Forge of Darkness

ELEVEN

On all sides Arathan saw desolation. Beneath a colourless sky, houses huddled in their own ruin, and to look upon them was to draw inside all the details of failure, until they clogged his thoughts like greasy dust. Between the scattered buildings, low, smoke-blackened walls of stone rose from scorched grasses like smeared teeth. He weathered their skeletal grimaces as he hunched in the saddle, Besra plodding beneath him. The walls were without any order, and none of the haphazard enclosures they made held livestock.

This was nothing like any village he had seen. Trapped between walls as if snared in a giant web, the houses were far apart, defying the notion of streets. They refused to face one another and there was something shameful in this unwilling regard, as if community offered no gifts and necessity was cause for resentment. Most doorways were without doors and the blackness they framed seemed strangely solid; even in surrender something remained that was impenetrable, mystifying. They did not invite inside with the lure of curiosity; he felt pushed away, and whatever remained in the hidden rooms, behind shuttered windows and beneath sagging ceilings, was a secret tale written in wreckage.

This was the civilization of the Azathanai, desultory and forlorn. In its impoverishment it besieged the soul, and the most horrifying thing of all, to Arathan’s eyes, was that some of these houses were still occupied. He saw solid doors, latched shut, and the smudged ember-glows of candles leaking through shutters. He saw figures standing in shadows, beneath porches made of huge granite stones so perfectly cut that no mortar was needed, and he felt the unyielding pressure of strangers’ eyes upon him and his companions as they rode slowly through the settlement.

His imagination recoiled from the poison of this place, from all the rejections — the casting away of pointless possessions, the indifference to weed-snarled yards and the broken barrows of burnt wood that had once been buildings. This was not his world and to breathe of it, to look upon it and take inside each and every detail, whispered of madness.

The day’s lifeless light was failing. Lord Draconus led them through tumbled gaps in the walls, cutting through the centre of the settlement. The horses walked as if exhausted by grief, and upon the dusty neck of Besra, the flies barely crawled.

When his father reined in opposite an oversized house of stone and timber, Arathan felt his spirits flinch. It stood a short distance away, somehow more alone than all the others, and upon its granite facade the grey stone had been carved in endless, meaningless patterns of what seemed to be circles or rings. The sawn ends of the wood rafters, forming a row above the squat, wide door frame and marching on to the very ends of the front wall to either side, all bore similar shapes, like the imprints left behind by raindrops on mud. Three low walls reached for the building but all seemed to have shattered or crumbled with the effort. The air around the house felt dead and cold.

‘You might think,’ said Draconus, half turning to regard his bastard son, ‘that your thoughts are your own.’

Arathan blinked.

Behind him, Sergeant Raskan whispered something like a prayer, and then cleared his throat. ‘My lord, is this sorcery, then, to so plague our minds?’

‘The world around you speaks your language,’ Draconus replied. ‘It can do no else. All you see bears the paint of your words.’ He paused, and then grunted, ‘I wager none of you noted the flowers amidst the weeds, or the dance of the swifts above the old spring. Or how the sky, for but a moment, was like the purest porcelain.’

Unwilling to turn, to look upon Feren who rode at Rint’s side, Arathan stared at his father, fighting with the meaning of his words. ‘We are invited,’ he said.

‘Indeed, Arathan. You begin to comprehend the curse of the Azathanai.’

‘The Jheleck do not raid here any more.’

Draconus shrugged. ‘See you anything of value?’

A figure now stood in the doorway of the strange, carved house. Not tall but thin, and, from what Arathan could make out, barely clothed — and that clothing was little more than rags of the skins of small animals. All at once, to Arathan, the scene seemed perfect — perfectly rendered, and nothing was accidental. Nothing ever is.

Rint spoke and his voice sounded clumsy and rough amidst a sudden, fragile elegance. ‘Do we make camp here, Lord Draconus? You mentioned a spring and we have great need of water.’

Draconus nodded. ‘The horses will find it for you, but we shall camp just beyond the village, on the hill at the crossroads up ahead.’ He dismounted.

Arathan did the same, trying not to shiver and struggling not to gasp: for all the perfection closing tight around him, it seemed the air surrounding the carved house could not feed his lungs.

Studying him, Draconus said, ‘Draw nearer to me, Arathan, if you wish to remain.’

Rint and Feren had moved away. Raskan was hastening to gather up the reins of the other horses, his movements strangely panicked to Arathan’s eyes.

Stepping closer to his father, Arathan found that he could once more fill his chest with sweet, blessed air. He returned his attention to the figure in the doorway. ‘Who is he and how can he live in… in this?’

‘Azathanai, of course,’ Draconus replied, and then sighed. ‘I know, the name is meaningless. No, it is more than that: it is misleading.’

When it seemed that he would not explain, Arathan asked, ‘Are they gods?’

‘If they are,’ his father said after a moment’s thought, ‘they are gods in waiting.’

‘Waiting for what?’

‘Worshippers. But this confuses things, I would wager. Belief creates, Arathan. So you have been taught. The god cannot exist until it is worshipped, until it is given shape, personality. It is made in the crucible of faith. So claim our finest Tiste philosophers. But it is not that simple, I think. The god may indeed exist before the first worshipper ever arrives, but it does not call itself a god. It simply lives, of and for itself. Far to the south, Arathan, there are wild horses, and from birth until death they remain free. They have never tasted an iron bit, or felt the command of reins or knees or heels, and in that freedom, not once in their lives do they surrender their fear of us.’

Arathan thought about that, but found no words for those thoughts.

His father continued, ‘What falls under our hand, Arathan, we bend to our will. The horses we ride worship us, as if we were gods. But you and I, we can taste the bitterness of that, because if we are gods then we are unreliable gods. Imperfect gods. Cruel gods. Yet the horse is helpless in the face of all that and can only yearn for our blessing. Should its master beat it, still it yearns, seeking what all living things seek: the grace of being. Still, its god ever turns away. You may pity that horse,’ Draconus continued after a moment, ‘but not its desire.’

The grace of being. ‘Then what god would break us?’ Arathan asked.

Draconus grunted a second time, but it seemed to be a pleased grunt. He nodded to the figure in the doorway. ‘Not this one, Arathan.’

But Arathan’s thoughts had marched on, relentless upon a fraught path. Do gods break those they would have as worshippers? Do they set upon their children terrible ordeals, so that those children must kneel in surrender, opening their souls to helplessness? Is this what Mother Dark will do to her children? To us?

‘Most Azathanai,’ Draconus continued, ‘have no desire to be worshipped, to be made into gods. The confession of the helpless is written in spilled blood. The surrender that is sacrifice. It can taste… bitter.’

He and his father were now alone, facing the house and its dweller. Dusk fell around them like dark rain, devouring everything else, until the rest of the village took on the texture of worn, fading tapestries.

The figure then stepped out from the doorway, and a light came with him. It was not a warm light, not a light to drive back the gloom, and it hovered over the man’s left shoulder, a pallid disc or ball, larger than a man’s head, and if the man reached up, it would have remained beyond his touch, just past his fingertips.

That globe followed the man as he approached.

‘Cold and airless is his aspect,’ muttered Draconus. ‘Stay close to me, Arathan. A step away from my power and the blood will freeze and then boil in your flesh. Your eyes will burst. You will die in great pain. I trust such details impress upon you the importance of remaining close?’

Arathan nodded.

‘He has not yet decided on a name,’ Draconus added. ‘Which is a rather irritating affectation.’

