Dust of Dreams

Chapter Fifteen

He saw a different past. One that rolled out after choices not made. He saw the familiar trapped inside strangeness. Huddling round fires as winds howled and new things moved in the darkness beyond. The failure of opportunities haunted him and his kind. A dogged rival slipped serpent-like into the mossy cathedrals of needled forests, sliding along shadow streams, and life became a time of picking through long-dead kills, frowning at broken tools of stone different from anything ever seen before. This-all of this-he realized, was the slow failure that, in his own past, had been evaded.

By the Ritual of Tellann. The sealing of living souls inside lifeless bone and flesh, the trapping of sparks inside withered eyes.

Here, in this other past, in that other place, there had been no ritual. And the ice that was in his own realm the plaything of the Jaghut here lifted barriers unbidden. Everywhere the world shrank. Of course, such challenges had been faced before. People suffered, many died, but they struggled through and they survived. This time, however, it was different.

This time, there were strangers.

He did not know why he was being shown this. Some absurdly detailed false history to torment him? Too elaborate, too strained in its conceptualization. He had real wounds that could be torn open. Yes, the vision mocked him, but on a scale broader than that of his own personal failures. He was being shown the inherent weakness of his own kind-he was feeling the feelings of those last survivors in that other, bitter world, the muddy knowledge of things coming to an end. The end of families, the end of friends, the end of children. Nothing to follow.

The end, in fact, of the one thing never before questioned. Continuation. We tell ourselves that each of us must pass, but that our kind will live on. This is the deeply buried taproot feeding our very will to live. Cut that root, and living fades. Bleeding dry and colourless, it fades.

He was invited to weep one last time. To weep not for himself, but for his species.

When fell the last salty tear of the Imass? Did the soil that received it taste its difference from all those that came before? Was it bitterer? Was it sweeter? Did it sting the ground like acid?

He could see that tear, its deathly drop dragged into infinity, a journey too slow to measure. But he knew that what he was seeing was a conceit. The last to die had been dry-eyed-Onos Toolan had witnessed the moment here in this false past-the wretched brave lying bound and bleeding and awaiting the flint-toothed ivory blade in a stranger’s hand. They too were hungry, desperate, those strangers. And they would kill the Imass, the last of his kind, and they would eat him. Leave his cracked and cut bones scattered on the floor of this cave, with all the others, and then, in sudden superstitious terror, the strangers would flee this place, leaving nothing behind of themselves, lest wronged ghosts find them on the paths of haunting.

In that other world, the end of Tool’s kind came at the cut of a knife.

Someone was howling, flesh stretched to bursting by a surge of rage.

The children of the Imass, who were not children at all, but inheritors nevertheless, had flooded the world with the taste of Imass blood on their tongues. Just one more quarry hunted into oblivion, with nothing more than a vague unease lodged deep inside, the mark of sin, the horror of a first crime.

The son devours the father, heart of a thousand myths, a thousand half-forgotten tales.

Empathy was excoriated from him. The howl he heard was rising from his own throat. The rage battered like fists inside his body, a demonic thing eager to get out.

They will pay-

But no. Onos Toolan staggered onward, hide-bound feet crunching on frozen moss and lichen. He would walk out of this damning, vicious fate. Back to his own world’s paradise beyond death, where rituals delivered curse and salvation both. He would not turn. He was blind as a beast driven to the cliff’s edge, but it did not matter; what awaited him was a death better than this death-

He saw a rider ahead, a figure hunched and cowled as it waited astride a gaunt, grey horse from which no breath plumed. He saw a recurved Rhivi bow gripped in one bony hand, and Onos Toolan realized that he knew this rider.

This inheritor.

Tool halted twenty paces away. ‘You cannot be here.’

The head tilted slightly and the glitter of a single eye broke the blackness beneath the cowl. ‘Nor you, old friend, yet here we are.’

‘Move aside, Toc the Younger. Let me pass. What waits beyond is what I have earned. What I will return to-it is mine. I will see the herds again, the great ay and the ranag, the okral and agkor. I will see my kin and run in the shadow of the tusked tenag. I will throw a laughing child upon my knee. I will show the children their future, and tell them how all that we are shall continue, unending, for here I will find an eternity of wishes, for ever fulfilled.

‘Toc, my friend, do not take this from me. Do not take this, too, when you and your kind have taken everything else.’

‘I cannot let you pass, Tool.’

Tool’s scarred, battered hands closed into fists. ‘For the love between us, Toc the Younger, do not do this.’

An arrow appeared in Toc’s other hand, biting the bowstring and, faster than Tool could register, the barbed missile flashed out and stabbed the ground at his feet.

‘I am dead,’ said Tool. ‘You cannot hurt me.’

‘We’re both dead,’ Toc replied, his voice cold as a stranger’s. ‘I will take your legs out from under you and the wounds will be real-I will leave you bleeding, crippled, in terrible pain. You will not pass.’

Tool took a step forward. ‘Why?’

‘The rage burns bright within you, doesn’t it?’

‘Abyss take it-I am done with fighting! I am done with all of it!’

‘On my tongue, Onos Toolan, is the taste of Imass blood.’

‘You want me to fight you? I will-do you imagine your puny arrows can take down an Imass? I have snapped the neck of a bull ranag. I have been gored. Mauled by an okral. When my kind hunt, we bring down our quarry with our own hands, and that triumph is purchased in broken bones and pain.’

A second arrow thudded into the ground.

‘Toc-why are you doing this?’

‘You must not pass.’

‘I–I gifted you with an Imass name. Did you not realize the measure of that honour? Did you not know that no other of your kind has ever been given such a thing? I called you friend. When you died, I wept.’

‘I see you now, in flesh, all that once rode the bone.’

‘You have seen this before, Toc the Younger.’

‘I do not-’

‘You did not recognize me. Outside the walls of Black Coral. I found you, but even your face was not your own. We were changed, the both of us. Could I go back…’ He faltered, and then continued, ‘Could I go back, I would not have let you pass me by. I would have made you realize.’

‘It does not matter.’

Something broke inside Onos Toolan. He looked away. ‘No, perhaps it doesn’t.’

‘On the Awl’dan plain, you saw me fall.’

Tool staggered back as if struck a blow. ‘I did not know-’

‘Nor me, Tool. And so truths come round, full circle, with all the elegance of a curse. I did not know you outside Black Coral. You did not know me on the plain. Fates have a way of… of fitting together.’ Toc paused, and then hissed a bitter laugh. ‘And do you recall when we met at the foot of Morn? Look upon us now. I am the withered corpse, and you-’ He seemed to tremble, as if struck an invisible blow, and then recovered. ‘On the plain, Onos Toolan. What did I give my life for? Do you recall?’

The bitterness in Tool’s mouth was unbearable. He wanted to shriek, he wanted to tear out his own eyes. ‘The lives of children.’

‘Can you do the same?’

Deeper than any arrows, Toc struck with his terrible words. ‘You know I cannot,’ Tool said in a rasp.

‘You will not, you mean.’

‘They are not my children!’

‘You have found the rage of the Imass-the rage they escaped, Tool, with the Ritual. You have seen the truth of other pasts. And now you would flee-flee it all. Do you really believe, Onos Toolan, that you will find peace? Peace in self-deception? This world behind me, the one you so seek, you will infect with the lies you tell yourself. Every child’s laugh will sound hollow, and the look in every beast’s eye will tell you they see you truly.’

The third arrow struck his left shoulder, spun him round but did not knock him down. Righting himself, Tool reached to grip the shaft. He snapped it and drew out the fletched end. Behind him, the flint point and a hand’s-width of shaft fell to the ground. ‘What-what do you want of me?’

‘You must not pass.’

‘What do you want?’

‘I want nothing, Tool. I want nothing.’ And he nocked another arrow.

‘Then kill me.’

‘We’re dead,’ Toc said. ‘That I cannot do. But I can stop you. Turn round, Onos Toolan. Go back.’

‘To what?’

Toc the Younger hesitated, as if uncertain for the first time in this brutal meeting. ‘We are guilty,’ he said slowly, ‘of so many pasts. Will we ever be made to answer for any of them? I wait, you see, for the fates to fit together. I wait for the poisonous beauty.’

‘You want me to forgive you-your kind, Toc the Younger?’

‘Once, in the city of Mott, I wandered into a market and found myself in front of row upon row of squall apes, the swamp dwellers. I looked into their eyes, Tool, and I saw their suffering, their longing, their terrible crime of living. And for all that, I knew that they were simply not intelligent enough. To refuse forgiveness. You Imass, you are. So. Do not forgive us. Never forgive us!’

‘Am I to be the weapon of your self-hatred?’

‘I wish I knew.’

In those four words, Tool heard his friend, a man trapped, struggling to recall himself.

Toc resumed. ‘After the Ritual, well, you chose the wrong enemy for your endless war of vengeance. It would have been more just, don’t you think, to proclaim a war against us humans. Perhaps, one day, Silverfox will come to realize that, and choose for her undead armies a new enemy.’ He then shrugged. ‘If I believed in justice, that is… if I imagined that she was capable of seeing clearly enough. That you and you alone, T’lan Imass, are in the position to take on the necessary act of retribution-for those squall apes, for all the so-called lesser creatures that have fallen and ever fall to our slick desires.’

He speaks the words of the dead. His heart is cold. His single eye sees and does not shy away. He is… tormented. ‘Is this what you expected,’ Tool asked, ‘when you died? What of Hood’s Gate?’

Teeth gleamed. ‘Locked.’

‘How can that be?’

The next arrow split his right knee-cap. Bellowing in agony, Tool collapsed. He writhed, fire tearing up his leg. Pain… in so many layers, folding round and round-the wound, the murder of a friendship, the death of love, history skirling up in a plume of ashes.

Horse hoofs slowly thumped closer.

Blinking tears from his eyes, Tool stared up at the ravaged, half-rotted face of his old friend.

‘Onos Toolan, I am the lock.’

The pain was overwhelming. He could not speak. Sweat stung his eyes, more bitter than any tears. My friend. The one thing left in me-it is slain. You have murdered it.

‘Go back,’ said Toc in a tone of immeasurable weariness.

‘I–I cannot walk-’

‘That will ease, once you turn around. Once you retrace your route, the farther you get away… from me.’

With blood-smeared hands, Tool prised loose the arrow jutting from his knee. He almost passed out in the wave of agony that followed, and lay gasping.

‘Find your children, Onos Toolan. Not of the blood. Of the spirit.’

There are none, you bastard. As you said, you and your kind killed them all. Weeping, he struggled to stand, twisting as he turned to face the way he had come. Rock-studded, rolling hills, a grey lowering sky. You’ve taken it all-

‘And we’re far from finished,’ said Toc behind him.

I now cast away love. I embrace hate.

Toc said nothing to that.

Dragging his maimed leg, Tool set out.

Toc the Younger, who had once been Anaster First Born of the Dead Seed, who had once been a Malazan soldier, one-eyed and a son to a vanished father, sat on his undead horse and watched the broken warrior limp to the distant range of hills.

When, at long last, Tool edged over a ridge and then disappeared behind it, Toc dropped his gaze. His lone eye roved over the matted stains of blood on the dead grasses, the glistening arrows, one broken, the other not, and those jutting from the half-frozen earth. Arrows fashioned by Tool’s own hands, so long ago on a distant plain.

He suddenly pitched forward, curling up like a gut-stabbed child. A moment later a wretched sob broke loose. His body trembled, bones creaking in dried sockets, as he wept, tearless, leaking nothing but the sounds pushing past his withered throat.

A voice broke through from a few paces away, ‘Compelling you to such things, Herald, leaves me no pleasure.’

Collecting himself with a groan, Toc the Younger straightened in the saddle and fixed his eye upon the ancient bonecaster standing now in the place where Tool had been. He bared dull, dry teeth. ‘Your hand was colder than Hood’s own, witch. Do you imagine Hood is pleased at you stealing his Herald? At your using him as you will? This will not go unanswered-’

‘I have no reason to fear Hood-’

‘But you have reason to fear me, Olar Ethil!’

