Ричард Морган: The Dark Defiles

Meanwhile, Anasharal the Helmsman, full of ancient unhuman knowing when they planned the expedition back in Yhelteth last year, was now proving remarkably cagey about specifics. The Kiriath demon was either unwilling or unable to point them with any clarity to the Changeling’s grave, and instead suggested—somewhat haughtily—that they do the legwork themselves and inquire of the locals. I fell from on high for your benefit, went the habitual gist of the lecture. Is it my fault that I no longer have the vision I gave up in order to bring my message to you? I have steered you to journey’s end. Let human tongues do the rest.

But the Hironish islanders were a notoriously closed-mouth bunch—even Gil’s dull-as-dishwater tutors had mentioned that. Historically, they’d been know to harbor popular pirates and tax evaders despite anything the League’s heavy-handed customs officers could do about it. To lie with impassive calm in the face of threats, to spit with contempt at drawn steel, and to die under torture rather than give up a fellow islander.

So they certainly weren’t about to spill the secrets of settled generations to some bunch of poncey imperials who showed up from the alien south and started asking oh, hey, we hear there’s this dark lord out of legend buried around here somewhere. Any chance you could take us to him?

Not just like that, anyway.

It took a week of careful diplomacy in and out of the taverns in Ornley and then out to the hamlets and crofts beyond, just to find a handful of locals who would talk to them. It took soft words and coin and endless rounds of drinks. And even then, what these men had to say was sparse and contradictory:

—the Illwrack Changeling, hmm, yes, that’d be the one from the dwenda legend. But he was never buried up here, the dwenda took him away in a shining longship, to where the band meets the ocean …

—crucified him on Sirk beach for a betrayer, was what I heard, facing the setting sun as he died. His followers took him down three days later and buried him. It’s that grave up behind the old whaler’s temple.

—the Illwrack Betrayer was brought to the Last Isle, to the Chain’s Last Link, just as the legends say. But the isle only manifests to mortal eyes at spring solstice, and even then, only with much purifying prayer. To land there would require an act of great piety. You should ask at the monastery on Glin cliffs, perhaps they can make offerings for you when you return next year.

Yeah, that’s right —jeers from further down the tavern bar— you should ask his brother out at Glin. Never known him turn down a request for intercession if it came weighted with enough coin …

You know, I’ve had about enough out of you whelps. My brother’s a righteous man, not like some worthless bastard sons I could—

They’d had to break that one up with fists. Start all over again.

— the grave you seek is on a promontory of the Gray Gull peninsula, no more than a day’s march north of here. On approach, Gray Gull may seem a separate island, but do not be deceived. Certain currents cause the inlets to fill enough at certain times to make it so—but you can always cross, at worst you might have to wade waist deep. And most of the time, you won’t even get your boots wet.

Hagh! —a graybeard fishing skipper hawks and spits something unpleasantly yellow onto the tavern’s sawdust floor, rather close to Ringil’s boot— not going to find that grave this side of hell! That’s where the Aldrain demons took that one—screaming to hell!

No, no, my lords, forgive him, this is just fisherfolk superstition. The last human son of Illwrack is buried at the compass crossroads, on a rise just south of here. Some say the hill itself is the Changeling’s barrow.

—the truth, my lords, is that the dwenda hero was laid to rest in the stone circle at Selkin, where his retainers …

So forth.

It was a lot of digging.

But in the absence of the imperial expedition’s other main prize—the legendary floating city of An-Kirilnar, which they also couldn’t seem to find right now—there really wasn’t much else to do but tramp out to site after site and dig until disappointed.

DISAPPOINTMENT IS A SLOW POISON.

Initially, and for some of the closer sites, practically every figure of note on the expedition tagged along. There was still a palpable air of journey’s end hanging over them all at that point—a sense that after all that planning, all those sea miles covered, this was it. And whatever it was, no one wanted to miss it.

True above all for Mahmal Shanta—he went out of sheer academic curiosity and at the cost of some substantial personal discomfort. Really too old for a voyage into such cold climes anyway, Shanta was still getting over flu and had to be carried on a covered litter by six servants, which was awkward over rough ground and slowed everybody else down. Gil rolled his eyes at Archeth, but in the end what were you going to do? The naval engineer was a primary sponsor of the expedition; his family’s shipyards had built two of the three vessels they sailed in and reconditioned the third, and even in illness he held onto stubborn and canny command of the flagship Pride of Yhelteth.

If anyone had earned the right, it was Shanta.

Archeth’s reasons for riding along were twofold, and a little more pragmatic. She went because she was overall expedition leader and it was expected of her. But more than that, she badly needed something to take her mind off the lack of any Kiriath architecture standing above the waves offshore. Not finding An-Kirilnar had hit her hard.

Marine commander Senger Hald went ostensibly to supervise those of his men detailed to the search, but really to put an unquestionable marine boot on the proceedings. And Noyal Rakan went beside him, to show the Throne Eternal flag and remind everyone who was supposed to be in charge. The two men were coolly amicable, but the interservice rivalry was never far beneath the surface, in them or in the men they commanded.

Lal Nyanar, captain of the Dragon’s Demise mostly on account of Shab Nyanar’s substantial investment in the expedition, went along even when the prospecting was done overland, apparently out of some belief that he was representing his absent father’s interests in the quest. Gil didn’t really begrudge him; Nyanar wasn’t much of a sea captain—the sinecure commands his father had secured for him back in Yhelteth were largely ceremonial or involved river vessels—but he did at least know how to follow orders. Out of sight of his ship, he deferred to the expedition leaders and kept his head down.

The same could not be said of the others.

Of the expedition’s other investors who’d actually made the trip north, Klarn Shendanak stuck close to the action because he didn’t trust Empire men any further than you could throw one, and that included Archeth Indamaninarmal, jet-skinned half-human imperial cypher that she was. Menith Tand followed suit and stuck close to Shendanak because he harbored a standard Empire nobleman’s distaste for the Majak’s rough-and-ready immigrant manners and would not be one-upped. And Yilmar Kaptal went along because he mistrusted both Shendanak and Tand in about equal measure. The three of them didn’t quite spit at each other outright, but having them at your back was like leading a procession of alley cats. Shendanak never went anywhere without an eight-strong honor guard of thuggish-looking second cousins fresh down from the steppes, which in turn meant that Tand brought along a handful of his own mercenary crew to balance the equation, and Kaptal flat-out demanded that Rakan muster a squad of Throne Eternal just in case…