Toll the Hounds Part 15

He eyed her for a half-dozen heartbeats. 'More often of late,' he said.

'Yes.' The High Priestess sat up, wincing at some pain in her lower back and rubbing at the spot. 'Do you remember, Spin, how all of this was so easy, once? Our young bodies seemed made for just that one thing, beauty woven round a knot of need. How we displayed our readiness, how we preened, like the flowers of carnivorous plants? How it made each of us, to ourselves, the most important thing in the world, such was the seduction of that knot of need, seducing first ourselves and then others, so many others-'

'Speak for yourself,' Spinnock said, laughing, even as her words prodded something deep inside him, a hint of pain there was no point paying attention to, or so he told himself, still holding his easy smile as he drew closer to the bed. 'Those journeys into Kurald Galain were denied you for so long, until the rituals of opening seemed devoid of purpose. Beyond the raw pleasure of s.e.x.'

She studied him a moment from beneath heavy lids. 'Yes.'

'Has she forgiven us, then?'

Her laugh was bitter. 'You ask it so plain, as if enquiring after a miffed relative! How can you do such things, Spin? It should have taken you half the night to broach that question.'

'Perhaps age has made me impatient.'

'After the torture you just put me through? You have the patience of lichen.'

'But rather more interesting, I hope.'

She moved to the edge of the bed, set her bare feet on the floor and hissed at the stone's chill. 'Where are my clothes?'

'They burned to ash in the heat of your desire.'

'There bring them over, if you please.'

'Now who is impatient?' But he collected up her priestly robes.

'The visions are growing more . . . fraught.'

Nodding, he held out her robe.

She rose, turned round and slipped her arms into the sleeves, then settled back into his embrace. 'Thank you, Spinnock Durav, for acceding to my . . . need.'

'The ritual cannot be denied,' he replied, stroking her cut-short, midnight-black hair. 'Besides, did you think I would refuse such a request from you?'

'I grow tired of the priests. Their ennui is such that most of them must imbibe foul herbs to awaken them to life. More often, of late, we have them simply service us, while they lie there, limp as rotting bananas.'

He laughed, stepping away to find his own clothes. 'Bananas, yes, a most wondrous fruit to reward us in this strange world. That and kelyk. In any case, the image you describe is unfairly unappetizing.'

'I agree, and so, thank you again, Spinnock Durav.'

'No more grat.i.tude, please. Unless you would have me voice my own and so overwhelm you with the pathos of my plight.'

To that, she but smiled. 'Stay naked, Spin, until I leave.'

'Another part of the ritual?' he asked.

'Would I have so humbly asked if it was?'

When she was gone, Spinnock Durav drew on his clothing once more, thinking back to his own ritual, servicing his sword with a lover's touch, as if to remind the weapon that the woman he had just made love to was but a diversion, a temporary distraction, and that there was place for but one love in his heart, as befitted a warrior.

True, an absurd ritual, a conceit that was indeed pathetic. But with so little to hold on to, well, Tiste Andii clung tight and fierce to anything with meaning, no matter how dubious or ultimately nonsensical.

Dressed once more, he set out.

The game awaited him. The haunted gaze of Seerdomin, there across from him, with artfully carved but essentially inert lumps of wood, antler and bone on the table between them. Ghostly, irrelevant players to each side.

And when it was done, when victory and defeat had been played out, they would sit for a time, drinking from the pitcher, and Seerdomin might again speak of something without quite saying what it was, might slide round what bothered him with every word, with every ambiguous comment and observation. And all Spinnock would glean was that it had something to do with the Great Barrow north of Black Coral. With his recent refusal to journey out there, ending his own pilgrimage, leaving Spinnock to wonder at the man's crisis of faith, to dread the arrival of true despair, when all that Spinnock needed from his friend might wither, even die.

And where then would he find hope?

He walked the gloomy streets, closing in on the tavern, and wondered if there was something he could do for Seerdomin. The thought slowed his steps and made him alter his course. Down an alley, out on to another street, this one the side of a modest hill, with the buildings stepping down level by level on each side, a cascade of once brightly painted doors but who bothered with such things now in this eternal Night?

He came to one door on his left, its flaked surface gouged with a rough sigil, the outline of the Great Barrow in profile, beneath it the ragged imprint of an open hand.

Where worship was born, priests and priestesses appeared with the spontaneity of mould on bread.

Spinnock pounded on the door.

After a moment it opened a crack and he looked down to see a single eye peering up at him.

'I would speak to her,' he said.

The door creaked back. A young girl in a threadbare tunic stood in the narrow hallway, now curtseying repeatedly. 'L-lord,' she stammered, 'she is up the stairs it is late-'

'Is it? And I am not a "lord". Is she awake?'

A hesitant nod.

'I will not take much of her time. Tell her it is the Tiste Andii warrior she once met in the ruins. She was collecting wood. I was . . . doing very little. Go, I will wait.'

Up the stairs the girl raced, two steps at a time, the dirty soles of her feet flashing with each upward leap.

