Steven Erikson - Fall of Light

It was a struggle pulling the tapestry from the stack, and his efforts sent many rolls sliding and spilling out to unravel upon the floor. The dust stung his eyes, made his nose run. He felt more than saw moths fluttering about, brushing his skin when he dragged the tapestry clear. Finding a stretch of unobstructed floor, Herat unrolled his prize.

Lanterns were no longer necessary. Darkness failed in hiding a thing. More’s the pity. He stood and stared down at the vast scene stitched into the fabric. ‘The Battle of The Storm in the Founding Age’, artist unknown. He had last seen it more than thirty years ago, though he could barely recall the context. Perhaps it had been found in a storage cupboard, during one of the many refurbishings of rooms that had occurred as the Citadel’s population burgeoned with acolytes, priests and priestesses. Or upon a wall in some long-sealed chamber that had been reopened. The details hardly mattered, the title even less.

What battle? What storm? What Age of Founding?

He studied the swarm of figures upon the blasted landscape, the scores of flying dragons shredding the dark clouds hanging low over the battlefield. His eyes narrowed on the flanking hilltops, where stood the rival commanders of the two armies locked together between them. From one such figure, tall and martial, something like a stain, or scorching, marred the weave, blackening the air surrounding the man.

He’d thought it nothing more than damage, the bloom of rotting mould, perhaps, or where a torch had been held too close to the hanging. But now he saw, as he looked more closely, that the very threads were black.

It’s him. Draconus. The helm hides his face, but the manner of his stance betrays him. That, and the darkness, like smoke. I saw it today, as he strode across the Terondai.

Abyss below, what have we done?

A voice spoke behind him. ‘I sought you upon the tower.’

Herat closed his eyes, not yet turning to face her. ‘Yet you tracked me here.’

‘Your journey was reported,’ Emral Lanear replied. ‘This is my temple, after all.’

‘Yes,’ the historian replied, eyes opening again, gaze returning once more to the tapestry laid out on the floor before him. ‘There is honour,’ he said, ‘and then there is stupidity.’

‘What do you mean?’

Still he would not turn to face her. ‘If in the course of our lives, we find ourselves in the same place, again and again … what lesson is not being heeded? What wilful idiocy obtains, proof against any self-examination, any reflection or contemplation? How is it, High Priestess, that a single man or woman’s life can so bitterly match the history of an entire people?’

After a long moment, she moved up to stand beside him. Her attention fixed upon the tapestry.

‘Draconus,’ said Herat, ‘has done this before. See him? That wreath of darkness he wears like a cloak – or wings. See the woman at his side? Who was she, I wonder? What forgotten ancestor embraced his gifts, only to vanish from all memory?’

‘That is no more than a stain,’ she said. ‘Your imagination-’

‘Is beggared by truth,’ he said sharply. ‘Blind yourself if you must. At last, I begin to understand.’

‘What? What is there to understand, historian? We have done what was needed.’

‘No, I think we have failed.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘We saw Draconus, Kellaras on his heels. They were setting out for the Valley of Tarns.’

‘Yes, so that Draconus can retrieve his Houseblades.’

‘But he won’t,’ Herat said. ‘He can’t. Don’t you see? This is his battle. It’s been his war, from the very start. We just didn’t realize it.’

‘You are speaking nonsense,’ Lanear snapped. ‘Liosan is to blame. And Urusander’s Legion. Hunn Raal-’

‘Failure finds myriad details, High Priestess, each one like a trap. Each one can snare you into believing the moment was unique. And so you are deceived into focusing on the details instead of the failure itself. In this manner,’ he added, ‘failures breed unchecked, unchallenged, and more often than not, unrecognized in what they all share.’

‘Which is?’

He shrugged. ‘The face in the mirror.’ He heard her breath catch, but continued remorselessly. ‘This is a squalid revelation, High Priestess. Nor are we alone in our … errors in judgement. Draconus and the ways of love … it is my thought that, time and again, his ways of love become ways of war. Call him a fool – it’s easily enough done. But even then, Emral, spare the man a moment of pity.’

‘He was to be our only sacrifice, Herat. We set Silchas upon him, and what was done was only what was necessary.’ She gestured dismissively at the tapestry. ‘This signifies nothing, a web for your fears and overwrought imagination.’ Stepping away, she said, ‘I will leave you to struggle in its strands. I must resume my preparations for the arrival of my Liosan counterpart.’

He saw no point in responding, and simply listened to her dwindling footfalls.

Ah, Draconus. You poor, misguided man. All that power, all those years – how many thousands? And still you stumble, your arms laden with gifts, your words forever lifeless in their entreaties.

Perhaps you Azathanai were too few, more an extended family than strangers inviting fascination. Perhaps, in your collective knowing, you all knew one another too well. Or perhaps, Draconus, your failure was and is a personal one, written deep in your bones and blood, in that heart too generous, too bloated with all it would give, and far too intent on the giving to receive anything in return. To make generosity into a weapon … ah, you understand nothing, nothing at all, do you?

Consider your friends, good sir, so few in number, so wary in their regard. Few could match your largesse. Of them all, only Anomander could stand as your equal, and even then, an equal measure quaintly discounting your secrets. Still, I wonder if he suspects …

Herat could almost see them, there upon the ridge overlooking the Valley of Tarns. How, he wondered, would that fateful exchange play out? Terse in the manner of men for whom deeds and gestures mattered more than any words. A meeting of gazes, a recognition of intentions, and then, at the last, the simple nod bespeaking the tragic cost of all to come.

Shall I write of that encounter? Am I not the historian, the caged witness behind the bars, flinching at the mad world beyond?

I see sleet slanting down from a glowering sky, a washed-out winter’s afternoon, with only a hint of the coming storm. I see Lord Anomander turn from his steady contemplation of the distant enemy ranks – or perhaps, in the wake of dread magic, he wheels, his face twisted in grief-

No, let us hook ourselves upon the meat of this battle before the flesh cools. To dangle and spin in wayward regard. See Draconus, dismounting from a blown horse. With Captain Kellaras behind him, colours muted in such a way as to flatten him against the background, our lone witness bound in threads. Few others are present, none with the temerity to draw closer, to hear the two men speak. Only the captain, a face of black threads bleached by the passing centuries. His name will be forgotten, his role beneath mention.

Like the armies about to clash, he and they are but footnotes, reduced to a sentence or two, or some rhythmic oration of set phrases to lay out the battle, the time of fever, stumbling to the knees, vanishing thereafter.

But he watches as the two men greet one another. They are friends, after all, and there is much for each man to recognize when looking upon the other. The future will fail in knowing this. A battle for a woman’s affections, yes, that’s summary simple enough – after all, what value motivations? It is the deed that is important. A lover upon one side, an adopted son upon the other.