Steven Erikson - Forge of Darkness

‘I despise riddles even more.’

‘Then I shall make of you an enigma to all. Oh, just reach for it, will you? There. No, tuck it into your belt. Now you can walk with a swagger, bold as a wolf. Unless you’d rather carry the axe?’

‘No. Weapons frighten me.’

‘Then some wisdom at least I have taught you. Good.’

She did not want to leave. By far the greater host of her memories belonged in this tower, rather than in the place of her birth; but now it seemed she would make her pilgrimage, by a most circuitous route, back home. In her path, however, she would find other Jaghut, and then the Azathanai. Since the Jheleck visit, Haut had been animated by something, his mood mercurial, and it seemed that his infirmities were vanishing from his withered form, like skins in the heat. He bore himself like a warrior now, readying himself for an argument in iron.

She followed him to the door, frowning at it as if seeing it for the first time. All at once, she had no faith in what waited beyond it. A sweep of yellow grasses, the muted rise of worn hills ahead, a sky paling as if brushed with light — these would be as they always were. What then to fear?

As Haut reached out for the handle he paused and glanced back. ‘You’re learning.’

‘I don’t understand.’

The Jaghut flung open the door. Darkness swirled in like smoke around him, tendrils curling round his legs. He muttered something, but, turned away as he was from her, she could not make out the words.

Dread held Korya motionless. Her heart beat wildly, like a trapped bird.

This time, when Haut spoke, she heard him clearly. ‘I begin to see now, what they did. It is clever, yet rife with risk. Very well, we shall walk it, and see where it leads.’

‘Master — what has happened to the world?’

‘Nothing… yet. Come along.’

Somehow she managed to step into his wake, the ladle banging at her thigh with each stride. Flickers of irritation sought to distract her, but she held her gaze upon the strange, smoky darkness. As it flowed up and around her, she was startled to realize that she could see through its ethereal substance. Haut marched ahead, his worn boots thumping and scuffing across gravel.

Crossing the threshold of the tower’s entrance, she beheld a narrow path running along a ridge barely an arm’s reach across. To either side there was nothing but empty space. She swallowed down a sudden vertigo. When she spoke, the vastness devoured her voice. ‘Master, how can this be?’

Under her feet, she felt the gravel shifting unsteadily and looked down. She saw, in gleam and sparkle, jewellery: a thick carpet of gems, rings, baubles; a veritable treasure underfoot. Haut paid it no heed, kicking through the clutter as if it were nothing more than woodchips and pebbles. Crouching, she collected up a handful. The rings were all cut through, twisted as if pulled from senseless fingers. She held a neck torc of solid gold, bent and gouged as if by knife cuts. Snapped necklaces slithered down between the fingers of her hand, cool as serpents. Glancing up, she saw that Haut had stopped and was looking back at her.

Korya shook her head in disbelief. ‘Wealth to make a noble less than a beggar. Master, who would leave such a trail?’

Haut grunted. ‘Wealth? Is it rarity that warrants value? If so, of greater value than these trinkets are trust, truth and integrity. Of greater value still, forgiveness. Of greatest value among them all, an outstretched hand. Wealth? We live in paucity. And this here is a most treacherous path — and we must walk it with unerring step, child.’

Korya dropped the treasure and straightened. ‘I fear that I might stumble. I might fall, master.’

He shrugged, as if the notion gave him no qualm. ‘This is loot. A slayer’s hoard. The path wends upward and who can say what waits at its very end? A keep groaning beneath melted sheaths of gold? A throne of diamond where sits a rotted corpse? Will you believe this path to be so obvious? Who defends this realm? What army kneels in service to gold and silver? How warm is their bed of jewels at night?’

‘I said I dislike riddles, master. What realm is this?’

‘Ah, such a nuanced word. Realm. An invitation to balance, all stationary, mote tilted against mote, the illusion of solidity. A place to walk through, encompassing the span of one’s vision and calling it home. Did you expect the world you knew? Did you imagine the future awaits you no different in substance from the past? Where are the grasslands, you ask. Where is the tumble of days and nights — but of those, what more can I teach you? What more can be learned of them than any child of sound wits can comprehend after but a handful of years?’

With these words drifting back to her, and then out to the sides to fall away leaving no echo, Haut resumed his march.

Korya followed. ‘This is Azathanai.’

‘Very good,’ he answered without turning.

‘What do they mean by it?’

‘Ask the Jheleck. Bah, too late for that. The fools left, tails between their hairy legs. And to think, they wanted you. Another bauble. I wonder — what will your kin do with a score of Soletaken pups?’

‘I don’t know. Tame them, I suppose.’

Haut’s laugh was sharp, cutting. ‘To tame something, one must take advantage of its stupidity. They will never tame those beasts, because savage though they may be, they are not stupid.’

‘Then, as hostages, they will learn the ways of the Tiste, and see them not as strangers, nor enemies.’

‘You believe this? Perhaps it will be so.’

The path continued its climb, though not so steep as to make uncertain their purchase. But her legs were getting tired. ‘Master, did you expect this?’

‘In a manner of speaking, yes.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Child, we have been invited.’

‘By whom?’

‘That remains to be discovered.’

She knew her life was yet modest, but already she had a sense that most promises would, eventually, prove empty. There was nowhere to go but forward, but no one could avow that what lay ahead was a better life. Potential felt like a burden, possibility like wolves on her trail. Her dreams of godly powers were the frayed remnants of childhood; they trailed like wisps behind her, tired as the streamers of last year’s fete. She thought back to the dolls in the trunk’s silent, dark confines, the eyes staring at nothing, the mouths smiling at no one, now well behind her — long gone from reach, or a moment’s rush across the floor. There was stillness in that place, as still as the room surrounding it, as still as the keep itself. And just as the dolls dwelt in their trunk, so too had she and Haut dwelt in the keep, and it might well be true that this realm was but another version, and that it was all a matter of scale.

The gods and goddesses were in their rooms. She could almost see them, standing at the high windows looking out and dreaming of better places, better times, better lives. And like the dolls, their eyes were focused on vast distances and nothing closer to hand could make them waver, not for a moment.

Yet stranger memories haunted her now. Her room in the tower, the dead flies lying in the grit of the stone windowsill, crowded up against the discoloured glass, as if in the frenzy to escape they had bludgeoned themselves to death trying to reach an unattainable light. She should never have swept the spiders’ webs from the frame, for the spiders would have fed well on the flies’ futility.

Was the future no more than a succession of worlds one longed to live in? Each one for ever beyond reach, with such pure light and vistas that ran on without end? Was frenzy and anguish really that different?

They had been ascending for what seemed half a day, and still the path ahead wended its way ever upward. Fires burned in the muscles of her legs, making her imagine peat fires — some childhood memory, a place where the forest had died so long ago it had rotted into the ground, in layer upon layer, all soaked through with water the colour of rust. She remembered bundles of sodden skins pulled out from the pools, dangling stone weights from black ropes. She remembered stuffing wiry as hair, and the day was cold and the air was thick with midges, and knives flashed as the bundles were cut open and the hides rolled out.