to be me. Indirectly, of course.’
‘All right. Me and Ublala and Harlest, we want to be pirates.’
‘Don’t make me laugh, Shurq.’
‘Now you’re being cruel.’
‘Sorry. Pirates, you say. Well, all three of you are notoriously hard to drown. Might work at that.’
‘Your confidence and well-wishing overwhelms me.’
‘And when do you plan on embarking on this new venture?’
‘When you’re done with us, of course.’
Tehol tugged up his trousers again. ‘Yet another edifying conversation with you, Shurq. Now, I smell something that might well be soup, and you need to go back to your crypt.’
‘Sometimes I really hate you.’
He led her by the hand down the shallow, crumbling steps. She liked these journeys, even though the places he took her were strange and often… disturbing. This time, they descended an inverted stepped pyramid – at least that was what he called it. Four sides to the vast, funnelled pit, and at the base there was a small square of darkness.
The air was humid enough to leave droplets on her bare arms. Far overhead, the sky was white and formless. She did not know if it was hot – memories of such sensations had begun to fade, along with so many other things.
They reached the base of the pit and she looked up at the tall, pale figure at her side. His face was becoming more visible, less blurred. It looked handsome, but hard. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said after a moment, ‘that she’s got you by the ankles.’
‘We all have our burdens, Kettle.’
‘Where are we?’
‘You have no recognition of this place?’
‘No. Maybe.’
‘Let us continue down, then.’
Into the darkness, three rungs to a landing, then a spiral staircase of black stone.
‘Round and round,’ Kettle said, giggling.
A short while later they came to the end, the stairs opening out onto a sprawling, high-ceilinged chamber. The gloom was no obstacle to Kettle, nor, she suspected, to her companion. She could see a ragged mound heaped against the far wall to their right, and made to move towards it, but his hand drew her back.
‘No, lass. Not there.’
He led her instead directly ahead. Three doorways, each one elaborately arched and framed with reverse impressions of columns. Between them, the walls displayed deeply carved images.
‘As you can see,’ he said, ‘there is a reversal of perspective. That which is closest is carved deepest. There is significance to all this.’
‘Where are we?’
‘To achieve peace, destruction is delivered. To give the gift of freedom, one promises eternal imprisonment. Adjudication obviates the need for justice. This is a studied, deliberate embrace of diametric opposition. It is a belief in balance, a belief asserted with the conviction of religion. But in this case, the proof of a god’s power lies not in the cause but in the effect. Accordingly, in this world and in all others, proof is achieved by action, and therefore all action – including the act of choosing inaction – is inherently moral. No deed stands outside the moral context. At the same time, the most morally perfect act is the one taken in opposition to what has occurred before.’
‘What do the rooms look like through those openings?’
‘In this civilization,’ he continued, ‘its citizens were bound to acts of utmost savagery. Vast cities were constructed beneath the world’s surface. Each chamber, every building, assembled as the physical expression of the quality of absence. Solid rock matched by empty space. From these places, where they did not dwell, but simply gathered, they set out to achieve balance.’
It seemed he would not lead her through any of the doorways, so she fixed her attention instead on the images. ‘There are no faces.’
‘The opposite of identity, yes, Kettle.’
‘The bodies look strange.’
‘Physically unique. In some ways more primitive, but as a consequence less… specialized, and so less constrained. Profoundly long-lived, more so than any other species. Very difficult to kill, and, it must be said, they
Kettle swung round to study that distant heap of… something. ‘Those are bodies, aren’t they?’
‘Bones. Scraps of clothing, the harnesses they wore.’
‘Who killed them?’
‘You had to understand, Kettle. The one within you must understand. My refutation of the Forkrul Assail belief in balance is absolute. It is not that I am blind to the way in which force is ever countered, the way in which the natural world strains towards balance. But in that striving I see no proof of a god’s power; I see no guiding hand behind such forces. And, even if one such existed, I see no obvious connection with the actions of a self-chosen people for whom chaos is the only rational response to order. Chaos needs no allies, for it dwells like a poison in every one of us. The only relevant struggle for balance I acknowledge is that within ourselves. Externalizing it presumes inner perfection, that the internal struggle is over, victory achieved.’
‘You killed them.’
‘These ones here, yes. As for the rest, no. I was too late arriving and my freedom too brief for that. In any case, but a few enclaves were left by that time. My draconic kin took care of that task, since no other entity possessed the necessary power. As I said, they were damned hard to kill.’
Kettle shrugged, and she heard him sigh.
‘There are places, lass, where Forkrul Assail remain. Imprisoned for the most part, but ever restless. Even more disturbing, in many of those places they are worshipped by misguided mortals.’ He hesitated, then said, ‘You have no idea, Kettle, of the extremity the Azath tower found itself in. To have chosen a soul such as yours… it was like reaching into the heart of the enemy camp. I wonder if, in its last moments, it knew regret. Misgivings. Mother knows, I do.’
‘What is this soul you are talking about?’
‘Perhaps it sought to use the soul’s power without fully awakening it. We will never know. But you are loose upon the world now. Shaped to fight as a soldier in the war against chaos. Can that fundamental conflict within you be reconciled? Your soul, lass? It is Forkrul Assail.’
‘So you have brought me home?’
His hand betrayed his sudden flinch. ‘You were also a mortal human child, once. And there is a mystery in that. Who birthed you? Who took away your life, and why? Was all this in preparation for your corpse to house the Assail soul? If that is the case, then the Azath tower was either deceived by someone capable of communicating with it, or it had in truth nothing at all to do with the creation of you as you now are. But that makes no sense – why would the Azath lie to me?’
‘It said you were dangerous.’
He was silent for some time. Then, ‘Ah, you are to kill me once I have vanquished the other entombed creatures.’
‘The tower is dead,” Kettle said. ‘I don’t have to do anything it told me. Do I?’ She looked up and found him studying her.
‘What path will you choose, child?’
She smiled. ‘Your path. Unless you’re bad. I’ll be very angry if you’re bad.’
‘I am pleased, Kettle. Best that you stay close to me, assuming we succeed in what we must do.’
‘I understand. You may have to destroy me.’
‘Yes. If I can.’
She gestured with her free hand at the heap of bones. ‘I don’t think you’ll have much trouble.’
