CHAPTER FIFTEEN
And all the ages past
Have nothing to say
They rest easy underfoot
Uttering not a whisper
They are dead as the eyes
That looked upon them
Riding the dust that gathers
In lost and forgotten corners
You won’t find them
Scratched in scrolls
Or between the bindings
Of leather-bound tomes
Not once carved
On stelae and stone walls
They do not hide
Waiting to be found
Like treasures of truth
Or holy revelation
Not one of the ages past
Will descend from the heavens
Cupped in the hand
Of a god or clutched tight
By a stumbling prophet
All these ages past
Remain for ever untouched
With lessons unlearned
By the fool who can do nothing
But stare ahead
To where stands the future
Grinning with empty eyes
TIME HAD BECOME MEANINGLESS. THEIR WORLD NOW ROLLED LIKE waves, back and forth, awash with blood. Yan Tovis fought with her people. She could match her brother’s savagery, if not his skill. She could cut down Liosan until the muscles of her arm finally failed, and she’d back away, dragging her sword behind her. Until the rainy, flat blackness unfurled from the corners of her vision and she staggered, chest screaming for breath, moments from slipping into unconsciousness, but somehow each time managing to pull herself back, pushing clear of the press and stumbling among the wounded and dying. And then down on to her knees, because another step was suddenly impossible, and all around her swirled the incessant tidal flow and ebb, the blur of figures moving from body to body, and the air was filled with terrible sound. Shrieks of pain, the shouts of the cutters and stretcher-bearers, the roar of endless, eternal battle.
She understood so much more now. About the world. About the struggle to survive in that world. In any world. But she could find words for none of it. These revelations were ineffable, too vast for the intellect to conquer. She wanted to weep, but her tears were long gone, and all that remained precious could be found in the next breath she took, and the one after that. Each one stunning her with its gift.
Reaching up one trembling forearm, she wiped blood and grime from her face. A shadow passed over her and she lifted her head to see the close pass of another dragon – but it did not descend to the breach, not this time, instead lifting high, seeming to hover a moment behind the curtain of Lightfall before backing away and vanishing into the glare.
Relief came in a nauseating rush that had her leaning forward. Someone came to her side, resting a light arm across her back.
‘Highness. Here, water. Drink.’
Yan Tovis looked up. The face was familiar only in that she’d seen this woman again and again in the press, fighting with an Andiian pike. Grateful, yet sick with guilt, she nodded and took the waterskin.
‘They’ve lost the will for it, Highness. Again. It’s the shock.’
The shock, yes. That.
Half of my people are dead or too wounded to fight on. As many Letherii. And my brother stands tall still, as if it’s all going to plan. As if he’s satisfied by our stubborn insanity, this thing he’s made of us all.
The smith will bend the iron to his will. The smith does not weep when the iron struggles and resists, when it seeks to find its own shape, its own truth. He hammers the sword, until he beats out a new truth. Edged and deadly.
‘Highness, the last of the blood has shattered. I – I saw souls, trapped within – breaking apart. Highness – I saw them screaming, but I heard nothing.’
Yan Tovis straightened, and now it was time to be the one giving comfort. Yet she’d forgotten how. ‘Those lost within, soldier, will for ever stand upon the Shore. There are … worse places to be.’ If she could, she would flinch at her own tone. So lifeless, so cold.
Despite that, she felt something like will steal back into the young woman. It seemed impossible. Yedan, what have you made of my people?
How long ago was it? In a place where days could not be measured, where the only tempo was the wash and flood of howling figures, this tide seething into the heart of midnight, she had no answer to this simplest of questions. Lifting the waterskin, she drank deep, and then, half in dread, half in disbelief, she faced Lightfall.
And the wound, where the last of the Liosan still alive on this side were falling to Shake swords and Andiian pikes. Her brother was down there. He had been down there for what seemed for ever, impervious to exhaustion, as units disengaged and others stumbled forward to relieve them, as the warriors of his Watch fell one by one, as veterans of the first battle stepped to the fore in their place, as they too began to fall, and Shake veterans arrived – like this woman at her side.
Brother. You can kill for ever. But we cannot keep up with you. No one can.
I see an end to this, when you stand alone, and the dead shall be your ground.
She turned to the soldier. ‘You need to rest. Deliver this news to Queen Drukorlat. The blood wall has shattered. The Liosan have retreated. Half of us remain.’
The woman stared. And then looked around, as if only now realizing the full extent of the horror surrounding them, the heaps of corpses, the entire strand a mass of supine bodies under blood-soaked blankets. She saw her mouth the word half.
‘When in the palace, rest. Eat.’
But the soldier was shaking her head. ‘Highness. I have one brother left to me. I cannot stay in the palace – I cannot leave his side for too long. I am sorry. I shall deliver your message and then return at once.’
Yan Tovis wanted to rail at her, but she bit down on her fury, for it was meant not for this woman, but for Yedan Derryg, who had done this to her people. ‘Tell me then, where is your brother?’
The woman pointed to a boy sleeping in a press of Shake fighters resting nearby.
The vision seemed to stab deep into Yan Tovis and she struggled to stifle a sob. ‘Be with him, then – I will find another for the message.’
‘Highness! I can—’
She pushed the waterskin into the woman’s arms. ‘When he awakens, he will be thirsty.’
Seeing the soldier’s wounded expression as she backed away, Yan Tovis could only turn from her, fixing her eyes once more upon the breach. It’s not you who has failed me, she wanted to say to that soldier, it is I who have failed you. But then she was alone once more and it was too late.
Brother, are you down there? I cannot see you. Do you stand triumphant once more? I cannot see you.
All I can see is what you did. Yesterday. A thousand years ago. In the breath just past. When there are none but ghosts left upon the Shore, they will sing your praises. They will make of you a legend that none living will ever hear – gods, the span of time itself must be crowded with such legends, for ever lost yet whispered eternally on the winds.
What if that is the only true measure of time? All that only the dead have witnessed, all that only they can speak of, though no mortal life will ever hear them. All those stories for ever lost.
Is it any wonder we cannot grasp hold of the ages past? That all we can manage is what clings to our own lives, and what waits within reach? To all the rest, we are cursed to deafness.
And so, because she knew naught else to do, in her mind Yan Tovis reached out – to that moment a day past, or a breath ago, or indeed at the very dawn of time, when she saw her brother lead a sortie into the face of the Liosan centre, and his Hust sword howled with slaughter, and, with that voice, summoned a dragon.