The man was surprisingly young, perhaps only a handful of years older than Arathan himself. Here and there, in almost random fashion, ring-like tattoos adorned his skin, like the scars from some pox. His narrow, nondescript face bore no marks, however, and the eyes were dark and calm. When he spoke, his voice made Arathan think — incongruously — of pond water beneath a thin sheet of ice. ‘Draconus, it has been how many years since we last met? On the eve of the Thel Akai’s disavowal-’

‘We’ll not speak of time,’ Draconus said, and the words rang like a command.

The man’s brows lifted slightly, and then he shrugged. ‘But one way, surely, this refusal? After all, the future is the only field still to be sowed, and if we are to stay our hands here, what point this meeting? Shall we throw our seeds, Draconus, or make blunt fists?’

‘I did not think it would be you delivering the gift,’ Draconus replied.

‘Oh, that gift. You surmise correctly. Not me.’ And with that he smiled.

Arathan’s father answered with a scowl.

The stranger’s laugh was low. ‘Indeed. Impatience besets you, to no avail. You must trek farther still. The next village at the very least.’

‘The next, or do you but mock me?’

‘The next, I think. There has been much talk of your… request. And the answering thereof.’

‘Already I have been away from the court for too long,’ Draconus said in a frustrated growl.

‘Such gestures fill the imagination of the bearer,’ the man said, ‘but the same cannot be certain of the recipient. I fear a great disappointment awaiting you, Draconus. Perhaps even a hurt, a deep wound-’

‘I am not interested in your prophecies, Old Man.’

Arathan frowned at that strange name, so contrary to this figure facing them.

‘Not a prophecy, Draconus. I would not risk that in your presence. Rather, I fear the value you have imbued in this gift of yours — it is, perhaps, dangerous in its extremity.’

‘Who awaits me in the next village?’

‘I cannot even guess,’ Old Man replied. ‘But a few will gather. Curious. This usage of Night, Draconus, was without precedent, and the fury of the believers is something to behold.’

‘I care not. Let them worship stone if it pleases them. Unless,’ he added, ‘they would challenge me?’

‘Not you, nor the hand with which you wielded your desire. Instead, Draconus, they weep and seek redress.’

‘As I expected.’

Old Man was silent for a long moment, and then he said, ‘Draconus, be careful — no, we must all be careful now. In the healing they seek, they reach deeply into the Vitr. We do not know what will come of this.’

‘The Vitr? Then they are fools.’

‘The enemy is not foolishness, Draconus, but desperation.’

‘Who so reaches?’

‘I have heard Ardata’s name mentioned. And the Sister of Dreams.’

Draconus looked away, his expression unreadable. ‘One thing at a time,’ he muttered.

‘Much to make right, Draconus,’ Old Man said, smiling once more. ‘In the meantime, my child approaches.’

‘So you ever say.’

‘So I shall say until I need say it no more.’

‘I never understood why you were content with mere reflection, Old Man.’

The smile broadened. ‘I know.’

He turned round then and walked back to his house, the globe following and taking with it the bitter cold, the empty promise of dead air.

Halfway back, Old Man paused and looked back. ‘Oh, Draconus, I almost forgot. There is news.’

‘What news?’

‘The High King has built a ship.’

Arathan felt a sudden pressure, coming from his father, an invisible force that pushed him away, one step, and then another. He gagged, began to crumple And then a hand pulled him close. ‘Sorry,’ Draconus said. ‘Careless of me.’

Half bent over, Arathan nodded, accepting the apology. Old Man had vanished within his strange house, taking the light with him.

‘I’m never good,’ said Draconus, ‘with displeasing news.’

The noses of the horses found the spring readily enough, and Rint leaned forward over the saddle horn to study the stone-lined pond. As Draconus had predicted, there were swifts wheeling and darting above the still waters, and now bats as well. Beside him, Feren grunted and said, ‘What do you make of that?’

A statue commanded the centre of the pool. A huge figure, sunk to its thighs, roughly hacked from serpentine as if in defiance of that stone’s potential, for it was well known that serpentine wore well the finest polish — not that Rint had ever seen a solid block anything near the size of this monstrosity, more familiar with small game pieces and the like. None the less, this seemed a most artless effort. The torso and every limb were twisted, the stone seeming to shout its pain. The scum of dried algae stained its thighs, evidence of the spring’s slow failing perhaps. The face, tilted skyward atop a thick, angular neck, offered the heavens a grimace, and this face alone bore signs of a skilled hand. Rint stared up at it, mesmerized.

Raskan moved past the two Borderswords, leading the horses to the pond’s roughly tiled edge.

Sighing, Feren slipped down from the saddle, dropping the reins of her mount so that it could join the other beasts in drinking from the pool.

‘I think it’s meant to be a Thel Akai,’ Rint finally said.

‘Of course it’s a Thel Akai,’ Feren snapped. ‘All that pain.’ She held in one hand three waterskins and now moved to crouch down at the edge, and began filling them.

Feeling foolish, Rint pulled his gaze away from the giant’s tormented face and dismounted. He collected more waterskins from where they hung flaccid from his saddle.

‘What I meant was,’ Feren resumed, ‘why raise a statue in the middle of a watering hole? It’s not even on a pedestal or anything.’

‘Unless it sank in the mud.’

‘And what monuments do you build on mud, brother?’

The water was cool and clear. Beyond the ledge, the pool seemed to drop away to unknown depths, but that was due to the failing light, Rint suspected. ‘I don’t trust magic,’ he said. ‘And this village reeks of it.’

Raskan grunted at that. ‘I feel the same as you, Rint. It makes the skin crawl. If this is what waits this side of Bareth Solitude, well, it’s little wonder we rarely visit these lands. Or the people who choose to live like this.’

Feren straightened and turned round. ‘Someone comes,’ she said.

Rint thought about spitting into the water and decided against it. He imagined Raskan was regretting his words, since it was likely that they had been heard by the Azathanai who now approached. Still crouching, he twisted to regard the newcomer. A woman of middle years, overweight but not grossly so; still, it seemed she sagged from every appendage, and the roll of fat overwhelming her belt had pushed away the front of her hide shirt and so hung exposed, the skin white as snow and creased with stretch marks. She had, Rint decided, once been much fatter.

The woman halted a few paces away, scowling. ‘You do not know me,’ she said in the Tiste language, but with a thick, muted accent.

Feren cleared her throat. ‘Forgive us, Azathanai. We do not.’

‘The Dog-Runners know me. I am found among them, on winter nights. They see me in the fires they light. I am worshipped and I see the worship in their eyes, the reflected flames of their eyes.’

‘Then,’ said Rint, ‘you have travelled a long way to come here.’

The scowl faded and the woman shrugged. ‘I would choose a shape of beauty. Instead, they feed me until I can barely move.’ With these words she reached to her belly, pushed her hand inside, and Rint realized, in horror, that what he had taken to be stretch marks were in fact scars — now wounds, one of them splitting open as she pushed her hand deeper. When she withdrew it, slimed with blood and ichor, she held in her hand a small clay figurine, bulbous in form. She tossed it at the feet of Feren, who involuntarily stepped back.

Rint stared as the wound closed, and the blood ran from the skin watery as rain, until once more the belly was alabaster white.

Feren was looking down at the clay figurine and after a moment she bent down and picked it up.

Glancing over at what his sister held, Rint saw that it was female, with a nub of a head — barely shaped — above huge breasts and a round belly. The legs were pressed together below an exaggerated vulva.

‘They feed the fire,’ the woman said. ‘And I grow fat.’

Raskan was mute and pale; he stood like a man who wanted to flee. The woman walked over to him. ‘Do I frighten you? Do you not want to feel my weight upon you? The wetness of my gift?’

Rint saw that Raskan was trembling.

