[redJAKO]

[ramble]stories are power, words are power, the power to change oneself, its emotions, all the power in the world lying within those emotions, swinging one way then the next to a burgeoning of those emotions..hate, greed, malice, righteous anger and the power to slaughter or the power of life: love happiness, good, the chance to change, begin anew, and so find yourself free of former tethers and that which would bind and chain.



Culmination of abuse, sick physical and sexual.



He was playing with the discarded lumps of wax he collected from the trash heap bellow the back wall of the main house..He could mould faces from the pieces and build entire families like the families down in the village, where boys and girls his age worked alongside their parents and when not working played in the woods and were always laughing.

This was where his brother found him. His brother with the sad face so unlike the wax ones he liked to make. He arrived carrying a coil of rope, and stood just inside the jammed-wide doors all overgrown.

Beak, who had a boring name back then, saw in his brother’s face a sudden distress, which then drained away and a faint smile took its place which was a relief since Beak always hated it when his brother went off somewhere to cry. Older brothers should never do that and if he was older, why, he’d never do that.

His brother then walked towards him, and still half smiling he said, ‘I need you to leave little one. Take your toys and leave here.’

Beak stared with wide eyes. His brother never asked such things of him. His brother had always shared this barn. ‘Don’t you want to play with me?’

‘Not now,’ his brother replied, and Beak saw that his hands were trembling which meant there’d been trouble back at the estate. Trouble with mother.

‘Playing will make you feel better,’ Beak said.

‘I know. But not now.’

‘Later?’ Beak began collecting his wax villagers.

‘We’ll see.’

There were decisions that did not seem like decisions. And choices could just fall into place when nobody was really looking and that was how things were in childhood just as they were for adults. Wax villagers cradled in his arms, Beak set off, out the front and into the sunlight. Summer days were always wonderful – the sun was hot enough to make the villagers weep with joy…

Decisions and choices, falling.

What was it he had wanted to ask? There was no memory of that. The memory of that was gone, melted down into nothing, It had been a very hot day.

Reaching the entrance he saw his brother -- who had been sitting with legs dangling from the loft's edge -- slide over to drop onto the floor. But he didn't drop all the way. The rope round his neck caught him instead

And then, his face turning dark as his eyes bulged and his tongue pushed out, his brother danced in the air, kicking through the shafts of dusky sunlight.

Beak ran up to him -- the game his brother had been playing with the rope had gone all wrong, and now his brother was choking. He threw his arms about his brother's kicking legs and tried with all his might to hold him up.

And there he stood, and perhaps he was screaming, but perhaps he wasn't, because this was an abandoned place, too far away from anyone who might help.

His brother tried to kick him away. His brother's fists punched down on the top of Beak's head, hard enough to hurt but not so much since those hands couldn’t but barely reach him, short as he was being still younger than his brother. So he just held on.



Fire awoke in the muscles of his arms. In his shoulders. His neck. HIs legs shook beneath him, because he needed to stand on his toes -- if he tried to move his arms further down to well below his brother's knees, then his brother simply bent those knees and started choking again.

Fire everywhere, fire right through Beak's body.

His legs were failing. HIs arms were failing. And as they failed his brother choked. Pee ran down to burn against Beak's wrists and his face. The air was suddenly thick with worse smells and his brother never did things like this -- all this mess, the terrible mistake with the rope.

Beak could not hold on, and this was the problem with being a younger brother, with being as he was. And the kicking finally stilled, the muscles of his brother's legs becoming soft, loose. Two fingertips from one of his brother's hands lightly brushed Beak's hair, but they only moved when Beak himself moved, so those fingers were as still as the legs.

It was good that his brother wasn't fighting any more. He must have loosened the rope from round his neck and was now just resting. And that was good because Beak was now on his knees, arms wrapped tight about his brother's feet.

And there he stayed.

Until, three bells after dusk, one of the stable hands from the search party came into the barn with a lantern"



Then, a sacrifice for those whom he cared.



...he felt in himself a cleansing, a scouring away, what priests called purification, only they really knew nothing about purification because it had nothing to do with offerings of blood or coin and nothing to do with starving yourself and whipping your own back or endlessly chanting until the brain goes numb. Nothing like any of that. Purification, Beak now understood was final.

Beak was driven down by the immense weight, the horrible hunger. Yet he would not retreat...Survival, he realized, could only be found through purity. Of his love for them all -- how so many of them had smiled at him, laughed with him. How hands clapped him on the shoulder and even, now and then, tousled his hair.

