Steven Erikson - Fall of Light

Will it take Urusander’s mailed fist pounding upon the door to awaken her?

‘You will have to kill him,’ Rise Herat said.

She could not argue that observation.

‘The balance of success, however,’ the historian went on, ‘will be found in choosing whose hand wields the knife. That assassin, High Priestess, cannot but earn eternal condemnation from Mother Dark.’

‘A child of this newborn Light, then,’ she replied, ‘for whom such condemnation means little.’

‘Urusander is to arrive to the wedding bed awash in the blood of his new wife’s slain lover? No, it cannot be a child of Lios.’ His gaze fixed on hers. ‘Assure me that you see that, I beg you.’

‘Then who among her beloved worshippers would choose such a fate?’

‘I think, on this stage you describe, choice has nowhere to dance.’

She caught her breath. ‘Whose hand do we force?’

‘We? High Priestess, I am not-’

‘No,’ she snapped. ‘You just play with words. A chewer of ideas too frightened to swallow the bone. Is not the flavour woefully short-lived, historian? Or is the habit of chewing sufficient reward for one such as you?’

He looked away, and she saw that he was trembling. ‘My thoughts but spiral to a single place,’ he slowly said, ‘where stands a single man. He is his own fortress, this man that I see before me. But behind his walls he paces in fury. That anger must give us the breach. Our way in to him.’

‘How does it sit with you?’ Emral asked.

‘Like a stone in my gut, High Priestess.’

‘The scholar steps into the world, and for all the soldiers that comprise your myriad ideas, you finally comprehend the price of living as they do, as they must. A host of faces – you now wear them all, historian.’

He said nothing, turning to stare out to the distant north horizon.

‘One man, then,’ she said. ‘A most honourable man, whom I love as a son.’ She sighed, even as tears stung her eyes. ‘He is all but turned away already, and she from him. Poor Anomander.’

‘The son slays the lover, in the name of the man who would be his father. Necessity delivers its own madness, High Priestess.’

‘We face difficulties,’ Emral said. ‘Anomander is fond of Draconus, and this sentiment is mutual. It is measured in great respect and more: it possesses true affection. How do we sunder all of that?’

‘Honour,’ he replied.

‘How so?’

‘They are two men who hold honour above all else. It is the proof of integrity, after all, and they choose to live that proof in all that they do.’ He faced her again. ‘A battle is coming. Facing Urusander, Anomander will command all the Houseblades of the Greater and Lesser Houses. And, perhaps, a resurrected Hust Legion. Paint this picture I offer, High Priestess. The field of battle, the forces arrayed opposite one another. Where, then, do you see Lord Draconus? At the head of his formidable Houseblades – who so efficiently annihilated the Borderswords? He will stand on his honour, yes?’

‘Anomander will not deny him,’ she whispered.

‘And then?’ Rise asked. ‘When the highborn see who would stand with them in the battle to come? Will they not in rage – in fury – step to one side?’

‘But wait, historian. Surely Anomander will blame his highborn allies for abandoning the field?’

‘Perhaps at first. Anomander will see that defeat is inevitable. Thus, there will be the humiliation of the surrender to Urusander, and he cannot but see the Consort’s gesture as the cause of that. A surrender forced by Draconus’s pride, and when the Consort remains unrepentant – he can do no other, as he will see the surrender as a betrayal, as he must; indeed, he will understand it as his own death sentence – then, Lanear, we see them set upon one another.’

‘The highborn will acclaim Anomander’s disavowal of that friendship,’ she said, nodding. ‘Draconus will end up isolated. He cannot hope to defeat such united opposition. That battle, historian, will be the last of the civil war.’

‘I love this civilization too much,’ Rise said, as if tasting the words for himself, ‘to see it destroyed. Mother Dark must never know any of this.’

‘She will never forgive her First Son.’

‘No.’

‘Honour,’ she said, ‘is a terrible thing.’

‘All the more egregious our crime, High Priestess, in forging a weapon in the flames of integrity, a fire we will feed until it burns itself out. You see him as a son. I do not envy you, Lanear.’

A voice screamed in her mind, rising up from her wounded soul. The pain that birthed that scream was unbearable. Love and betrayal on a single blade. She felt the edge turn and twist. But I see no other way! Must Kharkanas die in flames? Will Urusander’s soldiers be made into crass thugs, and as thugs take power unopposed, unchecked? Are we doomed to make lovers of war into our rulers? How soon, then, before Mother Dark reveals a raptor’s eyes, with talons gripping the arms of the throne? Oh, Anomander, I am sorry. Roughly, she wiped at her eyes and cheeks. ‘I will trap the crime in my mirror,’ she said in a broken voice, ‘where it can howl unheard.’

‘And to think how Syntara underestimates you.’

She shook her head. ‘No longer, perhaps. I have written to her.’

‘You have? Then it begins in earnest.’

‘We will see. She is yet to reply.’

‘Did you address her as an equal, High Priestess?’

She nodded.

‘Then you make your language familiar, in the ancient sense of the word. She will preen in that plumage.’

‘Yes. Vanity was ever the breach in her walls.’

‘We assemble a sordid list here, Lanear. When fortresses abound, we make sieges life’s daily habit. In such a world, we each stand alone at day’s end, and face in fear our barred door.’ The strain deepened the lines on his face. ‘A most sordid list.’

‘Each one a single step upon the path, historian. No longer can you hold to this post, high above the world. Now, Rise Herat, you must walk among the rest of us.’

‘I will write none of this. The privilege is gone from my heart.’

‘It is just the blood on your hands,’ she replied, without much sympathy. ‘When it is all said and done, you can wash them clean in the river below. And in time, as that river flows on and on, the truth will be dispersed, until none could hope to discern your crimes. Or mine.’

‘Then I will see you kneeling at my side on that day, High Priestess.’

She nodded. ‘If there can be whores of history, Rise, then we are surely in their company.’

He was studying her, with the face of a condemned man.

See now, woman? The mirrors are everywhere.

* * *

Step by step, pilgrims made a path. Seeking a place of tragedy deemed holy, or a site sanctified by nothing more than a truth or two scraped down to the bone, the ones who sought out such places transformed them into shrines. Endest Silann understood this now: that the sacred was not found, but delivered. Memory spun the thread, each pilgrim a single strand, stretched and twisted, spun, spun into life. It did not matter that he had been the first. Others among his priestly kin were setting out, into the face of winter, to arrive at the ruined estate of Andarist. They walked in his footsteps, but left no blood on the trail. They arrived and they stood, looking upon the site of past slaughter, but did so without comprehension.

Their journey, he knew, was a search. For something, for a state of being, perhaps. And in that contemplation, that silent yearning, they found … nothing. He imagined them stepping forward into the clearing before the house, walking around, eyes scanning the worthless ground, the crooked stones and the withered grasses that would grow thick and green in patches come the spring. Finally, they crossed the threshold, walking over the flagstones hiding the mouldering corpses of the slain, and before them, in the chill gloom, waited the hearthstone, now a sunken altar, with its indecipherable words carved upon its stone face. He saw them looking around, imaginations conjuring up ghosts, placing one here, another there. They sought, in the silence, for faint echoes, the trapped cries of loss and anguish. They took note, without question, of the black droplets of blood everywhere, not understanding their meandering way, not understanding Endest’s own senseless wandering – no, they would seek some vast meaning in that trail on the stones.