Dust of Dreams

Chapter Two

He stood amidst the rotted remnants of ship timbers, tall yet hunched, and if not for his tattered clothes and long, wind-tugged hair, he could have been a statue, a thing of bleached marble, toppled from the Meckros city behind him to land miraculously upright on the colourless loess. For as long as Udinaas had been watching, the distant figure had not moved.

A scrabble of pebbles announced the arrival of someone else coming up from the village, and a moment later Onrack T’emlava stepped up beside him. The warrior said nothing for a time, a silent, solid presence.

This was not a world to be rushed through, Udinaas had come to realize; not that he’d ever been particularly headlong in the course of his life. For a long time since his arrival here in the Refugium, he had felt as if he were dragging chains, or wading through water. The slow measure of time in this place resisted hectic presumptions, forcing humility, and, Udinaas well knew, humility always arrived uninvited, kicking down doors, shattering walls. It announced itself with a punch to the head, a knee in the groin. Not literally, of course, but the result was the same. Driven to one’s knees, struggling for breath, weak as a sickly child. With the world standing, looming over the fool, slowly wagging one finger.

There really should be more of that. Why, if I was the god of all gods, it’s the only lesson I would ever deliver, as many times as necessary.

Then again, that’d make me one busy bastard, wouldn’t it just.

The sun overhead was cool, presaging the winter to come. The shoulder-women said there would be deep snow in the months ahead. Desiccated leaves, caught in the tawny grasses of the hilltop, fluttered and trembled as if shivering in dread anticipation. He’d never much liked the cold-the slightest chill and his hands went numb.

‘What does he want?’ Onrack asked.

Udinaas shrugged.

‘Must we drive him off?’

‘No, Onrack, I doubt that will be necessary. For the moment, I think, there’s no fight left in him.’

‘You know more of this than me, Udinaas. Even so, did he not murder a child? Did he not seek to kill Trull Sengar?’

‘He crossed weapons with Trull?’ Udinaas asked. ‘My memories of that are vague. I was preoccupied getting smothered by a wraith at the time. Well, then, friend, I can understand how you might want to see the last of him. As for Kettle, I don’t think any of that was as simple as it looked. The girl was already dead, long dead, before the Azath seeded her. All Silchas Ruin did was crack the shell so the House could send down its roots. In the right place and at the right time, thus ensuring the survival of this realm.’

The Imass was studying him, his soft, brown eyes nested in lines of sorrow, in lines that proved that he felt things too deeply. This fierce warrior who had-apparently-once been naught but leathery skin and bones was now as vulnerable as a child. This trait seemed true of all the Imass. ‘You knew, then, all along, Udinaas? The fate awaiting Kettle?’

‘Knew? No. Guessed, mostly.’

Onrack grunted. ‘You rarely err in your guesses, Udinaas. Very well, go then. Speak with him.’

Udinaas smiled wryly. ‘Not bad at guessing yourself, Onrack. Will you wait here?’

‘Yes.’

He was glad of that, for despite his conviction that Silchas Ruin did not intend violence, with the White Crow there was no telling. If Udinaas ended up cut down by one of those keening swords, at least his death would be witnessed, and unlike his son, Rud Elalle, Onrack was not so foolish as to charge out seeking vengeance.

As he drew closer to the albino Tiste Andii, it became increasingly evident that Silchas Ruin had not fared well since his sudden departure from this realm. Most of his armour was shorn away, leaving his arms bare. Old blood stained the braided leather collar of his scorched gambeson. He bore new, barely healed gashes and cuts, and mottled bruises showed below skin like muddy water beneath ice.

His eyes, alas, remained hard, unyielding, red as fresh blood in their shadowed sockets.

‘Longing for that old Azath barrow?’ Udinaas asked as he halted ten paces from the gaunt warrior.

Silchas Ruin sighed. ‘Udinaas. I had forgotten your bright gift with words.’

‘I can’t recall anyone ever calling it a gift,’ he replied, deciding to let the sarcasm pass, as if his stay in this place had withered his natural acuity. ‘A curse, yes, all the time. It’s amazing I’m still breathing, in fact.’

‘Yes,’ the Tiste Andii agreed, ‘it is.’

‘What do you want, Silchas Ruin?’

‘We travelled together for a long time, Udinaas.’

‘Running in circles, yes. What of it?’

The Tiste Andii glanced away. ‘I was… misled. By all that I saw. An absence of sophistication. I imagined the rest of that world was no different from Lether… until that world arrived.’

‘The Letherii version of sophistication is rather narcissistic, granted. Comes with being the biggest lump of turd on the heap. Locally speaking.’

Ruin’s expression soured. ‘A turd thoroughly crushed under heel, now.’

Udinaas shrugged. ‘Comes to us all, sooner or later.’

‘Yes.’

Silence stretched between them, and still Ruin would not meet his gaze. Udinaas understood well enough, and knew too that it would be unseemly to show any pleasure at the White Crow’s humbling.

‘She will be Queen,’ Silchas Ruin said abruptly.

‘Who?’

The warrior blinked, as if startled by the question, and then fixed his unhuman attention once more upon Udinaas. ‘Your son is in grave danger.’

‘Is he now?’

‘I thought, in coming here, that I would speak to him. To offer what meagre advice of any worth I might possess.’ He gestured at the place where he stood. ‘This is as far as I could manage.’

‘What’s holding you back?’

Ruin’s expression soured. ‘To the Blood of the Eleint, Udinaas, any notion of community is anathema. Or of alliance. If in spirit the Letherii possess an ascendant, it is the Eleint.’

‘Ah, I see. Which was why Quick Ben managed to defeat Sukul Ankhadu, Sheltatha Lore and Menandore.’

Silchas Ruin nodded. ‘Each intended to betray the others. It is the flaw in the blood. More often than not, a fatal one.’ He paused, and then said, ‘So it proved with me and my brother Anomander. Once the Draconic blood took hold of us, we were driven apart. Andarist stood between us, reaching with both hands, seeking to hold us close, but our newfound arrogance surpassed him. We ceased to be brothers. Is it any wonder that we-’

‘Silchas Ruin,’ Udinaas cut in, ‘why is my son in danger?’

The warrior’s eyes flashed. ‘My lesson in humility very nearly killed me. But I survived. When Rud Elalle’s own lesson arrives, he may not be so fortunate.’

‘Ever had a child, Silchas? I thought not. Giving advice to a child is like flinging sand at an obsidian wall. Nothing sticks. The brutal truth is that we each suffer our own lessons-they can’t be danced round. They can’t be slipped past. You cannot gift a child with your scars-they arrive like webs, constricting, suffocating, and that child will struggle and strain until they break. No matter how noble your intent, the only scars that teach them anything are the ones they earn themselves.’

‘Then I must ask you, as his father, for a boon.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘I am, Udinaas.’

Fear Sengar had tried to stab this Tiste Andii in the back, had tried to step into Scabandari Bloodeye’s shadow. Fear had been a difficult man, but Udinaas, for all his jibes and mockery, his bitter memories of slavery, had not truly disliked him. Nobility could be admired even when not met eye to eye. And he had seen Trull Sengar’s grief. ‘What would you ask of me, then?’

‘Give him to me.’

‘What?’

The Tiste Andii held up a hand. ‘Make no answer yet. I will explain the necessity. I will tell you what is coming, Udinaas, and when I am done, I believe you will understand.’

Udinaas found he was trembling. And as Silchas Ruin continued to speak, he felt the once-solid ground inexorably shifting beneath his feet.

The seemingly turgid pace of this world was proved an illusion, a quaint conceit.

The truth was, everything was pitching headlong, a hundred thousand boulders sliding down a mountainside. The truth was, quite simply, terrifying.

Onrack stood watching the two figures. The conversation had stretched on much longer than the Imass had anticipated, and his worry was burgeoning along with it. Little good was going to come of this, he was certain. He heard a coughing grunt behind him and turned to see the two emlava crossing his trail a hundred or so paces back. They swung their massive, fanged heads in his direction and eyed him warily, as if seeking permission-but he could see by their loping gait and ducked tail-stubs that they were setting out on a hunt. The guilt beneath their intent seemed instinctive, as did their wide-eyed belligerence. They might be gone a day, or weeks. In need of a major kill, with winter fast approaching.

Onrack turned his attention back to Udinaas and Silchas Ruin, and saw that they were now walking towards him, side by side, and the Imass could read well enough Udinaas’s battered spirit, his fugue of despair.

No, nothing good was on its way here.

He heard the scrabble behind him as the emlava reached the point where the trail they’d taken would move them out of Onrack’s line of sight, and both animals bolted to escape his imagined attention. But he had no interest in calling them back. He never did. The beasts were simply too stupid to take note of that.

