Steven Erikson - Forge of Darkness

Andarist turned to his brother. ‘Anomander, please. This is not necessary-’

‘This High Mason has won from the First Son of Mother Dark a blood-vow, brother. Does he imagine that a thing of little value? If there is no coin in this exchange, then is it not my right to demand the same of him in return?’

‘He is Azathanai-’

‘Are the Azathanai not bound by honour?’

‘Anomander, it’s not that. As you have said, binding by blood pulls both ways. As it now stands, all you have bound yourself to is this hearthstone. Your vow is to the upholding of your brother and the woman he loves, and the union thereof. If such was not your sentiment from the very first, then as the High Mason has said, best we not hear it now?’

Anomander stepped back as if rocked by a blow. He lifted his bloodied hand.

‘I do not doubt you,’ Andarist insisted. ‘Rather, I implore you to reconsider your demand on this Azathanai. We know nothing of him, beyond his reputation — yet that reputation is unsullied by questions regarding his integrity.’

‘Just so,’ replied Anomander. ‘And yet he hesitates.’

The High Mason’s breath hissed sharply. ‘First Son of Darkness, hear my words. Should you wrest this vow from me, I will hold you to it, and its truth shall be timeless for as long as both of us shall live. And you may have cause to regret it yet.’

Andarist stepped closer to his brother, eyes imploring. ‘Anomander — can’t you see? There is more to what you ask of him than either of us can comprehend!’

‘I will have his vow,’ Anomander said, eyes fixed on those of the High Mason.

‘To what end?’ Andarist demanded.

‘High Mason,’ Anomander said, ‘tell us of those ramifications which we do not as yet comprehend.’

‘I cannot. As I said, First Son, there is no precedent for this. Shall I be bound to your summons? Perhaps. Just as you may in turn be bound to mine. Shall we each know the other’s mind? Shall all secrets vanish between us? Shall we for ever stand in opposition to one another, or shall we stand as one? Too much is unknown. Consider carefully then, for it seems you speak from wounded pride. I am not a creature who weighs value in coin, and in wealth I ever measure all that cannot be grasped.’

Anomander was silent.

The Azathanai then held up a hand, and Sparo was shocked to see blood streaming down from a deep gash in the palm. ‘Then it is done.’

As he turned away, Anomander called out to him, ‘A moment, please. You are known by title alone. I will have your name.’

The huge man half swung round, studied Anomander for a long moment, and then said, ‘I am named Caladan Brood.’

‘It is well,’ said Anomander, nodding. ‘If we are to be allies…’

‘That,’ replied the High Mason, ‘still remains to be seen.’

‘No blood shed in my name or cause-’

Caladan Brood then bared teeth, and those teeth were sharp and long as those of a wolf. ‘That, too, Lord, remains to be seen.’

Not too many years ago, fewer indeed than she cared to think about, Korya Delath had lived in another age. The sun had been brighter, hotter, and when she had carried her dolls, a dozen or more, up the narrow, treacherous stone steps to the Aerie’s platform, she had delivered them into that harsh light with breathless excitement. For this was their world, cut clean with the low walls enclosing the platform casting the barest of shadows, and the heat rising from the stone was lifted up by the summer wind as if giving voice to a promise.

Up here, in that lost age, it ever seemed she was moments from unfolding wings, moments from sailing up into the endless sky. She was a giant to her dolls, a goddess, and hers were the hands of creation, and even without wings she could stand and look down upon them, reaching to adjust their contented positions, tilting their faces upward so that she could see their stitched smiles or surprised ‘O’ mouths, and their bright knuckled eyes of semi-precious stones — garnet, agate, amber — that gleamed and flashed as they drank in the fervent light.

The summers were longer then, and if there were days of rain she did not remember them. From the Aerie she could look out and study the vast world beyond her and her dolls, her little hostages. The Arudine Hills girdled the north, barely a league distant from the keep, and from the maps Haut had let her examine she knew that these hills ran more or less west-east, only breaking up in the border reaches of Tiste-held territory far to the east; while westward they curled slightly northward, forming the southern end of a vast valley where dwelt the Thel Akai. If she looked directly east she would see the rolling steppes of the Jhelarkan Range, and the so-called Contested Territory, and in her memories she thought she caught glimpses of herds, smudged dark and spotting the land, but perhaps those images came from the ancient tapestries lining Haut’s study, and in any case the huge creatures only wandered now through her mind, and nowhere else. To the south she could make out two raised roads, mostly overgrown even then; one angling southeastward, the other southwestward. One of them, she knew now, led to Omtose Phellack, the Empty City. The other reached for the eastern borderlands, and it had been upon that road that she had first journeyed, from the world she had known as a child of Lesser House Delack, in the Tiste settlement called Abara, to this, the northernmost Jaghut keep in the realm they no longer claimed yet continued to occupy.

For this reason Haut had often mocked the notion of contested territory, but he also cited Jhelarkan indifference or possibly, given their defeats at the hands of the Tiste, incapability in claiming new lands for their control. Besides, the land in question was now empty, of little worth except as pasture, and the Jhelarkan way of life did not include the maintenance of domestic animals. There was nothing to contest, and it seemed just one more of those pointless arguments neighbours fostered with each other, a stamping of feet and holding of breath, a fury that could end in the spilling of blood. Haut was right to mock such things.

In her memories she could find no hint that she had ever seen a Jheleck. The territory to the east seemed the demesne of conquering weeds and scrub, ruled by relentless winds polishing cracked bedrock. It had been a place she had been forbidden to explore, except from here, atop the Aerie, straining across blurring distances with her eyes and seeing only whatever her imagination could conjure to life. But then, this was how she explored everything beyond the keep. Haut had kept her inside ever since she had been delivered into his care, isolated, hostage to everything, and to nothing.

She knew now that the Jaghut had not quite understood the Tiste tradition of giving and receiving hostages; certainly they had never sent one of their own children eastward, and given how rare those children were, it was no wonder. In any case, Haut only spoke of her enforced imprisonment as one of education: he had taken upon himself the responsibility of teaching her, and if he was an unusually harsh master, well, he was Jaghut.

Her dolls remained in her room these days. It had been years since they last looked up at the sun in its sky, with their ‘O’ mouths and eternal smiles. Sometimes, surprise and pleasure just faded away. Sometimes, the world dwindled, down until it was no bigger than a small, shallow platform atop a tower, and goddesses ran out of games to play, gave up reaching down to adjust the posture of her insensate children. Sometimes, the hostages just died of neglect, and power over corpses was no power at all.

This day, however, she was a goddess gripped by something that might be fear, or perhaps alarm, and her heart was thumping fast in her thin chest as she stood alone on the platform, watching the score or so Jheleck drawing ever closer to the keep. There was no question that they were intent on accosting Haut, either with violence or threat — she could think of no other reason for defying the prohibitions, for crossing the border into Jaghut territory. Of course, it was a territory no longer held by anyone. Were these ancient enemies coming to claim it for themselves?