Fall of Light

FIVE

And here the tale’s tone must change.

A war upon death? The wayward adventures of the Azathanai? Foolish youth and bitter ancients – raise a sceptical brow, then, and let us plunge into the absurdity of the unimaginable and the impossible.

I’ll not gainsay the prowess of the Azathanai, nor seek to diminish the significance of their meddling. Draconus was not alone in his headlong careering into disaster. The question, for which there remains no answer, is this: are they gods? If so, then childish ones. Stumbling with their power, careless with their charges. Worthy of worship? You would well guess my answer.

You are curious, I gather, and indeed led into bemusement, by my fashioning this tale. In your mind, I am sure, the place of beginnings lacked the formality of territories, shorelines, the hinting of a discrete and singular world, upon which myths and legendary entities abound. Dare I suggest that what clashes is within you, not me? The deep past is a realm of the imagination, but one made hazy and indistinct with mystery. Yet is it not the mystery that so ignites the fire of wonder? But the unformed realm is a sparse setting, and little of substance can be built upon the unknown.

I give you places, the hard rocks and dusty earth, the withered grasses and besieged forests. The cities and encampments, the ruins and modest abodes, the keeps and monasteries – enough to yield comforting footfalls, enough to frame the drama, and in so doing, alas, mystery drifts away.

If I was to speak to you now of countless realms, jostling in the ether, and perhaps setting each one as an island in the mists of oblivion, might the imagination spark anew? Draw close, then. The island that is Kurald Galain and Wise Kharkanas abuts realms half seen, rarely sensed, within which mystery thrives. Let us unfold the world, my friend, and see what wonders are revealed.

A war upon death. The wayward adventures of the Azathanai. Foolish youth and bitter ancients …

* * *

In a place where the gloom never eased, there stretched a plain of wind-blown silts. Lying half buried in beds of the dun, fine-grained material, the detritus of countless civilizations cluttered every possible view, reaching out to the horizons. Godly idols crouched with their backs to the incessant wind, shouldering high dunes that curled round to make empty bowls in their laps. The statues of kings and queens stood tilted, hip-deep, with arms upraised or one hand reaching out as if to grant benediction. The tall backs of thrones thrust like tombstones from the flats. Here and there, foundation walls from crumbled palaces and temples made ridges and lines; rooms sculpted hollows, and cracked domes rose in polished humps.

Wings folded, the Azathanai Skillen Droe followed the set of tracks wending its way across this eerie, despondent landscape. Flight was out of the question, as the air was caustic above the plain, and riding the high, grit-laden winds was too excoriating, even for one such as he.

Instead, the tall, arched figure plodded shin-deep through the desiccated, lifeless silts, his reptilian eyes fixed on the ragged trench made by the one who had walked ahead of him. His mysterious predecessor was dragging something that did little more than glide over the deep furrows carved by its thick, bandy legs.

It had been a long time since Skillen Droe last visited this realm. Since then, the wreckage and ruins had proliferated. Most of the idols he did not recognize. Many of the statues portraying emperors, kings, queens and child-gods revealed features that were alien and, at times, disturbing to Skillen’s sensibility. And he could feel the push and tug of the wayward currents of invisible energy that he knew as the Sidleways, although he was not the Azathanai who had coined that name.

Forgotten monuments rode the Sidleways, inward from other realms. Like flotsam, fragments washed up here, as if this plain served a singular purpose as the repository of failed faiths, abandoned dreams and broken promises. Perhaps it was, as some of his kin believed, the corner of the mind, and the mind in question was the universe itself.

It was difficult to decide if the notion pleased or irritated him. If indeed the universe possessed a mind, it was a cluttered one. And if corners such as these thrived in that mind, then the custodian was asleep, or, perhaps, drunk. This river of semi-consciousness abounded in musing eddies and swirls, in spirals of relentless notions, spinning and spinning until they devoured themselves. Ideas rushed forward only to recoil from boulders in the stream, curling off to the sides and dissolving in the churning tumult. No, this was a mind in hibernation, where only vague memories and flashes of inspiration made the waters restless.

But mine is not the mind to impose rhythms upon the cosmic storm. This flesh does not yield itself to a surrendering, to what waits beyond it. I only play with the words of others, my throat tickled by some imagined instinct, spitting up the dregs of the countless poets I have devoured.

This plain is silent, mostly. These statues, once painted, now lean weathered and weary. The gods squat and pray for a prayer, yearn for a whisper of worship, and, failing all that, would be content enough with a pigeon settling to rest atop the head – but even that modest blessing is denied them here, in this corner of the mind, this vault of the Sidleways.

Through the wrack, he could make out something ahead. A structure of what looked like stone rose from the general ruination, enclosed by a low wall. The silts surrounding all of this seemed preternaturally level. Skillen could see what looked like a gatehouse to the right, an ornate arch of elegant, panelled stone. But he was approaching from one side, following the tracks that led to the stone wall directly before him.

Spreading his leathery wings, Skillen beat at the air for a moment, raising clouds. The Azathanai slipped forward, lifting higher with sharp, hard flaps, and then swiftly gliding closer. He saw the tracks resume in the yard of the house, wending round in a haphazard pattern to eventually intercept the stone-lined path from the gatehouse – and there, huddled upon the raised steps of the building’s entrance, was a lone figure that appeared to be brushing itself off, puffs of dust surrounding it.

Skillen glided over the wall and settled lightly on the pathway. At his arrival, the seated figure looked up, but its face remained hidden beneath a heavy hood of coarse wool.

‘Skillen Droe, I did not think you would come.’

Not yet choosing to reply, Skillen turned to face the gatehouse. A Sidleways current was pouring through it, although the torrent of energy stirred not a grain of dust or silt. After a moment feeling its power burnishing the scales of his brow, cheeks and needle-fanged snout, Skillen faced the house once more. The stream swept round him and flowed into and through the huge wooden door behind the figure seated on the steps.

The hooded man might have nodded then, as the hood shifted slightly. ‘I know. It is an answer, of sorts.’ One pale hand gestured back to the house behind him. ‘Drains. Repositories. Bottomless, it seems. Possibilities, forever rushing in. Vanishing? Who can say? Some thoughts,’ he continued, in a musing tone, ‘escape the peculiar. Evade the particular. They tear free and so cease their private ways. And the river swells, and swells yet more. Skillen, old friend, what have you been up to?’

‘It is risky,’ Skillen ventured, in a wave of scents and flavours.

The seated, hooded man sighed. ‘I imagine so. All that you offer, while in that dread stream … will it simply fill the house, do you think? Your manner of speaking here, flowing past me and through this absurd wooden door – your words: do you fear their immortality as they seep into mortar and stone?’

‘K’rul. Why here?’

‘No reason,’ K’rul replied. ‘Rather, no reason of mine. You saw the tracks? A Builder found me. I was … exploring.’ He paused for a moment, and when he resumed his tone changed, seeking something more conversational. ‘Mostly, I am ignored. But not this time, and not with this one.’ K’rul waved at himself. ‘It dragged me here. Well, at first it dragged me about the yard, as if wanting to leave me there, or there, or perhaps there. No place seemed to satisfy it. In the end, it left me on the doorstep, as it were, and then? Why, it vanished.’ K’rul rose and brushed more dust from his robes. ‘Skillen, you might find an easier converse if you stood not on the path. This Sidleways is particularly potent, is it not?’

Skillen glanced about the yard, noting those smudged places where the Builder had deposited K’rul. There was no discernible pattern in that map. After a moment, he edged off the stone pathway. ‘What waits inside?’

K’rul shook his head, the motion making the hood fall back, revealing a drawn, bloodless face. ‘Like the others, I would imagine. The rooms … upside down. One walks upon an uneven ceiling, a confusion of buttresses and steep ramps leading down … or is it up? To wander within is to know inverted thoughts. The displacement of perspective may well hold a message, but it is lost on me.’

But Skillen barely heard the words, so appalled was he by K’rul’s condition. ‘What afflicts you?’