She tightened the straps of her helm and readied her sword. Down at the breach the Liosan were pouring like foam from the wound, and Yan Tovis could see her Shake buckling. Everywhere but at the centre, where her brother hacked his way forward, and all the enemy reeling before him seemed to be moving at half his speed. He could have been cutting reeds for all the resistance they offered him. Even from this distance, blood washed like a bow wave before Yedan’s advance, and behind him Shake fighters followed, and she could see how his deadliness infected them, raised them into a state of frenzied fury.
From one flank two Letherii companies pushed in to bolster her people, and she watched the line stiffen, watched it plant its feet and hold fast.
Yan Tovis set off for the other flank, increasing her pace until she was jogging. Anything faster would have instilled panic in those who saw her. But the longer she took, the closer that flank edged towards routing, and the more of her people died beneath the Liosan attackers. Her heart thundered, and trembling took possession of her entire body.
Into the press, shouting now, forcing her way through. Her fighters found her with wild, frightened eyes, fixed upon her with sudden hope.
But they needed more than hope.
She lifted her sword, and became a queen going to war. Unleashed, the battle lust of her royal line, the generation upon generation of this one necessity, this nectar of power, rising within her, taking away the words in her voice, leaving only a savage scream that made those close to her flinch and stare.
Huddling in a corner of her mind was a bleak awareness, observing with an ironic half-smile. Do you hear me, brother? Here on your left? Do you nod in satisfaction? Do you feel my blood reaching to meet yours? Rulers of the Shake, once more fighting upon the Shore.
Oh, we have never been as pathetic as we are at this moment, Yedan. Pathetic in our fate, trapped in our roles, our place in things. We were born to this scene. Every freedom was a lie. A terrible, heart-crushing lie.
The enemy was suddenly before her. She greeted them with a smile, and then the flash of her sword.
To either side, her people rallied. Fighting with their queen – they could not let her stand alone, they could not leave her, not now, and what took hold of their lives then was something unruly and huge, a leviathan bristling awake. They struck back, halting the Liosan advance, and then pushed forward.
Light exploded like blood from the wound.
Yedan and his wedge of Shake fighters vanished in the gushing wave.
She saw her brother’s followers flung back, tumbling like rag dolls in a hurricane. Weapons flew from hands, helms were torn loose, limbs flailed. They were thrown up against the shins of their kin holding the centre line, even as it reeled back to a howling wind that erupted from the wound.
In the fiery gale, Yedan stood suddenly alone.
Yan Tovis felt ice in her veins. Dragon breath—
A massive shape looming in the breach, filling it, and then out from the fulminating light snapped a reptilian head, jaws open in a hissing snarl. Lunging down at her brother.
She screamed.
Heard the jaws impact the ground like the fist of a god – and knew that Yedan was no longer there. Her own voice now keening, she slashed forward, barely seeing those she cut down.
Manic laughter filled the air – Hust! Awake!
She broke through, staggered, and saw—
The dragon’s head was lifting in a spray of blood-soaked sand, the neck arching, the jaws stretching wide once more, and then, as if from nowhere, Yedan Derryg was directly beneath that enormous serpent head, and he was swinging his laughing sword – and that glee rose to a shriek of delight as the blade’s edge chopped deep into the dragon’s neck.
He was a man slashing into the bole of a centuries-old tree. The impact should have shattered the bones of his arms. The sword should have rebounded, or exploded in his hands, spraying deadly shards.
Yet she saw the weapon tear through that enormous, armoured neck. She saw the blood and gore erupt in its wake, and then a fountain of blood spraying into the air.
The dragon, its shoulders jammed in the breach, shook with the blow. The long neck whipped upward, seeking to pull away, and in the welling gape of the wound in its throat Yan Tovis saw the gleam of bone. Yedan had cut through to the dragon’s spine.
Another gloating shriek announced his backswing.
The dragon’s head and an arm’s length of neck jumped away then, off to one side, and the yawning jaws pitched nose down and hammered the strand as if mocking that first lunge. The head tilted and then fell with a trembling thump, the eyes staring sightlessly.
The headless neck thrashed upward like a giant blind worm, spitting blood in lashing gouts, and on all sides of the quivering, decapitated beast black crystals pushed up from the drenched sand, drawing together, rising to form faceted walls – and from every corpse that had been splashed or buried in the deluge ghostly forms now rose, struggling within that crystal. Mouths opened in silent screams.
Dodging the falling head, Yedan had simply advanced upon the trembling body filling the breach. Using both hands, he drove the Hust sword, point first, deep into the beast’s chest.
The dragon exploded out from the wound, scales and shattered bone, yet even as Yedan staggered beneath the flood of gore the blood washed from him as would rain upon oil.
Hust. Killer of dragons. You will shield your wielder, to keep your joy alive. Hust, your terrible laughter reveals the madness of your maker.
Yedan’s desire to trap the corpse of a dragon in the breach was not to be – not this time – for she could see the ruined body being dragged back in heaving lunges – more dragons behind this one, crowding the gate.
Will another come through? To meet the fate of its kin?
I think not.
Not yet.
Not for some time.
The Liosan on this side of the wound were dead, bodies heaped on all sides. Her Shake stood atop them, two, three deep under their unsteady feet, and she saw the shock in their faces as they stared upon Yedan Derryg, who stood before the wound – close enough to take a step through, if he so desired, and take the battle into the enemy’s realm. And for a moment she thought he might – nothing was impossible with her brother – but instead he turned round, and met his sister’s eyes.
‘If you had knelt—’
‘No time,’ she replied, shaking the blood from her sword. ‘You saw that. They know what you would seek to do, brother. They will not permit it.’
‘Then we must make it so that they have no say in the matter.’
‘They were impatient,’ she said.
He nodded, and then faced the fighters. ‘They will clear the gate and re-form. Captains! Draw your units back and reassemble to the rear. Sound the call to the Letherii. Shake – you have now stood the Shore, and you stood it well.’ He sheathed his weapon, silencing its chilling chuckle. ‘This is how we shall measure our last days. Here, on this border drawn with the bones of our ancestors. And none shall move us.
‘Shake! Tell me when you have come home – tell me when that truth finally comes to you. You are home.’
The words horrified her, but more horrifying still was the answering roar from her people.
Yedan seemed surprised, and he turned to her then, and she saw the truth in his eyes.
Brother, you do not feel it. You do not feel that you have come home. You do not feel as they do!
A flash of something in his gaze, something private between them that shook her as had nothing else. Longing, fear, and despair.
