Fall of Light

TWELVE

‘You fear desire,’ said Lasa Rook, her eyes lurid in the fire’s light. ‘Hanako of the Scars, I fold back my furs for you, that we may partake in senseless rutting, followed by tender cuddles. Which one pays for the other, I wonder? No matter, choose one as the oyster and the other as the shell, and should I paint in gold its opposite, well, such are the risks of love.’

Hanako pulled his gaze from hers with an effort and glared into the flames. ‘Is this your flimsy veil of grief, Lasa Rook, so quickly flung away at the first heat?’

‘My husbands are no more! What am I to do?’ She swept her hair back with both hands, a gesture that thrust out her chest and, as Hanako mused on the curse of anatomy, the breasts upon it. ‘A vast emptiness has devoured my soul, dear boy, and it is in need of filling.’

‘More husbands?’

‘No! I am done with that! Do you not see me running light as a butterfly through the meadows of my liberated mind? Look well into my eyes, Hanako, slayer of the Lord of Temper. In these pools awaits all manner of lascivious curiosity, forward and back, sideways and upside down. You need only find the courage to look.’

But that he would not do. Instead, he twisted slightly upon the fallen tree trunk where he sat, and frowned at the wrapped form of Erelan Kreed. The warrior was muttering in his sleep, an endless litany of strange names, punctuated by vile hissing and bone-chilling curses. The madness had not abated, and it had been three days now. Even the mosquitoes and biting flies avoided him.

The valley and the dread lake where Kreed had slain the dragon was far behind them, and yet it seemed that the world was reluctant to yield the pattern, as they now sat beside yet another lake, at the base of yet another thickly forested valley. For two days Hanako had carried the warrior, his armour and his weapons, and on both nights, with dusk’s sudden arrival, he had sunk down to the ground on trembling legs, too weary to even eat.

Lasa Rook had taken to cooking their meals, although Hanako was the one to force food into the mouth of Erelan Kreed, fighting the warrior’s delirium and wild, batting hands, his fierce eyes and teeth bared like fangs.

In consideration of that, Hanako wondered, tenuously, if Erelan was perhaps saner than he appeared. Lasa Rook cooks food to make even the dead fast. I must warn this Jaghut lord. Lead her to no kitchen beneath the rock-piles, lest you unleash the undead in frenzy and madness, spill them fleeing into the mortal realms!

‘Oh, bless me, Hanako,’ Lasa sighed, ‘do reach out a pawing hand at the very least? Here, I yield you these lobes, my oft-plucked fruit, so well handled and tender, whose very nipples cry out with the memory of tweaks and twists. They have the taste of honey, I’m told, and the scent of flowers.’

‘I’ve seen you dab them every morning,’ Hanako said.

‘A secret revealed! And yet you still speak of marriage? Hanako, this journey of ours is almost as bad, with all the shattered privacy of making toilet and other things. Imagine this intimacy, young sir, with no end in sight! Shall I pluck importunate hairs from alarming locales upon your person, while you squeeze blackheads upon mine? Shall we take turns wiping the drool from our chins with every dawn, for years on end? Tell me, what other details of marriage can I offer you, to disavow all your notions of romantic bliss?’

‘Please, Lasa. My thoughts are for Erelan Kreed. He does not improve. There was madness in that dragon’s blood.’

‘It’s said that there are celibate monks among the south-dwellers. Pray rush to their cold company, Hanako.’

‘Lasa Rook, I beg you, we must discuss what to do with our friend here!’

‘We bring him down to the Jaghut, of course. And whatever Azathanai might be lounging about. They can examine our blathering warrior here, and decide if he is fit to live or die. This matter, you must see, Hanako, lies beyond us. Now, where was I? Ah, these protrudinous fruit, so swollen and inviting-’

With a low growl, Hanako rose to his feet. He stepped away from the fire, moving past Lasa, and made his way down to the pebbled shoreline.

The stars were strewn upon the still surface of the lake. Cool air rose from the water, lifting to Hanako the faintly pungent smell of decay where detritus made a cluttered rim of the shoreline. He walked along that verge, his steps slow. Rock and water … the world had a way of making borderlands the repository of the discarded, as if in the collision of smaller worlds things did not merge, only break.

The Thel Akai, such lovers of tales from distant lands, were nonetheless a people content with their own isolation. There were things to protect, after all, and pre-eminent among them a host of precious but flimsy beliefs. There was little defence, however, against the invasion of ideas, beyond whatever strength was offered by collective prejudices. And even among an isolated people such as the Thel Akai, factions arose, jostling for dominance, always eager to impose distinctions.

The only weapon of any worth against such idiocy was laughter, and it cut sharper and deeper than any blade.

A war upon death. That was worth a bold guffaw. Now watch us laugh all the way to the feet of the Lord of Rock-Piles himself. Some ideas will turn the blade, wounding the wielder with unexpected suddenness.

He turned at the sound of splashing from the lake, caught the glimmer of churning water as a figure clambered into view. Hanako saw a flash of tusks, and then heard muttered cursing as the stranger struggled with a bulky, sodden pack. He dragged it ashore, and then straightened, turning to face Hanako. ‘Is this the crude self-obsession of youth, Thel Akai, or has mercy simply died along with everything else?’

Hanako stepped forward, in time for the Jaghut to thrust the heavy sack into his hands.

‘It’s time to give thanks to that fire of yours,’ the Jaghut said, stepping past. ‘A beacon, a promising pyre, a rack to dry flesh and bone. It was all these things, and more.’

Hanako grunted under the weight of the sack, which was still draining water. He hurried to catch up to the Jaghut. ‘But – where did you come from?’

‘A boat, Thel Akai. By this means, one can journey across lakes. Unless,’ he added, ‘the boat changes its mind, and longs instead to explore the bottom.’

As they drew nearer the fire, Lasa Rook’s voice drifted out to them. ‘Another wastrel, Hanako? But not the grunts and growls of a bear, nor the hiss of a dragon. Why, this venture offers everything but the sweaty squeeze beneath the furs. Tell me, oh please, the tale of a shipwrecked prince flung so callously upon my lap, as it were …’

She was standing, awaiting them, and her words trailed away when the Jaghut stepped into the light, already stripping off his soaked clothing.

‘Unless you’re in the habit of devouring small children with your sweet trap, woman, best look back upon your companion, if satisfaction is what you seek.’

Lasa Rook snorted, and then moved to sit once more. ‘Wastrels indeed. Do charge these flames, Hanako, and with luck, such heat will dry our guest to a frail wisp, lifting him high into the night and gone.’

Now naked, the Jaghut moved closer to the hearth and began laying out his clothes. ‘Thel Akai,’ he said, making the words sound like a mild irritation, ‘you’ve been tumbling down out of the mountains for weeks now. All through the nights, as I communed with the walls of my cave, and paced the rough floor in search of quietude, I have been subjected to echoing braying I assumed to be laughter.’ Finished with his clothing, he moved closer to the flames and held out his hands to the heat. ‘But let it not be said that a Jaghut worth his salt would call but one cave his refuge. I set out, then, seeking a more remote cache.’

‘His boat sank,’ Hanako explained.

Lasa Rook lifted a bright gaze to him. ‘At last, brevity! Heed well this deplorable youth, Jaghut, and consider – in your own time, to be sure – the value of being succinct. After all, we do not all live for ages untold, inviting such preambles as to witness the greying of hair and bending of bones.’

After a moment, the Jaghut rose and retrieved the pack that Hanako had dragged into the firelight. He pulled free the straps and drew out a bundled chain surcoat, followed by a helm, a belt and twin scabbarded shortswords.

Hanako stared. ‘You swam carrying all that? I think even I could not manage such a thing, sir.’

‘When swimming fails, one walks.’

‘Listen to him, Hanako. Before this night is done, he will tell you of the stars he gathered from the sky.’ She rose. ‘I’m for sleep, yielding to you snores rather than moans. But do lean an ear to this pallid Jaghut, and partake in his dirge of exhausted wisdom. No finer music could more quickly put me to sleep.’

Hanako moved to check on Erelan Kreed, but the warrior remained unconscious, his brow hot with fever. Troubled, Hanako returned to sit opposite the Jaghut.

‘What ails your friend?’

‘He slew a dragon, and then drank its blood.’

The Jaghut grunted. ‘I expect he eats his own lice, too.’

‘I am named Hanako.’

‘I know.’

Hanako waited, and then shrugged before dragging close a branch torn from a tree they had pulled up from the high-water line. He flung it on to the fire. Sparks scattered and then died.

‘Names,’ said the Jaghut, ‘become their own curses. They are seared upon your soul, destined to follow your every deed. Such flimsy frames to bear inordinate burdens. It is my thought that we should all dispense with our old names, perhaps once every ten or so years. Imagine the wonder of beginning anew, Hanako, cleansed of all history.’

‘I would see a world, sir, where every crime was escaped.’

‘Hmm, you have a point there, but I wonder, what is it, precisely?’

‘With our names comes responsibility, for all that we have done, and all that we promise to do. But also, sir, how would we keep track of our companions? Our friends? Family?’

‘Yes, but your point?’

Hanako frowned. ‘You are Jaghut. You are unlike the rest of us. It is the very continuity that we yearn for, which you would reject. Well, which you have rejected.’

For a time neither spoke, and the only sound beyond the crackling flames was the drone of Lasa Rook’s snoring.

Then the Jaghut said, ‘Hanako, I am named Raest.’

‘Then welcome, Raest, to our fire.’

‘Voice a single jibe, Hanako, and I might have to chop off your head. Just so you understand how this night will play.’

‘I am too worried for Erelan Kreed, to be honest.’

‘He will live. Or die.’

‘Ah. Thank you.’

‘If he lives, he will not be the man you once knew. If you trusted this Erelan Kreed, trust him no longer. If you thought you knew him, you know him no more. And, should he instead die, why, honour who he once was. Raise a decent cairn and sing his praises.’

Hanako stared into the flames. ‘We journey, Raest,’ he said, ‘in answer to the call of one of your kin.’

‘Hood. Now that is a name worthy of being a curse.’

‘You will not answer his need?’

‘Of course not.’

‘You say that other Thel Akai have passed through this valley, and past your cave. It seems, then, that there will be many more in Hood’s army than I had first imagined.’

