Dust of Dreams

Chapter Thirteen

He came to us in the guise of a duke from an outlying border fastness-a place remote enough that none of us even thought to suspect him. And in his manner, his hard countenance and few words, he matched well our lazy preconceptions of such a man. None of us could argue that there was something about him, a kind of self-assurance rarely seen at court. In his eyes, like wolves straining at chains, there was a hint of the feral-the priestesses positively dripped.

‘But, they would find, his was a most potent seed. And it was not Tiste Andii.’

Silchas Ruin poked at the fire with a stick, reawakening flames. Sparks fled up into the dark. Rud watched the warrior’s cadaverous face, the mottled play of orange light that seemed to paint brief moments of life in it.

After a time, Silchas Ruin settled back and resumed. ‘Power was drawn to him like slivers of iron to a lodestone… it all seemed so… natural. His distant origins invited the notion of neutrality, and one might argue, in hindsight, that Draconus was indeed neutral. He would use any and every Tiste Andii to further his ambitions, and how were we to imagine that, at the very core of his desire, there was love?’

Rud’s gaze slid away from Silchas Ruin, up and over the Tiste Andii’s right shoulder, to the terrible slashes of jade in the night sky. He tried to think of something to say, a comment of any sort: something wry, perhaps, or knowing, or cynical. But what did he know of the love such as Silchas Ruin was describing? What, indeed, did he know of anything in this or any other world?

‘Consort to Mother Dark-he laid claim to that title, eventually, as if it was a role he had lost and had vowed to reacquire.’ The white-skinned warrior snorted, eyes fixed on the flickering flames. ‘Who were we to challenge that assertion? Mother’s children had by then ceased to speak with her. No matter. What son would not challenge his mother’s lover-new lover, old lover, whatever-’ and he looked up, offering Rud a faint grin. ‘Perhaps you’ve some understanding of that, at least. After all, Udinaas was not Menandore’s first and only love.’

Rud looked away again. ‘I am not certain love was involved.’

‘Perhaps not. Do you wish more tea, Rud Elalle?’

‘No, thank you. It is a potent brew.’

‘Necessary, for the journey to come.’

Rud frowned. ‘I do not understand.’

‘This night, we shall travel. There are things you must see. It is not enough that I simply lead you this way and that-I do not expect a loyal hound at my heel, I expect a comrade standing at my side. To witness is to approach comprehension, and you will need that, when you decide.’

‘Decide what?’

‘The side you will take in the war awaiting us, among other things.’

‘Other things. Such as?’

‘Where to make your stand, and when. Your mother chose a mortal for your father for a good reason, Rud. Unexpected strengths come from such mating: the offspring often exhibit the best traits from both.’

Rud started as a stone cracked in the fire. ‘You say you will lead me to places, Silchas Ruin, for you have no wish that I be naught but a loyal, mindless hound. Yet it may be that I shall not, in the end, choose to stand beside you at all. What then? What if I find myself opposite you in this war?’

‘Then one of us will die.’

‘My father left me in your care-and this is how you betray his trust?’

Silchas Ruin bared his teeth in a humourless smile. ‘Rud Elalle, your father gave you to my care not out of trust-he knows me too well for that. Consider this your first lesson. He shares your love for the Imass of the Refugium. That realm-and every living thing within it-is in danger of annihilation, should the war be lost-’

‘Starvald Demelain-but the gate was sealed!’

‘No seal is perfect. Will and desire gnaw like acid. Well. Hunger and ambition are perhaps more accurate descriptions of that which assails the gate.’ He collected the blackened pot from beside the coals and poured Rud’s cup full once more. ‘Drink. We have strayed from the path. I was speaking of the ancient forces-your kin, if you like. Among them, the Eleint. Was Draconus a true Eleint? Or was he something else? All I can say is, he wore the skin of a Tiste Andii for a time, perhaps as a sour joke, mocking our self-importance-who can know? In any case, it was inevitable that Anomander, my brother, would step into the Consort’s path, and all those opportunities for knowledge and truth came to a swift end. To this day,’ he added, sighing, ‘I wonder if Anomander regrets killing Draconus.’

Rud started. His mind was awhirl. ‘What of the Imass? This war-’

‘I told you,’ Silchas Ruin snapped, face betraying his irritation. ‘Wars are indifferent to the choice of victims. Innocence, guilt, such notions are irrelevant. Grasp hold of your thoughts and catch up. I wondered if Anomander has regrets. I know that I do not. Draconus was a cold, cold bastard-and with the awakening of Father Light, ah, well, we saw then the truth of his jealous rage. The Consort cast aside, see the malice of the spurned ignite a black fire in his eyes! When we speak of ancient times, Rud Elalle, we find in our words things far nearer to hand, and all those emotions we imagined new, blazing with our own youth, we find to be ancient beyond imagining.’ He spat into the coals. ‘And this is why poets never starve for things to sing about, though rare is the one who grows fat upon them.’

‘I will defend the Refugium,’ said Rud, hands clenching into fists.

‘We know that, and that is why you are here-’

‘But that makes no sense! I should be there, standing before the gate!’

‘Another lesson. Your father may love the Imass, but he loves you more.’

Rud surged to his feet. ‘I will return-’

‘No. Sit down. You have a better chance of saving them all by accompanying me.’

‘How?’

Silchas Ruin leaned forward and reached into the fire. He scooped up two handfuls of coals and embers. He held them up. ‘Tell me what you see, Rud Elalle, Ryadd Eleis-do you know those words, your true name? They are Tiste Andii-do you know what they mean?’

‘No.’

Silchas Ruin studied the embers cupped in his hands. ‘Just this. Your true name, Ryadd Eleis, means “Hands of Fire”. Your mother looked into the soul of her son, and saw all there was to see. She may well have cherished you, but she also feared you.’

‘She died because she chose betrayal.’

‘She was true to the Eleint blood within her-but you also possess the blood of your father, a mortal, and he is a man I came to know well, to understand as much as anyone could. A man I came to respect. He was the first to comprehend the girl’s purpose, the first to realize the task awaiting me-and he knew that I did not welcome the blood that would stain my hands. He chose not to stand in my way-I am not yet certain what happened at the gate, the clash with Wither, and poor Fear Sengar’s misplaced need to stand in Scabandari’s stead-but through it all, Kettle’s fate was sealed. She was the seed of the Azath, and a seed must find fertile soil.’ He dropped the embers-now cooled-back on to the fire. ‘She is young yet. She needs time, and unless we stand against the chaos to come, she will not have that time-and the Imass will die. Your father will die. They will all die.’ He rose and faced Rud. ‘We leave now. Korabas awaits.’

‘What is Korabas?’

‘For this we must veer. Kallor’s dead warren should suffice. Korabas is an Eleint, Ryadd. She is the Otataral Dragon. There is chaos in a human soul-it is your mortal gift, but be aware-like fire it can turn in your hands.’

‘Even to one named “Hands of Fire”?’

The Tiste Andii’s red eyes seemed to flatten. ‘My warning was precise.’

‘What do we seek in meeting this Korabas?’

Silchas slapped the ashes from his palms. ‘They will free her, and that we cannot stop. I mean to convince you that we should not even try.’

Rud found his fists were still clenched tight, aching at the ends of his arms. ‘You give me too little.’

‘Better than too much, Ryadd.’

‘Because like my mother, you fear me.’

‘Yes.’

‘Between you and your brothers, Silchas Ruin, who was the most honest?’

The Tiste Andii cocked his head, and then smiled.

A short time later, two dragons lifted into the darkness, one gleaming polished gold that slid in and out of the gloom in lurid smears; the other was bone white, the pallor of a corpse in the night-save for the twin embers of its eyes.

They rose high and higher still above the Wastelands, and then vanished from the world.

In their wake, in a nest of rocks, the small fire glowed fitfully in its bed of ashes, eating the last of itself. Until nothing was left.

Sandalath Drukorlat gave the hapless man one last shake that sent spittle whipping from his lips, and then threw him further up the shoreline. He scrambled to his feet, fell over, got up a second time and stumbled unsteadily away.

Withal cleared his throat. ‘Sweetness, you seem a little short of temper lately.’

‘Challenge yourself, husband. Find something to improve my mood.’

He glanced out at the crashing waves, licked salt from around his mouth. The three Nachts were sending the scrawny refugee off with hurled shells and dead crabs, although not a single missile managed to strike the fleeing man. ‘The horses have recovered, at least.’

‘Their misery has just begun.’

‘I couldn’t quite make out what happened, but I take it the Shake vanished through a gate. And, I suppose, we’re going to chase after them.’

‘And before they left, one of their own went and slaughtered almost all of the witches and warlocks-the very people I wanted to question!’