Intruders into this realm rode an ill tide, arriving like vanguards to legions of chaos. Change stained the world the hue of fresh blood more often than not. When the truth was, the one thing all Imass desired was peace, affirmed in the ritual of living, secure and stable and exquisitely predictable. Heat and smoke from the hearths, the aromas of cooking meats, tubers, melted marrow. The nasal voices of the women singing as they went about their day’s modest demands. The grunts and gasps of love-making, the chants of children. Someone might be working an antler tine, the spiral edge of a split long-bone, or a core of flint. Another kneeling by the stream, scraping down a hide with polished blades and thumbnail scrapers, and nearby there was the faint depression marking a pit of sand where other skins had been buried. When anyone needed to urinate they would squat over the pit to send their stream down. To cure the hides.

Elders sat on boulders and watched the camp and all their kin going about their tasks, and they dreamed of the hidden places and the pathways that opened in the fever of droning voices and drumming and swirling scenes painted on torch-lit stone, deep in the seethe of night when spirits blossomed before the eyes in myriad colours, when the patterns rose to the surface and floated and flowed in the smoky air.

The hunt and the feast, the gathering and the shaping. Days and nights, births and deaths, laughter and grief, tales told and retold, the mind within unfolding to reveal itself like a gift to every kin, every warm, familiar face.

This, Onrack knew, was all that mattered. Every appeasement of the spirits sought the protection of that precious peace, that perfect continuity. The ghosts of ancestors hovered close to stand sentinel over the living. Memories wove strands that bound everyone together, and when those memories were shared, that binding grew ever stronger.

In the camp behind him, his beloved mate, Kilava, reclined on heaps of soft furs, only days away from giving birth to their second child. Shoulder-women brought her wooden bowls filled with fat, delicious grubs still steaming from the hot flat-rocks lining the hearths. And cones of honey and pungent teas of berry and bark. They fed her continuously and would do so until her labour pains began, to give her the strength and reserves she would need.

He recalled the night he and Kilava went to the home of Seren Pedac, in that strange, damaged city of Letheras. To hear of Trull Sengar’s death had been one of the hardest moments of Onrack’s life. But to find himself standing before his friend’s widow had proved even more devastating. Setting eyes upon her, he had felt himself collapse inside and he had wept, beyond any consolation, and he had-some time later-wondered at Seren’s fortitude, her preternatural calm, and he had told himself that she must have gone through her own grief in the days and nights immediately following her love’s murder. She had watched him weep with sorrow in her eyes but no tears. She’d made tea, then, methodical in its preparation, while Onrack huddled inside the embrace of Kilava’s arms.

Only later would he rail at the injustice, the appalling senselessness of his friend’s death. And for the duration of that night, as he struggled to speak to her of Trull-of the things they had shared since that moment of frail sympathy when Onrack elected to free the warrior from his Shorning-he was reminded again and again of fierce battles, defiant stands, acts of breathtaking courage, any one of which would have marked a worthy end, a death swollen with meaning, shining with sacrifice. And yet Trull Sengar had survived those, every one of them, fashioning a kind of triumph in the midst of pain and loss.

Had Onrack been there, in the blood-splashed arena of sand, Trull’s back would not have been unguarded. The murderer would never have succeeded in his act of brutal treachery. And Trull Sengar would have lived to see his own child growing in Seren Pedac’s belly, would have witnessed, in awe and wonder, that glow of focused inwardness in the expression of the Acquitor. No male could know such a sense of completeness, of course, for she had become a vessel of that continuity, an icon of hope and optimism for the future world.

Oh, if Trull could have witnessed that-no one deserved it more, after all the battles, the wounds, the ordeals and the vast solitude that Onrack could never pierce-so many betrayals and yet he had stood unbowed and had given of himself all that he could. No, there had been nothing fair in this.

Seren Pedac had been kind and gracious. She had permitted Kilava’s ritual ensuring a safe birth. But she had also made it clear that she desired nothing else, that this journey would be her own, and indeed, she was strong enough to make it.

Yes, women could be frightening. In their strengths, their capacity to endure.

As much as Onrack would have treasured being close to Kilava now, to treat her with gifts and morsels, any such attempt would have been met with ridicule from the shoulder-women and a warning snarl from Kilava herself. He had learned to keep his distance, now that the birthing was imminent.

In any case, he had grown fond of Udinaas. True, a man far more inclined to edged commentary than Trull had been, prone to irony and sarcasm, since these were the only weapons Udinaas could wield with skill. Yet Onrack had come to appreciate his wry wit, and more than that, the man had displayed unexpected virtues in his newfound role as father-ones that Onrack noted and resolved to emulate when his time arrived.

He had missed such an opportunity the first time round, and the man who was his first son, Ulshun Pral, had been raised by others, by adopted uncles, brothers, aunts. Even Kilava had been absent more often than not. And so, while Ulshun was indeed of their shared blood, he belonged more to his people than he did to his parents. There was only faint sorrow in this, Onrack told himself, fragments of regret that could find no fit in his memories of the Ritual’s deathless existence.

So much had changed. This world seemed to rush past, ephemeral and elusive, days and nights slipping through his hands. Time and again he was almost paralysed by a sense of loss, overwhelmed with anguish at the thought of another moment gone, another instant dwindling in his wake. He struggled to remain mindful, senses bristling to every blessed arrival, to absorb and devour and luxuriate in its taste, and then would come a moment when everything flooded over him and he would be engulfed, flailing in the blinding, deafening deluge.

Too many feelings, and it seemed weeping was his answer to so much in this mortal life-in joy, in sorrow, in gifts received and in the losses suffered. Perhaps he had forgotten all the other possible ways of responding. Perhaps they were the first to go once time became meaningless, cruel as a curse, leaving tears as the last thing to dry up.

Udinaas and Silchas Ruin drew closer.

And once more, Onrack felt like weeping.

The D’rhasilhani coast looked gnawed and rotted, with murky silt-laden rollers thrashing amidst pitted limestone outcrops and submerged sandbars overgrown with mangroves. Heaps of foam the hue of pale flesh lifted and sagged with every breaker, and through the eyeglass Shield Anvil Tanakalian could see, above the tideline where crescent pockets of sand and gravel were visible, mounds of dead fish, swarmed by gulls and something else-long, low and possibly reptilian-that heaved and bulled through the slaughter every now and then, sending the gulls flapping and screeching.

He was relieved he was not standing on that shore, so alien from the coast he had known almost all of his life-where the water was deep, clear and deathly cold; where every inlet and reach was shrouded in the gloom of black cliffs and thick forests of pine and fir. He had not imagined that such shorelines as he was seeing now even existed. Squalid, fetid, like some overripe pig slough. Northeastward along the coastline, at the base of a young range of mountains angling south, what must be a huge river emptied out into this vast bay, filling the waters with its silts. The constant inflow of fresh water, thick and milky-white, had poisoned most of the bay, as far as Tanakalian could determine. And this did not seem right. He felt as if he was looking upon the scene of a vast crime of some sort, a fundamental wrongness spreading like sepsis.

‘What is your wish, sir?’

The Shield Anvil lowered the eyeglass and frowned at the coast filling the view to the north. ‘Make for the river mouth, Captain. I gauge the outflow channel lies upon the other side, closest to that eastern shore-the cliffs seem sheer.’

‘Even from here, sir,’ said the captain, ‘the barely submerged banks upon this side are plain to our sight.’ He hesitated. ‘It is the ones we cannot see that concern me, Shield Anvil. I am not even appeased should we await the tide.’

‘Can we not withdraw, further out to sea, and then make our approach closer to the eastern coastline?’

‘Into the head of the river’s current? Possibly, although in the clash with the tide, that current will be treacherous. Shield Anvil, this delegation we seek-not a seafaring people, I assume?’

Tanakalian smiled. ‘A range of virtually impassable mountains blocks the kingdom from the coast, and even on the landward side of that range a strip of territory is claimed by pastoral tribes-there is peace between them and the Bolkando. Nonetheless, to answer you, sir, no, the Bolkando are not a seafaring people.’

‘Thus, this river mouth…’

‘Yes, Captain. By gracious agreement with the D’rhasilhani, the Bolkando delegation is permitted an encampment on the east side of the river.’

‘The threat of invasion can make lifelong enemies into the closest allies,’ observed the captain.

‘So it seems,’ agreed Tanakalian. ‘What is extraordinary is that the alliances seem to be holding, even now when there will be no invasion from the Lether Empire. I suspect certain benefits from peace became evident.’

‘Profitable, you mean.’

‘Mutually so, yes, Captain.’

‘I must attend to the ship now, sir, if we are to revise our approach to the place of landing.’