‘And how will you find me, Dead Rider? I stand here, yet not here. No, in the living world I am huddled beneath furs, sleeping under bright stars-’

‘You have no need of sleep.’

She laughed. ‘Guarded well by a young warrior-one you knew well, yes? One you chase at night, there behind his eyes-and yes, when I saw the truth of that, why, he proved my path to you. And you spoke to me, begging for his life, which I accepted into my care. It has all led… to this.’

‘And here,’ Toc muttered, ‘I’d given up believing in evil. How many others do you plan to abuse?’

‘As many as I need, Herald.’

‘I will find you. When my other tasks are finally done, I swear, I will find you.’

‘To achieve what? Onos Toolan is severed from you. And, more importantly, from your kind.’ She paused, and then added with a half-snarl, ‘I don’t know what you meant by that rubbish you managed to force out, about Tool finding his children. I need him for other things.’

‘I was fighting free of you, bonecaster. He saw-he heard-’

‘And failed to understand. Onos Toolan hates you now-think on that, think on the deepness of his love, and know that for an Imass hatred runs deeper still. Ask the Jaghut! It is done, and can never be mended. Ride away from this, Herald. I now release you.’

‘I look forward,’ said Toc, gathering the reins, ‘to the next time we meet, Olar Ethil.’

Torrent’s eyes snapped open. Stars in blurred, jade-tinged smears spun overhead. He drew a deep but ragged breath, shivered beneath his furs.

Olar Ethil’s crackling voice cut through the darkness. ‘Did he catch you?’

He was in no hurry to reply to that. Not this time. He could still smell the dry, musty aura of death, could still hear the drumbeat of hoofs.

The witch continued, ‘Less than half the night is done. Sleep. I will keep him from you now.’

He sat up. ‘Why would you do that, Olar Ethil? Besides,’ he added, ‘my dreams belong to me, not you.’

Rasping laughter drifted across to him. ‘Do you see his lone eye? How it glitters in darkness like a star? Do you hear the howl of wolves echoing out from the empty pit of the one he lost? What do the beasts want with him? Perhaps he will tell you, when at last he rides you down.’

Torrent bit down one reply, chose another: ‘I escape. I always do.’

She grunted. ‘Good. He is filled with lies. He would use you, as the dead are wont to do to mortals.’

In the night Torrent bared his teeth. ‘Like you?’

‘Like me, yes. There is no reason to deny it. But listen well, I must leave your side for a time. Continue southward on your journey. I have awakened ancient springs-your horse will find them. I will return to you.’

‘What is it you want, Olar Ethil? I am nothing. My people are gone. I wander without purpose, caring not if I live or die. And I will not serve you-nothing you can say can compel me.’

‘Do you believe me a Tyrant? I am not. I am a bonecaster-do you know what that is?’

‘No. A witch.’

‘Yes, that will do, for a start. Tell me, do you know what a Soletaken is? A D’ivers?’

‘No.’

‘What do you know of Elder Gods?’

‘Nothing.’

He heard something like a snarl, and then she said, ‘How can your kind live, so steeped in ignorance? What is history to you, warrior of the Awl’dan? A host of lies to win you glory. Why do you so fear the truth of things? The darker moments of your past-you, your tribe, all of humanity? There were thousands of my people who did not join the Ritual of Tellann-what happened to them? Why, you did. No matter where they hid, you found them. Oh, on rare occasions there was breeding, a fell admixture of blood, but most of the time such meetings ended in slaughter. You saw in our faces the strange and the familiar-which of the two frightened you the most? When you cut us down, when you carved the meat from our bones?’

‘You speak nonsense,’ Torrent said. ‘You tell me you are Imass, as if I should know what that means. I do not. Nor do I care. Peoples die. They vanish from the world. It is as it was and ever will be.’

‘You are a fool. From my ancient blood ran every stream of Soletaken and D’ivers. And my blood, ah, it was but half Imass, perhaps even less. I am old beyond your imagining, warrior. Older than this world. I lived in darkness, I walked in purest light, I cast curses upon shadow. My hands were chipped stone, my eyes spawned the first fires to huddle round, my legs spread to the first mortal child. I am known by so many names even I have forgotten most of them.’

She rose, her squat frame dangling rotted furs, her hair lifting like an aura of madness to surround her withered face, and advanced to stand over him.

A sudden chill gripped Torrent. He could not move. He struggled to breathe.

She spoke. ‘Parts of me sleep, tormented by sickness. Others rail in the fury of summer storms. I am the drinker of birth waters. And blood. And the rain of weeping and the oil of ordeal. I did not lie, mortal, when I told you that the spirits you worship are my children. I am the bringer of a land’s bounty. I am the cruel thief of want, the sower of suffering.

‘So many names… Eran’ishal, Mother to the Eres’al-my first and most sentimental of choices.’ She seemed to flinch. ‘Rath Evain to the Forkrul Assail. Stone Bitch to the Jaghut. I have had a face in darkness, a son in shadow, a bastard in light. I have been named the Mother Beneath the Mountain, Ayala Alalle who tends the Gardens of the Moon, for ever awaiting her lover. I am Burn the Sleeping Goddess, in whose dreams life flowers unending, even as those dreams twist into nightmares. I am scattered to the very edge of the Abyss, possessor of more faces than any other Elder.’ She snapped out a withered, bony hand, the nails long and splintered, and slowly curled her fingers. ‘And he thinks to hunt me down!’ Her head tilted back to the sky. ‘Chain down your servants, Hood!’ She fixed him once more with her eyes. ‘Tell me, mortal! Did he catch you?’

Torrent stared up at her. An old hag crackling with venom and rage. Her dead breath reeked of serpents among the rocks. The onyx knuckles of her eyes glistened with the mockery of life. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘you were once all those things, Olar Ethil. But not any more. It’s all torn away from you, isn’t it? Scattered and lost, when you gave up life-when you chose to become this thing of bones-’

That hand lunged down, closed about his neck. He was lifted from the ground as if he weighed less than an orthen, flung away. Slamming hard down on one shoulder, breath whooshing from his lungs, half-blinded and unable to move.

She appeared above him, rotted teeth glittering like stumps of smoky quartz. ‘I am promised! The Stone Bitch shall awaken once more, in plague winds and devouring locusts, in wildfires and drowning dust and sand! And you will fall upon each other, rending flesh with teeth and nails! You will choose evil in fullest knowledge of what you do-I am coming, mortal, the earth awakened to judgement! And you shall kneel, pleading, begging-your kind, human, shall make pathos your epitaph, for I will give you nothing, yield not a single instant of mercy!’ She was gasping now, a pointless bellows of unwarmed breath. She trembled in terrible rage. ‘Did he speak to you?’

Torrent sat up. ‘No,’ he said through gritted teeth. He reached up to the swollen bruises on his throat.

‘Good.’ And Olar Ethil turned away. ‘Sleep, then. You will awaken alone. But do not think you are rid of me, do not think that.’ A pause, and then, ‘He is filled with lies. Beware him.’

Torrent hunched forward, staring at the dew-speckled ground between his crooked legs. He closed his eyes. I will do as you ask. When the time comes, I will do as you ask.

She awoke to the howling of wolves. Setoc slowly sat up, ran a hand through the tangles of her matted hair, and then drew her bedroll closer about her body. False dawn was ebbing, almost drowned out by the glare of the jade slashes. As the echoes of those howls faded, Setoc cocked her head-had something else stirred her awake? She could not be certain. The stillness of night embraced them-she glanced across to the motionless form of Cafal. She’d run him into exhaustion. Each night since they’d begun this journey he’d fallen into deep sleep as soon as their paltry evening meal was done.

As her eyes adjusted, she could make out his face. It had grown gaunt, aged by deprivation. She knew he’d not yet reached his thirtieth year of life, but he seemed decades older. He lay like a dead man, yet she sensed from him troubled dreams. He was desperate to return to his tribe.

‘Something terrible is about to happen.’ These words had ground out from him again and again, a litany of dread, a chant riding out his tortured breaths as he ran.

She caught a scent, a sudden mustiness in the cool, dry air. Visions of strange fecundity fluttered across her eyes, as if the present was peeling away, revealing this landscape in ancient times.

An oasis, a natural garden rich with colour and life. Iridescent birds sang among palm fronds. Monkeys scampered, mouths stained with succulent fruit. A tiny world, but a complete one, seemingly changeless, untouched by her kind.

When she saw the grey cloud drifting closer, inexplicable bleak despair struck her and she gasped aloud. She saw the dust settling like rain, a dull patina coating the leaves, the globes of fruit, the once-clear pool of water. And everything began to die.

In moments there was nothing but blackened rot, dripping down the boles of the palms. The monkeys, covered in oozing sores, their hair falling away, curled up and died. The birds sought to flee but ended up on the grey ground, flapping and twitching, then falling still.

The oasis dried up. The winds blew away what was left and sands closed about the spring until it too vanished.

Setoc wept.

What had done this? Some natural force? Did some mountain erupt to fill the sky with poison ash? Or was it a god’s bitter breath? Had some wretched city burned, spewing acidic alchemies into the air? Was this desecration an accident, or was it deliberate? She had no answer to such questions; she had only their cruel yield of grief.

Until a suspicion lifted from beneath her sorrow, grisly and ghastly. It… it was a weapon. But who wages war upon all living things? Upon the very earth itself? What could possibly be won? Was it just… stupidity? Setoc shook herself. She did not like such thoughts.

But this anger I feel, does it belong to the wolves? To the beasts on their forgotten thrones? No, not just them. It is the rage of every unintended victim. It is the fury of the innocents. The god whose face is not human, but life itself.

She is coming…

Setoc caught a host of vague shapes in the darkness now, circling, edging closer. Curious in the manner of all wolves, yet cautious. Old memories left scars upon their souls, and they knew what the presence of these two-legged intruders meant for them, for their kind.

They could smell her tears. Their child was in pain, and so the wolves spun their spiral ever tighter. Bringing their heat, the solid truth of their existence-and they would bare fangs to any and every threat. They would, if needed, die in her stead.

And she knew she deserved none of this.

How did you find me? After this long? I see you, grey-nosed mother-was I the last one to suckle from your teats? Did I drink in all your strength until you were left with aching bones, failing muscles? I see the clouds in your eyes, but they cannot hide your love-and it is that love that breaks my heart.

Still, she held out her hand.

Moments later she felt that broad head rise beneath it.

The warm, familiar smells of old assailed her, stinging her eyes. ‘You must not stay,’ she whispered. ‘Where I go… you will be hunted down. Killed. Listen to me. Find the last of the wild places-hide there for ever more. Be free, my sweet ones…’

She heard Cafal awaken, heard his muffled grunt of shock. Seven wolves crowded their small camp, shy as uninvited children.

Her mother moved up closer, fur sliding the length of Setoc’s arm. ‘You must go,’ she whispered to the beast. ‘Please.’

‘Setoc,’ said Cafal. ‘They bring magic.’

‘What?’

‘Can’t you feel the power-so harsh, so untamed-but I think, yes, I can use it. A warren, close enough the barrier feels thin as a leaf. Listen, if we run within it, I think-’

‘I know,’ she said in a croak, leaning her weight against the she-wolf, so solid, so real, so sure. ‘I know, Cafal, the gift they bring.’

‘Perhaps,’ he said in growing excitement as he tugged aside his blankets, ‘we can get there in time. We can save-’

‘Cafal, none of this is for you. Don’t you understand anything? It’s not for you!’

He met her glare unblinking-the dawn was finally paling the sky-and then nodded. ‘Where will they lead you, then? Do you know?’

She turned away from his despair. ‘Oh, Cafal, you really are a fool. Of course we’re returning to your tribe’s camp. No other path is possible, not any more.’