‘We could always go to Bluerose.’

She stood straight, almost visibly quivering. He’d heard, once, that lightning went from the ground up and not the other way round. Sandalath looked ready to ignite and split the heavy clouds overhead. Or cut a devastating path through the ramshackle, stretched-out camp of those islanders Yan Tovis had left behind-the poor fools lived in squalid driftwood huts and wind-torn tents, all along the highwater line like so much wave-tossed detritus. And though the water was ever rising, so that the spray of the tumultuous seas now drenched them, not one had the wherewithal to move.

Not that they had anywhere to go. The forest was a blackened wasteland of stumps and ash for as far as he could see.

Just outside Letheras, Sandalath had cut open a way into a warren, a place she called Rashan, and the ride through it had begun in terrifying darkness that quickly dulled to torrid monotony. Until it began falling apart. Chaos, she said. Inclusions, she said. Whatever that means. And the horses went mad.

They had emerged into the proper world on the slope facing this strand, the horses’ hoofs pounding up clouds of ash and cinders, his wife howling in frustration.

Things had eased up since then.

‘What in Hood’s name are you smiling about?’

Withal shook his head. ‘Smiling? Not me, beloved.’

‘Blind Gallan,’ she said.

There had been more and more of this lately. Incomprehensible expostulations, invisible sources of irritation and blistering fury. Face it, Withal, the honeymoon’s over.

‘In the habit of popping up like a nefarious weed. Spouting arcane nonsense impressing the locals. Never trust a nostalgic old man-or old woman, I suppose. Every tale they spin has a hidden agenda, a secret malice for the present. They make the past-their version of it-into a kind of magic potion. “Sip this, friends, and return to the old times, when everything was perfect.” Bah! If it’d been me doing the blinding, I wouldn’t have stopped there. I would have scooped out his entire skull.’

‘Wife, who is this Gallan?’

She bridled, jabbed a finger at him. ‘Did you think I hadn’t lived before meeting you? Oh, pity poor Gallan! And if he left a string of women in the wake of his wanderings, why, be so good as to indulge the sad creature-well, this is what comes of it, isn’t it?’

Withal scratched his head. See what happens when you marry an older woman? And face it, it doesn’t take a Tiste Andii to have about a hundred thousand years of history behind her. ‘All right,’ he said slowly, ‘what now, then?’

She gestured after the refugee she’d sent scampering. ‘He doesn’t know if Nimander and the others were with the Shake-there were thousands-the only time he saw Yan Tovis was at the landing, and she was three thousand paces away. But, then, who else could have managed to open the gate? And then keep it open to admit ten thousand people? Only Andii blood can open the Road, and only royal Andii blood could keep it open! By the Abyss, they must have bled one of their own dry!’

‘This road, Sand, where does it lead?’

‘Nowhere. Oh, I should never have left Nimander and his kin! The Shake not only listened to Blind Gallan, they then went and believed him!’ She stepped closer and raised a hand, as if to strike him.

Withal backed up a step.

‘Oh, gods, just get the horses, Withal.’

As he set off, he glanced-with odd longing-after the still-running refugee.

A short time later they sat mounted, pack-horses behind them, while Sandalath, motionless, seemed to study something in front of them that only she could see. The waves thrashed to their left, the burnt forest stank on their right. The Nachts fought over a thick, massive length of driftwood that probably weighed more than all three put together. That’d make a good club… for a damned Toblakai. Sink brace plugs, wrap the knobby end in hammered iron. Stud with beaten bronze rivets and maybe a spike or three. Draw wire down the length of the shaft, and then sink a deep and heavy counterweight butt-

‘It’s healing, but the skin is thin.’ She suddenly had a knife in her hand. ‘I can get us through, I think.’

‘Do you have royal blood then?’

‘Snap shut that trap or I’ll do it for you. I told you, it’s a huge wound-barely mended. In fact, it seems weaker on the other side, which isn’t good, isn’t right, in fact. Did they stay on the Road? They must have known that much at least. Withal, listen well. Ready a weapon-’

‘A weapon? What kind of weapon?’

‘Wrong choice. Find another one.’

‘What?’

‘Stupidity won’t work. Try that mace on your belt.’

‘That’s a smith’s hammer-’

‘And you’re a smith, so presumably you know how to use it.’

‘So long as my victim lays his head on an anvil, aye.’

‘Can’t you fight at all? What kind of husband are you? You Meckros-always fighting off pirates and such, or so you always said-’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Unless they were just big fat lies, trying to impress your new woman.’

‘I haven’t used a weapon in decades-I just make the damned things! And why do I need to anyway? If you wanted a bodyguard you should have said so in the first place, and I could have hired on to the first ship out of Lether Harbour!’

‘Abandon me, you mean! I knew it!’

He reached up to tear at his hair and then recalled that he didn’t have enough of it. Gods, life can be damned frustrating, can’t it just? ‘Fine.’ He tugged loose the hammer. ‘I’m ready.’

‘Now, remember, I died the first time because I don’t know anything about fighting, and I don’t want to die a second time-’

‘What’s all this talk about fighting and dying? It’s just a gate, isn’t it? What in Hood’s name is on the other side?’

‘I don’t know, you idiot! Just be ready!’

‘For what?’

‘For anything!’

Withal slipped his left foot out of its stirrup and swung down to the littered sand.

Sandalath stared. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m going to piss, and maybe whatever else I can manage. If we’re going to end up in a hoary mess, I don’t want fouled breeches, not stuck in a saddle, not riding with a horde of shrieking demons on my tail. Besides, I probably only have a few moments of living left to me. When I go I plan on doing it clean.’

‘Just blood and guts.’

‘Right.’

‘That’s pathetic. As if you’ll care.’

He went off to find somewhere private.

‘Don’t take too long!’ she shouted after him.

There was a time, aye, when I could take as damned well long as I pleased.

He returned and would have climbed back into the saddle, but Sandalath insisted he wash his hands in the sea. Once this was done, he collected up the hammer, brushed sand from it, and then mounted the horse.

‘Anything else needing doing?’ she asked. ‘A shave, perchance? Buff your boots, maybe?’

‘Good suggestions. I’ll just-’

With a snarl she slashed her left palm. The air split open before them, gaping red as the wound in her hand. ‘Ride!’ she yelled, kicking her horse into a lunge.

Cursing, Withal followed.

They emerged on to a blinding, blasted plain, the road beneath them glittering like crushed glass.

Sandalath’s horse squealed, hoofs skidding, slewing sideways as she sawed on the reins. Withal’s own beast made a strange grunting sound, then its head seemed to drop out of sight, front legs folding with sickening snaps-

Withal caught a glimpse of a pallid, overlong hand, slashing through the path where his horse’s head had been a moment earlier, and then a curtain of blood lifted before him, wrapped hot and thick over his face, neck and chest. Blinded, flaying empty air with his mace, he pitched forward, leaving the saddle, and struck the road’s savage surface. The cloth of his jerkin disintegrated, and the skin of his chest followed suit. The breath was knocked from his lungs. He vaguely heard the hammer bounce and skitter down the road.

Sudden bellowing roars, the impact of something huge against bare flesh and bone. Splintering blows drumming the road beneath him-the hot splash of something drenching his back-he clawed the blood from his eyes, managed to lift himself to his hands and knees-coughing, spewing vomit.

The thundering concussions continued, and then Sandalath was kneeling beside him. ‘Withal! My love! Are you hurt-oh, Abyss take me! Too much blood-I’m sorry, oh, I’m sorry, my love!’

‘My horse.’

‘What?’

He spat to clear his mouth. ‘Someone chopped off my horse’s head. With his hand.’

‘What? That’s your horse’s blood? All over you? You’re not even hurt?’ The hands that had been caressing him now shoved him away. ‘Don’t you dare do that again!’

Withal spat a second time, and then pushed himself to his feet, eyes fixing on Sandalath. ‘This is enough.’ As she opened her mouth for a retort he stepped close and set a filthy finger against her lips. ‘If I was a different kind of man, I’d be beating you senseless right about now-no, don’t give me that shocked look. I’m not here to be kicked around whenever your mood happens to turn foul. A little measure of respect-’

‘But you can’t even fight!’

‘Maybe not, and neither can you. What I can do, though, is make things. And something else, too, I can decide, at any time, when I’ve had enough. And I will tell you this right now, I’m damned close.’ He stepped back. ‘Now, what in Hood’s name just-gods below!’

This shout burst from him in shock-three enormous, hulking, black-skinned demons were on the road just beyond the dead horse. One of them held a club of driftwood that looked like a drummer’s baton in its huge hands, and was using it to pound down some more on a mangled, crushed corpse. The other two followed the blows as if gauging the effects of each and every crushing impact. Bluish blood had sprayed out on the road, along with other less identifiable discharges from the pulped ruin of their victim’s body.

