Forge of Darkness

Orfantal nodded. ‘Thank you, Lord Silchas.’



‘Cedorpul,’ said Silchas, ‘will it be you in charge of Orfantal?’



‘The historian has elected for himself that privilege, milord, and will be here shortly.’



‘Oh dear,’ Silchas said, smiling down at Orfantal. ‘Expect an education in confusion, hostage, but one that I am sure will achieve for you admirable resilience against the eternal chaos afflicting the Citadel.’



Orfantal smiled without quite understanding what the Lord meant, and then he went to the trunk to examine the toy soldiers.



Silchas grunted behind him and said, ‘I foresee an impressive knowledge of historical battles to come.’



‘Glory belongs to every boy’s dreams,’ said Cedorpul. ‘I am sure, however, that the historian will offer his share of unheeded wisdom in such matters.’



‘By this we ever trek familiar paths,’ said Silchas. ‘Goodbye, then, Orfantal.’



‘Goodbye, milord.’



After he had left, Cedorpul cleared his throat. ‘Now then, the dining room. I will not be so negligent as to let you starve. Also, I expect, given the bell that just sounded, that your fellow hostage, Legyl Behust, is even now haranguing the servers.’



With a longing glance at the soldiers in the trunk, Orfantal straightened and followed Cedorpul out of the room. Moments later the dog joined them, tail wagging and tongue lolling.



Glancing down at it, Cedorpul made a disgusted sound. ‘Worms. We’ll have to do something about that, I think.’



In the absence of light and in the death of every colour, draining his imagination and the scenes it desperately conjured, Kadaspala sat alone in the room he had been given. It was not a large room. With hands groping and feet shuffling he had explored its confines, and in his mind he painted its details in shades of black and grey: the cot where he lay down at night, which creaked with his restless turning, the rope netting of its mattress stretched and sagging beneath him; the quaint writing desk with its angled surface, ink wells and footpad; the water closet with its narrow, flimsy door and the latch that rattled loose in its fittings; the long side table that ran the length of one wall, where rested jugs and goblets of copper that stung the tongue harsher than the wine filling his mouth; the wardrobe with its weathered surface. They seemed, one and all, the leavings of a past life, and he thought of this room as a tomb, artfully arrayed to honour the memory of living, but shrouded in eternal darkness, in air that tasted dead.



There were few memories of the journey down to Kharkanas. They had taken his knife, and since leaving him here, after a cadre of healers arrived to fret and sigh, his only visitors were servants coming with food and later departing with the servings barely touched. One, a young woman by her voice, had offered to bathe him, and he had laughed at that, too empty to regret the cruelty of the sound, and the fleeing pad of her feet to the door had simply made him laugh all the harder.



In a world without tears, an artist was left with nothing to do and no purpose to hold on to. Anguish was a satisfying torment to feed creative impulses, but he felt no anguish. Longing that spoke no known language offered up an endless palette, but he longed for nothing. Wonder made the brush tremble, but all wonder was dead within him. He had been betrayed by every talent sewn into his sinews, scratched into his bones, and now that he had severed the threads to vision, he shared this darkness with lifeless gods, and this room was indeed a tomb, as befitted its occupant.



He sat upon the cot, painting the air with one finger, brushing lines of black knotted with touches of grey to give shape to the creaking of the ropes under him. There was little talent in perfect rendition. Setting banal reality upon a board or canvas made sordid the modest virtue of craft; as if perfect brush-strokes and obsessive detail could exist as something beyond technical prowess, and could in fact announce profundity. He knew otherwise and it was this contempt that sat like swirling ripples marking the surface of his dissolution, turgid but hinting of life.



In the world he had left behind, an artist needed to tie contempt down and make the bindings tight, and take damp cloth to where it bled through. To let it loose was to attack both artist and audience, and he had neither the strength nor the will for such a thing: even the sentiment left him exhausted.



He had descended into madness, there in the chamber of the house his memory dared not revisit. He was not yet certain that it had departed. Blindness made a mystery of everything just out of reach. He had decided to wait, and upon the only canvas left to him paint sounds upon the ephemeral walls of this crypt: the creaks and faint echoes; the muted slap from people passing by the door, those footsteps so urgent and so pathetic; the dull repetition of his own breath and the sullen thump of his heart; the languid surge and ebb of the blood in his veins.