Arms wrapped tight, even as the fire began to burn the muscles of his arms. His shoulders and neck. His legs.

He could hold on, now, until they found him.

Those fires were so hot, now, burning – but there was no pain. Pain had been scoured away, cleansed away. Oh, the weight was vast, getting heavier still, but he would not leg go. Not of his brothers and his sisters, the ones he so loved. My friends.

In horror Faradan Sort found herself staring at a collapsed jumble of ashes and scorched bone. But no, there was a pattern in with that, a configuration, if she could but focus through her tears. Oh. The bones of the arms seemed to be hugging the knees, the crumpled skull settled on them. The bones of the arms seemed to be hugging the knees, the crumpled skull settled on them.

Like a child hiding in a closet, a child seeking to make himself small, so mall..

Beak. God’s below … Beak.




Meeting with this sacrifice this world’s underworld, an afterlife.




The hand gripping his arm was skeletal, the skin a strange huge of green. The figure, very tall, was hooded and wearing black rags. It seemed to be studying the gate.

'Is that where I'm supposed to go, now?" Beak asked.

'Yes.'

'All right. Are you coming with me?

'No.'

'All right. Well, will you let go of my arm, then?'

The hand fell away. 'It is not common,' the figure then said.

'What?'

'That I attend to ... to arrivals. In person.'

'My name is Beak.'

'Yes.'

'What's through there?'

'You brother waits for you, Beak. He has been waiting a long time.'

'Beak smiled and stepped forward, all at once in a great hurry -- the silver light within that gate was beautiful, reminding him of something.

The strangers voice brought him round: 'Beak.'

'Yes?'

'Your brother. He will not know you. Yet. Do you understand?'

Beak nodded...

'My brother,' Beak said, his smile broadening. 'I'm taller now. Stronger. I can save him, can't I?'

A long pause, and then the figure said, 'Yes, Beak, you can save him.'

Yes, that made sense. He set out again. With sure strides to the gate, into that silver glow, to emerge on the other side in a glade beside a trickling stream. And kneeling near the bank. His brother. The same as he remembered. On the ground on all sides were hundreds of small wax figures. Smiling faces, an entire village, maybe even a whole town.

Beak walked up to his brother.

Who said, too shy to look up, 'I made all of these, for him.'

'They're beautiful,' Beak said, and he found tears running down his face, which embarrassed him so he wiped them away. Then asked, 'Can I play with you?'

His brother hesitated, scanning all the figure, then he nodded. 'All right.'

The words of Steven Erikson, though I am even on a reread, do indeed afflict me with awe. With sad emotions, powerful imagery and a study in pain, solitude and salvation.

BREAK for Blog

Then the Imass, upon Toc’s death.

‘…The Mezla…’

Hetan saw her husband’s head slowly turn at that word, saw his eyes fix on the Awl warrior, then watched as a cascade of realizations took hold of Tool’s expression, ending with a terrible scream as he brought his hands to his face, then fell to his knees.

And she was suddenly at his side, cradling his head against her belly as he loosed another piercing cry, clawing at his won face.

The Awl stared as if in shock.

… Beside the two of them now, drawing her panther skin about her shoulders, Kilava Onass. Her husband’s sister, whose heart held more sorrow and loss than Hetan could comprehend, who would weep every night as if it was ritually demanded of her with the sun’s setting. Who would walk out beyond the camp and sing word;ess songs to the night sky =-- songs that would send the ay howling with voices of mourning and grief.

… Tool drew himself from Hetan’s embrace. Saying nothing, he straightened then began walking.

To where his friend had fallen.

The Awl warrior took a half-step towards him. ‘No!’ he shouted, turning pleading eyes upon Hetan. ‘He must not! The Mezla – he was a friend, yes? Please he must not!’

Tool walked on.

‘Please! They cut off his face!’

Hetan flinched. ‘He knows,’ she said.

And then Tool did halt, looking back, meeting Hetan’s eyes. ‘My love,’ he said in a ragged voice. ‘I do not understand.’

She could but hskae her head.

‘They betrayed him,’ Tool continued. ‘Yet, see. This day. He rode to the enemy.’

‘To save the lives of these children,’ Hetan said. ‘Yes.’

‘I do not understand.’

‘You have told me many tales, husband, of your friend. Of Toc the Younger. Of the honour within him. I ask you this: how could he not?’

