Blood and Bone

CHAPTER VI

Old man moon made all the preparations. Through the heat of the day Saeng sat in the hut on its tall poles. She fanned Hanu, all the while feeling rather like a bird in a cage. She watched Moon coming and going from the surrounding jungle. In the clear light of day he appeared no more than a tattooed old man. A village elder, priest, or monk. He laid up a great pile of firewood, set the fire, then set to grinding various ingredients in a mortar: charcoal, some kind of red dirt or clay, and plant roots. The mortar was no more than a slab of basalt bearing a depression in its top that he pushed a stone across. He then set a number of pointed sticks on a slab of wood together with a row of grey earthenware pots. Last, he unrolled a long sheet of woven rattan matting.

The boy Ripan, meanwhile, had been tasked with watching the fire. This he pursued only in the most negligent manner, heaving loud aggrieved sighs, and raising a palm leaf fan over the fire in a desultory wave.

One time when Moon had gone off into the woods, the lad drew out his flute. He blew a series of descending hauntingly sad notes, and sang: ‘Woe to whoever would reach for the Moon … they fail to see the cliff before their feet …’ and he sent her a sharp-toothed grin.

Towards evening Old Man Moon’s wrinkled tattooed face appeared at the hut’s entrance. ‘Things are nearly ready.’

‘Perhaps,’ called Ripan from the fire, ‘you should wait for the Night of our Ancestors, or the Festival of Cleansing. Those would be far more propitious …’

‘You forget whom you speak to,’ the old man snapped in his first betrayal of any temper in front of Saeng. He smiled up reassuringly. ‘I am Old Man Moon! I decide what times are propitious, and which are not. Now come, we will begin.’

‘And my brother?’

He raised a placating hand. ‘Later. After your payment.’

Saeng did not move. ‘Payment usually follows services.’

‘I always receive my due first. But, if it makes you feel any better, I assure you that what you provide for me will not be binding or efficacious unless I pay for it. It’s all part of the exchange.’

Saeng was not completely convinced, but there appeared to be nothing she could hold the man to. Her mouth tight with misgiving, she climbed down the ladder, assisted by Moon.

‘Very good!’ he exclaimed. ‘Play for us, Ripan.’

The youth rolled his eyes to the purpling, half-overcast sky.

‘There, now.’ Moon stood next to the rattan matting. He set to rolling up his waistcloth wrap and exposed a loincloth that was no more than a strip running vertically between his flat wrinkled flanks.

Not only was Saeng horrified to be presented with the old man’s withered buttocks, but she saw that each was entirely pristine.

Oh, my ancestors, no! Not this.

He lay on his stomach and rested his head on his folded arms. He sighed contentedly. ‘Very good.’

Saeng cleared her throat. ‘So. I’m to tattoo your …’ She couldn’t think of any way to say it.

‘As you can see, I’m running out of options. I could turn over. Would you prefer that?’

‘No! No thank you. This is fine.’

‘I thought as much. Ripan — you’re not playing.’

‘It’s not time yet,’ the lad answered resentfully.

Moon raised his head to peer up at the trees and the gathering evening. ‘Ah! You are right. I’ve got ahead of myself, I am so eager.’ He looked over his shoulder. ‘I apologize. I haven’t been myself since I had something of an accident recently. But tonight should go a long way to remedying that.’

Saeng frowned down at the old man. A recent accident? She remembered a night not so long ago. Her neighbours screaming, pointing up at the black sky. And on the moon: had she glimpsed a flash of light? Then darkness swirling across the scarred round face obscuring it for nights on end.

‘Are you the moon?’ she asked, unable to withhold all wonder from her voice.

He chuckled indulgently. ‘No, child. Not itself, of course. But I live its life and it mine. Long ago I chose to tie myself to it as intimately as if it were my twin. I can still remember when the vision of it first revealed itself to me all those ages ago.’ He laid his head back down on his folded arms. ‘At that time I moved through darkness without being aware what darkness was — it was all I knew. But then, unbidden, the vision came to me of the moon floating among the stars. Glorious, it seemed to me. A hanging pool of quicksilver. Its light was silvery cool. Magical. I swore then that I had found my essence and I took the moon as my patron. My inspiration. My source.’ He glanced back to her once again. ‘Do you know what I mean by that?’

‘I believe so,’ she answered, slowly. She recalled a few of the more ancient shades from her childhood speaking of the greatest of the entities that emerged from the vastness of the past. And how each had their Aspect, their province, or facet. Earth, Dark, Water, Light, and more. Why not the moon?

‘Of course you know what happened then, yes?’

She shook her head then realized he couldn’t see and so murmured, ‘No.’ Before her eyes the spinning glyphs and symbols continued their shimmering graceful arc across the old man’s back, as if mirroring the turning of the infinite night above.

‘The moon fades.’ Ripan spoke up, and he blew a long sad note that trailed down into silence.

‘Yes. The sun rose. The moon was but stealing its glow from the sun. For the first time I beheld the sun and it terrified me. It seemed my wanderings had brought me into Tiste lands. I paid my respects to Mother Dark but kept to myself mostly. Now I live here and I pay my respects to Lady Ardata.’

‘You serve the Demon-Queen?’

‘Demons?’ He cocked his head. ‘Well, there are a few, I suppose. But there are one or two of everything here. Long ago Ardata offered sanctuary to all the creatures and spirits you humans cared to name monsters. Which, it seems, conveniently includes everything other than you. Here you will find many things that have elsewhere disappeared from the face of the earth. Even some things that have been forgotten all together.’

‘Himatan …’ Saeng breathed.

‘Indeed. Some few humans live in the jungles as well. But they are just one kind among many. And they tread lightly for it.’ He closed his eyes and sighed once more. ‘Ah, child. You should have seen it then. The moon, I mean. Wondrous! It used to be much larger in the sky, you know. Very much larger. These late days it is but a shrunken grey shadow of its former glory. And it had brothers and sisters, then. Other moons.’

‘All gone now,’ murmured Ripan, pointedly.

‘Yes. Some lost their way and wandered off. Others fell to break up in great fiery cascades.’ He shook his head in sad reminiscence.

Saeng studied the assemblage of tattooing instruments and what she assumed to be powdered pigments or tints in the coarsely fired earthenware pots. She picked up one long stick to find it tipped in an iron point that glimmered blue-grey in the fading twilight.

Struck by a thought, she said, ‘I always assumed you’d be female, you know. Where I come from, the moon is always portrayed as female.’

The old man nodded where he lay, his head on his folded arms. ‘Yes. I understand that is how it is now — among you humans. And the Tiste as well, I believe. But in the eldest cults, the ones that date back to when awareness first raised its eyes to the sky in wonder, among these, where people move in unison with the seasons, the moon is always male and the sun female. Such is the irrefutable logic of fertility. The sun gives life. The sun provides. What does the moon do? It has no light of its own — it can only steal some small glow from the sun. It is but a pale modest attendant to the infinitely flowing and infinitely giving life abundance that is the sun.’

She found him gazing at her over his shoulder. ‘As part of me is to Light.’

Saeng frowned and opened her mouth to ask what he meant by that but he raised his head, announcing, ‘Ah! Now we can begin.’ Saeng peered about, wondering why suddenly it was time. Then she saw it. The moon had risen. Its pallid magical light streamed through the trees. A few narrow beams of wavering liquid silver now fell across Old Man Moon’s elbow and one shoulder. The tattoos within this light blazed to life like distant stars.

Saeng raised the instrument in her hand. ‘But … what do I do?’

‘Ah! Simplicity itself!’ Moon shifted an arm and smoothed a patch of earth. He scratched a symbol in the dirt. ‘Start with that one.’

Swallowing her distaste, she examined his right buttock. ‘Where?’

‘The outside top. Work inward.’

Wonderful. Work inward! But what do I do when I reach … well, maybe I should cross that bridge when I come to it.

‘And what do I use, you know, for ink?’

‘Ah. Take up the nearest pot …’

Saeng lifted it and peered inside: the dust scintillated like powdered silver.

‘… and spit into it.’

Spit? ‘What? Spit? Really?’

‘Yes. Quite so. It is required.’

Gods look away! This was getting worse and worse. Hanu better damn well appreciate it! She spat, but as she did so a great gust of the powder blew up into her face and she coughed, nearly dropping the pot. She wiped her watering eyes. ‘I’m so sorry!’

Ripan laughed, and it was not a friendly laugh.

‘It is fine,’ Moon assured her. To Ripan, a curt, ‘Play!’

The youth took up his flute and blew a squalling note. He winked over the instrument.

‘Try not to exhale next time,’ Moon explained.

‘I’ll try,’ she answered tightly, rather annoyed that he hadn’t mentioned it before.

She crouched next to him, tucked her legs beneath her, and bent down over his withered flanks. She dabbed the tip of the instrument into the globe of liquid silver her spit had become, then studied the symbol the old man had drawn.

Taking a deep breath, she set to work.

Old Man Moon talked the entire time. Concentrating on her task, Saeng hardly heard half of what he said. Occasionally he would raise a hand, saying, ‘good enough’ or ‘extend that line’. But other than these simple instructions he seemed content to leave her to it. Each new glyph or arcane symbol he traced in the dirt for her. As the work progressed Saeng was disconcerted to see some of her handiwork join the orderly march of signs spinning across the old man’s flank and back. Ripan kept up a low tuneless accompaniment that seemed to wander drearily, and frankly was no help to her concentration.

It might have been her imagination, but it seemed as if the moon shone brighter for her as she worked.

After one particularly screeching note Old Man Moon caught her glaring in the youth’s direction. He smiled indulgently. ‘Never you mind Ripan, child. He and my other offspring, they have no sympathy for me. That is just how it is. Not as among you humans, I know. So long as I remain strong and whole they will remain in my shadow — so to speak. They are merely waiting. Waiting for my destruction or dissolution. Then all my power will devolve upon them. Then they will rule all that is the province of the sublunary. Is that not so, Ripan?’

