CHAPTER NINE
I am fallen prey
There was a time
When fangs sank deep
My body dragged
And flesh howled
Fear’s face was cold
With instinct’s need
There was a time
When strangers took me
And the unfamiliar
Whispered terror
And the shock of desires
We could not expect
Lit eyes so like our own
There was a time
When a friend twisted
Before my eyes
And all my solid faiths
Washed free underfoot
Unknowing the world
With new and cruel design
There was a time
When kin drew the knife
To sever sacred law
With red envy
And red malice
The horror visits
The heart of home
Do you see this journey?
What began in shadows
And dark distance
Has drawn ever closer
Now I am fallen prey
To the demon in my soul
And the face twisting
Is my own
Railing at failures
Of flesh and bone
The spirit withers
And I fall prey
We have listed
A world of enemies
And now we fall prey
We fall prey
Faces of Fear
Fisher kel Tath
BROKEN AT LAST, THE BODY SLUMPS AND THE SPIRIT PULLS FREE, THE spirit wings away in flight and the sound of its wings is a sigh. But this, he knew, was not always the case. There were times when the spirit staggered loose with a howl, as broken as the body left behind. Too long inside tortured flesh, too long a sordid lover of punishing pain.
The sound of his horse’s hoofs was hollow, the creak of its tendons like the settling of an old, familiar chair, and he thought of a warm room, a place heady with memories threaded through with love and grief, with joy and suffering. But there was no pocket within him to hold tears, nothing he could squeeze in one fist just to feel the wet trickling down between his fingers. No gestures left to remind himself of who he had once been.
He found her rotted corpse, huddled in the lee of a boulder. There were red glints in her hair, beneath wind-blown dust. Her face was tucked down, sunken cheeks pressed against the knees. As if in her last moments she sat, curled up, staring down at the stumps of her feet.
It was all too far gone, he told himself. Even this felt mechanical, but disjointed, on the edge of failure; a measure of stumbling steps, like a man blind and lost, trying to find his way home. Dismounting, boots rocking as the bones inside them shifted and scraped, he walked to her, slowly sat down on the boulder, amidst the creaks of tendon, bone and armour.
Broken-winged, the spirit had staggered from this place. Lost even to itself. How could he hope to track it? Leaning forward, he settled his face into his hands, and – though it made no difference – he closed his one eye.
Who I am no longer matters. A chair, creaking. A small room, acrid with woodsmoke. Crows in the rafters – what mad woman would invite them into this place? The hunters have thundered past and the wolf no longer howls. She has no breath for such things, not now, not running as she must. Running – gods, running!
She knows it’s no use. She knows they will corner her, spit her with spears. She knows all about hunting, and the kill, for these were the forces of law in her nature. So too, it seems, for the ones pursuing her.
And the woman in the chair, her eyes are smarting, her vision blurs. The chimney needs cleaning, and besides, the wild is dead, for ever dead. And when next the hunters thunder past, their quarry will be on two legs, not four.
Just so.
Do you dream of me, old woman? Do you dream of a single eye, flaring in the night, one last look of the wild upon your face, your world? Gods below, I am tearing apart. I can feel it.
The horns sound their triumph. Slain, the beast’s heart stills its mad race.
In her creaking chair, the old woman reaches up one hand, and gouges out one of her eyes. It rests bloody in her palm while she gasps with pain. And then she lifts her head and fixes her one remaining eye upon him. ‘Even the blind know how to weep.’
He shakes his head, not in denial, but because he does not understand.
The old woman throws the eye into the fire. ‘To the wild, to the wild, all gone. Gone. Loose the wolf within you, Ghost. Loose the beast upon the trail, and one day you shall find her.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Smell that? Wax in the fire. Wax in the fire.’
‘What place is this?’
‘This?’ The chair creaks. She reaches up to her other eye. ‘Love lives here, Ghost. The Hold you have forgotten, the Hold you all yearn to find again. But you forget more than that.’ She pushed her nails into her other eye. ‘Where there is love, there is pain.’
‘No,’ he whispered, ‘there must be more to it than that.’ He lifted his head, and opened his eye. Wretched wasteland, a boulder, a huddled form. ‘But she threw it into the flames.’ Wax. Wax in the fire.
Looking down, he studied the corpse beside him, and then he rocked to his feet, walked over to his lifeless horse, and pulled from the saddle a roll of sacking. Laying it out, he went back to her, lifted her gently from her snarled nest of greening grasses. On to the cloth, drawing up the edges and binding them tight, and then gathering the sack and slinging it across the horse’s rump just behind the saddle, before climbing astride the motionless mount.
Collecting up the reins, Toc closed his remaining eye.
Then opened the missing one.
The day’s light vanished abruptly, the mass of bruised clouds climbing, billowing outward. A savage gust of wind bowed back the trees lining the north ridge and a moment later rushed down the slope and up on to the road. Her horse shied and then quivered to the impact, and she hunched down over the saddle as the gale threatened to lift her from the animal’s back. Driving her heels into its flanks, she urged her mount onward.
She was still half a day from the city – the warrens had a way of wandering, and gates could never be counted on, and this particular gate had opened a long, long way from where it had begun. Exhausted, filled with doubts and trepidation, she pushed on, her horse’s hoofs cracking sparks on the cobbles.
Some things could haunt a soul; some things needed undoing. The toe of a boot searching ashes – but no, she’d gone beyond that. She was here, regrets like hounds at her heels.
Thunder pounded; lightning flashed and sent jagged fissures of argent light splitting the black clouds. Somewhere behind her a strike detonated on the road and her horse stumbled. She steadied it with a firm rein. The gusts of wind felt like fists pummelling the left side of her face, and all down that side of her body. She swore, but could barely hear her own voice.
The darkness had swallowed the world now and she rode half blind, trusting her mount to stay on the road. And still the rain held back – she could taste it on the air, bitter with the salt whipped up from the seas beyond the ridge.
Her cloak pulled loose from the thigh strings and snapped out wild as a torn sail behind her. She shouted a curse as she was nearly yanked from the saddle. Teeth grinding, she forced her upper body forward once again, one hand holding tight on the hinged saddle horn.
She’d ridden into the face of sandstorms – gods, she’d damned near spat into the face of the Whirlwind itself – but nothing like this. The air crackled, groaned. The road shook to the thunderous reverberations, like the hoofs of a god descending.
Howling now, giving voice to her fury, she drove her horse into a churning gallop, and the beast’s breaths snorted like drums in the rain – but the air was charnel hot, tomb-dry – another blinding flash, another deafening detonation – her horse wavered and then, muscles bunching, bones straining, it regained its purchase on the road –
– and someone was now riding beside her, on a huge, gaunt horse black as the sky overhead.
She twisted round to glare at him. ‘This is you?’
A flash of a grin, and then, ‘Sorry!’
‘When will it end?’
‘How should I know? When the damned gate closes!’
He then added something more, but thunder smashed to splinters whatever he’d said, and she shook her head at him.
He leaned closer, shouted, ‘It’s good to see you again!’
‘You idiot! Does he even know you’re here?’
