‘It was brighter then-do you recall!’
‘Perturbations of orbit, or so believed the K’Chain Che’Malle.’
‘So too the Jaghut, who were most diligent in their observations of the world. Tell me, High King, did you know they broke peace only once! In all their existence-no, not the T’lan Imass-that war belonged to those savages and the Jaghut were a most reluctant foe.’
‘They should have turned on the Imass,’ Kallor said. ‘They should have annihilated the vermin.’
‘Perhaps, but I was speaking of an earlier war-the war that destroyed the Jaghut long before the coming of the T’lan Imass. The war that shattered their unity, that made of their lives a moribund flight from an implacable enemy-yes, long before and long after the T’lan Imass.’
Kallor considered that for a moment, and then he grunted and said, ‘I am not well versed in Jaghut history. What war was this? The K’Chain Che’Malle? The Forkrul Assail?’ He squinted at the dragon. ‘Or, perhaps, you Eleint?’
There was sorrow in its tone as the dragon replied, ‘No. There were some among us who chose to join in this war, to fight alongside the Jaghut armies-’
‘Armies? Jaghut armies?’
‘Yes, an entire people gathered, a host of singular will. Legions uncountable. Their standard was rage, their clarion call injustice. When they marched, swords beating on shields, time itself found measure, a hundred million hearts of edged iron. Not even you, High King, could imagine such a sight-your empire was less than a squall to that terrible storm.’
For once, Kallor had nothing to say. No snide comment to voice, no scoffing refutation. In his mind he saw the scene the dragon had described, and was struck mute. To have witnessed such a thing!
The dragon seemed to comprehend his awe. ‘Yes again, High King. When you forged your empire, it was on the dust of that time, that grand contest, that most bold assault. We fought. We refused to retreat. We failed. We fell. So many of us fell-should we have believed otherwise! Should we have held to our faith in the righteousness of our cause, even as we came to believe that we were doomed?’
Kallor stared across at the dragon, the tea in the pot steaming away. He could almost hear the echoes of tens of millions, hundreds of millions, dying on a plain so vast even the horizons could not close it in. He saw flames, rivers of blood, a sky solid with ash. In creating this image, he had only to draw upon his own fury of destruction, then multiply it a thousand fold. The notion took his breath, snatched it from his lungs, and his chest filled with pain. ‘What,’ he managed, ‘who? What enemy could vanquish such a force?’Grieve for the Jaghut, High King, when at last you sit on that throne, Grieve for the, chains that hind all life, that yon can never break, Weep, for me and my fallen kin-who did not hesitate to join a war that could not be won. Know, for ever in your soul, Kallor Eidorann, that the Jaghut fought the war no other has dared to fight.’
‘Eleint
‘Think of these people. Think of them, High King. The sacrifice they made for us all. Think of the Jaghut, and an impossible victory won in the heart of defeat. Think, and then you will come to understand all that is to come. Perhaps, then, you alone will know enough to honour their memory, the sacrifice they made for us all.
‘High King, the Jaghut’s only war, their greatest war, was against Death itself.’
The dragon turned away then, spreading its tattered wings. Sorcery blossomed round the huge creature, and it lifted into the air.
Kallor stood, watching the Eleint rise into the cinnamon sky. A nameless dead dragon, that had fallen in the realm of Death, that had fallen and in dying had simply… switched sides. No, there could be no winning such a war. ‘You damned fool,’ he whispered at the fast receding Eleint. ‘All of you, damned fools.’ Bless you, bless you all.
Gothos, when next we meet, this High King owes you an apology.
On withered cheeks that seemed cursed to eternal dryness, tears now trickled down. He would think long and think hard, now, and he would come to feelings that he’d not felt in a long time, so long that they seemed foreign, dangerous to harbour in his soul.
And he would wonder, with growing unease, at the dead Eleint who, upon escaping the realm of Death, would now choose the Crippled God as its new master.
