The Crippled God

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

WHITE AS BONE, THE BUTTERFLIES FORMED A VAST CLOUD OVER-HEAD. Again and again their swirling mass dimmed the sun with a blessed gift of shadow that moments later broke apart, proving that curses hid in every gift, and that blessings could pass in the blink of an eye.

An eye swarming with flies. Badalle could feel and indeed see them clustering at the corners; she could feel them drinking her tears. She did not resent their need, and their frenzied crawl and buzz felt cool against her scorched cheeks. Those that crowded her mouth she ate when she could, the taste bitter when she crushed them, the wings like patches of dry skin almost impossible to swallow.

Since the Shards had left, only the butterflies and the flies remained, and there was something pure in these last two forces. One white, the other black. Only the extremes remained: from the unyielding ground below to the hollow sky above; from the push of life to the pull of death; from the breath hiding within to the last to leave a fallen child.

The flies fed upon the living, but the butterflies waited for the dead. There was nothing in between. Nothing but this walking, the torn feet and the stains they left behind, the figures toppling and then stepped over.

In her head, Badalle was singing. She sensed the presence of others – not those ahead of her or those behind her, but ghostly things. Invisible eyes and veiled thoughts. An impatience, a harsh desire for judgement. As if the Snake’s very existence was an affront. To be ignored. Denied. Fled from.

But she would not permit any to escape. They did not have to like what they saw. They did not have to like her at all. Or Rutt or Held or Saddic or any of the bare thousand still alive. They could rail at her thoughts, at the poetry she found in the heart of suffering, as if it had no meaning to them, no value. No truth. They could do all of that; still she would not let them go.

I am as true as anything you have ever seen. A dying child, abandoned by the world. And I say this: there is nothing truer. Nothing.

Flee from me if you can. I promise I will haunt you. This is my only purpose now, the only one left to me. I am history made alive, holding on but failing. I am everything you would not think of, belly filled and thirst slaked, there in all your comforts surrounded by faces you know and love.

But hear me. Heed my warning. History has claws.

Saddic still carried his hoard. He dragged it behind him. In a sack made of clothes no longer needed by anyone. His treasure trove. His … things. What did he want with them? What meaning hid inside that sack? All those stupid bits, the shiny stones, the pieces of wood. And the way, with every dusk, when they could walk no further, he would take them all out to look at them – why did that frighten her?

Sometimes he would weep, for no reason. And make fists as if to crush all his baubles into dust, and it was then that she realized that Saddic didn’t know what they meant either. But he wouldn’t leave them behind. That sack would be the death of him.

She imagined the moment when he fell. This boy she would have liked for a brother. On to his knees, hands all entwined in the cloth sleeves, falling forward so that his face struck the ground. He’d try to get back up, but he’d fail. And the flies would swarm him until he was no longer even visible, just a seething, glittering blackness. Where Saddic had been.

They’d eat his last breath. Drink the last tears from his eyes which now just stared. Invade his open mouth to make it dry as a cave, a spider hole. And then the swarm would explode, rush away seeking more of life’s sweet water. And down would descend the butterflies. To strip away his skin, and the thing left – with its sack – would no longer be Saddic.

Saddic will be gone. Happy Saddic. Peaceful Saddic, a ghost hovering, looking down at that sack. I would have words for him, for his passing. I would stand over him, looking down at all those fluttering wings so like leaves, and I would try, one more time, to make sense of the sack, the sack that killed him.

And I would fail. Making my words few. Weak. A song of unknowing. All I have for my brother Saddic.

When that time comes, I will know it is time for me to die, too. When that time comes, I will give up.

And so she sang. A song of knowing. The most powerful song of all.

They had a day left, maybe two.

Is this what I wanted? Every journey must end. Out here there is nothing but ends. No beginnings left. Out here, I have nothing but claws.

‘Badalle.’ The word was soft, like crumpled cloth, and she felt it brush her senses.

‘Rutt.’

‘I can’t do this any more.’

‘But you are Rutt. The head of the Snake. And Held, who is the tongue.’

‘No. I can’t. I have gone blind.’

She moved up alongside him, studied his old man’s face. ‘They’re swollen,’ she said. ‘Closed up, Rutt. It’s to keep them safe. Your eyes.’

‘But I can’t see.’

‘There’s nothing to see, Rutt.’

‘I can’t lead.’

‘For this, there is no one better.’

‘Badalle—’

‘Even the stones are gone. Just walk, Rutt. The way is clear; for as far as I can see, it’s clear.’

He loosed a sob. The flies poured in and he bent over, coughing, retching. He stumbled and she caught him before he fell. Rutt righted himself, clutching Held tight. Badalle heard a soft whimper rising from them both.

No water. This is what is killing us now. Squinting, she glanced back. Saddic was nowhere in sight – had he already fallen? If he had, it would be just as well that she’d not seen it. Other faces, vaguely familiar, stared at her and Rutt, waiting for the Snake to begin moving once again. They stood hunched over, tottering. They stood with backs arched and bellies distended as if about to drop a baby. Their eyes were depthless pools where the flies gathered to drink. Sores crusted their noses, their mouths and ears. Skin on cheeks and chins had cracked open and glistened beneath ribbons of flies. Many were bald, missing teeth, their gums bleeding. And Rutt was not alone in being blind.

Our children. See what we have done to them. Our mothers and fathers left us to this, and now we leave them, too, in our turn. There is no end to the generations of the foolish. One after another after another and at some point we all started nodding thinking this is how it has to be, and so we don’t even try to change things. All we pass down to our children is the same stupid grin.

But I have claws. And I will tear away that grin. I swear it.

‘Badalle.’

She had begun singing out loud. Wordless, the tone low and then building, thickening. Until she could feel more than one voice within her, and each in turn joined her song. Filling the air. Their sound was one of horror, a terrible thing – she felt its power growing. Growing.

‘Badalle?’

I have claws. I have claws. I have claws. Show me that grin one more time. Show it, I’m begging you! Let me tear it from your face. Let me rip deep, until my talons score your teeth! Let me feel the blood and let me hear the meat splitting and let me see the look in your eyes as you meet mine let me see I have claws I have claws I have claws—

‘Badalle!’

Someone struck her, knocked her down. Stunned, she stared up into Saddic’s face, his round, wizened face. And from his eyes red tears tracked down through the dust on his leathery cheeks.

‘Don’t cry,’ she whispered. ‘It’s all right, Saddic. Don’t cry.’

Rutt knelt beside her, groped with one hand until his fingers brushed her forehead. ‘What have you done?’

His tone startled her. The cloth is torn. ‘They’re all too weak,’ she said. ‘Too weak to feel anger. So I felt it for them – for all of you—’ She stopped. Rutt’s fingertips leaked blood. She could feel crystal shards digging into her back. What?

‘You moved us,’ Saddic said. ‘It … hurt.’

She could hear wailing now. The Snake was writhing in pain. ‘I went … I went looking.’

‘For what?’ Rutt demanded. ‘For what?’

‘For claws.’

Saddic shook his head. ‘Badalle. We’re children. We don’t have claws.’

The sun dimmed then and she squinted past Saddic. But the butterflies were gone. Flies, look at all the flies.

‘We don’t have claws, Badalle.’

‘No, Saddic, you’re right. We don’t. But someone does.’

The power of the song still clung to her, fierce as a promise. Someone does. ‘I’m taking us there,’ she said, meeting Saddic’s wide eyes.

He drew back, leaving her to stare up at the sky. Flies, roiling in a massive cloud, black as the Abyss. She clambered to her feet. ‘Take my hand, Rutt. It’s time to walk.’

She crouched, staring up at the gate. Beneath it the crumbling ruin of Kettle House was like a thing crushed under a heel. Something like blood oozed out from its roots to carve runnels down the slope. She believed it was dead, but of course there was no way to know for sure.

There was no glory in failure. Kilava had learned that long, long ago. The passing of an age was always one of dissolution, a final sigh of exhaustion and surrender. She had seen her kin vanish from the world – the venal mockery that were the T’lan Imass hardly weighed as much as dust upon the scales of survival – and she well understood the secret desires of Olar Ethil.

Maybe the hag would succeed. The spirits knew, she was ripe for redemption.

Kilava had lied. To Onrack, to Udinaas, to Ulshun Pral and his clan. There had been no choice. To remain here would have seen them all slain, and she would not have that on her conscience.

When the wound was breached, the Eleint would enter this world. There was no hope of stopping them. T’iam could not be denied, not with what was coming.

The only unknown, to her mind, was the Crippled God. The Forkrul Assail were simple enough, as bound to the insanity of final arguments as were the Tiste Liosan. Kin in spirit, those two. And she believed she knew what her brother intended to do, and she would leave him to it, and if her blessing meant anything, well then he had it, with all her heart. No, the Crippled God was the only force that troubled her.

She remembered the earth’s pain when he was brought down from the sky. She remembered his fury and his agony when first he was chained. But the gods were hardly done with him. They returned again and again, crushing him down, destroying his every attempt to find a place for himself. If he cried out for justice, no one was interested in listening. If he howled in wretched suffering, they but turned away.

But the Crippled God was not alone in that neglect. The mortal realm was crowded with those who were just as wounded, just as broken, just as forgotten. In this way, all that he had become – his very place in the pantheon – had been forged by the gods themselves.

And now they feared him. Now, they meant to kill him.

‘Because the gods will not answer mortal suffering. It is too much … work.’

He must know what they intended – she was certain of it. He must be desperate in seeking a way out, an escape. No matter what, she knew he would not die without a fight. Was this not the meaning of suffering?

Her feline eyes narrowed on the gate. Starvald Demelain was a fiery red welt in the sky, growing, deepening.

‘Soon,’ she whispered.

She would flee before them. To remain here was too dangerous. The destruction they would bring to this world would beggar the dreams of even the Forkrul Assail. And once upon the mortal realm, so crowded with pathetic humans, there would be slaughter on a colossal scale. Who could oppose them? She smiled at the thought.

‘There are a few, aren’t there? But too few. No, friends, let them loose. T’iam must be reborn, to face her most ancient enemy. Chaos against order, as simple – as banal – as that. Do not stand in their path – not one of you could hope to survive it.’

What then of her children?

‘Dear brother, let us see, shall we? The hag’s heart is broken, and she will do whatever she can to see it healed. Despise her, Onos – the spirits know, she deserves nothing else – but do not dismiss her. Do not.’

It seemed very complicated.

Kilava Onass looked up at the wound.

‘But it isn’t. It isn’t anything like that at all.’

Rock cracked in Kettle House, startling her. Reddish mists roiled out from the sundered walls.

‘She was flawed, was Kettle. Too weak, too young.’ What legacy could be found in a child left alone, abandoned to the fates? How many truths hid in the scatter of small bones? Too many to bear thinking about.

Another stone shattered, the sound like snapping chains.

Kilava returned her attention to the gate.

Gruntle slumped against a massive boulder, in the full sun, and leaned his head back against the warm stone, closing his eyes. Instinct’s a bitch. The god who had damned him was a burning presence deep inside, filling him with an urgency he could not understand. His nerves were frayed; he was exhausted.

He had journeyed through countless realms, desperate to find the quickest path to take him … where? A gate. A disaster about to be unleashed. What is it you so fear, Trake? Why can you not just tell me, you miserable rat-chewing bastard? Show me an enemy. Show me someone I can kill for you, since that seems to be the only thing that pleases you.

The air stank. He listened to the flies crawling on the corpses surrounding him. He didn’t know where he was. Broad-leafed trees encircled the glade; he had heard geese flying overhead. But this was not his world. It felt … different. Like a place twisted by sickness – and not the sickness that had taken the twenty or so wretched humans lying here in the high grasses, marring their skin with weeping pustules, swelling their throats and forcing their tongues past blistered lips. No, all of that was just a symptom of some deeper disease.

There was intention. Here. Someone summoned Poliel and set her upon these people. I am being shown true evil – is that what you wanted, Trake? Reminding me of just how horrifying we can be? People curse you and the pestilence of your touch ruins countless lives, but you are not a stranger to any world.

These people – someone used you to kill them.

He thought he’d seen the worst of humanity’s flaws back in Capustan, in the Pannion War. An entire people deliberately driven insane. But if he understood the truths behind that war, there had been a wounded thing at the very core of the Domin, a thing that could only lash out, claws bared, so vast, so consuming was its pain.

And though he was not yet ready for it, a part of him understood that forgiveness was possible, from the streets of Capustan to the throne in Coral, and probably beyond – there had been mention of a being trapped in a gate, sealing a wound with its own life force. He could track an argument through all that, and the knowledge gave him something close to peace. Enough to live with.

But not here. What crime did they commit – these poor people – to earn such punishment?

He could feel his tears drying on his cheeks. This is … unforgivable. Is it my anger you want, Trake? Is this why I am here, to be reawakened? Enough of the shame, the grief, the self-recrimination, is that what you’re telling me?

Well then, it hasn’t worked. All I see here is what we’re capable of doing.

He missed Ganoes Paran. And Itkovian. Friends to whom he could speak. They seemed to belong to a different life, a life long lost to him. Harllo. Ah, you should see your namesake, my friend. Oh, how you would have loved him – she’d have to fight you off, brick up the doors to keep you from being his father. You’d have shown her what it meant to love a child unconditionally.

Stonny, do you miss Harllo as much as I do?

But you’ve got the boy. You’ve got your son. And I promised I would come back. I promised.

‘What would you do here, Master of the Deck?’ His question was swallowed by the glade. ‘What choice would you make, Paran? We weren’t happy with our lots, were we? But we took hold of them anyway. By the throat. I expect you’ve yet to relinquish your grip. Me? Ah, gods, how I’ve messed it up.’

In his dreams he had seen a blackened thing, with claws of red and fangs dripping gore. Lying panting, dying, on churned-up earth. The air was brittle cold. The wind whipped about as if warring with itself. What place was that?

That place? Gods, it’s where I’m going, isn’t it? I have a fight ahead. A terrible fight. Is she my ally? My lover? Is she even real?

It was time. An end to these morbid thoughts, this brush with self-indulgence. He knew well that to give voice to certain feelings, to expose them in all their honesty, made him vulnerable to derision. ‘Don’t touch us with what you feel. We don’t believe you.’ His eyes blinking open, he looked around.

Crows on the branches, but even they were not yet ready to feed.

Gruntle climbed to his feet, walked to the nearest corpse. A young man, skin of burnished bronze, braided hair black as pitch. Dressed like some Rhivi outlander. Stone tools, a wooden club at his waist – beautifully carved, shaped like a cutlass, the edge oiled and gleaming. ‘You loved that sword, didn’t you? But it didn’t help you. Not against this.’

He turned, took in the glade, and spread his arms. ‘You died miserable. I now offer you something more, a second way.’

The hair on the back of his neck lifted. Their spirits had drawn close. ‘You were warriors. Come with me and be warriors once again. And if we are to die, then it shall be a better death. I can offer this but nothing more.’

The last time he had done this, his followers had been alive. Until this moment, he had not even known that this was possible, this breaching of death’s barrier. It’s all changing. I don’t think I like it.

The spirits drifted back to their bodies. The flies scattered.

Moments later, limbs twitched, mouths opened to dry rasps. Now, Trake, we can’t have them like this, can we? Heal their flesh, you piece of immortal dung.

Power filled the glade, an emanation that pushed back the vile curse of this realm, all the exultant expressions of evil that seemed to thrive unopposed in this place. Swept away. Refuted.

He remembered sitting at a campfire, listening to Harllo going on about something, and a fragment of words returned to him now. The face across the fire, long and flickering. ‘War, Gruntle. Like it or not, it’s the spur of civilization.’ And then that lopsided grin.

‘Hear that, Trake? I just figured out why you’ve granted me this gift. It’s all nothing but expedience with you. One hand blesses but the other waits for the coin. And you’ll be paid, no matter what. No matter what.’

Twenty-one silent warriors now faced him, their sores gone, their eyes bright. He could be cruel now and just take them. ‘He’ll have made sure you can understand me. He’ll have done that, I think.’

Cautious nods.

‘Good. You can stay here. You can return to your people – if any are still alive. You can try to seek vengeance against the ones who killed you. But you know you’ll lose. Against the evil now in your land, you are doomed.

‘You’re warriors. When you run with me, know that a fight awaits us. That is our path.’ He hesitated, and then spat to one side. ‘Is there glory in war? Come with me and let’s find out.’

When he set off, twenty-one warriors followed.

And when he awakened his power they rushed closer. This, my friends, is called veering. And this, my friends, is the body of a tiger.

A rather big one.

The three strangely garbed strangers they found walking on the trail ahead barely had time to lift their long clubs before Gruntle was among them. Once he passed, there wasn’t much left of those three pale men, and he felt the pleasure of his companions. And shared it. There’s only one thing to do with evil. Take it in your jaws and crush it.

Then they were gone from the world.

What place washes bones up like driftwood? Mappo’s gaze narrowed on the flat, blinding stretch awaiting him. Shards of quartz and gypsum studded the colourless, dead ground, like knots of cacti. The horizon was level behind shimmering waves of heat, as if this desert reached to the very edge of the world.

I have to cross it.

He crouched, reached down and picked up a long bone, studied it. Bhederin? Maybe. Not yet fully grown. He collected another. Wolf or dog jaw. So, this desert was once prairie. What happened? The bones fell with a clatter. Straightening, Mappo drew a deep breath. I think … I think I am getting tired of living. Tired of the whole thing. Nothing is working like it used to. Flaws are appearing, signs of things breaking down. Inside. The very core of my spirit.

But I have one thing left to do. Just one thing left, and then I can be done with all this. He found himself drifting off, not for the first time, finding that place in his head where every thought rattled like chains, and he could only drag himself in crooked circles, the weight stealing his strength, his willingness to go on.

One thing left. It’s down to managing resources. Harbouring the will. Navigating between all the sour truths. You can live that long, Mappo. You have no choice but to live that long, or all this will be for nothing.

I see the world’s edge. Waiting for me.

He tightened the straps of his sack, and then set out. At a steady jog. It’s just a desert. I’ve run across a few in my day. I won’t go hungry. I won’t go thirsty, and whatever exhaustion comes to me, well, it’ll end when it’s all over.

With each footfall his nerves seemed to recoil from the contact. This was a damaged place, one vast scar upon the earth. And for all the death lining the desert’s bizarre shore behind him, there was life here. Inimical, unpleasant life. And it possessed intent.

You feel me, don’t you? I offend you. But it is not my desire to offend. Leave me to pass, friend, and we will be done with each other.

Flies buzzed round him now. He had settled into a dogtrot, his breathing steady and deep. The insects kept pace, gathering in ever greater numbers. Death is not punishment. It is release. I have seen that all my life. Though I did not wish to, though I told myself stories to pretend otherwise. Every struggle must end. Is the rest that follows eternal? I doubt it. I doubt we’d ever get off that easily.

Hood, I feel your absence. I wonder what it means. Who now waits beyond the gate? So much anguish comes in knowing that each of us must pass through it alone. To then discover that once through we remain alone – no, that is too much to bear.

I could have married. Stayed in the village. I could have fathered children, and seen in each child something of my wife, something of me. Is that enough meaning to a life? A cloth of unending folds?

I could have murdered Icarium – but then, he has instincts for such things. His madness awakens so fast, so utterly fast, that I might have failed – and after killing me his rage would have sought a new target, and many others would have died.

There really was no choice. There never was. Is it any wonder I am so tired?

The flies swarmed him in a thick, glittering cloud. They sought out his eyes, but those had closed to slits. They spun round his mouth, but the gusts of breath from his nostrils drove them off. His people had been herders. They understood flies. He ignored their seething embrace. It meant nothing, and on he ran.

But then my death would have made my loved ones grieve, and there is nothing pleasant in grieving. It is hot and dry to the touch. It is weakness taken inside. It can rise up and drown a life. No, I am glad I never found a wife, never fathered children. I could not bear to be the cause of their sorrow.

How can one give so freely of love to another, when the final outcome is one of betrayal? When one must leave the other – to be the betrayer who dies, to be the betrayed left alive. How can this be an even exchange, with death waiting at the end?

He ran, and time passed. The sun tracked across half the sky. The warm ache in his legs had shaken off the torment of his thoughts again and again, leading him into a world emptied of everything. How perfect is running? This grand delusion of flight? Away from our demons, ever away, until even the self sobs loose, spins lost in our wake.

Perfect, oh yes. And a thing to despise. No distance can win an escape; no speed can outrun this self and all its host of troubles. It’s only the sweet exhaustion that follows that we so cherish. An exhaustion so pure it is as close to dying as we can get without actually doing so.

Poets could speak knowingly of metaphors; if life is walking, then running is a life’s entire span speeded up, and to act out birth to death in a single day, over and over again, has the flavour of perfect habit, for it mimicks undeniable truths. Small deaths paying homage to the real one. We choose them in myriad forms and delight in the ritual. I could run until I wear out. Every joint, every bone and every muscle. I could run until my heart groans older than its years, and finally bursts.

I could damn the poets and make the metaphor real. We are all self-destructive. It is integral to our nature. And we will run even when there’s nowhere to run to, and nothing terrible to run from. Why? Because to walk is just as meaningless. It just takes longer.

Through the screen of whizzing flies he saw something in the sky ahead. A darker cloud, a towering, swirling thing. Dust storm? There was no dust. A whirlwind? Maybe. But the air was still. It was in his path, although still some distance away. He watched it, to track its path.

The cloud remained directly ahead. Just bigger.

It’s coming straight at me.

More flies?

The insects surrounding him were suddenly frenzied – and he caught something in their manic buzzing. You’re part of this, aren’t you? The finders of life. And once found, you … summon.

He could hear that cloud now, a deeper, more frightening drone quickly overwhelming the swarming flies.

Locusts.

But that makes no sense. There is nothing for them to eat. There is nothing here at all.

All of this felt wrong. Mappo slowed his run, halted. The flies spun round him a moment longer, and then fled. He stood, breathing deep, eyes on the vast spinning pillar of locusts.

And then, all at once, he understood. ‘D’ivers.’

Something that looked like white foam was spreading from the base of the locust cloud, surging in tumultuous waves. Gods below. Butterflies. ‘You’re all d’ivers. You’re all one thing, one creature – the flies, the locusts, the butterflies – and this desert is where you live.’ He recalled the bones upon the edge. ‘This desert … is what you made.’

The butterflies reached him, whipped round him – so many he could no longer see the ground at his feet. The frantic breaths of their wings stole the sweat from his skin, until he began shivering. ‘D’ivers! I would speak to you! Semble! Show yourself to me!’

The locusts blighted half the sky, devouring the sun. Spinning overhead, and then, in a wave of rage, descending.

Mappo dropped to his knees, buried his face beneath his arms, hunched down.

They struck his back like a deluge of darts.

As more poured down, he grunted at their weight. Bones creaked. He struggled for breath, clenched his jaws against the pain.