And to that question, his only answer was another grin.
Where had he been? The man had ever infuriated her. And now here he was, at her side, reminding her of all the reasons she’d had the first time round for doing … for doing what she did. Growling another curse, she shot him a glare. ‘Will this get any worse?’
‘Only when we leave!’
Gods below, the things I’ll do for love.
‘North,’ the withered hag had said, her bent and broken visage reminding Torrent of an uncle who’d taken a hoof to the side of his face, crushing jaws and cheekbone. For the rest of his days, he’d shown to the world the imprint of that hoof, and with a twisted, toothless grin, he’d laugh and say, ‘My best friend did this. What’s the world come to when you can’t even trust your best friends?’
And if the horse had outlived him, if his wife had not wept at his byre as a widow should, instead standing dry-eyed and expressionless, if he’d not begun chasing little girls … Torrent shook his head. Any rider who called his horse his best friend already had a few stones knocked loose in his skull.
For all that, Torrent found himself tending to his mount with a care bordering on obsession. And he grieved to see it suffer. Poor forage, not enough water, the absence of its own kind. Solitude weakened a horse’s spirit, for they were herd animals as much as humans were, and loneliness dulled the eye.
‘The desert glitters with death,’ continued Olar Ethil. ‘We must go round it. North.’
Torrent glanced over at the children. Absi had ventured a few strides on to the plain, returning with a shard of crystal that painted prisms up his bared arm. He held up his trophy, waved it back and forth as if it was a sword, and then he laughed. The twins looked on, their wan faces empty of expression.
He had no skills when it came to children. Redmask had set him to care for the Awl children, that day long ago, knowing well his awkwardness, his discomfort. Redmask had been punishing him for something – Torrent could no longer remember what, not that it mattered any more. From where he had been, he’d seen the fall of the great leader. From where he had been, he’d witnessed the death of Toc Anaster.
It was a measure of human madness, he realized, that children should be made to see such things. The pain of the dying, the violence of the slayer, the cruelty of the victor. He wondered what the twins had seen, since that night of betrayal. Even Absi must bear scars, though he seemed oddly immune to long bouts of sorrow.
No, none of this was right. But then, maybe it had never been right. Did there not come to every child that moment when the mother, the father, loses that god-like status, that supreme competence in all things, when they are revealed to be as weak, as flawed and as lost as the child looking on? How that moment crushes! All at once the world becomes a threatening place, and in the unknown waits all manner of danger, and the child wonders if there is any place left in which to hide, to find refuge.
‘North,’ said Olar Ethil again, and she set off, limping, pieces hanging from her battered form. The two skeletal lizards scampered into her wake – he’d wondered where they’d been, since it had been days since he’d last seen them, but now the damned things were back.
Torrent turned from his horse and walked over to the children. ‘Absi and Stavi this time,’ he said. Stavi rose and took her brother’s hand – the one not gripping the shard – and led him over to the horse. She clambered into the saddle, and then reached down to Absi.
Watching her lift the boy from the ground and set him down on the saddle in front of her reminded Torrent of how these children had changed. Wiry, all fat burned away, their skins darkened by the sun. A newly honed edge of competence.
Redmask left me to guard the children. But they are gone, now. All of them. Gone. So I promised Setoc to ward these ones. So bold, that vow. And I don’t even like children. If I fail again, these three will die.
Storii’s calloused hand slipped into his own. He looked down to meet her eyes, and what he saw in them made his stomach twist. No, I am not your unflawed protector, not your guardian god. No, do not look at me like that. ‘Let’s go,’ he said gruffly.
She could feel her power growing, her senses reaching out through stony ground, along the sodden sands of buried streams. Again and again, she touched the signs of her chosen children, the Imass, and even those from the Eres’al – who dwelt in the times before the Imass. And she could hear the echoes of their voices, songs lost to ancient winds now, there on the banks of extinct rivers, in the lees of hills long since worn down and eaten away.
The tools were crude, it was true, the stone of poor quality, but no matter. They had lived in this place; they had wandered these lands. And they shall do so once again. Onos T’oolan, you refuse to understand what I seek for you, for you and all your kin. Silverfox has led so many away, far beyond my reach, but First Sword, those who follow you shall find salvation.
Heed not the summons of the First Throne – she may be a child of the Emperor, she may even stand in the shadow of secrets – but her power over you is an illusion. What urges you to obey is the stain of Logros, the madness of his desperation. Yes, you knelt before the First Throne, there with all the others, but the Emperor is dead. The Emperor is dead!
Listen to me, Onos T’oolan! Turn your people back – the path you are on shall see you all destroyed. Find me – let us end this war of wills. First Sword, see through my eyes – I have your son.
I have your son.
But still he pushed her away, still his own power seethed and roiled around him, raw with the force of Tellann. She sought to force her way through, but his strength defied her. You damned fool! I have your son!
She snarled, paused to glare back at the humans trailing her. And what of your daughters, Onos? Shall I open their throats? Will that compel you? How dare you defy me! Answer me!
Nothing but the moaning wind.
Must I abandon them? Must I find you myself? Tell me, is your power sufficient to rebuff a dragon? I will come to you, First Sword, in the raging fire of Telas—
‘If you harm them, Olar Ethil, a thousand worlds of Telas fire shall not keep you safe from me.’
She laughed. ‘Ah, now you speak.’
‘Do I?’
The Bonecaster hissed in fury. ‘You? Begone, you one-eyed corpse! Go back to your pathetic army of worthless soldiers!’
‘Reach so with your powers, Olar Ethil, and there is no telling whom you might find. In fact, consider this a warning. You are far from alone in this land. There are wings in the darkness, and the morning frost holds in every droplet a thousand eyes. On the wind, scents and flavours, and the breath of ice—’
‘Oh, be quiet! I see what you’re doing! Do you imagine me unable to hide?’
‘You failed in hiding from me, a one-eyed corpse.’
‘The longer you linger,’ she said, ‘the more you lose of yourself. That is my warning to you. You fall away, Toc Anaster. Do you understand me? You fall away.’
‘I shall hold on long enough.’
‘To do what?’
‘What’s needed.’
It proved easy for her will to evade him, slipping to rush past, thundering like a flash flood. Pouring, like water, like fire. She would assail the First Sword’s Tellann. She would shatter the barrier. She would take him by the throat—
Ahead, a line of horse soldiers across her path, silent and dark upon the plain. Dirty, limp banners, torn standards, helms above gaunt, withered faces.
Her power hammered into them, crashed and broke apart like waves against a cliff. Olar Ethil felt her mind reeling back. She was stunned by the will of these revenants, these usurpers of the Throne of Death. As she staggered back, one guided his horse out from the line.
The grey of his beard was spun iron, the cast of his eyes was stone. He reined in before her, leaned forward on his saddle. ‘You are treading foreign land, Bonecaster.’
‘You dare challenge me?’
‘Anywhere, any time.’
‘He is mine!’
‘Olar Ethil,’ he said, drawing his sword, ‘when you argue with death, you always lose.’
Shrieking her fury, she fled.