‘I could make you kneel to me,’ continued the woman. ‘Such is my power. You think you understand beauty. You dream of women thin as children, and see nothing perverse in that. But when one such as I comes to stand before you, I sense your hunger for worship, even as that hunger shames you. Lie upon the ground, Tiste, and let me teach you all about power-’

‘Enough!’

The command rang in the air. Rint was spun round by it. Draconus had appeared, Arathan a step behind him.

The Azathanai woman edged back, her scowl returning, and with it a spasm of venom that just as quickly vanished. ‘I was but amusing myself, Draconus. No harm.’

‘Begone, Olar Ethil. Skulk your way back to the Dog-Runners. These people are under my protection.’

She snorted. ‘They need it. Tiste.’

That word dripped with contempt, and dropping the figurine Feren reached for her sword, but Rint stepped close and stayed her hand.

Raskan staggered away, his hands covering his face. He almost collided with Draconus who moved aside just in time, and then fled onward. Now Rint could see the Lord’s fury.

The woman named Olar Ethil studied Draconus, unperturbed. ‘I could take them all,’ she said. ‘Even the woman. And you would not be able to stop me.’

‘When last we crossed paths, Olar Ethil, that might have been true. I invite you to quest deeper.’

‘Oh, no need, Draconus. Night rides your breath. I see where you have gone and what you have done and you are a fool. All for love, was it? Or am I being too… romantic. More like ambition, which, since we are not fools, you could not appease among us.’ She made a faint gesture with her blood-stained hand.

The clay figurine exploded with a sharp crack.

Feren cursed, reaching a hand up to her cheek and drawing it back smeared in blood. ‘You fat hag!’

Olar Ethil laughed. ‘Touched by the goddess! You carry a child, woman, yes? A girl… and oh, the hue of her blood is most unusual!’

Draconus stepped closer and Olar Ethil faced him again. ‘You wanted a grandson?’ she asked. ‘How disappointing for you. Come no closer, Draconus! You have my attention now. Gaze into the flames at night for too long, and I will steal your soul — you all have felt it. Your words die and the fire fills your mind. Draconus, I will look out from the flames. I will watch you, and listen, and discover your secrets. Although, granted, I already know most of them. Shall I utter your truths, O Suzerain of Night?’

Draconus halted his advance. ‘If you come to the flames of our campfires, Olar Ethil, even once, we shall do battle. Until but one of us remains alive.’

The woman’s eyes widened with shock. ‘Well now,’ she murmured, ‘all that armour… for naught. Death, Draconus? Be careful — the word alone is an unholy summons these days.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean an Azathanai has taken a life. Spilled the blood of a very powerful… innocent. Around this deed, chaos now dances like carrion flies — why do you think I returned?’

‘An Azathanai has committed murder?’ The belligerence was gone from Draconus now, and when he stepped closer to Olar Ethil, Rint understood — as well as she evidently did — that no threat was intended.

Her expression was now grave. ‘Not a Tiste, Draconus, which absolves you of vengeance. Nor a Dog-Runner, or so I have since discovered, which absolves me of the same. Nor a Thel Akai — although that would have been interesting. Neither Jheck nor Jheleck. Jaghut, beloved. Karish, mate to Hood, is dead. Slain.’

The sudden anguish in the Lord’s face was terrible to behold. Rint edged back, pulling Feren with him. He saw the boy watching from a dozen or so paces away, but not watching his father; nor was he watching Olar Ethil. Instead, Arathan’s eyes were fixed on Feren.

Abyss take us all. He’s made a child with her. A girl.

Feren had half turned, only to be snared by Arathan’s eyes.

Rint heard her whisper, ‘I’m sorry.’

In a harsh voice Draconus spoke. ‘Olar Ethil, come to my fires.’

The woman nodded, strangely formal. ‘I would never have done so,’ she said, ‘if not invited, Suzerain. Forgive me. I have been too long among the Dog-Runners, who prove so easy to bait that I cannot help myself.’ She cocked her head. ‘It seems that I am a cruel goddess.’

‘Be more mindful, then,’ Draconus replied, but there was no bite in his words; rather, a kind of tenderness. ‘They are vulnerable to deep hurts, Olar Ethil.’

She sighed regretfully. ‘I know. I grow careless in my power. They feed me with such desperation, such yearning! The Bonecasters voice prayers in my name, like biting ants beneath the furs. It drives me mad.’

Draconus settled a hand upon her shoulder, but said nothing.

She sank against him, resting her head against his chest.

Rint was dumbfounded. Draconus… who are you?

‘And,’ Olar Ethil continued, her voice muffled, ‘they make me fat.’

With an amused snort Draconus stepped away. ‘Do not blame them for your appetites, woman.’

‘What will you do?’ she asked him.

‘Where is Hood?’

‘I have heard that his grief has driven him mad. Lest he proclaim war upon the Azathanai, he was subdued by kin and is now chained in a cell in the Tower of Hate.’

‘The Jaghut have gathered? To what end?’

‘None can say, Draconus. The last time they gathered they argued themselves into the abandonment of their realm.’

Draconus seemed distracted for a moment, and then he shook his head. ‘I will speak to the Lord of Hate. Tell me, do we know the slayer among the Azathanai?’

‘Not yet, Suzerain. Some are missing, or in hiding.’

Draconus grunted. ‘Nothing new in that.’

‘No.’

As they were speaking, Feren had been pulling at Rint’s grip on her arm. Finally her efforts drew his attention. But she was not interested in leaving his side. Instead, as he released her, she sagged to the ground, leaning hard against his legs. He felt the shudder of her silent weeping.

Rint felt sick inside. He wished they had never agreed to accompany the Consort. He wished that Ville and Galak would finally catch up with them, so they could all leave — break this contract and to the Abyss with the consequences. He wanted no more of this.

Draconus said, ‘Rint, help your sister tend to her wound, and then make camp upon the hill.’

‘Yes, Lord.’

‘Arathan.’

‘Sir?’

‘Find Raskan. Help him.’

‘Help?’ The boy’s eyes were wide with sudden fear.

Draconus frowned. ‘I meet your eyes. You are the son of Draconus. Go to him.’

Arathan found Sergeant Raskan crumpled against a wall, his face ravaged by grief. As he drew nearer, the man looked up, wiped roughly at his eyes and made to stand, only to sag once more on the wall. He looked away as if shamed.

‘Rint and Feren are going to where we will make camp,’ said Arathan. ‘They have all the horses.’

‘Go away, boy.’

‘I cannot.’

‘I said go away!’

Arathan was silent for a long moment, and then he said, ‘I wish that I could, sergeant. This should be a time for you to be alone. I do not know what she did, but I can see that it was cruel.’

‘Keep your distance,’ Raskan said in a low rasp, ‘lest I harm you.’

‘Sergeant, my father has met my eyes. I am his son. I am not here to ask you. I am here to command you. I will lead you to the camp. It is my father’s wish.’

Raskan looked up, eyes hooded in the gloom, his cheeks streaked and his beard glittering. ‘Your father,’ he hissed, making the words a curse. ‘This was Ivis’s task, not mine! Maybe he could have weathered it, but I cannot!’

‘What did she take from you?’

His laugh was harsh and bitter, but he straightened from the wall. ‘I am not the fool he thinks I am. She knows him from long ago. I begin to see.’

‘What do you mean? What do you see? Sergeant Raskan, tell me — what do you see?’

‘Azathanai blood is what I see. It needs chaining and that’s what he’s done. Chained it down. By his will alone you are held back, made normal to our eyes. You fool — not once did she look at you!’

Arathan stared at the man, trying to comprehend. And then he backed away a step. ‘Why should she? Raskan! Why should she look at me at all?’

But the man levered himself from the wall and staggered in the direction of the hill beyond the village. After a moment, Arathan stumbled after him. He heard the sergeant muttering under his breath.