The youth blew a long eerie note, and winked. ‘I can hardly wait.’

Saeng sat back from her work, appalled. ‘That is awful.’ She shook the long-handled needle at Ripan. ‘You should honour your father. Wish him long life, health, prosperity.’

Old Man Moon chuckled. ‘Yet is this not how it is among you living kind? When you strip away all the sentiment and affection — real or not — the old must make way for the young. The new generation replaces the prior. Is this not so?’

Saeng bit at her lip ‘Well. In the harshest possible light, yes.’

‘That light is the cold radiance of the moon, child. That is one aspect of the sublunary. I call to that most basic of drives. The unsaid half of procreation. A drive that supersedes even the urge to survival.’

Moon reached down to scratch his buttock and Saeng had to comment silently: I’m feeling no such urge right now, old man.

‘Did you know,’ Moon went on, oblivious, ‘that on one certain moon every year animals of the depths heave themselves up on to beaches on many lands to lay their eggs, to procreate, even though it means their death? This is what I speak of.’

Saeng spat into another roughly formed earthenware cup. ‘It’s different for people.’

He sighed. ‘So they tell themselves.’

She forced herself to examine the man’s flank. She’d been given a rag to wipe away the blood and excess dye from the tattooing and this she balled up once more to wipe the skin. Yet in the pale watery moonlight the stain looked more like melted silver than dark like blood. ‘How much more am I to do? The moon will set, surely.’

The old man chuckled again. ‘Do not worry. We will have as long as is necessary. You are almost done, in any case. Just the one side.’

Well, thank the ancestors for that mercy! ‘Very good. What’s next?’

‘Ah! This one is tricky.’ He scratched in the dirt. ‘A circle with a line through it and an undulating line beneath. The line beneath must be marked in the fifth cup’s ink, if you please.’

‘Fine.’ Saeng clamped that needle between her teeth and asked through it, ‘Why me? Why not Ripan, or anyone else?’

The old man now had his chin on his flat hands. ‘Ripan? Tiam’s blood, no. He is not suited for such service. You, however, are perfect.’

‘Oh? How?’

‘Thyrllan moves through your heart and your hands, child. I feel it like a surge, a tidal pull, when you touch me.’

‘Thyrllan? Whatever do you mean, Thyrllan?’

‘Light, child.’

Saeng jerked, stabbing, and the old man hissed. Mercury drops ran down his tattooed flesh. Saeng wiped them away. ‘Sorry.’

‘Quite all right. Unfortunately, there is no narcotic in creation powerful enough to dull my senses.’

Light again, dammit. But what was she to do? She took the second needle from her mouth and began working on the undulating line. ‘I’m looking for a temple to Light. The Great Temple.’

‘It lies within Ardata’s demesnes.’

‘Where?’

The old man shrugged. ‘I do not know. You must simply look for it. You will meet the multiform denizens of Ardata’s protection. Some will be of no help. Others will help you.’

How very helpful. ‘I was warned that something was coming. Something terrible.’

He straightened an arm to point to the west. There the unearthly jade light of the Visitor played through the trees. ‘Perhaps it has something to do with that.’

‘Don’t you know? I mean, the moon. The stars. Divination! Foretelling the future and all that?’

An indulgent chuckle from the man. ‘Oh, yes. All that. My child — the moon rises, the moon sets. Every day is the same to me. I cannot see the future any more than I can revisit the past. I see only what I am looking down upon.’

‘But people …’

‘People will always believe what they want to believe. Grant things as much power as they choose to give them.’ He shrugged again. ‘Such is how it is.’

‘But you know what I’m talking about, don’t you? The prophecies. The Visitor. Some name it the Sword of the Gods. An evil curse. It would be a cataclysm.’

The old man rubbed a shoulder and grimaced as if at an old wound. ‘Yes. As it happens, I know exactly what you mean … but child, what is that to me? The world revolves on. The moon rises. The moon sets. It matters not who walks upon the face of the land.’

Saeng sat back once more, the needle forgotten in her hand. Such indifference! It almost took her breath away. Didn’t he care? And he’d seemed so kind. Then she remembered the angry snarled words of the leopard-man: those who would stand aside …

‘So you won’t help me.’

‘I am helping you, child. A service for a service. And you are almost done. Just a few last symbols and we are finished.’

She was tired. Bleary with exhaustion, in fact. To see clearly for the work she had to squint her eyes until they hurt and her back felt as if daggers were stabbing it. ‘Then you will heal Hanu,’ she said, blinking heavily.

‘Yes. Surely. For if I do not all that you have given me will drain away into nothing. Like moonbeams cupped in your hands.’

‘Fine. What’s next?’

He sketched once more in the dirt.

In the end she could not remember whether she finished or not. All she knew was that she found herself jerking her eyes open again and again. The needle wavering in her hand. She remembered a sea of beautiful arcane symbols dancing and gyring before her as if in a sea of stormy night-black ink. Then the old man’s voice rang as if from afar, deep and profound. ‘That is enough. You have given me so very much, Priestess of Light. Sleep now, safe and warded, under the light of the moon.’

And she remembered no more.

The heat of the sun upon her face woke her. She sat up, blinking and wincing, and covered her gaze. Morning mist hovered over the clearing and among the trees. Thick clouds half obscured the sky. The humidity was choking. Already beads of sweat pricked her arms and face.

Hanu! She leaped to her feet only to stagger, almost falling, hands to her head. Gods! What happened? She was hardly able to walk. Of course, fool! You expect to walk away from an all-night ritual? You’ve just done the most demanding work of your life!

She peered around for Moon’s hut but couldn’t see it. What she did spot was Hanu lying in the glade among the tall grass. She stumbled over to fall to her knees next to him. She shook him.

‘Hanu! Can you hear me? Hanu?’

He groaned and rolled on to his back.

She covered her mouth to smother a yell of triumph.

He fumbled at his great full helm, drew it off, then blinked in the bright light just as she had. His mild brown eyes found her, sent a look of wonder.

‘You fell.’

He cocked his head, thinking. Then he nodded.

‘I came down for you, then an underground stream took us.’

He nodded again, holding his head. An inarticulate groan of pain escaped his lips.

‘You hit your head.’

He gave the sign for emphatic agreement — three times.

‘Can you walk?’

By way of answer he slowly began heaving himself up. She tried to help but didn’t think she made much difference. He stood weaving, as unsure on his feet as she felt. He signed, ‘Where?’

‘We’re in Himatan now. The stream brought us.’ He peered around, confused, obviously searching for the stream. ‘I dragged you as far as I could.’

He grunted, signed, ‘Heavy.’

Smiling indulgently, Saeng reached out in her thoughts: ‘Don’t you remember I opened the path between our thoughts?’

He rubbed his forehead, grimacing at himself. ‘Oh, yes.’

‘I couldn’t bring you too far. Can you walk?’

He nodded, picked up the helm and tucked it under an arm, checked his weapons. Saeng started east. ‘This way.’

But Hanu did not follow. She peered back to see him near the centre of the sunlit glade staring down at something. As she returned he gestured to his feet.

Hidden among the tall grass was a tiny house no taller than her knees. It stood on short poles and had a doll’s ladder that led up to its front opening. Peering down at it Saeng felt as if she would faint. Her vision darkened and a roaring gathered in her ears. Hanu’s strong grip on her shoulder steadied her. ‘A spirit house,’ she breathed. A symbol above the opening proclaimed who it was made for. And Saeng knew who that was, of course.

The moon spirit. Am I the one who has lost her mind?

‘Careful,’ Hanu sent.

‘Yes,’ she murmured. ‘I know. Bad luck to disturb them … Let’s go.’

She never made it to the edge of the open glade. Her knees gave way and she collapsed. Utterly spent. Gods! No strength left at all … Can barely think.

The next thing she became aware of was the sensation of floating. The tree canopy of arching branches passing overhead. Firm arms under her knees and shoulders. Hanu’s turn, she thought, and tucked her head into his shoulder to sleep.

* * *

The scene outside the hanging cloth of Golan’s litter remained depressingly repetitive. Jungle and more jungle. Ancient Elders, will it ever end? And their pace was slowing. Each day’s march crossed less ground. Ground! As if it could be called that! A morass of rotting vegetation, tangled creepers, and hidden swamp. At times the land seemed indistinguishable from the water.

He opened the loose yellowed and brittle pages that were his copy of Brother Fel-esh’s Travels in the Most Ancient of Lands:

And so it was less than twelve days’ journey after the village of Payam Tani, that we beheld floating above the wide jungle canopy the golden edifices that were the assembled temples and palaces of Jakal Viharn …

Golan carefully closed the pages and bound them up once more. So, some fifteen days to the village … less than one moon’s travel, all told. Yet Bakar wrote that it took them nearly twice that time to reach the Gangrek Mounts after fleeing the capital … None of these travel times match up!

It was most frustrating.

Someone cleared their throat outside the litter and Golan said, ‘Yes, U-Pre?’ He moved the cloth a fraction aside to see the man. The second in command walked bent with hands clasped behind his back. He seemed reluctant to meet Golan’s gaze. His leathers bore dark stains and the white dusting of dried salts. He was unshaven, his face glistening with sweat, and he appeared to have lost weight. The thought struck Golan that perhaps the man was sick. He is pushing himself hard; I mustn’t blame him. ‘More bad news, Second?’

The man nodded. ‘The train is bogged down, Master. We won’t be able to get them moving again any time soon. We may as well hold here.’

We’ve hardly moved today! Golan bit back his outburst. He took a long calming breath as he had been trained a lifetime to do. ‘I see, Second. This is unwelcome news. We are behind schedule. What is it this time?’

‘The wagons, Master. The ground is too soft and the obstacles too thick.’

‘Yet we need those stores, Second. We are travelling in a hostile land.’