Torrent walked to stand beside the kneeling creature. ‘You nearly deafened us,’ he said. ‘Is something wrong?’
She slowly straightened, then lashed out an arm across the front of his chest. Thrown back, he was flung through the air. He struck the ground hard, the breath driven from his lungs.
Olar Ethil walked to him, reached down and closed a hand round his throat. She pulled him upright, thrust her mangled face forward, and in the sockets of her eyes he could see fires raging. ‘If I kill them all,’ she hissed, ‘here and now … what use are you? Tell me, pup, what use are you?’
He gasped, trying to regain his breath. Snarling, she thrust him away. ‘Do not mock me again, Awl.’
Torrent staggered, dropped to one knee.
Close by, the two skeletal reptiles laughed.
Storii ran to his side. ‘Don’t,’ she pleaded, her face tear-streaked. ‘Don’t, please. Don’t leave us!’
He shook his head, his throat too bruised for words.
His horse moved up behind them, nudged Torrent’s shoulder. Spirits below.
It had been a long time since he’d last unleashed the full power of Tellann, dragging his hold on the Warren with him with each heavy, scraping step. Within its deadened heart, nothing could reach Onos T’oolan; even the furious assault of Olar Ethil felt muted, a muffled rage made indistinct by layer upon layer of the First Sword’s will.
He recalled a desert, a salt flat’s verge of sharp stones. There were rents in the line. There were clans with but a few warriors left to stand, there on that cold, still morning. He stood before Logros, bereft of his kin, and all that held him there was the binding of duty, the knotted webs of loyalty. He was the First Sword, after all.
The last Jaghut in the Odhan had been hunted down, butchered. The time had come to return to the Malazan Empire, to the Emperor who had seated himself on the First Throne. And Onos T’oolan knew he would soon return to the side of Dassem Ultor, his mortal shadow who had taken for himself – and for his closest followers – the title of First Sword. Prophetic inspiration, for they would soon all be dead – as dead as Onos T’oolan, as dead as the T’lan Imass. Or if not dead, then … destroyed.
Instead, Logros had lifted one hand, a splay of gnarled fingers all pointing at Onos. ‘You were once our First Sword,’ he said. ‘When we return to the mortal empire, we shall avow service to Dassem Ultor, for he is your heir to the title. You shall surrender the name of First Sword.’
Onos T’oolan considered that for a time. Surrender the title? Cut through the bindings? Sever the knots? Know freedom once more? ‘He is mortal, Logros. He does not know what he has done in taking for himself the title of First Sword.’
‘In service,’ Logros replied, ‘the T’lan Imass sanctify him—’
‘You would make of him a god?’
‘We are warriors. Our blessing shall—’
‘Damn him for eternity!’
‘Onos T’oolan, you are of no use to us.’
‘Do you imagine’ – and he recalled the timbre of his voice, the seething outrage, and the horror of what Logros sought to do … to a mortal man, to a man destined to face his own death, and that is something we have never done, no, we ever ran from that moment of reckoning – Logros, the Lord of Death shall strike at the T’lan Imass, through him. Hood shall make him pay. For our crime, for our defiance – ‘Do you imagine,’ he’d said, ‘that your blessing could be anything but a curse? You would make him a god of sorrow, and failure, a god with a face doomed to weep, to twist in anguish—’
‘Onos T’oolan, we cast you out.’
‘I shall speak to Dassem Ultor—’
‘You do not understand. It is too late.’
Too late.
The Adjunct Lorn had believed that it was the murder of the Emperor that had broken the human empire’s alliance with Logros T’lan Imass. She had been wrong. The spilled blood you should have heeded was Dassem Ultor’s, not Kellanved’s. And for all that neither man truly died, but only one bore the deadly kiss of Hood in all the days that followed. Only one stood before Hood himself, and learned of the terrible thing Logros had done to him.
They said Hood was his patron god. They said he had avowed service to the Lord of Death. They said that Hood then betrayed him. They understood nothing. Dassem and his daughter, they were Hood’s knives, striking at us. What is it, to be the weapon of a god?
Where are you now, Logros? Do you feel me, so fiercely reborn? My heir – your chosen child – has rejected the role. His footfalls now mark the passing of tragedy. You have made him the God of Tears, and now that Hood is gone he must hunt down the next one who made him what he was. Do you tremble, Logros? Dassem is coming for you. He is coming for you.
No, the world could not reach through to Onos T’oolan. Not a tremor of pain, not a tremble of grief. He knew nothing of rage. He was immune to every betrayal delivered upon him, and upon those whom he had loved with all his once-mortal heart. He had no desire for vengeance; he had no hope of salvation.
I am the First Sword. I am the weapon of the godless, and upon the day I am unsheathed, dust shall take your every dream. Logros, you fool, did you think you and all the T’lan Imass were proof against your new god’s deadly kiss? Ask Kron. Ask Silverfox. Look upon me now, see how Olar Ethil seeks to wrest me away from Dassem’s curse – but she cannot. You gave him mastery over us, and these chains no Bonecaster can shatter.
We march to our annihilation. The First Sword is torn in two, one half mortal and cruel in denial, the other half immortal and crueller still. Be glad Dassem has not found me. Be glad he seeks his own path, and that he will be far from the place where I shall stand.
And here is my secret. Heed this well. The weapon of the godless needs no hand to wield it. The weapon of the godless wields itself. It is without fear. It is empty of guilt and disdainful of retribution. It is all that and more, but one thing it is not: a liar. No slaying in the name of a higher power, no promises of redemption. It will not cloak brutality in the zeal that justifies, that absolves.
And this is why it is the most horrifying weapon of all.
No one could reach him, and he could feel his power seething, emanating from him in radiating waves – and beyond it the world trembled. He was no longer interested in hiding. No longer concerned with stratagems of deceit.
Let his enemies find him. Let them dare his wrath.
Was this not better? Was this not more comforting than if he’d ignited his rage? Tellann did not demand ferocious fires, engulfing the lands, devouring the sky. Tellann could hide in a single spark, or the faint gleam in an ember’s soul. It could hide in the patience of a warrior immune to doubt, armoured in pure righteousness.
And if that righteousness then blazed, if it scorched all who dared assail it, well, was that not just?
Ulag Togtil bowed under the assault of the First Sword’s thoughts, this searing flood of bright horror. He could feel the waves of anguish erupting from his fellow warriors, swirling like newborn eels in the maelstrom of their leader’s rage.
Was this destroying them all? Would Onos T’oolan at last find his place to embrace annihilation, only to turn round and discover nothing but ashes in his wake? His followers incinerated by all that roiled out from him? Or will this anneal us? Will this forge us all into his weapons of the godless?
We felt you, Olar Ethil, and we too reject you and all that you promise. Our time is over. The First Sword understands this. You do not.
Go away. The blood you demand from this world is too terrible, and to spill it in our name is to give final proof to this theme of tragedy, the dread curse born of the mortal named Dassem Ultor.
Logros, could I find you now, I would tear your limbs off. I would twist your skull until your neck snapped. And I would bury that skull in the deepest, darkest pit, so that you witness naught but an eternity of decay.
