Forge of Darkness (The Kharkanas Trilogy 1)

In the world of night promised by Mother Dark, so much would remain for ever unseen. He began to wonder if that would be a mercy. He began to wonder if this was the secret of her promised blessing to all her believers, her children. Darkness now and for evermore. So we can get on with things.

A score or more horses had taken the trail he was now on. The killers were moving westward. He might well meet them if they had camped to rest from their night of slaughter. They might well murder him, or just feed him.

Kadaspala did not care. He had ten thousand faces in his head, and they were all the same. The memory of Enesdia seemed far away now. If he was spared, he would ride for her, desperate with need. For the beauty he dared not paint, for the love he dared not confess. She was where the gods of colour gathered all the glory in their possession. She was where he would find the rebirth of his faith.

Every artist was haunted by lies. Every artist fought to find truths. Every artist failed. Some turned back, embracing those comforting lies. Others took their own lives in despair. Still others drank themselves into the barrow, or poisoned everyone who drew near enough to touch, to wound. Some simply gave up, and wasted away in obscurity. A few discovered their own mediocrity, and this was the cruellest discovery of all. None found their way to the truths.

If he lived a handful of breaths from this moment, or if he lived a hundred thousand years, he would fight — for something, a truth, that he could not even name. It was, perhaps, the god behind the gods of colour. The god that offered both creation and recognition, that set forth the laws of substance and comprehension, of outside and inside and the difference between the two.

He wanted to meet that god. He wanted a word or two with that god. He wanted, above all, to look into its eyes, and see in them the truth of madness.

With brush and desire, I will make a god.

Watch me.

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In the world of night promised by Mother Dark, so much would remain for ever unseen. He began to wonder if that would be a mercy. He began to wonder if this was the secret of her promised blessing to all her believers, her children. Darkness now and for evermore. So we can get on with things.

A score or more horses had taken the trail he was now on. The killers were moving westward. He might well meet them if they had camped to rest from their night of slaughter. They might well murder him, or just feed him.

Kadaspala did not care. He had ten thousand faces in his head, and they were all the same. The memory of Enesdia seemed far away now. If he was spared, he would ride for her, desperate with need. For the beauty he dared not paint, for the love he dared not confess. She was where the gods of colour gathered all the glory in their possession. She was where he would find the rebirth of his faith.

Every artist was haunted by lies. Every artist fought to find truths. Every artist failed. Some turned back, embracing those comforting lies. Others took their own lives in despair. Still others drank themselves into the barrow, or poisoned everyone who drew near enough to touch, to wound. Some simply gave up, and wasted away in obscurity. A few discovered their own mediocrity, and this was the cruellest discovery of all. None found their way to the truths.

If he lived a handful of breaths from this moment, or if he lived a hundred thousand years, he would fight — for something, a truth, that he could not even name. It was, perhaps, the god behind the gods of colour. The god that offered both creation and recognition, that set forth the laws of substance and comprehension, of outside and inside and the difference between the two.

He wanted to meet that god. He wanted a word or two with that god. He wanted, above all, to look into its eyes, and see in them the truth of madness.

With brush and desire, I will make a god.

Watch me.

But in this moment, as he rode through swords of light and shrouds of shadow, upon the trail of blind savagery, Kadaspala was himself like a man without eyes. The painted face was everywhere. His fingers could not stop painting it, in the air, like mystical conjurations, like evocations of unseen powers, like a warlock’s curse and a witch’s warding against evil. Fingers that could close wounds at a stroke, that could unravel the bound knots of time and make anew a world still thriving with possibilities — that could do all these things, yet tracked on in their small scribings, trapped by a face of death.

Because the god behind the gods was mad.

I shall paint the face of darkness. I shall ride the dead down the throat of that damned god. I, Kadaspala, now avow this: world, I am at war with you. Outside — you, outside, hear me! The inside shall be unleashed. Unleashed.

I shall paint the face of darkness. And give it a dead child’s eyes.

Because in darkness, we see nothing.

In darkness, behold, there is peace.

Narad’s fingers brushed the unfamiliar lines of his own face, the places that had twisted or sagged. Haral’s fists had done more than bruise and cut. They had broken nerves. He had looked upon his face reflected in a forest pool, and barely recognized it. The swelling was gone, bones mending as best they could, and most of the vision had returned to his left eye, but now he bore another man’s visage, thickened and pulled down, stretched and dented.

He had known Haral’s history. He had known that the bastard had lost his family in the wars, and that there was a cauldron of rage bubbling and popping somewhere inside the man. But for all that, Narad had been unable to stop himself, and finally — the day with that highborn runt — all of his verbal jabs and prods had pushed the caravan captain too far. It wasn’t hard to remember the look in Haral’s face, in the instant before he struck, the raw pleasure in the man’s eyes — as though a door had been thrown open and all the fists of his anger could now come flying out.

There was plenty of anger among the Tiste, swirling and on occasion rising up to drown sorrow, to overwhelm what was needed to just get along. Or maybe it was a force that existed in everyone, like a treasure hoard of every humiliation suffered in a lifetime of broken dreams and disappointments, a treasure hoard, a chest, with a flimsy lock.

Narad was an ugly man now, and he would think like an ugly man, but one still strong enough to keep sorrow’s head down, beneath the surface, and find satisfaction each and every time he drowned it. He wasn’t interested in a soft world any more, a world where tenderness and warmth were possible, rising like bright flowers from beds of skeletal lichen and sun-burnt moss. He needed to keep reminding himself of all of that.

He sat listening to the conversations in the camp around him, the words coming from those gathered round the fire, or outside the tents. Jests and complaints about the damp ground, the fire’s wayward but vengeful smoke. And he could hear, in rasping susurration, iron blades sliding on whetstones, as nicks were worked out and blunt edges honed sharp once again. Narad was among soldiers, true soldiers, and their work was hard and unpleasant, and he now counted himself one of them.