Steven Erikson - Crack’d Pot Trail

“ ‘There is blood and there is love. There are women who find themselves alone, and then not alone, and there is shame held within even as the belly swells. Truth revealed can rain blood.

She held to herself the crime her husband’s brother had committed upon her. She held it for her love for he who was her husband.

“‘But now, on this night, she felt cut in two by a ragged knife. One of her sons would die, and in her husband’s eyes she saw tears from a love fatally wounded. Too late she cast her regard upon her beloved’s brother, and saw only the mask of his indifference.”

“Wait, I don’t understand-”

“Gods below!” burst out Tiny Chanter. “The uncle raped the mother, you fool, and the boy chosen was the beget of that!”

“The mother’s uncle raped the boy? But-”

“Kill him?” Midge asked.

“Go on, Calap,” Tiny commanded.

“‘In the deep of night, a knife was drawn. When a brother slays a brother, the gods are aghast. The Maned Sisters claw through their iron hair and the earth itself shakes and trembles. Wolves howl in shame for their bothers of the hunt. I awoke to hard slaughter. My mother, lest she speak. My father, too. And of my brother and uncle, why, both were gone from the camp.’“

“Vengeance!” bellowed Tiny Chanter. “No man needs a god when vengeance stands in its stead! He hunted them down didn’t he? Tell us!”

Calap nodded. “And so the Fenn told the tale of the hunt, how he climbed mountain passes and survived the whelp of winter, how he lost the trail again and again, and how he wept when he came upon the cairn bearing the frozen carcass of his brother, half-devoured by his uncle-who had bargained with the darkest spirits of the shadows, all to purchase his own life. Until at last, upon a broad glacier’s canted sweep, he crossed blades with his uncle, and of that battle even a thousand words would be too few. Beneath the cold sun, almost blinded by the snow and ice, they fought as only giants could fight. The spirits themselves warred, as shadows locked with honoured light, until even the Maned Sisters fell to their knees, beseeching an end.”

He paused again to sip water.

“And it was light that decided the battle-the sun’s flash on the son’s blade, direct into the eyes of the uncle. A deft twist, a slash, and upon the crushed and broken ice and snow a crimson stream now poured, sweet as the spring’s thaw.

“And so the son stood, the slayings avenged, but a bleakness was upon his soul. He was now alone in his family. He was, he knew, also the murderer of kin. And that night, as he lay sleeping, huddled in a rock shelter, the Maned Sisters visited upon him a dream. He saw himself, thin, weak, walking into the camp of his tribe. The season had broken, the terrible cold was gone from the air, and yet he saw no smoke, and no fires. He saw no one and as he drew closer he came upon bones, picked clean by foxes and here and there split open by the jaws of rock leopards, wolves and bears. And in the hut of his father he found the Wheel, split down the centre, destroyed forever more, and in his dream he knew that, in the moment his sword took the soul of his uncle, the Wheel had been sundered. Too many crimes in a single pool of blood-a curse had befallen the tribe. They had starved, they had torn one another apart in their madness. The warrior awoke, knowing he was now alone, his home was no more, and that there was a stain upon his soul than not even the gods could wash clean.

“Down from the mountains he came, a vessel emptied of love. Thus he told his tale, and the Imass keened and rocked to share his grief. He would stay for a time, he said, but not overlong, knowing well the burden he presented. And that night-”

“That will do,” pronounced Tiny, grunting as he climbed to his feet. “Now we walk.”

“It’s Flicker’s turn now, isn’t it?” So demanded Brash Phluster.

“Not yet.”

“But soon?”

“Soon.” He paused and smiled. “Then we vote.”

Strips of charred meat were apportioned out, skins filled one last time, the mules and horses brought close to drink again, and then the trek resumed. Chewing with an array of curious and disparate expressions, we trudged along the worn trail.

What fate had befallen this region? Why, nothing but the usual vagary. Droughts settled like a plague upon lands. Crops withered and blew away, people and beasts either died or moved on. But the track where walked pilgrims asserted something more permanent, immortal even, for belief is the blood’s unbroken thread. Generation upon generation, twisted and knotted, stretched and shredded, will and desire set the cobble stones upon this harrowed road, and each is polished by sweat and suffering, hope and cherished dreams. Does enlightenment appear only upon the shadeless travail, on a frame of soured muscles and aching bones? Is blessing born solely from ordeal and deprivation?

The land trembles to the slightest footfall, the beetle and the bhederin, and in the charms of the wind one can hear countless cries for succor.

Of course, with all the chewing and gnawing going on, not one of us could hear a damned thing.

We are pilgrims of necessity, stumbling in the habits of privation.

“The Dantoc must have known a mighty thirst.” So said Apto Canavalian. “Two heavy skins, just for an old woman hiding in the cool gloom.”

“Elderly as she is,” replied Mister Must from atop the carriage, “the Dantoc Calmpositis holds to the teaching of Mendic Hellup, whose central tenet is that water is the secret of all life, and much physical suffering comes from a chronic undernourishment of water in our bodies.” He chewed on his pipe stem for a moment, and then said, “Or something like that.”

“You’re an odd one,” Apto noted, squinting up at the driver. “Times you sound rolled up as a scholar, but others like a herder who sleeps under his cow.”

“Disparate my learnings, sir.”

Moments of malice come to us all. How to explain them? One might set hands upon breast and claim the righteous stance of self-preservation. Is this enough to cleanse the terrible bright splashes stinging the eye? Or what of simple instinctive retaliation from a kneeling position, bearing one’s own dark wounds of flesh and spirit? A life lived is a life of regrets, and who can stand at the close of one’s years and deny the twisted skeins skirled out in one’s wake?

In this moment, as the burden of the tale was set upon me once more, could I have held up before my own visage a silvered mirror, would I recoil before a mien of vicious spite? Were all witness to something bestial, akin to a rock-ape’s mad gleam upon discovering a bloated tick dangling from an armpit? Did I snarl like a hyena in a laughing pit? A sex-sodden woman with penis and knife in hand, or breasts descending as weapons of suffocation upon a helpless, exhausted face? Wicked my regard?

Or naught but a sleepy blink and the coolness of a trickling rill only moments from a poisonous chuckle? Pray, you decide.

“The mortal brain,” quoth I, “is an amorous quagmire. Man and woman both swim sordid currents in the gurgling caverns of unfettered desire. We spread the legs of unknown women at a glance, or take possession of the Gila Monster’s stubby tail in a single flutter of sultry lashes. Coy is our silent ravishing, abulge with mutual lust pungent as a drunkard’s breath. In the minds of each and every one of us, bodies writhe slick with oiled perfumes, scenes flash hot as fire, and the world beyond is stripped naked to our secret eyes. We rock and we pitch, we sink fast and grasp tight. Our mouths are teased open and tongues find bedmates. Aftermaths wash away and with them all consequence, leaving only the knowing meet of eyes or that shiver of nearness with unspoken truths sweet as a lick.”