They came to weep. They came seeking salvation, for in the end, even grief masks a selfish indulgence. We weep in our lives for the things lost to us, the worlds done. A great man was dead, but we cannot follow him-we dare not, for to each of us death finds a new path.
An age was dead. The new age belonged to generations still to come. In the stalls of the market rounds the potters stacked bowls bearing the face of the dead king, with scenes of his past glories circling round and round, for ever outside of time, and this was the true wish of the multitudes.
Stop. Stop now. Pray this day never ends. Pray the ashes drift for ever. Pray tomorrow never becomes. It is a natural desire, an honest wish.
The tale dies, but this death will take some time. It is said the king lingered, there in the half breath. And people gathered each day at the palace gates, to weep, to dream of other ends, of fates denied.
The tale dies, but this death will take some time.
And the river’s red tongue flows without end. And the spirit of the king said: I see you. I see you all. Can you not hear him? Hear him still?
Nom Kala stood with the others, a silent mass of warriors who had forgotten what it was to live, as the wind pulled at rotted furs, strips of hide and dry tangles of hair. Dull, pitted weapons hung like afterthoughts from twisted hands. Air pitched into the bowls of eye sockets and moaned back out. They could be statues, gnawed by age, withering where they stood facing the endless winds, the senseless rains, the pointless waves of heat and cold.
There was nothing useful in this, and she knew she was not alone in her disquiet. Onos T’oolan, the First Sword, crouched down on one knee ten paces ahead of them, hands wrapped round the grip of his flint sword, the weapon’s point buried in the stony ground. His head was lowered, as if he made obeisance before a master, but this master was invisible, little more than a smear of obligations swept aside, but the stain of what had been held him in place-a stain only Onos T’oolan could see. He had not moved in some time.
Patience was no trial, but she could sense the chaos in her kin, the pitch and cant of terrible desires, the rocking rebuffs of vengeance waiting. It was only a matter of time before the first of them broke away, defying this servitude, this claim of righteous command. He would not reach for them. He had yet to do so, why imagine he would change-
The First Sword rose, faced them. ‘I am Onos T’oolan. I am the First Sword of Tellann. I reject your need.’
The wind moaned on, like the flow of sorrow.
‘You shall, however, bow to mine.’
She felt buffeted by those words. This is what it means, then, to yield before a First Sword. We cannot deny him, cannot defy him. She could feel his will, closing like a fist about her. We had our chance-before this. We could have drifted away. He gave us that. But not one T’lan Imass had done any such thing. Instead, we fell inside ourselves, ever deeper, that endless eating and spitting out and eating all we spat out-this is the seductive sustenance of hatred and spite, of rage and vengeance.
He could have led us off a cliff and we would not have noticed.
The three Orshayn bonecasters stepped forward. Ulag Togtil spoke. ‘First Sword, we await your command.’
Onos T’oolan slowly faced south, where the sky above the horizon seemed to boil like pitch. And then he swung north, where a distant cloud caught the sun’s dying light. ‘We go no farther,’ the First Sword said. ‘We shall be dust.’
And what of our dark dreams, First Sword?
Such was his power that he heard her thought and so turned to her. ‘Nom Kala, hold fast to your dreams. There will be an answer. T’lan Imass, we are upon a time of killing.’
The statues shifted. Some straightened. Some hunched down as if beneath terrible burdens. The statues-my kin. My sisters, my brothers. There are none to look upon us now, none to see us, none to wonder at who we once were, at who shaped us with such… loving hands. As she watched, they began, one by one, falling into dust.
None to witness. Dust of dreams, dust of all that we never achieved. Dust of what we might have been and what we cannot help but be.
Statues are never mute. Their silence is a roar of words. Will you hear? Will you listen?
She was the last, alone with Onos T’oolan himself.
‘You possess no rage, Nom Kala.’
‘No, First Sword, I do not.’
‘What might you find to serve in its place?’
‘I do not know. The humans defeated us. They were better than we were, it is as simple as that. I feel only grief, First Sword.’
‘And is there no anger in grief, Nom Kala?’
Yes. It may be that there is. But if I must search for it-
‘There is time,’ said Onos T’oolan.
She bowed to him, and released herself.
Onos T’oolan watched as Nom Kala fell in a gusting cloud. In his mind a figure was approaching, hands held out as if beseeching. He knew that harrowed face, that lone glittering eye. What could he say to this stranger he had once known? He too was a stranger, after all. Yes, they had once known each other. But now look at us, both so intimate with dust.
Nom Kala’s anguish returned to him. Her thoughts had bled with dread power-she was young. She was, he realized, what the Imass might have become, had the Ritual not taken them, had it not stolen their future. A future of pathos. Sordid surrender. The loss of dignity, a slow, slow death.
No, Toc the Younger. I give you nothing but silence. And its torrid roar.
Will you hear? Will you listen?
Any of you?
She had dwelt like a parasite deep in its entrails. She had seen, all around her, the broken remnants of some long abandoned promise, the broken clutter, the spilled fluids. But there had been heat, and a pulsing presence as if the very stone was alive-she should have understood the significance of such things, but her mind had been wallowing in its own darkness, a lifeless place of pointless regrets.
Standing not six paces from the two gold-skinned foreigners, she had turned and, like them, looked with wonder, disbelieving.
Ampelas Rooted.
Ampelas Uprooted. The entire city, its massive, mountainous bulk, filled the northern sky. Its underside was a forest of twisted metal roots, from which drained rainbow rain as if even in pain it could bleed nothing but gifts. Yet, Kalyth could see its agony. It was canted to one side. It was surrounded by smoke and dust. Fissures rose from its base, like the broken knuckles of a god only moments from once again hammering the earth.
She could feel… something, a bristling core of will knotted in breathless pain. The Matron’s? Could it be anyone else? Her blood flowed through the rock. Her lungs howled, winds shrieking between caverns. Her sweat glistened and ran like tears. She bled in a thousand places, bones splintering to vast, ever growing pressures.
The Matron, yes, but… there was no mind left inside that nightmare of oozing flesh.
Uprooted, this long-dead thing. Uprooted, a thousand upon a thousand generations of belief, faith, the solid iron of once immutable laws.
She defies every truth. She wills life into a corpse, and now it staggers across the sky.
‘A sky keep,’ said the one named Gesler. ‘Moon’s Spawn-’
‘But this one is bigger,’ said Stormy, clawing at his beard. ‘If Tayschrenn could see this-’