevolence prowling the darkness. And so I stood in hidden vigil over his betrothed, who was alone in the cemetery. I may be unblooded, brother, but I am not without courage. I know you believe that inexperience is the soil in which thrive the roots of false courage. But I am not false, no matter what you think. For me, inexperience is unbroken soil, not yet ready for roots. I stood in my brother’s place.’
‘Malevolence in the night, Rhulad? Whose?’
‘I could not be certain. But I felt it.’
‘Fear,’ Trull said, ‘have you no questions for Rhulad on this matter?’
‘No,’ Fear replied drily. ‘There is no need for that… when you are around.’
Trull clamped his mouth shut, thankful that the night obscured the flush on his face.
There was silence for some time after that.
The trail began climbing, winding among outcrops of lichen-skinned granite. They climbed over fallen trees here and there, scrambled up steep slides. The moon’s light grew diffuse, and Trull sensed it was near dawn by the time they reached the highest point of the trail.
The path now took them inland – eastward – along a ridge of toppled trees and broken boulders. Water trapped in depressions in the bedrock formed impenetrable black pools that spread across the trail. The sky began to lighten overhead.
Fear then led them off the path, north, across tumbled scree and among the twisted trees. A short while later Kaschan Trench was before them.
A vast gorge, like a knife’s puncturing wound in the bedrock, its sides sheer and streaming with water, it ran in a jagged line, beginning beneath Hasana Inlet half a day to the west, and finally vanishing into the bedrock more than a day’s travel to the east. They were at its widest point, two hundred or so paces across, the landscape opposite slightly higher but otherwise identical – scattered boulders looking as if they had been pushed up from the gorge and mangled trees that seemed sickened by some unseen breath from the depths.
Fear unclasped his cloak, dropped his pack and walked over to a misshapen mound of stones. He cleared away dead branches and Trull saw that the stones were a cairn of some sort. Fear removed the capstone, and reached down into the hollow beneath. He lifted clear a coil of knotted rope.
‘Remove your cloak and your weapons,’ he said as he carried the coil to the edge.
He found one end and tied his pack, cloak, sword and spear to it.
Trull and Rhulad came close with their own gear and all was bound to the rope. Fear then began lowering it over the side.
‘Trull, take this other end and lead it to a place of shadow. A place where the shadow will not retreat before the sun as the day passes.’
He picked up the rope end and walked to a large, tilted boulder. When he fed the end into the shadows at its base he felt countless hands grasp it. Trull stepped back. The rope was now taut.
Returning to the edge, he saw that Fear had already begun his descent. Rhulad stood staring down.
‘We’re to wait until he reaches the bottom,’ Rhulad said. ‘He will tug thrice upon the rope. He asked that I go next.’
‘Very well.’
‘She has the sweetest lips,’ Rhulad murmured, then looked up and met Trull’s eyes. ‘Is that what you want me to say? To give proof to your suspicions?’
‘I have many suspicions, brother,’ Trull replied. ‘We have sun-scorched thoughts, we have dark-swallowed thoughts. But it is the shadow thoughts that move with stealth, creeping to the very edge of the rival realms – if only to see what there is to be seen.’
‘And if they see nothing?’
‘They never see nothing, Rhulad.’
‘Then illusions? What if they see only what their imagination conjures? False games of light? Shapes in the darkness? Is this not how suspicion becomes a poison? But a poison like white nectar, every taste leaving you thirsting for more.’
Trull was silent for a long moment. Then he said, ‘Fear spoke to me not long ago. Of how one is perceived, rather than how one truly is. How the power of the former can overwhelm that of the latter. Hov indeed, perception shapes truth like waves on stone.’
‘What would you ask of me, Trull?’
He faced Rhulad directly. ‘Cease your strutting before Mayen.’
A strange smile, then, ‘Very well, brother.’
Trull’s eyes widened slightly.
The rope snapped three times.
‘My turn,’ Rhulad said. He grasped hold of the rope and was quickly gone from sight.
The knots of these words were anything but loose. Trull drew a deep breath, let it out slowly, wondering at that smile. The peculiarity of it. A smile that might have been pain, a smile born of hurt.
Then he turned upon himself and studied what he was feeling. Difficult to find, to recognize, but… Father Shadow forgive me. I feel… sullied.
The three tugs startled him.
Trull took the heavy rope in his hands, feeling the sheath of beeswax rubbed into the fibres to keep them from rotting. Without the knots for foot- and hand-holds, the descent would be treacherous indeed. He walked out over the edge, facing inward, then leaned back and began making his way down.