He heard a door open, close, then open again, and the girl reappeared at the top of the stairs. 'Come!' she hissed.

The wood creaked beneath him as he climbed to the next level.

The priestess ancient, immensely obese had positioned herself on a once plush chair before an altar of heaped trinkets. Braziers bled orange light to either side, shedding tendrils of smoke that hung thick and acrid beneath the ceiling. The old woman's eyes reflected that muted glow, murky with cataracts.

As soon as Spinnock entered the small room, the girl left, closing the door behind her.

'You do not come,' said the priestess, 'to embrace the new faith, Spinnock Durav.'

'I don't recall ever giving you my name, Priestess.'

'We all know the one who alone among all the Tiste Andii consorts with us lowly humans. Beyond the old one who bargains for goods in the markets and you are not Endest Silann, who would have struggled on the stairs, and bowed each one near to breaking with his weight.'

'Notoriety makes me uneasy.'

'Of course it does. What do you want with me, warrior?'

'I would ask you something. Is there a crisis among the faithful?'

'Ah. You speak of Seerdomin, who now denies us in our need.'

'He does? How? What need?'

'It is not your concern. Not that of the Tiste Andii, nor the Son of Darkness.'

'Anomander Rake rules Black Coral, Priestess, and we Tiste Andii serve him.'

'The Great Barrow lies outside Night. The Redeemer does not kneel before the Son of Darkness.'

'I am worried for my friend, Priestess. That is all.'

'You cannot help him. Nor, it is now clear, can he help us.'

'Why do you need help?'

'We await the Redeemer, to end that which afflicts his followers.'

'And how will the Redeemer achieve such a thing, except through chosen mortals?'

She c.o.c.ked her head, as if startled by his question, then she smiled. 'Ask that question of your friend, Spinnock Durav. When the game is done and your Lord is victorious yet again, and you call out for beer, and the two of you so much more alike than you might imagine drink and take ease in each other's company.'

'Your knowledge dismays me.'

'The Redeemer is not afraid of the Dark.'

Spinnock started, his eyes widening. 'Embracing the grief of the T'lan Ima.s.s is one thing, Priestess. That of the Tiste Andii no, there may be no fear in the Redeemer, but his soul had best awaken to wisdom. Priestess, make this plain in your prayers. The Tiste Andii are not for the Redeemer. G.o.d or no, such an embrace will destroy him. Utterly.' And, by Mother's own breath, it would destroy us as well. And, by Mother's own breath, it would destroy us as well.

'Seerdomin awaits you,' she said, 'and wonders, since you are ever punctual.'

Spinnock Durav hesitated, then nodded. Hoping that this woman's G.o.d had more wisdom than she did; hoping, too, that the power of prayer could not bend the Redeemer into ill-conceived desires to reach too far, to seek what could only destroy him, all in that fervent fever of gushing generosity so common to new believers.

'Priestess, your claim that the Great Barrow lies beyond my Lord's responsibilities is in error. If the pilgrims are in need, the Son of Darkness will give answer-'

'And so lay claim to what is not his.'

'You do not know Anomander Rake.'

'We need nothing from your Lord.'

'Then perhaps I can help.'

'No. Leave now, Tiste Andii.'

Well, he had tried, hadn't he? Nor did he expect to gain more ground with Seerdomin. Perhaps something more extreme was required. No, Seerdomin is a private man. Let him be. Remain watchful, yes, as any friend would. And wait. No, Seerdomin is a private man. Let him be. Remain watchful, yes, as any friend would. And wait.

If he had walked from the nearest coast, the lone figure crossing the gra.s.slands of north Lamatath had travelled a hundred leagues of unsettled prairie. Nowhere to find food beyond hunting the spa.r.s.e game, all of it notoriously fleet of foot and hoof. He was gaunt, but then, he had always been gaunt. His thin, grey hair was unkempt, drifting out long in his wake. His beard was matted, knotted with filth. His eyes, icy blue, were as feral as any beast of the plain.

A long coat of chain rustled, swinging clear of his shins with each stride. The shadow he cast was narrow as a sword.

In the cloudless sky wheeled vultures or ravens, or both, so high as to be nothing but specks, yet they tracked the solitary figure far below. Or perhaps they but skirled in the blue emptiness scanning the wastes for some dying, weakening creature.

But this man was neither dying nor weak. He walked with the stiff purpose characteristic of the mad, the deranged. Madness, he would have noted, does not belong to the soul engaged with the world, with every hummock and tuft of gra.s.s, with the old beach ridges with their cobbles of limestone pushing through the thin, patched skin of lichen and brittle moss. With the mocking stab of shadow that slowly wheeled as the sun dragged itself across the sky. With the sounds of his own breath that were proof that he remained alive, that the world had yet to take him, pull him down, steal the warmth from his ancient flesh. Madness stalked only an inner torment, and Kallor, the High King, supreme emperor of a dozen terrible empires, was, in his heart, a man at peace.

