I am one of those things, he thought, turning the Helm in his hands. Broken beyond repair. Abandoned and bereft, cast out by those who once loved me.
And so thinking, he set about tuning its darkness to his own despair.
In it he placed his abiding frustration at his Elder Brother’s stubborn pride, and his own hatred of the role he had been condemned to play. He placed into it his anguish at his siblings’ betrayal, shaded with profound sorrow and honed keen with rage—for they had all betrayed him, all of them. He gave Shape to his own self-loathing, to the memory of futile defiance, to that moment, that terrible moment, when the world was Sundered and the seas rushed into the chasm, and he knew himself defeated and alone.
Of helpless torment he Shaped it, of the memory of crawling upon the heaving earth, clutching at it in his pain while the long arm of his brother’s wrath pursued, shifting the very sun until his skin blackened and cracked, and he was forced, bellowing, to flee once more. Of countless days and nights of bitter convalescence he Shaped it, of the awareness of his lost Gift and the dire knowledge that he was maimed beyond repair, that his name had become a curse on the lips of his brother’s Children. He Shaped it of sheer loathing at the cowardice of his Elder Brother, who dared not cross the Sundering Sea, but worked ever at a distance.
Of the grief at all fair things lost, he Shaped it, and the bittersweet pleasures he found to fill their place—of vengeance and rancorous triumph, of the dawning knowledge that he was well and truly abandoned, a rebel Shaper casting a threatening shadow over his siblings’ dearest labors. Of a faint, desperate thread of hope, he Shaped it; and the sure knowledge that hope was doomed.
Of searing pain he Shaped it, of impotent fury, of the remorseless agony of his wounded flesh, of the slow drip of ichor that bled from his wound, of the slow drip of malice that poisoned his heart, fed by generation upon generation of hatred endured.
Of unflinching truth, he Shaped it.
When it was done, he donned the Helm of Shadows and gazed through the eye-slits of his own dark vision, gazing across the land and hoarding his dwindling energies to peer into the hearts and minds of all living beings blessed with his Elder Brother’s Gift of thought; for yes, oh yes, that had been his brother’s Gift, in all the mingled curse and blessing it entailed.
Somewhere, in the far reaches of the Sundered World, there must be others who shared the pain of betrayal, who understood what it was to rage against an unfair destiny. Mortals, it was true, with brief, flickering lives—but with Godslayer to hand, it need not be so.
Three emissaries his Elder Brother had sent to destroy him. He would summon three of his own; comrades, commanders, keepers of his citadel.
He would find them.
He would make them his.
He would make them immortal.
ONE
Tanaros walked down the hallway, black marble echoing under his bootheels.
It was like an unlit mirror, that floor, polished to a high gleam. The archways were vast, not built to a human scale. All along the walls the marrow-fire burned, delicate veins of blue-white against all that shining blackness. In both, his reflection was blurred and distorted. There was Tanaros; there, and there and there.
A pale brow, furrowed. A lock of dark hair falling, so.
Capable hands.
And a stern mouth, its soft words of love long since betrayed.
It had been a long time, a very long time, since Tanaros had thought of such matters, of the sum total the pieced-together fragments of his being made; nor did he think of them now, for his Lord’s summons burned like a beacon in his mind. And beneath his attire, beneath the enameled armor that sheltered him, his branding burned like marrow-fire on his flesh, white-hot and cold as ice, throbbing as his heart beat, and piercing.
So it was, for the Three.
“Guardsman,” he said in greeting.
“General Tanaros, sir.” The Havenguard Fjeltroll on duty grinned, showing his eyetusks. His weapons hung about him like boulders on the verge of avalanche; he hoisted one, a sharp-pointed mace, in salute as he stood aside. Beyond him, the entrance to the tower stair yawned like an open mouth. “His Lordship awaits you in the observatory.”
“Krognar,” Tanaros said, remembering his name. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure, Lord General.” The Fjeltroll saluted again.
It was a long way to the observatory, to the very top of the utmost tower of Darkhaven. Tanaros climbed it step by step, feeling his heartbeat increasing as he labored. A mortal heart, circumscribed by the silvered scar of his branding. When all was said and done, he was a Man, nothing more. It was his Lordship who had made him one of the Three, and deathless. He heard his breath labor, in and out. Mortal lungs, circulating blood. How long had they been at that task? It had been a thousand years and more since Tanaros had answered his Lord’s first summons, his hands red with the lifeblood of one he had once loved, his heart filled with rage and anguish.
It felt longer.
He wondered, briefly, how Vorax made the long climb.
Darkness spiraling on darkness. Broad steps, wrought by Fjeltroll, made to endure their broad, horny feet. Tanaros reached out, touching the spiraling wall of the tower, fingers trailing. It should have burned, the marrow-fire; it did burn, but faintly. Here the veins branched and branched again, growing ever thinner and fainter as the tower thrust upward into the darkness.
It was always dark here.
Tanaros paused in the entrance to the observatory, letting his eyes adjust. Dark. It was always dark. Even the windows opened onto darkness, and the night sky. There, the stars, that never shone in cloud-blotted daylight.
“My Lord.” He bowed, crisp and correct, as he had bowed for centuries on end.
“Tanaros.” The voice rumbled, deep as mountains; it soothed, easing his joints, loosening the stiffness of centuries, of honor betrayed and never forgotten. It always had. In the darkness, the Shaper was silhouetted in the windows of night, vast shoulders occluding the stars. A pair of eyes glinted like crimson embers. “You have come.”
Tanaros took a breath, feeling his lungs loosen. “Always, my Lord Satoris.”
“It is well.”
In a carven chair in the corner sat Vorax, his thick legs akimbo, fanning himself and breathing hard. Long ago he had been a lord of the race of Men, dwelling in the cool clime of Staccia, far to the north. Gluttony, greed and a ruthless pragmatism had moved him to answer the Shaper’s summons, becoming one of the immortal Three. He grinned at Tanaros from where he sprawled, his beard fanning over his massive chest. “Grave doings, cousin! Is it not so?”
“If you say so, cousin.” Tanaros did not sit in his Lord’s presence. Long ago, he had stood vigilant in the presence of his King as he stood now, in the presence of one far greater. Loyalties changed; protocol did not. He inclined his head in deference. “We await the Dreamspinner, my Lord?”
“Yes.” His Lord turned to the westernmost window, gazing out at the night. “Tell me, Tanaros. What do you see, thence?”
He made his way to his Lord’s side. It was like standing beside a stoked forge, the might of the Shaper beating against his skin in waves. In the air a scent, coppery and sweet, like fresh-spilled blood, only stronger. “Where, my Lord?”
“There.” Satoris pointed to the west, the line of his arm unerring.
It could not be otherwise, of course, for westward lay Torath and the Souma, the Eye in the Brow of Uru-Alat—and Lord Satoris was a Shaper. Though his brethren had cast him out, though their allies reviled him and called him Sunderer, Banewreaker and Prince of Lies, he was a Shaper. Day or night, above the earth or below it, he knew where the Souma lay.