The journey home had been enough, if only to return one last time to the place of beginnings, to crumbled reminiscences amidst sea-thrust coral sands above the tide line, the handful of abandoned shacks battered by countless storms into withered skeletons of wood. Nets lay buried in glistening drifts blinding white in the harsh sunlight. And the track that had led down from the road, overgrown now with wind-twisted grasses…no place from the past survived unchanged, and here, in this small fisher village on the coast of Itko Kan, Hood had walked with thorough and absolute deliberation, leaving not a single soul in his wake.

Barring the one man who had now returned. And the daughter of that man, who had once been possessed by a god.

And in the leaning shack that had once housed them both—its frond-woven roof long since stripped away—with the broad, shallow-draught fisherboat close by now showing but a prow and a stern, the rest buried beneath the coral sand, the father had laid himself down and slept.

Crokus had awakened to soft weeping. Sitting up, he had seen Apsalar kneeling beside the still form of her father. There were plenty of footprints on the floor of the shack from the previous evening’s random explorations, but Crokus noted one set in particular, prints large and far apart yet far too lightly pressed into the damp sand. A silent arrival in the night just past, crossing the single chamber to stand square-footed beside Rellock. Where it had gone after that left no markings in the sand.

A shiver rippled through the Daru. It was one thing for an old man to die in his sleep, but it was another for Hood himself—or one of his minions—to physically arrive to collect the man’s soul.

Apsalar’s grief was quiet, barely heard above the hiss of waves on the beach, the faint whistle of the wind through the warped slats in the shack’s walls. She knelt with bowed head, face hidden beneath her long black hair that hung so appropriately like a shawl. Her hands were closed around her father’s right hand.

Crokus made no move towards her. In the months of their travelling together, he had come, perversely, to know her less and less. Her soul’s depths had become unfathomable, and whatever lay at its heart was otherworldly and…not quite human.

The god that had possessed her—Cotillion, the Rope, Patron of Assassins within the House of Shadow—had been a mortal man, once, the one known as Dancer who had stood at the Emperor’s side, who had purportedly shared Kellanved’s fate at Laseen’s hands. Of course, neither had died in truth. Instead, they had ascended. Crokus had no idea how such a thing could come to be. Ascendancy was but one of the countless mysteries of the world, a world where uncertainty ruled all—god and mortal alike—and its rules were impenetrable. But, it seemed to him, to ascend was also to surrender. Embracing what to all intents and purposes could be called immortality, was, he had begun to believe, presaged by a turning away. Was it not a mortal’s fate—fate, he knew, was the wrong word, but he could think of no other—was it not a mortal’s fate, then, to embrace life itself, as one would a lover? Life, with all its fraught, momentary fragility.

And could life not be called a mortal’s first lover? A lover whose embrace was then rejected in that fiery crucible of ascendancy?

Crokus wondered how far she had gone down that path—for it was a path she was surely on, this beautiful woman no older than him, who moved in appalling silence, with a killer’s terrible grace, this temptress of death.

The more remote she grew, the more Crokus felt himself drawn forward, to that edge within her. The lure to plunge into that darkness was at times overwhelming, could, at a moment’s thought, turn frantic the beat of his heart and fierce the fire of the blood in his veins. What made the silent invitation so terrifying to him was the seeming indifference with which she offered it to him.

As if the attraction itself was…self-evident. Not worth even acknowledging. Did Apsalar want him to walk at her side on this path to ascendancy—if that was what it was? Was it Crokus she wanted, or simply…somebody, anybody?

The truth was this: he had grown afraid to look into her eyes.

He rose from his bedroll and quietly made his way outside. There were fisherboats out on the shoals, white sails taut like enormous shark fins plying the sea beyond the breakers. The Hounds had once torn through this area of the coast, leaving naught but corpses, but people had returned—there if not here. Or perhaps they had been returned, forcibly. The land itself had no difficulty absorbing spilled blood; its thirst was indiscriminate, true to the nature of land everywhere.

Crokus crouched down and collected a handful of white sand. He studied the coral pebbles as they slipped down between his fingers. The land does its own dying, after all. And yet, these are truths we would escape, should we proceed down this path. I wonder, does fear of dying lie at the root of ascendancy?

If so, then he would never make it, for, somewhere in all that had occurred, all that he had survived in coming to this place, Crokus had lost that fear.

He sat down, resting his back against the trunk of a massive cedar that had been thrown up onto this beach—roots and all—and drew out his knives. He practised a sequenced shift of grips, each hand reversing the pattern of the other, and stared down until the weapons—and his fingers—became little more than blurs of motion. Then he lifted his head and studied the sea, its rolling breakers in the distance, the triangular sails skidding along beyond the white line of foam. He made the sequence in his right hand random. Then did the same for his left.

Thirty paces down the beach waited their single-masted runner, its magenta sail reefed, its hull’s blue, gold and red paint faint stains in the sunlight. A Korelri craft, paid in debt to a local bookmaker in Kan—for an alley in Kan had been the place where Shadowthrone had sent them, not to the road above the village as he had promised.

The bookmaker had paid the debt in turn to Apsalar and Crokus for a single night’s work that had proved, for Crokus, brutally horrifying. It was one thing to practise passes with the blades, to master the deadly dance against ghosts of the imagination, but he had killed two men that night. Granted, they were murderers, in the employ of a man who was making a career out of extortion and terror. Apsalar had shown no compunction in cutting his throat, no qualms at the spray of blood that spotted her gloved hands and forearms.

There had been a local with them, to witness the veracity of the night’s work. In the aftermath, as he stood in the doorway and stared down at the three corpses, he’d lifted his head and met Crokus’s eyes. Whatever he saw in them had drained the blood from the man’s face.

By morning Crokus had acquired a new name. Cutter.