‘Yes, Master.’

‘Very well, Second. It would not do to get too far ahead, would it?’

‘No, Master.’

Golan gave a small wave to dismiss the man and let the cloth fall back. He noted how tattered the gauze had become. These voracious jungle insects are eating it. Soon there will be nothing left … Oh dear …

U-Pre’s scrawny shadow, Principal Scribe Thorn, was not far behind. Golan lay back yet kept the fellow in the edge of his vision until the man’s awkward gait brought him close enough for him to pronounce: ‘Welcome, Principal Scribe! What news?’

The man gaped up, his prominent Adam’s apple bobbing like a swallowed ball. ‘Master! How did you know? Astounding!’

Every day it was so — and by now Golan was beginning to wonder if perhaps the man had been making fun of him all this time. ‘Your report?’

The man’s unusually long neck bent as he peered down at his woven fibre sheets. ‘Twelve wagons, Master.’

‘Total?’

‘Today.’

Golan glared at the man. ‘Today? Twelve wagons lost all in one day?’

The Principal Scribe was consulting his notes and so unaware of his angry stare. ‘Broken axles, rotted beds. Disassembled for spare parts, Master.’

‘And their stores?’

‘Abandoned, Master.’

‘Abandoned, Principal Scribe? What stores would they be?’

The man noted that tone, hunching. He consulted the thick sheaves of manifests in the bulging shoulder bag at his side. ‘Firewood, mostly, Master,’ he announced, obviously pleased to have so quickly located the requested information.

Golan straightened so abruptly he had to grasp the side of the litter to steady himself. ‘Firewood?’ he said, disbelieving. ‘We are dragging wood into a forest?’ He waved the blackwood baton in a wide circle. ‘False gods, man! Have a look around. We’re surrounded by trees.’

The scribe nervously fingered the globular jade inkwell hanging from his neck. ‘With the greatest of respect, Master — none of these trees are suitable. They are too green and damp to burn.’

Golan was almost at a loss for words. ‘Well … then … dead trees. Fallen trees!’

‘Again, Master. I am most sorry, but they rot immediately, never truly drying out.’

‘I see.’ Golan studied the man. His uneven eyes, one higher than the other, and gawking cross-eyed bird-like stare. His lips ink-stained from his habit of holding his writing instrument in his mouth. Was he truly mocking him all this time? ‘So, you are trying to tell me that nothing ever burns in this jungle?’

‘Oh, no, m’lord. Fires rage through here regularly during the dry season. But only the leaves and bracken and such on the forest floor are consumed. The trees endure.’

‘Thank you for that lesson in natural philosophy, Principal Scribe. I am most illuminated.’

‘Ever glad to be of service, Master.’

Golan eyed the fellow closely for a time. ‘Anything else?’

‘Yes.’ Thorn retrieved a new set of sheets. ‘The rate of troop disappearances is growing. We believe it is a combination of desertions and unfortunate attacks.’

‘Unfortunate attacks?’

‘Yes, m’lord. For example, four soldiers spotted something that resembled a pig and despite your orders against entering the jungle they chased after it. None was seen again. It is presumed they were victims of wild animals, or some other jungle denizen.’

‘Jungle denizen. A delicate euphemism, Thorn.’

‘So it is entered in the official campaign history.’

I am beginning to fear that that official record is all that will be left of us. ‘My thanks, Principal Scribe. Until tomorrow’s report.’

The scribe bowed then scuttled off in quick small steps.

Golan tapped the Rod of Execution to his chin. He reflected that Brother Fel-esh wrote in his account of his discoveries, and his groundbreaking exploration, all the while conveniently failing to mention the full army of attendants, guards and servants, some three hundred strong in total, who supported him in his ‘adventure’.

And he barely made it out alive.

Whereas I lead five thousand troops and two hundred yakshaka, supported by fifteen thousand slaves, labourers, bearers and assorted camp followers.

I hope to do slightly better. He tapped the baton to his litter. ‘Set me down and have my tent erected.’

The yakshaka bowed.

That night there came an attack that Golan knew even the most creative record-keeping could not cover up as unfortunate. He was in his tent reporting to the Circle of Nine when the first of the shouts and calls reached him through the layered cloth walls. Standing before the glowing silver chasing on his baton of office, Golan groaned inwardly at what the alarms announced. He cleared his throat and interjected: ‘That is all for now, then. Am continuing to press forward.’

‘See that you do,’ came the stern whisper of Master Surin. ‘We are counting on your advance to divert all attention from us. This is your purpose and role-’

‘Understood, Masters. Thank you. Goodnight.’

‘You are encountering difficulties?’ Master Surin enquired, his voice becoming silky soft, as it always did when he sensed prevarication or, worse, failure.

Golan switched to vague honesty. ‘Of course, Masters. We all knew this would be difficult.’

The yells had turned to screams and a general tumult outside the tent.

‘Well,’ Surin answered, grudgingly appeased, ‘see to it.’

‘Of course. My thanks, Masters.’

The frosty blue glow faded leaving Golan in the dark. Arms extended, he felt about for the opening, heaved aside the thick cloth. And stepped into chaos.

A storm of some sort appeared to have engulfed the camp. Labourers and workers, male and female, all ran pell-mell, waving their arms over their heads, even covering their faces. Clouds of insects choked the air like a sandstorm. They swooped over the ground in great swarms. U-Pre stood next to the opening, batting at his face and arms and hopping from foot to foot. ‘What are we to do, sir?’ he shouted.

‘What of the Isturé mages?’ Golan called back. A warm rush spread over his feet and he peered down to see a thick crimson carpet of swarming ants. He hopped and kicked at the tide.

‘I’ve heard nothing from them,’ U-Pre shouted, batting at his arms and hissing his pain at the red welts revealed.

A fat yellow centipede now rode atop U-Pre’s helmet as if it were some sort of whimsical crest. Golan recognized it as one of the fatally poisonous kind. Summoning his power he flicked it aside without saying anything. He bent closer to shout: ‘I will see to them. Start fires, Second. Many fires.’

U-Pre saluted and jogged off. Golan went in search of an Isturé. His yakshaka bodyguard immediately surrounded him; they appeared either impervious to the plague of insects or merely hardened against their bites and stings, and the unnerving sensation of things crawling where they shouldn’t. For his part, Golan summoned his power to maintain a flickering blue aura about his person that turned aside the swarms. The encampment was a riot of screaming and writhing men and women batting at their ears and faces. Any fires were almost smothered beneath the thousands of winged bodies drawn to their heat. Golan lent power to each he passed, allowing them to flare up once more, hungry and all-consuming. He hoped their smoke would also contribute to dispersing the hordes.

Close to the border of the camp he found an Isturé. The man wore heavy armour of plates at chest and shoulders over a mail coat, and a full helm. All had once been blackened, but was now scraped and worn through heavy use to an iron-grey shine. He was leaning on a tall rectangular shield and waving a gauntleted hand before the visor of his helm as if the attack were nothing more than a show put on for his amusement.

‘Where are your mages, Isturé?’ Golan demanded.

‘The name is Black the Lesser,’ came a sullen rumble from within the helm.

‘Mages, Black. Where are your vaunted Isturé mages?’

‘Not our battle.’

‘Not your-Why else are you here, ancients take you?’

‘We watch for these monsters you’re so fearful of. Lizard-cats, lion-men and other bugaboos.’

‘I demand you take action! At once! Or I will leave you behind as useless!’

Heaving a loud sigh, the big man threw his shield on to his back and waved for Golan to follow. He led him to an old man sitting cross-legged on the ground. His greying hair stood in all directions and a great baggy set of robes enveloped him like a tattered shapeless bag. Black stopped in front of him and tilted his helm to indicate Golan. The old man cocked a sallow rheumy eye to Golan. ‘What is it?’

‘What is it? What is it?’

Golan thrust out his hand only to realize that he’d left the Rod of Execution in the tent. He waved around instead. ‘Can’t you do something about this!’

The old man gave a shrug that was smothered within the bag. ‘I could. Why don’t you?’

Golan drew himself up straight, offended, then was forced to wave a hand before his face where scores of alarmingly huge flying cockroaches now fluttered their stiff brown wings and bumped at every one of his orifices. ‘The time has not yet come for me to announce myself,’ he said between clenched teeth.

‘She knows you’re here.’

‘She does not know a master of the Inner Circle has been sent!’

The old man snorted a loud laugh as if what Golan had said was immensely amusing. His arched brow climbed even higher. ‘Do you really think that matters one damned bit?’

Golan decided to dismiss the man’s words as empty bluster. What would this foreigner know anyway? Then he noted how of the swarms of insects seething over the ground not one touched the man’s robes and this settled the matter for him. ‘Do something about this plague or I shall reconsider our agreement, Isturé. What would your Skinner think of that? He would not take it well, I think.’

The old man’s gimlet eye shifted to Black. The two appeared to share some sort of unspoken communication and then it was the old man’s turn to heave a sigh. He climbed awkwardly to his feet, began rooting through what appeared to be innumerable pockets lining his loose robes.

Meanwhile the swarming continued. Solid flights of tiny midges or flies completely enmeshed their victims, who quickly fell, becoming nothing more than twitching heaps of glittering black multitudes. ‘Do something,’ Golan snarled, his hands impotent fists at his sides.

The old man produced a feather from his robes. It was grimed and plain, perhaps taken from some seabird. Golan sensed the blossoming of the man’s power — a far different flavour from the foreign ‘Warrens’. More chthonic, seething wild and feral. The old man blew upon the feather and it shot straight up into the fat scudding clouds above. Then he sat once more and pulled his robes higher about his pale neck.

‘That’s it?’ Golan demanded.

‘Done.’ He sniffed, coughed, then hawked something up that he spat aside. ‘All this damp,’ he complained to Black. ‘Bad for the lungs.’

