He stroked and twirled now as he frowned down into the fire before him.
What had that grey-haired bard sung? There on the modest stage in K’rul’s Bar earlier in the night, when he had watched on, content with his place in the glorious city he had saved more than once?
‘Oh frail city, where strangers arrive…’
‘I need to tell you something, Kruppe.’
The round man glanced up to find a shrouded figure seated on the other flat stone, reaching thin pale hands out to the flames. Kruppe cleared his throat, then said, ‘It has been a long time since Kruppe last found himself perched as you see him now. Accordingly, Kruppe had long since concluded that you wished to tell him something of such vast import that none but Kruppe is worthy to hear.’
A faint glitter from the darkness within the hood. ‘I am not in this war.’
Kruppe stroked the rattails of his beard, delighting himself by saying nothing.
‘This surprises you?’ the Elder God asked.
‘Kruppe ever expects the unexpected, old friend. Why, could you ever expect otherwise? Kruppe is shocked. Yet, a thought arrives, launched brainward by a tug on this handsome beard. K’rul states he is not in the war. Yet, Kruppe suspects, he is nevertheless its prize.’
‘Only you understand this, my friend,’ the Elder God said, sighing. Then cocked its head. ‘I had not noticed before, but you seem sad.’
‘Sadness has many flavours, and it seems Kruppe has tasted them all.’
‘Will you speak now of such matters? I am, I believe, a good listener.’
‘Kruppe sees that you are sorely beset. Perhaps now is not the time.’
‘That is no matter.’
‘It is to Kruppe.’
K’rul glanced to one side, and saw a figure approaching, grey-haired, gaunt.
Kruppe sang,’”Oh frail city, where strangers arrive”… and the rest?’
The newcomer answered in a deep voice, ‘“… pushing into cracks, there to abide.”‘
And the Elder God sighed.
‘Join us, friend,’ said Kruppe. ‘Sit here by this fire: this scene paints the history of our kind, as you well know. A night, a hearth, and a tale to spin. Dear K’rul, dearest friend of Kruppe, hast thou ever seen Kruppe dance?’
The stranger sat. A wan face, an expression of sorrow and pain.
‘No,’ said K’rul. ‘I think not. Not by limb, not by word.’
Kruppe’s smile was muted, and something glistened in his eyes. ‘Then, my friends, settle yourselves for this night. And witness.’
Book One. Vow to the Sun
This creature of words cuts
To the quick and gasp, dart away
The spray of red rain
Beneath a clear blue sky
Shock at all that is revealed
What use now this armour
When words so easy slant between?
This god of promises laughs
At the wrong things, wrongly timed
Unmaking all these sacrifices
In deliberate malice
Recoil like a soldier routed
Even as retreat is denied
Before corpses heaped high in walls
You knew this would come
At last and feign nothing, no surprise
To find this cup filled
With someone else’s pain
It’s never as bad as it seems
The taste sweeter than expected
When you squat in a fool’s dream
So take this belligerence
Where you will, the dogged cur
Is the charge of my soul
To the centre of the street
Spinning round all fangs bared
Snapping at thirsty spears
Thrust cold and purged of your hands
– Hunting Words, Brathos Of Black Coral
Chapter One
Oh frail city!
Where strangers arrive
Pushing into cracks
There to abide
Oh blue city!
Old friends gather sighs
At the foot of docks
After the tide
Uncrowned city!
Where sparrows alight
In spider tracks
On sills well high
Doomed city!
Closing comes the night
History awakens
Here to abide
– Frail Age, Fisher Kel That
Surrounded in a city of blue fire, she stood alone on the balcony. The sky’s darkness was pushed away, an unwelcome guest on this the first night of the Gedderone Fete. Throngs filled the streets of Darujhistan, happily riotous, good-natured in the calamity of one year’s ending and another’s beginning. The night air was humid and pungent with countless scents.
There had been banquets. There had been unveilings of eligible young men and maidens. Tables laden with exotic foods, ladies wrapped in silks, men and women in preposterous uniforms all glittering gilt-a city with no standing army bred a plethora of private militias and a chaotic proliferation of high ranks held, more or less exclusively, by the nobility.