Yes, we understand the First Sword now.
We understand, and we cannot bear it.
Rystalle Ev struggled to reach Ulag’s side. She needed his strength. The First Sword was devouring himself, his thoughts both gaping, snapping maw and mangled, bloody tail. He was a serpent of fire, wheeling inexorably forward. The current swept his warriors after him; they staggered, blind in the deluge of terrible power.
Ulag, please – are we not done with weapons? Is peace nothing but a lie?
First Sword – you vow to shatter us all, but what will it win us? Is this the only legacy we can offer to all who follow? We die, tokens of useless defiance. The kings will still stride the earth, the slaves will still bow in chains, the hunters will hunt and the hunted will die. Mothers will weep for lost children – First Sword, can you offer us nothing but this?
But there was no room in the thoughts of Onos T’oolan to heed the fears of his followers. He was not even listening, chewing on the pathetic game of implacability – this mad diffidence and the absurdity of the unaffected. No, none of them could reach him.
But we follow. We can do nothing else.
She stumbled against Ulag. He reached out, steadied her.
‘Ulag?’
‘Hold on, Rystalle Ev. Find something. A memory you can hold on to. A time of joy, of love even. When the moment comes …’ he paused, as if struggling with his words, ‘when the time comes, and you are driven to your knees, when the world turns its face from you on all sides, when you fall inside yourself, and fall, and fall, find your moment, your dream of peace.’
‘There is none,’ she whispered. ‘I remember only grief.’
‘Find it,’ he hissed. ‘You must!’
‘He will see us all destroyed – that is the only peace I now dream of, Ulag.’
She saw him turn away then, and sorrow filled her. See us? We are the T’lan Imass. We are the glory of immortality. When oblivion comes, I shall kiss it. And in my mind, I shall ride into the void on a river of tears. On a river of tears.
Gruntle followed a trail old beyond imagination, skirting sheer cliffs, the tumbled wreckage of sharp rocks and shattered boulders. In this place of dreams the air was hot, smelling of salt marshes and vast tidal flats. It was a trail of the dead and the dying, a trail of clenched jaws and neck muscles taut as bands of iron. Limbs scraped, knocked against stone, and that deep, warm miasma that so bound the minds of the hunted, the victims, filled the air like the breath of ghosts trapped for ever in this travail.
He reached the cave, paused just outside it, head lifted, testing the air.
But all this was long past, generation folded upon generation, a procession that promised to repeat again and again, for all time.
An illusion, he well knew. The last giant cat that had dragged its prey into this cave was bones and dust, so scattered by the centuries that he could not identify its scent. A leopard, a tiger, a cave lion – what did it matter, the damned thing was dead. The cycle of hunting, breeding and rearing had long ago snapped clean.
He edged into the cave, knowing what he would find.
Bones. Gnawed skulls. Eres’al skulls, and those of other apes, and here and there a human child, a woman. This was proof of a time when the world’s future tyrants were nothing but victims, cowering, eyes wide at the flash of feline eyes in the darkness. They fell to savage fangs, to talons. They hung slack by the neck from the jaws of the great tawny beasts haunting their world.
Tyranny was but a gleam in the eye back then, and each day the sun lifted to light a world of ignorance. How sweet must that have been.
Gruntle snorted. Where was the mind that dreamed of unimagined possibilities – like hands groping in the dark? Groping – was that a flare of distant light? Was that a promise of something, something … wonderful? In the moment before the low growl – hackles snapping – and the sudden lunge. Better to die reaching for dreams than reaching for … for what? That tick under the armpit of the smelly creature huddled against you?
I have heard that rock apes gather on the cliff edges to watch the sun set and rise. What are they thinking? What are they dreaming? Is that a moment of prayer? A time to give thanks for the glory of life?
A prayer? Aye: ‘May all these two-legged hunters chew straight up their own arses. Give us spears of fire and lightning to turn this battle – just once, we beg you. Just once!’
He reached out a massive barbed paw and slapped at a small skull, watched it skid and then slowly spin in place. Got you, I see. Fangs went crunch, dreams went away. Done. With a low growl, he slipped past the heaps of bones until he found the place where the ancient cats had slept, bellies full, running through the wild grasses of their dream worlds – which were no different from this one. Imagine dreaming of a paradise no different from the one in which you happen to live. What moral might hide in that?
All these worlds, all these fraught warrens, mocked him with their perfect banality. Patterns without revelation, repetitions without meaning. It was not enough to imagine worlds without humans or other sentient fools; the simple act of imagining placed his all-too-human sensibility upon the scene, his very own eyes to witness the idyllic perfection of his absolute absence. For all that, it was easy to harbour such contradictions – when I hold on to this humanity within me. When I refuse the sweet bliss of the tiger’s world.
No wonder you forgot everything, Trake. No wonder you weren’t ready for godhood. In the jungles of ancient days, the tigers were gods. Until the new gods arrived. And they were far thirstier for blood than the tigers ever were, and now the jungle is silent.
This night, he knew, here in this cave, he would dream of the hunt, the perfect stalking of the perfect prey, and dragging his victim up the trail and into this cave, away from the hyenas and jackals.
As dreams went, it wasn’t that bad. As dreams went.
Black fur, the taste of blood in my mouth …
He had found him outside the walls of a dead city. Kneeling on a dusty road, collecting the shattered remnants of an old pot, but it was not just one pot that had broken apart, it was hundreds. A panicked flight, smoke and flames rising to blacken the limestone cliffs against which the city had cowered, the blurred passing of wretched faces, like broken husks and flotsam in a river. Things fell, things fell apart.
He was trying to put the pieces back together, and as Mappo drew nearer he looked up, but only briefly, before returning to his task. ‘Good sir,’ he said, with one finger pushing shards back and forth, endlessly rearranging, seeking patterns, ‘Good sir, have you by chance some glue?’
The rage was gone, and with it all memory. Icarium knelt with his back to a city he had destroyed.
Sighing, Mappo set his heavy satchel down, and then crouched. ‘Too many broke here,’ he said, ‘for you to repair. It would take weeks, maybe even months.’
‘But I have time.’
Mappo flinched, looked away – but not at the city, where capemoths crowded window sills in the slope-walled buildings leaning against the cliff walls, where the scorch marks streaked the stone like slashes into night. Not at the city, with its narrow streets filled with rubble and corpses, and the rhizan lizards swarming the cold, rotting flesh, and the bhok’arala clambering down to lick sticky stains for the salt and snatching up bundles of clothing with which to make nests. And not at the gate, the doors blasted apart, the heaps of dead soldiers swelling inside their armour as the day’s heat burgeoned.
He stared instead southward, to the old caravan camps marked only by low stone foundations and pens for sheep and goats. Never again would the desert traders travel to this place; never again would merchants from distant cities come seeking the famous Redworm Silks of Shikimesh.
‘I thought, friend,’ Mappo said, and then he shook his head. ‘Only yesterday you spoke of journeying. Northeast, you said, to the coast.’
