Reaper's Gate & Toll the Hounds - By Steven Erikson Page 0,93

to fight an eternal battle against itself. From the heavens, only indifference rained down, like ash, stinging the eyes, scratching raw the throat. There was no sustenance in that blinding deluge.

Chosen – now there was a conceit of appalling proportions. Either we all are, or none of us are. And if the former, then we will all face the same judge, the same hand of justice – the wealthy, the Indebted, the master, the slave, the murderer and the victim, the raper and the raped, all of us, so pray hard, everyone – if that helps – and look well to your own shadow. More likely, in her mind, no-one was chosen, and there was no day of judgement awaiting every soul. Each and every mortal faced a singular end, and that was oblivion.

Oh, indeed, the gods existed, but not one cared a whit for the fate of a mortal's soul, unless they could bend that soul to their will, to serve as but one more soldier in their pointless, self-destructive wars.

For herself, she was past such thinking. She had found her own freedom, basking beneath that blessed rain of indifference. She would do as she willed, and not even the gods could stop her. It would be the gods themselves, she vowed, who would come to her. Beseeching, on their knees, snared in their own game.

She moved silently, now, deep in the crypts beneath the Old Palace. I was a slave, once – many believe I still am, yet look at me – I rule this buried realm. I alone know where the hidden chambers reside, I know what awaits me within them. I walk this most fated path, and, when the time is right, I will take the throne.

The Throne of Oblivion.

Uruth might well be looking for her right now, the old hag with all her airs, the smugness of a thousand imagined secrets, but Feather Witch knew all those secrets. There was nothing to fear from Uruth Sengar – she had been usurped by events. By her youngest son, by the other sons who then betrayed Rhulad. By the conquest itself. The society of Edur women was now scattered, torn apart; they went where their husbands were despatched; they had surrounded themselves in Letherii slaves, fawners and Indebted. They had ceased to care. In any case, Feather Witch had had enough of all that. She was in Letheras once more and like that fool, Udinaas, she was fleeing her bondage; and here, in the catacombs of the Old Palace, none would find her.

Old storage rooms were already well supplied, equipped a morsel at a time in the days before the long journey across the oceans. She had fresh water, wine and beer, dried fish and beef, fired clay jugs with preserved fruits. Bedding, spare clothes, and over a hundred scrolls stolen from the Imperial Library. Histories of the Nerek, the Tarthenal, the Fent and a host of even more obscure peoples the Letherii had devoured in the last seven or eight centuries – the Bratha, the Katter, the Dresh and the Shake.

And here, beneath the Old Palace, Feather Witch had discovered chambers lined with shelves on which sat thousands of mouldering scrolls, crumbling clay tablets and worm-gnawed bound books. Of those she had examined, the faded script in most of them was written in an arcane style of Letherii that proved difficult to decipher, but she was learning, albeit slowly. A handful of old tomes, however, were penned in a language she had never seen before.

The First Empire, whence this colony originally came all those centuries ago, seemed to be a complicated place, home to countless peoples each with their own languages and gods. For all the imperial claims to being the birth of human civilization, it was clear to Feather Witch that no such claim could be taken seriously. Perhaps the First Empire marked the initial nation consisting of more than a single city, probably born out of conquest, one city-state after another swallowed up by the rampaging founders. Yet even then, the fabled Seven Cities was an empire bordered by independent tribes and peoples, and there had been wars and then treaties. Some were broken, most were not. Imperial ambitions had been stymied, and it was this fact that triggered the age of colonization to distant lands.

The First Empire had met foes who would not bend a knee. This was, for Feather Witch, the most important truth of all, one that had been conveniently and