Toll the Hounds

CHAPTER EIGHT

The swath of ground where all the grasses had been worn away might have marked the passing of a herd of bhederin, if not for the impos shy;sibly wide ruts left behind by the enormous studded wheels of a wagon, and the rubbish and occasional withered corpses scatttred to either side, vultures and crows danced among the detritus.

Traveller sat slouched in the Seven Cities saddle atop the piebald gelding. Nearby, at the minimum distance that his horse would accept, was the witch, Samar Dev, perched like a child above the long-legged, gaunt and fierce Jhag horse whose name was, she had said, Havok. The beast’s true owner was somewhere ahead, perhaps behind the Skathandi and the Captain’s monstrous carriage, or be shy;yond it. Either way, she was certain a clash was imminent.

‘He dislikes slavers,’ she had said earlier, as if this explained everything.

No demon, then, but a Toblakai of true blood, a detail that sent pangs of regret and pain through Traveller, for reasons he kept to himself — and though she had seen something of that anguish in his face it appeared she would respect his pri shy;vacy. Or perhaps feared its surrender, for Samar Dev was a woman, he suspected, prone to plunging into vast depths of emotion.

She had, after all, travelled through warrens to find the trail of the one ahead of them on this plain, and such an undertaking was not embraced on a whim. All to deliver a horse. He knew enough to leave it at that, poor as it might be as justifi shy;cation for such extremity. The Kindaru had accepted the reason with sage nods, seeing nothing at all unusual in any of it — the horse was a sacred beast, after all, a Jhag, brother to their cherished horses-of-the-rock. They possessed legends with similar themes, and indeed they had spent half the night recounting many of them — and now they had found themselves a new one. Master of the Wolf-Horses met a woman so driven as to be his own reflection, and together they rode into the north, having drawn their threads through the last camp of the Kindaru, and were now entwined each with the other and both with the Kindaru, and though this was a tale not yet done it would nevertheless live on, for as long as lived the Kindaru themselves.

He had noted the grief in Samar Dev’s weary, weathered face, as the many wounds delivered — in all innocence — by the Kindaru slowly sank deeper, piercing her heart, and now compassion swirled dark and raw in her eyes, although the Kindaru were far behind them now. It was clear, brutally so, that both she and Traveller had collected a new thread to twist into their lives.

‘How far ahead?’ she asked.

‘Two days at the most.’

‘Then he might have found them by now, or they him.’

‘Yes, it’s possible. If this Skathandi Captain has an army, well; even a Toblakai can die.’

‘I know that,’ she replied. Then added, ‘Maybe.’

‘And there are but two of us, Samar Dev.’

‘If you’d rather cut away from this trail, Traveller, I will not question your de shy;cision. But I need to find him.’

He glanced away. ‘His horse, yes.’

‘And other things.’

Traveller considered for a time. He studied the broad, churned-up track. A thou shy;sand or five thousand; when people were moving in column it was always difficult to tell. The carriage itself would be a thing worth seeing, however, and the direction just happened to be the one he needed to take. The prospect of being forced into a detour was unacceptable. ‘If your friend is smart, he won’t do anything overt. He’ll hide, as best one can on these plains, until he sees an advantage — though what that advantage might be, against so many, I can’t imagine.’

‘So you will stay with me for a while longer?’

He nodded.

‘Then I should tell you some things, I think.’

They guided their horses on to the track and rode at the trot.

Traveller waited for her to continue.

The sun’s heat reminded him of his homeland, the savannahs of Dal Hon, although in this landscape there were fewer flies, and of the enormous herds of countless kinds of beasts — and the ones that hunted them — there was little sign. Here on the Lamatath there were bhederin, a lone breed of antelope, hares, wolves, coyotes, bears and not much else. Plenty of hawks and falcons overhead, of course — but this place did not teem as one might expect and he wondered about that.

Had the conflagration at Morn wiped everything out? Left a blasted landscape slow to recover, into which only a few species drifted down from the north? Or were the K’Chain Che’Malle rabid hunters, indulging in a slaughterfest that did not end until they themselves were extinct?

‘What do you know of the Emperor of a Thousand Deaths?’

He glanced across at her. ‘Not much. Only that he cannot be killed.’

‘Right.’

He waited.

Locusts crawled across the dusty track amidst shredded blades of grass, as if wondering who had beaten them to it. Somewhere high above a raptor loosed a piercing cry, the kind intended to panic a bird in flight.

‘His sword was forged by the power of the Crippled God. Possessing levels of sorcery to which the wielder can reach, each time, only by dying — fighting and dying with that weapon in his hands. The Emperor, a poor ravaged creature, a Tiste Edur, knew that death was but an illusion. He knew, I am certain of it, that he was cursed, so terribly cursed. That sword had driven him mad.’

Traveller imagined that such a weapon would indeed drive its wielder insane. He could feel sweat on the palms of his hands and shifted the reins into his right hand, settling the other on his thigh. His mouth felt unaccountably dry.

‘He needed champions. Challengers. Sometimes they would kill him. Some shy;times more than once. But as he came back again and again, ever stronger, in the end the challenger would fall. And so it went.’

‘A terrible fate,’ Traveller muttered.

‘Until one day some ships arrived. On board, yet more champions from distant lands. Among them, Karsa Orlong, the Toblakai. I happened to be with him, then.’

‘I would hear the story behind such a partnership.’

‘Maybe later. There was someone else, another champion. His name was Icarium.’

Traveller slowly twisted in his saddle, studied the woman across from him, Some unconscious message told the gelding to halt.

Samar’s Jhag horse continued on for a few steps, then she reined it in and turned to meet Traveller’s eyes. ‘I believe, if Icarium had met the Emperor, well, the dying would still be going on, spreading like a wildfire. An entire continent. . pretty much incinerated. Who knows, perhaps the entire world.’

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

‘Instead,’ Samar Dev said, ‘Karsa was sent for first.’

‘What happened?’

Her smile was sad. ‘They fought.’

‘Samar Dev,’ Traveller said, ‘that makes no sense. The Toblakai still lives.’

‘Karsa killed the Emperor. With finality.’

‘How?’

‘I have some suspicions. I believe that, somewhere, somehow, Karsa Orlong spoke with the Crippled God — not a pleasant conversation, I’m sure. Karsa rarely has those.’

‘Then the Emperor of a Thousand Deaths-’

‘Gone, delivered unto a final death. I like to believe Rhulad thanked Karsa with his last breath.’

If there was need for such a thought she was welcome to it. ‘And the sword? Does the Toblakai now carry it as his own?’

She collected her reins and nudged her mount onward. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Another reason why I have to find him.’

You are not alone in that, woman. ‘He bargained with the Crippled God. He replaced the Emperor.’

‘Did he?’

He urged his horse forward, came up alongside her once more. ‘What other possibility is there?’

And to that she grinned. ‘Ah, but that is where I know something you don’t, Traveller. I know Karsa Orlong.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It’s his favourite game, you see, pretending to be so. . obvious. Blunt, lacking all subtlety, all decorum. Just a savage, after all. The only possibility is the obvi shy;ous one, isn’t it? That’s why I don’t believe that’s what he’s done.’

‘You don’t wish to believe, you mean. Now I will speak plain, Samar Dev. If your Toblakai wields the sword of the Crippled God, he shall have to either yield it or draw it against me. Such a weapon must be destroyed.’

‘You set yourself as an enemy of the Crippled God? Well, you’re hardly alone in that, are you?’

He frowned. ‘I did not then,’ he said, ‘nor do I desire to do so now. But he goes too far.’

‘Who are you, Traveller?’

‘I played the game of civilization once, Samar Dev. But in the end I remain as I am, a savage.’

‘Too many have put themselves into Karsa Orlong’s path,’ she said. ‘They do not stand there long.’ A pause, and then, ‘Civilized or barbarian — those are but words — the cruel killer can wear all the costumes he wants, can pretend to great causes and hard necessities. God’s below, it all sickens me, the way you fools carry on. Over the whole damned world it’s ever the same.’

He answered this rant with silence, for he believed it was ever the same, and that it would never change. Animals remained just that, whether sentient or not, and they fought, they killed, they died. Life was suffered until it was over, and then. . then what?

An end. It had to be that. It must be that.

Riding on, now, no words between them. Already past the telling of stories, the recounting of adventures. All that mattered, for each of them, was what lay ahead.

With the Toblakai named Karsa Orlong.

Some time in his past, the man known as the Captain had been a prisoner to some shy;one. At some point he had outlived his usefulness and had been staked out on the plain, wooden spikes driven through his hands, his feet, hammered to the hard earth to feed the ants, to feed all the carrion hunters of Lamatath. But he’d not been ready to die just then. He had pulled his hands through the spikes, had worked his feet free, and had crawled on elbows and knees half a league, down into a valley where a once-mighty river had dwindled to a stream fringed by cottonwoods.

His hands were ruined. His feet could not bear his weight. And, he was con shy;vinced, the ants that had crawled into his ears had never left, trapped in the tun shy;nels of his skull, making of his brain a veritable nest — he could taste their acidic exudations on his swollen, blackened tongue.

If the legend was true, and it was, hoary long-forgotten river spirits had squirmed up from the mud beneath the exposed bank’s cracked skin, clawing like vermin to where he huddled fevered and shivering. To give life was no gift for such creatures; no, to give was in turn to take. As the king feeds his heir all he needs to survive, so the heir feeds the king with the illusion of immortality. And the hand reaches be shy;tween the bars of one cage, out to the hand reaching between the bars of the other cage. They exchange more than just touch.

The spirits fed him life. And he took them into his soul and gave them a new home. They proved, alas, restless, uncivil guests.

The journey and the transformation into a nomadic tyrant of the Lamatath Plains was long, difficult, and miraculous to any who could have seen the wretched, maimed creature the Captain had once been. Countless tales spun like dust-devils about him, many invented, some barely brushing the truth.

His ruined feet made walking an ordeal. His fingers had curled into hooklike things, the bones beneath calcifying into unsightly knobs and protrusions. To see his hands was to be reminded of the feet of vultures clutched in death.

He rode on a throne set on the forward-facing balcony of the carriage’s second tier, protected from the midday sun by a faded red canvas awning. Before him walked somewhere between four hundred and five hundred slaves, yoked to the carriage, each one leaning forward as they strained to pull the enormous wheeled palace over the rough ground, An equal number rested in the wagons of the entourage, helping the cooks and the weavers and the carpenters until their turn came in the harnesses.

The Captain did not believe in stopping. No camps were established. Motion was everything. Motion was eternal. His two wings of cavalry, each a hundred knights strong, rode in flanking positions, caparisoned in full banded armour and ebony cloaks, helmed and carrying barbed lances, the heads glinting in the sun shy;light. Behind the palace was a mobile kraal of three hundred horses, his greatest pride, for the bloodlines were strong and much of his wealth (that which he did not attain through raiding) came from them. Horse-traders from far to the south sought him out on this wasteland, and paid solid gold for the robust destriers.

A third troop of horse warriors, lighter-armoured, ranged far and wide on all sides of his caravan, ensuring that no enemy threatened, and seeking out possible targets — this was the season, after all, and there were — rarely these days, true enough — bands of savages eking out a meagre existence on the grasslands, including those who bred grotesque mockeries of horses, wide-rumped and bristle-maned, that if nothing else proved good eating. These ranging troops included raiding parties of thirty or more, and at any one time the Captain had four or five such groups out scouring the plains.

Merchants had begun hiring mercenary troops, setting out to hunt him down. But those he could not buy off he destroyed. His knights were terrible in battle.

The Captain’s kingdom had been on the move for seven years now, rolling in a vast circle that encompassed most of the Lamatath. This territory he claimed as his own, and to this end he had recently dispatched emissaries to all the bordering cities — Darujhistan, Kurl and Saltoan to the north, New Callows to the southwest, Bastion and Sarn to the northeast — Elingarth to the south was in the midst of civil war, so he would wait that out.

In all, the Captain was pleased with his kingdom. His slaves were breeding, pro shy;viding what would be the next generation drawing his palace. Hunting parties car shy;ried in bhederin and antelope to supplement the finer foodstuffs looted from passing caravans. The husbands and wives of his soldiers brought with them all the neces shy;sary skills to maintain his court and his people, and they too were thriving.

So like a river, meandering over the land, this kingdom of his. The ancient, half-mad spirits were most pleased.

Though he never much thought about it, the nature of his tyranny was, as far as he was concerned, relatively benign. Not with respect to foreigners, of course, but then who gave a damn for them? Not his blood, not his adopted kin, not his responsibility. And if they could not withstand his kingdom’s appetites, then whose fault was that? Not his.

Creation demands destruction. Survival demands that something else fails to survive. No existence was truly benign.

Still, the Captain often dreamed of finding those who had nailed him to the ground all those years ago — his memories of that time were maddeningly vague. He could not make out their faces, or their garb. He could not recall the details of their camp, and as for who and what he had been before that time, well, he had no memory at all. Reborn in a riverbed. He would, when drunk, laugh and proclaim that he was but eleven years old, eleven from that day of rebirth, that day of beginning anew,

He noted the lone rider coming in from the southwest, the man pushing his horse hard, and the Captain frowned — the fool had better have a good reason for abusing the beast in that manner. He didn’t appreciate his soldiers posturing and to make bold impressions. He decided that, if the reason was insufficient, he would have the man executed in the traditional manner — trampled into bloody ruin beneath the hoofs of his horses.

The rider drew up alongside the palace, a servant on the side platform taking the reins of the horse as the man stepped aboard. An exchange of words with the Master Sergeant, and then the man was climbing the steep steps to the ledge sur shy;rounding the balcony. Where, his head level with the Captain’s knees, he bowed.

‘Sire, Fourth Troop, adjudged ablest rider to deliver this message.’

‘Go on,’ said the Captain.

‘Another raiding party was found, sire, all slain in the same manner as the first one. Near a Kindaru camp this time.’

‘The Kindaru? They are useless. Against thirty of my soldiers? That cannot be.’

‘Troop Leader Uludan agrees, sire. The proximity of the Kindaru was but coincidental — or it was the raiding party’s plan to ambush them.’

Yes, that was likely. The damned Kindaru and their delicious horses were get shy;ting hard to find of late. ‘Does Uludan now track the murderers?’

‘Difficult, sire. They seem to possess impressive lore and are able to thor shy;oughly hide their trail. It may be that they are aided by sorcery.’

