Fall of Light (46 page)

Houseblades were stationed in every common room now, and at the doors to the private ones. It was, in some ways, absurd. The girls hid in their hidden places. Ivis himself had said they could root them out at any time. Instead, such a moment would have to await the return of Lord Draconus.
And in the meantime, we live in terror of two wretched children.

After stoking the fire, Yalad drew a chair close to Sandalath and sat, leaning back and stretching out his legs. ‘This is welcome warmth, yes?’

Prok found another ballad, beginning the song loud and stentorian, rocking in his chair to some unheard musical accompaniment, the hand holding its tankard of wine lifting up and down to set the beat.

Wincing, Yalad sighed. ‘Do you ever wonder, milady, why so many of our songs do little more than moan over things lost or never owned in the first place?’

No. Not really.
‘Our good surgeon, sir, knows better than to choose the more raucous ones, lest Commander Ivis arrive again at the most inopportune instant, with us witness to the rise of startling colour to his face.’

‘He was mordant on your behalf, milady. Surely you understand that.’

‘Of course, and by such willingness he charms me, gate sergeant.’

Yalad smiled. ‘That admission would see him crimson.’ He slowly shook his head. ‘And Ivis as old as he is, I’d never thought to see him on such uncertain footing. The charm, milady, is yours, and makes him young again … but in a most unsettling way for us who serve under him.’

‘I would not see his authority undermined, sir,’ Sandalath said, frowning. ‘Advise me, if you will, on how best to blunt what charms I may possess.’

‘I cannot, milady,’ Yalad said, ‘as no man here would even think of withering such gifts, natural as they are.’

She regarded him beneath veiled lids. ‘Sir, you learn well the language of the court. Or is there more of the courting in it than is seemly?’

‘No,’ he replied. ‘I know well my station, milady, and more to the point, yours. It is an otherwise grim season we suffer here, and so we take such pleasures as we can find.’

She continued studying him. ‘I envy the cleverness in you, gate sergeant. If I possess charms, they are sadly childlike. A sheltered life shrinks the world for the one who suffers in it. All too often, innocence yields naivety, and when pushed from the small world into the vaster one beyond, the creature finds herself both unknowing and lost.’

‘Your confession humbles me, milady.’

She waved a hand. ‘It is nothing. I stood atop a tower, witnessing the death of too many men and women. I never thought that war would come so close, no longer a thing in the distance, beyond some border. Now, it strides across familiar ground, and makes that ground newly estranged.’ She started as a log abruptly shifted in the hearth, sending up a flurry of sparks. ‘It does little good,’ she added, ‘when the walls breathe, and, I fear, blink.’

‘You are safe, milady,’ Yalad said. ‘Failing any other option, we’ll starve them out.’

Further conversation between the two was interrupted by the arrival of Surgeon Prok, his song done. Clumsily, he dragged a third chair up, and then slumped down in it with a heavy sigh. ‘You can strip the bark from a tree and think nothing of it,’ he said, nodding to himself. ‘But peel back a man’s skin and, ah, entire worlds are jarred askew. We shiver and are made vulnerable.’ He smiled across at Yalad. ‘I make my war with ruined flesh, gate sergeant. To make it right again. But you, with that blade at your side, you make the trees bleed.’

Yalad frowned. ‘It’s said the priests have found a sorcery that heals, Prok. They name it Denul. Perhaps what ails you is your impending obsolescence.’

Prok’s florid face broadened in a smile. ‘No risk of that to the soldier, though. Obsolescence.’ He stretched the word out, tasted it, and seemed to find it foul. After a moment, he leaned back, raising the tankard before him. ‘I have imbibed of that sorcery, Yalad. You wonder at with whom you bargain, with such sudden power in your hands. Imagine, if you will, a future in which healing is possible for everything, every ailment, every wound. Should a remnant of life linger in the flesh, why, we can save the fool. The question then is: should we?’

Sandalath glanced at Yalad, and then said, ‘But why would you not, surgeon? I would think, in such a future, you would find an answer to your desire – to make things right again, to mend the broken, to heal the diseased, or the wounded.’

He tilted the tankard in her direction. ‘To the crowded future, then.’

She watched him drink, and then said, ‘Even magic cannot refuse death.’