‘Ah, you have travelled far, then. Is isolation such a comfort? Forgive me that question, Droe. Of course, there is peace to be found in not knowing, in not being, in not hearing, and not finding. Peace, in the way of becoming forgetful, while to others, mostly forgotten.’ K’rul managed a wan smile. ‘But still, I would know: if you have been, then where? And if not, then, why?’

‘I found a world in argument with itself. The delusion of intelligence, K’rul, is a sordid thing.’

‘And this towering form you now present to me? Do you wear the guise of these … creatures?’

‘One of their breeds, yes. I played the assassin,’ Skillen replied. ‘Subtlety is lost on them. They raise a civilization of function, mechanical purpose. They are driven to explain all, and so understand nothing. They refuse artistry. But artistry hides in the many shades of one colour. They have rejected the value of the common spirit in all things. They cleave to one colour, and heed but one shade. The rational mind can play only rational games: this is the trap. But I did take note, K’rul, of the arrogance and irony implicit in their worship of demonstrable truths.’ He paused, and then added, ‘They are coming.’

K’rul barked a laugh, harsh enough to cut the air. ‘Do you recall, I once spoke of possibilities? Well, I have made a gift of them. Or, rather, gifts. Magic, requiring no bargaining with the likes of you or me. And already, those gifts are being abused.’

Skillen waited, withholding every scent, every flavour. There was sorcery in the spilled blood of Azathanai. K’rul had very nearly bled himself dry. The gesture was that of an unbalanced mind.

The man before him made an ambiguous wave of one hand, and said, ‘Errastas seeks to usurp command of these gifts.’ He cocked his head and studied Skillen, and then added, ‘No. Command is not, I now think, the right word. Allow me to offer you one that you, in your present state, might better comprehend. He seeks to impose his flavour upon my gifts, and from that, a sort of influence. Skillen, I do not think I can stop him.’

‘What else?’

‘Starvald Demelain,’ K’rul said. ‘The dragons are returning.’

Skillen Droe continued to stare at K’rul, until the man looked away. The loss of blood, so vast, so profound, had broken something inside this man. The notion made Skillen Droe curious, in a morbid way. ‘I heard your call, K’rul, and so here I am. I preferred you as a woman.’

‘My days of birthing are done, for a time.’

‘But not, it seems, your bleeding.’

K’rul nodded. ‘The question is: who will find me first? Errastas, or – should she emerge from Starvald Demelain – Tiam? Skillen Droe, I need a guardian. You see me at my most vulnerable. I could think of none other than you – none other so determined to remain apart from our worldly concerns. And yet, what do you offer me? Only a confession. Where have you been? Elsewhere. What have you been doing? Setting traps. Still … I do ask, Skillen.’

‘I am to blame for the dragons-’

‘Hardly!’

‘-and I do not fear Errastas, or any other Azathanai.’

K’rul answered that mockingly. ‘Of course you don’t.’

Skillen Droe made no reply.

K’rul shook his head. ‘Please excuse that, Skillen. At the very least, I must tell you what he has done.’

Skillen Droe released a sigh heavy with indifference. ‘As you will.’

‘Will you protect me?’

‘Yes. But know this, K’rul. I still preferred you as a woman.’

* * *

It had begun with a conversation, in the way that the uttering of words, on easy breath, lodged like seeds, grew and then ripened in the minds of all who would later claim to be present. A conversation, Hanako reflected, to elucidate the absurdity of everything that followed. This was the curse among the Thel Akai, where only silence could stop the onrushing flood of those things, countless in number, upon which the battered survivors might look back, nodding at the signs, the precious omens, and all those casual words slipping back and forth.

But silence was a rare beast among the Thel Akai, and from this tragic truth, the lifeline of an entire people trembled to a thousand cuts. Surely, before too long, it would snap. Even as he and his kin tumbled down in helpless mirth.

Too often among his kind, laughter – unamused and disabusing – was the only response to pain, and this notion twisted Hanako round, once again, to the clear-eyed affirmation of the absurd.

He sat upon the sloped side of a boulder, streaming blood from more wounds than he dared contemplate. His heaving chest had slowed its frantic gasps. The blood he had swallowed – his own – was heavy in his stomach, boiling like bad ale. From the huge boulder’s other side and so out of sight, Erelan Kreed was working his knife through tough hide, humming under his breath that same monotonous and tuneless scale of notes, like a cliff-singer slapping awake his vocal cords, making the sounds of stretching and tightening, bunching and tickling. Kreed was known to drive village dogs mad whenever the fool was busy at something.

The hand with the knife had a voice. The other hand, pulling away that rank skin of fur, answered with its own. The sob of sagging muscle and folds of fat made a wet chorus. Of all creatures known to Hanako, only flies could dance to this song, were any bold or desperate enough to brave this chill, mountain air.

Before Hanako, on the roughly level terrace that had marked their camp, Lasa Rook was only now gaining her hands and knees, her fit of laughter finally relenting. When she lifted her head to look at him, he saw the thick glitter of tears in her eyes, the wet streaks that ran down through the dust on her rounded cheeks, and the now dirty mucus tracking down from her nostrils. ‘What,’ she asked brightly, ‘still nothing to say? A pronouncement, if you please! The moment begs for a word, if not two! I beseech you, Hanako! ‘Twas but a slap or two from the Lord of Temper, and still you bridle!’

‘I could but wince,’ he said, sighing, ‘at seeing the stitch in your side.’

‘It was your seeming impatience that so struck me,’ she replied, drawing a muscled forearm across her mouth to sweep up the mucus and dirt, leaving it to glisten in the fine, almost white, hairs of her wrist. She then lifted and swept back her mass of wavy, golden hair. ‘But that is the curse of youth, after all. Berate me for my insensitivity, Hanako, and we can shudder down into our familiar roles.’

From behind the boulder, Erelan Kreed’s perfidious song ended abruptly. Stones grated underfoot, and then the warrior emerged, dragging the cave-bear’s skin behind him. ‘You complained of the night’s chill, Hanako,’ he said. ‘But now, in the months and perhaps years to come, you will be able to keep warm at night … as you chew the lord’s hide into suppleness.’

Lasa snorted, and so was forced to clean her nose yet again. ‘A suppleness the lord knew well. As well as his own skin. But years, Erelan? More like decades. The lord’s manifestation here, Hanako, is unmatched in my memory. It’s a wonder he managed to find a cavern big enough to home him.’

‘More the wonder that we did not even see it,’ said Erelan, ‘since it lies not twenty paces above us.’

‘And so the boulder that would so hide Hanako’s morning toilet did proffer the lord a most squalid gift, upon the very threshold of his abode.’ Even as she said this, she offered Hanako the breathtaking smile that had already ensnared three husbands.

‘I proffered no such gift,’ Hanako replied. ‘That unleavened loaf now resides in my left boot.’

This comment made Lasa Rook fold over once again, her laughter so intense that she struggled to breathe.

Stepping past Hanako, Erelan slapped a bloody hand down on the young warrior’s shoulder. ‘Next time you decide to wander off, pup, at the very least carry a weapon. You’ve not the claws or fangs to equal a bear. Still, the rolling embrace was a fine mummery to start this day.’ He then thrust something in front of Hanako’s face, making him flinch back. ‘Here, the lord’s lower jaw – it pretty much fell away. You came as close to tearing it off as to make a cutter hesitate to take coin.’

Sighing, Hanako accepted the trophy. He stared down at the jutting canines, remembering how they felt as they scored across his scalp. The thin white rings of the tongue-nest, lined up in parallel rows, were delicate as seashells.

‘As for the tongue,’ Erelan continued, ‘why, we have us breakfast.’ With that, the warrior continued on, stepping round the prostrate form that was Lasa Rook, and crouched down before the hearth. He had tucked the thick severed tongue through his belt, and now he drew it out to settle it atop a stone of the hearth, where it began sizzling. ‘The Lord of Temper’s run out of things to say, ha ha.’