The Shield Anvil nodded and, as the captain departed, Tanakalian raised the eyeglass once more, leaning for support against the starboard figurehead as he steadied himself. The seas were not especially rough this far inside the nameless bay, but in moments the Throne of War would begin to come about, and he was intent on making use of the hard pitch to scan further along the sheer cliffs of the eastern shoreline.

The Mortal Sword Krughava remained in her cabin. Since his return from visiting the Adjunct, Destriant Run’Thurvian had elected to begin an extended period of secluded meditation, and was also below decks. The presence of either one would have imposed a degree of formality that Tanakalian found increasingly chafing. He understood the necessity for propriety, and the burden of tradition that ensured meaning to all that they did-and all that they were-but he had spent time on the command ship of the Adjunct, in the company of Malazans. They displayed an ease in shared hardship that had at first shocked the Shield Anvil, until he comprehended the value of such behaviour. There could be no challenging the discipline of the Bonehunters when battle was summoned. But the force that truly held them together was found in the camaraderie they displayed during those interminably long periods of inactivity, such as all armies were forced to endure. Indeed, Tanakalian had come to delight in their brash lack of decorum, their open irreverence and their strange penchant for revelling in the absurd.

Perhaps an ill influence, as Run’Thurvian’s faintly disapproving frowns implied, whenever Tanakalian attempted his own ironic commentary. Of course, the Destriant possessed no shortage in his list of disappointments regarding the Order’s new Shield Anvil. Too young, woefully inexperienced, and dismayingly inclined to rash judgement-this last flaw simply unacceptable in one bearing the title of Shield Anvil.

‘Your mind is too active, sir,’ the Destriant had said once. ‘It is not for the Shield Anvil to make judgement. Not for you to decide who is worthy of your embrace. No, sir, but you have never disguised your predilections. I give you that.’

Generous of the man, all things considered.

As the ship lost headway in its long, creaking coming-about, Tanakalian studied that forbidding coast, the tortured mountains-many of them with cones shrouded in smoke and foul gases. It would not do to find themselves thrown against that deadly shoreline, although given the natural inclination of outflow currents, the risk was very real. Leading the Shield Anvil to one of those ghastly judgements, and in this case, even the Destriant could not find fault.

With a faint smile, Tanakalian lowered the eyeglass once more and returned it to its sealskin sheath slung beneath his left arm. He descended from the forecastle and made his way below decks. They would require Run’Thurvian and his sorcery to ensure safe passage into the river mouth, and this, Tanakalian concluded, was fair justification for interrupting the Destriant’s meditation, which had been going on for days now. Run’Thurvian might well cherish his privilege of solitude and unmitigated isolation, but certain necessities could not be avoided even by the Order’s Destriant. The old man could do with the fresh air, besides.

The command ship was alone in this bay. The remaining twenty-four serviceable Thrones of War held position far out to sea, more than capable of weathering whatever the southern ocean could muster, barring a typhoon, of course, and that season had passed, according to local pilots.

Since they had relinquished the Froth Wolf to the Adjunct, the Listral now served as the Order’s flagship. The oldest ship in the fleet-almost four decades since the laying of the keels-the Listral was the last survivor of the first line of trimarans, bearing antiquated details in style and decoration. This lent the ship a ferocious aspect, with every visible span of ironwood carved into the semblance of a snarling wolf’s head, and the centre hull was entirely shaped as a lunging wolf, three-quarters submerged so that the crest of foam at the bow churned from the beast’s gaping, fanged mouth.

Tanakalian loved this ship, even the archaic row of inside-facing cabins lining the corridor of the first level below deck. Listral could manage but half as many passengers as could the second and third lines of Thrones of War. At the same time, each cabin was comparatively spacious, indeed, almost luxurious.

The Destriant’s abode encompassed the last two cabins of this, the starboard hull. The wall between them now bore a narrow, low door. The stern chamber served as Run’Thurvian’s private residence, whilst the forward cabin had been sanctified as a temple of the Wolves. As expected, Tanakalian found the Destriant kneeling, head bowed, before the twin-headed altar. Yet something was wrong-the air reeked of charred flesh, burnt hair, and Run’Thurvian, his back to Tanakalian, remained motionless as the Shield Anvil swung in through the corridor hatch.

‘Destriant?’

‘Come no closer,’ croaked Run’Thurvian, his voice almost unrecognizable, and Tanakalian now heard the old man’s desperate wheezing of breath. ‘There is not much time, Shield Anvil. I had… concluded… that none would disturb me after all, no matter how overlong my absence.’ A hacking, bitter laugh. ‘I had forgotten your… temerity, sir.’

Tanakalian drew a step closer. ‘Sir, what has happened?’

‘Stay back, I beg you!’ gasped the Destriant. ‘You must take my words to the Mortal Sword.’

Something glittered on the polished wooden floor around the kneeling form, as if the man had leaked out on all sides-but the smell was not one of urine, and the liquid, while thick as blood, seemed almost golden in the faint lantern light. Real fear flowed through Tanakalian upon seeing it, and the Destriant’s words barely reached him over the thumping of his own heart. ‘Destriant-’

‘I travelled far,’ Run’Thurvian said. ‘Doubts… a growing unease. Listen! She is not as we believed. There will be… betrayal. Tell Krughava! The vow-we have made a mistake!’

The puddle was spreading, thick as honey, and it seemed the robed shape of the Destriant was diminishing, collapsing into itself.

He is dying. By the Wolves, he is dying. ‘Destriant,’ Tanakalian said, forcing his terror down, swallowing against the horror of what he was witnessing, ‘will you accept my embrace?’

The laugh that made its way out sounded as if it had bubbled up through mud. ‘No. I do not.’

Stunned, the Shield Anvil staggered back.

‘You… you are… insufficient. You always were-another one of Krughava’s errors in… in judgement. You fail me, and so you shall fail her. The Wolves shall abandon us. The vow betrays them, do you understand? I have seen our deaths-this one here before you, and the ones to come. You, Tanakalian. The Mortal Sword too, and every brother and sister of the Grey Helms.’ He coughed, and something gushed out in the convulsion, spraying the altar with liquid and shapeless gobbets that slid down into the folds of stone fur, traversing the necks of the Wolves.

The kneeling figure slumped, folded in the middle at an impossible angle. The sound made when Run’Thurvian’s forehead struck the floor was that of a hen’s egg breaking, and that span of bone offered little resistance, so that the man’s face collapsed as well.

As Tanakalian stared, drawn forward once more, he saw watery streams leaking out from the Destriant’s ruined head.

The man had simply… melted. He could see that greyish pulp boiling, thinning down into clear streams of fat.

And he so wanted to scream, to unleash his horror, but a deeper dread had claimed him. He would not accept my embrace. I have failed him, he said. I will fail them all, he said.

Betrayal?

No, that I cannot believe.

I will not.

Although he knew Run’Thurvian was dead, Tanakalian spoke to him nonetheless. ‘The failure, Destriant, was yours, not mine. You journeyed far, did you? I suggest… not far enough.’ He paused, struggling to quell the trembling that had come to him. ‘Destriant. Sir. It pleases me that you rejected my embrace. For I see now that you did not deserve it.’

No, he was not simply a Shield Anvil, in the manner of all those who had come before, all those who had lived and died beneath the burden of that title. He was not interested in passive acceptance. He would take upon himself mortal pain, yes, but not indiscriminately.

I too am mortal, after all. It is my essence that I am able to weigh my judgement. Of what is worthy. And what is not.

No, I shall not be as other Shield Anvils. The world has changed-we must change with it. We must change to meet it. He stared down at the heaped mess that was all that remained of Destriant Run’Thurvian.

There would be shock. Dismay and faces twisted into distraught fear. The Order would be flung into disarray, and it would fall to the Mortal Sword, and to the Shield Anvil, to steady the rudder, until such time as a new Destriant was raised among the brothers and sisters.

Of more immediate concern, however, as far as Tanakalian was concerned, was that there would be no sorcerous protection in traversing the channel. In his assessment-shaky as it might be at the moment-he judged that news to be paramount.

The Mortal Sword would have to wait.

He had nothing to tell her in any case.

‘Did you embrace our brother, Shield Anvil?’

‘Of course, Mortal Sword. His pain is with me, now, as is his salvation.’

The mind shaped its habits and habits reshaped the body. A lifelong rider walked with bowed legs, a seafarer stood wide no matter how sure the purchase. Women who twirled strands of their hair would in time come to sit with heads tilted to one side. Some people prone to worry might grind their teeth, and years of this would thicken the muscles of the jaws and file the molars down to smooth lumps, bereft of spurs and crowns.

