Midnight Tides by Steven Erikson
Looking for solid grounding? Bugg’s Construction is your answer.
Until the flood sweeps the entire world away, that is.
‘Can we buy you some clothes?’
Tehol blinked. ‘Why?’
****
Seren stared down. The valley stretched below, its steep sides unrelieved forest, a deep motionless green. The glitter of rushing water threaded through the shadows in the cut’s nadir. Blood of the Mountains, the Edur called that river. Tis’forundal. Its waters ran red with the sweat of iron.
The track they would take crossed that river again and again.
The lone Tiste Edur far below had, it seemed, emerged from that crimson stream. Striding to the head of the trail then beginning the ascent.
As if knowing we’re here.
Buruk the Pale was taking his time with this journey, calling a halt shortly after midday. The wagons would not tip onto that rocky, sliding path into the valley until the morrow. Caution or drunk indifference, the result was the same.
Hull stood at her side. Both of them watched the Tiste Edur climb closer.
‘Seren.’
‘Yes?’
‘You weep at night.’
‘I thought you were asleep.’
He said nothing for a moment, then, ‘Your weeping always woke me.’
And this is as close as you dare, isn’t it? ‘Would that yours had me.’
‘I am sure it would have, Seren, had I wept.’
And this eases my guilt? She nodded towards that distant Tiste Edur. ‘Do you recognize him?’
‘I do.’
‘Will he cause us trouble?’
‘No, I don’t think so. I believe he will be our escort back to Hiroth lands.’
‘Noble-born?’
Hull nodded. ‘Binadas Sengar.’
She hesitated, then asked, ‘Have you cut flesh for him?’
‘I have. As he has for me.’
Seren Pedac drew her furs tighter about her shoulders. The wind had not relented, though something of the valley’s damp rot now rode its bludgeoning rush. ‘Hull, do you fear this Great Meeting?’
‘I need only look back to see what lies ahead.’
‘Are you so sure of that?’
‘We will buy peace, but it will be, for the Tiste Edur, a deadly peace.’
‘But peace none the less, Hull.’
‘Acquitor, you might as well know, and so understand me clearly. I mean to shatter that gathering. I mean to incite the Edur into war with Letheras.’
Stunned, she stared at him.
Hull Beddict turned away. ‘With that knowledge,’ he said, ‘do as you will.’
Chapter Three
Face to the Light betrayed by the Dark Father Shadow lies bleeding Unseen and unseeing
Lost until his Children take the final path and in the solitude of strangers awaken once more
Tiste Edur prayer
A hard silence that seemed at home in the dense, impenetrable fog. The Blackwood paddles had been drawn from water thick as blood, which ran in rivulets, then beads, down the polished shafts, finally drying with a patina of salt in the cool, motionless air. And now there was nothing to do but wait.
Daughter Menandore had delivered a grim omen that morning. The body of a Beneda warrior. A bloated corpse scorched by sorcery, skin peeled back by the ceaseless hungers of the sea. The whispering roar of flies stung into flight by the arrival of those Edur whose slaves had first found it.
Letherii sorcery.
The warrior wore no scabbard, no armour. He had been fishing.
Four K’orthan longboats had set out from the river mouth shortly after the discovery. In the lead craft rode Hannan Mosag and his K’risnan Cadre, along with seventy-five blooded warriors. Crews of one hundred followed in the three additional raiders.
The tide carried them out for a time. It soon became clear that no wind waited offshore, so they left the three triangular sails on each ship furled and, thirty-five warriors to a side, had begun paddling.
Until the Warlock King had signalled a halt.
The fog enclosed the four raider longboats. Nothing could be seen twenty strokes of the paddle in any direction. Trull Sengar sat on the bench behind Fear. He had set his paddle down and now gripped the new iron-sheathed spear his father had given him.
The Letherii ships were close, he knew, drifting in the same manner as the Edur longboats. But they relied solely upon sail and so could do nothing until a wind rose.
