Fall of Light (126 page)

It was a struggle to keep his attention on the commander, rather than casting a triumphant look to Emral Lanear. The historian’s breath was suddenly tight in his chest. ‘Milord?’

‘Too late,’ Silchas Ruin explained. ‘I shall go to the Chamber of Night. I shall demand to see Lord Draconus. I shall appeal to his honour.’

‘An honourable man,’ Lanear said slowly, as if searching for words, ‘would not abide the spilling of so much blood in his name.’

And what of Mother Dark? What of her love, wrapped like chains about Lord Draconus? Consort or husband – the distinction means so much less than so many would have it. It has become the weapon, a thousand hands upon the grip. She holds him close to ease the pain in her heart. The pain of a realm bent upon self-destruction. The pain of her children torn apart, of Light bleeding into the Dark, rich as blood, thin as tears.

I’ll not write of this. I’ll not record our venal manipulations. Centuries from now, my ilk will ponder this day and the silence embracing it. They’ll devise theories, they’ll plumb the nadir world of motivations and all the fears we keep hidden. They will even defend Silchas Ruin, whilst others condemn him.

Go now, commander, poke the serpent in its lair. Lord Draconus does not flee, because she does not permit him the luxury. This is not his pride at work, but hers. Pride and love, the power of the former grants sanctity upon the latter. We venture now, commander, into a place where none of us belong.

He stared down at the heartline of the valley.

For we have made a woman’s love our field of battle, and now will see her lover dragged forth in sacrifice.

No, I will not write of this.

Silchas Ruin gathered up his reins. Then he hesitated. ‘I am a warrior,’ he said. ‘I do not shy from necessity. If we are to fight Vatha Urusander and his legion, then I will lead us into that battle.’

‘None doubt your virtue,’ said Lanear.

They waited.

‘And yet,’ said Silchas, ‘if peace can be won, here on the cusp of slaughter, by the will of a single man …’

‘Appeal to his honour,’ said Lanear. ‘Lord Draconus is an honourable man.’

‘The will,’ said Herat, ‘not of one man, commander, but of two men. Such a thing will be remembered, and celebrated.’

Silchas scowled, and Herat wondered if he’d pushed too far, or indeed, if he had erred in his judgement of the man’s vanity. ‘In this,’ Silchas then said in a growl, ‘I am but the messenger of his conscience. When the echoes of my horse’s hoofs have passed, little else will linger.’ He faced the historian with a stern visage. ‘I trust that is understood.’

Rise Herat nodded.

All three turned then at the sound of approaching horses. A pair of riders, coming up from the track that led back to Kharkanas. Cedorpul and Endest Silann.

Lanear spoke. ‘Best ride on, milord. These priests of mine are my business, not yours.’

‘Cedorpul promises sorcery,’ Silchas said.

‘At a battle we may well avoid, milord.’

Silchas Ruin swung his mount around. He would pass the two priests on the narrow track, but Herat was certain that few, if any, words would be exchanged. ‘I ride to the Chamber of Night,’ the commander announced. ‘But that business, as you say, High Priestess, is not theirs to debate. Blunt them. Confound them if you must, but ensure my path remains clear.’

‘I shall do as you say, milord,’ said Lanear.

Silchas Ruin set off, gathering his horse into a quick canter.

Rise Herat glanced back at the valley. ‘We have done with it, then,’ he said in a low voice.

‘Dispense with that tone,’ Lanear snapped. ‘Condemnation avails us nothing. We cannot predict what words may pass between him and Draconus. What comes is now out of our hands, historian.’

But he shook his head. ‘And does that smoke suffice, High Priestess, to fill your body and blind you to guilt? If so, I’m of a mind to join you next time you imbibe. We can wallow in opaque insensibility, and deem all that races past us scant distraction. Let the clouds find our veins, swell the chambers of our hearts, and whisper sweet promises of oblivion.’

If she intended a retort, she bit back on the words with the arrival of Cedorpul and Endest Silann.

‘High Priestess!’ cried Cedorpul as he reined in. ‘I was dismissed with but a single word! Have we not a battle to discuss? To where does he ride?’

‘Take no offence,’ Lanear replied. ‘There is time still. Our commander attends to many things. Tell me, have you brought word of the Hust Legion?’

Cedorpul frowned, and then shook his head. ‘Nothing from the south, and it is indeed worrisome. We cannot hope to defeat the Liosan with only the Houseblades defending us.’