Yedan Derryg, the Watch, wandered down to the water’s edge. The night sky, so familiar to one who had wrapped his life about this late stretch of time preceding the sun’s rise, was now revealed to him as strange, jarred free of the predictable, the known, and the muscles of his jaw worked in steady, unceasing rhythm.

The reflected smear of vaguely green comets rode the calm surface of the inlet, like slashes of luminous glow-spirits, as were wont to gather in the wake of ships. There were strangers in the sky. Drawing closer night after night, as if summoned. The blurred moon had set, which was something of a relief, but Yedan could still observe the troubled behaviour of the tide-the things that had once been certain were certain no longer. He was right to worry.

Suffering was coming to the shore, and the Shake would not be spared. This was a knowledge he shared with Twilight, and he had seen the growing fear in the rheumy eyes of the witches and warlocks, leading him to suspect that they too had sensed the approach of something vast and terrible. Alas, shared fears did not forge any renewed commitment to co-operation-for them the political struggle remained, had indeed intensified.

Fools.

Yedan Derryg was not a loquacious man. He might well possess a hundred thousand words in his head, open to virtually infinite rearrangement, but that did not mean he laboured under the need to give them voice. There seemed to be little point in that, and in his experience comprehension diminished as complexity deepened-this was not a failing of skills in communication, he believed, but one of investment and capacity. People dwelt in a swamp of feelings that stuck like gobs of mud to every thought, slowing those thoughts down, making them almost shapeless. The inner discipline demanded in order to cleanse such maladroit tendencies was usually too fierce, too trying, just too damned hard. This, then, marked the unwillingness to make the necessary investment. The other issue was a far crueller judgement, in that it had to do with the recognition that in the world there were numerically far more stupid people than there were smart ones. The difficulty was in the innate cleverness of the stupid in disguising their own stupidity. The truth was rarely displayed in an honest frown or a sincere knotting of the brow. Instead, it was revealed in a flash of suspicion, the hint of diffidence in an offhand dismissal, or, perversely, muteness offered up to convey a level of thoughtful consideration which, in truth, did not exist.

Yedan Derryg had little time for such games. He could smell an idiot from fifty paces off. He watched their sly evasions, listened to their bluster, and wondered again and again why they could never reach that essential realization, which was that the amount of effort engaged in hiding their own stupidity would serve them better used in cogent exercise of what little wits they possessed. Assuming, of course, that improvement was even possible.

There were too many mechanisms in society designed to hide and indeed coddle its myriad fools, particularly since fools generally held the majority. In addition to such mechanisms, one could also find various snares and traps and ambushes, one and all fashioned with the aim of isolating and then destroying smart people. No argument, no matter how brilliant, can defeat a knife in the groin, after all. Nor an executioner’s axe. And the bloodlust of a mob was always louder than a lone, reasonable voice.

The true danger, Yedan Derryg understood, was to be found in the hidden deceivers-those who could play the fool yet possessed a kind of cunning that, while narrowly confined to the immediate satisfaction of their own position, proved of great skill in exploiting the stupid and the brilliant alike. These were the ones who hungered for power and more often than not succeeded in acquiring it. No genius would willingly accept true power, of course, in full knowledge of its deadly invitations. And fools could never succeed in holding on to it for very long, unless they were content as figureheads, in which case the power they held was an illusion.

Gather a modest horde of such hidden deceivers-those of middling intelligence and clever malice and avaricious ambition-and serious trouble was pretty much assured. A singular example of this was found in the coven of witches and warlocks who, until recently, had ruled the Shake-inasmuch as a scattered, dissolute and depressed people could be ruled.

Jaws bunching, Yedan Derryg crouched down. Ripples from the faint waves rolled round the toes of his boots, gurgled into the pits they made in the soft sand. His arms trembled, every muscle aching with exhaustion. The brine from the shoreline could not wash the stench from his nostrils.

Behind him, in the squalid huddle of huts beyond the berm, voices had awakened. He heard someone come on to the shore, staggering it seemed, drawing closer in fits and starts.

Yedan Derryg reached down his hands until the cold water flowed over them, and what was clear suddenly clouded in dark blooms. He watched as the waves, sweeping out so gently, tugged away the stains, and in his mind uttered a prayer.

This to the sea

This from the shore

This I give freely

Until the waters run clear

She came up behind him. ‘In the name of the Empty Throne, Yedan, what have you done?’

‘Why,’ he replied to his sister’s horrified disbelief, ‘I have killed all of them but two, my Queen.’

She stepped round, splashed into the water until she faced him, and then set a palm against his forehead and pushed until she could see his face, until she could stare into his eyes. ‘But… why? Did you think I could not handle them? That we couldn’t?’

He shrugged. ‘They wanted a king. One to control you. One they could control in turn.’

‘And so you murdered them? Yedan, the longhouse has become an abattoir! And you truly think you can just wash your hands of what you have done? You’ve just butchered twenty-eight people. Shake. My people! Old men and old women! You slaughtered them!’

He frowned up at her. ‘My Queen, I am the Watch.’

She stared down at him, and he could read her expression well enough. She believed her brother had become a madman. She was recoiling in horror.

‘When Pully and Skwish return,’ he said, ‘I will kill them, too.’

‘You will not.’

He could see that a reasonable conversation with his sister was not possible, not at this moment, with the cries of shock and grief rising ever higher in the village. ‘My Queen-’

‘Yedan,’ she gasped. ‘Don’t you see what you have done to me? Don’t you realize the wound you have delivered-that you would do such a thing in my name…’ She seemed unable to finish the statement, and he saw tears in her eyes now. And then that gaze iced over and her tone hardened as she said, ‘You have two choices left, Yedan Derryg. Stay and be given to the sea. Or accept banishment.’

‘I am the Watch-’

‘Then we will be blind to the night.’

‘That cannot be permitted,’ he replied.

‘You fool-you’ve left me no choice!’

He slowly straightened. ‘Then I shall accept the sea-’

She turned round, faced the dark waters. Her shoulders shook as she lowered her head. ‘No,’ she managed in a grating voice. ‘Get out of here, Yedan. Go north, into the old Edur lands. I will not accept one more death in my name-not one. No matter how deserved it is. You are my brother. Go.’

She was not one of the deceivers, he knew. Nor was she a fool. Given the endless opposition from the coven, she had possessed less power than her title proclaimed. And perhaps, intelligent as Yan Tovis was, she had been content to accept that limitation. Had the witches and warlocks been as wise and sober in their recognition of the deadly lure of ambition, he could well have left things as they were. But they had not been interested in a balance. They wanted what they had lost. They had not shown the intelligence demanded by the situation.

And so he had removed them, and now his sister’s power was absolute. Understandable, then, that she was so distraught. Eventually, he told himself, she would come to comprehend what was now necessary. Namely, his return, as the Watch, as the balance to her potentially unchecked power.

He would need to be patient.

‘I shall do as you say,’ he said to her.

She would not turn round, and so, with a nod, Yedan Derryg set out, northward along the shoreline. He’d left his horse and pack-mount tethered two hundred paces along, just above the high-water mark. One sure measure of intelligence, after all, was in the accurate anticipation of consequences. Emotions stung to life could drown one as easily as a riptide, and he had no desire to deepen her straits.

Soon the sun would rise, although with rain on the way its single glaring eye would likely not be visible for long, and that too was well. Leave the cloud’s tears to wash away all the blood, and before too long the absence of over a score of brazen, incipient tyrants would rush in among the Shake like a sudden fresh and bracing wind.

Strangers rode the night sky, and if the Shake had any hope of surviving what was coming, the politics of betrayal must be swept away. With finality.

It was his responsibility, after all. Perhaps his sister had forgotten the oldest vows that bound the Watch. But he had not. And so he had done what was necessary.

There was no pleasure in the act. Satisfaction, yes, as would be felt by any wise, intelligent person who succeeds in sweeping aside a multitude of shortsighted sharks, thus clearing the water. But no pleasure.

To his right, as he walked the shoreline, the land was growing light.

But the sea to his left remained dark.

Sometimes the verge between the two grew very narrow indeed.

Shifting weight from one foot to the other, Pully stared down into the pit. Snakes swarmed by the hundred in that hole, sluggish at first but now, as the day warmed, they writhed like worms in an open wound. She tugged at her nose, which had a tendency to tingle whenever she fell back into the habit of chewing her lips, but the tingling wouldn’t leave. Which meant, of course, that she was gnawing away at those wrinkled flaps covering what was left of her teeth.

Getting old was a misery. First the skin sagged. Then aches settled into every place and places that didn’t even exist. Pangs and twinges and spasms, and all the while the skin kept sagging, lines deepening, folds folding, and all beauty going away. The lilt of upright buttocks, the innocence of wide, shallow tits. The face still able to brave the weather, and lips still sweet and soft as pouches of rendered fat. All gone. What was left was a mind that still imagined itself young, its future stretching out, trapped inside a sack of loose meat and brittle bones. It wasn’t fair.