Oh, Yedan. I did not know. I did not know.
Kadagar Fant, Lord of Light, stood trembling before the corpse of Iparth Erule. This was his third visit to the marshalling area before the gate, his third time down from the high wall to stand before the headless dragon lying on its side at the end of a curling swathe of broken black shards. The golden scales had dulled, the belly was bloating with gases, and capemoths clustered in the gaping mouth of the severed neck, a mass of fluttering white wings – as if flowers had burst from the corpse in some manic celebration.
Aparal Forge looked away from his lord, not ready for him yet. He had sent legion after legion through the breach, and with growing despair watched each one retreat, torn and bloody. Hundreds of his soldiers were lying on dripping cots beneath canopies – he could hear their cries amidst the clatter of weapons being readied for the next assault – and thrice their number rested for ever silent in neat rows beyond the cutter trenches. He had no idea how many were lost beyond the breach – a thousand? More? The enemy had no interest in treating Liosan wounded, and why would they? We would kill their wounded just as quickly, and call it mercy. These are the mechanics of war. It’s where logic takes us, every time.
Overhead sailed three dragons. Like birds startled into the sky, they refused to come down, and had been up there since Iparth’s death. Aparal could feel their rage, and something like hunger – as if some part of them, something reptilian and soulless, wanted to descend and feed on that rank carcass. The remaining seven, sembled since the morning, had established discrete encampments on the barrows to either side of the Great Avenue, with their bespoke legions settled around them. The elites, the true Liosan warriors, yet to draw weapons, yet to advance upon the gate, awaiting only Kadagar’s command.
When would it come? When would their lord decide that he’d seen enough of his citizens die? Common dwellers of the city, commanded by nobles trapped below the select ranks of the Soletaken, soldiers only in name, and oh how they died!
Fury seethed in him at the thought. But I will not look to my lord. I will not beseech him yet again. Will he only relent when they’re all dead? For whom, then, this victory? But he knew the answer to that question.
If Kadagar Fant stood alone at the end of all this; if he sat in the gloom of an empty throne room in an empty palace, in an empty city, he would still count it a triumph. Winning Kharkanas was meaningless; what mattered to the Lord of Light was the absolute annihilation of those who opposed him. On both sides of the breach.
Do you remember, Kadagar, the day the stranger came to Saranas? We were still children then, still friends, still open to possibilities. But even we shared our shock at his nerve. A human, almost as tall as a Liosan, wearing beneath a tattered woollen cloak a coat of mail that reached down to his ankles, a bastard sword slung under his left arm. Long grey hair, snarled with indifference, a beard stained the hue of rust beneath the thin lips. He had been smiling – they all agreed on that, from the scouts beyond the walls to the guards at the South Gate, to those in the streets who halted to watch him stride towards the citadel at the heart of Saranas.
And he was still smiling when he stepped into the throne room, and your father leaned forward on the High Throne, making the bonewood creak.
It was Haradegar – your uncle – who growled and reached for his sword. Too much arrogance in this stranger. Too much contempt in that smile.
But your father lifted a hand, staying his Weaponmaster, and he spoke to the stranger in a tone we’d not heard before.
‘Kallor, High King, welcome to Saranas, last city of Tiste Liosan. I am Krin Ne Fant, Champion of High House Light—’
‘Serap’s son?’
Their lord flinched, and Kadagar, I saw the shame in your eyes.
‘My … grandmother, High King. I did not know—’
‘She’d have no reason to tell you, would she?’ Kallor looked round. ‘She was virtually a prisoner here – they even sent her handmaids away. Arrived as a stranger, and as a stranger you were determined to keep her. Is it any wonder she fled this shit-bucket?’
Haradegar’s sword hissed free.
Kallor looked over at the Weaponsmith, and grinned, and whatever Haradegar saw in the High King’s eyes stole his courage – oh, shame upon shame, Kadagar! Were these your first wounds? I think now that they were.
The High King faced Krin once more. ‘I promised her, and so I am here. Krin Ne Fant, your grandmother Serap, of the Issgin line, is dead.’
Krin slowly settled back on the throne, but he now looked shrunken, withering in that bonewood cage. ‘What – what happened?’
Kallor grunted. ‘What happened? I just told you. She died. Is that not enough?’
‘No.’
Shrugging, the High King said, ‘Poison. By her own hand. I found her at dawn on the first day of the Season of Flies, cold and still on the throne I made for her with my own hands. Krin Ne Fant, I am her murderer.’
I remember the silence that followed. I remember how dry my mouth was, and how I could not look anywhere but at this terrible, grey man who stood as one without fear, yet spoke words inviting violence.
But Fant was shaking his head. ‘If … you said “by her own hand”—’
The smile turned into a snarl. ‘Do you truly believe suicide belongs solely to the one taking his or her own life? All that rot about selfishness and self-hatred? The lies we tell ourselves to absolve us of all blame, of all the roles that we played in that wretched death?’ He raised one chain-clad hand, pointed a finger first at Krin and then with a sweeping gesture at all who stood in the throne room. ‘You all had your parts to play in her death. The doors you kept locked. The loyal servants and friends you took from her. Your ill-disguised whispers behind her back or when she stepped into a room. But I have not come to avow vengeance on her behalf. How can I? The freshest blood of guilt is the pool I now stand in. I could not love her enough. I can never love enough.
‘I killed her. One drop of poison each day, for a thousand years.
‘By her wishes, I return to Saranas. By her wishes, I bring you this.’ And then he drew from beneath his grey cloak a bedraggled rag doll. Flung it so that it slid to the foot of the dais.
And in that time word had travelled out, and now standing inside the doors, twenty paces behind Kallor, stood your father’s mother. Serap’s daughter.
Did Kallor know she was there? Listening to his words? Would it have changed anything?
‘She was making this for her daughter,’ Kallor said, ‘and took it with her when she fled. Unfinished. In fact, little more than knotted cloth and wool. And so it remained, for all the centuries I knew and loved her. I surmise,’ he added, ‘she found it again by accident. And decided it needed … finishing. On the dawn when I found her, it was settled into her lap like a newborn child.’
Behind him, Krin’s mother made a wounded sound and sank to her knees. Her servants rushed close.
Smiling once more, Kallor unstrapped his weapon harness and let it fall to the tiled floor. The clash rang hollow in the chamber. ‘My words are done. I am the killer of Serap, and I await your kiss of righteous vengeance.’ And then he crossed his arms and waited.
