Reaper's Gale

Standing, tottering, squinting now at the gate awaiting them both. ‘Damn,’ Toc muttered, ‘but that’s a poor excuse for a gate.’



‘The dead see as they see, Toc the Younger. Not long ago, it shone white with purity.’



‘My heart goes out to that poor, misguided soul.’



‘Of course it does. Come. Walk with me.’



They set out towards that gate.



‘You do this for every soul?’



‘I do not.’



‘Oh.’ And then Toe halted-or tried to, but his feet dragged onward-‘Hold on, my soul was sworn to the Wolves-’



‘Too late. Your soul, Toe the Younger, was sworn to me. Long ago.’



‘Really? Who was the fool who did that?’



‘Your father,’ Hood replied. ‘Who, unlike Dassem Ultor, remained loyal.’



‘Which you rewarded by killing him? You bastard piece of pigsh-’



‘You will await him, Toe the Younger.’



‘He lives still?’



‘Death never lies.’



Toe the Younger tried to halt again. ‘Hood, a question-please.’



The god stopped, looked down at the mortal.



‘Hood, why do I still have only one eye?’



The God of Death, Reaper of Souls, made no reply. He had been wondering that himself.



Damned wolves.



Chapter Twenty-Three



I have seen the face of sorrow



She looks away in the distance



Across all these bridges



From whence I came



And those spans, trussed and arched



Hold up our lives as we go back again



To how we thought then



To how we thought we thought then



I have seen sorrow’s face,



But she is ever turned away



And her words leave me blind



Her eyes make me mute



I do not understand what she says to me



I do not know if to obey



Or attempt a flood of tears



I have seen her face



She does not speak



She does not weep



She does not know me



For I am but a stone fitted in place



On the bridge where she walks



– Lay of the Bridgeburners , Toc the Younger



Once, long ago, Onrack the broken committed a crime. He had professed his love for a woman in fashioning her likeness on the wall of a cave. There had been such talent in his hands, in his eyes, he had bound two souls into that stone. His own… that was his right, his choice. But the other soul, oh, the selfishness of that act, the cruelty of that theft…



He stood, now, before another wall of stone, within another cave, looking upon the array of paintings, the beasts with every line of muscle, every hint of motion, celebrating their veracity, the accuracy of genius. And in the midst of these great creatures of the world beyond, awkward stick figures, representing the Imass, cavorted in a poor mime of dance. Lifeless as the law demanded. He stood, then, still Broken, still the stealer of a woman’s life.



In the darkness of his captivity, long ago, someone had come to him, with gentle hands and yielding flesh. He so wanted to believe that it had been she, the one whose soul he had stolen. But such knowledge was now lost to him; so confused had the memory become, so infused with all that his heart wished to believe.



And, even if it had indeed been she, well, perhaps she had no choice. Imprisoned by his crime, helpless to defy his desire. In his own breaking, he had destroyed her as well.



He reached out, settled fingertips lightly upon one of the images. Ranag, pursued by an ay. In the torch’s wavering light both beasts seemed in motion, muscles rippling. In celebrating the world, which held no regrets, the Imass would gather shoulder to shoulder in this cavern, and with their voices they would beat out the rhythm of breaths, the huffing of the beasts; while others, positioned in selected concavities, pounded their hands on drums of hollowed-out wood and skin, until the echoes of hoofbeats thundered from all sides.



We are the witnesses. We are the eyes trapped for ever on the outside. We have been severed from the world. And this is at the heart of the law, the prohibition. We create ourselves as lifeless, awkward, apart. Once, we were as the beasts, and there was no inside, no outside. There was only the one, the one world, of which we were its flesh, its bone, flesh little different from grasses, lichens and trees. Bones little different from wood and stone. We were its blood, in which coursed rivers down to the lakes and seas.



We give voice to our sorrow, to our loss.



In discovering what it is to die, we have been cast out from the world.



In discovering beauty, we were made ugly.



We do not suffer in the manner that beasts suffer-for they surely do. We suffer with the memory of how it was before suffering came, and this deepens the wound, this tears open the pain. There is no beast that can match our anguish.