The Crippled God

humility shall find you.’ He glared at the others. ‘All of you, in fact.’

Beru growled. ‘You snivelling little upstart …’

But then his voice fell away, for the Lord of Shadows was gone.

‘Busy busy busy.’

Cotillion paused on the road. ‘It’s done?’

‘Of course it’s done!’ Shadowthrone snapped, and then grunted. ‘Here? What are we doing here?’

‘Recognize the place, then.’

‘Pah! Not more regrets from you. I’m sick of them!’

‘I am marking this site one more time-’

‘What, like a Hound pissing against a fence post?’

Cotillion nodded. ‘Crude, but apt.’

‘What of you?’ Shadowthrone demanded. ‘Did you return to Shadowkeep? Did you send her off? Did she need a few slaps? A punch in the nose, a quick roger behind the keep?’

‘She needed only my invitation, Ammanas.’

‘Truly?’

‘Of all the wolves on one’s own trail,’ Cotillion said, ‘there is always one, the pack’s leader. Cruel and relentless. Show me a god or a mortal with no wolves on their heels-’

‘Enough talk of wolves. This is me, after all. Fanged, eyes of fire, foul fur and endless hunger, a hundred beasts, each one named Regret.’

‘Just so.’ Cotillion nodded.

‘So you put her on a horse and gave her a blade, and sent her back down her own trail.’

‘To kill the biggest, meanest one, aye.’

Shadowthrone grunted again. ‘Bet she was smiling.’

‘Find me a fool who’ll take that bet,’ Cotillion replied, smiling himself.

The Lord of Shadows looked round. ‘See none hereabouts. Too bad.’

The air filled with the cries of gulls.

Tiste Liosan. The Children of Father Light. A star is born in the dark, and the heavens are revealed to all. Withal ran his hand along the pitted plaster, fragments of damp moss falling away where his fingers scraped it loose. The painted scene was in a primitive, awkward style, yet he suspected it was more recent than those glorious works in the city’s palace. Light like blood, corpses on the strand, faces shining beneath helms. A sky igniting …

A few survived the chaos, the civil wars. They cowered here in this forest. In coloured plaster and paint, they sought to make eternal their memories. He wondered why people did such things. He wondered at their need to leave behind a record of the great events witnessed, and lived through.

Sure enough, a discovery like this — here in the forest above the Shore, at the base of a vast sinkhole his errant step had inadvertently discovered — well, it led to questions, and mystery, and, like the missing patches and the thick clumps of moss, he found a need to fill in the gaps.

For we are all bound in stories, and as the years pile up they turn to stone, layer upon layer, building our lives. You can stand on them and stare out at future’s horizon, or you can be crushed beneath their weight. You can take a pick in hand and break them all apart, until you’re left with nothing but rubble. You can crush that down into dust and watch the wind blow it away. Or you can worship those wretched stories, carving idols and fascinating lies to lift your gaze ever higher, and all those falsehoods make hollow and thin the ground you stand on.

Stories. They are the clutter in our lives, the conveniences we lean upon and hide behind. But what of it? Change them at will — it’s only a game in the skull, shaking the bones in the cup to see if something new shows up. Aye, I imagine such games are liberating, and the sense of leaving oneself behind is akin to moving house. A fresh start beckons. A new life, a new host of stories, a new mountain to build stone by stone.

‘What makes you happy, Withal?’

Long stretches of time, Sand, free of alarm.

‘Nothing else?’

Oh, beauty, I suppose. Pleasure to caress the senses.

‘You play at being a solid and simple man, Withal, but I think it is all an act. In fact, I think you think too much, about too many things. You’re worse than me. And before long, all that chaos gets so thick it starts looking solid, and simple.’

Woman, you make my head ache. I’m going for a walk.

Rubbing at his bruised hip, he brushed twigs and mud from his clothes, and then carefully made his way up the sinkhole’s side, grasping roots, finding footholds from the blocks of cut stone hiding in the gloom. Pulling himself clear, he resumed his journey down to the Shore.

Twenty or more paces up from the strand, the forest edge had been transformed. Trees cut down, trenches dug in banked ripples facing the imminent breach in Lightfall. Figures swarming everywhere. Weapons in heaps — swords, spears and pikes — with Shake and Letherii crews busy scrubbing the rust from the ancient iron, rolling new grips from strips of soaked leather. The wood of the hafted weapons seemed to have been unaffected by the passage of time, the black shafts as strong as ever. Hundreds of helms formed vaguely disturbing mounds here and there, awaiting oil and refitting.

Working his way past all this, Withal reached the strand. He paused, searching among the crowds. But he could not find the one he sought. Seeing a familiar face ahead, he called out, ‘Captain Pithy!’

The woman looked up.

‘Where is he?’ Withal asked.

She straightened from the leather map she’d laid out on the sand, wiped sweat from her face, and then pointed.

Withal looked in that direction. Saw a lone figure seated atop an old midden, facing Lightfall. With a wave to Pithy, he set off in that direction.

Yedan Derryg was taking bites from a lump of cheese, his jaws working steadily as he studied the cascading light. He glanced over as Withal approached, but only briefly. Boots crunching on the ghastly white bone fragments of the beach, and then the slope of the midden, where amidst larger pieces of bone there were husks of some forest nut, more recent gourds and pieces of pottery, Withal reached the prince’s side, whereupon he sat down. ‘I didn’t know we had any cheese left.’

Yedan plopped the last bit into his mouth, chewed a moment, swallowed and then said, ‘We don’t.’

Withal rubbed at his face. ‘I expect to feel the salt, the freshened sea breezes. Instead, the air feels as close as the hold of a ship.’ He nodded to Lightfall. ‘There is no breath from this, none at all.’

Yedan grunted. ‘There will be soon enough.’

‘The queen was wondering about that.’

‘Wondering?’

‘All right. Fretting. Well, more like a cornered cat, come to think of it, so not fretting at all. Snarling, all claws out, fear blazing in her eyes.’

Yedan’s jaws bunched, as if he was still chewing cheese, and then he said, ‘Is that what you wake up to every morning, Withal?’

He sighed, squinted at Lightfall. ‘Never been married, have you? I can tell.’

‘Not much interested.’

‘In any of that?’

‘In women.’

‘Ah. Well, among the Meckros, men marry each other all the time. I figure they see how men and women do it, and want that for themselves.’

‘Want what, exactly?’

‘Someone to be the cat, someone to be the dog, I suppose. But all official like.’

‘And here I thought you’d go on about love and commitment, Withal.’

‘No, it’s all down to who lifts a leg and who squats. And if you’re lucky, that goes back and forth. If you’re unlucky, you end up trapped in one or the other and life’s miserable.’