There were many misfortunes to take and give shape to a Thel Akai’s life, but Erelan Kreed’s feeble witticisms were among the cruellest of curses. They were enough to dampen Lasa’s ground-kicking mirth, and once more she sat up, her reddened eyes fixing upon the slab of meat now sizzling on the rock, her expression settling somewhat.

Stifling a groan, Hanako pushed himself upright. ‘I am for the stream,’ he said.

‘Then we’ll see what needs threading,’ Lasa said, nodding.

Impatient youth? Yes, I see that, Lasa Rook. Given our purpose, and that joyous decision that so started us on this march, the bear might well have saved me the journey. Sighing yet again, Hanako skirted his way along the terrace until he came to the tumbling fall of water and its momentary pool that filled the bowl it had worn in the stone shelf. His few clothes were sodden rags now and he left them on the ground as he stripped down.

The water was clear, clean and stunningly cold. The shock against the lacerations covering most of his body quickly gave way to blessed numbness as he stood beneath the falls. Hanako, who so hates the cold these days. So quickly chilled by an unseasonal breath of wind. Hanako, who once crawled across a frozen lake, what has become of you? There was an old saying among the Thel Akai. ‘Born in the mountains, she longs for the valleys. Born against the sea, she longs for the plain. Born in the valley, she sets eyes upon the snow-clad peaks …’ And so on, as if the point already made could never be made to perfection, and the axe swings eternal against the tree, until the leaves raining down bury us. There we stand, senseless to the tremble in our hands, blind to the mulch against our eyes.

Thel Akai, you are brutes among flowers.

The cold water washed away the blood, slowed the ooze from the wounds. Naked and chilled down to his aching, bruised bones, Hanako returned to the camp.

He found both Erelan and Lasa crouched at the fire, slicing greasy strips from the charred meat. Lasa’s brows lifted upon seeing him. ‘So this was tongue after all,’ she said as she licked her fingertips, and then she cocked her head, ‘leaving me to wonder at my ambivalence.’

Erelan frowned up at him. ‘Have you no other clothes?’

‘I have … some few scraps,’ replied Hanako. ‘But I need sewing up.’

Lasa rose and drew close. She set to examining his wounds, touching here and there, standing all too close – close enough to have something brush her thigh. Glancing down, Lasa hummed under her breath. She lifted her gaze and arched one brow. ‘Not a mountain’s mantle of bitter snow can shrivel bold Hanako. I pronounce you fit and in no need of awl and gut.’

‘Do you mock me?’ he asked.

‘If one scar entices,’ she said, stepping back, ‘then your thousand will win you a launching of lust such as the world has never before seen. See how I struggle to constrain myself, young warrior? And I, a woman with three husbands!’

‘You would keep me at your knee, Lasa Rook.’

Her eyes widened. ‘Ah, now! You are right to chastise me. You have indeed grown – why, from thigh to knee, I should say, and more.’

Erelan Kreed laughed, but it was an uncertain laugh.

With a bright, sidelong glance, Lasa turned away. ‘We should be going. I will make a play of purpose to this wayward impulse, and shake the reins of my two work-horses.’

Frowning, Hanako knelt at his pack and drew out what little spare clothing he’d thought to bring with him. Overhead, the morning sun was already warm upon his torn back, making each gash sting. Yes, she was right to call them hers, although thus far neither he nor Erelan advanced any claim to an inviting caress. Three husbands left behind and Lasa Rook was yet to betray any greed to add others to her night beneath the furs. Work-horses indeed.

Gingerly, he drew on a worn hemp-woven shirt, and then leggings of the same coarse material.

‘Be sure to bring that fur,’ Erelan Kreed said as Hanako gathered up his gear. ‘It is a warrior’s way to wear their conquests, and to accept gifts from the Lord and Ladies of the Wild. By that cloak, Hanako, you honour the slain.’

Lasa kicked her way through the coals of the hearth, stamping each one underfoot. ‘Your way, Kreed, and none other’s. You’ll wear honour as if it fits, even as it stretches and tears to the swell of pride. The slain crowd your wake, and their realm is no more and no less than resentment. That you breathe in their stead. That your hearts still pound in your chest. That you move in flesh and bone and make nothing of the ghosts that haunt you. All of this gnaws their souls without resolution.’

But Erelan was humming again, as he tied up his bedroll.

Drawing close to Hanako once more, Lasa Rook dropped her voice. ‘Oh, do take the fur, Hanako. You wrestled it off the lord, after all. And all for want of a decent night’s sleep.’

‘I would have yielded,’ said Hanako, ‘had he given me the choice.’

‘It’s said that fear eats at a soul, but I would say it differently. Fear eats away at the choices before you, Hanako, until but one remains. The Lord of Temper knew that fear.’

‘He emerged to find me blocking his escape from the cave, Lasa Rook.’

She nodded. ‘And in nature he is no different from us. We do not understand the notion of retreat.’ She turned then to study the way ahead and below. The mountainside tumbled away in ridges, down into a forested valley. A glittering lake was awakening to the rising sun in the valley’s deep basin. ‘Even this march,’ she continued, ‘is ridiculous.’ The thought brought a bright smile to her as she swung back to grin at Hanako. ‘What direction? Where lies death, brave young warrior? To the east, where the sun is reborn each dawn? To the west, where it falls away each dusk? What of the south, where fruit rots on the branch and insects swarm without rest upon the ground, in daily tasks of dismemberment? Or perhaps the bitter north, where a sleeping woman awakens to find the corpse-serpent has stolen half her body? Or awakens not at all, and lies unchanging for all time? In each direction, death stands triumphant. We seek to join the Jaghut-with-ashes-in-his-heart. We march here to join his march there – but where is there?’

Hanako shrugged. ‘This I would know, too, Lasa Rook. I would see how this Jaghut answers.’

‘Is it a worthy war?’

He glanced away, down into the verdant valley, down to that silver blade of a lake, remembering the conversation that had begun this journey. The tale, arriving on unseen wings, of a grieving Jaghut, railing against the death that took his wife, and the terrible vow that came of that. Was it not the fate of the living to struggle with the feeling of impotence that came in the witnessing of death? Was there not, in truth, nothing to be done, nothing but weathering the weight, the clawing anguish, the fierce anger? How bold could this Jaghut be, in declaring war upon death itself?

There had been mocking laughter, as if all present would test each other, would beat as if with swords on the mettle of the Thel Akai and their perverse appreciation of delicious, maddening absurdity. And yet. How quickly the derision gave way to that dark current in their souls, as remembered grief rose like ghosts in the night, as each and every instance of impotence bled anew. And so the conversation curled in on itself, all humour lost, and in its place emerged a blackened, scorched gleefulness. A delight sweeter than any other. A burgeoning astonishment at the Jaghut’s glorious audacity.

Many dreams were offered up, beckoning, inviting a soul to follow. Few were mundane. Fewer still were even possible. But in each, Hanako knew, there was a taste of something like hope, sufficient to lure one on to that path, if only in the realm of the wishful. Dreams were to be tolerated, year after year the flavour dulling with pity and diminished by bitter experience, until they burned holes in the gut. He knew that all too well, even when he was mocked for his youth – since when, after all, did dreams belong only to the old and wise, who knew them solely by the disappointment left behind? Was it not the realm of children that still beckoned, crowded, as it was, to the heavens with dreams – dreams not yet slashed to ribbons, not yet torn down, or rotted from within?

Death was the reaper of ambition, the devourer of hope. So muttered the ancients in every village, around the night’s hearth-fires, with the flames animating the death-masks of their faces. Only memories could live in such faces, when the nights ahead promised so little.

Still … born with ambition and knowing only hope, children knew nothing of death.

Conversations such as the one Hanako had witnessed in his village had no doubt burst up like wildfires among all the Thel Akai settlements, from mountain to coast and in all the valley settlements that huddled between the two. The Jaghut had called for an army, in the name of a war that could not be won.

The Thel Akai gave their answer with the drumbeat of heavy, bitter laughter, and said, That is a war we can wage.

The pathos of such a claim was enough to make one drunk. He felt that loose, wild surge rising up again in his chest as he pondered Lasa Rook’s question. Its taste was a fool’s triumph. ‘A worthy war? It is, I think, the only worthy war.’

