‘Master asks: should sweet Crone stay the night as Barak’s guest, awaiting answers to these queries?’
Clattering at the window. Barak swiftly rose and approached it.
‘A demon!’ cried Crone, half spreading her enormous wings.
‘One of mine,’ said Baruk, unlatching the iron frame and then stepping back as Chillbais clambered awkwardly into view, grunting as he squeezed through. ‘Master Barak!’ he squealed. ‘Out! Out! Out!’
Barak had felt ill a moment earlier. Now he was suddenly chilled in his very bones. He slowly shut the window, then faced the Great Raven. ‘Crone, it has be shy;gun.’
The demon saw her and bared needle fangs as he hissed, ‘Grotesque monstrosiy!’
Crone made stabbing motions with her beak. ‘Bloated toad!’
‘Be quiet, both of you!’ Barak snapped. ‘Crone, you will indeed stay the night as my guest. Chillbais, find somewhere to be. I have more work for you and I will collect you when it’s time.’
Flickering a forked tongue out at Crone, the squat demon waddled towards the fireplace. It clambered on to the glowing coals, then disappeared up the chimney. Black clouds of soot rained down, billowing out from the hearth.
Crone coughed. ‘Ill-mannered servants you have, High Alchemist.’
But Baruk was not listening. Out.
Out!
That lone word rang through his mind, loud as a temple bell, drowning out everything else, although he caught a fast-fading echo. .
‘. . stalwart ally, broken and with blood on his face. .’
CHAPTER TWO
Anomander would tell no lie, nor live one,
and would that deafness could
bless him in the days and nights
beyond the black rains of Black Coral.
Alas, this was not to be. .
And so we choose to hear nothing
Of the dreaded creak, the slip and snap
Of wooden wheels, the shudder on stone
And the chiding rattle of chains, as if
Upon some other world is where darkness
Beats out from a cursedly ethereal forge
And no sun rises above horizon’s rippled
Cant — some other world not ours indeed -
Yes bless us so, Anomander, with this
Sanctimony, this lie and soft comfort,
And the slaves are not us, this weight
But an illusion, these shackles could break
With a thought, and all these cries and
Moans are less than the murmurs
Of a quiescent heart — it’s all but a tale,
My friends, this tall denier of worship
And the sword he carries holds nothing,
No memory at all, and if there be a place
In the cosy scheme for lost souls
Pulling onward an uprooted temple
It but resides in an imagination flawed
And unaligned with sober intricacy -
Nothing is as messy as that messy world
And that comfort leaves us abiding
Deaf and blind and senseless in peace
Within our imagined place, this precious order. .
Fisher kel Tath
Dragon Tower stood like a torch above Black Coral. The spire, rising from the northwest corner of the New Andiian Palace, was solid black basalt, dressed in fractured, faceted obsidian that glistened in the eternal gloom enshrouding the cily. Atop its flat roof crouched a crimson-scaled dragon, wings folded, its wedge head hanging over one side so that it seemed to stare down on the crazed shadowy patchwork of buildings, alleys and streets far below,
There were citizens still in Black Coral — among the humans — who believed that the ferocious sentinel was the stone creation of some master artisan among the ruling Tiste Andii, and this notion left Endest Silann sourly amused. True, he understood how wilful such ignorance could be. The thought of a real, live dragon casting its baleful regard down on the city and its multitude of scurrying lives was to most truly terrifying, and indeed, had they been close enough to see the gleaming hunger in Silanah’s multifaceted eyes, they would have long fled Black Coral in blind panic.
For the Eleint to remain so, virtually motionless, day and night, weeks into months and now very nearly an entire year, was not unusual. And Endest Silann knew this better than most.
The Tiste Andii, once a formidable, if aged, sorcerer in Moon’s Spawn, now a barely competent castellan to the New Andiian Palace, slowly walked Sword Street as it bent south of the treeless park known as Grey Hill. He had left the fiercely lit district of Fish, where the Outwater Market so crowded every avenue and lane that those who brought two-wheeled carts in which to load purchases were forced to leave them in a square just north of Grey Hill. The endless streams of porters for hire — who gathered every dawn near the Cart Square — always added to the chaos between the stalls, pushing through with wrapped bundles towards the carts and slipping, dodging and sliding like eels back into the press. Although the Outwater Market acquired its name because the preponderance of fish sold there came from the seas beyond Night — the perpetual darkness cloaking the city and the surround shy;ing area for almost a third of a league — there could also be found the pale, gem-eyed creatures of Coral Bay’s Nightwater.
Endest Silann had arranged the next week’s order of cadaver eels from a new supplier, since the last one’s trawler had been pulled down by something too big for its net, with the loss of all hands. Nightwater was not simply an unlit span of sea in the bay, unfortunately. It was Kurald Galain, a true manifestation of the warren, quite possibly depthless, and on occasion untoward beasts loomed into the waters of Coral Bay. Something was down there now, forcing the fishers to use hooks and lines rather than nets, a method possible only because the eels foamed just beneath the surface in the tens of thousands, driven there by terror. Most of the eels pulled aboard were snags.