‘Thel Akai, who like a good joke,’ Raest said, nodding. ‘Dog-Runners, who have made sorrow a goddess of endless tears. Ilnap, who flee a usurper among their island kingdom. Forulkan, seeking the final arbiter. Jheck and Jhelarkan, ever eager for blood, even should it ooze from carrion. Petty tyrants from across the ocean, fleeing the High King’s incorruptible justice. Tiste, Azathanai, Halacahi, Thelomen-’

‘Thelomen!’

‘Word travels swift and far, Hanako, when even the waves carry the tale.’

‘Then,’ whispered Hanako, ‘this shall be a most formidable army.’

‘I would almost yield my isolation to see Hood’s ugly face, once he realizes the true tragedy that is the answer to his ill-considered summons.’

‘I should have realized,’ Hanako said. ‘Grief will make a vast legion. How could it not?’

‘It is not the grief, young Thel Akai, but the questions for which there are no answers. Against such silence, frustration and fury will see every sword drawn. Hood longs to face an enemy, and will, I fear, refashion death into a god. A being worthy of cursing, a face to be carved from senseless stone, offering up a blank, stony gaze, a grimace of granite.’ Raest snorted. ‘I see dolmens in the offing, and sacred wells from which the stench of rotting meat rises, to greet dancing flies. There will be sacrifices made, in the delusion of fair bargain.’

‘The Thel Akai,’ said Hanako, ‘hold to a faith in balance. When there is death, life will answer it. All things in this world, and in every other, ride upon a fulcrum.’

‘A fulcrum? And who then fashioned this cosmic construct, Hanako?’

‘It is simply how things are made, Raest. Mountains will crack and tumble, making the ground level where once stood cliffs. Rivers will flood and then subside when the waters drain away. For every dune raised up by the winds, there is an answering hollow.’

‘For every cry, there follows a silence. For every laugh, there is weeping. Yes, yes, Hanako.’ Raest waved a long-fingered, almost skeletal hand. ‘But alas, what you describe to me is the mind’s game with itself, haunted by the need to make sense of senseless things. To be certain, there are vague rules at work, which observation can detect. Crumbling mountains and flooding rivers and the like. The grinding wheel of the stars at night. But such predictability can deceive, Hanako. Worse, it can lead to complacency. Better to heed the unlikely, and assemble such rules only after disaster’s dust settles. After all, the heart of that need is comfort.’

Hanako glanced away, and then scowled down into the flames of the fire. ‘You mock our beliefs.’

‘But gently, I assure you.’

‘As you would a child, you mean.’

‘Such is our curse,’ Raest replied. ‘In fact,’ he added, ‘one cannot help but detest the Jaghut in general. Permit me, if you will, to explain.’

Hanako pushed more of the branch into the fire. He considered the Jaghut’s offer. There would indeed be value in learning more of these strange people. After a moment, he nodded. ‘Very well.’

Raest reached out to collect a stick, one end of which he thrust into the embers. ‘Some dread failure overtook us, one in which the intellect, knowing only itself, rose to dominate our proud selves, and by the seduction of language then set about denigrating all that was not rational, all that hovered tantalizingly out of reach, beyond its power to comprehend, much less explain away. Although it works hard at doing precisely that: explaining away, dismissing, impugning, mocking. The cynical eye is cast, and the cleverness of the mind ascends to assume the pose of the haughty. What results, sadly, is an intellect that won’t be denied its own sense of superiority.’ He held up the stick with which he had been stirring the embers, studied the small flames flickering from its blackened tip. ‘Is there anything more obnoxious than that?’

Hanako found himself matching Raest’s examination of the small tongues of fire writhing about the stick’s tip.

Raest continued. ‘So Gothos gave to us this wretched truth, and in so doing, he showed us the paucity of our lives. The intellect delights in standing triumphant within us, even as the ashes rise past our knees, as the skies darken and grow foul with smoke; even as children starve or are flung into the face of war and strife. Because the mind that has convinced itself of its own superiority is incapable of humility, and in the absence of humility, it is incapable of growth.’ He waved the stick before him to make the tip glow, inscribing patterns that seemed to linger in the air. ‘To all this, Caladan Brood but nodded, and built for us a monument to our own stupidity. The Tower of Hate. Oh, how we laughed at the wonder of it, the blatant skyward stab of our obdurate natures. A monument, in truth, to announce the fall of our civilization … now that was a night of celebration!’

‘But surely,’ objected Hanako, ‘the rational state proffers many gifts to a civilization!’

Raest shrugged, and then set one hand over one of his eyes, blinking with the other. ‘Why yes, I see them now! These gifts!’ He withdrew his hand and frowned. ‘Oh dear, is that the cost? What my second eye observes – all those poor fools made to kneel in the dirt! And the well-meaning but utterly self-deceiving leaders – living in such splendour – who hold in their hands the life and death and liberty of those abject minions! And there, ever ready with their salutes, the soldiers who would impose the will of said leaders, in the subjugation of their fellows. Why, reason rules this world! The necessities of organization are such rational constructs – who could deny their worth?’ He snorted. ‘Hmm, shall we ask the slaves, in the few moments they win each day in which to pause and draw breath from their labours? Or shall we ask the leaders, who in the luxury of privilege are granted time to contemplate the system in which they thrive? Or, perhaps, the soldiers? But then, they are told not to think, only to obey. Where, then, among these myriad participants, are we to look for judgement?’

‘The bards, the poets, the sculptors and painters.’

‘Bah, who ever listens to them?’

‘You heeded Caladan Brood.’

‘He drove the spear into our civilization, yes, but that civilization was already a corpse, already cold and lifeless upon the ground. No, the role of artists is to attend the funerals. They are the pall-bearers of failure, and every wonder they raise high in celebration harks back to a time already dead.’

‘Some would dance, and give to us joy and hope.’

‘The gift of momentary forgetfulness,’ Raest said, nodding. ‘This we name entertainment.’

‘Does that not have value?’

‘It does, except when pursued to excess. At that point, it becomes denial.’

‘What, then, is your answer, Raest?’

The Jaghut’s tusks flashed dully as Raest grinned. ‘I shall endeavour to create a new civilization, one heeding the inherent flaws of its organization. I shall, indeed, attempt the impossible. Alas, I can already foresee the outcome, as I am driven by frustration and, ultimately, despair. The possibility must be acknowledged – which we dare not do – that we, being imperfect creatures, are ever doomed to fail in achieving the perfection of a just society, a society of liberation, balanced and compassionate, reasonable and spiritual, devoid of tyrannies of thought and deed, absent wanton malice, the cruelty of natural vices, be they greed, envy, or the desire to dominate.’

Hanako studied the flames, considering the Jaghut’s chilling words. ‘But, Raest, can we not try?’

‘To try implies a willingness to accept our flaws, and to serve the cause of mitigating them. To try, Hanako, begins with acknowledging those flaws, and that requires humility, and so we return, once again, to an intellect convinced of its own superiority – not just superiority over others of its own kind, but superiority over nature itself. The Tiste poet Gallan said it well when he wrote “The shore does not dream of you”. Do you know that poem?’

Hanako shook his head.

‘Do you grasp the meaning of that line?’

‘Nature will prove itself superior to our every conceit.’

Raest nodded, his eyes shining in the firelight. ‘Humility. Seek it within yourself, be as sceptical of your own superiority as your intellect is sceptical of the superiority of things other than itself. Turn your critical faculties inward, with ruthless diligence, and by that you will understand the true meaning of courage. It is the kind of courage that sees you end up on your knees, but with the will to rise once more, to begin it all over again.’

‘You describe an unending journey, Raest, of a nature which would test a soul to its very core.’

‘I describe a life lived well, Hanako. I describe a life of worth.’ Then he flung the stick on to the flames. ‘But my words are not for the young, alas. Even so, they may echo into future years, and rebound when the time is propitious. Thus, I offer them to you, Hanako.’

‘For your gift this night,’ Hanako said, ‘I thank you.’

‘A gift you barely comprehend.’

The Thel Akai heard the wryness in the Jaghut’s tone, stealing the sting from the words. ‘Just so, Raest.’

‘The Dog-Runners speak with rare vision,’ Raest said, ‘when they say that in the flames of the hearth, we can see both our rise and our fall.’

‘And the ashes in the morning to come?’

The Jaghut’s twisted mouth fashioned a bitter grin. ‘Those ashes … yes, well. There are none to see them, just as none of us can do aught but remember heat yet remain doomed to feel no warmth from the memory, so we know but cannot know what it was like to be born, nor what it will be like to die. Ashes … they will tell you that something has burned, but what is the shape of that thing? For those who burned but faintly, some form remains, enough with which to guess. But for those who burned fiercely, ah, as you say, nothing but a heap of ashes, swiftly scattered on the wind.’

‘Is there no hope for legacy, Raest?’

‘By all means hope, Hanako. Indeed, aspire. But what the future will read from what you leave behind is beyond your power to control. And if that is not humbling, then nothing is.’

‘And yet,’ said Hanako, ‘I travel to find an army that seeks death, to wage a war that cannot be won. In my heart, I yearn for failure, and dream of glory.’

‘And no doubt you will find it,’ Raest replied.

‘Tell me of the Azathanai.’

‘Squalid wretches every one of them. Look not to the Azathanai for guidance.’

‘How did you walk across the bottom of the lake, carrying your armour?’

‘How? A few steps, amidst clouds of silt, and then back to the surface, and then down again, for a few more strides. It was dull work, I tell you. There is a forest down there, making a tangle of everything. And hearthstones in rings, like pocks, making treacherous holes. Tree stumps and overly curious fish. Biting eels. I’ve had better days.’ With that, Raest rose. ‘Sleep beckons.’

But Hanako was not yet finished with this unexpected guest. ‘Raest, can you heal Erelan Kreed?’

The Jaghut paused, and then said, ‘No. As I said, the blood will either kill him or it won’t. But what I can offer is a warning. The kin of the slain dragon will know your friend by the scent of that Draconic blood. Some will seek to resume old arguments.’

Hanako stared at Raest. ‘They will hunt us?’

The Jaghut shrugged. ‘You have lively days ahead of you, Thel Akai.’

* * *

With dawn’s light creeping around the sides of the mountain to the east, Garelko, the eldest of Lasa Rook’s husbands, walked up to the side of the dragon’s carcass and gave it a kick. Rank gases hissed out from somewhere below. Coughing, he staggered back.

