Forge of Darkness

The ascent ended just ahead in a broken tumble of stones that seemed to flatten, as if by weight alone they could force the trail level, but something was lying upon the verge — a corpse, sprawled and half naked, the limbs stretched as if the body had been dragged to the edge of the descent. From this contorted perch, blood ran down in thick ropes, drowning the last few scattered gems.



A Jaghut woman.



She could see the point of a long knife jutting from her chest, and her back was arched in a manner to suggest the handle protruding from between her shoulder blades.



‘Karish.’



The word, coming from Haut who now stood before the body, was half prayer, half plea. A moment later he wavered, as if about to fall — and she drew up close, thinking to take his weight though, of course, she could never manage that. Haut staggered ahead, stumbled past the body, lifting the axe.



‘ Karish! ’



Korya reached the corpse. She stared down at it — the first dead person she had ever seen. A proud-looking woman, her features even, perhaps beautiful by Jaghut standards, she seemed to be frowning at the formless sky. The tusks were white as goat’s milk. The mouth was slightly open, crusted with froth and blood. The eyes bore a strange look, as if in seeing everything they found nothing worthy of regard. Above all, it was their stillness that shook Korya. This is death. Death is stillness. And stillness does not belong among the living.



A pinnacle beyond the tumbled boulders marked the end of the ascent — a span of level rock five, perhaps six strides across. A godly realm, but upon it stood only Haut. He was studying the ground, as if seeking to read the past.



Not long past. She died only moments ago. The blood only now begins to slow.



Now at last she found the need to speak. ‘Where could they have gone? We passed no one.’ When Haut made no answer, she walked to the edge and looked down. A seething storm swirled far below, argent yet sickly. Waves of nausea struck her and she backed away a step, almost toppling.



Haut’s hand met her back, solid as stone. ‘Unwise, hostage. To look upon Chaos is to yield to its invitation. For that, I am most sorely tempted. It is said,’ he went on, the axe-head crunching on the bedrock as he let the weapon down, ‘that Mother Dark did not hesitate. She leapt into that wild realm. And returned, but not the same woman she had been before. Now, she would turn her back upon Chaos, a champion of all that it is not.’



She wondered at his words, their rambling nature; their looseness in this moment.



‘I wager it unwise,’ Haut went on, ‘to make of oneself a symbol, and if she be coveted, why is it a surprise to any?’



‘Master. Who was she? The Jaghut woman? Who could have done this?’



‘My brother’s wife,’ Haut replied. ‘Karish. The greatest scholar among the Jaghut. She was lured here and then murdered.’



‘By the Azathanai?’



‘By one or more among them, yes.’



‘Will there now be war, master? Between the Jaghut and the Azathanai?’



He turned at that, studied her for a moment, only to look away again. ‘A war?’ He voiced that word as if he had never heard it before, and only now comprehended its meaning.



‘Master. When we began this journey, you said that we were invited. Was it to see this? If so, why?’



‘She named it the Spar of Andii — your Mother Dark. And made of it a fist of Darkness. Hostage, what awaits us now is the challenge of making sense of these symbols. For this, your cleverness surpasses mine. It was ever my belief that you needed us. Now it seems that it is we who need you.’ His face twisted and seemed to crumple before her. ‘Korya Delath, will you help us?’



NINE



Haral, the leader of the caravan guards who would not be called ‘sir’, had drawn up his horse to await them. Just beyond, the trail forked, with a cobbled track beginning there. To the left it climbed a hundred or more strides to the fortified walls of the Tulla Hold, an edifice carved into the cliffside. A dozen or more windows made rough holes in the rock facing above the heaped boulders that formed the defences. Along the uneven wall rose squat towers, four in all, each one twice as broad at the base as at the summit, with mounted arbalests commanding the platforms. To Orfantal’s eyes Tulla Hold rose before him like a fortress of myth, and he imagined high-ceilinged hallways shrouded in shadows, through which grieving lords and haunted ladies walked, and the rooms that had once held children now had their doorways sealed and the cradles — rank with mould and thick with dust — rocked only to faint draughts in the deep of night.



He saw rusting weapons on hooks lining the walls, and tapestries sagging beneath their pins. The images were faded with age, but all bore the scenes of war, the death of heroes and murderers in flight. In every room such tapestries brooded like faint echoes of battle, filling the walls with corpses of sewn thread, studded with arrows or bearing lurid wounds.