Fall of Light (The Kharkanas Trilogy 2)

A MAN WITHOUT DAUGHTERS, SHARENAS ANKHADU REFLECTED as she studied her commander, knew little of subtlety. Vatha Urusander faced south, his back to the keep’s outer wall, the detritus from the chute leading from the kitchen heaped behind him, at the base of a wedge-shaped stain on the stone wall. He stood with his boots in scraps of rubbish. Knucklebones blushed pink, tubers black with rot, broken pottery, peels and lumps of fat too rancid to burn. Despite the late afternoon’s bitter cold, steam rose from that mound like the smoke from some hidden peat fire. There was, she decided, fecundity in what rotted, but hardly the appetizing kind.

In her absence, the list of the slain had grown. Curious, for a war as yet undeclared. She eyed her commander, wondering if she knew him at all. Aching from the long ride, she waited at a distance, her clothes spattered with mud, her hands quickly growing numb with cold beneath the soaked-through leather riding gloves.

Winter was the season of isolation. Worlds closed in, crowded up one against another. Trapped in such confines, surrounded by forbidding cold and frozen land, one could obsess on what was still to come, speaking heated words, making the season of spring into a promise of fire. She had ridden far in her exploration of the realm, through bleak wastelands, scorched forests, winding through hills silvered by snow and frost. And like anything coming in from the cold, she was rarely made a welcome guest. It did not take an ice-locked keep to forge solitude. Winter’s isolation belonged as much to the mind as to the world outside it.

A painter of portraits would grin at the image before her now, in that cruel, superior way of artists who saw all that they needed to see. Complexity was confusion more often than not, while clarity could gift one with simplicity. In any case, the backside of a fortress was sordid enough in its mundane truths. Gatehouses, formal lanes and a bold façade all served what was required of them, elevating the titled few and their claims of privilege and wealth, and of course such edifices fronted the building, like a tapestry hiding a crumbling wall.

No different from men and women, then: buildings shit out a hole in their backside.

The notion made her think of Hunn Raal and his smile, the one he saved for the people he despised. Knowledge assembled secret hoards, and the man now leading the Legion in all but name was greed’s own tyrant these days. Worse, there was now something else about him, an emanation of sorts, beyond the usual rank wine staining his breath and souring his sweat. Sharenas wondered if she was alone in sensing that change – perhaps, simply, she had been gone too long.

Too long, and ill timed this departure. We went our separate ways, Kagamandra Tulas. You and I, so long ago now, it seems. Have you found your betrothed yet? Did you flinch, or did you stand in the manner of the man you would be? Kagamandra, I have come back to Neret Sorr, and I miss you.

When at last Urusander shifted his gaze and saw her, she noted his surprise. ‘Captain! I did not know you had returned to us.’

‘I have but just arrived, sir,’ she said.

She studied him as he approached. Like an apparition, he wore winter’s skin, white and vaguely translucent, as if clad in ice. The lines of his face were etched deep in the fading light. This transformation still startled her. The High Priestess Syntara names it purity. But I see a season of thought, the details of belief and conviction, all frozen in place. We are invited into sleep, drawn ever deeper into a world of extremes, where our hearts are locked.

Light yields no empathy. This is not the man I once knew.

Urusander said, ‘Tell me, I beg you, that Toras Redone has seen reason. I will not see a repeat of Lord Rend’s mad attack upon us, when we remain here, at peace.’

He hesitated then, and she could guess at the reason. He had ever been a reluctant commander, too severe for court politics, uncomfortable in the presence of the nobles of the Great Houses and their subtle, ambivalent ways. Nor was he a man known for being loquacious. But now, and here, there was little choice.

‘This is not how it was meant to be,’ he said. ‘If I did not move, it was with reason. If I chose to suspend judgement, I had good cause. Sharenas, we are not as we once were.’ He gestured, indicating his face, and then studied his hand, as it hovered before him. ‘Not this. The High Priestess sees far too much in such mundane attire. No, what has come to us – to us all – is a kind of ambiguity, as if our spirit has stumbled, suddenly lost.’ His gaze narrowed as he studied his bleached hand. ‘And yet, does this not invite the very opposite? The marks of faith?’ He glanced at her. ‘I am unchanged in that. She would call me Father Light, but that title is like a blow to the chest.’ Shaking his head, he looked away, letting his hand drop.

Father Light. High Priestess, have you no sense of irony? This father here has done poorly with his charges, true-born and adopted. Worse still, his soldiers run wild, like a family torn loose. He is father to thousands.

Commander, what will you do about your children?

‘Sir, Syntara would set you opposite, but equal, to Mother Dark. It is, I know, somewhat … simplistic. But perhaps that offers its own appeal.’

‘You cannot hold it in,’ he muttered, as if suddenly distracted. ‘Not for ever. No mortal has that capacity.’

‘Sir?’

His voice hardened. ‘Anger, Sharenas, is an unruly beast. We chain it daily, seeking the civil mien. Witness to injustices on all sides, appalled at the brazen abuse of that most basic notion of fairness, so arrogantly abrogated. And then, there is the effrontery. Indeed, humiliation. I would have walked away from it. You know that, Sharenas, don’t you?’

She nodded.

He went on. ‘But the beast broke free and now runs hard – but to where? Seeking what? Reparation or vengeance?’ He shifted to face south, as if he could somehow look upon the Citadel itself. ‘He painted what he saw, and now … now, Abyss take me, he sees nothing. By this terrible act of self-mutilation’ – he turned his head to meet her gaze – ‘did he make vow to the triumph of Dark? This is what I ask myself, again and again.’

Before me stands a man with too many thoughts and too few feelings. ‘Sir, Kadaspala was driven mad, by what he found, by what had been done to his sister and his father. There was no intent in what he did to himself, unless it was to claw out the anguish filling his head.’

After a moment, Urusander grunted, and his tone turned wry. ‘I lost grip on the chain and that beast is well beyond my reach now. I understand how it must seem, to Anomander, and to all the other highborn. Vatha Urusander waits in Neret Sorr, eager to begin the season of war.’

To that, she said nothing.

‘Sharenas, what word do you bring?’

What word? Well, an expected question, under the circumstances. Still … blessed Abyss, what island have I stumbled upon? What forbidding seas surround it? Was I alone

in riding into the face of winter, looking upon freshly made barrows? Here you stand, seeking word of the outside world. Your island, sir, is lost on every map. Kadaspala? Forget that fool! We now gather with all swords drawn! Urusander, how do I venture close? ‘Sir, Commander Toras Redone is presently indisposed. Broken, I am told, by grief.’

The bleached visage before her revealed no hint of subterfuge as he frowned. ‘I do not understand. Has she lost a dear one, then?’

Sharenas hesitated. This was not a challenge to her courage – she would speak the truth here, as befitted Urusander’s most loyal captain. But this man’s innocence frightened her – an innocence, it seems, won in the slipping free of a chain. I see less a father and more a child. Reborn, Syntara? Indeed, and it’s a cold, cold cradle. ‘Sir, it seems that Hunn Raal has told you little of his various missions across Kurald Galain. I but rode into his wake, sir, and made of it all I could glean, although, it must be said, I was rarely welcome.’