‘How can it be a secret when even I did not know it? No, I have dreamed no sordid dreams, longed for nothing immoral. There is no cause for disgust. I could kneel above the water — I could look down on my face. And see nothing evil. She lied. I deserve no shame!’

The man was speaking nonsense. Arathan wondered if his mind had been broken by the witch’s magic. His own thoughts felt unhinged. My father knew her long ago. I don’t know what that means — it means nothing. It seems all of the Azathanai know my father. Grizzin Farl. Old Man. And now this witch. Each one we meet knows him. They call him the Suzerain of Night. They fear him.

I am his son. Bastard no longer.

Why did he wait? Why did he bring me out here to say that?

They clambered over the last of the settlement’s walls. Ahead the track resumed, climbing to a crossroads flanked on one side by a humped, rounded hill on which stood half a dozen trees, forming a half-ring. In the cup they formed stood Rint and Feren. Neither Draconus nor Olar Ethil could be seen — he wondered where they had gone. Were they still at the pool?

The horses were tied to the trees and stood with heads lowered beneath gnarled boughs that seemed tangled with black lichen.

Raskan ascended the hillside as if it were the face of a hated enemy, tearing at the grasses, pulling aside rocks and leaving them to tumble and roll so that Arathan had to jump from their path. The manic fury of the man was frightening.

Halfway up Raskan halted and wheeled to glare down at him. ‘Some truths should never be revealed! Look at me!’

‘There is nothing to see, sergeant,’ Arathan replied. ‘Nothing but anger.’

The man stared as if in shock.

‘You are the gate sergeant of House Dracons, Raskan. You wear my father’s old moccasins and you have ridden at his side. He sent you to me, remember? And you said what needed to be said.’

Each statement seemed to strike the man like a blow, and he sat down on the slope.

‘Stand up!’ Arathan snapped. ‘You taught me how to ride Hellar. You fed Sagander blood-broth and saved his life.’

Raskan drew a deep, shuddering breath, squeezed shut his eyes for a moment, and then regained his feet. ‘As you say.’

‘They’re getting a meal ready. We should join them.’

But Raskan hesitated, and then he said, ‘I am sorry, Arathan. I misspoke.’

‘You made no sense.’

‘That is true enough. No sense, none at all. Forgive me.’

Arathan shrugged.

Raskan resumed the climb, but slowly this time, without vehemence. After watching for a moment, Arathan tried to follow, but his legs would not move. She was up there, and she carried his child. A girl had been made, by him and her. In the heat and wet, in the hunger and need, a child had been made. The thought terrified him.

He managed a step, and then another, although it seemed, all at once, that this was the hardest climb of his life. Feelings swarmed him in chaotic confusion, until they all blended into a solid roar; he felt that sound then rush away, leaving only a numbed silence, too weary for hope, too exhausted for expectation. All that remained was the taste of the terror he had experienced earlier, dull now, metallic.

They had made a child, but Feren needed nothing more from Arathan. She already had all she had wanted from him. In giving her one thing, he had thought it only right to give her everything, all of him. The foolish were ever too generous — he had heard Sagander say that often enough when stuffing scrolls and manuscripts into a chest that he then locked. His private writings, the culmination of his life as a scholar. Kept, for none to see. Arathan understood that now. What is given away for free comes back wounded. Value is not always shared and some hands are rougher than others.

Father, this is what Old Man said to you, in warning.

I don’t think you were listening.

Feren touched the wound on her cheek. Rint had pulled from it a shard of clay, sewing the gash shut with gut thread. The bitch had laughed and that laugh still echoed in her skull, sharp as claws. Her mind felt full of blood, as if the wound from the clay fragment still bled, but only inward now, in unceasing flow.

Rint crouched nearby, building the cookfire, but she could see that his hands were shaking.

The witch had only confirmed what the corpse in the barrow had told them: she was seeded. A child was spreading roots through her belly. But now it felt alien, monstrous, and this sensation made her spirit recoil. The midwives were clear on this: love must line the womb. Love, forming a protective sheath. Without love, the child’s soul withers, and she so wanted to love this creation.

The seed had been given in innocence. The hunger for it had belonged to her alone, hoarded like a treasure, a chest she wanted filled to the brim. And it had seemed that, night after night, she had cast in the boy’s precious gifts by the handful, only to find that chest still gaping come the dawn. An illusion, she realized now. She was swollen with wealth and this sense of pallid impoverishment was her failing, not his.

She recalled looking upon pregnant women in the Bordersword villages, not too long ago, and seeing in them the sated satisfaction that she had, on occasion, derisively called smug. She had been a fool, quick to forget when she had known the same, when she had sauntered bold as a glutton — but such memories delivered spasms of pain and grief: it was no wonder she rejected all of what she too had known, leaving nothing but contempt and spite.

But now all she could feel was the girl curling like a fist inside her. Around blood most unusual! The boy had been more than just a boy. He was the son of Draconus, and the witch knew something — a secret, a buried truth. The unknown mother was not unknown to her, or so Rint now believed.

The wound in Feren’s face stung as if licked by flames. It throbbed, shouted with pain in the centre of her cheek. It had torn her beauty away — what beauty she possessed and she’d never gauged it a thing to admire or envy — and she felt marked now, as if with a thief’s brand. She stole the seed of a lord’s son — see her! There is no hiding the truth of that!

She wanted to love the child growing within her: that first gift of protection offered up by all mothers, and if the shock of birth was as much the surrendering of that protection as it was labour’s own pain, she was a veteran to both and nothing awaiting her was unfamiliar. She had no cause to fear: every desire had been appeased; every prayer answered in the white stream’s perfect blessing.

A girl, damned in conception, and when Feren imagined looking upon its newborn face, she saw her own, cheek gashed and bleeding, with eyes that knew only hate.

The torment of her thoughts shredded and spun away when Raskan clambered into view and she saw what had been done to him. He looked aged far beyond his years, his motions palsied and febrile as those of an ancient with brittle bones as he tottered to the fire and slowly sat down. He looked more than shocked; he looked ill, and Feren wondered if the witch’s brutal sorcery had stolen more than peace from his soul.

Rint was stirring a broth on the fire. He did not look up when he spoke and his words were gruff. ‘Every witch has cold hands. The touch wears off, sergeant.’

‘She is Azathanai,’ the sergeant replied, making the statement a rejection of all that Rint had offered him.

‘A witch all the same,’ Rint responded doggedly. ‘Even the Jheleck know of this Olar Ethil, who looks out from flames and yearns to meet your eyes. They call her power Telas. We have all felt it, when the night slumps just before dawn, and we look upon the hearth, expecting to see nothing but embers, and are shocked at the sight of fresh flames.’ He nudged another stick into the fire. ‘And then… other times… who hasn’t fallen silent when sitting round a hearth, eyes trapped by the deadly spirit in the flames? You feel the cold on your back and the heat on your face, and it seems that you cannot move. A trance grips you. Your eyes are locked, and in your mind, moving like half-seen shadows, ancient dreams stir awake.’

Feren stared across at her brother, half in wonder and half in fear. Rint’s face was twisted into a grimace. He stirred the broth as if testing the depth of mud before his next step.

Beside Feren, Raskan’s breathing was harsh and rapid. ‘She has touched you, Rint.’

‘She has, though I knew it not at the time. Or perhaps I did, but kept the truth from myself. We are ever made uneasy by what we do not know, and there is no virtue in recognizing that, since it speaks only of our own ignorance.’

‘Better ignorance than this!’

