There was no breath to speak of. Rather, what awoke him was the smell of death, dry, an echo of pungent decay that might belong to the carcass of a beast left in the high grasses, desiccated yet holding its reek about itself, close and suffocating as a cloak. Opening his eyes, Kallor found himself staring up at the enormous, rotted head of a dragon, its massive fangs and shredded gums almost within reach.

The morning light was blotted out and it seemed the shade cast by the dragon roiled with all its centuries of forgotten breath.

As the savage thunder of Kallor’s heartbeat eased, he slowly edged to one side – the dragon’s viper head tilting to track his movement – and carefully stood, keeping his hands well away from the scabbarded sword lying on the ground beside his bedroll. ‘I did not,’ he said, scowling, ‘ask for company.’

The dragon withdrew its head in a crackling of dried scales along the length of its serpent neck; settled back between the twin cowls of its folded wings.

He could see runnels of dirt trickling down from creases and joins on the creature’s body. One gaunt forelimb bore the tracery of fine roots in a colourless mockery of blood vessels. From the shadowed pits beneath the gnarled brow ridges there was the hint of withered eyes, a mottling of grey and black that could hold no display of desire or intent; and yet Kallor felt that regard raw as sharkskin against his own eyes as he stared up at the undead dragon.

‘You have come,’ he said, ‘a long way, I suspect. But I am not for you. I can give you nothing, assuming I wanted to, which I do not. And do not imagine,’ he added, ‘that I will bargain with you, whatever hungers you may still possess.’

He looked about his makeshift camp, saw that the modest hearth with its fistful of coals still smouldered from the previous night’s fire. ‘I am hungry, and thirsty,’ he said. ‘You can leave whenever it pleases you.’

The dragon’s sibilant voice spoke in Kallor’s skull. ‘You cannot know my pain.’

He grunted. ‘You cannot feel pain. You’re dead, and you have the look of having been buried. For a long time.’

‘The soul writhes. There is anguish. I am broken.’

He fed a few clumps of dried bhederin dung on to the coals, and then glanced over. ‘I can do nothing about that.’

‘I have dreamt of a throne.’

Kallor’s attention sharpened with speculation. ‘You would choose a master? That is unlike your kind.’ He shook his head. ‘I scarcely believe it.’

‘Because you do not understand. None of you understand. So much is beyond you. You think to make yourself the King in Chains. Do not mock my seeking a master, High King Kallor.’

‘The Crippled God’s days are numbered, Eleint,’ said Kallor. ‘Yet the throne shall remain, long after the chains have rusted to dust.’

There was silence between them then, for a time. The morning sky was clear, tinted faintly red with the pollen and dust that seemed to seethe up from this land. Kallor watched the hearth finally lick into flames, and he reached for the small, battered, blackened pot. Poured the last of his water into it and set the pot on the tripod perched above the fire. Swarms of suicidal insects darted into the flames, igniting in sparks, and Kallor wondered at this penchant for seeking death, as if the lure for an end was irresistible. Not a trait he shared, however.

‘I remember my death,’ the dragon said.

‘And that’s worth remembering?’

‘The Jaghut were a stubborn people. So many saw naught but the coldness in their hearts—’

‘Misunderstood, were they?’

‘They mocked your empire, High King. They answered you with scorn. It seems the wounds have not healed.’

‘A recent reminder, that’s all,’ Kallor replied, watching the water slowly awaken. He tossed in a handful of herbs. ‘Very well, tell me your tale. I welcome the amusement.’

The dragon lifted its head and seemed to study the eastern horizon.

‘Never wise to stare into the sun,’ Kallor observed. ‘You might burn your eyes.’

‘It was brighter then – do you recall?’

‘Perturbations of orbit, or so believed the K’Chain Che’Malle.’

‘So too the Jaghut, who were most diligent in their observations of the world. Tell me, High King, did you know they broke peace only once? In all their existence – no, not the T’lan Imass – that war belonged to those savages and the Jaghut were a most reluctant foe.’

‘They should have turned on the Imass,’ Kallor said. ‘They should have annihilated the vermin.’

‘Perhaps, but I was speaking of an earlier war – the war that destroyed the Jaghut long before the coming of the T’lan Imass. The war that shattered their unity, that made of their lives a moribund flight from an implacable enemy – yes, long before and long after the T’lan Imass.’

Kallor considered that for a moment, and then he grunted and said, ‘I am not well versed in Jaghut history. What war was this? The K’Chain Che’Malle? The Forkrul Assail?’ He squinted at the dragon. ‘Or, perhaps, you Eleint?’

There was sorrow in its tone as the dragon replied, ‘No. There were some among us who chose to join in this war, to fight alongside the Jaghut armies—’

‘Armies? Jaghut armies?’

‘Yes, an entire people gathered, a host of singular will. Legions uncountable. Their standard was rage, their clarion call injustice. When they marched, swords beating on shields, time itself found measure, a hundred million hearts of edged iron. Not even you, High King, could imagine such a sight – your empire was less than a squall to that terrible storm.’

For once, Kallor had nothing to say. No snide comment to voice, no scoffing refutation. In his mind he saw the scene the dragon had described, and was struck mute. To have witnessed such a thing!

The dragon seemed to comprehend his awe. ‘Yes again, High King. When you forged your empire, it was on the dust of that time, that grand contest, that most bold assault. We fought. We refused to retreat. We failed. We fell. So many of us fell – should we have believed otherwise? Should we have held to our faith in the righteousness of our cause, even as we came to believe that we were doomed?’

Kallor stared across at the dragon, the tea in the pot steaming away. He could almost hear the echoes of tens of millions, hundreds of millions, dying on a plain so vast even the horizons could not close it in. He saw flames, rivers of blood, a sky solid with ash. In creating this image, he had only to draw upon his own fury of destruction, then multiply it a thousandfold. The notion took his breath, snatched it from his lungs, and his chest filled with pain. ‘What,’ he managed, ‘who? What enemy could vanquish such a force?’

‘Grieve for the Jaghut, High King, when at last you sit on that throne. Grieve for the chains that bind all life, that you can never break. Weep, for me and my fallen kin – who did not hesitate to join a war that could not be won. Know, for ever in your soul, Kallor Eidorann, that the Jaghut fought the war no other has dared to fight.’

‘Eleint…’

‘Think of these people. Think of them, High King. The sacrifice they made for us all. Think of the Jaghut, and an impossible victory won in the heart of defeat. Think, and then you will come to understand all that is to come. Perhaps, then, you alone will know enough to honour their memory, the sacrifice they made for us all.

‘High King, the Jaghut’s only war, their greatest war, was against Death itself.’

The dragon turned away then, spreading its tattered wings. Sorcery blossomed round the huge creature, and it lifted into the air.

Kallor stood, watching the Eleint rise into the cinnamon sky. A nameless dead dragon, that had fallen in the realm of Death, that had fallen and in dying had simply…switched sides. No, there could be no winning such a war. ‘You damned fool,’ he whispered at the fast receding Eleint. ‘All of you, damned fools.’ Bless you, bless you all.

Gothos, when next we meet, this High King owes you an apology.

On withered cheeks that seemed cursed to eternal dryness, tears now trickled down. He would think long and think hard, now, and he would come to feelings that he’d not felt in a long time, so long that they seemed foreign, dangerous to harbour in his soul.

And he would wonder, with growing unease, at the dead Eleint who, upon escaping the realm of Death, would now choose the Crippled God as its new master.

A throne, Emperor Kellanved once said, is made of many parts. And then he had added, any one of which can break, to the king’s eternal discomfort. No, it did no good to simply sit on a throne, deluding oneself of its eternal solidity. He had known that long before Kellanved ever cast an acquisitive eye on empire. But he was not one for resonant quotations.

Well, everyone has a few flaws.

 

In a dark pool a score of boulders rise clear of the lightless, seemingly lifeless surface. They appear as islands, no two connected in any obvious way, no chain of uplifted progression to hint at some mostly submerged range of mountains, no half-curl to mark a flooded caldera. Each stands alone, a bold proclamation.

Is this how it was at the very beginning? Countless scholars struggled to make sense of it, the distinct existences, the imposition of order in myriad comprehensions. Lines were drawn, flags splashed with colours, faces blended into singular philosophies and attitudes and aspects. Here there is Darkness, and here there is Life. Light, Earth, Fire, Shadow, Air, Water. And Death. As if such aspects began as pure entities, unstained by contact with any of the others. And as if time was the enemy, forcing the inevitable infections from one to another.

Whenever Endest Silann thought about these things, he found himself trapped in a prickly, uneasy suspicion. In his experience, purity was an unpleasant concept, and to imagine worlds defined by purity filled him with fear. An existence held to be pure was but the physical corollary of a point of view bound in certainty. Cruelty could thrive unfettered by compassion. The pure could see no value among the impure, after all. Justifying annihilation wasn’t even necessary, since the inferiority was ever self-evident.

Howsoever all creation had begun, he now believed, those pure forms existed as nothing more than the raw materials for more worthy elaborations. As any alchemist knew, transformation was only possible as a result of admixture. For creation to thrive, there must be an endless succession of catalysts.