‘Wouldn’t know,’ Black rumbled. ‘I’m still a young shoot.’ And he laughed while the old man cackled harshly.

What strange people, these foreigners. Was that a reference to this Vow of theirs?

Something was coming. Golan could feel it in the air now brushing past him. In the distance, the dark canopy of the jungle writhed as if in the fists of giants. A great boom crashed overhead like a burst of thunder. Black, he noted, had braced himself, hunching and digging in his rear foot. Golan had opened his mouth to ask what was happening when a wall of air punched into him and sent him flying backwards, his feet swinging up violently. He landed on the back of his neck, stunned; fortunately the muddy ground was soft beneath him.

After the stars cleared from his vision the Thaumaturg found himself peering upwards at shattered branches whipping overhead, along with great wads of detritus dug up by the hurricane winds that now scoured the encampment like a rough sweeping hand. The noise was tremendous, deafening, a thundering storm howl that eliminated any possibility of communication. Not that he could move in any case.

The front, or blast-wave, now diminished, roiling onwards. Golan could push himself up on to his elbows. Of the thick black swarms of insects there remained no sign. He stood, his yakshaka bodyguards rising with him, and headed for the main staging area. Here the troops and labourers were slowly straightening, stunned amazement clear upon their features. He found that the plague of insects was not the only thing missing: the tents had been swept clean from the field. Wagons lay overturned, their contents scattered across the mud and mire. His own tent was completely absent; his servants crawled through his strewn possessions lying in a trail of wreckage that disappeared among the trees.

A yakshaka soldier approached and respectfully proffered the Rod of Execution in both armoured hands. Golan took it absently while he continued to scan the wide field of scattered stores and tossed debris. The baton was muddy and he used the edge of his robes to wipe it clean.

A second boom crashed down upon them, making the troops flinch, and it was as if the clouds were overturned as a great downpour struck, hammering everything further into the muck. Golan stood quite still in the torrent, drops falling from his chin and his fingertips, watching reams of pressed plant fibre papers dissolving in the rain and filth.

Funny. The bastard probably thinks this is all so very funny.

* * *

They established their headquarters in the valley just before the one occupied by the southern capital of the Thaumaturgs, Isana Pura. Dismounting from an inspection of the pickets and the deployment of his lancers, Prince Jatal straightened the white cotton robes he wore over his armour and tucked his gauntlets into his belt. That he was not looking forward to this strategy council was something of an understatement. The head of every family would have a place at the table and there would be as many opinions as mouths flapping. Yet attend he must. It was required. As the head of one of the two largest factions his was a position of leadership among this temporary coalition. Not that said position carried any attendant authority whatsoever.

He drew off his helmet and tucked it under an arm. Its bright chain camail rattled and hissed as he walked. The Warleader’s guards at the entrance nodded their acknowledgement — the deepest gesture of respect any of the Adwami could expect from these foreign mercenaries, who reserved their salutes for the Warleader himself.

He pushed aside the cloth hangings and entered into a yelling match. His fellow representatives lay on pillows and carpets about the tent shouting and cursing one another. Across the way, the Warleader sat accoutred as was his habit in his long mail coat, cross-legged, chin in one fist, his face flushed and rigid with control. The ligaments of his neck stood out as taut as bowstrings. Jatal found Princess Andanii sitting back on a pillow, idly stroking a jewelled dagger at her hip. She offered him a quick veiled glance.

Now aware of Jatal’s entrance, several of the minor families most closely allied with the Hafinaj sought to enlist him in support of their cause. He raised his hands, helpless. ‘Please! Jher-ef, Waress! Not all at once, if you would be so kind.’ He sat, sweeping out his robes, and extended a hand to the Warleader. ‘Let us hear the opinion of our hired expert.’

‘Bah!’ scoffed Ganell from where he sat. ‘That one is only interested in seizing all the best spoils for himself.’

Jatal arched a brow, inviting the Warleader to respond.

The man drew a heavy grating breath. ‘It only makes sense, my prince,’ he began, his voice almost fracturing in the effort to remain civil. ‘My troops should storm the Thaumaturgs’ precincts while your lancers patrol the streets to control the city and outlying grounds.’

Jatal swung his gaze to Ganell. ‘Sounds reasonable to me.’

The big man waved his arms. ‘The real treasure will be with the damned Thaumaturgs!’

Jatal made a show of considering this. ‘Yet … are we not agreed to share all spoils?’

‘What little will be left of it,’ Ganell grumbled darkly, shifting uncomfortably.

Jatal pursed his lips. He turned to the Warleader. ‘Perhaps a force of Adwami men-at-arms may accompany you, Warleader? Some thousand soldiers, perhaps? Drawn from a number of the families?’

The Warleader’s severe lined face, held as immobile as a stone mask, gave no hint of what he thought of the suggestion, but he did finally incline his head in assent. His ropy iron-grey hair fell forward, hanging as long as his wiry beard. ‘I have no objection, my lords.’

‘And who is to command this force?’ Sher’ Tal, Horsemaster of the Saar, called out. He thrust a finger at Ganell. ‘Not him!’

‘Buffalo …’ Ganell murmured, baring his teeth at the man.

Jatal raised a hand to quiet the rising tension. ‘I admit to some curiosity regarding the practices of these infernal Thaumaturgs. Perhaps I may command this force — with the permission of the council.’

‘I too wish to witness the evils of these magi!’ Princess Andanii announced quickly. ‘Perhaps command should be shared.’

Jher-ef, elderly head of the Fal’esh, waved a curt dismissal. ‘Such distasteful sights should not be for your eyes, my princess.’

Her mouth hardening, Andanii eased herself upright. ‘Perhaps we should face one another at a hundred paces armed with bows — then we shall see who comes away with eyes to see.’

The old man’s jowls reddened behind his grey beard. He glared about, puffing. ‘Unheard-of insolence … it was agreed … no challenges during the concord!’

‘And be thankful for it, Jher-ef,’ Jatal murmured to his old family ally, aside. Then, to the room as a whole, he said: ‘I propose we now vote upon it …’

But Jatal’s motion for a vote had to wait. Further counter-proposals were introduced. Alternative strategies were thrown up at the last moment and the entire process of whittling down had to begin again. It was close to dawn before consensus was reached; and that, Jatal imagined, only out of pure exhaustion.

So it was reluctantly granted that the Warleader would rush straight for the Thaumaturgs’ main ritual centre and residences to secure them, while the lancers and other Adwami mounted troops would control and pacify the city proper. Accompanying the Warleader would be an Adwami force co-commanded by Prince Jatal and Princess Andanii. The impatient Warleader was loudly reminded that as a mere hireling, he, too, would be under their joint command.

This the Warleader took with his long lined face held as rigid as a stone sculpture close to fracturing. His lieutenant however, reclining at his side, chuckled silently at the man’s mortification, all the while wolfing down a giant’s share of the roast goat and lamb. As it was already dawn, the attack was scheduled for that night.

After the council was formally dismissed most of the family heads mumbled their bleary farewells and headed to their own tents to sleep. Jatal remained. He had a few questions for the Warleader. As the man rose, rather stiff-legged, he asked, ‘What of intelligence? You seem remarkably unconcerned regarding troop numbers and such.’

The Warleader adjusted the old leather belt about his mail coat and peered down at Jatal with his flinty grey eyes. Dead flat eyes — the most dismissive eyes I have ever encountered.

‘I have sent agents ahead into the city. They have long been reporting back.’

Jatal nodded his agreement with such precautions. ‘I even considered slipping into the city myself, disguised as a pilgrim or a penitent.’

‘My prince — had you attempted such a thing I would have ordered Scarza here to knock you on the head and drag you back.’

The sting of such audacious disrespect was muted by the broad comical wink sent from the man in question, who was still reclining at the Warleader’s feet. Jatal bit back his outrage and shook his head instead, either in admiration or astonishment, he wasn’t sure which. ‘Well … you sent him after me already, didn’t you?’

‘Indeed I did, Prince. Such heroic adventures may be standard fare among bards and storytellers, but a prince should hardly be sent straight into an enemy stronghold. That is what expendable personnel are for — yes?’

Expendable personnel. The man had an unsettling ability to cut through all the mush and romanticism that surrounded raiding and warfare. Yes, expendable. That was what it all came down to, wasn’t it? No matter how distasteful the sentiment may be.

Jatal motioned to a servant for tea. His discomfort — had he just been slapped down? — drove him to ask, ‘Yet you agreed to myself and the princess commanding the force that would strike for the Thaumaturg premises.’

The old man lifted his shoulders in an indifferent shrug. ‘I knew some noble would be foisted upon me. Better you than some others.’

Again, Jatal gathered the distinct impression of being handed an insult wrapped in a compliment. Still dissatisfied, he pressed on: ‘You have an estimate, then, of the number of yakshaka soldiers we may expect to meet?’

The man’s thin cracked lips pursed. The lines bracketing his mouth deepened like fissures in granite. ‘No more than fifty, certainly.’

Jatal was quite startled. ‘Fifty? That is as good as an army. How can we overcome fifty yakshaka?’

The Warleader waved a gnarled, age-spotted hand, the nails yellowed and jagged like talons. ‘They will not emerge to meet us in battle. Their duty is to protect the Thaumaturgs. And we are not here to kill them. Rather, we will be there to stop them from interfering in the sacking and pillaging of the city. Besides, they are formidable, but not indestructible.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Now, if you will excuse me. At my age it is important to take the time to rest and recuperate …’

Jatal bowed as his tea arrived steaming on a silver platter. ‘Of course. Later, then.’

The Warleader bowed shallowly and departed.

Gone to his tent, no doubt, where, Jatal heard reported by servants, he applied himself assiduously to the goal of stupefying himself with mind-numbing smoke. Well, so far it didn’t seem to have interfered with his performance. Perhaps he dosed himself in order to tolerate the fractious Adwami. In any case, it was none of his business.