‘I–I don’t understand.’

‘I know. Never mind. It’s time to leave.’

Destriant Kalyth scanned the south horizon, the blasted, unrelieved emptiness revealed in the toneless light of the rising sun. ‘Where then,’ she muttered, ‘are my hands of fire?’ She turned to her two exhausted companions. ‘You understand, don’t you? I cannot do this alone. To lead your kind, I need my own kind. I need to look into eyes little different from my own. I need to see their aches come the dawn, the sleep still in their faces-spirits fend, I need to see them cough the night loose and then piss a steaming river!’

The K’Chain Che’Malle regarded her with their reptilian eyes, unblinking, unhuman.

Kalyth’s beseeching frustration trickled away, and she fixed her attention on Sag’Churok, wondering what he had seen-those fourteen undead Jaghut, the battle that, it was now clear, completely eradicated their pursuers. This time, anyway. Was there something different in the K’ell Hunter? Something that might be… unease?

‘You wanted a Destriant,’ she snapped. ‘If you thought that meant a doe-eyed rodara, it must finally be clear just how wrong you were. What I am given, I intend to use-do you understand?’ Still, for all the bravado, she wished she had the power to bind those Jaghut to her will. She wished they were with them right now. Still not human, but, well, closer. Yes, getting closer. She snorted and turned back to study the south.

‘No point in waiting round here, is there? We continue on.’

‘Destriant,’ Sag’Churok whispered in her mind, ‘we are running out of time. Our enemy draws ever closer-no, not hunting the three of us. They hunt the Rooted, our final refuge in this world.’

‘We’re all the last of our kind,’ she said, ‘and you must have realized by now, in this world and in every other, there is no such thing as refuge.’ The world finds you. The world hunts you down.

Time, once more, to ride Gunth Mach as if she were nothing more than a beast, Sag’Churok lumbering at their side, massive iron blades catching glares from the sun in blinding spasms. To watch small creatures start from the knotted grasses and bound away in panic. Plunging through clouds of midges driven apart by the prows of reptilian heads and broad heaving chests.

To feel the wind’s touch as if it was a stranger’s caress, startling in its unwelcome familiarity, reminding her again and again that she still lived, that she was part of the world’s meat, forever fighting the decay dogging its trail. None of it seemed real, as if she was simply waiting for reality to catch up to her. Each day delivered the same message, and each day she met it with the same bemused confusion and diffident wariness.

These K’Chain Che’Malle felt none of that, she believed. They did not think as she did. Everything was a taste, a smell-thoughts and feelings, the sun’s very light, all flowing in a swarm of currents. Existence was an ocean. One could skate upon the surface, clinging to the shallows, or one could plunge into the depths, until the skull creaked with the pressure. She knew they saw her and her kind as timid, frightened by the mystery of unplumbed depths. Creatures floundering in fears, terrified of drowning knee-deep in truths.

But your Matron wants you to slide into the shallows, to find my world of vulnerabilities-to find out what we do to defeat them. You seek new strategies for living, you seek our secret of success. But you don’t understand, do you? Our secret is annihilation. We annihilate everyone else until none are left, and then we annihilate each other. Until we too are gone.

Such a wondrous secret. Well, she would give it to them, if she could. Her grand lessons of survival, and only she would hear the clamouring howl of the ghosts storming her soul.

Riding Gunth Mach’s back, Kalyth’s hands itched. Destinies were drawing close. I will find my hands of fire, and we will use you, Sag’Churok. You and Gunth Mach and all your kind. We will show you the horrors of the modern world you so want to be a part of.

She thought of their dread enemy, the faceless killers of the K’Chain Che’Malle. She wondered at this genocidal war, and suspected it was, in its essence, no different from the war humans had been engaged in for all time. It is the same, but it is also different. It is… naive.

With what was coming, with what she would bring… Kalyth felt a deep, sickening stab.

Of pity.

In an unbroken line from each mother to every daughter, memory survived, perpetuating a continuous history of experience. Gunth Mach held in her mind generations of lives trapped in a succession of settings that portrayed the inexorable collapse, the decay, the failure of their civilization. This was unbearable. Knowledge was an unceasing scream in her soul.

Every Matron was eventually driven insane: no daughter, upon ascension to the role, could long withstand the deluge. Male K’Chain Che’Malle had no comprehension of this; their lives were perfectly contained, the flavours of their selves truncated and unsubtle. Their unswerving loyalty was sustained in ignorance.

She had sought to break this pattern, with Sag’Churok, and in so doing was betraying the inviolate isolation of the Matrons. But she did not care. All that had gone before had not worked.

She remembered half a continent pounded level and then made smooth as a frozen lake, on which cities sprawled in a scale distorted even to K’Chain Che’Malle eyes, as if grandeur and madness were one and the same. Domes large enough to swallow islands, curling towers and spires like the spikes riding the backs of dhenrabi. Buildings with single rooms so huge that clouds formed beneath the ceiling, and birds dwelt there in their thousands, oblivious to the cage that held them. She remembered entire mountain ranges preserved as if they were works of art, at least until their value as quarries for sky keeps was realized, in the times of the civil wars-when those mountains were carved down to stumps. She remembered looking upon her kind in league-wide columns twenty leagues long as they set out to found new colonies. She stood, creaking beneath her own weight, and watched as fifty legions of Ve’Gath Soldiers-each one five thousand strong-marched to wage war against the Tartheno Tel Akai. And she was there when they returned, decimated, leaving a trail of their own dead that stretched across the entire continent.

She recalled the birth pains of the Nah’ruk, and then the searing agony of their betrayal. Burning cities and corpses three-deep on vast fields of battle. Chaos and terror within the nests, the shriek of desperate births. And the sly mockery of the waves on the shores as a dying Matron loosed her eggs into the surf in the mad hope that something new would be made-a hybrid of virtues with all the flaws discarded.

And so much more… fleeing through darkness and blinding smoke… the slash of an Assassin’s talons. Cold, sudden adjudication. Life draining away, the blessed relief that followed. Flavours awakening cruel and bitter in the daughter who followed-for nothing was lost, nothing was ever lost.

There was a goddess of the K’Chain Che’Malle. Immortal, omniscient as such things were supposed to be. The goddess was the Matron, mahybe of the eternal oil. Once, that oil had been of such strength and volume that hundreds of Matrons were needed as holy vessels.

Now there was but one.

She could remember the pride, the power of what had once been. And the futile wars waged to give proof to that pride and that power, until both had been utterly obliterated. Cities gone. The birth of wastelands across half the world.

Gunth Mach knew that Gu’Rull still lived. She knew, too, that the Shi’gal Assassin was her adjudicator. Beyond this quest, there waited the moment of inheritance, when Acyl finally surrendered to death. Was Gunth Mach a worthy successor? The Shi’gal would decide. Even the enemy upon the Rooted, slaughter unleashed in the corridors and chambers, would have no bearing upon matters. She would surge through the panicked crowds, seeking somewhere to hide, with three Assassins stalking her.

The will to live was the sweetest flavour of all.

She carried the Destriant on her back, a woman who weighed virtually nothing, and Gunth Mach could feel the tension in her small muscles, her frail frame of bones. Even an orthen bares its fangs in its last moments of life.

Failure in this quest was unacceptable, but in Gunth Mach’s mind, it was also inevitable.

She would be the last Matron, and with her death so too would die the goddess of the K’Chain Che’Malle. The oil would drain into the dust, and all memory would be lost.

It was just as well.

Spirits of stone, what happened here?

Sceptre Irkullas slowly dismounted, staring aghast at the half-buried battlefield. As if the ground had lifted up to swallow them all, Barghast and Akrynnai both. Crushed bodies, broken limbs, faces scoured away as if blasted by a sandstorm. Others looked bloated, skin split and cracked open, as if the poor soldiers had been cooked from within.

Crows and vultures scampered about in frustrated cacophony, picking clean what wasn’t buried, whilst Akrynnai warriors wandered the buried valley, tugging free the corpses of dead kin.

Irkullas knew his daughter’s body was here, somewhere. The thought clenched in his stomach like a sickly knot leaching poison, weakening his limbs, tightening the breath in his throat. He dreaded the notion of sleep at this day’s end, the stalking return of anguish and despair. He would lie chilled beneath furs, chest aching, rushes of nausea squirming through him, his every breath harsh and strained-close to the clutch of panic.

Something unexpected, something unknown, had come to this petty war. As if the spirits of the earth and rock were convulsing in rage and, perhaps, disgust. Demanding peace. Yes, this is what the spirits have told me, with this here-this… horror. They have had enough of our stupid bloodletting.

We must make peace with the Barghast.

He felt old, exhausted.

A day ago vengeance seemed bright and pure. Retribution was sharp as a freshly honed knife. Four major battles, four successive victories. The Barghast clans were scattered, fleeing. Indeed, only one remained, the southernmost, largest clan, the Senan. Ruled by the one named Onos Toolan. The Akrynnai had three armies converging upon the Warleader and his encampment.

We have wagons creaking beneath Barghast weapons and armour. Chests filled with foreign coins. Heaps of strange furs. Trinkets, jewellery, woven rugs, gourd bowls and clumsy pots of barely tempered clay. We have everything the Barghast possessed. Just the bodies that owned them have been removed. Barring a score of broken prisoners.

We are a travelling museum of a people about to become extinct.

And yet I will plead for peace.

Upon hearing this, his officers would frown behind his back, thinking him an old man with a broken heart, and they would be right to think that. They would accept his commands, but this would be the last time. Once they rode home Sceptre Irkullas would be seen-would be known to all-as a ‘ruler in his grey dusk’. A man with no light of the future in his eyes, a man awaiting death. But it comes to us all. Everything we fear comes to us all.

Gafalk, who had been among the advance party, rode up and reined in near the Sceptre’s own horse. The warrior dismounted and walked to stand in front of Irkullas. ‘Sceptre, we have examined the western ridge of the valley-or what’s left of it. Old Yara,’ he continued, speaking of the Barghast spokesperson among the prisoners, ‘says he once fought outside some place called One-Eye Cat. He says the craters remind him of something called Moranth munitions, but not when those munitions are dropped from the sky as was done by the Moranth. Instead, the craters look like those made when the munitions are used by the Malazans. Buried in the ground, arranged to ignite all at once. Thus lifting the ground itself. Some kind of grenado. He called them cussers-’

‘We know there is a Malazan army in Lether,’ Irkullas said, musing. Then he shook his head. ‘Give me a reason for their being here-joining in a battle not of their making? Killing both Akrynnai and Barghast-’

‘The Barghast were once enemies of these Malazans, Sceptre. So claims Yara.’

‘Yet, have our scouts seen signs of their forces? Do any trails lead from this place? No. Are the Malazans ghosts, Gafalk?’

The warrior spread his hands in helpless dismay. ‘Then what struck here, Sceptre?’

The rage of gods. ‘Sorcery.’

A sudden flicker in Gafalk’s eyes. ‘Letherii-’

‘Who might well be pleased to see the Akrynnai and Barghast destroy each other.’

‘It is said the Malazans left them few mages, Sceptre. And their new Ceda is an old man who is also the Chancellor-not one to lead an army-’

But Irkullas was already shaking his head at his own suggestions. ‘Even a Letherii Ceda cannot hide an entire army. You are right to be sceptical, Gafalk.’

A conversation doomed to circle round and devour its own tail. Irkullas stepped past the warrior and looked upon the obliterated valley once more. ‘Dig out as many of our warriors as you can. At dusk we cease all such efforts-leaving the rest to the earth. We shall drive back the night with the pyre of our dead. And I shall stand vigil.’

‘Yes, Sceptre.’

The warrior returned to his horse.

Vigil, yes, that will do. A night without sleep-he would let the bright flames drive back the sickness in his soul.

