Midnight Tides by Steven Erikson
Sandalath snorted. ‘Pathetic. This is the god’s sword-wielder? A mistake.’
‘If it is,’ Withal said in a low voice, ‘I have no intention of telling him so.’
Rhulad clambered to his feet. ‘It killed me.’
‘Yes,’ Withal replied. ‘It did, whatever “it” was.’
‘A Forkrul Assail.’
Sandalath stiffened. ‘You should be more careful, Edur, in choosing your enemies.’
A laugh close to hysteria, as Rhulad made his way up from the beach. ‘Choose, woman? I choose nothing.’
‘Few ever do, Edur.’
‘What is she doing here, Withal?’
‘The Crippled God thought I needed company. Beyond three insane Nachts.’
‘You are lovers?’
‘Don’t be absurd,’ Sandalath said, sneering.
‘Like she said,’ Withal added.
Rhulad stepped past them. ‘I need my sword,’ he muttered, walking inland.
They turned to watch him.
‘His sword,’ Sandalath murmured. ‘The one the god had you make?’
Withal nodded. ‘But I am not to blame.’
‘You were compelled.’
‘I was.’
‘It’s not the weapon that’s evil, it’s the one wielding it.’
He studied her. ‘I don’t care if you crack my skull again. I am really starting to hate you.’
‘I assure you my sentiments are identical regarding you.’
Withal turned away. ‘I’m going to my shack.’
‘Of course you are,’ she snapped behind him. ‘To beg and mumble to your god. As if it’d bother listening to such pathetic mewling.’
‘I’m hoping,’ Withal said over his shoulder, ‘that it’ll take pity on me.’
‘Why should it?’
He did not reply, and wisely kept his answering smile to himself.
****
Standing ten paces to the side of the throne, Brys Beddict watched as King Ezgara Diskanar walked solemnly into the domed chamber. Distracted irritation was on the king’s face, since his journey had required a detour around the prone, shivering form of the Ceda, Kuru Qan, but that was behind him now, and Brys saw Ezgara slowly resume his stern expression.
Awaiting him in the throne room was a handful of officials and guards. First Eunuch Nifadas was positioned to the right of the throne, holding the Lether crown on a blood-red pillow. First Concubine Nisall knelt at the foot of the dais, on the left side. Along with Brys and six of his guardsmen, Finadd Gerun Eberict was present with six of his own soldiers of the Palace Guard.
And that was all. The investiture on this, the day of the Seventh Closure – or close enough since no-one could agree on that specific date – was to be witnessed by these few. Not as originally planned, of course. But there had been more riots, the last one the bloodiest of them all. The king’s name had become a curse among the citizenry. The list of invitations had been truncated as a matter of security, and even then, Brys was nervous about Gerun Eberict’s presence.
The king neared the dais, his robes sliding silken on the polished marble floor in his wake.
‘This day,’ Nifadas intoned, ‘Lether becomes an empire.’
The guards executed the salute reserved for the royal line and held it, motionless as statues.
Ezgara Diskanar stepped up onto the dais and slowly turned round.
The First Eunuch moved to stand before him and raised the pillow.
The king took the crown and fitted it onto his head.
‘This day,’ Nifadas said, stepped back, ‘Lether is ruled by an emperor.’ He turned. ‘Emperor Ezgara Diskanar.’
The guards released their salute.
And that is it.
Ezgara sat on the throne.
Looking old and frail and lost.
****
The windows were shuttered tight. Weeds snarled the path, vines had run wild up the walls to either side of the stepped entrance. From the street behind them came the stench of smoke, and a distant roar from somewhere in the Creeper Quarter inland, beyond Settle Lake, indicated that yet another riot had begun.
From the Fishers’ Gate, Seren Pedac and the Crimson Guardsmen had walked their horses down littered streets. Signs of looting, the occasional corpse, a soldier’s dead horse, and figures scurrying from their path into alleys and side avenues. Burnt-out buildings, packs of hungry feral dogs drawn in from the abandoned farmlands and forests, refugee families huddled here and there, the King’s City of Lether seemed to have succumbed to depraved barbarity with the enemy still leagues beyond the horizon.
