Toll the Hounds

mean to remain in my privileged state-’

‘As Mistress of the Assassins’ Guild? Vorcan, there will be no need for such a Guild, no room for it.’

‘Never mind the Guild. I am not interested in the Guild. It served, a function of the city, a bureaucratic mechanism. Its days are fast dwindling in number.’

‘Is that why you sent your daughter away?’

A flicker of true annoyance in her eyes, and she looked away. ‘My reasons are not of your concern in that matter, High Alchemist.’ Her tone added, And it’s none of your business, old man.

‘What role, then,’ Baruk asked, ‘do you envision for yourself in this new Daru-jhistan?’

‘A quiet one,’ she replied.

Yes, quiet as a viper in the grass. ‘Until such time, I imagine, as you see an op- portunity.’

She drained her wine and set down the goblet. ‘We are understood, then.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I suppose we are.’

‘Do inform Derudan.’

‘I shall.’

And she left.

The recollection left a sour taste in Baruk’s mouth. Was she aware of the other convergences fast closing on Darujhistan? Did she even care? Well, she wasn’t the only one who could be coy. One thing he had gleaned from that night of mur-der years ago: Vorcan had, somehow, guessed what was on its way. Even back then, she had begun her preparations… all to ensure her level of comfort. Send-ing her daughter away, extricating herself from the Guild. And visiting her ver-sion of mercy upon the others in the Cabal. And if she’d got her way, she would now be the only one left alive.

Think hard on that, Baruk, in the light of her professed intentions. Her desire to position herself.

Might she try again?

He realized he was no longer sure she wouldn’t.

This is the moment for mirrors, and surely that must be understood by now. Pol-ished, with the barest of ripples to twist the reflection, to make what one faces both familiar and subtly altered. Eyes locked, recognition unfolding, quiet horrors flow-ering. What looks upon you here, now, does not mock, denies the cogent wink, and would lead you by a dry and cool hand across the cold clay floor of the soul.

People will grieve. For the dead, for the living. For the loss of innocence and for the surrender of innocence, which are two entirely different things. We will grieve, for choices made and not made, for the mistakes of the heart which can never be undone, for the severed nerve-endings of old scars and those to come.

A grey-haired man walks through the Estate District. No more detailed de-scription is necessary. The blood on his hands is only a memory, but some mem-ories leave stains difficult to wash away. By nature, he observes. The world, its multitude of faces, its tide-tugged swirling sea of emotions. He is a caster of nets, a trailer of hooks. He speaks in the rhythm of poetry, in the lilt of song. He un-derstands that there are wounds in the soul that must not be touched; but there are others that warm to the caress. He understands, in other words, the necessity of the tragic theme. The soul, he knows, will, on occasion, offer no resistance to the tale that draws blood.

Prise loose those old scars. They remind one what it is to grieve. They remind one what it is to live.

A moment for mirrors, a moment for masks. The two ever conspire to play out the tale. Again and again, my friends.

Here, take my hand.

He walks to an estate. The afternoon has waned, dusk creeps closer through the day’s settling dust. Each day, there is a moment when the world has just passed by, leaving a sultry wake that hovers, suspended, not yet stirred by the awakening of night. The Tiste Edur worship this instant. The Tiste Andii are still, motionless as they wait for darkness. The Tiste Liosan have bowed their heads and turned away to grieve the sun’s passing; In the homes of humans, hearthfires are stirred awake. People draw into their places of shelter and think of the night to come.

Before one’s eyes, solidity seems poised, moments from crumbling into disso-lution. Uncertainty becomes a law, rising supreme above all others. For a bard, this time is a minor key, a stretch of frailty, a pensive interlude. Sadness drifts in the air, and his thoughts are filled with endings.

Arriving at the estate, he is quickly and without comment escorted into the main house, down its central corridor and out into a high-walled garden where night flow-ers stream down the walls, drenched blossoms opening to drink in the gathering dusk. The masked bodyguard then leaves him, for the moment alone in the garden, and the bard stands motionless for a time, the air sweet and pungent, the sound of trickling water filling the enclosed space.

He recalls the soft songs he has sung here, unaccompanied by any instrument. Songs drawn from a hundred cultures, a dozen worlds. His voice weaving together the fragments of Shadow’s arrival, drawing together the day just past and the night eager to arrive.

There were secrets in music and poetry. Secrets few knew and even fewer un-derstood. Their power often stole into a listener subtle as the memory of scent on a drawn breath, less than a whisper, yet capable of transforming the one so gifted, an instinctual ecstasy that made troubles vanish, that made all manner of grandeur possible-indeed, within reach.

A skilled bard, a wise bard, knew that at certain moments in the course of a cycle of day and night, the path into the soul of a listener was smooth, unob-structed, a succession of massive gates that swung open to a feather’s touch. This was the most precious secret of all. Dusk, midnight, and that strange period of sudden wakefulness known as the watch-yes, the night and its stealthy ap-proach belonged to the heart.

Hearing a footfall behind him, he turns.

She stands, her long black hair shimmering, her face untouched by sun or wind, her eyes a perfect reflection of the violet blossoms adorning the walls. He can see through the white linen of her dress to the outlines of her body, roundness and curves and sweeps of aesthetic perfection-those forms and lines that mur-mured their own secret language to awaken desires in a man’s soul.

Every sense, he knows, is a path into the heart.

Lady Envy watches him, and he is content to let her do so, as he in turn re-gards her.

They could discuss the Seguleh-the dead ones in the casks, the living ones serving in this estate. They could ponder all that they sensed fast approaching. He could speak of his anger, its quiet, deadly iron that was so cold it could burn at the touch-and she would see the truth of his words in his eyes. She might drift this way and that in this modest garden, brushing fingertips along trembling petals, and speak of desires so long held that she was almost insensate to the myr-iad roots and tendrils they had wrought through her body and soul, and he would perhaps warn her of the dangers they presented, the risk of failure that must be faced and, indeed, accepted-and she would sigh and nod and know well he spoke with wisdom.

Mocking flirtation, the jaw-dropping self-obsession, all the ways in which she amused herself when engaging with the mortals of this world, did not accom-pany Lady Envy to this garden. Not with this man awaiting her. Fisher kel Tath was not a young man-and there were times when she wondered if he was mor-tal at all, although she would never pry in search of truth-and he was not at all godlike with physical perfection. His gifts, if she could so crassly list them, would include his voice, his genius with the lyre and a dozen other obscure in-struments, and the mind behind the eyes that saw all, that understood far too much of what he did see, that understood too the significance of all that re-mained and would ever remain hidden-yes, the mind behind the eyes and every faint hint he offered up to reveal something of that mind, its manner of obser-vance, its stunning capacity for compassion that only blistering fools would call weakness.

No, this was one man whom she would not mock-could not, in fact. They could have discussed many things. Instead, they stood, eyes meeting and held, and the dusk closed in with all its scents and secrets.

Storm the abyss and throw down a multitude of astounded gods! The sky cracks open from day into night, and then cracks yet again, revealing the flesh of space and the blood of time-see it rent and see it spray in glistening red droplets of dy-ing stars! The seas boil and the earth steams and melts!

Lady Envy has found a lover.

Poetry and desire, fulminations one and the same and oh this is a secret to make thugs and brainless oafs howl