She yanked at her nose again, trying to get the feeling back. And that was another thing. The wrong parts kept on growing. Ears and nose, warts and moles, hairs sprouting everywhere. The body forgot its own rules, the flesh went senile and the bright mind within could wail all it wanted, but nothing that was real ever changed except for the worse.

She widened her stance and sent a stream of piss down into the stony earth. Even simple things got less predictable. Oh, what a misery ageing was.

Skwish’s head popped up amidst seething snakes, eyes blinking.

‘Yah,’ said Pully, ‘I’m still here.’

‘How long?’

‘Day and a night and now it’s morning. Y’amby get what yer needed? I got aches.’

‘An’ I got reck’lections I ain’t ever wanted.’ Skwish started working herself free of the heaps of serpents, none of which minded much or even noticed, busy as they were, breeding in a frenzy that seemed to last for ever.

‘T’which we might want, iyerplease?’

‘Mebee.’

Skwish reached up and, grunting, Pully helped her friend out of the pit. ‘Yee, y’smell ripe, woman. Snake piss and white smear, there’ll be onward eggs in yer ears.’

‘It’s a cold spirit t’travel on, Pully, an’ I ain’t ever doin it agin, so’s if I rank it’s the leese of our perbems. Gaf, I need a dunk in the sea.’

They set off for the village, a half day’s journey coastward.

‘An ya tervilled afar, Skwish, did yee?’

‘It’s bad an’ it’s bad, Pully. Cold blood t’the east no sun could warm. I seen solid black clouds rollin down, an’ iron rain an gashes in th’geround. I see the stars go away an’ nothing but green glows, an’ them green glows they is cold, too, cold as th’east blooding. All stems but one branch, y’see. One branch.’

‘So’s we guessed right, an’ next time Twilight goes an’ seal barks on ’bout a marchin’ the Shake away from the shore, you can talk up an’ cut er down and down. An’ then we vote and get er gone. Er and the Watch, too.’

Skwish nodded, trying to work globs of snake sperm out of her hair, without much success. ‘Comes to what’s d’served, Pully. The Shake did ever ’ave clear eyes. Y’ can’t freck on an’ on thinkin’ th’world won’t push back. It’ll push awright. Till the shore breaks an’ breaks it will an’ when it does, we ever do drown. I saw dust, Pully, but it wasn’t no puffy earth. T’was specks a bone an’ skin an’ dreams an’ motes a surprise, hah! We’s so freckered, sister, it’s all we can do is laughter an prance into the sea.’

‘Goo’ anough fra me,’ Pully grumbled. ‘I got so many aches I might be the def’nition a ache irrself.’

The two Shake witches-the last left alive, as they were soon to learn-set out for the village.

Take a scintillating, flaring arm of the sun’s fire, give it form, a life of its own, and upon the faint cooling of the apparition, a man such as Rud Elalle might emerge, blinking with innocence, unaware that all he touched could well explode into destructive flames-had he been of such mind. And to teach, to guide him into adulthood, the singular aversion remained: no matter what you do, do not awaken him to his anger.

Sometimes, Udinaas had come to realize, potential was a force best avoided, for the potential he sensed in his son was not a thing for celebration.

No doubt every father felt that flash of blinding, burning truth-the moment when he sensed his son’s imminent domination, be it physical or something less overtly violent in its promise. Or perhaps such a thing was in fact rare, conjured from the specific. After all, not every father’s son could veer into the shape of a dragon. Not every father’s son held the dawn’s golden immanence in his eyes.

Rud Elalle’s gentle innocence was a soft cloak hiding a monstrous nature, and that was an unavoidable fact, the burning script of his son’s blood. Silchas Ruin had spoken to that, with knowing, with the pained truth in his face. The ripening harvest of the Eleint, a fecund brutality that sought only to appease itself-that saw the world (any world, every world) as a feeding ground, and the promise of satisfaction waited in the bloated glut of power.

Rare the blood-fouled who managed to overcome that innate megalomania. ‘Ah, Udinaas,’ Silchas Ruin had said. ‘My brother, perhaps, Anomander. Osserc? Maybe, maybe not. There was a Bonecaster, once… and a Soletaken Jaghut. A handful of others-when the Eleint blood within them was thinner-and that is why I have hope for Rud Elalle, Udinaas. He is third-generation-did he not clash with his mother’s will?’

Well, it was said that he had.

Udinaas rubbed his face. He glanced again at the tusk-framed hut, wondering if he should march inside, put an end to that parley right now. Silchas Ruin, after all, had not included himself among those who had mastered their Draconean blood. A sliver of honesty from the White Crow, plucked from that wound of humility, no doubt. It was all that was holding Udinaas back.

Crouched beside him, shrouded by gusts of smoke from the hearth, Onrack released a long sigh that whistled from his nostrils-break a nose enough times and every breath was tortured music. At least it was so with this warrior. ‘He will take him, I think.’

Udinaas nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

‘I am… confused, my friend. That you would permit this… meeting. That you would excuse yourself and so provide no counter to the Tiste Andii’s invitation. That hut, Udinaas, may be a place filled with lies. What is to stop the White Crow from offering your son the sweet sip of terrible power?’

There was genuine worry in Onrack’s tone, deserving more than bludgeoning silence. Udinaas rubbed again at his face, unable to determine which was the more insensate: his features or his hands; and wondering why an answer seemed to important to him. ‘I have walked in the realm of Starvald Demelain, Onrack. Among the bones of countless dead dragons. At the gate itself, the corpses were heaped like glitter flies along a window sill.’

‘If it is indeed in the nature of the Eleint to lust for self-destruction,’ ventured Onrack, ‘would it not be better to guide Rud away from such a flaw?’

‘I doubt that would work,’ Udinaas said. ‘Can you turn nature aside, Onrack? Every season the salmon return from the seas and heave their dying bodies upstream, to find where they were born. Ancient tenag leave the herds to die amid the bones of kin. Bhederin migrate into the heart of the plains every summer, and return to forest fringes every winter-’

‘Simpler creatures one and all-’

‘And I knew slaves in the Hiroth village-ones who’d been soldiers once, and they withered with the anguish of knowing that there were places of battle-places of their first blooding-that they would never again see. They longed to return, to walk those old killing grounds, to stand before the barrows filled with the bones of fallen friends, comrades. To remember, and to weep.’ Udinaas shook his head. ‘We are not much different from the beasts sharing our world, Onrack. The only thing that truly sets us apart is our talent for rejecting the truth-and we’re damned good at that. The salmon does not question its need. The tenag and the bhederin do not doubt what compels them.’

‘Then you would doom your son to his fate?’

Udinaas bared his teeth. ‘The choice isn’t mine to make.’

‘Is it Silchas Ruin’s?’

‘It may seem, Onrack, that we are protected here, but that’s an illusion. The Refugium is a rejection of so many truths it leaves me breathless. Ulshun Pral, you, all your people-you have willed yourself this life, this world. And the Azath at the gate-it holds you to your convictions. This place, wondrous as it is, remains a prison.’ He snorted. ‘Should I chain him here? Can I? Dare I? You forget, I was a slave.’

‘My friend,’ said Onrack, ‘I am free to travel the other realms. I am made flesh. Made whole. This is a truth, is it not?’

‘If this place is destroyed, you will become a T’lan Imass once more. That’s the name for it, isn’t it? That immortality of bones and dried flesh? The tribe here will fall to dust.’

Onrack was staring at him with horror-filled eyes. ‘How do you know this?’

‘I do not believe Silchas Ruin is lying. Ask Kilava-I have seen a certain look in her eyes, especially when Ulshun Pral visits, or when she sits beside you at the fire. She knows. She cannot protect this world. Not even the Azath will prevail against what is coming.’

‘Then it is we who are doomed.’

No. There is Rud Elalle. There is my son.

‘And so,’ said Onrack after a long pause, ‘you will send your son away, so that he may live.’

No, friend. I send him away… to save you all. But he could not say that, could not reveal that. For he knew Onrack well now; and he knew Ulshun Pral and all the others here. And they would not accept such a potential sacrifice-they would not see Rud Elalle risk his life in their name. No, they would accept their own annihilation, without a second thought. Yes, Udinaas knew these Imass. It was not pride that made them what they were. It was compassion. The tragic kind of compassion, the kind that sacrifices itself and sees that sacrifice as the only choice and thus no choice at all, one that must be accepted without hesitation.

Better to take the fear and the hope and all the rest and hold it inside. What could he give Onrack now, at this moment? He did not know.