And Hannan Mosag had made certain there would be no wind. Shadow wraiths flickered over the deck, roving restlessly, long-clawed hands reaching down as they clambered on all fours. They prowled as if eager to leave the confines of the raider. Trull had never seen so many of them, and he knew that they were present on the other longboats as well. They would not, however, be the slayers of the Letherii. For that, the Warlock King had summoned something else.
He could feel it. Waiting beneath them. A vast patience, suspended in the depths.
Near the prow, Hannan Mosag slowly raised a hand, and, looking beyond the Warlock King, Trull saw the hulk of a Letherii harvest ship slowly emerge from the fog. Sails furled, lanterns at the end of out-thrust poles, casting dull, yellow light.
And then a second ship, bound to the first by a thick cable.
Shark fins cut the pellucid surface of the water around them.
And then, suddenly, those fins were gone.
Whatever waited below rose.
Emerged unseen with a shivering of the water.
A moment, blurred and uncertain.
Then screams.
Trull dropped his spear and clapped both hands to his ears – and he was not alone in that response, for the screams grew louder, drawn out from helpless throats and rising to shrieks. Sorcery flashed in the fog, briefly, then ceased.
The Letherii ships were on all sides now. Yet nothing could be seen of what was happening on them. The fog had blackened around them, coiling like smoke, and from that impenetrable gloom only the screams clawed free, like shreds of horror, the writhing of souls.
The sounds were in Trull’s skull, indifferent to his efforts to block them. Hundreds of voices. Hundreds upon hundreds. Then silence. Hard and absolute. Hannan Mosag gestured.
The white cloak of fog vanished abruptly.
The calm seas now rolled beneath a steady wind. Above, the sun glared down from a fiercely blue sky. Gone, too, was the black emanation that had engulfed the Letherii fleet. The ships wallowed, burned-out lanterns pitching wildly.
‘Paddle.’
Hannan Mosag’s voice seemed to issue from directly beside Trull. He started, then reached down, along with everyone else, for a paddle. Rose to plant his hip against the gunnel, then chopped down into the water.
The longboat surged forward.
In moments they were holding blades firm in the water, halting their craft alongside the hull of one of the ships.
Shadow wraiths swarmed up its red-stained side.
And Trull saw that the waterline on the hull had changed. Its hold was, he realized, now empty.
‘Fear,’ he hissed. ‘What is going on? What has happened?’
His brother turned, and Trull was shocked by Fear’s pallid visage. ‘It is not for us, Trull,’ he said, then swung round once more.
It is not for us. What does he mean by that? What isn’t?
Dead sharks rolled in the waves around them. Their carcasses were split open, as if they had exploded from within. The water was streaked with viscid froth.
‘We return now,’ Hannan Mosag said. ‘Man the sails, my warriors. We have witnessed. Now we must leave.’
Witnessed – in the name of Father Shadow, what?
Aboard the Letherii ships, canvas snapped and billowed.
The wraiths will deliver them. By the Dusk, this is no simple show of power. This – this is a challenge. A challenge, of such profound arrogance that it far surpassed that of these Letherii hunters and their foolish, suicidal
It was said gold was all that mattered to the Letherii. But who, in their right mind, would seek wealth when it meant certain death? They had to have known there would be no escape. Then again, what if I had not stumbled upon them? What if I had not chosen the Calach strand to look for jade? But no, now he was the one being arrogant. If not Trull, then another. The crime would never have gone unnoticed. The crime was never intended to go unnoticed.
He shared the confusion of his fellow warriors. Something was awry here. With both the Letherii and with… us. With Hannan Mosag. Our Warlock King.
Our shadows are dancing. Letherii and Edur, dancing out a ritual – but these are not steps I can recognize. Father Shadow forgive me, I am frightened.
Nineteen ships of death sailed south, while four K’orthan raiders cut eastward. Four hundred Edur warriors, once more riding a hard silence.
****
It fell to the slaves to attend to the preparations. The Beneda corpse was laid out on a bed of sand on the floor of a large stone outbuilding adjoining the citadel, and left to drain.