At first he had rejected it. The local had misread all that had been revealed behind the Daru’s eyes that night. Nothing fierce. The barrier of shock, fast crumbling to self-condemnation. Murdering killers was still murder, the act like the closing of shackles between them all, joining a line of infinite length, one killer to the next, a procession from which there was no escape. His mind had recoiled from the name, recoiled from all that it signified.

But that had proved a short-lived rectitude. The two murderers had died indeed—at the hands of the man named Cutter. Not Crokus, not the Daru youth, the cut-purse—who had vanished. Vanished, probably never to be seen again.

The delusion held a certain comfort, as cavernous at its core as Apsalar’s embrace at night, but welcome all the same.

Cutter would walk her path.

Aye, the Emperor had Dancer, yes? A companion, for a companion was what was needed. Is needed. Now, she has Cutter. Cutter of the Knives, who dances in his chains as if they were weightless threads. Cutter, who, unlike poor Crokus, knows his place, knows his singular task—to guard her back, to match her cold precision in the deadly arts.

And therein resided the final truth. Anyone could become a killer. Anyone at all.

She stepped out of the shack, wan but dry-eyed.

He sheathed his knives in a single, fluid motion, rose to his feet and faced her.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘What now?’

 

Broken pillars of mortared stone jutted from the undulating vista. Among the half-dozen or so within sight, only two rose as tall as a man, and none stood straight. The plain’s strange, colourless grasses gathered in tufts around their bases, snarled and oily in the grey, grainy air.

As Kalam rode into their midst, the muted thunder of his horse’s hoofs seemed to bounce back across his path, the echoes multiplying until he felt as if he was riding at the head of a mounted army. He slowed his charger’s canter, finally reining in beside one of the battered columns.

These silent sentinels felt like an intrusion on the solitude he had been seeking. He leaned in his saddle to study the one nearest him. It looked old, old in the way of so many things within the Warren of Shadow, forlorn with an air of abandonment, defying any chance he might have of discerning its function. There were no intervening ruins, no foundation walls, no cellar pits or other angular pocks in the ground. Each pillar stood alone, unaligned.

His examination settled on a rusted ring set into the stone near the base, from which depended a chain of seized links vanishing into the tufts of grass. After a moment, Kalam dismounted. He crouched down, reaching out to close his hand on the chain. A slight upward tug. The desiccated hand and forearm of some hapless creature lifted from the grasses. Dagger-length talons, four fingers and two thumbs.

The rest of the prisoner had succumbed to the roots, was half buried beneath dun-coloured, sandy soil. Pallid yellow hair was entwined among the grass blades.

The hand suddenly twitched.

Disgusted, Kalam released the chain. The arm dropped back to the ground. A faint, subterranean keening sound rose from the base of the pillar.

Straightening, the assassin returned to his horse.

Pillars, columns, tree stumps, platforms, staircases leading nowhere, and for every dozen there was one among them holding a prisoner. None of whom seemed capable of dying. Not entirely. Oh, their minds had died—most of them—long ago. Raving in tongues, murmuring senseless incantations, begging forgiveness, offering bargains, though not one had yet—within Kalam’s hearing—proclaimed its own innocence.

As if mercy could be an issue without it. He nudged his horse forward once more. This was not a realm to his liking. Not that he’d in truth had much choice in the matter. Bargaining with gods was—for the mortal involved—an exercise in self-delusion. Kalam would rather leave Quick Ben to play games with the rulers of this warren—the wizard had the advantage of enjoying the challenge—no, it was more than that. Quick Ben had left so many knives in so many backs—none of them fatal but none the less sure to sting when tugged, and it was that tugging the wizard loved so much.

The assassin wondered where his old friend was right now. There’d been trouble—nothing new there—and, since then, naught but silence. And then there was Fiddler. The fool had re-enlisted, for Hood’s sake!

Well, at least they’re doing something. Not Kalam, oh no, not Kalam. Thirteen hundred children, resurrected on a whim. Shining eyes following his every move, mapping his every step, memorizing his every gesture—what could he teach them? The art of mayhem? As if children needed help in that.

A ridge lay ahead. He reached the base and brought his horse into a gentle canter up the slope.

Besides, Minala seemed to have it all under control. A natural born tyrant, she was, both in public and in private amidst the bedrolls in the half-ruined hovel they shared. And oddly enough, he’d found he was not averse to tyranny. In principle, that is. Things had a way of actually working when someone capable and implacable took charge. And he’d had enough experience taking orders to not chafe at her position of command. Between her and the aptorian demoness, a certain measure of control was being maintained, a host of life skills were being inculcated…stealth, tracking, the laying of ambushes, the setting of traps for game both two-and four-legged, riding, scaling walls, freezing in place, knife throwing and countless other weapon skills, the weapons themselves donated by the warren’s mad rulers—half of them cursed or haunted or fashioned for entirely unhuman hands. The children took to such training with frightening zeal, and the gleam of pride in Minala’s eyes left the assassin…chilled.

An army in the making for Shadowthrone. An alarming prospect, to say the least.

He reached the ridge. And suddenly reined in.

An enormous stone gate surmounted the hill opposite, twin pillars spanned by an arch. Within it, a swirling grey wall. On this side of the gate, the grassy summit flowed with countless, sourceless shadows, as if they were somehow tumbling out from the portal, only to swarm like lost wraiths around its threshold.

‘Careful,’ a voice murmured beside Kalam.

He turned to see a tall, hooded and cloaked figure standing a few paces away, flanked by two Hounds. Cotillion, and his favoured two, Rood and Blind. The beasts sat on their scarred haunches, lurid eyes—seeing and unseeing—on the portal.

‘Why should I be careful?’ the assassin asked.

‘Oh, the shadows at the gate. They’ve lost their masters…but anyone will do.’