In a low voice Sandalath said, ‘Your Nachts-the Jaghut were inveterate jokers. Hah hah. That was a Forkrul Assail. It seems the Shake stirred things up somewhat-they’re probably all dead, in fact, and this one was backtracking with the intention of cleaning up any stragglers-out through the gate, probably, to murder every refugee on that shoreline we’ve just left behind. Instead, he ran into us-and your Venath demons.’

Withal wiped blood from his eyes. ‘I’m, uh, starting to see the resemblances-they were ensorcelled before?’

‘In a manner of speaking. A geas, I suspect. They’re Soletaken… or maybe D’ivers. Either way, this particular realm forced a veering-or a sembling-who can say which species is the original, after all?’

‘Then what do the Jaghut have to do with any of this?’

‘They created the Nachts. Or so I gathered-the mage Obo in Malaz City seemed to be certain of that. Of course, if he’s right and they did, then what they managed to do was something no one else has ever managed-they found a way to chain the wild forces of Soletaken and D’ivers. Now, husband, get cleaned up and saddle a new horse-we can’t stay here long. We ride as far as we need to on this road to confirm the slaughter of the Shake, and then we ride back out the way we came.’ She paused. ‘Even with these Venath, we’ll be in danger-if there’s one Forkrul Assail, there’s bound to be more.’

The Venath demons had evidently decided they were done with the destruction of the Forkrul Assail, as they now bounded up the road a few paces to then huddle round the club and examine the damage to their lone weapon.

Gods, they’re still stupid Nachts. Only bigger.

What a horrid thought.

‘Withal.’

He faced her again.

‘I’m sorry.’

Withal shrugged. ‘It will be all right, Sand, if you don’t expect me to be what I’m not.’

‘I may have found them infuriating, but I fear for Nimander, Aranatha, Desra, all of them. I fear for them so.’

He grimaced, and then shook his head. ‘You underestimate them, I think, Sand.’ And may Phaed’s ghost forgive us all for that.

‘I hope so.’

He went to work loose the saddle, paused to pat the animal’s gore-soaked neck. ‘Should’ve given you a name, at least. You deserved that much.’

Her mind was free. It could slip down among the sharp knuckles of quartz studding the plain, where nothing lived on the surface. It could slide beneath the stone-hard clay to where the diamonds, rubies and opals hid from the cruel heat. All this land’s wealth. And deep into the crumbling marrow of living bones wrapped in withered meat, crouched in fever worlds where blood boiled. In the moments before the very end, she could hover behind hot, bright eyes-the brightness that was the final looking upon all the surrounding things-all the precious vistas-that announced saying goodbye. That look, she now knew, did not shine forth solely among old people, though perhaps they were the only ones to whom it belonged. No, here, in this gaunt, slow, slithery snake, it was the beacon blazing in the eyes of children.

But she could fly away from such things. She could wing high and higher still, to ride the fuzzy backs of capemoths, or the feathered tips of vultures’ wings. And look down wheeling round and round the crawling, dying worm far below, that red, scorched string winking with dull motion. Thread of food, knots of promise, the countless strands of salvation-and see all the bits and pieces falling off, left in its wake, and down and down low and lower still, to eat and pick at leather skin, pluck the brightness from eyes.

Her mind was free. Free to make beauty with a host of beautiful, terrible words. She could swim through the cool language of loss, rising to touch precious surfaces, diving into midnight depths where broken thoughts fluttered down, where the floor fashioned vast, intricate tales.

Tales, yes, of the fallen.

There was no pain in this place. Her untethered will recalled no aching joints, no crusting flies upon split, raw lips; no blackened, lacerated feet. It was free to float and then sing across hungry winds, and comfort was a most natural thing, reasonable, a proper state of being. Worries dwindled, the future threatened no alteration to what was and one could easily believe that what was would always be.

She could be an adult here, splashing water on to pretty flowers, dipping fingers into dreaming fountains, damming up rivers and devouring trees. Filling lakes and ponds with poison rubbish. Thickening the air with bitter smoke. And nothing would ever change and what changes came would never touch her adultness, her perfect preoccupation with petty extravagances and indulgences. The adults knew such a nice world, didn’t they?

And if the bony snake of their children now wandered dying in a glass wilderness, what of it? The adults don’t care. Even the moaners among them-their caring had sharp borders, not far, only a few steps away, patrolled borders with thick walls and bristling towers and on the outside there was agonizing sacrifice and inside there was convenience. Adults knew what to guard and they knew, too, how far to think, which wasn’t far, not far, not far at all.

Even words, especially words, could not penetrate those walls, could not overwhelm those towers. Words bounced off obstinate stupidity, brainless stupidity, breathtaking, appalling stupidity. Against the blank gaze, words are useless.

Her mind was free to luxuriate in adulthood, knowing as it did that she would never in truth reach it. And this was her own preoccupation, a modest one, not very extravagant, not much of an indulgence, but her own which meant that she owned it.

She wondered what adults owned, these days. Apart from this murderous legacy, of course. Great inventions beneath layers of sand and dust. Proud monuments that not even spiders could map, palaces empty as caves, sculptures announcing immortality to grinning white skulls, tapestries displaying grand moments to fill the guts of moths. All this, such a bold, joyous legacy.

Flying high, among the capemoths and vultures and rhinazan and swarms of Shards, she was free. And to look down was to see the disordered patterns writ large across the glass plain. Ancient causeways, avenues, enclosures, all marked out by nothing more than faint stains-and the broken glass was all that remained of some unknown civilization’s most wondrous chalice.

At the snake’s head and in front of it, the tiny flickering tongue that was Rutt and the baby he named Held in his arms.

She could descend, plummeting like truth, to shake the tiny swaddled form in Rutt’s twig-arms, force open the bright eyes to the glorious panorama of rotted cloth and layers of filtered sunlight, the blazing rippling heat from Rutt’s chest. Final visions to take into death-this was the meaning behind that brightness, after all.

Words held the magic of the breathless. But adults turn away.

They have no room in their heads for a suffering column of dying children, nor the heroes among them.

‘So many fallen,’ she said to Saddic who remembered everything. ‘I could list them. I could make them into a book ten thousand pages long. And people will read it, but only so far as their own private borders, and that’s not far. Only a few steps. Only a few steps.’

Saddic, who remembered everything, he nodded and he said, ‘One long scream of horror, Badalle. Ten thousand pages long. No one will hear it.’

‘No,’ she agreed. ‘No one will hear it.’

‘But you will write it anyway, won’t you?’

‘I am Badalle, and all I have is words.’

‘May the world choke on them,’ said Saddic, who remembered everything.

Her mind was free. Free to invent conversations. Free to assemble sharp knuckles of quartz into small boys walking beside her endless selves. Free to trap light and fold it in and in and in, until all the colours became one, and that one was so bright it blinded everyone and everything.

The last colour is the word. See it burn bright: that is what there is to see in a dying child’s eyes.

‘Badalle, your indulgence was too extravagant. They won’t listen, they won’t want to know.’

‘Well, now, isn’t that convenient?’

‘Badalle, do you still feel free?’

‘Saddic, I still feel free. Freer than ever before.’

‘Rutt holds Held and he will deliver Held.’

‘Yes, Saddic.’

‘He will deliver Held into an adult’s arms.’

‘Yes, Saddic.’

The last colour is the word. See it burn bright in a dying child’s eyes. See it, just this once, before you turn away.

‘I will, Badalle, when I am grown up. But not until then.’

‘No, Saddic, not until then.’

‘When I’ve done away with these things.’

‘When you’ve done away with these things.’

‘And freedom ends, Badalle.’

‘Yes, Saddic, when freedom ends.’

Kalyth dreamed she was in a place she had not yet reached. Overhead was a low ceiling of grey, turgid clouds, the kind that she had seen above the plains of the Elan, when the first snows came down from the north. The wind howled, cold as ice, but it was dry as a frozen tomb. Across the taiga, stunted trees rose from the permafrost like skeletal hands, and she could see sinkholes, here and there, in which dozens of some kind of four-legged beast had become mired, dying and freezing solid, and the wind tugged and tore at their matted hides, and frost painted white their curved horns and ringed the hollow pits of their eyes.

In the myths of the Elan, this vista belonged to the underworld of death; it was also the distant past, the very beginning place, where the heat of life first pushed back the bitter cold. The world began in darkness, devoid of warmth. It awakened, in time, to an ember that flared, ever so brief, before one day returning to where it had begun. And so, what she was seeing here before her could also belong to the future. Past or in the age to come, it was where life ceased.