Glittering streams ran down the raw stone before him. Red-stained calcretions limned the surface here and there. Flea-like insects skipped across the surface. The scrapes left by the passage of Rhulad and Fear glistened in the fading light, ragged furrows wounding all that clung to the rock.
Knot to knot, he went down the rope, the darkness deepening around him. The air grew cool and damp, then cold. Then his feet struck mossy boulders, and hands reached out to steady him.
His eyes struggled to make out the forms of his brothers. ‘We should have brought a lantern.’
‘There is light from the Stone Bowl,’ Fear said. ‘An Elder Warren. Kaschan.’
‘That warren is dead,’ Trull said. ‘Destroyed by Father Shadow’s own hand.’
‘Its children are dead, brother, but the sorcery lingers. Have your eyes adjusted? Can you see the ground before you?’
A tumble of boulders and the glitter of flowing water between them. ‘I can.’
‘Then follow me.’
They made their way out from the wall. Footing was treacherous, forcing them to proceed slowly. Dead branches festooned with mushrooms and moss. Trull saw a pallid, hairless rodent of some kind slip into a crack between two rocks, tail slithering in its wake. ‘This is the Betrayer’s realm,’ he said.
Fear grunted. ‘More than you know, brother.’
‘Something lies ahead,’ Rhulad said in a whisper.
Vast, towering shapes. Standing stones, devoid of lichen or moss, the surface strangely textured, made, Trull realized as they drew closer, to resemble the bark of the Blackwood. Thick roots coiled out from the base of each obelisk, spreading out to entwine with those of the stones to each side. Beyond, the ground fell away in a broad depression, from which light leaked like mist.
Fear led them between the standing stones and they halted at the pit’s edge.
The roots writhed downward, and woven in their midst were bones. Thousands upon thousands. Trull saw Kaschan, the feared ancient enemies of the Edur, reptilian snouts and gleaming fangs. And bones that clearly belonged to the Tiste. Among them, finely curved wing-bones from Wyval, and, at the very base, the massive skull of an Eleint, the broad, flat bone of its forehead crushed inward, as if by the blow of a gigantic, gauntleted fist.
Leafless scrub had grown up from the chaotic mat on the slopes, the branches and twigs grey and clenching. Then the breath hissed between Trull’s teeth. The scrub was stone, growing not in the manner of crystal, but of living wood.
‘Kaschan sorcery,’ Fear said after a time, ‘is born of sounds our ears cannot hear, formed into
words that loosen the bindings that hold all matter together, that hold it to the ground. Sounds that bend and stretch light, as a tidal inflow up a river is drawn apart at the moment of turning. With this sorcery, they fashioned fortresses of stone that rode the sky like clouds. With this sorcery, they turned Darkness in upon itself with a hunger none who came too close could defy, an all-devouring hunger that fed first and foremost upon itself.’ His voice was strangely muted as he spoke. ‘Kaschan sorcery was sent into the warren of Mother Dark, like a plague. Thus was sealed the gate from Kurald Galain to every other realm. Thus was Mother Dark driven into the very core of the Abyss, witness to an endless swirl of light surrounding her – all that she would one day devour, until the last speck of matter vanishes into her. Annihilating Mother Dark. Thus the Kaschan, who are long dead, set upon Mother Dark a ritual that will end in her murder. When all Light is gone. When there is naught to cast Shadow, and so Shadow too is doomed to die.
‘When Scabandari Bloodeye discovered what they had done, it was too late. The end, the death of the Abyss, cannot be averted. The journey of all that exists repeats on every scale, brothers. From those realms too small for us to see, to the Abyss itself. The Kaschan locked all things into mortality, into the relentless plunge towards extinction. This was their vengeance. An act born, perhaps, of despair. Or the fiercest hatred imaginable. Witness to their own extinction, they forced all else to share that fate.’
His brothers were silent. The dull echoes of Fear’s last words faded away.
Then Rhulad grunted. ‘I see no signs of this final convergence, Fear.’
‘A distant death, aye. More distant than one could imagine. Yet it will come.’
‘And what is that to us?’
‘The Tiste Invasions drove the Kaschan to their last act. Father Shadow earned the enmity of every Elder god, of every ascendant. Because of the Kaschan ritual, the eternal game among Dark, Light and Shadow would one day end. And with it, all of existence.’ He faced his brothers. ‘I tell you this secret knowledge so that you will better understand what happened here, what was done. And why Hannan Mosag speaks of enemies far beyond the mortal Letherii.’
The first glimmerings of realization whispered through Trull. He dragged his gaze from Fear’s dark, haunted eyes, and looked down into the pit. To the very base, to the skull of that slain dragon. ‘They killed him.’