Forge of Darkness (Kharkanas Trilogy 1) (29 page)

There were hidden purposes to this journey, and the secrecy drawn tight around it was proof enough of that. There was risk here, danger born of ignorance, and Rint did not like that. To make matters worse, he knew little of Bareth Solitude; and of the lands and peoples beyond the plain he knew even less. The Azathanai were enigmatic in the way of all strangers – they came among the Tiste singly, naturally remote and seemingly uninterested in forging friendships. In truth, Rint did not see much use in them at all. He would rather Jaghut than Azathanai; at least the Jaghut had seen fit to deny the Jheleck their
belligerent
expansion into the lands of the south. The Azathanai had done nothing, even as their villages were raided.

But the Jheleck never attacked a single Azathanai. They stole no children, raped no women. They merely burned down houses and ran off with loot, and to all of that the Azathanai simply laughed, as if possessions were meaningless
.

‘
Wealth,’ they said, ‘is a false measure. Honour cannot be hoarded. Integrity cannot adorn a room. There is no courage in gold. Only fools build a fortress of wealth. Only fools would live in it and imagine themselves safe
.’

These words had been repeated, although Rint knew not which Azathanai had first uttered them; they had rushed through the soldier camps during the war, told like a tale of heroism, yet in tones of confusion, incomprehension and disbelief. But it was not the complexity of the thoughts that so confounded Rint and the others; in truth, there was nothing particularly complicated about them. Instead, the source of the unease engendered was that the Azathanai had given proof to that indifference.

The man decrying the starvation of peasants eats well every night. This is how convictions are revealed as hypocrisy, as empty words
. But the Azathanai had spoken truth, and had watched, unperturbed, as the Jhelarkan raiders stole or destroyed all they had.

Such people frightened Rint. Were they even capable of anger? Did they not feel indignation? Did they not take offence?

He tossed the bucket out to the end of the rope knotted about its handles, watched as it settled and filled. The pull on his arms was solid as he drew against the weight.

Draconus had reached the rise and was staring out to the west, where the sun had lost all its shape in a welter of red upon the horizon. Moments later he raised one gauntleted hand.

Rint pulled the bucket up in a slosh of water and set it down on the bank, his heart suddenly thudding heavy as a drum. He watched as Draconus turned about and made his way back down to the river. He waded across and was met by Raskan. A few words were exchanged and then the Lord moved on, leaving the sergeant to stare after him.

Someone is coming. From the west. Someone … expected
.

Feren came down to his side, her moccasin-clad feet crunching on the rounded pebbles of the bank. ‘You saw?’

He nodded.

‘Who might it be, I wonder?’

‘I would not think a Jaghut,’ Rint replied. ‘Who then? Azathanai?’ He saw her glance back at the camp, followed her gaze. ‘Do you fear for the boy now? What is he to all of this?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You did what was asked of you, Feren. He will have expectations.’

She shot him a hard look. ‘And is he nothing more than a damned pup to be brought to heel?’

‘You are the only one who can answer that,’ he retorted.

‘You are a man. Of this, you understand nothing.’

‘I don’t? How old would the boy have been by now? Same as Arathan, or close enough.’ He saw the effect of his words, like blades crossing her face, and it sickened him. ‘Sister, I am sorry.’

But her eyes had gone flat. ‘Children die. A mother gets over it, as she must.’

‘Feren—’

‘The failure was his father’s, not mine.’

‘I know. I did not mean—’

‘Grief led his hand to the knife. Selfishness sank it into his own heart.’

‘Feren.’

‘He abandoned me when I needed him the most. I learned from that, brother. I learned well.’

‘Arathan is not—’

‘I know that! Is it me who’s been chewing dead meat all afternoon? Am I the one worked into a black rage? I had a son. He died. I had a husband. He is dead, too. And I have a brother, who thinks he knows me, but all he knows is a sister he has invented – go to her again, Rint. She’s easy to find. Bound to the chains inside your head.’ She lifted a hand as if to strike him and he steeled himself against the blow, but it never came, and moments later she was walking back to the fire.