Their forces began marshalling just before dusk. Princess Andanii arrived surrounded by a personal bodyguard of twenty Vehajarwi knights. She wore heavy leathers and a silk-wrapped conical iron helmet, a curved sword at her side, her bow on her back. Jatal bowed to her. ‘Princess. We leave at once. Before we go, however, I must ask again whether you think it is prudent that both of us accompany this force.’

Her glance was sharp at first, but softened as she nodded her understanding. She leaned close in her saddle, her voice low. ‘This cohort drawn from all the families was a masterstroke, my prince. Do you not see they must accept both of us as commanders? We will have need of a force that we alone control. One free of family obligations. Will we not?’

Jatal was quite flustered and adjusted his seating on Ash’s back to cover his reaction. He brushed at the long hanging sides of his mail coat, his robes and sword. By the Demon-King Kell-Vor! He hadn’t thought of that! He’d merely proposed this ad-hoc force to quell internecine bickering and to shuffle everything along. But now that she had mentioned it; yes, such a body could be extremely useful should they declare themselves …

And if Andanii wishes to believe it was all part of a deliberate long-term plan on my part, well, so much the better for my standing in her eyes.

He cleared his throat and twisted a hand in Ash’s reins. ‘Well, the Warleader is of the opinion that we will probably see no action, in any case.’

Andanii frowned her scepticism. ‘Why should that be?’

‘He claims the yakshakas’ first duty is to guard the Thaumaturgs. So long as we do not threaten them they should stay out of the fight.’

‘And where does a foreigner come by such intimate knowledge of our neighbours?’

Jatal gazed at the young woman in stunned admiration. Shades of my ancestors! Again, such a question hadn’t even occurred! What an impressive leader this one will be. Beautiful, cunning … and that night … Gods, the memory of her reaching down to grasp my manhood even as I …

She leaned to him, her dark eyes concerned. ‘You are all right?’

Jatal nodded, taking a shaky breath. He rubbed the sleeve of his light cotton robe across his slick face. ‘Yes. I am fine. I was just thinking … that is a very good question, my princess. Perhaps I should strive to learn more of this man. Where he is from. Why he knows so much.’

A curt nod. ‘Yes. Do so. For the time will come when we will no longer need him.’

Jatal now eyed the woman sidelong in suspicion. Did she plan on not honouring their agreement with the mercenary? Perhaps she was merely considering all the possible alternatives. So … beautiful, cunning, passionate … and ruthless.

Their force of picked Adwami mounted men-at-arms formed column as the first element. The Warleader’s mercenary troops would follow. While the troops ordered themselves, the Warleader rode up on his dappled pale stallion. He saluted Jatal and Andanii. ‘As commanders, you shall lead. I will ride with my troops. We make for the central administrative compound.’ For an instant it seemed a mocking half-smile cracked the man’s severe features. He turned his mount aside and trotted back along the column.

Jatal was more than irritated; the Warleader possessed the best intelligence regarding the city, its environs and defences. That they should lead was, well … was worse than ridiculous. It was inviting disaster. He waved over Gorot, his master-at-arms. The squat veteran urged his horse closer. ‘Send out your swiftest riders. Scout the damned city.’ Gorot saluted and fell back. Jatal watched him go, thinking himself wise not to have gone to the lancer knights, where, usually, such an ‘honour’ would be bestowed. Better now to find an actual scout who could ride rather than some young minor noble’s scion out to make a name for him or her self.

It was halfway into the night when they reached the valley floor to knee their mounts up on to a wide cobbled road that would take them to the city. Visibility remained excellent as the moon was high and waxing, while the great arc of the Scimitar very nearly over-powered it. Again Jatal admired the Thaumaturgs’ engineering works: not only the road, but the canals and reservoirs they passed — all interlocking elements of a complex system of irrigation.

A stream of mounted scouts came and went reporting on the way ahead. No roadblocks, no fielded army. Hamlets and farmers’ cottages all remained dark and quiet as the column clattered past. The glow of the city swelled ahead, though it was not as bright as Jatal imagined it ought to have been, given that Isana Pura was the southern capital.

Further scouts reported no barricades or columns massed in the streets to challenge them. Many of the surrounding bodyguard lancers grinned at the news but Jatal was not encouraged. What did they imagine was going on? That these mages had surrendered already? Fled? No. These reports only troubled him. If the magi and their soldiers and yakshaka guardians were not in the streets — then where were they?

Across the front of the column he caught Andanii’s eye and in her pale moonlit features, framed by her tall helmet, her lips held as a hardened slash, he thought he read similar misgivings. Regardless, onward they swept, passing field after farmed field, the alien sprawl of Isana Pura, population perhaps a million souls, spreading out before them.

After a series of outlying collections of farmers’ huts, wayside travellers’ compounds, and what appeared to be merchants’ staging areas, they rode on to the city proper. Here, the streets narrowed to a point where only three could ride abreast. The houses and shops lined the ways as solid walls of sun-dried brick relieved only by small barred windows and shut doors. Each street lay before them eerily empty and the jangle and clatter of their advance echoed loudly until Jatal believed that the entire city must be wincing with the racket of it. Yet no door cracked open and no gawping residents came pouring forth to crowd the way — which itself would have been an effective enough deterrent to stop their advance.

He expected imminent ambush or counter-attack and couldn’t suppress a flinch at each intersection. He and his flanking guards, and Princess Andanii ahead with her guards, all rode now with reins in one hand and naked blade in the other. Each turn brought them to a street nearly identical to the one before. It was a grim and unadorned urban conglomeration that Jatal knew from travellers’ accounts to be typical of Thaumaturg architecture and planning. Yet it remained a city of ghosts — for where was everyone? From what he knew of these mages’ firm hand of rule, he suspected the inhabitants were all cringing in root cellars and back larders: helpless and unarmed, forbidden weapons by their imperious masters.

By now he was utterly without a sense of which way to turn either to advance or to retreat. He could see no further than the looming two-storey walls surrounding him in this puzzle-box of a city. Yet hovering over these brick walls floated the pointed bell-like towers of what he imagined must be the Thaumaturgs’ quarters. In their twistings and turnings at every intersection, Andanii and her bodyguards appeared to be attempting to reach it. At one meeting of five crooked narrow ways they came roaring to a halt, drawing reins, the hooves of their mounts loud on the cobbles as they stamped and reared.

‘Where are our damned scouts!’ Andanii called to him.

‘I do not know!’ This apparent disappearance of their forward riders troubled him greatly, but he wasn’t about to say that aloud. He worked to settle Ash — who champed and twisted his neck as he had been trained for fighting — and noted to the rear of their column that the Warleader and his troops no longer followed. Damn the man! Had they lost him? Or had this been his intent all along?

He’d been desperately trying to dredge up a traveller’s brief description of the city that he’d read some time ago and it came to him then and he gestured with his bared sword. ‘Keep inward. I’m fairly sure-’

‘Very good!’ Andanii sawed her mount’s head about and kicked its sides to send it leaping onward. Jatal followed, hoping to all the foreign gods that he had the right of it.

They charged through a series of long, relatively straight roads each no wider than two arm-spans. Jatal had spent every night of his life in his family gathering of tents where the wind brushed freely, and wide uninterrupted vistas spread on all sides. If these cramped ways and grim squat dwellings were typical of city life then he knew he wanted none of it. Also, his stomach clenched and churned, anticipating at any moment ambush or raking arrow-fire. The curious bell-shaped domed towers of the Thaumaturgs, however, reared steadily ever closer.

A turn brought Andanii into a near collision with a mounted Adwami scout — a youth of the Manahir. The column crowded to a stamping, clattering, sudden halt.

‘What news?’ the princess demanded of the young unblooded boy as each struggled to settle their mounts.

‘The streets are deserted, my lady,’ he answered, stammering, quite flustered to be directly addressing so prominent a noble.

‘I can see that,’ she snapped. ‘Where are your fellows? Were you attacked?’

‘No, m’lady. I believe they have, ah, lost their way.’

‘Lost their way …’ she echoed in disbelief. ‘Lost!’

The youth winced, ducking his head. He waved to the surroundings. ‘These strange twisting ways … I have never seen the like.’

Andanii rubbed and patted her mount’s neck to soothe it. ‘Well … true enough,’ she allowed.

Separated by the guards, Jatal reared high in his saddle to point to the blunt towers. ‘Know you the way?’

The scout jerked a nod. ‘Aye, noble born. A large walled compound. But its doors are shut.’

‘Take us immediately, damn you!’ Andanii snapped and the young man gaped, not knowing what to say. In Jatal’s opinion he made the right choice by merely hauling his mount around and stamping off without delay. The column followed.

After more twistings and turnings — the horses trampling abandoned baskets of goods and wares along the way — the alley ended abruptly at an even narrower path that ran along an unadorned wall of dark stone blocks. The wall of the compound. Andanii followed at the heels of the scout, sheering to the right, slowing in her headlong dash. The extraordinary narrowness of the channel forced them to ride single file. Jatal’s boots nearly scraped the walls to either side as he went.

The constricted path continued ruler-straight along the border of the Thaumaturgs’ quarters, but the scout halted at a set of slim stone stairs that led up to a portal in the wall. The opening was just large enough for a person to duck within. A door of plain wooden planks barred it. Andanii dismounted and threw herself against it.

‘Locked — or barred!’ she announced.

The door did not look too strong to Jatal. He dismounted and shook it: ironmongery rattled thinly. He raised a booted foot and slammed the aged planks. The door swung inward with a snap of metal. One of Andanii’s bodyguards laughed his scorn at this, but Jatal did not share the man’s confidence. Rather, this apparent lack of preparedness or concern for any direct assault only added to his unease. Something was wrong here. Profoundly wrong. He felt it in the acid filling his stomach, his sand-dry mouth, and a cruel iron band that was tightening about his skull.