‘So this gate is sealed?’

The hooded head slowly turned. ‘Dear Kalam, is this a flight from our realm? How…ignoble.’

‘I said nothing to suggest—’

‘Then why does your shadow stretch so yearningly forward?’

Kalam glanced down at it, then scowled. ‘How should I know? Perhaps it considers its chances better in yonder mob.’

‘Chances?’

‘For excitement.’

‘Ah. Chafing, are you? I would never have guessed.’

‘Liar,’ Kalam said. ‘Minala has banished me. But you already know that, which is why you’ve come to find me.’

‘I am the Patron of Assassins,’ Cotillion said. ‘I do not mediate marital disputes.’

‘Depends on how fierce they get, doesn’t it?’

‘Are you ready to kill each other, then?’

‘No. I was only making a point.’

‘Which was?’

‘What are you doing here, Cotillion?’

The god was silent for a long moment. ‘I have often wondered,’ he finally said, ‘why it is that you, an assassin, offer no obeisance to your patron.’

Kalam’s brows rose. ‘Since when have you expected it? Hood take us, Cotillion, if it was fanatical worshippers you hungered for, you should never have looked to assassins. By our very natures, we’re antithetical to the notion of subservience—as if you weren’t already aware of that.’ His voice trailed off, and he turned to study the shadow-wreathed figure standing beside him. ‘Mind you, you stood at Kellanved’s side, through to the end. Dancer, it seems, knew both loyalty and servitude…’

‘Servitude?’ There was a hint of a smile in the tone.

‘Mere expedience? That seems difficult to countenance, given all that the two of you went through. Out with it, Cotillion, what is it you’re asking?’

‘Was I asking something?’

‘You want me to…serve you, as would a minion his god. Some probably disreputable mission. You need me for something, only you’ve never learned how to ask.’

Rood slowly rose from his haunches, then stretched, long and languorous. The massive head then swung round, lambent eyes settling on Kalam.

‘The Hounds are troubled,’ Cotillion murmured.

‘I can tell,’ the assassin replied drily.

‘I have certain tasks before me,’ the god continued, ‘that will consume much of my time for the near future. Whilst at the same time, certain other…activities…must be undertaken. It is one thing to find a loyal subject, but another entirely to find one conveniently positioned, as it were, to be of practical use—’

Kalam barked a laugh. ‘You went fishing for faithful servants and found your subjects wanting.’

‘We could argue interpretation all day,’ Cotillion drawled.

There was a detectable irony in the god’s voice that pleased Kalam. In spite of his wariness, he admitted that he actually liked Cotillion. Uncle Cotillion, as the child Panek called him. Certainly, between the Patron of Assassins and Shadowthrone, only the former seemed to possess any shred of self-examination—and thus was actually capable of being humbled. Even if the likelihood was in truth remote. ‘Agreed,’ Kalam replied. ‘Very well, Minala has no interest in seeing my pretty face for a time. Leaving me free, more or less—’

‘And without a roof over your head.’

‘Without a roof over my head, aye. Fortunately it never seems to rain in your realm.’

‘Ah,’ Cotillion murmured, ‘my realm.’

Kalam studied Rood. The beast had not relinquished its steady stare. The assassin was growing nervous under that unwavering attention. ‘Is your claim—yours and Shadowthrone’s—being contested?’

‘Difficult to answer,’ Cotillion murmured. ‘There have been…trembles. Agitation…’

‘As you said, the Hounds are troubled.’

‘They are indeed.’

‘You wish to know more of your potential enemy.’

‘We would.’

Kalam studied the gate, the swirling shadows at its threshold. ‘Where would you have me begin?’

‘A confluence to your own desires, I suspect.’

The assassin glanced at the god, then slowly nodded.

 

In the half-light of dusk, the seas grew calm, gulls wheeling in from the shoals to settle on the beach. Cutter had built a fire from driftwood, more from the need to be doing something than seeking warmth, for the Kanese coast was subtropical, the breeze sighing down off the verge faint and sultry. The Daru had collected water from the spring near the trail head and was now brewing tea. Overhead, the first stars of night flickered into life.

Apsalar’s question earlier that afternoon had gone unanswered. Cutter was not yet ready to return to Darujhistan, and he felt nothing of the calm he’d expected to follow the completion of their task. Rellock and Apsalar had, finally, returned to their home, only to find it a place haunted by death, a haunting that had slipped its fatal flavour into the old man’s soul, adding yet one more ghost to this forlorn strand. There was, now, nothing for them here.

Cutter’s own experience here in the Malazan Empire was, he well knew, twisted and incomplete. A single vicious night in Malaz City, followed by three tense days in Kan that closed with yet more assassinations. The empire was a foreign place, of course, and one could expect a certain degree of discord between it and what he was used to in Darujhistan, but if anything what he had seen of daily life in the cities suggested a stronger sense of lawfulness, of order and calm. Even so, it was the smaller details that jarred his sensibilities the most, that reinforced the fact that he was a stranger.

Feeling vulnerable was not a weakness he shared with Apsalar. She seemed possessed of absolute calm, an ease, no matter where she was—the confidence of the god who once possessed her had left something of a permanent imprint on her soul. Not just confidence. He thought once more of the night she had killed the man in Kan. Deadly skills, and the icy precision necessary when using them. And, he recalled with a shiver, many of the god’s own memories remained with her, reaching back to when the god had been a mortal man, had been Dancer. Among those, the night of the assassinations—when the woman who would become Empress had struck down the Emperor…and Dancer.

She had revealed that much, at least, a revelation devoid of feeling, of sentiment, delivered as casually as a comment about the weather. Memories of biting knives, of dust-covered blood rolling like pellets across a floor…

He removed the pot from the coals, threw a handful of herbs into the steaming water.