With that hoarse admission from Raskan, Arathan arrived. He halted a few paces from the fire, and Feren saw how he would not look at her. This was a relief, since the single glance she had just cast his way burned like a knife blade in her chest. She felt her eyes drawn to the flickering flames and quickly looked away, off into the night.

Better ignorance than this! Voice that cry as if the words were holy, for they are surely that. Words to haunt our entire lives, I should think.

Rint rose. ‘Feren, if you would, the bowls are here.’

She did not object, as it gave her something to do. She set about ladling the broth into the bowls, while Rint moved off to his pack. When he returned he carried a flask which he offered to Raskan. ‘Sergeant, I’m of no mind to test your command this night. Nor shall Feren.’

The man frowned. ‘Meaning?’

‘Get drunk, sergeant. Get good and drunk.’

A faint smile cracked the man’s features. ‘I am reminded of an old saying and now wonder at its source…’

Rint jerked a nod. ‘Yes. “Drown the witch,” sergeant, with my blessing.’

‘And mine,’ Feren said.

When Raskan reached for the flask he suddenly hesitated and looked up at Arathan. ‘Lord Arathan?’

‘Mine, too,’ Arathan said.

Feren settled back on her haunches, closing her eyes.

‘ Lord Arathan.’ It is done, then. He met his son’s eyes and knew them as his own.

‘Of course he’d know them,’ she muttered under her breath. They just needed a few hundred wounds first.

‘You did not expect me,’ said Olar Ethil. When he did not answer she looked across at him, and then sighed. ‘Draconus, it pains me to see you like this.’

‘What I shall deliver to Kharkanas-’

‘Will heal nothing!’ she snapped. ‘You always see too much in things. You make symbols of every gesture and expect others to understand them, and when they do not, you are lost. And, Draconus, you do not fare well when you are lost. She has unmanned you, that doe-eyed, simpering fool.’

‘You speak ill of the woman I love, Olar Ethil. Do not think I will yield another step.’

‘It is not you I doubt, Draconus. You gave her Darkness. You gave her something so precious she knows not what to do with it.’

‘There is wisdom in her indecision,’ Draconus replied.

She studied him. The night felt starved of faith, as if he had taken it all inside, and now harboured it with undeserved loyalty. ‘Draconus. She now rules, and ascends into godhood. She sits on that throne, face to face with necessities — and I fear they have little to do with you, or what you desire. To rule is to kneel before expediency. You should fear her wisdom.’

If her words found tender places, he had the will and the strength to not flinch, but there was pain in his eyes. She knew it well, from long ago. ‘There are Jaghut among the Dog-Runners.’

He looked at her. ‘What?’

‘Those who rejected the Lord of Hate. They amuse themselves ordering and reordering what does not belong to them. They make fists and call them gods. Spirits of water, air and earth flee before them. Burn dreams of war. Vengeance.’

‘Must it all crumble, Olar Ethil? All that we have made here?’

She waved a dismissive hand. ‘I will answer with fire. They are my children, after all.’

‘Making you no different from those Jaghut, or will you now claim Burn as your child, too?’

Scowling, Olar Ethil set her hands upon her distended belly. ‘They don’t feed her.’

They were silent for a few heartbeats, and then he said, ‘Feren did not deserve that.’

‘I said I was a cruel goddess and I meant it, Draconus. What care I about who does or who doesn’t deserve anything? Besides, she was already well used. You will have a grandchild to play with and let us be plain: I don’t mean tossing on one knee. How are they, by the way? Our wretched spawn?’

‘If they had a fourth sister she would be called Venom,’ Draconus replied. ‘As it is, alas, they have no need for a fourth sister.’

‘Three memories of pain. That is all I have of them. Will you visit his mother, then?’

‘No.’

‘You and I, Draconus, we are cruel in love. I wager Mother Dark is yet to discover that.’

‘We shall not make love tonight, Olar Ethil.’

She laughed harshly against the sting of those words. ‘A relief, Draconus. Three pains are enough for me.’

‘Old Man says… the next village.’

‘And then?’

He sighed. ‘I shall send the others back and ride on to the Tower of Hate.’

‘Your son?’

‘He shall ride with me. I believe his tutor left him with gifts for the Lord of Hate.’

‘They will be ill received, I predict. Does the boy return to Kharkanas with you?’

‘He cannot, and the means with which I shall hasten that journey are for me and Calaras and none other.’

‘Then he knows nothing.’

‘Nothing.’

‘Draconus, must all your seeds be errant? Left to grow wild, for ever untamed? Our daughters will be the death of you — you keep them too close, smothered by your neglect. It is no wonder they are venomous.’

‘Perhaps,’ he admitted. ‘I have no answer to my children. All of myself that I see in them is but cause for concern, and I am left wondering why parents give to their children so freely their flaws, yet not their virtues.’

She shrugged. ‘We are all misers with what we believe we have earned, Draconus.’

He reached to her and rested his hand upon her shoulder, and that touch sent a tremble through her. ‘You wear your weight well, Olar Ethil.’

‘If you mean my fat then I call you a liar.’

‘I did not mean your fat.’

After a moment she shook her head. ‘I think not. We are no wiser, Draconus. We fall into the same traps, over and over again. For all that I am fed by my Dog-Runners, I do not understand them; and for all that I nurtured Burn, at my own breast, still I underestimated her. I fear it is that fated disregard that will see the end of me some day.’

‘Will you not see your own death?’

‘I choose not to. Best it come in an instant, unexpected and so not feared. To live in dread of dying is to not live at all. Pray that I am running on my last day, fleet as a hare, my heart filled with fire.’

‘So I shall pray, Olar Ethil. For you.’

‘What of your death, Draconus? You were always one for planning, no matter how many times those plans failed you.’

‘I will,’ he replied, ‘die many deaths.’

‘You have seen them?’

‘No. I have no need for that.’

She looked out upon the water of the spring. Night made it black. Caladan Brood’s sculpture of the Thel Akai still lifted a tormented face to the sky, and would do so for ever. It was aptly named Surrender, and he had forced that sentiment upon the stone itself, refusing all subtlety. She feared Caladan Brood for his honesty and despised him for his talent.

‘I see his mother in his face,’ she said after a time. ‘In his eyes.’

‘Yes.’

‘That must be hard for you.’

‘Yes.’

She pushed her hand into her belly, feeling the skin split, and then the sudden heat of blood and the steady beat of her heart — almost within reach. Instead, her hands closed about the baked clay form of a figurine. She pulled it out. She crouched to wash it clean and then straightened and offered it to Draconus. ‘For your son.’

‘Olar Ethil, he is not yours to protect.’

‘Even so.’

After a moment he nodded and took it from her.

Draconus then squeezed her shoulder and began walking away.

She brushed fingers across her belly but the wound had closed once more. ‘I forgot to ask, what name did you give him?’

Draconus paused and glanced back at her. When he told her, she made a startled sound, and then began laughing.

Arathan slept fitfully, haunted by dreams of the corpses of children floating on a pool of black water. He saw ropes coming from their bellies, as if each one had been tied to something, but those ropes were severed, the ends hacked and shredded. Staring upon this scene, he felt a sudden certainty — in the way of dreams — that the spring, far beneath the surface, spilled out not water but these drowned babies, and the flow was endless.

When he walked out upon them he felt their soft bodies give under his weight, and with each step he grew somehow heavier, until, with a sound like breaking ice, he plunged through Only to awaken, slick with sweat, his chest aching from a breath held overlong against imaginary pressures.

He sat up to see that it was still night. His father was standing near the horses under the strange trees, and it seemed that he stared eastward — into the village or perhaps beyond it. For all Arathan knew, Draconus might be looking upon Kharkanas itself, and the Citadel, and a woman hidden in darkness seated on a throne.