Her laughter was low, with a kind of intimacy that made Hanako’s skin prickle with sweat beneath his clothes. ‘You will speak for me, then,’ she said, ‘in my defence.’

He frowned. ‘I do not understand. Your defence against whom?’

‘Why, my husbands, of course, once they figure out where I went.’ She turned then and squinted expectantly back up the mountain trail, before once again flashing him that smile. ‘But let us lead them a fair chase! What say you, bold slayer of the Lord of Temper?’

Hanako looked across to Erelan Kreed. The huge warrior appeared to have been stricken by Lasa Rook’s revelation. ‘Damn you, Lasa Rook!’ he growled.

Her brows lifted. ‘What have I done now?’

‘Leave it to you,’ Erelan said, ‘to make even this war a complicated one.’

In a sudden surge of appreciation, Hanako smiled across at Erelan Kreed, and then he burst out his laughter. Upon seeing the flare of pride in the warrior’s eyes, Hanako’s laughter redoubled.

A war upon death? Why, what could be complicated about that?

‘Follow me, my brave guardians!’ cried Lasa Rook. ‘I will swim in that lake by noon!’

* * *

Even after centuries, in which the chaos of the love between them coruscated in wild ebbs and flows, the fever of desire could take them in an instant. In hissing savagery, talons scored deep, tearing loose scales that spun earthward. Jaws snapped and sank fangs into the thick muscles of the nape. The wings hammered in confusion, and Dalk Tennes, gripping tight, would feel her terrible weight dragging them both to the mountain peaks far below.

Beloved wife, I felt you twist away – once the fury was spent in us both. I saw you slide along a strong current, finding at last an updraught that sped you away. Moments later, Iskari Mockras, you were little more than a speck, but still I trembled to your heat, and knew that you did the same to mine, as it lingered on within you.

We are fragments of Tiam. Something like children, but too wise for that title. We preen with the air of ancients, but remain too foolish to hold that pose. The winds we ride – this sea of endless sky – hold us aloft, neither too high nor too low. We are in the middle of our lives, in the age of walking backwards.

Since the opening of the gate, since that sudden torrent that was either escape or a summons that could not be denied, Dalk had flown a wild cavort, striving to distance himself from his dragon kin. There had been clashes, mindless as ever, as each dragon raged against its own splintered nature. The histories and bloodlines that bound them all, heavier than any chain, tighter than any skin, made a fever of companionship.

Yet he had taken his lover anyway, high above these mountains, and after weeks of stalking. And he had then left her to fall away, satiated and wounded, wanting only to sleep in some solitary place. Where she could heal, and muse on the snarling spawn to come.

Was this instinct, this need to so claim a new world? So the rocks and earth would tremble to the sharp cries of the newborn, to make a home of the unknown. Or was every desire no less than the caged soul deafened by its own cacophony? Instincts could make for a host of regrets, and Dalk was still undecided on what flavour this deed would take. The voice within the mind that spoke to some other, and that other none but itself. In spiralling dialogue of endless persuasion, entire realms could be swallowed up, encompassed, mapped with delusions, and so claimed for one’s own. And yet, for all this, the cage door does not open.

And so, we rule what we have always ruled, and every border beyond the limits of our skull is but an illusion. Now watch us fight for them. Watch us die for them. This is not majesty that fills graveyards, but sophistry.

We are new in this world, and yet have nothing new to offer it.

My eyes guide me, from one unfamiliar place to the next, but I cannot escape the place behind my eyes, this cage of self, and these words – these endless words!

Escape, or summons. The matter was yet to be determined. Magic burned bright in this strange realm, but flowed untethered. Currents charged nowhere, clashed without purpose.

In hissing savagery, talons scored deep, tearing loose scales that spun earthward. Jaws snapped and sank fangs into the thick muscles of the nape. The wings hammered in confusion, and I, gripping tight, felt her weight …

He would hunt anew.

I shall make this sorcery mine.

Moments later, as he sailed the high winds rising from the walls of mountains that faced the western sea, Dalk Tennes caught the scent of freshly spilled blood. Turning, he banked, and then began a lazy spiral earthward. Desire’s spending made for fierce hunger.

* * *

‘There is some witchery in a wife’s silence,’ said Garelko.

‘It was the lure of a few more moments in bed,’ Ravast replied, nodding. ‘Had she forgotten us? Did she tend the garden, unmindful of how the morning lengthened? Why charge this sleep – so gleefully snatched – with her curse that is our guilt? I was restless in my somnolence.’

Tathenal laughed behind Ravast. ‘But not enough to prise open an eye! To look about, wondering, flinching at the cold hearth, hearing – with burgeoning consternation – the snores of Garelko.’

‘Ah, but those I am used to,’ Ravast said. ‘No more jarring than your beastly grunts. Still, what you say is true enough. We rejected the signs of amiss.’

‘Husbands live under that cloud with unceasing trepidation,’ Garelko said, as he led the small troop down the steep, rocky trail. ‘As upon a frozen lake, the ice beneath us is of unknown thickness. As in a forested trail, with the scent of cat all about, where every tautberry glows feline eyes to our overwrought imaginations. As upon a cliff’s edge, with the dread shadow of some winged monster sliding over us.’

At that last observation, Ravast snorted heavily. ‘So you go on about that, an event neither I nor Tathenal did witness. The sky was clear, the morning fresh, and if there was indeed a shadow, then some condor mistook the top of your head for a rival’s nest. But, upon closer inspection – the shadow that made you start – the wise bird saw no eggs worth mentioning.’

‘We are men,’ grunted Garelko. ‘Eggs are for breaking.’

‘We are husbands,’ corrected Tathenal. ‘Eggs are for juggling.’

Ravast sighed. ‘Amen to that.’

‘I was speaking of the witchery of a wife’s silence, my beleaguered brothers. Have you not seen her standing at the door, her back to you? Did your knees not tremble, as your mind scampered like a stoat back through the day, or was it last week? When you might have with blind bliss committed some slight?’

Ravast shrugged. ‘The heart that questions its own love will stew in the mildest season. Our bellies have been on fire for months now.’

‘Back to that again, Ravast?’ Tathenal drew closer and slapped Ravast on one shoulder – the one that did not bear the weight and show the edge of the slung battleaxe. ‘Her love for us is gone! Your moans will make felt from handfuls of wool, and so suffocate the very virtue whose death you fear.’

‘I wish you’d not mentioned wool,’ Ravast said in a growl. ‘Stapp was too eager to promise taking our flocks into his care. I do not trust that man.’

‘And when she stands beside you,’ Garelko resumed, ‘yet says nothing? Is that the warmth and comfort of companionship? Shall we bathe in her moment of sentimental foolery? That roaringly impossible instant when she’s forgotten all our past crimes? In saying nothing, she wields a menagerie of power. For me, why, I’d rather the whip of her words, the tirade of her temper, the crash of crockery against the side of my skull.’

‘You are a beaten dog,’ Tathenal said, laughing again. ‘Garelko, first of her husbands, first to her bedding. First to flutter and fold to the slightest wind of her displeasure.’

‘Let us not speak of her displeasing winds,’ said Ravast.

‘Why not?’ Tathenal asked. ‘A subject we three can share in a welter of mutual sympathy! The true curse of our union is her love of cooking, so dispiritingly mismatched to her talent. Have we not eaten better these three nights upon the trail? Is this not why not one of us has suggested we hasten our pace and so catch up to her? Are we not, in fact, revelling in the glory of well-made repast? My stomach is too dumb to lie, and my how easy it sits right now!’

‘Women,’ said Garelko, ‘should be barred from every kitchen. Our wife’s enthusiasm keeps her slim, when better she wallow in fat with grease painting flabby lips.’

‘Hah,’ growled Tathenal. ‘Even Lasa cannot bear too much of Lasa’s cooking. This is none other than her conspiracy that ensures her svelte demeanour. You have the truth there, Garelko. Should we ever catch her, we’ll turn this table. We’ll truss her up and chain her well away from the kitchen. We’ll give her a taste of decent food, and watch how she billows to our ministrations.’