Why do I remember this now, Kadagar? Of course, for all the miserable tragedy of that moment, was it not what came next that truly filled my chest with ashes?
Krin, his hand lifted, fingers pressed against temple, not even looking up as he gestured with his other hand. And whispered. ‘Go, Kallor. Just … go.’
And how then I finally understood the High King’s smile. Not a thing of pleasure. No, this was the smile of a man who wanted to die.
What did we do? We denied him.
I remember how he reached down to collect his sword, how he turned away, his back to the throne and the man seated upon it, and walked out. I saw him walk past the huddle of retainers and the woman kneeling in their midst, and he paused, looked down at her.
If he said anything then, we did not hear it. If he uttered soft words, none within range ever spoke of them. And then he was walking onward, out and beyond their sight.
Four years later you swore that you would never sire a child. That all the Liosan would be your children, come the day you ascended to the throne. And I might have laughed, too blind to the future awaiting us all these centuries later. I might have wounded you, as children often do.
‘Beloved brother.’
Aparal turned. ‘Lord.’
‘Your thoughts were far away. What were you thinking, that could so drag you from this place?’
Was there longing in Kadagar’s eyes? He didn’t think so. ‘Lord, no more than weariness. A moment’s rest.’ He looked to the assembled legions. ‘They are ready. Good.’
As he moved to join his retinue Kadagar stayed him with one hand and leaned close to whisper, ‘What were you thinking about, brother?’
A rag doll. ‘Old friend, it was a moment empty of dreams. A place of grey dust. That and nothing more.’
Kadagar let go, stepped back. ‘Aparal – is it true?’
‘Lord?’
‘The laughter—’
‘Yes, Lord. A Hust waits for us, in the hands of a Shake warrior.’ He pointed at the carcass of the dragon. ‘Two passes of the blade, to slice through Iparth Erule’s neck.’
‘He must be killed! This Shake warrior!’
‘Yes, Lord.’
Kadagar lifted one hand to his brow, reminding Aparal of the father, of poor, lost Krin Ne Fant. ‘But … how?’
Aparal cocked his head. ‘Lord? Why, when all the others have fallen, when he alone remains. When twelve dragons break through. Sire, this is not a legion of Hust. It is one sword.’
And Kadagar was nodding now, eyes flooding with relief. ‘Just so, brother.’ He glanced back at the carcass. ‘Poor Iparth Erule.’
‘Poor Iparth Erule.’
Kadagar Fant, Lord of Light, then licked his lips. ‘Such a terrible waste.’
In every echo that reached Sandalath Drukorlat, she heard ghosts laughing. Withal sat close, down on the stone of the dais, almost at her feet, but it seemed he was dozing, exhaustion making a mockery of his vigil. She did not mind. Mortal failure was ever tinged with irony, was it not?
She closed her eyes, listening, waiting for the visions to return. Were these sendings from Mother Dark? Or just the cluttered rag-ends of all those lives surrendered to these walls and floors of stone? Mother, I doubt there is anything of you in these scenes. The gloom is of their own making, and those hard voices rocking so back and forth in my skull, well, I know them all.
One side crimson with blood, Anomander Rake straightening to face the Hust Legion. ‘The invasion has just begun,’ he told the waiting warriors. ‘We risk being overwhelmed.’ He drew a slow, deep breath, jaws briefly clenching in pain. ‘I shall wait for them beyond the Rent, to deny them the Throne of Shadow. This leaves the gate itself. Hust Legion! You shall march to the gate. You shall march through it. You shall take the battle to them, and hold them there. And,’ he scanned the rows of helmed faces, ‘when the last five of you remain, you must give your lives to sealing that wound. You shall, Hust-armed and Hust-armoured, for ever close Starvald Demelain.’
Wailing shrieks from blades and scaled breastplates, from helms, from greaves and gauntlets, a deafening chorus that shattered into wild laughter. But within that insane glee, the faces of the Andiian warriors were expressionless. And with solemn salutes they acknowledged their lord’s command.
Hust Legion, we never saw you again.
But the Eleint stopped coming.
Hust Legion, how many did you kill on that other side? How many bones lie in heaps upon that alien plain? There at the gate? I can almost … almost see them, a felled forest of bones.
But now shadows slide over them, shadows from the sky.
Anomander Rake, ‘for ever’ was a lie. But you knew that. You were just buying time. Thinking we would ready ourselves for the next invasion. Did we? Did anyone?
But then, a suspicion whispers in my skull. You made her face us once again. Well, not us. Me.
Killed yourself a dragon, did you, Yedan Derryg?
Feel up to a thousand more?
Withal knew he was dreaming. The Meckros city where he had been born was nothing like this, a place of smoky dark quartzite and walls sheathed in mica and anthracite, and even as the groaning rise and fall beneath his feet told him the city was indeed floating on unseen seas, beyond the canted avenue lining the high sea wall on his left he could see nothing. No stars above, no cresting foam below.
Cordage creaked, the only sounds surrounding him. The city was abandoned, and he was alone.
‘Mortal. She will not listen. She is lost in ages past.’
He looked round, and then grunted, irritated with himself. She was the Goddess of Dark. What else would he see of her, if not this empty abyss on all sides? ‘And me, an island city, untethered and unanchored and caught on unknown currents. Mael knows, Withal, even your dreams lack the subtle touch.’
‘Despair is a curse, Withal of the Meckros. You must warn her—’
‘Forgive me for interrupting, Mother Dark, but she is past listening to me. And to be honest, I don’t blame her. I have nothing worth saying. You have made her the ruler of an empty city – how do you expect her to feel?’
Too bold, perhaps, for there came no reply from the surrounding darkness.
He stumbled forward, unsure of his destination, but feeling the need to reach it. ‘I have lost my belief in the seriousness of the world. Any world. Every world. You give me an empty city, and I feel like laughing. It’s not as if I don’t believe in ghosts. I do. How could I not? As far as I’m concerned, we’re all ghosts.’ He paused, set a hand upon the cold, damp stone of the sea wall. ‘Only this is real. Only this lasts from moment to moment, stretching on for years. Centuries. We – we just pass through. Filled with ephemeral thoughts—’
‘You surrender too much of yourself, Withal.’
‘It’s easy,’ he replied, ‘when nothing I own is worth a damned thing.’
‘This island city is the ghost. Its truth lies broken on the seabed. It drifts only in your memory, Withal.’