Throne of Night. He settled back into his blanket and stared up at the stars overhead. Their twisted pattern made him think of fevers, when nothing was right with the world and the wrongness was terrifying — tormenting a small boy who was already filled with confused visions of icy cold water and shards of ice and who cried out for a mother who never came and never answered.

He had been that boy once. But even questions had a way of going away, eventually, when no answers were possible. He thought of the gift he would bring to the Lord of Hate, and knew it to be paltry, useless enough to be an insult. But he had nothing else to give.

Raskan believed that Olar Ethil was Arathan’s mother, but he knew that she was not. He had no reason for his certainty; still he did not question it. If anything, the witch reminded him of Malice, when she was younger and fatter — in the days when the girl first walked and was in the habit of wandering everywhere, smiling and singing since she did not yet know the meaning of the name she had been given. Something in their faces, young and old, seemed to be the same.

Bootsteps sounded and he tilted his head to find his father standing over him. After a moment Draconus sank into a crouch. He was holding in his hands a clay figurine, a thing that seemed to cry out sex, in an excess of sensuality that struck Arathan as grotesque. One of the witch’s gifts.

‘For you,’ Draconus said.

Arathan wanted to refuse it. Instead he sat up and took it from his father’s hands.

‘It will be light soon,’ Draconus went on. ‘Today I send back Rint, Feren and Raskan.’

‘Back?’

‘You and I shall ride on, Arathan.’

‘We leave them behind?’

‘They are no longer needed.’

And somewhere ahead, you will leave me behind, too. No longer needed. ‘Father,’ he said, hands clutching the figurine, ‘don’t hurt her.’

‘Hurt who?’

‘Feren,’ he whispered. And the child she carries. My child.

He could see his father’s frown, and how it slowly twisted into a scowl. It was, he realized, never too dark to see such things. ‘Don’t be foolish, Arathan.’

‘Just leave them alone, please.’

‘I would do no other,’ Draconus said in a growl. He quickly straightened. ‘Go back to sleep if you can,’ he said. ‘We have far to ride today.’

Arathan settled back on to the hard ground once more. He held the figurine like a baby against his chest. He had stood up to his father. He had made a demand even if it had sounded like a plea. A true son knew to draw lines in the sand and claim what he would for himself, for his own life and all that he deemed important in it. This was what growing up meant. Places to claim, things owned and things defended. It was a time of jostling, because the space was never big enough for the both of them, for both father and son. There was pushing and there was pulling, and comfort went away if it had ever existed; but maybe someday it would come back. If the father permitted it. If the son wanted it. If neither feared the other.

Arathan wondered if he would ever stop fearing his father, and then he wondered, as he studied the swirl of stars fading in the paling sky overhead, if there would come a time when his father began fearing him.

He thought he heard the witch whisper in his mind.

For the fire, boy. When your love is too much. Too much to bear.

For the fire.

The smooth curves of the figurine felt warm in his hands, as if promising heat.

When he closed his eyes the nightmare returned, and this time he saw a woman at the bottom of the pool, reaching into her belly and dragging free babies, one after another. She bit through the ropes and sent the babies away with a push. They thrashed until they drowned.

Along the edge of the pool now, women had gathered, reaching down to collect the limp, lifeless forms. He watched them stuff those bodies inside their bellies. And then they walked away.

But one woman remained, and the water before her was clear — no corpses in sight. She stared down into it, and he heard her singing in a soft voice. He could not understand the words, only the heartbreak in them. When she turned away and walked, he knew it was to the sea. She was going away and she was never returning to this place, and so she did not see the last boy rise up, still thrashing, fighting shards of ice, reaching for a hand that was not there.

And upon a stone, overlooking all this, sat his father. Cutting ropes. Into, Arathan surmised, manageable lengths.

Raskan woke late in the morning, the sun’s light lancing into his brain like jagged spears. Cursing his own fragility, he slowly sat up.

The two Borderswords were sprawled out in the shade of the trees. Behind them stood the horses, still tethered, but some, he realized, were missing. He wondered why, but a terrible thirst rose from within and he looked round, with sudden desperation, for a waterskin. Someone had left one within reach and he dragged it close.

As he drank, perhaps too greedily, Rint sat up and looked across at him. ‘There’s still some breakfast,’ the Bordersword said.

Raskan lowered the waterskin. ‘Where have they gone?’ he asked.

Rint shrugged.

I have shamed my lord. ‘Where have they gone?’ he demanded, pushing himself to his feet. The pain in his head redoubled and he gasped, feeling his guts churn. ‘What was I drinking last night?’

‘Mead,’ Rint replied. ‘Three flasks.’

Feren had climbed to her feet, brushing grasses and dried leaves from her clothes. ‘We’re to go back, sergeant. They went on without us. It was the Lord’s command.’

After a long moment, Raskan realized that he was staring — stupidly — at the woman. He could see the beginning of a swell on her, but that was impossible. Perhaps, he told himself, she’d always carried some extra weight. He tried to recall, but then gave up on the effort.

‘Something changed,’ Rint said to him. ‘We do not know what it was. He discharged us and orders you to return to House Dracons. That is all we know, sergeant. For most of the journey back, it seems reasonable that we should travel together, and so we waited.’

Raskan looked away, but then he nodded. I failed him. Somehow — no, do not lie to yourself, Raskan. It was that witch’s curse. It was how you broke, fled like a coward. Draconus will throw you away, just as he did Sagander. He thought then of Arathan, now riding at his father’s side, and shot another glance at Feren.

But she was carrying her saddle to her horse.

The boy commanded me. I remember that much at least. He showed his father’s iron, and yet, in his words to me, he was generous. Arathan, fare you well. I do not think I will see you again.

‘Clouds to the south,’ Rint said. ‘I smell the approach of rain.’ He turned to Raskan. ‘Get some food in your stomach, sergeant. If we are lucky we can ride free of the rain, and, if Mother Dark wills it, we shall meet Ville and Galak.’

Feren snorted. ‘Dear brother,’ she said, ‘she may well be a goddess now, but Mother Dark sets no eyes upon us, not here. We are not in Kurald Galain and even if we were, do you truly believe she is omniscient?’

‘Wherever there is night,’ he said, glowering.

‘If you say so,’ she replied as she led her horse out from under the trees. ‘I’ll wait for you at the spring.’

Raskan winced, and saw that Rint was now staring at his sister with an expression of dread.

‘If I see that witch,’ Feren said to her brother, one hand reaching up to the stitched gash on her cheek, ‘I’ll be sure to say hello.’ Swinging into the saddle, she loosened the sword in the scabbard belted at her side, and then set out, back towards the village.

Rint hurried over to his own saddle. ‘Wake up, sergeant — I’m not leaving her alone down there with that witch.’

‘Go, then,’ said Raskan. ‘Do not wait for me. I will find you on the other side of the village.’

‘As you will,’ he replied. ‘But she’s right in one thing — you’ll need to water your horse first.’

‘I know.’

Feren didn’t know if it was possible to kill an Azathanai, but she meant to try. She hoped the witch was wandering, as she had been the night before, since Feren had no desire to begin kicking down doors in this wretched village. She’d had enough of feeling used. The Azathanai did not understand propriety — even Grizzin Farl had pushed into her world of secrets, and if he laughed to soften the insult, an insult it remained.

She had suffered the touch of a dead Thel Akai, and now bore the scar of a witch’s curse. She had earned the right to fight back.

She knew what she was doing; she knew the value of anger, and how it could scour away other feelings. In her rage she did not have to think about the child growing within her; she did not have to think about Arathan and what she — and Draconus — had done to him. She did not have to think about the hurts she had delivered to her own brother. This was the lure of violence, and violence did not begin at the moment of physical assault; it began earlier, in all the thoughts that led up to it, in that storm of vehemence and venom. Rage beckoned violence, like those call-and-answer songs among the Deniers.