From the makeshift hut the three Thel Akai had built for the night just past, up beyond the high-water mark, Ravast laughed. Crouched in the entranceway, he watched as Garelko then waded into the water to approach the carcass from that side.

‘Aai!’ Garelko cried as he looked down. ‘The water seethes with ravenous crayfish!’

Tathenal appeared from further up the strand, dragging another uprooted tree. Upon hearing Garelko’s cry, he paused and looked up. ‘You haunt that poor beast like a wolf its kill. Leave off that which you cannot claim, unless by stink alone you would assert kinship.’

‘Wait!’ said Garelko, peering down. ‘What glimmer is this I see? Ah, nothing but the picked bones of Tathenal’s curiosity. ‘Twas but the tiniest bird, if one can judge said bones. Do you still hear the snicker of pincers in your ears, O brother of fate? Why, they must have set upon you in the night.’

‘What truths then does the dead beast yield?’ Tathenal asked.

‘Many truths, Tathenal.’ Garelko waded back on to the shore. ‘By gleaning examination of myriad details, I conclude, for example, that the dragon did not make that cairn of stones in which was entombed Ravast’s battleaxe.’

‘Indeed? Then did it not crush its own skull either?’

‘I wager that gift belonged to Erelan Kreed.’

‘Why, such perception in old Garelko! But can you be certain that it was not the ravenous crayfish that scuttled in sudden ambush, whilst the wounded beast wallowed in the shallows?’

‘Your mocking words, Tathenal, well match your ignorance. I felt the snip of pincers and can tell you, only a fool would underestimate their vicious efficacy.’

‘A foolish dragon, at the very least,’ Ravast suggested as he emerged from the hut and made his way down on to the shoreline. ‘Tathenal, I see you have collected for us another tree. Will you add it to the seven others and make for us a neat pile?’

Tathenal scowled up at him. ‘The dream felt very real, pup. I tell you, we all came close to drowning, and if not for the ship I built, blessed as I was by premonition, we would all be dead now.’

‘Dead in your dream realm, you mean.’

‘And who is to say that such realms are lacking in verisimilitude, Ravast? Indeed, that realm may well be the repository of our precious souls, and should we die in it, we would awaken with lifeless eyes and an insatiable predilection for funereal attire. Dour and solemn may well describe your tastes in fashion, but not mine!’

‘But Tathenal,’ said Ravast, ‘by all means build your timbered salvation, only do it in your sleep, in the realm where it will be needed.’ He gestured at the uprooted trees now lining their camp. ‘These will avail you not, unless you envision a ship able to ply waters both real and imagined.’

‘Wise observation,’ observed Garelko, now studying Tathenal with some scepticism. ‘And one which had already occurred to me, since it is the eldest who know wisdom. Perhaps, in reconsidering Ravast’s words, it would be better to conclude not wisdom, but the youthful quickness of the youthful mind, that so swiftly rushes to the place of obvious absurdity, particularly when contemplating someone else’s efforts.’

‘A rush to ill-considered judgement, you mean,’ retorted Tathenal. ‘Near children such as Ravast are incapable of understanding nuance in matters of the metaphysical. Lost on him, as well, is my gracious generosity in offering him a berth upon my vessel.’

‘I see no vessel,’ said Ravast. ‘I see trees, branches, leaves and roots.’

‘It is the superior mind that can observe this meanest material, and yet see in it a sharp-prowed monument to maritime majesty.’

‘They buried my axe,’ Ravast said, ‘fearing that it was all that remained of us. We came too late, alas, to see the wet stains of our wife’s tears, as she flung herself atop the rock-pile, tearing hair from her scalp in reams of grief and whatnot.’

‘I looked for but found no clumps of hair,’ Garelko said. ‘No, it’s far more likely that she has already taken young, all-too-handsome Hanako to her furs, and if her mighty will reveals the power she imagines it to possess, why, already she swells with illegitimate child. I see her, here in my mind’s eye, already sated and, curse that Hanako, satiated as well! The smugness of her glinting regard haunts me! The faint smile of womanly victory over us, in all those battles we never recognize, even as our blood drips. I see it, hovering like a knife above my heart, to make sudden blur towards my beleaguered manhood!’

‘That cut is years old, Garelko,’ Tathenal said. ‘An eel made lifeless by age, flopping no more.’

‘Ravast, come to my aid. Young and old must ally, and by stinging rebuke savage the one who possesses not enough of either. Tathenal, by all means build your boat, but we must leave you behind, and rush to the moment when we stumble upon our disloyal wife, as she thrashes in the arms of Hanako the adulterer. You and I, Ravast, we shall unveil the cuckold’s razor beak, and see in our wife’s wide eyes that first flowering of fear and dread! And then, with her dignity squirming beneath our heel, we shall grind her into misery and remorse, and so win a cornucopia of favours!’

‘Bright fruit and venomous nectar, more like,’ said Tathenal, sneering. ‘When I see you both flounder in deep waves, and hear your piteous cries, why, I will blithely sail past you both, and offer up the meanest flutter of fingers.’

‘When next you see me in your dreams,’ Ravast said, ‘observe as I rush to the flood, inviting every lungful of sweet water. Welcome my carcass, Tathenal, as it rolls to and fro, and be at ease, knowing I died happy.’

Garelko grunted. ‘Ravast, you’ve not been married long enough to have lifeless eyes. In perusing my reflection this morning, in the lake’s mirrored surface, I was shocked at the dullness of my own gaze.’

‘Our shock is long past,’ said Tathenal. ‘Yours is a gaze, Garelko, that can blunt a sword’s edge, and by wit you bludgeon us all. My poor humour reels bruised and struck senseless. So by all means, take the pup and be off, both of you!’

Ravast turned back to the hut. ‘We’d best dismantle our abode, Garelko, since it was by our own hands that it was thus raised.’

‘A moment there! Where will I sleep?’

‘Why, Tathenal,’ said Ravast, ‘you can sleep in your boat.’

Garelko laughed. ‘Sweet dreams, Tathenal! Hahahaha!’

‘Very well,’ sighed Tathenal after a moment’s consideration, ‘I will accompany you, to ensure that you are safe, as I alone among the three of us happen to be in my fighting prime. The pup is too wild and wayward and still thinks himself a hero, whilst the ancient man of creaking bones can scarcely lift his weapon.’

‘Ah,’ said Ravast, ‘we can leave the hut then, for the next party of fools.’

‘You confess your spite!’

‘I confess nothing, except, perhaps, a sudden laziness. Now, have we not lingered here long enough? We have a treacherous wife to hunt down!’

‘I shall shake my fist at her most stentoriously,’ said Garelko as he collected his gear. ‘As a bear awakened from its cave, my lips shall writhe and my fangs gnash with eerie clicking sounds. Like a wolf in the deep snows, I shall shake my hide and free the hackles to rise. With all the remorselessness of an advancing crayfish, my pincers shall open wide in waving threat and snippery danger.’

‘Finally,’ said Tathenal, ‘in simile he finds the proper scale.’

A short time later, the three husbands of Lasa Rook set out, once again upon the trail of their wife.

Perhaps it was the dragon’s carcass, but Ravast’s thoughts were soon mired in memories of battle. He had been new to his weapons when Thelomen raiders struck their village. He could remember their blunt-prowed ships driving up upon the pebbled strand, and how armoured figures swarmed over the sides and began running up the slope. The village dogs were in a frenzy, rushing down to challenge them. Most of the beasts were wise enough to harry rather than close, but a few went down to spears, dying loudly, in a mess of blood and entrails. Ravast, rushing to join a line of men and women who’d collected up weapons and, here and there, some pieces of armour or a helm or a shield, had fallen into a gap between two kin. Readying his axe and shield, he only then realized that he was in the first line, the one made up of the most ancient members of the clan. They stood for the sole purpose of slowing the Thelomen advance, thus earning the village’s younger warriors the time to fully arm and armour themselves, whilst youths corralled the children to guide them into the forested crags inland.

The only defender not in his proper place was Ravast.

But it was too late, as the first wave of Thelomen reached them.

Widows and widowers, the lame and the bent, Ravast’s companions fought hard and in silence, long past all thoughts of complaint or fear. When they fell, they made no cries, and not one begged for mercy. It was only much later that Ravast understood how that battle, that savage defence of the village, marked for his companions a purpose to their deaths – a moment they had all been waiting for. When faced with the choice of sudden death or the lingering wasting away of old age, not one had hesitated in taking up a weapon.

Ravast alone survived, and fought with such desperation that he held the attackers back, until the now caparisoned warriors who had finally gathered behind him elected to advance to join him rather than waiting in their shield-wall.

The Thelomen had been driven back that day, without ever reaching the village. Ravast had been proclaimed both a hero and a fool, and on that day he had caught the eye of Lasa Rook.

Thereafter, Ravast fought that battle many times, in the tales told at the hearth, and in his dreams, where the fear took hold of him in ways he had not known on the day itself. He did well to disguise it, of course, as befitted the young hero of that day. But the truth of it was, he carried more scars from the dreams of the battle than from the battle itself.

Lasa Rook had won him with little effort, not knowing, he suspected, the lame, shivering creature that hid inside his hale young body. Fear had made a life of farming and herding most welcome, and if others noted how strange it was that such a natural warrior should choose to set aside his weapons and armour, it was easy enough to then consider the lure of Lasa Rook, the village’s most desired woman.

He had learned to hide that fear, and had raised high walls around his dreams. Tathenal could well dream of floods and devastation, and gather uprooted trees with which to build his salvation. But no such gesture existed for Ravast. Neither a ship built by any Thel Akai, nor one built by a god, could ride above the waves of fear.

Upon such seas, every vessel will sink, vanishing beneath the roiling tumult. Upon such seas, a man such as I can only drown.

And yet, here he walked, at seeming ease alongside his fellow husbands.

She will not risk the Jaghut’s unreasoning path. She will know when to turn back. Long before any battle. If not, then I will confess to her. I will tell her about the widows and widowers, the too old and the crippled, who rushed to their place in that first line. And the silence that took them, bittersweet with anticipation, and how they all gathered up their own fears, and sent them into the one man who did not belong among them.

I will tell her of my fears, and if I must fall in esteem in her eyes, then still I shall not hesitate.

Wife. You buried my axe.

But I buried it long ago.

You think me now dead. But I died in that line. I, Ravast, widower to them all.

