Toll the Hounds

The world, someone once said, gives back what is given. In abundance. But then, as Kallor would point out, someone was always saying something. Until he got fed up and had them executed.



Chapter Five



Pray, do not speak to me of weather



Not sun, not cloud, not of the places



Where storms are born



I would not know of wind shivering the heather



Nor sleet, nor rain, nor of ancient traces



On stone grey and worn



Pray, do not regale the troubles of ill health



Not self, not kin, not of the old woman



At the road’s end



I will spare no time nor in mercy yield wealth



Nor thought, nor feeling, nor shrouds woven



To tempt luck’s end



Pray, tell me of deep chasms crossed



Not left, not turned, not of the betrayals



Breeding like worms



I would you cry out your rage ‘gainst what is lost



Now strong, now to weep, now to make fist and rail



On earth so firm



Pray, sing loud the wretched glories of love



Now pain, now drunken, now torn from all reason



In laughter and tears



I would you bargain with the fey gods above



Nor care, nor cost, nor turn of season



To wintry fears



Sing to me this and I will face you unflinching



Now knowing, now seeing, now in the face



Of the howling storm



Sing your life as if a life without ending



And your love, sun’s bright fire, on its celestial pace



To where truth is born



– Pray, an end to inconsequential things, Baedisk of Nathilog



Darujhistan. Glories unending! Who could call a single deed inconsequential? This scurrying youth with his arms full of vegetables, the shouts from the stall in his wake, the gauging eye of a guard thirty paces away, assessing the poor likelihood of catching the urchin. Insignificant? Nonsense! Hungry mouths fed, glowing pride, some fewer coins for the hawker, perhaps, but it seemed all profit did was fill a drunken husband’s tankard anyway so the bastard could die of thirst for all she cared! A guard’s congenitally flawed heart beat on, not yet pushed to bursting by hard pursuit through the crowded market, and so he lives a few weeks longer, enough to complete his full twenty years’ service and so guarantee his wife and children a pension. And of course the one last kiss was yet to come, the kiss that whispered volumes of devotion and all the rest.



The pot-thrower in the hut behind the shop, hands and forearms slick with clay, dreaming, yes, of the years in which a life took shape, when each press of a fingertip sent a deep track across a once smooth surface, changing the future, reshaping the past, and was this not as much chance as design? For all that intent could score a path, that the ripples sent up and down and outward could be surmised by decades of experience, was the outcome ever truly predictable?



Oh, of course she wasn’t thinking any such thing. An ache in her left wrist obliterated all thoughts beyond the persistent ache itself, and what it might portend and what herbs she would need to brew to ease her discomfort-and how could such concerns be inconsequential?



What of the child sitting staring into the doleful eye of a yoked ox outside Corb’s Womanly Charms where her mother was inside and had been for near a bell now, though of course Mother had Uncle-Doruth-who-was-a-secret for company which was better than an ox that did nothing but moan? The giant, soft, dark-so-dark brown eye stared back and to think in both directions was obvious but what was the ox thinking except that the yoke was heavy and the cart even heavier and it’d be nice to lie down and what could the child be thinking about but beef stew and so no little philosopher was born, although in years to come, why, she’d have her own uncle-who-was-a-seeret and thus like her mother enjoy all the fruits of marriage with few of the niggling pits.



And what of the sun high overhead, bursting with joyous light to bathe the wondrous city like a benediction of all things consequential? Great is the need, so sudden, so pressing, to reach up, close fingers about the fiery orb, to drag it back-and back!-into night and its sprawled darkness, where all manner of things of import have trembled the heavens and the very roots of the earth, or nearly so.



Back, then, the short round man demands, for this is his telling, his knowing, his cry of Witness! echoing still, and still. The night of arrivals, the deeds of the arrived, even as night arrives! Let nothing of consequence be forgot. Let nothing of inconsequence be deemed so and who now could even imagine such things to exist, recalling with wise nod the urchin thief, the hawker, the guard. The thrower of pots and the child and the ox and Uncle Doruth with his face between the legs of another man’s wife, all to came (excuse!) in the day ahead.