She rode through the village, through cool morning air, using the crumbled gaps in the walls as they had done the day before, and guided her mount down to the spring with its ugly statue and depthless waters. But she did not find the witch. Instead, she found Ville and Galak, watering their horses.

At the sound of her horse’s thumping hoofs as she approached, both men turned. And the smiles they gave her shattered the fury within her, and she rode out from it as if from under a cloud.

In the night just past, as Rint lay in his sleeping furs and listened to Arathan’s soft moans from the other side of the fire — and Feren’s soft weeping much closer to hand — he had thought about killing Lord Draconus. A knife to the throat would have done it, except that it seemed the man never slept. Again and again through the night Rint had opened his eyes and looked across to where the huge figure was standing, seeing only that he remained, motionless, a silhouette strangely impenetrable.

Shivering under his furs, Rint began to believe in the power of Night, in the inescapable breath of Mother Dark. Wherever the sun set, she would then rise, as if bound now to the raw truths of the universe. She had ceased being a Tiste. Even the title of goddess now seemed paltry and insufficient to evoke what she had become.

He did not understand how a mortal could make that journey, could become something other. But clearly she had done so. And Lord Draconus stood at her side and, Rint now suspected, shared something of the power his lover possessed.

The Azathanai met Draconus eye to eye, as equals, and even, on occasion, in deference. The Suzerain of Night: he had heard that title used for Draconus before, but it was not a popular one among the Tiste, who objected to its presumption, its arrogant impropriety. Well, as far as Rint was now concerned, they were all fools to denigrate Draconus’s claim to that title. Whatever it meant, it was a thing of power, brutally real and profoundly dangerous.

There was no question now in Rint’s mind that Draconus posed a threat. The highborn were right to fear the Consort and his influence in the court. They were right to want him ousted, and if not ousted, then brought down, discarded and driven away in disgrace.

Months past, Urusander’s agents had come among the Bordersword villages. They had argued their case — the need for a husband for Mother Dark, rather than a consort, and the obvious choice for that husband: Vatha Urusander, commander of the Legion. Those agents had gained little ground among the Borderswords. Their cause rode currents of conflict, and the Borderswords had lost their thirst for war. Those fierce fools had left in frustration.

Rint knew that his opinion counted for something among the loose council of his people, and he vowed that the next time such an agent visited, he would lend his support. Draconus needed to go. Even better, someone should kill the man and so end this deadly rise to power.

He had seen enough, here on this journey, to choose now to stand with Urusander. Hunn Raal and his comrades were not so blinded by personal ambition as Rint and his kin had believed. No, the next time will be different.

When Draconus announced that the contract had ended, concluded to the Lord’s satisfaction, Rint had struggled to hide his relief. Now he could take Feren away from all this: from the Lord’s cruel needs and the son’s pathetic ones. They would accompany Raskan as far as Abara Delack, because the man deserved that much — it was hardly Raskan’s fault that he served a beast.

They could now leave the lands of the Azathanai.

He rode hard to catch up to his sister, only to find his fears unfounded and, better still, that she was in good company.

‘I am not always cruel.’

Raskan spun round at the words. The saddle slipped from his hands and he staggered back. ‘No,’ he moaned. ‘Go away.’

Instead Olar Ethil drew closer. ‘Yours is an unhealthy fire,’ she said. ‘Let me douse it. Let me heal you.’

‘Please,’ he begged.

But this denial she received as an invitation. She reached out, as Raskan sank to his knees, and took his head in her hands. ‘Poisons of desire are the deadliest of all. I can cure you and so end your torment.’ She paused and then added, ‘It will give me pleasure to do so. Pleasure such as you cannot conceive. You are a man and so cannot know what it is to be sated — not in those few panting breaths following release that is all you can ever know — but the swollen bliss of a woman, ah, well, Gate Sergeant Raskan, this is what I seek and it is what I can offer you.’

The hands, pressed against the sides of his head, felt cool and soft, plump and yielding as they seemed to meld into his skin, and then the bones of his face, the fingers reaching through his temples. The heat of his thoughts vanished at their touch.

‘Open your eyes,’ she said.

He did so and found only her bared belly. It filled his vision.

‘Whence you came, Raskan.’

He stared at the scars and would have turned his head but she held him fast. He reached up to pull away her hands but found only her wrists — the rest had flowed into him, merging with the bones. In horror, he felt his fingertips track a seamless path from the skin of her wrists to his own face.

She drew him closer to her belly. ‘Worship is a strange thing,’ she said. ‘It seeks… satiation. Revelation is nothing without it. As you are fulfilled, I am filled. As you revel in surrendering, I delight in your gift. You need no other gods than this one. I am your only goddess now, Raskan, and I invite you inside.’

He wanted to cry out but no sound came from his throat.

She pressed his face against her belly, and he felt a scar open, splitting ever wider. Blood smeared his cheeks, leaked past his lips. Choking, he sought to draw a breath. Instead, fluids filled his lungs.

He felt her push his head into her belly, and then the edges of the gash tightened round his neck. His body was thrashing, but her power over him was absolute, even as the wound began to close, cutting through his neck.

His struggles stilled. He hung limp in her grip, blood streaming down his chest.

A moment later, in a sob more felt than heard, his body fell away. Yet he remained, blind, swallowed in flesh. And in his last moments of consciousness, he touched satiation and knew it for what it was. The blessing of a goddess, and, with it, joy that filled his being.

Olar Ethil wiped her bloodied hands on her distended belly, and then stepped over the headless corpse crumpled at her feet.

She went to the nearest tree and clambered up into its branches. The strange black lichen enwreathing those branches now gathered round her, growing in answer to a muttering of power from her full, blood-tinted lips. Thoroughly hidden now, she waited for the return of the dead man’s companions. She wanted to see the pregnant woman again, and that sweet wound on her cheek.

Not always cruel, it was true. Just most of the time.

‘It was boredom that had us riding half through the night,’ Ville was saying as they rode back to find Sergeant Raskan. ‘That and finding water. Without that spring we would’ve been in trouble.’

‘The sooner we’re gone from these lands the better,’ Galak said, glancing at the stone houses they rode past. ‘I don’t mind us riding all this way only to turn round and go back again. I don’t mind it at all.’

‘The tutor?’ Rint asked.

‘Quiet the whole way,’ Galak replied. ‘Seemed happy enough to see the monks.’

Something in the man’s tone made Rint look over at his friend.

But it was Ville who grunted and said, ‘Galak decided he didn’t trust the old man. Saw no reason for it myself.’

‘Something in his eyes,’ Galak said, shrugging. ‘Something not right.’

They reached the base of the hill.

‘I see his horse,’ Feren said. ‘Did he go back to sleep?’

Rint shook his head. The witch had wounded the poor man and a night of mead did not heal. It just offered the peace of oblivion. Nothing lasted, of course. The spirit struggled back to the surface, gasping the pain of living.

The four of them cantered up the hillside, crested its summit.

He saw Raskan, lying curled up — but something was wrong. The air stank of spilled blood. Reining in, Rint made to dismount, and then fell still.

The Borderswords were silent — their horses halted and the beasts jerking their heads, nostrils flaring.

Feren slipped down and walked over to where the headless body was lying. Rint saw her studying Raskan, and then the ground around the corpse. All at once she lifted her head towards one of the trees. Her sword scraped free.

Rint’s mouth was suddenly dry as dust. Eyes narrowing, he sought to see what Feren was staring at, but the snarl of lichen cloaking all the branches revealed nothing. Dismounting, one hand on his knife, he drew closer to his sister.