We will laugh then, in our breaking of souls, and set our vision back upon the trail, to our distant, peaceful farm, which lies upon the heel of the Lower Rise, just above the veil of morning smoke from the village below.

The dogs are barking, I hear, but not in alarm. They are just keeping their throats ready.

Because the Thelomen will come again, in their ships, and I will take my place in that first line. Where I will stand in silence. And in blessed anticipation.

He thought back to the dragon’s carcass, and the frantic swing of his axe, that only by chance struck the beast’s taloned paw. The walls had held on that day, if only because the battle proved so brief in duration. The walls had held, but barely.

‘Another slope and another mountain and another high pass!’ Garelko groaned as they climbed up from the lake’s edge. ‘Ravast, I beg you, carry this old man!’

No, I already carry too many.

Tathenal said, ‘The saddle pass is high enough, I should think. That will see us safe from the flood. When next we camp, I have in mind a new idea. Ravast, consider this when you build our hut for the night. Hull-shaped, and sound of flank …’

Tathenal’s dreams of flood the night just past were not the first. For years, he had been haunted by visions of disaster, against which his will proved, time and again, utterly helpless. Behind the veil of sleep, the mind had a way of wandering into strange places, as if the soul knew that it was, in truth, lost. Landscapes arrived twisted, known and yet unknown, and he would see faces that he recognized, yet did not, and in walking through his dreams, in turning to him and speaking in garbled tongues, they proved little more than harbingers of confusion.

For all that, the sense of dread persisted, like the scent of a storm upon the air. The roots of a mountain grown corrupted and rotten – he alone could feel its tremors, its promise of imminent collapse. A tendril of smoke upon the breeze – none other noticed the glow of the raging flames deep in the forest, the growing roar of conflagration. Diseases among the livestock, birds falling from the sky, the village cats poisoned and dying beneath wagons. Each time, Tathenal was alone in seeing the signs, unheeded in his cries of warning, and the last to fall to whatever calamity – fleeing exhausted, whimpering, and yet burning with validation.

Prophets thrived on being ignored. They delighted in being proved right, and delighted yet more in seeing misery and suffering afflict every fool who dared to mock. Tathenal had long since learned to keep his fears to himself, barring the occasional confession to his closest companions – his fellow husbands. Their chiding and amusement comforted him, when he chose to not think about it too much. Familiar voices took the sting from dismissive words. Habits and patterns could be worn like old clothes.

There was little challenge in assembling each scene of destruction, plucking free the specific details, and then recognizing the singular fear hidden behind them all. Worse, he was hardly unique in his terror of death. Warriors marched into its face at every battle, and their courage was but the visible side of the mask, when the unseen side, flush against the skin of their faces, was cold and clammy with fear. Wives who commanded the hearth, as mistresses of the farm and its myriad denizens, wove blankets, or pushed the dust from the rooms; they dragged husbands or lovers to their furs and blazed like fires against the darkness. Herders counted their flocks and sought signs of wolves on the mountain paths. Wood-carvers gathered dead trees and fought their own kind of war, seeking resurrection in what they made. Poets and hearth-singers pulled threads from tattered souls, eliciting emotions which, in the end, were proofs against death.

The enemy forced every act, every deed. The enemy pursued, or stalked, or waited in ambush. It could not be defeated, and it never lost.

Tathenal understood the Jaghut, Hood. He understood this summoning, and the outrage that gave it such appeal. He understood, as well, the futility of it.

Middle among the husbands, he found himself upon an ever-moving bridge, with the youth, Ravast, carrying one end, and the elder, Garelko, the other. Their positions were fixed, but the march through time could not pause, not for an instant. Until death came to take one of them. Then, the journey would stagger, stumble and slide. In a predictable world, Garelko would fall first, and Tathenal would find himself taking the old man’s place, as the new eldest, and if Lasa Rook was as unchanging as she seemed, then Ravast would find himself upon that bridge, trapped in the middle, with a new youth upon the other end.

It was an awkward construct in Tathenal’s mind, and yet it held, stubborn and persistent. He did not particularly like it, sensing its lack of artistry, and, indeed, its lack of purpose. It is simply how we are. A stupid thing to consider. A bridge? Why a bridge? What unknown torrent does it span? And why am I alone in finding my feet not upon solid ground, but upon an uncertain purchase? When I at last find myself the eldest, will I step with relief upon some future shore, some river’s verge or chasm’s blessed ledge? And, should I arrive there, what will I see ahead of me?

We carry our bridges, from birth until death. If I name it the soul, then it is no wonder I ever fear the flood, the fire, the avalanche. Or the gnawing waste of disease, and every hidden, unseen place of neglect. But these two companions, holding me up at either end, ah, I set too vast a weight upon them.

He understood the nature of love, such as he felt for his fellow husbands. They stood aligned and together, with Lasa Rook opposite them. The specifics were not relevant. No soul deserved to stand alone, and families both found and made served the same purpose. In his dreams, it was this that he saw swept away, time and again. In his dreams, he ever ended up alone.

There would be an army, clustered around Hood and his vow. Tathenal was certain of it. An army such as no world had ever seen before. Its enemy was impossible, but that did not matter – no, in truth, it was that impossibility that would give the army its strength. He could not explain his certainty; could make little sense of his faith. But he would see that army, and, perhaps, join it.

I will step off the edge of this bridge. Knowing what will come of that. And it may be that, when the end comes, I will understand. Death will defeat time, when nothing else can. Lasa Rook, beloved wife, will you see the glory of that?

He did not believe any of the others would follow him, especially not Lasa Rook, and he was settled with that final departure.

It would be better, he decided, if he dreamed of that army. He knew, when at last he joined the ranks, his dreams of disaster would leave him. An end to my fear of being alone. An end to a soul’s solitude, when death at last arrives. There is something in that, something in there, that comforts.

Hood, your army will be vast.

Garelko made his way along the trail, taking the lead and so setting the pace. He deemed this the proper thing, since he was the eldest. He imagined himself the silver-muzzled wolf, the noble king, the wizened veteran of a thousand hunts. Our quarry is elusive, to be sure. But my mind’s eye is sharp. I see her swaying hips, and those buttocks, smooth as damp clay, as giant pots, two fused into one, rolling as she walks. A behind to bury your face in, with breath held, of course. But still, I will lunge without hesitation.

Not a wolf, but a sea lion, fierce and weighty, yet elegant in the water. In the midst of a surging wave, rushing for the crevice, the niche in the stone wall of her coy indifference. The echoes of her yelp will be as music to my soul.

And the swell of her belly! See these hands? They are made to cup such wonder, to stroke and gather in the folds that proffer wealth, like bolts of the softest cloth. Are we not sensual creatures? And do not the rough edges of age, these calluses and brittle nails, bely the tenderness of a loving touch? Or eager lust, for that matter?

The pup sneers, as only pups can, but such haughtiness is flimsy disguise over inexperience. I see through him, indeed, and think nothing of his airs. Youth has that swollen self to contend with, while I am past such conceits. Like an animal I will roll in my pleasures, and make of her a sack of moans.

She thinks us dead. She gasps in the arms of Hanako, no doubt, even at this very moment! Well, what’s another husband to add to the milling herd? It is experience she will long for, before too long, and by the time we find her, well, I see her eyes light up like torches in a cave.

Behind and belly, and now her breasts.

Weight and heft, sweet as bladders of wine, and my hands such a perfect fit beneath each fleshy pronouncement! Why, she could smother a horse with those twin tomes of sensuality! I see the animal dead with a smile on its face – no, a moment, such an image alarms my sensitive self. We shall send the horse back into the field; she can smother something else … think on it later.

We are hunters, and she the quarry. That much is plain. Unencumbered, as far as notions go.

I didn’t even believe in dragons. Slithering myth, seductive legend, scales and forked tongue, wings and whipping tail! An outrageous interruption to our conversation. Eating a skinned bear, no less! Was it so dainty of sensibility as to peel the beast before devouring? How curious! How ignoble for the Lord of Temper!

Dragons! Whence came the wretched thing?

But in rank decay, how mundane. Yet, was it not noble in form? No, it was not. A vile thing, this hoary beast of legend. We shall have to kill every one we come across, if only to appease the symmetry of sweet nature. Such insults must not go unchallenged.

I will take her from behind, and then from the front, fighting her breasts as if wrestling two bags of ale with stuck stoppers. Pull, you fool! Twist and pull!

The wizened wolf knows well its prey. A thousand hunts, a thousand conquests, and this trail is older than you might think, and yet, old man or not, I find it fresh as strawberries!

The pup knows nothing of this. Even Tathenal barely comprehends. The sweetness of life is anticipation. This, then, is our real moment of glory, yet listen to them, grunting and gasping as we climb yet another mountain’s backside, about to plunge into the crack of the pass, and crawl our way down its length – be tempted not by any caves you might spy, my fellow husbands! They are but distractions! She runs in order to be caught!

Ah, Lasa Rook, beloved, your sweat should taste sweet as wine. Which we can achieve, once I pour wine all over you.

Is not the mind a wondrous world? That thoughts and aspirations can cavort with such glee? That desires can spool out into such wild mess as to tangle every sense, and confound the spirit in a welter of delicious indulgence!

Reality stands no chance against such inner creations.

Dragons notwithstanding.

‘Ease up the pace, Garelko! You will rush us to our deaths!’

Garelko’s whiskered lips stretched into a grin … that just as quickly faded. Oh, such ill-chosen words!

* * *

‘I would have preferred a simpler path,’ muttered K’rul. ‘A modest step on to the withered plain, flanked by hills, and before us the tall poles surmounted with skulls, to mark the Jhelarkan claim to the territory. A week’s journey north of that, and we find ourselves in the place we sought.’

Skillen Droe shifted slightly, his neck twisting as he looked back upon K’rul. ‘The Jheleck would not welcome me.’

‘Oh, them too? What have you done to earn their enmity? In fact, is there anyone who would actually welcome you, Skillen Droe?’

The giant winged reptile tilted his head, considering, and then said, ‘None come to mind, but I will give it more thought.’

K’rul rubbed at his neck, where the bruises remained from when his companion had lifted him into the air. He studied the scene before them, and then sighed. ‘I wonder, is it your imagination, or mine, that conjures up worlds such as this one? Or do I reveal the flaw of conceit?’