‘True enough,’ he allowed. ‘We but prolong the moment of its arrival. Denul becomes a cheat, milady, to delight in the instant but dismay in the distance. It is more than life that is extended, it is also the agony of failure, for fail we will, and fail we must. Yalad’s war has its victories and its losses. It surges ahead, and then yields ground. It can even end, for a time. But the healer knows only retreat, and each step yielded is bitter, the ground soaked in blood.’

‘Then the sorcery is a boon,’ she replied. ‘Indeed, it is a godly gift.’

He met her eyes, and she saw through their reddened gleam to a sudden, raw pain. ‘Then why, milady, does it taste so sour?’

‘That would be the wine, Prok,’ Yalad said, with a faint smile.

He shifted his gaze to the gate sergeant. ‘Yes, of course.’

A few moments later, Commander Ivis entered the chamber, pulling off his heavy cloak. He paused for a moment to study the occupants of the room, and then, with the briefest of glances at Sandalath, made his way across to the kitchen.

Ivis was a rare presence at the dinner table these evenings. His habit of walking the grounds beyond the keep walls often devoured half the night. Once, in her room and readying for sleep, Sandalath had paused at the window, and, looking down, saw the commander standing at the graves of those household staff who had been murdered by the daughters of Draconus. She could not be sure, but she thought that the mound he faced belonged to the old surgeon, Atran. When she was alive, he had affected distracted ignorance of her desire, as if taking pleasure was a notion he had no business entertaining, given his duties. Sandalath suspected that he now regretted his aloofness.

‘I wonder,’ mused Prok once Ivis had gone, ‘if it takes a surgeon’s eye to see what ails a man, or woman, when that person has made disguise a profession.’

‘Keep such thoughts to yourself,’ Yalad snapped.

‘Forgive me, gate sergeant. You are most correct. But understand: I describe no blessing on my part. This gift pains the recipient, who would rather return it than accept the burden. But then, into whose hands?’

‘Is Denul truly godless?’ Sandalath asked.

Prok seemed to flinch. ‘Imagine that: the power of life and death in my hands arrives as a godless thing. How eager we are to turn about miracles, and make them as mundane as, oh, binding the laces on your moccasin. Yet with each wonder we tread underfoot, the world gets just a little more … pale.’

‘Why not brighter, surgeon?’ Sandalath suggested. ‘What need for gods, should the future bring us all such powers?’

He blinked at her. ‘You think gods offer nothing more than the delusion of bargaining, milady? With every moment, we speak with the world, and in its own way it speaks back – should we choose to hear it. But now, cut out its tongue. Excise its participation in this dialogue. Indeed, do that and to continue speaking will feel most foolish, yes? The prayer unanswered makes for a bleak echo.’ He leaned forward and carefully set the tankard down on the stone dais surrounding the hearth. ‘Or worse, the returning whisper will arrive filled with utter nonsense. It is my belief, milady, that cults and religions often find their shape out of the necessity to fill the silence of a world made godless, and it was made godless precisely because we stopped listening. In place of honest humility, then, are set rules and prohibitions, inquisitions and the violent silencing of a host of avowed or imagined enemies. Do this and not that. Why? Because the god said so, that’s why. But was that really the god speaking, or just some twisted echo of mortal flaws and frailties, each one adding to the list of holy pronouncements?’

‘Dangerous words this night,’ Yalad said. ‘Best you go to your room, Prok, and sleep.’

‘With the dinner bell not yet sounded, gate sergeant? Would you have me starve?’

‘Mother Dark is not—’

‘Ah, Mother Dark, yes, who hides unseen and has nothing to say, so the priestesses open wide their legs seeking mundane ecstasy, or at the very least, satiation.’ Prok waved a hand to cut off Yalad’s retort. ‘Yes, yes, I understand, and in her absence and in her silence she in truth informs us of something profound. But truly, Yalad, how many are capable of appreciating that level of subtlety? The cult that makes its rules simple will thrive. Reduced to a phrase or two should suffice. It will be interesting to see what the followers of Father Light will make of their faith – but whatever it is, no matter how simple or complex, you can be sure that Mother Dark will issue faint reply.’

Sandalath chanced to glance towards the kitchen door, and saw Ivis standing there. There was no doubt that he had heard the surgeon’s words, but she could read nothing from his expression. An instant later the bell sounded.