But she was not alone.

A score of figures sat on gaunt horses along a ridge a hundred paces distant. Wrapped in black rain-capes, armoured and helmed, they seemed to be watching her, waiting for her. But terror held Kalyth rooted, as if knee-deep in frozen mud.

She wore a thin tunic, torn and half-rotted, and the cold was like the Reaper’s own hand, closing about her from all sides. She could not move within its intransigent grip, even had she wanted to. She would will the strangers away; she would scream at them, unleash sorcery to send them scattering. She would banish them utterly. But no such powers belonged to her. Kalyth felt as useless here as she felt in her own world. A vessel empty, longing to be filled by a hero’s bold fortitude.

The wind ripped at the grim figures, and now at last the snow came, cutting like shards of ice from the heavy clouds.

The riders stirred. The horses lifted their heads, and all at once they were descending the slope, hoofs cracking hard the frozen ground.

Kalyth huddled, arms tight about herself. The frost-rimed riders drew closer, and she could just make out that array of faces behind the serpentine nose-guards of their helms-deathly pale, bearing slashes gaping deep crimson but bloodless. They wore surcoats over chain, uniforms, she realized, to mark allegiance to some foreign army, grey and magenta beneath frozen bloodstains and crusted gore. One, she saw, was tattooed, bedecked with fetishes of claws, feathers and beads-huge, barbaric, perhaps not even human. But the others, they were of her own kind-she was certain of that.

They reined in before her and something drew Kalyth’s wide stare to one rider in particular, grey-bearded beneath the dangling crystals of ice, his grey eyes, set deep in shadowed sockets, reminding her of a bird’s fixed regard-cold and raptorial, bereft of all compassion.

When he spoke, in the language of the Elan, no breath plumed from his mouth. ‘Your Reaper’s time is coming to an end. Death shall surrender his face-’

‘Never was a welcoming one,’ cut in the heavy, round-faced soldier on the man’s right.

‘Enough of that, Mallet,’ snapped another horseman, one-armed, hunched with age. ‘You don’t even belong here yet. We’re waiting for the world to catch up-such are dreams and visions-they are indifferent to the ten thousand unerring steps in any given mortal’s life, much less the millions of useless ones. Learn patience, healer.’

‘Where one yields,’ continued the bearded soldier, ‘we shall stand in his stead.’

‘In times of war,’ growled the barbaric warrior-who seemed preoccupied with braiding the ratty tatters of his dead horse’s mane.

‘Life itself is a war, one it is doomed to lose,’ retorted the bearded man. ‘Do not think, Trotts, that our rest will come soon.’

‘He was a god!’ barked another soldier, baring teeth above a jet-black forked beard. ‘We’re just a company of chewed-up marines!’

Trotts laughed. ‘See how high you’ve climbed, Cage? At least you got your head back-I remember burying you in Black Dog-we looked for half the night and never found it.’

‘Got ett by a frog,’ another suggested.

The dead soldiers laughed, even Cage.

Kalyth saw the grey-bearded soldier’s faint smile and it transformed his falcon’s eyes into something that seemed capable of holding, without flinching, the compassion of an entire world. He leaned forward on his saddle, the horn creaking as it bent on its hinge. ‘Aye, we’re no gods, and we’re not going to attempt to replace him beneath that rotted cowl. We’re Bridgeburners, and we’ve been posted to Hood’s Gate-one last posting-’

‘When did we agree to that?’ Mallet demanded, eyes wide.

‘It’s coming. In any case, I was saying-and gods below you’re all getting damned insubordinate in your hoary deadness-we’re Bridgeburners. Why are any of you surprised to find that you’re still saluting? Still taking orders? Still marching out in every miserable kind of weather you can imagine?’ He glared left and right, but it was softened by the wry twist of his lips. ‘Hood knows, it’s what we do.’

Kalyth could hold back no longer. ‘What do you want with me?’

The grey eyes settled on her once more. ‘Destriant, by that title alone you must now consort with the likes of us-in Hood’s-your Reaper’s-stead. You see us as Guardians of the Gate, but we are more than that. We are-or will become-the new arbiters, for as long as is necessary. Among us there are fists, mailed gauntlets of hard violence. And healers, and mages. Assassins and skulkers, sappers and horse-archers, lancers and trackers. Cowards and brave, stolid warriors.’ He hitched a half-smile. ‘And we’ve found all manner of unexpected… allies. In all our guises, Destriant, we shall be more than the Reaper ever was. We are not distant. Not indifferent. You see, unlike Hood, we remember what it was to be alive. We remember each and every moment of yearning, of desperate need, the anguish that comes when no amount of beseeching earns a single instant’s reprieve, no pleading yields a moment’s mercy. We are here, Destriant. When no other choice remains, call upon us.’

The ice of this realm seemed to shatter all around Kalyth and she staggered as warmth flooded through her. Blessed-no, the blessing of warmth. Gasping, she stared up at the unnamed soldier as tears filled her eyes. ‘This… this is not the death I imagined.’

‘No, and I give you this. We are the Bridgeburners. We shall sustain. But not because we were greater in life than anyone else. Because, Destriant, we were no different. Now, answer me as a Destriant, Kalyth of Ampelas Rooted, do we suffice?’

Does anything suffice? No, that is too easy. Think on your answer, woman. He deserves that much at least. ‘It is a natural thing to fear death,’ she said.

‘It is.’

‘And so it should be,’ grunted the one named Cage. ‘It’s miserable-look at my company-I can’t get rid of these ugly dogs. The ones you leave behind, woman, they’re waiting for you.’

‘But without judgement,’ said the grey-eyed soldier.

The one-armed one was nodding, and he added, ‘Just don’t expect any of ’em to have lost their bad habits-like Cage and his eternally sour bile. It’s all what you knew-who you knew, I mean. It’s all that and nothing more.’

Kalyth did not know these people, yet already they felt closer to her than anyone she had ever known. ‘I am becoming a Destriant in truth,’ she said in wonder. And I no longer feel so… alone. ‘I fear death still, I think, but not as much as I once did.’ And I once flirted with suicide, but I have left that behind, for ever. I am not ready to embrace an end to things. I am the last Elan. And my people are waiting for me, not caring if I come now or a hundred years from now-it is no different to them.

The dead-my dead-will indulge me.

For as long as I need. For as long as I have.

The soldier gathered his reins. ‘You shall find your Mortal Sword and your Shield Anvil, Kalyth. Against the cold that slays, you must answer with fire. There will come to you a moment when you must cease following the K’Chain Che’Malle; when you must lead them. In you lies their last hope for survival.’

But are they worth preserving?

‘That judgement does not belong to you.’

‘No-no, I’m sorry. They are so… alien-’

‘As you are to them.’

‘Of course. I am sorry.’

The warmth was fading, the snow closing in.

The riders wheeled their lifeless mounts.

She watched them ride off, watched them vanish in the swirling white.

The white, how it burns the eyes, how it insists-

Kalyth opened her eyes to bright, blinding sunlight. I am having such strange dreams. But I still see their faces, each one. I see the barbarian with his filed teeth. I see scowling Cage, whom I adore because he could laugh at himself. And the one named Mallet, a healer, yes-it is easy to see the truth of that. The one-armed one, too.

And the one with the falcon’s eyes, my iron prophet, yes. I did not even learn his name. A Bridgeburner-such a strange name for soldiers, and yet… so perfect there in the chasm between the living and the dead.

Death’s guardians. Human faces in place of the Reaper’s shadowed skull. Oh, what a thought! What a relief!

She wiped her eyes and sat up. And a flood of memories returned. Her breath caught and she twisted about, finding the K’Chain Che’Malle. Sag’Churok, Rythok, Gunth Mach… ‘O spirits bless us.’

Yes, she would not find Kor Thuran, the K’ell Hunter’s stolid, impervious presence. The space beside Rythok howled its emptiness, shrieked his absence. The K’Chain Che’Malle was dead.

Scouting far to the west, out of sight-but they all felt the sudden explosive clash. Kor Thuran’s snarls filled their skulls, his rage and baffled defiance-his pain. She found she was shivering, as bitter recollections assailed her. He died. We could not see who killed him.

Our winged Assassin has vanished. Was it Gu’Rull? Had Kor Thuran committed a transgression? Was the Hunter fleeing us all and did the Assassin punish him? No, Kor Thuran did not flee. He fought and he died guarding our flank.

Enemies now hunt us. They know we are close. They mean to find us.

She rubbed at her face, forced out a broken sigh, the echoes of the K’ell Hunter’s terrible death still crowding her mind, leaving her feeling exhausted. And this day has only begun.