He grunted. ‘The ghost dreams of ghosts in a ghostly world. This is what I’ve come to understand, Mother Dark. From the Tiste Andii – and these Liosan. The way you can take a hundred thousand years and crush it all in one hand. There is no truth to time. It’s all a lie.’
‘She agrees with you, Withal. She was born a hostage to secret fates, born a hostage to a future she could not imagine, much less defy. In this, it was understood by all, she symbolized every child.’
‘But you took it too far,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘You never let her grow up.’
‘Yes, we would keep them children for ever.’
The Meckros city ended with a ragged edge, as if it had been torn in half. Withal continued walking until his steps sent him pitching down through darkness.
He started, head snapping up, and looked round. The throne room of Kharkanas, Sandalath on the throne, hands to her face, sobbing uncontrollably. Swearing under his breath, he rose, unfolding stiff, aching limbs, and went up to take her into his arms.
‘They’re all dying! Withal! On the Shore – they’re all dying!’
He held her tight.
Her words muffled by his shoulder, she said, ‘Five thousand warriors. From the mines, from the prisons. From the gutters. Five thousand. The Hust Legion – I saw them marching out from the burning city.’ She lifted her head, stared at him with tortured eyes. ‘Their swords howled. Their armour sang with joy. No one stood by and wept. No. Instead, they ran from the laughter, they fled the streets – those not already dead. The sound – so terrible – the Hust Legion marched to their deaths, and no one watched them go!’
He slapped her, hard enough to knock her to the floor at the foot of the throne. ‘Enough of this, Sand. This palace is driving you mad.’
She twisted round on to her knees, a knife in her hand, eyes blazing with rage.
‘Better,’ he grunted, and then backed away from the slashing blade. ‘Too many wretched ghosts in your skull, woman. They all think they got something useful to tell you, but they don’t. They’re damned fools, and you know how I know they’re damned fools? Because they’re still here.’
Warily, he watched her straighten, watched her lick the blood from her lips. Then sheathe the knife. Her sigh was ragged. ‘Husband, it’s this waiting. Waiting for them all to die, for the Liosan legions to enter the city – the palace. And then they will kill you, and I cannot bear it.’
‘Not just me,’ he said. ‘You, as well.’
‘I have no regret for that. None.’
‘There are other Tiste Andii. There must be. They are coming—’
‘To what end?’ She slumped at the foot of the throne. ‘To avenge me? And so it goes on and on, back and forth. As if it all meant something.’ She looked up. ‘Do these walls care? This floor? No, but I will make it different this time, Withal.’ She met his eyes with a fierce challenge. ‘I will burn this palace down to the ground before they ever get here. I swear it.’
‘Sandalath, there is nothing here to burn.’
‘There are other ways,’ she whispered, ‘to summon fire.’
The killing ground was once more clear of corpses, broken weapons and pieces of torn flesh, but the once-white sand was brown as mud. Captain Pithy studied it for a moment longer, and then resumed examining the grip of her sword. The leather cord was loose – twice in the last fight the weapon had shifted in her grip. Looking up, she saw one of the Letherii youths Yedan was using to scavenge decent weapons. ‘You! Over here!’
The girl struggled up with her sled and stepped to one side as Pithy began rummaging through the blood-spattered array of weapons. ‘Hear any chuckling from any of these, girl?’ She looked up and winked. ‘Didn’t think so, but one can always hope.’
‘You’re Captain Pithy.’
‘So far, aye.’ She found a Liosan sword and lifted it clear, testing its weight and balance. Then peering at the honed edge, before snorting. ‘Looks a hundred years old, and neglected for half that.’ She returned it to the sled. ‘Why aren’t there any Letherii weapons here?’
‘The Liosan steal them, sir.’
‘Well, that’s one way to beat us – a mass exchange of weapons, until all we’re left with is that useless crap they brought from the other side. Better send word to the prince – we need to deny them these particular spoils, and make a point of it.’ Pithy retrieved her old sword. ‘Here, you got small fingers – see if you can thread that strip through on the end here, where it’s pulled loose. Just thread it and I’ll do the rest.’
Instead of her fingers, the girl used her teeth, and in moments had managed to tug the leather strip through.
‘Smart lass.’ Pithy tugged hard on the strip and was pleased to see the coil draw tighter to the wooden handles encasing the tang. ‘There, should do for the next fight or two. Thanks for helping fix my sword. Now, off you go – I see ’em massing again on the other side.’
The girl took up the ropes and hurried off with her sled, the ivory runners sliding easily across the strand.
Captain Pithy walked to her place in the line. ‘Now,’ she said in a loud voice, ‘it’s Nithe’s day off, the lazy shit. He probably thinks he’s earned those five whores and the jug of wine sharing his bed, but that was just me feeling sorry for him.’
‘Cap’n’s a pimp!’ someone shouted from a few rows back.
Pithy waited for the laughter to die down. ‘Can’t make piss on the coin they pay officers in this army, so don’t begrudge me something on the side.’
‘Never you, Captain!’
Horns sounded and Pithy faced the breach. ‘Coming through, soldiers! Harden up now like a virgin’s dream! Weapons ready!’
A vague mass of shapes, pushing and then slashing through bruised light thin as skin. Then the blades drew back.
What’s this? Something different – what are—
From the wound, three enormous Hounds bursting through. Blood-thick sand sprayed as the creatures skidded. One twisted to one side, shot off towards the Shake line on Pithy’s right, a white blur, huge as a bull. Another charged for the other flank, and the one directly before Pithy met her eyes in the instant before it lowered its broad head, and she felt the strength leave her body in a single, soft breath. Then the Hound lunged straight at her.
As the jaws stretched wide, revealing canines long as daggers, Yan Tovis ducked low and swung her sword. The blade bit into the left of the beast’s neck, and then rebounded in a splash of blood. Beside her, a Shake warrior shrieked, but the cry was short-lived, vanishing when the beast bit down, its jaws engulfing his head. Bones crunching, the man was lifted from his feet as the Hound reared back, fangs sawing through his neck. Gore sprayed as the headless corpse fell to the sand and rolled on to its back.
Yan Tovis thrust her sword, but the point skidded across the beast’s chest.
Snarling, it swung its head. The impact sent Yan Tovis spinning. Landing hard, she rolled on to her side, seeing Liosan ranks plunging through the breach not fifteen paces from her. She’d lost her sword, and her groping hand found nothing but clumps of blood-glued sand. She could feel her strength faltering, draining away, pain spreading across half her body.
Behind her, the Hound began killing her people.