Yet he dared speak none of this out loud. He knew that among these Vehajarwi, and the larger circle of Adwami nobles, his reputation was that of scholar and philosopher, not a warrior such as his brothers. And so he knew how any disquiet voiced by him would be received. Better, then, not to give this one guard any chance for further scorn.

And there was always Andanii, as well.

Spurred by the heat of her standing now so close, her quick panting breath in his ears, her face flushed and sweaty with anticipation, he stepped through first. The way led down into an inner open court, also quite narrow, rather like an encircling flagged path that allowed access to the many enclosed buildings. This too was deserted. The air here was much hotter and drier than the narrow shaded alleyways still cool with the night air. The sun’s heat now penetrating to the surrounding walls of dressed blue-black stone. From his readings, Jatal knew the rock to be of volcanic origin, even to the point of containing tiny shards of black glass. The guards crowded protectively about him and Andanii.

‘Now what?’ she asked him in the profound quiet. At first Jatal could not answer, such was the clash of emotions and thoughts the question elicited: elation that perhaps she truly did rely upon his judgement, versus anger and resentment that perhaps she thought him so weak as to be in need of such bolstering. ‘We should leave a quarter of the lancers with the horses,’ he managed coolly. ‘The rest should secure this court.’

Andanii nodded to the captain of her guard, who went to relay the orders. The quiet of the surroundings made Jatal suppress his breath as he listened. He caught distant yells over the brush and jangle of the troops’ armour as they spread out. Perhaps the Warleader and his men had reached the compound before them. Oddly enough, though no plants or flowers were in evidence, a cloyingly sweet perfume choked the air making him faintly nauseous.

‘M’lady,’ a lancer called from one of the neighbouring buildings. Andanii crossed in response and Jatal followed. They passed through the crowd of troops to an airy stone hall, perhaps a meditation space, or classroom. Within, a field of corpses lay sprawled across the flagged stone floor. All dead Thaumaturg magi. Or, since most were quite young, a class of their acolytes, students or postulants. The nearest was a girl. Her dark hair was cropped close to her skull, almost like fur, and her flesh was snowy pale where her legs and arms showed beyond her plain robes. The seeming reason her flesh was so unnaturally ashen was that her blood was now all pooled across the stones. The same was true of all the others.

A grisly assemblage of some thirty freshly dead.

‘Those fool mercenaries!’ Andanii snarled, and she pressed the back of a hand to her mouth. ‘They will bring the yakshaka down upon us!’

Jatal was not so certain of this; the mercenaries seemed to be across the compound. And the students lay toppled forward from cross-legged positions — a pose of meditation. Their features were still serene, though smeared in drying gore. The Warleader’s men were mercenaries, true, but they did not strike him as so coldblooded. Besides, if one of the mercenaries had come across such a pretty girl as this, Jatal had no doubt he would have done more than merely strike her down.

He turned to his second, Gorot. ‘Take charge of the main body — secure that courtyard.’

The old campaigner saluted and jogged off.

‘M’lady,’ Andanii’s guard captain called. He’d been examining the bodies and he peered up now, wonderment and a touch of unease in his gaze. ‘I see no wounds among them.’

A set of prints crossed the pooled gore. A calm unhurried set of bare splay-toed feet that walked on across the next court leaving behind a trail of drying blood. The killer? None of the mercenaries went barefoot. A fellow Thaumaturg? Yet the acolytes’ slippers lay in a jumbled heap next to the entrance — these people did not go barefoot.

Someone did. The detail nagged at Jatal. It was familiar but he could not quite place it. The prints somehow mesmerized him; he could not help but follow them. They climbed on to a raised colonnaded walk of a series of stone arches, where Andanii joined him. ‘We have to stop these fools from spilling any more blood.’

Jatal peered up from the path of blood. ‘We should not move on until we’ve secured this area.’

The princess slammed her sword home. ‘We have to link up with the Warleader and his troops in any case. And where in the name of the holy sun is everyone?’

‘The cowards have fled,’ Andanii’s captain put in, coming abreast of them.

Jatal studied the man. Did he really think it would be this easy? He raised a hand for patience. ‘We mustn’t wander willy-nilly like a lost wind searching. We’ll send out small scouting parties to locate them.’

Andanii’s clenched brows rose and for an instant Jatal thought he saw something like admiration touch her eyes. She gave a fierce nod. ‘Very good, Prince of the Hafinaj. Sound strategy.’ She waved to her captain, who bowed and jogged off.

‘This Warleader had better have an excellent excuse,’ she growled, hands on her armoured hips.

‘He will no doubt claim to have lost us in that maze.’

‘Yes. He shows a strong head,’ she said, grinning. ‘We’ll have to keep him on a shorter rope.’

Jatal answered the grin. Yes, the language of horse-breaking for their hired Warleader. The man seemed to have forgotten that he worked for them.

The sudden crash of metal and a man’s scream of agony made Jatal flinch. Andanii spun, sword drawn instantly. Their guards converged on a tall stone altar-like plinth where one figure towered over all — one of the Thaumaturgs’ armoured bodyguards, the yakshaka.

Even as the princess moved to close two guards blocked her way. From his raised position on the steps Jatal could see that this yakshaka had been in a fight: it wielded its great yataghan one-handed. Its other arm hung useless, its bright inset stones now smeared in dark wetness. Yet in just a few blows two of their men-at-arms had already fallen.

Yells of alarm now sounded to their rear. Jatal turned a slow circle: on every side the fearsome yakshaka had stepped ponderously from the cover of walls and open portals. They had been encircled. ‘Make for the exit!’ he bellowed. He urged one of Andanii’s guards to shuffle her onward.

And where was Gorot now when he needed him most? Organizing the main body!

‘This way, my nobles,’ the guard captain called, waving aside. Their party made for an open-sided building and onward to another alleyway. Andanii’s guards hurried them along between a series of cell-like stone buildings.

Here the noise and shouts of fighting echoed and re-echoed in a dull directionless roar. Jatal suspected that this captain had no idea where he was taking them — just that he was fleeing a potential slaughter. They stumbled into a tiny flagged yard enclosed on three sides.

‘Now which way?’ Andanii demanded.

The man did not respond. Instead, he directed one of the twelve guards to the way they had come. ‘Watch the entrance.’

‘You have no idea, have you?’

He turned to regard her. A small smile raised the edge of his mouth. ‘We will, ah, circle round, my princess.’

‘Captain!’ a guard called from a wall. This enclosure appeared to be a dormitory, open to the central shared space, complete with a fire-pit and a few pots. Jatal thought it perhaps servant’s quarters. Andanii and he crossed to the guard. Under the narrow stone roof lay scattered straw, covered here and there by thin blankets. The guard waved to a tiny opening where a stone staircase led down into darkness. The moist air emerging carried a repellent stink of rot.

‘Perhaps this is where everyone has gone,’ Jatal mused.

‘The serpents’ den,’ the captain snarled. A shouted alarm snapped everyone’s attention to their rear, where yakshaka now closed with their ponderous loud steps. Iron clashed as the guards blocked and slipped the first massive swings. ‘Nothing for it,’ the captain said, and waved down four men. Two of these were Jatal’s, and he gave his own assent to their questioning glances.

The captain invited Andanii onward. ‘My princess …’

Andanii shot him a glare as if determined not to betray any hint of disgust or dread. She drew her slim sabre and started down — even she had to turn sideways to manage the pit-like opening. The captain turned next to Jatal. ‘My lord?’

‘After you.’

‘I must organize the retreat.’

‘Then do so.’

The captain inclined his helmeted head just a touch, and Jatal was reminded that this man had spent his entire career skirmishing and raiding against him and his allies. ‘Wait here then, if you would … my lord.’

From the pit’s opening Jatal watched while the captain jogged to the line of defence. Four of their guards had fallen to the lumbering monstrosities and now the captain waved the rest into a retreating rearguard action, yielding ground towards the stairs.

Jatal waited until they had nearly reached him then hurried down into the dark and near solid stomach-gagging stink. Beneath, it was not so murky as it had seemed from above. Slim corridors lined with dressed stone led off in three directions. It seemed that slits and chutes cunningly hidden among the stonework allowed shafts of light from the Fallen One’s Chariot to play down among them. Andanii waited here with her two guards. Of the other two, Jatal’s, he saw no sign.

‘What now?’ she asked him again, her voice low and quite choked by the stench.

This time Jatal did not wonder about the motive behind her asking. He heard the clenched panic behind the words and felt it himself. With each choice, they’d been driven, or been foolish enough, to advance ever further into the Thaumaturgs’ embrace. Inwardly he was already of the conviction that none of them would escape here alive.

Andanii’s captain and the rest of the guards came crashing down the near-vertical stone stairs. Armour scraped the walls and bared swords rang and clashed. Heavy steps sounded above, but that was all. Jatal was certain there was no way such behemoths could manage what seemed a mere servants’ entrance.

‘We should move,’ Jatal answered Andanii at last. ‘They’ll know another way down.’

‘Yes,’ the captain added. He had seized a torch from a wall sconce, and now motioned aside with it. ‘This way looks to head back.’

Jatal did not dispute that, but he was sceptical that they would so easily negotiate this maze. He caught Andanii’s attention. ‘Where are the other two guards?’

She pointed. ‘They went to scout.’

‘We can’t leave them.’

The captain urged them on. ‘Come, Princess.’

Andanii had sheathed her sabre. ‘They will follow,’ she hissed, and set off to follow her guards.

For a moment Jatal stood motionless, alone, listening. What had been that fellow’s name? Oroth? Something like that. ‘Oroth!’ he called. ‘Myin-el? Can you hear me? We’re moving! Come back!’ He listened again but heard nothing distinct, only the breath of the damp air moving through the tunnels, and once again something like distant muted screams and yells.

Do not become separated from them! his dread howled. Cursing himself and Andanii, he set off to follow.