The K’Chain Che’Malle faced her, motionless, waiting. There would be no cookfire this morning. They had carried her through most of the night, and in her exhaustion she had slept like a fevered child in Gunth Mach’s arms. She wondered why they had set her down, why they had not kept going. She could feel their nervous impatience to be off-away-the disaster of failure stalked this quest now, closer than ever before. As huge and imposing as they were, she now saw them as vulnerable, insufficient to this task.

There are deadlier things out there. They brought down a K’ell Hunter in a score of heartbeats.

Yet, as she rose to her feet, a new assurance filled her-gift of her dreams, and though they might be nothing more than fanciful conjurations, false benedictions, they seemed to give her something solid, and she could feel her frailty falling away from her soul like a cracked seed husk. Her eyes hardened as she regarded the three K’Chain Che’Malle.

‘If they find us, they find us. We cannot run from… from ghosts. Nor can we trust in the protection of Gu’Rull. So, we drive south-straight as a lance. Gunth Mach, give me your back to ride. This will be a long day-there is so much, so much we must now leave behind us.’ She looked to Rythok. ‘Brother, I mean to honour Kor Thuran-we all must-by succeeding in our quest.’

The K’ell Hunter’s reptilian eyes remained fixed on her, cold, unyielding.

Sag’Churok and Gunth Mach rarely spoke to her these days, and when they did it seemed their voices were more distant, harder to make out. She did not think the fault was theirs. I am dwindling within myself. The world narrows-but how is it I even know this? What part within me is aware of its own measure?

No matter. We must do this.

‘It is time.’

Sag’Churok watched Gunth Mach force her own body into the configuration necessary to accommodate the Destriant. The heady, spice-drenched scents roiled from her in tendrils that spread like branches on the currents of air, and they carried to the K’ell Hunter echoes of Kor Thuran’s last moments of agony.

When the hunter became the hunted, every retort was reduced to a defiant snarl, a few primitive threat postures, and the body existed to absorb damage-to weather and withstand all it could as the soul that dwelt within it sought, if not escape, then a kind of comprehension. A recognition. That even the hunter must know fear. No matter how powerful, no matter how superior, how supreme, sooner or later forces it could not defeat or flee from would find it.

Domination was an illusion. Its coherence could only hold for so long.

This lesson was a seared brand upon the memories of the K’Chain Che’Malle. Its bitter taste soured the dust of the Wastelands, and eastward, on the vast plain that had once known great cities and the whisper of hundreds of thousands of K’Chain Che’Malle, now there was nothing but melted and crushed fragments, and what the winds sought they could not find, and so wandered for ever lost.

Kor Thuran had been young. No other crime belonged to the K’ell Hunter. He had made no foolish decisions. Had not fallen victim to his own arrogance or sense of invulnerability. He had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. And now so much was lost. And for all the Destriant’s noble words-her sudden, unwarranted confidence and determination-Sag’Churok, along with Rythok and Gunth Mach, knew that the quest had failed. Indeed, it was not likely that they would survive the day.

Sag’Churok shifted his gaze from Gunth Mach as she suffered her transformation in runnels of oil that dripped like blood.

Gu’Rull was gone, probably dead. Every effort to brush his thoughts had failed. Of course, the Shi’gal Assassin could shield his mind, but he had no reason to do so. No, two of the five protectors were gone. And still this puny human stood, her soft face set in an expression Sag’Churok had come to know as defiant, weak eyes fixed on the undulating horizon to the south as if her will alone could conjure into being her precious Shield Anvil and Mortal Sword. It was brave. It was… unexpected. For all that the Matron’s gifts were fading from the woman, she had indeed found some kind of inner strength.

All for naught. They would die, and soon. Their torn and broken bodies would lie scattered, lost, their great ambitions unheralded.

Sag’Churok lifted his head, drank in the air, and caught the taint of the enemy. Close. Drawing closer. Threat oils rising between his scales, he scanned the horizon, and finally settled on the west-where Kor Thuran had fallen.

Rythok had done the same, and even Gunth Mach’s head had swivelled round.

The Destriant was not blind to their sudden fixation. She bared her teeth. ‘Guardians,’ she said. ‘It seems we need your help-not some time in the future, but now. What can you send to us? Who among you can stand against that which my companions will not let me even see?’

Sag’Churok did not understand her meaning. He did not know whom she was addressing. Was this the Matron’s madness, or Kalyth’s very own?

The Destriant’s gait was stiff with fear as she walked up to Gunth Mach, who helped the woman on to the gnarled saddle of scales behind her shoulders.

Sag’Churok faced Rythok. Hunter. Slow them down.

Rythok stretched his jaws until they creaked, and then drew the edges of his blades against each other in a singing rasp. Tail lashing-spraying thick droplets of oil that pattered the ground-the K’ell Hunter set off at a run, head dipping in the attack posture. Westward.

‘Where is he going?’ Kalyth shouted. ‘Call him back! Sag’Churok-’

But he and Gunth Mach sprang into motion, side by side, legs scything the air, taloned feet snapping as they kicked them forward, ever swifter, the pace building until the broken ground blurred beneath them. South.

The Destriant shrieked-her mask of determination shattered and in its place the raw truth of comprehension and all the horror that followed. Her puny fists beat at Gunth Mach’s neck and shoulders, and for an instant it looked as if Kalyth would throw herself from the First Daughter’s back-but their speed was too great, the risk of broken limbs, or indeed, a broken neck, defeated the impulse and forced her to hold tightly to Gunth Mach’s neck.

They had gone a third of a league when Rythok’s savage hiss burst into their skulls-the blistering acid of sudden, frenzied battle. Blades striking home, impacts reverberating like thunder. A crackling, terrifying sound, and all at once blood was gushing from the K’ell Hunter. A piercing cry, a weaving stagger, burning pain and then baffled anguish as Rythok’s legs gave way.

Ribs cracked as he struck the ground. Sharp rocks tore and stabbed the softer hide of his belly as he skidded.

But Rythok was not yet done. Dying would have to wait.

He rolled, twisted round, blade lashing back into his wake. The edge struck armour, chopped through it, and bit deep into flesh.

Phlegm and blood spattered, stung like fire in Rythok’s eyes-a sudden image, brutal in its clarity, as a massive axe swung down, filling the Hunter’s vision on his left side.

An explosion of white.

And death made the two fleeing K’Chain Che’Malle stagger. A moment, and then, with unyielding will, they recovered. Glistening with grief, rank with battle oils.

The Destriant was weeping-shedding her own oil, thin, salty, all that she could muster.

She humbled Sag’Churok. Had his hide grown slick with sorrow when he killed Redmask? No, it had not. Bitter with disappointment, yes, he had known that. But greater the icy grip of intransigent judgement. He and Gunth Mach had been witness to humans slaughtering each other. The fire of battle had raged on all sides. Human life was, it was clear, of little value-even to the humans themselves. When the world is swarming with a hundred million orthen, what loss a few tens of thousands?

Yet, this frail alien creature wept. For Rythok.

In moments he would wheel. He would do as Rythok had done. But not precisely so. There was little point in attempting to kill. Maiming was a more useful tactic. He would wound as many as he could and so diminish the numbers capable of pursuing Gunth Mach and the Destriant.

He would employ skills Rythok had not yet learned and now never would. Sag’Churok might not be a Ve’Gath Soldier, but he would surprise them nonetheless.

Gunth Mach.

‘Yes, beloved.’

Sag’Churok whetted his blades.

‘No!’ Kalyth shrieked. ‘Do not dare leave us! Sag’Churok-I forbid it!’

Destriant. I shall succeed where Rythok failed. My life shall purchase you a day, perhaps two, and you must make it enough.

‘Stop! I have prayed! Do you not understand? They said they would answer!’

I do not know of whom you speak, Destriant. Listen well to my words. Acyl Nest shall die. The Matron is doomed, and all those within the Rooted. Gunth Mach carries my seed. She shall be a new Matron. Find your Shield Anvil and your Mortal Sword-the three of you shall be Gunth Mach’s J’an Sentinels, until such time as she breeds her own.

Then Gunth Mach shall free you.

This is not your war. This is not your end-it is ours.

‘Stop!’

Sag’Churok prepared to speak to her once more, despite the growing effort it entailed. He would tell her of his admiration. And his faith in her-and of his own astonishment at feeling such emotions for a human. They were paltry things, too weak to be considered gifts of any sort, but he would-

Figures in the distance ahead. Not the enemy. Not born and bred of matrons either. And not, Sag’Churok realized, human.

Standing, readying an array of weapons.