It would be best, he decided, if he did not survive to return home. An uncle or cousin could play the bear to his grandchildren-someone else, in any case. Better, indeed, if he was denied the chance of sleep until the very instant of his death.

One final battle-against the Senan camp? Kill them all, and then fall myself. Bleed out in the red mud. And once dead, I can make my peace… with their ghosts. Hardly worth continuing this damned war on the ash plains of death, this stupid thing.

Dear daughter, you will not wander alone for long. I swear it. I will find your ghost, and I will protect you for ever more. As penance for my failure, and as proof of my love.

He glared about, as if in the day’s fading light he might see her floating spirit, a wraith with a dirt-smeared face and disbelieving eyes. No, eyes with the patience of the eternally freed. Freed from all this. Freed… from everything. In a new place. Where no sickness grows inside, where the body does not clench and writhe, flinching at the siren calls of every twinge, every ache.

Spirits of stone, give me peace!

Maral Eb’s army had doubled in size, as survivors from shattered encampments staggered in from all directions-shame-faced at living when wives, husbands and children had died beneath the iron of the treacherous Akrynnai. Many arrived bearing no weapons, shorn of armour, proof that they had been routed, had fled in waves of wide-eyed cowardice. Cold waters were known to wash upon warriors in the midst of battle, even Barghast warriors, and the tug of currents could lift into a raging flood where all reason drowned, where escape was a need that overwhelmed duty and honour. Cold waters left the faces of the survivors grey and bloated, stinking of guilt.

But Maral Eb had been sobered enough by the news of the defeats to cast no righteous judgement upon these refugees with their skittish eyes. Clearly, he understood he would need every warrior he could muster, although Bakal knew as well as anyone how such warriors, once drowned beneath panic, were now broken inside-worse, in the instant when a battle tottered on the fulcrum’s point, their terror could return. They could doom the battle, as their panic flooded out and infected everyone else.

No word had come from the Senan. It seemed that, thus far at least, the Akrynnai had yet to descend upon Bakal’s own clan. Soon, Maral Eb would grasp hold of the Senan army and claim it for himself. And then he would lead them all against the deceitful Sceptre Irkullas.

A thousand curses rode the breaths of the mass of warriors. It was obvious now that the Akryn had been planning this war for some time, trickling in and out their so-called merchants as spies, working towards the perfect moment for betrayal. How else could the Sceptre assemble such forces so quickly? For every refugee insisted that the enemy numbered in the tens of thousands.

Bakal believed none of it. This was the war Onos Toolan did not want. The wrong war. Maral Eb walked flanked by his two brothers, and surrounding these three was a mob of strutting idiots, each one vying to find the perfect words to please their new Warleader and his two hood-eyed, murderous siblings. Arguments sending the arrow of blame winging away. Onos Toolan was no longer alive and so less useful as a target, although some murky residue remained, like handfuls of shit awaiting any rivals among the Senan. Now it was the Akrynnai-Irkullas and his lying, cheating, spying horsemongers.

By the time this army arrived at the Senan camp, they would be blazing with the righteous fury of innocent victims.

‘whatever he needs,’ Strahl had said at the noon break. ‘Falsehoods cease being false when enough people believe them, Bakal. Instead, they blaze like eternal truths, and woe to the fool who tries pissing a stream on that. They’ll tear you to pieces.’

Strahl’s words were sound, ringing clear and true upon the anvil, leaving Bakal’s disgust to chew him on the inside with no way out. That ache warred with the one in his barely mended elbow, making his stride stiff and awkward. But neither one could assail the shame and self-hatred that closed a fist round his soul. Murderer of Onos Toolan. So fierce the thrust that he broke his arm. Look upon him, friends, and see a true White Face Barghast! He had heard as much from Maral Eb’s cronies. While behind him trudged his fellow Senan warriors, nothing like the triumphant slayers of Onos Toolan they pretended to be. Silent, grim as shoulderwomen at a funeral. Because we share this crime. He made us kill him to save our own lives. He made us cowards. He made me a coward.

Bakal felt like an old man, and each time his gaze caught upon those three broad backs arrayed like bonepicker birds at the head of the trail, it was another white-hot stone tossed into the cauldron. Soon to boil, yes, raging until the blackened pot boiled dry. All that useless steam.

What will you do with my people, Maral Eb? When Irkullas shatters us again, where will we run to? He needed to think. He needed to find a way out of this. Could he and his warriors convince the rest of the clan to refuse Maral Eb? Refuse this suicidal war? Teeth grating, Bakal began to understand the burdens under which Onos Toolan had laboured. The impossibility of things.

The real war is against stupidity. How could I not have understood that? Oh, an easy answer to that question. I was among the stupidest of the lot. And yet, Onos Toolan, you stood before me and met my eyes-you gave me what I did not deserve.

And look at me now. When Maral Eb stands before me, I choke at the very sight of him. His flush of triumph, his smirk, the drunken eyes. I am ready to spew into his face-and if I had any food in my guts I would probably do just that, unable to help myself.

Onos Toolan, you should have killed us-every warrior you brought with you. Be done with the stupid ones, be done with us all-instead, you leave us with the perfect legacy of our idiocy. Maral Eb. Precisely the leader we deserve.

And for our misplaced faith, he will kill everyone.

Bakal bared his teeth until the wind dried them like sun-baked stones. He would do nothing. He would defy even Strahl and his companions here. There would be justice after all. An ocean of it to feed the thirsty ground. So long as he did nothing, said nothing.

Lead us, Maral Eb-you are become the standard of Tool’s truth. You are his warning to us, which we refused to heed. So, warrior of the Imass, you shall have your vengeance after all.

Strahl spoke at his side. ‘I have seen such smiles, friend, upon the warrior I am about to slay-the brave ones who face their deaths unflinching. I see… crazed contempt, as if they say to me: “Do what you must. You cannot reach me-my flesh, yes, my life, but not my soul. Drive home your blade, warrior! The final joke is on you!’ ” His laugh was a low snarl. ‘And so it is, because it is a joke I will not get until I am in their place, facing down my own death.’

‘Then,’ said Bakal, ‘you will have to wait.’ But not for long. And when the time comes I too will laugh at this perfect jest.

The place belonged to Stolmen, but it was his wife who walked at the head of the Gadra column. And it was to Sekara the Vile that the scouts reported during the long march to the Senan encampment-which was now less than half a league away.

Her husband’s face was set in a scowl as he trudged three paces behind her. The expression did not belong to offended fury, however. Confusion and fear were the sources of his anger, the befuddled misery of the unintelligent man. Things were moving too fast. Essential details were being kept from him. He did not understand and this made him frightened. He had right to be. Sekara was beginning to realize that his usefulness was coming to an end-oh, there were advantages to ruling through him, should that opportunity arise in the aftermath of the imminent power struggle, but better a husband who actually comprehended his titular function-assuming it was even necessary, since many a past warleader had been a woman. Although, truth be said, such women were invariably warriors, possessing the status of experienced campaigners.

Sekara had fought many battles, of course, in her own style. She had laid sieges, in tents and in yurts. She had drawn blood beneath the furs in the armour of night, had driven knives-figurative and literal-into the hearts of scores of lovers. She had unleashed precision ambushes with utter ruthlessness, and had stared down seemingly insurmountable odds. Her list of triumphs was well nigh unending. But few would countenance any of that. They held to out-of-fashion notions of prowess and glory, and for Sekara this had proved and would ever prove the greatest obstacle to her ascension.

No, for now, she would need a man to prop up in front of her. Not that anyone would be fooled, but so long as propriety was observed, they would abide.

There were challenges ahead. Stolmen was not ready to be the Warleader of the White Faces. Not while in the throes of a vicious war. No, at the moment, the greatest need was to ensure the survival of the Barghast, and that demanded a capable commander. Someone clever in the ways of tactics and whatnot. Someone swollen with ambition, eager to be quickly pushed to the fore, arriving breathless and flush-quickly, yes, so that he’d no opportunity to grow wary, to begin to recognize the flimsy supports beneath him, the clever traps awaiting his first misstep.

Sekara had long pondered prospective candidates. And she had to admit that she was not entirely satisfied with her final choice, but the bones were cast. Alone, in the chill night at that first secret meeting, in the wake of a tumultuous gathering of warchiefs, Maral Eb had seemed perfect. His contempt for Onos Toolan had filled him with hatred that she slyly fed until it became a kind of fevered madness. Nothing difficult there, and his willingness to bind himself to her conspiracy had struck her, at the time, as almost comical. Like a puppy eager to lick whatever she offered.

He had been alone. And perhaps, in that, she had been careless. She had not considered, for even an instant, Maral Eb’s two brothers.

Three were harder to manage than one. Almost impossible, in fact. If they were left to consolidate their domination once the war was over, Sekara knew that her chance would be for ever lost. She knew, indeed, that Maral Eb would see her murdered, to silence all that she knew.

Well, his brothers would just have to die. In battle, to a stray arrow-these things, she had been told, happened all the time. Or some bad food, improperly cured, to strike with swift fever and terrible convulsions, until the heart burst. A lover’s tryst gone awry, some enraged rival. Charges of rape, a trial of shaming and a sentence of castration. Oh, the possibilities were countless.

For the moment, of course, such delights would have to wait. The Akrynnai must be defeated first, or at least driven back-one more battle awaited them, and this time Sceptre Irkullas would be facing the combined might of the Senan, Barahn and Gadra clans.

Two Barahn scouts had found her three days past, carrying with them the stunning news of Onos Toolan’s murder. The Gadra had already been on the march. Sekara had made certain that her people-a small clan, isolated and perilously close to Akryn lands-had not awaited the descent of thousands of enraged Akrynnai horsewarriors. Instead, Stolmen had announced the breaking of camp and this fast-paced retreat to the safety of the Senan, almost as soon as news of the war reached them.

Since then, Gadra scouts had twice sighted distant riders observing them, but nothing more; and as Sekara learned from an alarmingly steady arrival of refugees from other clans, a half-dozen battles had left the Barghast reeling. The sudden coyness of the victorious Akrynnai was disturbing. Unless they too sought one final clash. One that they were content to let the Gadra lead them to at a steady dogtrot.

Stolmen complained that his warriors were weary, barely fit for battle. Their nerves were twisted into taut knots by constant vigilance and a sickening sense of vulnerability. They were a small clan, after all. It made no tactical sense for the Sceptre to let them reach the Senan. The Akrynnai horde should have washed over them by now.

Well, that was for Maral Eb to worry about. Sekara had just this morning sent her own agents ahead to the Senan. Onos Toolan was dead. But his wife was not, nor his children, bloodkin and otherwise. The time had come for Sekara to unleash her long-awaited vengeance.

The day’s light was fading. Though she had exhorted her people with relentless impatience, they would not reach the Senan any time before midnight.

And by then the blood spilled would be as cold as the ground beneath it.

Stavi made a face. ‘He has a secret name,’ she said. ‘An Imass name.’

Storii’s brow knitted as she looked down upon the drooling toddler playing in the dirt. She twisted round on the stone she was sitting on. ‘But we can’t get it, can we? I mean, he doesn’t know it, that name, how can he? He can’t talk.’

‘Not true! I heard him talk!’

‘He says “blallablallablalla” and that’s all he says. That doesn’t sound Imass to me.’

Stavi tugged at the knots in her hair, unmindful of the midges swarming round her head. ‘But I heard Father talking-’

Storii’s head snapped up, eyes accusing. ‘When? You snuck off to be with him-without me! I knew it!’

Stavi grinned. ‘You were squatting over a hole. Besides, he wasn’t talking to me. He was talking to himself. Praying, maybe-’

‘Father never prays.’

‘Who else would he be talking to, except some five-headed Imass god?’

‘Really, which head?’

‘What?’

‘Which head was he talking to?’

‘How should I know? The one listening. It had ears on stalks and they turned. And then it popped out one eye and swallowed it-’

Storii leapt to her feet. ‘So it could look out its hole!’

