Forge of Darkness (The Kharkanas Trilogy 1)

More rumours, more agitation to rush up and down the hallways of the Citadel. The sanctuary of the Old Tower was Rise Herat’s place of strength amidst all this nonsense. Instead, he found himself left in charge of a girl he saw as almost feral and possibly simple-minded, so vast the temple’s neglect. Ever passed on to the next, scores of teachers and no lessons ever returned to, Legyl’s was an education of fragments, delivered in haste and out from airs of distraction. When he had looked down at her, however, he had seen sure intelligence in the large eyes staring back up at him.

As the court historian, he decided that history would be the lesson he delivered. Such ambitions proved short-lived, as her breathless scatter of comments and observations left him confused. She listened to his words as one might listen to a songbird in the garden, a pleasant drone in the background. Whatever she took in seemed randomly selected; but perhaps it was that way with all children. He rarely had any contact with them, and generally preferred it that way.

Rise looked out over Kharkanas. Thin smoke drifted above the cityscape, not yet lifting to the height of the tower. It softened all that lay beneath it, and he wondered at the loss he always felt when venturing into a vista, the way the vastness narrowed down to the immediate; the sudden insistence of details near to hand. There had been a time, a generation or so back, when the city’s artists had taken to the countryside, to paint landscapes, and to Rise Herat’s mind these paintings achieved what reality could not. A promise of depth and distance, yet one in which the promise remained sacred, for neither depth nor distance could be explored. To draw closer was to see only the brush strokes and dried paint upon the board; and with them the surrendering of the illusion.

Details cluttered the mortal mind, blinded it to the broader sweeps of history. He’d thought to reach this observation in his lesson with Legyl. It might have been, he now considered, that she was still rather too young for such concepts. But then, it was equally likely that age had little to do with comprehension. He need only descend the tower and plunge into the frantic world of the court to witness the same obsessions with detail and immediacy that sent Legyl Behust scurrying this way and that. If anything, he was, in making the comparison, being unkind to the child.

No matter. Thoughts unspoken left no scars upon others. The fate of the inner landscape of the one doing the thinking was, of course, entirely different. This was the procession, he knew, of the failing mind, and in that failure was found a place where many unspoken thoughts came to rest; and it was a place of prejudice, hatred and ignorance.

That said, he knew that he was a poor teacher. He wove his histories as if they were inventions, disconnected and not relevant. Worse, he preferred the sweeping wash of colour to obsessive detail, ineffable feeling over intense analysis, possibility over probability; he was, by any measure, a dreadful historian.

He could see a shadow upon the city below, not thrown down by the smoke; nor did it come from a cloud as the sky was clear. This was Mother Dark’s indrawn breath, stealing the light from the world. What, he wondered, did she do with it? Was it as the priestesses said? Did she devour it, feed upon it? When light goes, where does it go?

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More rumours, more agitation to rush up and down the hallways of the Citadel. The sanctuary of the Old Tower was Rise Herat’s place of strength amidst all this nonsense. Instead, he found himself left in charge of a girl he saw as almost feral and possibly simple-minded, so vast the temple’s neglect. Ever passed on to the next, scores of teachers and no lessons ever returned to, Legyl’s was an education of fragments, delivered in haste and out from airs of distraction. When he had looked down at her, however, he had seen sure intelligence in the large eyes staring back up at him.

As the court historian, he decided that history would be the lesson he delivered. Such ambitions proved short-lived, as her breathless scatter of comments and observations left him confused. She listened to his words as one might listen to a songbird in the garden, a pleasant drone in the background. Whatever she took in seemed randomly selected; but perhaps it was that way with all children. He rarely had any contact with them, and generally preferred it that way.

Rise looked out over Kharkanas. Thin smoke drifted above the cityscape, not yet lifting to the height of the tower. It softened all that lay beneath it, and he wondered at the loss he always felt when venturing into a vista, the way the vastness narrowed down to the immediate; the sudden insistence of details near to hand. There had been a time, a generation or so back, when the city’s artists had taken to the countryside, to paint landscapes, and to Rise Herat’s mind these paintings achieved what reality could not. A promise of depth and distance, yet one in which the promise remained sacred, for neither depth nor distance could be explored. To draw closer was to see only the brush strokes and dried paint upon the board; and with them the surrendering of the illusion.

Details cluttered the mortal mind, blinded it to the broader sweeps of history. He’d thought to reach this observation in his lesson with Legyl. It might have been, he now considered, that she was still rather too young for such concepts. But then, it was equally likely that age had little to do with comprehension. He need only descend the tower and plunge into the frantic world of the court to witness the same obsessions with detail and immediacy that sent Legyl Behust scurrying this way and that. If anything, he was, in making the comparison, being unkind to the child.

No matter. Thoughts unspoken left no scars upon others. The fate of the inner landscape of the one doing the thinking was, of course, entirely different. This was the procession, he knew, of the failing mind, and in that failure was found a place where many unspoken thoughts came to rest; and it was a place of prejudice, hatred and ignorance.

That said, he knew that he was a poor teacher. He wove his histories as if they were inventions, disconnected and not relevant. Worse, he preferred the sweeping wash of colour to obsessive detail, ineffable feeling over intense analysis, possibility over probability; he was, by any measure, a dreadful historian.

He could see a shadow upon the city below, not thrown down by the smoke; nor did it come from a cloud as the sky was clear. This was Mother Dark’s indrawn breath, stealing the light from the world. What, he wondered, did she do with it? Was it as the priestesses said? Did she devour it, feed upon it? When light goes, where does it go?

The landscape painters of old became obsessed with light, and reputedly that obsession drove many of them mad. But surely it was much worse if all light was stolen away. His thoughts turned to Kadaspala, the finest of all portrait artists — was it any wonder that he lived beneath a cloud of fear and flung his rage at the world? The priestesses promised gifts with the coming of darkness, and that none would be blind within it. Such gifts came from sorcery and so they were never free. Rise wondered at the cost awaiting them all.

He heard scrabbling from the stairs and turned to see Cedorpul climbing into view. The young priest was out of breath, his round face and round body seeming to bob loosely, as if filled with air. Behind him, as he stepped on to the platform, another figure loomed into view.

Cedorpul looked round. ‘She’s not here? Where is she?’

‘In her room. Playing.’

‘Abdication of responsibilities!’

Rise Herat tilted his head to one side. ‘My very thoughts when you left her with me, Cedorpul.’

The priest waved a hand and then spent a moment straightening his stained tunic. ‘These matters are beneath argument. Her whereabouts are known: that is all that is relevant here.’

The other priest edged past Cedorpul and stood looking out over the city.

‘Endest Silann,’ Rise said to him, ‘tell me what you see?’

‘It is less what I see than what I feel, historian.’