‘Then what manner of plans did you think to discuss?’ Rise Herat asked him.

‘My sorcery, of course! It finds shape.’

‘Shape?’

‘I have mastered malice, historian. I will be ready to face Hunn Raal.’

Herat turned to Endest Silann. The man was gaunt, aged, harried. Herat suspected that he had not come here of his own will. The priest’s hands were tightly bound in strips of linen, stained red in blooms and edged in pallid gold. He wore coarse wool to fend off the cold, but his head was bare. ‘Endest Silann, do you bring Mother Dark’s blessing to this newfound magic of Cedorpul’s?’

‘It has the flavour of darkness,’ the man replied, not meeting the historian’s eyes.

‘Bestowed by her, then?’

After a moment, he shook his head.

‘Myriad are her aspects,’ Cedorpul said, his round cheeks fiery red, his face that of a glutted child. ‘Many forces lie beneath or beyond her notice. I have drawn from such, ensuring not to stir her equanimity.’

Endest glanced across at Cedorpul, as if unimpressed with this explanation, but voiced no opinion.

Lanear cleared her throat, something she did often of late, and then said, ‘Your journey was wasted, alas, and has proved trying for Endest Silann. Your gestures are riddled with haste, Cedorpul, leaving me concerned. One would think eagerness anathema to the control of magic—’

‘One would if speaking from a place of utter ignorance!’

‘Mind your manners, sir!’ said Herat.

Cedorpul turned on him with a sneer. ‘And you comprehend even less, historian. Your pondering ways are in for a shock. Indeed, the entire world is due its rude awakening.’

‘Then do ring the discordant bell, priest,’ replied Herat wearily, ‘and delight in our fleeing its clamour.’

Teeth bared, Cedorpul pulled his mount around and kicked savagely at its flanks. The startled beast leapt forward, hoofs biting at the frozen road.

‘Pray it throws him,’ muttered Endest Silann as they watched Cedorpul ride away. ‘Swift be night’s sudden setting, to defy his newfound dawn. Pray his neck breaks, to leave lolling his interrupted ambition. Pray his limp body rolls beneath indifferent hoofs, to give lie to nature’s horror at what he contemplates.’

‘A potent curse,’ Rise Herat said, chilled by the dry venom of the man’s tone.

Endest Silann shrugged. ‘Nothing potent resides in my words, historian. Like yours, my breath sings useless warnings, bestirring a fistful of air, all too quickly swept away. What we have to say wins us less perturbation than a sparrow’s leap from a twig.’

Rise Herat could find little with which to disagree in that assessment.

But Emral Lanear spoke, ‘You may be surprised, then, priest. Words alone have ushered in civil war, after all, and our fates now reside in the words soon to be spoken, either here or in the Citadel.’

Offering up a second shrug, Endest Silann said nothing. Then he nudged his horse to the crest, and once there he halted the beast and let drop the reins. He began unfolding the strips of cloth binding his hands.

‘What are you doing?’ Lanear demanded.

‘I am showing her the field of battle,’ Endest answered without turning.

‘Why?’

‘To see winter’s end, High Priestess. The unsullied snow of the basin. The empty slopes, the unoccupied ridges. The muted blessing of a simple breeze. The world delivers its own gifts.’ He held up and out his hands, from which blood now dripped. ‘It is our common flaw to make the wondrous familiar, and the familiar a thing bound in the tangled wire of contempt.’

‘You would torture her,’ accused Lanear.

Endest slowly lowered his hands. ‘Her?’ he asked.

They watched him wrap up his hands once more. It was more difficult now, with all the blood that had streamed down from the wounds. Herat was thankful that the priest had not turned those crimson eyes upon him.
She would see too much. My goddess, witness to my guilt.

Lanear looked up the track. ‘If Cedorpul should catch up with Silchas Ruin …’

‘Pray,’ said Rise Herat, ‘he cuts him down for his temerity.’

At that, Endest Silann twisted in his saddle to regard the historian. Then he nodded. ‘I see.’

‘Do you?’ Herat asked.

‘Yes. You will lay her out on the altar of her love, and make a knife of your unwelcome cock.’ He raised his hands again, now bound, now blind. ‘She will never forgive him.’

‘Better him than thousands,’ Lanear said, but her onyx skin was ashen.

Endest faced her, and then bowed. ‘Alas, High Priestess, for all your machinations, he won’t be the only man to fall. Her will is not to be scorned.’