She had gone for a walk, westward along the white beach. Even as dusk settled, he had lost sight of her, and he had begun to wonder if she was ever coming back.

A log settled suddenly, flinging sparks. The sea had grown entirely dark, invisible; he could not even hear the lap of the waves beyond the crackling fire. A cooler breath rode the breeze.

Cutter slowly rose, then spun round to face inland as something moved in the gloom beyond the fire’s light. ‘Apsalar?’

There was no reply. A faint thumping underfoot, as if the sands trembled to the passage of something huge…huge and four-legged.

The Daru drew out his knives, stepping away from the flickering light.

Ten paces away, at a height to match his own, he saw two glowing eyes, set wide, gold and seemingly depthless. The head and the body beneath it were darker stains in the night, hinting at a mass that left Cutter cold.

‘Ah,’ a voice said from the shadows to his left, ‘the Daru lad. Blind has found you, good. Now, where is your companion?’

Cutter slowly sheathed his weapons. ‘That damned Hound gave me a start,’ he muttered. ‘And if it’s blind, why is it looking straight at me?’

‘Well, her name is something of a misnomer. She sees, but not as we see.’ A cloaked figure stepped into the firelight. ‘Do you know me?’

‘Cotillion,’ Cutter replied. ‘Shadowthrone is much shorter.’

‘Not that much, though perhaps in his affectations he exaggerates certain traits.’

‘What do you want?’

‘I would speak with Apsalar, of course. There is the smell of death here…recent, that is—’

‘Rellock. Her father. In his sleep.’

‘Unfortunate.’ The god’s hooded head turned, as if scanning the vicinity, then swung back to face Cutter. ‘Am I your patron now?’ he asked.

He wanted to answer no. He wanted to back away, to flee the question and all his answer would signify. He wanted to unleash vitriol at the suggestion. ‘I believe you might be at that, Cotillion.’

‘I am…pleased, Crokus.’

‘I am now named Cutter.’

‘Far less subtle, but apt enough, I suppose. Even so, there was the hint of deadly charm in your old Daru name. Are you sure you will not reconsider?’

Cutter shrugged, then said, ‘Crokus had no…patron god.’

‘Of course. And one day, a man will arrive in Darujhistan. With a Malazan name, and no-one will know him, except perhaps by reputation. And he will eventually hear tales of the young Crokus, a lad so instrumental in saving the city on the night of the Fete, all those years ago. Innocent, unsullied Crokus. So be it…Cutter. I see you have a boat.’

The change of subject startled him slightly, then he nodded. ‘We have.’

‘Sufficiently provisioned?’

‘More or less. Not for a long voyage, though.’

‘No, of course not. Why should it be? May I see your knives?’

Cutter unsheathed them and passed them across to the god, pommels forward.

‘Decent blades,’ Cotillion murmured. ‘Well balanced. Within them are the echoes of your skill, the taste of blood. Shall I bless them for you, Cutter?’

‘If the blessing is without magic,’ the Daru replied.

‘You desire no sorcerous investment?’

‘No.’

‘Ah. You would follow Rallick Nom’s path.’

Cutter’s eyes narrowed. Oh, yes, he would recall him. When he saw through Sorry’s eyes, at the Phoenix Inn, perhaps. Or maybe Rallick acknowledged his patron…though I find that difficult to believe. ‘I think I would have trouble following that path, Cotillion. Rallick’s abilities are…were—’

‘Formidable, yes. I do not think you need use the past tense when speaking of Rallick Nom, or Vorcan for that matter. No, I’ve no news…simply a suspicion.’ He handed the knives back. ‘You underestimate your own skills, Cutter, but perhaps that is for the best.’

‘I don’t know where Apsalar’s gone,’ Cutter said. ‘I don’t know if she’s coming back.’

‘As it has turned out, her presence has proved less vital than expected. I have a task for you, Cutter. Are you amenable to providing a service to your patron?’

‘Isn’t that expected?’

Cotillion was silent for a moment, then he laughed softly. ‘No, I shall not take advantage of your…inexperience, though I admit to some temptation. Shall we begin things on a proper footing? Reciprocity, Cutter. A relationship of mutual exchanges, yes?’

‘Would that you had offered the same to Apsalar.’ Then he clamped his jaw shut.

But Cotillion simply sighed. ‘Would that I had. Consider this new tact the consequence of difficult lessons.’

‘You said reciprocity. What will I receive in return for providing this service?’

‘Well, since you’ll not accept my blessing or any other investment, I admit to being at something of a loss. Any suggestions?’

‘I’d like some questions answered.’

‘Indeed.’

‘Yes. Such as, why did you and Shadowthrone scheme to destroy Laseen and the empire? Was it just a desire for revenge?’

The god seemed to flinch within his robes, and Cutter felt unseen eyes harden. ‘Oh my,’ Cotillion drawled, ‘you force me to reconsider my offer.’

‘I would know,’ the Daru pressed on, ‘so I can understand what you did…did to Apsalar.’

‘You demand that your patron god justify his actions?’

‘It wasn’t a demand. Just a question.’

Cotillion said nothing for a long moment.

The fire was slowly dying, embers pulsing with the breeze. Cutter sensed the presence of a second Hound somewhere in the darkness beyond, moving restlessly.

‘Necessities,’ the god said quietly. ‘Games are played, and what may appear precipitous might well be little more than a feint. Or perhaps it was the city itself, Darujhistan, that would serve our purposes better if it remained free, independent. There are layers of meaning behind every gesture, every gambit. I will not explain myself any further than that, Cutter.’

‘Do—do you regret what you did?’

‘You are indeed fearless, aren’t you? Regret? Yes. Many, many regrets. One day, perhaps, you will see for yourself that regrets are as nothing. The value lies in how they are answered.’