Another pause, and then the Imass continued, ‘It is well, then. I understand, and approve. There is no reason that he must die with us. No reason, indeed, that he must witness such a thing when it comes to pass. You would spare him the grief, as much as such a thing is possible. But, Udinaas, it is not acceptable that you share our fate. You too must depart this realm.’

‘No, friend. That I will not do.’

‘Your son’s need for you remains.’

Oh, Rud loves you all, Onrack. Almost as much as he seems to love me. I will stay nonetheless, to remind him of what he fights to preserve. ‘Where he and Silchas Ruin will go, I cannot follow,’ he said. And then he grunted and managed to offer Onrack a wry smile. ‘Besides, here and only here, in your company-in the company of all the Imass-I am almost content. I’ll not willingly surrender that.’ So many truths could hide inside glib lies. While the reason was a deceit, the sentiments stacked so carefully within it were not.

So much easier, he told himself, to think like a tenag, or a bhederin. Truth from surface to core, solid and pure. Yes, that would indeed be easier than this.

Rud Elalle emerged from the hut, followed a moment later by Silchas Ruin.

Udinaas could see in his son’s face that any formal parting would prove too fraught. Best this was done with as little gravitas as possible. He rose, and Onrack did the same.

Others stood nearby, watchful, instincts awakened that something grave and portentous was happening. Respect and courtesy held them back one and all.

‘We should keep this… casual,’ Udinaas said under his breath.

Onrack nodded. ‘I shall try, my friend.’

He is no dissembler, oh no. Less human than he looks, then. They all are, damn them. ‘You feel too much,’ Udinaas said, as warmly as he could manage, for he did not want the observation to sting.

But Onrack wiped at his cheeks and nodded, saying nothing.

So much for making this casual. ‘Oh, come with me, friend. Even Rud cannot withstand your gifts.’

And together, they approached Rud Elalle.

Silchas Ruin moved off to await his new charge, and observed the emotional farewells with eyes like knuckles of blood.

Mortal Sword Krughava reminded Tanakalian of his childhood. She could have stridden out from any of a dozen tales of legend he had listened to curled up beneath skins and furs, all those breathtaking adventures of great heroes pure of heart, bold and stalwart, who always knew who deserved the sharp end of their sword, and who only ever erred in their faith in others-until such time, at the tale’s dramatic climax, when the truth of betrayal and whatnot was revealed, and punishment soundly delivered. His grandfather always knew when to thicken the timbre of his voice, where to pause to stretch out suspense, when to whisper some awful revelation. All to delight the wide-eyed child as night drew in.

Her hair was the hue of iron. Her eyes blazed like clear winter skies, and her face could have been carved from the raw cliffs of Perish. Her physical strength was bound to a matching strength of will and neither seemed assailable by any force in the mortal world. It was said that, even though she was now in her fifth decade of life, no brother or sister of the Order could best her in any of a score of weapons: from skinning knife to mattock.

When Destriant Run’Thurvian had come to her, speaking of fraught dreams and fierce visions, it was as tinder-dry kindling to the furnace of Krughava’s inviolate sense of purpose, and, it turned out, her belief in her own imminent elevation to heroic status.

Few childhood convictions survived the grisly details of an adult’s sensibilities, and although Tanakalian accounted himself still young, still awaiting the temper of wisdom, he had already seen enough to comprehend the true horror waiting beneath the shining surface of the self-avowed hero known to all as the Mortal Sword of the Grey Helms of Perish. Indeed, he had come to suspect that no hero, no matter what the time or the circumstance, was anything like the tales told him so many years ago. Or perhaps it was his growing realization that so many so-called virtues, touted as worthy aspirations, possessed a darker side. Purity of heart also meant vicious intransigence. Unfaltering courage saw no sacrifice as too great, even if that meant leading ten thousand soldiers to their deaths. Honour betrayed could plunge into intractable insanity in the pursuit of satisfaction. Noble vows could drown a kingdom in blood, or crush an empire into dust. No, the true nature of heroism was a messy thing, a confused thing of innumerable sides, many of them ugly, and almost all of them terrifying.

So the Destriant, in his last breaths, had made a grim discovery. The Grey Helms were betrayed. If not now, then soon. Words of warning to awaken in the Mortal Sword all those blistering fires of outrage and indignation. And Run’Thurvian had expected the Shield Anvil to rush into Krughava’s cabin to repeat the dire message, to see the fires alight in her bright blue eyes.

Brothers and sisters! Draw your swords! The streams must run crimson in answer to our besmirched honour! Fight! The enemy is on all sides!

Well.

Not only had Tanakalian found himself unwilling to embrace the Destriant and his mortal pain, he was reluctant to launch such devastating frenzy upon the Grey Helms. The old man’s explanations, his reasons-the details-had been virtually non-existent. Essential information was lacking. A hero without purpose was like a blinded cat in a pit of hounds. Who could predict the direction of Krughava’s charge?

No, this needed sober contemplation. The private, meditative kind.

The Mortal Sword had greeted the dreadful news of the Destriant’s horrid death in pretty much the expected manner. A hardening of already hard features, eyes glaring like ice, the slow, building rise of questions that Tanakalian either could not hope to answer, or, as it turned out, was unwilling to answer. Questions and unknowns were the deadliest foes for one such as Mortal Sword Krughava, who thrived on certainty regardless of its relationship to reality. He could see how she was rocked, all purchase suddenly uncertain beneath her boots; and the way her left hand twitched-as if eager for the grip of her sword, the sure promise of the heavy iron blade; and the way she instinctively straightened-as if awaiting the weight of her chain surcoat-for this surely was news that demanded she wear armour. But he had struck her unawares, in her vulnerability, and this might well constitute its own version of betrayal, and he knew to be careful at that moment, to display for her a greater helplessness than she herself might be feeling; to unveil in his eyes and in his seemingly unconscious gestures enormous measures of need and need for reassurance. To, in short, fling himself like a child upon her stolid majesty.

If this made him into something despicable, a dissembler, a creature of intrigue and cunning manipulation, well, these were dire charges indeed. He would have to consider them, as objectively as possible, and withhold no judgement no matter how self-damning, no matter how condign.

The Shield Anvils of old, of course, would not have bothered. But absence of judgement in others could only emerge from absence of judgement in oneself, a refusal to challenge one’s own assumptions and beliefs. Imagine the atrocities such inhuman postures invited! No, that was a most presumptuous game and not one he would play.

Besides, giving the Mortal Sword what she needed most at that moment-all his apparently instinctive nudges to remind her of her noble responsibilities-was in fact the proper thing to do. It would serve no one to have Krughava display extreme distress or, Wolves forbid, outright panic. They were sailing into war, and they had lost their Destriant. Matters were fraught enough in bare facts alone.

She needed to steel herself, and she needed to be seen doing so by her Shield Anvil in this moment of privacy, and in the wake of presumed success she would then find the necessary confidence to repeat the stern ritual before the brothers and sisters of the Order.

But that latter scene must wait, for the time had come to greet the Bolkando emissaries, and Tanakalian was comforted in the solid crunch of his and her boots on the strand of crushed coral that served as a beach in this place of landing. One pace behind the Mortal Sword-and while curiosity and wonder at the Destriant’s absence might trouble the crew of the skiff and the captain and all the others aboard the Listral, now firmly anchored in the broad disc of a slow eddy in the river mouth, neither Krughava nor her Shield Anvil seemed to be displaying anything untoward as they set out for the elaborate field tent of the Bolkando. And such was their faith in their commanders that minds settled back into peaceful repose.

Could such observations be seen as cynical? He thought not. Comportment had value at times like these. There was no point in distressing the members of the Order, only to pointedly delay resolution until after this parley.

The air was sultry, heat seething up from the blinding white strand. The shattered carapaces of crabs were baked red by the sun, forming a ragged row at the fringe of the high-water line. Even the gulls looked beaten half-senseless where they perched on the bones of uprooted mangrove trunks.

The two Perish worked their way up the verge and set out across a silted floodplain that spread away in a broad fan from the river on their left. Bright green tufts of seasonal grasses dotted the expanse. A long column of Bolkando sentries stood lining the bank of the river, about twenty paces back from row upon row of short, tapering logs stacked in the mud. Oddly, those sentries, tall, dark-skinned and barbaric in their spotted hide cloaks, were all facing the river and so presenting their backs to the two Perish guests.

A moment later Tanakalian was startled to see some of those logs explode into thrashing motion. He tugged the eyeglass from its holster and slowed to examine the river bank through the magnifying lenses. Lizards. Enormous lizards-no wonder the Bolkando warriors have their backs to us!

If Krughava had noticed anything of the scene at the river bank, she gave no sign.