‘Only way gods know how to aim.’

Storii squealed with laughter.

The dirt-faced runt looked up from his playing, eyes wide, and then he smiled and said, ‘Blallablallablalla!’

‘That’s the god’s name!’

‘But which head?’ Stavi asked.

‘The one with poop in his ears, of course. Listen, if we can really find out his secret name, we can curse him for ever and ever.’

‘That’s what I was saying. What kind of curses?’ ‘Good ones. He can only walk on his hands. He starts every sentence with blallablallablalla. Even when he’s twenty years old! As old as that, and even older.’

‘That’s pretty old. That’s grey-haired old. Let’s think of more curses.’

Sitting oblivious on the ground, the son of Onos Toolan and Hetan made curling patterns in the soft dust with one finger. Four squiggles in one particular pattern, trying again and again to get it just right. It was getting dark. Shadows walked out from stones. The shadows were part of the pattern.

The Imass possessed no written language. Something far more ancient was buried deep within them. It was liquid. It was stain on skin. It was the magic of shadows cast by nothing-nothing real. It was the gift of discord, the deception of unnatural things slipped into a natural world. It was cause in search of effect. When the sun was gone from the sky, fire rose in its stead, and fire was the maker of shadows, revealer of secrets.

The child had a secret name, and it was written in elusive, impermanent games of light and dark, a thing that could flicker into and out of existence in the dancing of flames, or, as now, at the moment of the sun’s death, with the air itself crumbling to grainy dust.

Absi Kire, a name gifted by a father struck with unexpected hope, long after the death of hopeful youth. It was a name striving for faith, when faith had departed the man’s world. It whispered like a chill wind, rising up from the Cavern of the Worm. Absi Kire. Its breath was dry, plucking at eyes that had forgotten how to close. Born of love, it was a cry of desperation.

Patterns in the dirt, fast sinking into formless gloom.

Absi Kire.

Autumn Promise.

Storii held up a hand, cutting short a list of curses grown past breathless, and cocked her head. ‘Some news,’ she said.

Nodding, Stavi reached down and snatched up the boy. He struggled, tilting his head back until it pressed hard against her chest. She blew down, stirring the hair atop his slightly elongated head, and he instantly settled.

‘Excited voices.’

‘Not happy excited.’

‘No,’ Stavi agreed, turning to look in the direction of the camp-just beyond a sweep of tilted rock outcroppings. The glow of fires was rising beneath a layer of woodsmoke.

‘We should get back.’

Hetan cursed under her breath. The girls had kidnapped their half-brother yet again, and no one had seen their escape. When they were out of her sight, the vast pit of her solitude opened its maw beneath her, and she could feel herself tumbling and spinning as she fell… and fell. So much darkness, so little hope that the plunge would end in a merciful snap of bones, the sudden bliss of oblivion.

Without her children, she was nothing. Sitting motionless, wandering inside her skull, dull-eyed and weaving like a hoof-kicked dog. Nose sniffing, claws scratching, but there was no way out. Without her children, the future vanished, a moth plunging into the fire. She blinked motes from her eyes, hands drawn together and thumbnails picking at the scabs and oozing slices left behind by the last assault on the ends of her fingers, the tender skin round the nails.

Frozen in place, sunken, in endless retreat.

Another bowl of rustleaf? Durhang? A resin bud of d’bayang? D’ras beer? Too much effort, every one of them. If she sat perfectly still, time would vanish.

Until the girls brought him back. Until she saw the twins pretending to smile but skittish and worried behind their eyes. And he would squirm in a girl’s arms, reaching for Hetan, who would see those strangely large, wide hands with their stubby fingers, clutching, straining, and a howl would rise within her, lifting out of that black maw, blazing like a skystone returning to the sky.

She would take him into a suffocating embrace, desperate sparks igniting within her, forcing her into animation.

Strings on the ends of those pudgy fingers, plucking her to life.

And she howled and she howled.

Heavy footsteps rushed past the entrance to the tent. Voices, a few shouts. A runner had entered the camp. The word was delivered, and the word was dead.

How could imagination hope to achieve the wonders of reality? The broken, deathly landscape stretched out on all sides, but the vista was shrinking as the day’s light faded. Yet more than darkness embraced the transformation. Domes of cracked bedrock appeared, skinned in lichen and moss. Shin-high trees with thick, twisted boles, branches fluttering with the last of the autumn leaves, like blackened layers of peeled skin. Bitter arctic wind rushing down from the northwest to herald winter’s eager arrival.

Cafal and Setoc ran through this new world. The frigid air bit in their lungs, yet it was richer and sweeter than anything they had breathed in their own realm, their own time.

How to describe the noise of a hundred thousand wolves running across the land? It filled Cafal’s skull with the immensity of an ocean. Padded footfalls delivered a pitch and rhythm unlike that of spaded hoofs. The brush of fur as shoulders rubbed was a seething whisper. The heat rising from bodies was thick as mist, the animal smell overwhelming-the smell of a world without cities, forges, charcoal burners, without battlefields, trenches filled with waste, without human sweat and perfumes, the smoke of rustleaf and durhang, the dust of frantic destruction.

Wolves. Before humans waged war upon them, before the millennia-long campaign of slaughter. Before the lands emptied.

He could almost see them. Every sense but sight was alive with the creatures. And he and Setoc were carried along on the ghostly tide.

All that was gone had returned. All this history, seeking a home.

They would not find it among his people. He did not understand why Setoc was leading them to the Barghast. He could hear her singing, but the words she used belonged to some other language. The tone was strangely fraught, as if warring forces were bound together. Curiosity and wariness, congress and terror-he could almost see the glint of bestial eyes as they watched the first band of humans from a distance. Did these two-legged strangers promise friendship? Cooperation? A recognition of brother-and sisterhood? Yes, to all of that. But this was no family at peace; this was a thing writhing with deceit, betrayal, black malice and cruelty.

The wolves were innocents. They stood no chance.

Flee the Barghast. Please, I beg you-

But his pleading rang hollow even to Cafal. He needed them-he needed this swift passage. Night had fallen. A wind was rising to tear at the torches and hearth-fires in the Senan camp. Rain spat with stinging fury and lightning ignited the horizon.

Eyes gleamed, iron licked the darkness-

The gods were showing him was what coming.

And he would not get there in time. Because, as has ever been known, the Barghast gods were bastards.

Heart thudding with anticipation, Sathand Gril slipped out from the light of the wind-whipped fires. He had watched the children and their furtive flight into the shattered hills northeast of the camp when the sun was still a hand’s breadth above the horizon. This had been his singular responsibility for weeks now-spying on the horrid little creatures-all leading to this moment, this reward.

He had killed the boy’s dog and now he would kill the boy. Plunging his knife into his belly with a hand over his mouth to stifle the shrieks. A large rock to crush the skull and destroy the face, because no one welcomed the face of a dead child, especially one frozen in twisted pain. He had no desire to look upon the half-lidded eyes that saw nothing, that had gone flat with the soul’s absence. No, he would destroy the thing utterly, and then fling it into a defile.

The twins were destined for something far more elaborate. He’d break their legs. Then tie their hands. He’d blood them both, but not cruelly, for Sathand was not one of those who hungered to rape, not women, not children. But he would give them his seed to carry to the gods.

This night of murder, it was for the Barghast. The righting of wrongs. The end of the usurper’s line and the eradication of Hetan’s shame. Onos Toolan was not of the clans of the White Face. He was not even Barghast.

No matter. Word had come. Onos Toolan was dead-murdered by Bakal, who had broken his own arm with the force of the knife-thrust he had driven into the Warleader’s heart. A power struggle was coming-Sathand Gril well knew that Sekara had decided on the Barahn warchief, Maral Eb. But to Sathand’s eyes-and to those of many others among the Senan-Bakal could make a surer claim, and that was one Sathand would back. More blood to be spilled before things settled out. Most were agreed on that.

Sekara the Vile. Her idiot husband, Stolmen. Maral Eb and his vicious brothers. The new Warleader would be Senan-no other clan was as powerful, after all, not even the Barahn.

It would have to be quick-all of it. The cursed Akrynnai army was on its way.

Sathand Gril padded through the darkness-the brats should be on their way back by now. Even they weren’t stupid enough to stay out once the sun set, what with both half-starved wolves and Akrynnai marauders on the hunt. So… where were they?

From the camp behind him, someone shrieked.

It had begun.

Three women entered the tent, and Hetan knew them all. She watched them advance on her, and suddenly everything became perfectly clear, perfectly understandable. Mysteries flitting away like veils of smoke on the wind. Now I join you, husband. She reached for her knife and found only the sheath at her hip-her eyes snapped to the flat-stone on which sat the remnants of her last meal, and there waited the knife-and Hetan lunged for the weapon.

She did not reach it in time. A knee slammed into her jaw, whipped her head round, blood spinning in threads. Hands snagged her wrists, dragged her round and pushed her to the ground.

Fists pummelled her face. Flares of light exploded behind her eyes. Stunned, suddenly too weak to struggle, she felt herself rolled on to her stomach. Rawhide bound her arms behind her. Fingers snarled a fist’s worth of hair and lifted her head up.

Balamit’s foul breath whispered across her cheek. ‘No easy way for you, whore. No, it’s hobbling for Hetan-and what’s so different about that? You’d rut with a dog if it knew how to kiss! May you live a hundred years!’

She was thrown on to her back, and then lifted up from behind, Jayviss’s nails digging deep into Hetan’s armpits.

Hega, burly, miserable Hega, swung the hatchet down.

Hetan shrieked as the front half of her right foot was chopped off. The leg jumped, spraying blood. She tried to pull the other one away, but a crack of the hatchet’s iron ball against her kneecap numbed the leg. The hatchet swung down again.

The pain rushed in a black flood. Balamit giggled.

Hetan passed out.

Krin, whose niece had married a Gadra warrior and was swollen with child, watched as Sekara’s bitch dogs dragged Hetan out from the tent. The whore was unconscious. Her stumped feet trailed wet streaks that seemed to flare as lightning flashed in the night.

They brought her to the nearest hearth-fire. Little Yedin was tending to the flat blade and it was pale hot when she lifted it from the coals. Meat sizzled and popped as the blade was pushed against Hetan’s left foot. The woman’s body jerked, her eyes starting open in shock. A second shriek shattered the air.

Nine-year-old Yedin stared, and then at an impatient snap from one of the bitches, she flipped the blade and seared Hetan’s other foot.

Krin hurried forward, scowling at the way Hetan’s eyes had rolled up, head lolling. ‘Wake her up, Hega. I’m first.’

His sister grinned, still holding the bloodied hatchet. ‘Your son?’

Krin looked away, disgusted. He was barely half her age. Then he jerked a nod. ‘Tonight’s the night for it,’ he said.

‘Widow’s gift!’ Hega cried in glee.

Jayviss brought over a gourd of water and threw its contents into Hetan’s bruised face.

She sputtered, coughed.

Krin advanced on her, mindful and delighted at how many people had gathered, and at how other men were arguing their place. ‘Keep her hands tied,’ he said. ‘For the first dozen or so. After that, there won’t be any need.’

It was true-no Barghast woman resisted by that point. And in a few days, she’d drop to her hands and knees at a glance, backside upthrust and ready.

‘Might be two dozen,’ someone in the crowd observed. ‘Hetan was a warrior, after all.’

Hega stepped up and kicked Hetan in the ribs. Spittle flew from the widow’s lips as she snarled and said, ‘What’s a warrior without a weapon? Bah, she’ll be licking her lips after five or so, you’ll see!’

Krin said nothing; nor did anyone else. The warriors knew their own, after all. Hega was an idiot, to think Hetan would break so easily. I remember you, Hega. My sister, too fat to fight. And who was the one licking her lips five times a day? Oh, we see where your hate lives-gods, I am giving my son to this thing? Well, just for one night. And I’ll give him my own knife, with leave to use it. No one will miss you, Hega. And no one will call out my boy, either.