‘Feren?’

‘She’s there,’ Feren whispered.

‘What? I see nothing-’

‘ She’s there! ’

Rint looked down at the body. The severed end of Raskan’s neck looked pinched, and the cut was ragged. He did not think it came from an edged weapon. But then, what? A wave of cold swept through him and he shivered. He turned as Galak and Ville came up behind them. Both men had drawn their weapons, and they looked to all sides, their faces desperate, seeking an enemy though there was none to be found.

‘I just left him,’ Rint said. ‘There was no one about — he was alone up here. I swear it.’

‘She’s there!’ Feren cried, pointing with her sword. ‘I see her!’

‘There is nothing there,’ Ville said in a growl. ‘No woman, at least. Feren-’

‘Azathanai! Witch, come down and meet my sword! You so liked my blood — give me some of yours!’ Feren marched up to the tree and swung her sword at the tree’s gnarled bole. The edge rebounded with a metallic shout and the blade was a flash of dull silver flying out from Feren’s hand. The weapon spun past Rint and then landed, burying its point in the earth — where Raskan’s head would have been had it remained. Feren staggered back as if she had been the one struck, and Rint moved to take her in his arms.

She thrashed in his grip, glaring up at the tree. ‘Murderer! Olar Ethil, hear me! I curse you! In the name of an innocent man, I curse you! By the blood you took from me, I curse you!’

Rint dragged her back. He shot a glare at Ville and Galak. ‘Wrap up the body and throw it on the horse! We need to leave!’

The woman in his arms fought savagely, her nails raking deep gashes across his forearms. All at once he remembered a child, thrashing in blind fury, and how he had to hold her until her rage was spent in exhaustion. She’d clawed him. She’d bitten him. She’d been terrible in righteousness. A cry broke from his throat, filled with anguish at all that was lost, and for all that never changed.

His cry stilled her sudden as a breath, and then she was twisting round in his arms and embracing him, and now it was her strength that he felt, and his weakness that he gave in return.

‘But where’s the head?’ Ville shouted, half panicked.

‘It’s gone!’ Feren snapped.

Brother and sister held each other tight, and all at once Rint knew that they were doomed, that their lives were now wrapped round this moment, this wretched hill and these haunted trees — the headless body of an innocent man. Awaiting them he saw only blood and murder, cascading down like rain. He saw fires and could taste the bite of smoke in his throat.

He heard Ville and Galak carrying the body to the horse, and then Ville cursed when he saw that the mount had yet to be saddled. ‘Set him down! Set him down, Galak!’

Feren pulled herself free. Rint stood, arms hanging as if life had been torn from his embrace, and now only empty death remained, watching dully as his sister stumbled over to her sword. She tugged it free and sheathed it, every motion febrile, moving like a woman who knew eyes were fixed upon her — but in chilling hunger, not admiration. His chest ached to see her this way again.

When she had found her husband — his body and his useless, pathetic escape from the hardships of grief — when that man had simply left her alone and with staring eyes and open mouth shouted out his cowardice in a voice that never came and would never come again — she had moved as she did now, busying herself with tasks, with necessities.

He felt tears filling the beard on his cheeks.

Something sailed down from the tree’s black canopy and thumped on the ground almost at Rint’s feet. He looked down to see a clay figurine, slick with fresh blood. And from the impenetrable tangle overhead he heard a soft laugh.

Rint straightened. Ville and Galak had saddled the mount and were heaving the corpse over it. They took up leather strings to tie Raskan’s hands to his feet, one man to either side of the animal as they passed the string ends under the horse’s belly. They tied the strings to the laces from the moccasins — Lord Draconus’s own — and cinched tight the knots.

Rint stared at the heels, at how the thick hide was unevenly worn. Just like his boots.

‘Feren,’ he said, ‘lead them down the hill.’

‘Rint?’

‘Take them, sister. I won’t be long.’

But she drew close, her eyes wide with fear. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘Something meaningless.’

Whatever she saw in his face seemed to answer her needs and after a moment she turned away, hurrying back to her horse.

Rint went to his own horse and rummaged in the saddle bags. As his friends mounted up and rode away, Ville leading Raskan’s horse with its lifeless burden, Rint drew out a flask of oil. They would have dry whetstones for the rest of this journey and would have to be mindful of rust and dulled edges, but there was nothing to be done about it.

He walked up to the tree, collecting wood, grasses and dried leaves along the way.

‘I know,’ he said as he built up the tinder round the base of the tree. ‘I know I but send you back into the flames. And in fire there is doubtless no pain for one such as you.’ He splashed oil against the bole of the tree, emptied the flask. ‘Unless… the desire behind the fire has power. I think it does. I think that is why a raider’s firing a house is a crime, an affront. Burning to death — malicious hands touching the flame to life — I think this has meaning. I think it stains the fire itself.’

He drew out his tinder box and found the embers he had this very morning collected from the cookfire. ‘I do this wanting to hurt you, Olar Ethil. And I want that to matter.’

He set the embers down beneath a thick twisted bundle of grasses, watched as the smoke rose, and then, as flames licked to life, Rint stepped back.

The fire spread, and then found the oil. Like serpents the flames climbed the trunk of the tree. The lowest branches, with their nests of black lichen, burst alight.

Rint backed away from the heat. He watched as the flames surged from branch to branch, climbing ever higher. He watched as branches from the trees to either side caught, and the sound was a building roar.

When he heard her begin screaming, he walked back to his horse, climbed into the saddle, and rode away.

Her shrieks followed him down the hill.

Feren stared up at the burning trees. She could hear the witch’s frantic screams and they made her smile.

When Rint re-joined them they turned as one and made their way back through the village.

This time Azathanai were emerging from their homes, to stare up at the wall of flames commanding the hilltop, and the grey smoke rising from them. Then they turned to watch the Borderswords riding past, and said nothing.

Feren held her smile, and offered it to every face turned her way.

Father and son rode side by side through the morning, saying little. Shortly after noon Draconus reined in suddenly and twisted in the saddle. He peered eastward, in the direction they had come. Arathan did the same, but could see nothing untoward.

‘Father?’

Draconus seemed to hunch slightly. ‘Raskan is dead.’

Arathan said nothing. He did not want to believe his father’s words, but he did not doubt the truth of them.

‘She saw it as mercy,’ Draconus continued after a moment. ‘Does that make a difference?’

The witch killed him? He thought of the clay figurine in his saddle bag. He had not wanted to take it from his father’s hands. He wished now that he had refused him. When your love is too much to bear. For the fire, boy, for the fire.

‘They found the body,’ Draconus said. ‘It is their rage that I now feel. I was careless. Unmindful, my thoughts elsewhere. But I made plain my protection. Olar Ethil mocks me. Too often we strike at one another. From the ashes of our past, Arathan, you will find sparks that refuse to die. Be careful what memories you stir.’ He drew a deep breath then, and let it out in something like a shudder. ‘I admire them,’ he said.

‘Who?’ Arathan asked.

‘The Borderswords. I admire them deeply. They have struck back at her, not in my name, but because it was right to do so. Olar Ethil will be scarred by this. Terribly scarred. Arathan,’ he added, taking up the reins once more, ‘she who bears your child is a remarkable woman. You are right to love her.’

Arathan shook his head. ‘I do not love her, Father. I no longer believe in love.’

Draconus looked across at him.

‘But,’ Arathan allowed, ‘she will be a good mother.’

They resumed riding. He wanted to think about Raskan but could not. He was leaving a world behind, and the faces that he saw in that world remained alive in his mind. It seemed to be enough. The day ahead stretched before Arathan, as if it would never end.