His Lord had understood that. Indeed, he had been driven to do all that he had done by that very comprehension. And change was, for so many, terrifying. For so much of existence, Anomander Rake had fought virtually alone. Even his brothers had but fallen, bound by the ties of blood, into the chaos that followed.

Was Kharkanas truly the first city? The first, proudest salutation to order in the cosmos? Was it in fact even true that Darkness preceded all else? What of the other worlds, the rival realms? And, if one thought carefully about that nascent age of creation, had not the admixture already begun? Was there not Death in the realms of Darkness, Light, Fire and all the rest? Indeed, how could Life and Death exist in any form of distinction without the other?

No, he now believed that the Age of Purity was but a mythical invention, a convenient separation of all the forces necessary for all existence. Yet was he not witness to the Coming of Light? To Mother Dark’s wilful rejection of eternal stasis? Did he not with his own eyes see the birth of a sun over his blessed, precious city? How could he not have understood, at that moment, how all else would follow, inevitably, inexorably? That fire would awaken, that raging winds would howl, that waters would rise and the earth crack open? That death would flood into their world in a brutal torrent of violence? That Shadow would slide between things, whispering sly subversions of all those pristine absolutes?

He sat alone in his room, in the manner of all old men when the last witness has wandered off, when nothing but stone walls and insensate furniture gathered close to mock his last few aspirations, his last dwindling reasons for living. In his mind he witnessed yet again, in a vision still sharp, still devastating, Andarist staggering into view. Blood on his hands. Blood painted in the image of a shattered tree upon his grief-wracked face – oh, the horror in his eyes could still make Endest Silann reel back, wanting none of this, this curse of witnessing—

No, better stone walls and insensate furniture. All the errors in Andarist’s life, now crowding with jabbering madness in those wide, staring eyes.

Yes, he had reeled back once that stare fixed his own. Some things should never be communicated, should never be cast across to slash through the heavy curtains one raised to keep whatever was without from all that was within, slashing through and lodging deep in the soul of a defenceless witness. Keep your pain to yourself, Andarist! He left you to this – he left you thinking you wiser than you were. Do not look so betrayed, damn you! He is not to blame!

I am not to blame.

To break Shadow is to release it into every other world. Even in its birth, it had been necessarily ephemeral, an illusion, a spiral of endless, self-referential tautologies. Shadow was an argument and the argument alone was sufficient to assert its existence. To stand within was a solipsist’s dream, seeing all else as ghostly, fanciful delusion, at best the raw matter to give Shadow shape, at worst nothing more than Shadow’s implicit need to define itself – Gods, what is the point of trying to make sense of such a thing? Shadow is, and Shadow is not, and to dwell within it is to be neither of one thing nor of any other.

And your children, dear Shadow, took upon themselves the strength of Andiian courage and Liosan piety, and made of that blend something savage, brutal beyond belief. So much for promises of glory.

He found he was sitting with his head in his hands. History charged, assailing his weary defences. From the image of Andarist he next saw the knowing half-smile of Silchas Ruin, on the dawn when he walked to stand beside Scabandari, as if he knew what was to come, as if he was content with accepting all that followed, and doing so to spare his followers from a more immediate death – as Liosan legions ringed the horizon, soldiers singing that horrifying, haunting song, creating a music of heartbreaking beauty to announce their march to slaughter – sparing his people a more immediate death, granting them a few more days, perhaps weeks, of existence, before the Edur turned on their wounded allies on some other world.

Shadow torn, rent into pieces, drifting in a thousand directions. Like blowing upon a flower’s seed-head, off they wing into the air!

Andarist, broken. Silchas Ruin, gone.

Anomander Rake, standing alone.

This long. This long…

The alchemist knows: the wrong catalyst, the wrong admixture, ill-conceived proportions, and all pretence of control vanishes – the transformation runs away, unchained, burgeons to cataclysm. Confusion and fear, suspicion and then war, and war shall breed chaos. And so it shall and so it does and so it ever will.

See us flee, dreaming of lost peace, the age of purity and stasis, when we embraced decay like a lover and our love kept us blind and we were content. So long as we stayed entertained, we were content.

Look at me.

This is what it is to be content.

Endest Silann drew a deep breath, lifted his head and blinked to clear his eyes. His master believed he could do this, and so he would believe his master. There, as simple as that.

Somewhere in the keep, priestesses were singing.

 

A hand reached up and grasped hard. A sudden, powerful pull tore loose Apsal’ara’s grip and, snarling curses, she tumbled from the axle frame and thumped heavy on the sodden ground.

The face staring down at her was one she knew, and would rather she did not. ‘Are you mad, Draconus?’

His only response was to grasp her chain and begin dragging her out from under the wagon.

Furious, indignant, she writhed across the mud, seeking purchase – anything to permit her to right herself, to even, possibly, resist. Stones rolled beneath the bite of her fingernails, mud grated and smeared like grease beneath her elbows, her knees, her feet. And still he pulled, treating her with scant, bitter ceremony, as if she was nothing more than a squalling cut-purse – the outrage!

Out from the wagon’s blessed gloom, tumbling across rock-studded dirt – chains whipping on all sides, lifting clear and then falling back to track twisting furrows, lifting again as whoever or whatever was at the other end heaved forward another single, desperate step. The sound was maddening, pointless, infuriating.

Apsal’ara rolled upright, gathering a length of chain and glaring across at Draconus. ‘Come closer,’ she hissed, ‘so I can smash your pretty face.’

His smile was humourless. ‘Why would I do that, Thief?’

‘To please me, of course, and I at least deserve that much from you – for dragging me out here.’

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I deserve many things, Apsal’ara. But for the moment, I will be content with your attention.’

‘What do you want? We can do nothing to stop this. If I choose to greet my end lounging on the axle, why not?’

They were forced to begin walking, another step every few moments – much slower now, so slow the pathos stung through to her heart.

‘You have given up on your chain?’ Draconus asked, as if the manner in which he had brought her out here was of no import, easily dismissed now.

She decided, after a moment, that he was right. At the very least, there’d been some…drama. ‘Another few centuries,’ she said, shrugging, ‘which I do not have. Damn you, Draconus, there is nothing to see out here – let me go back—’

‘I need to know,’ he cut in, ‘when the time comes to fight, Apsal’ara – will you come to my side?’

She studied him. A well-featured man, beneath that thick, black beard. Eyes that had known malice long since stretched to snapping, leaving behind a strange bemusement, something almost regretful, almost…wise. Oh, this sword’s realm delivered humility indeed. ‘Why?’ she demanded.

His heavy brows lifted, as if the question surprised him. ‘I have seen many,’ he said, haltingly, ‘in my time. So many, appearing suddenly, screaming in horror, in anguish and despair. Others…already numbed, hopeless. Madness arrives to so many, Apsal’ara…’

She bared her teeth. Yes, she had heard them. Above the places where she hid. Out to the sides, beyond the incessant rains, where the chains rolled and roped, fell slack then lifted once more, where they crossed over, one wending ever farther to one side, cutting across chain after chain – as the creature at the end staggered blind, unknowing, and before too long would fall and not rise again. The rest would simply step over that motionless chain, until it stretched into the wagon’s wake and began dragging its charge.

‘Apsal’ara, you arrived spitting like a cat. But it wasn’t long before you set out to find a means of escape. And you would not rest.’ He paused, and wiped a hand across his face. ‘There are so few here I have come to…admire.’ The smile Draconus then offered her was defenceless, shocking. ‘If we must fall, then I would choose the ones at my side – yes, I am selfish to the last. And I am sorry for dragging you out here so unceremoniously.’

She walked alongside him, saying nothing. Thinking. At last, she sighed. ‘It is said that only one’s will can fight against chaos, that no other weapons are possible.’

‘So it is said.’

She shot him a look. ‘You know me, Draconus. You know…I have strength. Of will.’

‘You will fight long,’ he agreed, nodding. ‘So very long.’

‘The chaos will want my soul. Will seek to tear it apart, strip away my awareness. It will rage all around me.’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Some of us are stronger than others.’

‘Yes, Apsal’ara. Some of us are stronger than others.’

‘And these you would gather close about you, that we might form a core. Of resistance, of stubborn will.’

‘So I have thought.’

‘To win through to the other side? Is there an other side, Draconus?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know,’ she repeated, making the words a snarl. ‘All my life,’ she said, ‘I have chosen to be alone. In my struggles, in my victories and my failings. Draconus, I will face oblivion in the same way. I must – we all must. It does nothing to stand together, for we each fall alone.’

‘I understand. I am sorry, then, Apsal’ara, for all this.’

‘There is no other side, Draconus.’

‘No, probably not.’

She drew up more of her chain, settled its crushing weight on to her shoulders, and then pulled away from the man, back towards the wagon. No, she could not give him anything, not when hope itself was impossible. He was wrong to admire her. To struggle was her own madness, resisting something that could not be resisted, fighting what could not be defeated.

This foe would take her mind, her self, tearing it away piece by piece – and she might sense something of those losses, at least to begin with, like vast blanks in her memory, perhaps, or an array of simple questions she could no longer answer. But before long, such knowledge would itself vanish, and each floating fragment would swirl about, untethered, alone, unaware that it had once been part of something greater, something whole. Her life, all her awareness, scattered into frightened orphans, whimpering at every strange sound, every unseen tug from the surrounding darkness. From woman to child, to helpless babe.

