‘You go too far,’ said Anomander then, in a rasp. ‘By title I call you so, as you ask of me, but mother to me you are not.’

‘Then wash the darkness from your skin, Anomander Purake.’

Her cold tone shivered through Galar Baras. Beside him, he heard Henarald gasping like a man in pain. Galar moved closer to him, felt contact, and reached to take the sword from his lord’s failing arms. As the full weight of the weapon settled in Galar’s hands, he grunted — it felt as if he was holding up an anvil.

Henarald sank to his knees beside Galar, shuddering uncontrollably.

Anomander spoke. ‘Devoid of sanctity, lost to virtue, and oblivious of all that’s holy, what manner of prize are you?’

‘If you would seek me, look inward.’

‘Perhaps that satisfies the priests, Mother, and you to see their feathers twitch above the vellum as if to mock the flight of your fancies. But I am a warrior and you name me your protector. Give me something to defend. Tell me not my enemies, for I already know them well. Advise no strategies, for that is my garden and it is well tended. Touch lips to no banner I raise, for all honour is found in the warrior at my side and my pledge to him or her. Give me a cause to fight for, Mother, to die for if need be. Shall we war over faith? Or fight in the name of justice or against injustice? A sword striking down the demons of inequity? A campaign to save the helpless, or just their souls? Do I fight for food on the table? A dry roof and a warm bed? The unfettered promise of a child’s eyes? Name yourself the prize if you must, but give me a cause.’

There was silence in the chamber.

Galar started at an oath from Anomander — close to his side — and he felt the sword taken hold of and then pulled from his hands, snatched away light as a reed.

Boots sounded behind him and suddenly the door was swung open and pale light spilled on to the stone floor around his feet. He looked across to see Kellaras, his skin the breath of midnight, stumbling into his master’s wake as Anomander strode from the chamber.

Galar crouched to help lift Henarald to his feet.

The old man seemed barely conscious, his eyes closed, his head lolling, and the spit hanging from his mouth had frozen solid. ‘What?’ the Lord of Hust whispered. ‘What has happened?’

I know not. ‘It is done, Lord.’

‘Done?’

‘The sword is blessed, Lord.’

‘Are you certain?’

Galar helped Henarald across the threshold, and then reached back to pull shut the door. He looked around and saw that Anomander and Kellaras were already well down the corridor. ‘All is well,’ he told the Lord of Hust.

‘The child… the child…’

‘He has it, Lord. In his hands. He has the sword.’

‘Take me home, Galar.’

‘I shall, Lord.’

The old man he helped down the corridor was not the old man who had walked into the Chamber of Night, and in this comprehension Galar did not for an instant consider the ebon cast to Henarald’s skin.

A soul made weary of life longed for sordid ends. Rise Herat climbed for the tower, his refuge from which any escape was downward, and the height of which reduced entire lives to smudges crawling on faraway streets, like insects examining the crevices between pavestones. He had earlier this day walked those streets, wandering through stained Kharkanas and its uneasy multitudes. He had looked upon faces by the hundred, watching people hide in plain view, or cleave close to companions and loved ones while offering suspicious regard to every stranger who dared look their way. He had witnessed smug wealth, worn like precious cloaks of invulnerability, and saw in those visages the wilful guarding of things that could not be guarded. He had seen the poverty that every concourse exhibited, figures like bent and tattered standards of ill-luck and failure, although to all others that measure of ill-luck was in itself failure. He had seen flashes of envy and malice in veiled glances; he had heard laughter loud enough to draw the attention of others, and knew it for the diffident bravado it was — that child-like need for attention like a weed’s root wanting water — but no confidence grew straight and bold from such things, and the eyes ever gave it all away, in pointless bluster and ready challenge.

And those rare gestures of recognition and kindness, they appeared like remnants left behind from a better age. The modern guise was indifference and self-absorption, with every face offering a mask of imperturbability and cynical pessimism.

Rise was an historian who wrote nothing down, because history was not in ages past, not in ages either gilded or tarnished. It was not a thing of retrospection or cogent reflection. It was not lines scratched on parchment, or truths stained deep in vellum. It was not a dead thing to reach back towards, collecting what baubles caught one’s eye, and then sweeping the rest from the table. History was not a game of relevance versus irrelevance, or a stern reordering of convictions made and remade. Nor was it an argument, nor an explanation, and never a justification. Rise wrote nothing, because for him history was the present, and every detail carried its own story, reaching roots into antiquity. It was nothing more than an unblinking recognition of life’s incessant hunger for every moment, like a burst of the present that sent shockwaves into the past and into the future.