Her heart came near to bursting as she gazed upon her beloved. These Imass – they were unable to hide anything they felt. They possessed none of the masks, the disguise, that were the biter gifts of others, including her own Barghast. And they were without control, without mastery, which left grieving to wound the soul deeper than anything Hetan could imagine. As with grieving, so too love. So too friendship. So too, alas, loyalty.

… Hetan left her husband kneeling beside the body of Toc the Younger. She could do no more for him, and this was not a failing on her part. The raw grief of an Imass was like a bottomless well, one that could snatch the unsuspecting and send them plummeting down into unending darkness.

Once, long ago, Tool had stood before his friend, and his friend had not know him, and for the Imass – mortal once more, after thousands upon thousands of years – this had been the source of wry amusement, in the manner of a trickster’s game where the final pleasure but awaited revelation of the truth.

Tool, in his unhuman patience, had waited a long time to unveil that revelation. Too long, now. His friend had died, unknowing. The trickster’s game had delivered a wound from which, she suspected, her husband might never recover.

And so, she now knew in her heart, there might be other losses on this tragic day. A wife losing her husband. Two daughters losing their adopted father, and one son his true father.




Even on the Bonehunters Marines being lit up though Beak, exposing all of their grief, ailments, where "Sorry had savaged herself again and again" between her legs.




Ahhhh I love Erikson, such a good reread.

[redJAKO]

Then a lovely poem to cap off the rough chapter.

I have seen the face of sorrow
She looks away in the distance
Across all these bridges
From whence I came
And those spans, trussed and ached
Hold up our lives as we go back again
To how we thought then
To how we through we thought then
I have seen sorrow’s face,
But she is ever turned away
And her words leave me blind
Her eyes make me mute
I do not understand what she says to me
I do not know if to obey
Or attempt a flood of tears
I have seen her face
She does not speak
She does not weep
She does not know me
For I am but a stone fitted in place
On the bridge where she walks

[coltainereborn]

Wow, good find. I remember that poem also, definately one of SE"s best, could almost stand on its own, but after reading it I remember just going through a list mentally of all the people that I had grown to like, and then died throughout the books. SE almost does too good a job of of making the reader care about these people, b/c then when they do end up dying you feel it much more.

my favorite line

I have seen Sorrows face,
But she is ever turned away.

Awesome

[Night Hawk]

Man... you hit the nail on the head... Erikson's writing is earthly, gritty, certainly not the fairytale fantasy that seems to be the most abundant in the fantasy genre... which is why I liked ES more and more for each page I read when I first found his works. Beak stuck with me... as did the stories of Toc the Younger and Felisin Younger.

[redJAKO]

Yeah, that whole 100 pages hit me so much, wanted to compile it I'm not much of a poetry guy, don't find too much from the poems (though I respect how much he puts into it), but that sorrow one..powerful.

[waylander001]

redJAKO, on Aug 2 2009, 08:31 AM, said:

Yeah, that whole 100 pages hit me so much, wanted to compile it I'm not much of a poetry guy, don't find too much from the poems (though I respect how much he puts into it), but that sorrow one..powerful.

If you like that poem I know that one guy actually wrote music to it and posted the version on YouTube - I have it set as a favourite because I liked it so much - maybe you should check it out

This post has been edited by waylander001: 09 August 2009 - 01:24 PM

[MTS]

Was his name Kit Soden by any chance?

[waylander001]

Mappo's Travelling Sack, on Aug 9 2009, 02:33 PM, said:

Was his name Kit Soden by any chance?

not too sure - just discovered it on one of the many social sites now doing the rounds on the net - but it definitely was uploaded to there from youtube and it definitely sets a mood when you listen to it

[andrewtkd]

MTS, on 09 August 2009 - 01:33 PM, said:

Was his name Kit Soden by any chance?

Yes it was Kit Soden.

[Braden]

Putting those passages together made me cry (in a good way).

[Hetan]

Quote

Even on the Bonehunters Marines being lit up though Beak, exposing all of their grief, ailments, where "Sorry had savaged herself again and again" between her legs.

Just for accuracy - that was Smiles not Sorry.

[HiddenOne]

Hetan, on 15 September 2010 - 06:26 PM, said:

Quote

Even on the Bonehunters Marines being lit up though Beak, exposing all of their grief, ailments, where "Sorry had savaged herself again and again" between her legs.

Just for accuracy - that was Smiles not Sorry.

I knew that wasn't making any sense for some reason.