The warning chilled Rise Herat, while Lanear looked away to make plain her dismissal. ‘Endest Silann,’ she said, sighing again. ‘Your name is cursed in the city’s markets. Your misguided blessings summoned a dragon. And people went hungry for a time. The very faith of Mother Dark sustained damage in the eyes of the commonfolk, and her blessing has been seen to fade among more than a few of them. You have made yourself an unwelcome prophet, and accordingly, I know not what to do with you, barring a diminishment of your rank in the priesthood.’ She fixed her gaze upon him. ‘You are an acolyte once more, sir. With a difficult path to redemption awaiting you. Indeed, it may prove impossible for a mortal man to achieve.’

If she sought to sting, his sudden laugh crushed that hope. He bowed again. ‘As you will, High Priestess. Then, by your leave, I will return to the Wise City, seeking the glimmer of its namesake.’

‘Do not expect to be welcome to council,’ she said in a hiss.

He smiled. ‘But I never have been, High Priestess. Still, I take your meaning and will abide by it. I embark on a welcome return to being forgotten and, indeed, beneath notice.’ Fumbling at the reins, he managed to pull his horse back on to the track, where he set off at a slow trot.

Neither the historian nor the High Priestess spoke for a time, and yet neither seemed eager to begin the return journey. Finally, Lanear said, ‘If Cedorpul proves his power, he will be most useful in opposing Syntara and Hunn Raal.’

‘Then you had best mend that bridge and be the first to cross,’ Herat said.

‘I shall bribe him with privilege.’

The historian nodded. ‘Among tactics, nothing else proves as successful. Feed his vanity, make costly his ire.’

‘Such efforts would fail with Endest Silann.’

‘Yes.’

‘He remains dangerous.’

‘Indeed. While Mother Dark continues to make use of him.’

‘I will think on what to do about that,’ she said, drawing out a clay pipe and a pouch: rustleaf mixed with something else.

‘He kept her attention away from us.’

‘What of it?’

‘He knew, even then. What she might see.’ Then he shook his head. ‘Look at us, hiding from our goddess, and relieved by her continued ignorance. As prophet, Endest Silann walked among the commonfolk. He opened his hands so that she could not turn away, could not blink. You think by this act did he condemn the faithless, the misguided, the banal selfishness of each person who suffered that regard. But I think, now, the one he sought to condemn was her.’

To that she had no reply. He watched her tamping the herb into the bowl. She then tipped in some embers from a silver and enamel box that was now part of her regular attire, tied to her sash by a leather string.
We are creatures of ritual and habit, repeating patterns of comfort. Alas, too often we also repeat patterns of disaster. As every historian cannot help but comprehend. From the minuscule and mundane to the monumental and the profound, we draw and redraw the same maps, enough to make a book, enough to make a life.

Smoke plumed on the breeze.

Clouds inside and out. Obscure me from myself, that I might imagine my demeanour noble, my stance statuesque. Yes, I will have some of that.

  *   *   *

Endest Silann found Cedorpul on the road, leading his horse by the reins. As he slowed his mount to a walk and drew up alongside the priest, Cedorpul cast him a dark glare. ‘Damned beast threw a shoe. I had hoped to catch Silchas Ruin.’

‘You hope for many things,’ Endest said.

‘You were of little use back there. I once knew you as a friend. Now, I know not what you are.’

‘Apparently, an acolyte once more. Punished for my walk in the market. And now, it seems, distrusted. But I wonder, is it me the High Priestess would see excluded from council, or Mother Dark?’

Cedorpul kicked at a stone on the path, watched it roll into the shallow ditch. ‘Elemental Night. It did not take me long to find it. She does not command that realm, Endest. I assure you of that. It is vast. There are rivers, pools of power, of which she knows nothing.’ He glanced up at Endest. ‘What do you make of it? Is our goddess an impostor?’

‘If she does not rule that realm, Cedorpul, then who does?’

‘I wish I knew. Perhaps,’ he added, ‘the throne remains unclaimed.’

‘Ambition unbridled, Cedorpul, can make ugly even the most benign and placid visage.’

The man scowled, and then spat. ‘I am a wizard now. The world bends to my will.’

‘In a small way, to be sure.’

‘Do you mock me?’

Endest Silann shook his head. ‘I advise caution, knowing it will be unheeded. You say there are sources of power within the realm of night, many of them unclaimed. You are right.’

Cedorpul’s small eyes narrowed. ‘What do you know? What has she told you?’