South of Grey Hill, the street lanterns grew scarcer as Endest Silann made his way into the Andiian district. Typically, there were few Tiste Andii on the streets. Nowhere could be seen figures seated on tenement steps, or in stalls lean shy;ing on countertops to call out their wares or simply watch passers-by. Instead, the rare figures crossing Endest’s path were one and all on their way somewhere, probably the home of some friend or relation, there to participate in the few re shy;maining rituals of society. Or returning home from such ordeals, as tenuous us smoke from a dying fire.
No fellow Tiste Andii met Endest Silann’s eyes as they slipped ghostly past. This, of course, was more than the usual indifference, but he had grown used to it. An old man must need a thick skin, and was he not the oldest by far? Excepting Anomander Dragnipurake.
Yet Endest could recall his youth, a vision of himself vaguely blurred by time, setting foot upon this world on a wild night with storms ravaging the sky. Oh, the storms of that night, the cold water on the face. . that moment, I see it still.
They stood facing a new world. His lord’s rage ebbing, but slowly, trickling down like the rain. Blood leaked from a sword wound in Anomander’s left shoul shy;der. And there had been a look in his eyes. .
Endest sighed as he worked his way up the street’s slope, but it was an uneven, harsh sigh. Off to his left was the heaped rubble of the old palace. A few jagged walls rose here and there, and crews had carved paths into the mass of wreckage, salvaging stone and the occasional timber that had not burned. The deafening col shy;lapse of that edifice still shivered in Endest’s bones, and he slowed in his climb, one hand reaching out to lean against a wall. The pressure was returning, making his jaw creak as he clenched his teeth, and pain shot through his skull.
Not again, please.
No, this would not do. That time was done, over with. He had survived. He had done as his lord had commanded and he had not failed. No, this would not do at all.
Endest Silann stood, sweat now on his face, with his eyes squeezed shut.
No one ever met his gaze, and this was why. This. . weakness.
Anomander Dragnipurake had led his score of surviving followers on to the strand of a new world. Behind the flaring rage in his eyes there had been triumph.
This, Endest Silann told himself, was worth remembering. Was worth holding on to.
We assume the burden as we must. We win through. And life goes on.
A more recent memory, heaving into his mind. The unbearable pressure of the deep, the water pushing in on all sides. ‘You are my last High Mage, Endest Silann. Can you do this for me?’
The sea, my lord? Beneath the sea?
‘Can you do this, old friend?’
My lord, I shall try.
But the sea had wanted Moon’s Spawn, oh, yes, wanted it with savage, relentless hunger. It had railed against the stone, it had besieged the sky keep with its crushing embrace, and in the end there was no throwing back its dark swirling legions.
Oh, Endest Silann had kept them alive for just long enough, but the walls were collapsing even as his lord had summoned the sky keep’s last reserves of power, to raise it up from the depths, raise it up, yes, back into the sky.
So heavy, the weight, so vast-
Injured beyond recovery, Moon’s Spawn was already dead, as dead as Endest Silann’s own power. We both drowned that day. We both died.
Raging falls of black water thundering down, a rain of tears from stone, oh, how Moon’s Spawn wept. Cracks widening, the internal thunder of beauty’s collapse. .
I should have gone with Moon’s Spawn when at last he sent it drifting away, yes, I should have. Squatting among the interred dead. My lord honours me for His sacrifice, but his every word is like ashes drifting down on my face. Abyss below, I felt the sundering of every room! The fissures bursting through were sword slashes in my soul, and how we bled, how we groaned, how we fell inward with our mortal wounds!
The pressure would not relent. It was within him now. The sea sought vengeance, and now could assail him no matter where he stood. Hubris had delivered a curse, searing a brand on his soul. A brand that had grown septic. He was too broken to fight it off any more.
I am Moon’s Spawn, now. Crushed in the deep, unable to reach the surface. I descend, and the pressure builds. How it builds!
No, this would not do. Breath hissing, he pushed himself from the wall, staggered onward. He was a High Mage no longer. He was nothing. A mere castellan, fretting over kitchen supplies and foodstuffs, watch schedules and cords of wood for the hearths. Wax for the yellow-eyed candlemakers. Squid ink for the stained scribes. .
Now, when he stood before his lord, he spoke of paltry things, and this was his legacy, all that remained.
Yet did I not stand with him on that strand! Am I not the last one left to share with my lord that memory?
The pressure slowly eased. And once again, he had survived the embrace. And the next time? There was no telling, but he did not believe he could last much longer. The pain clutching his chest, the thunder in his skull.
We have found a new supply of cadaver eels. That is what I will tell him. And he will smile and nod, and perhaps settle one hand on my shoulder. A gentle, cautious squeeze, light enough to ensure that nothing breaks. He will speak his gratitude.
For the eels.