The Bolkando pavilion sprawled vast enough to encompass scores of rooms. The flaps of the main entrance were drawn back and bound to ornate wooden poles with gilt crow-hook clasps. The sunlight, filtering in through the weave of the canopy, transformed the spaces within into a cool, soft world of cream and gold, and both Tanakalian and Krughava halted once inside, startled by the blessed drop in temperature. The air, fanning across their faces, carried the scents of exotic, unknown spices.

Awaiting them was a functionary of some sort, dressed in deerskin and silvered mail so fine it wouldn’t stop a child’s dagger. The man, his face veiled, bowed from the waist and then gestured the two Perish through a corridor walled in silks. At the far end, perhaps fifteen paces along, stood two guards, again bedecked in long surcoats of the same ephemeral chain. Tucked into narrow belts were throwing knives, two on each hip. Leather sheaths, trimmed in slivers of bone, slung under the left arm, indicated larger weapons, cutlasses perhaps, but these were pointedly empty. The soldiers wore skullcap helms but no face-guards, and as he drew closer, Tanakalian was startled to see a complex skein of scarification on those grim faces, every etched seam stained with deep red dye.

Both guards stood at attention, and neither seemed to take any notice of the two guests. Tanakalian followed a step behind Krughava as she passed between them.

The chamber beyond was spacious. All the furniture within sight-and there was plenty of it-appeared to consist of articulating segments, as if capable of being folded flat or dismantled, yet this did nothing to diminish their delicate beauty. No wood within sight was bare of a glossy cream lacquer that made the Shield Anvil think of polished bone or ivory.

Two dignitaries awaited them, both seated along one side of a rectangular table on which wrought silver goblets had been arrayed, three before each chair. Servants stood behind the two figures, and two more were positioned beside the seats intended for the Perish.

The walls to the right and left held tapestries, each one bound to a wooden frame, although not tightly. Tanakalian’s attention was caught when he saw how the scenes depicted-intimate gardens devoid of people-seemed to flow with motion, and he realized that the tapestries were of the finest silks and the images themselves had been designed to awaken to currents of air. And so, to either side as they walked to the chairs, water flowed in stony beds, flower-heads wavered in gentle, unfelt breaths of wind, leaves fluttered, and now all the pungent scents riding the air brought to him in greater force this illusion of a garden. Even the light reaching down through the canopy was artfully dappled.

One such as Mortal Sword Krughava, of course, was inured, perhaps even indifferent, to these subtleties, and he was reminded, uncharitably, of a boar crashing through the brush as he followed her to the waiting seats.

The dignitaries both rose, the gesture of respect exquisitely timed to coincide with the arrival of their armoured, clanking guests.

Krughava was the first to speak, employing the trader tongue. ‘I am Krughava, Mortal Sword of the Grey Helms.’ Saying this, she tugged off her heavy gauntlets. ‘With me is Shield Anvil Tanakalian.’

The servants were all pouring a dark liquid from one of three decanters. When the two Bolkando representatives picked up their filled goblets, Krughava and Tanakalian followed suit.

The man on the left, likely in his seventh decade, his dark face etched with jewel-studded scars on brow and cheeks, replied in the same language. ‘Welcome, Mortal Sword and Shield Anvil. I am Chancellor Rava of Bolkando Kingdom, and I speak for King Tarkulf in this parley.’ He then indicated the much younger man at his side. ‘This is Conquestor Avalt, who commands the King’s Army.’

Avalt’s martial profession was plain to see. In addition to the same chain surcoat as worn by the guards in the corridor, he wore scaled vambraces and greaves. His brace of throwing knives, plain-handled and polished by long use, was accompanied by a short sword scabbarded under his right arm and a sheathed cutlass under his left. Strips of articulated iron spanned his hands from wrist to knuckle, and then continued on down the length of all four fingers, while an oblong piece of rippled iron protected the upper half of his thumbs. The Conquestor’s helm rested on the table, the skullcap sporting flared cheek-guards as well as a nose-bridge wrought in the likeness of a serpent with a strangely broad head. A plethora of scars adorned the warrior’s face, the pattern ruined by an old sword slash running diagonally down his right cheek, ending at the corner of his thin-lipped mouth. That the blow had been a vicious one was indicated by the visible dent in his cheekbone.

Once the introductions and acknowledgements had been made, the Bolkando raised their goblets, and everyone drank.

The liquid was foul and Tanakalian fought down a gag.

Seeing their expressions, the Chancellor smiled. ‘Yes, it is atrocious, is it not? Blood of the King’s fourteenth daughter, mixed with the sap of the Royal Hava tree-the very tree that yielded the spike thorn that opened her neck vein.’ He paused, and then added, ‘It is the Bolkando custom, in honour of a formal parley, that he sacrifice a child of his own to give proof to his commitment to the proceedings.’

Krughava set the goblet down with more force than was necessary, but said nothing.

Clearing his throat, Tanakalian said, ‘While we are honoured by the sacrifice, Chancellor, our custom holds that we must now grieve for the death of the King’s fourteenth child. We Perish do not let blood before parley, but I assure you, our word, when given, is similarly honour-bound. If you now seek some gesture of proof of that, then we are at a loss.’

‘None is necessary, my friends.’ Rava smiled. ‘The virgin child’s blood is within us now, is it not?’

When the servants filled the second of the three goblets arrayed before each of them, Tanakalian could sense Krughava stiffening. This time, however, the liquid ran clear, and from it wafted a delicate scent of blossoms.

The Chancellor, who could not have been blind to the sudden awkwardness in the reactions of the Perish, renewed his smile. ‘Nectar of the sharada flowers from the Royal Garden. You will find it most cleansing of palate.’

They drank and, indeed, the rush of sweet, crisp wine was a palpable relief.

‘The sharada,’ continued the Chancellor, ‘is fed exclusively from the still-births of the wives of the King, generation upon generation. The practice has not been interrupted in seven generations.’

Tanakalian made a soft sound of warning, sensing that Krughava-her comportment in blazing ruins-was moments from flinging the silver goblet into the Chancellor’s face. Quickly setting his own goblet down he reached for hers and, with only a little effort, pried it from her hand and carefully returned it to the tabletop.

The servants poured the last offering, which to Tanakalian’s eyes looked like simple water, although of course by now that observation was not as reassuring as he would have preferred. A final cleansing, yes, from the Royal Well that holds the bones of a hundred mouldering kings! Delicious!

‘Spring water,’ said the Chancellor, his gentle tones somewhat strained, ‘lest in our many words we should grow thirsty. Please, now, let us take our seats. Once our words are completed, we shall dine on the finest foods the kingdom has to offer.’

Sixth son’s testicles! Third daughter’s left breast!

Tanakalian could almost hear Krughava’s inner groan.

The sun was low when the final farewells were uttered and the two barbarians marched back down to their launch. Chancellor Rava and Conquestor Avalt escorted the Perish for precisely half the distance, where they waited until that clumsy skiff was pushed off the sands where it wallowed about before the rowers found their rhythm, and then the two dignitaries turned about and walked casually back towards the pavilion.

‘Curious, wasn’t it?’ Rava murmured. ‘This mad need of theirs to venture east.’

‘All warnings unheeded,’ Avalt said, shaking his head.

‘What will you say to old Tarkulf?’ the Chancellor asked.

The Conquestor shrugged. ‘To give the fools whatever they need, of course, with a minimum of haggling on price. I will also advise we hire a salvage fleet from Deal, to follow in the wake of their ships. At least as far as the edge of the Pelasiar Sea.’

Rava grunted. ‘Excellent notion, Avalt.’

They strolled into the pavilion, made their way down the corridor and returned to the main chamber, secure once more in the presence of servants whose eardrums had been punctured and tongues carved out-although there was always the chance of lip-reading spies, meaning of course that these four hapless creatures would have to die before the sun had set.

‘This land-based force of theirs to cross the kingdom with,’ Rava said, sitting down once more, ‘do you foresee any problem?’

Avalt collected the second decanter and poured some more wine. ‘No. These Perish place much value in honour. They will stay true to their word, at least on the march out. Those that make it back from the Wastelands-assuming any do-will be in no position to do much besides submitting to our will. We will strip the survivors of any valuables and sell them on as castrated slaves to the D’rhesh.’

Rava made a face. ‘So long as Tarkulf never finds out. We were caught completely unawares when those allies of the Perish ran headlong into our forces.’

Avalt nodded, recalling the sudden encounter during the long march towards the border of the Lether Empire. If the Perish were barbaric, then the Khundryl Burned Tears were barely human. But Tarkulf-damn his scaly crocodile hide-had taken a liking to them, and that was when this entire nightmare began. Nothing worse, in Avalt’s opinion, than a king deciding to lead his own army. Every night scores of spies and assassins had waged a vicious but mostly silent war in the camps. Every morning the nearby swamps were filled with corpses and squalling carrion birds. And there stood Tarkulf, breathing deep the night-chilled air and smiling at the cloudless sky-the raving, blessedly thick-headed fool.

