Steven Erikson - Forge of Darkness

‘But you are not so enamoured of sacrifice.’

‘When my every prayer to her goes unanswered…’ he glared at the historian, ‘and do not dare speak to me of trials to test my faith.’

‘I would not,’ Rise Herat replied. ‘As I said, to track down this path is for me a fast unravelling of reason. But three strides along and I am floundering, too many ends in my hands and doubtful of every knot.’

‘How is it you can deny a belief in power?’

‘It is my thought that without belief, there is no power.’

‘What do you win with that, historian?’

Rise shrugged. ‘Freedom, I suppose.’

‘And what do you lose?’

‘Why, everything, of course.’

The priest stared up at him, his expression unreadable.

‘You are exhausted, friend. Close your eyes. I will abide.’

‘And when you see the blood on my hands?’

‘I will take them in my own.’

Endest’s eyes filled with tears, but a moment later he closed them and set his head back against the chair’s thick padding.

Rise Herat watched sleep take the young priest, and waited for the mask to crack.

They rode through a city subdued, where light struggled and what commerce Orfantal saw spoke in strident voices, with gestures sudden and fretful. The gloom of the alleys that led on to the main thoroughfare bled out like wounds upon the day. He was riding one of Lady Hish Tulla’s horses, a placid mare with a broad back and twitching ears, her mane braided yet cut short to raise the knotted stubble into a crest. He wondered if the animal had a name. He wondered if she knew it and held it as her own, and what that name might mean to her, especially when in the company of other horses. And did she know the names given to other horses; and if she did, then what new shape had she found in her world? Was there some inkling that things were not as they had once seemed; that something foreign was now lodged in the animal’s head?

He did not know why such questions haunted him. There were all kinds of helplessness, just as there were many kinds of blindness. A horse could carry on its back a hero, or a villain. The beast knew no difference and deserved no stain from the deeds of its master. A child could stumble in the wake of a father who murdered for pleasure, or a mother who murdered from fear, and yet find an entire life spent in the shadow of such knowledge. Questions could not arise without some sense of knowing, and the worst of it was, with that knowing came the realization that many of those questions could never be answered.

Directly ahead rode Gripp Galas, who had returned from the wedding that never happened at Hish Tulla’s side, and the lady had been wearing armour and weapons, and there was news of deaths coming down from the north. All of this made the room where Orfantal stayed, and the house that surrounded it, seem small and woeful. Gripp and Hish Tulla had been silent and yet filled with grim news, but Orfantal had been too frightened to ask any questions, and he fled the weight of their presence.

But on this day they were escorting him to the Citadel, into the keeping of the Sons and Daughters of Night. He was about to meet Lord Anomander and his brothers: all the great men his mother had talked about, and if there was talk of war, then Orfantal knew that he had nothing to fear in the midst of such heroes.

Lady Hish Tulla rode up alongside Orfantal. Her expression was severe. ‘You have known such hardship since leaving House Korlas, Orfantal, and I fear the unpleasantness is not yet at an end.’

Ahead of them, Gripp Galas glanced back, and then looked forward once again. They were approaching the first bridge. That brief moment of attention disturbed Orfantal, though he knew not why.

‘There has been news from Abara Delack,’ she continued. ‘The monastery has been assaulted and burned to the ground. Alas, the violence did not end there. Orfantal, we have word that your grandmother has died, and that House Korlas is no more. I am sorry. Gripp and I disagreed on this, the telling of such terrible news, but I feared you would hear it when in the Citadel, in an instant lacking sensitivity — the place awaiting you is a buzzing wasp nest of gossip, and often words are spoken for the sole purpose of witnessing their sting.’

Orfantal hunched over in the saddle, fighting a sudden chill. ‘This city,’ he said, ‘is so dark.’

‘More so in the Citadel,’ Lady Hish Tulla said. ‘Such is the flavour of Mother Dark’s power. At the very least, Orfantal, you will soon lose your fear of the dark, and in that absence of light you will find that you see all there is that needs seeing.’

‘Will my skin turn black?’

‘It will, unless you choose the ways of the Deniers, I suppose.’

‘I would have the cast of Lord Anomander,’ he said.

‘Then Night shall find you, Orfantal.’

‘At House Korlas, milady, did everyone die? I had a friend there, a boy who worked with the horses.’

She studied him, and did not immediately reply.

They rode out across the broad bridge, the clash of the hoofs on the cobbles beneath them suddenly sounding hollow. Orfantal could smell the river, rising up dank and vaguely foul. It made him think of brooding gods.

‘I do not know,’ Hish Tulla said. ‘The fire left very few remains.’

‘Well, he used to be my friend, but then that went away. I am glad Mother wasn’t there, though.’

‘Orfantal, grief is a difficult thing, and you have already been through a lot. Be patient with yourself. There is a substance to living, and sadness is woven through it.’

‘Are you sad, milady?’

‘You will find a balance. Whence comes the answer to sadness few can predict, but it does come, in time, and you will learn to appreciate pleasure for the gift that it is. What you must never expect, Orfantal, is joy unending, because it does not exist. Too many strive for the unachievable, and this pursuit consumes them. They rush frantic and desperate and so reveal weakness in the face of sadness. More than weakness, in fact. It is in truth a kind of cowardice, that which espouses an evasive disposition as if it were a virtue. But this bluster is frail work.’ Then she sighed. ‘I am too complex, I fear, and make of advice things insubstantial.’

Orfantal shook his head. ‘I am no stranger to feeling sad, milady. Tonight I will weep for Wreneck, and for the horse I killed.’

They had crossed a short span and now ascended the lesser bridge over the Citadel’s moat. At Orfantal’s confession, Gripp Galas reined in and turned his horse to block the way.

‘That beast was on its last legs,’ he said.

‘You did not see its last struggles, sir,’ Orfantal replied.

‘True, I did not. But if you had not sacrificed your mount in the manner you did, you would not be here now.’

Orfantal nodded. ‘My spirit would be free, and back on the grounds of House Korlas, and it would play in the ruins with the ghost of Wreneck, from before he decided to not like me any more. I would have a friend again, and that horse would be alive now, with a few memories of the boy it carried, a boy who was not cruel to it.’

Gripp looked down, seemed to study the cobbles for a long moment, and then he sighed and swung his mount round.

They continued on, beneath the arch of the gatehouse, watched by black-skinned Houseblades in the livery of House Purake.

Lady Hish Tulla spoke. ‘Take him inside, Gripp. I will meet you later in the Grand Hall.’

‘Milady?’

‘Go on, Gripp. Give me a few moments, I beg you.’

The old man nodded. ‘Come along, hostage, and I will see you home.’

Hish Tulla watched them ride across the courtyard, still fighting the sob that threatened to tear loose from deep inside her. A boy’s innocent words had left her broken. The flimsy frame of her self-control, so hastily resurrected in the wake of her comforting embrace of Lord Andarist, weathering his grief on their knees at the foot of the hearthstone, had collapsed once again.