It ends. As simple as that?
‘Pikes!’ someone screamed – was it me? As the massive Hound leapt for her, Pithy dropped to the sand, twisted as the beast passed directly over her, and thrust her sword into its belly.
The point was punched back out as if fired from a crossbow, driving her elbow into the ground. One of the Hound’s back legs lifted her from the sand, carried her flailing forward. She heard the clash of pike shafts close in on all sides. Half stunned, she curled up beneath the beast. Its snarls filled her world, along with the crunch of bones and the shrieks of dying Letherii. She was kicked again, this time spilling her out to one side.
Teeth grinding, she forced herself into a crouch. She still held her sword, glued to her hand now by streams of blood – she was cut somewhere – and she made herself close on the thrashing demon. Lunged.
The blunted, battered tip of the sword caught the Hound in the corner of its left eye. With an almost human scream, the beast lurched away, sending figures sprawling. It was scored with slashes from countless pike-thrusts, white hide streaming crimson, and more soldiers pressed in, pursuing. The Hound stumbled over a corpse, twisted round to face its attackers.
Its left eye was filled with blood.
Got you, you heap of dung!
Someone leapt close, swinging a wood-cutter’s axe. The impact on the beast’s skull drove it to its knees. The axe handle shattered, and Pithy saw the wedge blade fall away. The Hound’s skull gleamed, exposed across half its head, a torn flap of skin dangling down past its jaw.
One-handed Nithe flung the broken handle away, reached for a knife.
The Hound snapped out, jaws hammering into the man. Canines punched through chain, tore deep into his chest. As they ripped free, Nithe’s ribs seemed to explode outward in their wake. He spun, landed on his knees.
Pithy shrieked.
The Hound’s second bite tore Nithe’s face off – forehead, cheekbones, his upper jaw. His mandible dropped down, hanging like a bloody collar. Both his eyes were gone. He pitched forward.
Weaving drunkenly now, the Hound stumbled back. Behind it, Liosan warriors advanced in a bristling line, faces lit with desire.
‘Drive them back!’ Pithy screamed.
Pikes levelled, her Letherii pushed forward.
‘The queen! The queen!’
Shake warriors suddenly surrounded Yan Tovis. She heard the Hound somewhere behind her, snarls, weapons striking, shafts shattering, terrible cries of pain – a knot of madness tearing ever deeper through the ranks. But protecting her now, a score of her people, forming up to face the Liosan soldiers.
To defend their queen. No, please – don’t do this—
There weren’t enough of them. They would die for nothing.
The Liosan arrived like the crest of a wave, and in moments rushed round to isolate Yan Tovis and her warriors.
Someone crouched to hand her a sword.
Her throat thick with nausea, she forced herself to her feet.
Seeing the Hound charging for his line on the left flank, Yedan Derryg ran to meet it. The Hust sword loosed a manic, ululating cry, and it seemed that the chilling sound checked the beast – for the briefest of instants – before it launched itself at the prince.
When its jaws reached for him, the head was driving down, anticipating that he would come in low. Instead, Yedan leapt high, twisted parallel with the ground, legs thrown out, and rolled in the air, over the Hound’s shoulders, and as he spun, down swung the sword.
The Hust blade shrieked as it bit, athwart the beast’s spine, driving down through vertebrae and then spinal cord.
He glanced off its hip coming down, and that hip fell one way and Yedan the other. Striking the ground, he rolled and came to his feet, eyes still on the Hound.
Watched as it toppled, body thumping on the sand, head following. Its eyes stared sightlessly. And beyond the dead beast, rows of faces. Letherii. Shake. Gape-mouthed like fools.
He pointed at Brevity. ‘Captain! Advance the flank – shallow wedge! Push into the Liosan and push hard!’
With that he turned and ran across the strand. He’d seen two more Hounds.
Ahead, a wedge formation of Liosan soldiers had closed with Pithy’s Letherii and neither side was yielding. Yedan could not see the Hound – had they killed it? No – there, trying to retreat to Lightfall’s wound. Should he let it go?
No.
But to reach it, he would have to carve through a score of Liosan.
The Hust sword’s laugh was shrill.
Yedan cut the first two down and wounded another before he was temporarily slowed by the rest of them. Swords hacked at him, slashed for his face. Others thrust for his belly and thighs. He blocked, countered. Twisted, pushed forward.
Severed arms and hands spun, releasing the weapons they’d held. Blood sprayed and spat, bodies reeled. Flashes of wild expressions, mouths opening in pain and shock. And then he was past them all, in his wake carnage and horror.
The Hound was three strides from the breach, struggling to stay upright.
He saw its head turn, looked into its eyes, both of which wept blood. Torn lips formed ragged black lines as it snarled at him, heaving to meet him—
But not in time. A thrust. A slash. The Hound’s guts billowed out and spilled to the ground in a brown splash of fluids.
It sank down, howling.
Yedan leapt on to its back –
– in time to see a fourth Hound lunge through the gate.
The prince launched himself forward, through the air, sword’s point extended.
Into the Hound’s broad chest, the blade sliding in with gurgling mirth.
The beast’s countering bite hammered him to the ground, but he refused to let go of the sword, dragging it with him. The Hound coughed blood in thick, hot sprays, pitched forward, head lolling.
Yedan kicked it in the throat to free his sword, turned then, and found a mass of Liosan wheeling to face him. No quick way through – both flanks had closed up. Slow work ahead—
And then, from the wound behind him, a sudden presence that lifted the hairs on the back of his neck. Looming, foul with chaotic sorcery.
Dragon.
Swearing under his breath, Yedan Derryg swung round, and plunged into Lightfall’s wound.
Half her warriors had gone down, and Yan Tovis could feel herself weakening. She could barely lift her sword. Gods, what is wrong with me? How badly was I injured? I ache – but … what else? She staggered, sagged down on to one knee. The fighting closed in around her. What—
Concussions from beyond the Shake line. The Hound screaming in fury and pain.
Head spinning, she looked up.
A grey, miasmic wave of sorcery erupted from the edge of the flank closest to Lightfall, the spitting, crackling wave rushing close to strike the press of Liosan. Bodies erupted in red mist.
Shouting – someone had hold of Yan Tovis under each arm, was dragging her back to the re-formed Shake line – and there was Skwish, rushing to join them.
‘Blood of the queen! Blood of the queen!’ The witch looked ten years old, a child of shining gold. ‘Get her clear! The rest a you! Advance!’
