Forge of Darkness (Kharkanas Trilogy 1) (93 page)

The forge of Darkness

SIXTEEN

‘BELIEF,’ SAID DRACONUS
, ‘never feels strange to the believer. Like an iron stake driven deep into the ground, it is an anchor to a host of convictions. No winds can tear it free so long as the ground remains firm.’

Riding beside his father, Arathan said nothing. The land ahead was flat, marked only by clusters of low cairns made from piled stones, as if signifying crossroads. But Arathan could see no crossroads; he could barely make out the path they travelled. The sky overhead was a dull blue, like burnished tin, through which vast but distant flocks of birds could be seen, scudding like clouds on high winds.

Draconus sighed. ‘It is the failure of every father to impart wisdom to his child. No paint adheres to sweating stone. You are too eager, too impatient and too quick to dismiss the rewards of someone else’s experience. I am hardly blind to the surge of youth, Arathan.’

‘I have no beliefs,’ said Arathan, shrugging. ‘No anchor, no convictions. If winds take me, then I will drift.’

‘I believe,’ said Draconus, ‘that you seek your mother.’

‘How can I seek what I do not know?’

‘You can and you will, with a need that overwhelms. And should you one day find that which you seek, you no doubt imagine an end to your need. I can warn you that disappointment lies ahead, that life’s most precious gifts always come from unexpected sources, but you will not waver from your desire. Thus, from me you learn nothing.’

Arathan scowled, realizing that he could not hide anything from his father. Deceit was an easy path, but the moment it failed only a fool would stay upon it. ‘You sent her away,’ he said.

‘Out of love.’

They rode past another heap of stones, and Arathan saw a scatter of finger bones along its nearer edge, bleached white by the sun. They made rows like teeth. ‘That makes no sense. Did she not love you in return? Was it in the name of love that you chose to break her heart? No, sir, I see no wisdom from you.’

‘Is this how you baited Tutor Sagander?’

‘I never baited him—’

‘Behind your innocent guise you make every word a weapon, Arathan. This may have worked with Sagander, since he refused to see you as anything but a small child. Among men, however, you will be known as dissembling and treacherous.’

‘I do not dissemble, Father.’

‘When you feign ignorance of the wounds your words deliver, you dissemble.’

‘Do you always send away the ones you love? Must we always journey through the ruins of your past? Olar Ethil—’

‘I was speaking of belief,’ Draconus replied, with iron in his tone. ‘It will make your path, Arathan, and I say that with certainty, because it is belief that guides each and every one of us. You may imagine it as a host and you may well feel the wayward tug of every conviction, and convince yourself that they each summon with purpose. But this is not a mindful journey, and the notion of progress is an illusion. Do not trust the goals awaiting you: they are chimeras, and their promise salves the very belief that invented them, and by this deception you ever end where you began, but in that end you find yourself not young, not filled with zeal as you once were, but old and exhausted.’

‘What you describe is not a worthy ambition. If this is your wisdom’s gift then it is a bitter one.’

‘I am trying to warn you. Strife awaits us, Arathan. I fear it shall reach far beyond the borders of Kurald Galain. I did what I could for Mother Dark, but like you she was young when first I gave my gift to her. Every step she has taken since then she believes to be purposeful and forward. This is one anchor we all share.’ He fell silent, as if made despondent by his own words.

‘Is that how you view love, Father? As a gift you bestow upon others, only to then stand back to watch and see if they are worthy of it? And when they fail, as they must, you discard them and set out in search of the next victim?’

His face darkened. ‘There is a fine line between fearless and foolish, Arathan, and you now stride it precariously. The gift of which I spoke was not love. It was power.’

‘Power should never be a gift,’ Arathan said.

‘An interesting assertion, from one so powerless. But I will listen. Go on.’

‘Gifts are rarely appreciated,’ Arathan said, and in his mind he was remembering his first night with Feren. ‘And the one who receives knows only confusion. At first. And then hunger … for more. And in that hunger, there is expectation, and so the gift ceases being a gift, and becomes payment, and to give itself becomes a privilege and to receive it a right. By this all sentiment sours.’

Draconus drew up. Arathan did the same a moment later and swung Besra around to face him. The wind seemed to slide between them.

His father’s gaze was narrow, searching. ‘Arathan, I think now that you heard Grizzin Farl’s warning to me.’

‘I don’t recall, sir, if I did. I don’t remember much of that evening.’

Draconus studied him a moment longer and then looked away. ‘It seems,’ he said, ‘that every gift I give is carved from my own flesh, and by every wound and every scar upon my body, I map the passage of my loves. Did you know, son, that I rarely sleep? I but weather the night, amidst aches and sore repose.’

If this confession sought sympathy from Arathan, he judged himself a failure. ‘I would evade that fate for myself, sir. The wisdom you have offered me is not the one you intended, so I cannot but view it as a most precious gift.’

The smile Draconus then swung to him was wry. ‘You have reawakened my pity for Sagander, and I do not refer to an amputated leg.’

‘Sagander’s iron stakes pinned him to the ground long ago, sir. Legs or not, he does not move and never will.’

‘You are quick to judge. What you describe makes him no less dangerous.’

Arathan shrugged. ‘Only if we walk too close. He is in my past now, sir. I do not expect to see him again.’

‘I would think not,’ Draconus agreed. ‘But I wonder if I have not wronged him. You are far from easy company, Arathan. Now, a house awaits us.’