Well, thank the nine-headed goddess the King was back in his palace, sucking the bones of frog legs, and the Burned Tears were encamped across the river-bed just beyond the northeast marches, dying of marsh fever and whatnot.

Rava drained his wine and then poured some more. ‘Did you see her face, Avalt?’

The Conquestor nodded. ‘Still-births… fourteenth daughter’s blood… you always had a fertile, if vaguely nasty imagination, Rava.’

‘Belt juice is an acquired taste, Avalt. Strangers rarely take to it. I admit, I was reluctantly impressed that neither one actually gagged on the vile stuff.’

‘Wait until it shows up in any new scars they happen to suffer.’

‘That reminds me-where was their Destriant? I fully expected their High Priest would have accompanied them.’

Rava shrugged. ‘For the moment, we cannot infiltrate their ranks, so that question cannot yet be answered. Once they come ashore and enter our kingdom, we’ll have plenty of camp followers and bearers and we will glean all we need to know.’

Avalt leaned back, and then shot the Chancellor a glance. ‘The fourteenth? Felash, yes? Why her, Rava?’

‘The bitch spurned my advances.’

‘Why didn’t you just steal her?’

Rava’s wrinkled face twisted. ‘I tried. Heed this warning, Conquestor, do not try getting past a Royal blood’s handmaidens-the cruellest assassins this world has ever seen. Word got back to me, of course… three days and four nights of the most despicable torture of my agents. And the bitches had the temerity to send me a bottle of their pickled eyeballs. Brazen!’

‘Have you retaliated?’ Avalt asked, taking a drink to disguise his shiver of horror.

‘Of course not. I overreached, casting my lust upon her. Lesson succinctly delivered. Heed that as well, my young warrior. Not every slap of the hand should ignite a messy feud.’

‘I heed everything you say, my friend.’

They drank again, each with his own thoughts.

Which was just as well.

The servant standing behind and to the right of the Chancellor was making peace with his personal god, having worked hard at exchanging the blink code with his fellow spy across the table from him, and well knowing that he was about to have his throat slit wide open. In the interval when the two snakes were escorting the Perish down to their boat, he had passed on to a plate-bearer a cogent account of everything that had been said in the chamber, and that woman was now preparing to set out this very night on her perilous return journey to the capital.

Perhaps Chancellor Rava, having overreached, was content to accept the grisly lesson of his temerity, as delivered by Lady Felash’s torturers upon his clumsy agents. The Lady, alas, was not.

It was said that Rava’s penis had all the lure of an eviscerated snake belly. The very thought of that worm creeping up her thigh was enough to send the fourteenth daughter of the King into a sizzling rage of indignation. No, she had only begun delivering her lessons to the hoary old Chancellor.

In the tiny kingdom of Bolkando, life was an adventure.

Yan Tovis was of a mind to complete the ghastly slaughter her brother had begun, although it was questionable whether she’d succeed, given the blistering, frantic fury of Pully and Skwish as they spat and cursed and danced out fragments of murder steps, sending streams of piss in every direction until the hide walls of the hut were wine-dark with the deluge. Twilight’s own riding boots were similarly splashed, although better suited to shed such effrontery. Her patience, however, was not so immune.

‘Enough of this!’

Two twisted faces snapped round to glare at her. ‘We must hunt him down!’ snarled Pully. ‘Blood curses! Rat poisons, thorn fish. Nine nights in pain! Nine an’ nine amore!’

‘He is banished,’ said Yan Tovis. ‘The matter is closed.’

Skwish coughed up phlegm and, snapping her head round, sent it splatting against the wall just to the left of Twilight. Growling, Yan Tovis reached for her sword.

‘Accident!’ shrieked Pully, lunging to collide with her sister, and then pushing the suddenly pale witch back.

Yan Tovis struggled against unsheathing the weapon. She hated getting angry, hated that loss of control, especially since once it was awakened in her, it was almost impossible to rein in. At this moment, she was at the very edge of rage. One more insult-by the Errant, an unguarded expression-and she would kill them both.

Pully had wits enough to recognize the threat, it was clear, since she continued pushing Skwish back, until they were both against the far wall, and then she pitched round, head bobbing. ‘R’grets, Queen, umbeliss r’grets. Grief, an’ I’m sure, grief, Highness, an’ it may be that shock has the sting a venom in these old veins. Pologies, fra me and Skwish. Terrible tale, terrible tale!’

Yan Tovis managed to release the grip of her longsword. In bleak tones she said, ‘We have no time for all this. The Shake has lost its coven, barring you two. And it has lost its Watch. There are but the three of us now. A queen and two witches. We need to discuss what we must do.’

‘An’ it says,’ said Pully, vigorously nodding, ‘an’ it says the sea is blind t’the shore an’ as blind to the Shake, and the sea, it does rises. It does rises, Highness. The sixth prophecy-’

‘Sixth prophecy!’ hissed Skwish, pushing her way round her sister and glaring at Yan Tovis. ‘What of th’fifteenth prophecy? The Night of Kin’s Blood! “And it rises and the shore will drown, all in a night tears into water and the world runs red! Kin upon kin, slaughter marks the Shake and the Shake shall drown! In the unbreathing air.” And what could be more unbreathing than the sea? Your brother has killed us all an us all!’

‘Banished,’ said Twilight, her tone flat. ‘I have no brother.’

‘We need a king!’ wailed Skwish, pulling at her hair.

‘We do not!’

The two witches froze, frightened by her ferocity, shocked by her words.

Yan Tovis drew a deep breath-there was no hiding the tremble in her hands, the extremity of her fury. ‘I am not blind to the sea,’ she said. ‘No-listen to me, both of you! Be silent and just listen! The water is indeed rising. That fact is undeniable. The shore drowns-even as half the prophecies proclaim. I am not so foolish as to ignore the wisdom of the ancient seers. The Shake are in trouble. It falls to us, to me, to you, to find a way through. For our people. Our feuding must end-but if you cannot set aside all that has happened, and do it now, then you leave me no choice but to banish you both.’ Even as she uttered the word ‘banish’ she saw-with no little satisfaction-that both witches had heard something different, something far more savage and final.

Skwish licked her withered lips, and then seemed to sag against the hut’s wall. ‘We muss flee th’shore, Queen.’

‘I know.’

‘We muss leave. Pu’a’call out t’the island, gather all the Shake. We muss an’ again we muss begin our last journey.’

‘As prophesized,’ whispered Pully. ‘Our lass journey.’

‘Yes. Now the villagers are burying the bodies-they need you to speak the closing prayers. And then I shall see to the ships-I will go myself back out to Third Maiden Isle-we need to arrange an evacuation.’

‘Of the Shake only y’mean!’

‘No, Pully. That damned island is going to be inundated. We take everyone with us.’

‘Scummy prizzners!’

‘Murderers, slackers, dirt-spitters, hole-plungers!’

Yan Tovis glared at the two hags. ‘Nonetheless.’

Neither one could hold her gaze, and after a moment Skwish started edging towards the doorway. ‘Prayers an’ yes, prayers. Fra th’dead coven, fra all th’Shake an’ th’shore.’

Once Skwish had darted out of sight, Pully sketched a ghastly curtsy and then hastened after her sister.

Alone once more, Yan Tovis collapsed down into the saddle-stool that passed for her throne. She so wanted to weep. In frustration, in outrage and in anguish. No, she wanted to weep for herself. The loss of a brother-again-again.

Oh. Damn you, Yedan.

Even more distressing, she thought she understood his motivations. In one blood-drenched night, the Watch had obliterated a dozen deadly conspiracies, each one intended to bring her down. How could she hate him for that?

But I can. For you no longer stand at my side, brother. Now, when the Shore drowns. Now, when I need you most.

Well, it served no one for the Queen to weep. True twilight was not a time for pity, after all. Regrets, perhaps, but not pity.

And if all the ancient prophecies were true?

Then her Shake, broken, decimated and lost, were destined to change the world.

And I must lead them. Flanked by two treacherous witches. I must lead my people-away from the shore.

With the arrival of darkness, two dragons lifted into the night sky, one bone-white, the other seeming to blaze with some unquenchable fire beneath its gilt scales. They circled once round the scatter of flickering hearths that marked the Imass encampment, and then winged eastward.

In their wake a man stood on a hill, watching until they were lost to his sight. After a time a second figure joined him.

If they wept the darkness held that truth close to its heart.

From somewhere in the hills an emlava coughed in triumph, announcing to the world that it had made a kill. Hot blood soaked the ground, eyes glazed over, and something that had lived free lived no more.