A throne, Emperor Kellanved once said, is made of many parts. And then he had added, any one of which can break, to the king’s eternal discomfort. No, it did no good to simply sit on a throne, deluding oneself of its eternal solidity. He had known that long before Kellanved ever cast an acquisitive eye on empire. But he was not one for resonant quotations.
Well, everyone has a few flaws.
In a dark pool a score of boulders rise clear of the lightless, seemingly lifeless surface. They appear as islands, no two connected in any obvious way, no chain of uplifted progression to hint at some mostly submerged range of mountains, no half-curl to mark a flooded caldera. Each stands alone, a bold proclamation.
Is this how it was at the very beginning? Countless scholars struggled to make sense of it, the distinct existences, the imposition of order in myriad comprehensions. Lines were drawn, flags splashed with colours, faces blended into singular philosophies and attitudes and aspects. Here there is Darkness, and here there is Life. Light, Earth, Fire, Shadow, Air, Water. And Death. As if such aspects began as pure entities, unstained by contact with any of the others. And as if time was the enemy, forcing the inevitable infections from one to another. Whenever Endest Silann thought about these things, he found himself trapped in a prickly, uneasy suspicion. In his experience, purity was an unpleasant concept, and to imagine worlds defined by purity filled him with fear. An existence held to be pure was but the physical corollary of a point of view bound in cer-tainty. Cruelty could thrive unfettered by compassion. The pure could see no value among the impure, after all. Justifying annihilation wasn’t even necessary, since the inferiority was ever self-evident.
Howsoever all creation had begun, he now believed, those pure forms existed as nothing more than the raw materials for more worthy elaborations. As any alchemist knew, transformation was only possible as a result of admixture. For creation to thrive, there must be an endless succession of catalysts.
His Lord had understood that. Indeed, he had been driven to do all that he had done by that very comprehension. And change was, for so many, terrifying. For so much of existence, Anomander Rake had fought virtually alone. Even his brothers had but fallen, bound by the ties of blood, into the chaos that followed.
Was Kharkanas truly the first city? The first, proudest salutation to order in the cosmos? Was it in fact even true that Darkness preceded all else? What of the other worlds, the rival realms? And, if one thought carefully about that nascent age of creation, had not the admixture already begun? Was there not Death in the realms of Darkness, Light, Fire and all the rest? Indeed, how could Life and Death exist in any form of distinction without the other?
No, he now believed that the Age of Purity was but a mythical invention, a convenient separation of all the forces necessary for all existence. Yet was he not witness to the Coming of Light? To Mother Dark’s wilful rejection of eternal stasis? Did he not with his own eyes see the birth of a sun over his blessed, precious city? How could he not have understood, at that moment, how all else would follow, inevitably, inexorably? That fire would awaken, that raging winds would howl, that waters would rise and the earth crack open? That death would flood into their world in a brutal torrent of violence? That Shadow would slide between things, whispering sly subversions of all those pristine absolutes?
He sat alone in his room, in the manner of all old men when the last witness has wandered off, when nothing but stone walls and insensate furniture gathered close to mock his last few aspirations, his last dwindling reasons for living. In his mind he witnessed yet again, in a vision still sharp, still devastating, Andarist staggering into view. Blood on his hands. Blood painted in the image of a shattered tree upon his grief-wracked face-oh, the horror in his eyes could still make Endest Silann reel back, wanting none of this, this curse of witnessing-
No, better stone walls and insensate furniture. All the errors in Andarist’s life, now crowding with jabbering madness in those wide, staring eyes.
Yes, he had reeled back once that stare fixed his own. Some things should never be communicated, should never be cast across, to slash through the heavy curtains one raised to keep whatever was without from all that was within, slashing through and lodging deep in the soul of a defenceless witness. Keep your pain to yourself, Andarist! He left you to this-he left you thinking you wiser than you were. Do not look so betrayed, damn you! He is not to blame!
I am not to blame.
To break Shadow is to release it into every other world. Even in its birth, it had been necessarily ephemeral, an
