Fall of Light (The Kharkanas Trilogy 2)

* * *

Using one of the braziers, Arathan brewed tea. Gothos sat at his desk, but had turned the chair to one side in order to stretch out his legs. His hands rested now on his thighs. The tapping was done, and the fingers were curled as if waiting for something to grasp. His face was a clash of shadows. The sun outside was sinking, the light withdrawing as if inhaled, to mark the fiery orb’s dying gasp, and shadows flowed out from between abandoned buildings, spilling in through the doorway.

Readying two cups, Arathan rose and brought one over to the Lord of Hate.

‘On the desk, if you will,’ Gothos said in a low rumble.

‘You eschewed the wine,’ Arathan said, setting the cup down and returning to his place beside the brazier. He thought to add something more, but nothing came to mind. Instead, he said, ‘I feel filled with words, lord, and still, I can think only of my father. And the Azathanai blood within me.’

Gothos made a gesture of dismissal. ‘Blood is not an honorific. You cannot choose your family, Arathan. When the moment comes, and by honour and by love you must face the choice, meet his eye and call him friend.’

‘Friend?’ Arathan considered that for a moment, and then shook his head. ‘I see nothing between us to suggest friendship.’

‘Because you are incomplete, Arathan. Oh, very well, a lesson then, long overdue. I am rarely loquacious, so pay attention. I do not challenge the acuity of your observations, or your thoughts, such as you reveal to any of us. Among kin, we are one in a most familiar crowd, defined by how each family member sees us, and the manner in which they see us was carved out long ago, in childhood. Theirs, yours. These are strictures, confining, resisting change. True, you may find friends among siblings, or even think of an aunt, or an uncle, in such a manner. But they are all simulacra. A family is a gathering of blood-kin wielding fists. Attacking, defending, or simply determined to make space amidst the tumult.’

Arathan thought back on what little he knew of his own kin. The half-sisters who seemed chained to childhood, who had flitted through his life like vicious afterthoughts. The father who had ignored him for most of Arathan’s existence, only to drag him to the forefront of a journey undertaken in the name of gifts, and who in the end made of Arathan himself a gift.

Had Raskan been a friend? Rind? Feren?

After a time, he grunted and said, ‘My horses proved loyal.’

Gothos snorted a laugh, and then reached for the cup. He sniffed at it, sipped, and then said, ‘This, then, is friendship. A family you choose. What you give to it, you give freely. What you withhold from it, measures its depth. There are those who know only distant relations – associates, if you will. Then there are those who would embrace even a stranger, should that stranger venture a smile or nod. In each instance described, we see facets of fear. The dog that growls should anyone come near. The dog that lies on its back and exposes its throat, surrendering to anyone, with begging eyes and a demeanour made helpless.’

‘You describe extremes, lord. There must be other kinds, healthier kinds.’

‘I would first describe the ones that damage, Arathan, so that you may begin to eliminate past experiences, insofar as friendship is concerned.’

Sighing, Arathan said, ‘I have but few experiences as it stands, lord, and would rather not see them savaged.’

‘Better to defend your delusions, then?’

‘Comforts are rare enough.’

‘You will come upon those who exude life, who burn bright. In their company, how are you to be? Proud to name them friend? Pleased to bask in their fire? Or, in the name of need, will you simply devour all that they offer, like a force of darkness swallowing light, warmth, life itself? Will you make yourself a rocky island, black and gnarled, a place of cold caves and littered bones? The bright waves do not soothe your shores, but crash instead, explode in a fury of foam and spray. And you drink in every swirl, sucked down into your caves, your bottomless caverns.

‘I do not describe a transitory mood. Not a temporary disposition, brought on by external woes. What I describe, in fashioning this island soul, so bleak and forbidding, is a place made too precious to be surrendered, too stolid to be dismantled. This island I give you, this soul in particular, is a fortress of need, a maw that knows only how to ease its eternal hunger. Within its twisted self, no true friend is acknowledged and no love is honest in its exchange. The self stands alone, inviolate as a god, but a besieged god … forever besieged.’ Gothos leaned forward, studied Arathan with glittering eyes. ‘Oddly, those who burn bright are often drawn to such islands, such souls. As friends. As lovers. They imagine they can offer salvation, a sharing of warmth, of love, even. And in contrast, they see in themselves something to offer their forlorn companion, who huddles and hides, who gives occasion to rail and loose venom. The life within them feels so vast! So welcoming! Surely there is enough to share! And so, by giving – and giving – they are themselves appeased, and made to feel w

orthwhile. For a time.

‘But this is no healthy exchange, though it might at first seem so – after all, the act of giving will itself yield a kind of euphoria, a drunkenness of generosity, not to mention the salve of protectiveness, of paternal regard.’ Gothos leaned back again, drank more from the cup in his hands, and closed his eyes. ‘The island is unchanging. Bones and corpses lie upon its wrack on all sides.’

Arathan licked dry lips. ‘She was not like that,’ he whispered.

Shrugging, Gothos turned his head, to study the dull frozen fog on the window above the desk. ‘I do not know whom you mean, Arathan. When you find a true friend, you will know it. There may be challenges in that relationship, but for all that, it thrives on mutual respect, and honours the virtues exchanged. You need no fists to make a space for yourself. No one clings to your shadow – even as they grow to despise that shadow, and the one who so boldly casts it. Your feelings are not objects to be manipulated, with cold intent or emotion’s blind, unreasoning heat. You are heard. You are heeded. You are challenged, and so made better. This is not a tie that exhausts, nor one that forces your senses to unnatural extremes of acuity. You are not to be tugged or prodded, and your gifts – of wit and charm – are not to be denigrated for the attentions they earn. Arathan, one day you may come to call your father a friend. But I tell you this, I believe he already sees you as one.’

‘What gives you reason to so defend him, lord?’

‘I do not defend Draconus, Arathan. I speak in defence of his son’s future. As does a friend, when the necessity arises.’

The admission silenced Arathan. And yet, is he not the Lord of Hate? From where, then, this loving gift?

Gothos reached out and ran his fingers, splayed out, down the icerimed glass of the window. ‘The notion of hatred,’ he said as if catching Arathan’s thoughts, ‘is easily misapplied. One must ask: what is it that this man hates? Is it joy? Hope? Love? Or is it, perhaps, the cruelty by which so many of us live, the unworthy thoughts, the revel of base emotions, the sheer stupidity that sends a civilization lurching onward, step by step into self-destruction? Arathan, you are here, far away from the Tiste civil war, and I am glad for that. So too, I suspect, is your father.’

The shadows stole into the chamber, barring the strange bars of the sun’s last light, streaming in through the streaks the lord’s fingers had left behind on the glass.

Arathan drank the tea and found it surprisingly sweet.

* * *