Fall of Light (22 page)

‘I could but wince,’ he said, sighing, ‘at seeing the stitch in your side.’

‘It was your seeming impatience that so struck me,’ she replied, drawing a muscled forearm across her mouth to sweep up the mucus and dirt, leaving it to glisten in the fine, almost white, hairs of her wrist. She then lifted and swept back her mass of wavy, golden hair. ‘But that is the curse of youth, after all. Berate me for my insensitivity, Hanako, and we can shudder down into our familiar roles.’

From behind the boulder, Erelan Kreed’s perfidious song ended abruptly. Stones grated underfoot, and then the warrior emerged, dragging the cave-bear’s skin behind him. ‘You complained of the night’s chill, Hanako,’ he said. ‘But now, in the months and perhaps years to come, you will be able to keep warm at night … as you chew the lord’s hide into suppleness.’

Lasa snorted, and so was forced to clean her nose yet again. ‘A suppleness the lord knew well. As well as his own skin. But years, Erelan? More like decades. The lord’s manifestation here, Hanako, is unmatched in my memory. It’s a wonder he managed to find a cavern big enough to home him.’

‘More the wonder that we did not even see it,’ said Erelan, ‘since it lies not twenty paces above us.’

‘And so the boulder that would so hide Hanako’s morning toilet did proffer the lord a most squalid gift, upon the very threshold of his abode.’ Even as she said this, she offered Hanako the breathtaking smile that had already ensnared three husbands.

‘I proffered no such gift,’ Hanako replied. ‘That unleavened loaf now resides in my left boot.’

This comment made Lasa Rook fold over once again, her laughter so intense that she struggled to breathe.

Stepping past Hanako, Erelan slapped a bloody hand down on the young warrior’s shoulder. ‘Next time you decide to wander off, pup, at the very least carry a weapon. You’ve not the claws or fangs to equal a bear. Still, the rolling embrace was a fine mummery to start this day.’ He then thrust something in front of Hanako’s face, making him flinch back. ‘Here, the lord’s lower jaw – it pretty much fell away. You came as close to tearing it off as to make a cutter hesitate to take coin.’

Sighing, Hanako accepted the trophy. He stared down at the jutting canines, remembering how they felt as they scored across his scalp. The thin white rings of the tongue-nest, lined up in parallel rows, were delicate as seashells.

‘As for the tongue,’ Erelan continued, ‘why, we have us breakfast.’ With that, the warrior continued on, stepping round the prostrate form that was Lasa Rook, and crouched down before the hearth. He had tucked the thick severed tongue through his belt, and now he drew it out to settle it atop a stone of the hearth, where it began sizzling. ‘The Lord of Temper’s run out of things to say, ha ha.’

There were many misfortunes to take and give shape to a Thel Akai’s life, but Erelan Kreed’s feeble witticisms were among the cruellest of curses. They were enough to dampen Lasa’s ground-kicking mirth, and once more she sat up, her reddened eyes fixing upon the slab of meat now sizzling on the rock, her expression settling somewhat.

Stifling a groan, Hanako pushed himself upright. ‘I am for the stream,’ he said.

‘Then we’ll see what needs threading,’ Lasa said, nodding.

Impatient youth? Yes, I see that, Lasa Rook. Given our purpose, and that joyous decision that so started us on this march, the bear might well have saved me the journey.
Sighing yet again, Hanako skirted his way along the terrace until he came to the tumbling fall of water and its momentary pool that filled the bowl it had worn in the stone shelf. His few clothes were sodden rags now and he left them on the ground as he stripped down.

The water was clear, clean and stunningly cold. The shock against the lacerations covering most of his body quickly gave way to blessed numbness as he stood beneath the falls.
Hanako, who so hates the cold these days. So quickly chilled by an unseasonal breath of wind. Hanako, who once crawled across a frozen lake, what has become of you?
There was an old saying among the Thel Akai.
‘Born in the mountains, she longs for the valleys. Born against the sea, she longs for the plain. Born in the valley, she sets eyes upon the snow-clad peaks …’ And so on, as if the point already made could never be made to perfection, and the axe swings eternal against the tree, until the leaves raining down bury us. There we stand, senseless to the tremble in our hands, blind to the mulch against our eyes.

Thel Akai, you are brutes among flowers.

The cold water washed away the blood, slowed the ooze from the wounds. Naked and chilled down to his aching, bruised bones, Hanako returned to the camp.

