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Arathan was the same age her son would now be, a young man spread-eagled beneath the world, as all young men were. He was not her son, but he could give her a son. Indeed, she was certain that he would. Her brother had seen something of this strange, macabre compact in her mind, this blending of fates, one empty, the other fast filling. She was convinced of that.

It was one thing to use for pleasure. It was another thing entire to just use. She taught Arathan the ways of lovemaking, whispering of grateful women in the future. But who were these women, who would give thanks to Feren for all that she’d given the man in their bed? Where would he find these women, this frail bastard son, soon to be abandoned among the Azathanai? Not a question with which she need concern herself, of course; and she reminded herself of this often, to little avail. He would be what she made him, and in turn he would make in her what he could never be: a son. And afterwards, in the dark and the heat, she would stroke his hair, and make his hands into fists — soft tips and absent nails — which she then closed her own hands around — and in fleeting ecstasy, sick with guilt, she imagined the boy’s fists to be smaller than they were, as if by the strength of her grip she could crush them down to proper proportions.Advertisement

There was a kind of recklessness in women. To open her legs was to invite it in, and with the invitation came surrender. Each night, the taste of that surrender stole into her like a drug. Her brother could see it, and was right to fear it. A woman who does not care is a dangerous woman.

Each day, as they rode across the barren land, she longed for the night to come, for the boy’s helpless eagerness, for the shudders of his body against hers, for the waves that seemed to steal away his life — so much of it, rushing into her. She meant to use that life.

Children died. But a woman could make more children. Sons were born and sometimes they died, but there were many sons. And even dreams of the future held in hands, places of darkness.

Riding at his sister’s side, trapped in the silence between them, Rint studied the lie of the land, wishing that monuments might rise before them, erupting from the hard ground, halting them in their tracks. All forward progress denied: nothing to do but turn round and return to Kurald Galain.

When she took with child, she would flee, like a thief down a street, into hidden alleys, secret courses that none could follow. A prize in her womb, she would draw knife and hiss at any who drew near. Even her brother.

He cursed Draconus, cursed this entire venture; he felt his body weaken with anguish at the sight of young Arathan, riding so proud at his father’s side. He’d thought better of his sister. The world, crowding close round this meagre party, had grown sordid.

The day was drawing to a close, shadows stretched into their path from the lead riders, ephemeral and misshapen. To either side the plain rolled out, rippled like a dislodged rug, threadbare on the rises where the winter winds cut like knives for months on end. The deeper basins were bleached white, made lifeless by leaching salts.

They had passed some ruins just after noon. Foundation stones of pitted granite formed a rectangle on a level span just above a broad, shallow basin. The scale of the structure seemed oversized for Azathanai, and Rint saw little sign of their legendary stone-working skills in the roughly hewn granite. The walls had long since tumbled, forming a scree down the slope on the basin side and lying in heaps upon the opposite side. There was no evidence that anyone had ever harvested the rubble. Apart from the lone building, Rint saw no other signs of habitation — no pen walls, no field enclosures, and the ground bore no evidence of ploughing. He wondered at it as they rode by.

Only ignorance emptied the past. Fools built the world from nothing — the whim of a god, some bold acclamation of existence in the Abyss. None of these visions of creation did more than serve the vanity of those holding them. As if all was made for them; for their eyes to witness, for their wonder to behold. Rint did not believe it. The past had no beginning. Something always existed before, no matter how far back one reached. It was the conceit of a mortal life, which began and so must end, to then imagine all of existence following suit, as if cowed into obedience. In myriad forms all that existed had always existed.

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His sister had made herself the lover of a bastard son who was of an age to match that of the son she had lost. Things twisted in thinking about that. Things peeled back, exposing ugly secrets in lurid half-light. The past had a face and it was a face she would make alive once more. Arathan deserved better and there was no cause to wonder at his innocence, his naivete in these matters: he was in his age of foolishness, as came upon all young men. Dreams raged like fires of the sun, but high as those flames might carry him, the fall promised an endless plunge into despair. Subtlety was lost — these were Arathan’s years of stumbling, awkward his limbs and overborne his mind, and the depthless love he now felt for Feren would soon turn to wounded hatred. pqdm.com