Such particular attention was, thankfully, a rare occurrence. But some deaths arrived, every now and then, bearing certain… eccentricities. And the one lying below was one such arrival.
Not least because the Wolves wanted his soul, yet would not get it, but also because this mortal had evaded Hood’s grasp again and again, even though any would see and understand well the sweet gift the Lord of Death had been offering.
Singular lives, yes, could be most… singular.
Witness that of the one who had arrived a short time earlier. There were no gifts in possessing a simple mind. There was no haze of calming incomprehension to salve the terrible wounds of a life that had been ordained to remain, until the very end, profoundly innocent.
Hood had not begrudged the blood on Beak’s hands. He had, however, most succinctly begrudged the heartless actions of Beak’s mother and father.
Few mortal priests understood the necessity for redress, although they often spouted the notion in their sermons of guilt, with their implicit extortions that did little more than swell the temple coffers.
Redress, then, was a demand that even a god could not deny. And so it had been with the one named Beak.
And so it was, now, with the one named Toc the Younger.
‘Awaken,’ Hood said. ‘Arise.’
And Toc the Younger, with a long sigh, did as Hood commanded.
Standing, tottering, squinting now at the gate awaiting them both. ‘Damn,’ Toc muttered, ‘but that’s a poor excuse for a gate.’
‘The dead see as they see, Toc the Younger. Not long ago, it shone white with purity.’
‘My heart goes out to that poor, misguided soul.’
‘Of course it does. Come. Walk with me.’
They set out towards that gate.
‘You do this for every soul?’
‘I do not.’
‘Oh.’ And then Toe halted-or tried to, but his feet dragged onward-‘Hold on, my soul was sworn to the Wolves-’
‘Too late. Your soul, Toe the Younger, was sworn to me. Long ago.’
‘Really? Who was the fool who did that?’
‘Your father,’ Hood replied. ‘Who, unlike Dassem Ultor, remained loyal.’
‘Which you rewarded by killing him? You bastard piece of pigsh-’
‘You will await him, Toe the Younger.’
‘He lives still?’
‘Death never lies.’
Toe the Younger tried to halt again. ‘Hood, a question-please.’
The god stopped, looked down at the mortal.
‘Hood, why do I still have only one eye?’
The God of Death, Reaper of Souls, made no reply. He had been wondering that himself.
Damned wolves.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I have seen the face of sorrow
She looks away in the distance
Across all these bridges
From whence I came
And those spans, trussed and arched
Hold up our lives as we go back again
To how we thought then
To how we thought we thought then
I have seen sorrow’s face,
But she is ever turned away
And her words leave me blind
Her eyes make me mute
I do not understand what she says to me
I do not know if to obey
Or attempt a flood of tears
I have seen her face
She does not speak
She does not weep
She does not know me
For I am but a stone fitted in place
On the bridge where she walks
Once, long ago, Onrack the broken committed a crime. He had professed his love for a woman in fashioning her likeness on the wall of a cave. There had been such talent in his hands, in his eyes, he had bound two souls into that stone. His own… that was his right, his choice. But the other soul, oh, the selfishness of that act, the cruelty of that theft…
He stood, now, before another wall of stone, within another cave, looking upon the array of paintings, the beasts with every line of muscle, every hint of motion, celebrating their veracity, the accuracy of genius. And in the midst of these great creatures of the world beyond, awkward stick figures, representing the Imass, cavorted in a poor mime of dance. Lifeless as the law demanded. He stood, then, still Broken, still the stealer of a woman’s life.
In the darkness of his captivity, long ago, someone had come to him, with gentle hands and yielding flesh. He so wanted to believe that it had been she, the one whose soul he had stolen. But such knowledge was now lost to him; so confused had the memory become, so infused with all that his heart wished to believe.
And, even if it had indeed been she, well, perhaps she had no choice. Imprisoned by his crime, helpless to defy his desire. In his own breaking, he had destroyed her as well.
He reached out, settled fingertips lightly upon one of the images. Ranag, pursued by an ay. In the torch’s wavering light both beasts seemed in motion, muscles rippling. In celebrating the world, which held no regrets, the Imass would gather shoulder to shoulder in this cavern, and with their voices they would beat out the rhythm of breaths, the huffing of the beasts; while others, positioned in selected concavities, pounded their hands on drums of hollowed-out wood and skin, until the echoes of hoofbeats thundered from all sides.
We are the witnesses. We are the eyes trapped for ever on the outside. We have been severed from the world. And this is at the heart of the law, the prohibition. We create ourselves as lifeless, awkward, apart. Once, we were as the beasts, and there was no inside, no outside. There was only the one, the one world, of which we were its flesh, its bone, flesh little different from grasses, lichens and trees. Bones little different from wood and stone. We were its blood, in which coursed rivers down to the lakes and seas.
We give voice to our sorrow, to our loss.
In discovering what it is to die, we have been cast out from the world.
In discovering beauty, we were made ugly.
We do not suffer in the manner that beasts suffer-for they surely do. We suffer with the memory of how it was before suffering came, and this deepens the wound, this tears open the pain. There is no beast that can match our anguish.
So sing, brothers. Sing, sisters. And in the torch’s light, float’ ing free from the walls of our minds-of the caves within us-see all the faces of sorrow. See those who have died and left us. And sing your grief until the very beasts flee.
Onrack the Broken felt the tears on his cheeks, and cursed himself for a sentimental fool.
Behind him, Trull Sengar stood in silence. In humouring a foolish Imass, he was without impatience. Onrack knew he would simply wait, and wait. Until such time as Onrack might stir from his grim memories, recalling once more the gifts of the present. He would-
‘There was great skill in the painting of these beasts.’
The Imass, still facing die stone wall, still with his back to the Tiste Edur, found himself smiling. So, even here and now, I indulge silly fantasies that are, even if comforting, without much meaning. ‘Yes, Trull Sengar. True talent. Such skill is passed down in the blood, and with each generation there is the potential for… burgeoning. Into such as we see here.’
‘Is the artist among the clans here? Of were these painted long ago, by someone else?’
‘The artist,’ Onrack said, ‘is Ulshun Pral.’
‘And is it this talent that has earned him the right to rule?’
No. Never that. ‘This talent,’ the Imass replied, ‘is his weakness.’
‘Better than you, Onrack?’
He turned about, his smile now wry. ‘I see some flaws. I see hints of impatience. Of emotion free and savage as the beasts he paints. I see also, perhaps, signs of a talent he had lost and has not yet rediscovered.’
‘How does one lose talent like that?’
‘By dying, only to return.’
‘Onrack,’ and there was a new tone to Trull’s voice, a 1 gravity that unnerved Onrack, ‘I have spoken with these Imass here. Many of them. With Ulshun himself. And I do not think they ever died. I do not think they were once T’lan, only to have forgotten in the countless generations of existence here.’