Sighing, Prok worked himself upright. ‘A chair to take me, a table to lean against – what more does a man need? Come, Yalad, join me in fighting off starvation’s dogs one more night, yes?’

The gate sergeant rose and faced Sandalath. ‘Milady?’

She took the hand he offered her, but let his grip slip away once she was on her feet. Turning, she met the eyes of Ivis, and smiled.

He bowed slightly in her direction.

Accompanied by Keeper Sorca, Matron Bidishan, Setyl and Venth, they set off for the dining room. For this evening at least, Ivis would join them.

  *   *   *

Wreneck’s long hunt for the soldiers who had hurt Jinia had not begun well. Winter was a world made gaunt with starvation. But, it now seemed, even endings didn’t quite end.

The warmth of the palm resting upon his brow seemed to hover at a vast distance from the place in which Wreneck had found himself. And where he had found himself, he was not alone. A figure sat beside him, not close enough to reach out and touch – meaning the hand upon Wreneck’s forehead did not belong to this stranger. But the figure was speaking, often in a language he could not understand, and at times the voice was a woman’s, while at other times it belonged to a man. The times when the stranger spoke in Wreneck’s own language, the words were confusing, as if Wreneck was nothing more than a witness, as if the words were not meant for him at all.

But the hand upon his brow was different, because it felt real. Still, it was far away. What lay between was dark, but the darkness roiled, like soot-filled water, and that water was icy cold. He had no desire to set out across it, and so come closer to the warmth, though he understood that such feelings seemed wrong.

‘Besides,’ muttered the stranger at his side in a man’s voice, ‘desire itself is a cruel parent, when the child knows no strength.’

There was some comfort here, anyway, in the midst of his companion’s grown-up words, even when they weren’t meant for him.

‘Men,’ said the stranger, ‘suffer many things. Some they give voice to, all too often, and make of them a dirge that drains the interest from any within hearing. But other sufferings are quiet things, held tight with a hand clamped over the mouth. That hand can silence or suffocate, or both; and there is no proof that the man sought one but not the other. But the idea of choice is unimportant. These kinds of suffering are reluctant to die, and if murder is the desire, strength is the betrayer.’

Wreneck nodded, thinking he understood. It was part of being a man, he told himself, that made the secret suffering so powerful.

As if the stranger had heard his thoughts, he said, ‘Hidden deep inside, it grows fat on what morsels of sweet, deadly imagination the man offers it, and this is a butcher’s tally of fears and dreads.’

Still, the hand upon Wreneck’s brow felt dry, not blood-soaked. Despite the comfort of this unknown companion, it might be worth the journey back, to where lived winter’s pale light. He had been so cold, on those nights, with the forest yielding him little. The world, he now knew, promised nothing.

His friend spoke again, this time in a woman’s voice. ‘If the world was a parent – to all that lived upon it – then love died long ago, after too many ages of mutual cruelty. Burning forests. Dying trees. A child trapped by the flames. The shaking of earth and rock-falls, or houses falling down killing everyone inside. A beautiful baby, dying for no good reason. No, we have lots of reasons to hate the world, and the world has lots of reasons to hate us. It goes on and on, now, and still we keep being cruel to each other.

‘And we pretend we’re winning. Until we lose again. This is how things rise and fall, and how things once strong can end up burned out and in ruin, with weeds growing up from the cracked flagging. This is how proud old women end up dying in the dirt, or just burning up like a straw doll. Things rise and fall, the way the chest does when you’re breathing. And, dear child, you’re still breathing. Shall we count this a victory?’

There were gravestones, and crypts. I walked over mounds. It was cold, everything was cold. The stones, the sky. I found a pit and sank into it. Like a dead man. Until the cold went away.

It is as my friend says. Men twist to what they suffer inside. Jinia, I will find them and kill them. They won’t be able to hide, because what they did will be right there, on their faces.

‘The life of a child finds strength,’ said his friend, now a man again, ‘in its potential. That potential is stubborn. It doesn’t understand surrender … until it does, and with that understanding, the child withers and dies. You, Wreneck, don’t comprehend the notion of surrender. This is what draws us to you. You have the will of tender shoots, as they emerge from cracks in stone, or between the flagstones. Victory is far away, but inevitable. In this manner, the child is closest to nature, when the adult has long since fled the cost of ambition, and must live, day upon day, with the price of an entire language built around notions of surrender.’