Memories of Ice

Death and dying makes us into children once again, in truth, one last time, there in our final wailing cries. More than one philosopher has claimed that we ever remain children, far beneath the indurated layers that make up the armour of adulthood.

Armour encumbers, restricts the body and soul within it. But it also protects. Blows are blunted. Feelings lose their edge, leaving us to suffer naught but a plague of bruises, and, after a time, bruises fade.

Tilting his head back triggered sharp protests from the muscles of his neck and shoulders. He stared skyward, blinking against the pain, the tautness of his flesh wrapped around bones like a prisoner's bindings.

But there's no escape, is there? Memories and revelations settle in like poisons, never to be expunged. He drew the cooling air deep into his lungs, as if seeking to capture in the breath of the stars their coldness of regard, their indifferent harshness. There are no gifts in suffering. Witness the Tiste Andii.

Well, at least the stomach's gone quiet. building, I suspect, for another eye-watering bout.

Bats flitted through the darkness overhead, wheeling and darting as they fed on the wing. The city of Pale flickered to the south, like a dying hearth. Far to the west rose the hulking peaks of the Moranth Mountains. Paran slowly realized that his folded arms now gripped his sides, struggling to hold all within. He was not a man of tears, nor did he rail at all about him. He'd been born to a carefully sculpted, cool detachment, an education his soldier's training only enhanced. If such things are qualities, then she has humbled me. Tavore, you are indeed the master of such schooling. Oh, dearest Felisin, what life have you now found for yourself? Not the protective embrace of the nobility, that's for certain.

Boots sounded behind him.

Paran closed his eyes. No more news, please. No more revelations.

'Captain.' Whiskeyjack settled a hand on Paran's shoulder.

'A quiet night,' the captain observed.

'We looked for you, Paran, after your words with Dujek. It was Silverfox who quested outward, found you.' The hand withdrew. Whiskeyjack stood alongside him, also studying the stars.

'Who is Silverfox?'

'I think,' the bearded veteran rumbled, 'that's for you to decide.'

Frowning, Paran faced the commander. 'I've little patience for riddles at the moment, sir.'

Whiskeyjack nodded, eyes still on the glittering sweep of the night sky. 'You will just have to suffer the indulgence, Captain. I can lead you forward a step at a time, or with a single shove from behind. There may be a time when you look back on this moment and come to appreciate which of the two I chose.'

Paran bit back a retort, said nothing.

'They await us at the base of the barrow,' Whiskeyjack continued. 'As private an occasion as I could manage. Just Mallet, Quick Ben, the Mhybe and Silverfox. Your squad members are here in case you have … doubts. They've both exhausted their warrens this night — to assure the veracity of what has occurred-'

'What,' Paran snapped, 'are you trying to say, sir?'

Whiskeyjack met the captain's eyes. 'The Rhivi child, Silverfox. She is Tattersail reborn.'

Paran slowly turned, gaze travelling down to the foot of the barrow, where four figures waited in the darkness. And there stood the Rhivi child, a sunrise aura about her person, a penumbra of power that stirred the wilder blood that coursed within him. Yes. She is the one. Older now, revealing what she will become. Dammit, woman, you never could keep things simple. All that was trapped within him seemed to wash through his limbs, leaving him weak and suddenly shivering. He stared down at Silverfox. 'She is a child.' But I knew that, didn't I? I've known that for a while, I just didn't want to think about it. And now, no choice.

Whiskeyjack grunted. 'She grows swiftly — there are eager, impatient forces within her, too powerful for a child's body to contain. You'll not have long-'

'Before propriety arrives,' Paran finished drily, not noticing Whiskeyjack's start. 'Fine for then, what of now? Who will naught but see me as a monster should we even so much as hold hands? What can I say to her? What can I possibly say?' He spun to Whiskeyjack. 'This is impossible — she is a child!'

'And within her is Tattersail. And Nightchill-'

'Nightchill! Hood's breath! What has happened — how?'

'Questions not easily answered, lad. You'd do better to ask them of Mallet and Quick Ben — and of Silverfox herself.'

Paran involuntarily took a step back. 'Speak with her? No. I cannot-'

'She wishes it, Paran. She awaits you now.'

'No.' His eyes were once again pulled downslope. 'I see Tattersail, yes. But there's more — not just this Nightchill woman — she's a Soletaken, now, Whiskeyjack. The creature that gave her her Rhivi name — the power to change. '

The commander's eyes narrowed. 'How do you know, Captain?'

'I just know-'

'Not good enough. It wasn't easy for Quick Ben to glean that truth. Yet you know. How, Paran?'

The captain grimaced. 'I've felt Quick Ben's probings in my direction — when he thinks my attention is elsewhere. I've seen the wariness in his eyes. What has he found, Commander?'

'Oponn's abandoned you, but something else has taken its place. Something savage. His hackles rise whenever you're close-'

'Hackles.' Paran smiled. 'An apt choice of word. Anomander Rake killed two Hounds of Shadow — I was there. I saw it. I felt the stain of a dying Hound's blood — on my flesh, Whiskeyjack. Something of that blood now runs in my veins.'

The commander's voice was deadpan. 'What else?'

'There has to be something else, sir?'

'Yes. Quick Ben caught hints — there's much more than simply an ascendant's blood to what you've become.' Whiskeyjack hesitated, then said, 'Silverfox has fashioned for you a Rhivi name. Jen'isand Rul.'

'Jen'isand Rul.'

'It translates as "the Wanderer within the Sword". It means, she says, that you have done something no other creature has ever done — mortal or ascendant — and that something has set you apart. You have been marked, Ganoes Paran — yet no-one, not even Silverfox, knows what it portends. Tell me what happened.'

Paran shrugged. 'Rake used that black sword of his. When he killed the Hounds. I followed them … into that sword. The spirits of the Hounds were trapped, chained with all the … all the others. I think I freed them, sir. I can't be sure of that — all I know is that they ended up somewhere else. No longer chained.'

'And have they returned to this world?'

'I don't know. Jen'isand Rul… why should there be any significance to my having wandered within that sword?'

Whiskeyjack grunted. 'You're asking the wrong man, Captain. I'm only repeating what Silverfox has said. One thing, though, that has just occurred to me.' He stepped closer. 'Not a word to the Tiste Andii — not Korlat, not Anomander Rake. The Son of Darkness is an unpredictable bastard, by all accounts. And if the legend of Dragnipur is true, the curse of that sword of his is that no-one escapes its nightmare prison — their souls are chained … for ever. You've cheated that, and perhaps the Hounds have as well. You've set an alarming … precedent.'

Paran smiled bitterly in the darkness. 'Cheated. Yes, I have cheated many things, even death.' But not pain. No, that escape still eludes me. 'You think Rake takes much comfort in the belief of his sword's … finality.'