She knew what was coming. She knew, too, that in the end there was a kind of mercy to that blind ignorance, to the innocence of pieces. Unknowing, the orphans would dissolve away, leaving nothing.

What mind could not fear such a fate?

‘Draconus,’ she whispered, although she was far from his side now, closing in on the wagon once more, ‘there is no other side of chaos. Look at us. Each chained. Together, and yet alone. See us pass the time as we will, until the end. You made this sword, but the sword is only a shape given to something far beyond you, far beyond any single creature, any single mind. You just made it momentarily manageable.’

She slipped into the gloom behind the lead wheel. Into the thick, slimy rain.

‘Anomander Rake understands,’ she hissed. ‘He understands, Draconus. More than you ever did. Than you ever will. The world within Dragnipur must die. That is the greatest act of mercy imaginable. The greatest sacrifice. Tell me, Draconus, would you relinquish your power? Would you crush down your selfishness, to choose this…this emasculation? This sword, your cold, iron grin of vengeance – would you see it become lifeless in your hands? As dead as any other hammered bar of iron?’

She ducked beneath the lead axle and heaved the chain on her shoulders up and on to the wooden beam. Then climbed up after it. ‘No, Draconus, you could not do that, could you?’

There had been pity in Rake’s eyes when he killed her. There had been sorrow. But she had seen, even then, in that last moment of locked gazes, how such sentiments were tempered.

By a future fast closing in. Only now, here, did she comprehend that.

You give us chaos. You give us an end to this.

And she knew, were she in Anomander Rake’s place, were she the one possessing Dragnipur, she would fail in this sacrifice. The power of the weapon would seduce her utterly, irrevocably.

None other. None other but you, Anomander Rake.

Thank the gods.

 

He awoke to the sting of a needle at the corner of one eye. Flinching back, gasping, scrabbling away over the warm bodies. In his wake, that blind artist, the mad Tiste Andii, Kadaspala, face twisted in dismay, the bone stylus drawing back.

‘Wait! Come back! Wait and wait, stay and stay, I am almost done! I am almost done and I must be done before it’s too late, before it’s too late!’

Ditch saw that half his mangled body now bore tattoos, all down one side – wherever skin had been exposed whilst he was lying unconscious atop the heap of the fallen. How long had he been lying there, insensate, whilst the insane creature stitched him full of holes? ‘I told you,’ he said, ‘not me. Not me!’

‘Necessary. The apex and the crux and the fulcrum and the heart. He chose you. I chose you. Necessary! Else we are all lost, we are all lost, we are all lost. Come back. Where you were and where you were, lying just so, your arm over, the wrist – the very twitch of your eye—’

‘I said no! Come at me again, Kadaspala, and I will choke the life from you. I swear it. I will crush your neck to pulp. Or snap your fingers, every damned one of them!’

Lying on his stomach, gaping sockets seeming to glare, Kadaspala snatched his hands back, hiding them beneath his chest. ‘You must not do that and you must not do that. I was almost finished with you. I saw your mind went away, leaving me your flesh – to do what was needed and what was needed is still needed, can’t you understand that?’

Ditch crawled further away, well beyond the Tiste Andii’s reach, rolling and then sinking down between two demonic forms, both of which shifted sickeningly beneath his weight. ‘Don’t come any closer,’ he hissed.

‘I must convince you. I have summoned Draconus. He is summoned. There will be threats, they come with Draconus, they always come with Draconus. I have summoned him.’

Ditch slowly lowered himself down on to his back. There would be no end to this, he knew. Each time his mind fell away, fled to whatever oblivion it found, this mad artist would crawl to his side, and, blind or not, he would resume his work. What of it? Why should I really care? This body is mostly destroyed now, anyway. If Kadaspala wants it – no, damn him, it is all I have left.

‘So many are pleased,’ the Tiste Andii murmured, ‘to think that they have become something greater than they once were. It is a question of sacrifices, of which I know all there is to know, yes, I know all there is to know. And,’ he added, somewhat breathlessly, ‘there is of course more to it, more to it. Salvation—’

‘You cannot be serious.’

‘It is not quite a lie, not quite a lie, my friend. Not quite a lie. And truth, well, truth is never as true as you think it is, or if it is, then not for long not for long not for long.’

Ditch stared up at the sickly sky overhead, the flashes of reflected argent spilling through what seemed to be roiling clouds of grey dust. Everything felt imminent, something hovering at the edge of his vision. There was a strangeness in his mind, as if he was but moments from hearing some devastating news, a fatal illness no healer could solve; he knew it was coming, knew it to be inevitable, but the details were unknown and all he could do was wait. Live on in endless anticipation of that cruel, senseless pronouncement.

If there were so many sides to existing, why did grief and pain overwhelm all else? Why were such grim forces so much more powerful than joy, or love, or even compassion? And, in the face of that, did dignity really provide a worthy response? It was but a lifted shield, a display to others, whilst the soul cowered behind it, in no way ready to stand unmoved by catastrophe, especially the personal kind.

He felt a sudden hatred for the futility of things.

Kadaspala was crawling closer, his slithering stalking betrayed in minute gasps of effort, the attempts at stealth pathetic, almost comical.

Blood and ink, ink and blood, right, Kadaspala? The physical and the spiritual, each painting the truth of the other.

I will wring your neck, I swear it.

He felt motion, heard soft groans, and all at once a figure was crouching down beside him. Ditch opened his eyes. ‘Yes,’ he said, sneering, ‘you were summoned.’

‘Just how many battles, wizard, are you prepared to lose?’

The question irritated him, but then it was meant to. ‘Either way, I have few left, don’t I?’

Draconus reached down and dragged Ditch from between the two demons, roughly throwing him on to his stomach – no easy thing, since Ditch was not a small man, yet the muscles behind that effort made the wizard feel like a child.

‘What are you doing?’ Ditch demanded, as Draconus placed his hands to either side of the wizard’s head, fingers lacing below his jaw.

Ditch sought to pull his head back, away from that tightening grip, but the effort failed.

A sudden wrench to one side. Something in his neck broke clean, a crunch and snap that reverberated up into his skull, a brief flare of what might have been pain, then…nothing.

‘What have you done?’

‘Not the solution I would have preferred,’ Draconus said from above him, ‘but it was obvious that argument alone would not convince you to cooperate.’

Ditch could not feel his body. Nothing, nothing at all beneath his neck. He broke it – my neck, severed the spinal cord. He – gods! Gods! ‘Torment take you, Elder God. Torment take your soul. An eternity of agony. Death of all your dreams, sorrow unending among your kin – may they too know misery, despair – all your—’

‘Oh, be quiet, Ditch. I haven’t the time for this.’

The scene before Ditch’s eyes rocked then, swung wild and spun, as Draconus dragged him back to where he had been lying before, to where Kadaspala needed him to be. The apex, the crux, the heart, the whatever. You have me now, Tiste Andii.

And yes, I did not heed your threat, and look at me now. True and true, you might say, Ditch never learns. Not about threats. Not about risks. And no, nothing – nothing – about creatures such as Draconus. Or Anomander Rake. Or any of them, who do what they have to do, when it needs doing.

‘Hold your face still,’ Kadaspala whispered close to one ear. ‘I do not want to blind you, I do not want to blind you. You do not want to be blind, trust me, you do not want to be blind. No twitching, this is too important, too too too important and important, too.’

The stab of the stylus, a faint sting, and now, as it was the only sensation he had left, the pain shivered like a blessing, a god’s merciful touch to remind him of his flesh – that it still existed, that blood still flowed beneath the skin.

The healer, Ditch, has devastating news.

But you still have your dignity. You still have that.

Oh yes, he still has his dignity. See the calm resignation in these steady eyes, the steeled expression, the courage of no choice.

Be impressed, won’t you?

 

The south-facing slopes of God’s Walk Mountains were crowded with ruins. Shattered domes, most of them elliptical in shape, lined the stepped tiers like broken teeth. Low walls linked them, although these too had collapsed in places, where run-off from the snow-clad peaks had cut trenches and gullies like gouges down the faces, as if the mountains themselves were eager to wash away the last remnants of the long dead civilization.

Water and earth will heal what needs healing. Water and earth, sun and wind, these will take away every sign of wilful assertion, of cogent imposition. Brick crumbles to rubble, mortar drifts away as grit on the breeze. These mountains, Kedeviss knew, will wash it all away.

The notion pleased her, and in these sentiments she was little different from most Tiste Andii – at least those she knew and had known. There was a secret delight in impermanence, in seeing arrogance taken down, whether in a single person or in a bold, proud civilization. Darkness was ever the last thing to remain, in the final closing of eyelids, in the unlit depths of empty buildings, godless temples. When a people vanished, their every home, from the dishevelled hovel of the destitute to the palaces of kings and queens, became nothing but a sepulchre, a tomb host to nothing but memories, and even these quickly faded.