The locusts stabbed again and again with their jaws, driven mad by the feel and scent of living flesh.

But he was Trell, and his kind had skin like leather.

The locusts could not draw blood. But the weight grew vast, seeking to crush him. In the gap his arms made for his face he stared at inky darkness, and his gasps snatched up dust from the ground. Deafened by the futile clack of bladed jaws, buried in riotous darkness, he held on.

He could feel the mind of the d’ivers now. Its fury was not for him alone. Who stung you so? Who in this desert drove you away? Why are you fleeing?

The being was ancient. It had not sembled in a long time – thousands of years, perhaps more. Lost now to the primitive instincts of the insects. Shards opals diamonds gems leaves drinkers – the words slithered into him as if from nowhere, a girl’s sing-song voice that now echoed in his mind. Shards opals diamonds gems leaves drinkers – go away!

With a deafening roar the vast weight on Mappo’s back burst apart, exploded outward.

He sat up, tilted back his head. ‘Shards opals diamonds gems leaves drinkers – go away. Go away. Go!’

A song of banishing.

The cloud heaved upward, twisted, and then churned past him. Another seething wave of butterflies, and then they too were gone.

Stunned, Mappo looked round. He was alone. Child, where are you? Such power in your song – are you Forkrul Assail? No matter. Mappo thanks you.

He was covered in bruises. Every bone ached. But still alive.

‘Child, be careful. This d’ivers was once a god. Someone tore it apart, into so many pieces it can never heal. It can’t even find itself. All it knows now is hunger – not for you or me. For something else. Life itself, perhaps. Child, your song has power. Be careful. What you banish you can also summon.’

He heard her voice again, fainter now, drifting away. ‘Like the flies. Like the song of the flies.’

Grunting, he climbed to his feet. Drew his sack round and loosened the drawstrings, reached in and lifted out a waterskin. He drank deep, sighed, drank a second time and then stuffed the skin back into the sack. Tightening the shoulder straps again, he faced east, and resumed running.

For the edge of the world.

‘Nice sword.’

‘Alas, this one I must use. I will give my two Letherii swords to you.’

Ryadd Eleis leaned back against the knobby stone of the cave wall. ‘How did they get the dragons on that blade?’

Silchas Ruin continued studying the weapon he had unsheathed. The flames of the hearth danced up and down its length. ‘There is something wrong with this,’ he said. ‘The House of Hust burned to the ground with everything else – not Kharkanas itself, of course, that city didn’t burn. Not precisely. But Hust, well, those forges were a prize, you see. And what could not be held had to be destroyed.’

Ryadd glanced away, at the pearl sky beyond the cave mouth. Another dawn had arrived. He’d been alone for some time. Awakened to find that the Tiste Andii had returned sometime in the night, blown in like a drift of snow. ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying.’

The white face took on an almost human hue, bathed as it was in the firelight. But those red eyes were as unnerving as ever. ‘I thought I knew all the weapons forged by the Hust. Even the obscure ones.’

‘That one does not look obscure, Silchas,’ said Ryadd. ‘It looks like a hero’s weapon. A famous weapon. One with a name.’

‘As you say,’ Silchas agreed. ‘And I am not so old as to forget the ancient warning about trusting shadows. No, the one who gave me this sword is playing a game.’

‘Someone gave it to you? In return for what?’

‘I wish I knew.’

Ryadd smiled. ‘Never bargain knowing only the value of one side of the deal. Onrack said that to me once. Or maybe it was Ulshun Pral.’

Silchas shot him a look.

Ryadd shrugged, lifting himself to his feet. ‘Do we now resume our journey?’

Sheathing the sword, Silchas straightened as well. ‘We have gone far enough, I think.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I needed to take you away from Starvald Demelain, and now I have done so.’ He faced Ryadd. ‘This is what you must learn. The Eleint blood within you is a poison. I share it, of course. My brother and I chose it for ourselves – we perceived a necessity, but that is the fatal lure of power, isn’t it? With the blood of T’iam within our veins, we could bring peace to Kurald Galain. Of course, that meant crushing every House opposing us. Regrettable, but that sentiment was as far as the poison would permit us to go in our thoughts. The thousands who died could not make us hesitate, could not stop us from continuing. Killing thousands more.’

‘I am not you, Silchas Ruin.’

‘Nor will you ever be, if I can help it.’

Ryadd walked to the cave’s edge, looked out on bleak, jagged rock and blinding sweeps of snow where the sun’s light marched down into the valley below. Elsewhere, in shadow, the snow was as blue as the sky. ‘What have you done, Silchas?’

Behind him, the Tiste Andii replied, ‘What I deemed … necessary. I have no doubt that Kilava succeeded in forcing your people out of that realm – they won’t die, not there, not then. Udinaas is a clever man. In his life, he has come to understand the pragmatism of survival. He will have led the Imass away from there. And he will find them a home, somewhere to hide from humans—’

‘How?’ Ryadd demanded. ‘It’s not even possible.’

‘He will seek help.’

‘Who?’

‘Seren Pedac,’ Silchas replied. ‘Her old profession makes her a good choice.’

‘Her child must have been born by now.’

‘Yes. A child she knows she must protect. When Udinaas comes to her, she will see how her need and his can be resolved together. She will guide the Imass to a hidden place, and in that place she too will hide, with her child. Protected by Onrack, protected by the Imass.’

‘Why can’t we be just left alone?’ Ryadd heard the anguish in his own voice and closed his eyes against the outside glare.

‘Ryadd Eleis, there is a kind of fish, living in rivers, that when in small numbers – two or perhaps three – is peaceful enough. But when the school grows, when a certain threshold is reached, these fish go mad. They tear things apart. They can devour the life in a river for a league’s length, and only when their bellies start bursting do they finally scatter.’

‘What has that to do with anything?’ Ryadd turned to glare at Silchas Ruin.

The Tiste Andii sighed. ‘When the gate of Starvald Demelain opens, the Eleint will come through in vast numbers. Most will be young, by themselves little threat, but among them there will be the last of the Ancients. Leviathans of appalling power – but they are incomplete. They will arrive hunting their kin. Ryadd, if you and I had remained, seeking to oppose the opening of that gate, we would lose our minds. We would in mindless desire join the Storm of the Eleint. We would follow the Ancients – have you never wondered why, in all the realms but Starvald Demelain itself, one will never find more than five or six dragons in one place? Even that many demands the mastery of at least one Ancient. Indeed, to be safe, Eleint tend to travel in threes.’ Silchas Ruin walked up to stand beside Ryadd, and stared out at the vista. ‘We are the blood of chaos, Ryadd Eleis, and when too many of us gather in one place, the blood boils.’

‘Then,’ Ryadd whispered, ‘the Eleint are coming, and there’s no stopping them.’

‘What you say is true. But here you are safe.’

‘Me? What of you?’

Silchas Ruin’s hand found the grip of his scabbarded sword. ‘I must leave you now, I think. I did not plan it, and I am not pleased at the thought of abandoning you—’

‘And all that we spoke of before was a lie,’ cut in Ryadd. ‘Our perilous mission – all of it, a lie.’

‘Your father understood. I promised him that I would save you, and I have done so.’

‘Why did you bother?’

‘Because you are dangerous enough alone, Ryadd. In a Storm … no, I could not risk that.’

‘Then you intend to fight them after all!’

‘I will defend my freedom, Ryadd—’

‘What makes you think you can? With what you said of the Ancients—’

‘Because I am one, Ryadd. An Ancient.’

Ryadd stared at the tall, white-skinned warrior. ‘Could you compel me, Silchas Ruin?’

‘I have no desire to even so much as attempt it, Ryadd. Chaos seduces – you have felt it. And soon you may witness the fullest expression of that curse. But I have learned to resist the seduction.’ He smiled suddenly, and in an ironic tone added, ‘We Tiste Andii are skilled at denying ourselves. We have had a long time to get it right, after all.’

Ryadd drew his furs close about himself. His breath plumed in the bitter cold. He concentrated a moment, was answered by a billowing of the hearth’s flames behind him. Heat roiled past.

Silchas glanced back at the sudden inferno. ‘You are indeed your mother’s son, Ryadd.’

He shrugged. ‘I was tired of being chilled.’ He then looked across at Silchas. ‘Was she an Ancient Eleint?’

‘The first few generations of Soletaken count among the Ancients, yes. T’iam’s blood was at its purest then, but that purity is short-lived.’

‘Are there others like you, Silchas? In this world?’

‘Ancients?’ He hesitated, and then nodded. ‘A few.’

‘When the Storm arrives, what will they do?’

‘I don’t know. But we who were not trapped within Starvald Demelain all share our desire for independence, for our freedom.’

‘So they will fight, like you.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Then why can I not fight beside you?’

‘If I must defend you while defending myself – well, it is likely that I would fail on both counts.’

‘But I am Menandore’s son—’

‘And formidable, yes, but you lack control. An Ancient will see you – will see all that you are – and it will take you, tearing out your mind and enslaving what remains.’

‘If you did the same – to me – imagine how powerful you would then be, Silchas.’

‘Now you know why dragons so often betray one another in the heat of battle. It is our fear that makes us strike at our allies – before they can strike at us. Even in the Storm, the Ancients will trust not one of their equals, and each will possess scores of lesser slaves, as protection against betrayal.’

‘It seems a terrible way to live.’

‘You don’t understand. It is not simply that we are the blood of chaos, it is that we are eager to boil. The Eleint revel in anarchy, in toppling regimes among the Towers, in unmitigated slaughter of the vanquished and the innocent. To see flames on the horizon, to see the enkar’l vultures descending upon a corpse-strewn plain – this charges our heart as does nothing else.’

‘The Storm will unleash all that? On this world?’

Silchas Ruin nodded.

‘But who can stop them?’

‘My other swords are beside your pallet, Ryadd Eleis. They are honourable weapons, if somewhat irritating on occasion.’

‘Who can stop them?’

‘We’ll see.’

‘How long must I wait here?’

Silchas Ruin met his eyes with a steady, reptilian stare. ‘Until the moment you realize that it’s time to leave. Be well, Ryadd. Perhaps we will meet again. When next you see your father, do tell him I did what I promised.’ He hesitated, and then added, ‘Tell him, too, that with Kettle, I believe now that I acted … hastily. And for that I am sorry.’

‘Is it Olar Ethil?’

Silchas Ruin frowned. ‘What?’

‘Is she the one you’re going to kill, Silchas Ruin?’

‘Why would I do that?’

‘For what she said.’

‘She spoke the truth, Ryadd.’

‘She hurt you. On purpose.’

He shrugged. ‘What of it? Only words, Ryadd. Only words.’

The Tiste Andii leaned forward then, over the cliff’s edge, and slipped out of sight. A moment later he lifted back into view, a bone-white dragon, white as the snow below, where his winged shadow slipped in pursuit.

Ryadd stood a moment longer, and then turned away from the cave mouth. The fire blazed until the swords started singing in the heat.

‘Look at you, squatting in your own filth like that. What happened to Fenn’s great pride – wasn’t that his name? Fenn? That Teblor war-king? So he died, friend – doesn’t mean you have to fall so low. It’s disgusting is what it is. Head back into the mountains – oh, hold on a moment there. Let’s see that mace – take the sheath off, will you?’

He licked chapped, stinging lips. His whole mouth felt swollen on the inside. He needed a drink, but the post’s gate had been locked. He’d slept against it through the night, listening to the singing in the tavern.

‘Show it to me, Teblor – could be we can make us a deal here.’

He straightened up as best he could. ‘I cannot yield this,’ he said. ‘It is an Eleint’aral K’eth. With a secret name – I walked the Roads of the Dead to win this weapon. With my own hands I broke the neck of a Forkrul Assail—’

But the guard was laughing. ‘Meaning it’s worth four crowns, not two, right? Harrower’s breath, you people can spin ’em, can’t you? Been through Death’s Gate, have ya? And back out again? Quite a feat for a drunk Teblor stinking of pigshit.’

‘I was not always this way—’

‘Of course not, friend, but here you are now. Desperate for drink, with just me standing between you and the tavern. This could be Death’s Gate all over again, come to think of it, hey? ’Cause if I let you through, why, the next time you leave it’ll probably be by the heels. You want through, Teblor? Gotta pay the Harrower’s coin. That mace – hand it over then.’

‘I cannot. You don’t understand. When I came back … you cannot imagine. I had seen where we all ended up, you see? When I came back, the drink called me. Helps me forget. Helps me hide. What I saw broke me, that’s all. Please, you can see that – how it broke me. I’m begging—’

‘Factor don’t take to beggars, not here. Y’got nothing to pay your way in, be off – back into the woods, dry as a hag’s cubbyhole, true enough. Now, for that mace, well, I’ll give ya three crowns. Even you couldn’t drink three crowns’ worth in a single night. Three. See, got ’em right here. What do you say?’

‘Father.’

‘Get lost, lad, me and your da’s working out a business transaction here.’

‘No deal, Guard, not for that weapon—’

‘It’s your da’s to do with as he pleases—’

‘You can’t even lift it.’

‘Wasn’t planning on lifting it. But up on the wall of my brother’s tavern, well, that’d make quite a sight, don’t you think? Pride of place for you Teblor, right over the hearth.’

‘Sorry, sir. I’m taking him back to the village now.’

‘Until tomorrow night – or next week – listen, lad, you can’t save them that won’t be saved.’

‘I know. But the dragon-killer, that I can save.’

‘Dragon-killer? Bold name. Too bad dragons don’t exist.’

‘Son, I wasn’t going to sell it. I swear that—’

‘I heard, Father.’

‘I wasn’t.’

‘The Elders have agreed, Father. The Resting Stone waits.’

‘It does?’

‘Hey now, you two! Boy, did you say Resting Stone?’

‘Best you pretend you never heard that, sir.’

‘That vicious shit’s outlawed – king’s command! You – Da – your son says the Elders are going to murder you. Under a big fucking boulder. You can claim sanctuary—’

‘Sir, if you take him inside the fort, we will have no choice.’

‘No choice? No choice but to do what?’

‘It’s better if none of this ever happened, sir.’

‘I’m calling the captain—’

‘If you do that, this will all come out. Sir, do you want to start the Teblor on the path to war? Do you want us to burn your fledgling colony to the ground? Do you want us to hunt down and kill every one of you? Children, mothers, the old and wise? What will the First Empire think of a colony gone silent? Will they cross the ocean to investigate? And the next time your people come to our shore, will we meet you not as friends, but as enemies?’

‘Son – bury the weapon with me. And the armour – please …’

The youth nodded. ‘Yes, Father.’

‘This time when I die, I shall not return.’

‘That is true.’

‘Live long, son, as long as you can.’

‘I shall try. Guard?’

‘Get out of my sight, both of you.’

On to the forest trail. Away from the trading post, the place where Teblor came down to surrender everything, beginning with dignity. He held his son’s hand and did not look back. ‘There is nowhere to drink in the realm of the dead.’

‘I am sorry, Father …’

‘I’m not, my son. I’m not.’

Ublala sat up, wiping at his eyes. ‘They killed me! Again!’

Ralata stirred beside him, twisting to lift her head and study him with bleary eyes. A moment later her head disappeared again beneath the furs.

Ublala looked round, found Draconus standing nearby, but the warrior’s attention remained fixed on the eastern horizon, where the sun’s newborn light slowly revealed a rocky, glittering desert. Rubbing at his face, the giant stood. ‘I’m hungry, Draconus. I’m chilled, my feet hurt, I got dirt under my nails and there’s things living in my hair. But the sexing was great.’

Draconus glanced over. ‘I had begun to doubt she would relent, Toblakai.’

‘She was bored, you see. Boredom’s a good reason, don’t you think? I think so. I’ll do more of that from now on, with women I want to sex.’

One brow arched. ‘You will bore them into submission, Ublala?’

‘I will. Soon as we find more women. I’ll bore them right to the ground. Was that a dragon you turned into? It was hard to see, you were all blurry and black like smoke. Can you do that whenever you like? You gods got it good, I think, being able to do things like that. Hey, where did that fire come from?’

‘Best begin cooking your breakfasts, Ublala, we have far to walk today. And it will be through a warren, for I like not the look of that desert ahead.’

Ublala scratched his itchy scalp. ‘If you can fly, why don’t you just go where you’re going? Me and my wife, we can find someplace else to go. And I can bury the mace and the armour. Right here. I don’t like them. I don’t like the dreams they give me—’

‘I will indeed leave you, Ublala, but not quite yet. As for the weapons, I fear you will need them soon. You will have to trust me in this, friend.’

‘All right. I’ll make breakfast now – is that half a pig? Where’s the other half? I always wonder that, you know, when I’m in the market and I see half a pig. Where’s the other half? Did it run away? Haha – Ralata? Did you hear me make a joke? Haha. As if half-pigs can run! No, they’d have to kind of hop, wouldn’t they? Hop hop hop.’

From under the furs, Ralata groaned.

‘Ublala.’

‘Yes, Draconus?’

‘Do you believe in justice?’

‘What? Did I do something wrong? What did I do? I won’t make jokes no more, I promise.’

‘You’ve done nothing wrong. Do you know when something is unfair?’

Ublala looked round desperately.

‘Not at this moment, friend. I mean, in general. When you see something that is unjust, that is unfair, do you do something about it? Or do you just turn away? I think I know the answer, but I need to make certain.’

‘I don’t like bad things, Draconus,’ Ublala muttered. ‘I tried telling that to the Toblakai gods, when they were coming up out of the ground, but they didn’t listen, so me and Iron Bars, we had to kill them.’

Draconus studied him for some time, and then he said, ‘I believe I have just done something similar. Don’t bury your weapons, Ublala.’

He had left his tent well before dusk, to walk the length of the column, among the restless soldiers. They slept badly or not at all, and more than one set of red-shot, bleary eyes tracked Ruthan Gudd as he made his way to the rear. Thirst was a spreading plague, and it grew in the mind like a fever. It pushed away normal thoughts, stretching out time until it snapped. Of all the tortures devised to break people, not one came close to thirst.

Among the wagons now, where heaps of dried, smoked meats remained wrapped in hides, stacked in the beds. The long knotted ropes with rigged harnesses were coiled up in front of each wagon. The oxen were gone. Muscle came from humans now. Carrying food no one wanted to eat. Food that knotted solid in the gut, food that gripped hard with vicious cramps and drove strong men to their knees.

Next on the trail were the ambulance wagons, burdened with the broken, the ones driven half-mad by sun and dehydration. He saw the knots of fully armed guards standing over the water barrels used by the healers, and the sight distressed him. Discipline was fraying and he well understood what he was seeing. Simple need had the power to crush entire civilizations, to bring down all order in human affairs. To reduce us to mindless beasts. And now it stalks this camp, these soldiers.

This army was close to shattering. The thirst gnawed ceaselessly.

The sun cut a slice on the western horizon, red as a bloodless wound. Soon the infernal flies would stir awake, at first drowsy in the unwelcome chill, and then rushing in to dance on every exposed area of skin – as if the night itself had awakened with a hundred thousand legs. And then would come the billowing clouds of butterflies, keeping pace overhead like silver clouds tinted jade green – they had first arrived to feed on the carcasses of the last slaughtered oxen, and now they returned each evening, eager for more.

He walked between the wagons with their moaning cargo, exchanging occasional nods with the cutters who moved among their charges with moistened cloths to press against blistered mouths.

No pickets waited beyond the refuse trench – there seemed to be little point in such things – only a row of grave mounds, with a crew of a dozen diggers working on a few more with picks and shovels. Beneath the ground’s sun-baked surface there was nothing but stone-hard white silts, deep as a man was tall. At times, when the pick broke a chunk loose, the pressed bones of fish were revealed, of types no one had ever seen before. Ruthan Gudd had chanced to see one example, some massively jawed monstrosity was etched in rust-red bones on a slab of powdery silt. Enormous eye sockets above rows upon rows of long fangs.

He’d listened to the listless conjecture for a short time, and then wandered on without adding any comment of his own. From the deepest ocean beds, he could have told them, but that would have slung too many questions his way, ones he had no desire to answer. ‘How the fuck do you know that?’

Good question.

No. Bad question.

He’d kept silent.

Out past the diggers now, ignoring them as they straightened to lean on shovels and stare at him. He walked on to the trail the column had made, a road of sorts where the sharp stones had been kicked clear by the passage of thousands of boots. Twenty paces. Thirty, well away from the camp now. He halted.

All right, then. Show yourselves.

He waited, fingers combing through his beard, expecting to see the dust swirl up from the path, lift into the air, find shape. The simple act of setting eyes upon a T’lan Imass depressed Ruthan Gudd. There was shame in making the wrong choice – only a fool would deny that. And just as one had to live with the choice, so too was one forced to live with the shame. Well, perhaps live wasn’t the right word, not with the T’lan Imass.

Poor fools. Make yourselves the servants of war. Surrender everything else. Bury your memories. Pretend that the choice was a noble one, and that this wretched existence is good enough. Since when did vengeance answer anything? Anything of worth?

I know all about punishment. Retribution. Wish I didn’t but I do. It all comes down to eliminating that which offends. As if one could empty the world of bastards, or scour it clean of evil acts. Well, that would be nice. Too bad it never works. And all that satisfaction, well, it proves short-lived. Tasting like … dust.

No poet could find a more powerful symbol of futility than the T’lan Imass. Futility and obstinate stupidity. In war you need something to fight for. But you took that away, didn’t you? All that you fought to preserve had ceased to exist. You condemned your entire world to oblivion, extinction. Leaving what? What shining purpose to drive you on and on?

Oh yes, I remember now. Vengeance.

No swirls of dust. Just two figures emerging from the lurid, dust-wreathed west, shambling on the trail of the Bonehunters.

The male was huge, battered, hulking. His stone sword, carried loosely in one hand, was black with sun-baked blood. The female was more gracile than most T’lan Imass, dressed in rotted sealskins, and on her shoulder a small forest of wood, bone and ivory harpoons. The two figures halted five paces from Ruthan Gudd.

The male bowed his head. ‘Elder, we greet you.’

Ruthan scowled. ‘How many more of you are out there?’

‘I am Kalt Urmanal, and the Bonecaster at my side is Nom Kala of the Brold. The two of us are all that are here. We are deserters.’

‘Are you now? Well, among the Bonehunters, desertion is punishable by death. Tell me, since that obviously won’t work, how do the T’lan Imass punish deserters, Kalt?’

‘They don’t, Elder. Deserting is punishment enough.’

Sighing, Ruthan Gudd looked away. ‘Who leads the T’lan Imass army, Kalt? The army you fled?’

The female, Nom Kala, answered. ‘First Sword Onos T’oolan. Elder, there is the smell of ice about you. Are you Jaghut?’

‘Jaghut? No. Do I look like a Jaghut?’

‘I do not know. I have never seen one.’

Never – what? ‘I haven’t washed in some time, Nom Kala.’ He combed his beard. ‘Why did you follow us? What do you want with the Bonehunters? No, wait, let us return to that later. You say that Onos T’oolan, the First Sword, leads an army of T’lan Imass – which clans? How many Bonecasters? Do they walk this same desert? How far away?’

