Steven Erikson - Forge of Darkness

T’riss lowered the skin, her eyes suddenly bright. ‘The ache in my throat is eased.’

‘I imagine Vitr did not manage the same.’

The woman frowned, glanced back at the forest of high grass. ‘An excess of vitality,’ she said, ‘can burn the soul.’ She looked again to Faror. ‘But this water, it pleases me. I imagine it in full coolness, about my limbs. Tell me, is there water in abundance?’

‘In places, yes. In others, no. The hills to the south were once green, but when the last of the trees were cut down the soil died. There remains a single spring, which we must now ride to. It is, however, a risk. There are outlaws — they first became a problem during the wars. Men and women who refused to join the legions and saw opportunity once the soldiers departed. Such militias as a town or village mustered were too small to extend patrols beyond the settlement’s outskirts.’

‘These outlaws command the spring?’

‘Like us, they depend upon it. When a troop of Wardens or a well-armed caravan arrive to make use of the water, they hide. We are but two, and they will see in that an invitation to make trouble.’

‘Do they wish to rob us, Faror Hend?’

The Warden looked back at the grass horse. ‘They may have cause to hesitate. Otherwise, we must fight to protect ourselves.’

‘I will see this spring, this place of abundant water. Are you rested, Faror Hend?’

‘No. Feed for the horse, and then for us.’

‘Very well.’

Faror Hend regarded her. ‘T’riss, you seem new to your… your form. This body you wear and its needs. Water. Food. Do you know what you were before?’

‘Tonight,’ T’riss said, ‘I will dream of water.’

‘Do you not understand my meaning?’

‘Dreams in the Vitr are… unpleasant. Faror Hend, I begin to understand this world. To make, one must first destroy. The grasses I made use of are even now losing their life, in this my mount, and in these my clothes. We dwell in the midst of destruction. This is the nature of this world.’

‘You are indeed a stranger,’ Faror observed. ‘A visitor. Do you come with a purpose?’

‘Do you?’ T’riss asked. ‘Have you its knowing upon your birth? This purpose you speak of?’

‘One comes to discover the things that one must do in a life,’ Faror replied.

‘Then what you do is your purpose for being, Faror Hend?’

‘No,’ she admitted. ‘Not always. Forgive me, but I saw you as a harbinger. Created by someone or something unknown, for a cause — and come among us for a reason. But your challenge shames me. None of us knows our own purpose — why we were born, the reason that sets us here. There are many meanings to each life, but none serve to ease the coldest question of all, which is why? We ask it of the Abyss, and no answer arrives but the echo of our own cry.’

‘I meant no challenge, Faror Hend. Your words give me much to think about. I have no memories of the time before.’

‘Yet you recognize Azathanai.’

But T’riss frowned. ‘What is Azathanai?’

Faror Hend blinked, and then her eyes narrowed. ‘There is knowledge hidden within you, T’riss. Hidden with intent. It pushes your thoughts away. It needs you unknowing.’

‘Why would it do that?’

I can think of but one reason. You are dangerous. ‘I don’t know, T’riss. For now, I am taking you to Kharkanas. The problem you pose is well beyond me.’

‘The Vitr is your enemy.’

Faror had turned to feed her horse; now she shot T’riss a sharp look over a shoulder. ‘Is it?’

But the strange woman’s face was blank, her eyes wide and innocent. ‘I believe I am hungry.’

‘We will eat, and then ride on.’

T’riss was as enamoured of food as she had been of water, and would have devoured all that remained of their supplies if not for a word from Faror Hend. The Warden thought to question her guest further, but did not know where to start. The child-like innocence in her seemed to exist like islands, and the seas surrounding them were deep, fathomless. And each island proved barren once reached, while between them, amidst dark tumultuous waves, Faror floundered. But one thing seemed clear: T’riss was losing knowledge, as if afflicted by a disease of the mind, a Loss of Iron; or perhaps the new body she had taken — this woman’s form with its boyish proportions — was imposing its own youthful ignorance. And in the absence of what she had been, something new was emerging, something avid in its appetites.

They mounted up and resumed the journey. The landscape around them was level, dotted here and there by thorny brush, the soil cracked and shrivelled by drought — as it had been since Faror had first joined the Wardens. She sometimes wondered if Glimmer Fate was feeding on the lands surrounding it, drawing away its sustenance as would a river-leech snuggling warm flesh; and indeed, might not this sea of black grasses mark the shallows of the Vitr itself, evidence of the poison seeping out?

Faror Hend’s gaze fell upon her companion, who still rode ahead, the beast beneath T’riss creaking and still leaking dust, dirt and insects. Is she the truth of the Vitr? Is this the message we are meant to take from her? Ignorant of us and indifferent to our destruction? Is she to be the voice of nature: that speaks without meaning; that acts without reason?

But then, if this were true, why the need for a messenger at all? The Sea of Vitr delivered its truth well enough, day after day, year upon year. What had changed? Faror’s eyes narrowed on T’riss. Only her. Up from the depths, cast upon this shore. Newborn and yet not. Alone, but Finarra spoke of others — demons.

The hills drew nearer as the afternoon waned. They met no other riders; saw no signs of life beyond the stunted shrubs and the aimless pursuits of winged insects. The sky was cloudless, the heat oppressive.

The rough ground ahead slowly resolved itself in deepening shadows, the clawed tracks of desiccated, sundered hillsides, the gullies where runoff had once thundered down but now only dust sifted, stirred by dry winds.

Faror’s eyes felt raw with lack of sleep. The mystery posed by T’riss had folded up her mind like a tattered sheet of vellum. Hidden now, all the forbidden words of desire; and even her concern for the fate of the captain — as well as that of Spinnock Durav — was creased and obscured, tucked away and left in darkness.

Closer now, she made out a trail cutting into the ridgeline. It was clear that T’riss had seen it as well, for she guided her mount towards it.

‘Be wary now,’ Faror Hend said.

The woman glanced back. ‘Shall I raise us an army?’

‘What?’

T’riss gestured. ‘Clay and rock, the dead roots beneath. Armed with slivers of stone. Below the deep clays there are bones, as well, and the husks of enormous insects all wonderfully hued.’

‘Can you make anything from the land surrounding you?’

‘If it had occurred to me,’ she replied, reining in, ‘I could have made guardians from the grasses, but in shape only that which I have seen. A horse, or one such as you and me.’

‘Yet you fashioned a sword with which to defend yourself, before we met.’

‘This is true. I cannot explain that, unless I have perhaps seen such a weapon before, only to have since forgotten. It seems my memory is flawed, is it not?’

‘I believe so, yes.’

‘If we are many, the outlaws will avoid us. So you said.’

‘I did.’ Faror hesitated, and then said, ‘What power do you draw upon, T’riss, in the fashioning of such creatures? Does it come from the Vitr?’

‘No. The Vitr does not create, it destroys.’

‘Yet you came from it.’

‘I was not welcome there.’