Henarald spoke again, his features all sharp angles, a glitter in his eyes that might have been fear. ‘First Son, are you displeased? The blade is silent, its tongue severed at the root. If it howls for you, only you can hear it.’

‘I hear it,’ Anomander whispered.

Henarald nodded. ‘The weapon waits only for the blessing of Mother Dark.’

‘You will see nothing,’ said Silchas Ruin from where he leaned against the wall opposite Kellaras.

Henarald shook his head. ‘Then I shall hear that blessing, sir. Or taste it. Or touch it, like a rose melting on to the blade, and I will feel warmth in the turning away of light. My head shall fill with the scent of the holy.’

‘You shall emerge,’ Silchas said, ‘with the skin of midnight.’

The Hust Lord flinched.

Anomander straightened, and still he did not reach for the weapon. Instead, he faced Andarist. ‘Well, brother, what think you of this sword?’

Andarist was seated at one end of the table, like a man chained down against his will. His need to be gone from the city, to be on the road that would lead him to the woman he loved, was like sweat on his body, an emanation of impatience that seemed to crackle about him. His eyes flicked to the sword, and then up to his brother’s face. ‘I am a believer in names, Anomander. Power unfolds on the tongue. A word sinks claws into the mind and there would hold fast. Yet the Hust Lord tells us this blade is without a voice. Still, brother, you say that you hear its howl. I would know: by what name does this sword call itself?’

Anomander shook his head. ‘None. I hear only the promise of purity.’

‘In its will,’ said Henarald, ‘it demands the purest hand. To draw a weapon is to announce an end to uncertainty. It brooks no doubt in its wielder. It is, sirs, a sword for the First Son of Darkness. If he should deny it, in seeing weakness or flaw, or in sensing malign intent in its clear song, then I shall shatter it, and cast the shards across the world. No other shall claim this blade. Understand this of this sword: in the hands of a king, he is made tyrant. In the hands of a tyrant, he is made abomination. In the hands of the broken, he breaks all that he touches.’

The words hung in the small chamber, like echoes that wouldn’t die.

Hust Henarald stood tall before Anomander: an apparition of soot and weals, scars and mottled skin, and Kellaras was reminded of his first meeting with the Lord, when it seemed that iron hid beneath Henarald’s flesh and blood; that he was held in place by twisted bars still glowing from the forge. For all of that, Kellaras saw fear in the old smith’s eyes.

Silchas Ruin spoke into the heavy silence, ‘Lord Hust, what have you done?’

‘There is a secret place,’ Henarald said, ‘known to me. Known to certain Azathanai. There is a forge that is the first forge. Its heat is the first heat. Its fire is the first fire, born in the time before the Dog-Runners, in the time of the Eresal who have long since vanished into the grasslands of the south, where the jungles crawl down to unknown seas. There is no death in these flames. Often they have dimmed, but never have they died. It was in this forge that this weapon was made. One day, I knew — I know — I will be a child again.’ He turned to fix Kellaras with a hard stare. ‘Did I not say so, good sir?’

Kellaras nodded. ‘You did, Lord, but I admit, I did not understand then. I do not understand now.’

Henarald looked away, and to the captain’s eyes he seemed to deflate, as if struck to pain by Kellaras’s admission — his ignorance, his stupidity. One gnarled hand waved as if in dismissal. ‘The child knows simple things,’ he said in a near whisper. ‘Simple emotions, each one solid, each one raw. Each one honest in its bold certainty, no matter how cruel.’

It is the madness of iron. This weapon has been forged by a madman.

‘Purity,’ Henarald continued, uttering the word in the tones of a lament. ‘We are not ready for it. Perhaps we never will be. Lord Anomander, be sure in your reply to this — is Mother Dark pure in this darkness she has spun about herself? Is the darkness pure? Do doubts die where they are sown? For ever starved of light, with no soil to take their roots? Tell me, will her blessing be as that of a child?’

Slowly, Anomander shook his head. ‘Lord Hust, I cannot answer these questions. You must ask them of her.’

‘Are you not the First Son?’

Anomander’s shrug bespoke frustration. ‘What do children know of their parents?’

Andarist started at that, enough to make his chair creak. And then he rose. ‘Brothers, I must make ready. We are late as it is. I would come to her upon her second day in waiting, with the sun high and every shadow in retreat. Anomander, either take the sword or deny it. Be as simple as a child, even as Lord Hust said, and decide upon the cut.’