Kalt Urmanal said, ‘Far to the south, Elder. Of Bonecasters there are few, but of warriors there are many. Forgotten clans, remnants of armies broken on this continent in ancient conflicts. Onos T’oolan summoned them—’

‘No,’ said Nom Kala, ‘the summons came from Olar Ethil, in the making of Onos—’

‘Shit,’ Ruthan swore.

Both T’lan Imass fell silent.

‘This is turning into a real mess.’ Ruthan clawed again at his beard, glared at the undead warriors. ‘What is she planning? Do you know?’

‘She intends to wield the First Sword, Elder,’ Nom Kala replied. ‘She seeks … redemption.’

‘She has said this to you, Bonecaster?’

‘No, Elder, she has not. She remains distant from Onos T’oolan. For now. But I was born on this soil. She cannot walk it with impunity, nor hide the power of her desires. She journeys eastward, parallel with Onos T’oolan.’ Nom Kala hesitated, and then added, ‘The First Sword is also aware of her, but he remains defiant.’

‘He is a Childslayer, Elder,’ said Kalt Urmanal. ‘A black river has drowned his mind, and those who chose to follow him can no longer escape its terrible current. We do not know the First Sword’s intent. We do not know the enemy he will choose. But he seeks annihilation. Theirs or his own – he cares not how the bones will fall.’

‘What has driven him to such a state?’ Ruthan Gudd asked, chilled by the warrior’s words.

‘She has,’ Nom Kala replied.

‘Does he know that?’

‘He does, Elder.’

‘Then could Olar Ethil be the enemy he chooses?’

Both T’lan Imass were silent for a moment, and then Kalt Urmanal said, ‘We had not considered that possibility.’

‘It seems she betrayed him,’ Ruthan observed. ‘Why shouldn’t he return the favour?’

‘He was noble, once,’ said Kalt. ‘Honourable. But now his spirit is wounded and he walks alone no matter how many follow behind him. Elder, we are creatures inclined to … excess. In our feelings.’

‘I had no idea,’ Ruthan said in a dry tone. ‘So while you have fled one nightmare, alas, you have found another.’

‘Your wake is filled with suffering,’ Nom Kala said. ‘It was an easy path to follow. You cannot cross this desert. No mortal can. A god has died here—’

‘I know.’

‘But he is not gone.’

‘I know that, too. Shattered into a million fragments, but each fragment lives on. D’ivers. And there is no hope of ever sembling back into a single form – it’s too late and has been for a long time.’ He waved at the flies. ‘Mindless, filled with pathetic need, understanding nothing.’ He cocked his head. ‘Not so different from you, then.’

‘We do not deny how far we have fallen,’ said Kalt Urmanal.

Ruthan Gudd’s shoulders sagged. He looked down. ‘So have we all, T’lan Imass. The suffering here is contagious, I think. It seeps into us, makes bitter our thoughts. I am sorry for my words—’

‘There is no need to apologize, Elder. You spoke the truth. We have come to you, because we are lost. Yet something still holds us here, even as oblivion beckons us with the promise of eternal peace. Perhaps, like you, we need answers. Perhaps, like you, we yearn to hope.’

He twisted inside at that, was forced to turn away. Pathetic! Yield them no pity! Struggling against tears, he said, ‘You are not the first. Permit me to summon your kin.’

Five warriors rose from the dust behind him.

Urugal the Woven stepped forward and said, ‘Now we are seven again. Now, at last, the House of Chains is complete.’

Hear that? All here now, Fallen One. I didn’t think you could get this far. I really didn’t. How long have you been building this tale, this relentless book of yours? Is everyone in place? Are you ready for your final, doomed attempt to win for yourself … whatever it is you wish to win?

See the gods assembling against you.

See the gates your poison has frayed, ready to break asunder and unleash devastation.

See the ones who stepped up to clear this path ahead. So many have died. Some died well. Others died badly. You took them all. Accepted their flaws – the weak ones, the fatal ones. Accepted them and blessed them.

And you weren’t nice about it either, were you? But then, how could you be?

He knew then, with abject despair, that he would never comprehend the full extent of the Crippled God’s preparations. How long ago had it all begun? On what distant land? By whose unwitting mortal hand? I’ll never know. No one will. Win or fail, no one will. In this, he is as unwitnessed as we are. Adjunct, I am beginning to understand you, but that changes nothing, does it?

The book shall be a cipher. For all time. A cipher.

Looking up, he found that he was alone.

Behind him, the army was struggling to its feet.

‘Behold, night is born. And we must walk with it.’ You had the right of that, Gallan. He watched the burial crew rolling wrapped corpses into the grave pits. Who were those poor victims? What were their names? Their lives? Does anyone know? Anyone at all?

‘He’s not broached a single cask?’

Pores shook his head. ‘Not yet. He’s as bad off as the rest of us, sir.’

Kindly grunted, glanced over at Faradan Sort. ‘Tougher than I’d have expected.’

‘There are levels of desperation,’ she said. ‘So he hasn’t reached the next one yet. It’ll come. The question is, what then, Kindly? Expose him? Watch our soldiers tear him limb from limb? Does the Adjunct know about any of this?’

‘I’m going to need more guards,’ said Pores.

‘I will speak to Captain Fiddler,’ Kindly said. ‘We’ll put the marines and the heavies on those posts. No one will mess with them.’

Pores scratched something on his wax ledger, read over what he’d written and then nodded. ‘The real mutiny is brewing with the haul teams. That food is killing us. Sure, chewing on dried meat works up some juices, but it’s like swallowing a bhederin cow’s afterbirth after it’s been ten days in the sun.’

Faradan Sort made a choking sound. ‘Wall’s foot, Pores, couldn’t you paint a nicer picture?’

Pores raised his eyebrows. ‘But Fist, I worked on that one all day.’

Kindly rose. ‘This night is going to be a bad one,’ he said. ‘How many more are we going to lose? We’re already staggering like T’lan Imass.’

‘Worse than a necromancer’s garden party,’ Pores threw in, earning another scowl from Faradan Sort. His smile was weak and he returned to the wax tablet.

‘Keep an eye on Blistig’s cache, Pores.’

‘I will, sir.’

Kindly left the tent, one wall of which suddenly sagged.

‘They’re folding me up,’ Pores observed, rising from the stool and wincing as he massaged his lower back. ‘I feel thirty years older.’

‘We all do,’ Sort muttered, collecting her gear. ‘Live with it.’

‘Until I die, sir.’

She paused at the tent entrance. Another wall sagged. ‘You’re thinking all wrong, Pores. There is a way through this. There has to be.’

He grimaced. ‘Faith in the Adjunct untarnished, then? I envy you, Fist.’

‘I didn’t expect you to fold so quickly,’ she said, eyeing him.

He stored his ledger in a small box and then looked up at her. ‘Fist, some time tonight the haul crew will drop the ropes. They’ll refuse to drag those wagons one more stride, and we’ll be looking at marching on without food, and when that happens, do you understand what it will mean? It will mean we’ve given up – it’ll mean we can’t see a way through this. Fist, the Bonehunters are about to announce their death sentence. That is what I will have to deal with tonight. Me first, before any of you show up.’

‘So stop it from happening!’

He looked at her with bleak eyes. ‘How?’

She found she was trembling. ‘Guarding the water – can you do it with just the marines?’

His gaze narrowed on her, and then he nodded.

She left him there, in his collapsing tent, and set out through the breaking camp. Talk to the heavies, Fiddler. Promise me we can do this. I’m not ready to give up. I didn’t survive the Wall to die of thirst in a fucking desert.

Blistig glared at Shelemasa for a moment longer, and then fixed his hate-filled eyes on the Khundryl horses. He could feel the rage flaring inside him. You bitch – look what you’re doing to us, all for some war we don’t even want. ‘Just kill them,’ he commanded.

The young woman shook her head.

Heat flushed his face. ‘We can’t waste the water on horses!’

‘We aren’t, Fist.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The horses get our allotted water,’ Shelemasa said. ‘And we drink from the horses.’

He stared, incredulous. ‘You drink their piss?’

‘No, Fist, we drink their blood.’

‘Gods below.’ Is it any wonder you all look half dead? He rubbed at his face, turned away. Speak the truth, Blistig. It’s all you have left. ‘You’ve had your cavalry charge, Khundryl,’ he said, watching a troop of heavies marching past – going the wrong way. ‘There won’t be another, so what’s the point?’

When he turned back he saw that she had gone white. The truth. Nobody has to like it. ‘The time has come for hard words,’ he said. ‘You’re done – you’ve lost your warleader and got an old woman instead, a pregnant one at that. You haven’t got enough warriors left to scare a family of berry-pickers. She just invited you along out of pity – don’t you see that?’

‘That’s enough,’ snapped another voice.

He turned to see Hanavat standing behind him. Blistig bared his teeth. ‘I’m glad you heard all that. It needed saying. Kill the damned horses. They’re useless.’

She studied him with flat eyes. ‘Fist Blistig, while you hid behind Aren’s precious walls, the Wickans of the Seventh Army fought a battle in a valley, and in that battle they mounted a charge upslope, into a wall of the enemy. They won that battle when it seemed they could not. But how? I will tell you. Their shamans had selected a single horse, and with tears in their eyes they fed on its spirit, and when they were done that horse was dead. But the impossible had been achieved, because Coltaine expected no less.’

‘I hid behind a fucking wall, did I? I was the garrison commander! Where else would I be?’

‘The Adjunct has asked us to preserve our horses, and this we shall do, Fist, because she expects no less from us. If you must object, deliver your complaint to the Adjunct. As for you, as you are not the Fist in command of the Khundryl, I tell you now that you are no longer welcome here.’

‘Fine. Go ahead and choke on that blood, then. I spoke out of concern, and in return you do nothing but insult me.’

‘I know the reasons behind your words, Fist Blistig,’ Hanavat said levelly.

He met her eyes unflinching, and then, shrugging, he said, ‘The slut speaks.’ He turned and left them.

As the Fist walked away, Shelemasa drew a shaky breath and stepped close to Hanavat. ‘Mother?’

She shook her head. ‘I am fine, Shelemasa. The fever thirst is on Fist Blistig. That and nothing more.’

‘He said we were done. I will not be pitied! Not by anyone! The Khundryl—’

‘The Adjunct believes we are still of worth, and so do I. Now, let us tend to our beasts. Do we have enough fodder?’

Shelemasa shook herself, and then nodded. ‘More than we need, in fact.’

‘Good. And our water?’

She winced.

Hanavat sighed, and then arched her back with a groan. ‘I’m too old to think of her as my mother,’ she said, ‘and yet I do. We still breathe, Shelemasa. And we can still walk. For now, that must be enough.’

Shelemasa stepped closer, as close as she dared to get. ‘You have borne children. You have loved a man—’

‘Many men, truth be told.’

‘I thought that, one day, I could say the same for myself. I thought I could look back and be satisfied.’

‘You don’t deserve to die, Shelemasa. I could not agree with you more, and so you shall not. We will do whatever must be done. We will live through this—’ She cut herself off then and Shelemasa looked up to see her staring back at the Khundryl camp. She followed the older woman’s gaze.

Gall had appeared, and at his side stood Jastara, his eldest son’s widow. Shelemasa moved to block Hanavat from their view, and then walked over. ‘Warleader,’ she hissed, ‘how many times will you wound her?’

The warrior seemed to have aged a dozen years since she had last seen him, but it did nothing to cool her fury. And in his unwillingness to meet her eyes she saw only cowardice.

‘We go to our sons this night,’ he said. ‘Tell her that. I do not mean to wound. Tonight, or the next. Soon.’

‘Soon,’ said Jastara, her tone harsh. ‘And I will see my husband again. I will walk at his side—’

Shelemasa felt disgust twisting her face. ‘After sleeping with his father? Will you, Jastara? Is his spirit here? Does he see you? Does he know all that you have done? Yet you tell yourself you will be at his side again – you are mad!’ A hand settled on her shoulder and she turned. ‘Hanavat – no—’

‘You are so quick to defend me, Shelemasa, and for that I am ever grateful. But I will speak to my husband.’

Jastara had backed away at Shelemasa’s words, and a moment later she fled, pushing through the crowd that had gathered. A few of the older women spun to strike at her when she rushed past. A dozen youths gathered nearby laughed and one reached down for a stone—

‘Belay that, scout!’

At the bark, the girl froze.

Captain Fiddler was walking into the Khundryl camp, to collect his scouts. He glanced over at Gall, Hanavat and Shelemasa and for an instant it seemed he was simply going to continue on to his charges, but then he altered his path and approached.

‘No disrespect intended, Mother Hanavat, but we don’t have time for all this shit. Your histories are just that – a heap of stories you keep dragging everywhere you go. Warleader Gall, all that doom you’re bleating on about is a waste of breath. We’re not blind. None of us. The only question you have to deal with now is how are you going to face that end? Like a warrior, or on your Hood-damned knees?’ Then, ignoring the crowd, Fiddler made his way towards his troop. ‘We’re on point this night, scouts. Take up those spears and let’s get moving. The column’s about to march.’

Shelemasa watched the Malazan lead the youths away.

From Hanavat, a low laugh, and then, ‘No disrespect, he said. And then he went and slapped us all down.’

‘Mother—’

‘No, he was right, Shelemasa. We stand here, naked but for our pride. Yet see how heavy it weighs. Well, this night, I think, I will try to step lighter – after all, what have I left to lose?’

Your child.

As if Hanavat had read her mind, she reached up and brushed Shelemasa’s cheek. ‘I will die first,’ she whispered, ‘and the one within me shall quickly follow. If this is how it must be, then I must accept it. As must we all.’ She faced her husband then. ‘But not on our knees. We are Khundryl. We are the Burned Tears.’

Gall said, ‘If I had not led us down to Aren, our children would still be alive. I have killed our children, Hanavat. I – I need you to hate me.’

‘I know, husband.’

Shelemasa could see that beseeching need in Gall’s reddened eyes, but his wife gave him nothing more.

He tried again. ‘Wife, the Burned Tears died at the Charge.’

Hanavat simply shook her head, then took Shelemasa’s hand and led her into the camp. It was time to leave. They had to see to the horses. Shelemasa spared one glance back and saw Gall standing alone, hands covering his face.

‘In grief,’ murmured Hanavat, ‘people will do anything to escape what cannot be escaped. Shelemasa, you must go to Jastara. You must take back your words.’

‘I will not.’

‘It is not for you to judge – yet how often is it that those in no position to judge are the first to do so, and with such fire and venom? Speak to her, Shelemasa. Help her find some peace.’

‘But how can I, when just to think of her fills me with disgust?’

‘I did not suggest it would be easy, daughter.’

‘I will give it some thought.’

‘Very well. Just don’t wait too long.’

The army lifted into motion like a beast mired in mud, one last exhausted heave forward, weight dragging it down. The wagons lurched behind the teams of haulers as they strapped on their harnesses and took up the ropes. Scores of tents were left standing, along with a scattering of cookpots and soiled clothing lying like trampled flags.

Flies roiled in clouds to swarm the hunched-over, silent soldiers, and overhead the glow of the Jade Strangers was brighter than any moonlight, bright enough for Lostara Yil to see every detail on the painted shields of the regulars, which they now carried to keep the flies from their backs. The lurid green painted drawn, lined faces with a ghastly corpulent hue, and made unearthly the surrounding desert. Clouds of butterflies wheeled above like ever-building storms.

Lostara stood with Henar Vygulf at her side, watching the Adjunct draw on her cloak, watching her lifting the hood. She had taken to leading the vanguard herself, five or six paces ahead of everyone else, excepting Captain Fiddler’s thirty or so Khundryl youths who ranged ahead a hundred paces, scouts with nothing to scout. Lostara’s eyes stayed on the Adjunct.

‘In Bluerose,’ said Henar, ‘there is a festival of the Black-Winged Lord once every ten years on winter’s longest night. The High Priestess shrouds herself and leads a procession through the city.’

‘This Black-Winged Lord is your god?’

‘Unofficially, under the suspicious regard of the Letherii. Highly proscribed, in fact, but this procession was one of the few that they did not outlaw.’

‘You were celebrating the year’s longest night?’

‘Not really. Not in the fashion that farmers might each winter, to celebrate the coming of the planting season – very few farms around Bluerose; we were mostly seafaring. Well, maritime, anyway. It was meant to summon our god, I suppose. I was not much for making sense of such things. And as I said, it was once every ten years.’

Lostara waited. Henar wasn’t a talkative man – thank Hood – but when he spoke he always had something useful to say. Eventually.

‘Hooded, she’d walk silent streets, followed by thousands equally mute, down to the water’s edge. She would stand just beyond the reach of the surf. An acolyte would come up to her carrying a lantern, which she would take in one hand. And at the moment of dawn’s first awakening, she would fling that lantern into the water, quenching its light.’

Lostara grunted. ‘Curious ritual. Instead of the lantern, then, the sun. Sounds like you were worshipping the coming of day more than anything else.’

‘Then she would draw a ceremonial dagger and cut her own throat.’

Shaken, Lostara Yil faced him, but found she had nothing to say. No response seemed possible. Then a thought struck her. ‘And that was a festival the Letherii permitted?’

‘They would come down and watch, picnicking on the strand.’ He shrugged. ‘For them it was one less irritating High Priestess, I suppose.’

Her gaze returned to the Adjunct. She had just set out. A shrouded figure, hidden from all behind her by that plain hood. The soldiers fell in after her and the only sound that came from them was the dull clatter of their armour, the thump of their boots. Lostara Yil shivered and leaned close to Henar.

‘The hood,’ Henar muttered. ‘It reminded me, that’s all.’

She nodded. But she dreaded the thought of that story coming back to haunt them.

‘I can’t believe I died for this,’ Hedge said, wanting to spit but there wasn’t enough in his mouth to do it, and of course he’d have to be mad to waste the water. He turned and glared at the three oxen pulling Bavedict’s carriage. ‘Got any more of that drink you gave ’em? They’re looking damned hale, Alchemist – we could all do with a sip or three.’

‘Hardly, Commander,’ Bavedict said, one hand on the hawser. ‘They’ve been dead for three days now.’

Hedge squinted at the nearest beast. ‘Well now, I’m impressed. I admit it. Impressed, and that can’t be said often of old Hedge.’

‘In Letheras,’ Bavedict said, ‘there are dozens of people wandering around who are in fact dead and have been for some time. Necromantic alchemy is one of the most advanced of the Uneasy Arts among the Letherii. In fact, of all the curse elixirs I sold, the one achieving everlasting undeath was probably the most popular – as much as anything costing a chestful of gold can be popular.’

‘Could you do this for a whole army?’

Bavedict blanched. ‘C-commander, such things are, er, prohibitively difficult to achieve. Preparing a single curse-vial, for example, involves months of back-breaking effort. Denatured ootooloo spawn – the primary ingredient – well, you’d be lucky to get three drops a night, and harvesting is terribly risky, not to mention exhausting, even for a man reputedly as skilled as myself.’

‘Ulatoo spawn, huh? Never heard of it. Never mind, then. It was just a notion. But, you got any more of that stuff?’

‘No sir. I judged as greatest the need of the Bridgeburners for the munitions in this carriage—’

‘Shh! Don’t use that word, you fool!’

‘Sorry, sir. Perhaps, then, we should invent some other term – something innocuous, that we could use freely.’

Hedge rubbed at his whiskered jaw. ‘Good idea. How about … kittens?’

‘Kittens, sir? Why not? Now then, our carriage full of kittens is not something that can be abandoned, is it, sir? And I should tell you, the entire company of Bridgeburners has not the strength to haul it.’

‘Really? Well, er, just how many kittens you got stuffed in there?’

‘It’s the raw ingredients, sir. Bottles and casks and vials and … er, tubing. Condensers, distillation apparatuses. Um, without two cats of opposite gender, sir, making kittens is not an easy venture.’

Hedge stared for a moment, and then nodded. ‘Oh, ah, of course, Alchemist. Just so.’ He glanced to his right, where a squad of marines had just come up alongside them, but their attention was on the wagon loaded with food and water that they were guarding, or so Hedge assumed since they were resting hands on hilts and looking belligerent. ‘Well, keep at it then, Bavedict. Never can have too many kittens, can we?’

‘Precisely, sir.’

Six paces behind the two men, Rumjugs leaned close to Sweetlard. ‘I had me some kittens once, you know.’

Sweetlard shot her an unsurprised look. ‘Errant knows, you’ll take coin from anybody, love.’

He had a swagger, I remember that much. And how I’d get sick, my stomach burning like I’d swallowed coals, every time he came into the house. Ma, she was a bird, really, the kind that flits about as if no branch gives comfort, no leaf makes perfect shade. And her eyes would leap to him and then away again. But in that one look she’d know if something bad was on the way.

If it was, she’d edge closer to me. The jay is in the tree, the chick is in danger. But there was nothing she could do. He weighed twice as much as she did. He once threw her through the shack’s flimsy wall. That time was something of a mistake for old Da, since it took outside what went on inside, so people saw the truth of it all. My little family.

There must’ve been a neighbour, someone on the street, who’d seen and decided he didn’t much like it. A day later Da was dragged back to the house beaten close to death, and there we were, Ma and her two boys – that was before my brother ran away – there we were, nursing him back.

How stupid was that? We should’ve finished what that right-thinking neighbour had started.

But we didn’t.

That swagger, and Ma darting about.

I remember the last day of all that. I was seven, almost eight. Quiet Ginanse, who lived up the street and worked as a knife-sharpener, had been found strangled in the alley behind his shop. People were upset. Ginanse had been solid, an old veteran of the Falar Wars, and though he had a weakness for drink he wasn’t a violent drunk. Not at all. Too much ale and he wanted to seduce every woman he saw. A sweet soul, then. That’s what Ma used to say, hands fluttering like wings.

So people were upset. He’d been drunk the night before. In no shape to defend himself. The rope that had killed him was horsehair – I remember how people talked about that, as if it was important, though I didn’t know why at the time. But they’d found horsehairs in Gin’s neck.

The old women who shared a house on the corner, three of them, seemed to be looking at us again and again – we were outside, listening to everybody talking, all those emotions running high. Ma was white as plucked down. Da was on the bench beside the shack’s door. He’d gotten a rash on his hands and was slowly melting a lump of lard between them. There’d been a strange look in his eye, but for once he wasn’t offering any opinion on the matter.

Horsehair. A tradition among the outliers, the wood-cutting camps east of the city. ‘How adulterers are hung, aye?’ And the old women nodded. ‘But old Ginanse, he ain’t never—’ ‘No, couldn’t, y’see? Got burned down there – was on a ship that caught fire when they took Falar Harbour. He couldn’t do nothing.’

The drunk seducer with nowhere to take it. How shit-fouled miserable is that? Breaks the heart.

