Steven Erikson - Forge of Darkness

The memory, arriving now so suddenly, halted Korya in her tracks.

Jheleck skins.

Haut must have sensed her absence behind him, for he turned about, and then made his way back down to her.

‘Master,’ she said, ‘tell me of the first encounters between the Jheleck and my people.’

The Jaghut’s pained expression filled her with dismay.

When he said nothing she spoke, her tone dull but relentless: ‘I found a memory, master. We understood nothing of Soletaken, did we? That the giant wolves we slew were in fact people. We killed them. We hunted them, because it is a lust in our souls, to hunt.’ She wanted to spit that last word, but it came out as lifeless as the others. ‘We cut their hides from their carcasses and we cured those skins in the bogs.’

He gestured for her to walk and set out once again. ‘The origin of the Jheleck is a mystery, hostage. When they have sembled into their walking forms, standing upon two legs, they bear some resemblance to the Dog-Runners of the far south. Their features are perhaps more bestial, but then, that should hardly surprise you — the frigid world of the far north is a harsh home, after all.’

‘Do the Dog-Runners treat with them?’

‘There are Jheck in the south now. It may be that they do.’

‘We hunted them. For pleasure.’

‘It is the legacy of most intelligent beings to revel in slaughter for a time,’ Haut replied. ‘In this we play at being gods. In this, we lie to ourselves with delusions of omnipotence. There is but one measure to the wisdom of a people, and that is the staying hand. Fail in restraint and murder thrives in your eyes, and all your claims to civilization ring hollow.’

‘Is there such a legacy among you Jaghut?’

‘There was a time, Korya, when the Jaghut ceased their forward stride.’

A faint chill came to her at that, as if he but plucked at her earlier thoughts with fullest knowing.

‘We faced a choice then,’ Haut went on. ‘To resume our onward journey, or to turn round, to discover the blessing that is walking back the way we came. In our standing in one place, we argued for centuries, until finally, in our mutual and well-deserved disgust, we each chose our own paths.’

‘And so ended your civilization.’

‘It was never much of one to begin with. But then, few are. So, you recall a grim memory, and would now chew it. Your next decision is crucial. Do you spit it out or do you swallow it down?’

‘I would walk from civilization.’

‘You cannot, for it resides within you.’

‘And not within you?’ she demanded.

‘Do not be a fool, Korya,’ he replied, his voice drifting back soft as a knife edge on a whetstone. ‘You saw well my array of weapons. Most arguments in iron are arguments of civilization. Which paint shall we wear? By which name are we to be known? Before what gods must we bow? And who are you to answer such questions on my behalf? I take up this axe to defend my savagery — but know this: you will hear the echo of such sentiments in every age to come.’

She snorted. ‘You imagine that I will live through ages, master?’

‘Child, you will live for ever.’

‘A child’s belief!’

‘An adult’s nightmare,’ he shot back.

‘You would I never grew up? Or are you happy to contemplate my eternal nightmare?’

‘The choice is yours, Korya. Spit it out or swallow it down.’

‘I don’t believe you. I will not live for ever. Nothing does, not even the gods.’

‘And what do you know of gods?’

‘Nothing.’ Everything. I stood with them, at the window.

In the dark of the trunk, the eyes saw nothing, yet knew it not. She could have taken the dolls out before she left. Set them out in a row upon the windowsill, among the dead flies, and pressed their flat faces against the grimy glass. She could have told them to see all there was to be seen.

But, goddess that she had once been, she was never so cruel.

We are not flies.

One day she had come to the window only to find all the flies gone. The sun’s warmth had brought them all back to life. That day had been the most frightening day of her young life.

I should have fed them to the spiders. If I had not swept their homes away.

In this place… ‘I have begun remembering things,’ she said.

He grunted, not turning, not slowing his stride. ‘And are these memories yours?’

‘I think so. Who else’s?’

‘That remains to be seen, hostage. But it has begun.’

Mahybe. The vessel waiting to be filled. Trunk of dolls. Reach in, quickly now! Choose one, upon your life — choose one!

Another memory assailed her, but it could not be real. She was outside the tower, hovering in the hot summer air. Before her, the window, and through its grey glass, she saw row upon row of faces. She floated, looking upon them, wondering at their sad expressions.

Now at last, I think I know what the gods and goddesses were all looking at.

Jewels crunched and rolled under her feet. She imagined herself old, bent and broken, with at her hand all the gold, silver and gems of the world, and in her heart there was yearning, and she knew that she would give it all up… for one child’s dream.

Children died. Feren held those words in her mind, swaddled and snug-tight in bitter embrace. Some fell from the womb with eyes closed, and the warmth of the blood upon their faces was cruel mockery. They were expunged in waves of pain, only to lie still in dripping hands. No woman deserved that. For others, there were but a handful of years which only later seemed crowded, cries of hunger, small hands grasping, luminous eyes that seemed wise in the ways of things not spoken. And then one day, those eyes stared out from half-closed lids, seeing nothing.

Mischance was scurrilous. Fate had a way of walking into empty rooms with smug familiarity. Children died. The laments of the mothers were hollow sounds to anyone’s ears. People turned away and studied the ground, or some feature upon the horizon, as if it were changing before their eyes.

She remembered the look on Rint’s face, her beloved brother, and how it crumpled with comprehension. She remembered the old women working quietly, businesslike, and not meeting her gaze. She remembered her fury at the sound of youths laughing nearby, and then hearing the bark of someone hushing them. It was not that death was rare. In dogged step it ever remained close, cold as a shadow. The blunt truth was, the world beat upon a soul until bones bent and hearts broke.

Since then, she had been crawling away, and it had been years and for all that she had aged since that time she felt but a day older, the bruise of grief still fresh beneath her skin, with the echo of insensitive laughter hard in her ears.

As they travelled across Bareth Solitude, each night she took to her bed the young man, bastard son of Draconus, and told herself that it was because the Lord had asked it of her. But it was getting more and more difficult to meet her brother’s eye. Arathan was pouring his seed into her, twice, three times a night, and she did nothing to prevent what might come of that; just as she had done nothing the night that she slept with Grizzin Farl, but at least then she’d had the excuse of being rather drunk. Something wayward had taken hold of her, a rushing towards fate, eager to sink into dire consequences.

She had no fear of her own future, and to be mired in circumstances of one’s own making offered its own delusion of control. But she was claiming that which belonged to others — the years ahead of them, the lives they would be made to lead. Mothers who lost could become obsessed with protectiveness and that might well find Feren, and for that her child would suffer through life. Arathan could sire a bastard and so show his father a mirrored reflection, and the eyes in their self-regard would be cold and unforgiving. Her brother, disarmed anew, might flee from an uncle’s love, stung by the pain of a loss still too sharp to bear.