He wanted to weep. Instead, he cursed himself for being a fool.

A figure appeared at the rise on the other side of the river. Massive, towering, clad in thick plates of leather armour, a clutch of spears balanced over one shoulder, a heavy sack held in one hand. His head was bare, his hair unbound and lit like fiery blood in the glare of the setting sun. He paused for a moment and then lumbered his way down to the ford.

And Rint knew this Azathanai, though he had never seen him before.

The lone warrior among the Azathanai. The one known as Protector. Though whom he has fought is a question I cannot answer. Thel Akai halfblood, mate to Kilmandaros
.

This is Grizzin Farl
.

The water barely breached his heavy boots.

‘Draconus!’ he bellowed. ‘Is this how you hide from all the world? Ha, I had not believed the tales – now see me for the fat fool I am! But look, I have ale!’

* * *

He came among them like a man with nothing to fear and nothing to lose, and only much later – years later – did Arathan come to understand how each fed the other and could in turn fashion sentiments of both admiration and great pity. But with his arrival in the camp, it was as if a giant had descended from some lofty mountain crag, down from some wind-whipped keep with echoing halls and frost at the foot of wooden doors. Its master had grown weary of the solitude and now sought company.

There are those from whom pleasure exudes, heady as ale fumes, inviting as the warmth of a fire on a cold night. They encourage amusement with but a glance, as if jests fill the world and the company they share cannot help but fall into that welcoming embrace.

The Azathanai named himself Grizzin Farl, and he did not wait for Draconus to introduce him to the others; instead walking to each in turn. Raskan, Rint, and then Arathan, and when his hand clasped Arathan’s wrist the nest of wrinkles bracketing the giant’s eyes sharpened and he said, ‘A sword-wielder’s forearm, that. Your father has not been careless in preparing you for the life ahead. You are Arathan, inconvenient son of Draconus, lost child to a grieving mother. Will it be this hand I now hold that sends the knife into your father’s back? So he fears, and what father wouldn’t?’

Arathan stared up into those grey eyes. ‘I have no ambitions,’ he said.

‘Well you may not, but others have.’

‘They will never find me.’

Gnarled eyebrows lifted at that. ‘Will you live a life in hiding, then?’

Arathan nodded. The others were standing close, listening, but he could not pull his gaze from that of Grizzin Farl.

‘That is not much of a life,’ the giant said.

‘I am not much of a life, sir. Therefore it well suits me.’

Grizzin Farl finally released his grip on Arathan’s arm and turned to Draconus. ‘It is said Darkness has become a weapon. Against whom is it intended to strike? This is the question, and I go to hear its answer. Tell me, Draconus, will Kharkanas reel to my fated arrival?’

‘Towers will topple,’ Draconus replied. ‘Women will swoon.’

‘Ha! As well they should!’ But then he frowned. ‘Those observations, old friend, do not sit well together.’ And with that he turned to Feren and lowered himself to one knee. ‘Who could expect such beauty here on the very edge of Bareth Solitude? It is ever in my nature to save the best for last. I am Grizzin Farl, known among the Azathanai as the Protector, known among the Jheleck as the warrior who misses every fight, sleeps through every battle, and but smiles at every challenge. Known, too, by those Jaghut who remain as the Stone that Sleeps, which is their poetic way of describing my infamous lethargy. Now, I would have you speak your own name, so
that
I may cherish it and hold the memory of your voice for ever in my heart.’

Through all of this, Feren seemed unimpressed, though the colour was high on her cheeks. ‘I am Feren,’ she said. ‘A Bordersword and sister to Rint.’

‘Too young,’ Grizzin Farl said after a moment, ‘to lose hope. Your voice has told me a tragic tale, though the details remain obscured, but in loss there is pain, and pain will become a sting that ever reminds of that loss.’