Icarium looked up, frowned. ‘I did?’
‘Seeking the Tanno, the Spiritwalkers. They are said to have collected ancient records from as far back as the First Empire.’
‘Yes.’ Icarium nodded. ‘I have heard that said, too. Think of all that secret knowledge! Tell me, do you think the priests will permit me entry to their libraries? There is so much I need to learn – why would they stop me? Do you think they will be kind, friend? Kind to me?’
Mappo studied the shards on the road. ‘The Tanno are said to be very wise, Icarium. I do not imagine they would bar their doors to you.’
‘Good. That’s good.’
The Trell scratched at the bristle on his jaw. ‘So, it shall be Icarium and Mappo, walking across the wastes, all the way to the coast, there to take ship to the island, to the home of the Spiritwalkers.’
‘Icarium and Mappo,’ the Jhag repeated, and then he smiled. ‘Mappo, my friend, this seems a most promising day, does it not?’
‘I shall draw water from the caravan wells, and then we can be on our way.’
‘Water,’ said Icarium. ‘Yes, so I can wash this mud off – I seem to have bathed in it.’
‘You slid down a bank yesterday evening.’
‘Just so, Mappo. Clumsy of me.’ He slowly straightened, cupped in his hands a score of fragments. ‘See the beautiful blue glaze? Like the sky itself – they must have been beautiful, these vessels. It is such a loss, when precious things break, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, Icarium, a terrible loss.’
‘Mappo?’ He lifted eyes sharp with anguish. ‘In the city, I think, something happened. Thousands have died – thousands lie dead in that city – it’s true, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, Icarium, a most tragic end.’
‘What awful curse was visited upon it, do you think?’
Mappo shook his head.
Icarium studied the shards in his hands. ‘If I could put it all back together, I would. You know that, don’t you? You understand that – please, say that you understand.’
‘I do, friend.’
‘To take what’s broken. To mend it.’
‘Yes,’ Mappo whispered.
‘Must everything break in the end?’
‘No, Icarium, not everything.’
‘Not everything? What will not break in the end? Tell me, Mappo.’
‘Why,’ and the Trell forced a smile, ‘you need not look far. Are we not friends, Icarium? Have we not always been friends?’
A sudden light in the Jhag’s grey eyes. ‘Shall I help you with the water?’
‘I would like that.’
Icarium stared at the shards in his hands and hesitated.
Mappo dragged his satchel over. ‘In here, if you like. We can try to put them together later.’
‘But there’s more on the road, all about – I would need—’
‘Leave the water to me, then, Icarium. Fill the satchel, if you like, as many as you can gather.’
‘But the weight – no, I think it would prove too heavy a burden, friend, this obsession of mine.’
‘Don’t worry on that account, friend. Go on. I will be back shortly.’
‘You are certain?’
‘Go on.’
With a smile, Icarium knelt once again. His gaze caught on his sword, lying on the verge a few paces to his right, and Mappo saw him frown.
‘I cleaned the mud from it last night,’ Mappo said.
‘Ah. That was kind of you, friend.’
Shikimesh and the Redworm Silks. An age ago, a thousand lies ago, and the biggest lie of all. A friendship that could never break. He sat in the gloom, encircled by a ring of stones he had rolled together – an old Trell ritual – with the gap opening to the east, to where the sun would rise. In his hands a dozen or so dusty, pale blue potsherds.
We never got round to putting them back together. He’d forgotten by the afternoon, and I made no effort to remind him – and was that not my task? To feed him only those memories I judged useful, to starve all the others until they vanished.
Kneeling that day, he had been like a child, with all his games in waiting before him – waiting for someone like me to come along. Before that, he was content with the company of his own toys and nothing more. Is that not a precious gift? Is that not the wonder of a child? The way they have of building their own worlds, of living in them, and finding joy in the living itself?
Who would break that? Who would crush and destroy such a wondrous thing?
Will I find you kneeling in the dust, Icarium? Will I find you puzzling over the wreckage surrounding you? Will we speak of holy libraries and secret histories?
Shall we sit and build us a pot?
With gentle care, Mappo returned the shards to his satchel. He lay down, set his back to the gap in the ring of stones, and tried to sleep.
Faint scanned the area. ‘They split here,’ she announced. ‘One army went due east, but it’s the narrower trail.’ She pointed southeast. ‘Two, maybe three forces – big ones – went that way. So, we have us a choice to make.’ She faced her companions, gaze settling on Precious Thimble.
The young woman seemed to have aged decades since Jula’s death. She stood in obvious pain, the soles of her feet probably blistered, cracked and weeping. Just like mine. ‘Well? You said there was power … out here, somewhere. Tell us, which army do we follow?’
Precious Thimble hugged herself. ‘If they’re armies, there must be a war.’
Faint said, ‘Well, there was a battle, yes. We found what was left. But maybe that battle was the only one. Maybe the war’s over and everyone’s going home.’
‘I meant, why do we have to follow any of them?’
‘Because we’re starving and dying of thirst—’
The young woman’s eyes flashed. ‘I’m doing the best I can!’
Faint said, ‘I know, but it’s not enough, Precious. If we don’t catch up with somebody, we’re all going to die.’
‘East, then – no, wait.’ She hesitated.
‘Out with it,’ growled Faint.
‘There’s something terrible that way. I – I don’t want to get close. I reach out, and then I flee – I don’t know why. I don’t know anything!’
Amby was staring at her as if studying a strange piece of wood, or a broken idol. He seemed moments from spitting at its feet.
Faint ran her hands through her greasy hair – it was getting long but she welcomed that. Anything to fend off the infernal heat. Her chest ached and the pain was a constant companion now. She dreamed of getting drunk. Falling insensate in some alley, or some squalid room in an inn. Disappearing from herself, for one night, just one night. And let me wake up to a new body, a new world. With Sweetest Sufferance alive and sitting beside me. With no warring gods and swords through foreheads. ‘What about to the southeast, Sorceress? Any bad feelings in that direction?’
Precious Thimble shook her head, and then shrugged.
‘What does that mean?’ Faint hissed in exasperation. ‘Is it as nasty as what’s east of us, or isn’t it?’
‘No – but …’
‘But what?’
‘It tastes of blood! There! How’s that, then? It all tastes of blood!’
‘Are they spilling it or drinking it?’
Precious Thimble stared at Faint as if she’d gone mad. Gods, maybe I have, asking a question like that. ‘Which way will kill us quickest?’
A deep, shuddering breath. ‘East. That army – they’re all going to die.’
‘Of what?’ Faint demanded.
‘I don’t know – thirst, maybe. Yes, thirst.’ Her eyes widened. ‘There’s no water, no water at all – I see ground, glittering ground, blinding, sharp as daggers. And bones – endless fields of bones. I see men and women driven mad by the heat. I see children – oh gods – they come walking up like nightmares, like proof of all the crimes we have ever committed.’ Abruptly, horrifyingly, she howled, her hands to her face, and then staggered back and would have fallen if not for Amby, who stepped close to take her weight. She twisted round and buried herself in his embrace. Over her head, he stared at Faint, and gave her a jarring smile.