He found both Erelan and Lasa crouched at the fire, slicing greasy strips from the charred meat. Lasa’s brows lifted upon seeing him. ‘So this was tongue after all,’ she said as she licked her fingertips, and then she cocked her head, ‘leaving me to wonder at my ambivalence.’

Erelan frowned up at him. ‘Have you no other clothes?’

‘I have … some few scraps,’ replied Hanako. ‘But I need sewing up.’

Lasa rose and drew close. She set to examining his wounds, touching here and there, standing all too close – close enough to have something brush her thigh. Glancing down, Lasa hummed under her breath. She lifted her gaze and arched one brow. ‘Not a mountain’s mantle of bitter snow can shrivel bold Hanako. I pronounce you fit and in no need of awl and gut.’

‘Do you mock me?’ he asked.

‘If one scar entices,’ she said, stepping back, ‘then your thousand will win you a launching of lust such as the world has never before seen. See how I struggle to constrain myself, young warrior? And I, a woman with three husbands!’

‘You would keep me at your knee, Lasa Rook.’

Her eyes widened. ‘Ah, now! You are right to chastise me. You have indeed grown – why, from thigh to knee, I should say, and more.’

Erelan Kreed laughed, but it was an uncertain laugh.

With a bright, sidelong glance, Lasa turned away. ‘We should be going. I will make a play of purpose to this wayward impulse, and shake the reins of my two work-horses.’

Frowning, Hanako knelt at his pack and drew out what little spare clothing he’d thought to bring with him. Overhead, the morning sun was already warm upon his torn back, making each gash sting. Yes, she was right to call them hers, although thus far neither he nor Erelan advanced any claim to an inviting caress. Three husbands left behind and Lasa Rook was yet to betray any greed to add others to her night beneath the furs. Work-horses indeed.

Gingerly, he drew on a worn hemp-woven shirt, and then leggings of the same coarse material.

‘Be sure to bring that fur,’ Erelan Kreed said as Hanako gathered up his gear. ‘It is a warrior’s way to wear their conquests, and to accept gifts from the Lord and Ladies of the Wild. By that cloak, Hanako, you honour the slain.’

Lasa kicked her way through the coals of the hearth, stamping each one underfoot. ‘Your way, Kreed, and none other’s. You’ll wear honour as if it fits, even as it stretches and tears to the swell of pride. The slain crowd your wake, and their realm is no more and no less than resentment. That you breathe in their stead. That your hearts still pound in your chest. That you move in flesh and bone and make nothing of the ghosts that haunt you. All of this gnaws their souls without resolution.’

But Erelan was humming again, as he tied up his bedroll.

Drawing close to Hanako once more, Lasa Rook dropped her voice. ‘Oh, do take the fur, Hanako. You wrestled it off the lord, after all. And all for want of a decent night’s sleep.’

‘I would have yielded,’ said Hanako, ‘had he given me the choice.’

‘It’s said that fear eats at a soul, but I would say it differently. Fear eats away at the choices before you, Hanako, until but one remains. The Lord of Temper knew that fear.’

‘He emerged to find me blocking his escape from the cave, Lasa Rook.’

She nodded. ‘And in nature he is no different from us. We do not understand the notion of retreat.’ She turned then to study the way ahead and below. The mountainside tumbled away in ridges, down into a forested valley. A glittering lake was awakening to the rising sun in the valley’s deep basin. ‘Even this march,’ she continued, ‘is ridiculous.’ The thought brought a bright smile to her as she swung back to grin at Hanako. ‘What direction? Where lies death, brave young warrior? To the east, where the sun is reborn each dawn? To the west, where it falls away each dusk? What of the south, where fruit rots on the branch and insects swarm without rest upon the ground, in daily tasks of dismemberment? Or perhaps the bitter north, where a sleeping woman awakens to find the corpse-serpent has stolen half her body? Or awakens not at all, and lies unchanging for all time? In each direction, death stands triumphant. We seek to join the Jaghut-with-ashes-in-his-heart. We march here to join his march there – but where is there?’

Hanako shrugged. ‘This I would know, too, Lasa Rook. I would see how this Jaghut answers.’

‘Is it a worthy war?’