And then, from the wound, a reverberation that sent them all to their knees.
Deafened by a sudden, thunderous crack! from the breach, Aparal Forge saw his Soletaken kin rearing back. Eldat Pressen, the youngest and boldest of them all, so eager to follow in the wake of the Hounds of Light, was pulling her head back from the wound, and in that recoiling motion blood fountained.
He stared, aghast, as brains and gore sprayed down from her shattered skull.
Her body shook in waves of savage trembling, her tail thrashing, claws digging into and then tearing up the ground. A blind sweep of her tail sent broken bodies flying.
Her huge torso collapsing with massive shudders, Eldat’s neck and head writhed, and Aparal could now see the terrible sword blow that had struck her head, splitting the skull open, destroying her and all that she had once been – a bright-eyed, laughing woman. He loosed a sob, but could not turn away. Eldat. Playing in the garden, in another age. We were thinking only of peace then. But now I wonder, did it ever exist? That age? Or were we just holding our breath? Through all those years, those decades – she grew into a beautiful woman, we all saw that. We witnessed and it gave us pleasure.
And oh how we all longed to bed her. But she’d set her heart upon the only one of us who would take no woman – or man – into his arms. Kadagar had no time for such things, and if he broke her heart again and again, well, that was the price of serving his people. As father to them all, he could be lover to none.
Kadagar, you stand on the battlements once more.
You look down upon her death, and there is no swift mercy here, no sudden stillness. Her mind is destroyed, but her body refuses to yield. Kadagar Fant, what meaning do you dare take from this?
He struggled to regain self-control. ‘Clear the area,’ he said to his officers, his voice breaking. He drew a deep breath, cleared his throat. ‘She will not die quickly. Not now.’
Ashen-faced, the soldiers set off to relay the commands.
Aparal looked back at the gate. Hust. You came to meet her, before she was across the threshold. Where, then, are my soldiers on the other side? Where – gods below – are the Hounds?
In cascading streams of light, Yedan Derryg groped blindly. His sword’s laughter was slowly dying away. This was the real danger. Getting lost within Lightfall. But he’d seen little choice, and now he needed to return. One Hound remained. How many of his soldiers were dying even now? Whilst he stumbled blindly in this infernal light?
He could feel the wound’s terrible pain, a vicious, biting thing, desperate to heal.
Yedan halted. A wrong step now could take him on to the Liosan plain, facing tens of thousands of the enemy. And more dragons.
Heavy, buffeting currents from behind him. He whirled.
Something, coming through—
The Hound exploded from the light.
He dropped low into a crouch, blade slashing. Cutting through both front legs. The beast stumbled – he twisted and chopped down on its neck. The Hust blade sliced through, leapt out from under its throat with a delighted yelp. The head slammed into the ground at Yedan’s feet.
He stood for a moment, staring down at it. Then he sheathed his sword, reached down. His back creaked as he strained to lift the head into his arms. He faced the direction the Hound had been heading and then, with a running start that spun him round, he heaved the head out into the light.
Facing the opposite direction, he set off for the wound.
Aparal’s eyes had been on the gate, and he was not alone in seeing the Hound’s severed head sailing out to thump and roll on the ground. Shouts of dismay and horror sounded on all sides.
He stared in horror.
It cannot be just one man. It cannot!
A Hust legion waits for us. Hundreds of the cursed slayers, each one driven mad by their weapons. Nothing will stop them, nothing can defeat them.
We cannot win this.
Unblinking, he stared at the huge head, the empty eyes, and then he turned to the dying dragon. It had lurched up against the corpse of Iparth Erule. Had bitten into his rotting flank. But now the motions were slowing, losing that frenzied strength. Eldat, please die. Please.
‘Not long now,’ he whispered. Not long now.
Waves of sorcery had pursued the Hound back to the wound, Pully and Skwish advancing behind them, clambering over corpses and torn-up soldiers still in the process of dying. Pithy staggered in their wake. She’d taken a slash to her right shoulder and the bleeding wasn’t slowing. Her arm was sheathed in red, with thick threads draining from her fist. Colours were fast fading from the world.
She saw Brevity leading a solid wedge of Letherii, coming up from the left flank. Where was the prince?
And what was that thunder in the breach?
Nearby was the carcass of a Hound, and nearer the breach another one of the horrid, giant beasts, still alive, still kicking where it lay on its side. Soldiers were closing on it, readying their pikes. Killing it was going to take some time.
I’m so tired. All at once the strength left her legs and she sat down. Bad cut. A fang? A claw? I can’t remember – can’t twist round enough to see it. But at least the pain’s gone.
‘Captain!’
Pithy looked down at the sword in her hand. Smiled. You did all right. You didn’t fail me. Where’s that girl? Need to tell her.
‘Someone get one of the witches! Quickly!’
That voice was loud, almost right next to her ear, but it seemed muffled all the same. She saw Brevity running towards her now, but it was hard work, getting over all those bodies, and Pithy wondered if she’d arrive in time.
In time for what? Oh. This.
She settled, tried lying down, found herself cradled in someone’s arms.
‘Her back’s bitten half off! Where are the witches?’
‘Spent.’
‘We need—’
A roaring sound filling her head, Pithy looked down at her hand, the one holding the sword. She willed it to let go, but it refused. She frowned. But a moment later the frown faded. I understand. I am a soldier. Not a thief. Not a criminal. A soldier. And a soldier never lets go of the sword. Ever. You see it in their eyes.
Can you see it in my eyes? I bet you can.
It’s true. At last, it’s true. I was a soldier.
Brevity was still ten paces away when she saw her friend die. She cried out, sagged down amidst the corpses. Crossing this killing field had been a nightmare, a passage of unrelenting horror. Letherii, Shake, Liosan – bodies were bodies, and death was death, and names didn’t mean shit. She was soaked in what had been spilled, what had been lost. The abattoir reek was thick enough to drown in. She held her head in her hands.
Pithy.
Remember the scams? How we took ’em for all they had? It was us against the world and gods, it felt good those times we won. It never hurt us, not once, beating ’em at their own game. Sure, they had law on their side, making legal all they stole. But then, they’d made up those laws. That was the only difference between us.
We used to hate their greed. But then we got greedy ourselves. Served us right, getting caught.
Island life, now that was boring. Until those Malazans showed up. It all started right then, didn’t it? Leading up to here. To now.
They sent us tumbling, didn’t they? Fetching us up on the Shore. We could’ve gone off on our own, back into everything we knew and despised. But we didn’t. We stayed with Twilight and the Watch, and they made us captains.
