Forge of Darkness (The Kharkanas Trilogy 1)

His gods were colours, but he knew them not. They bore heady emotions and before them, in moments of weakness or vulnerability, he would reel, or cry out, seeking to turn away. But their calls would bring him back, helpless, a soul on its knees. At times he could taste them, or feel their heat upon his skin. At times he could smell them, redolent with promise and quick to steal from his memories, and so claim those memories for their own. So abject had his worship become that he now saw himself in colours — the landscape of his mind, the surge and ebb of emotions, the meaningless cascades behind the lids of his eyes when shut against the outside world; he knew the blues, purples, greens and reds of his blood; he knew the flushed pink of his bones, with their carmine cores; he knew the sunset hues of his muscles, the silvered lakes and fungal mottling of his organs. He saw flowers in human skin and could smell their perfumes, or, at times, the musty readiness of desire — that yearn to touch and to feel.

The gods of colour came in lovemaking. They came in the violence of war and the butchering of animals, in the cutting down of wheat. They came in the moment of birth and in the wonder of childhood — was it not said that newborn babies saw naught but colours? They came in the muted tones of grief, in the convulsions of pain and injury and disease. They came in the fires of rage, the gelid grip of fear — and all that they touched they then stained, for all time.

There was but one place and one time when the gods of colour withdrew, vanished from the ken of mortals, and that place, that time, was death.

Kadaspala worshipped colour. It was the gift of light; and in its tones, heavy and light, faint and rich, was painted all of life.

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His gods were colours, but he knew them not. They bore heady emotions and before them, in moments of weakness or vulnerability, he would reel, or cry out, seeking to turn away. But their calls would bring him back, helpless, a soul on its knees. At times he could taste them, or feel their heat upon his skin. At times he could smell them, redolent with promise and quick to steal from his memories, and so claim those memories for their own. So abject had his worship become that he now saw himself in colours — the landscape of his mind, the surge and ebb of emotions, the meaningless cascades behind the lids of his eyes when shut against the outside world; he knew the blues, purples, greens and reds of his blood; he knew the flushed pink of his bones, with their carmine cores; he knew the sunset hues of his muscles, the silvered lakes and fungal mottling of his organs. He saw flowers in human skin and could smell their perfumes, or, at times, the musty readiness of desire — that yearn to touch and to feel.

The gods of colour came in lovemaking. They came in the violence of war and the butchering of animals, in the cutting down of wheat. They came in the moment of birth and in the wonder of childhood — was it not said that newborn babies saw naught but colours? They came in the muted tones of grief, in the convulsions of pain and injury and disease. They came in the fires of rage, the gelid grip of fear — and all that they touched they then stained, for all time.

There was but one place and one time when the gods of colour withdrew, vanished from the ken of mortals, and that place, that time, was death.

Kadaspala worshipped colour. It was the gift of light; and in its tones, heavy and light, faint and rich, was painted all of life.

When he thought of an insensate world, made of insensate things, he saw a world of death, a realm of incalculable loss, and that was a place to fear. Without eyes to see and without a mind to make order out of chaos, and so bring comprehension, such a world was where the gods went to die. Nothing witnessed, and so nothing renewed. Nothing seen, and so nothing found. Nothing outside, and so nothing inside.

It was midday. He rode through a forest, where on all sides the sun’s light fought its way down to the ground, touching faint here, bold there. Its gifts were brush-strokes of colour. He had a habit of subtly painting with the fingers of his right hand, making small caresses in the air — he needed no brush; he needed only his eyes and his mind and the imagination conjured in the space between them. He made shapes with deft twitches of those fingers, and then filled them with sweet colour — and each one was a prayer, an offering to his gods, proof of his love, his loyalty. If others saw the motions at the end of his right hand, they no doubt thought them twitches, some locked-in pattern of confused nerves. But the truth was, those fingers painted reality, and for all Kadaspala knew, they gave proof to all that he saw and all that existed to be seen.

He understood why death and stillness were bound together. In stillness the inside was silent. The living conversation was at an end. Fingers did not move, the world was not painted into life, and the eyes, staring unseen, had lost sight of the gods of colour. When looking upon the face of a dead person, when looking into those flat eyes, he could see the truth of his convictions.

It was midday. The sun fought its way down and the gods fluttered, dipped and filled patches of brilliance amidst gloom and shadow, and Kadaspala sat on his mule, noting in a distracted fashion the thin wisps of smoke curling round his mount’s knobby ankles, but most of his attention was upon the face, and the eyes, of the corpse laid out on the ground before him.

There had been three huts on this narrow trail. Now they were heaps of ash, muddy grey and dull white and smeared black. One of the huts had belonged to a daughter, old enough to fashion a home of her own, but if she had shared it with a husband his body was nowhere to be seen, while she was lying half out of what had probably been the doorway. The fire had eaten her lower body and swollen the rest, cooking it until the skin split and here the gods sat still, as if in shock, in slivers of lurid red and patches of peeled black. Her long hair had been thrown forward, over the top of her head. Parts of it had burned, curling into fragile white nests. The rest was motionless midnight, with hints of reflected blue, like rainbows on oil. She was, mercifully, lying face down. One rupture upon her back was different, larger, and where the others had burst outward this one pushed inward. A sword had done that.

The body directly before him, however, was that of a child. The blue of the eyes was now covered in a milky film, giving it its only depth, since all that was behind that veil was flat, like iron shields or silver coins, sealed and deprived of all promise. They were, he told himself yet again, eyes that no longer worked, and the loss of that was beyond comprehension.