‘This seems a worthy vengeance,’ said Ravast. ‘Shall we vote on this course of action?’

Garelko halted on the trail, forcing the other two to do the same. He swung round to face them, offering up an expression of disdain. ‘Listen to you bold whelps! A vote, no less! A course of action! Why, with such resolve we three could throw back a thousand charging Jhelarkan. But see her regard slide over us, and all resolve crumbles like a well-made pie!’ He wheeled round again, shaking his head as he resumed the march. ‘The courage of husbands is directly proportionate to the proximity of the wife.’

‘It need not be that way, Garelko!’

‘Ah, Ravast, you are a fool. How things need to be weigh as nothing to how they are. Hence, our bowed dispositions, our harried reflections, the flighty birds of our eyes.’

‘Not to mention your nestly hair.’

‘Assuredly that, too, Tathenal. And it’s a wonder I have any left.’

‘Less a wonder than a nightmare. Were you prettier in your youth, Garelko? It must have been so, since I am still waiting to witness a single moment of pity in our wife.’

‘Before marriage,’ Garelko said, ‘I was desired far and wide. I caught the eyes of mothers and daughters alike. Even our man-lover of a king could not keep his hands from me – and who among us could deny his eye for beautiful men?’

‘He’s the lucky one,’ muttered Ravast. ‘Or, was. Famous lovers should never grow too old. Better they die of burst hearts in a thrash of supple limbs and leaking oils. Such swans creep into the sordid.’

‘And still he preens,’ said Tathenal, ‘and so embarrasses us all.’

Garelko threw up a dismissive hand. ‘The fate of every ageing king. Or queen, for that matter. Or, to be fair, every hero.’

‘Bah!’ retorted Tathenal. ‘It is the fate of the young who cease being young. And so it is all our fates.’

‘And this is what now haunts our wife?’ Ravast asked. ‘Does she so fear the loss of her wild beauty that she would make death stand in the place of ageing?’

‘Suicidal defiance?’ mused Tathenal behind Ravast. ‘There is a certain charm to that.’

‘Charm and Lasa Rook do not sit well together,’ said Garelko. ‘Slovenly lust? Yes. Seduction and the promise of manly dissolution? Of course. Manipulation and sudden vengeance? Absolutely. That smile and those eyes that could make even a man-loving king tremble? Oh, we’ve seen it ourselves, have we not? Why, I do not imagine-’

Garelko stepped round a sharp bend in the trail at that moment, and the scene before him cut the words from his tongue. Following a step behind, Ravast looked up and halted.

Before them, on a broad ledge, a reptilian monstrosity had been feeding on a massive, skinned carcass, and now it lifted its gore-smeared head to face them. The beast’s hiss sprayed all three Thel Akai with a fine mist of blood.

As the creature’s long neck curled, raising the head high, Garelko brought round his iron-shod staff from where it had been slung across his back, and leapt forward.

Reptilian jaws stretched wide and the head lunged down.

Garelko slipped to one side and drove the heel of his staff into the beast’s right eye.

Roaring, it pulled its head back.

Battleaxe in his hands, Ravast ran up on to the sloped side of a boulder, gaining height as he did so. Seeing the creature lashing out with an enormous taloned hand, Ravast launched himself from the boulder. Axe blade met that sweeping hand, the edge driving between two fingers, slicing through the webbing and then deep between the bones.

Recoiling, the beast stumbled back – tearing the axe from Ravast’s grip – and then rolled on to the carcass on which it had been dining. The stripped cage of the carcass’s ribs splintered and collapsed like brittle sticks, carrying the creature over on to its folded wings.

Tathenal raced past, between Ravast and Garelko, swinging his blunt-tipped, two-handed broadsword, chopping deep into the thrashing beast’s left thigh.

The creature continued rolling until it slammed into a massive boulder. The impact lifted the rock and sent it tumbling off the ledge beyond. A moment later the beast followed, vanishing – with trailing tail – from sight. Concussions shook the ground as the boulder made its wild descent to the treeline far below.

Then there was a thundering, snapping sound, and they saw the monster sailing out on its broad wings, skimming over the forest’s canopy. Its flight was erratic, as the head was strangely tilted. Ravast’s axe gleamed bright in the sunlight, firmly wedged between the talon-clad fingers of one hand.

Tathenal lifted up his sword to show the others the three scales still clinging to the blade’s edge.

‘Very well, Garelko,’ said Ravast, ‘not just shadows.’

‘Lasa camped here,’ Garelko pronounced, scanning the ledge. ‘Look, see how she kicked out the hearth’s coals, same as she does at home. Our wife’s habits make a trail we need no hound to follow.’ He slung the staff over on to his back once more and set off down the trail. The others followed.

‘Oh no,’ Garelko continued, ‘as I was saying, there is little charm in our dear wife. Deadly allure? Oh, indeed. That whimper-enticing heft of her thigh when sitting with folded legs, so smug an invitation for a man’s hand? How could we deny that? And what of the …’

The conversation continued, as the three husbands made their way down towards the forest.

It was nearing midday.

* * *

‘My husbands are in no hurry, it seems,’ said Lasa Rook, ‘and for that they will pay dearly. Am I not enticing enough? Desirable enough?’ She edged close to Hanako, until their shoulders were pressing. ‘Well?’

‘You are these things, Lasa, and more,’ said Hanako, struggling to keep his eyes on the trail.

‘Of course,’ she went on, ‘they are angry with me, and rightly so.’

Behind them, Erelan said, ‘You did not even leave them a note.’

‘Ah! Not what I was thinking about, to be honest. Thrice, now, I’ve almost burned down the house. There is a careless imp in me – oh, do not look so shocked, Hanako! I will admit to my flaws, no matter how attractive and endearing they might be! In any case, the imp has a temper, too, as each night it and I must witness – yet again – my three husbandly oafs shovelling down the wretched fare I set before them. Have they no taste?’

‘They must have,’ objected Erelan, ‘since they married you!’

‘Ha ha! I am ambushed. Then I shall say it so: in the years since their lucid moments of appreciation, they have let themselves descend into dullardly obtuseness, into vapid venality. Their palates belong to dogs, their grunts are those of pigs – is it any wonder the imp snarls and kicks at coals until the rugs smoulder on all sides?’

‘What cause this vengeance of yours?’ Hanako asked.

Her shoulder pushed him hard enough to make him stumble. ‘So spake the virgin to marriage!’

Erelan laughed his uncertain laugh, and Lasa rounded on him. ‘And you! O warrior who wears everything he conquers! Where is your wife? What? None ever waved an inviting hand? How is it we supple reflections have not swooned in answer to your stolid prowess? Your pride of glory and the rotting trophies you hang from your person?’

Hanako dared not glance behind him to see the effect of her tirade on Erelan Kreed. He was thankful enough that she’d already dismissed him.

‘Your wit is a song to my ears, Lasa,’ Erelan said, ‘and so I laughed.’

‘You’ve not met my wit,’ Lasa warned in a low tone. ‘And you should thank the hoary rock-gods for that.’ She swung round again. ‘Bah, I need a bath. Hanako, dear youngling, when we reach the lake – unless it was ever a mirage, designed solely to haunt a woman’s need for a decent toilet – will you indulge my body with soap and oils?’

‘What of your husbands?’

‘Well, they’re not here, are they? No! The fools are probably well off the trail I set them. Picking berries, perhaps, with lips of blue as they natter endlessly about everything and nothing. Or they have found slabs on which to lie in the sun – as they often do when guarding the flocks. To think, they imagine that I can’t see them up in the hills! I have the sharpest eyes, Hanako. The sharpest! No, they are indolent and smug, slovenly and lazy.’

‘I will attend to you at the lake, then,’ said Hanako.

She pushed up against him once more. ‘Will you now?’

‘You tease me unduly, Lasa Rook.’

‘I but tease out what hides in you.’

‘Is it any wonder I remain wary?’

