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Child of Chaos - Chris Wraight
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A Black Library Publication
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CHILD OF CHAOS
By Chris Wraight
So, what do you want from me?
Perhaps some kind of explanation? Some kind of great redemptive story, to explain the way events transpired? Perhaps there was a reason, a causal mote that made everything explicable, and in turn, when you understand that, you might loathe me a little less than you do at present.
But there isn't one. I never had time for redemption. I am, as you might say, elemental. Axiomatic. Somebody within this whole skein of false turns had to be.
As it turns out, I am compassed. I am what I am - that is my blessing, and it is, for symmetry's sake, my curse.
Now wait. I get ahead of myself. An explanation was desired, and so I should start on Colchis. You could make a case that everything - everything - started there. What a desperate, awful place to start.
Then the beginnings always are, I suppose.
* * *
Gods, I hated Colchis. I hated the heat, I hated the dust and the thick sweat of it. Even before I knew that other worlds existed, I cursed the gods for making my home so unbearable. There's a reason why religions prosper in deserts - there's nothing else to do but ponder the misery.
I used to sit in the shadow of my father's house, squatting as the air shimmered, and wait for scorpions to scuttle out of the glare. I'd catch them in my bare fingers and hold them up, watching them wriggle. I'd pluck their limbs off, one by one. Sometimes I'd get stung, sometimes I wouldn't. It was a kind of game, though not a very good one. Once, a sting made me feverish for a month, leaving me boiling on my mat inside with visions and shaking. I might have died. I didn't care much, either way. Once I'd recovered, I was sitting right back out in the porch, waiting for the next one to scamper into range. Ever since then, I've played the same game: get close to the danger, see how long you can last before it bites you.
It doesn't matter which town that was. I can barely remember it myself. They were all the same - thick with filth and haze and the stink of perspiration and refuse. My parents were exasperated with me. They wanted me to learn a trade; get ahead, find something useful to do. I didn't want any of that. I wanted to be rich without trying. I wanted to have slaves and concubines. I wanted to play my scorpion game with people. For a long time, it wasn't clear how I would be able to achieve that, but fate had a way of leading me into opportunity.
I had noticed, being an observant sort, that the Covenant had become the kind of organisation I might do well in. It is fashionable now, among those who still pretend to keep records and tell histories, to think of the Covenant as some wellspring of piety - the precursor to the fundamental religion that came later. Perhaps it was, in some places. Maybe in Vharadesh they did things properly. Out in the provinces, though, the priests had begun to develop a reputation. They drank. They gambled. They were violent, and they used that violence to gather up riches. Even the devout knew that the tithes they paid didn't all end up embellishing temples. The whole edifice was like a spoiled aquifer, with a cold and oily heart locked away from the searching light of the sun.
So you can understand the attraction. I could see myself in those robes, with a palace of my own where a fountain would tinkle in the courtyard and a chamber full of young things would lounge around in silks and count my coins. Getting there was not straightforward, though - for all their decadence, the clerics held on to power with the rictus grip of a fresh corpse. Only the well-connected were sent to the seminaries and taught the rites and shown how to read the old texts. For street-trash like me, there was just penury to look forward to.
I didn't give up, though. The idea had entered my head, and it stuck there. I hung around the oratories and watched the aspirants come and go, waddling like fat dogs. I listened at the window when they chanted their songs, and began to learn the patterns of the words. As I got older, I got bolder. I crept into the old scriptoria when the doddering masters had dozed off, and I stole books. Bit by bit, I started to piece together the catechisms and the litanies. It didn't make any sense, of course - they were just words - but I memorised a lot of it. It all came naturally. Of course it did. These were the words I was born to preach, whether or not I believed them. I did believe, later, but back then they were just symbols, like codes on a lock.
There was a young man in my settlement, a pious one, who had inked some words of the holy books onto his face and shaven head. Every day before dawn he would apply more henna, re-writing the sacred glyphs with only the aid of a polished silver bowl for reflection. For this, he was considered something of an inspiration in our fly-blown township. Even my own mother, a fat and lazy slattern if ever there was one, noticed his diligence.
'Why can't you be more like him?' she would complain, picking at her fingernails and watching me sitting idly in the porch. 'Why can't you be more like Erebus?'
Now, you see, thoughts like this have a terrible power. I took her words to heart. I pondered them. And I thought to myself: why can't I be more like Erebus?
I was thinking the same thing as I garrotted that young