She suspected that the dwellers of the village, there at the foot of the nearest mountain, on the edge of a lake in headlong retreat, knew nothing about the sprawling city whose ruins loomed above them. A convenient source of cut stone and oddly glazed bricks and nothing more. And of course, whatever little knowledge they had possessed, they had surrendered it all to saemankelyk, for it was clear as the troupe drew closer that the village was lifeless, abandoned.

Against the backdrop of the mountains, the figure of Clip – striding well ahead of the rest of them – looked appropriately diminished, like an ant about to tackle a hillside. Despite this, Kedeviss found her gaze drawn to him again and again. I’m not sure. Not sure about him. Distrust came easy, and even had Clip been all smiles and eager generosity, still she would have her suspicions. They’d not done well with strangers, after all.

‘I have never,’ said Nimander as he walked at her side, ‘seen a city like that.’

‘They certainly had a thing about domes,’ observed Skintick behind them. ‘But let’s hope that some of those channels still run with fresh water. I feel salted as a lump of bacon.’

Crossing the dead lake had been an education in human failure. Long lost nets tangled on deadheads, harpoons, anchors, gaffs and more shipwrecks than seemed reasonable. The lake’s death had revealed its treachery in spiny ridges and shoals, in scores of mineralized tree trunks, still standing from the day some dam high in the mountains broke to send a deluge sweeping down into a forested valley. Fisher boats and merchant scows, towed barges and a few sleek galleys attesting to past military disputes, the rusted hulks of armour and other things less identifiable – the lake bed seemed a kind of concentrated lesson on bodies of water and the fools who dared to navigate them. Kedeviss imagined that, should a sea or an ocean suddenly drain away to nothing, she would see the same writ large, a clutter of loss so vast as to take one’s breath away. What meaning could one pluck free from broken ambition? Avoid the sea. Avoid risks. Take no chances. Dream of nothing, want less. An Andiian response, assuredly. Humans, no doubt, would draw down into thoughtful silence, thinking of ways to improve the odds, of turning the battle and so winning the war. For them, after all, failure was temporary, as befitted a shortlived species that didn’t know any better.

‘I guess we won’t be camping in the village,’ Skintick said, and they could see that Clip had simply marched through the scatter of squatting huts, and was now attacking the slope.

‘He can walk all night if he likes,’ Nimander said. ‘We’re stopping. We need the rest. Water, a damned bath. We need to redistribute our supplies, since there’s no way we can take the cart up and over the mountains. Let’s hope the locals just dropped everything like all the others did.’

A bath. Yes. But it won’t help. We cannot clean our hands, not this time.

They passed between sagging jetties, on to the old shore by way of a boat-launch ramp of reused quarry stones, many of which had been carved with strange symbols. The huts rested on solid, oversized foundations, the contrast between ancient skill and modern squalor so pathetic it verged on the comical, and Kedeviss heard Skintick’s amused snort as they wended their way between the first structures.

A rectangular well dominated the central round, with more perfectly cut stone set incompetently in the earth to form a rough plaza of sorts. Discarded clothing and bedding was scattered about, bleached by salt and sun, like the shrunken remnants of people.

‘I seem to recall,’ Skintick said, ‘a child’s story about flesh-stealers. Whenever you find clothes lying on the roadside and in glades, it’s because the stealers came and took the person wearing them. I never trusted that story, though, since who would be walking round wearing only a shirt? Or one shoe? No, my alternative theory is far more likely.’

Nimander, ever generous of heart, bit on the hook. ‘Which is?’

‘Why, the evil wind, of course, ever desperate to get dressed in something warm, but nothing ever fits so the wind throws the garments away in a fit of fury.’

‘You were a child,’ Kedeviss said, ‘determined to explain everything, weren’t you? I don’t really recall, since I stopped listening to you long ago.’

‘She stabs deep, Nimander, this woman.’

Nenanda had drawn up the cart and now climbed down, stretching out the kinks in his back. ‘I’m glad I’m done with that,’ he said.

Moments later Aranatha and Desra joined them.

Yes, here we are again. With luck, Clip will fall into a crevasse and never return.

Nimander looked older, like a man whose youth has been beaten out of him. ‘Well,’ he said with a sigh, ‘we should search these huts and find whatever there is to find.’

At his command the others set out to explore. Kedeviss remained behind, her eyes still on Nimander, until he turned about and regarded her quizzically.

‘He’s hiding something,’ she said.

He did not ask whom she meant, but simply nodded.

‘I’m not sure why he feels the need for us, ’Mander. Did he want worshippers? Servants? Are we to be his cadre in some political struggle to come?’

A faint smile from Nimander. ‘You don’t think, then, he collected us out of fellowship, a sense of responsibility – to take us back…to our “Black-Winged Lord”?’

‘Do you know,’ she said, ‘he alone among us has never met Anomander Rake. In a sense, he’s not taking us to Anomander Rake. We’re taking him.’

‘Careful, Kedeviss. If he hears you you will have offended his self-importance.’

‘I may end up offending more than that,’ she said.

Nimander’s gaze sharpened on her.

‘I mean to confront him,’ she said. ‘I mean to demand some answers.’

‘Perhaps we should all—’

‘No. Not unless I fail.’ She hoped he wouldn’t ask for her reasons on this, and suspected, as she saw his smile turn wry, that he understood. A challenge by all of them, with Nimander at the forefront, could force into the open the power struggle that had been brewing between Clip and Nimander, one that was now played out in gestures of indifference and even contempt – on Clip’s part, at any rate, since Nimander more or less maintained his pleasant, if slightly morbid, passivity, fending off Clip’s none too subtle attacks as would a man used to being under siege. Salvos could come from any direction, after all. So carry a big shield, and keep smiling.

She wondered if Nimander even knew the strength within him. He could have become a man such as Andarist had been – after all, Andarist had been more of a father to him than Anomander Rake had ever been – and yet Nimander had grown into a true heir to Rake, his only failing being that he didn’t know it. And perhaps that was for the best, at least for the time being.

‘When?’ he asked now.

She shrugged. ‘Soon, I think.’

 

A thousand paces above the village, Clip settled on one of the low bridging walls and looked down at the quaintly sordid village below. He could see his miserable little army wandering about at the edges of the round, into and out of huts.

They were, he decided, next to useless. If not for concern over them, he would never have challenged the Dying God. Naturally, they were too ignorant to comprehend that detail. They’d even got it into their heads that they’d saved his life. Well, such delusions had their uses, although the endless glances his way – so rank with hopeful expectation – were starting to grate.

He spun the rings. Clack-clack…clack-clack…

Oh, I sense your power, O Black-Winged Lord. Holding me at bay. Tell me, what do you fear? Why force me into this interminable walk?

The Liosan of old had it right. Justice was unequivocal. Explanations revealed the cowardice at the core of every criminal, the whining expostulations, the series of masks each one tried on and discarded in desperate succession. The not-my-fault mask. The it-was-a-mistake mask. You-don’t-understand and see-me-so-helpless and have-pity-I’m-weak – he could see each expression, perfectly arranged round eyes equally perfect in their depthless pit of self-pity (come in there’s room for everyone). Mercy was a flaw, a sudden moment of doubt to undermine the vast, implacable structure that was true justice. The masks were meant to stir awake that doubt, the last chance of the guilty to squirm free of proper retribution.

Clip had no interest in pity. Acknowledged no flaws within his own sense of justice. The criminal depends upon the compassion of the righteous and would use that compassion to evade precisely everything that that criminal deserved. Why would any sane, righteous person fall into such a trap? It permitted criminals to thrive (since they played by different rules and would hold no pity or compassion for those who might wrong them). No, justice must be pure. Punishment left sacrosanct, immune to compromise.

He would make it so. For his modest army, for the much larger army to come. His people. The Tiste Andii of Black Coral. We shall rot no longer. No more dwindling fires, drifting ashes, lives wasted century on century – do you hear me, O Lord? I will take your people, and I will deliver justice.

Upon this world.

Upon every god and ascendant who ever wronged us, betrayed us, scorned us.

Watch them reel, faces bloodied, masks awry, the self-pity in their eyes dissolving – and in its place the horror of recognition. That there is no escape this time. That the end has arrived, for every damned one of them.

Yes, Clip had read his histories. He knew the Liosan, the Edur, he knew all the mistakes that had been made, the errors in judgement, the flaws of compassion. He knew, too, the true extent of the Black-Winged Lord’s betrayal. Of Mother Dark, of all the Tiste Andii. Of those you left in the Andara. Of Nimander and his kin.

Your betrayal, Anomander Rake, of me.

The sun was going down. The rings clacked and clacked, and clacked. Below, the salt pan was cast in golden light, the hovels crouched on the near shoreline blessed picturesque by distance and lack of detail. Smoke from a cookfire now rose from their midst. Signs of life. Flames to beat back the coming darkness. But it would not last. It never lasted.

 

The High Priestess pushed the plate away. ‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘Any more and I will burst.’ A first level acolyte ducked in to take the plate, scurrying off with such haste that she almost spilled the towering heap of cracked crayfish shells.

Leaning back, the High Priestess wiped the melted butter from her fingers. ‘It’s typical,’ she said to the half-dozen sisters seated at the table, ‘the nets drag up a sudden, unexpected bounty, and what do we do? Devour it entire.’