‘If such landscapes are the products of your mind, or mine, K’rul, then conceit is the least of our worries.’

In the basin before them sprawled a city, so vast it climbed every slope, with a heavy cloud of dust shrouding the entire valley. Spires towered above angular tenements and what seemed to be public buildings, monumental in a solid, belligerent style. There were causeways spanning the gaps between the spires, and a vast gridwork of canals in which clear water flowed, with ornate bridges precisely placed at intervals, linking each district.

What jarred the eye were the city’s scale and the seething press of denizens crawling upon every available surface. Not a single spire was taller than K’rul himself, and the denizens were insects. Ants, perhaps, or termites, or some other such hive-dwelling creature.

‘I foresee difficulties crossing it,’ K’rul said. ‘Without, that is, leaving ruin in our wake. I think,’ he added, ‘we’ll need the use of your wings.’

‘It is the way of such insects,’ said Droe, ‘to ignore anything and everything, until that thing in some way disturbs them. Occupied as they are with more immediate endeavours, scurrying about on their rounds. The exigencies of survival, status, cooperation and such consume their entire existence.’

K’rul considered Droe’s observations, and then grunted and said, ‘But are there malcontents among them, I wonder? Plotters seeking freedom from their daily travail: that miserable crawl from birth to death? With heavy boots and careless steps, we could be the scourge of gods down there, and from our passage cults will rise in the years to follow, as memories blur and twist. Vengeful or indifferent? All a matter of interpretation.’

‘You imagine this as more than a simple illusion of civilization, K’rul? Are these insects in possession of written records? Histories and compilations? Literature?’

‘Droe, I see sculptures, there in the central plaza. There are artisans among them. Surely, there must be poets, too? And philosophers and inventors. Historians and politicians – all the natural pairings of professionals who, in the end, prove to be sworn enemies of one another.’

‘A curious notion, K’rul,’ said Droe. ‘Philosophers and inventors as enemies of one another? I beg you, explain this.’

K’rul shrugged. ‘The inventor possesses a lust for creation, but rarely if ever thinks of unintended consequences to whatever is invented. In answering a dilemma of functionality, or pursuing the dubious reward of efficiency, changes arrive to a society, and often they prove overwhelming. And surely, Skillen, you need not an explanation of the hatred politicians hold for historians – which by hard experience is rightly reciprocated. The Lord of Hate had much to say on the matter, which I found it difficult to refute. Civilization is an argument between thinkers and doers, just as invention is an argument against nature.’

‘Among these insects, then, in this city, you believe there is true civilization. But my eyes, K’rul, are perhaps keener than yours. I see how they march to and fro, and each one identical to the next, barring the ones we might deem soldiers, or constabulary. If there be a queen or empress, she hides, perhaps, in the cellar of that central palace, and speaks in scents and flavours.’

‘As do you, Skillen Droe. Yet does your chosen manner of communication lack subtlety? Does it fail in the necessary intricacy to express complex thought? Someone indeed rules below, and is served by an inner court. The soldiers maintain order and enforce cooperation. The sculptures are raised, to gods, perhaps, or even heroes of the past. What leads you to doubt?’

‘It is not doubt that I feel, K’rul.’

‘Then what?’

‘I feel … belittled.’

‘Well.’ After a moment, K’rul sighed. ‘Hard to argue against that. Still, we skirt the most intriguing issue here. These realms, which we stumble upon, when our only intent is to reach a destination. At times,’ he admitted, ‘I feel as if nature sets against us obstacles, each one intended to obscure.’

‘Obscure what, precisely?’

K’rul shrugged. ‘Some banal truth, no doubt.’

‘Each and every journey I have undertaken, K’rul, insists upon a passage of time, manifest in the gradual alteration, or development, of the landscape. The eye measures the step, the step spans the distance, and the mind conjures for itself a place for it, and gives it a name. But we sentient beings, we are ones to clutter time, to crowd it or stretch it out, when in truth it is unchanging.’

K’rul eyed the winged reptile. ‘Is this how your most recent hosts deem things? Have we not also the will to bend time, as it suits us?’

‘I cannot say. Have we?’

‘In the absence of confusion, we find easy synchronicity with time’s natural passing, with its fixed pace. Alas, Skillen, confusion walks with us, stubborn as a shadow.’ He paused, and then waved at the city before them. ‘An insect sets out, there to the west, and begins its march to the easternmost end of the scape. In its modest scale, the journey is long, arduous even. Yet you, Skillen, with your wings spread, could paint your shadow upon the gap in mere moments. Time, it seems, possesses a varying scale.’

‘No. It is only perception that varies.’

‘We have little else.’

‘The K’Chain Che’Malle, K’rul, are makers of instruments and machines. They contrive clocks that divide time itself. Thus, it is fixed in place. The procession of the gears never varies.’

‘But would a citizen of the city below sense the same intervals as those K’Chain Che’Malle?’

‘Perception suggests not … and yet, as I said, the gears are precise and the intervals consistent.’

‘And so, once again,’ mused K’rul, ‘we must look upon scale, and deem it relevant.’

‘It may be,’ said Skillen Droe as he unfolded his wings, ‘that in creating their clocks, the K’Chain Che’Malle have imposed an order, and a focal point, upon a force of nature that heretofore knew no rules. And by this creation, we are now trapped.’

The notion disturbed K’rul, and he had no response to make.

‘I see a sea beyond the valley.’

‘A sea! Now I begin to suspect who imposed this world upon us!’

‘Too bad, since he too will not welcome me.’

Skillen Droe collected up K’rul with one long-fingered, taloned hand, and unceremoniously took to the air, wings snapping. As they rose higher, K’rul could see that the land they had walked upon was in fact an island, although there had been no sense of that when striding through the mists earlier in the day. The realm of detritus and dust, of abandoned thrones and monuments, had dwindled into the fog that seemed to mark the boundaries between worlds.

Such distinctions seemed arbitrary, and the uncanny proliferation of realms, to which the Azathanai had access, had led K’rul into the belief that, by some strange synthesis of creation, he and his kind were the makers of such places. It was a difficult notion to shake, particularly when it seemed – as it did now – that two wills could war with creation itself.

This island was a manifestation of Mael’s whimsy, and Mael was in the habit of mocking the pretences of solid ground that rose like raised welts upon the perfect surface of his seas and oceans. He was also in the habit of peopling such lands with irritatingly poignant absurdities.

Insects! A city of spires and statues, bridges and canals! You deem this humour, Mael?

They swept over the city in the valley, shadow trailing, and a short time later reached the sandy strip of the shoreline. Out of courtesy, Skillen brought them down upon the white beach. The air here was sharp but warm.

His feet settling into the sand, K’rul straightened his clothing. ‘Your talons have put holes in my robe,’ he said.

Mael appeared, walking out from the lazy waves that whispered over the strand. Momentarily tangled in seaweed, the Azathanai paused to pluck it free, and then continued on. The man was naked, pale, his eyes a bland, washed-out blue. His black hair was long, hanging limp over his broad shoulders. Reaching the shore, he pointed a finger at Skillen Droe. ‘You owe me an apology.’

‘My life is measured in debts,’ Skillen Droe replied.

‘I see an easy solution to that,’ Mael said, and then his gaze shifted to K’rul. ‘At the very least, you should have elected to bleed out into the sea. Instead, we are witness to a crude proliferation of untempered power. Did no one advise you against such an act?’

‘I chose not to table the decision for discussion, Mael,’ K’rul replied. ‘Not that any of us ever discuss anything before doing whatever it is we end up doing. In any case,’ he added, ‘we are not all insects.’

Mael smiled. ‘An exercise,’ he said, ‘that amuses me.’

‘To what end?’

The Azathanai who ruled the seas simply shrugged. ‘What do you two want? Where are you going?’

‘To the Vitr,’ K’rul replied.

Mael grunted and looked away. ‘Ardata. And the Queen of Dreams.’

‘Well, to be more precise, the bay known as Starvald Demelain, where, it seems, the Gate once more resides.’

‘Open? Unguarded?’

‘We cannot be sure,’ K’rul admitted. ‘Hence, our journey. Now, if you’ll kindly get this damned sea out of our way …’

Mael frowned. ‘I didn’t make this. Or, rather, I didn’t deliberately put it in your way. Indeed, I assumed that you came here to speak to me. Are you saying that you didn’t?’

‘No,’ K’rul answered. ‘We didn’t.’

They were all silent for a moment, and then Mael grunted. ‘Oh. Well, right then. I suppose we’re done here.’

Skillen Droe said, ‘I apologize, Mael. It did not occur to me that you laid claim to everything beneath the waves, even submerged mountains.’

‘It wasn’t the mountain as such, Droe, it was you breaking it, and then lifting it into the damned sky. You left a damned hole, you fool, a raw wound in the seabed, and now fires burn down in the depths, and strange creatures gather round the edges, living and dying with every flare. If that’s not enough, I almost scalded myself when I went to look.’

‘It did not occur to me to think-’

‘Yes,’ cut in Mael, ‘and you need not add anything to that confession.’

K’rul glanced at Skillen Droe. ‘What mountain? Lifted, where, precisely?’

‘Into the sky, as Mael explained, K’rul. Hollowed out, a city resides within. I made use of K’Chain Che’Malle technology, testing its limits, as it were. As it is, it has proved a noble residence.’

‘Residence?’ K’rul asked. ‘Who dwells within it?’

‘Well, no one yet. The matter is rather confused at the moment, since I have lost track of it.’

Mael snorted. ‘You lost your floating mountain?’

‘Momentarily. I am sure it will turn up somewhere. Now, Mael, if you permit, I will carry K’rul across your sea, and we shall endeavour to make no disturbance.’

Turning back to the sea, Mael dismissively waved a hand.

They watched him walk back beneath the surface. Then Skillen pointed, and they saw a small sailing ship plying the shallows of the bay, a tiny craft no longer than K’rul’s foot.

‘Oh, really, now.’

* * *

The repast of lunch was now done. Tathenal set hands on hips and considered for a time, even as his fellow husbands stamped out the embers of the cookfire, and then he shrugged. ‘Sordid demands upon our lives. We must abandon our well-earned rest, bowing once more to our hasty pursuit of grief, joy and subtle vengeance. In my mind I do indeed see her, and at her shoulder, face stricken, young Hanako, Lord of Betrayals. He but deserves the meanest glance, for now she strides forth in red outrage. “You made me think you were all dead!” she cries and all at once we are the accused, cringing to her timorous tirade, and before a single breath’s passed, hear us blubber our wet-lipped apologies, words tumbling in haste.’ He shook his head. ‘No, my dreams were in error. No vessel of wood and dreams shall save us from this maelstrom of malaise.’