‘Your thought or Uludan’s?’

A faint flush of the man’s face. ‘Mine, sire.’

‘I did not invite your opinion, soldier.’

‘No, sire. I apologize.’

Sorcery — the spirits within should have sensed such a thing anywhere on his territory. Which tribes were capable of assembling such skilled and no doubt nu shy;merous warriors? Well, one obvious answer was the Barghast — but they did not travel the Lamatath. They dwelt far to the north, along the edges of the Rhivi Plain, in fact, and north of Capustan. There should be no Barghast this far south. And if, somehow, there were. . the Captain scowled. ‘Twenty knights shall ac shy;company you back to the place of slaughter. You then lead them to Uludan’s troop. Find the trail no matter what.’

‘We shall, sire.’

‘Be sure Uludan understands.’

‘Yes, sire.’

And understand he would. The knights were there not just to provide a heav shy;ier adjunct to the troop. They were to exact whatever punishment the sergeant deemed necessary should Uludan fail.

The Captain had just lost sixty soldiers. Almost a fifth of his total number of light cavalry.

‘Go now,’ he said to the rider, ‘and find Sergeant Teven and send him to me at once.’

‘Yes, sire.’

As the man climbed back down, the Captain leaned back in his throne, staring down at the dusty backs of the yoked slaves. Kindaru there, yes. And Sinbarl and the last seven or so Gandaru, slope-browed cousins of the Kindaru soon to be en shy;tirely extinct. A shame, that — they were strong bastards, hard-working, never com shy;plaining. He’d set aside the two surviving women and they now rode a wagon, bellies swollen with child, eating fat grubs, the yolk of snake eggs and other bizarre foods the Gandaru were inclined towards. Were the children on the way pure Gandaru? He did not think so — their women rutted anything with a third leg, and far less submissively than he thought prudent. Even so, one or both of those children might well be his.

Not as heirs, of course. His bastard children held no special rights. He did not even acknowledge them. No, he would adopt an heir when the time came — and, if the whispered promises of the spirits were true, that could be centuries away.

His mind had stepped off the path, he realized.

Sixty slain soldiers. Was the kingdom of Skathandi at war? Perhaps so.

Yet the enemy clearly did not dare face him here, with his knights and the en shy;tire mass of his army ready and able to take the field of battle. Thus, whatever army would fight him was small-

Shouts from ahead.

The Captain’s eyes narrowed. From his raised vantage point he could see with shy;out obstruction that a lone figure was approaching from the northwest. A skin of white fur flapped in the breeze like the wing of a ghost-moth, spreading out from the broad shoulders. A longsword was strapped to the man’s back, its edges oddly rippled, the blade itself a colour unlike any metal the Captain knew.

As the figure came closer, as if expecting the massed slaves to simply part be shy;fore him, the Captain’s sense of scale was jarred. The warrior was enormous, eas shy;ily half again as tall as the tallest Skathandi — taller even than a Barghast. A face seemingly masked — no, tattooed, in a crazed broken glass or tattered web pattern. Beneath that barbaric visage, the torso was covered in some kind of shell armour, pretty but probably useless.

Well, the fool — huge or not — was about to be trampled or pushed aside. Motion was eternal. Motion was — a sudden spasm clutched at the Captain’s mind, digging fingers into his brain — the spirits, thrashing in terror — shrieking-

A taste of acid on his tongue-

Gasping, the Captain gestured.

A servant, who sat behind him in an upright coffin-shaped box, watching through a slit in the wood, saw the signal and pulled hard on a braided rope. A horn blared, followed by three more.

And, for the first time in seven years, the kingdom of Skathandi ground to a halt.

The giant warrior strode for the head of the slave column. He drew his sword. As he swung down with that savage weapon, the slaves began screaming.

From both flanks, the ground shook as knights charged inward.

More frantic gestures from the Captain. Horns sounded again and the knights shifted en masse, swung out wide to avoid the giant.

The sword’s downward stroke had struck the centre spar linking the yoke harnessess. Edge on blunt end, splitting the spar for half its twenty-man length. Bolts scattered, chains rushed through iron loops to coil and slither on to the ground.

The Captain was on his feet, tottering, gripping the bollards of the balcony rail. He could see, as his knights drew up into ranks once more, all heads turned towards him, watching, waiting for the command. But he could not move. Pain lanced up his legs from the misshapen bones of his feet. He held on to the ornate posts with his feeble hands. Ants swarmed in his skull.

The spirits were gone.

Fled.

He was alone. He was empty.

Reeling back, falling into his throne.

He saw one of his sergeants ride out, drawing closer to the giant, who now stood leaning on his sword. The screams of the slaves sank away and those sud shy;denly free of their bindings staggered to either side, some falling to their knees as if subjecting themselves before a new king, a usurper. The sergeant reined in and, eyes level with the giant’s own, began speaking.

The Captain was too far away. He could not hear, and he needed to — sweat poured from him, soaking his fine silks. He shivered as fever rose through him. He looked down at his hands and saw blood welling from the old wounds — opened once more — and from his feet as well, pooling in the soft padded slippers. He remembered, suddenly, what it was like to think about dying, letting go, sur shy;rendering. There, yes, beneath the shade of the cottonwoods-

The sergeant collected his reins and rode at the canter for the palace.

He drew up, dismounted in a clatter of armour and reached up to remove his visored helm. Then he ascended the steps.

‘Captain, sir. The fool claims that the slaves are now free.’

Staring into the soldier’s blue eyes, the grizzled expression now widened by dis shy;belief, by utter amazement, the Captain felt a pang of pity. ‘He is the one, isn’t he?’

‘Sir?’

‘The enemy. The slayer of my subjects. I feel it. The truth — I see it, I feel it. I taste it!’

The sergeant said nothing.

‘He wants my throne,’ the Captain whispered, holding up his bleeding hands. ‘Was that all this was for, do you think? All I’ve done, just for him?’

‘Captain,’ the sergeant said in a harsh growl. ‘He has ensorcelled you. We will cut him down.’

‘No. You do not understand. They’re gone!’

‘Sir-’

‘Make camp, Sergeant. Tell him — tell him he is to be my guest at dinner. My guest. Tell him. . tell him. . my guest, yes, just that.’

The sergeant, a fine soldier indeed, saluted and set off.

Another gesture with one stained, dripping, mangled hand. Two maids crept out to help him to his feet. He looked down at one. A Kindaru, round and plump and snouted like a fox — he saw her eyes fix upon the bleeding appendage at the end of the arm she supported, and she licked her lips.

I am dying.

Not centuries. Before this day is done. Before this day is done, I will be dead. ‘Make me presentable,’ he gasped. ‘There shall be no shame upon him, do you see? I want no pity. He is my heir. He has come. At last, he has come.’

The maids, both wide-eyed with fear now, helped him inside.

And still the ants swarmed.

The horses stood in a circle facing inward, tails flicking at flies, heads lowered as they cropped grass. The oxen stood nearby, still yoked, and watched them. Kede shy;viss, who leaned with crossed arms against one of the wagon’s wheels, seemed to be watching the grey-haired foreigner with the same placid, empty regard.

Nimander knew just how deceptive that look could be. Of them all — these pal shy;try few left — she saw the clearest, with acuity so sharp it intimidated almost everyone subject to it. The emptiness — if the one being watched finally turned to meet those eyes — would slowly fade, and something hard, unyielding and im shy;mune to obfuscation would slowly rise in its place. Unwavering, ever sharpening until it seemed to pierce the victim like nails being hammered into wood. And then she’d casually look away, unmindful of the thumping heart, the pale face and the beads of sweat on the brow, and the one so assailed was left with but one of two choices: to fear this woman, or to love her with such savage, demanding desire that it could crush the heart.

Nimander feared Kedeviss. And loved her as well. He was never good with choices.

If Kallor sensed that regard — and Nimander was certain he did — he was indif shy;ferent to it, preferring to divide his attention between the empty sky and the empty landscape surrounding them. When he wasn’t sleeping or eating. An un shy;pleasant guest, peremptory and imperious. He would not cook, nor bother cleans shy;ing his plate afterwards. He was a man with six servants.

Nenanda was all for banishing the old man, driving him away with stones and pieces of dung, but Nimander found something incongruous in that image, as if it was such an absurd impossibility that it had no place even in his imagination.

‘He’s weakening,’ Desra said at his side.

‘We’re soon there, I think,’ Nimander replied. They were just south of Sarn, which had once been a sizeable city. The road leading to it had been settled all along its length, ribbon farms behind stalls, shops and taverns. The few residents left were an impoverished lot, skittish as whipped dogs, hacking at hard ground that had been fallow too long — at least until they saw the travellers on the main road, whereupon they dropped their hoes and hurried away.

The supplies left at the T-intersection had been meticulously packed into wooden crates, the entire pile covered in a tarp with its corners staked. Ripe fruits, candied sugar-rock dusted in salt, heavy loads of dark bread, strips of dried eel, watered wine and three kinds of cheese — where, all this had come from, given the wretched state of the forms they’d passed, was a mystery.

‘He would kill us as soon as look at us,’ Desra said, her eyes now on Kallor.

‘Skintick agrees.’

‘What manner of man is he?’

Nimander shrugged. ‘An unhappy one. We should get going.’

‘Wait,’ said Desra. ‘I think we should get Aranatha to look at Clip.’

‘Aranatha?’ He looked round, found the woman sitting, legs folded under her like a fawn’s, plucking flowers from the sloped bank of the road. ‘Why? What can she do?’

Desra shook her head, as if unable to give her reasons. Or unwilling.

Sighing, Nimander said, ‘Go ahead, ask her, then.’

‘It needs to come from you.’

Why? ‘Very well.’ He set out, a dozen strides taking him to where Aranatha sat. As his shadow slipped over her she glanced up and smiled.

Smiles so lacking in caution, in diffidence or wry reluctance, always struck him as a sign of madness. But the eyes above it, this time, were not at all vacuous. ‘Do you feel me, Nimander?’

‘I don’t know what you mean by that, Aranatha. Desra would like you to ex shy;amine Clip. I don’t know why,’ he added, ‘since I don’t recall you possessing any specific skills in healing.’

‘Perhaps she wants company,’ Aranatha said, rising gracefully to her feet.

And he was struck, as if slapped across the face, by her beauty. Standing now so close, her breath so warm and so strangely dark. What is happening to me? Kedeviss and now Aranatha.

‘Are you all right, Nimander?’

‘Yes.’ No. ‘I’m fine.’ What awakens in me? To deliver both anguish and exal shy;tation?

She placed a half-dozen white flowers in his hand, smiled again, then walked over to the wagon. A soft laugh from Skintick brought him round.

‘There’s more of that these days,’ his brother said, gazing after Aranatha. ‘If we are to be an incongruous lot, and it seems we are, then it follows that we con shy;found each other at every turn.’

‘You are speaking nonsense, Skintick.’

‘That is my task, isn’t it? I have no sense of where it is we’re heading — no, I don’t mean Bastion, nor even the confrontation that I think is coming. I mean us, Nimander. Especially you. The less control you have, the greater your talent for leadership seems to become, the qualities demanded of such a person — like those flowers in your hand, petals unfolding.’

Nimander grimaced at this and scowled down at the blossoms. ‘They’ll be dead shortly.’

‘So may we all,’ Skintick responded. ‘But. . pretty while it lasts.’

Kallor joined them as they prepared to resume the journey. His weathered face was strangely colourless, as if drained of blood by the incessant wind. Or whatever memories haunted him. The flatness in his eyes suggested to Nimander that the man was without humour, that the notion was as alien to him as mending the rips in his own clothes. ‘Are you all finally done with your rest?’ Kallor asked, noting the flowers still in Nimander’s hand with a faint sneer.

‘The horses needed it,’ Nimander said. ‘Are you in a hurry? If so, you could al shy;ways go ahead of us. When you stop for the night we’ll either catch up with you or we won’t.’

‘Who would feed me, then?’

‘You could always feed yourself,’ Skintick said. ‘Presumably you’ve had to do that on occasion.’

Kallor shrugged. ‘I will ride the wagon,’ he said, heading off.

Nenanda had collected the horses and now led them over. ‘They all need re-shoeing,’ he said, ‘and this damned road isn’t helping any.’

A sudden commotion at the wagon brought them all round, in time to see Kallor flung backward from the side rail, crashing heavily on the cobbles, the look on his face one of stunned surprise. Above him, standing on the bed, was Aranatha, and even at that distance they could see something dark and savage blazing from her eyes.

Desra stood near her, mouth hanging open.

On the road, lying on his back, Kallor began to laugh. A rasping, breathy kind of laugh.

With a bemused glance at Skintick and Nenanda, Nimander walked over.

Aranatha had turned away, resuming her ministrations with Clip, trickling water between the unconscious man’s lips. Tucking the flowers under his belt, Nimander pulled himself on to the wagon and met Desra’s eyes. ‘What hap shy;pened?’

‘He helped himself to a handful,’ Desra replied tonelessly, nodding towards Aranatha. ‘She, er, pushed him away.’

‘He was balanced on a wheel spoke?’ Skintick asked from behind Nimander.

Desra shook her head. ‘One hand on the rail. She just. . sent him flying.’

The old man, his laughter fading away, was climbing to his feet. ‘You damned Tiste Andii,’ he said, ‘no sense of adventure.’

But Nimander could see that, despite Kallor’s seeming mirth, the grizzled war shy;rior was somewhat shaken. Drawing a deep breath and wincing at some pain in his ribs, he moved round to the back of the wagon and once more climbed aboard, this time keeping his distance from Aranatha.

Nimander leaned on the rail, close to Aranatha. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

Glancing up, she gave him another one of those appallingly innocent smiles. ‘Can you feel me now, Nimander?’

Was the idea of water enough to create an illusion so perfect that every sense was deceived? The serpent curl of the One River, known as Dorssan Ryl, encircled half the First City of Kharkanas. Before the coming of light there was no reflec shy;tion from its midnight surface, and to settle one’s hand in its ceaseless flow was to feel naught but a cooler breath against the skin as the current sighed round the intrusion. ‘Water in Darkness, dreams in sleep’ — or so wrote one of the Mad Poets of the ninety-third century, during the stylistic trend in poetry characterized by brevity, a style that crashed in the following century during the period of art and oratory known as the Flowering Bright.