Madness? Too late, Precious Thimble – and thank the gods you can’t see what we’re seeing. Shivering, Faint turned to the southeast. ‘That way, then.’ Children. Don’t remind me. Some crimes cut close to the bone, too close. No, don’t remind me.
In her mind she saw Sweetest Sufferance, a face splitting into a smile. ‘Finally,’ she muttered, ‘a decision. Get on with it, Faint.’
Faint nodded for Amby to follow with the sorceress, and then she set out with her hobbling, wincing gait. If they’ve gone too far, we won’t make it. If we get much worse … blood. We’ll either spill it or drink it.
She wondered at the armies ahead. Who in Hood’s name were they, and why go this deep into the Wastelands just to fight a stupid battle? And why then split up? And you poor fools marching east. Just a glimpse of where you’re headed tears at her sanity. I pray you turn back before you leave too many lying lifeless on the ground.
Wherever you’re going, it can’t be worth it. Nothing in this world is worth it, and you’d be hard pressed to convince me otherwise.
She heard a grunt and glanced back.
Amby was carrying Precious Thimble in his arms, the smile on his face stretched into a rictus travesty of satisfaction, as if in finding his heart’s desire he was forcing himself to take its fullest pleasure. Precious Thimble’s head lolled against his upper arm, her eyes closed, her mouth half open.
‘What’s wrong with her?’
Amby said, ‘Fainted … Faint.’
‘Oh, sod off, you lump of lard.’
Ten thousand furred backs, black, silver and grey, the bodies lean and long. Like iron swords, ten thousand iron swords. They seethed before Setoc’s eyes, they blurred like the honed edges of waves on an angry sea. She was carried along, driven to rearing cliffs, to up-thrust fangs of rotted rock.
The wind roared in her ears, roared in and through her, trembling like thunder through every bone of her being. She felt the beasts crashing ashore, felt their fury assailing insensate stone and all the brutal laws that held it in place. They bared teeth at the sky, they bit and chewed shafts of sunlight as if speared through. They howled against the coming of night and in the hunt they stalked their own senseless savagery.
We are what we are, and facing this enemy what we are is helpless.
Who will fight for us? Who will peel lips back to reveal swords of sharp iron?
The cliffs ahead reverberated to the onslaught – she drew ever closer. Wolves of Winter, do you see me? Blessed Lord, Proud Lady, is this your summons? Does there await a cave in that ravaged wall? And inside, a Hold of Thrones?
There is a smell to the wild, a smell that makes the hairs stand on end, that rushes like ice through human veins. There are trails crossing the path, secret passages beneath the canopy. Mice dance on the beaten floor in the instant before we arrive, and we are blind to it all.
And all the spaces carved out by our fires and our weapons and our axes and our ploughs, we must then fill with that sweating, bitter flood that is pride. In the wastelands of our making we will ourselves to stand as would one exalted and triumphant.
Thrones of the Wild, thrones of bones and hides and lifeless eyes. Tall as mountains, these Beast Thrones.
Who assails us? Who hunts us? Who slays us?
Everyone.
She raced for the jagged rocks. Annihilation, if it came, would arrive as a blessing. The heat of the beasts carrying her was sweet as a loving kiss, a safe embrace, a promise of salvation. I am the Destriant of the Wolves. I hold in my chest the souls of the all the slain beasts, of this and every other world.
But I cannot hold them for ever.
I need a sword. I need absolution.
Absolution, yes, and a sword. Ten thousand iron swords. In the name of the Wolves of Winter, in the name of the Wild.
Sister Equity walked across lifeless sand, far to the south of the Spire, far away from the eyes of everyone. She had once dreamed of peace. She had lived in a world where questions were rare, and there had been comfort in that. If there was a cause worthy enough to which she could devote her life, it was to journey from birth to death without confrontation. Nothing to stir her unease, nothing to deliver pain or to receive it. Although the Forkrul Assail had long ago lost their god, had long ago suffered the terrible grief of that god’s violent end – the murder for which no penance was possible – she had come to harbour in her own soul a childish hope that a new god could be made. Assembled like the setting of bones, the moulded clay of muscles, the smooth caress of a face given form, given life by her own loving hands. And this god she would call Harmony.
In the world of this god life would not demand a death. There would be no need to kill in order to eat. There would be no cruel fate or random tragedy to take one before her time, and the forests and plains would seethe with animals, the skies with birds, the seas, lakes and rivers with fish.
The wishes of a child were fragile things, and she now knew that none ever survived the hard, jostling indifference that came with the bitter imperatives of adulthood: the stone-eyed rush to find elusive proofs of worth, or to reach at last the swollen satiation that was satisfaction. Virtues changed; the clays found new forms and hardened to stone, and adults took weapons in hand and killed each other over them. And in that new world she had found herself growing into there was no place – no place at all – for peace.
She recalled walking from the ship into the city, into the midst of these clamouring humans with the frightened eyes. On all sides, she could see how they dwelt in war, each one an exhausted soldier battling demons real and imagined. They fought for status, they fought for dignity, and they fought to wrest both away from their neighbours, their mates, their kin. In fact, the very necessity that held families together, and neighbourhoods, provinces and kingdoms, was fraught with desperation and fear, barricaded against the unknown, the strange and the threatening.
The Forkrul Assail had been right in shattering it all. There would be peace, but in the making of peace there must be judgement, and retribution. The people of Kolanse and the kingdoms to the south must all be returned to their childlike state, and then built anew. They could not, would not, do it for themselves – too many things got in the way, after all. They always did.
It was unfortunate that to achieve a sustainable balance many thousands had to die, but when the alternative was the death of everyone, who could argue against the choice made? Populations had been dismantled, selectively culled. Entire regions laid waste, not a single human left, to free the land to heal. Those who were permitted to live were forced into a new way of living, under the implacable guidance of the Forkrul Assail.
If this had been the extent of the redress, Equity would have been content. Things could be made viable, a balance could be achieved, and perhaps even a new god would arise, born of sober faith in reality and its very real limitations, born of honest humility and the desire for peace. A faith to spread across the world, adjudicated by the Pures and then the Watered.
If not for the Heart, if not for that fist of torment dredged up from the depths of the bay. All that power, so raw, so alien, so perfect in its denial. Our god was slain, but we had already found a path to vengeance – the Nah’ruk, who had broken their chains and now thirsted for the blood of their masters. So much was already within our reach.
But for the Heart, so firing Reverence, Serenity and the other elders, so poisoning their souls. No balance could be perfect – we all knew that – but now a new solution burned bright, so bright it blinded them to all else. The Gate, wrested away from the K’Chain Che’Malle, cleansed of that foul, ancient curse. Akhrast Korvalain, returned once more to the Forkrul Assail, and from that gate – from the power of the Heart – we could resurrect our god.
We could be made children once again.
Sacrifices? Oh yes, but everything of worth demanded that. Balance? Why, we shall do away with the one force eternally intent on destroying that balance – humanity.
Our answer is annihilation. Our cull shall be absolute. Our cull shall be the excision of an entire species.