She backed away at his words. ‘I reveal no such thing!’ she said in a rasp.

Grizzin Farl slowly straightened, then spread his arms out as if to encompass them all. ‘Tonight we will drink ourselves into wild joy, until the fire has dimmed and the stars flee the dawn, whereupon we will all grow maudlin and each swear everlasting fealty to one another, before passing out.’ He lifted his sack. ‘Ale from the Thel Akai, who are masters, if not of brewing, most certainly of drinking.’ He paused, and then added, ‘I trust you have food. In my haste to meet you, I fear I left home without any.’

Arathan was startled to hear his father’s sigh.

Then Grizzin Farl smiled, and once more all was right in the world.

* * *

The ale was strong and went immediately to Arathan’s head. Shortly after the evening meal, and in the midst of a bawdy song about a Thel Akai maiden and an old Jaghut with an aching tusk, sung with great melodrama by the Azathanai, Arathan fell asleep. Raskan awoke him the next morning with a cup of strong herbs and willow bark, and it was while he sat, sipping the hot drink, that he saw that Grizzin Farl was no longer among them.

Even now it seemed like a dream, blurred and raucous, almost fevered. Head aching, Arathan kept his eyes on the ground before him, as the others began breaking camp. He wondered what other matters were spoken of in the night just past, and he felt his own absence as if it mocked whatever claims he might make to having become a man. He had fallen unconscious like a boy at his first cups, a tankard stolen from the table and hastily gulped down behind a chair.

He had wanted to hear more about Darkness as a sword, a weapon. And it was clear that Grizzin Farl knew Arathan’s father – in ways no one else did, perhaps not even Mother Dark herself. What strange history did they share? What mysterious tales bound their past? A few covert glances to Raskan, Rint and Feren suggested that nothing momentous had been revealed; if anything, everyone seemed at greater ease than they had shown in the time before Grizzin Farl’s
arrival
, as if barriers had been pushed down after a night of ale and laughter.

After a moment of consideration, Arathan looked again at Feren, and saw that
something
had changed. There was a looseness about her, and then he caught a smile she sent her brother’s way at some muttered comment, and suddenly it seemed as if
everything
had changed. Tensions had vanished. The oppressive weight that had been Sagander’s accident had disappeared.
Grizzin Farl came among us, and then he left, but when he left, he took something with him
.

He saw his father watching him, and after a moment Draconus strode over. ‘I should have warned you about Thel Akai ale.’

Arathan shrugged.

‘And you barely recovered from a concussion,’ his father continued. ‘It must have hit you like a sleeping draught. I am sorry, Arathan, that you missed most of an enjoyable evening.’ He hesitated, and then said, ‘You have had too few of those.’

‘He called you his friend,’ Arathan said, his tone painfully accusing.

A flatness came to his father’s eyes. ‘He calls everyone “friend”, Arathan. Give it no further thought.’

Arathan glared after him as he walked away.

From a lone, diseased tree upriver drifted the morning cry of a bird and he looked over but could not see the creature among the crooked branches and sullen leaves.

It hides, and it is free
.

Free to fly away from all of this
.

* * *

A short time later they ascended the slope and came out upon the Bareth Solitude, and the way ahead stretched on in ribboned rows beneath a clear sky, and Arathan was reminded of Sagander’s lessons recounting the death of a great inland sea.

As he rode, he thought of water, and freedom.

And prisons.

To the west was the land of the Azathanai, where dwelt protectors who protected nothing, and wise sages who never spoke, and Thel Akai came down from the mountains to share drunken nights no one remembered the next day. It was a world of mysteries, and he would soon see it for himself. With the thought, he felt light in the saddle, as if moments from transforming into a bird, from taking wing in search of a diseased tree.

But the thin sea ahead was bereft of trees, and the beach ridges with their bleached cobbles edged basins of grass and little else.