And now we fought us a war. You did, Pithy. I’m still fighting it. Still not knowing what any of it means.
Ten paces, and I can’t look over at you. I can’t. It’s this distance between us. And while I live, I can’t cross it. Pithy, how could you leave me so alone?
Yedan Derryg emerged from the wound in Lightfall. The laughter of his sword chewed the air. She stared across at him, thinking how lost he looked. But no. That’s just me. It’s just me. He knows what he needs to know. He’s worked it all out. It comes with the blood.
Sergeant Cellows stumped up to Yedan. ‘Prince – she’s alive, but unconscious. The witches used her—’
‘I know,’ he replied, studying the killing field.
The sergeant, burly and hulking – a touch of Teblor blood in him – followed his gaze and grunted. ‘They hurt us this time, sire. The Hounds mauled the centre and the right flank. One of the beasts reached the wounded before Pully drove it back. But our losses, sire. They hurt us. Nithe, Aysgan, Trapple, Pithy—’
Yedan shot him a hard look. ‘Pithy?’
Cellows pointed with a finger that had been cut off just below the knuckle. ‘There.’ A figure slumped in a weeping soldier’s arms. Brevity kneeling nearby, head lowered.
‘See to what needs to be done, Sergeant. Wounded. Weapons.’
‘Yes, sire – er, Prince?’
‘What is it?’
‘Seems I’m the last.’
‘The last?’
‘From your original company, sir. Coast Patrol.’
Yedan felt something crunch at the back of his mouth. He winced, leaned over and spat. ‘Shit, broke a tooth.’ He lifted his eyes, stared across at Cellows. ‘I want you in reserve.’
‘For when I need you the most, Sergeant. For when I need you at my side. Until then, you are to remain out of the fight.’
‘Sire—’
‘But when I call, you’d better be ready.’
The man saluted, and then strode away.
‘My last,’ Yedan whispered.
He squinted at Brevity. If all these eyes were not upon me, I would walk to you, Brevity. I would take you in my arms. I would share your grief. You deserve that much. We both do. But I can show nothing like … that.
He hesitated, suddenly unsure. Probed his broken tooth with his tongue. Tasted blood. ‘Shit.’
Brevity looked up as the shadow fell over her. ‘Prince.’ She struggled to stand but Yedan reached out, and the weight of his hand pushed her back down.
She waited for him to speak. But he said nothing, though his eyes were now on Pithy and the soldiers gathering around the fallen woman. She forced herself to follow his gaze.
They were lifting her so gently she thought her heart would rupture.
‘It’s no easy thing,’ murmured Yedan, ‘to earn that.’
Aparal Forge saw the enclaves encamped on the surrounding mounds slowly stirring awake, saw the soldiers assembling. This will be the one, then. When we throw our elites through the gate. Legions of Light. Lord Kadagar Fant, why did you wait this long?
If they had gone through from the first, the Shake would have fallen by now. Make the first bite the deepest. Every commander knows this. But you wouldn’t listen. You wanted to bleed your people first, to make your cause theirs.
But it hasn’t worked. They fight because you give them no choice. The pot-throwers dry their hands and the wheel slows and then stops. The weavers lock up their looms. The wood-carvers put away their tools. The road-menders, the lamp-makers, the hawkers of songbirds and the dog-skinners, the mothers and the whores and the consorts and the drug-peddlers – they all set down the things they would do, to fight this war of yours.
It all stops, and for so many now will never start again.
You’ve ripped out the side of your people, left a gaping wound – a wound like the one before us. And we flow through it like blood. We spill out and scab up on the other side.
The Soletaken were all sembled now. They knew what needed to be done. And as the ranks drew up, Aparal saw his Eleint-fouled kin take position, each at the head of his or her own elite soldiers.
But a Hust Legion awaits us. Slayers of Hounds and Dragons, in all the mad laughter of war.
This next battle. It will be our last.
He looked up to the battlements, but Kadagar was not there. And from his soldiers resting on all sides, his commoners so bloodied, so utterly ruined, Aparal heard the same words. ‘He comes. Our lord shall lead us.’
Our lord. Our very own rag doll.
‘Water, Highness. Drink.’
She barely had strength to guide the mouthpiece to her lips. Like rain in a desert, the water flowed through the ravaged insides of her mouth. Lacerated tissues stung awake, her throat opened in relief. She pulled it away, gasping.
‘What’s happening? Where am I?’
‘The witches and your brother, Queen, they killed the Hounds.’
Hounds.
What day is this? In a world without days, what day is this?
‘They’re little girls now,’ her companion said.
Yan Tovis blinked up at her. A familiar face. ‘Your brother?’
The woman looked away.
‘I’m sorry.’
She shook her head. ‘I will see them soon, my queen. That’s what I look forward to now.’
‘Don’t think that way—’
‘Forgive me, Highness. I took care of them all my life, but against this, I wasn’t enough. I failed. It’s too much. From the very start, it was too much.’
Yan Tovis stared up at the woman’s face, the dry eyes, the absence of expression. She’s already gone. ‘“They await you on the Shore.”’
A brittle half-smile. ‘So we say over our dead, yes. I remember.’
Over our dead.
‘Tell the witches – if they do that to me again – if they use me like that – ever again – I will kill them both.’
The woman flinched. ‘They look ten years old, Highness.’
‘But they aren’t. They’re two old women, sour and bitter and hateful of the world. Go, give them my warning, soldier.’
With a silent nod, the young woman rose.
Yan Tovis settled her head, felt the sand grinding against the back of her skull. Empty sky. Dreams of darkness. If I had knelt to the Shore, they couldn’t touch me. Instead, they punished me.
‘But if they hadn’t,’ she whispered, ‘those Hounds would have killed hundreds more. Which of us, then, is sour and bitter? Hateful of the world?’
I will go to her. To Kharkanas. I will beg her forgiveness. Neither of us can withstand the weight of this crown. We should cast it off. We can find the strength for that. We must.
Oh, I am a fool. Yedan will not yield. The lives lost must mean something, even when they don’t. So, it seems we must all die. It seems we have no choice. Not the Shake, not the Letherii, not Sandalath Drukorlat, Queen of High House Dark.
She reached down and came up with a handful of white sand – crumbled bones. ‘It’s all here,’ she whispered. ‘Our entire history, right here. From then … to now. To what’s coming. All … here.’ And she watched, as she closed that hand into a fist, as if to crush it all.