Trull Sengar wiped at his eyes, then he smiled. ‘There was, yes, a most beautiful woman…’
Book Four. Reaper’s Gale
I went in search of death
In the cast down wreckage
Of someone’s temple nave
I went in search among flowers
Nodding to the wind’s words
Of woeful tales of war
I went among the blood troughs
Behind the women’s tents
All the children that never were
And in the storm of ice and waves
I went in search of the drowned
Among bony shells and blunt worms
Where the grains swirled
Each and every one crying out its name its life its loss
I went on the current roads
That led me nowhere known
And in the still mists afield
Where light itself crept uncertain
I went in search of wise spirits
Moaning their truths in dark loam
But the moss was silent, too damp to remember my search
Finding at last where the reapers sow
Cutting stalks to take the season
I failed in my proud quest
To a scything flint blade
And lying asward lost to summer
Bared as its warm carapace
of youthful promise was sent away
into autumn’s reliquary sky
Until the bones of night
Were nails glittering in the cold
oblivion, and down the darkness
death came to find me
Chapter Nineteen
The great conspiracy among the kingdoms of Saphinand, Bolkando, Ak’ryn, and D’rhasilhani that culminated in the terrible Eastlands War was in numerous respects profoundly ironic. To begin with, there had been no conspiracy. This fraught political threat was in fact a falsehood, created and fomented by powerful economic interests in Lether; and more, it must be said, than just economic. Threat of a dread enemy permitted the imposition of strictures on the population of the empire that well served the brokers among the elite; and would no doubt have made them rich indeed if not for the coincidental financial collapse occurring at this most inopportune of moments in Letherii history. In any case, the border kingdoms and nations of the east could not but perceive the imminent threat, especially with the ongoing campaign against the Awl on the north plains. Thus a grand alliance was indeed created, and with the aforementioned foreign incentives, the war exploded across the entire eastern frontier.
Combined, not entirely accidentally, with the punitive invasion begun on the northwest coast, it is without doubt that Emperor Rhulad Sengar felt beleaguered indeed…
She had been no different from any other child with her childish dreams of love. Proud and tall, a hero to stride into her life, taking her in his arms and sweeping away all her fears like silts rushing down a stream to vanish in some distant ocean. The benediction of clarity and simplicity, oh my, yes, that had been a most cherished dream.
Although Seren Pedac could remember that child, could remember the twisting anguish in her stomach as she yearned for salvation, an anguish delicious in all its possible obliterations, she would not indulge in nostalgia. False visions of the world were a child’s right, not something to be resented, but neither were they worthy of any adult sense of longing.
In Hull Beddict, after all, the young Seren Pedac had believed, for a time-a long time, in fact, before her foolish dream finally withered away-that she had found her wondrous hero, her majestic conjuration whose every glance was a blessing on her heart. So she had learned how purity was poison, the purity of her faith, that is, that such heroes existed. For her. For anyone.
Hull Beddict had died in Letheras. Or, rather, his body had died there. The rest had died in her arms years before then. In a way, she had used him and perhaps not just used him, but raped him. Devouring his belief, stealing away his vision-of himself, of his place in the world, of all the meaning that he, like any other man, sought for his own life. She had found her hero and had then, in ways subtle and cruel, destroyed him under the siege of reality. Reality as she had seen it, as she still saw it. That had been the poison within her, the battle between the child’s dream and the venal cynicism that had seeped into adulthood. And Hull had been both her weapon and her victim.
She had in turn been raped. Drunk in a port city tearing itself apart as the armies of the Tiste Edur swept in amidst smoke, flames and ashes. Her flesh made weapon, her soul made victim. There could be no surprise, no blank astonishment, to answer her subsequent attempt to kill herself. Except among those who could not understand, who would never understand.
Seren killed what she loved. She had done it to Hull, and if the day ever arrived when that deadly flower opened in her heart once more, she would kill again. Fears could not be swept away. Fears returned in drowning tides, dragging her down into darkness. I am poison.
Stay away. All of you, stay away.
She sat, the shaft of the Imass spear athwart her knees, but it was the weight of the sword belted to her left hip that threatened to pull her down, as if that blade was not a hammered length of iron, but links in a chain. He meant nothing by it. You meant nothing, Trull. I know that. Besides, like Hull, you are dead. You had the mercy of not dying in my arms. Be thankful for that.
Nostalgia or no, the child still within her was creeping forward, in timid increments. It was safe, wasn’t it, safe to cup her small unscarred hands and to show, in private oh-so-secret display, that old dream shining anew. Safe, because Trull was dead. No harm, none at all.
Loose the twist deep in her stomach-no, further down. She was now, after all, a grown woman. Loose it, yes, why not? For one who is poison, there is great pleasure in anguish. In wild longing. In the meaningless explorations of delighted surrender, subjugation-well, subjugation that was in truth domination-no point in being coy here. I surrender in order to demand. Relinquish in order to rule. I invite the rape because the rapist is me and this body here is my weapon and you, my love, are my victim.
Because heroes die. As Udinaas says, it is their fate.
The voice that was Mockra, that was the Warren of the Mind, had not spoken to her since that first time, as if, somehow, nothing more needed to be said. The discipline of control was hers to achieve, the lures of domination hers to resist. And she was managing both. Just.
In this the echoes of the past served to distract her, lull her into moments of sensual longing for a man now dead, a love that could never be. In this, even the past could become a weapon, which she wielded to fend off the present and indeed the future. But there were dangers here, too. Revisiting that moment when Trull Sengar had drawn his sword, had then set it into her hands. He wished me safe. That is all. Dare I create in that something more? Even to drip honey onto desire?
Seren Pedac glanced up. The fell gathering-her companions-were neither gathered nor companionable. Udinaas was down by the stream, upending rocks in search of crayfish-anything to add variety to their meals-and the icy water had turned his hands first red, then blue, and it seemed he did not care. Kettle sat near a boulder, hunched down to fend off the bitter wind racing up the valley. She had succumbed to an uncharacteristic silence these past few days, and would not meet anyone’s eyes. Silchas Ruin stood thirty paces away, at the edge of an overhang of layered rock, and he seemed to be studying the white sky-a sky the same hue as his skin. ‘The world is his mirror,’ Udinaas had said earlier, with a hard laugh, before walking down to the stream. Clip sat on a flat rock about halfway between Silchas Ruin and everyone else. He had laid out his assortment of weapons for yet another intense examination, as if obsession was a virtue. Seren Pedac’s glance found them all in passing, before her gaze settled on Fear Sengar.