‘Your wallowing ways are a chore to us all, Tathenal,’ said Garelko.

‘And yet each dusk, old man, I shall still gather driftwood, lest the nightmares of my unsettled sleep awaken truthfully to a night of terrible flood.’

‘In the meantime,’ ventured Ravast as he shouldered his pack, ‘she draws another step distant, our beloved, grieving widow. Do neither of you find it odd that she marches to the death we presumably have already found? Perhaps indeed a certain new purpose has enlivened her stride-’

‘Aye, anticipation of the forthcoming night in which her cave stretches to swollen meat,’ muttered Garelko, though he smiled. ‘The Lord of Cuckolding has taken her hand, so sweetly to match the pup’s incorrigible youth, too smug for any other man to stomach-’

‘No, you doddering fool,’ Ravast retorted. ‘Think on it! She journeys in search of us! Into that hoary realm of spiders and webs, the cold sand upon which serpents lie curled in slumber as they await the night. The cramped confines, Garelko, of the rock-pile!’

As Garelko paused to scratch his jaw, Tathenal joined him and peered curiously at Ravast. ‘Garelko, you old goat, listen to the boy. He may have a point. In all misapprehension, our widow now rushes to her fierce battle with death itself! Not, alas, with amused mien, but with terrible purpose! She wishes us back!’

‘Then it behoves us,’ Garelko said in a musing tone, ‘to reach her before she takes that fatal step.’

‘The chasm crossed,’ Tathenal added with a nod. ‘The river forded, the pit leapt into, the veil parted, the chalice sipped, the-’

‘Oh, enough, Tathenal!’ Ravast snapped, turning from them both, and then wheeling back round. ‘Your slow wit will ever stumble in the dust of my wake, and that goes for you too, Garelko. No, the time has come for me to take to the fore, to ascend to predominance. It was,’ he added, ‘long in coming.’

He watched as the two older men exchanged a glance, and then Garelko smiled at Ravast. ‘Why, of course, by all means to the fore, young wolf. Do lead us doddering discards. We shall grip hard the gilded hem of your trailing genius, and consider ourselves blessed.’

Tathenal cleared his throat. ‘I see the way ahead, bold Ravast, a descent from these mountains. Be assured we shall follow your hasty plunge, and leave to you that first leap into her delighted embrace, and should Hanako’s smooth expression darken, why, we are reunited with our weapons, are we not? We shall lay out his cold body in a pool of hot blood! Hoary as Thelomen we shall cleave in half his skull to make the greenest cup for her bedside!’

Sighing, Ravast turned away. ‘Follow then, and never doubt for a moment: this throne has a new master.’

‘But I’ve yet to make toilet!’ cried Garelko in sudden dismay.

Ravast scowled. ‘Best make it a deferential one, old goat. Then catch us up in the instant past the shudder.’

Tathenal hissed in sympathy. ‘Oh, how I hate that shudder.’

Setting out, Ravast led the way, skirting the lake, and it was not long before Garelko caught up. The trail angled away from the shoreline and began its wending descent. The verdant canopy below was dark, yet lit gold here and there when the sunlight broke through the gathering clouds.

A storm was coming, blighting the day, and this lent zeal to their haste. Revelling in his youth, Ravast smiled at hearing the panting breaths of the two men behind him. While Garelko could set a matching pace for the morning, at last the creaky ancient was failing. This was a worthy pace, proof that this day had seen the world change, utterly and irrevocably. The chest could swell to such largesse, and he counselled upon himself a few moments of sober introspection. Myriad were the responsibilities of leading the pack, and it would be well to exercise some humility in his newfound power.

But there was too much pleasure, for now, to contemplate tendering mercy unto his older comrades, with their wobbly legs and watery eyes. He quickened his pace.

‘The tyrant unleashed!’ gasped Garelko somewhere behind him.

‘A storm draws upon us,’ Ravast called out over a shoulder. ‘The air is edged. Know you well this stillness. We must soon find shelter-’

‘Rain!’ shouted Tathenal. ‘Rain and flood! Rain and flood and mudslides! Rain and flood and mudslides and-’

‘Cease wailing!’ Ravast hissed. ‘Your caterwaul is a summons to the Lady of Thunder!’

‘I but remind her of our mortal selves, pup!’

‘I am pup no longer!’

‘Hear him snarl,’ Garelko said. ‘Woof woof!’

Ravast spun round. Seeing their open grins, fury filled him with sudden, searing realization. ‘You but mocked me!’

‘You’re all tuft and paws,’ Garelko said with a sneer. ‘Thought to knock the pair of us, did you? But who will guard you in the night? Perch there indeed, upon that lonely throne! I see your eyes shot through, hands trembling, limbs leaping, starting at every shadow!’

‘He ages before us,’ Tathenal added. ‘Beneath the burden of universal spite and, before long, disdain. Palpitating shell of a man, once young, once so bold! Wisdom cannot be wrested, pup!’

Ravast made fists and raised them threateningly. ‘Shall I break you both in half? Did I not defend the entire village against a Thelomen raiding party?’

‘Oh dear,’ laughed Garelko. ‘Not that again!’

Shaking his head, Tathenal said, ‘He’ll crawl to us soon enough, belly to the dust, a whimper and curled tail-’

Ravast turned on him. ‘You but await your ascent, Tathenal? Is that how it is? What have you promised Garelko here? A new mattress? What vows have you two exchanged, to keep me under your heels?’

‘It will be a fine mattress,’ Garelko said, and Tathenal nodded.

‘Now, pup,’ Garelko continued, ‘I see a clearing below and to the right, if my useless eyes are not so useless, and is that not a glimpse of slated roof, pitched just so? A beckoning abode, a serendipitous shelter, but perhaps already occupied? Must we roust some hapless denizen? Three Thel Akai need plenty of room, after all.’

‘This mockery will not be forgotten,’ Ravast promised. ‘But still, out with the weapons, in case indeed we need to shoo away some other. Garelko, take up that oafish mace and lead us on, as befits your claim of continued rule.’

Teeth bared, Garelko unslung the weapon and edged past Ravast. ‘Ah, pup, take note and see how it’s done.’

‘Just don’t bash down the door,’ Tathenal advised.

Garelko frowned. ‘Why not?’

‘We must keep out the weather, of course. This is the purpose of doors and walls and so on.’

The eldest husband paused. ‘You have a point. Suggestions?’

‘You could knock,’ said Tathenal.

‘Knuckles to wood, aye, sound notion.’ He shouldered his mace and glanced at Ravast. ‘See, pup? A wise leader must learn the art of assuaging his underlings. Of course, such recourse had already occurred to me, being eldest and so on. Yet I remained silent, to give Tathenal leave to feel clever. This is the art of command.’

Tathenal stepped close to Garelko and grabbed the man’s left ear. ‘This is big – does it come off?’

‘Aaii! That hurts!’

Releasing him, Tathenal gave Garelko a hard push. ‘Get on with you, goat. I already hear the wind riding the treetops.’

Grumbling, Garelko set off down the trail. After a moment, Ravast and Tathenal followed.

There was a flavour, to be sure, that came with such a longstanding companionship, and although Ravast was the youngest and newest to the cause – that cause being the mutual loyalty necessary to survive marriage to Lasa Rook – he had little choice in acknowledging its value. This, of course, did not obviate the pleasures of one-upmanship. For the moment he had been bested, but in the very next instant Garelko had failed in pressing his newfound alliance with Tathenal, and this was pleasing.

He crept, now, alongside Tathenal, in the wake of bold Garelko. Bold? The codger has never been bold in his overlong life! No, he is shamed to the fore, by none other than me! This is something to savour indeed, petty as it is! Oh, Lasa, do return with us and yield a lifetime of the inconsequential, I beg you!

They reached the edge of the small clearing in time to see Garelko arrive at the door. Using the butt of his mace he hammered on the frame, as even a light tap from the Thel Akai was likely to punch a hole through the door’s flimsy planks. After a moment, Garelko turned. ‘No one home-’

The door swung open and stepping into the gap was a Jaghut.

Rare was the Jaghut face that betrayed emotion, much less frustration, and yet even in the gathering gloom this man made his frustration woefully evident. ‘Why,’ he said in a half-snarl, ‘a lone cabin in the deep forest, high upon a wild mountain, well off the trail – now in there lives a denizen inviting company! Worse yet, more Thel Akai! A night in which I anticipated sober study now lies in ruin, as I must weather the grunts, sighs and farts of three oversized guests, not to mention their likely appetites!’ Then he stepped back and swept an arm in invitation. ‘But do come in, you and your two huddled shadows in the thicket beyond. Welcome to the last refuge of Raest, and heed well in your manners the misery your arrival brings.’

Garelko glanced back and waved Ravast and Tathenal forward. He then sheathed his mace once more, ducked, and made his way into the cabin.

Tathenal made a faint snickering sound and Ravast jabbed the man in the ribs. ‘None of that!’ he hissed.

‘Jaghut!’ muttered Tathenal, still grinning. ‘We shall pluck his strings the whole night, and leave such discord as to confound the man for years to come!’ He clutched at Ravast’s arm and pulled him close. ‘This is just what we require!’ he whispered. ‘A sorry victim upon whom to gang up, and so further consolidate our solidarity! Pity this fool, Ravast, pity him!’

‘I have pity for everyone in your company, Tathenal. Indeed, upon this journey I have cried myself to sleep every night.’

They continued on, reaching the doorway and then jostling a moment before Ravast stepped back to give his fellow husband leave to enter first.

The low rafters forced them all to the solid but narrow chairs Raest now pulled up around a modest table upon which the leavings of a meal still remained. The air was slightly sour with woodsmoke as the chimney was not drawing well, and there was the faint tang of something acrid, reminding Ravast of snake piss.

‘A sup or two remains in the cauldron,’ Raest said wearily. ‘Sit, lest you bring down the roof and worse with your solid skulls wagging this way and that.’

‘Kind sir,’ Garelko said with a nod as he eased himself down in the chair. ‘Ah, a perch for a single ham, better than none!’

