And they would come – they will come, once I am recognized. Yet he could not hide himself from their eyes; he could not stand back whilst they slaughtered these young humans who knew nothing of life, who were soldiers in name only. These lessons of cruelty and brutality did not belong in what a child needed to learn, in what a child should learn.
And a world in which children were subjected to such things was a world in which compassion was a hollow word, its echoes a chorus of mockery and cold contempt.
Four skirmishes. Four, and Minala was now mother to seven hundred destroyed lives, almost half of them facing the mercy of death… until Shadowthrone appears, with his edged gift, in itself cold and heartless.
'Your face betrays you, Trull Sengar. You are driven to weeping yet again.'
The Edur looked across at Onrack, then over to where Minala now stood with Panek. 'Her rage is her armour, friend. And that is my greatest weakness, that I cannot conjure the same within myself. Instead, I stand here, waiting. For the next attack, for the return of the terrible music – the screams, the pain and the dying, the deafening roar of the futility our battle-lust creates… with every clash of sword and spear.'
'Yet, you do not surrender,' the T'lan Imass said.
'I cannot.'
'The music you hear in battle is incomplete, Trull Sengar.'
'What do you mean?'
'Even as I stand at your side, I can hear Minala's prayers, whether she is near us or not. Even when she drags wounded and dying children back, away from danger, I hear her. She prays, Trull Sengar, that you do not fall. That you fight on, that the miracle that is you and the spear you wield shall never fail her. Never fail her and her children.'
Trull Sengar turned away.
'Ah,' Onrack said, 'with your tears suddenly loosed, I friend, I see my error. Where I sought by my words to instil pride in you, I defeat your own armour and wound you deeply. With despair. I am sorry. There remains so much of what it is to live that I have forgotten.' The battered warrior regarded Trull in silence for a moment, then added, '
Perhaps I can give you something else, something more… hopeful.'
'Please try,' Trull said in a whisper.
'At times, down in this chasm, I smell something, a presence. It is faint, animal. It… comforts me, although I do not know why, for I cannot comprehend its source. In those times, Trull Sengar, I feel as if we are being observed. We are being watched by unseen eyes, and in those eyes there is vast compassion.'
'Do you say this only to ease my pain, Onrack?'
'No, I would not so deceive you.'
'What – who does it come from?'
'I do not know – but I have seen that it affects Monok Ochem. Even Ibra Gholan. I sense their disquiet, and this, too, comforts me.'
'Well,' rasped a voice beside them, 'it isn't me.' Shadows coalescing, creating a hunched, hooded shape, wavering indistinct, as if reluctant to commit itself to any particular existence, any single reality.
'Shadowthrone.'
'Healing, yes? Very well. But I have little time. We must hurry, do you understand? Hurry!'
Renewed, once again, to face what will come. Would that I had my own prayers. Comforting words in my mind… to drown out the screams all around me. To drown out my own.
Somewhere down below, Karsa Orlong struggled to calm Havok, and the sudden hammer of hoofs against wood, sending trembles through the deck beneath Samar Dev's feet, indicated that it would be some time before the animal quieted. She did not blame the Jhag horse. The air below was foul, reeking with the sick and the dying, with the sour stench that came from hopelessness.
But we are spared that fate. We are Guests, because my giant companion would kill the Emperor. The fool. The arrogant, self-obsessed idiot. I should have stayed with Boatfinder, there on that wild shore. I should have then turned around and walked home. She had so wanted this to be a journey of exploration and discovery, the lure of wonders waiting somewhere ahead. Instead, she found herself imprisoned by an empire gone mad with obsession. Self-righteous, seeing its own might as if it was a gift bestowing piety. As if power projected its own ethos, and the capability to do something was justification enough for doing it.
The mindset of the street-corner bully, in his head two or three rules by which he guided his own existence, and by which he sought to shape his world. The ones he must fear, the ones he could drive to their knees, and maybe ones he hungered to be like, or ones he lusted after, but even there the relationship was one of power. Samar Dev felt sick with disgust, fighting a tide of tumultuous panic rising within her – and no dry deck beneath her boots could keep her from that sort of drowning.