And he’d always a kind word for Ma, when she went to him to get the one knife we owned sharpened. Hardly charged a thing either. ‘That blade a mouse couldn’t shave with, hah! Hey, boy, your ma ever let you shave a mouse? Good practice for when one shows up under yer nose! Few years yet, though.’

‘So,’ said someone in the crowd, ‘a jealous man – no, make it a jealous, stupid man. With wood for brains.’ And a few people laughed, but they weren’t pleasant laughs. People were working up to something. People knew something. People were figuring it out.

Like a bird in a thorn bush, Ma slipped inside without a sound. I followed her, thinking about poor old Ginanse and wondering who was gonna sharpen Ma’s knife now. But Da got up right then and went in a step before me. His hands were dripping melted fat.

I don’t remember exactly what I saw. Just a flash, really. Up close to Da’s face, just under his huge, bearded jaw. And he made a gurgling sound and his knees bent as if he was about to sit down – right on me. I jumped back, tripped in the doorway and landed in the dust beside the bench.

Da was making spitting sounds, but not from his mouth. From his neck. And when he landed on his knees, twisting round in the doorway as if wanting to come back outside, the front of his chest was all wet and bright red. I looked into my father’s eyes. And for the first and only time in my life with him, I actually saw something alive in there. A flicker, a gleam, that went out for good as he slumped on the threshold.

Behind him, Ma stood holding that little knife in her right hand.

‘Here y’go, boy, hold it careful now. It’s sharp enough to shave a mouse – Bridgeburner magic, what I can do with decent iron. Give us another smile, sweet Elade, it’s all the payment I ask, darling.’

‘Well now, recruit, y’ever stand still? Seen you goin’ round and round and round. Tell me, was your old man a court clown or something?’

No, Master-Sergeant, my da was a wood-cutter.

‘Really? Outlier blood? But you’re a scrawny thing for a wood-cutter’s son. Not one for the trade then?’

He died when I was seven, Master-Sergeant. I was of no mind to follow his ways. I ended up learning most from my ma’s side of the family – had an aunt and uncle who worked with animals.

‘Found you a name, lad.’

Master-Sergeant?

‘See, I wrote it right here, making it official. Your name is Widdershins, and you’re now a marine. Now get out of my sight – and get someone to beat those dogs. That barking’s driving me mad.’

‘How’s the stomach, Wid?’

‘Burns like coals, Sergeant.’

A half-dozen regulars were coming up alongside them. The one in the lead eyed Balm and said, ‘Fist Blistig assigned us t’this one, Sergeant. We got it in hand—’

‘Best under a blanket, Corporal,’ said Balm.

Throatslitter piped an eerie laugh, and the squad of regulars jumped at the sound.

‘Your help’s always welcome,’ Balm added. ‘But from now on, these wagons got details of marines to help guard ’em.’

The corporal looked nervous enough for Widdershins to give him a closer look. Now that’s an awfully plump face for someone on three tiny cups a day.

The corporal was stubborn or stupid enough to try again. ‘Fist Blistig—’

‘Ain’t commanding marines, Corporal. But tell you what, go to him and tell him all about this conversation, why don’t you? If he’s got a problem he can come to me. I’m Sergeant Balm, Ninth Squad. Or, if I rank too low for him on all this, why, he can hunt down Captain Fiddler, who’s up ahead, on point.’ Balm cocked his head and scratched his jaw. ‘Seem to recall, from my basic training days, that a Fist outranks a captain – hey, Deadsmell, is that right?’

‘Mostly, Sergeant. But sometimes, well, it depends on the Fist.’

‘And the captain,’ added Throatslitter, nudging Widdershins with a sharp elbow.

‘Now there’s a point,’ Balm mused. ‘Kinda sticky, like a hand under a blanket.’

Throatslitter’s second laugh sent them scurrying.

‘Those soldiers looked flush,’ Widdershins muttered once they’d retreated into the gloom. ‘At first, well, the poor fools were just following orders, so I thought you was being unkind, Sergeant – but now I got some suspicions.’

‘That’s an executable offence,’ said Deadsmell. ‘What you’re suggesting there, Wid.’

‘It’s going to happen soon if it hasn’t already,’ Widdershins said, grimacing. ‘We all know it. Why d’you think Fid nailed us to these wagons?’

Throatslitter added, ‘Heard we was getting our heavies for this, but then we weren’t.’

‘Nervous, Throaty?’ Widdershins asked. ‘Only the four of us, after all. The scariest thing about us is your awful laugh.’

‘Worked though, didn’t it?’

‘They went to moan at their captain or whoever,’ Balm said. ‘They’ll be back with reinforcements, is my guess.’

Widdershins jabbed Throatslitter with his elbow, avenging that earlier prod. ‘Scared, Throaty?’

‘Only of your breath, Wid – get away from me.’

‘Got another squad on the other side of these wagons,’ Balm pointed out. ‘Anyone see which one?’

They all looked over, but the three lines of wretched haulers mostly blocked their view. Throatslitter grunted. ‘Could be Whiskeyjack himself. If we get in trouble they won’t be able to get through—’

‘What’s your problem?’ Balm demanded.

Throatslitter bared his teeth. ‘This is thirst we’re dealing with here, Sergeant – no, all of you! Where I came from, droughts hit often, and the worst was when the city was besieged – and with Li Heng, well, during the scraps with the Seti that was pretty much every summer. So I know about thirst, all right? Once the fever strikes, there’s no stopping it.’

‘Well isn’t that cheery? You can stop talking now, Throatslitter, and that’s an order.’

‘I think it’s Badan Gruk’s squad,’ said Deadsmell.

Balm snorted.

Widdershins frowned. ‘That’s a problem, Sergeant? They’re Dal Honese just like you, aren’t they?’

‘Don’t be an idiot. They’re from the southern jungles.’

‘So are you, aren’t you?’

‘Even if I was, and I’m not saying I wasn’t, or was, that’d make no difference, you understand me, Wid?’

‘No. Tayschrenn himself couldn’t have worked out what you just said, Sergeant.’

‘It’s complicated, that’s all. But … Badan Gruk. Well, could be worse, I suppose. Though like Throaty said, we’d both have trouble supporting the other. I wish Fid ain’t pulled the heavies from us. What d’you think he’s done with ’em?’

Deadsmell said, ‘It was Faradan Sort who come up after Kindly, to talk to the captain. And I wasn’t deliberately eavesdropping or nothing. I just happened to be standing close. So I didn’t catch it all, but I think there might be some trouble with the food haulers on the back end. I’m thinking that’s where the heavies went.’

‘What, to lighten the loads?’

Throatslitter yelped.

Lap Twirl scratched at the end of his nose where the tip had once been. ‘Kind’ve insulting,’ he muttered, ‘them calling themselves Bridgeburners.’

Burnt Rope glanced over at the company marching on his left. Squinted at the three oxen plodding the way oxen plodded the world over. It’s how it looks when y’get someone doing something nobody wants t’do. Draught animals. Of course, it’s all down to stupidity, isn’t it? Do the work, get food, do more work to get more food. Over and over again. Not like us at all. ‘I don’t care what they call themselves, Lap. They’re marching just like us. In the same mess, and when we’re all bleached bones, well, who could tell the difference between any of us?’

‘I could,’ Lap Twirl said. ‘Easy. Just by looking at the skulls. I can tell if it’s a woman or a man, young or old. I can tell if it’s a city-born fool or a country one. Where I apprenticed, back in Falar, my master had shelves and shelves of skulls. Was doing a study – he could tell a Napan from a Quon, a Genabackan from a Kartoolian—’

Corporal Clasp, walking a step ahead, snorted loudly and then half turned, ‘And you believed him, Lap? Let me guess, that’s how he made his living, isn’t it? Wasn’t it you Falari who had that thing about burying relatives in the walls of your houses? So when rival claims to some building came up, why, everyone ran to the skullscriers.’

‘My master was famous for settling disputes.’

‘I just bet he was. Listen, working out a man or woman, old or young – sure, I’ll buy that. But the rest? Forget it, Lap.’

‘Why are we talking about skulls again?’ Burnt Rope asked. When no one seemed able to come up with an answer, he went on, ‘Anyway, I’m thinking it’s all right that we got them Bridgeburners so close, instead of ’em regulars – if we get mobbed at this wagon here, we could call on ’em to help.’

‘Why would they do that?’ Lap Twirl demanded.

‘Can’t say. But Dead Hedge, he’s a real Bridgeburner—’

‘Yeah,’ drawled Clasp, ‘I heard that, too. Pure rubbish, you know. They’re all dead. Everyone knows that.’

‘Not Fiddler …’

‘Except Fiddler …’

‘And Fiddler and Hedge were in the same squad. Along with Quick Ben. So Hedge is for real.’

‘All right, fine, so it isn’t pure rubbish. But him helping us is. We get in trouble here, we got no one else to look to for help. Tarr’s squad is on the other side of the haulers – no way t’reach us. So, just stay sharp, especially when the midnight bell sounds.’

From ahead of them all, Sergeant Urb glanced back. ‘Everyone relax,’ he said. ‘There won’t be any trouble.’

‘What makes you so sure, Sergeant?’

‘Because, Corporal Clasp, we got Bridgeburners marching beside us. And they got kittens.’

Burnt Rope joined the others in solemn nodding. Urb knew his stuff. They were lucky to have him. Even with Saltlick sent off back-column, they would be fine. Burnt Rope glanced enviously at that huge Letherii carriage. ‘Wish I had me some of them kittens.’

If anything, letting go was the easiest among all the choices left. The other choices crowded together, jostling and unpleasant, and stared with belligerent expressions. Waiting, expectant. And he so wanted to turn away from them all. He so wanted to let go.

Instead, the captain just walked, his scouts whispering around him like a score of childhood memories. He didn’t want them around, but he couldn’t send them away either. It was what he was stuck with. It’s what we’re all stuck with.

And so there was no letting go, not from any of this. He knew what the Adjunct wanted, and what she wanted of him. And my marines, and my heavies. And none of it’s fair and we both know it and that’s not fair either. Those other choices, willing him to meet their eye, stood before him like an unruly legion. ‘Take us, Fiddler, we’re all that you meant to say, a thousand times in your life – when you looked on and remained silent, when you let it all slide past instead of taking a step right into the path of all that shit, all that cruel misery. When you … let it go. And felt bits of you die inside, small ones, barely a sting, and then gone.

‘But they add up, soldier. Don’t they? So she says don’t let go this time, don’t sidestep. She says – well, you know what she says.’

Fiddler wasn’t surprised that the chiding voice within him, the voice of those hardened choices ahead, was Whiskeyjack’s. He could almost see his sergeant’s eyes, blue and grey, the colour of honed weapons, the colour of winter skies, fixing upon him that knowing look, the one that said, ‘You’ll do right, soldier, because you don’t know how to do anything else. Doing right, soldier, is the only thing you’re good at.’ And if it hurts? ‘Too bad. Stop your bitching, Fid. Besides, you ain’t as alone as you think you are.’

He grunted. Now where had that thought come from? No matter. It was starting to look like the whole thing was useless. It was starting to look like this desert was going to kill them all. But until then, he’d just go on, and on, walking.

Walking.

A small, grubby hand tugged at his jerkin. He looked down.

The boy pointed ahead.

Walking.

Fiddler squinted. Shapes in the distance. Figures appearing out of the darkness.

Walking.

‘Gods below,’ he whispered.

Walking.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

TIME HAD BECOME MEANINGLESS. THEIR WORLD NOW ROLLED LIKE waves, back and forth, awash with blood. Yan Tovis fought with her people. She could match her brother’s savagery, if not his skill. She could cut down Liosan until the muscles of her arm finally failed, and she’d back away, dragging her sword behind her. Until the rainy, flat blackness unfurled from the corners of her vision and she staggered, chest screaming for breath, moments from slipping into unconsciousness, but somehow each time managing to pull herself back, pushing clear of the press and stumbling among the wounded and dying. And then down on to her knees, because another step was suddenly impossible, and all around her swirled the incessant tidal flow and ebb, the blur of figures moving from body to body, and the air was filled with terrible sound. Shrieks of pain, the shouts of the cutters and stretcher-bearers, the roar of endless, eternal battle.

She understood so much more now. About the world. About the struggle to survive in that world. In any world. But she could find words for none of it. These revelations were ineffable, too vast for the intellect to conquer. She wanted to weep, but her tears were long gone, and all that remained precious could be found in the next breath she took, and the one after that. Each one stunning her with its gift.

Reaching up one trembling forearm, she wiped blood and grime from her face. A shadow passed over her and she lifted her head to see the close pass of another dragon – but it did not descend to the breach, not this time, instead lifting high, seeming to hover a moment behind the curtain of Lightfall before backing away and vanishing into the glare.

Relief came in a nauseating rush that had her leaning forward. Someone came to her side, resting a light arm across her back.

‘Highness. Here, water. Drink.’

Yan Tovis looked up. The face was familiar only in that she’d seen this woman again and again in the press, fighting with an Andiian pike. Grateful, yet sick with guilt, she nodded and took the waterskin.

‘They’ve lost the will for it, Highness. Again. It’s the shock.’

The shock, yes. That.

Half of my people are dead or too wounded to fight on. As many Letherii. And my brother stands tall still, as if it’s all going to plan. As if he’s satisfied by our stubborn insanity, this thing he’s made of us all.

The smith will bend the iron to his will. The smith does not weep when the iron struggles and resists, when it seeks to find its own shape, its own truth. He hammers the sword, until he beats out a new truth. Edged and deadly.

‘Highness, the last of the blood has shattered. I – I saw souls, trapped within – breaking apart. Highness – I saw them screaming, but I heard nothing.’

Yan Tovis straightened, and now it was time to be the one giving comfort. Yet she’d forgotten how. ‘Those lost within, soldier, will for ever stand upon the Shore. There are … worse places to be.’ If she could, she would flinch at her own tone. So lifeless, so cold.

Despite that, she felt something like will steal back into the young woman. It seemed impossible. Yedan, what have you made of my people?

How long ago was it? In a place where days could not be measured, where the only tempo was the wash and flood of howling figures, this tide seething into the heart of midnight, she had no answer to this simplest of questions. Lifting the waterskin, she drank deep, and then, half in dread, half in disbelief, she faced Lightfall.

And the wound, where the last of the Liosan still alive on this side were falling to Shake swords and Andiian pikes. Her brother was down there. He had been down there for what seemed for ever, impervious to exhaustion, as units disengaged and others stumbled forward to relieve them, as the warriors of his Watch fell one by one, as veterans of the first battle stepped to the fore in their place, as they too began to fall, and Shake veterans arrived – like this woman at her side.

Brother. You can kill for ever. But we cannot keep up with you. No one can.

I see an end to this, when you stand alone, and the dead shall be your ground.

She turned to the soldier. ‘You need to rest. Deliver this news to Queen Drukorlat. The blood wall has shattered. The Liosan have retreated. Half of us remain.’

The woman stared. And then looked around, as if only now realizing the full extent of the horror surrounding them, the heaps of corpses, the entire strand a mass of supine bodies under blood-soaked blankets. She saw her mouth the word half.

‘When in the palace, rest. Eat.’

But the soldier was shaking her head. ‘Highness. I have one brother left to me. I cannot stay in the palace – I cannot leave his side for too long. I am sorry. I shall deliver your message and then return at once.’

Yan Tovis wanted to rail at her, but she bit down on her fury, for it was meant not for this woman, but for Yedan Derryg, who had done this to her people. ‘Tell me then, where is your brother?’

The woman pointed to a boy sleeping in a press of Shake fighters resting nearby.

The vision seemed to stab deep into Yan Tovis and she struggled to stifle a sob. ‘Be with him, then – I will find another for the message.’

‘Highness! I can—’

She pushed the waterskin into the woman’s arms. ‘When he awakens, he will be thirsty.’

Seeing the soldier’s wounded expression as she backed away, Yan Tovis could only turn from her, fixing her eyes once more upon the breach. It’s not you who has failed me, she wanted to say to that soldier, it is I who have failed you. But then she was alone once more and it was too late.

Brother, are you down there? I cannot see you. Do you stand triumphant once more? I cannot see you.

All I can see is what you did. Yesterday. A thousand years ago. In the breath just past. When there are none but ghosts left upon the Shore, they will sing your praises. They will make of you a legend that none living will ever hear – gods, the span of time itself must be crowded with such legends, for ever lost yet whispered eternally on the winds.

What if that is the only true measure of time? All that only the dead have witnessed, all that only they can speak of, though no mortal life will ever hear them. All those stories for ever lost.

Is it any wonder we cannot grasp hold of the ages past? That all we can manage is what clings to our own lives, and what waits within reach? To all the rest, we are cursed to deafness.

And so, because she knew naught else to do, in her mind Yan Tovis reached out – to that moment a day past, or a breath ago, or indeed at the very dawn of time, when she saw her brother lead a sortie into the face of the Liosan centre, and his Hust sword howled with slaughter, and, with that voice, summoned a dragon.

She tightened the straps of her helm and readied her sword. Down at the breach the Liosan were pouring like foam from the wound, and Yan Tovis could see her Shake buckling. Everywhere but at the centre, where her brother hacked his way forward, and all the enemy reeling before him seemed to be moving at half his speed. He could have been cutting reeds for all the resistance they offered him. Even from this distance, blood washed like a bow wave before Yedan’s advance, and behind him Shake fighters followed, and she could see how his deadliness infected them, raised them into a state of frenzied fury.

From one flank two Letherii companies pushed in to bolster her people, and she watched the line stiffen, watched it plant its feet and hold fast.

Yan Tovis set off for the other flank, increasing her pace until she was jogging. Anything faster would have instilled panic in those who saw her. But the longer she took, the closer that flank edged towards routing, and the more of her people died beneath the Liosan attackers. Her heart thundered, and trembling took possession of her entire body.

Into the press, shouting now, forcing her way through. Her fighters found her with wild, frightened eyes, fixed upon her with sudden hope.

But they needed more than hope.

She lifted her sword, and became a queen going to war. Unleashed, the battle lust of her royal line, the generation upon generation of this one necessity, this nectar of power, rising within her, taking away the words in her voice, leaving only a savage scream that made those close to her flinch and stare.

Huddling in a corner of her mind was a bleak awareness, observing with an ironic half-smile. Do you hear me, brother? Here on your left? Do you nod in satisfaction? Do you feel my blood reaching to meet yours? Rulers of the Shake, once more fighting upon the Shore.

Oh, we have never been as pathetic as we are at this moment, Yedan. Pathetic in our fate, trapped in our roles, our place in things. We were born to this scene. Every freedom was a lie. A terrible, heart-crushing lie.

The enemy was suddenly before her. She greeted them with a smile, and then the flash of her sword.

To either side, her people rallied. Fighting with their queen – they could not let her stand alone, they could not leave her, not now, and what took hold of their lives then was something unruly and huge, a leviathan bristling awake. They struck back, halting the Liosan advance, and then pushed forward.

Light exploded like blood from the wound.

Yedan and his wedge of Shake fighters vanished in the gushing wave.

She saw her brother’s followers flung back, tumbling like rag dolls in a hurricane. Weapons flew from hands, helms were torn loose, limbs flailed. They were thrown up against the shins of their kin holding the centre line, even as it reeled back to a howling wind that erupted from the wound.

In the fiery gale, Yedan stood suddenly alone.

Yan Tovis felt ice in her veins. Dragon breath—

A massive shape looming in the breach, filling it, and then out from the fulminating light snapped a reptilian head, jaws open in a hissing snarl. Lunging down at her brother.

She screamed.

Heard the jaws impact the ground like the fist of a god – and knew that Yedan was no longer there. Her own voice now keening, she slashed forward, barely seeing those she cut down.

Manic laughter filled the air – Hust! Awake!

She broke through, staggered, and saw—

The dragon’s head was lifting in a spray of blood-soaked sand, the neck arching, the jaws stretching wide once more, and then, as if from nowhere, Yedan Derryg was directly beneath that enormous serpent head, and he was swinging his laughing sword – and that glee rose to a shriek of delight as the blade’s edge chopped deep into the dragon’s neck.

He was a man slashing into the bole of a centuries-old tree. The impact should have shattered the bones of his arms. The sword should have rebounded, or exploded in his hands, spraying deadly shards.

Yet she saw the weapon tear through that enormous, armoured neck. She saw the blood and gore erupt in its wake, and then a fountain of blood spraying into the air.

The dragon, its shoulders jammed in the breach, shook with the blow. The long neck whipped upward, seeking to pull away, and in the welling gape of the wound in its throat Yan Tovis saw the gleam of bone. Yedan had cut through to the dragon’s spine.

Another gloating shriek announced his backswing.

The dragon’s head and an arm’s length of neck jumped away then, off to one side, and the yawning jaws pitched nose down and hammered the strand as if mocking that first lunge. The head tilted and then fell with a trembling thump, the eyes staring sightlessly.

The headless neck thrashed upward like a giant blind worm, spitting blood in lashing gouts, and on all sides of the quivering, decapitated beast black crystals pushed up from the drenched sand, drawing together, rising to form faceted walls – and from every corpse that had been splashed or buried in the deluge ghostly forms now rose, struggling within that crystal. Mouths opened in silent screams.

Dodging the falling head, Yedan had simply advanced upon the trembling body filling the breach. Using both hands, he drove the Hust sword, point first, deep into the beast’s chest.

The dragon exploded out from the wound, scales and shattered bone, yet even as Yedan staggered beneath the flood of gore the blood washed from him as would rain upon oil.

Hust. Killer of dragons. You will shield your wielder, to keep your joy alive. Hust, your terrible laughter reveals the madness of your maker.

Yedan’s desire to trap the corpse of a dragon in the breach was not to be – not this time – for she could see the ruined body being dragged back in heaving lunges – more dragons behind this one, crowding the gate.

Will another come through? To meet the fate of its kin?

I think not.

Not yet.

Not for some time.

The Liosan on this side of the wound were dead, bodies heaped on all sides. Her Shake stood atop them, two, three deep under their unsteady feet, and she saw the shock in their faces as they stared upon Yedan Derryg, who stood before the wound – close enough to take a step through, if he so desired, and take the battle into the enemy’s realm. And for a moment she thought he might – nothing was impossible with her brother – but instead he turned round, and met his sister’s eyes.

‘If you had knelt—’

‘No time,’ she replied, shaking the blood from her sword. ‘You saw that. They know what you would seek to do, brother. They will not permit it.’

‘Then we must make it so that they have no say in the matter.’

‘They were impatient,’ she said.

He nodded, and then faced the fighters. ‘They will clear the gate and re-form. Captains! Draw your units back and reassemble to the rear. Sound the call to the Letherii. Shake – you have now stood the Shore, and you stood it well.’ He sheathed his weapon, silencing its chilling chuckle. ‘This is how we shall measure our last days. Here, on this border drawn with the bones of our ancestors. And none shall move us.