Cutter slowly turned and stared out into the darkness of the sea. ‘I threw Oponn’s coin into the lake,’ he said.

‘And do you now regret the act?’

‘I’m not sure. I didn’t like their…attention.’

‘I am not surprised,’ Cotillion muttered.

‘I have one more request,’ Cutter said, facing the god again. ‘This task you shall set me on—if I am assailed during it, can I call upon Blind?’

‘The Hound?’ The astonishment was clear in Cotillion’s voice.

‘Aye,’ Cutter replied, his gaze now on the huge beast. ‘Her attention…comforts me.’

‘That makes you rarer than you could imagine, mortal. Very well. If the need is dire, call upon her and she will come.’

Cutter nodded. ‘Now, what would you have me do on your behalf?’

 

The sun had cleared the horizon when Apsalar returned. After a few hours’ sleep, Cutter had risen to bury Rellock above the tide line. He was checking the boat’s hull one last time when a shadow appeared alongside his own.

‘You had visitors,’ she said.

He squinted up at her, studied her dark, depthless eyes. ‘Aye.’

‘And do you now have an answer to my question?’

Cutter frowned, then he sighed and nodded. ‘I do. We’re to explore an island.’

‘An island? Is it far?’

‘Middling, but getting farther by the moment.’

‘Ah. Of course.’

Of course.

Overhead, gulls cried in the morning air on their way out to sea. Beyond the shoals, their white specks followed the wind, angling southwestward.

Cutter set his shoulder to the prow and pushed the craft back out onto the water. Then he clambered aboard. Apsalar joined him, making her way to the tiller.

What now? A god had given him his answer.

There had been no sunset in the realm the Tiste Edur called the Nascent for five months. The sky was grey, the light strangely hued and diffuse. There had been a flood, and then rains, and a world had been destroyed.

Even in the wreckage, however, there was life.

A score of broad-limbed catfish had clambered onto the mud-caked wall, none less than two man-lengths from blunt head to limp tail. They were well-fed creatures, their silvery-white bellies protruding out to the sides. Their skins had dried and fissures were visible in a latticed web across their dark backs. The glitter of their small black eyes was muted beneath the skin’s crinkled layer.

And it seemed those eyes were unaware of the solitary T’lan Imass standing over them.

Echoes of curiosity still clung to Onrack’s tattered, desiccated soul. Joints creaking beneath the knotted ropes of ligaments, he crouched beside the nearest catfish. He did not think the creatures were dead. Only a short time ago, these fish had possessed no true limbs. He was witness, he suspected, to a metamorphosis.

After a moment, he slowly straightened. The sorcery that had sustained the wall against the vast weight of the new sea still held along this section. It had crumbled in others, forming wide breaches and foaming torrents of silt-laden water rushing through to the other side. A shallow sea was spreading out across the land on that side. There might come a time, Onrack suspected, when fragments of this wall were this realm’s only islands.

The sea’s torrential arrival had caught them unawares, scattering them in its tumbling maelstrom. Other kin had survived, the T’lan Imass knew, and indeed some had found purchase on this wall, or on floating detritus, sufficient to regain their forms, to link once more so that the hunt could resume.

But Kurald Emurlahn, fragmented or otherwise, was not amenable to the T’lan Imass. Without a Bonecaster beside him, Onrack could not extend his Tellann powers, could not reach out to his kin, could not inform them that he had survived. For most of his kind, that alone would have been sufficient cause for…surrender. The roiling waters he had but recently crawled from offered true oblivion. Dissolution was the only escape possible from this eternal ritual, and even among the Logros—Guardians of the First Throne itself—Onrack knew of kin who had chosen that path. Or worse…

The warrior’s contemplation of choosing an end to his existence was momentary. In truth, he was far less haunted by his immortality than most T’lan Imass.

There was always something else to see, after all.

He detected movement beneath the skin of the nearest catfish, vague hints of contraction, of emerging awareness. Onrack drew forth his two-handed, curved obsidian sword. Most things he stumbled upon usually had to be killed. Occasionally in self-defence, but often simply due to an immediate and probably mutual loathing. He had long since ceased questioning why this should be so.

From his massive shoulders hung the rotted skin of an enkar’al, pebbled and colourless. It was a relatively recent acquisition, less than a thousand years old. Another example of a creature that had hated him on first sight. Though perhaps the black rippled blade swinging at its head had tainted its response.

It would be some time, Onrack judged, before the beast crawled out from its skin. He lowered his weapon and stepped past it. The Nascent’s extraordinary, continent-spanning wall was a curiosity in itself. After a moment, the warrior decided to walk its length. Or at least, until his passage was blocked by a breach.

He began walking, hide-wrapped feet scuffing as he dragged them forward, the point of the sword inscribing a desultory furrow in the dried clay as it trailed from his left hand. Clumps of mud clung to his ragged hide shirt and the leather straps of his weapon harness. Silty, soupy water had seeped into the various gashes and punctures on his body and now leaked in trickling runnels with every heavy step he took. He had possessed a helm once, an impressive trophy from his youth, but it had been shattered at the final battle against the Jaghut family in the Jhag Odhan. A single crossways blow that had also shorn away a fifth of his skull, parietal and temporal, on the right side. Jaghut women had deceptive strength and admirable ferocity, especially when cornered.

The sky above him had a sickly cast, but one he had already grown used to. This fragment of the long-fractured Tiste Edur warren was by far the largest he had come across, larger even than the one that surrounded Tremorlor, the Azath Odhanhouse. And this one had known a period of stability, sufficient for civilizations to arise, for savants of sorcery to begin unravelling the powers of Kurald Emurlahn, although those inhabitants had not been Tiste Edur.

