‘I need only their swords to cheer.’
‘Yes,’ Dathenar grunted, ‘there is that.’
A short time later, a score of crows winged out from the hills, and made their way overhead, seeking the distant trees. The two officers exchanged a look, but, for a change, neither spoke.
* * *
Flakes of snow drifted down from laden branches, carpeting the stone-lined track ahead, like the petals of fallen blossoms. Spring, however, seemed far away. The sound of his horse’s hoofs was sharp and solid, and yet Captain Kellaras heard little echo, as the snow-shrouded forest made for a muted world. This was one of the few remaining stretches of true wilderness left in the realm, spared the axe only by an ancient royal mandate, granted to an ancestor of House Tulla.
The night before, he had heard wolves, and their voices, rising so mournfully into the night, had stirred something primal within the captain, something he had not known existed. He pondered that experience now, as he let his horse choose its own pace on the slippery cobbles, and it seemed that his thoughts well matched his surroundings. Cloaked in strange isolation, where the only sounds he heard belonged to himself, his mount, and their journey.
Wilderness offered a curious solitude. The comforts of society were gone, and in their place, indifferent nature – but that indifference set forth a challenge to the spirit. It would be easy to choose to see it as cruel, and to then fear it, flee it, or destroy it. Even easier, perhaps, to surrender to animal instincts, to live or die by its own rules.
Long before villages, or towns, or cities, the wild forests were home to modest huddles of makeshift huts, to clans of family. Each camp no doubt commanded a vast range, since such forests were miserly in what they yielded. But by the hearth-fires alone, the wild was kept at bay, and in those flames, a war had begun.
It was not difficult to see the path of devastation made by that still ongoing war, and from the perspective of where he now rode, in this silent forest, it was a challenge to find virtue in the many monuments to victory with which his kind now surrounded itself. Keeps of stone and timber laid claim to the simplest needs, of shelter and warmth and security. Villages, towns and indeed cities gave purpose and protection to the gathered denizens, and the pursuit of convenience was a powerful motivator in all things. All of these creations were fashioned from the bones of nature, the slain corpses in this eternal war. In this manner, the victors did enclose themselves in what they had killed, be it tree or wild stone.
Surrounded by death, it was little wonder that they would sense virtually nothing of what lay beyond it. And yet, from nature’s bones the artists among the people would find and make things of great beauty, things that pleased the eye, with poetry of form and the peace of those forms rearranged in seeming balance. More to the point, Kellaras realized, so much of what was deemed pleasing, or satisfying, or indeed edifying, was but a simulacrum, a reinventing of what nature already possessed, far beyond the lifeless walls and tamed fields.
Was art, then, nothing more than a stumbling, half-blind journey back into the wilderness, with each path selected in groping isolation, endlessly rediscovering what should have been already known, reinventing what already existed, recreating the beauty of what had already been slain?
It would be a shock indeed, should an artist reach this revelation: comprehending the relationship of their art with murder, with generations of destruction, and with this long, long journey away from those first hearth-fires, in that first forest, when the enemy at hand was first glimpsed, like a spark in the mind, and from it was born the first fear. The first unknown.
If imagination’s birth had come from something as ignoble as fear, then, at last, Kellaras understood this eternal war. By a wilful twist of the mind, he could of course choose to be selective in what he saw, and what he felt, and, from those two forces in combination, in what he believed. A brightly gaze, then, to paint the world with the bliss of optimism, and every wonder crafted by the hand, whether mundane tool or glorious edifice, as symbols of the triumphant spirit. But each such pronouncement, no matter how bold the assertion, or how adamant the claim to virtue, was but a cry in the face of a deeper silence, a silence in which lurked a vague unease, a yearning for something else, something more.
Lift high gods and goddesses, if you will. Dream of exaltation, in what the altar bleeds, in what the fires burn, in what art we raise, in what industry we occupy our lives. Each is lifted into view from an ineffable need, a yearning, a hunger to fill some empty space inside.
Our spirits are not whole. Some crucial piece has been carved from them. If we go back, and back, to a forest such as this one, and make for ourselves an entire world of the same, we come to the silence, and the isolation, and the seed-ground of our every thought, beaten down, unlit and awaiting the season’s turn. We come to our beginning, before the walls, before the keeps and towers, with nothing but living wood encircling our precious glade.
In such a place, the gods and goddesses must step down from the high heavens, and kneel, with us, in humility.
But Kellaras was not so naïve as to imagine such a return. The rush and the conflagration of progress were demonic in their intensity. And we stake our lives in this fight for our place in things we ourselves invented. And in our new world, nature is indeed very far away.
Rounding a slow wend in the road, he caught his first glimpse of the outer wall of the Tulla estate. The past summer’s vines made a stark, chaotic latticework upon those walls, like withered veins and arteries drained of all life. The track straightened before a gateway, and beyond, centred amidst expansive grounds, rose the estate itself, built upon massive Azathanai foundation stones. Various outbuildings clustered to either side of the structure, including stables and a mill. Riding through the gateway, Kellaras saw the frozen sweep of a fishpond on his left, and three rows of leafless fruit-bearing trees on his right.
Even here, almost three days away from Kharkanas, the power of Mother Dark was visible, with shadows that belonged to an eclipse, and a pervasive glower to the day’s fractured light. Kellaras glanced again at the orchard, wondering at the fate of those trees. Perhaps in darkness, new trees will come, bearing fruit of another kind.
Or perhaps those trees, and the forest beyond, will simply die.
Still, it was curious that no such die-back had yet occurred, even within Kharkanas itself. As if plants sensed nothing of light’s loss; as if they held to an older, brighter world. Was that yet another front of the selfsame war? Or was Mother Dark’s sorcery a gift given solely to the Tiste? He wondered if the Azathanai perceived the dying light. He would have to ask Grizzin Farl. And if not? Will it mean that we are all subject to an illusion, our very minds under manipulation by Mother Dark?
More and more, this faith tastes sour. Mother, is this your darkness upon my mind, stealing away what others can rightly see? And, in surrendering thus to your will, what else must we yield? It is said believers are selective in what they see of the world – do you announce this with blatant metaphor made real? And if so, what is your point?
Two figures appeared from near the stables. Kellaras angled his mount and rode towards them.
Gripp Galas wore but the thinnest hide, and steam rose from his shoulders, his thinning hair stringy with sweat. Beside him, Lady Hish Tulla stood with furs wrapped about her form.
Kellaras reined in before them. ‘Have the servants all fled, then, milady?’
‘The house staff remain,’ she replied, eyeing him levelly. ‘In winter’s season, there is little to do here, captain. In any case,’ she added, ‘we prefer the solitude.’