‘Shake! Tell me when you have come home – tell me when that truth finally comes to you. You are home.’

The words horrified her, but more horrifying still was the answering roar from her people.

Yedan seemed surprised, and he turned to her then, and she saw the truth in his eyes.

Brother, you do not feel it. You do not feel that you have come home. You do not feel as they do!

A flash of something in his gaze, something private between them that shook her as had nothing else. Longing, fear, and despair.

Oh, Yedan. I did not know. I did not know.

Kadagar Fant, Lord of Light, stood trembling before the corpse of Iparth Erule. This was his third visit to the marshalling area before the gate, his third time down from the high wall to stand before the headless dragon lying on its side at the end of a curling swathe of broken black shards. The golden scales had dulled, the belly was bloating with gases, and capemoths clustered in the gaping mouth of the severed neck, a mass of fluttering white wings – as if flowers had burst from the corpse in some manic celebration.

Aparal Forge looked away from his lord, not ready for him yet. He had sent legion after legion through the breach, and with growing despair watched each one retreat, torn and bloody. Hundreds of his soldiers were lying on dripping cots beneath canopies – he could hear their cries amidst the clatter of weapons being readied for the next assault – and thrice their number rested for ever silent in neat rows beyond the cutter trenches. He had no idea how many were lost beyond the breach – a thousand? More? The enemy had no interest in treating Liosan wounded, and why would they? We would kill their wounded just as quickly, and call it mercy. These are the mechanics of war. It’s where logic takes us, every time.

Overhead sailed three dragons. Like birds startled into the sky, they refused to come down, and had been up there since Iparth’s death. Aparal could feel their rage, and something like hunger – as if some part of them, something reptilian and soulless, wanted to descend and feed on that rank carcass. The remaining seven, sembled since the morning, had established discrete encampments on the barrows to either side of the Great Avenue, with their bespoke legions settled around them. The elites, the true Liosan warriors, yet to draw weapons, yet to advance upon the gate, awaiting only Kadagar’s command.

When would it come? When would their lord decide that he’d seen enough of his citizens die? Common dwellers of the city, commanded by nobles trapped below the select ranks of the Soletaken, soldiers only in name, and oh how they died!

Fury seethed in him at the thought. But I will not look to my lord. I will not beseech him yet again. Will he only relent when they’re all dead? For whom, then, this victory? But he knew the answer to that question.

If Kadagar Fant stood alone at the end of all this; if he sat in the gloom of an empty throne room in an empty palace, in an empty city, he would still count it a triumph. Winning Kharkanas was meaningless; what mattered to the Lord of Light was the absolute annihilation of those who opposed him. On both sides of the breach.

Do you remember, Kadagar, the day the stranger came to Saranas? We were still children then, still friends, still open to possibilities. But even we shared our shock at his nerve. A human, almost as tall as a Liosan, wearing beneath a tattered woollen cloak a coat of mail that reached down to his ankles, a bastard sword slung under his left arm. Long grey hair, snarled with indifference, a beard stained the hue of rust beneath the thin lips. He had been smiling – they all agreed on that, from the scouts beyond the walls to the guards at the South Gate, to those in the streets who halted to watch him stride towards the citadel at the heart of Saranas.

And he was still smiling when he stepped into the throne room, and your father leaned forward on the High Throne, making the bonewood creak.

It was Haradegar – your uncle – who growled and reached for his sword. Too much arrogance in this stranger. Too much contempt in that smile.

But your father lifted a hand, staying his Weaponmaster, and he spoke to the stranger in a tone we’d not heard before.

‘Kallor, High King, welcome to Saranas, last city of Tiste Liosan. I am Krin Ne Fant, Champion of High House Light—’

‘Serap’s son?’

Their lord flinched, and Kadagar, I saw the shame in your eyes.

‘My … grandmother, High King. I did not know—’

‘She’d have no reason to tell you, would she?’ Kallor looked round. ‘She was virtually a prisoner here – they even sent her handmaids away. Arrived as a stranger, and as a stranger you were determined to keep her. Is it any wonder she fled this shit-bucket?’

Haradegar’s sword hissed free.

Kallor looked over at the Weaponsmith, and grinned, and whatever Haradegar saw in the High King’s eyes stole his courage – oh, shame upon shame, Kadagar! Were these your first wounds? I think now that they were.

The High King faced Krin once more. ‘I promised her, and so I am here. Krin Ne Fant, your grandmother Serap, of the Issgin line, is dead.’

Krin slowly settled back on the throne, but he now looked shrunken, withering in that bonewood cage. ‘What – what happened?’

Kallor grunted. ‘What happened? I just told you. She died. Is that not enough?’

‘No.’

Shrugging, the High King said, ‘Poison. By her own hand. I found her at dawn on the first day of the Season of Flies, cold and still on the throne I made for her with my own hands. Krin Ne Fant, I am her murderer.’

I remember the silence that followed. I remember how dry my mouth was, and how I could not look anywhere but at this terrible, grey man who stood as one without fear, yet spoke words inviting violence.

But Fant was shaking his head. ‘If … you said “by her own hand”—’

The smile turned into a snarl. ‘Do you truly believe suicide belongs solely to the one taking his or her own life? All that rot about selfishness and self-hatred? The lies we tell ourselves to absolve us of all blame, of all the roles that we played in that wretched death?’ He raised one chain-clad hand, pointed a finger first at Krin and then with a sweeping gesture at all who stood in the throne room. ‘You all had your parts to play in her death. The doors you kept locked. The loyal servants and friends you took from her. Your ill-disguised whispers behind her back or when she stepped into a room. But I have not come to avow vengeance on her behalf. How can I? The freshest blood of guilt is the pool I now stand in. I could not love her enough. I can never love enough.

‘I killed her. One drop of poison each day, for a thousand years.

‘By her wishes, I return to Saranas. By her wishes, I bring you this.’ And then he drew from beneath his grey cloak a bedraggled rag doll. Flung it so that it slid to the foot of the dais.

And in that time word had travelled out, and now standing inside the doors, twenty paces behind Kallor, stood your father’s mother. Serap’s daughter.

Did Kallor know she was there? Listening to his words? Would it have changed anything?

‘She was making this for her daughter,’ Kallor said, ‘and took it with her when she fled. Unfinished. In fact, little more than knotted cloth and wool. And so it remained, for all the centuries I knew and loved her. I surmise,’ he added, ‘she found it again by accident. And decided it needed … finishing. On the dawn when I found her, it was settled into her lap like a newborn child.’

Behind him, Krin’s mother made a wounded sound and sank to her knees. Her servants rushed close.

Smiling once more, Kallor unstrapped his weapon harness and let it fall to the tiled floor. The clash rang hollow in the chamber. ‘My words are done. I am the killer of Serap, and I await your kiss of righteous vengeance.’ And then he crossed his arms and waited.

Why do I remember this now, Kadagar? Of course, for all the miserable tragedy of that moment, was it not what came next that truly filled my chest with ashes?

Krin, his hand lifted, fingers pressed against temple, not even looking up as he gestured with his other hand. And whispered. ‘Go, Kallor. Just … go.’

And how then I finally understood the High King’s smile. Not a thing of pleasure. No, this was the smile of a man who wanted to die.

What did we do? We denied him.

I remember how he reached down to collect his sword, how he turned away, his back to the throne and the man seated upon it, and walked out. I saw him walk past the huddle of retainers and the woman kneeling in their midst, and he paused, looked down at her.

If he said anything then, we did not hear it. If he uttered soft words, none within range ever spoke of them. And then he was walking onward, out and beyond their sight.

Four years later you swore that you would never sire a child. That all the Liosan would be your children, come the day you ascended to the throne. And I might have laughed, too blind to the future awaiting us all these centuries later. I might have wounded you, as children often do.

‘Beloved brother.’

Aparal turned. ‘Lord.’

‘Your thoughts were far away. What were you thinking, that could so drag you from this place?’

Was there longing in Kadagar’s eyes? He didn’t think so. ‘Lord, no more than weariness. A moment’s rest.’ He looked to the assembled legions. ‘They are ready. Good.’

As he moved to join his retinue Kadagar stayed him with one hand and leaned close to whisper, ‘What were you thinking about, brother?’

A rag doll. ‘Old friend, it was a moment empty of dreams. A place of grey dust. That and nothing more.’

Kadagar let go, stepped back. ‘Aparal – is it true?’

‘Lord?’

‘The laughter—’

‘Yes, Lord. A Hust waits for us, in the hands of a Shake warrior.’ He pointed at the carcass of the dragon. ‘Two passes of the blade, to slice through Iparth Erule’s neck.’

‘He must be killed! This Shake warrior!’

‘Yes, Lord.’

Kadagar lifted one hand to his brow, reminding Aparal of the father, of poor, lost Krin Ne Fant. ‘But … how?’

Aparal cocked his head. ‘Lord? Why, when all the others have fallen, when he alone remains. When twelve dragons break through. Sire, this is not a legion of Hust. It is one sword.’

And Kadagar was nodding now, eyes flooding with relief. ‘Just so, brother.’ He glanced back at the carcass. ‘Poor Iparth Erule.’

‘Poor Iparth Erule.’

Kadagar Fant, Lord of Light, then licked his lips. ‘Such a terrible waste.’

In every echo that reached Sandalath Drukorlat, she heard ghosts laughing. Withal sat close, down on the stone of the dais, almost at her feet, but it seemed he was dozing, exhaustion making a mockery of his vigil. She did not mind. Mortal failure was ever tinged with irony, was it not?

She closed her eyes, listening, waiting for the visions to return. Were these sendings from Mother Dark? Or just the cluttered rag-ends of all those lives surrendered to these walls and floors of stone? Mother, I doubt there is anything of you in these scenes. The gloom is of their own making, and those hard voices rocking so back and forth in my skull, well, I know them all.

One side crimson with blood, Anomander Rake straightening to face the Hust Legion. ‘The invasion has just begun,’ he told the waiting warriors. ‘We risk being overwhelmed.’ He drew a slow, deep breath, jaws briefly clenching in pain. ‘I shall wait for them beyond the Rent, to deny them the Throne of Shadow. This leaves the gate itself. Hust Legion! You shall march to the gate. You shall march through it. You shall take the battle to them, and hold them there. And,’ he scanned the rows of helmed faces, ‘when the last five of you remain, you must give your lives to sealing that wound. You shall, Hust-armed and Hust-armoured, for ever close Starvald Demelain.’

Wailing shrieks from blades and scaled breastplates, from helms, from greaves and gauntlets, a deafening chorus that shattered into wild laughter. But within that insane glee, the faces of the Andiian warriors were expressionless. And with solemn salutes they acknowledged their lord’s command.

Hust Legion, we never saw you again.

But the Eleint stopped coming.

Hust Legion, how many did you kill on that other side? How many bones lie in heaps upon that alien plain? There at the gate? I can almost … almost see them, a felled forest of bones.

But now shadows slide over them, shadows from the sky.

Anomander Rake, ‘for ever’ was a lie. But you knew that. You were just buying time. Thinking we would ready ourselves for the next invasion. Did we? Did anyone?

But then, a suspicion whispers in my skull. You made her face us once again. Well, not us. Me.

Killed yourself a dragon, did you, Yedan Derryg?

Feel up to a thousand more?

Withal knew he was dreaming. The Meckros city where he had been born was nothing like this, a place of smoky dark quartzite and walls sheathed in mica and anthracite, and even as the groaning rise and fall beneath his feet told him the city was indeed floating on unseen seas, beyond the canted avenue lining the high sea wall on his left he could see nothing. No stars above, no cresting foam below.

Cordage creaked, the only sounds surrounding him. The city was abandoned, and he was alone.

‘Mortal. She will not listen. She is lost in ages past.’

He looked round, and then grunted, irritated with himself. She was the Goddess of Dark. What else would he see of her, if not this empty abyss on all sides? ‘And me, an island city, untethered and unanchored and caught on unknown currents. Mael knows, Withal, even your dreams lack the subtle touch.’

‘Despair is a curse, Withal of the Meckros. You must warn her—’

‘Forgive me for interrupting, Mother Dark, but she is past listening to me. And to be honest, I don’t blame her. I have nothing worth saying. You have made her the ruler of an empty city – how do you expect her to feel?’

Too bold, perhaps, for there came no reply from the surrounding darkness.

He stumbled forward, unsure of his destination, but feeling the need to reach it. ‘I have lost my belief in the seriousness of the world. Any world. Every world. You give me an empty city, and I feel like laughing. It’s not as if I don’t believe in ghosts. I do. How could I not? As far as I’m concerned, we’re all ghosts.’ He paused, set a hand upon the cold, damp stone of the sea wall. ‘Only this is real. Only this lasts from moment to moment, stretching on for years. Centuries. We – we just pass through. Filled with ephemeral thoughts—’

‘You surrender too much of yourself, Withal.’

‘It’s easy,’ he replied, ‘when nothing I own is worth a damned thing.’

‘This island city is the ghost. Its truth lies broken on the seabed. It drifts only in your memory, Withal.’

He grunted. ‘The ghost dreams of ghosts in a ghostly world. This is what I’ve come to understand, Mother Dark. From the Tiste Andii – and these Liosan. The way you can take a hundred thousand years and crush it all in one hand. There is no truth to time. It’s all a lie.’

‘She agrees with you, Withal. She was born a hostage to secret fates, born a hostage to a future she could not imagine, much less defy. In this, it was understood by all, she symbolized every child.’

‘But you took it too far,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘You never let her grow up.’

‘Yes, we would keep them children for ever.’

The Meckros city ended with a ragged edge, as if it had been torn in half. Withal continued walking until his steps sent him pitching down through darkness.

He started, head snapping up, and looked round. The throne room of Kharkanas, Sandalath on the throne, hands to her face, sobbing uncontrollably. Swearing under his breath, he rose, unfolding stiff, aching limbs, and went up to take her into his arms.

‘They’re all dying! Withal! On the Shore – they’re all dying!’

He held her tight.

Her words muffled by his shoulder, she said, ‘Five thousand warriors. From the mines, from the prisons. From the gutters. Five thousand. The Hust Legion – I saw them marching out from the burning city.’ She lifted her head, stared at him with tortured eyes. ‘Their swords howled. Their armour sang with joy. No one stood by and wept. No. Instead, they ran from the laughter, they fled the streets – those not already dead. The sound – so terrible – the Hust Legion marched to their deaths, and no one watched them go!’

He slapped her, hard enough to knock her to the floor at the foot of the throne. ‘Enough of this, Sand. This palace is driving you mad.’

She twisted round on to her knees, a knife in her hand, eyes blazing with rage.

‘Better,’ he grunted, and then backed away from the slashing blade. ‘Too many wretched ghosts in your skull, woman. They all think they got something useful to tell you, but they don’t. They’re damned fools, and you know how I know they’re damned fools? Because they’re still here.’

Warily, he watched her straighten, watched her lick the blood from her lips. Then sheathe the knife. Her sigh was ragged. ‘Husband, it’s this waiting. Waiting for them all to die, for the Liosan legions to enter the city – the palace. And then they will kill you, and I cannot bear it.’

‘Not just me,’ he said. ‘You, as well.’

‘I have no regret for that. None.’

‘There are other Tiste Andii. There must be. They are coming—’

‘To what end?’ She slumped at the foot of the throne. ‘To avenge me? And so it goes on and on, back and forth. As if it all meant something.’ She looked up. ‘Do these walls care? This floor? No, but I will make it different this time, Withal.’ She met his eyes with a fierce challenge. ‘I will burn this palace down to the ground before they ever get here. I swear it.’

‘Sandalath, there is nothing here to burn.’

‘There are other ways,’ she whispered, ‘to summon fire.’

The killing ground was once more clear of corpses, broken weapons and pieces of torn flesh, but the once-white sand was brown as mud. Captain Pithy studied it for a moment longer, and then resumed examining the grip of her sword. The leather cord was loose – twice in the last fight the weapon had shifted in her grip. Looking up, she saw one of the Letherii youths Yedan was using to scavenge decent weapons. ‘You! Over here!’

The girl struggled up with her sled and stepped to one side as Pithy began rummaging through the blood-spattered array of weapons. ‘Hear any chuckling from any of these, girl?’ She looked up and winked. ‘Didn’t think so, but one can always hope.’

‘You’re Captain Pithy.’

‘So far, aye.’ She found a Liosan sword and lifted it clear, testing its weight and balance. Then peering at the honed edge, before snorting. ‘Looks a hundred years old, and neglected for half that.’ She returned it to the sled. ‘Why aren’t there any Letherii weapons here?’

‘The Liosan steal them, sir.’

‘Well, that’s one way to beat us – a mass exchange of weapons, until all we’re left with is that useless crap they brought from the other side. Better send word to the prince – we need to deny them these particular spoils, and make a point of it.’ Pithy retrieved her old sword. ‘Here, you got small fingers – see if you can thread that strip through on the end here, where it’s pulled loose. Just thread it and I’ll do the rest.’

Instead of her fingers, the girl used her teeth, and in moments had managed to tug the leather strip through.

‘Smart lass.’ Pithy tugged hard on the strip and was pleased to see the coil draw tighter to the wooden handles encasing the tang. ‘There, should do for the next fight or two. Thanks for helping fix my sword. Now, off you go – I see ’em massing again on the other side.’

The girl took up the ropes and hurried off with her sled, the ivory runners sliding easily across the strand.

Captain Pithy walked to her place in the line. ‘Now,’ she said in a loud voice, ‘it’s Nithe’s day off, the lazy shit. He probably thinks he’s earned those five whores and the jug of wine sharing his bed, but that was just me feeling sorry for him.’

‘Cap’n’s a pimp!’ someone shouted from a few rows back.

Pithy waited for the laughter to die down. ‘Can’t make piss on the coin they pay officers in this army, so don’t begrudge me something on the side.’

‘Never you, Captain!’

Horns sounded and Pithy faced the breach. ‘Coming through, soldiers! Harden up now like a virgin’s dream! Weapons ready!’

A vague mass of shapes, pushing and then slashing through bruised light thin as skin. Then the blades drew back.

What’s this? Something different – what are—

From the wound, three enormous Hounds bursting through. Blood-thick sand sprayed as the creatures skidded. One twisted to one side, shot off towards the Shake line on Pithy’s right, a white blur, huge as a bull. Another charged for the other flank, and the one directly before Pithy met her eyes in the instant before it lowered its broad head, and she felt the strength leave her body in a single, soft breath. Then the Hound lunged straight at her.

As the jaws stretched wide, revealing canines long as daggers, Yan Tovis ducked low and swung her sword. The blade bit into the left of the beast’s neck, and then rebounded in a splash of blood. Beside her, a Shake warrior shrieked, but the cry was short-lived, vanishing when the beast bit down, its jaws engulfing his head. Bones crunching, the man was lifted from his feet as the Hound reared back, fangs sawing through his neck. Gore sprayed as the headless corpse fell to the sand and rolled on to its back.

Yan Tovis thrust her sword, but the point skidded across the beast’s chest.

Snarling, it swung its head. The impact sent Yan Tovis spinning. Landing hard, she rolled on to her side, seeing Liosan ranks plunging through the breach not fifteen paces from her. She’d lost her sword, and her groping hand found nothing but clumps of blood-glued sand. She could feel her strength faltering, draining away, pain spreading across half her body.

Behind her, the Hound began killing her people.

It ends. As simple as that?

‘Pikes!’ someone screamed – was it me? As the massive Hound leapt for her, Pithy dropped to the sand, twisted as the beast passed directly over her, and thrust her sword into its belly.

The point was punched back out as if fired from a crossbow, driving her elbow into the ground. One of the Hound’s back legs lifted her from the sand, carried her flailing forward. She heard the clash of pike shafts close in on all sides. Half stunned, she curled up beneath the beast. Its snarls filled her world, along with the crunch of bones and the shrieks of dying Letherii. She was kicked again, this time spilling her out to one side.

Teeth grinding, she forced herself into a crouch. She still held her sword, glued to her hand now by streams of blood – she was cut somewhere – and she made herself close on the thrashing demon. Lunged.

The blunted, battered tip of the sword caught the Hound in the corner of its left eye. With an almost human scream, the beast lurched away, sending figures sprawling. It was scored with slashes from countless pike-thrusts, white hide streaming crimson, and more soldiers pressed in, pursuing. The Hound stumbled over a corpse, twisted round to face its attackers.

Its left eye was filled with blood.

Got you, you heap of dung!

Someone leapt close, swinging a wood-cutter’s axe. The impact on the beast’s skull drove it to its knees. The axe handle shattered, and Pithy saw the wedge blade fall away. The Hound’s skull gleamed, exposed across half its head, a torn flap of skin dangling down past its jaw.

One-handed Nithe flung the broken handle away, reached for a knife.

The Hound snapped out, jaws hammering into the man. Canines punched through chain, tore deep into his chest. As they ripped free, Nithe’s ribs seemed to explode outward in their wake. He spun, landed on his knees.

Pithy shrieked.

The Hound’s second bite tore Nithe’s face off – forehead, cheekbones, his upper jaw. His mandible dropped down, hanging like a bloody collar. Both his eyes were gone. He pitched forward.

Weaving drunkenly now, the Hound stumbled back. Behind it, Liosan warriors advanced in a bristling line, faces lit with desire.

‘Drive them back!’ Pithy screamed.

Pikes levelled, her Letherii pushed forward.

‘The queen! The queen!’

Shake warriors suddenly surrounded Yan Tovis. She heard the Hound somewhere behind her, snarls, weapons striking, shafts shattering, terrible cries of pain – a knot of madness tearing ever deeper through the ranks. But protecting her now, a score of her people, forming up to face the Liosan soldiers.

To defend their queen. No, please – don’t do this—

There weren’t enough of them. They would die for nothing.

The Liosan arrived like the crest of a wave, and in moments rushed round to isolate Yan Tovis and her warriors.

Someone crouched to hand her a sword.

Her throat thick with nausea, she forced herself to her feet.

Seeing the Hound charging for his line on the left flank, Yedan Derryg ran to meet it. The Hust sword loosed a manic, ululating cry, and it seemed that the chilling sound checked the beast – for the briefest of instants – before it launched itself at the prince.

When its jaws reached for him, the head was driving down, anticipating that he would come in low. Instead, Yedan leapt high, twisted parallel with the ground, legs thrown out, and rolled in the air, over the Hound’s shoulders, and as he spun, down swung the sword.

The Hust blade shrieked as it bit, athwart the beast’s spine, driving down through vertebrae and then spinal cord.

He glanced off its hip coming down, and that hip fell one way and Yedan the other. Striking the ground, he rolled and came to his feet, eyes still on the Hound.

Watched as it toppled, body thumping on the sand, head following. Its eyes stared sightlessly. And beyond the dead beast, rows of faces. Letherii. Shake. Gape-mouthed like fools.

He pointed at Brevity. ‘Captain! Advance the flank – shallow wedge! Push into the Liosan and push hard!’