Idly, Onrack wondered if the renegade T’lan Imass he and his kin pursued had somehow triggered the wound that had resulted in the flooding of this world. It seemed likely, given its obvious efficacy in obscuring their trail. Either that, or the Tiste Edur had returned, to reclaim what had once been theirs.

Indeed, he could smell the grey-skinned Edur—they had passed this way, and recently, arriving from another warren. Of course, the word ‘smell’ had acquired new meaning for the T’lan Imass in the wake of the Ritual. Mundane senses had for the most part withered along with flesh. Through the shadowed orbits of his eyes, for example, the world was a complex collage of dull colours, heat and cold and often measured by an unerring sensitivity to motion. Spoken words swirled in mercurial clouds of breath—if the speaker lived, that is. If not, then it was the sound itself that was detectable, shivering its way through the air. Onrack sensed sound as much by sight as by hearing.

And so it was that he became aware of a warm-blooded shape lying a short distance ahead. The wall here was slowly failing. Water spouted in streams from fissures between the bulging stones. Before long, it would give way entirely.

The shape did not move. It had been chained in place.

Another fifty paces and Onrack reached it.

The stench of Kurald Emurlahn was overpowering, faintly visible like a pool enclosing the supine figure, its surface rippling as if beneath a steady but thin rain. A deep ragged scar marred the prisoner’s broad brow beneath a hairless pate, the wound glowing with sorcery. There had been a metal tongue to hold down the man’s tongue, but that had dislodged, as had the straps wound round the figure’s head.

Slate-grey eyes stared up, unblinking, at the T’lan Imass.

Onrack studied the Tiste Edur for a moment longer, then he stepped over the man and continued on.

A ragged, withered voice rose in his wake. ‘Wait.’

The undead warrior paused and glanced back.

‘I—I would bargain. For my freedom.’

‘I am not interested in bargains,’ Onrack replied in the Edur language.

‘Is there nothing you desire, warrior?’

‘Nothing you can give me.’

‘Do you challenge me, then?’

Tendons creaking, Onrack tilted his head. ‘This section of the wall is about to collapse. I have no wish to be here when it does.’

‘And you imagine that I do?’

‘Considering your sentiments on the matter is a pointless effort on my part, Edur. I have no interest in imagining myself in your place. Why would I? You are about to drown.’

‘Break my chains, and we can continue this discussion in a safer place.’

‘The quality of this discussion has not earned such an exercise,’ Onrack replied.

‘I would improve it, given the time.’

‘This seems unlikely.’ Onrack turned away.

‘Wait! I can tell you of your enemies!’

Slowly, the T’lan Imass swung round once more. ‘My enemies? I do not recall saying that I had any, Edur.’

‘Oh, but you do. I should know. I was once one of them, and indeed that is why you find me here, for I am your enemy no longer.’

‘You are now a renegade among your own kind, then,’ Onrack observed. ‘I have no faith in traitors.’

‘To my own kind, T’lan Imass, I am not the traitor. That epithet belongs to the one who chained me here. In any case, the question of faith cannot be answered through negotiation.’

‘Should you have made that admission, Edur?’

The man grimaced. ‘Why not? I would not deceive you.’

Now, Onrack was truly curious. ‘Why would you not deceive me?’

‘For the very cause that has seen me Shorn,’ the Edur replied. ‘I am plagued by the need to be truthful.’

‘That is a dreadful curse,’ the T’lan Imass said.

‘Yes.’

Onrack lifted his sword. ‘In this case, I admit to possessing a curse of my own. Curiosity.’

‘I weep for you.’

‘I see no tears.’

‘In my heart, T’lan Imass.’

A single blow shattered the chains. With his free right hand, Onrack reached down and clutched one of the Edur’s ankles. He dragged the man after him along the top of the wall.

‘I would rail at the indignity of this,’ the Tiste Edur said as he was pulled onward, step by scuffing step, ‘had I the strength to do so.’

Onrack made no reply. Dragging the man with one hand, his sword with the other, he trudged forward, his progress eventually taking them past the area of weakness on the wall.

‘You can release me now,’ the Tiste Edur gasped.

‘Can you walk?’

‘No, but—’

‘Then we shall continue like this.’

‘Where are you going, then, that you cannot afford to wait for me to regain my strength?’

‘Along this wall,’ the T’lan Imass replied.

There was silence between them for a time, apart from the creaks from Onrack’s bones, the rasp of his hide-wrapped feet, and the hiss and thump of the Tiste Edur’s body and limbs across the mud-layered stones. The detritus-filled sea remained unbroken on their left, a festering marshland on their right. They passed between and around another dozen catfish, these ones not quite as large yet fully as limbed as the previous group. Beyond them, the wall stretched on unbroken to the horizon.

In a voice filled with pain, the Tiste Edur finally spoke again. ‘Much more…T’lan Imass…and you’ll be dragging a corpse.’

Onrack considered that for a moment, then he halted his steps and released the man’s ankle. He slowly swung about.

Groaning, the Tiste Edur rolled himself onto his side. ‘I assume,’ he gasped, ‘you have no food, or fresh water.’

Onrack lifted his gaze, back to the distant humps of the catfish. ‘I suppose I could acquire some. Of the former, that is.’

‘Can you open a portal, T’lan Imass? Can you get us out of this realm?’

‘No.’

The Tiste Edur lowered his head to the clay and closed his eyes. ‘Then I am as good as dead in any case. None the less, I appreciate your breaking my chains. You need not remain here, though I would know the name of the warrior who showed me what mercy he could.’

‘Onrack. Clanless, of the Logros.’

‘I am Trull Sengar. Also clanless.’

Onrack stared down at the Tiste Edur for a while. Then the T’lan Imass stepped over the man and set off, retracing their path. He arrived among the catfish. A single chop downward severed the head of the nearest one.