She was stunned at how swiftly it had all crumbled, and more than a little frightened. For all her disgust and contempt for the ways of her people, there had remained, somewhere buried deep, a belief in its innate resiliency. But here, before her, was the evidence of sudden, thorough collapse. Greed and savagery unleashed, fear and panic triggering brutality and ruthless indifference.
They passed bodies of citizens who had been long in dying, simply left in the street while they bled out.
Down one broad avenue, near the canal, a mob had passed through, perhaps only half a day earlier. There was evidence that soldiers had battled against it, and had been pushed back into a fighting withdrawal.
Flanking buildings and estates had been trashed and looted. The street was sticky with blood, and the tracks of dozens of wagons were evident, indicating that here, at least, the city’s garrison had returned to take away corpses.
Iron Bars and his Guardsmen said little during the journey, and now, gathered before her home, they remained on their horses, hands on weapons and watchful.
Seren dismounted.
After a moment, Iron Bars and Corlo did the same.
‘Don’t look broken into,’ the mage said.
‘As I said,’ Seren replied, ‘nothing inside is worth taking.’
‘I don’t like this,’ the Avowed muttered. ‘If trouble comes knocking, Acquitor…’
‘It won’t,’ she said. ‘These riots won’t last. The closer the Edur army gets, the quieter things will become.’
‘That’s not what happened in Trate.’
‘True, but this will be different.’
‘I don’t see why you’d think so,’ Iron Bars said, shaking his head.
‘Go find your ship, Avowed,’ Seren said. She turned to the others. ‘Thank you, all of you. I am honoured to have known you and travelled in your company.’
‘Go safe, lass,’ Corlo said.
She settled a hand on the mage’s shoulder. Held his eyes, but said nothing.
He nodded. ‘Easy on that.’
‘You heard?’
‘I did. And I’ve the headache to prove it.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Try to remember, Seren Pedac, Mockra is a subtle warren.’
‘I will try.’ She faced Iron Bars.
‘Once I’ve found our employer and planted my squad,’ he said, ‘I’ll pay you another visit, so we needn’t get all soft here and now.’
‘All right.’
‘A day, no longer, then I’ll see you again, Acquitor.’
She nodded.
The Avowed and his mage swung themselves back into their saddles. The troop rode off.
Seren watched them for a moment, then turned about and walked up the path. The key to the elaborate lock was under the second flagstone.
The door squealed when she pushed it back, and the smell of dust swept out to engulf her. She entered, shutting the door.
Gloom, and silence.
She did not move for a time, the corridor stretching before her. The door at its end was open, and she could see into the room beyond, which was lit by cloth-filtered sunlight coming from the courtyard at the back. A high-backed chair in that far room faced her, draped in muslin cloth.
One step, then another. On, down the corridor. Just before the entrance to the room, the mouldering body of a dead owl, lying as if asleep on the floor. She e
Ghostly furniture to either side, but it was the chair that held her gaze. She crossed to it, then, without removing the cloth, she sat down, the muslin drawing inward as she sank down into the seat.
Blinking, Seren looked about.
Shadows. Silence. The faint smell of decay. The lump of the dead owl lying just beyond the threshold.
‘Seren Pedac’s… empire,’ she whispered.
And she had never felt so alone.
****
In the city of Letheras, as companies of Gerun Eberict’s soldiers cut and chopped their way through a mass of cornered citizens who had been part of a procession of the king’s loyalists, on their way to the Eternal Domicile to cheer the investiture, citizens whose blood now spread on the cobbles to mark this glorious day; as starlings in their tens of thousands wheeled ever closer to the old tower that had once been an Azath and was now the Hold of the Dead; as Tehol Beddict – no longer on his roof – made his way down shadowy streets on his way to Selush, at the behest of Shurq Elalle; as the child, Kettle, who had once been dead but was now very much alive, sat on the steps of the old tower singing softly to herself and plaiting braids of grass; as the rays of the sun lengthened to slant shafts through the haze of smoke, the bells began ringing.