The eye sockets, ears, nostrils and gaping mouth were all cleaned and evened out with soft wax. Chewed holes in its flesh were packed with a mixture of clay and oil.
With six Edur widows overseeing, a huge iron tray was set atop a trench filled with coals that had been prepared alongside the corpse. Copper coins rested on the tray, snapping and popping as the droplets of condensation on them sizzled and hissed then vanished.
Udinaas crouched beside the trench, staying far enough back to ensure that his sweat did not drip onto the coins – a blasphemy that meant instant death for the careless slave – and watched the coins, seeing them darken, becoming smoky black. Then, as the first glowing spot emerged in each coin’s centre, he used pincers to pluck it from the tray and set it down on one of a row of fired-clay plates – one plate for each widow.
The widow, kneeling before the plate, employed a finer set of pincers to pick up the coin. And then pivoted to lean over the corpse.
First placement was the left eye socket. A crackling hiss, worms of smoke rising upward as the woman pressed down with the pincers, keeping the coin firmly in place, until it melded with the flesh and would thereafter resist being dislodged. Right eye socket followed. Nose, then forehead and cheeks, every coin touching its neighbours.
When the body’s front and sides, including all the limbs, were done, melted wax was poured over the coin-sheathed corpse. And, when that had cooled, it was then turned over. More coins, until the entire body was covered, excepting the soles of the feet and the palms of the hands. Another layer of melted wax followed.
The task of sheathing consumed most of the day, and it was near dusk when Udinaas finally stumbled from the outbuilding and stood, head bowed, while the cool air plucked at the sweat on his skin. He spat in an effort to get the foul stench out of his mouth. Burnt, rotting flesh in the building’s turgid, oven-hot confines. The reek of scorched hair. No amount of scented oil and skin-combing could defeat what had seeped into his pores. It would be days before Udinaas had rid himself of that cloying, dreadful taste.
He stared down at the ground between his feet. His shoulder still ached from the forced healing done by Uruth. Since that time, he had had no opportunity to speak with Feather Witch.
To his masters, he had explained nothing. They had, in truth, not pressed him very hard. A handful of questions, and they’d seemed content with his awkward, ineffectual answers. Udinaas wondered if Uruth had been as unmotivated in her own questioning of Feather Witch. The Tiste Edur rarely displayed much awareness of their slaves, and even less understanding of their ways. It was, of course, the privilege of the conquerors to be that way, and the universal fate of the conquered to suffer that disregard.
Yet identities persisted. On a personal level. Freedom was little more than a tattered net, draped over a host of minor, self-imposed bindings. Its stripping away changed little, except, perhaps, the comforting delusion of the ideal. Mind bound to self, self to flesh, flesh to bone. As the Errant wills, we are a latticework of cages, and whatever flutters within knows but one freedom, and that is death.
The conquerors always assumed that what they conquered was identity. But the truth was, identity could only be killed from within, and even that gesture was but a chimera. Isolation had many children, and dissolution was but one of them – yet its path was unique, for that path began when identity was left behind.
From the building behind him emerged the song of mourning, the Edur cadence of grief. Hunh, hunh, hunh, hunh… A sound that always chilled Udinaas. Like emotion striking the same wall, again and again and again. The voice of the trapped, the blocked. A voice overwhelmed by the truths of the world. For the Edur, grieving was less about loss than about being lost.
Is that what comes when you live a hundred thousand years?
The widows then emerged, surrounding the corpse that floated waist-high on thick, swirling shadows. A figure of copper coins. The Edur’s singular use of money. Copper, tin, bronze, iron, silver and gold, it was the armour of the dead.
At least that’s honest. Letherii use money to purchase the opposite. Well, not quite. More like the illusion of the opposite. Wealth as life’s armour. Keep, fortress, citadel, eternally vigilant army. But the enemy cares nothing for all that, for the enemy knows you are defenceless.