‘A body part that grows larger in the telling,’ Raest said, moving over to a softer chair set up near the hearth. ‘Come the night you three will have to cosy up here on the floor. It’s dirt but at least it’s dry.’

Tathenal rummaged in his pack, pulling out three tin bowls, and then, bent over, made his way to the cauldron, nodding to Raest as he drew near. ‘Most generous, Raest of the Jaghut. The foulness of the weather and all that.’

His host did little more than grunt, reaching for a steaming tankard on the flagstone at his side.

‘Do forgive us,’ Tathenal continued as he ladled stew into the cups, ‘for ruining your sober study. Still, I have heard you Jaghut are known to indulge in such things, perhaps, to excess? Consider this night, then, a moment of relief in your otherwise unleavened existence.’

‘Relief? Oh yes, come the dawn and my seeing the last of you.’

Smiling, Tathenal collected up the three bowls and crabbed his way over to the table.

Ravast, already seated beside Garelko, spoke. ‘Good Raest, we thank you for this. Hear that wind’s howl – how it builds to rank fury. Mountain storms are the worst, are they not? Mmm, this stew smells wonderful, and this meat … what alpine ruminant fell to your snare or arrow, might I ask?’

‘There is a lizard that lives in the scree, venomous and ill spirited. Some can grow as long as you are tall. Indeed, they have been known to eat goats, sheep and Jaghut children we don’t like.’

Ravast paused with his spoon hovering over the bowl. ‘This is a venomous lizard?’

‘No of course not. You’re eating mutton, you fool.’

‘Ah, then, about that lizard?’

‘Oh, only that I found one has made a home of my cottage. It now regards us from the rafters, directly above you, in fact.’

Ravast slowly looked up, to see cold, glittering, unblinking eyes fixed upon him.

‘Hence my warning about you three taking your seats as quickly as possible,’ Raest added. ‘Such are the responsibilities of a host, trying as they might be.’

‘I never much liked mutton,’ confessed Garelko as he slurped.

‘Which is insane,’ snapped Tathenal, ‘since we are sheep herders.’

‘Yes, well, that’s just it, isn’t it? Two belly-bulging meals a day for how many decades? Each one knobby with mutton. That said, this meat here’s gamey, suggesting a wild sheep rather than our gentled breeds of the north. Thus, both overly sweet and roiling pungent. My bowels shall be busy tonight.’

At the groans of both Ravast and Tathenal, Raest cursed under his breath and took another mouthful of his mulled wine.

‘I remain curious, Raest,’ Tathenal said after a moment or two, ‘about this sober study of yours. Have you Jaghut not surrendered the future? What more remains to be contemplated?’

‘Why, the past, of course. Of the present, best we say nothing.’

‘But, kind sir, the past is dead.’

‘That’s rich, from you fools so eager to hasten through Hood’s gate.’

Ravast interjected, ‘Oh, sir, we do nothing of the sort! Indeed, we pursue our wife, with the very aim of bringing her back home before she strides through that sordid portal!’

‘The pathetic moan of disappointing husbands the world over, no doubt. And is your wife buxom, sensuous in an indolent if slightly randy way? Golden-locked, blossom-cheeked, full-lipped and inclined to snoring?’

‘Yes! All those things!’

‘In the company of a Thel Akai brave, big enough to break you all into pieces? A true warrior of a man, wearing nothing but rags and yet freshly scarred and scabbed from head to toe?’

Garelko choked on his stew. Ravast realized that his jaw now hung, leaving his mouth gaping. He managed a dry swallow and then looked to both Garelko and Tathenal. ‘Did you hear that? She’s had her way with him! Torn his clothes to shreds! Clawed and bitten and scratched in her lustful frenzy! She’s never done all that to any of us, damn her!’

‘We are undone,’ groaned Tathenal, lowering his head into his hands. ‘Cuckolded, cast aside, flung away, dismissed! No match to young Hanako, Thief of Love! Hanako the Ravished, the Pawed and Clawed, the Smarting yet Smug!’

Raest observed them all, now sipping gently from his tankard. ‘And the other one, dragon-fevered. Met them a few nights past, on my way here. We shared a fire. For this reason and only this reason, I do return the favour.’

It was a moment before Ravast frowned. ‘Dragon-fevered? Is this some new southern plague, then?’

‘Oh, a plague to come, I’m sure. He’ll live or he won’t. Mayhap you’ll find a cairn beside the trail below. Or not. Or, just as likely, the stiff corpse of this Hanako, his throat lustfully gnawed right down to the vertebrae. All skin rent from his flesh, and a smile upon his ashen face.’

‘You shatter our resolve,’ moaned Garelko, pulling at what remained of his hair. ‘Husbands? Should we perhaps consider returning home? Leaving her to … to him? I admit, I am defeated. Left behind, indeed. She’s used us up, worn us out, and now blithely moves on – even you, Ravast, young as you are, not warrior enough for Lasa Rook! Aaii! We have lost the battleground between our wife’s ample legs!’

Ravast found that he was trembling. Outside, the rain had begun, lashing down amidst trees that thrashed in the gale. Lightning flickered through cracks and joins; thunder followed. ‘No, Garelko. We shall confront her! We shall bear witness to her face, to her confession, to that cruel triumphant glint in her eye.’

‘A knife in my heart would be kinder!’

‘A flood-’

‘Enough about the flooding, Tathenal!’ snapped Ravast. He thumped the tabletop, rattling the bowls. ‘She would stride merrily into the realm of the rock-piles? Fine then, and three boots to her plush backside to send her on her way!’

‘Ladies of Fury,’ sighed Garelko, ‘her plush backside!’

‘This is all rather pathetic,’ Raest said from his chair. ‘But highly entertaining.’

At that moment thunder hammered the ground, so close as to seem to have come from just outside the cabin’s door. Everything shook and with an alarmed hiss the venomous lizard fell from the rafters and landed heavily on the tabletop, where it writhed briefly before righting itself and glaring about, head snapping from one side to the other.

Garelko’s hand shot out, grasping the creature by the snout. He stood and lifted the lizard, walking over to the door. ‘Duck for this damned thing? Not likely.’ Opening the door he flung the lizard out into the night. And then paused, staring out into the gloom.

‘Close that door, please,’ Raest said. ‘You’re scattering the embers here and these boots are almost new. Well, before they got soaked through.’

Garelko eased the door shut with a curiously gentle motion, and then, hunched over, made his way back to his chair. ‘Alas, Raest,’ he said, sighing as he sat. ‘It seems you have another guest.’

‘Is the lizard preparing to insist? No? Then who? I heard no knock.’

‘Good thing, too,’ Garelko said. ‘Sir, there is a dragon in your yard.’

Raest set his tankard down. ‘Only the wicked know peace.’ With a grunt he arose, gathering up a dusty, stained leather cloak that hung on a peg to one side of the door. That it had been hanging there for a long time was evinced by the stretched nipple that remained when he shrugged it on, riding his left shoulder. Tathenal turned away, hand covering the lower half of his face as he fought against an unseemly guffaw.

Garelko dared but a single glance at his fellow husband, lest he too burst loose in unholy mirth. Instead, he pushed his chair back and half stood. ‘Good sir, I will accompany you. Accosting a dragon seems perhaps dangerous. See how I am armoured and armed-’

Ravast added, ‘Do join dear Raest, then. We’ve seen off one dragon already, although that was mostly me and my axe in its foot. I leave this one to you, old goat. Tathenal is welcome to the next one.’ He reached for Garelko’s unwanted bowl of unwelcome mutton stew.

‘I require no armed escort,’ Raest said, now collecting a leather cap, such as might be worn beneath a helm, which he pulled on with some effort, only to remove it immediately, reaching into the cap and withdrawing what looked like a mouse’s nest of dry grasses. Emptied, the cap proved a better fit. Thus attired, the Jaghut opened the door once more and strode outside.

Garelko followed. ‘Good sir,’ he began, ‘about that other dragon-’

‘Kilmandaros has much to answer for,’ Raest cut in.

Before them, filling most of the clearing, the dragon stood upon its four squat limbs in a weary crouch, its tattered wings half cocked in the manner of an exhausted bird. Its massive head was turned and glittering eyes regarded them.

Frowning, Garelko said to Raest, ‘Sir, you take in vain the name of our sweet if fictional goddess mother.’

‘Oh, she’s real enough, Thel Akai. She’s never liked dragons, you see, and it seems some of her prejudice now infuses her wayward children. You may well be in the habit of attacking them, but not here and not now. So listen well. Draw not that weapon. Make no threat. Be gentle in your regard – well, as gentle as that face of yours can manage. As for the conversation, leave that to me.’

‘Conversation? Sir, with this wind I can barely hear you as it is.’

‘Not with you, idiot. With the dragon.’

‘I will delight in being the first Thel Akai to hear the slithery speech of a dragon, then!’

‘You will hear her or not. The choice belongs to her, not you.’

‘A female then! How can you tell?’

‘Simple. She’s bigger.’ With that, Raest strode forward, Garelko falling in a step behind the Jaghut. They halted no more than five or six paces from the creature’s snout. The dragon had lowered her head to bring it level with Raest. Rain streamed down the scales, the occasional flash of lightning sending reflected light shimmering across the pebbled hide.

When the dragon spoke, her voice filled Garelko’s skull, cool and sweet. ‘A Jaghut and a Thel Akai. Yet not at each other’s throats, from which I conclude that you have but just met, with the night still young.’

‘You are of course welcome,’ said Raest out loud, ‘to wait out this storm in the faint shelter of my glade. Once the storm is past, however, I expect you to continue on to wherever it is you’re going. It’s not that I don’t like dragons, you understand. Rather, I prefer solitude.’

‘Of course you do, Jaghut. What then of this Thel Akai?’

‘Gone in the morning as well. This one and his fellows still in the cabin.’

‘I found a slain brother, higher upon the trail.’

Garelko cleared his throat. ‘Alas, he surprised us.’

In that instant, the dragon’s gaze acquired sharp intensity, fixing solely upon Garelko. ‘Do you fear me vengeful, Thel Akai?’

Garelko blinked water from his eyes. ‘Fear?’

Raest said, ‘Thel Akai haven’t the wits to be frightened. That said, I’ll have no fighting in my damned yard, is that understood?’