‘Kurald Galain continues to yield surprises,’ said the Third Sister, ‘why not expect more to come?’

‘Because, dearest, nothing lasts for ever. Surrounding Kharkanas, there once stood forests. Until we chopped them down.’

‘We were young—’

‘And that would be a worthy defence,’ the High Priestess cut in, ‘if we have not, here in our old age, just repeated the stupidity. Look at us. Come the morrow all our clothes will cease to fit. We will discover, to our horror, bulges where none existed before. We see pleasure as an excuse for all manner of excess, but it is a most undisciplined trait. Now, sermon ended. Someone pour the tea.’

More first level acolytes slithered in.

A rustling of small bells at the corridor door preceded the arrival of a temple guardian. The woman, clad in scale armour and ringed leather, marched up to halt beside the High Priestess. She lowered the grille face-piece on her helm and leaned close to whisper – lips unseen and so unreadable by any – a brief message.

The High Priestess nodded, and then gestured the guardian away. ‘Second and Third Sister, remain in your seats. You others, take your tea to the Unlit Garden. Sixth Sister, once there you can stop hiding that flask and top up everyone else, yes?’

Moments later, only three women remained in the chamber, as even the acolytes had been sent away.

The door opened again and the guardian reappeared, this time escorting an old woman, human, who tottered on two canes to support her massive weight. Sweat darkened the cloth of her loose clothing round her armpits and beneath her cleavage and on the bulging islands of her hips. Her expression was one of anxiety and discomfort.

Unbidden, Third Sister rose and pulled a bench away from one wall, positioning it in the woman’s path.

‘Please do sit,’ said the High Priestess, thinking, alas, of the two dozen blind crayfish she’d just eaten, each almost half the size of a lobster, served up drenched in melted butter. Pleasure until pain, and we then rail at our misfortune.

With muttered thanks, the woman lowered herself on to the bench. ‘Please to introduce myself,’ she said in a wheeze. ‘I am the Witch—’

‘I know,’ the High Priestess interrupted, ‘and that title will suffice here, as must my own. Yours has been a trying journey, and so I can only assume you come with word of a crisis.’

A quick nod. ‘The cult of the Redeemer, High Priestess, has become…corrupted.’

‘And what is the agency of that corruption?’

‘Well, but that is complicated, you see. There was a High Priestess – oh, she was a reluctant owner of that title, and all the duties that came with it. Yet none could deny her natural authority—’

‘“Natural authority”,’ said the High Priestess. ‘I like that phrase. Sorry, do go on.’

‘Outlaws have usurped the pilgrim camp. There is some concentrated form of the drink called kelyk – I do not know if you are familiar with it?’

‘We are, yes.’

Another quick nod. ‘Saemankelyk. The word comes from a dialect common south of God’s Walk Mountains. “Saeman” means “Dying God” and “kelyk” means—’

‘Blood.’

A sigh. ‘Yes.’

Second Sister cleared her throat, and then said, ‘Surely you do not mean to suggest that the meaning is literal?’

The witch licked her lips – an instinctive gesture rather than anything ironic – and said, ‘I have applied some…arts, er, to examining this saemankelyk. There are unnatural properties, that much is certain. In any case, the outlaws have made addicts of the pilgrims. Including Salind, the Redeemer’s High Priestess.’

Third Sister spoke. ‘If this foul drink is in any way blessed, then one might well see its poisonous influence as a corruption of the Redeemer’s worshippers. If one kneels before saemankelyk…well, one cannot kneel before two masters, can one?’

Not without physically splitting in half, no. ‘Witch, what is it you wish of us?’

‘This corruption, High Priestess. It could…spread.’

Silence round the table.

It was clear now to the High Priestess that the witch had given this meeting considerable thought, until arriving at the one suggestion she considered most likely to trigger alarm. As if we Tiste Andii are but taller, black-skinned versions of humans. As if we could so easily be…stolen away.

Emboldened, the witch resumed. ‘High Priestess, Salind – she needs help. We need help. There was a warrior, one among you, but he has disappeared. Now that Seerdomin is dead, I sought to find him. Spinnock Durav.’

The High Priestess rose. ‘Come with me, Witch,’ she said. ‘Just you and me. Come, it’s not far.’

The old woman levered herself upright, confusion in her small eyes.

To a side passage, a narrow corridor of twenty paces, and then down a short flight of stairs, the air still smelling of fresh-chiselled basalt, into a large but low-vaulted octagonal chamber devoid of any furniture, the floor of which was inlaid with onyx tesserae, irregular in shape and size. A journey of but a few moments for most people; yet for the witch it was an ordeal, striking the High Priestess with the poignancy of the old woman’s desperation – that she should so subject herself to such a struggle. The trek from her home through the city to the keep must have been an epic undertaking.

These thoughts battered at the High Priestess’s impatience, and so she weathered the delay saying nothing and without expression on her smooth, round face.

As soon as the witch tottered into the chamber, she gasped.

‘Yes, you are clearly an adept,’ observed the High Priestess. ‘There are nodes of power in this temple. Kurald Galain, the cleansing darkness.’ She could see that the witch was breathing hard and fast, and there was a look of wonder on that sweat-sheathed face. ‘Do not be alarmed at what you feel inside,’ she said. ‘By entering here, you have drawn Kurald Galain into your body, in your breaths, through the very pores of your skin. The sorcery is now within you.’

‘B-but…why? Why have you done this to me?’

‘I could sense the labouring of your heart, Witch. Your trek to my temple would have been your last—’

‘Oh, I knew that!’ snapped the witch.

The sudden irritation shocked the High Priestess for a moment. She reassessed this woman tottering before her. ‘I see. Then…’

‘Then yes, I prayed my sacrifice would be worth it. Salind is so precious – what has been done to her is despicable. Is…evil.’

‘Then you have not come in the name of the Redeemer, have you?’

‘No. I came for a friend.’

A friend. ‘Witch, Spinnock Durav is no longer in Black Coral. It grieves me to hear of Seerdomin’s death. And it grieves me more to learn of Salind’s fate. Tell me, what else are you feeling?’

The witch was hunched over, as if in visceral pain. ‘Fine,’ she hissed reluctantly. ‘I can see that there is no risk of the poison spreading. I never thought there was.’

‘I know that,’ said the High Priestess, her voice soft.

‘But I needed to bargain for your help.’

‘That is ever the assumption among you humans. Do you know, when the delegates from the Free Cities came to treat with us, when the Rhivi and the man who pretended to be Prince K’azz D’Avore of the Crimson Guard came to us – they all thought to bargain. To buy our swords, our power. To purchase our alliance. Lord Anomander Rake but lifted one hand – before any of them could even so much as say one beseeching word. And he said this: “We are the Tiste Andii. Do not seek to bargain with us. If you wish our help, you will ask for it. We will say yes or we will say no. There will be no negotiations.”’

The witch was staring across at her.

The High Priestess sighed. ‘It is not an easy thing for a proud man or woman, to simply ask.’

‘No,’ whispered the witch. ‘It’s not.’

Neither spoke then for a dozen heartbeats, and then the witch slowly straightened. ‘What have you done to me?’

‘I expect Kurald Galain has done its assessment. Your aches are gone, yes? Your breathing has eased. Various ailments will disappear in the next few days. You may find your appetite…diminished. Kurald Galain prefers forces in balance.’

The witch’s eyes were wide.

The High Priestess waited.

‘I did not ask for such things.’

‘No. But it did not please me to realize that your journey to my temple would prove fatal.’

‘Oh. Then, thank you.’

The High Priestess frowned. ‘Am I not yet understood?’

‘You are,’ replied the witch, with another flash of irritation, ‘but I have my own rules, and I will voice my gratitude, whether it pleases you or not.’

That statement earned a faint smile and the High Priestess dipped her head in acknowledgement.

‘Now, then,’ said the witch after yet another brief stretch of silence, ‘I ask that you help Salind.’

‘No.’

The witch’s face darkened.

‘You have come here,’ said the High Priestess, ‘because of a loss of your own faith. Yes, you would have the Temple act on behalf of Salind. It is our assessment that Salind does not yet need our help. Nor, indeed, does the Redeemer.’

‘Your…assessment?’

‘We are,’ said the High Priestess, ‘rather more aware of the situation than you might have believed. If we must act, then we will, if only to preempt Silanah – although, I admit, it is no easy thing attempting to measure out the increments of an Eleint’s forbearance. She could stir at any time, at which point it will be too late.’

‘Too late?’

‘Yes, for Salind, for the usurpers, for the pilgrim camp and all its inhabitants.’

‘High Priestess, who is Silanah? And what is an Eleint?’

‘Oh, I am sorry. That was careless of me. Silanah commands the spire of this keep – she is rather difficult to miss, even in the eternal gloom. On your return to your home, you need but turn and glance back, and up, of course, and you will see her.’ She paused, and then added, ‘Eleint means dragon.’

‘Oh.’

‘Come, let us return to the others. I am sure more tea has been brewed, and we can take some rest there.’

The witch seemed to have run out of commentary, and now followed meekly as the High Priestess strode from the chamber.

The return journey did not take nearly as long.