Fourteen in all. Details assembling as Sag’Churok and Gunth Mach raced ever closer. Gaunt despite the blackened, gnarled armour encasing their torsos and limbs. Strange helms with down-swept cheek-guards that projected below their chins. Ragged camails of black chain. Thick, tattered and stained cloaks that had once been dyed an intense, deep yellow, trimmed in silver fur.

Sag’Churok saw that seven of the strangers held in their gauntleted hands long, narrow-bladed swords of blued steel, basket-hilted with half-moon knuckle-guards, and ornate bucklers. He saw two others with heavier single-edged axes and embossed round shields covered in mottled hides. Three with broad-headed, iron-sheathed spears. And two more, standing behind the rest, preparing slings.

And, surrounding them all, spreading down from the faint rise on which they waited, frost sparkled on earth and stone.

Disbelief struck Sag’Churok like a hammer-blow.

This was not possible. This was… without precedent. Impossible-what cast these strangers? Foes or allies? But no, they cannot be allies.

Besides, as all know, Jaghut stand alone.

‘There!’ shouted Kalyth, pointing. ‘I prayed! There-run to them-quickly! Guardians of the Gate!’

Destriant-hear me. These ones will not help us. They will do nothing.

‘You’re wrong!’

Destriant. They are Jaghut. They are…

… impossible.

But Gunth Mach had altered her course, was closing directly upon the waiting warriors. Sag’Churok fell in beside her, still shocked, still confused, uncomprehending-

And then he and Gunth Mach caught the stench wafting from the Jaghut, gusting out from the frozen ground encircling them.

Destriant, beware! They are undead!

‘I know what they are,’ snapped Kalyth. ‘Stop, Gunth Mach-stop retreating-right here, don’t move.’ And then she slipped down from the Daughter’s back.

Destriant, we do not have time-

‘We do. Tell me, how many pursue us? Tell me!’

A Caste. Fifty. Forty-nine now. Four wield Kep’rah, weapons of sorcery. A Crown commands them, they flow as one.

She looked to the northwest. ‘How far away?’

Your eyes shall find them shortly. They are… mounted.

‘On what?’

Sag’Churok would have sent her an image, but she was beyond such things now. She was closed and closing. Wrought… legs. To match our own. Tireless.

He watched as the Destriant absorbed this information, and then she faced the Jaghut.

‘Guardians. I thought to see… familiar faces.’

One of the spear-wielders stepped forward. ‘Hood would not want us.’

‘If he had,’ said the swordswoman beside him, ‘he would have summoned us.’

‘He would not choose that,’ resumed the first Jaghut, ‘for he knew we would not likely accede.’

‘Hood abused our goodwill,’ the swordswoman said, tusks gleaming with frost, ‘at the first chaining. He knew enough to face away from us at the next one.’ An iron-sheathed finger pointed at the Destriant. ‘Instead, he abused you, child of the Imass. And made of one his deadliest enemy. We yield him no sorrow.’

‘No commiseration,’ said the spear-wielder.

‘No sympathy,’ added one of the slingers.

‘He will stand alone,’ the swordswoman said in a rasp. ‘A Jaghut in solitude.’

Sag’Churok twisted round, studied the glint of metal to the northwest. Not long now.

The swordswoman continued. ‘Human, you keep strange company. They will teach you nothing of value, these Che’Malle. It is their curse to repeat their mistakes, again and again, until they have destroyed themselves and everyone else. They have no gifts for you.’

‘It seems,’ said Kalyth of the Elan, ‘we humans have already learned all they could teach us, whether we ever knew it or not.’

A chilling sound, the rattling laughter of fourteen undead Jaghut.

Then the spear-wielder spoke. ‘Flee. Your hunters shall know the privilege of meeting the last soldiers of the only army the Jaghut ever possessed.’

‘The last to die,’ one added in a growl.

‘And should you see Hood,’ said the swordswoman, ‘remind him of how his soldiers never faltered. Even in his moment of betrayal. We never faltered.’

More laughter.

Pale, trembling, the Destriant returned to Gunth Mach. ‘We go. Leave them to this.’

Sag’Churok hesitated. They are too few, Destriant. I will stay with them.

Fourteen pairs of cold, lifeless eyes fixed on the K’ell Hunter, and, smiling, the swordswoman spoke. ‘There are enough of us. Kep’rah never amounted to much of a threat against Omtose Phellack. Still, you may stay. We appreciate an audience, because we are an arrogant people.’ The ghastly grin broadened. ‘Almost as arrogant as you, Che’Malle.’

‘I think,’ observed the spear-wielder, ‘this one is… humbled.’

His companion shrugged. ‘Into the twilight of a species comes humility, like an old woman who has just remembered she’s still a virgin. Too late to count for anything. I am not impressed.’ And the swordswoman attempted to spit, failed, and quietly cursed.

‘Sag’Churok,’ said the Destriant from Gunth Mach’s saddled back, ‘do not die here. Do you understand me? I need you still. Watch, if you must. See what there is to be seen, and then return to us.’

Very well, Kalyth of the Elan.

The K’ell Hunter watched his beloved carry the human away.

Battered armour rustled and clanked as the Jaghut warriors readied themselves, fanning out along the crest of the hill. As they did so, the frigid air crackled around them.

Sag’Churok spoke: Proud soldiers, do not fear they will pass you by. They pass by nothing they believe they can slay, or destroy.

‘We have observed your folly countless times,’ replied the swordswoman. ‘Nothing of what we are about to face will catch us unawares.’ She turned to her companions. ‘Is not Iskar Jarak a worthy leader?’

‘He is,’ answered a chorus of rough voices.

‘And what did he say to us, before he sent us here?’

And thirteen Jaghut voices answered: “ ‘Pretend they are T’lan Imass.’ ”

The last survivors of the only army of the Jaghut, who had not survived at all, then laughed once more. And that laughter clattered on, to greet the Caste, and on, through the entire vicious, stunning battle that followed.

Sag’Churok, watching from a hundred paces away, felt the oil sheathing his hide thicken in the bitter gusts of Omtose Phellack, as the ancient Hold of Ice trembled to the impacts of Kep’rah, as it in turn lashed out-bursting flesh, sending frozen pieces and fragments flying.

In the midst of the conflagration, iron spoke with iron in that oldest of tongues.

Sag’Churok watched. And listened. And when he had seen and heard enough, he did as the Destriant commanded. He left the battle behind. Knowing the outcome, knowing a yet deeper, still sharper bite of humility.

Jaghut. Though we shared your world, we never saw you as our foe. Jaghut, the T’lan Imass never understood-some people are simply too noble to be rivals. But then, perhaps it was that very nobility they so despised.

Iskar Jarak, you who commanded them… what manner of thing are you? And how did you know? I wish you could answer me that one question. How did you know precisely what to say to your soldiers?

Sag’Churok would never forget that laughter. The sound was carved into his very hide; it rode the swirls of his soul, danced light on the heady flavours of his relief and wonder. Such knowing amusement, both wry and sweet, such a cruel, breathtaking sound.

I have heard the dead laugh.

He knew he would ride that laughter through the course of his life. It would hold him up. Give him strength.

Now I understand, Kalyth of the Elan, what made your eyes so bright on this day.

Behind him, the earth shook. And the song of laughter went on and on.

The swollen trunks of segmented trees rose from the shallows of the swamp, so bloated that Grub thought they might split open at any moment, disgorging… what? He had no idea, but considering the horrific creatures they had seen thus far-mercifully from a distance-it was likely to be so ghastly it would haunt his nightmares for the rest of his life. He swatted at a gnat chewing on his knee and crouched further down behind the bushes.

The buzz and whine of insects, the slow lap of water on the sodden shoreline, and the deep, even breathing of something massive, each exhalation a sharp whistle that went on… and on.

Grub licked sweat from his lips. ‘It’s big,’ he whispered.

Kneeling at his side, Sinn had found a black leech and let each of its two suckers fasten on to the tip of a finger. She spread the fingers and watched how the slimy thing stretched. But it was getting fatter. ‘It’s a lizard,’ she said.

‘A dragon.’

‘Dragons don’t breathe, not like we do, anyway. That’s why they can travel between worlds. No, it’s a lizard.’

‘We lost the path-’

‘There never was a path, Grub,’ Sinn replied. ‘There was a trail, and we’re still on it.’

‘I preferred the desert.’

‘Times change,’ she said, and then grinned. ‘That’s a joke, by the way.’

‘I don’t get it.’

She made a face. ‘Time doesn’t change, Grub, just the things in it.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘This trail, of course. It’s as if we’re walking the track of someone’s life, and it was a long life.’ She waved with her free hand. ‘All this, it’s what’s given shape to the mess at the far end-which was where we started from.’