Water in perfect illusion. . was this fundamentally no different from real wa shy;ter? If the senses provide all that defines the world, then were they not the ar shy;biters of reality? As a young acolyte, fired with passions of all sorts, Endest Silann had argued bell after bell with his fellow students over such matters. All those ‘Essence of truth, senses will lie’ themes that seemed so important then, before every universe exploded in the conflagration of creation, shoving all those bright, flaring candles over the table edge, down into the swirling sea of wax where every notion, every idea, melted into one and none, into the scalding sludge that drowned everyone no matter how clever, how wise, how poetic.

What am I thinking of these days! Naught but the nonsense of my wasted youth. ‘Certainty scours, a world without wonder.’ Ah, then, perhaps those terse poets had stumbled on to something after all. Is this what obsesses me now? A suspicion that all the truths that matter lie somewhere in a soul’s youth, in those heady days when words and thoughts could still shine — as if born from nothing solely for our personal edification.

Generation upon generation, this does not change. Or so it comforts us to be shy;lieve. Yet I wonder, now, does that stretch of delight grow shorter? Is it tighten shy;ing, cursed into a new kind of brevity, the one with ignorance preceding and cynicism succeding, each crowding the precious moment?

What then the next generation? Starved of wonder, indifferent to the reality or the unreality of the water flowing past, caring only whether they might drift or drown. And then, alas, losing the sense of difference between the two.

There was no one, here in his modest chamber, to hear his thoughts. No one, indeed, who even cared. Deeds must tumble forward, lest all these witnesses grow bored and restless. And if secrets dwelt in the lightless swirl of some un shy;seen, unimagined river, what matter when the effort to delve deep was simply too much? No, better to. . drift.

But worries over the mere score of young Tiste Andii growing now in Black Coral was wasted energy. He had no wisdom to offer, even if any of them was in shy;clined to listen, which they weren’t. The old possessed naught but the single virtue of surviving, and when nothing changed, it was indeed an empty virtue.

He remembered the great river, its profound mystery of existence. Dorssan Ryl, into which the sewers poured the gritty, rain-diluted blood of the dead and dying. The river, proclaiming its reality in a roar as the rain lashed down in tor shy;rents, as clouds, groaning, fell like beasts on to their knees, only to fold into the now-raging currents and twist down into the black depths. All this, swallowed by an illusion.

There had been a woman, once, and yes, he might have loved her. Like the hand plunged into the cool water, he might have been brushed by this heady emo shy;tion, this blood-whispered obsession that poets died for and over which people murdered their dearest. And he recalled that the last time he set eyes upon her, down beside Dorssan Ryl, driven mad by Mother’s abandonment (many were), there was nothing he recognized in her eyes. To see, there in a face he had known, had adored, that appalling absence — she was gone, never to return.

So I held her head under, watched those staring, uncomprehending eyes grow ever wider, filling with blind panic — and there! At the last moment, did I not see — a sudden light, a sudden-

Oh, this was a nightmare. He had done nothing, he had been too much the coward. And he had watched her leave, with all the others so struck by loss, as they set out on a hopeless pilgrimage, a fatal search to find Her once again. What a journey that must have been! Before the last crazed one fell for the final time, punctuating a trail of corpses leagues long. A crusade of the insane, wandering into the nowhere.

Kharkanas was virtually an empty city after they’d gone. Anomander Rake’s first lordship over echoing chambers, empty houses. There would be many more.

A calm, then, drifting on like flotsam in the stream, not yet caught by the rushes, not yet so waterlogged that it vanished, tumbled like a severed moon into the muddy bed. Of course it couldn’t last. One more betrayal was needed, to shat shy;ter the world once and for all.

The night just past Endest Silann, making his way to a back storeroom on the upper level, came upon the Son of Darkness in a corridor. Some human, thinking the deed one of honour, had hung a series of ancient Andii tapestries down both walls of the passage. Scenes of Kharkanas, and one indeed showing Dorssan Ryl — although none would know if not familiar with that particular vantage point, for the river was but a dark slash, a talon curled round the city’s heart. There was no particular order, arrayed so in ignorance, and to walk this corridor was to be struck by a collage of images, distinct as memories not one tethered to the next.

Anomander Rake had been standing before one, his eyes a deep shade of amber. Predatory, fixed as a lion’s before a killing charge. On the faded tapestry a figure stood tall amidst carnage. The bodies tumbled before him all bled from wounds to the back. Nothing subtle here, the weaver’s outrage dripped from every thread. White-skinned, onyx-eyed, sweat-blackened hair braided like hanging ropes. Slick swords in his hands, he looked out upon the viewer, defiant and cold. In the wracked sky behind him wheeled Locqui Wyval with women’s heads, their mouths open in screams almost audible.

‘He did not mean it,’ said Anomander Rake.

But he did. ‘Your ability to forgive far surpasses mine, Lord.’

‘The body follows the head, but sometimes it’s the other way round. There was a cabal. Ambitious, hungry. They used him, Endest, they used him badly.’

‘They paid for it, didn’t they?’

‘We all did, old friend.’

Endest Silann looked away. ‘I so dislike this hallway, Lord. When I must walk it, I look neither left nor right.’

Rake grunted, ‘It is indeed a gauntlet of recrimination,’

‘Reminders, Lord, of the fact that some things never change.’

‘You must wrest yourself loose, Endest. This despondency can. . ravage the soul.’

‘I have heard there is a river that empties into Coral Bay. Eryn or Maurik. Which seems depthless.’

Anomander Rake, still studying the tapestry, nodded.

‘Spinnock Durav has seen it, walked its shores. He says it reminds him of Dorssan Ryl. . his childhood.’

‘Yes, there are some similarities.’

‘I was thinking, if I could be spared. .’

His Lord glanced over and smiled. ‘A pilgrimage? Of course, Endest. If, that is, you can return before a month passes.’

Ah, are we so close, then? ‘I will not stay long, Lord. Only to see, with my own eyes, that is all.’

The glance had become something more focused, and the amber glare had dimmed to something like. . like mud. ‘I fear you may be disappointed. It is but a deep river. We cannot touch the past, old friend.’ He looked back once more on the tapestry. ‘And the echoes we imagine we hear, well, they deceive. Do not be surprised, Endest, if you find nothing you seek, and everything you fear.’

And what is it, Lord, that you think I seek? I would not ask what you think I fear for you know the answer to that one. ‘I thought the walk might do me some good.’

‘And so it shall.’

Now, the next day, he sat in his chamber. A small leather pack of supplies rested beside the door. And the thought of a walk, a long one, up rugged moun shy;tainsides beneath hard sunlight, no longer seemed so appetizing. Age did such things, feeding the desire then starving the will. And what, after all, would seeing the river achieve?

A reminder of illusions, perhaps, a reminder that, in a realm for ever beyond reach, there stood the ruin of a once-great city, and, flowing round it, Dorssan Ryl, living on, ceaseless in its perfect absence, in playing its game of existence. A river of purest darkness, the life water of the Tiste Andii, and if the children were gone, well, what difference did that make?

Children will leave. Children will abandon the old ways, and the old fools with all their pointless advice can mutter and grumble to empty spaces and nod at the answering echoes. Stone and brickwork make ideal audiences.

No, he would make this journey. He would defy the follies of old age, unmea shy;sured and unmocked under the eyes of the young. A solitary pilgrimage.

And all these thoughts, seeming so indulgent and wayward, will perhaps reveal their worth then, driving dire echoes forward to that future moment of revelation. Hah. Did he believe such things? Did he possess the necessary faith?

‘Ask no question, the river shall answer.’

‘Question the river, find the answer.’

The Mad Poets spent lifetimes waging profound wars in their rendered prose. Achieving what? Why, the implosive obliteration of their tradition.

Summarize that in two clauses.

‘I need you to make a journey.’

Spinnock Durav managed a smile. ‘When, Lord?’

Anomander Rake stretched out his legs until his boots were very nearly in the flames of the hearth. ‘Soon, I think. Tell me, how goes the game?’

He squinted at the fire. ‘Not well. Oh, I win each time. It’s just that my finest opponent does poorly of late. His mind is on other matters, unfortunately. I am not pressed, and this removes much of the pleasure.’

‘This would be Seerdomin.’

Spinnock glanced up, momentarily surprised. But of course, he told himself, he is the Son of Darkness, after all. They may well call him the Ghost King, but I doubt there is a single detail he does not know in Black Coral. They will not heed that until they make a terrible mistake and then it will be too late. ‘Seer shy;domin, yes. The Benighted.’

A faint smile from Anomander Rake. ‘Itkovian was a most extraordinary man. This newborn cult interests me, and I am not so sure it would have pleased him. He saw himself as a soldier, a failed one at that — the fall of Capustan devastated him.’ He paused for a moment, clearly remembering, then he said, ‘They were but a mercenary company, modest in complement — nothing like the Crimson Guard. I dare say even the Crimson Guard would have failed to hold Capustan.’

Spinnock Durav remained silent, attentive. He had been away during that time. Another journey on behalf of his Lord. Hunting a dragon, of all things. Conversa shy;tions like the one he’d found at the end of that quest were not worth repeating.

‘He could forgive everyone but himself.’

No wonder you liked him.

Anomander Rake sighed. ‘I cannot say how long you will need, Spinnock. As long, perhaps, as you can manage.’

As the significance of that statement settled into Spinnock Durav he felt an uncharacteristic flash of dismay. Angry at himself, he slowly settled his hands on the arms of the chair, fingers curling round the smooth wood, hoping he’d left nothing in his expression. This is what I do and will do. Until my end. She is young, so young — oh, there’s no point in thinking about. . about any of that. About her at all. Was he able to keep the anguish from his eyes? What thoughts — doubts — rustled through his Lord now as he watched his old friend? Feeling de shy;feated, Spinnock Durav glanced over at Anomander Rake.

The ruler of Black Coral sat frowning at his smouldering boots.

So, how long has he been thus? ‘I have always. . managed, Lord.’

‘Yes, you have. I am curious. What so afflicts Seerdomin?’

‘A crisis of faith, I think.’ Life like Kef Tanar, this skipping across paths. He does it so well, this man whom I have never defeated in our tabletop wars, not in ten thousand years. But I can stay with you, Lord, at least this far. ‘He has ceased making his daily pilgrimage. Among those living out there, there have grown expectations. Which, it seems, he is unable to meet,’

‘You tread carefully, Spinnok Durav. That is unlike you.’

‘I do not possess all the details yet.’

‘But you shall.’

‘Eventually, yes.’

‘And then?’

Spinnock looked across at Rake. ‘I will do what needs doing.’

‘Best hurry, then.’

Ah, yes, I see now.

‘The Redeemer is a most helpless god,’ Anomander Rake said after a time. ‘Un shy;able to refuse, unable to give. A sea sponge swallowing the entire sea. Then the next one and the one after that. Can it simply go on for ever? But for Itkovian, I would think not.’

‘Is that a sort of faith, Lord?’

‘Perhaps it is. Is his ability to forgive truly endless? To take on the pain and guilt of others for all eternity? I admit, I have some serious difficulties with this cult’s root tenets — oh, as I said, I greatly admired Itkovian, the Shield Anvil of the Grey Swords. I even understand, to some extent, his gesture with the Kron T’lan Imass. As the Redeemer, however. . I cannot but wonder at a god so willing to assume the crimes and moral flaws of its followers, while in turn demanding nothing — no expectation of a change in behaviour, no threat of punishment should they continue to transgress. Absolution — yes, I grasp the notion, but abso shy;lution is not the same as redemption, is it? The former is passive. The latter de shy;mands an effort, one with implicit sacrifice and hardship, one demanding all the higher qualities of what we call virtues.’

‘Yet he is called the Redeemer.’

‘Because he takes on the task of redemption for all who come to him, all who pray to him. And yes, it is an act of profound courage. But he does not expect the same of his people — he appears to possess no expectations whatsoever.’

This was most loquacious of his Lord, evidence of a long, careful condensation of thought, of considerable energy devoted to the nature of the cult clinging to the very edge of Black Coral and Night, all of which seemed. . unusual. ‘He leads by example, then.’

A sudden glitter of interest in Anomander Rake’s eyes and he studied Spin shy;nock Durav intently. ‘Has any one follower stumbled on to that possibility, Spinnock Durav?’.

‘I do not know. I, er, don’t think so — but, Lord, I am too far outside all of it at the moment.’

‘If the Redeemer cannot deny, then he is trapped in a state of imbalance. I won shy;der, what would be needed to redress that imbalance?’

Spinnock Durav found his mouth dry, and if he’d built proud castles of compre shy;hension, if he’d raised sound fortifications to guard his assumptions, and arrayed vast armies to argue his case and to shift and align and manoeuvre to defend his cherished notions — if he had done all this to then sit in comfort, secure in his place in this conversation — if this was indeed a game of Kef Tanar, then in one simple question posed, his foe had crashed his empire to ruin.

What would be needed to redress that imbalance?

A man who refuses.

You tell me time is short, my Lord. You lead me to elucidate what bothers me — for you can see that something does — and then, amidst the lofty clouds of religious discussion, you lash a lightning bolt down, striking my very heart.

If I am to do something, I must do it soon.

My Lord, my awe of you is unbounded. My love for you and the compassion you so delicately unveil leads me into this willingness, to storm without hesita shy;tion what you would have me storm, to stand for as long as needed, for it is what you need.

‘It is well I am immune to heat,’ Anomander Rake said, ‘for I have scorched my boots most severely.’

And so the fire grows round you, yet you do not flinch.

I will not fail you, my Lord.

‘Endest Silann is upon the mountain road now,’ Anomander Rake said, rising. ‘And Crone has returned but soon must wing away again. I shall ask her to send a few grandchildren to guard him on his journey. Unless, of course, you think it might offend Endest Silann should he see them wheeling overhead?’

‘It might, Lord, but that should not change your decision.’

A faint smile. ‘Agreed. Send my regards to the priestess, Spinnock.’

Until that moment, he had not known he was going to visit the High Priestess — who had scoured away her very name in service to her role in the Temple of Dark shy;ness, to make of her ever-open legs an impersonal act, that made her body a vessel and nothing more — but he now knew that he needed to do just that. Kurald Galain was a most troubled warren right now. Storms rumbled within it, drumming every thread of power. Energies crackled. Making her insatiable. So, she will want me — but that is not what concerns Anomander Rake. There is something else. I must go to her, and I don’t even know why.

But he does.

Spinnock Durav found himself sitting alone in the small chamber. The fire was down to coals. The air smelled of burned leather.