 

It should have come as no surprise to Samar Dev when Karsa Orlong rode back into the camp at dusk at the end of the third day since leaving them. Riding in, saying nothing, looking oddly thoughtful.

Unscathed. As if challenging the Hounds of Shadow was no greater risk than, say, herding sheep, or staring down a goat (which, of course, couldn’t be done – but such a detail would hardly stop the Toblakai, would it? And he’d win the wager, too). No, it was clear that the encounter had been a peaceful one – perhaps predicated on the Hounds’ fleeing at high speed, tails between their legs.

Slipping down from Havok’s back, Karsa walked over to where sat Samar Dev beside the dung fire. Traveller had moved off thirty or so paces, as it was his habit to attend to the arrival of dusk in relative solitude.

The Toblakai crouched down. ‘Where is the tea?’ he asked.

‘There isn’t any,’ she said. ‘We’ve run out.’

Karsa nodded towards Traveller. ‘This city he seeks. How far away?’

Samar Dev shrugged. ‘Maybe a week, since we’re going rather slowly.’

‘Yes. I was forced to backtrack to find you.’ He was silent for a moment, looking into the flames, and then he said, ‘He does not seem the reluctant type.’

‘No, you’re right. He doesn’t.’

‘I’m hungry.’

‘Cook something.’

‘I will.’

She rubbed at her face, feeling the scrape of calluses from her hands, and then tugged at the knots in her hair. ‘Since meeting you,’ she said, ‘I have almost forgotten what it is to be clean – oh, Letheras was all right, but we were pretty much in a prison, so it doesn’t really count. No, with you it’s just empty wastelands, blood-soaked sands, the occasional scene of slaughter.’

‘You sought me out, witch,’ he reminded her.

‘I delivered your horse.’ She snorted. ‘Since you two are so clearly perfect for each other, it was a matter of righting the cosmic balance. I had no choice.’

‘You just want me,’ he said, ‘yet whenever we are together, you do nothing but second-guess everything. Surrender, woman, and you can stop arguing with yourself. It has been a long time since I spilled my seed into a woman, almost as long as since you last felt the heat of a man.’

She could have shot back, unleashed a flurry of verbal quarrels that would, inevitably, all bounce off his impervious barbarity. ‘You’d be gentle as a desert bear, of course. I’d probably never recover.’

‘There are sides of me, witch, that you have not seen, yet.’

She grunted.

‘You are ever suspicious of being surprised, aren’t you?’

A curious question. In fact, a damned tangle of a question. She didn’t like it. She didn’t want to go near it. ‘I was civilized, once. Content in a proper city, a city with an underground sewer system, with Malazan aqueducts and hot water from pipes. Hallways between enclosed gardens and the front windows to channel cool air through the house. Proper soap to keep clothes clean. Songbirds in cages. Chilled wine and candied pastries.’

‘The birds sing of imprisonment, Samar Dev. The soap is churned by indentured workers with bleached, blistered hands and hacking coughs. Outside your cool house with its pretty garden there are children left to wander in the streets. Lepers are dragged to the edge of the city and every step is cheered on by a hail of stones. People steal to eat and when they are caught their hands are cut off. Your city takes water from farms and plants wither and animals die.’

She glared across at him. ‘Nice way to turn the mood, Karsa Orlong.’

‘There was a mood?’

‘Too subtle, was it?’

He waved a dismissive hand. ‘Speak your desires plain.’

‘I was doing just that, you brainless bhederin. Just a little…comfort. That’s all. Even the illusion would have served.’

Traveller returned to the fire. ‘We are about to have a guest,’ he said.

Samar Dev rose and searched round, but darkness was fast swallowing the plain. She turned with a query on her lips, and saw that Karsa had straightened and was looking skyward, to the northeast. And there, in the deepening blue, a dragon was gliding towards them.

‘Worse than moths,’ Traveller muttered.

‘Are we about to be attacked?’

He glanced at her, and shrugged.

‘Shouldn’t we at least scatter or something?’

Neither warrior replied to that, and after a moment Samar Dev threw up her hands and sat down once more beside the fire. No, she would not panic. Not for these two abominations in her company, and not for a damned dragon, either. Fine, let it be a single pass rather than three – what was she, an ant? She picked up another piece of dung and tossed it into the fire. Moths? Ah, I see. We are a beacon, are we, a wilful abrogation of this wild, empty land. Whatever. Flap flap on over, beastie, just don’t expect scintillating discourse.

The enormous creature’s wings thundered as the dragon checked its speed a hundred paces away, and then it settled almost noiselessly on to the ground. Watching it, Samar Dev’s eyes narrowed. ‘That thing’s not even alive.’

‘No,’ Karsa and Traveller said in unison.

‘Meaning,’ she continued, ‘it shouldn’t be here.’

‘That is true,’ Traveller said.

In the gloom the dragon seemed to regard them for a moment, and then, in a blurring dissolution, the creature sembled, until they saw a tall, gaunt figure of indeterminate gender. Grey as cobwebs and dust, pallid hair long and ropy with filth, wearing the remnants of a long chain hauberk, unbelted. An empty, splintered scabbard hung from a baldric beneath the right arm. Leggings of some kind of thick hide, scaled and the hue of forest loam, reached down to grey leather boots that rose to just below the knees.

No light was reflected from the pits of its eyes. It approached with peculiar caution, like a wild animal, and halted at the very edge of the firelight. Whereupon it lifted both hands, brought them together into a peak before its face, and bowed.

In the native tongue of Ugari, it said, ‘Witch, I greet you.’

Samar Dev rose, shocked, baffled. Was it some strange kind of courtesy, to address her first? Was this thing in the habit of ignoring ascendants as if they were nothing more than bodyguards? And from her two formidable companions, not a sound.

‘And I greet you in return,’ she managed after a moment.

‘I am Tulas Shorn,’ it said. ‘I scarce recall when I last walked this realm, if I ever have. The very nature of my demise is lost to me, which, as you might imagine, is proving disconcerting.’

‘So it would, Tulas Shorn. I am Samar Dev—’

‘Yes, the one who negotiates with spirits, with the sleeping selves of stream and rock, crossroads and sacred paths. Priestess of Burn—’

‘That title is in error, Tulas Shorn—’

‘Is it? You are a witch, are you not?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘You do not reach into warrens, and so force alien power into this world. Your congress is with the earth, the sky, water and stone. You are a priestess of Burn, chosen among those of whom she dreams, as are others, but you, Samar Dev, she dreams of often.’

‘How would you know that?’

Tulas Shorn hesitated, and then said, ‘There is death in dreaming.’

‘You are Tiste Edur,’ said Karsa Orlong, and, baring his teeth, he reached for his sword.

‘More than that,’ said Traveller, ‘one of Hood’s own.’

Samar Dev spun to her two companions. ‘Oh, really! Look at you two! Not killed anything in weeks – how can you bear it? Planning on chopping it into tiny pieces, are you? Well, why not fight for the privilege first?’

Traveller’s eyes widened slightly at her outburst.

Karsa’s humourless smile broadened. ‘Ask it what it wants, then, witch.’

‘The day I start taking orders from you, Karsa Orlong, I will do just that.’

Tulas Shorn had taken a step back. ‘It seems I am not welcome here, and so I shall leave.’

But Samar Dev’s back was up, and she said, ‘I welcome you, Tulas Shorn, even if these ones do not. If they decide to attack you, I will stand in their way. I offer you all the rights of a guest – it’s my damned fire, after all, and if these two idiots don’t like it they can make their own, preferably a league or two away.’

‘You are right,’ Traveller said. ‘I apologize. Be welcome, then, Tulas Shorn.’

Karsa shrugged. ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘I’ve killed enough Edur. Besides, this one’s already dead. I still want to know what it wants.’

Tulas Shorn edged in warily – a caution that seemed peculiarly out of place in a corpse, especially one that could veer into a dragon at any moment. ‘I have no urgent motivations, Tartheno Toblakai. I have known solitude for too long and would ease the burden of being my only company.’

‘Then join us,’ Karsa said, returning to crouch at the fire. ‘After all,’ he added, ‘perhaps one day I too will tire of my own company.’

‘Not any time soon, I would wager,’ said the Tiste Edur.

Traveller snorted a laugh, and then looked shocked at himself.

Samar Dev settled down once more, thinking of Shorn’s words. ‘There is death in dreaming.’ Well, she supposed, there would be at that. Then why did she feel so…rattled? What were you telling me, Tulas Shorn?

‘Hood has released you?’ Traveller asked. ‘Or was he careless?’

‘Careless?’ The Tiste Edur seemed to consider the word. ‘No, I do not think that. Rather, an opportunity presented itself to me. I chose not to waste it.’

‘So now,’ said Traveller, eyes fixed on the withered face enlivened only by reflected firelight, ‘you wing here and there, seeking what?’

‘Instinct can set one on a path,’ Tulas Shorn said, ‘with no destination in mind.’ It raised both hands and seemed to study them. ‘I have thought to see life once more, awakened within me. I do not know if such a thing is even possible. Samar Dev, is such a thing possible? Can she dream me alive once more?’

‘Can she – what? I don’t know. Call me a priestess if you like, but I don’t worship Burn, which doesn’t make me a very good priestess, does it? But if she dreams death, then she dreams life, too.’