He found them soon enough, all jammed up together in a tunnel. He pushed his way to the fore. ‘What is it? Why aren’t you moving?’

Andanii and her captain did not answer; they did not have to. At their feet lay the corpse of a yakshaka guardian. Jatal’s first thought was that they had bested it, though he’d heard nothing of any struggle. Then, in the flickering golden light of the captain’s torch, he made out what held their attention: some sort of black fluid, thick and oozing, dripped from every joint of the armoured giant: at hips, elbows, shoulders and neck. The stench of putrefaction was overpowering. It physically drove Jatal to retreat a step. ‘Gods!’ He gagged, a hand at his mouth.

‘Not the work of our friends the mercenaries,’ the captain observed from behind a fold of cloth pressed to his face.

‘Then who?’

‘We’ll see,’ Andanii answered, and she strung her great bow, as tall as she. ‘I will go first. Captain, hold the light behind me.’

Jatal disagreed with this order of march but the captain bowed, murmuring, ‘Yes, Princess.’ It seemed that the members of her entourage were used, or trained, to defer to her. Stepping over the obscene corpse of the Thaumaturg guardian, Jatal followed the captain.

The tunnel complex wound on. All openings were corbelled arches, an ancient architecture Jatal recognized from the written narratives of travellers through the region, even those of thousands of years ago. He glimpsed in passing what looked like dormitories, study halls, and small meditation or prayer cells.

He thought he’d gained something of an insight into these Thaumaturgs from this hidden maze of structures — presumably their true habitation. It was as if the surface was of no interest to them, or was used merely as sleight of hand to deceive and mislead. Their true vocation and interests lay beneath, hidden or shielded. And from what he’d seen so far, these practices struck him as detestable and obscene.

They passed more sprawled corpses, these of older men and women, all Thaumaturgs, or their servants. None of the bodies bore any obvious wounds. All lay disfigured, bloated, or, in some cases, with their flesh traumatized and torn as if having burst from within. The stink of sickness and rotting flesh was unrelenting but by now Jatal was able to endure it without his gorge constantly licking at the back of his throat.

They entered a larger chamber, its flagged floor crowded with bodies. At first he thought it some sort of infirmary or training centre for physicians. Corpses in various stages of dissection lay on stone plinths, while the weak torchlight hinted at mummified bodies along the walls. The ones hung on the walls appeared to be aids in instruction: each displayed a differing system within the human body. On one, the musculature lay exposed and preserved in all its ropes and cable-like twinings over the bones. On another, the circulatory system of veins and arteries lay highlighted and tinted like so many streams, channels and rivulets upon a map.

In an instant it struck Jatal that what he observed was not a ward for the healing and reknitting of the flesh, but rather its opposite: a theatre for the systematic disassembling and deconstruction of the human body. The insight left him dizzy with revulsion. For an instant his only thought was to flee. He felt as if his very breath carried into his body some sort of contagion or contamination that could poison it.

One of the guards leaned over to heave up the contents of his stomach and the captain cursed the man. In the quiet following the ragged gagging and gasping, slow shuffled steps sounded from the darkness of a tunnel opening. Jatal gradually shifted his blade in that direction as did everyone else, all in complete silence. Andanii’s bow creaked next to Jatal’s ear as she drew it fully back, the bright needle point of the arrow steady upon the opening. He knew that from this distance it could punch through solid iron plate.

Instead of the expected giant yakshaka, however, a dark-robed stick-figure of a man tottered unsteadily out of the dark. A Thaumaturg mage. One pale hand groped the air blindly before him while the other clutched at the wall. As the theurgist stepped further into the torchlight Jatal grunted his shock upon seeing that the man’s eyes gaped as empty pits while his face was smeared in gore, as if the orbs had melted, to dribble like melted wax down his cheeks. Burst sores at his neck oozed a clear fluid down his robes.

Swallowing his dread, his visceral revulsion, and the acid pressure from his stomach, Jatal managed to speak. ‘What has happened here?’

The blind Thaumaturg cocked his head. A smile that might have been contemptuous, or one of self-mockery, climbed his lips. ‘It has been said,’ he began, ‘that flesh is stronger than iron. Yet this is not so. For are we not all heir to the countless failings of the flesh? Are we not in life only one step from its corruption and decay?’

Snarled loathing from Andanii announced the bow’s thrumming and the figure jerked back a step.

Yet he remained standing. From a mere few paces the arrow had passed completely through him.

The smile broadened and blackened blood welled up through his lips as the man spoke again: ‘Tell me, children … what would you sacrifice to live for ever?’

Bellowing his rage and horror the captain leaped forward, sword swinging, and the Thaumaturg’s head flew from his shoulders. The body slumped to the floor. The captain turned to them, his chest heaving, his eyes white all around. ‘By the ancestors, what is happening here?’

‘I think I may know,’ Jatal answered. He gestured to the opening. ‘We should go that way.’

The guards scrounged lamps from the classroom, or theatre, or whatever the chamber was, and lit them.

Andanii readied another arrow. ‘I will lead. Jatal — will you accompany me?’

‘Of course.’

Two guards held lamps close as he and Andanii edged their way down the damp chill tunnel. ‘So what is it you think?’ she whispered. ‘I am not so dense as to imagine this has anything to do with our mercenaries.’

‘You are right,’ he answered, low. ‘I am beginning to suspect we did not come alone, my princess.’

She frowned at this, uncertain of his meaning. But he remembered the bare footprints. He knew a group who spurned all such trappings of so-called civilization: sandals to protect their feet, clothing to warm themselves, even fires to cook their food. And add to this all the talk of flesh and corruption.

He wondered now which of the two he dreaded the more: the Thaumaturg magi, or these mad Shaduwam priests of Agon.

They next entered a nest of smaller chambers with numerous side tunnels and portals. The stench of decomposition was so thick here that Jatal felt as if he had to blink it away. Everyone breathed now in short quick gasps, barely allowing the fetid air to pass their lips.

The crash of iron on stone and a scream brought Jatal about. Their rearguard had been cut down by a yakshaka that must have stepped out from a side portal. In the narrow tunnel only the next guard in line could reach the giant and he chopped frantically, chipping the bright reflective stones from the creature’s chest. But the two-handed yataghan the monster wielded next appeared in an eruption of blood from the leather armour of the man’s back. The corpse slid backwards off the broad wet blade.

The captain was next and he adjusted his stance, sword ready in both hands.

Andanii’s great bow creaked like a bending tree trunk just next to Jatal’s ear. ‘Down!’ he bellowed.

The captain ducked just as the yakshaka reared up for a two-handed descending cut and Jatal marvelled once more, for the blade came to within a finger’s breadth of the tall corbelled arch of the tunnel and he realized that this entire complex had been designed precisely to accommodate these guardians.

The bow released in a punishing snap.

The creature’s helm shattered in a flurry of shards as the arrow took it through the vision slit to burst out the rear of its skull. The giant tottered stiffly backwards, rocked like an unbalanced obelisk, and fell in a crash of stone.

Jatal, the captain, and the two remaining guards all turned their wondering gazes upon Andanii. The captain bowed, sheathing his sword. ‘Magnificent, my princess.’

She inclined her chin a fraction, pleased, then drew another yardlong arrow from the bag at her side.

As they renewed their careful advance, Jatal asked aside, ‘How did you know …?’

‘I didn’t. I just tried it.’

‘I see.’ There, it seemed, lay the profound difference between them. He needed to know before he would act. She, it seemed, required no such assurance and would simply act, unhesitating, decisive. While he admired such supreme confidence, he could not shake the suspicion that it would also lead to disaster.

They entered into the largest chamber yet of the subterranean complex. The flickering lamplight suggested it was a great circle, the distances lost in the gloom. Glassware, tools and instruments glinted from the middle of the broad chamber, while serried about the circumference of the room lay countless stone sarcophagi. The rotting flesh stench seemed to be emanating from these stone beds.

Edging up to one, a guard peered in only to immediately flinch away, gagging, the back of a gloved hand to his mouth. Jatal glanced to Andanii: she was covering the chamber with her bow while her captain guarded her, so he steeled himself to take a look.

The stone-flagged floor was slick and sticky beneath his boots with some sort of tacky dark ooze that had slopped over the sides of many of the sarcophagi. The fetid reek was exactly that of corpses left to decompose after battle.

A hand pressed to his face, Jatal bent to glance in the nearest and though intellectually he had already deduced what awaited there, he could not suppress the atavistic human wrenching of his gut. He stood for a time, frozen. He’d been driven beyond horror, beyond any connection to the pathetic thing that lay within.

‘What is it?’ Andanii called.

Gods, yes, what was it? The stew of a human body amid hardened crusted fluids, flesh fallen away from bones and floating amid the stone plates of armour peeled away … or perhaps unable to adhere? The process interrupted … contaminated … corrupted. The clutching clawed hands of bare tendon and bone. The skull fleshless where the bath had eaten all soft tissue but for a cap of scalp and hair. This poor creature had been alive!

Then beyond Jatal’s comprehension the skull turned towards him and a skeletal hand rose, beseeching.

The next thing Jatal knew he was clenched in the arms of the captain, Andanii facing him, demanding something.

‘Speak, damn you! What was it? What happened?’

Jatal blinked at her. He felt his heart hammering as if he’d fought the duel of his life. A cold sweat chilled him from his brows to his feet. Andanii appeared to see the awareness in his eyes for she nodded over his shoulder and the captain released him. His sword, he noted, lay now amid the muck of the floor.

‘What happened?’ he asked.

The princess shifted uneasily, rubbing an arm, her bow still in her hand. ‘That’s what we want to know.’

‘What did you see?’

She frowned, eyeing him as if uncertain of his sanity. And she would not be so wrong. Merciless gods! It lived! What a terrifying curse.

‘What did you see?’ he asked again, calmer, straightening his hauberk and shirts.