With that he turned and ran across the strand. He’d seen two more Hounds.

Ahead, a wedge formation of Liosan soldiers had closed with Pithy’s Letherii and neither side was yielding. Yedan could not see the Hound – had they killed it? No – there, trying to retreat to Lightfall’s wound. Should he let it go?

No.

But to reach it, he would have to carve through a score of Liosan.

They saw him, and recoiled.

The Hust sword’s laugh was shrill.

Yedan cut the first two down and wounded another before he was temporarily slowed by the rest of them. Swords hacked at him, slashed for his face. Others thrust for his belly and thighs. He blocked, countered. Twisted, pushed forward.

Severed arms and hands spun, releasing the weapons they’d held. Blood sprayed and spat, bodies reeled. Flashes of wild expressions, mouths opening in pain and shock. And then he was past them all, in his wake carnage and horror.

The Hound was three strides from the breach, struggling to stay upright.

He saw its head turn, looked into its eyes, both of which wept blood. Torn lips formed ragged black lines as it snarled at him, heaving to meet him—

But not in time. A thrust. A slash. The Hound’s guts billowed out and spilled to the ground in a brown splash of fluids.

It sank down, howling.

Yedan leapt on to its back –

– in time to see a fourth Hound lunge through the gate.

The prince launched himself forward, through the air, sword’s point extended.

Into the Hound’s broad chest, the blade sliding in with gurgling mirth.

The beast’s countering bite hammered him to the ground, but he refused to let go of the sword, dragging it with him. The Hound coughed blood in thick, hot sprays, pitched forward, head lolling.

Yedan kicked it in the throat to free his sword, turned then, and found a mass of Liosan wheeling to face him. No quick way through – both flanks had closed up. Slow work ahead—

And then, from the wound behind him, a sudden presence that lifted the hairs on the back of his neck. Looming, foul with chaotic sorcery.

Dragon.

Swearing under his breath, Yedan Derryg swung round, and plunged into Lightfall’s wound.

Half her warriors had gone down, and Yan Tovis could feel herself weakening. She could barely lift her sword. Gods, what is wrong with me? How badly was I injured? I ache – but … what else? She staggered, sagged down on to one knee. The fighting closed in around her. What—

Concussions from beyond the Shake line. The Hound screaming in fury and pain.

Head spinning, she looked up.

A grey, miasmic wave of sorcery erupted from the edge of the flank closest to Lightfall, the spitting, crackling wave rushing close to strike the press of Liosan. Bodies erupted in red mist.

Shouting – someone had hold of Yan Tovis under each arm, was dragging her back to the re-formed Shake line – and there was Skwish, rushing to join them.

‘Blood of the queen! Blood of the queen!’ The witch looked ten years old, a child of shining gold. ‘Get her clear! The rest a you! Advance!’

And then, from the wound, a reverberation that sent them all to their knees.

Deafened by a sudden, thunderous crack! from the breach, Aparal Forge saw his Soletaken kin rearing back. Eldat Pressen, the youngest and boldest of them all, so eager to follow in the wake of the Hounds of Light, was pulling her head back from the wound, and in that recoiling motion blood fountained.

He stared, aghast, as brains and gore sprayed down from her shattered skull.

Her body shook in waves of savage trembling, her tail thrashing, claws digging into and then tearing up the ground. A blind sweep of her tail sent broken bodies flying.

Her huge torso collapsing with massive shudders, Eldat’s neck and head writhed, and Aparal could now see the terrible sword blow that had struck her head, splitting the skull open, destroying her and all that she had once been – a bright-eyed, laughing woman. He loosed a sob, but could not turn away. Eldat. Playing in the garden, in another age. We were thinking only of peace then. But now I wonder, did it ever exist? That age? Or were we just holding our breath? Through all those years, those decades – she grew into a beautiful woman, we all saw that. We witnessed and it gave us pleasure.

And oh how we all longed to bed her. But she’d set her heart upon the only one of us who would take no woman – or man – into his arms. Kadagar had no time for such things, and if he broke her heart again and again, well, that was the price of serving his people. As father to them all, he could be lover to none.

Kadagar, you stand on the battlements once more.

You look down upon her death, and there is no swift mercy here, no sudden stillness. Her mind is destroyed, but her body refuses to yield. Kadagar Fant, what meaning do you dare take from this?

He struggled to regain self-control. ‘Clear the area,’ he said to his officers, his voice breaking. He drew a deep breath, cleared his throat. ‘She will not die quickly. Not now.’

Ashen-faced, the soldiers set off to relay the commands.

Aparal looked back at the gate. Hust. You came to meet her, before she was across the threshold. Where, then, are my soldiers on the other side? Where – gods below – are the Hounds?

In cascading streams of light, Yedan Derryg groped blindly. His sword’s laughter was slowly dying away. This was the real danger. Getting lost within Lightfall. But he’d seen little choice, and now he needed to return. One Hound remained. How many of his soldiers were dying even now? Whilst he stumbled blindly in this infernal light?

He could feel the wound’s terrible pain, a vicious, biting thing, desperate to heal.

Yedan halted. A wrong step now could take him on to the Liosan plain, facing tens of thousands of the enemy. And more dragons.

Heavy, buffeting currents from behind him. He whirled.

Something, coming through—

The Hound exploded from the light.

He dropped low into a crouch, blade slashing. Cutting through both front legs. The beast stumbled – he twisted and chopped down on its neck. The Hust blade sliced through, leapt out from under its throat with a delighted yelp. The head slammed into the ground at Yedan’s feet.

He stood for a moment, staring down at it. Then he sheathed his sword, reached down. His back creaked as he strained to lift the head into his arms. He faced the direction the Hound had been heading and then, with a running start that spun him round, he heaved the head out into the light.

Facing the opposite direction, he set off for the wound.

Aparal’s eyes had been on the gate, and he was not alone in seeing the Hound’s severed head sailing out to thump and roll on the ground. Shouts of dismay and horror sounded on all sides.

He stared in horror.

It cannot be just one man. It cannot!

A Hust legion waits for us. Hundreds of the cursed slayers, each one driven mad by their weapons. Nothing will stop them, nothing can defeat them.

We cannot win this.

Unblinking, he stared at the huge head, the empty eyes, and then he turned to the dying dragon. It had lurched up against the corpse of Iparth Erule. Had bitten into his rotting flank. But now the motions were slowing, losing that frenzied strength. Eldat, please die. Please.

‘Not long now,’ he whispered. Not long now.

Waves of sorcery had pursued the Hound back to the wound, Pully and Skwish advancing behind them, clambering over corpses and torn-up soldiers still in the process of dying. Pithy staggered in their wake. She’d taken a slash to her right shoulder and the bleeding wasn’t slowing. Her arm was sheathed in red, with thick threads draining from her fist. Colours were fast fading from the world.

She saw Brevity leading a solid wedge of Letherii, coming up from the left flank. Where was the prince?

And what was that thunder in the breach?

Nearby was the carcass of a Hound, and nearer the breach another one of the horrid, giant beasts, still alive, still kicking where it lay on its side. Soldiers were closing on it, readying their pikes. Killing it was going to take some time.

I’m so tired. All at once the strength left her legs and she sat down. Bad cut. A fang? A claw? I can’t remember – can’t twist round enough to see it. But at least the pain’s gone.

‘Captain!’

Pithy looked down at the sword in her hand. Smiled. You did all right. You didn’t fail me. Where’s that girl? Need to tell her.

‘Someone get one of the witches! Quickly!’

That voice was loud, almost right next to her ear, but it seemed muffled all the same. She saw Brevity running towards her now, but it was hard work, getting over all those bodies, and Pithy wondered if she’d arrive in time.

In time for what? Oh. This.

She settled, tried lying down, found herself cradled in someone’s arms.

‘Her back’s bitten half off! Where are the witches?’

‘Spent.’

‘We need—’

A roaring sound filling her head, Pithy looked down at her hand, the one holding the sword. She willed it to let go, but it refused. She frowned. But a moment later the frown faded. I understand. I am a soldier. Not a thief. Not a criminal. A soldier. And a soldier never lets go of the sword. Ever. You see it in their eyes.

Can you see it in my eyes? I bet you can.

It’s true. At last, it’s true. I was a soldier.

Brevity was still ten paces away when she saw her friend die. She cried out, sagged down amidst the corpses. Crossing this killing field had been a nightmare, a passage of unrelenting horror. Letherii, Shake, Liosan – bodies were bodies, and death was death, and names didn’t mean shit. She was soaked in what had been spilled, what had been lost. The abattoir reek was thick enough to drown in. She held her head in her hands.

Pithy.

Remember the scams? How we took ’em for all they had? It was us against the world and gods, it felt good those times we won. It never hurt us, not once, beating ’em at their own game. Sure, they had law on their side, making legal all they stole. But then, they’d made up those laws. That was the only difference between us.

We used to hate their greed. But then we got greedy ourselves. Served us right, getting caught.

Island life, now that was boring. Until those Malazans showed up. It all started right then, didn’t it? Leading up to here. To now.

They sent us tumbling, didn’t they? Fetching us up on the Shore. We could’ve gone off on our own, back into everything we knew and despised. But we didn’t. We stayed with Twilight and the Watch, and they made us captains.

And now we fought us a war. You did, Pithy. I’m still fighting it. Still not knowing what any of it means.

Ten paces, and I can’t look over at you. I can’t. It’s this distance between us. And while I live, I can’t cross it. Pithy, how could you leave me so alone?

Yedan Derryg emerged from the wound in Lightfall. The laughter of his sword chewed the air. She stared across at him, thinking how lost he looked. But no. That’s just me. It’s just me. He knows what he needs to know. He’s worked it all out. It comes with the blood.

Sergeant Cellows stumped up to Yedan. ‘Prince – she’s alive, but unconscious. The witches used her—’

‘I know,’ he replied, studying the killing field.

The sergeant, burly and hulking – a touch of Teblor blood in him – followed his gaze and grunted. ‘They hurt us this time, sire. The Hounds mauled the centre and the right flank. One of the beasts reached the wounded before Pully drove it back. But our losses, sire. They hurt us. Nithe, Aysgan, Trapple, Pithy—’

Yedan shot him a hard look. ‘Pithy?’

Cellows pointed with a finger that had been cut off just below the knuckle. ‘There.’ A figure slumped in a weeping soldier’s arms. Brevity kneeling nearby, head lowered.

‘See to what needs to be done, Sergeant. Wounded. Weapons.’

‘Yes, sire – er, Prince?’

‘What is it?’

‘Seems I’m the last.’

‘The last?’

‘From your original company, sir. Coast Patrol.’

Yedan felt something crunch at the back of his mouth. He winced, leaned over and spat. ‘Shit, broke a tooth.’ He lifted his eyes, stared across at Cellows. ‘I want you in reserve.’

‘Sire?’

‘For when I need you the most, Sergeant. For when I need you at my side. Until then, you are to remain out of the fight.’

‘Sire—’

‘But when I call, you’d better be ready.’

The man saluted, and then strode away.

‘My last,’ Yedan whispered.

He squinted at Brevity. If all these eyes were not upon me, I would walk to you, Brevity. I would take you in my arms. I would share your grief. You deserve that much. We both do. But I can show nothing like … that.

He hesitated, suddenly unsure. Probed his broken tooth with his tongue. Tasted blood. ‘Shit.’

Brevity looked up as the shadow fell over her. ‘Prince.’ She struggled to stand but Yedan reached out, and the weight of his hand pushed her back down.

She waited for him to speak. But he said nothing, though his eyes were now on Pithy and the soldiers gathering around the fallen woman. She forced herself to follow his gaze.

They were lifting her so gently she thought her heart would rupture.

‘It’s no easy thing,’ murmured Yedan, ‘to earn that.’

Aparal Forge saw the enclaves encamped on the surrounding mounds slowly stirring awake, saw the soldiers assembling. This will be the one, then. When we throw our elites through the gate. Legions of Light. Lord Kadagar Fant, why did you wait this long?

If they had gone through from the first, the Shake would have fallen by now. Make the first bite the deepest. Every commander knows this. But you wouldn’t listen. You wanted to bleed your people first, to make your cause theirs.

But it hasn’t worked. They fight because you give them no choice. The pot-throwers dry their hands and the wheel slows and then stops. The weavers lock up their looms. The wood-carvers put away their tools. The road-menders, the lamp-makers, the hawkers of songbirds and the dog-skinners, the mothers and the whores and the consorts and the drug-peddlers – they all set down the things they would do, to fight this war of yours.

It all stops, and for so many now will never start again.

You’ve ripped out the side of your people, left a gaping wound – a wound like the one before us. And we flow through it like blood. We spill out and scab up on the other side.

The Soletaken were all sembled now. They knew what needed to be done. And as the ranks drew up, Aparal saw his Eleint-fouled kin take position, each at the head of his or her own elite soldiers.

But a Hust Legion awaits us. Slayers of Hounds and Dragons, in all the mad laughter of war.

This next battle. It will be our last.

He looked up to the battlements, but Kadagar was not there. And from his soldiers resting on all sides, his commoners so bloodied, so utterly ruined, Aparal heard the same words. ‘He comes. Our lord shall lead us.’

Our lord. Our very own rag doll.

‘Water, Highness. Drink.’

She barely had strength to guide the mouthpiece to her lips. Like rain in a desert, the water flowed through the ravaged insides of her mouth. Lacerated tissues stung awake, her throat opened in relief. She pulled it away, gasping.

‘What’s happening? Where am I?’

‘The witches and your brother, Queen, they killed the Hounds.’

Hounds.

What day is this? In a world without days, what day is this?

‘They’re little girls now,’ her companion said.

Yan Tovis blinked up at her. A familiar face. ‘Your brother?’

The woman looked away.

‘I’m sorry.’

She shook her head. ‘I will see them soon, my queen. That’s what I look forward to now.’

‘Don’t think that way—’

‘Forgive me, Highness. I took care of them all my life, but against this, I wasn’t enough. I failed. It’s too much. From the very start, it was too much.’

Yan Tovis stared up at the woman’s face, the dry eyes, the absence of expression. She’s already gone. ‘“They await you on the Shore.”’

A brittle half-smile. ‘So we say over our dead, yes. I remember.’

Over our dead.

‘Tell the witches – if they do that to me again – if they use me like that – ever again – I will kill them both.’

The woman flinched. ‘They look ten years old, Highness.’

‘But they aren’t. They’re two old women, sour and bitter and hateful of the world. Go, give them my warning, soldier.’

With a silent nod, the young woman rose.

Yan Tovis settled her head, felt the sand grinding against the back of her skull. Empty sky. Dreams of darkness. If I had knelt to the Shore, they couldn’t touch me. Instead, they punished me.

‘But if they hadn’t,’ she whispered, ‘those Hounds would have killed hundreds more. Which of us, then, is sour and bitter? Hateful of the world?’

I will go to her. To Kharkanas. I will beg her forgiveness. Neither of us can withstand the weight of this crown. We should cast it off. We can find the strength for that. We must.

Oh, I am a fool. Yedan will not yield. The lives lost must mean something, even when they don’t. So, it seems we must all die. It seems we have no choice. Not the Shake, not the Letherii, not Sandalath Drukorlat, Queen of High House Dark.

She reached down and came up with a handful of white sand – crumbled bones. ‘It’s all here,’ she whispered. ‘Our entire history, right here. From then … to now. To what’s coming. All … here.’ And she watched, as she closed that hand into a fist, as if to crush it all.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

‘THERE WILL COME A TIME,’ VENTURED SECHUL LATH, ‘WHEN WE shall be all but forgotten.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ growled Errastas. ‘And they shall drink blood. Remember that? Book of Elders. And that is the last memory of us that will remain. As drinkers of blood. A tyranny of thirst. If it is not for us to save our worshippers, then who will – who will save all these wretched mortals?’

Behind them, feet thumping the ground like a drum of war, Kilmandaros said, ‘They cannot be saved. They never could.’

‘Then what use are we? To any of them?’

Errastas spat on the ground, and replied with contempt, ‘Someone to blame, Setch. For all the ruin they themselves commit. On each other. On themselves. Anyway, enough. We’ve chewed on this too many times.’

Sechul Lath glanced back. ‘Are we far enough, do you think?’

Kilmandaros’s eyes were hooded with exhaustion, and she did not bother following his gaze. ‘No.’

‘A warren—’ Errastas began.

She cut him off with a snort. ‘The wounding to come shall strike through every warren. Young and Elder. Our only hope is to get as much distance between us and her as we can.’

Errastas shrugged. ‘I never much liked K’rul anyway.’

‘To begin,’ Kilmandaros said, ‘this but wounds. If she is not slain in time, then K’rul will indeed die, and the world shall be unmade. The death of sorcery, and more.’

Sechul Lath smiled across at Errastas. ‘And so the coin is cast, and it spins, and spins still.’

‘She is no longer our problem,’ he replied, one finger probing the empty socket of his stolen eye. ‘Her sister will have to deal with her. Or someone else.’

‘And on this our fate rests – that someone else cleans up the mess we make. I dare say our children will not appreciate the burden.’

‘They’ll not live long enough to appreciate much of anything,’ Errastas said.

I truly see our problem, friends. We don’t want the future, we want the past. With a new name. But it’s still the past, that invented realm of nostalgia, all the jagged edges smoothed away. Paradise … for the drinkers of blood.

‘Draconus seeks to do me harm,’ said Kilmandaros. ‘He waits for me.’

‘Don’t be a fool,’ snapped Errastas. ‘He will join with T’iam in slaying the Otataral Dragon. He may have vowed eternal war against chaos, but even he would not welcome its end. Besides, a battle with you risks too much – you might kill him. He’s been imprisoned in a sword for how long? You think he’d risk his freedom so soon? Perhaps indeed he has old scores to settle with you, Kilmandaros, but he is about to discover far more immediate threats.’

‘Unless he gleans our purpose.’

Sechul Lath glanced back at her. ‘Mother, I assure you, he has done that. But I think Errastas judges rightly. Draconus will see the threat posed by the release of the Otataral Dragon, and her presence will be his lodestone. Hopefully a fatal one.’

‘Many have tried to kill her,’ Errastas agreed, ‘and all have failed. Even the imprisonment demanded an elaborate trap – one that took centuries for Rake to devise.’

‘He wasn’t alone,’ rumbled Kilmandaros.

‘And what was made you have now unmade,’ Errastas said, nodding. ‘And Anomander Rake is dead, and there remains no one to match his insane obsessions—’

Kilmandaros had drawn close during the conversation, and her hand was a sudden blur in the corner of Sechul’s vision, but the blow she struck Errastas was impossible to miss, as ribs snapped and he was thrown from his feet. He struck the ground, rolled once, and then curled up around the damage to his chest.

She moved to stand over him. ‘You will cease speaking ill of him,’ she said in a low voice. ‘We did not always agree. Often we quarrelled. But the Son of Darkness was a man of integrity and honour. No longer will I permit you to spit on his name. He is dead, and your voice lives on like the cry of a cowardly crow, Errastas. You were never his match, and even in death he stands taller than you in all your guises. Do you think I do not hear your resentment? Your envy? It disgusts me.’

Sechul Lath felt a trickle of power from Errastas, as the Elder God healed himself. Slowly, he regained his feet, and, not looking at either of them, resumed walking.

After a moment, Sechul fell in behind the Errant, followed by Kilmandaros.

She said, loud enough for both to hear, ‘Rake once said to me that Draconus was a man of great honour. Before the betrayal. Before his day of rage. I believe him.’

Sechul turned and studied his mother. ‘You believe he will leave the Otataral Dragon to T’iam. That he will seek you out, not to settle old scores, but to punish you for what you have done here. To punish you for releasing her.’

‘Punish me?’ She bared her tusks. ‘He will seek to kill me, my son. And I am frightened.’

The admission was like ice in Sechul’s veins. Mother? ‘We should never have done this,’ he whispered.

‘A common prayer,’ she muttered in reply.

‘Farther still?’ Errastas demanded.

Kilmandaros glanced behind them. ‘Farther still.’

The dragon circled him twice before descending to the broken tundra two hundred paces ahead. As Tulas Shorn walked closer, he watched it eyeing him warily. Scales like plates of ice, milky and translucent in places, blinding white where the sun’s light struck them full. Eyes red as blood. With less than fifty strides between them, the dragon sembled.

Tulas maintained his steady approach until ten paces away, and then he halted in alarm. ‘Is that a Hust blade you carry, Silchas Ruin? Such was not your style.’

The weapon was moaning, sensing the nearness of one possessing the blood of Eleint. One other than its wielder, that is.

Silchas Ruin’s expression was flat. ‘It seems that you evaded their bargain – for there was a bargain, was there not? Between my brother and the Lord of the Slain. There had to have been.’

‘I imagine you are correct.’

‘Was your prison Hood’s realm, Prince, or Dragnipur?’

Tulas straightened, tilted his head. ‘You refuse me my proper title.’

‘I see no throne, Tulas Shorn. Was “prince” not honorific enough? Would you prefer pretender?’

‘If I was not bound still – and eternally so, I fear – to this state of undeath, Silchas Ruin, I might take offence at your words.’

‘If you wish, we could still cross blades, you sperm-clouded abomination of darkness.’

Tulas considered the proposition. ‘You are returned to this world, Silchas, leading me to the inescapable conclusion that the Azath do indeed know how to shit.’

‘Tulas,’ said Silchas Ruin as he strode closer, ‘do you remember the night of the whores?’

‘I do.’

‘You are such a rotted mess now, I doubt a kingdom’s wealth could buy you their favour.’

‘As I recall, they blindfolded themselves before lying with you – what did they squeal? Oh yes. “He has the eyes of a white rat!” Or words to that effect.’

They faced one another.

‘Tulas, would a smile crack what’s left of your face?’

‘Probably, old friend, but know that I am smiling – in my heart.’

Their embrace was savage with memories thought for ever lost, a friendship they’d thought long dead.

‘Against this,’ Silchas whispered, ‘not even Hood can stand. My friend.’

After a time, they drew apart.

‘Do not weep for me,’ said Tulas Shorn.

Silchas made a careless gesture. ‘Unexpected joy. But … too bad about the war.’

‘The war in which we did our level best to kill each other? Yes, those were bad times. We were each caught in whirlpools, friend, too vast and powerful for us to escape.’

‘The day Emurlahn shattered, so too did my heart. For you, Tulas. For … everything we then lost.’

‘Do you know, I do not even remember my own death? For all I know, it could well have been by your hand.’

Silchas Ruin shook his head. ‘It was not. You were lost in the shattering – so even I do not know what happened to you. I … I searched, for a time.’

‘As I would have done for you.’

‘But then Scara—’

‘Curse of the Eleint.’

Silchas nodded. ‘Too easily embraced.’

‘But not you. Not me.’

‘It pleases me to hear you say that. Starvald Demelain—’

‘I know. The Storm will be a siren call.’

‘Together, we can resist it.’