The High Priestess of the Temple of Dark had cut her hair even shorter, making her disturbingly boyish as she pushed him on to his back, straddling him with her usual eagerness. Normally, he would now begin to slow her down, providing a force of resistance defying her impatience, and so drawing out her pleasure. This time, however, he let her have her way. This was all incidental. Since that un shy;known force had trembled through Kurald Galain, all the priestesses had been frantic in their desire, forcing male Tiste Andii into the temple and the rooms with the plush beds. If the rumours were true, then even the occasional human was dragged in for the same needful interrogation.

But no answers could be found in the indulgences of the flesh, and perhaps all this was a kind of metaphorical revelation of that raw truth, one that extended far beyond the temple and the prescriptions of priestesses. Yet, did he want answers from Salind? From that young human woman who could not be more than twenty years of age? From another High Priestess?

He had seen too much, had lived too long. All she faced ahead and all the ex shy;periences still awaiting her — they belonged to her age, and should indeed be shared — if at all — by one of similar years. He had no desire to be a mentor, for the student soon grows past the need of one (if the mentor has done his job well), and then it is the mentor who rails against the notion of equality, or of being sur shy;passed. But the impossibility of the notion went further. She would never surpass him. Instead, she would grow old all too quickly, and the sensibilities of her life, a life so truncated, could never match his.

Korlat had not hesitated with the Malazan sergeant Whiskeyjack — Spinnock had heard the tragic tale, bound up as it was in the conquest of Black Coral and the fall of the Pannion Domin. And the prolonged absence of both Korlat and her brother, Orfantal. Nevertheless, Whiskeyjack had been a man late in his years — he had lived most of a life. And who could say if the union could have lasted? When, in a terribly short span of years, Korlat would have seen her beloved de shy;scend into decay, his back bent, hands atremble, memory failing.

Spinnock could almost imagine the end of that, as, broken-hearted, Korlat would face a moment with a knife in her hands, contemplating the mercy of end shy;ing her husband’s life. Was this a thing to look forward to? Do we not possess enough burdens as it is?

‘If not for your desire I could feel in my nest,’ said the woman now lying be shy;neath him, ‘I would think you disinterested, Spinnock Durav. You have not been with me here, it seems, and while it’s said a man’s sword never lies, now I truly wonder if that is so.’

Blinking, he looked down into her face. A most attractive face, one that both suited the nature of her devotion and yet seemed far too innocent — too open — for this life of uninhibited indulgence. ‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I waited for you to. . leave.’

She pushed out from under him, sat up and ran her long-fingered hands through the brush of her hair. ‘We fail in that of late,’ she said.

Ah, so that is the reason for your desperation, your avidness.

‘It will return,’ she said. ‘It must. Something. . changes, Spin.’

He stared at her unblemished back, the graceful curve of her spine, the slight rounding on her hips that he knew to be soft and cool to the touch. The angle of her shoulders bespoke either temporary satiation or a more prolonged weariness. ‘Our Lord sends his regards.’

She turned to look down at him, brows lifted in surprise. ‘He does? That would be a first.’

Spinnock frowned. Yes, it would. I hadn’t thought of that. ‘I will be leaving soon.’

Her eyes hardened. ‘Why does he treat you so? As if he possessed you, to do with as he pleases.’

‘I stand in his stead,’

‘But you are not the Son of Darkness.’

‘No, that is true.’

‘One day you are going to die in his stead.’

‘I am.’

‘And then he will need to find another fool.’

‘Yes.’

She glared down at him, then turned and swiftly rose. Black skin polished in the glow of the lanterns — nothing boylike now, a figure all curves and softened planes. Spinnock smiled. ‘I will miss you as well.’

Faint surrender as she sighed. And when she faced him again, there was noth shy;ing veiled in her eyes. ‘We do what we can.’

‘Yes.’

‘No, you don’t understand. The Temple — my priestesses. We try as Anoman shy;der Rake tries, both of us, seeking to hold on to some meaning, some purpose. He imagines it can be found in the struggles of lesser folk — of humans and all their miserable squabbles. He is wrong. We know this and so too does he. The Temple, Spin, chooses another way. The rebirth of our Gate, the return of Mother Dark, into our lives, our souls.’

‘Yes. And?’

Something crumpled in her expression. ‘We fail as he does. We know and he knows. The Son of Darkness does not send me his regards.’

Then. . he said ‘priestess’.

But he didn’t mean this one. Spinnock sat up, reached down to the floor where his clothes were lying. ‘High Priestess,’ he said, ‘what can you tell me of the Cult of the Redeemer?’

‘What?’

He looked up, wondered at the alarm in her eyes. After a moment he shook his head. ‘No, I am not interested in forgiveness. Embracing the T’lan Imass killed the man — what would embracing us do to his soul?’

‘I care not to think, Spin. Oh, he was glorious in his way — for all the blood that was needlessly spilled because of it — still. . glorious. If you speak not of our bur shy;dens, then I do not understand your question.’

‘It is newborn, this cult. What shape will it take?’

She sighed again — most extraordinary and further proof of her exhaustion. ‘As you say, very young indeed. And like all religions, its shape — it future — will be found in what happens now, in these first moments. And that is a cause for con shy;cern, for although pilgrims gather and give gifts and pray, no organization exists. Nothing has been formulated — no doctrine — and all religions need such things.’

He rubbed at his jaw, considering, and then nodded.

‘Why does this interest you?’ she asked.

‘I’m not sure, but I appreciate your expertise.’ He paused, stared down at the clothes in his hands. He had forgotten something, something important — what might it be?

‘I was not wrong,’ she observed, still watching him. ‘You are not yourself, Spin. Have you finally come to resent your Lord’s demands?’

‘No,’ Perhaps, but that is not worthy of consideration — the flaw would be mine, after all. ‘I am fine, High Priestess.’

She snorted. ‘None of us are that, Spin,’ she said as she turned away.

As his gaze dropped he saw his sword and belt lying on the floor. Of course — he had forgotten his ritual. He collected the weapon and, as the High Priestess threw on her robes, carried it over to the table and set it down. From the belt’s stiff leather pouch he removed a small sponge, a metal flask of eel oil, and a much-stained pad of sharkskin.

‘Ah,’ said the High Priestess from the doorway, ‘all is right with the world again. Later, Spin.’

‘Yes, High Priestess,’ he replied, electing to ignore her sarcasm. And the need it so poorly disguised.

Rain had rushed in from the sea, turning the paths into rivers of mud. Salind sat in the makeshift shed, legs curled up beneath her, shivering as water dripped down through holes in the roof. More people had come scratching at her door, but she had turned them all away.

She’d had enough of being a High Priestess. All her heightened sensitivities to the whims of the Redeemer were proving little more than a curse. What matter all these vague emotions she sensed from the god? She could do nothing for him.

This should not have surprised her, and she told herself that what she was feel shy;ing wasn’t hurt, but something else, something more impersonal. Perhaps it was her grieving for the growing list of victims as Gradithan and his sadistic mob con shy;tinued to terrorize the camp — so much so that some were planning to leave as soon as the road dried out. Or her failure with the Benighted. The expectations settling upon her, in the eyes of so many people, were too vast, too crushing. She could not hope to answer them all. And she was finding that, in truth, she could answer none of them.

Words were empty in the face of brutal will. They were helpless to defend whatever sanctity might be claimed, for a person’s self, for their freedom to choose how they would live, and with whom. Empathy haunted her. Compassion opened wounds which only a hardening of the soul could in the future prevent, and this she did not want — she had seen too many faces, looked into too many eyes, and recoiled from their coldness, their delight in vicious judgement.

The righteous will claim sole domain on judgement. The righteous are the first to make hands into fists, the first to shout down dissenters, the first to bully others into compliance.

I live in a village of the meek, and I am the meekest of them all. There is no glory in being helpless. Nor is there hope.

Rain lashing down, a drumming roar on the slatted, angled roof, the sound of a deluge that filled her skull. That the Redeemer will embrace is neither just nor unjust. No mortal can sanction their behaviour in the Redeemer’s name. How dare they so presume? Miserable faces marching past, peering in through the cracks in her door. And she wanted to rail at them all. You damned fools. Absolution is not enough! But they would then look upon her, moon-eyed and doleful, desperate that every question yield an answer, clinging to the notion that one suffered for a reason and knowledge of that reason would ease the suffering.

Knowledge, Salind told herself, eases nothing. It just fills spaces that might otherwise flood with despair.

Can you live without answers? All of you, ask that of yourself. Can you live without answers? Because if you cannot, then most assuredly you will invent your own answers and they will comfort you. And all those who do not share your view will by their very existence strike fear and hatred into your heart. What god blesses this?

‘I am no High Priestess,’ she croaked, as water trickled down her face.

Heavy boots splashing in the mud outside. The door was tugged back and a dark shape blotted out the pale grey light. ‘Salind.’

She blinked, trying to discern who so spoke to her with such. . such compas shy;sion. ‘Ask me nothing,’ she said. ‘Tell me less.’

The figure moved, closing the door in a scrape of sodden grit that filled the shed with gloom once more. Pausing, standing, water dripping from a long leather cloak. ‘This will not do.’

‘Whoever you are,’ Salind said, ‘I did not invite you in. This is my home.’

‘My apologies, High Priestess.’

‘You smell of sex.’

‘Yes, I imagine so.’

‘Do not touch me. I am poison.’

‘I–I have no desire to. . touch you, High Priestess. I have walked this village — the conditions are deplorable. The Son of Darkness, I well know, will not long abide such poverty.’

She squinted up at him. ‘You are the Benighted’s friend. The only Tiste Andii for whom humans are not beneath notice.’

‘Is this what you believe of us, then? That is. . unfortunate.’

‘I am ill. Please go away, sir.’

‘My name is Spinnock Durav. I might have told you that when last we met — I do not recall and clearly neither do you. You. . challenged me, High Priestess.’

‘No, I rejected you, Spinnock Durav.’

There might have been something like wry amusement in his tone as he replied, ‘Perhaps the two are one and the same.’

She snorted. ‘Oh, no, a perennial optimist.’

He reached down suddenly and his warm palm pressed against her forehead. She jerked back. Straightening, he said, ‘You are fevered.’

‘Just go.’

‘I will, but I intend to take you with me-’

‘And what of everyone else so afflicted in this camp? Will you carry them all out? Or just me, just the one upon whom you takc pity? Unless it is not pity that drives you.’

‘I will have healers attend the camp-’

‘Do that, yes. I can wait with the others.’

‘Salind-’

‘That’s not my name.’

‘It isn’t? But I was-’

‘I simply chose it. I had no name. Not as a child, not until just a few months ago. I had no name at all, Spinnock Durav. Do you know why I haven’t been raped yet? Most of the other women have. Most of the children, too. But not me. Am I so ugly? No, not in the flesh — even I know that. It’s because I was a Child of the Dead Seed do you know the meaning of that, Tiste Andii? My mother crawled half-mad on a battlefield, reaching beneath the jerkins of dead soldiers until she found a member solid and hard. Then she took it into herself and, if she were blessed, it would spill into her. A dead man’s seed. I had plenty of brothers and sisters, a family of aunts and a mother who in the end rotted to some terrible disease that ate her flesh — her brain was long gone by then. I have not been raped, because I am untouchable.’

He stared down at her, evidently shocked, horrified into dumb silence.

She coughed, wishing she did not get sick so often — but it had always been this way. ‘You can go now, Spinnock Durav.’

‘This place festers.’ And he moved forward to pick her up.

She recoiled. ‘You don’t understand! I’m sick because he’s sick!’

He halted and she finally could make out his eyes, forest green and tilted at the corners, and far too much compassion gleamed in that regard. ‘The Redeemer? Yes, I imagine he is. Come,’ and he took her up, effortlessly, and she should have struggled — should have been free to choose — but she was too weak. Pushing him away with her hands was a gesture, a desire, transformed into clutching help shy;lessly at his cloak. Like a child.

A child.

‘When the rains stop,’ he murmured, his breath no doubt warm but scalding against her fevered cheek, ‘we shall rebuild. Make all this new. Dry, warm.’

‘Do not rape me.’

‘No more talk of rape. Fever will awaken many terrors. Rest now.’

I will not judge. Not even this life of mine. I will not — there is weakness in the world. Of all sorts. All sorts. .

Stepping outside with the now unconscious woman in his arms, Spinnock Durav looked round. Figures on all sides, both hooded and bareheaded in the rain, water streaming down.

‘She is sick,’ he said to them. ‘She needs healing.’

No one spoke in reply.

He hesitated, then said, ‘The Son of Darkness will be informed of your. . difficulties.’

They begun turning away, melting into the grey sheets. In moments Spinnock found himself alone.

He set out for the city.

The Son of Darkness will be informed. . but he knows already, doesn’t he? He knows, but leaves it all to. . to whom? Me? Seerdomin? The Redeemer him shy;self?

‘Give my regards to the priestess.’

Her, then, this frail thing in my arms. I will attend to her, because within her lies the answer.

Gods, the answer to what?

Boots uncertain in the slime and mud, he made his careful way back. Night awaited.

And, rising up from the depths of his memories, the fragment of some old poem, ‘The moon does not rain, but it weeps.’ A fragment, yes, it must be that. Alas, he could not recall the rest and so he would have to settle with the phrase — although in truth it was anything but settling.

I could ask Endest — ah, no, he is gone from us for the time being. The High Priestess, perhaps. She knows every Tiste Andii poem ever written, for the sole purpose of sneering at every one of them. Still.

The words haunted him, mocked him with their ambiguity. He preferred things simple and straightforward. Solid like heroic sculpture — those marble and alabaster monuments to some great person who, if truth be known, was nowhere near as great as believed or proclaimed, and indeed looked nothing like the white polished face above the godlike body — oh, Abyss take me, enough of this!

In the camp, in the wake of the Tiste Andii’s departure with the High Priestess half dead in his arms, the bald priest, short and bandy-legged and sodden under rain-soaked woollen robes, hobbled up to Gradithan. ‘You saw?’

The ex-soldier grunted. ‘I was tempted, you know. A sword point, right up back of his skull. Shit-spawned Tiste Andii bastard, what in Hood’s name did he think, comin’ here?’

