The Tiste Edur shrugged. ‘That topic had not even occurred to me-’
‘Oh, but in a way it has, and continues to do so. The spirit of Emurlahnis. Scabandari. Father Shadow. This haunts you, as it does all the Tiste Edur. The matter is delicate, you see. Very delicate, for both you and my guest. I must needs rely upon your restraint, or there will be trouble. Calamity, in fact.’
‘I shall do my best, sir. A moment-what is your name?’
The man reached for the latch. ‘My name is for no-one, Bruthen Trana. Best know me by one of my many titles. The Letherii one will do. You may call me Knuckles.’
He lifted the latch and pushed open the door.
Within was a vast circular chamber-far too large for the modest tower’s wall that Bruthen Trana had seen from outside. Whatever ceiling existed was lost in the gloom. The stone-tiled floor was fifty or more paces across. As Knuckles stepped inside, the glow from his lantern burgeoned, driving back the shadows. Opposite them, abutting the curved wall, was a raised dais on which heaps of silks, pillows and furs were scattered; and seated at the edge of that dais, leaning forward with forearms resting on thighs, was a giant. An ogre or some such demon, bearing the same hue of skin as Knuckles yet stretched over huge muscles and a robust frame of squat bones. The hands dangling down over the knees were disproportionately oversized even for that enormous body. Long, unkempt hair hung down to frame a heavy-featured face with deep-set eyes-so deep that even the lantern’s light could spark but a glimmer in those ridge-shelved pits.
‘My guest,’ Knuckles murmured. ‘Kilmandaros. Most gentle, I assure you, Bruthen Trana. When… distracted. Come, she is eager to meet you.’
They approached, footfalls echoing in this waterless chamber. Knuckles shifted his route slightly towards a low marble table on which sat a dusty bottle of wine. ‘Beloved,’ he called to Kilmandaros, ‘see who the house has brought to us!’
‘Stuff it with food and drink and send it on its way,’ the huge woman said in a growl. ‘I am on the trail of a solution, scrawny whelp of mine.’
Bruthen Trana could now see, scattered on the tiles before Kilmandaros, a profusion of small bones, each incised in patterns on every available surface. They seemed arrayed without order, nothing more than rubbish spilled out from some bag, yet Kilmandaros was frowning down at them with savage concentration.
‘The solution,’ she repeated.
‘How exciting,’ Knuckles said, procuring from somewhere a third goblet into which he poured amber wine. ‘Double or nothing, then?’
‘Oh yes, why not? But you owe me the treasuries of a hundred thousand empires already, dear Setch-’
‘Knuckles, my love.’
‘Dear Knuckles.’
‘I am certain it is you who owes me, Mother.’
‘For but a moment longer,’ she replied, now rubbing those huge hands together. ‘I am so close. You were a fool to offer double or nothing.’
‘Ah, my weakness,’ Knuckles sighed as he walked over to Bruthen Trana with the goblet. Meeting the Tiste Edur’s eyes, Knuckles winked. ‘The grains run the river, Mother,’ he said. ‘Best hurry with your solution.’
A fist thundered on the dais. ‘Do not make me nervous!’
The echoes of that impact were long in fading.
Kilmandaros leaned still further, glowering down at the array of bones. ‘The pattern,’ she whispered, ‘yes, almost there. Almost…’
‘1 feel magnanimous,’ Knuckles said, ‘and offer to still those grains… for a time. So that we may be true hosts to our new guest.’
The giant woman looked up, a sudden cunning in her expression. ‘Excellent idea, Knuckles. Make it so!’
A gesture, and the wavering light of the lantern ceased Its waver. All was still in a way Bruthen Trana could not define-after all, nothing had changed. And yet his soul knew, somehow, that the grains Knuckles had spoken of were time, its passage, its unending journey. He had just, with a single gesture of one hand, stopped time.
At least in this chamber. Surely not everywhere else. And yet…
Kilmandaros leaned back with a satisfied smirk and fixed her small eyes on Bruthen Trana. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘The house anticipates.’
‘We are as flitting dreams to the Azath,’ Knuckles said. ‘Yet, even though we are but momentary conceits, as our sorry existence might well be defined, we have our uses.’
‘Some of us,’ Kilmandaros said, suddenly dismissive, ‘prove more useful than others. This Tiste Edur’-a wave of one huge, scarred hand-‘is of modest value by any measure.’
‘The Azath see what we do not, in each of us. Perhaps, Mother, in all of us.’
A sour grunt. ‘You think this house let me go of its own will-proof of your gullibility, Knuckles. Not even the Azath could hold me for ever.’
‘Extraordinary,’ Knuckles said, ‘that it held you at all.’
This exchange, Bruthen Trana realized, was an old one, following well-worn ruts between the two.
‘Would never have happened,’ Kilmandaros said under her breath, ‘if he’d not betrayed me-’
‘Ah, Mother. I have no particular love for Anomander Purake, but let us be fair here. He did not betray you. In fact, it was you who jumped him from behind-’
Anticipating his betrayal!’
‘Anomander does not break his word, Mother. Never has, never will.’
‘Tell that to Osserc-’
‘Also in the habit of “anticipating” Anomander’s imminent betrayal.’
‘What of Draconus?’
‘What of him, Mother?’
Kilmandaros rumbled something then, too low for Bruthen Trana to catch.
Knuckles said, ‘Our Tiste Edur guest seeks the place of Names.’
Bruthen Trana started. Yes! It was true-a truth he had not even known before just this moment, before Knuckle’s quiet words. The place of Names. The Names of the Gods.
‘There will be trouble, then,’ Kilmandaros said, shifting in agitation, her gaze drawn again and again to the scatter of bones. ‘He must remember this house, then. The path-every step-he must remember, or he will wander lost for all time. And with him, just as lost as they have ever been, the names of every forgotten god.’
‘His spirit is strong,’ Knuckles said, then faced Bruthen Trana and smiled. ‘Your spirit is strong. Forgive me-we often forget entirely the outside world, even when, on rare occasions such as this one, that world intrudes.’
The Tiste Edur shrugged. His head was spinning. The place of Names. ‘What will I find there?’ he asked.
‘He forgets already,’ Kilmandaros muttered.
‘The path,’ Knuckles answered. ‘More than that, actually. But when all is done-for you, in that place-you must recall the path, Bruthen Trana, and you must walk it without a sliver of doubt.’
‘But, Knuckles, all my life, I have walked no path without a sliver of doubt-more than a sliver, in fact-’
‘Surprising,’ Kilmandaros cut in, ‘for a child of Scabandari-’
‘I must begin the grains again,’ Knuckles suddenly announced. ‘Into the river-the pattern, Mother, it calls to you once more.’
She swore in some unknown language, bent to scowl down at the bones. ‘I was there,’ she muttered. ‘Almost (here-so close, so-’
A faint chime echoed in the chamber.
Her fist thundered again on the dais, and this time the echoes seemed unending.
At a modest signal from Knuckles, Bruthen Trana drained the fine wine and set the goblet down on the marble tabletop.
It was time to leave.
Knuckles led Bruthen Trana back into the corridor. A final glance back into that airy chamber and the Tiste Edur saw Kilmandaros, hands on knees, staring directly at him with those faintly glittering eyes, like two lone, dying stars in the firmament. Chilled to the depths of his heart, Bruthen Trana pulled his gaze away and followed the son of Kilmandaros back to the front door.
At the threshold, he paused for a moment to search Knuckles’s face. ‘The game you play with her-tell me, does such a pattern exist?’