She waved a hand. ‘I will brush aside your temerity, Hanako of the Scars, Slayer of the Lord of Temper. My husbands can rot. I will take a lover, to spite them all. I might choose you, Hanako, what do you think of that?’

‘I see three deaths awaiting me, since surely my dying once will not be enough.’

‘What? Oh, them. Think on that some more, youngling. They already know I travel with company – oh, Erelan would give them no cause for jealousy, as his only love is the warrior’s vanity. But you, Hanako. Young, handsome, and are you not the tallest brave in the village? The strongest? Did you not just this morning tear the lower jaw off the Lord of Temper? And then break his neck? No, dear lover to be, it seems even you cannot light a fire to their heels. But look – is that a glimmer ahead, through those branches? Is the sun not directly above us?’

‘There is no way to-’

‘Hush! It is my blessing to experience synchronicity in life. Perfections meet wherever I make my island. Smile sweetly, and show sure hands in the spreading of soap and oil, Hanako, and I might let you walk upon my shore.’

There to fetch up like a half-drowned man. ‘I fear that lake will be as cold as was the stream.’

‘A challenge to your manhood, then.’ A moment later she halted and raised a hand.

Company ahead? Well, it seemed a decent lake. Perhaps the Dog-Runners have made a camp upon its shoreline.

Erelan edged up to join them, and then, drawing his long-handled mace, moved ahead in a low crouch.

Glancing across at Lasa Rook, Hanako saw her meet his gaze in the same instant, and she rolled her eyes. They set out after Erelan Kreed, stepping carefully.

The treed trail ended a dozen paces ahead, pushed up against a scree of low boulders crowded with the leavings of high floods in the past. Erelan had crept up against this bulwark and was peering through a skeletal skein of branches. From the shoreline just past him, something was thrashing in the shallows, and it sounded big.

Hanako reached for his father’s sword – which he had foolishly left near his bedding as he ventured off for his dawn meeting with the Lord of Temper – which now formed the spine to his bedroll. Sliding it from its scabbard, he studied its dull, pocked length. The single edge was ragged, notched. There was a distinct leftward curve visible along its backed reach. The history of this blade was one of successive failures. It was no wonder he hesitated unsheathing it.

Lasa Rook settled a hand on his scabbed, slashed and swollen forearm. ‘Leave this for Erelan,’ she whispered. ‘See how he charges himself with delight?’

They drew closer, until they fetched up alongside their warrior companion. Through the latticework of tangled brush, Hanako looked out upon a winged, scaled monstrosity. It favoured one forelimb and bled from a haunch as it staggered clumsily in the shallows. The massive head at the end of its long, sinewy neck was pitching wildly, tilting to one side.

Erelan’s eager words came in a hiss. ‘Blinded in the right eye. I but wait until it makes itself blind to the shore.’

‘Why not leave it be?’ Hanako asked.

Erelan grunted. ‘See that axe – there upon the strand? Torn out from that forefoot?’

Lasa gasped. ‘Oh dear, that weapon belongs to my beloved Ravast!’

‘Look then,’ Erelan continued in a rough growl, ‘to the blood on its maw – the gore slung between fangs!’

‘My husbands have been devoured, and not by me!’

Erelan straightened suddenly. ‘This warrior avenges you, Lasa Rook!’ Leaping up on to a boulder, he readied his mace, and then jumped down on to the pebbled wrack and raced forward.

The monster heard nothing as it slapped at the water. Its blinded eye was turned to the shoreline, and so it saw nothing of Erelan’s furious charge.

The heavy mace struck the beast’s head, just behind the blinded eye. The impact was sufficient to crush its orbital, its flared cheekbone, and one side of the creature’s skull.

Blood sprayed from its nostrils and it lurched away with a drunken stagger.

Erelan struck again, this time with a blow coming from high above, straight down on to the flat of the creature’s head. The mace buried its striking end in the skull, halted only by the weapon’s bronze-sheathed shaft. Pitching suddenly on to its side, the dying beast coughed out a heavy gush of blood. Legs kicked fitfully as Erelan wrenched free his mace. He clambered on to the monster’s back, perching atop one shoulder, and swung a third time. The snap of the bones of the neck was sharp, echoing out across the lake’s waters.

The creature slumped in twitching death.

Hanako set out, Lasa following, arriving on the pebble-strewn beach in time to see Erelan draw out his gutting knife and begin carving into the carcass’s chest.

‘He seeks the hearts,’ said Hanako, ‘in keeping with his warrior’s-’

‘Host to every manly fever,’ Lasa Rook said in a bitter tone, ‘his antics leave us cold. My husbands!’ She fell to her knees at the axe lying on the stones. ‘Ravast, so young, so fresh to my bed! I see the fury of your battle! The bravery of your stand! Who was first to dive down the fiend’s maw? Garelko, too slow as always, too old, in all his creaking ways! Tathenal! Did the beast toss its head in swallowing you down? Like a sliver of flesh? Like a fish down a heron’s gullet? Did you complain all the way? Oh, my heart grieves! Ravast!’

Having carved a gaping hole in the creature’s steaming chest, Erelan barked triumphantly as he struggled to pull free an enormous, blood-drenched mass of muscle that still trembled. ‘See, I have the first one! Hah!’ He fell back on to the gravel, knees crunching in the polished stones. Raising the heart high above his head, he leaned back, letting the draining blood wash down over his face, and filling his mouth.

The visage he swung over to Lasa Rook was ghastly. ‘I am your champion, Lasa-’

Then Erelan’s eyes widened amidst the sea of red. ‘Iskari Mockras! Arak Rashanas, my foul brother, lusts after you! I pursue him! Too many insults, too many betrayals! There were crushed eggs making a path to your high perch! He leaves you to yearn and doubt my seed’s power! I will kill him!’ Rearing upright, the beast’s heart tumbling out from his grip, Erelan staggered a step, and then clutched the sides of his head. ‘I took her again, Arak Rashanas! She will yield my spawn in this new world! They are born with the hate of you in their hearts – this I swear!’

He stumbled into the water. ‘This fire! This pain! Latal! Mother! Heal me!’

Erelan fell, as if in a swoon, and the waters closed around him in a bloom of blood.

Hanako rushed into the icy shallows. Reaching Erelan, he lifted the warrior under the arms – saw with horror the pink water draining from Kreed’s slack mouth. Wounds reopened across Hanako’s body as he dragged Erelan back on to the shore.

Lasa had not moved from where she knelt before Ravast’s axe, but her face was ashen as she looked across at Hanako’s struggles. ‘Is he dead?’ she asked.

Hanako did not yet know the answer to that, so he said nothing as he rolled Erelan on to his side. He pressed a hand against the warrior’s neck, and felt in the veins there the thundering, panicked beat of the man’s hearts. ‘He lives but I fear his chest may burst, Lasa!’

Then Erelan spasmed. His boots kicked gouges through the pebbles. His hands waved blindly but still managed to push Hanako away. Erelan fell over on to his back, his eyes wide as they stared skyward. ‘She sings my name – in the ache within her – my love sings my name!’

‘What do you mean?’ Hanako asked. ‘Erelan?’

‘Dalk!’

‘Erelan!’

Something flashed to life in Erelan’s eyes, and they fixed suddenly on Hanako. Horror and terror warred in that wild stare. ‘Hanako!’ he whispered. ‘I – I am not alone!’

* * *

His belly filled with berries, Ravast dozed in the sun. They occupied a clearing they had spied off to one side of the trail, in which huge slabs of stone lay strewn about, marking some fallen temple, perhaps, or the gutted remnants of a looted barrow. No matter. The midday sun bathed the glade with sweet warmth, and the travails of the world seemed far away.

Tathenal was pottering among the menhirs, while Garelko snored loudly from his own bed of stone.

‘Ravast, I proclaim these Azathanai.’

‘Fascinating.’