‘From one to the other is generally in one direction only,’ Traveller observed. ‘Hood will come for you, Tulas Shorn; sooner or later, he will come to reclaim you.’

For the first time, she sensed evasiveness in the Tiste Edur as it said, ‘I have time yet, I believe. Samar Dev, there is sickness in the Sleeping Goddess.’

She flinched. ‘I know.’

‘It must be expunged, lest she die.’

‘I imagine so.’

‘Will you fight for her?’

‘I’m not a damned priestess!’ She saw the surprise on the faces of Karsa and Traveller, forced herself back from the ragged edge of anger. ‘I wouldn’t know where to start, Tulas Shorn.’

‘I believe the poison comes from a stranger’s pain.’

‘The Crippled God.’

‘Yes, Samar Dev.’

‘Do you actually think it can be healed?’

‘I do not know. There is physical damage and then there is spiritual damage. The former is more easily mended than the latter. He is sustained by rage, I suspect. His last source of power, perhaps his only source of power whilst chained in this realm.’

‘I doubt he’s in the negotiating mood,’ Samar Dev said. ‘And even if he was, he’s anathema to the likes of me.’

‘It is an extraordinary act of courage,’ said Tulas Shorn, ‘to come to know a stranger’s pain. To even consider such a thing demands a profound dispensation, a willingness to wear someone else’s chains, to taste their suffering, to see with one’s own eyes the hue cast on all things – the terrible stain that is despair.’ The Tiste Edur slowly shook its head. ‘I have no such courage. It is, without doubt, the rarest of abilities.’

None spoke then for a time. The fire ate itself, indifferent to witnesses, and in its hunger devoured all that was offered it, again and again, until night and the disinterest of its guests left it to starve, until the wind stirred naught but ashes.

If Tulas Shorn sought amiable company, it should have talked about the weather.

In the morning, the undead Soletaken was gone. And so too were Traveller’s and Samar Dev’s horses.

‘That was careless of us,’ Traveller said.

‘He was a guest,’ Samar Dev said, baffled and more than a little hurt by the betrayal. They could see Havok, standing nervously some distance off, as if reluctant to return from his nightlong hunting, as if he had been witness to something unpleasant.

There was, however, no sign of violence. The picket stakes remained where they had been pounded into the hard ground.

‘It wanted to slow us down,’ Traveller said. ‘One of Hood’s own, after all.’

‘All right,’ Samar Dev glared across at a silent Karsa Orlong, ‘the fault was all mine. I should have left you two to chop the thing to bits. I’m sorry.’

But Karsa shook his head. ‘Witch, goodwill is not something that needs an apology. You were betrayed. Your trust was abused. If there are strangers who thrive on such things, they will ever remain strangers – because they have no other choice. Pity Tulas Shorn and those like it. Even death taught it nothing.’

Traveller was regarding the Toblakai with interest, although he ventured no comment.

Havok was trotting towards them. Karsa said, ‘I will ride out, seeking new mounts – or perhaps the Edur simply drove your beasts off.’

‘I doubt that,’ Traveller said.

And Karsa nodded, leaving Samar Dev to realize that he had offered the possibility for her sake, as if in some clumsy manner seeking to ease her self-recrimination. Moments later, she understood that it had been anything but clumsy. It was not her inward chastisement that he spoke to; rather, for her, he was giving Tulas Shorn the benefit of the doubt, although Karsa possessed no doubt at all – nor, it was clear, did Traveller.

Well then, I am ever the fool here. So be it. ‘We’d best get walking, then.’

In setting out, they left behind a cold hearth ringed in stones, and two saddles.

Almost two leagues away, high in the bright blue sky, Tulas Shorn rode the freshening breeze, the tatters of his wings rapping in the rush of air.

As he had suspected, the trio had made no effort to hunt down the lost horses. Assuming, as they would, that the dragon had simply obliterated the animals.

Tulas Shorn had known far too much death, however, to so casually kill innocent creatures. No, instead, the dragon had taken them, one in each massive clawed foot, ten leagues to the south, almost within sight of a small, wild herd of the same species – one of the last such wild herds on the plain.

Too many animals were made to bow in servitude to a succession of smarter, crueller masters (and yes, those two traits went together). Poets ever wailed upon witnessing fields of slaughter, armies of soldiers and warriors frozen in death, but Tulas Shorn – who had walked through countless such scenes – reserved his sorrow, his sense of tragedy, for the thousands of dead and dying horses, war dogs, the oxen trapped in yokes of siege wagons mired in mud or shattered, the beasts that bled and suffered through no choice of their own, that died in a fog of ignorance, all trust in their masters destroyed.

The horse knows faith in the continuation of care from its master; that food and water will be provided, that injuries will be mended, that the stiff brush will stroke its hide at day’s end. And in return it serves as best it can, or at least as best it chooses. The dog understands that the two-legged members of its pack cannot be challenged, and believes that every hunt will end in success. These were truths.

A master of beasts must be as a parent to a host of unruly but trusting children. Stolid, consistent, never wanton in cruelty, never unmindful of the faith in which he or she is held. Oh, Tulas Shorn was not unaware of the peculiarity of such convictions, and had been the subject of mockery even among fellow Tiste Edur.

Although such mockery had invariably faded when they had seen what had been achieved by this strange, quiet warrior with the Eleint-tainted eyes.

Gliding high above the Lamatath Plain, now scores of leagues south of the witch and her companions, Tulas Shorn could taste something in the air, so ancient, so familiar, that if the dragon had still possessed functioning hearts, why, they would have thundered. Pleasure, perhaps even anticipation.

How long had it been?

Long.

What paths did they now wander down?

Alien ones, to be sure.

Would they remember Tulas Shorn? The first master, the one who had taken them raw and half-wild and taught them the vast power of a faith that would never know betrayal?

They are close, yes.

My Hounds of Shadow.

 

If he’d had a single moment, a lone instant of unharried terror, Gruntle might have conjured in his mind a scene such as might be witnessed from someone in a passing ship – some craft beyond the raging storm, at the very edge of this absurd insanity. Hands gripping the ratlines, deck pitching wild in the midst of a dishevelled sea, and there, yes…something impossible.

An enormous carriage thrashing through a heaving road of foam, frenzied horses ploughing through swollen, whipped waves. And figures, clinging here and there like half-drowned ticks, and another, perched high on the driver’s bench behind the maddened animals, from whom endless screams pealed forth, piercing the gale and thunder and surge. Whilst on all sides the storm raged on, as if in indignant fury; the winds howled, rain slashing the air beneath bulging, bruised clouds; and the sea rose up in a tumult, spray erupting in tattered sheets.

Yes, the witness might well stare, agape. Aghast.

But Gruntle had no opportunity for such musing, no sweet luxury of time to disconnect his mind’s eye from this drenched, exhausted and battered body strapped tight to the roof of the carriage, this careering six-wheeled island that seemed ever tottering on the edge of obliteration. To draw one more breath was the only goal, the singular purpose of existence. Nothing else was remotely relevant.

He did not know if he was the last one left – he had not opened his eyes in an eternity – and even if he was, why, he knew he would not hold out much longer. He convulsed yet again, but there was nothing left in his stomach – gods, he had never felt so sick in all his life.

The wind tore at his hair – he’d long since lost his helm – savage as clawed fingers, and he ducked lower. Those unseen fingers then grabbed a handful and pulled his head up.

Gruntle opened his eyes and found himself staring into a crazed face, the features so twisted that he could not for a moment recognize who was accosting him – some lost sailor from a drowned ship? Flung aboard the carriage as gods rolled in helpless laughter? – but no, it was Faint, and that expression was not abject terror. It was wild, gut-wrenching hilarity.

She tugged on the rings attached to the iron rails and managed to pull herself yet closer, enough to dip her head down beside his, and in the half-sheltered cave their arms created her voice seemed to come from his own skull. ‘I thought you were dead! So pale, like a damned cadaver!’

And this left her convulsed with laughter? ‘I damn well wish I was!’ he shouted back.

‘We’ve known worse!’

Now, he’d heard that a dozen times since this venture began, and he had begun to suspect it was one of those perfect lies that people voiced to stay sane no matter what madness they found themselves in. ‘Has Quell ever done anything like this before?’

‘Like what? This is the Trygalle Trade Guild, shareholder! This is what we do, man!’

And when she began laughing again, he planted a hand on her head and pushed her away. Faint retreated, back along the rail, and Gruntle was alone once more.

How long had it been? Days. Weeks. Decades. He desperately needed fresh water – whatever rain reached his face was as salty as the sea. He could feel himself weakening – even could he find something to eat, he would never hold it down. Outrageous, to think that he could die here, body flopping about on its straps, slowly torn apart by the storm. Not with a weapon in hand, not with a defiant bellow tearing loose from his throat. Not drenched in hot blood, not staring his killer in the eye.

This was worse than any demise he might imagine. As bad as some unseen disease – the sheer helplessness of discovering that one’s own body could fail all on its own. He could not even roar to the heavens with his last breath – the gesture would flood his mouth, leave him choking, defiance flung straight back at him, right back down his own throat.

More screaming – laughter? No, this was screaming.