‘Then we’re going back in time?’

‘No. That would be the wrong direction, wouldn’t it?’

‘Get that thing off your fingers before it sucks you dry.’

She held it out and he tugged it loose, which wasn’t as easy as he would have liked. The puckered wounds at the ends of Sinn’s fingers bled freely. Grub tossed the creature away.

‘Think he’ll smell it?’ Sinn asked.

‘He who?’

‘The lizard. My blood.’

‘Gods below!’

Her eyes were bright. ‘Do you like this place? The air, it makes you drunk, doesn’t it? We’re back in the age when everything was raw. Unsettled. But maybe not, maybe we’re from the raw times. But here, I think, you could stay for ten thousand years and nothing would change, nothing at all. Long ago, time was slower.’

‘I thought you said-’

‘All right, change was slower. Not that anything living would sense that. Everything living just knows what it knows, and that never changes.’

She was easier when she never said anything, Grub decided, but he kept that thought to himself. Something was stirring, out in the swamp, and Grub’s eyes widened when he studied the waterline and realized that it had crept up by a full hand’s span. Whatever it was, it had just displaced a whole lot of water. ‘It’s coming,’ he said.

‘Which flickering eye,’ Sinn mused, ‘is us?’

‘Sinn-we got to get out of here-’

‘If we’re not even here,’ she continued, ‘where did we come from, except from something that is here? You can’t just say, “Oh, we come through a gate,” because, then, the question just shows up all over again.’

The breathing had stopped.

‘It’s coming!’

‘But you can breed horses-and you can see how they change-longer legs, even a different gait. Like turning a desert wolf into a hunting dog-it doesn’t take as long as you’d think. Did someone breed us to make us like we are?’

‘If they did,’ hissed Grub, ‘they should’ve given one of us more brains!’ Snatching her by the arm, he pulled her upright.

She laughed as they ran.

Behind them, water exploded, enormous jaws snapped on empty air, breath shrieking, and the ground trembled.

Grub did not look behind them-he could hear the monstrous thrash and whip of the huge lizard as it surged through the undergrowth, closing fast.

Then Sinn tore herself free.

His heels skidded on wet clay. Spinning round, he caught an instant’s glimpse of Sinn-her back to him-facing a lizard big as a Quon galley, its elongated jaws bristling with dagger-sized fangs. Opening wide and wider still.

Fire erupted. A conflagration that blinded Grub, made him reel away as a solid wall of heat struck him. He stumbled to his knees. It was raining-no, that was hail-no, bits of flesh, hide and bone. Blinking, gasping, he slowly lifted his head.

A crater gaped before Sinn, steaming.

He climbed to his feet and walked unevenly to her side. The pit was twenty or more paces across, deep as a man was tall. Murky water gurgled, filling the basin. In that basin, a piece of the lizard’s tail thrashed and twitched. Mouth dry, Grub asked, ‘Did you enjoy that, Sinn?’

‘None of it’s real, Grub.’

‘Looked real enough to me!’

She snorted. ‘Just a memory.’

‘Whose?’

‘Maybe mine.’ Sinn shrugged. ‘Maybe yours. Something buried so deep inside us, we would never have ever known about it, if we weren’t here.’

‘That makes no sense.’

Sinn held up her hands. The one that had been streaming blood looked scorched. ‘My blood,’ she whispered, ‘is on fire.’

They skirted the swamp, watched by a herd of scaly, long-necked beasts with flattened snouts. Bigger than any bhederin, but with the same dull, bovine eyes. Tiny winged lizards patrolled their ridged backs, picking at ticks and lice.

Beyond the swamp the land sloped upward, festooned with snake-leafed trees with pebbled boles and feathery crowns. There was no obvious way around the strange forest, so they entered it. In the humid shade beneath the canopy, iridescent-winged moths fluttered about like bats, and the soft, damp ground was crawling with toads that could swallow a man’s fist and seemed disinclined to move aside, forcing Grub to step carefully and Sinn to lash out with her bare feet, laughing with every meaty impact.

The slope levelled out and the trees grew denser, gloom closing in like a shroud. ‘This was a mistake,’ muttered Grub.

‘What was?’

‘All of it. The Azath House, the portal-Keneb must be worried sick. It wasn’t fair, us just leaving like that, telling no one. If I’d known it was going to take this long to find whatever it was you think we need to find, I’d probably have said “no” to the whole idea.’ He eyed the girl beside him. ‘You knew from the very start, didn’t you?’

‘We’re on the trail-we can’t leave it now. Besides, I need an ally. I need someone who can guard my back.’

‘With what, this stupid eat-knife in my belt?’

She made a face. ‘Tell me the truth. Where did you come from?’

‘I was a foundling in the Chain of Dogs. The Imperial Historian Duiker saved me. He picked me up outside Aren’s gate and put me into Keneb’s arms.’

‘Do you actually remember all of that?’

‘Of course.’

Her eyes had sharpened their study. ‘You remember walking in the Chain of Dogs?’

He nodded. ‘Walking, running. Being scared, hungry, thirsty. Seeing so many people die. I even remember seeing Coltaine once, although the only thing I can see in my head now, when I think of him, is crow-feathers. At least,’ he added, ‘I didn’t see him die.’

‘What city did you come from?’

‘That I can’t remember.’ He shrugged. ‘Anything before the Chain… is gone, like it never existed.’

‘It didn’t.’

‘What?’

‘The Chain of Dogs made you, Grub. It built you up out of dirt and sticks and rocks, and then it filled you with everything that happened. The heroes who fought and then died, the people who loved, then lost. The ones that starved and died of thirst. The ones whose hearts burst with terror. The ones that drowned, the ones that swallowed an arrow or a sword. The ones who rode spears. It took all of that and that became your soul.’

‘That’s ridiculous. There were lots of orphans. Some of us made it, some of us didn’t. That’s all.’

‘You were what, three years old? Four? Nobody remembers much from when they were that young. A handful of scenes, maybe. That’s it. But you remember the Chain of Dogs, Grub, because you’re its get.’

‘I had parents. A real father, a real mother!’

‘But you can’t remember them.’

‘Because they died before the Chain even started!’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because what you’re saying makes no sense!’

‘Grub, I know because you’re just like me.’

‘What? You got a real family-you even got a brother!’

‘Who looks at me and doesn’t know who or what he’s looking at. I’ll tell you who made me. An assassin named Kalam. He found me hiding with a bunch of bandits who were pretending to be rebels. He carved things on to my soul, and then he left. And then I was made a second time-I was added on to. At Y’Ghatan, where I found the fire that I took inside me, that now burns on and on like my very own sun. And after, there was Captain Faradan Sort, because she knew that I knew they were still alive-and I knew because the fire never went out-it was under the city, burning and burning. I knew-I could feel it.’ She stopped then, panting to catch her breath, her eyes wild as a wasp-stung cat’s.

Grub stared at her, not knowing whether he wanted to hug her or hit her. ‘You were born to a mother, just like I was.’

‘Then why are we so different?’

Moths fled at her shout, and sounds fell away on all sides.

‘I don’t know,’ he replied in a soft voice. ‘Maybe… maybe you did find something in Y’Ghatan. But nothing like that ever happened to me-’

‘Malaz City. You jumped ship. You went to find the Nachts. Why?’

‘I don’t know!’

She leapt away from him, rushed off into the wood. In moments he had lost sight of her. ‘Sinn? What are you doing? Where are you going?’

The gloom vanished. Fifty paces away a seething sphere of flames blossomed. Trees exploded in its path as it rolled straight towards Grub.

He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound emerged.

The blistering ball of fire heaved closer, huge, bristling-

Grub gestured. The ground lifted suddenly into the fire’s path, in a mass of roots, humus and mud, surging upward, toppling trees to the sides. A thousand twisted brown arms snaked out from the churning earth. The writhing wall engulfed the rolling sphere of fire, slapped it down as would a booted heel crush the life from a wayward ember. Thunder shook. The earth subsided, the arms vanishing, leaving nothing more than a slowly settling, chewed-up mound. Clouds of steam billowed and then drifted, thinning as the darkness returned once more.

He saw her walking calmly towards him, stepping over shattered trunks, brushing dirt from her plain tunic.

Sinn halted directly before him. ‘It doesn’t matter, Grub,’ she said. ‘You and me-we’re different.’

She set off, and after a moment he stumbled after her.

Never argue with a girl.

It was a day for strangers. One was beyond his reach, the other he knew well. Taxilian and Rautos had prised loose a panel to reveal a confused mass of metal coils, tubes and wire-wrapped cables. Muttering about finding the necessary hinge spells needed to unleash sorcerous power, thus awakening the city’s brain, Taxilian began poking and prodding the workings. Crowding behind him, sweat beading his brow, Rautos ran through a litany of cautions, none of which Taxilian heeded.

