‘I see by the firelight that your boots are sadly worn, sergeant.’
‘It’s the way I walk, Lord.’
‘Out here, moccasins are far better suited.’
‘Yes, Lord, but I have none.’
‘I have an old pair, sergeant — they might prove somewhat too large, but if you do as do the Borderswords — filling them out as needed with fragrant grasses — then you will find them serviceable.’
‘Lord, I-’
‘You would refuse my generosity, sergeant?’
‘No, Lord. Thank you.’
There was a long time of silence. Raskan glanced over to where the Borderswords were crouched round the second cookfire. Ville had called out that the steaks were ready but neither the sergeant nor his lord moved. Hungry though he was, the cloying reek of the blood-broth had drowned Raskan’s appetite. Besides, he could not abandon Draconus without leave to do so.
‘This swirl of stars,’ Draconus suddenly said, ‘marks the plunge of light into darkness. These stars, they are distant suns, shining their light down upon distant, unknown worlds. Worlds, perhaps, little different from this one. Or vastly different. It hardly matters. Each star swirls its path towards the centre, and at that centre there is death — the death of light, the death of time itself.’
Shaken, Raskan said nothing. He had never heard such notions before — was this what the scholars in Kharkanas believed?
‘Tiste are comforted by their own ignorance,’ Draconus said. ‘Do not imagine, sergeant, that such matters are discussed at court. No. Instead, imagine the lofty realm of scholars and philosophers as little different from a garrison of soldiers, cooped up too long and too close in each other’s company. Squalid, venal, pernicious, poisoned with ambitions, a community of betrayal and jealously guarded prejudices. Titles are like splashes of thin paint upon ugly stone — the colour may look pretty, but what lies behind it does not change. Of itself, knowledge holds no virtue — it is armour and sword, and while armour protects it also isolates, and while a sword can swing true, so too can it wound its wielder.’
Raskan stirred the soup, feeling strangely frightened. He had no thoughts he could give voice to, no opinions that could not but display his own stupidity.
‘Forgive me, sergeant. I have embarrassed you.’
‘No, Lord, but I fear I am easily confused by such notions.’
‘Was I not clear enough in my point? Do not let the title of scholar, or poet, or lord, intimidate you overmuch. More importantly, do not delude yourself into imagining that such men and women are loftier, or somehow cleverer or purer of integrity or ideal than you or any other commoner. We live in a world of facades, but the grins behind them are all equally wretched.’
‘Grins, Lord?’
‘As a dog grins, sergeant.’
‘A dog grins in fear, Lord.’
‘Just so.’
‘Then, does everyone live in fear?’
The firelight barely reached the huge man standing beside Raskan, and the deep voice that came from that vague shape sounded loose, unguarded. ‘I would say, most of the time, yes. Fear that our opinions might be challenged. Fear that our way of seeing things might be called ignorant, self-serving, or indeed evil. Fear for our persons. Fear for our future, our fate. Our moment of death. Fear of failing in all that we set out to achieve. Fear of being forgotten.’
‘My lord, you describe a grim world.’
‘Oh, there are balances on occasion. Faint, momentary. Reasons for joy. Pride. But then fear comes clawing back. It always does. Tell me, sergeant, when you were a child, did you fear the darkness?’
‘I imagine we all did, Lord, when we were little more than pups.’
‘And what was it about darkness that we feared?’
Raskan shrugged. His eyes held on the flickering flames. It was a small fire, struggling to stay alive. When the last of the sticks had burned down, the coals would flare and ebb and finally grow cool. ‘The unknown, I suppose, Lord. Where things might hide.’
‘Yet Mother Dark chooses it like raiment.’
Raskan’s breath stilled, frozen in his chest. ‘I am a child no longer, Lord. I have no cause to fear that.’
‘I wonder, at times, if she has forgotten her own childhood. You need say nothing on that matter, sergeant. It’s late. My thoughts wander. As you say, we are no longer children. Darkness holds no terrors; we are past the time when the unknown threatens us.’
‘Lord, we can now let this cool,’ said Raskan, using his knife to lift the pot clear of the flames and setting it down.
‘Best join the others then,’ said Draconus, ‘before that meat turns to black leather.’
‘And you, Lord?’
‘In a few moments, sergeant. I will look some more upon these distant suns, and ponder unknown lives beneath their light.’
Raskan straightened, his knees clicking, his saddle-sore muscles protesting. He bowed to his lord and then made his way over to the other fire.
It was dark when Arathan opened his eyes. He found that he was pressed against a warm body, both soft and firm, solid as a promise, and he could smell faint spices on the still night air. The blanket was now shared, and the person sleeping beside him was Feren.
All at once he could hear his heart pounding.
From the camp there was no other sound; even the horses were quiescent. Blinking, he stared up at the stars, finding the brightest ones all in their rightful places. He struggled to think mundane thoughts, fought to ignore the warm body slumbering at his side.
Sagander said that the stars were but holes in the fabric of night, a thinning of blessed darkness; and that in ages long past there had been no stars at all — the dark was complete, absolute. This was in the time of the first Tiste, in the Age of Gifts, when harmony commanded all and peace stilled every restless heart. The great thinkers were all agreed on this interpretation, his tutor had insisted, in that forceful, belligerent way he had whenever Arathan asked the wrong questions.
But where is the light coming from? What lies behind the veil of night and how could it not exist in the Age of Gifts? Surely it must have been there from the very beginning?
Light was an invading fire, waging an eternal war to break through the veil. It was born when discord first came to the heart of the Tiste.
But in a world of peace and harmony, where did the discord come from?
‘The soul harbours chaos, Arathan. The spark of life knows not its own self, knows only need. If that spark is not controlled through the discipline of higher thoughts, then it bursts into flame. The first Tiste grew complacent, careless of the Gift. And those who succumbed, well, it is their souls you see burning through the Veil of Night.’
She shifted against him. She then rolled over so that she faced him, and drew closer, one arm crossing his chest. He felt her breath on his neck, felt her hair brushing his collarbone. The scent of spices seemed to come from all of her, from her breath and her skin, her hair and her heat.
Her breathing paused for a long moment, and then she sighed, drew closer still until he felt one of her breasts pressing against his arm, and then the other one, sliding down to rest on the same arm.
And then her hand was reaching down to his crotch.
She found him hard and already slick, but if that amounted to failure she seemed unperturbed, using her palm to slide what he had spilled out over his belly, and then taking hold of him once again.
With that grip she pulled him on to his side, and her leg, lifting to settle over him, felt astonishingly heavy. Her other hand reached down, forced itself under his hip, and pulled him over her lower leg until he was clenched between her thighs.
She made a sound when she guided him inside her.
He did not know what was happening. He did not know where she’d put him in, down there between her legs. Was it the hole where she pushed out her wastes? It could not be — it was too far forward, unless women were different in ways he had not imagined.