Pronouncing the birth of the empire.
The end of the Seventh Closure.
But the scribes were in error. The Seventh Closure had yet to arrive.
Two more days.
Leaning against a wall with his arms crossed, near the old palace, the First Consort, Turudal Brizad, the god known as the Errant, looked skyward at the cloud of starlings as the bells sounded, low and tremulous.
‘Unpleasant birds,’ he said to himself, ‘starlings…’
Two more days.
A most tragic miscalculation, I fear.
Most tragic.
Chapter Twenty-Three
‘A vast underground cavern yawned beneath the basin, the crust brittle and porous. Could one have stood in that ancient cave, the rain would have been ceaseless. Even so, eleven rivers fed into the marshlands that would one day be the city of Letheras, and the process of erosion that culminated in the collapse of the basin and the catastrophic draining of the rivers and swamps, was a long one. Thus, modest as Settle Lake is, it is worth reminding oneself of its extraordinary depth. The lake is, indeed, like a roof hatch with the enormous cavern the house beneath. So, the pulling down into the deep of Burdos’ fishing boat – the sole fisher of Settle Lake – nets and all, should come as no surprise. Nor should the fact the since that time, when so many witnessed Burdos’ demise, no other fishing boat has plied the waters of Settle Lake. In any case, I was, I believe, speaking of the sudden convergence of all those rivers, the inrush of the swamp’s waters, said event occurring long before the settlement of the area by the colonists. Fellow scholars, it would have been a dramatic sight, would it not?’
Excerpt from The Geologic History of Letheras, a lecture given by Royal Geographer Thula Redsand at the Cutter Academy 19th Annual Commencement (moments before the Great Collapse of the Academy Ceiling) Comments recounted by sole survivor, Ibal the Dart
There was nothing natural in the dust that loomed like a behemoth above the Edur armies as they came down from the north and began moving into positions opposite Brans Keep. The ochre cloud hovered like a standing wave in a cataract, fierce winds whipping southward to either side, carrying ashes and topsoil in a dark, ominous onslaught against the waiting Letherii armies and the barren hills behind them.
The emperor of the Tiste Edur had found the glory of rebirth yet again. Every death was a tier in his climb to unassailable domination. Resurrection, Udinaas now understood, was neither serene nor painless. It came in screams, in shrieks that rent the air. It came in a storm of raw trauma that tore at Rhulad’s sanity as much as it would anyone’s suffering the same curse. And there was no doubt at all in the slave’s mind, the sword and its gift were cursed, and the god behind it – if it was a god in truth – was a creature of madness.
This time, Rhulad’s brothers had been there to witness his awakening. Udinaas had not been surprised at the horror writ on their faces with the emperor’s first ragged scream, the convulsions racking Rhulad’s body of smudged gold and dried blood, the cold unearthly light blazing anew in his terrible eyes. He had seen them frozen, unable to draw closer, unable to flee, standing witness to the dreadful truth.
Perhaps, afterwards, when they had thawed – when their hearts started beating once more – there was sympathy. Rhulad wept openly, with only the slave’s arm across his shoulders for comfort. And Fear and Trull had looked on, the K’risnan sitting hunched and mute on the ground behind them, until such time as the emperor found himself once more, the child and brother and newly blooded warrior he’d once been – before the sword found his hands – discovered, still cowering but alive within him.
Little had been said on the return journey, but they had ridden their horses into the ground in their haste, and for all but Udinaas the ride had been a flight. Not from the Forkrul Assail and its immutable fascination for the peace of cold corpses, but from the death, and the rebirth, of the emperor of the Tiste Edur.
They re-joined the army five leagues from Brans Keep, and received Hannan Mosag’s report that contact had been established with the K’risnan in the other two armies, and all were approaching the fated battlefield, where, shadow wraiths witnessed, the Letherii forces awaited them.
