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‘No, milord. My courage fails me.’
‘What news do you bring that so unmans you?’
‘None but truths I regret knowing, milord. I have word from Captain Galar Baras. He has done as you commanded, but in the observation of his new recruits, he reiterates his doubt.’
Silchas turned to study the blackwood door at the corridor’s end. ‘No counsel will be found there, commander.’
I fear you are right. Kellaras shrugged. ‘My apologies, milord. I sought but could not find you.’
‘Yet you stepped aside and voiced no greeting.’
‘Forgive me, milord. All courage fails me. I believe what I sought in the Chamber of Night was a gift of faith from my goddess.’
‘Alas,’ said Silchas Ruin in a growl, ‘she makes faith into water, and pleasures in its feel as it drains from the hand. Even our thirst is denied us. Very well, Kellaras, I have your news, but it changes nothing. The Hust armour must be worn, the swords held in living hands. Perhaps this will be enough to give Urusander pause.’
‘He will know the measure of those in that armour, milord, and the fragility of the grasp upon those swords.’
‘You would spread the sand beneath your feet out and under my own, Kellaras, but I need to remain sure of each stride I take.’
‘Milord, any word of your brothers?’
Silchas frowned. ‘You think us eager to share such privacies, commander? Your lord will find you in good time, and yield no sympathy should your courage fail in his eyes. Now, divest yourself of that armour – its display whispers of panic.’
Bowing, Kellaras backed away.
Facing the Chamber of Night, Silchas Ruin seemed to hesitate, as if about to march towards it, and then he wheeled round. ‘A moment, commander. Send Dathenar and Prazek to the Hust, and charge them take command of the new cohorts, and so give answer to Galar Baras’s needs, as best we can.’
Startled, Kellaras asked, ‘Milord, are they to don Hust armour? Take up a Hust sword?’
Silchas Ruin’s face hardened. ‘Has courage failed everyone in our House? Leave my sight, commander!’
‘Milord.’ Kellaras quickly set off. As he marched up the corridor, he could feel Ruin’s baleful glare upon his back. Panic’s bite is indeed a fever. And here I am, the flea upon a thousand hides. He would return to his chamber and remove his armour, setting aside the girdle of war, but retain his sword as befitted his rank. Silchas was right. A soldier makes of his garb a statement, and an invitation. It was the swagger of violence, but inside that armour there could be diffidence and, indeed, great fear.
He would then set out and find Dathenar and Prazek where he had left them, upon the Citadel’s bridge.
Harbinger blades for those two, and a chorus of scales. Oh, my friends, I see you shrivel before my eyes at this news. Forgive me.
The Citadel’s darkness was suffocating. Again and again he found the need to pause and draw a deep, settling breath. In the corridors and colonnaded hallways, he walked virtually alone, and it was all too easy to imagine this place abandoned, haunted by a host of failures – no different, then, from any ruin he had visited out in the lands to the south, where the Forulkan left only their bones amidst the rubble. The sense of things still unfinished was like a curse riding an endless breath. It moaned on the wind and made stones tick in the heat. It whispered in the sifting of sand and voiced low laughter in the slip of pebbles between the fingers.
He could see this fortress devoid of life, a scorched shell that made Dark’s temple a bitter jest. Worshipped by spiders in their dusty webs, and beetles crawling through bat guano – a man wandering through such a place would find nothing worth remembering. The failings of the past cut like a sharp knife through any hope of nostalgia, or sweet reminiscence. He could not help but wonder at the impermanence of such places as temples and other holy sites. If nothing more than symbols of lost faith, then they st
ood as mortal failings. But if gods died in such ruins – if they felt a blade sink into their hearts, or slide smooth across their soft throats, then the crime was beyond any surrendering of faith.
Still, perhaps holiness was nothing more than an eye’s gift – upon these stones, or that tree, or the spring bubbling beneath it. Perhaps the only murder possible in such places was the one that left hope lying lifeless upon the ground.
Leaving his chamber and making his way towards the outer ward and the gate, beyond which waited the bridge, Kellaras was forced to cross the Terondai’s glittering pattern cut into the flagstones. He could feel the power beneath him, emanating in slow exudations, like the breath of a sleeping god. The sensation crawled across his skin.
He emerged into the chill night, where frost glistened on the stone walls and the lone Houseblade positioned at the gate stood huddled beneath a heavy cloak, dozing as she leaned against the barrier. Hearing his approach, she straightened.
‘Sir.’
‘You have closed the gate.’
She nodded. ‘I saw, sir, that the bridge was unguarded.’
‘Unguarded? Where, then, are Dathenar and Prazek?’
‘I do not know, sir.’