‘Hunh, hunh, hunh, hunh…’
This was Daughter Sheltatha Lore’s hour, when all things material became uncertain. Smudged by light’s retreat, when the air lost clarity and revealed its motes and grains, the imperfections both light and dark so perfectly disguised at other times. When the throne was shown to be empty.
Why not worship money? At least its rewards are obvious and immediate. But no, that was simplistic. Letherii worship was more subtle, its ethics bound to those traits and habits that well served the acquisition of wealth. Diligence, discipline, hard work, optimism, the personalization of glory. And the corresponding evils: sloth, despair, and the anonymity of failure. The world was brutal enough to winnow one from the other and leave no room for doubt or mealy equivocation. In this way, worship could become pragmatism, and pragmatism was a cold god.
Errant make ours a cold god, so we may act without constraint. A suitable Letherii prayer, though none would utter it in such a bold fashion. Feather Witch said that every act made was a prayer, and thus in the course of a day were served a host of gods. Wine and nectar and rustleaf and the imbibing thereof was a prayer to death, she said. Love was a prayer to life. Vengeance was a prayer to the demons of righteousness. Sealing a business pact was, she said with a faint smile, a prayer to the whisperer of illusions. Attainment for one was born of deprivation for another, after all. A game played with two hands.
‘Hunh, hunh, hunh, hunh…’
He shook himself. His sodden tunic now wrapped him in damp chill.
A shout from the direction of the sea. The K’orthan raiders were returning. Udinaas walked across the compound, towards the Sengar household. He saw Tomad Sengar and his wife Uruth emerge, and dropped to his knees, head pressed to the ground, until they passed. Then he rose and hurried into the longhouse.
The copper-sheathed corpse would be placed within the hollowed trunk of a Blackwood, the ends sealed with discs of cedar. Six days from now, the bole would be buried in one of a dozen sacred groves in the forest. Until that moment, the dirge would continue. The widows taking turns with that blunt, terrible utterance.
He made his way to the small alcove where his sleeping pallet waited. The longboats would file into the canal, one after the other in the grainy half-light. They would not have failed. They never did. The crews of nineteen Letherii ships were now dead – no slaves taken, not this time. Standing on both sid
In silence.
Because something terrible has happened.
He lay down on his back, staring up at the slanted ceiling, feeling a strange, unnerving constriction in his throat. And could hear, in the rush of his blood, a faint echo behind his heart. A double beat. Hunh hunh Huh huh. Hunh hunh Huh huh…
Who are you? What are you waiting for? What do you want with me?
****
Trull clambered onto the landing, the cold haft of his spear in his right hand, its iron-shod butt striking sparks on the flagstones as he stepped away from the canal’s edge and halted beside Fear. Opposite them, but remaining five paces away, stood Tomad and Uruth. Rhulad was nowhere to be seen.
Nor, he realized, was Mayen.
A glance revealed that Fear was scanning the welcoming crowd. There was no change in expression, but he strode towards Tomad.
‘Mayen is in the forest with the other maidens,’ Tomad said. ‘Collecting morok. They are guarded by Theradas, and Midik and Rhulad.’
‘My son.’ Uruth stepped closer, eyes searching Fear’s visage. ‘What did he do?’
Fear shook his head.
‘They died without honour,’ Trull said. ‘We could not see the hand that delivered that death, but it was… monstrous.’
‘And the harvest?’ Tomad asked.
‘It was taken, Father. By that same hand.’
A flash of anger in Uruth’s eyes. ‘This was no full unveiling. This was a demonic summoning.’
Trull frowned. ‘I do not understand, Mother. There were shadows—’
‘And a darkness,’ Fear cut in. ‘From the depths… darkness.’
She crossed her arms and looked away. Trull had never seen Uruth so distressed.
And in himself, his own growing unease. Fully three-fifths of the Tiste Edur employed sorcery. A multitude of fragments from the riven warren of Kurald Emurlahn. Shadow’s power displayed myriad flavours. Among Uruth’s sons, only Binadas walked the paths of sorcery. Fear’s words had none the less triggered a recognition in Trull. Every Tiste Edur understood his own, after all. Caster of magic or not.