Following his father’s gesture, Arathan looked ahead. Plain in sight, as if conjured from the ground less than a hundred paces distant, was a low structure. Its long roof sagged in the middle and a few gaps were visible as black holes amidst the lichen-covered slate tiles. Beneath the projecting eaves, the stone walls were roughly hewn and streaked with red stains. The yard around the house was devoid of grass and looked beaten down.

‘Is it conjured?’ Arathan asked.

‘Suggested is the better word,’ Draconus replied.

They set off towards it. The house appeared to be abandoned, but
Arathan
was certain that it was not. He squinted at the black patches made by the windows to either side of the solid door – which seemed to have been hacked from a single slab of grey stone – but could make out no movement in the shadows within. ‘Are we expected?’

‘More than expected, Arathan. Necessary.’

‘Necessary for this house to be?’

‘Just so.’

‘Then surely, Father, belief has more power than you credit it.’

‘I never discredited the power of belief, Arathan. I but warned you that it can offer dubious charms, and rarely does it invite self-analysis, much less reproach.’

‘Then sorcery must never be examined too closely? Lest it lose its power?’

‘Lest it cease to exist, Arathan. What is it to be a god, if not to hold the unfettered willingness to believe?’

‘Now you grant belief omnipotence. I can see how that would charm anyone, even a god.’

‘With each day, son, I see you grow more formidable.’

The observation startled Arathan. He already regretted his brutal words to his father.
As if I can speak of love. The only game I knew to play was one of possession. It does ill to treat love as would a child a toy. Feren, I am sorry for all that I did, for all that I was, and was not
. ‘I am anything but formidable, Father. I but flail with weapons too large to hold.’

Draconus grunted. ‘As do we all.’

There was motion from one window as they drew closer, and a moment later a figure clambered out from it. A man: not much older than Arathan himself. He was dressed in bloodstained clothing, loose and made from silks. A half-cape of deep green wool covered his shoulders, its collar turned up. He was dark-haired, clean-shaven, not unhandsome, although his face bore a frown as he worked free of the window and found his feet.

At the edge of the barren yard, Draconus reined in and Arathan did the same. His father dismounted. ‘Join me, Arathan,’ he said, and there was a strange timbre to his voice, as if awakened to excitement or, perhaps, relief.

A flock of the unknown birds was drawing closer, swarming the sky behind the house. Their flight was strange and the sight of them made Arathan uneasy. He slipped down from Besra.

The stranger – another Azathanai, no doubt – had walked halfway across the yard and now stood, eyes upon Draconus, and in place of the frown there was a mocking smile that stole the grace from his visage. Arathan imagined his fist driving into that smile, obliterating it. Satisfaction warmed his thoughts.

The stranger’s gaze snapped to Arathan’s and that unctuous smile broadened. ‘Would you rather not kiss it from me?’ he asked.

Beside Arathan, his father said, ‘Yield nothing to this one’s baiting, son. The soil ever shifts beneath him.’

The stranger’s brows lifted. ‘Now, Draconus, no need to be cruel in your judgement. My artistry is what binds the two of us, after all.’

‘For scarce a breath longer, Errastas. The gift is made, by you it seems, and I will have it.’

‘Gladly,’ Errastas replied, but he made no move; nor, Arathan noted, was the man carrying anything that might contain a gift.
Perhaps he gives as I will give
.

‘You wear blood, Errastas,’ Draconus observed. ‘What grim passage is behind you?’

Errastas looked down at the stains on his silks. ‘Oh, it’s not mine, Suzerain. Well, most of it isn’t, that is. The journey you set upon me proved fraught. I have never before bound power to an object where in its making I give nothing of myself. It proved most … enlightening.’

‘Night is not unwelcome, Errastas, and chaos needs nothing of blood, nor can it be made to spill it.’

Arathan sensed a growing tension in the air. The flock of birds was rushing closer, and with it came a seething sound, not of wings but of voices, uncannily high-pitched. He still could not make out their breed. His body was tensing and his mouth had gone dry. He did not like Errastas.

To his father’s words, Errastas had but shrugged. Then he cocked his head. ‘Scarce a breath, Draconus? You cannot imagine the discoveries I have made. My journey was eventful, as Sechul Lath would attest, since he accompanied me, and you might imagine its reward is now awaiting your hand this day. For you, surely it is. But for me, why, I have just begun.’ He held out an angular black disc, barely larger than the palm of his hand. ‘Behold, Suzerain, the folding of Night.’

‘I will have it.’

Smiling once more, Errastas strode closer. ‘Have you even considered the precedent set in the making of this, Draconus? I doubt it. You’re too old. All acuteness has dulled in your mind, and by love alone you are blind as these hunting bats.’

‘They hunt you, Errastas? Then you had best flee here.’ So saying, Draconus reached out and took up the object.

‘This is consecrated ground, O Lord. They wheel, sensing me near, but they cannot find me. These things I am now able to do, and much more besides. Will you understand this at least? What we have done – you by your demand and me by the answering of it – will see the death of the old ways. The death of wandering itself.’ He gestured with his now empty hand. ‘Our kin who kneel before the Azath, and so
make
deities of insensate stone, will find new assurance in what they worship, because like it or not, we have made true their faith. Power will find those places now, Draconus, and though the worshippers will remain ignorant of its source, it is all by our hands.’ He laughed. ‘Is that not amusing?’

‘This gift is singular, Errastas.’

The young man shrugged again. ‘Indeed it is.’

‘You have made none other?’