Details, the trembling skein of preparation, Udinaas was indifferent to them, the whisper of order in seeming chaos. An army marched, like some headless migration, each beast bound by instinct, the imperatives of violence. Armies marched from complexity into simplicity. It was this detail that drove them onward. A field waited, on which all matters could be reduced, on which dust and screams and blood brought cold clarity. This was the secret hunger of warriors and soldiers, of governments, kings and emperors. The simple mechanics of victory and defeat, the perfect feint to draw every eye, every mind lured into the indulgent game. Focus on the scales. Count the measures and mull over balances, observe the stacked bodies like stacked coins and time is devoured, the mind exercised in the fruitless repetition of the millstone, and all the world beyond was still and blurred for the moment… so long as no-one jarred the table.
Udinaas envied the warriors and soldiers their simple lives. For them, there was no coming back from death. They spoke simply, in the language of negation. They fought for the warrior, the soldier, at their side, and even dying had purpose – which was, he now believed, the rarest gift of all.
Or so it should have been, but the slave knew it would be otherwise. Sorcery was the weapon for the battle to come. Perhaps it was, in truth, the face of future wars the world over. Senseless annihilation, the obliteration of lives in numbers beyond counting. A logical extension of governments, kings and emperors. War as a clash of wills, a contest indifferent to its cost, seeking to discover who will blink first – and not caring either way. War, no different an exercise from the coin-reaping of the Merchants’ Tolls, and thus infinitely understandable.
The Tiste Edur and their allies were arraying themselves opposite the Letherii armies, the day’s light growing duller, muted by the hovering wave of suspended dust. In places sorcery crackled, shimmered the air, tentative escapes of the power held ready by both sides. Udinaas wondered if anyone, anyone at all, would survive this day. And, among those who did, what lessons would they take from this battle?
Sometimes the game goes too far.
She was standing beside him, silent and small and wrapped in a supple, undyed deerhide. She had said nothing, offered no reason for seeking him out. He did not know her mind, he could not guess her thoughts. Unknown and profoundly unknowable.
Yet now he heard her draw a shuddering breath.
Udinaas glanced ov
Feather Witch nodded. ‘I should thank you.’
‘No need.’
‘Good.’ She seemed to falter at her own vehemence. ‘I should not have said that. I don’t know what to think.’
‘About what?’
She shook her head. ‘About what, he asks. For Errant’s sake, Udinaas, Lether is about to fall.’
‘Probably. I have looked long and hard at the Letherii forces. I see what must be mages, standing apart here and there. But not the Ceda.’
‘He must be here. How could he not be?’
Udinaas said nothing.
‘You are no longer an Indebted.’
‘And that matters?’
‘I don’t know.’
They fell silent. Their position was on a rise to the northwest of the battlefield. They could make out the facing wall of Brans Keep itself, a squat, formidable citadel leaning up against a cliff carved sheer into a hillside. Corner towers flanked the wall, and on each stood large fixed mangonels with their waiting crews. There was also a mage present on each tower, arms raised, and it was evident that a ritual was under way binding the two on their respective perches. Probably something defensive, since the bulk of the King’s Battalion was positioned at the foot of the keep.
To the west of that battalion a ridge reached out from the hills a short distance, and on its other side were positioned elements of the king’s heavy infantry, along with the Riven Brigade. West of that waited companies of the Snakebelt Battalion with the far flanking side protected by the Crimson Rampant Brigade, who were backed to the westernmost edge of the Brans Hills and to the course of the Dissent River to the south.
It was more difficult to make out the array of Letherii forces east of the King’s Battalion. There was an artificial lake on the east side of the keep, and north of it, alongside the battalion, was the Merchants’ Battalion. Another seasonal river or drainage channel wound northeast on their right flank, and it seemed the Letherii forces on the other side of that intended to use the dry ditch as a line of defence.
In any case, Rhulad’s own army would present the western body of the Edur advance. Central was Fear’s army, and further to the east, beyond an arm of lesser hills and old lake beds, approached the army of Tomad and Binadas Sengar, on their way down from the town of Five Points.