‘Raise up the Heart! Hold it high so that its dread beat is heard by all! Against the depredations of humanity, think you not that we shall find allies?’
Allies. Yes, Reverence, we have found allies.
And I tell myself that I see peace in the future – the peace of my childhood, the peace of harmony, the peace of a silent world. All we need to reach it, is a little blood. A little blood.
But, Sister Reverence, then I look into your ancient eyes, and I see how the hunger of our allies has infected you. The Tiste Liosan, the Eleint, the Lord and Lady of the Beast Hold – but all they desire is chaos, anarchy, destruction, the end of the Age of Gods and the Age of Humans. Like you, they thirst for blood, but not a little blood. No. Oceans, oceans of blood.
Sister Reverence, we shall defy you when the time comes. Calm has found a weapon, a weapon to end your insane ambitions.
Her footfalls were a whisper in the sand, but in her mind the ground trembled beneath her tread. The sun’s heat was fierce on her white face, but the fire of her thoughts was hotter still. And the voices from the beach, not far ahead now, should fall in futility before her hard intransigence, yet in them she found … hope.
‘Balance,’ she said under her breath. ‘Sister Reverence, you force this upon us. In your extremity, we must counter you. Calm has found the weapon we need. Reach for your fiercest madness, we shall match it – and more.’
In truth, she cared nothing for the fate of humanity. If they all perished, so be it. No, what was important, here and now and in the future to come, was principle. Balance has an eternal enemy, and its name is ambition. You have forgotten this, Sister Reverence, and it falls to us to remind you. And so we shall.
She climbed the high bank above the beach. Below, fifteen paces away, a dozen humans had gathered, and it seemed an argument was under way. In the bay beyond sat a ship, its arcane lines sending a sudden chill through Equity. Jaghut. The fools!
She marched down on to the beach.
The first two sailors who saw her both shrieked. Weapons flashed, and all at once the humans were rushing towards her.
‘I would speak—’
A cutlass lashed out for her face. She edged aside, caught the wrist and clenched until bones split. The man howled, and she closed, driving her fingers into his throat. Blood sprayed from his gaping mouth, his eyes bulging as he fell back. A knife-thrust sought her stomach. Her mid-section bent to one side, evading the attack. She sent one hand snapping out to grasp the woman’s forehead and crushed it like the shell of an egg.
A cutlass struck her left shoulder, rebounded as if from dense wood. Hissing, Equity twisted round. Two swift blows broke the man’s neck. Scowling now, she waded forward. Bodies spun to her lashing hands. The screams were deafening—
And then the survivors were fleeing along the beach, their weapons flung away, and down by the water, thirty paces distant, stood four figures: a man, three women. Equity marched towards them.
Sorcery erupted from the shortest of the women. A wave of blistering cold crashed into the Forkrul Assail, driving her back a step.
One of the other women had drawn two short-hafted throwing axes and was fast closing.
Sweet kiss of the Abyss, are they all suicidal? ‘Cease your attack!’
One axe flew straight for her. She slipped from its path, only to grunt as the second axe struck her in the chest, its iron blade lodged in her breast bone. Agony ripped through her. The second wave of Omtose Phellack lifted her from the sand, flung her five paces back. She landed hard on her back, rolled, and then regained her feet. The bones of her chest plate convulsed, rejecting the axe blade, and she straightened in time to meet the attack of the axe-throwing woman.
Long-bladed knives, a blur of hissing blades.
Equity blocked the attacks, one after another, but was driven back, one step, two.
She awakened her voice. ‘STOP!’
The woman staggered, and then, with a growl, she pushed forward.
‘STOP THIS!’
Blood spattered from her attacker’s nose. Blood blossomed in her eyes. She stumbled, then lifted her weapons once more.
Snarling, Equity stepped close and slapped the woman, hard enough to snap her head round. She collapsed in a heap. The Forkrul Assail stood over her, contemplating driving a heel into the human’s throat.
An arrow glanced across her left temple, scoring a red slash. ‘CEASE ALL ATTACKS!’
The woman at her feet moaned, tried to rise. Exasperated, Equity reached down, picked her up and threw her into the sea ten paces to her right. She stabbed a long finger at the sorceress. ‘I will speak to you!’
The other woman with her shouted, ‘Then stop killing my crew!’
Equity ran a finger along the gash in her temple – the wound was already mending. She sighed. Her chest ached, but the bones had begun healing and the pain was fading to an itch. ‘They attacked me,’ she said. ‘I simply defended myself. Indeed,’ she added, cautiously approaching, ‘if I desired to kill them all, I would have done so.’
‘I see five bodies over there—’
‘As I said, I would have killed them all.’
The woman thrashing in the shallows was climbing unsteadily to her feet. Equity regarded her for a moment. ‘If she comes at me again, I will kill her.’ She faced the sorceress. ‘Make that plain to her – she belongs to you, does she not?’
The short, plump mage made a strange wiggle with the fingers of one hand. ‘I am hard pressed to keep her from carving your head from your rather bony shoulders. You certainly have a way with words, Inquisitor, but that will not work a second time.’
Equity narrowed her attention on the other woman in the group. She snorted. ‘It is said the Realm of Death is sundered. Do your kind now plague the world?’
‘I carry no plague,’ the woman replied.
The Forkrul Assail frowned. Was she a simpleton? Often, she well knew, the brain decayed irreparably in such creatures.
The man standing beside the undead woman was now staring at her with his one working eye. ‘Did she say y’got the plague, Cap’n?’
‘No, Pretty, she said you’re an idiot. Now be quiet – better yet, gather up the crew, now that they’ve scattered every which way, and detail a burial party, and all that other stuff. Go on.’
‘Aye, Cap’n.’ Then he hesitated, and said in a hoarse whisper that all could hear, ‘It’s just, this one, she looks like she’s got a plague, don’t she? All white and all those veins on her arms, and—’
‘Go, Kaban. Now.’
Nodding, the man limped off.
Equity watched the woman who’d attacked her set about retrieving her weapons.
‘Inquisitor,’ said the sorceress, ‘we have no interest in suffering your … adjudication. Indeed, we proclaim you our enemy.’
‘Is blind hatred your only recourse?’ Equity demanded. ‘You name me “Inquisitor”, telling me that you know certain details of local significance. Yet that title is a presumption. You assume that all Forkrul Assail are Inquisitors, and this is ignorant. Indeed, most of the Inquisitors we set upon the peoples of this land were Watered – as much human blood in their veins as Assail. We discovered a rather sweet irony in observing their zeal, by the way.’
‘Nevertheless,’ the sorceress retorted, even as she made imperative gestures towards her servant, ‘we must view you as our enemy.’
‘You still do not understand, do you? Your enemies are the Elders among the Pures, who seek the utter destruction of you and your kind, not just on this continent, but across the entire world.’
‘I am sure you understood why we might object to such desires,’ the sorceress said, and now her servant arrived, delivering into the young woman’s plump hand a clay pipe. She puffed for a moment, and then continued, ‘And while you appear to be suggesting that you do not share the zeal of your Elder Pures, I cannot help but wonder what has brought you here, to me.’