She shrugged. ‘You screamed and stabbed the corpse. And you kept stabbing …’

‘That is — was — no corpse.’

Andanii waved that aside as absurd. ‘Impossible. I saw it. It wasn’t even a body any more — just a tub of …’ She trailed off, unable to find the words.

‘Pus? Haemorrhaging? Diseased secretions?’

She winced, nodding. Now he noted how pale she was, how dark her lips in contrast. Yes. You did see it, didn’t you?

‘We must move on …’ the captain murmured.

Jatal collected his sword and searched about for something to wipe away the foul green and black emissions that smeared it. He found a bit of rag amid the wreckage on the floor. ‘No, Captain. No more need to stumble blindly about all these tunnels, dormitories and classrooms. Not when we are not alone.’

He faced the dark, sheathed his sword. ‘So if you are listening — come out! I know you are there and I know who you are. You’ve followed us all the way, haven’t you? Come to wage war upon your old enemy …’

He felt the heat of Andanii near his side. ‘Jatal,’ she began, gently, as if soothing a skittish horse. ‘Listen to yourself. You must calm down.’ He turned to find her face close, her dark eyes searching his, yet veiled, evaluative.

‘You think me mad?’

She bit at her lip. ‘Please, Jatal. Listen to yourself. There is no one out there.’

Jatal felt his every muscle quivering. His shirting clung to him soaked in his cold sweat. Was he unhinged? Certainly such sights would drive anyone beyond reason. Into delusion. Yet it all made such clear sense! He rubbed his gritty burning eyes. Perhaps he was wrong — he always suspected he was wrong. In everything. Every choice. Wrong. Such a poor leader he was …

‘The darkness is never empty,’ a man called from the writhing shadows beyond the lamplight.

Jatal heard the stamp of feet and shush of drawn blades as the captain and remaining guards readied themselves. Andanii’s bow creaked once more from just behind his ear. Yet he rested his hands on his weapon belt, thumbs tucked in, and cocked his head, waiting, while a figure came gliding silently from the murk.

He was not the one who had come uninvited to accost them during their meeting. But he could have been his brother, or father. Hair a matted nest of filth upon his head. His limbs and torso smeared in dirt, or perhaps the corrupt muck from the sarcophagi, now cracked and flaking. Eyes glared white all around from behind a near-mask of soot or dirt caked on by some fluid, perhaps blood.

One of the shaduwam of Agon.

Jatal sensed Andanii flinching away from the priest’s advance. Soft curses of recognition and dread sounded from the guards.

‘With these acts you have plunged us into irrevocable war, damn you all,’ Jatal ground out.

The man’s gaze seemed to be fixed upon Andanii. He appeared unperturbed. ‘We have been at war for centuries,’ he answered indifferently.

‘With your brothers, the Thaumaturgs.’

The bright orbs of the man’s eyes shifted to Jatal and his teeth gleamed bright as he smiled. For a moment Jatal thought the man was about to bite him. ‘Best not to reveal all one knows, or suspects, my prince. But you are correct. There is no antipathy so ferocious as between those closest in their philosophies or tenets, yes? The narrower the disagreement of dogma, the wider the ocean of blood spilled. So it has always been.’ He shrugged his lean bare shoulders. ‘It would be different if we were far more alien to one another in our beliefs. Then there would be only mutual contempt, or disinterest.’

Andanii stepped up to Jatal’s side. She now carried her bow hugged to her chest. ‘You are all lunatics. The Thaumaturgs will fall upon us with all their might.’

The man smiled even more broadly. ‘Then we must strike first — expunge them.’

Jatal wanted to strike that smug knowing smirk from the man’s face, but he was right. And such no doubt had been their intent. To instigate war. And they had succeeded. All talk was vain now. He pressed the back of a gloved hand to his slick hot forehead, and sighed his utter, sickened exhaustion. ‘Take us to the Warleader.’

The shaduwam bowed mockingly. ‘At once, O my prince.’

*

‘When I arrived I found just the same slaughter you describe,’ the Warleader explained. They stood in one of the squat towers that studded the Thaumaturgs’ compound. His armoured back to Jatal, the Warleader overlooked the boxy sprawl of the city where, in the golden early morning light, plumes of black smoke rose here and there — the inevitable byproduct of any sacking. Jatal and Andanii remained close to the slit of a stairway that their priest guide had shown them, as if unwilling to approach the man.

The Warleader glanced over his shoulder. ‘We were separated almost immediately from your column.’ He offered a slight shrug. ‘My troops are not such great riders as yours.’

‘So you knew nothing of their plans?’ Andanii demanded. ‘These Agons did not contact you?’

The foreigner glanced back once more, his gaze flat and dead — lizard eyes, Jatal decided. The man had an unnervingly alien gaze. Like that of the grey opalescent eeriness of the great river crocodiles that were occasionally found on the borders of their lands.

‘No,’ the man answered in his ashes-dry voice. Turning, he faced them. He rested his hands on his worn belt where his thick yellowed nails grated against the metal rings of his mail coat. His mouth behind his grizzled iron wire beard turned down. For a moment Jatal felt as if he faced some hoary stern elder god out of legend. ‘Now we must consider the future,’ he said. ‘You can be certain that through their arts the Thaumaturgs are aware of this massacre. They will not let it go unanswered …’

Andanii thrust out her chin and cut a hand through the air. ‘We must press our advantage!’

The Warleader nodded. ‘Indeed.’

Jatal swung his stunned gaze between the two. ‘What? Are you fools? Press onward? No — we must return home. Warn all the clans. Prepare our defences.’

Andanii turned upon him, grasping his shoulder. ‘Do you not see, Jatal? We have the advantage! We must strike again — and quickly.’

The Warleader nodded his agreement. ‘Exactly, my prince. Like it or not, war has been declared. For the moment initiative and momentum are ours. We must not let them slip from our fingers.’

Jatal felt cornered and outflanked. As if he faced an opponent who’d anticipated all his options and had systematically eliminated them. Yet — what could they hope to achieve? The path the Warleader appeared to be offering was merely the same old beaten road so depressingly familiar from all the histories. Escalation answering escalation until the only remaining option is annihilation. It was so pathetic and short-sighted. Couldn’t these two see the repeated insanity of it?

‘And what do you suggest?’ he asked, openly scornful.

‘Anditi Pura. If we can crush them there then we will break their grip on the country.’

‘Their capital? At the centre of their lands? A few thousand riders against all the might of their nation?’ Jatal shook his head. ‘You counsel suicide.’

‘Not at all,’ Andanii interjected, affronted, as if he’d insulted her. ‘It will take them time to muster their forces. If we do not delay we will have a chance.’

The Warleader raised a hand to silence her. ‘And — if I may — these Agon priests have questioned captives and what they have discovered may change your mind, my prince.’

‘If they are not lying.’

For an instant anger sparked in the man’s dead reptilian eyes, only to be quickly hidden. He spoke through clenched teeth. ‘Of course all intelligence must be verified. However, if it is confirmed then it is good news for us. Apparently the Thaumaturgs are already at war and this is the reason why they are so thin upon the ground. They have already marched east against Ardata.’

‘The gods are with us!’ Andanii enthused. Her eyes glowed with an ambition that Jatal now knew to be a perhaps insatiable hunger with her. ‘All the more reason not to delay.’

‘Indeed … Princess.’

‘What of the council?’ Jatal asked.

‘The two of you can continue to herd them along, I am sure.’ And the Warleader allowed them his abbreviated bow. ‘If you will permit — I will see to securing the compound.’

Andanii waved him off. ‘Of course. Begin planning contingencies for a march on the capital. We will gather the council.’

‘Very good.’ And the foreigner swept out. The ragged length of his mail coat scraped along the stone flagging as he went and his ropy iron-grey hair brushed his armoured shoulders. A gnarled age-spotted hand rested on the pommel of his bastard sword.

Andanii waited until the man was gone then turned to Jatal, who raised a hand to forestall her. ‘I know what you will say and I say it is madness. We could not succeed.’

‘And why not?’ She waved contemptuously to the maze of flat roofs beyond the compound walls. ‘You have seen them. These sheep care not who holds the rod. Us or the Thaumaturgs. It is all the same to them.’

‘And what of the Agons and their outrages? Already word is spreading, no doubt.’

She shrugged her indifference. ‘We make little of it. A feud between priesthoods, nothing more.’

‘You do not think we will be next once they have finished with the magi?’

Andanii closed the distance between them. Her dark eyes peered up into his, avid and consuming. ‘No, I do not believe we will be. They are fanatics. Once they have hunted down the Thaumaturgs they will retreat once more to their hermit caves, their boneyards, their desert dunes. They care nothing for rulership.’ Her gaze searched his, narrowing. ‘What then troubles you?’

What could he answer? Mere wisps of hints and impressions. An eerie familiarity about this Warleader. That odd worshipful glance from the Agon priest to the man. And just now his casual warning that he was aware of the alliance between the two of them.

And how did he get to the compound before us?

And — oh, my dear — what happened to my two men down in the tunnels?

He mutely shook his head, half turning away. ‘I … I cannot say for certain. Fear, I suppose. Fear for our chances.’

She grasped hold of his arm. Her hands were hot, even through his armour. ‘I understand. Nothing is certain. But if we stand together I know of nothing that can oppose us.’

Yes. If we stand together.

He offered her a smile and though he knew it to be a poor effort, she raised herself to press her lips to his. She whispered huskily. ‘Tonight, my prince. While the Adwami celebrate their victory, look for your humble serving girl — come to offer whatever your heart may desire.’

And though he hated himself for it he felt his own hunger rising and he answered the kiss. Am I the fool? I may be. Yet even this does not stop me. He realized that nothing would stop him. The possession of her body meant that much to him. Ancestors forgive me. I risk everything for the perfume that is her sweat. The honey that is her wetness. The music that is her pleasure.

I am damned.