Steven Erikson - Forge of Darkness

‘Keruli died and so became K’rul? Then the Azathanai can die after all.’

‘No. Rather, yes. This is difficult enough without your questions! I’d rather you threw some more wood on the fire.’

‘What for?’

‘Yes, I am aware that it is not burning. But fire marks the passage of time in that it demonstrably offers us the transition of one thing into another. It is like the music that accompanies a bard’s voice. Without the damned flames between us it seems the tale must stall, like a word half uttered, a breath half drawn.’

‘You were telling me about an Azathanai named K’rul.’

‘Not even his fellow Azathanai understand what he did, or even why. Perhaps he but tests his own immortality. Or perhaps ennui drove him to it. Here we skirt the chasm of intentions. He gives no answer to entreaty.’

‘What did he do?’

‘He bled, and from the wounds he opened upon himself, in the blood itself, he gave birth to mysterious power. Sorcery. Magic in many currents and flavours. They are young still, vague in aspect, only barely sensed. Those who do sense them might choose to flee, or venture closer. In exploration, these currents find definition.’

‘It is said,’ Korya ventured, ‘that the Jaghut possess their own sorcery. As do the Dog-Runners, and the Thel Akai, and even the Forulkan.’

‘And the Tiste?’ Haut asked.

She shrugged. ‘So Varandas said, but I have never seen anything of that.’

‘You were very young when you left Kurald Galain.’

‘I know. I admit, master, that I am sceptical of Tiste magic.’

‘And what of Mother Dark?’

‘I don’t know, master. Anything can be worshipped and made into a god, or goddess. It just takes collective fear — the desperate kind, the helpless kind, the kind that comes from having no answers to anything.’

‘Then is the absence of belief the same as ignorance?’

‘As much as the presence of belief can be ignorant.’

Haut grunted, and then nodded. ‘The blood leaks from him, in thin trickles, in heavy drops, and so his power passes out into the world and in leaving him becomes a thing left behind, and so Keruli became known as K’rul.’

‘The Dog-Runners expected him to die.’

‘They did. Who does not die when bleeding without surcease?’

‘But he lives on.’

‘He does, and now at last, I suspect, the other Azathanai begin to comprehend consequences of K’rul’s gift, and are alarmed.’

‘Because K’rul offers anyone a share in the power they once held only for themselves.’

‘Very good. What value being a god when each and every one of us can become one?’

She scowled. ‘What value being a god when you bully all those with less power than you? Where is the satisfaction in that? If it exists at all, it must be momentary, and pathetic and venal. Might as well pull the legs off that spider on the wall behind you — it’s hardly worthy of a strut, is it?’

‘Hostage, are not all gods selfish gods? They make their believers cower, if believers they choose to have; and if not, then in the hoarding of their power they become remote and cruel beyond measure. What god offers gifts, and does so freely, without expectation, without an insistence upon forms and proscriptions?’

‘That is K’rul’s precedent?’ Korya asked, and the very notion made her breathless and filled with wonder.

‘Long ago,’ Haut said, groaning as he climbed to his feet, ‘there were Jaghut markets, back when we had need of such things. Imagine the consternation in such a market, should one hawker arrive bearing countless treasures, which he then gave away, asking for nothing in return. Why, civilization could not survive such a thing, could it?’

‘Master, is K’rul the Lord of Hate?’

‘No.’

‘Is your tale at an end?’

‘It is.’

‘But you ended nowhere!’

‘I did warn you, hostage. Now pack up, as we must be off. The day promises an air cleansed of all things behind us, and a bold vista to entice us forward.’

And now they walked, down the tiers of the valley’s side, and in the distance there was a tower, rising above all others. It was white, luminescent as pearl, and it drew her gaze again and again.

Arathan followed Draconus out on to an expanse that in any other city would have been called a square. A high tower rose amidst a cluster of lesser kin directly opposite. Where the others were squat and angular and made of grey granite, the tower before them was faced in what looked like white marble, round-walled, smooth and graceful. The buildings gathered at its foot seemed as crass as hovels.

Draconus reined in before one such lesser tower, and dismounted. He turned to Arathan. ‘Hobble your horses. We have arrived.’

Arathan tilted his head and let his eyes travel the height of the white edifice. ‘I do not understand,’ he said, ‘why such a beautiful thing should be called the Tower of Hate.’

Pausing for a moment beside Calaras, Draconus frowned at his son. Then he gestured to the low doorway of the squat tower. ‘In here,’ he said. The aperture was narrow and low enough to force him to duck when he stepped within.

After hobbling Besra and Hellar, Arathan followed.

The chamber was dark and vaguely rank, its low ceiling bearing smoke-blackened rafters and beams stained with what looked like bird guano. A high-backed chair was positioned in a corner close to three vertical slits in the wall that passed for windows. The light spilling through ran like bars across a small, high desk, on which sat a stack of vellum as tall as the wine goblet that stood beside it. Roughly made feather quills were scattered about on what remained of the desk’s flat top, with more littering the stone floor underneath the wooden legs. In the corner to the left of the chair, a trap door in the floor had been lifted back, and from somewhere below pale light drifted upward like dust.

Draconus drew off his leather gloves and tucked them behind his sword belt. He looked around, and then said, ‘Wait here. I will go and find us some chairs.’

‘Do we seek an audience, Father? Are we in the gatekeeper’s tower?’

‘No,’ he replied, and made his way outside.

There was a scuffing sound from the trap and a moment later a figure climbed into view. Arathan had never before seen a Jaghut, as he knew this creature to be. Tall, gaunt, with skin the hue of olives, bearing creases and seams similar to those on lizard hide. The tusks curled as they swept up from the lower jaw to either side of a wide, slit mouth. Heavy brow ridges hid the eyes. The Jaghut was wearing a frayed robe of wool, unevenly dyed a watery purple. In one hand he held an ink bottle. His fingers were stained black.

Ignoring Arathan, the Jaghut walked to the desk and set the ink bottle down, and then, as if exhausted by the chore, he sat in the cushioned chair and leaned back to rest his head.

A flicker of dull gold marked his eyes as he studied the desktop. When he spoke, his voice was deep but rough. ‘Some write in wine. But others write in blood. As for me, why, I prefer ink. Less painful that way. I invite no excesses but moderation, but some would view even moderation to be a vice. What think you?’

Arathan cleared his throat. ‘We seek audience with the Lord of Hate.’

The Jaghut snorted. ‘That fool? He bleeds ink like a drunk pissing in the alley. His very meat is sodden with the bile of his dubious wit. He chews arguments like broken glass, and he bathes all too infrequently. What business would you have with him? None of any worth, I imagine. They come seeking a sage, and what do they find? Look at that heap of writing there, on the desk. He writes a suicide note, and it is interminable. His audience blinks, too filled with self-importance to choke out a laugh. Death, he tells them, is the gift of silence. One day we will all roll into that crypt, where the painted walls hide in darkness and even the dust will not stir. Tell me, do you long for peace?’