‘You are Jaghut. I am of no mind to challenge your temper. I am Sorrit, sister to Dalk, who now lies dead beside a lake, slain by Thel Akai. This realm proves dangerous.’

‘In this realm, Sorrit, resides Kilmandaros.’

‘Perhaps then I shall gather my kin, so that we may contemplate vengeance.’

Raest shrugged. ‘You will find her to the east, on the Azathanai Plain. She no longer guides her children, at least not with deliberation. The curse of being a god is how quickly one becomes bored. Not to mention frustrated, exasperated and, eventually, spiteful. But, to ease you somewhat, I have heard no word of Skillen Droe.’

‘Your news is welcome, Jaghut. Once this storm eases, I will indeed be on my way. As for you, Thel Akai, Dalk lusted for my blood. It is well that he is dead.’

Garelko grunted in surprise, and then said, ‘It is sad when siblings fall out. Families should be bastions of well-being, kindness and love.’

‘Is yours, Thel Akai?’

‘Well, it shall be, perhaps, once we hunt down our wayward wife, kill her lover, and drag the damned woman back home.’

Raest slapped Garelko on the upper arm. ‘Let us go back inside. I’m getting wet.’

As they turned about, Garelko took the opportunity to pat the Jaghut on the left shoulder, not out of affection, but to flatten the stretched nipple in the leather, which had been driving him mad.

* * *

There was little comfort to be found in being carried by Skillen Droe. K’rul hung like carrion in the taloned grip of his companion, with the choppy waves of the sea far below. Droe’s leathery wings sent the chill air beating down, and the only relief came when they slipped into a thermal of rising warm air and the wings could stretch out motionless as they scythed forward.

Above them the sky remained cloudless and cerulean, the sun hanging directly overhead as the morning gave way to afternoon. As there didn’t seem to be much to say, and speaking would require shouting, K’rul held his peace, while Skillen Droe self-evidently kept his thoughts to himself.

K’rul had begun dozing when he was jolted awake by a sudden rush of air. Skillen Droe had begun a sharp descent, and K’rul twisted round to look down.

A boat. It sat grounded upon a shoal, perhaps a hundred spans from a narrow sliver of coral-sand that could barely be called an island. There was nothing else in sight out to every horizon, only the endless swell of heaving waves.

There were two occupants in the craft. Only one was visible as the other was mostly hidden beneath a tattered grey parasol. K’rul looked down to see flaming red hair, artfully if loosely curled and piled high above a face turned up to the sun. That face was impossibly white, as if no rays could bronze it. The woman wore what looked like an evening gown, the silk a bright emerald green and the frills a deeper shade. Though the gown was intended to reach down to her ankles, she had drawn it up to expose her white thighs.

The boat had two benches, one fore and one aft. In between these was a broad-bellied gap that had once held a step-mast, but the step, sail and mast were nowhere to be seen. The woman sat at the bow, while her companion with the parasol occupied the stern.

Skillen Droe elected to land in the gap between them, his wings beating fiercely for a moment before catching an updraught that allowed him to hover briefly, sufficient to set K’rul down before he settled his own weight amidst a crunch and groan of wood, and then Skillen folded his wings and hunched down.

The boat was well and truly aground. K’rul straightened his clothes before facing the woman and bowing slightly. ‘Cera Planto, it has been too long since I last looked upon your lovely self.’ Glancing at the huge, iron-skinned, tusked man in the shade of the parasol, K’rul nodded. ‘Vix, I trust you are well.’

Vix replied with a single grunt, his one eye glittering.

Cera Planto fanned herself, ‘Always the sweetest compliments from you, K’rul, but do tell me, what on earth has happened to Skillen Droe?’

‘A new guise for an old self,’ K’rul replied. ‘Should he choose to speak, his words will come in scents and flavours in the mind. Peculiar, but affecting.’

‘Oh, I doubt he’ll have words for us, since that last unfortunate incident.’ Her broad, flaring cheekbones bore an unnatural flush amidst powdered white, and the kohl surrounding her deep blue eyes and fading up to her eyebrows glistened metallic green. ‘Are there not those among us, no matter what cast or credence, for whom mishap circles with persistent perfidy? So I see Skillen Droe, forever abuzz with ill chance.’

As if in reply, Skillen Droe settled lower in the craft, hooking his wings to offer himself shade, and then tilted his snouted head forward, opaque lids rising up to cover his eyes.

K’rul sighed. ‘Well, he has been flying us for some time.’

‘Then you have satisfied his need to feel useful,’ Cera replied. ‘Always the considerate one, you.’

‘I am sure,’ said K’rul, ‘once he has rested, he will be happy to dislodge your craft.’

‘Oh, Vix can do that any time. He’s just being stubborn.’

‘Not half as stubborn as you,’ Vix growled.

‘We shall see about that, won’t we?’

‘You have left spawn among the mortals,’ K’rul said to Vix. ‘They name themselves Trell, and make war with the Thelomen.’

Vix reached up to straighten his thin, wispy moustache, ensuring that the long black braids properly flanked his broad, tusked mouth. ‘I am profligate, to be sure. As for war, well, of course, why ever not?’

‘But you claim the Thelomen as your spawn as well,’ K’rul pointed out.

‘Just so. They actually share the same god. Me. And yet in my name they unleash hate and venom upon each other. Is that not amusing? Mortals are petty and vicious, unthinking and spiteful, inclined to stupidity and wilfully ignorant. I do so love them.’ He then made the habitual gesture K’rul had seen countless times before: reaching up to lightly brush the stitches sealing shut the lids of his left eye. ‘I contemplate a third breed, an admixture of Thelomen, Trell and Dog-Runner, whom I shall name Barghast. I expect they will war against everyone.’

‘Dog-Runner? I would think Olar Ethil might object to that, Vix.’

‘I piss in her fire. See how she objects to that.’

Sighing again, K’rul settled into a cross-legged position, facing Cera Planto once more. ‘And what have you been up to, my dear?’

‘We thought to explore an Azath House.’

‘In a boat?’

‘Unsuccessfully. But no matter. Eventually, Vix will lose this war of obstinacy and send us on our way once more. I foresee innumerable adventures in the offing.’ She collected up a small wooden carrying case, setting it on her lap before unclasping the lid and opening it. ‘In the meantime, I found a most iridescent breed of beetle on a tropical island, and had Vix collect as many of them as possible.’ She drew out a mortar and pestle, and then a bronze jar. ‘The wings, when finely ground and mixed with a drop of beeswax and olive oil, make for a most delightful kohl, don’t you think?’

‘Very enticing,’ K’rul said.

‘But you look pale. Decidedly too masculine, too, but never mind that. Almost bloodless, one might say. Have you been up to no good again?’

‘I have given freely of my power, Cera, not to any breed of mortal, but to all breeds of mortal. My blood swirls in the cosmos, swims to unmindful currents.’

Her deep blue eyes had narrowed and she now regarded him with vague disappointment. ‘Did you hear that, Vix? And you boasted of profligacy.’

Behind K’rul, Vix said, ‘Beware the Thelomen finding potent magic. Hmm. I shall have to pay them a visit, assuming once more the role of vengeful god.’

‘Do not wait too long,’ K’rul said to the tusked Azathanai behind him, ‘lest they do the swatting down.’

‘What a mess you’ve made,’ Vix said.

Shrugging, K’rul said, ‘It’s done. But now, with Skillen at my side, we set out to force some order upon the maelstrom.’

‘How?’ Cera Planto asked.

‘Dragons.’

‘Oh,’ said Cera. ‘Poor Skillen Droe!’

* * *

At last the mountains were behind Hanako and Lasa Rook, and ahead lay a level plain where even the forest dwindled, giving way to tufts of wiry grasses that looked sickly clinging to the salty clay. Hanako staggered woodenly beneath Erelan Kreed’s slack weight, while at his side Lasa Rook hummed a children’s song the words of which Hanako barely remembered, only that it was a tale of some orphan – and how many of those were there, anyway? – stealing fruit from some orchard, and some old witch who lived in an apple tree. One night the lad reached up and plucked the wrong fruit. Don’t mess with witches! ran the refrain, They’re rotten to the core!

Lasa Rook stopped humming abruptly, and then said, ‘Hanako of the Scars, your burden is exhausting you, leaving you little energy or attention to lavish upon me, and you well know how I enjoy being lavished. The situation, darling, is unsupportable.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Hanako, ‘if you could carry your own bedroll, and this cooking gear-’

‘Really? You would ask that of me? Why, if you were one of my husbands … but no, this time, in your ignorance, I shall forgive you. There is a force in the world – in all worlds, no doubt – like invisible fingers, ever plucking and pulling us down. Thus, as the years draw on, the face sags, the breasts too, and the belly and all places where the flesh bulges. It follows, sweet boy, that one must endeavour to diminish such burdens as best as one can. See this youthful visage? It remains so precisely because I have husbands to carry everything. Now, here you are, in their stead. If misery attends you, it is because you are yet to claim your reward. I am not to blame if you flatly refuse my appreciation!’

Hanako mumbled a mostly inarticulate apology.

They continued on, in uncomfortable silence, until they almost stumbled upon a lone figure before them. The man was seated cross-legged on the hard-packed clay, his back to them. An empty wooden bowl was at his side. He was gaunt, wizened and mostly hairless, and as Hanako and Lasa drew up to either side of him, he spoke without opening his eyes or shifting his head. ‘I believe the universe is expanding.’

The two Thel Akai halted, Hanako groaning as he let the body of Erelan Kreed slip down from his shoulder and into his arms, and then, as he crouched, on to the ground.

‘There is a manner,’ the stranger continued, ‘in which the soul can free itself of the flesh, and so wing swift as thought into the reaches of space. I have been contemplating this, as I dined. As one does. And it has occurred to me that the expanding universe is nothing more and nothing less than mortal souls in eternal flight. And that, should you somehow appear at the very edge of this ever-expanding creation, you would find the very first soul, impossibly ancient, so far along on its journey from its mortal flesh that not even dust remains of that body. We must be grateful to that soul, don’t you think? For … all of this.’

A moment later, the old man tilted slightly for a brief moment of flatulence, and then settled back once more. ‘Beans, but no rice.’

Hanako and Lasa exchanged a look, and then Hanako bent down and collected up Erelan Kreed once more. They walked past the old man, leaving him to his contemplation.

Some time later, Lasa Rook hissed and shook her head. ‘Azathanai.’