The wind was howling-a storm had found them on this fateful night-he could hear rain in the distance. Guy ropes quivered and hummed. Hide walls thumped and rippled-Barghast warriors were pouring into the encampment as if the wild drumming had summoned them, and Krin caught word that Maral Eb had arrived, along with the Senan warriors Tool had taken with him. Bakal among them. Slayer, liberator of all the Barghast. Who would forget this night?

Who would forget, too, that it was Krin, firstborn son of Humbrall Taur’s own uncle, who was the first to fuck Hetan?

The thought hardened him. He stood above her, waiting until her wild eyes slanted across his own, and when that fevered gaze stuttered and then returned to lock with his, Krin smiled. He saw the shock, and then the hurt that was betrayal, and he nodded. ‘Allies, Hetan? You lost them all. When you proclaimed him as your husband. When you championed your father’s madness.’

Hega pushed back in. ‘Where are your children, Hetan? Shall I tell you? Dead and cold in the darkness-’

Krin backhanded her across the face. ‘Your time with her is over, widow! Go! Run and hide in your hut!’

Hega wiped blood from her lips, and then, eyes flashing, she wheeled, shouting, ‘Bavalt son of Krin! Tonight you are mine!’

Krin almost sent a knife her way as she pushed through the crowd. A knife, son, long before she wraps round you, long before you sink into that spider’s hole.

As the significance of Hega’s words worked through, there was laughter, and Krin was stung by the contempt he heard all round him. He looked down at Hetan-she was still staring up at him, eyes unwavering.

Shame flooded through him, stealing his hardness fast as a mother’s kiss.

‘Don’t think you can watch,’ he said in a growl, crouching to pull her on to her stomach. As he tugged down her leathers, excitement returned-awakened by anger as much as anything else. Oh, and triumph, for many men among the Senan had looked upon her with lust and desire, and they were even now arguing their turn with her. But I am the first. I will make you forget Onos Toolan. I will remind you of the manhood of the Barghast. He knelt, pushing with his knees to splay wide her legs. ‘Lift up to me, whore. Show them all how you accept your fate.’

Pain was a distant roar. Something cold and sharp now filled her skull, fixed like spears to her eyes, and every face she had looked upon since awakening once more had pierced her like lightning, arcing in from her eyes, igniting her brain. Faces-those expressions and all that they revealed-they were burned upon her soul now.

She had played with Hega’s younger sister-they had been so close-but that woman was somewhere in the crowd now, flat-eyed, walled-off. Jayviss had spun a fine horse blanket as a wedding gift, and Hetan remembered her bright, proud smile when Hetan singled her out in giving public thanks. Balamit, daughter of a shoulderwoman, had been her keeper on the Night of First Blood, when Hetan was barely twelve years old. She’d sat awake, holding her hand, until sleep finally took the child now a woman.

Yedin often played with the twins-

Husband, I have betrayed you! In my misery, in my pathetic self-pity-I knew, I knew this was coming, how could it not? My children-I have abandoned them.

They killed them, husband. They killed our children!

‘Lift up to meet me, whore.’

Krin, I used to laugh at your hunger for me, sick as it was. Does my father’s ghost wait for you, Krin? Does he witness this, and what you demand of me?

Does he understand my shame?

Krin now punishes me. He is only the first, but no matter how many there are, the punishment will never be enough.

Now… now I understand the mind of a hobbled woman. I understand.

And she lifted up to meet him.

The wretches saw him before he saw them, and they saw, too, the heavy knife in his hand.

None would deny that the twins were clever, nasty creatures, in the manner of newborn snakes, and so when they spun round and fled, Sathand Gril was not surprised. But one of them was burdened with a child, and that child was now screaming.

Oh, they might silence him in the only way possible-a suffocating hand over his mouth and nose, thus sparing Sathand the blood on his own hands-and he waited for that as he plunged in pursuit, but the shrieks went on.

He could run them down, and so he would, eventually. He was sure they knew that they were already dead. Well, if they would make it a game, he would play. One last gesture of childhood, before he took childhood away. Would they squeal when he caught them? An interesting question. If not immediately, then later, yes, later they would squeal indeed.

Scrabbling sounds ahead, at the slumped end of a rock-walled defile, and Sathand lumbered forward-yes, there was one of them, with that boy in her arms, trying to climb up the scree-

The boulder very nearly killed him, dropping down to hammer into his shoulder. He howled in pain, stumbled-caught the flash of the other twin up on the edge of the wall to his left. ‘You rotted piece of dung!’ he snarled. ‘You will pay for that!’

No longer a game. He would give them hurt for hurt, and then more. He would make them regret such stupid attempts.

Ahead, the girl with the boy had given up trying to climb the fan of sand and gravel, and had instead dropped down and to the right, vanishing into a crevasse. A moment later the other girl darted in after her sister.

The whole thing had been an act. A trap. So clever, weren’t they?

Mind blackening with fury, he bolted after them.

Setoc was tugging at his arms. ‘Cafal! Get up!’

It was too late. He was seeing all there was to see. Cursed by his own gods. Could he close hands about their necks, one by one, and choke the life from them, he vowed he would.

His beloved sister-he had screamed as the hatchet chopped down. He had fallen to his knees when Krin stepped up to her, and now he sought to claw out his own eyes-although the visions behind them proved indifferent to the damage done to them. Blood ran with tears-he would dig and dig until never again would he look upon the world-but it seemed that blindness would for ever elude him.

He watched Krin rape his bloodkin. He heard the exhortations from the hundreds of warriors gathered round. He saw Bakal, gaunt and his eyes luminous, stumble into view, saw the man’s horror as all the blood left his face, saw as the great slayer of Onos Toolan twisted round and fled, as if the Warleader’s ghostly hand was reaching for him. But it was just the rape of a hobbled woman-not even considered rape, in fact. Just… using.

And Sathand Gril, whom he had hunted beside in years past, was now hunting Stavi and Storii, and Absi who flailed in Stavi’s arms as if in full awareness that this new world he had found was crumbling around him, that death was coming to take him before he could as much as taste it. And the boy was outraged, indignant, defiant. Confused. Terrified.

Too much. No heart could withstand such visions.

Setoc tugged at his arms, fought to keep his hands from his face. ‘We must keep going! The wolves-’

‘Hood take the wolves!’

‘But he won’t, you fool! He won’t-but someone will! We must hurry, Cafal-’

His hand lashed out, caught her flush on the side of her head. The way her neck twisted round as she fell horrified him. Crying out, he crawled to her.

The wolves were ghosts no longer. Blood clouded his eyes, dripped down in a mockery of tears. ‘Setoc!’ She was still a child, still so young, so thin-

The wolves howled, a chorus that deafened him, that drove him face-first into the frozen dirt. Gods, my head! Stop! Stop, I beg you! If he screamed, he could not hear it. The beasts surged on all sides, closing in and in-they wanted him.

They wanted his blood.

From somewhere sounded a hunter’s horn.

Cafal leapt to his feet and ran. Ran from the world.

When her sister passed the wailing boy over, Stavi clutched him to her chest. Storii moved past her as they emerged from the fissure, grasping handfuls of tawny grasses to pull her way up the slope. This range of broken hills was narrow, an island of scoured limestone, and beyond it the land levelled out, flat, with nowhere to hide. She struggled up the tattered slope, gasping, the boy beating at her face with his tiny fists.

They were going to die. She knew that now. Their life in all its loose joy, its perfect security, was suddenly gone. She longed for yesterday, she longed for the solid presence that was her adopted father. Once more the sight of his face, a face wide and weathered, with every feature exaggerated, oversized, his soft eyes that had only ever looked upon his children with love-against the twins, it had seemed anger was impossible. Even disapproval wavered in a heartbeat. They had worked him like river clay, but they had known that beneath that clay there was a thing of iron, a thing of great power. He was a truth, resolute, unbreakable. They worked him because they knew that truth.

Where was he now? What had happened to their mother? Why was Sathand Gril hunting them? Why was he going to kill them?

Storii ran ahead, darting like a hare seeking cover, but there was none to be found. Ghoulish light painted the plain as the Slashes etched the night. A cruel wind cut into their faces, and the mass of storm clouds blotted out the north sky. The sight of her sister’s panic was like a knife in Stavi’s chest-the world was as broken as the hills behind them, as broken as the vicious look in Sathand’s eyes. She could have dropped that rock on his skull-she should have-but the thought of hurting him that much had horrified her. A part of her had wanted to believe that if she could manage to break his shoulder, he would give up, he would return to the camp. She knew now, bleak with despair, that such faith-that all of this could be so easily righted-was ridiculous. Her error in judgement was going to see them all killed.

Hearing Sathand climb out of the fissure, Stavi cried out, running as fast as her legs could carry her. All at once the boy she held went quiet, and his arms wrapped tight round her neck, hands clutching her hair.

He understood as well. Motionless as a doe in the grasses not ten paces from a hunting cat, his eyes wide, his breath panting and hot against the side of her neck.

Tears streamed down her cheeks-he clutched her in the belief that she could protect him, that she could defend his life. But she knew she couldn’t. She wasn’t old enough. She wasn’t fierce enough.

She saw Storii look back over a shoulder, saw her falter-

Sathand’s heavy footfalls were closing fast.

‘Go!’ Stavi shrieked at her sister. ‘Just go!’

Instead, Storii bent down, scooped up a rock, and then sprinted back towards them.

Fierce sister, brave sister. You fool.

They would die together then.

Stavi stumbled, fell to her knees, skinning them on the grasses. The burning pain loosed more tears, and everything blurred. The boy kicked himself free-now he would run, fast as his short legs could take him-

Instead, he stood and faced the charging warrior. The man was not a stranger, was he? No, he was kin. And in the shadow of a kinsman there was safety.

Stavi whispered, ‘Not this time.’

Sathand readied the knife in his hand, slowing now that the chase had come to an end-nowhere for them to go, was there?

His shoulder throbbed, and sharp bolts of pain shot out from his collar bone-he couldn’t even lift that arm-she’d broken it.

But the warrior’s rage was fading. They did not choose their parents-who does? They’re just… unlucky. But that is the way of the world. Spawn of rulers inherit more than power-they inherit what happens when that power collapses. When a night of blood is unleashed, and ambition floods black as locust ink.

He saw the stone gripped by one of the girls and nodded, pleased with her defiance. Only half her blood was Barghast, but it had awakened for this. He would have to take her down first.

‘What has happened?’ asked the girl standing beside the boy. ‘Sathand?’

He bared his teeth. The right words now could take the fight out of them. ‘You are orphans,’ he said. ‘Your par-’

The stone was a blur, catching him a glancing blow above his left eye. He cursed in pain and surprise, and then shook his head. Blood ran down into the eye, blinding it. ‘Spirits haunt you!’ He laughed. ‘I’ve taken fewer wounds in battle! But… one eye is enough. One working arm, too.’ Sathand edged forward.

The boy’s eyes were wide, uncomprehending. He suddenly smiled and held out his arms.

Sathand faltered. Yes, I’ve taken you up and swung you in the air. I’ve tickled you until you shrieked. But that is done now. He lifted the knife.

The twins stared, unmoving. Would they protect the boy? He suspected they would. With teeth and nails, they would.

We are as we are. ‘I am proud of you,’ he said. ‘Proud of you all. But this must be.’

The boy cried out as if in joy.

Something slammed into his back. He staggered. The knife fell from his hand. Sathand frowned down at it. Why would he drop his weapon? Why was his strength draining away? On his knees, his lone eye finding the boy’s, level at last. No, he’s not looking at me. He’s looking past me. Confusion, a roar of something rushing deep in his skull. The warrior twisted round.

The second arrow took him in the forehead, dead centre, punching through the bone and ploughing into the brain.

