Sidilack, it was said, could feel then the deepest stain settling upon his soul. One that no cleansing ritual could eradicate. He saw, in that moment, the grim fate of his destiny, a descent into the madness of inconsolable grief. The god would take the last child, but it was most certainly the last. The blood.of the others was on Sidilack’s hands, a curse, a haunting that only death could relieve.
Yet he was Gral. Forbidden from taking his own life.
Another legend followed, that one recounting the long journey to Snaketongue’s final end, his pursuit of questions that could not be answered, the pathos of his staggering walk into the Dead Man’s Desert-realm of the fallen Gral-where even the noble spirits refused him, his soul, the hollow defence of his own crime.
Taralack Veed did not want to think of these things. Echoes of the child, that hissing, less-than-human creature who had been drawn into the shadows by a god-to what end? A mystery within the legend that would never be solved. But he did not believe there had been mercy in that god’s heart. He did not want to think of young females with small hands and feet, with sloped chins and large canines, with luminous eyes the hue of savanna grasses.
He did not want to think of Sidilack and the endless night of his doom. The warrior with slaughter’s blood staining his hands and his soul. That tragic fool was nothing like Taralack Veed, he told himself again and again. Truths did not hide in vague similarities, after all; only in the specific details, and he shared none of those with old Snaketongue.
‘You speak rarely these days, Taralack Veed.’
The Gral glanced up at Icarium. ‘1 am frightened for you,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘1 see nothing of the hardness in your eyes, friend, the hardness that perhaps none but a longtime companion would be able to detect. The hardness that bespeaks your rage. It seems to sleep, and I do not know if even Rhulad can awaken it. If he cannot, then you will die. Quickly.’
‘If all you say of me is true,’ the Jhag replied, ‘then my death would be welcome. And justified in every sense of the word.’
‘No other can defeat the Emperor-’
‘Why are you so certain 1 can? I do not wield a magical sword. I do not return to life should 1 fall. These are the rumours regarding the Tiste Edur named Rhulad, yes?’
‘When your anger is unleashed, Icarium, you cannot be stopped.’
‘Ah, but it seems I can.’
Taralack Veed’s eyes narrowed. ‘Is this the change that has come to you, Icarium? Have your memories returned to you?’
‘I believe if they had, I would not now be here,’ the Jhag replied, pausing before one stall offering cord-wrapped pottery. ‘Look upon these items here, Taralack Veed, and tell me what you see. Empty vessels? Or endless possibilities?’
‘They are naught but pots.’
Icarium smiled.
It was, the Gral decided, a far too easy smile. ‘Do you mock me, Icarium?’
‘Something awaits me. I do not mean this mad Emperor. Something else. Answer me this. How does one measure time?’,
‘By the course of the sun, the phases of the moon, the wheel of the stars. And, of course, in cities such as this one, the sounding of a bell at fixed intervals-a wholly absurd conceit and, indeed, one that is spiritually debilitating.’
‘The Gral speaks.’
‘Now you truly mock me. This is unlike you, Icarium.’
‘The sounding of bells, their increments established by the passing of sand or water through a narrowed vessel. As you say, a conceit. An arbitrary assertion of constancy. Can we truly say, however, that time is constant?’
‘As any Gral would tell you, it is not. Else our senses lie.’
‘Perhaps they do.’
‘Then we are lost.’
‘I appreciate your intellectual belligerence today, Taralack Veed.’
They moved on, wandering slowly alongside the canal.
‘I understand your obsession with time,’ the Gral said. ‘You, who have passed through age after age, unchanging, unknowing.’
‘Unknowing, yes. That is the problem, isn’t it?’
‘I do not agree. It is our salvation.’
They were silent for a few more strides. Many were the curious-at times pitying-glances cast their way. The champions were also the condemned, after all. Yet was there hope, buried deep behind those shying eyes? There must be. For an end to the nightmare that was Rhulad Sengar, the Edur Emperor of Lether.
‘Without an understanding of time, history means nothing. Do you follow, Taralack Veed?’
‘Yet you do not understand time, do you?’
‘No, that is true. Yet I believe I have… pursued this… again and again. From age to age. In the faith that a revelation on the meaning of time will unlock my own hidden history. I would find its true measure, Taralack Veed. And not just its measure, but its very nature. Consider this canal, and those linked to it. The water is pushed by current and tide from the river, then traverses the city, only to rejoin the river not far from where it first entered. We may seek to step out from the river and so choose our own path, but no matter how straight it seems, we will, in the end, return to that river.’
‘As with the bells, then,’ the Gral said, ‘water tracks the passage of time.’
‘You misunderstand,’ Icarium replied, but did not elaborate.
Taralack Veed scowled, paused to spit thick phlegm onto his palms, then swept it back through his hair. Somewhere in the crowd a woman screamed, but the sound was not repeated. ‘The canal’s current cannot change the law that binds its direction. The canal is but a detour.’
‘Yes, one that slows the passage of its water. And in turn that water changes, gathering the refuse of the city it passes through, and so, upon returning to the river, it is a different colour. Muddier, more befouled.’
‘The slower your path, the muddier your boots?’
‘Even so,’ Icarium said, nodding.
‘Time is nothing like that.’
‘Are you so certain? When we must wait, our minds fill with sludge, random thoughts like so much refuse. When we are driven to action, our current is swift, the water seemingly clear, cold and sharp.’
‘I’d rather, Icarium, we wait a long time. Here, in the face of what is to come.’
‘The path to Rhulad? As you like. But I tell you, Taralack Veed, that is not the path I am walking.’
Another half-dozen strides.
Then the Gral spoke. ‘They wrap the cord around them, Icarium, to keep them from breaking.’
Senior Assessor’s eyes glittered as he stood amidst a crowd twenty paces from where Icarium and Taralack Veed had paused in front of a potter’s stall. His hands were folded together, the fingers twitching. His breathing was rapid and shallow;
Beside him, Samar Dev rolled her eyes, then asked, ‘Are you about to fall dead on me? If I’d known this walk involved skulking in that Jhag’s shadow, I think I would have stayed in the compound.’
‘The choices you make,’ he replied, ‘must needs be entirely of your own accord, Samar Dev. Reasonably distinct from mine or anyone else’s. It is said that the history of human conflict resides exclusively in the clash of expectations.’
‘Is it now?’
‘Furthermore-’
‘Never mind your “furthermore”, Senior Assessor. Compromise is the negotiation of expectation. With your wayward notions we do not negotiate, and so all the compromising is mine.’
‘As you choose.’
She thought about hitting him, decided she didn’t want to make a scene. What was it with men and their obsessions? ‘He is in all likelihood going to die, and soon.’
‘I think not. No, most certainly I think not.’
Icarium and the Gral resumed their meander through the crowds, and after a moment Senior Assessor followed, maintaining his distance. Sighing, Samar Dev set off after him. She didn’t like this mob. It felt wrong. Tense, overwrought. Strain was visible on faces, and the cries of the hawkers sounded strident and half desperate. Few passers-by, she noted, were buying.