The slaying triggered a frenzy among the others. Skin split, sleek four-limbed bodies tore their way free. Broad, needle-fanged heads swung towards the undead warrior in their midst, tiny eyes glistening. Loud hisses from all sides. The beasts moved on squat, muscular legs, three-toed feet thickly padded and clawed. Their tails were short, extending in a vertical fin back up their spines.

They attacked as would wolves closing on wounded prey.

Obsidian blade flashed. Thin blood sprayed. Heads and limbs flopped about.

One of the creatures launched itself into the air, huge mouth closing over Onrack’s skull. As its full weight descended, the T’lan Imass felt his neck vertebrae creak and grind. He fell backward, letting the animal drag him down.

Then he dissolved into dust.

And rose five paces away to resume his killing, wading among the hissing survivors. A few moments later they were all dead.

Onrack collected one of the corpses by its hind foot and, dragging it, made his way back to Trull Sengar.

The Tiste Edur was propped up on one elbow, his flat eyes fixed on the T’lan Imass. ‘For a moment,’ he said, ‘I thought I was having the strangest dream. I saw you, there in the distance, wearing a huge, writhing hat. That then ate you whole.’

Onrack pulled the body up alongside Trull Sengar. ‘You were not dreaming. Here. Eat.’

‘Might we not cook it?’

The T’lan Imass strode to the seaside edge of the wall. Among the flotsam were the remnants of countless trees, from which jutted denuded branches. He climbed down onto the knotted detritus, felt it shift and roll unsteadily beneath him. It required but a few moments to snap off an armful of fairly dry wood, which he threw back up onto the wall. Then he followed.

He felt the Tiste Edur’s eyes on him as he prepared a hearth.

‘Our encounters with your kind,’ Trull said after a moment, ‘were few and far between. And then, only after your…ritual. Prior to that, your people fled from us at first sight. Apart from those who travelled the oceans with the Thelomen Toblakai, that is. Those ones fought us. For centuries, before we drove them from the seas.’

‘The Tiste Edur were in my world,’ Onrack said as he drew out his spark stones, ‘just after the coming of the Tiste Andii. Once numerous, leaving signs of passage in the snow, on the beaches, in deep forests.’

‘There are far fewer of us now,’ Trull Sengar said. ‘We came here—to this place—from Mother Dark, whose children had banished us. We did not think they would pursue, but they did. And upon the shattering of this warren, we fled yet again—to your world, Onrack. Where we thrived…’

‘Until your enemies found you once more.’

‘Yes. The first of those were…fanatical in their hatred. There were great wars—unwitnessed by anyone, fought as they were within darkness, in hidden places of shadow. In the end, we slew the last of those first Andii, but were broken ourselves in the effort. And so we retreated into remote places, into fastnesses. Then, more Andii came, only these seemed less…interested. And we in turn had grown inward, no longer consumed with the hunger of expansion—’

‘Had you sought to assuage that hunger,’ Onrack said as the first wisps of smoke rose from the shredded bark and twigs, ‘we would have found in you a new cause, Edur.’

Trull was silent, his gaze veiled. ‘We had forgotten it all,’ he finally said, settling back to rest his head once more on the clay. ‘All that I have just told you. Until a short while ago, my people—the last bastion, it seems, of the Tiste Edur—knew almost nothing of our past. Our long, tortured history. And what we knew was in fact false. If only,’ he added, ‘we had remained ignorant.’

Onrack slowly turned to gaze at the Edur. ‘Your people no longer look inward.’

‘I said I would tell you of your enemies, T’lan Imass.’

‘You did.’

‘There are your kind, Onrack, among the Tiste Edur. In league with our new purpose.’

‘And what is this purpose, Trull Sengar?’

The man looked away, closed his eyes. ‘Terrible, Onrack. A terrible purpose.’

The T’lan Imass warrior swung to the corpse of the creature he had slain, drew forth an obsidian knife. ‘I am familiar with terrible purposes,’ he said as he began cutting meat.

‘I shall tell you my tale now, as I said I would. So you understand what you now face.’

‘No, Trull Sengar. Tell me nothing more.’

‘But why?’

Because your truth would burden me. Force me to find my kin once more. Your truth would chain me to this world—to my world, once more. And I am not ready for that. ‘I am weary of your voice, Edur,’ he replied.

The beast’s sizzling flesh smelled like seal meat.

A short time later, while Trull Sengar ate, Onrack moved to the edge of the wall facing onto the marsh. The flood waters had found old basins in the landscape, from which gases now leaked upward to drift in pale smears over the thick, percolating surface. Thicker fog obscured the horizon, but the T’lan Imass thought he could sense a rising of elevation, a range of low, humped hills.

‘It’s getting lighter,’ Trull Sengar said from where he lay beside the hearth. ‘The sky is glowing in places. There…and there.’

Onrack lifted his head. The sky had been an unrelieved sea of pewter, darkening every now and then to loose a deluge of rain, though that had grown more infrequent of late. But now rents had appeared, ragged-edged. A swollen orb of yellow light commanded one entire horizon, the wall ahead seeming to drive towards its very heart; whilst directly overhead hung a smaller circle of blurred fire, this one rimmed in blue.

‘The suns return,’ the Tiste Edur murmured. ‘Here, in the Nascent, the ancient twin hearts of Kurald Emurlahn live on. There was no way of telling, for we did not rediscover this warren until after the Breach. The flood waters must have brought chaos to the climate. And destroyed the civilization that existed here.’

Onrack looked down. ‘Were they Tiste Edur?’

The man shook his head. ‘No, more like your descendants, Onrack. Although the corpses we saw here along the wall were badly decayed.’ Trull grimaced. ‘They are as vermin, these humans of yours.’