The priest — a priest of some unknown god somewhere to the south, Bastion, perhaps — made tsk-tsking sounds, then said, ‘The point is, Urdo-’

‘Shut that mouth of yours! That rank ain’t for nobody no more, you under shy;stand? Never mind the asshole thinkin’ he’s the only one left, so’s he can use it like it was his damned name or something. Never mind, cos he’ll pay for that soon enough.’

‘Humble apologies, sir. My point was, she’s gone now.’

‘What of it?’

‘She was the Redeemer’s eyes — his ears, his everything in the mortal world — and now that Tiste Andii’s gone and taken her away. Meaning we can do, er, as we please.’

At that, Gradithan slowly smiled. Then said in a low, easy voice, ‘What’ve we been doin’ up to now, Monkrat?’

‘While she was here, the chance remained of awakening the Benighted to his holy role. Now we need not worry about either of them.’

‘I was never worried in the first place,’ the once-Seerdomin said in a half-snarl. ‘Go crawl back into your hole, and take whatever boy with you as you fancy — like you say, nothing stopping us now.’

After the horrid creature scurried off, Gradithan gestured to one of his lieu shy;tenants. ‘Follow that Andii pig back into Night,’ he said. ‘But keep your distance. Then get word to our friends in the city. It’s all taken care of at the Barrow — that’s the message you tell ’em, right? Go on and get back here before dawn and you can take your pick of the women — one you want to keep for a while if you care to, or strangle beneath you for all I give a shit. Go!’

He stood in the rain, feeling satisfied. Everything was looking up, and up. And by squinting, why, he could almost make out that cursed tower with its disgust shy;ing dragon edifice — aye, soon it would all come down. Nice and bloody, like.

And though he was not aware of it — not enough to find cause for the sudden shiver that took him — he turned away from that unseeing regard, and so un shy;knowingly broke contact with sleepy, cold, reptilian eyes that could see far in shy;deed, through rain, through smoke, through — if so desired — stone walls.

Carved edifice Silanah was not. Sleepless, all-seeing protector and sentinel, beloved of the Son of Darkness, and possessed of absolute, obsidian-sharp judge shy;ment, most assuredly she was all that. And terrible in wrath? Few mortals could even conceive the truth and the capacity of the implacably just.

Which was probably just as well.

‘Mercy in compassion, no dragon lives.’

When skill with a sword was but passing, something else was needed. Rage. The curse was that rage broke its vessel, sent fissures through the brittle clay, sought out every weakness in the temper, the mica grit that only revealed itself in the edges of the broken shards. No repairs were possible, no glue creeping out when the fragments were pressed back together, to be wiped smooth with a fingertip.

Nimander was thinking about pottery. Web-slung amphorae clanking from the sides of the wagon, the horrid nectar within — a species of rage, perhaps, little dif shy;ferent from what had coursed through his veins when he fought. Rage in battle was said to be a gift of the gods — he had heard that belief uttered by that Malazan marine, Deadsmell, down in the hold of the Adjunct’s flagship, during one of those many nights when the man had made his way down into the dark belly, jug of rum swinging by an ear in one hand.

At first Nimander had resented the company — as much as did his kin — but the Malazan had persisted, like a sapper undermining walls. The rum had trickled down throats, loosened the hinges of tongues, and after a time all those fortifica shy;tions and bastions had stretched open their doorways and portals.

The rum had lit a fire in Nimander’s brain, casting flickering red light on a host of memories gathered ghostly round the unwelcoming heart. There had been a keep, somewhere, a place of childhood secure and protected by the one they all called Father. Ridged spines of snow lining the cobbled track leading to the embrasure gate, a wind howling down from grey mountains — a momentary abode where scores of children scurried about wild as rats, with the tall figure of Anomander Rake wandering the corridors in godlike indifference.

What had there been before that? Where were all the mothers? That memory was lost, entirely lost.

There had been a priest, an ancient companion of the Son of Darkness, whose task it had been to keep the brood fed, clothed, and healthy. He had looked upon them all with eyes filled with dismay, no doubt understanding — long before any of them did — the future that waited them. Understanding well enough to with shy;hold his warmth — oh, he had been like an ogre to them all, certainly, but one who, for all his bluster, would never, ever do them harm.

Knowing this, they had abused their freedom often. They had, more than once, mocked that poor old man. They had rolled beakers into his path when he walked past, squealing with delight when his feet sent them flying to bounce and shatter, or, better yet, when he lost his balance and thumped down on his backside, winc shy;ing in pain.

Such a cruel fire, lighting up all these ghastly recollections. Deadsmell, in his sleepy, seemingly careless way, had drawn out their tale. From that keep hidden in the fastness of some remote range of mountains to the sudden, startling arrival of a stranger — the aged, stooped Tiste Andii who was, it was learned with a shock, Anomander’s very own brother. And the arguments echoing from their fa shy;ther’s private chambers, as brothers fought over unknown things — decisions past, decisions to come, the precise unfolding of crimes of the soul that led to harsh ac shy;cusations and cold, cold silences.

Days later, peace was struck, somehow, in the dark of night. Their father came to them then, to tell them how Andarist was taking them all away. To an island, a place of warmth, of stretches of soft sand and pellucid waters, of trees crowded with fruit. And there, standing in the background during this imparting of a new future, was old Endest Silann, his face ravaged by some extremity of emotion — no more beakers underfoot, no more taunts and elusive imps racing to escape imagined pursuits (he never pursued, never once reached to snatch one of them, never raised a hand, never even raised his voice; he was nothing but a focus for their irreverence — an irreverence they would not dare turn upon their father). He had had his purpose and he had weathered it and now he wept as the children were drawn together and a warren was opened, a portalway into an unknown, mysterious new world where anything was possible.

Andarist led them through.

They would learn new things. The weapons awaiting them.

A stern teacher, not one to mock, oh no, that was quickly made clear when a casual cuff against the side of Skintick’s head sent him flying — a cuff to answer some muttered derision, no doubt.

The games ended. The world turned suddenly serious.

They came to love that old man. Loved him far too much, as it turned out, for where Anomander might well have proved capable of pushing back the horrors of adulthood and its terrible world, Andarist was not.

Children made perfect soldiers, perfect killers. They had no sense of mortality. They did not fear death. They took bright pleasure in destruction, even when that destruction involved taking a life. They played with cruelty to watch the results. They understood the simplicity of power found there in the weapon held in the hand.

See a bored child with a stick — and see how every beast nearby flees, under shy;standing well what is now possible and, indeed, probable. See the child, eyes scanning the ground, swinging the stick down to crush insects, to thrash flowers, to wage a war of mayhem. Replace the stick with a sword. Explain how guilt need not be considered when the ones who must die are the enemy.

Unleash them, these children with the avid eyes.

Good soldiers. Andarist had made them good soldiers. What child, after all, does not know rage?

But the vessel breaks.

The vessel breaks.

The Dying God, Nimander now believed, was a child. The mad priests poured him full, knowing the vessel leaked, and then drank of that puerile seepage. Because he was a child, the Dying God’s thirst and need were without end, never satiated.

As they journeyed along the road, ever westward, they found themselves be shy;tween planted fields. Here the scarecrows were truly dead, used up. Withered, webbed in black scraps of cloth, stiffly rocking in the wind. Poured out, these lives, and Nimander now saw these fields as bizarre cemeteries, where some local aberration of belief insisted that the dead be staked upright, that they ever stand ready for whatever may come.

Watchers of this road and all the fools who travelled it.

Once, on Drift Avalii, almost a year before the first attacks, two half-dead Dal Honese had washed up on the rocky coast. They had been paddling to the island of Geni, for reasons unexplained, in an ancient dugout. Both were naked, as they had used up every scrap of cloth from their garments, to stuff into the cracks in the hull — too many cracks, it turned out, and the beleaguered craft eventually sank, forcing the two men to swim.

The Lord’s nudge brought them to Drift Avalii, and somehow they avoided the murderous reefs and rocks girdling the island.

Dwellers in the dark jungles of their homeland, they were from a tribe ob shy;sessed with its own ancestors. The dead were not buried. The dead were made part of the mud walls of the village’s huts. When one in a family died, a new room would be begun, at first nothing but a single wall projecting outward. And in that wall was the corpse, clay-filled eye sockets, nose, ears, mouth. Clay like a new skin upon face, limbs, torso. Upright, in cavorting poses as if frozen in a dance. Two more kin needed to die before the room was complete and ready to be roofed with palm fronds and the like.

Some houses were big as castles, sprawled out at ground level in a maze of chambers, hundreds of them, dark and airless, in this way, the dead never left, They remained, witnessing all, eternal in judgement this pressure, said the two refugees, could drive one insane, and often did.

The jungle resisted farming. Its soil disliked taming. The huge trees were im shy;pervious to fire and could turn the edge of an iron axe. Villages were growing too massive, devouring land, while every cleared area around them was exhausted, Rival tribes suffered the same, and before too long wars were unleashed. The dead ancestors demanded vengeance for transgressions. Murdered kin — whose bodies had been stolen and so could not be properly taken care of — represented an open wound, a crime that needed answering.

Blood back and forth, said the two refugees. Blood back and forth, that is all. And when the enemy began destroying villages, burning them to the ground. .

No answer to the madness but flight.

Nimander thought about all this as he led his mare by the reins along the dusty road. He had no ancestors to haunt him, no ancestors to demand that he do this and that, that he behave in this way but not in that way. Perhaps this was freedom, but it left him feeling strangely. . lost.

The two Dal Honese had built a new boat and paddled away — not back home, but to some unknown place, a place devoid of unblinking ghosts staring out from every wall.

Rocking sounds came from the wagon and he turned to see Kallor swinging down on the near side, pausing to adjust his cloak of chain, then walking until he was alongside Nimander.

‘Interesting use of corpses,’ he said.

‘What use would that be?’ Skintick asked with a glance back towards them.

‘To frighten the crows? Not that any right-minded crow would look twice at those foul plants — they’re not even native to this world, after all.’

Nimander saw Skintick’s brows rise. ‘They aren’t?’

Kallor scratched at his beard and, since it seemed he wasn’t in any hurry to re shy;ply, Skintick faced forward once more.

‘Saemankelyk,’ said Nimander. ‘The Dying God. . who will be found in Bas shy;tion.’

The grey-haired warrior grunted. ‘Nothing changes.’

‘Of course it changes,’ Skintick retorted without turning round. ‘It keeps get shy;ting worse.’

‘That is an illusion,’ Kallor replied. ‘You Tiste Andii should know that. Your sense of things getting worse comes from growing older. You see more, and what you see wars with your memories of how things used to be.’

‘Rubbish. Old farts like you say that because it suits you. You hope it freezes us in our tracks so we end up doing nothing, which means your precious status quo persists just that much longer — enough for you to live out your life in what shy;ever comfort you think you’ve earned. You won’t accept culpability for anything, so you tell us that nothing ever changes.’

‘Ah, the fire of youth. Perhaps one day, pup, you’ll be old — assuming your stupidity doesn’t get you killed first — and I’ll find you, somewhere. You’ll be sit shy;ting on the stone steps of some abandoned temple or, worse, some dead king’s glorious monument. Watching the young people rush by. And I’ll settle down be shy;side you and ask you: “What’s changed, old man?” And you will squint, chew your gums for a time, then spit on to the cobbles shaking your head.’

‘Plan on living for ever, Kallor?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘What if your stupidity gets you killed?’

Kallor’s grin was feral. ‘It hasn’t yet.’

Skintick glanced back again, eyes bright, and all at once he laughed. ‘I am changing my mind about you.’

‘The Dying God has stolen Clip’s soul,’ Nimander said. ‘We’re going to get it back.’

‘Good luck.’

‘I suppose we will need it.’

‘I’m not the kind who helps, Nimander,’ Kallor said. ‘Even kin of Rake. Maybe,’ he added, ‘especially kin of Rake.’

‘What makes you think-’

The man interrupted with a snort. ‘I see him in all of you — excepting the empty one you call Clip. You are heading to Coral. Or you were, before this de shy;tour was forced upon you. Tell me, what do you imagine will happen when you find your glorious patron? Will he reach out one perfect hand to brush your brows, to bless the gift of your existence? Will you thank him for the privilege of being alive?’

‘What do you know about it?’ Nimander demanded, feeling the heat rise to flush his face.

‘Anomander Rake is a genius at beginning things. It’s finishing them he has trouble with.’

Ah, that stings of truth. Kallor, you have just prodded my own soul. A trait I inherited from him, then? That makes too much sense. ‘So, when I speak to him of you, Kallor, he will know your name?’

‘Were we acquaintances? Yes, we were. Did we delight in each other’s com shy;pany? You will have to ask him that one. Caladan Brood was simpler, easier to manage. Nothing but earth and stone. As for K’azz, well, I’ll know more when I fi shy;nally meet the bastard.’

‘I do not know those names,’ Nimander said. ‘Caladan Brood. K’azz.’

‘It’s of no real significance. We were allies in a war or three, that is all. And per shy;haps one day we will be allies once more, who can say? When some vast enemy forces us once again into the same camp, all on the same side.’ He seemed to think about that for a moment, then said, ‘Nothing changes.’

‘Are you then returning to Coral — where waits our father?’

‘No. The dust I kicked up last time will need a few centuries to settle, I ex shy;pect.’ He was about to add something more when his attention was pulled away, and he stepped across Nimander’s path — forcing him to halt — to walk to the road’s edge, facing north.

‘I’d spotted that,’ Skintick muttered, also stopping.

Fifty or so paces from the road, just beyond a strip of the alien plants and its row of wrapped effigies, was a ruin. Only one of the walls of the squarish, tower-like structure rose above man-height. The stones were enormous, fitted without mortar. Trees of a species Nimander had never seen before had rooted on top of the walls, snaking long, thick ropes down to the ground. The branches were skeletal, reaching horizontally out to the sides, clutching mere handfuls of dark, leathery leaves.

Nenanda had stopped the wagon and all were now studying the ruin that had so captured Kallor’s attention.

‘Looks old,’ Skintick said, catching Nimander’s eye and winking.

‘Jaghut,’ Kallor said. And he set out towards it. Nimander and Skintick followed.

In the field, the furrows of earth were bleached, dead, and so too the ghastly plants. Even the terrible clouds of insects had vanished.

Kallor stepped between two corpses, but there was not enough room so he reached out to either side and pushed the stakes over. Dust spat from the bases as the scarecrows sagged, then, pulling free, fell to the ground. The warrior continued on.

‘We can hope,’ said Skintick under his breath as he and Nimander followed through the gap.