‘You have bargained with the Jaghut,’ said Equity.
‘They share our aversion to your notions of justice.’
Frowning, Equity said, ‘I cannot understand what value the Jaghut see in you, a silly little girl playing at deadly magics, and beside you a lifeless abomination harbouring a parasite.’ She fixed her gaze upon the servant. ‘Is there a glamour about this one? If so, it is too subtle for me. Tell me, Sorceress, is she Jaghut?’
‘My handmaid? Goodness, no!’
Equity’s eyes settled upon the ship in the bay. ‘Is he there?’
‘Who?’
‘Your ally – I would speak to him. Or her.’
Smoke billowed and streamed. ‘I’m sorry, what ally?’
‘Where hides the Jaghut?’ Equity demanded.
‘Ah, I see. You misapprehend. I struck no bargain with any particular Jaghut. I merely sacrificed some blood for the privilege of Omtose Phellack—’
The undead captain turned on the sorceress. ‘You did what? Errant’s nudge – that storm! You can’t—’
‘Necessity, Captain Elalle. Now please, cogitate in silence for the moment, will you?’
‘I am astonished,’ admitted Equity. ‘I did not imagine you to be so … thick.’
‘Thorns and rocks—’
‘You cannot bargain with Omtose Phellack – you are not Jaghut. No, you need a blessing, or personal intervention, and this is as true of a mortal as it is of an Elder God. That ship is Jaghut – its kind has not sailed the seas of this world for millennia. Where has it come from?’
‘From the realm of Omtose Phellack itself,’ said the sorceress.
‘No, that is not possible. Unless a Jaghut has journeyed into the warren – but no, there is naught but ice – yonder ship was built in this world. Do you see now why this makes no sense?’
‘Not just ice, apparently.’
‘You have seen Omtose Phellack?’
‘My handmaid,’ said the sorceress. ‘It was she who journeyed through the gate. It was she who entered Omtose Phellack and returned with the ship.’
Equity studied the woman with the bruised eyes. ‘Describe the place where you were, please.’
‘Enlighten her,’ ordered the sorceress when the handmaid hesitated.
A shrug, and then, ‘Forest. Demons. Ravines. Vicious apes.’
‘You did not journey to Omtose Phellack,’ Equity pronounced. ‘The gate opened upon another realm, a different warren.’
‘That cannot be,’ objected the sorceress. ‘My ritual fed on the power of Omtose Phellack.’
‘Enough of all this,’ drawled the captain, crossing her arms. ‘This Forkrul Assail has come here to negotiate. She seeks to betray her Elders. Obviously, she’s come looking for allies, though why she would seek us out remains something of a mystery, since she clearly knew nothing about your making use of Omtose Phellack, Princess. So, unless your skills in sorcery are such that even the gods tremble, I admit to having some trouble understanding what she wants from us.’
Equity sighed. ‘We felt the touch of an Elder Warren, but could not determine which one.’
‘Then it was the Elder Pures who dispatched you?’
‘No, those who remain close to the Spire are mostly blind to distant powers. When I spoke of “we” I meant myself and my comrades; we have journeyed many times well beyond the influence of the power emanating from the Spire, else we would not have detected these … intrusions.’
‘And now you want to forge some kind of alliance,’ said the captain.
‘You seek the Spire, and that which lies upon its altar—’
‘Not precisely,’ interjected the sorceress, pausing to pull hard on her pipe before adding, ‘we seek to prevent whatever it is you’re all planning.’
‘And how do you expect to do that?’
‘I believe the term you have already used will suffice: allies.’
‘If you – and your allies – would have any hope of succeeding, you will need our help.’
‘And if we do not trust you?’ the captain asked.
‘This is proving a waste of time,’ said Equity. ‘I will speak to the Jaghut now.’
‘There isn’t one,’ said the sorceress, behind a veil of smoke.
‘Then he or she is hiding even from you. Open the gate, Princess – the one you used for your servant. The presence is very close – I can feel it. I felt it when you unleashed Omtose Phellack against me. Open the gate, and let us all see who has come among us.’
Hissing, the sorceress held out her pipe. The handmaid took it. ‘Very well. It will be a feeble gate; indeed, I might well fail—’
‘It won’t.’
The sorceress walked a short distance away, her rounded hips swaying. She lifted her hands, fingers moving as if plucking invisible strings.
Bitter cold flooded out, the sand crackling as if lit by lightning, and the gate that erupted was massive, yawning, towering. Through the billowing icy air flowed out a sweeter, rank smell. The smell of death.
A figure stood on the threshold of the gate. Tall, hunched, a withered, lifeless face of greenish grey, yellowed tusks thrusting up from the lower jaw. Pitted eyes regarded them from beneath a tattered woollen cowl.
The power cascading from this apparition sent Equity stumbling back. Abyss! A Jaghut, yes, but not just any Jaghut! Calm – can you hear me? Through this howl? Can you hear me? An ally stands before me – an ally of ancient – so ancient – power! This one could have been an Elder God. This one could have been … anything! Gasping, fighting to keep from falling to one knee, from bowing before this terrible creature, Equity forced herself to lift her gaze, to meet the empty hollows of his eyes.
‘I know you,’ she said. ‘You are Hood.’
The Jaghut stepped forward, the gate swirling closed behind him. Hood paused, regarding each witness in turn, and then walked towards Equity.
‘They made you their king,’ she whispered. ‘They who followed no one chose to follow you. They who refused every war fought your war. And what you did then – what you did—’
As he reached her, his desiccated hands caught her. He lifted her from her feet, and then, mouth stretching, he bit into the side of her face. The tusks drove up beneath her cheek bone, burst the eye on that side. In a welter of blood, he tore away half of her face, and then bit a second time, up under the orbitals, the tusks driving into her brain.
Equity hung in his grip, feeling her life drain away. Her head felt strangely unbalanced. She seemed to be weeping from only one eye, and from her throat no words were possible. I once dreamed of peace. As a child, I dreamed of—
Shurq Elalle stared in horror as the Jaghut flung the corpse away. From his gore-drenched mouth fell fragments of scalp and skull.
Then Hood faced them, and in a dry, toneless voice he said, ‘I have never much liked Forkrul Assail.’
No one spoke. Felash stood trembling, her face pale as death itself. Beside her, the handmaid had set her hands upon the axes at her belt, but seemed unable to move beyond that futile, diffident gesture.
Shurq Elalle gathered herself, and said, ‘You have a singular way of ending a discussion, Jaghut.’
The empty pits seemed to find her, somehow, and Hood said, ‘We have no need of allies. Besides, I recently learned a lesson in brevity, Shurq Elalle, which I have taken to heart.’
‘A lesson? Really? Who taught you that?’
The Jaghut looked away, across the water. ‘Ah, my Death Ship. I admit, it was a quaint affectation. Nonetheless, one cannot help but admire its lines.’
Princess Felash, Fourteenth Daughter of Bolkando, fell to her knees and was sick in the sand.