For the moment. But what mattered beyond just that? This single moment, pitching headlong into the next one, over and over again, as firm and true as each step he took, the hard ground reverberating up through the worn heels of his boots. The tactile affirmed reality, and nothing else mattered and never would.

A man at peace, yes indeed. And that he had once ruled the lives of hundreds of thousands, ruled over their useless, petty existences; that he had once, with a single gesture, condemned a surrendered army of fifteen thousand to their deaths; that he had sat a throne of gold, silver and onyx, like a glutton stuffed to overflowing with such material wealth that it had lost all meaning, all value . . . ah well, all that remained of such times, such glory, was the man himself, his sword, his armour, and a handful of antiquated coins in his pouch. Endless betrayals, a sea of faces made blurry and vague by centuries, with naught but the avaricious, envious glitter of their eyes remaining sharp in his mind; the sweep of smoke and fire and faint screams as empires toppled, one after another; the chaos of brutal nights fleeing a palace in flames, fleeing such a tide of vengeful fools that even Kallor could not kill them all much as he wanted to, oh, yes none of these things awakened bitter ire in his soul. Here in this wasteland that no one wanted, he was a man at peace.

Such truth could not be challenged, and were someone to rise up from the very earth now and stand in such challenge, why, he would cut him to pieces. Smiling all the while to evince his calm repose.

Too much weight was given to history, as far as Kallor was concerned. One's own history; that of peoples, cultures, landscapes. What value peering at past errors in judgement, at mischance and carelessness, when the only reward after all that effort was regret? Bah! Regret was the refuge of fools, and Kallor was no fool. He had lived out his every ambition, after all, lived each one out until all colour was drained away, leaving a bleached, wan knowledge that there wasn't much in life truly worth the effort to achieve it. That the rewards proved ephemeral; nay, worthless.

Every emperor in every realm, through all of time itself, soon found that the lofty t.i.tle and all its power was an existence devoid of humour. Even excess and indulgences palled, eventually. And the faces of the dying, the tortured, well, they were all the same, and not one of those twisted expressions vouchsafed a glimmer of revelation, the discovery of some profound, last-breath secret that answered all the great questions. No, every face simply pulled into itself, shrank and recoiled even as agony tugged and stretched, and whatever the bulging eyes saw at the last moment was, Kallor now understood, something utterly . . . ba.n.a.l.

Now there was an enemy ba.n.a.lity. The demesne of the witless, the proud tower of the stupid. One did not need to be an emperor to witness it scan the faces of people encircling an overturned carriage, the gleam of their eyes as they strain and stretch to catch a glimpse of blood, of broken limbs, relishing some pointless tragedy that tops up their murky inkwells of life. Watch, yes, those vultures of grief, and then speak of n.o.ble humanity, so wise and so virtuous.

Unseen by the ravens or condors, Kallor had now bared his teeth in a bleak smile, as if seeking to emulate the face of that tragically fallen idiot, pinned there beneath the carriage wheel, seeing the last thing he would see, and finding it in the faces of the gawkers, and thinking, Oh, look at you all. So ba.n.a.l. So . . . ba.n.a.l. Oh, look at you all. So ba.n.a.l. So . . . ba.n.a.l.

He startled a hare from some scrub, twenty paces away, and his left hand flashed out, underhand, and a knife sped in a blur, catching the hare in mid-leap, flipping it round in the air before it fell.

A slight tack, and he halted to stand over the small, motionless body, looking down at the tiny droplets of spilled blood. The knife sunk to the hilt, driven right through just in front of the hips the gut, then, not good. Sloppy.

He crouched, pulled loose the knife then quickly sliced open the belly and tugged and tore out the hare's warm intestines. He held the glistening ropes up in one hand, studied them and whispered, 'Ba.n.a.l.' 'Ba.n.a.l.'

An eye of the hare stared up sightlessly, everything behind it closed up, gone away.

But he'd seen all that before. More times than he could count. Hares, people, all the same. In that last moment, yes, there was nothing to see, so what else to do but go away?

He flung the guts to one side, picked up the carca.s.s by its elongated hind limbs and resumed his journey. The hare was coming with him. Not that it cared. Later, they'd sit down for dinner.

High in the sky overhead, the black specks began a descent. Their equally empty eyes had spied the entrails, spread in lumpy grey ropes on the yellow gra.s.ses, now in the lone man's wake. Empty eyes, but a different kind of emptiness. Not that of death's ba.n.a.lity, no, but that of life's ba.n.a.lity.

The same kind of eyes as Kallor's own.

And this was the mercy in the hare's swift death, for unlike countless hundreds of thousands of humans, the creature's last glimpse was not of Kallor's profoundly empty eyes a sight that brought terror into the face of every victim.

The world, someone once said, gives back what is given. In abundance. But then, as Kallor would point out, someone was always saying something. Until he got fed up and had them executed.

CHAPTER FIVE.

Pray, do not speak to me of weather Not sun, not cloud, not of the places Where storms are born I would not know of wind shivering the heather Nor sleet, nor rain, nor of ancient traces On stone grey and worn