Forge of Darkness (Kharkanas Trilogy 1) by Steven Erikson Read Free Book Online Page B

need to drag me home.’
    ‘Not if I get drunk first.’
    ‘It’s to be a race then, is it? Good!’
    There was something pathetic, Hunn Raal reflected, when a young man longed for a good reason to drink, to sit silent and alone, staring at memories that would not go away. Remembering fallen friends, and the screams of the dying. In truth, Hunn would not wish that on anyone, but if something wasn’t done to make the portrait of Urusander real, as real as it could be, there would be civil war.
    With the legions trapped in the eye of the storm.
    The true irony in all of this was the fact that Hunn Raal’s own Issgin line had more claim to the throne than anyone, even Mother Dark herself. No matter. The past was more than just empty holes. Here and there, those holes had been filled long ago, every truth buried, down deep and out of sight. And it was just as well. What he sought wasn’t for himself, was it? It was for the good of the realm. And even if it cost him his life, he would see Urusander on the Blackwood Throne.
    His thoughts returned to Draconus, like a flash of sudden blood in the night, and he felt rage build hot in his chest. The common belief was that the legions would stand aside and take no part in the squabbles among the nobility. But the common belief was wrong. Hunn Raal would see to it. Should the tensions erupt into open warfare, Draconus would find himself facing not just the sons and daughters of Mother Dark, but Urusander’s Legion as well.
    See you sweet-talk your way out of that mess, Draconus. See where your power-mad ambition finds you then
.
    Night clothed the town below, but the inns glowed in the valley bed with soft lanternlight, yellow and gold like the flames of candles. Looking down upon them, Hunn Raal could feel his thirst awaken.
     
    * * *
     
    Kadaspala wiped the last stubborn pigment stains from his hands using a cloth soaked in spirits, his eyes watering as the fumes reached his face. He’d sent the servant from his room. The idea of needing someone to help him dress for a meal was absurd. The secret of a great portrait was to meet the subject eye to eye, as equals, whether that subject was a commander of armies, or a shepherd boy who’d give up his own life to defend a flock of ahmryd. He despised the notion of betters. Station and wealth were flimsy props thrown up in front of people as flawed and as mortal as anyone else, and if it was their need to strut and prance behind them, it was proof of internal weakness and nothing else, and what could be more pathetic than that?
    He would never have servants. He wanted no artificial prop to deference. Every life was a gift – he needed only look into the eyes opposite him, at any time on any given day, to know this. It did not matter to whom those eyes belonged. He would see true, and then make that truth plain to see for everyone else. His was a hand that would never lie.
    The day’s sitting had been … adequate. The mood that took Kadaspala when rendering a portrait was a foul one, and he knew it. But most of his impatience was with himself. Each and every day was too short, the light too whimsical, his vision too sharp not to see the failings in his work – and no amount of praise from onlookers could change any of that. Hunn Raal had no doubt thought his comment soothing, even complimentary, but it had taken all of Kadaspala’s will to keep him from stabbing the smirking soldier in the eye with his brush. The passion that stole his mind when composing was a dark, frightening thing. Murderous and vile. Such depths had once frightened him, but now he simply lived with them, like an unpleasant scar marring his face, or pockmarks on his cheeks from some past illness.
    Yet it was the breadth of the contradiction that most disturbed him: that on the one hand he could adhere to the belief that every life was of equal value, a value that was immense, while at the same time despising everyone he knew.
    Almost everyone. There were