Steven Erikson - Forge of Darkness

He wanted to meet that god. He wanted a word or two with that god. He wanted, above all, to look into its eyes, and see in them the truth of madness.

With brush and desire, I will make a god.

Watch me.

But in this moment, as he rode through swords of light and shrouds of shadow, upon the trail of blind savagery, Kadaspala was himself like a man without eyes. The painted face was everywhere. His fingers could not stop painting it, in the air, like mystical conjurations, like evocations of unseen powers, like a warlock’s curse and a witch’s warding against evil. Fingers that could close wounds at a stroke, that could unravel the bound knots of time and make anew a world still thriving with possibilities — that could do all these things, yet tracked on in their small scribings, trapped by a face of death.

Because the god behind the gods was mad.

I shall paint the face of darkness. I shall ride the dead down the throat of that damned god. I, Kadaspala, now avow this: world, I am at war with you. Outside — you, outside, hear me! The inside shall be unleashed. Unleashed.

I shall paint the face of darkness. And give it a dead child’s eyes.

Because in darkness, we see nothing.

In darkness, behold, there is peace.

Narad’s fingers brushed the unfamiliar lines of his own face, the places that had twisted or sagged. Haral’s fists had done more than bruise and cut. They had broken nerves. He had looked upon his face reflected in a forest pool, and barely recognized it. The swelling was gone, bones mending as best they could, and most of the vision had returned to his left eye, but now he bore another man’s visage, thickened and pulled down, stretched and dented.

He had known Haral’s history. He had known that the bastard had lost his family in the wars, and that there was a cauldron of rage bubbling and popping somewhere inside the man. But for all that, Narad had been unable to stop himself, and finally — the day with that highborn runt — all of his verbal jabs and prods had pushed the caravan captain too far. It wasn’t hard to remember the look in Haral’s face, in the instant before he struck, the raw pleasure in the man’s eyes — as though a door had been thrown open and all the fists of his anger could now come flying out.

There was plenty of anger among the Tiste, swirling and on occasion rising up to drown sorrow, to overwhelm what was needed to just get along. Or maybe it was a force that existed in everyone, like a treasure hoard of every humiliation suffered in a lifetime of broken dreams and disappointments, a treasure hoard, a chest, with a flimsy lock.

Narad was an ugly man now, and he would think like an ugly man, but one still strong enough to keep sorrow’s head down, beneath the surface, and find satisfaction each and every time he drowned it. He wasn’t interested in a soft world any more, a world where tenderness and warmth were possible, rising like bright flowers from beds of skeletal lichen and sun-burnt moss. He needed to keep reminding himself of all of that.

He sat listening to the conversations in the camp around him, the words coming from those gathered round the fire, or outside the tents. Jests and complaints about the damp ground, the fire’s wayward but vengeful smoke. And he could hear, in rasping susurration, iron blades sliding on whetstones, as nicks were worked out and blunt edges honed sharp once again. Narad was among soldiers, true soldiers, and their work was hard and unpleasant, and he now counted himself one of them.

The troop awaited the return of their captain, Scara Bandaris, who along with a half-dozen soldiers had gone on to Kharkanas, to deliver the Jheleck hostages. Left behind by the caravan, still rib-cracked, still face-swollen, still half-blind, Narad had stumbled upon this troop and they had taken him in, cared for him, given him weapons and a horse, and now he rode with them.

The war against the Deniers had begun, here in this ancient forest. Narad had not known such a war was even threatening; he had never been impressed by the forest people. They were ignorant, most likely inbred, and meek as lambs. They weren’t much of an enemy, and it didn’t seem to be much of a war. The few huts they had come upon yesterday had been what Narad would have expected. One middle-aged man with a bad knee, a woman who called him husband, and the children they’d begotten. The girl who’d been hiding in the hut might have been pretty before the fire, but she was barely human after it, crawling out like she did. The killing had been straightforward. It had been professional. There had been no rapes, no torture. Every death delivered had been delivered quickly. Narad told himself that even necessity could be balanced with mercy.

The problem was: he was having trouble finding the necessity.

Corporal Bursa told him that he and his troop had cleaned out most of the Deniers in this section of forest — a day’s walk in any direction. He said it had been easy as there didn’t seem to be too many warriors among them, just the old and mothers and the young. Bursa reminded Narad of Haral, and already he had felt his instinctive response to a man bad at hiding hurts, but this time he kept quiet. He had learned his lesson and he wanted to stay with these men and women, these soldiers of the Legion. He wanted to be one of them.

He had drawn his sword in the Deniers’ camp, but none of the enemy had come within reach, and almost before he knew it the whole thing was over, and the others were firing the huts.

Where the girl had hidden was something of a mystery, but the smoke and flames had driven her out, eventually. Narad had been close by — well, the closest of any of them — and when she’d crawled out Bursa had ordered him to put the creature out of its misery.

He still remembered edging closer, fighting the gusts of heat. She was making no sound. Not once had she even screamed, although her agony must have been terrible. It was right to kill her, to end her torment. He told himself that again and again, as he worked ever closer — until he hunched over her, staring down at her scorched back. Pushing the sword into it had not been as hard as he thought it would be. The thing below him could as easily have been a sow’s carcass, roasted on a spit. Except for all the black hair.

There was no reason, then, that his killing her should be haunting him. But he was having trouble laughing and joking with the others. He was, in fact, having trouble meeting their eyes. Bursa had tried telling him that these forest folk weren’t even Tiste, but that was untrue. They were — the lame man they’d cut down could have been from Narad’s own family, or a cousin in a nearby village. He felt confused and the confusion wouldn’t go away. If he could get drunk it’d go away, for a time, but that wasn’t allowed in this troop. They drank beer because it was safer than the local water, but it was weak and there wasn’t that much of it and besides, these soldiers weren’t like that. Captain Scara Bandaris wouldn’t allow it; by all accounts, he was hard and ferociously disciplined, and he expected the same of his soldiers.

Yet these men and women worshipped the captain.

Narad was jealous of them all. He’d not even met the captain yet, and he wondered what he would see in this Scara Bandaris to make sense of this killing of Deniers, and this whole damned war. Narad had grown up on a farm lying just outside a small hamlet. He knew the reasons everyone gave when hunting vermin — the rats brought disease, the hares ate the crops and riddled the ground, and so all that slaughter was necessary. He knew that he should think of these Deniers in the same way, as an infestation and a threat to their way of life. Even rats minded their own business, but that didn’t save them; that didn’t stop them from being a problem; that didn’t keep the beaters and their dogs away.