‘This smile upon my soul, it grows. At last, my heart’s dream – we shall fight side by side, Silchas Ruin.’

‘And the first to fall …’

‘The other shall guard.’

‘Tulas.’

‘Yes?’

‘He saw my grief. He joined with me in my search.’

Tulas Shorn looked away, said nothing.

‘Tulas, Anomander—’

‘No, friend. Not yet – I – I am not yet ready to think of him. I am sorry.’

Silchas Ruin’s breath was ragged. He lifted a hand to his face, looked away, and then nodded. ‘As you wish.’ He laughed harshly. ‘It matters not, anyway. Not any more. He is dead.’

‘I know that,’ Tulas said, reaching out to grasp Silchas’s right shoulder. ‘And more than ever, it matters. If we do not speak of your loss – for a time – it does not mean I feel nothing of your grief. Understand me, please.’

‘Very well.’

Tulas eyed the Tiste Andii. ‘Curse of the Eleint,’ he said.

But his friend flinched. Neither spoke for a time. The Hust sword at Silchas’s belt was muttering in its scabbard. Then Silchas looked up. ‘Oh, there is one other thing – a spawn of Menandore—’

‘An enemy?’

‘He was born this side of Starvald Demelain.’

‘Ah, then a potential ally. Three … a good number. Does this child command the power inside him, does he rule the rage within?’

‘If he did, he would be here with us now.’

‘I see. Then what shall be his fate?’

‘I have not yet decided.’

They began walking north. The tundra stretched out on all sides. Small birds flitted among the low growth, and spinning clouds of midges lifted from the path they took. In the vast distance stretched a gleaming white line, marking the edge of the ice fields.

‘I sense the hand of Elder Gods in all this,’ Tulas Shorn said after a time.

‘Yes.’

‘What do they want?’

‘What they always want. A return to power.’

‘In the time of my deathlessness, Silchas, I came to understand the truth of that old saying: you cannot go back.’

‘They know it, but it won’t stop them from trying. And in trying, they may well destroy this world and countless others. They may well kill K’rul himself.’

‘A bold gamble, then.’

Silchas nodded. ‘The boldest.’

‘Sechul Lath, then?’

‘And Errastas, yes.’

‘So, Sechul Lath casts the die, and Errastas nudges the last tip – the game is rigged, friend.’

‘Just the way they like it, yes.’

‘Will you still play?’

Silchas looked thoughtful, and then he sighed. ‘They consider themselves masters at cheating. But then, I think this will be the first time that they sit at a table with mortal humans facing them. Cheating? When it comes to that, the Elder Gods are as children compared to humans. Since the time of my return, this much at least I have learned.’

‘The game is in danger of being turned?’

Silchas glanced across at him, and grinned. ‘I think … yes: just watch, Tulas. Just watch.’

In the scabbard, the sword gurgled. Laughter or, Tulas mused, choking.

‘My friend, how did you come by that weapon?’

‘A gift.’

‘From whom? Are they mad?’

‘Shadow.’

Tulas found he had nothing to say. Struck speechless, as the fire tellers used to say. Grimacing, he struggled, desperate to voice a warning – anything.

Silchas glanced over. ‘Not Edgewalker, Tulas.’

Edge— No, it cannot be – he could not have – oh, wonders of the Abyss! His voice cracked when at last he managed to speak. ‘I forgive him.’

Silchas frowned across at him. ‘Who?’

‘Your brother,’ Tulas replied in a broken rasp. ‘I forgive him – for all of it – for my anger, now proved so … so misplaced. Gods below, Silchas! He spoke true! But – how? How did he manage it?’

Silchas was still frowning. ‘I don’t understand, Tulas. How did he manage what?’

Tulas stared at Silchas Ruin. A moment’s disbelief, but then he shook his head. He said nothing, then, not even to his beloved brother. He was true to his word. He held the secret close and not once yielded a single word, not a single hint – else it would be known by now. It would be known!

‘Tulas?’

‘I forgive him, Silchas.’

‘I – I am so pleased. I am … humbled, friend. You see, that day, I remain convinced that it was not as it seemed—’

‘Oh, indeed, it was not.’

‘Can you explain, then?’

‘No.’

‘Tulas?’

They had halted. The sun was low on the horizon, painting the northern ice lurid shades of crimson. The midges whined in agitated clouds.

Tulas sighed. ‘To tell you, my friend, would be to betray his last secret. I forgive him, yes, but I already fear that he would not forgive me, if he could. For my words. My rage. My stupidity. If I now yield his last secret, all hope for me is lost. I beg you to understand.’

Silchas Ruin’s smile was tight. ‘My brother had a secret he kept even from me?’

‘From everyone.’

‘Everyone but you.’

‘It was to me that he vowed to say nothing, ever.’

The Tiste Andii’s eyes narrowed. ‘A secret as dangerous as that?’

‘Yes.’

Silchas grunted, but it was a despairing sound. ‘Oh, my friend. Does it not occur to you that, with a secret as deadly as you seem to suggest, my brother would do all he needed to to prevent its revelation?’

‘Yes, that has occurred to me.’

‘Including killing you.’

Tulas nodded. ‘Yes. You may have explained my demise. Your brother murdered me.’ And to complete the deception, he helped his brother look for me.

‘But—’

‘Still, Silchas, I forgive him. Between your brother and me, after all, I had clearly announced myself the unreliable one. I know it is difficult for you to accept that he would keep this from you—’

Silchas barked a laugh. ‘Dawn’s fire, Tulas, you are out of practice. I was being ironic. My brother kept things from me? Hardly a revelation to crush me underfoot. Anomander had many lessons to give me about pride, and, finally, a few of them have stuck.’

‘The world is vast yet—’

‘—truths are rare. Just so.’

‘And,’ Tulas added, ‘as the whores whispered about you, a man of giant aspirations but tiny capacities.’

‘Tell me, Prince Puke of the Eleint, shall I introduce you to this Hust blade?’

‘Best save that line for the next whore you meet, Silchas.’

‘Ha! I will!’

‘Prince Silchas of the Laughing Cock. Could be a while before we find a—’

‘Wrong, friend. We go to meet the biggest whore of them all.’

Tulas felt dried skin rip open as he laid bare his teeth. ‘T’iam. Oh, she won’t like that title, not one bit.’

‘Mother’s sake, Tulas. Irony!’

‘Ah,’ he nodded after a moment. ‘Yes. After all, if she’s a whore, then that makes all of us Soletaken—’

‘Makes us all whorespawn!’

‘And this amuses you?’

‘It does. Besides, I can think of no better line with which to greet her.’

‘Silchas, a lone Hust blade? Now you are too bold. An entire legion went out to do battle with her, and did not return.’

‘Yes they died, Tulas, but they did not fail.’

‘You said, a gift from Shadow?’

‘Yes. But not Edgewalker.’

‘Then who?’

‘He is pompous in his title. A new god. Shadowthrone.’

Shadowthrone. Ahh, not as pompous as you might think. ‘Do not underestimate him, friend.’

‘You warn me against someone you have never met?’

‘I do.’

‘What gives you cause to do so?’

Tulas pointed down at the scabbarded sword. ‘That.’

‘I will admit to some unease, friend.’

‘Good.’

‘Shall I show you the dragon-patterned welding?’

Oh dear.

Father?

The scene was murky, stained like an old painting, yet the figure looked up from the chair he was slumped in. Tired eyes squinted in the gloom. ‘If this is a dream, Rud … you look well, and that is good enough for me.’

Where are you?

Udinaas grimaced. ‘She’s a stubborn one, as bad as me. Well, not quite.’

The home of Seren Pedac. Then … Silchas judged rightly. You went to her. For help.

‘Desperation, Rud. Seems to be driving my life these days. And you, are you well?’

My power grows, Father. Blood of the Eleint. It scares me. But I can reach you now. You are not dreaming. I am unharmed.

Udinaas rubbed at his face, and he looked old to Ryadd’s eyes, a realization that triggered a pang deep inside. His father then nodded. ‘The Imass are in hiding, north of the city. A forest abandoned by the Teblor. It is perilous, but there’s no choice. I comfort myself with the thought of these ancient people, ancestors of us all, perhaps, crouching unseen in the midst of humanity. If this is possible, then so are many other unlikely possibilities, and perhaps the world is not as empty as we think we have made it.’

Father, Kilava sent you away because she will not resist the sundering of the gate.

Udinaas looked away. ‘I suspected something like that.’

She’s already given up—

‘Rud, I think it was her desire all along. In fact, I do not think Kettle’s mortal wounding came from the other side of Starvald Demelain. The Azath was young, yes, but strong. And with the Finnest of Scabandari, well – do you remember our confidence? But then, suddenly, something changed …’

Ryadd thought about that, and felt a surge of anger building within him. That was wrong, he said.

‘She pushed the Imass back into the world of the living—’

That was a living world!

‘It was a dream, doomed to go round and round and never change. In the eyes of nature, it was an abomination. But listen, Rud’ – and he leaned forward – ‘Onrack loves her still. Do nothing rash. Leave her be.’

And if you all die? If the Imass are discovered and then hunted down?

‘Trust in Seren Pedac. She will find a place for us. Rud – stay away from the dragons. When they come – stay as far away from them as you can.’

Silchas so warned me, Father.

‘Is he with you?’

No.

Udinaas nodded. ‘I’m not very free with my trust, but he did as he promised. I will give him that. Still, I’m glad he’s gone.’

Father, Seren Pedac must protect her child – he’s in great danger. Offer her the protection of the Imass.

Udinaas lifted his brows. ‘That just might work. Good thinking, there.’

Not me, Father. Silchas Ruin.

‘You begin to fade from my eyes, Rud—’

I grow weary.

‘Be safe. I lo—’

And then he was gone. Ryadd blinked his eyes clear, stared round at the grim cave walls. ‘A place to hide,’ he whispered. It’s all we ask. It’s what we all would ask, had we the voice. Just leave us alone.

‘She means to kill us,’ Stavi said, with eyes that did not belong to a young girl. ‘Me and Storii. She only wants Absi.’

The dusk was drawing its shroud. Torrent had found some bhederin dung, years old, and they huddled around the flickering flames. He watched the strange flashes of colour coming from the crystal shard Absi was playing with.

‘She won’t,’ he assured the twins. ‘She means to use you to bend your father to her will.’

‘She only needs Absi for that,’ said Storii. ‘She’ll kill one of us first, to get his attention. And then the other, to leave him with only his son. And then our father will kneel before her. He will surrender.’

‘You’re thinking too much – both of you. We’re still a long way from anything happening.’

‘You’re wrong,’ Stavi said. ‘It’s much closer than you think, Torrent.’

To that he had nothing to say. Even my lies fail me. He threw another chip on to the fire. ‘Wrap up now, in each other’s arms – Absi, go to your sisters. This night will be a cold one.’

‘She took us north.’

‘Yes, Stavi.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know – we couldn’t cross that desert.’ He looked around. ‘This might be a Hold, for all I know. I do not recognize the stars – and those jade spears are gone.’

‘A warren,’ said Storii, with some impatience. ‘We already knew that. But still she took us north.’

‘Go to sleep, all of you.’

When the three children settled down, Torrent threw the one fur skin they possessed over them, and then rose to stretch his legs and back. Glancing over at the witch, huddled fifteen paces away, he was reminded of a corpse he’d once found – one of the old women of the village, who’d walked out in the winter cold to find a place to die in solitude. A few of the old ones still did such things, though for most the custom had faded. A withered creature, rising from the spring thaw’s deep snows, kneeling in the fold of a hillside.

Maybe it wasn’t a bad way to die. Alone, freezing until all feeling went away, and then sleep, offering one last, warm sigh. The winds had torn her up, he recalled, and ice shards had broken through her skin from the inside, and the crows had found her eyes, lips and ears. And what was left …

Olar Ethil lifted her head, regarded him across the distance.

Torrent turned away.

‘Do not wander too far,’ she warned behind him. ‘In this warren, it is easy to get lost – and I will not go looking for you.’

Because we’re almost there, aren’t we?

‘If you choose to run away, pup, do not think I will take you back.’

He set out, with no intention of going too far. Don’t leave us, they begged. I won’t. Promise. Ten paces on, he glanced back. ‘Spirits below!’ The camp had vanished – now, nothing but flat tundra, stretching away into the darkness.

Then he caught a glimmer – the fire. I was just looking in the wrong direction. Torrent ran towards it. Halfway there he slowed, and then halted. Too far away – I never walked this far. I barely walked at all!

But he could see a figure seated before the feeble flames. Shivering, Torrent slowly approached. Olar Ethil? Is that you? No.

Not unless you’ve been hiding that red waistcoat.

The man was reaching into one voluminous sleeve, drawing forth silver wine cups, a large decanter, and then a host of candied fruit and baked desserts.

I am dreaming. All of this. I am sleeping close to the children right now, and my moans are heard by none but the hag.

The man looked up. His face was round, softened by years of indolence. A city dweller’s face. He gestured with a plump hand. ‘Quickly, Kruppe gestures – see? There is little time. Come. Sit. Before Kruppe awakens to a miserable and fraught dawn in his beleaguered city. You are the keeper of my daughters?’

‘What? I—’

‘Kruppe would be there, if he could. Pah! It is ever our excuse, and paltry and pathetic it is. But then, Kruppe is famous for his energetic seed – why, it has been known to swim a league upriver to impregnate a baron’s pretty daughter not three months before her scandalous marriage. Well, the marriage proved scandalous six months later, anyway, and how that husband was castigated and, indeed, disowned! Now, if he’d been as adventurous as she would have liked, why, Kruppe’s seed would have come to the door only to find it barred, yes? So, the husband got all that he deserved, or so Judge Kruppe pronounces.’

‘Your daughters … spirits take me, I see the resemblance – the eyes, the gestures with the hands – but Hetan—’

‘Delicious Hetan, memories return in a stew of desire and alarm – no matter. Grievous the fate of their mother. Perilous the fate of her children – and we must do something about that. Why are you not eating? Drinking? Baruk’s finest fare.’

Torrent pointed. ‘They … vanished.’

‘Oh my. The dread curse of unmindfulness. Perhaps next time, my barbarian friend. But time, it grows short, but Kruppe is shorter still.’ He fluttered a hand. ‘Tell me, what do you now see there?’

Torrent squinted. ‘A bow. Quiver. Arrows.’

‘Rhivi. To this day they yearly ply me with useless gifts, for reasons that, while obscure, are no doubt well deserved. In any case, I give them all away as a measure of my extraordinary generosity. Are these not finer weapons than the ones you now possess?’

‘My bow split. I had nothing with which to repair it. The arrow shafts have dried and warped – I’d intended to harden them one last time but forgot. The fletching—’

‘Before you go on, good sir, by your list Kruppe can conclude that yes, indeed, this Rhivi offering is superior to that which you now possess.’

‘I just said that.’

‘Did you? Excellent. Take them and be off with you. Quickly. Let it never be said that Kruppe is a neglectful father, no matter what that baron’s daughter later claimed in court. And if Kruppe had not dramatically revealed that she was now sleeping with her advocate, why, Kruppe would be a much thinner man than the one you now see fading before you, red waistcoat and all …’

‘Wait! I’m lost! She said—’

‘Behind you, O wily scout.’

New weapons in hand, Torrent slowly turned, to see, twenty paces away, the dying fire, the children knotted up beneath the fur, and Olar Ethil slumped on the far side. He swung back to thank the man, but he was gone, and with him his modest hearth. He lifted the weapons for a closer look. These are from no dream. These are real, and finely made. He set the string and tested the draw. Spirits! These Rhivi must be giants!

Olar Ethil barely stirred when he returned to the fire. ‘Changed your mind, did you?’

Torrent set the bow and quiver down beside him. ‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Just as well, pup. Warrens are dangerous places for fools such as you. If you would honour the vow you made, you would do well to stay close to me.’

Torrent tossed the last chip of dung into the fire, watched sparks lift into the night. ‘I shall, Bonecaster.’

Her head settled once more. He stared across at her. When sleep offers its final sigh, old hag, I’ll be there to wake you.

Absi rolled over in his sleep and in a soft, sing-song voice, said, ‘Kralalalala. Yip.’

But Torrent could see that his eyes were closed, and on his face there was a contented smile. The child licked his lips.

Saved them for him, did you, Kruppe? Well done.

Onos T’oolan halted, slowly turned. Limned in jade light, a thousand T’lan Imass stood facing him. So many? And, swirling there, the dust of hundreds more. Strangers. Summoned by the unveiling of Tellann. Is this what I want? Is this what I need? All at once he felt the weight of their attention, fixed so remorselessly upon him, and almost buckled. Needs, wants, they are irrelevant. This is what I will. And by that power alone, a world can be destroyed. Or shaped anew. He slowly straightened, restored by the thought, and the strength that came with it.

When I am done, dust shall be dust. Nothing more. Not a thing alive with secrets. Or thick with grief and horror. Simply dust. ‘Do you understand me?’

‘We do, First Sword.’

‘I will free you.’

‘Not yet, First Sword.’

‘I would walk alone.’

‘Then you shall.’

His army fell in cascading clouds, save two figures that had been standing well back in the T’lan legion.

Onos considered them for a time, and then beckoned.

They approached, and the female spoke. ‘First Sword, I once walked these lands – yet I did not.’

‘You are named Rystalle Ev.’

‘Yes.’

‘Your words make no sense.’

She shrugged, pointed northward. ‘There. Something … troubling.’

‘Olar Ethil—’

‘No, First Sword. This is closer.’

‘You are curious, Rystalle Ev?’

The warrior beside her, Ulag Togtil, spoke. ‘There are lost memories within her, First Sword. Perhaps they were taken from other Imass – from those who once lived here. Perhaps they are her own. That which will be found to the north, it is like the awakening of an old wound, but one she cannot see. Only feel.’

‘What you seek,’ Rystalle Ev said to Onos, ‘is threatened. Or so I fear. But I cannot be certain.’

Onos T’oolan studied the two of them. ‘You resist me well – and I see the strength you find in each other. It is … strange.’

‘First Sword,’ said Ulag, ‘it is love.’

Onos was silent, struggling to comprehend the warrior’s statement.

‘We did not discover it from within ourselves,’ Rystalle Ev said. ‘We found it—’

‘Like a stone in a stream,’ Ulag said. ‘Bright, wondrous—’

‘In the stream, First Sword, of your thoughts.’

‘When the mountains thunder, and the ice in the high passes at last shatters to spring’s warmth.’ Ulag lifted a withered hand, let it fall again. ‘The stream becomes a torrent, sweeping all down with it. Cruel flood. And yet … a stone, glimmering.’

‘This is not possible,’ said Onos T’oolan. ‘There is no such thing within me. The fires of Tellann have burned hollow my soul. You delude yourselves. Each other.’

Rystalle Ev shrugged. ‘Delusions of comfort – are these not the gifts of love, First Sword?’

Onos regarded the female. ‘Go, then, the two of you. Find this threat. Determine its nature, and then return.’

Ulag spoke, ‘You ask nothing more of us, First Sword?’

‘Rystalle Ev, does it hunt us?’

‘No, First Sword. I think not. It simply … is.’

‘Find this memory of yours, Rystalle Ev. If it is indeed a threat to me, then I shall destroy it.’

Onos T’oolan watched the two T’lan Imass trudge northward. The First Sword had drawn the power of Tellann close, protective – wearying of Olar Ethil’s assaults, he had made it an impenetrable wall. But there was risk to this. The wall left him blind to all that lay beyond it.

Threats to what I seek, to the fate I desire for us. Olar Ethil stands alone against me. I can think of no one else. After all, I do not flee destruction, but strive to meet it. To find it, in the place of my choosing. Who would deny me that?

Rystalle Ev, memories are powerless – did the Ritual not teach us this? Find what troubles you, then come back.

Ulag Togtil, in your language of flowers … I would know more of this glimmering stone, this wondrous impossibility.

He resumed his walk. Now alone on the ravaged plain, sword tip striking sparks from stones lying embedded in the ground. In his wake, a building wall of dust. Alive with secrets. Thick with grief and horror. Rising higher.

Rystalle Ev glanced back, watched the First Sword making his solitary way eastward, the dust seething behind him.

‘He does not know, does he?’

‘He is closed too much within himself,’ Ulag Togtil said.

‘See the cloud. We began as only a few hundred. We left a thousand to march behind him, as he demanded. But he has awakened Tellann. He has summoned.’

‘How many now, Rystalle Ev?’

‘Five thousand? Ten?’

‘That wall, Rystalle Ev, it is vast.’

‘Yes,’ she whispered.

Another moment passed, and then they turned and set off northward.

The mists cleared and Gruntle found himself padding through fresh snow. A thousand paces to his left two splintered masts jutted from a white mound, the windblown snow heaped in a high dune around the wreckage of a ship. Directly ahead, rocky outcroppings marked the foot of a range of cliffs split by narrow gorges.

At the flat foot of the outcroppings a scattering of skeletal hut frames crouched in the lee of the cliffs. The breath of raw magic was heavy in the air.

There was an answering thunder in his chest, and he could feel the warrior souls within him gathering close, awakening their power. He drew closer.

Hearing a coughing grunt, he halted, and tensed upon seeing two thick-shouldered cats emerge from a cave. Their hide was banded grey and black, like shadows on stone. Their upper canines reached down past their lower jaws. The beasts eyed him, small ears flattening back against their broad skulls, but made no other move.

Gruntle stretched his jaws in a yawn. Just beyond the huts, a rockfall had made a crevasse into a cave, and from that dark mouth drifted unsettling emanations. Fixing his eyes upon that passage, he padded forward.

The two sabre-toothed cats loped towards him.

Not Soletaken. Not d’ivers. These are true beasts. Hunters. But they look … hungry. At the cave mouth, Gruntle hesitated, glancing back as the big cats approached. Are you that fearless? What do you want with me?

Having drawn closer until flanked by the hooped frames of two huts, the cats halted, the one on the left sitting down on its haunches, and then flopping on to the thin snow and rolling on to its back.

Tension eased from Gruntle. Hungry for company. He faced the cave once more, and then slipped into the darkness. Instead of bitter cold, he felt heat, gusting damp and fetid from further within.

She is here. She is waiting for me.

Oh, how I have waited for this moment. Trake, I never asked for this. I never asked for you. And when you chose me, I told you, again and again, it was a mistake. Stonny, if you could see me now, you’d understand. You’d know the why … of all of this.

I can almost see it – that one, quick nod – to tell me it’s all right. I won’t be coming back, but it’s all right. We both know there are some places you can’t come back from. Not ever.

He considered sembling and then decided against it. She would meet him as she chose, but he was Trake’s Mortal Sword – at least on this day. A voice whispered inside him, distant, hollow, commanding him to turn round, to flee this place, but he ignored it.

The crevasse narrowed, twisting, before opening out into a vast, domed cavern.

