Fall of Light (The Kharkanas Trilogy 2)

But the one who waits behind him, he is Tiste. Andii.

The huge stranger halted before Narad. ‘Forgive me this,’ he said in a low, rumbling voice. ‘There is heat in the earth beneath us. It burns fiercest beneath your feet.’ He paused and tilted his head. ‘If it eases you, consider my friend and me as … moths.’

The others in the camp had awakened, were sitting up, but otherwise not moving. All eyes were fixed upon Glyph, who had risen and was joining Narad.

The stranger bowed to Glyph. ‘Denier, will you welcome us to your camp?’

‘It is not for me,’ Glyph replied. ‘I am the bow bent to the arrow. In this matter, Azathanai, Yedan Narad speaks for us.’

Narad started. ‘I’ve not earned any such privilege, Glyph!’

‘This time of night belongs to you,’ Glyph replied. ‘This is not where you stand, but when.’

Narad returned his attention to the stranger. Azathanai! ‘You are not our enemy,’ he said slowly, flinching at the faint question in his tone. ‘But the one behind you – is he a Legion soldier?’

‘No,’ the Azathanai replied. ‘He is Lord Anomander Rake, First Son of Darkness.’

Oh.

The lord then stepped forward, his attention fixed, not on Narad, but on Glyph. ‘We need not linger, if welcome is not offered. Denier, my brother haunts this forest. I would find him.’

Narad staggered back, his knees suddenly weak. A moment later he sank down on to his knees as the words of the evening just past returned to him.

‘Coming from where?’

‘From a holy shrine. From an altar black with old blood.’

He felt a hand upon his shoulder, a grip both soft and yet solid. With his own hands he had been clawing at his face, but now all strength left him, and they fell away, leaving him nowhere to hide. Shivering, eyes bleakly fixed on the ground before him, he listened to the storm in his skull, but it was a roar without words.

‘We know him,’ Glyph replied. ‘Look north.’

But the Azathanai spoke then. ‘Anomander, we’re not done yet here.’

‘We are,’ the Son of Darkness replied. ‘We walk north, Caladan. Unless this Denier lies.’

‘Oh, I doubt that,’ Caladan replied. ‘Still, we are not done yet. Bent Bow, your Watch suffers some unknown anguish. Does he refuse us welcome? If he does, then we must quit this forest—’

‘No!’ snapped Lord Anomander. ‘That we shall not do, Caladan. Look at this … this Yedan. He is not one of the forest dwellers. He bears a Legion sword, for Abyss’s sake. More likely we have stumbled into one of Urusander’s famous bandits – his very reason for invading the forest. I can now imagine them as godless as Urusander’s own, and a pact forged between the two.’

Narad closed his eyes.

‘A fine theory,’ Caladan said, ‘but, alas, utter nonsense. My lord, understand me – we walk lightly here, or not at all. We will await the word of the Watch, no matter how long it takes.’

‘Your advice confounds,’ Anomander said in a growl. ‘It is of a kind with all that now crowds me.’

‘Not the advice that confounds, lord, but the will that resists it.’

The hand on Narad’s shoulder was not a man’s hand. For this reason alone, he dared not open his eyes. Welcome to these two? How can I, without uttering the confession that now struggles to win free? Brother of the husband to be, I was the last to rape your brother’s would-be wife. I alone saw the light leave her eyes. Will you give me leave, good sir, to seek redress?

When Glyph spoke, his voice came from a few strides away, ‘His torment is not for you, Azathanai. Nor for you, Lord Anomander. Dreams make the path to waking, for the time of the Watch. We know nothing of that world. Only that its shaping is given form by anguished hands. And one of you, Azathanai or lord, now rattles that thing in his soul.’

‘Then name our crimes,’ Anomander said. ‘For myself, I will face them, and deny nothing that I have done.’

Narad lifted his head, but refused to open his eyes. Ah, this. ‘Azathanai,’ he said. ‘You are welcome here.’

Hunters now stirred, rising on all sides, taking hold of weapons.

Anomander said, ‘So I am denied, then.’