He never saw where it came from.

Stavi sank down on watery legs. Her sister ran to their brother and snatched him up. He yelped in delight.

In the greenish gloom, she could see the silhouette of a warrior astride a horse, sixty or more paces away. Something in that seemed unreal, and she struggled to track it down, and then gasped. That arrow. Sathand was turning round-in motion-and yet… sixty paces away! In this wind! Her gaze fell to Sathand’s corpse. She squinted at that arrow. I’ve seen the like before. I’ve-Stavi moaned and crawled forward until she could close a hand about the arrow’s shaft. ‘Father made this.’

The rider was closing at a loose canter.

Behind Stavi, her sister said, ‘That’s not Father.’

‘No-but look at the arrows!’

Storii set the boy down once more. ‘I see them. I see them, Stavi.’

As the warrior drew closer, they could see that something was wrong with him-and with his horse. The beast was too gaunt, its hide worn away in patches, its long, stained teeth gleaming, the holes of its eyes lightless, lifeless.

The rider was no better. But he held a horn bow, and within a saddle quiver a dozen or so of Onos Toolan’s arrows were visible. A cowl was draped over the warrior’s head, hiding what was left of his face and seemingly impervious to the gale. He let his horse slow to a walk, and then halted it ten paces away with a twitch of the reins.

He seemed to study them, and Stavi caught an instant’s blurred spark of a single eye. ‘The boy, yes,’ he said in Daru-but it was Daru with a Malazan accent. ‘But not you two.’

A chill crept over Stavi, and she felt her twin’s hand slip into hers.

‘That,’ he said after a moment, ‘perhaps came out wrong. What I meant was, I see him in the boy, but not in you two.’

‘You knew him,’ Storii accused. She pointed at the quiver. ‘He made those! You stole them!’

‘He made them, yes, as a gift to me. But that was long ago. Before you were born.’

‘Toc the Younger,’ whispered Stavi.

‘He spoke of me?’

That this warrior was undead did not matter. Both girls rushed forward, one to either side, to hug his withered thighs. At their touch, he might have flinched, but then he reached out with his hands. Hesitated, only to settle them on the heads of the girls.

As they wept in relief.

The son of Onos Toolan had not moved, but he watched, and he was still smiling.

Setoc’s eyes fluttered open. The instant she moved her head, blinding agony lanced through her skull. She groaned. The night was luminous, the familiar green tinge of her own world. She could feel the wolves, no longer as solid beasts surrounding her, but as ghosts once more. Ephemeral, hovering, pensive.

A cold wind was blowing, lightning flashing to the north. Shivering, nauseated, Setoc forced herself on to her knees. The dark plain spun round her. She tried to recall what had happened. Had she fallen?

‘Cafal?’

As if in answer thunder rumbled.

Blinking, she sat back on her haunches, looked round through bleared eyes. She found herself in the centre of a ring of half-buried boulders, the jade glow from the south adding a green hint to their silvery sheen. Whatever patterns had been carved upon them had long since weathered away to the barest of indentations. But there was power here. Old. As old as anything on this plain. Whispering sorrow to the empty land as the wind curled between the bleached humps.

The wolf ghosts slowly circled, as if drawn inward to this ring of stones and its mournful dirge.

There was no sign of Cafal. Had he been lost in the realm of the Beast Hold? If so, then he was lost for ever, falling back and back through the centuries, into times so ancient not a single human walked the world, where no blood-line was drawn to divide the hunter from the hunted-animals all. He would fall victim eventually, prey to some sharp-eyed predator. His death would be a lonely one, so lonely she suspected he would welcome it.

Even the will of the wolves in their hundreds of thousands could barely brush the immensity of the lost Hold’s power.

She huddled against the cold and the ache in her head.

The rain arrived with the rage of hornets.

Whipped by the wind and lashed by the rain, Cafal reached the edge of the encampment. Hearth-fires flared and dipped beneath the deluge, but even in the fitful light he could see huddled crowds and the smaller makeshift camps of the Barahn clustered round the edges. Figures hurried between the rows, hunched against the weather. He could see pickets here and there, haphazardly arranged with some of the posts abandoned.

When lightning lit the scene it seemed to seethe before his eyes.

Somewhere in there was his sister. Being used again and again. Warriors he had known all his life were pushing bloody paths into her, eager to join in the breaking of this once proud, beautiful and powerful woman. Cafal and Tool had spoken often of outlawing the tradition of hobbling, but too many resisted the casting away of traditions, even those as vicious as this one.

He could not change what had happened, all the damage already done, but he could steal her away, he could save her the months, even years, of horror that awaited her.

Cafal crouched, studying the Barghast camp.

Swathed in furs, Balamit made her way back to her yurt. Such a night! Too many years bowing to that bitch, too many years stepping from her path, eyes downcast as was demanded by Hetan’s position as wife to the Warleader. Well, the whore was paying the soul’s coin for that now, wasn’t she?

Balamit ran through her mind once more the fateful moment when Hega’s hatchet descended. The way Hetan’s whole body contorted in pain and shock, the deafening shriek cutting like a knife in the air. Some people lived as if privilege was something they were born to, as if everyone else was a lesser being, as if their domination was a natural truth. Well, there were other truths in nature, weren’t there? The gathering of the pack could bring down the fiercest wolf.

Balamit grinned as the rain spat icy against her face. Not just a pack, but a thousand of her kind! The pushed-down, the murky shapes that made up the common crowd, the ignored subjects of contempt. No, this was a worldly lesson, was it not? And, sweetest truth of all, we are far from finished.

Maral Eb was a fool, just another one of those superior bastards who thought their damned farts could buy a crown. Bakal was a much better choice-a Senan for one, and the Barahn were no match for her tribe-to think they could just step into the stirrup, when they’d not even had a hand in killing Onos Toolan, why, it was-

A huge shape stepped out from between two tarp-covered dung-piles, bulled into her hard enough to make her stagger. The figure reached out to right her even as she hissed a curse, and then the hand clutched tighter and snatched her close. A knife-blade sank between her ribs, the point slicing her heart in half.

Blinking in the sudden darkness, Balamit’s legs gave out beneath her, and she fell to the mud.

Her killer left her there without a backward glance.

Jayviss finally rose from her place close to the fire, as the flames had at last guttered out beneath the rain. Her bones ached terribly when the weather turned cold, and the injustice of that galled her. She was barely into her fifth decade, after all-but now that she was among the powerful, she could demand a ritual of healing to scour clean the rot in her joints, and she would have to pay nothing, nothing at all.

Sekara had promised. And Sekara knew the importance of favouring her allies.

Life would be good once again, as it had been in her youth. She could take as many men as she wanted. She could take for herself the finest furs to stay warm at night. She might even buy a D’ras slave or two, to work oils into her skin and make her supple once more. She’d heard they could take away stretch marks and make sagging breasts taut. They could smooth the wrinkles from her face, even the deep bird-track between her brows, where had gathered a lifetime of injustice and anger.

Seeing the last of the coals blacken at her feet, she turned away.

Two warriors stood before her. Barahn-one of them Kashat, Maral Eb’s brother. The other warrior she did not recognize.

‘What do you want?’ Jayviss demanded in sudden fear.

‘Just this,’ Kashat said, and he lashed out.

She caught the gleam of an etched blade. A sting against her throat, and suddenly heat poured down the front of her chest.

The ache in her bones vanished, and after a time the knot in her brow slowly relaxed, making her face, as the rain kissed it, almost young again.

Little Yedin crouched beside the body of Hega, staring at the pool of blood that still steamed even as raindrops pounded its surface. The nightmare would not end, and she could still feel the heat of the iron paddle she’d used to cauterize Hetan’s feet. It pulsed like fever up her arms, but could not reach the sickly chill wrapped about her heart.

So terrible a thing, and Hega had made her do it, because Hega had a way of making people do things, especially young people. She’d show them the dangerous thing in her eyes and nothing more would be needed. But Hetan had never been mean, had never been anything but nice, gentle, always ready with a wink. And Stavi and Storii, too. Always making Yedin laugh, the acts they put on, all their crazy ideas and plans.

The world ahead was suddenly dark, unknowable. And look here, someone had gone and killed Hega. The dangerous thing in her eyes hadn’t been enough, but then, what was?

What those men did to Hetan-

A hand grabbed the back of her collar and she was lifted from the ground.

A stranger’s face stared at her own.

From one side another voice spoke, ‘She won’t remember much of this, Sagal.’

‘One of Hega’s imps.’

‘Even so-’

Sagal set her down and she tottered on wobbly legs. He put his huge hands against the sides of her head. Their eyes met and Yedin saw a darkness come to life there, a dangerous thing-

Sagal snapped her neck, dropped the body on to Hega’s. ‘Find Befka. One more to go this night. For you.’

‘What of Sekara and Stolmen?’

Sagal grinned. ‘Kashat and me-we’re saving the best for last. Now go, Corit.’

The warrior nodded. ‘And then I get my turn with Hetan.’

‘She’s worth it, the way she squirms in the mud.’

Once Strahl had left, Bakal sat alone in his yurt. His wife would not return this night, he knew, and he admitted he would be not too upset if she did not return at all. Amazing, that surprises could come to a marriage after so many years. The skein of rules was torn apart this night, strands winging on the black wind. A thousand possibilities awakened in people’s souls. Long-buried feuds clawed up out of the ground and knives dripped. A warrior could look into a friend’s eyes and see a stranger, could look into a mate’s eyes and see the flare of wicked desires.

She wanted another man but Bakal was in the way. That man wanted her in turn, but his wife was in the way. Bakal’s wife had stood before him, a half-smile playing on her face, a living thing pleased to deliver pain-if pain was possible, which he’d found, to his own bemusement, it was not. The moment she’d realized that, her visage had transformed into hatred.

When she left, she was holding her knife. Between her and her new lover, a woman would die tonight.

Would he stop them?

He had not yet decided. Nothing raged inside him. Nothing smouldered an instant’s breath from bursting into flame. Even the effort of thinking exhausted him.

‘Blood runs down.’ An ancient saying among the Barghast. When a ruler is murdered, a thousand blades are drawn, and the weak become savage. We are in our night of madness. An enemy marches to find us, and we are locked in a frenzy of senseless slaughter, killing our own. He could hear faint screams cutting through the howling wind.

The image of his wife’s face, so ugly in its wants, rose before him.

No, I will not let it be. He rose, cast about until he found his coin-scaled hauberk. If he was too late to save the woman, he would kill both his wife and her lover. An act, he decided, devoid of madness.

‘Find him!’ exhorted Sekara. ‘His brothers are out-killing our allies! Maral Eb is alone-’

‘He is not,’ said Stolmen. ‘On this night, that would be insane.’

She glared at him. Huge in his armour, a heavy hook-knife in one gauntleted hand, a miserable look on his stolid face. ‘Tell him you would discuss the alliance of the Gadra Clan-just find a reason. Once you cut his throat-’

‘His brothers will hunt me down and kill me. Listen, woman, you told me you wanted Maral Eb to command the warriors-’

‘I did not expect him to move on us this very night! Hega is dead! Jayviss is nowhere to be found. Nor is Balamit. Don’t you understand what’s happening?’

‘It seems you don’t. If they’re all dead, then we are next.’

‘He’ll not dare touch us! I have a hundred slayers-I have spies in every clan! No, he still needs us-’

‘He won’t think that way when I try and kill him.’

‘Don’t just try, husband. Do it and be sure of it. Leave his fool brothers to me.’

The rain was hammering down on the thick hides humped over the sapling frame of the yurt’s ceiling. Someone shrieked nearby. Stolmen’s face was ashen.

Spirits below, he doesn’t even need the paint tonight. ‘Must I do this, too? Are you worth anything to me?’

‘Sekara, I stand here ready to give up my life-to protect you. Once this night is done, the madness will end. We need only survive-’

‘I’m not interested in just surviving!’