‘Not mine,’ Onrack replied.

‘You feel no pride, then, at their insipid success?’

The T’lan Imass cocked his head. ‘They are prone to mistakes, Trull Sengar. The Logros have killed them in their thousands when the need to reassert order made doing so necessary. With ever greater frequency they annihilate themselves, for success breeds contempt for those very qualities that purchased it.’

‘It seems you’ve given this some thought.’

Onrack shrugged in a clatter of bones. ‘More than my kin, perhaps, the edge of my irritation with humankind remains jagged.’

The Tiste Edur was attempting to stand, his motions slow and deliberate. ‘The Nascent required…cleansing,’ he said, his tone bitter, ‘or so it was judged.’

‘Your methods,’ Onrack said, ‘are more extreme than what the Logros would choose.’

Managing to totter upright, Trull Sengar faced the T’lan Imass with a wry grin. ‘Sometimes, friend, what is begun proves too powerful to contain.’

‘Such is the curse of success.’

Trull seemed to wince at the words, and he turned away. ‘I must needs find fresh, clean water.’

‘How long had you been chained?’

The man shrugged. ‘Long, I suppose. The sorcery within the Shorning was designed to prolong suffering. Your sword severed its power, and now the mundane requirements of the flesh return.’

The suns were burning through the clouds, their combined heat filling the air with humidity. The overcast was shredding apart, vanishing before their very eyes. Onrack studied the blazing orbs once more. ‘There has been no night,’ he said.

‘Not in the summer, no. The winters, it’s said, are another matter. At the same time, with the deluge I suspect it is fruitless to predict what will come. Personally, I have no wish to find out.’

‘We must leave this wall,’ the T’lan Imass said after a moment.

‘Aye, before it collapses entirely. I think I can see hills in the distance.’

‘If you have the strength, clasp your arms about me,’ Onrack said, ‘and I will climb down. We can skirt the basins. If any local animals survived, they will be on higher ground. Do you wish to collect and cook more from this beast?’

‘No. It is less than palatable.’

‘That is not surprising, Trull Sengar. It is a carnivore, and has fed long on rotting flesh.’

The ground was sodden underfoot when they finally reached the base of the wall. Swarms of insects rose around them, closing on the Tiste Edur with frenzied hunger. Onrack allowed his companion to set the pace as they made their way between the water-filled basins. The air was humid enough to sheathe their bodies, soaking through the clothing they wore. Although there was no wind at ground level, the clouds overhead had stretched into streamers, racing to overtake them then scudding on to mass against the range of hills, where the sky grew ever darker.

‘We are heading right towards a squall,’ Trull muttered, waving his arms about to disperse the midges.

‘When it breaks, this land will flood,’ Onrack noted. ‘Are you capable of increasing your pace?’

‘No.’

‘Then I shall have to carry you.’

‘Carry, or drag?’

‘Which do you prefer?’

‘Carrying seems somewhat less humiliating.’

Onrack returned his sword to its loop in the shoulder harness. Though the warrior was judged tall among his own kind, the Tiste Edur was taller, by almost the length of a forearm. The T’lan Imass had the man sit down on the ground, knees drawn up, then Onrack squatted and slipped one arm beneath Trull’s knees, the other below his shoulder blades. Tendons creaking, the warrior straightened.

‘There’s fresh gouges all around your skull, or what’s left of it at any rate,’ the Tiste Edur noted.

Onrack said nothing. He set forth at a steady jog.

Before long a wind arrived, tumbling down from the hills, growing to such force that the T’lan Imass had to lean forward, his feet thumping along the gravel ridges between the pools.

The midges were quickly swept away.

There was, Onrack realized, a strange regularity to the hills ahead. There were seven in all, arrayed in what seemed a straight line, each of equal height though uniquely misshapen. The storm clouds were piling well behind them, corkscrewing in bulging columns skyward above an enormous range of mountains.

The wind howled against Onrack’s desiccated face, snapped at the strands of his gold-streaked hair, thrummed with a low-pitched drone through the leather strips of his harness. Trull Sengar was hunched against him, head ducked away from the shrieking blast.

Lightning bridged the heaving columns, the thunder long in reaching them.

The hills were not hills at all. They were edifices, massive and hulking, constructed from a smooth black stone, seemingly each a single piece. Twenty or more man-lengths high. Dog-like beasts, broad-skulled and small-eared, thickly muscled, heads lowered towards the two travellers and the distant wall behind them, the vast pits of their eyes faintly gleaming a deep, translucent amber.

Onrack’s steps slowed.

But did not halt.

The basins had been left behind, the ground underfoot slick with wind-borne rain but otherwise solid. The T’lan Imass angled his approach towards the nearest monument. As they came closer, they moved into the statue’s lee.

The sudden falling off of the wind was accompanied by a cavernous silence, the wind to either side oddly mute and distant. Onrack set Trull Sengar down.

The Tiste Edur’s bewildered gaze found the edifice rearing before them. He was silent, slow to stand as Onrack moved past him.

‘Beyond,’ Trull quietly murmured, ‘there should be a gate.’

Pausing, Onrack slowly swung round to study his companion. ‘This is your warren,’ he said after a moment. ‘What do you sense of these…monuments?’

‘Nothing, but I know what they are meant to represent…as do you. It seems the inhabitants of this realm made them into their gods.’

To that, Onrack made no reply. He faced the massive statue once more, head tilting as his gaze travelled upward, ever upward. To those gleaming, amber eyes.

‘There will be a gate,’ Trull Sengar persisted behind him. ‘A means of leaving this world. Why do you hesitate, T’lan Imass?’

‘I hesitate in the face of what you cannot see,’ Onrack replied. ‘There are seven, yes. But two of them are…alive.’ He hesitated, then added, ‘And this is one of them.’