‘For what?’ Nimander asked.

‘That he decides he doesn’t like this Dying God. And makes up his mind to do something about it.’

‘You believe he is that formidable?’

Skintick shot him a glance. ‘When he said he was allied with Anomander and those others, it didn’t sound as though he meant he was a soldier or minor officer in some army, did it?’

Nimander frowned, then shook his head.

Skintick hissed wordlessly through his teeth, and then said, ‘Like. . equals.’

‘Yes, like that. But it doesn’t matter, Skin — he won’t help us.’

‘I wasn’t hoping for that. More like him deciding to do something for his own reasons, but something that ends up solving our problem.’

‘I’d wager no coins on that, Skin.’

Drawing closer to the ruin, they fell silent. Decrepit as it was, the tower was imposing. The air around it seemed grainy, somehow brittle, ominously cold despite the sun’s fierce heat.

The highest of the walls revealed a section of ceiling just below the uppermost set of stones, projecting without any other obvious support to cast a deep shadow upon the ground floor beneath it. The facing wall reached only high enough to encompass a narrow, steeply arched doorway. Just outside this entrance and to one side was a belly-shaped pot in which grew a few straggly plants with drooping flowers, so incongruous amid the air of abandonment that Nimander simply stared down at them, disbelieving.

Kallor walked up to the entrance, drew off a sealed gauntlet and wrapped it against the root-tracked frame. ‘Will you greet us?’ he demanded in a loud voice.

From within a faint shuffling sound, and then a thin, rasping reply: ‘Must I?’

‘The ice is long gone, Jaghut. The plains beyond are dry and empty. Even the dust of the T’lan Imass has blown away. Would you know something of the world you have ignored for so long?’

‘Why? Nothing changes.’

Kallor turned a pleased smirk upon Nimander and Skintick and then faced the dark doorway once more. ‘Will you invite us in, Jaghut? I am the High-’

‘I know who you are, O Lord of Futility. King of Ashes. Ruler of Dead Lands. Born to glory and cursed to destroy it every time. Killer of Dreams. Despoiler of-’

‘All right, enough of all that. I’m not the one living in ruins.’

‘No, but you ever leave them in your wake, Kallor. Come in, then, you and your two Others. I greet you as guests and so will not crush the life from you and devour your souls with peals of laughter. No, instead, I will make some tea.’

Nimander and Skintick followed Kallor into the darkness within.

The air of the two-walled chamber was frigid, the stones sheathed in amber-streaked hoarfrost. Where the other two walls should have been rose black, glimmering barriers of some unknown substance, and to look upon them too long was to feel vertiginous — Nimander almost pitched forward, drawn up only by Skintick’s sudden grip, and his friend whispered, ‘Never mind the ice, cousin.’

Ice, yes, it was just that. Astonishingly transparent ice-

A figure crouched at a small hearth, long-fingered hands working a blackened kettle on to an iron hook above the coals. ‘I ate the last batch of cookies, I’m afraid.’ The words drifted out inflectionless from beneath a broad-brimmed black felt hat. ‘Most people pass by, when they pass by. Seeing nothing of interest. None draw close to admire my garden.’

‘Your garden?’ Skintick asked.

‘Yes. Small, I know. Modest.’

‘The pot with the two flowers.’

‘Just so. Manageable — anything larger and the weeding would drive me mad, you see.’

‘Taking up all your time,’ Kallor commented, looking round.

‘Just so.’

A long stone altar provided the Jaghut with his bed, on which pale furs were neatly folded. A desk sat nearby, the wood stained black, the chair before it high-backed and padded in deerskin. On a niche set in the highest wall squatted a three-legged silver candlestick, oxidized black. Beeswax candles flickered in gut shy;tered pools. Leaning near the altar was an enormous scabbarded greatsword, the cross-hilt as long as a child’s arm. Cobwebs coated the weapon.

‘You know my name,’ Kallor said. ‘But I have not yet heard yours.’

‘That is true.’

Something dangerous edged into Kallor’s voice as he said, ‘I would know the name of my host.’

‘Once, long ago, a wolf god came before me. Tell me, Kallor, do you understand the nature of beast gods? Of course not. You are only a beast in the unfairly pejo shy;rative sense — unfair to beasts, that is. How is it, then, that the most ancient gods of this world were, one and all, beasts?’

‘The question does not interest me, Jaghut.’

‘What of the answer?’

‘You possess one?’

The hands reached out and lifted the kettle from the hook as steam rushed up round the long fingers. ‘This must now steep for a time. Am I unusual in my penchant for evading such direct questions? A trait exclusive to Jaghut? Hardly. Knowledge may be free; my voice is not. I am a miser, alas, although I was not always this way.’

‘Since I see little value in this particular matter,’ said Kallor, ‘I would not bargain with you.’

‘Ah, and what of the Others with you? Might not they be interested?’

Clearing his throat, Skintick said, ‘Venerable one, we possess nothing of worth to one such as you.’

‘You are too modest, Tiste Andii.’

‘I am?’

‘Each creature is born from one not its kind. This is a wonder, a miracle forged in the fires of chaos, for chaos indeed whispers in our blood, no matter its particular hue. If I but scrape your skin, so lightly as to leave but a momentary streak, that which I take from you beneath my nail contains every truth of you, your life, even your death, assuming violence does not claim you. A code, if you will, seemingly precise and so very ordered. Yet chaos churns. For all your similarities to your father, neither you nor the one named Nimander — nor any of your brothers and sisters — is identical to Anomander Dragnipurake. Do you refute this?’

‘Of course not-’

‘For each kind of beast there is a first such beast, more different from its parents than the rest of its kin, from which a new breed in due course emerges. Is this firstborn then a god?’

‘You spoke of a wolf god,’ Skintick said. ‘You began to tell us a story.’

‘So I did. But you must be made to understand. It is a question of essences. To see a wolf and know it as pure, one must possess an image in oneself of a pure wolf, a perfect wolf.’

‘Ridiculous,’ Kallor grunted. ‘See a strange beast and someone tells you it is a wolf — and from this one memory, and perhaps a few more to follow, you have fashioned your image of a wolf. In my empires, philosophers spewed such rubbish for centuries, until, of course, I grew tired of them and had them tortured and executed.’

A strange muffled noise came from the hunched-over Jaghut. Nimander saw the shoulders shaking and realized the ancient was laughing.

‘I have killed a few Jaghut,’ Kallor said; not a boast, simply a statement. A warning.

‘The tea is ready,’ the Jaghut said, pouring dark liquid into four clay cups that Nimander had not noticed before. ‘You might wonder what I was doing when the wolf god found me. I was fleeing. In disguise. We had gathered to imprison a tyrant, until our allies turned upon us and resumed the slaughter. I believe I may be cursed to ever be in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

‘T’lan Imass allies,’ Kallor said. ‘Too bad they never found you.’

‘Kron, the clan of Bek’athana Ilk who dwelt in the Cliffs Above the Angry Sea. Forty-three hunters and a Bonecaster. They found me.’

Skintick squatted to pick up two of the cups, straightening to hand one to Nimander. The steam rising from the tea was heady, hinting of mint and cloves and something else. The taste numbed his tongue.

‘Where is mine?’ Kallor demanded. ‘If I must listen to this creature I will drink his tea.’

Smiling, Skintick pointed down to where the cups waited on the ground.

Another soft laugh from the Jaghut. ‘Raest was the name of the Tyrant we defeated. One of my more obnoxiously arrogant offspring. I did not mourn his fall. In any case, unlike Raest, I was never the strutting kind. It is a sign of weakness to shine blinding bright with one’s own power. Pathetic diffidence. A need that undermines. I was more. . secure.’

He had Kallor’s attention now. ‘You killed forty-three T’lan Imass and a bonecaster?’

‘I killed them all.’ The Jaghut sipped from his own cup. ‘I have killed a few T’lan Imass,’ he said, the intonation a perfect mimicry of Kallor’s own claim a few moments past. ‘Tell me, then, do you like my abode? My garden?’

‘Solitude has driven you mad,’ Kallor said.

‘You would know all about that now, wouldn’t you, O Lord of Failures? Par shy;take of the tea, lest I take offence.’

Teeth bared, Kallor bent down to retrieve his cup.

The Jaghut’s left hand shot out, closing about Kallor’s wrist. ‘You wounded that wolf god,’ he said.

Nimander stared as he saw the old man struggle to twist free of that grip. Veins standing out on his temple, jaw muscles bunching beneath the beard. But there was no pulling loose. There was no movement at all from that withered, green hand.

‘When you laid waste to your realm,’ the Jaghut continued. ‘You wounded it terribly.’

‘Release me,’ Kallor said in a rasp. And with his other hand he reached back for the grip of his sword.

All at once the Jaghut’s hand fell away.

Kallor staggered back and Nimander saw a white impression of fingers encircling the old warrior’s wrist. ‘This is not how a host behaves. You force me to kill you.’

‘Oh, be quiet, Kallor. This tower was an Azath once. Shall I awaken it for you?’

Wondering, Nimander watched as Kallor backed towards the entrance, eyes wide in that weathered, pallid face, the look of raw recognition dawning. ‘Gothos, what are you doing here?’

‘Where else should I be? Now remain outside — these two Tiste Andii must go away for a while.’

Heat was spreading fast, out from Nimanderi’s stomach. He cast a wild look at Skintick, saw his friend sinking slowly to his knees. The empty cup in his hand fell away, rolled briefly on the damp ground, Nimander stared at the Jaghut. ‘What have you done?’

‘Only what was necessary.’

With a snarl Kallor spun round and stalked from the chamber. Over his shoul shy;der he said, ‘I will not wait long.’

Nimander’s eyes were drawn once more to the walls of ice. Black depths, shapes moving within. He staggered, reached out his hands-

‘Oh, don’t step in there-’

And then he was falling forward, his hands passing into the wall before him, no resistance at all.

‘Nimander, do not-’

Blackness.

Desra wandered round the wagon, drawing up to halt beside the ox. She set a hand on its back, felt the beast’s heat, the rippling with every twitch shedding the biting flies. She looked down into the animal’s eye, saw with a start how delicate its lashes. ‘You must take the world as it is.’ Andarist’s last words to her, before the world took him.

It wasn’t hard. People either had strength or they didn’t. The weak ones left her disgusted, welling with dark contempt. If they chose at all it was ever the wrong choice. They let the world break them time and again, then wondered — dull-eyed as this ox — why it was so cruel. But it wasn’t the world that was the problem, was it? It was stepping into the stampede’s path over and over again. It was learning nothing from anything. Nothing.

There were more weak people than strong ones. The weak were legion. Some just weren’t smart enough to cope with anything beyond meeting immediate needs: the field to sow, the harvest to bring on to the threshing floor, the beasts of burden to feed. The child to raise, the coin for the next jug of ale, the next knuckle bag of d’bayang. They didn’t see beyond the horizon. They didn’t even see the next valley over. The world outside was where things came from, things that caused trouble, that jarred the proper order of life. They weren’t interested in thinking. Depths were frightening, long roads a journey without purpose where one could end up lost, curling up to die in the ditch.

She had seen so many of the weak ones. They died unjustly in their thousands. Tens of thousands. They died because they worshipped ignorance and believed this blind god could make them safe.

Among the strong, only a few were worth paying attention to. Most were bullies. Their threats were physical or they were emotional, but the effect was the same — to make the victim feel weak. And it was the self-appointed task of these bullies to convince as many people as possible that they were inherently weak, and their lives ones of pathetic misery. Once this was done, the bully would then say: do as I say and I will keep you safe. I will be your strength. . unless you anger me. If you anger me I will terrorize you. I might even kill you. There were plenty of these bastards, pig-eyed and blustery little boys in big bodies. Or fish-eyed nasty bitches — although these ones, after proving to their victims how weak they were, would then lap up all the spilled blood. Delicate tongues flicking in and out. You had the physical bullies and the emotional bullies, and they both revelled in destroying lives.

No, she had no time for them. But there were others whose strength was of a much rarer kind. Not easy to find, because they revealed nothing. They were quiet. They often believed themselves to be much weaker than they were. But when pushed too hard, they surprised themselves, finding that they would not back away another step, that a wall had risen in their souls, unyielding, a barrier that could not be passed. To find one such as this was the most precious of discoveries.

Desra had played the bully more than once, as much from boredom as from anything else. She’d lapped up her share of blood.

She might well do the same with this one named Clip — if he ever returned to them, and there was no guarantee of that. Yes, she would use him and people like him, who imagined themselves strong but were, in truth, weak or so she would prove, eventually. Certainly, their blood didn’t taste any purer, any sweeter,

She had made her discovery, after all, of one whose strength was absolute. Before whom she herself felt weak but in a most pleasant, most satisfying way one to whom she might surrender whatever she chose without fearing he would one day use it against her. Not this one.

Not Nimander Golit.

Desra saw Kallor emerge from the ruin, his agitation plain to see. Armour rustling, he marched between the scarecrows and up on to the road. Reaching the wagon, he pulled himself up with a worn boot on a wooden spoke, then paused to stare down at Clip. ‘You should throw this fool away,’ he said to Aranatha, who sat holding a thin cloth stretched out over the unconscious figure.

She smiled in answer and said nothing.

Desra frowned at Kallor. ‘Where are the others?’

‘Yes,’ he replied with a sneer, ‘the others.’

‘Well?’

He lifted himself over the slats. ‘The Jaghut decided to use them — unfortunately for them.’

Use?

Nenanda swung round from where he sat on the bench. ‘What Jaghut?’ he demanded.

But Desra was already turning away, rushing down through the ditch and on to the withered field. Between the toppled scarecrows-

So who is this Dying God?

Skintick, who knew himself well, who knew that his imagination was the deadliest weapon he used against himself, who knew how, in any situation, he might laugh — a plunge into the depths of absurdity, a desperate attempt to save his sanity — now found himself awakening on a dusty platform, no more than twelve paces across, of limestone. It was surrounded by olive trees, a grove of ancient twisted boles and dark leathery leaves, the fruit clustered in abundance. A warm wind slid over his naked form, making the sun’s heat — at least to begin with — less oppressive than it should have been. The air smelled of salt.

The stumps of columns encircled the platform. They had been painted the deep hue of wine, but that had begun to flake away, exposing raw yellow rock.

Who is this Dying God?