‘You are still too young,’ Tathenal said. ‘Nothing of the profundity that accompanies antiquity is to be found in your squealing pup of a soul. While I, who have known a host of wretched decades – not as many as Garelko, let us be sure – I, then, am grown into the appreciation of our brief flit of life in the midst of this grinding, shambling, plodding march of pointless time. Did I say pointless? I did, and heed that well, Ravast.’

‘Your words are as a song to lull this child into sleep,’ Ravast said.

‘Like birds my wisdom flaps about your skull, despairing of ever finding a way in. The Azathanai are most ancient folk, Ravast. Mysterious, too. Like an uncle who dresses strangely and has nothing to say, but offers you a knowing wink every now and then. Yes, they can be maddening in their obscurity, and such knowing regard would wordlessly tell us of outlandish adventures and sights seen to steal the breath of lesser folk.’

Blinking against the glare, Ravast half sat up and peered across at Tathenal. The man was seated on one dolmen, the index finger of his right hand tracking the unknown words carved into the stone’s facing. ‘You speak of Kanyn Thrall-’

‘Who then wandered off again! Years, now, since last we have seen him, or known of his whereabouts. But now, at last, I am beyond caring. He but served as an irritating example. I was speaking of the Azathanai, and their obsession with stone. Statues, monuments, ringed circles, chambered tombs – always empty! – and their madness reaches yet further, Ravast! Stone swords! Stone armour! Stone helms, which will serve only stone heads! I imagine they shit stone, too-’

‘Well, we’ve seen enough suspicious pebbles on this trail-’

‘You mock me, but I tell you, there is no place in all the world which they have not seen, have not explored, have not interfered with. The Jaghut were right to oust the one they found hiding in their midst. You might think us Thel Akai immune, but there is no telling if an Azathanai hides among us – they choose the flesh they wear, you know-’

‘Well, that is nonsense, Tathenal,’ said Ravast, leaning back again and closing his eyes. ‘Were they as you say, they would not be mortal – they would be gods.’

‘Gods? Well, why not? We worship the rock-gods-’

‘No we don’t. We just blame them when things go wrong.’

‘And when we are blessed we thank them.’

‘No. When things go right, we congratulate ourselves.’

‘Oh, cynical child, does this fresh world so weary you? Are you left exhausted after uncovering all the world’s truths? Will you slouch and slide your jaded eye upon all the fools whose company you are cursed to endure?’

‘You mock my tolerance. It is only my youthful vigour that sustains me.’

‘The Azathanai built this, only to knock it down – not even a Thel Akai could so push these stones, uprooting them like this. I see about us the echoes of old rage. For all we know, our very own rock-gods were Azathanai.’

‘Then it is well that we lost faith.’

‘She hasn’t.’

Ravast frowned at that, and then sat up. ‘I would venture the opposite! It is no faith that makes anyone face death and only death. It is, if anything, surrender. Abjection. There is not a fool to be found who would worship death.’

‘Ah, but she marches not to kneel before the Lord of Rock-Piles, but to war against him.’

‘Might as well beat against a mountainside.’

‘Just so,’ Tathenal said, looking at the rubble around them.

‘There will be no Azathanai among the Jaghut’s company,’ Ravast said. ‘I suspect no more than a handful of fools. Other Jaghut, bound only by some kind of loyalty to the grieving brother. Perhaps a few Dog-Runners, eager to find a song in the deed. And we Thel Akai, of course, for whom such a summons is too outrageous to refuse.’

‘We refused it.’

‘In the name of flocks to keep, gardens to tend, nets to weave. And yet, Tathenal, look at us, here on this trail.’

‘We pursue her to bring her back. With weapons of reason, we will convince her-’

‘Hah! Idiot! She’s but extended our leashes, and knows the patience of the mistress. Look at us here, playing at freedom! But soon we will resume this trek, and she will take up the slack.’

There was a loud grunt from Garelko and they turned to see the man bolt upright, eyes wide. ‘Ah!’ he cried. ‘I dreamed a dragon!’

‘Was no dream, you fool,’ Tathenal said. ‘We met the beast this morning, and saw it off.’

Garelko squinted across at Tathenal. ‘We did? Then it was all real?’

Ravast stared at Tathenal. ‘That was a dragon?’

‘What else could it have been?’

‘I – I don’t know. A giant lizard. Winged. With a long neck. Snaking tail. And scales …’

The other two husbands were now studying him, with little expression. Ravast scowled. ‘By description,’ he muttered, ‘I suppose the comparison is apt.’

Groaning, Garelko stretched. ‘This fusion of dreams and truth has left me out of sorts. For all I know, I’ve not yet wakened, and it is my curse to see both of you haunting me even in my slumber. Pray there comes a day when there are as many girls born among the Thel Akai as boys. Then, a husband can stand alone, face to face with his wife, and there will be peace and everlasting joy in the world.’

Tathenal laughed. ‘You dodder, Garelko. The Tiste make such marriages and are no happier than us. The curse of your dreams has you yearning for the madness they espouse.’

‘Then wake me, I beg you.’

Sighing, Ravast slipped down from the slab. ‘I feel the leash grow taut, and would not welcome a whipping.’

‘You are long since whipped well and truly,’ said Tathenal.

‘Oh, roll over, will you?’

The three Thel Akai readied their gear once more, and in so doing Ravast was reminded again of his lost weapon. To a dragon, no less. Few would ever believe him, and the exhortations of his fellow husbands held little veracity. It was, in any case, an unpleasant notion, this proof of legends and old, half-forgotten tales.

Words momentarily exhausted, they made the trail in silence, and resumed their descent.

* * *

‘Beyond you, I am in need of allies.’

Skillen Droe glanced over at the cloaked figure trudging alongside him. ‘You will find few.’

‘There is a caustic sea, the essence of which is chaos.’

‘I know it.’

‘Mael does not claim it,’ K’rul said. ‘Indeed, none of us does. Ardata has ventured there, to its shoreline, and contemplates a journey into its depths. There is some risk.’

‘Is she alone?’

K’rul hesitated, and then said, ‘I cannot be certain. Ardata guards her realm jealously. It is my thought that we could appeal to that possessiveness.’

‘I will defend you, K’rul. But we are not allies. You have foolishly made yourself vulnerable.’

‘Very well.’

‘I will make this plain to her.’

‘Understood, Droe.’

They walked now along the edge of a vast pit. Its sheer walls were cracked, shattered as if from the blows of some giant hammer. The dusty floor of the crater showed crystalline outcrops that glittered with blue light. A steep ramp had been carved into the opposite cliff-side, curling round until it was out of sight, somewhere against the edge they skirted. Thus far, Skillen Droe could not see where the ramp debouched. There was something strangely protean about the dimensions of this pit, and the landscape surrounding it. They had been edging along it for some time now.

‘This is a quarry, K’rul?’

‘The Builders, I would think. They have, they tell me, reduced entire worlds to rubble, leaving them to float in clouds that ever circle the sun – a sun not our own, one must assume.’

‘The pit is devoid of Sidleways. Its air is still. There is no energy left in it. To descend, K’rul, is to die.’

‘I have no answers to their endeavours, Droe, or the means by which they wield their power. The houses they build here disappear shortly after their completion.’

‘Only to reappear elsewhere, as if grown from seeds.’

‘Something drives them to do what they do,’ K’rul said, pausing to cough for a moment. ‘Or indeed, someone. We share that at least with the Builders – the mystery of our origins. Even the force that cast us down upon the realm, to find flesh and bone, seems beyond our ken. Have we always been? Will we always be? If so, for what purpose?’

Skillen Droe considered K’rul’s words for a time.

Beneath the gloomy sky, they walked on. Their pace was slow, as K’rul seemed to have little strength. If he still dripped blood from his sacrifice, the crimson drops did not touch these dusty silts. No, they bled elsewhere.

‘It is our lack of purpose, K’rul, which drives us onward. Sensing absence, we seek to fill it. Lacking meaning, we seek to find it. Uncertain of love, we confess it. But what is it that we confess? Even a cloud of rubble will one day accrete, making something like a world.’

‘Then, Skillen, if I understand you, beliefs are all we have?’