He glanced away, down into the verdant valley, down to that silver blade of a lake, remembering the conversation that had begun this journey. The tale, arriving on unseen wings, of a grieving Jaghut, railing against the death that took his wife, and the terrible vow that came of that. Was it not the fate of the living to struggle with the feeling of impotence that came in the witnessing of death? Was there not, in truth, nothing to be done, nothing but weathering the weight, the clawing anguish, the fierce anger? How bold could this Jaghut be, in declaring war upon death itself?

There had been mocking laughter, as if all present would test each other, would beat as if with swords on the mettle of the Thel Akai and their perverse appreciation of delicious, maddening absurdity. And yet. How quickly the derision gave way to that dark current in their souls, as remembered grief rose like ghosts in the night, as each and every instance of impotence bled anew. And so the conversation curled in on itself, all humour lost, and in its place emerged a blackened, scorched gleefulness. A delight sweeter than any other. A burgeoning astonishment at the Jaghut’s glorious audacity.

Many dreams were offered up, beckoning, inviting a soul to follow. Few were mundane. Fewer still were even possible. But in each, Hanako knew, there was a taste of something like hope, sufficient to lure one on to that path, if only in the realm of the wishful. Dreams were to be tolerated, year after year the flavour dulling with pity and diminished by bitter experience, until they burned holes in the gut. He knew that all too well, even when he was mocked for his youth – since when, after all, did dreams belong only to the old and wise, who knew them solely by the disappointment left behind? Was it not the realm of
children
that still beckoned, crowded, as it was, to the heavens with dreams – dreams not yet slashed to ribbons, not yet torn down, or rotted from within?

Death was the reaper of ambition, the devourer of hope. So muttered the ancients in every village, around the night’s hearth-fires, with the flames animating the death-masks of their faces. Only memories could live in such faces, when the nights ahead promised so little.

Still … born with ambition and knowing only hope, children knew nothing of death.

Conversations such as the one Hanako had witnessed in his village had no doubt burst up like wildfires among all the Thel Akai settlements, from mountain to coast and in all the valley settlements that huddled between the two. The Jaghut had called for an army, in the name of a war that could not be won.

The Thel Akai gave their answer with the drumbeat of heavy, bitter laughter, and said,
That is a war we can wage.

The pathos of such a claim was enough to make one drunk. He felt that loose, wild surge rising up again in his chest as he pondered Lasa Rook’s question. Its taste was a fool’s triumph. ‘A worthy war? It is, I think, the
only
worthy war.’

Her laughter was low, with a kind of intimacy that made Hanako’s skin prickle with sweat beneath his clothes. ‘You will speak for me, then,’ she said, ‘in my defence.’

He frowned. ‘I do not understand. Your defence against whom?’

‘Why, my husbands, of course, once they figure out where I went.’ She turned then and squinted expectantly back up the mountain trail, before once again flashing him that smile. ‘But let us lead them a fair chase! What say you, bold slayer of the Lord of Temper?’

Hanako looked across to Erelan Kreed. The huge warrior appeared to have been stricken by Lasa Rook’s revelation. ‘Damn you, Lasa Rook!’ he growled.

Her brows lifted. ‘What have I done now?’

‘Leave it to you,’ Erelan said, ‘to make even
this
war a complicated one.’

In a sudden surge of appreciation, Hanako smiled across at Erelan Kreed, and then he burst out his laughter. Upon seeing the flare of pride in the warrior’s eyes, Hanako’s laughter redoubled.

A war upon death? Why, what could be complicated about that?

‘Follow me, my brave guardians!’ cried Lasa Rook. ‘I will swim in that lake by noon!’

  *   *   *

Even after centuries, in which the chaos of the love between them coruscated in wild ebbs and flows, the fever of desire could take them in an instant. In hissing savagery, talons scored deep, tearing loose scales that spun earthward. Jaws snapped and sank fangs into the thick muscles of the nape. The wings hammered in confusion, and Dalk Tennes, gripping tight, would feel her terrible weight dragging them both to the mountain peaks far below.

Beloved wife, I felt you twist away – once the fury was spent in us both. I saw you slide along a strong current, finding at last an updraught that sped you away. Moments later, Iskari Mockras, you were little more than a speck, but still I trembled to your heat, and knew that you did the same to mine, as it lingered on within you.

We are fragments of Tiam. Something like children, but too wise for that title. We preen with the air of ancients, but remain too foolish to hold that pose. The winds we ride – this sea of endless sky – hold us aloft, neither too high nor too low. We are in the middle of our lives, in the age of walking backwards.