His head aching, Skintick slowly sat up, shielding his eyes from the glare, but the sun’s light rebounded from the stone and there was no relief. Groaning, he pushed himself to his feet, stood tottering. Gods, the pain in his head! Pulsing, exploding in blinding flashes behind his eyes.

Who is this Dying-

There were corpses huddled beneath the trees — mostly bones and rotted cloth, tufts of hair, skin-stretched skulls. Once brightly coloured clothes, strange shoes, the glitter of buttons and jewellery, gold on bared teeth.

The sun felt. . evil. As if its heat, its light, was somehow killing him, lancing through his flesh, tearing through his brain. He was growing ever sicker.

There was, he suddenly understood, no one left alive on this world. Even the trees were dying. The oceans were burning away and death was everywhere. It could not be escaped. The sun had become a murderer.

Who is this-

You could dream of the future. You could see it as but a recognizable continuation of what can be seen around you at this moment. See it as progress, a driven force with blinding glory at the very end. Or each moment as the pinnacle, at least until the next higher peak resolved itself. A farmer sows to feed the vision of fruition, of abundance, and the comfort that comes with a predictable universe reduced to this upcoming season. Drip libations to remind the gods that order exists.

You could dream of, at least, a place for your son, your daughter. Who would wish to deliver a child into a world of mayhem, of inescapable annihilation? And did it matter if death arrived as a force beyond the control of anyone, or as the logical consequence of wilful stupidity? No it did not, when there was no one left to ponder such questions.

Fury and folly. Someone here had played the ultimate practical joke. Seeded a world with life, witnessed its burgeoning, and then nudged the sun to anger. Into a deadly storm, a momentary cough of poison light, and the season of life ended. Just so.

Who is-

The god dies when the last believer dies. Rising up bloated and white, sinking down into unseen depths. Crumbling into dust. Expelled in a gust of hot wind.

Venomous spears lanced through Skintick’s brain, shearing through every last tether that remained. And suddenly he was free, launching skyward. Free, yes, because nothing mattered any more. The hoarders of wealth, the slayers of chil shy;dren, the rapists of the innocent, all gone. The decriers of injustice, the addicts of victimization, the endlessly offended, gone.

Nothing was fair. Nothing. And that is why you are dying, dear god. That is why. How can you do anything else? The sun rages!

Meaningless!

We all die. Meaningless!

Who-

A hard slap and he was jolted awake. A seamed, tusked face hovered over him. Vertical pupils set in grey, the whites barely visible. Like a damned goat.

‘You,’ the Jaghut said, ‘are a bad choice for this. Answering despair with laughter like that.’

Skintick stared up at the creature. He couldn’t think of anything to say.

‘There is a last moment,’ Gothos continued, ‘when every sentient creature alive realizes that it’s over, that not enough was done, that hindsight doesn’t survive dying. Not enough was done — you Tiste Andii understood that. Anomander Rake did. He realized that to dwell in but one world was madness. To survive, you must spread like vermin. Rake tore his people loose from their complacency. And for this he was cursed.’

‘I saw — I saw a world dying.’

‘If that is what you saw, then so it is. Somewhere, somewhen. On the paths of the Azath, a distant world slides into oblivion. Potential snuffed out. What did you feel, Skintick?’

‘I felt. . free.’

The Jaghut straightened. ‘As I said, a bad choice.’

‘Where — where is Nimander?’

Sounds at the doorway-

Desra rushed into the chamber. She saw Skintick, saw him slowly sitting up. She saw what must be the Jaghut, the hood drawn back to reveal that greenish, unhu shy;man visage, the hairless pate so mottled it might have been a mariner’s map of islands, a tortured coastline, reefs. He stood tall in his woollen robes.

But nowhere could she find Nimander.

The Jaghut’s eyes fixed on her for a moment, and then he faced one of the walls of ice.

She followed that gaze.

Staggering into darkness he was struck countless times. Fists pounded, fingers raked ragged furrows through his skin. Hands closed about his limbs and pulled.

‘This one is mine!’

‘No, mine!’

All at once voices cried out on all sides and a hand closed about Nimander’s waist, plucked him into the air. The giant figure carrying him ran, feet thumping like thunder, up a steep slope, rocks scurrying down, first a trickle, then a roar of cascading stones, with screams in their wake.

Choking dust blinded him.

A sharp-edged crest crunching underfoot, and then a sudden even steeper de shy;scent, down into a caldera. Grey clouds rising in plumes, sudden coruscating heat foul with gases that stung his eyes, burned in his throat.

He was flung on to hot ash.

The giant creature loomed over him.

Through tears Nimander looked up, saw a strangely child-like face peering down. The forehead sloped back behind an undulating brow-ridge from which the eyebrows streamed down in thick snarls of pale, almost white hair. Round, smooth cheeks, thick lips, a pug nose, a pale bulging wattle beneath the rounded chin. Its skin was bright yellow, its eyes emerald green.

It spoke in the language of the Tiste Andii. ‘I am like you. I too do not belong here.’

The voice was soft, a child’s voice. The giant slowly blinked, and then smiled, revealing a row of dagger like fangs.

Nimander struggled to speak: ‘Where — who — all those people. .’

‘Spirits. Trapped like ants in amber. But it is not amber. It is the blood of dragons.’

‘Are you a spirit?’

The huge head shook in a negative. ‘I am an Elder, and I am lost.’

‘Elder.’ Nimander frowned. ‘You call yourself that. Why?’

A shrug like hills in motion. ‘The spirits have so named me.’

‘How did you come to be here?’

‘I don’t know. I am lost, you see.’

‘And before this place?’

‘Somewhere else. I built things. Of stone. But each house I built then vanished — I know not where. It was most. . frustrating.’

‘Do you have a name?’

‘Elder?’

‘Nothing else?’

‘Sometimes, I would carve the stone. To make it look like wood. Or bone. I remember. . sunsets. Different suns, each night, different suns. Sometimes two. Sometimes three, one fierce, the others like children. I would build another house, if I could. I think, if I could do that, I would stop being lost.’

Nimander sat up. He was covered in volcanic dust, so fine it shed from him like liquid. ‘Build your house, then.’

‘Whenever I begin, the spirits attack me. Hundreds, then thousands. Too many.’

‘I stepped through a wall of ice.’ The memory was suddenly strong. ‘Omtose Phellack-’

‘Oh, ice is like blood and blood is like ice. There are many ways in. None out. You do not belong here because you are not yet dead. You are lost, like me. We should be friends, I think.’

‘I can’t stay-’

‘I am sorry.’

Panic seethed to life in Nimander. He stood, sinking to his shins in the hot ash. ‘I can’t — Gothos. Find me. Gothos!’

‘I remember Gothos.’ A terrible frown lowered the Elder’s brows. ‘He would appear, just before the last stone was set. He would look upon my house and pronounce it adequate. Adequate! Oh, how I hated that word! My sweat, my blood, and he called them adequate! And then he would walk inside and close the door, and I would place the last stone, and the house would vanish! I don’t think I like Gothos.’

‘I don’t blame you,’ Nimander said, unwilling to voice his suspicion that Gothos’s arrival and the vanishing of the houses were in fact connected; that indeed the Jaghut came to collect them. This Elder builds the Houses of the Azath.

And he is lost.

‘Tell me,’ Nimander said, ‘do you think there are others like you? Others, out there, building houses?’

‘I don’t know.’

Nimander looked round. The jagged walls of the cone enclosed the space. Enormous chunks of pumice and obsidian lay half buried in the grey dust. ‘Elder, do the spirits ever assail you here?’

‘In my pit? No, they cannot climb the sides.’

‘Build your house here.’

‘But-’

‘Use the rim as your foundation.’

‘But houses have corners!’

‘Make it a tower.’

‘A house. . within the blood of dragons? But there are no sunsets.’

A house within the blood of dragons. What would happen? What would change? Why do the spirits deny him this? ‘If you are tired of being lost,’ Nimander said, ‘build a house. But before you are done, before you set that last stone, walk into it.’ He paused and looked round, then grunted a laugh. ‘You won’t have any choice; you will be building the thing from the inside out.’

‘But then who will finish it?’

Nimander looked away. He was trapped here, possibly for ever. If he did as Gothos did, if he remained inside the house to await its completion, he might find a way out. He might walk those hidden pathways. And in so doing, he would doom this creature to eternity here. This child, this mason.

And that I cannot do. I am not like Gothos. I am not that cruel.

He heard laughter in his head. Phaed, shrieking with laughter. Then she said, ‘Don’t be an idiot. Take the way out. Leave this fool to his building blocks! He’s pathetic!’

‘I will set the last stone,’ Nimander said. ‘Just make sure it’s small enough for me to lift and push into place.’ And he looked up, and he saw that the giant was smiling, and no, it no longer looked like a child, and in its eyes something shone and its light flowed down, bathed Nimander.

‘I am different,’ the Elder said in a deep, warm voice, ‘when I build.’

‘Get him out,’ Desra said.

‘I cannot.’

‘Why?’

The Jaghut blinked like a lizard. ‘I don’t know how. The gate is Omtose Phel shy;lack, but the realm beyond is something else, something I want nothing to do with.’

‘But you made this gate — and gates open from both sides.’

‘I doubt he could ever find it,’ the Jaghut said. ‘Even assuming anyone lets him get close.’

‘Anyone? Who’s in there with him?’

‘A few million miserable wretches.’

Desra glared at Skintick. ‘How could you let this happen?’

He was weeping and could only shake his head.

‘Do not blame this one,’ the Jaghut said. ‘Do not blame anyone. Accidents hap shy;pen.’

‘You drugged us,’ Skintick suddenly accused him, his voice harsh with grief.

‘Alas, I did. And I had my reasons for doing so. . which seem to have failed. Therefore I must be more. . direct, and oh how I dislike being direct. When next you see Anomander, tell him this from me: he chose wisely. Each time, he chose wisely. Tell him, then, that of all whom I ever met, there is but one who has earned my respect, and he is that one.’

A sudden sob from Skintick.

Desra felt strangely shaken by the Jaghut’s words.

‘And,’ the Jaghut then added, ‘for you. Do not trust Kallor.’

Feeling helpless, useless, she stepped closer to the wall of ice, squinted into its dark depths.

‘Careful, woman. That blood pulls hard on you Tiste.’

And yes, she could feel that, but it was nothing to trust, nothing to even pay attention to — it was the lie she had always known, the lie of something better just ahead, of all the questions answered, just ahead. Another step, one more. One more. Time’s dialogue with the living, and time was a deceitful creature, a liar. Time promised everything and delivered nothing.

She stared into the darkness, and thought she saw movement, deep, deep within.

‘No Jaghut is to be trusted,’ Kallor said, glaring at the lowering sun. ‘Especially not Gothos.’

Aranatha studied the ancient warrior with an unwavering gaze, and though he would not meet her sister’s eyes, it was clear to Kedeviss that Kallor felt himself under siege. A woman’s attention, devastating barrage of inexorable calculation — even a warrior flinched back.

But these were momentary distractions, she knew. Something had happened. Desra had rushed into the ruin and not returned. Nenanda stood fidgeting, eyes on the crumbled edifice.

‘Some gods are born to suffer,’ Kallor said. ‘You’d be better off heading straight to Coral. Unleash Anomander Rake against that Dying God, if getting this Clip back, is so important to you. At the very least you’ll have your vengeance.’

‘And is vengeance so important?’ Kedeviss asked.

‘Often it’s all there is,’ Kallor replied, still squinting westward.

‘Is that why they’re after you?’

He turned, studied her. ‘And who would be after me?’

‘Someone. That much seems obvious. Am I wrong?’

Aranatha spoke from the wagon, ‘You are not, sister. But then, he has always been hunted. You can see it in his eyes.’

‘Be glad that you remain marginally useful to me,’ Kallor said, turning away once more.

Kedeviss saw Nenanda glaring at the warrior’s back.

How much time had passed? Days, perhaps weeks. Nimander stood, watching the mason build his tower. Shaping stone with fists, with round hammerstones found somewhere, with leather-wrapped wooden mallets to edge the pumice fac shy;ing he had decided to add to ‘lighten the walls’.

To accommodate the giant, the tower needed to be huge, four storeys or more to the ceiling. ‘Made with the blood of dragons, the glass of what flowed, the pumice of what foamed with dying breaths. A tower, yes, but also a monument, a grave marker. What will come of this? I know not. You were clever, Nimander, with this idea. Too clever to stay here. You must leave, when the tower vanishes, you must be within it. I will stay.’

They repeated that argument again and again, and each time Nimander prevailed, not through brilliant reasoning, not through appealing to the Elder’s selfish desires (because it turned out he didn’t have any), but only through his refusal to surrender.

He had nothing awaiting him, after all. Nenanda could lead the others through — he was finding his own kind of wisdom, his restraint, and with Skintick and Kede shy;viss to guide him, he would do well. Until such time as they reached Coral.

Nimander had lost too many battles — he could see that in himself. Could feel every scar, still fresh, still wounding. This place would give him time to heal, if such a thing were possible. How long? Why not eternity?

A chorus of wails surrounded them, an army of spirits grovelling in the ash and dust at the base of the volcanic cone. Bemoaning the end of the world — as if this world suited them just fine, when clearly it didn’t, when each one dreamed of reclaiming flesh and bone, blood and breath. They sought to assail the slope but somehow failed again and again.

Nimander helped when he could, carrying tools here and there, but mostly he sat in the soft dust, seeing nothing, hearing only the cries from beyond the tower’s growing wall, feeling neither thirst nor hunger, slowly emptying of desire, ambition, everything that might once have mattered.

Around him the darkness deepened, until the only light came from some pre shy;ternatural glow from the pumice. The world closing in. .

Until-

‘One stone remains. This stone. The base of this low window, Nimander, within your reach. I will help you climb outside — then push the stone through, like this — but tell me, please, why can we not both leave here? I am within the tower. So are you. If I set the stone-’

‘Elder,’ cut in Nimander. ‘You are almost done here. Where is Gothos?’

A look of surprise. ‘I don’t know.’

‘He does not dare this realm, I think.’

‘Perhaps that is true.’

‘I don’t even know if this will work — if it will create for you a way out.’

‘I understand, Nimander. Remain inside with me. Let me set this stone.’

‘I don’t know where this tower will take you,’ Nimander replied. ‘Back to your realm, wherever that is, perhaps — but not my home. Nothing I know. Besides, you carved this to be pushed into place from outside — the angles-’

‘I can reshape it, Nimander.’

