‘Endest,’ asked Rise Herat, with a sudden chill rippling through him, ‘does she taste it now, then?’
The priest looked down, as if faltering u
pon the cusp of his reply, but then nodded.
‘And … has it … seduced her?’
He needed no other answer, the historian realized, than the blood draining down from Endest’s hands.
* * *
There had been a desire, possessed of value, to assemble a cadre of mages. A court, to be more specific, of Tiste Andii practitioners. Whether it was talent or something else, many hands were now able to reach into that power, and to shape it, although the notion of control was, it turned out, dubious. There was something wayward, untamable, in this sorcery. Rise Herat understood Gallan’s warning, its bitter nuances, and, like the poet, the historian feared the magic now among them.
‘Name it for the realm,’ Gallan had said, earlier, when he stood in the centre of the chamber and the sorcery rose up to entwine his form, its serpent tendrils questing and probing like blunt-headed worms. ‘We become synonymous with this flavour, and the darkness from which it emerges.’
‘It is not the name that interests me,’ Cedorpul had retorted. ‘We would proclaim you seneschal. If words are your power in this new art, then lead us. We will all find our own paths, Gallan. The point is, there is need. You must see that. Neret Sorr now blazes with light. Syntara organizes against us, and would see a path burned into the heart of Kharkanas.’ He had stepped closer to Gallan then, his eyes fierce. ‘I have dreamed it, that golden road of fire.’
‘Dreamed it, did you?’ Gallan had laughed. ‘Oh, I do not doubt you, priest. Against the waking world, the mind finds its own realm, and fills it with myriad fears and dreads. Where else would one play so freely with dire possibility?’ He had raised a hand, and the tongues of smoky darkness had wreathed his arm. ‘But this? It has no answer to Liosan. Light is revelation. Dark is mystery. What marches upon us cannot be defeated. We – and the world – must ever yield. Imagine, my friends, what we are about to witness. The death of mystery, and such a bright world will come, blinding us with truths, humbling us with answers, scouring us clean of that which we cannot know.’
In some ways, the new world Gallan described well suited Rise Herat, who was by nature frustrated with things he could not know, with meanings at which he could only guess, and where his every effort to surmise trembled at the roots with doubt. Was this new future not an historian’s paradise? Everything explicable, everything understandable.
A world made mundane.
And yet, a part of him recoiled at the notion, for when he looked closely, he saw a future made stale, lifeless. The death of mystery, he realized, was the death of life itself.
Gallan had dropped his arm, watched as the magic drained away from his body. ‘Revelation shall surely bless us. Doubt lies bloody upon the altar. Into the channels it drains, drip by drip, and then ebbs. We shall make a thousand thrones. Ten thousand. One for every fool. But the altar remains singular. It will take any and every sacrifice, and thirst yet for more.’ He had then smiled at the historian. ‘Prepare to recount the future, Herat, and describe well the long lines, the glint of row on row of knives in waiting hands. And upon the other hand – why, I shall tell this to Kadaspala, so that he may paint it – place a tether, and upon the end of its modest length, name some private beast.
‘Praise the light! We march to slaughter!’ He grinned mockingly at Cedorpul. ‘Name it for the realm. The sorcery of Kurald Galain.’
And so, laughing, he had stridden from the chamber.
* * *
Rise Herat made his way to the private chambers of High Priestess Emral Lanear. He was thinking on the nature of conspiracy, which, among those who both feared and named it, seemed to always possess at its core a misguided belief in the competence of others, as weighed against the incapacities – real or imagined – of the believer. Therefore, he concluded, the belief in conspiracy was in truth an announcement of the believer’s own sense of utter helplessness, in the face of forces both mysterious and fatally efficient.
If he looked to his own role, now, as a conspirator against both Anomander and Draconus, he felt nothing of the competence and confidence that should have come to him, settling upon his shoulders like a vestment in some secret ceremony of the capable. The world might move to hidden players, to well-disguised schemes and venal cabals, but it did not move smoothly. Rather, in the confused and raucous clash of muddled plans and desires, the world but lurched, and often in the wrong direction.
History mocked the pretensions of those who believed themselves in charge – of anything, least of all themselves. There was no doubt, in Herat’s mind, that conspiracies arose, like poisonous flowers, in every age, snaring those moments of terrible consequence that, more often than not, ended in violence and chaos. If civilization was a garden, it was poorly tended, with every hand at odds with the next. Private desires fed the wrong plants, and made for all a bitter harvest.
At the very least, the paranoid were well fed, though by nature their ability to discriminate between diabolical genius and woeful incompetence was non-existent. It was grist, after all, offering sweet sustenance to a soul panicked by its own helplessness.
He shared with the High Priestess an assembly of sound justifications. They sought to save the realm, and to end the civil war. They sought, beyond the singular moment of violent betrayal, a peaceful future. Kurald Galain must survive, they told each other, and lives would have to be sacrificed in order to assure that survival.
But not mine. And not yours, Emral Lanear. Where, then, is our sacrifice? Nothing but the carcasses of our honour. Conspiracy will devour its own truths, and even should we succeed, we are left as nothing but husks, mortal forms to house ruined souls. Is that not a sacrifice? Will we not find victory a bleak realm of sour satisfaction, with ourselves haunted by the truth behind every lie?
Crowd me in the comforts of what we win … I see a man drunk upon the divan, eager to waste the years left to him.
And you, my dear? How will faith taste to your bloodied tongue?
The corridors of the Citadel held a kind of promise, in that there was light in the darkness. His eyes could see, although now even the torches had been dispensed with. Cedorpul asserted that the talent with which the Mother’s children could pierce the darkness was her gift to them for their faith in her. The notion pleased Herat in too many ways, and should he list them he would see plain his own desperation, as a man making a banquet of a morsel.
He paused in one passageway as a trio of young priestesses hurried past him, their hoods over their heads and eyes down. They swirled in their silks, almost shapeless, but the scents of their perfumes made for a heady wake as the historian continued on. A goddess of love would be welcome in these times, but the pleasures of sex could not be her only gift. Lust spoke a base language, and its role in the course of history, Herat well knew, was fraught with tragedy and war.
But we are cold in our desires, the High Priestess and I. There is no heat in our plans, and the poses we will create invite no caress. She takes no men to her bed, not any more. The gate, as Cedorpul might say, has closed.
Yet her priestesses still swim the deep carnal seas, and call it worship.
But Mother Dark is no goddess of love. We were mistaken in that, and now lust boils unabated. We rush forward, with no time to temper our deeds with thought. The reins have been plucked from our hands, and this road we descend is steep.