Forge of Darkness

To that she shook her head, though her face remained hidden behind her hands. ‘If not you,’ she mumbled, ‘then someone else. I know them, you see.’



‘They will seek to twist you with their words,’ Draconus said. ‘Be wary of their sharp wits.’



‘I know them,’ she repeated. Then she straightened and shook herself. Facing Arathan she said, ‘Son of Draconus, let not your longing blind you to what you own.’ She gathered up her sodden furs and turned to the doorway, and was motionless for a moment, staring out into the hissing torrent of rain. Her hands became fists. ‘Like the rain, I will weep my way across the valley,’ she said. ‘Grief and rage will guide my fists with thunder, with lightning, as befits the goddess of love. All must flee before my path.’



‘Be careful,’ said Draconus. ‘Not every tower is empty.’



She looked back at him. ‘Suzerain, forgive my harsh words. Your path ahead is no less treacherous.’



He shrugged. ‘We are ever wounded by truths, Kilmandaros.’



She sighed. ‘Easier to fend off lies. But none comfort me now.’



‘Nor me,’ Draconus replied.



She slung her furs about her, and then set out into the gloom beyond.



‘I wish,’ said Arathan into the heavy silence that followed the fading thud of her footsteps, ‘that you had left me at home.’



‘Grief is a powerful weapon, Arathan, but all too often it breaks the wielder.’



‘Is it better, then, to armour oneself in regrets?’ He glanced up to see his father’s dark eyes studying him intently. ‘Perhaps I am easily understood,’ Arathan continued, ‘and to you I can offer no advice. But your words of caution which you offered her, well, I think she gave them in return. You can’t fix everything, Father. Is it enough to be seen to try? I don’t know how you would answer that question. I wish I did.’



From somewhere in the distance sounded the rumble of thunder.



Arathan began preparing their evening meal.



Moments later a thought struck him, and it left him cold. He glanced over to see his father standing in the doorway, staring out into the rain. ‘Father? Have Azathanai moved and lived among the Tiste?’



Draconus turned.



‘And if so,’ Arathan continued, ‘are they somehow able to disguise themselves?’



‘Azathanai,’ said his father, ‘dwell wherever they choose, in any guise they wish.’



‘Is Mother Dark an Azathanai?’



‘No. She is Tiste, Arathan.’



He returned to his cooking, adding more chips to the fire, but the chill would not leave him. If a goddess of love had cruel children, he wondered, by what names would they be known?



The morning broke clear. Still wearing his armour and shouldering his axe, Haut led Korya down into the valley, and the Abandoned City of the Jaghut. Varandas had departed in the night, whilst Korya slept and dreamed of dolls clawing the insides of the wooden trunk, as she wept and told them again and again that she would not bury them alive — but for all her cries she could find no means of opening the trunk, and her fingers bled at the nails, and when she lifted her head she discovered that she too was trapped inside a box. Panic had then startled her awake, to see her master sitting beside the makeshift hearth Varandas had made in the night.



‘The wood is wet,’ he had told her as she sat up, as if she had been responsible for the rain.



Trembling in the aftermath of the dream, she had set about preparing a cold breakfast. The chamber stank of the smoke that had filled the tower the night before, since there had been no aperture to draw it away except for the entrance, where the rain had formed a seemingly impenetrable wall. As they chewed the dried meat and hard bread, Korya had glared across at her master and said, ‘I have no desire to visit anyone known as the Lord of Hate.’



‘I share the sentiment, hostage, but visit him we must.’



‘Why?’



Haut flung the crust of the bread he had been gnawing on into the hearth, but as there was no fire the crust simply fell among the wet sticks and soaked logs. The Jaghut frowned. ‘With your vicious and incessant assault upon my natural equanimity, you force upon me the necessity of a tale, and I so dislike telling a tale. Now, hostage, why should that be so?’



‘I thought I was the one asking questions.’



Haut waved a hand in dismissal. ‘If that conceit comforts you, so be it. I am not altered in my resolve. Now tell me, why do I dislike tales?’



‘Because they imply a unity that does not exist. Only rarely does a life have a theme, and even then such themes exist in confusion and uncertainty, and are only described by others once that life has come to an end. A tale is the binding of themes to a past, because no tale can be told as it is happening.’