He stared at her, as if seeing her for the first time. Something in that look, so strange on his face, sent a tendril of disquiet through Sekara. She stepped closer, set a hand on his scaled chest. ‘I understand, husband. Know that I value what you are doing. I just don’t think it’s necessary, that’s all. Please, do this for me. Find Maral Eb-and if you see that he is surrounded by bodyguards, then return here. We will know that he fears for his life-we will have struck our first blow against him without even raising a hand.’

He sighed, turned to the entrance.

The wind gusted round him when he pushed aside the flap and stepped outside.

Sekara backed away from the chill.

A moment later she heard a heavy thump, and then something rolled into the tent wall before sliding to the ground.

Heart in her throat, hands to her mouth, Sekara froze.

Sagal was the first to enter the yurt. His brother Kashat came in behind him, a tulwar in one hand, the blade slick with watery blood.

‘Sekara the Vile,’ said Sagal, smiling. ‘’Tis a cruel night.’

‘I’m glad he’s dead,’ she replied, nodding to the dripping blade. ‘Useless. A burden upon my every ambition.’

‘Ambitions, yes,’ muttered Kashat, looking round. ‘You’ve done yourself well, I see.’

‘I have many, many friends.’

‘We know,’ said Sagal. ‘We’ve met with some of them this night.’

‘Maral Eb needs me-he needs what I know. My spies, my assassins. As a widow, I am no threat to you, any of you. Your brother shall be Warleader, and I will make certain he is unassailed.’

Sagal shrugged. ‘We’ll think on it.’

Licking her lips, she nodded. ‘Tell Maral Eb, I will come to him tomorrow. We have much to discuss. There will be rivals-what of Bakal? Have you thought of him? I can lead you straight to his yurt, let me get my cloak-’

‘No need for that,’ Sagal said. ‘Bakal is no longer a threat. A shame, the slayer of Onos Toolan dying so suddenly.’ He glanced across at Kashat. ‘Choked on something, wasn’t it?’

‘Something,’ Kashat replied.

Sekara said, ‘There will be others-ones that I know about that you don’t. Among the Senan and even my own people.’

‘Yes yes, you’ll sell them all, woman.’

‘I serve the Warleader.’

‘We’ll see, won’t we?’ At that Sagal swung round, left the yurt. Kashat paused to clean her husband’s blood from his tulwar, using a priceless banner hanging from the ridge-pole. He paused at the entrance, grinned at her, and then followed his brother.

Sekara staggered back a step, sank down on to a travel chest. Shivering gripped her, shook her, rattled her very bones. She struggled to swallow, but her mouth and throat were too dry. She laced together her hands on her lap, but they slipped free of each other-she could not take hold… of anything.

The wind buffeted the hide walls, cold air lancing in from the entrance flap, which had not settled properly back into place. She should get up, fix that. Instead, she sat, shaking, fighting her slippery hands. ‘Stolmen,’ she whispered. ‘Husband. You left me. Abandoned me. I almost’-she gasped-‘I almost died!’

She looked to where he had been standing, so big, so solid, and her eyes strayed to the banner and its horrid, wet stain. ‘Ruined it,’ she said in a mutter. ‘Ruined it.’ She used to run it through her hands. That silk. Through and through, like a stream of wealth that never wetted her palms. But no more. She would feel the crust of his blood, the dust speckling her hands.

‘He should have seen it coming. He should have.’

Bakal had just cinched on his weapon belt while sitting down, struggling one-handed with the clasp, when the two Barahn warriors rushed in. He surged upright. The hookblade hissed free of its scabbard and he caught the heavy slash of a descending tulwar. His lighter weapon’s blade snapped clean just above the hilt.

He leapt close and drove the jagged stub into the warrior’s throat. Blood poured on to his hand.

The other was coming round the brazier.

Bakal back-stepped from the warrior drowning in his own blood. He had nothing with which to defend himself.

Wife, it seems you win-

A shape loomed behind the Barahn who was readying his tulwar for a decapitating cut. Hookblades licked both sides of his throat. The brazier hissed and crackled as spatters struck it. Reeling, the Barahn stumbled to one side, fell over the armour chest, leaving one twitching foot visible from where stood Bakal.

Gasping, his arm in agony, he swung his gaze to the newcomer.

‘Cafal.’

‘I dreamed it,’ the priest said, face twisting. ‘Your hand, your knife-into his heart-’

‘Did you dream as well, Cafal, who delivered that blow?’

The burly warrior sagged, stepped clumsily away from the entrance, his eyes dropping to the weapons in his hands. ‘I’ve come for her.’

‘Not tonight.’

The hookblades snapped back into fighting position and Cafal made to advance on him, but Bakal raised his hand.

‘I will help you, but not tonight-she fell unconscious-two dozen men, maybe more, had used her. Any more and she would die and they won’t let that happen. The women have her, Cafal. They will tend to her, cackling like starlings-you know of what I speak. Until her flesh is healed-you cannot get into that hut. Those women will tear you to pieces. My-my wife went there first, before her other… tasks. To see, to join in-she, she laughed at me. At my horror. Cafal, she laughed.’

The priest’s visage was furrowed in cuts-he had been clawing at his own face, Bakal realized. ‘Your dreams,’ he whispered, eyes widening. ‘You saw.’

‘I saw.’

‘Cafal…’

‘But it’s not over. They don’t know that-none of them know that. Our gods are howling. In terror.’ He fixed wild eyes on Bakal. ‘Did they think they could get away with that? Did they forget what he was? Where he came from? He will take them into his hands and he will crush them!’ He bared his teeth. ‘And I will stand back-do you hear me? I will stand back, Bakal, and do nothing.’

‘Your sister-’

He started, as if Bakal had slapped him. ‘Yes. I will wait-’

‘You can’t hide here, Cafal. More of Maral Eb’s assassins will come for me-’

‘This night is almost spent,’ the priest said. ‘The madness is already blowing itself out. Find your allies, Bakal, gather them close.’

‘Come back in three days,’ Bakal said. ‘I will help you. We’ll get her out-away. But… Cafal, you must know-’

The man flinched. ‘It will be too late,’ he said in a wretched tone. ‘Yes, I know. I know.’

‘Go with the last of the night,’ Bakal said. He went to find one of his older weapons, and then paused, stared down at the two corpses crumpled on the floor. ‘I must do something now. One last thing.’ He lifted bleak eyes to the priest. ‘It seems the madness is not quite blown out.’

The rider emerged from the night with a child before him on the saddle. Two young girls flanked the horse, staggering with exhaustion.

As the storm’s ragged tail scudded south, taking the rain with it, Setoc watched the strangers approach. The man, she knew, was a revenant, an undead soldier of the Reaper. But, seated as she was in the centre of this ring of stones, she knew she had nothing to fear. This ancient power defied the hunger for blood-it was, she knew now, made for that very purpose. Against Elder Gods and their ceaseless thirst, it was a sanctuary, and was and would ever remain so.

He drew rein just outside the ring, as she knew he must.

Setoc rose to her feet, eyeing the girls. Dressed as Barghast, but neither was purely of that blood. Twins. Eyes dull with fading shock, and a kind of fearless calm rising in its place. The small boy, she saw, was smiling at her.

The revenant lifted the child with one hand, to which the boy clung like a Bolkando ape, and carefully set him down on the ground.

‘Take them,’ the revenant said to Setoc, and the undead eyes he fixed upon her blazed-one human and wrinkled in death, the other bright and amber-the eye of a wolf.

Setoc gasped. ‘You are not the Reaper’s servant!’

‘It’s my flaw,’ he replied.

‘What is?’

‘Cursed by… indecision. Take them, camp within the circle. Wait.’

‘For what?’

The rider collected the reins and drew the beast round. ‘For his war to end, Destriant.’ He hesitated, and then said, ‘We leave when I return.’

She watched him ride away, westward, as if fleeing the rising sun. The two girls closed on the boy and each took one of his hands. They edged warily closer.

Setoc sighed. ‘You are Hetan’s get?’

Nods.

‘I am a friend of your uncle. Cafal. No,’ she added wearily, ‘I do not know where he has gone. Perhaps,’ she added, thinking of the revenant’s last words, ‘he will return. For now, come closer, I will make a fire. You can eat, and then rest.’

Once inside the circle, the boy pulled loose from his sisters’ hands and walked to the southwestern edge of the ring, where he stared at seemingly nothing on the dark horizon, and then he began a strange, rhythmic babbling. Almost a song.

At the sound, Setoc shivered. When she turned to the twins, she saw that they had found her bedroll and were now wrapped together in its folds. Fast asleep.

Must have been a long walk.

The carrion eaters had picked away the last strip of meat. Jackals had chewed on the bones but found even their powerful jaws could not crush them sufficiently to swallow the splinters down, nor could they grind the ends as was their habit. In the end, they left the fragments scattered in the trampled grasses. Besides, there was more to be found, not only in this place, but in numerous others across the plain. It was proving a season for fly-swarmed muzzles and full bellies.

After a few days all the scavengers had left, abandoning the scene to the sun, wind and stars. The blades of grasses prickled free of dried-up blood, the roots thickened on enriched soil, and insects crawled like the teeth of the earth, devouring all they could.

On a night with a storm raging to the east and south, a night when foreign gods howled and ghost wolves raced like a tidal flood across an unseen landscape, when the campfires of armies whipped and stuttered, and the jackals ran first one way and then another, as the stench of spilled blood brushed them on all sides, the buried valley with its sprawl of boulders and bones and its ash heap of burnt remains began to move, here and there. Fragments drawing together. Forming into ribs, phalanges, leg bones, vertebrae-as if imbued with iron seeking a lodestone, they slid and rolled in fits and starts.

The wind that had begun in the southeast now rushed over the land, a gale like a hundred thousand voices rising, ever rising. Grasses whipped into frenzied motion. Dust swirled up and round and spun, filling the air with grit.

In the still cloudless sky overhead, the Slashes seemed to pulse and waver, as if seen through waves of heat.

Bones clattered together. From beneath the mass of boulders and crumpled armour in the valley, pieces of rotting flesh pulled free, tendons writhing like serpents, ligaments wriggling like worms, climbing free and crawling closer to the heap of bones-which were edging into a pattern, re-forming a recognizable shape-a skeleton, loosely assembled, but the bones were neither Akrynnai nor Barghast. These were thicker, with high ridges where heavy muscles once gripped tight. The skull that had been crushed was now complete once more, battered and scorched. It sat motionless, upper teeth on the ground, until the mandible clicked up against it, and then pushed beneath it, tilting the skull back, until the jaw’s hinges slipped into their joints.

Flesh and desiccated skin, random clumps of filthy hair. Ligaments gripped long bones, ends fusing to join them into limbs. Twisted coils of muscle found tendons and were pulled flat as the tendons grew taut. An arm was knitted together, scores of finger bones clumping at the end of the wrist.

Rotting meat bound the vertebrae into a serpentine curl. Ribs sank into indentations on the sides of the sternum and lifted it clear of the ground.

When the Slashes were gouging the horizon to the southeast, and the wind was dying in fitful gusts, a body lay on the grasses. Fragments of skin joined to enclose it, each seam knitting like a scar. Strands of hair found root on the pate of the skull.

As the wind fell away, there was the distant sound of singing. An old woman’s rough, enfeebled voice, and in the music of that song there were fists closed into tight knots, there was muscle building to terrible violence, and faces immune to the sun’s heat and life’s pity. The voice ensorcelled, drawing power from the land’s deepest memories.

Dawn crept to the horizon, bled colour into the sky.

And a T’lan Imass rose from the ground. Walked, with slow, unsteady strides, to the fire-annealed flint sword left lying close to the Barghast pyre. A withered but oversized hand reached down and closed about the grip, lifting the weapon clear.

Onos T’oolan faced southeast. And then set out.

He had a people to kill.