She stood facing him, a squat, muscular woman cloaked in the fur of a panther, but otherwise naked. Her hooded eyes held glints of gold, her round face was framed in thick, long black hair. Her broad, full-lipped mouth was set, unwelcoming.

Behind her, on a cracked hump of stone, was the ruin of a house. Walls had caved in and it seemed that an ancient tree had grown up from beneath the structure, shattering the foundations, but the tree was now dead. Sorrow drifted down from the broken edifice, bitter to Gruntle’s senses.

Above it, just under the dome, steam roiled, the clouds lit from behind – as if the cavern’s roof was glowing, hot enough to melt the stone. Staring up at this manifestation, Gruntle felt on the verge of falling upward – pulled into a realm unimaginably vast. Vast, yes, but not empty.

She spoke in his mind, that now familiar deep, liquid voice. ‘Starvald Demelain, Mortal Sword, now commanding this place, transforming the very stone itself. No other gate remains. As for you … is this your god’s panic? You should not be here. Tell him, Mortal Sword – tell my child – I will not permit your interference.’

Your child? You claim to be Trake’s mother, do you?

He sensed a flash of irritation. ‘First Swords, First Empire, First Heroes – we were a people proud of such things, for all the good it did us. I have birthed many children. Most of them are now dead.’

So is Trake.

‘First Heroes were chosen, Mortal Sword, to become gods, and so escape death. All that he surrendered that day on the Plains of Lamatath was his mortal flesh. But like any god, he cannot risk becoming manifest, and so he created you. His Mortal Sword, the weapon of his will.’

Remind me to thank him for that.

‘You must stand aside here,’ she said. ‘The Eleint are coming. If you seek to oppose them, you will die, Mortal Sword.’

No, what you fear is that I shall succeed.

‘I will not permit that.’

Then it is you and I who shall fight in this cavern, as I have seen in my dreams—

‘Dreams? You fool. I was trying to warn you.’

Black fur … blood, a dying breath – woman, these were not your sendings.

‘There is little time left! Gruntle, do not challenge this!’ She lifted her arms out to the sides. ‘Look at me! I am Kilava Onass, a Bonecaster of the Imass. I defied the Ritual of Tellann, and my power beggars that of your human gods. What will occur here not even I can prevent – do you understand me? It is … necessary …’

He had expected such words, but still his hackles rose. It’s what we always hear, isn’t it? From generals and warlords and miserable tyrants. Justifying yet another nightmare epoch of slaughter. Of suffering, misery and despair. And what do we all do? We duck down and weather it. We tell ourselves that this is how it must be – I stood on the roof of a building, and all around me people were dying. And by my hand – gods! That building wept blood!

For what? They all died – the whole fucking city – all those people – they just died anyway!

I told Trake he chose wrongly. I was never a soldier – I despise war. I detest all the sordid lies about glory and honour – you, Kilava, if you have lived as long as you say you have, if Trake is your get, then you have seen a child of yours kneel to war – as if war itself was a damned god!

But still, you want him to live – you want your child-god, your First fucking Hero, to go on, and on. Wars without end. And the sword shall swing down and they shall fall – for ever more!

‘Gruntle, why are you here?’

He advanced, feeling the blood within him rise to a boil. Haven’t you guessed? I’m going to fight. I’m going to bring your son down – here and now. I’m going to kill the bastard. An end to the god of slaughter, of horror, of rape—

Kilava howled in sudden rage, vanished inside a blur of darkness. Veered into a panther as huge as Gruntle himself, she coiled to spring.

In his mind, he saw a single, quick nod. Yes. Baring his fangs, Gruntle lunged to meet her.

Far to the northeast, something glittered. Mappo stood studying it for a long time, as the sun swelled the horizon behind him, and then slunk, red and sullen, down past the edge of the world. That distant, flashing fire held on for a while longer, like burning hills.

He drew the waterskin from his sack, drank deep, and then crouched down to probe his lacerated feet. The soles of the boots had been torn away by the fierce assault of crystal shards. Since noon he had been trailing blood, each smear vanishing beneath a frenzied clump of cape-moths, as if flowers sprang from his every footprint. Such is the gift of life in this tortured place. He drew a deep breath. The muscles of his legs were like clenched fists beneath him. He could not push on for much longer, not without a full night of rest.

But time is running out.

Mappo drank once more and then stored the waterskin. Shouldering the pack, he set off. Northeast.

The Jade Spears slashed a path into the night sky, and green light bled down, transforming the desert floor into a luminescent sea. As he jogged, Mappo imagined himself crossing the basin of an ocean. The bitter cold air filled his lungs, biting like ice with each indrawn breath. From this place, he knew, he would never surface. The thought disturbed him and with a growl he cast it from his mind.

As he ran, shooting stars raced and flared overhead, growing into an emerald storm, criss-crossing the heavens. He thought that, if he listened carefully enough, he might hear them, hissing like steam as they skipped, and then igniting with a crack of thunder once they began their final descent. But the rasping was only his own breath, the thunder nothing but the drum of his own heart. The sky stayed silent, and the burning arrows remained far, far away.

The sorrow in his soul had begun to taste sour. Aged and dissolute, moments from crumbling. He did not know what would come in its wake. Resignation, as might find a fatally ill man in his last days? Or just an exultant eagerness to see it all end? At the moment, even despair seemed too much effort.

He drew closer, eyes fixing on what seemed a range of tall crystals, green as glacial ice, rising to command the scene ahead. His exhausted mind struggled to make sense of it. Something … order, a pattern …

Oh, gods, I’ve seen its like before. In stone.

Icarium—

Immortal architect, builder of monuments, you set out to challenge the gods, to defy the weavers of time. Maker of what cannot die, but with each edifice you raise the things that you need the most – the memories the rest of us guard so zealously – and they arrive stillborn in your hands. Each one as dead as the one before.

And look at us, we who would pray to forget so much – our regrets, our foolish choices, the hurts we delivered over a lifetime – we think nothing of this gift, this freedom we see as a cage, and in our rattling fury we wish that we were just like you.

Raiser of empty buildings. Visionary of silent cities.

But how many times could he remind Icarium of friendship? The precious comfort of familiar company? How many times could he fill once more all those empty rooms? My friend, my bottomless well. But should I tell you the truth, then you would take your own life.

Is that so bad a thing? With all that you have done? Is it?

And now you are threatened. And helpless. I feel this. I know it as truth. I fear that you will be awakened, in all your rage, and that this time there will be more than just humans within reach of your sword. This time there will be gods.

Someone wants you, Icarium, to be their weapon.

But … if I reach you first, I could awaken you to who you are. I could speak the truth of your history, friend. And when you set the point of the dagger to your chest, I could stand back. Do nothing. I could honour you with the one thing I still had – myself. I could be the witness to your one act of justice.

I could talk you into killing yourself.

Is it possible? That this is where friendship can take us?

What would I do then?

I would bury you. And weep over the stones. For my loss, as friends will do.

The city was his genius – Mappo could see that truth in every line – but as he drew closer, squinting at the strangely flowing light and shadows in the facets of crystal, he saw evidence of occupation. His steps slowed.

Broken husks of fruit, fragments of clothing, the musty smell of dried faeces.

The sun was beginning to rise – had it been that far? He approached the nearest, broadest avenue. As he passed between two angular buildings, he froze at a flicker of movement – there, reflected from a facet projecting from the wall to his right. And as he stared, he saw it again.

Children. Walking past.

Yet no one was here – no one but me.

They were wending their way out of the city – hundreds upon hundreds of children. Stick-thin limbs and bellies swollen with starvation. As he watched the procession, he saw not a single adult among them.

Mappo walked on, catching glimpses in the crystals of their brief occupation, their squatting presence amidst palatial – if cold – splendour. Icarium, I begin to understand. And yet, cruellest joke of all, this was the one place you could never find again.

Every time you said you felt close … this city was the place you sought. These crystal machines of memory. And the trail you hunted – it did not matter if we were on another continent, it did not matter if we were half a world away – that trail was one of remembering. Remembering this city.

He went on, piecing together the more recent history, the army of children, and many times he caught sight of one girl, her mouth crusted with sores, her hair bleached of all colour. And huge eyes that seemed to somehow find his own – but that was impossible. She was long gone, with all the other children. She could not be—

Ah! This is the one! Voicing songs of incantation – the banisher of the d’ivers. Opals gems shards – this is the child.

He had come to a central square. She was there, looking out at him from a tilted spire of quartz. He walked until he stood in front of her, and her eyes tracked him all the way.

‘You are just a memory,’ Mappo said. ‘It is a function of the machine, to trap the life passing through it. You cannot be looking at me – no, someone has walked my path, someone has come to stand before you here.’ He swung round.

Fifteen paces away, before the sealed door of a narrow structure, Mappo saw a boy, tall, clutching a bundled shape. Their eyes met.

I am between them. That is all. They do not see me. They see each other.

But the boy’s eyes pinned him like knife points. And he spoke. ‘Do not turn away.’

Mappo staggered as if struck.

Behind him, the girl said, ‘Icarias cannot hold us. The city is troubled.’

He faced her again. A boy had come up beside her, in his scrawny arms a heap of rubbish. He studied the girl’s profile with open adoration. She blew flies from her lips.

‘Badalle.’ The tall boy’s voice drifted past him. ‘What did you dream?’

The girl smiled. ‘No one wants us, Rutt. Not one – in their lives they won’t change a thing to help us. In their lives they make ever more of us, but when they say they care about our future, they’re lying. The words are empty. Powerless. But I have seen words of real power, Rutt, and each one is a weapon. A weapon. That is why adults spend a lifetime blunting them.’ She shrugged. ‘No one likes getting cut.’

When the boy spoke again, it was as if he stood in Mappo’s place. ‘What did you dream, Badalle?’

‘In the end we take our language with us. In the end, we leave them all behind.’ She turned to the boy beside her and frowned. ‘Throw them away. I don’t like them.’

The boy shook his head.

‘What did you dream, Badalle?’

The girl’s gaze returned, centring on Mappo’s face. ‘I saw a tiger. I saw an ogre. I saw men and women. Then a witch came and took their children away. And not one of them tried to stop her.’

‘It wasn’t like that,’ Mappo whispered. But it was.

‘Then one rode after them – he wasn’t much older than you, Rutt. I think. He was hard to see. A ghost got in the way. He was young enough to still listen to his conscience.’

‘It wasn’t like that!’

‘Is that all?’ asked the boy named Rutt.

‘No,’ she replied, ‘but he’s heard enough.’

Mappo cried out, staggered back, away. He shot a look back and saw her eyes tracking him. And in his skull, she said, ‘Ogre, I can’t save you, and you can’t save him. Not from himself. He is your Held, but every child wakes up. In this world, every child wakes up – and it is what all of you fear the most. Look at Rutt. He has Held in his arms. And you, you go to find your Held, to fill your arms once more. Look at Rutt. He is terrified of Held waking up. He’s just like you. Now hear my poem. It is for you.

‘She made you choose

which child to save.

And you chose.

One to save,

the others to surrender.

It is not an easy choice

But you make it every day

That is not an easy truth

But the truth is every day

One of us among those

You walk away from

Dies

And there are more truths

In this world

Than I can count

But each time you walk away

The memory remains

And no matter how far or fast

You run

The memory remains.’

Mappo spun, fled the square.

Echoes pursued him. Carrying her voice. ‘In Icarias, memory remains. In Icarias waits the tomb of all that is forgotten. Where memory remains. Where he would have found his truth. Do you choose to save him now, Ogre? Do you choose to bring him to his city? When he opens his own tomb, what will he find?

What do any of us find?

Will you dare map your life, Ogre, by each dead child left in your wake? You see, I dreamed a dream I cannot tell Rutt, because I love him. I dreamed of a tomb, Ogre, filled with every dead child.

It seems, then, that we are all builders of monuments.

Shrieking, Mappo ran. And ran, leaving a trail of bloody footprints, and on all sides, his reflection. Forever trapped.

Because the memory remains.

‘Will you ever tire, Setch, of gloom and doom?’

Sechul Lath glanced across at Errastas. ‘I will, the moment you tire of all that blood on your hands.’

Errastas snarled. ‘And is it your task to ever remind me of it?’

‘To be honest, I don’t know. I suppose I could carve out my own eyes, and then bless my newfound blindness—’

‘Do you now mock my wound?’

‘No, forgive me. I was thinking of the poet who one day decided he’d seen too much.’

Behind them, Kilmandaros asked, ‘And did his self-mutilation change the world?’

‘Irrevocably, Mother.’

‘How so?’ she asked.

‘Eyes can be hard as armour. They can be hardened to see yet feel nothing, if the will is strong enough. You’ve seen such eyes, Mother – you as well, Errastas. They lie flat in the sockets, like stone walls. They are capable of witnessing any and every atrocity. Nothing gets in, nothing gets out. Now, that poet, he removed those stones. Tore away the veil, permanently. So what was inside, well, it all poured out.’

‘But, being blinded, nothing that was outside could find a way in.’

‘Indeed, Mother, but by then it was too late. It had to be, if you think about it.’

‘So it poured out,’ grumbled Errastas. ‘Then what?’

‘I’d hazard it changed the world.’

‘Not for the better,’ Kilmandaros muttered.

‘I have no burning need, Errastas,’ said Sechul Lath, ‘to cure the ills of the world. This one or any other.’

‘Yet you observe critically—’

‘If all honest observation ends up sounding critical, is it the honesty you then reject, or the act of observation?’

‘Why not both?’

‘Indeed, why not both? Abyss knows, it’s easier that way.’

‘Why do you bother, then?’

‘Errastas, I am left with two choices. I could weep for a reason, or weep for no reason. In the latter we find madness.’

‘And is the former any different?’ Kilmandaros asked.

‘Yes. A part of me chooses to believe that if I weep long enough, I’ll weep myself out. And then, in the ashes – in the aftermath – will be born something else.’

‘Like what?’ Errastas demanded.

Sechul Lath shrugged. ‘Hope.’

‘See this hole in my face, Knuckles? I too weep, but my tears are blood.’

‘My friend, at last you have become the true god of all the living worlds. When you finally stand at the very pinnacle of all creation, we shall raise statues marking your holy wounding, symbol of life’s ceaseless suffering.’

‘This I will accept, so long as the blood leaking down my face isn’t my own.’

Kilmandaros grunted. ‘No doubt your worshippers will be happy to bleed for you, Errastas, until the Abyss swallows us all.’

‘And I shall possess a thirst to match their generosity.’

‘When we—’

But Kilmandaros’s hand suddenly gripped Sechul’s shoulder and spun him round. ‘Friends,’ she said in a rumble, ‘it is time.’

They faced the way they had come.

From the ridge where they stood, the basin to the west stretched out flat, studded with rocks and tufts of wiry grass, for as far as they could see. But now, under the mid-morning light, the vista had begun to change. Spreading in a vast, curved shadow, the ground was bleaching, all colour draining away. From grey to white, until it seemed that the entire basin was a thing of bone and ash, and in the distance – at the very centre of this blight – the earth had begun to rise.

‘She awakens,’ said Kilmandaros.

‘And now,’ whispered Errastas, his lone eyes glittering bright, ‘we shall speak of dragons.’

A hill where no hill had been before, lifting to command the horizon, bulging, swelling – a mountain—

They saw it explode, a billowing eruption of earth and stone.

Huge cracks ripped across the basin floor. The entire ridge rippled under them and all three Elder Gods staggered.

As the column of dust and ashes rose skyward, as the cloud opened like a mushroom to fill half the sky, the sound finally reached them, solid as a rushing wall, igniting stunning agony inside their skulls. Sechul and Errastas were battered to the ground, sent tumbling. Even Kilmandaros was thrown from her feet – Sechul stared across at her, saw her mouth opened wide in a terrible scream that he could not hear amidst the howling wind, the crushing thunder of that eruption.

Twisting round, he stared at the vast, roiling cloud. Korabas. You are returned to the world.

Within the maelstrom spinning vortices of dirt, dust and smoke had begun to form. He watched them coil, pushed out to the sides as if buffeted by some unseen column of rising air at the very centre. Sechul frowned.

Her wings? Are those made by her wings? Elder blood!

As the roar died away, Sechul Lath heard Errastas. Laughing.

‘Mother?’

Kilmandaros was climbing to her feet. She glanced across at her son. ‘Korabas Otataral iras’Eleint. Otataral, Sechul, is not a thing – it is a title.’ She turned to Errastas. ‘Errant! Do you know its meaning?’

The one-eyed Elder God’s laughter slowly died. He looked away. ‘What do I care for ancient titles?’ he muttered.

‘Mother?’

She faced the terrible blight of earth and sky to the west. ‘Otas’taral. In every storm there is an eye, a place of … stillness. Otas’taral means the Eye of Abnegation. And now, upon the world, we have birthed a storm.’

Sechul Lath sank back down, covered his face with dust-stained hands. Will I ever tire? Yes. I have. See what we have unleashed. See what we have begun.

Errastas staggered close, falling to his knees beside Sechul, who looked up into that ravaged face and saw both manic glee and brittle terror. The Errant smiled a ghastly smile. ‘Do you see, Setch? They have to stop her! They have no choice!’

Yes, please. Stop her.

‘She has begun to move,’ Kilmandaros announced.

Sechul pushed Errastas to one side and sat up. But the sky revealed nothing: too much dust, too much smoke and ash – the pall had devoured two-thirds of the heavens, and the last third looked sickly, as if in retreat. The unnatural gloom was settling fast. ‘Where?’ he demanded.

His mother pointed. ‘Track her by the ground. For now, it is all we can do.’

Sechul Lath stood.

‘There,’ she said.

A broad swathe of bleached death, stretching in a line. ‘Northeast,’ he whispered, watching the slow, devastating blight cutting its slash across the landscape. ‘All that lies beneath her …’

‘Where she passes,’ said Kilmandaros, ‘no life shall ever return. The stillness of matter becomes absolute. She is the Eye of Abnegation, the storm’s centre, where all must die.’

‘Mother, we have gone too far. This time—’

‘It’s too late!’ shrieked Errastas. ‘She is the heart of sorcery! Without the Eye of Abnegation, there can be no magic!’

‘What?’

But Kilmandaros was shaking her head. ‘It is not as simple as that.’

‘What isn’t?’ Sechul demanded.

‘Now that she is freed,’ she said, ‘the Eleint must kill her. They have no choice. Their power is magical, and Korabas will kill all that magic depends upon. And since she is immune to their sorcery, it must be by fang and claw, and that will demand every Eleint – every storm, until T’iam herself is awakened. And as for K’rul, well, he can no longer refuse the Errant’s summons – he was the one who harnessed the chaos of the dragons in the first place.’

‘They have to kill her!’ cried Errastas. The blood leaking from his eye was now black with dust.

Kilmandaros grunted non-committally. ‘If they truly kill her, Errastas, then the storm dies.’ She faced him. ‘But you knew this – or at least guessed the truth. What you seek is the death of all sorcery bound to laws of control. You seek to create a realm where no mortal can hurt you, ever again. A realm where the blood is sacrificed in our name, but in truth we have no power to intervene, even if we wanted to. You desire worship, Errastas, but one where you need give nothing in return. Have I guessed right?’

Sechul Lath shook his head. ‘They cannot kill her—’

Errastas wheeled on him. ‘But they must! I told you! I will see them all destroyed! The meddling gods – I want our children dead! K’rul will understand – he will see that there’s no other way, no way to end this venal, pathetic tragedy.’ He stabbed a finger at Sechul. ‘You thought this was a game? Cheating with the knuckles, and then a wink to the moll? I summoned the Elder Gods! K’rul thinks to ignore me? No! I have forced his hand!’ He suddenly cackled, his fingers twitching. ‘She is a blood clot let loose in his veins! And she will find his brain, and he will die! I am the Master of the Holds, and I will not be ignored!’

Sechul Lath staggered back from Errastas. ‘They chained her the first time,’ he said, ‘because killing her was not an option – not if they wanted to keep the warrens alive.’ He whirled on Kilmandaros. ‘Mother – did you – did …’

She turned away. ‘I grew tired of this,’ she said.

Tired? ‘But – but the heart of the Crippled God—’

Errastas spat. ‘What do we care about that dried-up slab of meat? He’ll be as dead as the rest of them by the time this is done! So will the Forkrul Assail – and all the rest who’d think to challenge me! You didn’t believe me, Setch – you chose to not take me seriously – again.’

Sechul Lath shook his head. ‘I understand you now. Your real enemy is the Master of the Deck of Dragons. Dragons who are warrens – all that new, raw power. But you knew that you could not hope to match that Master – not so long as the gods and warrens remained dominant. So you devised a plan to kill it all. The Deck, the sorcery of the Dragons, the Master – the gods. But what makes you think that the Holds will somehow prove immune to the Eye of Abnegation?’

‘Because the Holds are Elder, you fool. It was K’rul’s bartering with the Eleint that made this whole mess – that brought the warrens into the realms, that forced order upon the chaos of the Old Magic. K’rul’s conniving that saw one dragon selected among the Grand Clan, chosen to become the Negator, the Otataral, while all the others would chain themselves to aspects of magic. They brought law to sorcery, and now I will shatter that law. For ever more!’

‘K’rul sought peace—’

‘He sought to trump us! And so he did – but that ends today! Today! Sechul Lath, did you not agree to end it all? By your words, you agreed!’

I wasn’t serious. I’m never serious. That’s my curse. ‘So, Errastas, if you will not seek the heart of the Crippled God, where will you go now?’

‘That is my business,’ he snapped, turning to study the bleached scar crossing the land. ‘Far away.’ He faced Sechul again. ‘Mael finally comprehends what we have done here – but tell me, do you see him? Does he charge towards us now in all his fury? He does not. And Ardata? Know that she too now schemes anew. As does Olar Ethil – the Elders once more approach ascension, a return to rule. There is much to be done.’

The Errant set off, then. Southward.

He flees.

Sechul turned to Kilmandaros. ‘I see my path now, Mother, from this moment onward. Shall I describe it for you? I see myself wandering, lost and alone. With only a growing madness for company. It is a vision – I see it clear as day. Well,’ and his laugh was dry, ‘every pantheon needs a fool, drooling and wild-eyed.’

‘My son,’ she said, ‘it is only a plan.’

‘Excuse me? What?’

‘The Errant. What we have unleashed here cannot be controlled. Now, more than ever, the future is unknown, no matter what he chooses to believe.’

‘Can she be chained again, Mother?’

She shrugged. ‘Anomander Rake is dead. The other Eleint who partook of the chaining, they too are now dead.’

‘K’rul—’

‘She is loose within him. He can do nothing. The Eleint who come will fight her. They will seek to take her down – but Korabas has long ago surrendered her sanity, and she will fight them to the bitter end. I expect most will die.’

‘Mother, please.’

Kilmandaros sighed. ‘You will not stay with me, my son?’

‘To witness your meeting with Draconus? I think not.’

She nodded.

‘Draconus will kill you!’

She faced him with burning eyes. ‘It was only a plan, my beloved son.’