She looked away. ‘It no longer matters, Fear.’
‘It does to me.’ His tone was hard, bitter. ‘I do not care what you make of it, what you tell yourself now to avoid feeling anything. Once, a brother of mine demanded the woman I loved. I did not refuse him, and now she is dead. Everywhere I look, Acquitor, I see her blood, flowing down in streams. It will drown me in the end, but that is no matter. While I live, while I hold madness at bay, Seren Pedac, I will protect and defend you, for a brother of mine set his sword into your hands.’
He walked away then, and still she could not look at him. Fear Sengar, you fool. A fool, like any other man, like every other man. What is it with your gestures? Your eagerness to sacrifice? Why do you all give yourselves to us? We are not pure vessels. We are not innocent. We will not handle your soul like a precious, fragile jewel. No, you fool, we’ll abuse it as if it was our own, or, indeed, of lesser value than that-if that is possible.
The crunch of stones, and suddenly Udinaas was crouching before her. In his cupped hands, a minnow. Writhing trapped in a tiny, diminishing pool of water.
‘Plan on splitting it six ways, Udinaas?’
‘It’s not that, Acquitor. Look at it. Closely now. Do you see? It has no eyes. It is blind.’
‘And is that significant?’ But it was, she realized. She frowned up at him, saw the sharp glitter in his gaze. ‘We are not seeing what is truly here, are we?’
‘Darkness,’ he said. ‘The cave. The womb.’
‘But… how?’ She looked round. The landscape of broken rock, the pallid lichen and mosses and the very dead trees. The sky.
‘Gift, or curse,’ Udinaas said, straightening. ‘She took a husband, didn’t she?’
She watched him walking back to the stream, watched him tenderly returning the blind minnow to the rushing water. A gesture Seren would not have expected from him. She? Who took a husband?
‘Gift or curse,’ said Udinaas as he approached her once again. ‘The debate rages on.’
‘Mother Dark… and Father Light.’
He grinned his usual cold grin. At last, Seren Pedac stirs from her pit. I’ve been wondering about those three brothers.’
Three brothers?
He went on as if she knew of whom he was speaking.
‘Spawn of Mother Dark, yes, but then, there were plenty of those, weren’t there? Was there something that set those three apart? Andarist, Anomander, Silchas. What did Clip tell us? Oh, right, nothing. But we saw the tapestries, didn’t we? Andarist, like midnight itself. Anomander, with hair of blazing white. And here, Silchas, our walking bloodless abomination, whiter than any corpse but just as friendly. So what caused the great rift between sons and mother? Maybe it wasn’t her spreading her legs to Light like a stepfather none of them wanted. Maybe that’s all a lie, one of those sweetly convenient ones. Maybe, Seren Pedac, it was finding out who their father was.’
She could not help but follow his gaze to where stood Silchas Ruin. Then she snorted and turned away. ‘Does it matter?’
‘Does it matter? Not right now,’ Udinaas said. ‘But it will.’
‘Why? Every family has its secrets.’
He laughed. ‘I have my own question. If Silchas Ruin is all Light on the outside, what must he be on the inside?’
‘The world is his mirror.’
But the world we now look upon is a lie.
‘Udinaas, I thought the Tiste Edur were the children of Mother Dark and Father Light.’
‘Successive generations, probably. Not in any obvious way connected to those three brothers.’
‘Scabandari.’
‘Yes, I imagine so. Father Shadow, right? Ah, what a family that was! Let’s not forget the sisters! Menandore with her raging fire of dawn, Sheltatha Lore the loving dusk, and Sukul Ankhadu, treacherous bitch of night. Were there others? There must have been, but they’ve since fallen by the wayside. Myths-prefer manageable numbers, after all, and three always works best. Three of this, three of that.’
‘But Scabandari would be the fourth-’
Andarist is dead.’
Oh. Andarist is dead.’ And how does he know such things? Who speaks to you, Udinaas, in your nightly fevers?
She could find out, she suddenly realized. She could slide in, like a ghost. She could, with the sorcery of Mockra, steal knowledge. I could rape someone else’s mind, is what I mean. Without his ever knowing.
There was necessity, wasn’t there? Something terrible was coming. Udinaas knew what it would be. What it might be, anyway. And Fear Sengar-he had just vowed to protect her, as if he too suspected some awful confrontation was close at hand. I remain the only one to know nothing.
She could change that. She could use the power she had found within her. It was nothing more than self-protection. To remain ignorant was to justly suffer whatever fate awaited her; yes, in lacking ruthlessness she would surely deserve whatever befell her. For ignoring what Mockra offered, for ignoring this gift.
No wonder it had said nothing since that first conversation. She had been in her pit, stirring old sand to see what seeds might spring to life, but there was no light reaching that pit, and no life among the chill grains. An indulgent game and nothing more.
I have a right to protect myself. Defend myself.
Clip and Silchas Ruin were walking back. Udinaas was studying them with the avidness he had displayed when examining the blind minnow.
I will have your secrets, slave. I will have those, and perhaps much, much more.
Udinaas could not help but see Silchas Ruin differently. In a new light, ha ha. The aggrieved son. One of them, anyway. Aggrieved sons, daughters, grandchildren, their children, on and on until the race of Shadow wars against that of Darkness. All on a careless word, an insult, the wrong look a hundred thousand years ago.
But, then, where are the children of Light?
Well, a good thing, maybe, that they weren’t around.
.
Enough trouble brewing as it was, with Silchas Ruin and Clip on one side and Fear Sengar and-possibly-Scabandari on the other. But of course Fear Sengar is no Mortal Sword of Shadow. Although he probably wants to be, even believes himself to be. Oh, this will play badly indeed, won’t it?
Silent, they walked on. Across this blasted, lifeless landscape. But not quite! There are… minnows.
The quest was drawing to a close. Just as well. Nothing worse, as far as he was concerned, than those legends of old when the stalwart, noble adventurers simply went on and on, through one absurd episode after another, with each one serving some arcane function for at least one of the wide-eyed fools, as befitted the shining serrated back of morality that ran the length of the story, from head to tip of that long, sinuous tail. Legends that bite. Yes, they all do. That’s the point of them.
But not this one, not this glorious quest of ours. No thunderous message driving home like a spike of lightning between the eyes. No tumbling cascade of fraught scenes ascending like some damned stairs to the magical tower perched on the mountain’s summit, where all truths were forged into the simple contest of hero against villain.
Look at us! What heroes? We’re all villains, and that tower doesn’t even exist.
Yet.
I see blood dripping between the stones. Blood in its making. So much blood. You want that tower, Silchas Ruin? Fear Sengar? Clip? You want it that much? You will have to make it, and so you shall.
Fevers every night. Whatever sickness whispered in his veins preferred the darkness of the mind that was sleep. Revelations arrived in torn fragments, pieces hinting of some greater truth, something vast. But he did not trust any of that-those revelations, they were all lies. Someone’s lies. The Errant’s? Menandore’s? The fingers poking into his brain were legion. Too many contradictions, each vision warring with the next.
What do you all want of me?
Whatever it was, he wasn’t going to give it. He’d been a slave but he was a slave no longer.