What now?

Gruntle snatched a breath and then looked up.

Walls of water on all sides – he flinched – and then a swell heaved them skyward, the carriage twisting, pitching. Rings squealed as he was tossed up, until sharp, savage tugs from the straps snatched him back down.

But he had seen – yes – all his companions – their wide eyes, their gaping mouths – and he had seen, too, the object of their terror.

They were racing, faster than any wave, straight for a towering cliff-face.

‘Land ho!’ shrieked Glanno Tarp from his perch.

Explosions of foam at the cliff’s base appeared with every lift of the waves. Jagged spires of black rock, reefs, shoals and all those other names for killers of people and ships. And carriages. All looming directly ahead, a third of a league away and closing fast.

Can those horses climb straight up a cliff-face? Sounds ridiculous – but I won’t put it past them. Not any more.

Even so, why is everyone screaming?

A moment later Gruntle had his answer. Another upward pitch, and this time he twisted round and glanced back, into their wake – no reason, at least, he didn’t think there was, but the view, surely, could not be as horrifying as what lay ahead.

And he saw another wall of water, this one high as a damned mountain.

Its sickly green flank picked up the carriage and then the horses, and began carrying them into the sky. So fast that the water streamed from the roof, from every flattened shareholder, and even the rain vanished as higher they went, into the gut of the clouds.

He thought, if he dared open his eyes, he would see stars, the ferment above, to the sides, and indeed below – but Gruntle’s nerve had failed him. He clung, eyes squeezed shut, flesh dry and shivering in the bitter cold of the wind.

More sound than a mortal brain could comprehend – thunder from beneath, animal squeals and human shrieks, the swollen thrash of blood in every vein, every artery, the hollow howl of wind in his gaping mouth.

Higher, and higher still—

And wasn’t there a cliff dead ahead?

He could not look.

 

Everyone thought that Reccanto Ilk was the one with the bad eyes, and that was a most pleasing misindirection as far as Glanno Tarp was concerned. Besides, he was fine enough with things within, oh, thirty or so paces. Beyond that, objects acquired a soft-edged dissolidity, became blocks of vague shape, and the challenge was in gauging the speed at which they approached, and, from this, their distance and relative size. The carriage driver had taken this to a fine art indeed, with no one the wiser.

Which, in this instance at least, was of no help at all.

He could hear everyone screaming behind him, and he was adding plenty all on his own, even as the thought flashed in his mind that Reccanto Ilk was probably shrieking in ignorance – simply because everyone else was – but the looming mass of the rotted cliff-face was a most undenimissable presence, and my how big it was getting!

The horses could do naught but run, what must have seemed downhill for the hapless beasts, even as the wave’s surge reared ever higher – all sorts of massomentum going on here, Glanno knew, and no quibblering about it, either.

What with pitch and angle and cant and all that, Glanno could now see the top of the cliff, a guano-streaked lip all wavy and grimacing. Odd vertical streaks depended down from the edge – what were those? Could it be? Ladders? How strange.

Higher still, view expandering, the sweep of the summit, flat land, and globs of glimmering light like melted dollops of murky wax. Something towering, a spire, a tower – yes, a towering tower, with jagged-teeth windows high up, blinking in and out – all directly opposite now, almost level—

Something pounded the air, pounded right into his bones, rattling the roots of his insipid or was it inspired grin – something that tore the wave apart, an upward charging of spume, a world splashed white, engulfing the horses, the carriage, and Glanno himself.

His mouth was suddenly full of seawater. His eyes stared through stinging salt. His ears popped like berries between finger and thumb, ploop ploop. And oh, that hurt!

The water rushed past, wiping clean the world – and there, before him – were those buildings?

Horses were clever. Horses weren’t half blind. They could find something, a street, a way through, and why not? Clever horses.

‘Yeaagh!’ Glanno thrashed the reins.

Equine shrills.

The wheels slammed down on to something hard for the first time in four days.

And, with every last remnant of axle grease scrubbed away, why, those wheels locked up, a moment of binding, and then the carriage leapt back into the air, and Glanno’s head snapped right and left at the flanking blur of wheels spinning past at high speed.

Oh.

When the carriage came back down again, the landing was far from smooth.

Things exploded. Glanno and the bench he was strapped to followed the horses down a broad cobbled street. Although he was unaware of it at the time, the carriage behind them elected to take a sharp left turn on to a side street, just behind the formidable tower, and, skidding on its belly, barrelled another sixty paces down the avenue before coming to a rocking rest opposite a squat gabled building with a wooden sign swinging wildly just above the front door.

Glanno rode the bench this way and that, the reins sawing at his fingers and wrists, as the horses reached the end of the rather short high street, and boldly leapt, in smooth succession, a low stone wall that, alas, Glanno could not quite manage to clear on his skidding bench. The impact shattered all manner of things, and the driver found himself flying through the air, pulled back down as the horses, hoofs hammering soft ground, drew taut the leather harness, and then whipped him round as they swung left rather than leaping the next low stone wall – and why would they? They had found themselves in a corral.

Glanno landed in deep mud consisting mostly of horse shit and piss, which was probably what saved his two legs, already broken, from being torn right off. The horses came to a halt beneath thrashing rain, in early evening gloom, easing by a fraction the agony of his two dislocated shoulders, and he was able to roll mostly on to his back, to lie unmoving, the rain streaming down his face, his eyes closed, with only a little blood dripping from his ears.

Outside the tavern, frightened patrons who had rushed out at the cacophony in the street now stood getting wet beneath the eaves, staring in silence at the wheelless carriage, from the roof of which people on all sides seemed to be falling, whereupon they dragged themselves upright, bleary eyes fixing on the tavern door, and staggered whenceforth inside. Only a few moments afterwards, the nearest carriage door opened with a squeal, to unleash a gush of foamy seawater, and then out stumbled the occupants, beginning with a gigantic tattooed ogre.

The tavern’s patrons, one and all, really had nothing to say.

 

Standing in the highest room of the tower, an exceedingly tall, bluish-skinned man with massive, protruding tusks, curved like the horns of a ram to frame his bony face, slowly turned away from the window, and, taking no notice of the dozen servants staring fixedly at him – not one of whom was remotely human – he sighed and said, ‘Not again.’

The servants, reptilian eyes widening with comprehension, then began a wailing chorus, and this quavering dirge reached down through the tower, past chamber after chamber, spiralling down the spiral staircase and into the crypt that was the tower’s hollowed-out root. Wherein three women, lying motionless on stone slabs, each opened their eyes. And as they did so, a crypt that had been in darkness was dark no longer.

From the women’s broad, painted mouths there came a chittering sound, as of chelae clashing behind the full lips. A conversation, perhaps, about hunger. And need. And dreadful impatience.

Then the women began shrieking.

High above, in the topmost chamber of the tower, the man winced upon hearing those shrieks, which grew ever louder, until even the fading fury of the storm was pushed down, down under the sea’s waves, there to drown in shame.

 

In the tavern in the town on the coast called the Reach of Woe, Gruntle sat with the others, silent at their table, as miserable as death yet consumed with shaky relief. Solid ground beneath them, dry roof overhead. A pitcher of mulled wine midway between.

At the table beside them, Jula and Amby Bole sat with Precious Thimble – although she was there in flesh only, since everything else had been battered senseless – and the two Bole brothers were talking.

‘The storm’s got a new voice. You hear that, Jula?’

‘I hear that and I hear you, Amby. I hear that in this ear and I hear you in that ear, and they come together in the middle and make my head ache, so if you shut up then one ear’s open so the sound from the other can go right through and sink into that wall over there and that wall can have it, ’cause I don’t.’

‘You don’t – hey, where’d everyone go?’

‘Down into that cellar – you ever see such a solid cellar door, Amby? Why, it’s as thick as the ones we use on the pits we put wizards in, you know, the ones nobody can open.’

‘It was you that scared ’em, Jula, but look, now we can drink even more and pay nothing.’

‘Until they all come back out. And then you’ll be looking at paying a whole lot.’

‘I’m not paying. This is a business expense.’

‘Is it?’

‘I bet. We have to ask Master Quell when he wakes up.’

‘He’s awake, I think.’

‘He don’t look awake.’

‘Nobody does, exceptin’ us.’

‘Wonder what everyone’s doing in the cellar. Maybe there’s a party or something.’

‘That storm sounds like angry women.’

‘Like Mother, only more than one.’

‘That would be bad.’

‘Ten times bad. You break something?’

‘Never did. You did.’

‘Someone broke something, and those mothers are on the way. Sounds like.’

‘Sounds like, yes.’

‘Coming fast.’

‘Whatever you broke, you better fix it.’

‘No way. I’ll just say you did it.’

‘I’ll say I did it first – no, you did it. I’ll say you did it first.’

‘I didn’t do—’

But now the shrieking storm was too loud for any further conversation, and to Gruntle’s half-deadened ears it did indeed sound like voices. Terrible, inhuman voices, filled with rage and hunger. He’d thought the storm was waning; in fact, he’d been certain of it. But then everyone had fled into the cellar—

Gruntle lifted his head.

At precisely the same time that Mappo did.

Their eyes met. And yes, both understood. That’s not a storm.