‘The Builders make houses. From broken stone they build houses, as if to gift the disordered world with order. But, K’rul, unlike you, I am not convinced. Who, after all, broke the stones? It is my thought that the Builders are our enemy. They are not assemblers of reason, or even purpose. Their houses are built to contain. They are prisons – the Builder who dragged you to that house sought to chain you to it, in its yard so perfectly enclosed by that stone wall.’

K’rul halted, drawing Skillen around. A pale hand reached up into the shadow of the hood, as if K’rul was setting fingers to his brow. ‘And yet, it failed.’

‘Perhaps you were still too powerful. Perhaps, the house was not yet ready for you.’

‘We have kin who worship such houses.’

‘Lacking meaning and purpose, they seek to find it. In the ordering of stone – does that surprise you, K’rul? Are the Builders our children, or are we theirs? If we are but generations, one preceding the other, then which of us has fallen from our purpose?

‘The Builders are building worlds of denial, K’rul. The question you must ask is this: for whom are they meant? And, it follows, is it our task to oppose them? Or simply watch, decrying the entropy that is their monument?

‘Worship? Only a fool worships what is already inevitable. If I cared – if I thought it would prove efficacious, I would tell our kin this. Your obeisance is pointless. Your adoration kisses a skull, and where you kneel, there is only dust. Your faith is in a god with no face.’

Once again, K’rul passed a hand over his hidden visage. ‘Skillen Droe, you name me a fool, and rightly so.’

‘What inspired your gift, K’rul?’

‘Does it matter?’

Skillen shrugged his sharp, protruding shoulders. ‘I cannot yet say.’

Sighing, K’rul resumed walking, and a moment later they strode side by side again, skirting the endless crater. ‘I sought a breaking of the rules, Skillen. Oh, I know, what rules? Well, it seemed – seems – to me that they exist. More to the point, they do not answer to us. Look well on each of us. We Azathanai. On our habits, our proclivities and predilections, and how they serve our need to distinguish each of us from the others. But rules precede us, as cause precedes effect.

‘Some things we do share. For one, the habit that is our possessiveness, when it comes to our power. I admit, I found inspiration in the Suzerain of Night, when from love he gave a mortal woman so much of his own power. And, once it was done – well, he could not take it back.’

‘I was unaware of this. I am shocked by this news. I did not think Draconus so … careless. Tell me of his regrets.’

‘I do not know that he has any, Skillen. There is, I have found, something almost addictive in surrendering power. To become drunk on helplessness – well, it has ceased being so strange a notion. I heeded the Suzerain’s gift, and deemed it, in the end, too modest. That has since changed, as Draconus has gone yet further, but of that I will tell you later.’

‘I fear tragedy in that tale.’

‘Again, a modest one. If not for what I was driven to do. So, together now, Draconus and K’rul, we come to threaten the realm with devastation. By our gifts. By the helplessness we so coveted. Understand, it did not seem that way, not to begin with. The acts were … generous. Was this, in fact, our purpose? The mystery of our existence, solved by simple sacrifice? By yielding so much of ourselves?’

‘You have given to mortals the gift of sorcery. But it is not mortals who now threaten you, is it? You spoke of Errastas, and the flavour of influence he seeks to impose upon your gifts. You say that you cannot stop him. If that is true, what do you now hope to achieve?’

‘Ah. And this, old friend, is why I sought you out. I admit, I considered your remorse. The burden of regret you carry, so fierce as to drive you from our company.’

‘You would use me so?’

‘I would rather you did not see it that way, Skillen. Consider this, instead, yet one more gift. From me to you. Nothing substantial, as we might measure it, but sufficient to give purpose.’

‘You offer me purpose? Born of old crimes? Name me this gift, then. And consider well before you speak, since I am contemplating rending you limb from limb for your temerity.’

‘Redemption.’

Skillen Droe was silent – even in his thoughts – as his soul seemed to recoil from that word. Rejection and disbelief, denial and refusal. Such impulses needed no language.

K’rul seemed to comprehend at least some of that, for he sighed and said, ‘Errastas seeks to impose a kind of order upon my gifts, and make of chance a secret assassin to hope and desire. Droe, there are gates, now. They await guardians. Suzerain powers. But I cannot look to the Azathanai. Draconus would seek them among the Tiste, but I deem that dubious and, indeed, fraught. No, I knew I must look elsewhere.’ He hesitated, and then said, ‘Old friend, Starvald Demelain has opened on to this realm, twice now. There are dragons among us – the boldest of the kin, no doubt. Ambitious, acquisitive.’

‘You would bargain with them? K’rul, you are a fool! To think they would welcome my presence! I am the last they would yearn to see!’

‘I disagree, Droe,’ K’rul replied, with anger in his tone now. ‘I told you. I am not done with my gifts. This yielding rises from a tide to a flood. We need no other treasure to dangle in the bargain. In all instances but one, Skillen, the dragons will fight for what we offer.’

‘You would unleash such battles? Will you see Tiam herself manifest on this realm?’

‘No, we will find them as they are – singly, dispersed and eager to keep it that way. As for Tiam, again I have an answer, a means of preventing her. I believe it will work, but once more, in this I will truly need your help. Indeed, our powers must be combined.’

‘I see now. Your gift of redemption to me, and from this, my gratitude to you, and from that, my power conjoined to yours. You have thought far, K’rul, with me like a loyal hound at your heel every step of the way.’

‘I considered only the means by which I could win your allegiance.’

‘And have you contrived similar manipulations for those others whose alliance you seek? What of Ardata, then? Ah, of course, the chaos of the Vitr, so close in substance to the lifeblood of dragons.’

‘Chaos is necessary,’ K’rul said, ‘to balance what Errastas seeks.’

‘Who else waits unknowing in the wings? Mael? Grizzin Farl? No, not him, unless it is to send him among your enemies. Kilmandaros? Nightchill? Farander Tarag? What of Caladan Brood – I would have thought that the High Mason, above any of us, would have been your first choice in this. With Brood at your side, not even Errastas could-^’

‘Caladan Brood is, for the time being, lost to us.’

Skillen Droe studied K’rul – they had, at some point in the past few moments, halted once again. ‘In what manner is he lost, K’rul? Does he play High King somewhere? Then I will fly to him and drag him from his pathetic throne. What of Mael? Does he hide still beneath the waves, building his castles of sand?’

‘Caladan Brood yields not to earthly ambitions, Droe. But he is bound to another cause. It may walk in step with our own, but no more in the manner that Draconus does, with his own singular efforts. As for Mael, well, we are not on speaking terms for the moment.’

Skillen’s laugh was a hiss, harsh and almost painfully dry. ‘So I am third among your choices.’

‘No. Without you, Skillen Droe, I have no hope of achieving what I seek.’

‘That much I do comprehend, K’rul. Very well, you have made me curious. Tell me, what scheme have you concocted to keep each and every dragon from charging into battle with me, upon first sight?’

‘None.’

‘What?’

‘Abyss take us, Skillen! Name me one dragon that could defeat you in single battle?’

‘Then you see me fighting each and every one?’

‘Not necessarily. And if so, be sure not to kill them. No, Skillen, you still don’t understand why I so need you. When we step on to the mortal realm, they will know that you are among them once again. Skillen Droe, I need you, as bait.’

Skillen reached out, and down, closing a massive, scaled hand around the front of K’rul’s cloak. He lifted K’rul up until his companion’s face was close to his own. The hood fell back, and Skillen was pleased to see the faintest flush fill K’rul’s thin cheeks.

‘I’d rather you not drop me from this height,’ K’rul said in a tight, strained voice.

‘You said Starvald Demelain has opened twice. How many dragons are we talking about?’

‘Oh, the first time yielded but one dragon, and it is already dead.’

‘Dead?’

‘Well, as dead as dragons are able to get.’

‘Who killed it?’

‘I’m not sure. Its carcass rots on the shore of the Vitr.’

‘Which dragon? Name it!’

‘Korabas Otar Tantaral.’

‘Korabas!’

‘But don’t worry,’ said K’rul. ‘I’m not done with her just yet.’