I cannot go with you. ‘In finding out where you are, Elder, I become lost. You are the mason, the maker of the houses. It is your task. You do not belong here.’

‘Nor do you.’

‘Don’t I? There are Tiste Andii spirits out there. And Tiste Edur. Even Liosan. The ones who fell in the first wars, when dragons burst through every gate to slay, to die. Listen to them out there! They have made peace with one another — a miracle, and one I would be happy to share.’

‘You are not a ghost. They will take you. They will fight over you, a beginning of a new war, Nimander. They will tear you to pieces.’

‘No, I will reason with them-’

‘You cannot.’

Despair stirred awake in Nimander, as he saw the truth of the Elder’s words. Even here, he was not welcome. Even here he would bring destruction. Yet, when they tear me limb from limb, I will die. I will become just like them. A short war. ‘Help me through the window,’ he said, pulling himself up on to the rough ledge.

‘As you wish. I understand, Nimander.’

Yes, perhaps you do.

‘Nimander.’

‘Yes?’

‘Thank you. For this gift of creation.’

‘Next time you meet Gothos,’ Nimander said as his friend pushed him through the portal, ‘punch him in the face for me, will you?’

‘Yes, another good idea. I will miss you. You and your good ideas.’

He fell through on to a thick powdery slope, hastily reaching up to grip the window’s edge to keep from sliding. Behind and below voices cried out in sudden hunger. He could feel their will churning up to engulf him.

A heavy scrape from the window and out came the final stone, end first, grinding as it was forced through. Catching Nimander by surprise. The weight pushed against his fingers where he held tight and he swore in pain as the tips were crushed, pinned — tearing one hand free left nails behind, droplets of blood spattering. He scrabbled for another handhold, then, voicing a scream, he tore loose his other arm.

Gods, how was he going to manage this? With two mangled hands, with no firm footing, with a mob surging frantic up the slope behind him?

Inexorable, the stone ground its way out. He brought a shoulder beneath it, felt the massive weight settling. His arms began to tremble.

Far enough now, yes, and he reached with one hand, began pushing to one side the nearest end of the blood-slick chunk of obsidian. He could see the clever angles now, the planes and how everything would somehow, seemingly impossibly, slide into perfect position. Push, some more — not much — almost in place-

Thousands, hundreds of thousands — a storm of voices, screams of desperation, of dismay, of terrible horror — too much! Please, stop! Stop!

He was weakening — he would not make it — he could not hold on any longer — with a sob he released his grip and in the last moment, tottering, he pushed with both hands, setting the stone — and then he was falling back, down, swallowed in cascading ash, stones, scouring chunks of rough pumice. Down the slope he tumbled, buried beneath ever more rubble. Hot. Suffocating. Blind. Drowning and one flailing hand was grasped, hard, by one and then two hands — small — a woman’s hands.

His shoulder flared in pain as that grip tightened, pulled him round. The collapsing hillside tugged at him, eager to take him — he understood its need, he sympathized, yes, and wanted to relent, to let go, to vanish in the crushing darkness.

The hands dragged him free. Dragged him by one bloody arm. The storm of voices raged anew, closer now and closing fast. Cold fingertips scrabbled against his boots, nails clawing at his ankles and oh he didn’t care, let them take him, let them-

He tumbled down on to damp earth. Gloom, silence but for harsh breaths, a surprised grunt from nearby.

Rolling on to his back, coughing through a mouth caked in ash. Eyes burning-

Desra knelt over him, her head down, her face twisted in pain as she held her arms like two broken wings in her lap. Skintick, rushing close to crouch beside him.

‘I thought — she-’

‘How long?’ Nimander demanded. ‘How could you have waited so long? Clip-’

‘What? It’s been but moments, Nimander. Desra — she came in, she saw into the ice — saw you-’

Fire burned his fingers, flicked flames up his hands and into his wrists, sizzling fierce along the bones. Fresh blood dripped from dust-caked wounds where nails had been. ‘Desra,’ he moaned. ‘Why?’

She looked up, fixed him with hard eyes. ‘We’re not finished with you yet, Nimander,’ she said in a rasp. ‘Oh no, not yet.’

‘You damned fool,’ Gothos said. ‘I was saving that one for later. And now he’s free.’

Nimander twisted round. ‘You cannot just collect people! Like shiny stones!’

‘Why not? My point is, I needed that one. There is now an Azath in the blood of dragons-’

‘The spilled blood — the blood of dead dragons-’

‘And you think the distinction is important? Oh, me and my endless folly!’ With sharp gestures he raised his hood once more, then turned to settle down on a stool, facing the hearth, his position a perfect match to the moment Nimander, Skintick and Kallor had first entered this place. ‘You idiot, Nimander. Dragons don’t play games. Do you understand me? Dragons play no games. Ah, I despair, or I would if I cared enough. No, instead, I will make some ashcakes. Which I will not share.’

‘It’s time to leave,’ Skintick said.

Yes, that much was obvious.

‘They’re coming now,’ Kallor said.

Kedeviss looked but could not see any movement in the gloom of the ruin’s entrance.

‘It’s too late to travel — we’ll have to camp here. Make us a fine meal, Aranatha. Nenanda, build a fire. A house of sticks to set aflame — that’ll make Gothos wince, I hope. Yes, entice him out here tonight, so that I can kill him.’

‘You can’t kill him,’ Aranatha said, straightening in the wagon bed.

‘Oh, and why not?’

‘I need to talk to him.’

Kedeviss watched her kin descend from the wagon, adjust her robes, then stride towards the ruin — where Skintick had appeared, helping Nimander, whose hands were dark with blood. Behind them, Desra.

‘That bitch sister of yours is uncanny,’ Kallor said in a growl.

Kedeviss saw no need to comment on that.

‘She speaks with Gothos — why? What could they possibly say to each other?’

Shrugging, Kedeviss turned away. ‘I think I will do the cooking tonight,’ she said.

Dying, the Captain stared across at the giant warrior with the shattered face. Woven carpets beneath each of them, the one on which sat the Captain now sodden with blood — blood that seemed to flow for ever, as if his body was but a valve, broken, jammed open, and out it came, trickling down from wounds that would never close. He was, he realized, back where he began. Opulence surrounded him this time, rather than grit and mud and dust on the edge of a dried riverbed, but did that make any real difference? Clearly it didn’t.

Only the dying could laugh at that truth. There were many things, he now understood, to which only the dying could respond with honest mirth. Like this nemesis warrior sitting cross-legged, hunched and glowering opposite him.

A small brazier smouldered between them, perched on three legs. On the coals rested a squat kettle, and the spiced wine within steamed to sweeten the air of the chamber.

‘You shall have to knock out some of the inner walls,’ the Captain said. ‘Have the slaves make you a new bed, one long enough, and other furniture besides.’

‘You are not listening,’ the giant said. ‘I lose my temper when people do not listen.’

‘You are my heir-’

‘No. I am not. Slavery is an abomination. Slavery is what people who hate do to others. They hate themselves. They hate in order to make themselves different, better. You. You told yourself you had the right to own other people. You told yourself they were less than you, and you thought shackles could prove it.’

‘I loved my slaves. I took care of them.’

‘There is plenty of room for guilt in the heart of hate,’ the warrior replied.

‘This is my gift-’

‘Everyone seeks to give me gifts. I reject them all. You believe yours is wondrous. Generous. You are nothing. Your empire is pathetic. I knew village dogs who were greater tyrants than you.’

‘Why do you torment me with such words? I am dying. You have killed me. And yet I do not despise you for that. No, I make you my heir. I give you my kingdom. My army will take your commands. Everything is yours now.’

‘I don’t want it.’

‘If you do not take it, one of my officers will.’

‘This kingdom cannot exist without the slaves. Your army will become nothing more than one more band of raiders, and so someone will hunt them down and destroy them. And all you sought to build will be forgotten.’

‘You torment me.’

‘I tell you the truth. Let your officers come to kill me. I will destroy them all. And I will scatter your army. Blood to the grass.’

The Captain stared at this monster, and knew he could do nothing. He was sinking, back against his heap of pillows, every breath shallower than the last. Swathed in robes and furs, he was none the less cold. ‘You could have lied,’ he whispered.

The man’s last words. Karsa studied the dead face for a moment longer. Then he thumped against the panel door to his left.

It opened a crack.

‘Everyone leave this carriage,’ Karsa commanded. ‘Take whatever you want — but you do not have much time.’

Then he settled back once more. Scanned the remnants of the lavish feast he had devoured — while the Captain had simply watched, smug as a rich father even as he died. But Karsa was not his son. Not his heir, no matter what the fool de shy;sired. He was Toblakai. A Teblor, and far to the north waited his people.

Was he ready for them?

He was.

Would they be ready for him? Probably not.

A long walk awaited him — there was not a single horse in this paltry kingdom that could accommodate him. He thought back to his youth, to those bright days of hard drama, crowded with omens, when every blade of grass was saturated with significance — but it was the young mind that fashioned such things. Not yet bleached by the sun, not yet worn down by the wind. Vistas were to be crossed. Foes were to be vanquished with harsh barks of fierce triumph, blood spraying in the air.

Once, long ago it seemed now, he had set out to find glory, only to discover that it was nothing like what he had imagined it to be. It was a brutal truth that his companions then had understood so much better than he had, despite his being War Leader. Nevertheless, they had let themselves be pulled into his wake, and for this they had died. The power of Karsa’s own will had overwhelmed them. What could be learned from that?

Followers will follow, even unto their own deaths. There was a flaw to such people — the willingness to override one’s own instinct for self-preservation. And this flaw invited exploitation, perhaps even required it. Confusion and uncertainty surrendered to simplicity, so comforting, so deadly.

Without followers this Captain would have achieved nothing. The same the world over. Wars would disintegrate into the chaos of raids, skirmishes, massacres of the innocent, the vendetta of blood-feuds, and little else. Monuments would never be raised. No temples, no streets and roads, no cities. No ships, no bridges. Every patch of ploughed land would shrink to what a few could manage. Without followers, civilization would never have been born.

He would tell his people all this. He would make them not his followers, but his companions. And together they would bring civilization to ruin, whenever and wherever they found it. Because, for all the good it created, its sole purpose was to breed followers — enough to heave into motion forces of destruction, spreading a tide of blood at the whim of those few cynical tyrants born to lead. Lead, yes, with lies, with iron words — duty, honour, patriotism, freedom — that fed the wilfully stupid with grand purpose, with reason for misery and delivering misery in kind.

He had seen the enemy’s face, its twin masks of abject self-sacrifice and cold-eyed command. He had seen leaders feed on the flesh of the bravely fallen. And this is not the Teblor way. It shall not be my way.

The sounds of looting from the rooms around him were gone now. Silence on all sides. Karsa reached down and used a hook to lift the kettle from the coals and set it down on the small table amidst the foodstuffs, the silver plates and the polished goblets.

Then he kicked the brazier over, scattering coals on to the beautifully woven carpets, into the silks and woollen blankets, the furs. He waited to see flames ig shy;nite.

When the first ones began, Karsa Orlong rose and, hunched over to clear the panel door, he made his way out.

Darkness in the world beyond the camp’s cookfires. A mad profusion of stars overhead. Arrayed in a vast semicircle facing the enormous carriage was the kingdom of the Captain. Karsa Orlong stood in front of the throne on the balcony.

‘The slaves are free,’ he said in a loud voice that carried to everyone. ‘The offi shy;cers will divide the loot, the horses and all the rest — an equal share for all, slaves and free, soldier and crafter. Cheat anyone and I will kill you.’

Behind him on the carriage, flames licked out from the countless windows and vents. Black smoke rose in a thickening column. He could feel the heat gusting against his back.

‘Come the dawn,’ he said, ‘everyone will leave. Go home. Those without a home — go find one. And know that the time I give you now is all that you will ever have. For when next you see me, when you are hiding there in your cities, I will come as a destroyer. Five years or twenty — it is what you have, what I give you. Use it well. All of you, live well.’

And that such a farewell should be received, not as a benediction, but as a threat, marked well how these people understood Karsa Orlong — who came from the north, immune to all weapons. Who slew the Captain without even touching him. Who freed the slaves and scattered the knights of the realm with not a single clash of swords.

The god of the Broken Face came among them, as each would tell others for the years left to them. And, so telling, with eyes wide and licking dry lips, they would reach in haste for the tankard and its nectar of forgetfulness.

Some, you cannot kill. Some are deliverers of death and judgement. Some, in wishing you a full life, promise you death. There is no lie in that promise, for does not death come to us all? And yet, how rare the one to say so. No sweet euphemism, no quaint colloquialism. No metaphor, no analogy. There is but one true poet in the world, and he speaks the truth.

Flee, my friends, but there is nowhere to hide. Nowhere at all.

See your fate, there in his Broken Face.

See it well.

Horses drawn to a halt on a low hilltop, grasses whispering unseen on all sides.

‘I once led armies,’ Traveller said. ‘I was once the will of the Emperor of Malaz.’

Samar Dev tasted bitterness and leaned to one side and spat.

The man beside her grunted, as if acknowledging the gesture as commentary. ‘We served death, of course, in all that we did. For all our claims otherwise. Imposing peace, ending stupid feuds and tribal rivalries. Opening roads to mer shy;chants without fear of banditry. Coin flowed like blood in veins, such was the gilt of those roads and the peace we enforced. And yet, behind it all, he waited.’

‘All hail civilization,’ Samar Dev said. ‘Like a beacon in the dark wilderness,’

‘With a cold smile,’ Traveller continued, as if not hearing her, ‘he waits. Where all the roads converge, where every path ends. He waits.’

A dozen heartbeats passed, with nothing more said.

To the north something burned, lancing bright orange flames into the sky, lighting the bellies of churning clouds of black smoke. Like a beacon. .

‘What burns?’ Traveller wondered.

Samar Dev spat again. She just couldn’t get that foul taste out of her mouth. ‘Karsa Orlong,’ she replied. ‘Karsa Orlong burns, Traveller. Because that is what he does.’

‘I do not understand you.’

‘It’s a pyre,’ she said. ‘And he does not grieve. The Skathandi are no more.’

‘When you speak of Karsa Orlong,’ Traveller said, ‘I am frightened.’

She nodded at that admission — a response he probably could not even see. The man beside her was an honest one. In many ways as honest as Karsa Orlong.

And on the morrow these two would meet.

Samar Dev well understood Traveller’s fear.