Last had devised a trap for the lizard-rats-the orthen-and had headed off to check it, Asane accompanying him.

At the top of a ramp and in a long but shallow antechamber, Nappet and Sheb had found a sealed door and were pounding at it with iron-headed sledges, each blow ringing like a tortured bell. Most of the damage they likely inflicted was to their ears, but since neither had anything to say to the other, they’d yet to discover it.

Breath was exploring the Nest itself, the now empty, abandoned abode of the Matron, finding nothing of interest, although unbeknownst to her residual flavours flowed in through her lungs and formed glistening minute droplets on her exposed skin. Vague dreams of producing children dogged her, successive scenes of labour and birth, tumbling one upon the next like a runaway nightmare. What had begun as a diffuse irritation was quickly building to an indefinable rage.

Breath had been living inside the Tiles since creating them, but even she could not find the meaning she sought in them. And now the outside world was seeping into her. Confusion swarmed.

And then there was the K’Chain Che’Malle drone. Climbing, drawing ever closer to this hapless collection of humans.

The ghost drifted amongst his family, haunted by a growing trepidation. His people were failing. In some ineffable, fundamental way, they were pulling apart. Even as he had wondered at their purpose, now each one-barring perhaps Taxilian-was doing the same. A crisis was upon them, and he could feel the growing turbulence. They would not be ready for Sulkit. They might even kill the drone. And then all would be lost.

He recalled-once, a thousand times? — standing on the deck of a ship, witness to the sea’s surface spreading out smooth as vitreous glass on all sides, a strange quality suffusing the still air, the light becoming uncanny, febrile. And around him faceless sailors scrambling, pale as motes-bloody propitiations to the Elder God, the bawling bleat of goats brought up from the hold, the flash of sea-dipped blades and twisted blankets of blood floating on the seas-all around him, such rising fear. And in answer to all of this, he heard his own laughter. Cruel as a demon’s, and wide eyes fixed on him, for they had found a monster in their midst. And he was that monster.

I called storms, didn’t I? Just to see the violence, to draw it round me like the warmest cloak. And even the cries of drowning mortals could not break my amusement.

Are these memories mine? What manner of beast was I?

The blood tasted… good. Propitiation? The fools-they simply fed my power.

I remember a tribe, corpses cooling beneath furs and blankets, and the stains of spite on my hands. I remember the empty hole I found myself in, the pit that was my crime. Too late to howl at its depth, its lifeless air, the deadness inside.

Betrayed by a wife. Everyone laughing behind my back. For that, all would die. So it must be, and so it was. And I fled that place, the home I destroyed in the span of a single night. But some holes cannot be climbed out of. I ran and ran, and each night, lying exhausted, I fell back into that hole, and I looked up at that mouth of light far above, and I watched it ever recede. Until it winked out.

When you see my eyes now, all you see is that deadness. You see the black, smooth walls. And you know that, though I look back at you, I see nothing that makes me feel… anything.

I am walking still, alone on the empty plain, and the edifice I approach looms ever bigger, a thing of stone and dried blood, a thing eager to awaken once more.

Come find me.

Asane came staggering back into the chamber where Taxilian and Rautos still crouched at the gutted wall. Gasping, frightened, she struggled to find her breath, as Rautos turned round.

‘Asane? What is it? Where is Last?’

‘A demon! One lives! It found us!’

They could hear sounds now on the ramp, leather soles and something else-the click of claws, the flicking hiss of a tail brushing stone.

Asane backed to the far wall. Rautos hissed, ‘Taxilian! Get Nappet and Sheb! Quickly!’

‘What?’ the man glanced back over his shoulder. ‘What is it?’

Last appeared, looking faintly bewildered, but otherwise unharmed. Two dead orthen hung from a string at his belt. Moments later, the K’Chain Che’Malle loomed into view. Gaunt, but no taller than a man, thin-limbed, a tail that lashed about as if possessing its own will.

The ghost felt the fear, in Asane and Rautos. But in Taxilian, who slowly straightened from the exposed machinery, there was wonder, curiosity. And then… excitement. He stepped forward.

The drone was studying the chamber, as if searching for something. At the incessant clanging from above, it cocked its head. A moment later there were shouts of triumph from Nappet and Sheb-the door had opened, but the ghost knew that the surrender of that barrier had not come beneath their sledges. Sulkit had simply unlocked it. A moment later, he wondered how he knew this.

Breath reappeared from a side passage. ‘Blueiron,’ she whispered, staring at the drone. ‘Like a… a Fulcrum. Taxilian, go to it-we need it.’

‘I know,’ he replied, licking dry lips. ‘Rautos, go up to Sheb and Nappet-keep them occupied up there. I don’t want them charging down here with swords out. Make them understand-’

‘Understand what?’ Rautos demanded.

‘That we’ve found an ally.’

Rautos’s eyes widened. He wiped sweat from his face. A moment later, he backed up, then turned and set off up the ramp.

Taxilian spoke to the drone. ‘Can you understand me? Nothing works. We need to fix it. We need your help-no, perhaps it’s the other way round. We’d like to help you bring all of this back to life.’

Silence. The K’Chain Che’Malle seemed to be ignoring everyone in the chamber, its tentacled fingers writhing like seagrass at the ends of its arms. The rows of fangs glistened in its broad slash of a mouth. After a moment, the drone blinked. Once, twice, three times, each lid distinct. Then it walked in a hitching gait to where Taxilian had been working. It picked up the panel and deftly replaced it. Straightening, it turned and faced the ghost, eyes fixing on his.

You can see me. The realization stunned him. And all at once he could feel something-my own body-and with it jarring pain in his hands, the ache of abuse. He could taste his own sweat, the acrid exhaustion of his muscles. And then it was gone.

He cried out.

Help me!

Sulkit’s reptilian eyes blinked again, and then the drone set off, quickly crossing the room and vanishing down the ramp that led to the domed carapace-the chamber that housed this city’s mind.

Taxilian barked a laugh. ‘Follow it!’ He hurried after the K’Chain Che’Malle. Breath fell in behind him.

Once the three were gone, Asane ran to Last and he took her in his arms.

Rautos, Sheb and Nappet arrived. ‘We got the door open,’ said Sheb, his voice overloud. ‘It just slid to one side. It leads outside, to a balcony-gods, we’re high up!’

‘Never mind that,’ growled Nappet. ‘We saw someone, way out on the plain. Walking. Seems we’ve found another wanderer.’

‘Maybe,’ said Rautos, ‘maybe he’ll know.’

‘Know what?’ snapped Sheb, baring his teeth.

Rautos gestured helplessly.

Nappet was glaring round, hefting the sledge in his hands. ‘So where’s the fucking demon?’

‘It means no harm,’ said Last.

‘Too bad for it.’

‘Don’t hurt it, Nappet.’

Nappet advanced on Last. ‘Look at the stupid farmer-found an animal to pet, did you? She’s not much-Breath looks a damned sight better.’

‘The demon isn’t even armed,’ said Last.

‘Then it’s stupid. Because if I was it, I’d be swinging the biggest damned axe I could find. I’d start by killing you and that hag you’re holding. Then fat, useless Rautos there, with the stupid questions.’

‘The first one it’d kill would be you, Nappet,’ laughed Sheb.

‘Because I’m the most dangerous one here, aye, it’d try. But I’d smash its skull in.’

‘Not the most dangerous,’ corrected Sheb, ‘just the stupidest. It’d kill you out of pity.’

‘Let’s go and prepare the meal,’ Last said to Asane, still guarding her with one thick, muscled arm. ‘Sorry, Nappet, there’s not enough for you.’

The man stepped closer. ‘Try and stop me-’

Last spun. His fist hammered into Nappet’s face, shattering the man’s nose. In a welter of blood he reeled back. Teeth bounced on the floor. The sledge fell from his hands. After a moment he fell down, and then curled up, covering his broken face.

The others stared at Last.

Then Sheb laughed, but it was a weak laugh.

‘Come on,’ said Last to Asane.

They left the chamber.

After a moment, Sheb said, ‘I’m heading back up to the balcony.’

Rautos went to his pack and rummaged within it until he found some rags and a flask. He then went over to crouch, grunting, beside Nappet. ‘Let’s see what we can do here, Nappet.’

Betrayal could lie dead, a cold heap of ashes, only to blaze alight in an instant. What drove me to such slaughter? They were kin. Companions. Loved ones. How could I have done that to them? My wife, she wanted to hurt me-why? What had I done? Gorim’s sister? That was nothing. Meaningless. Not worth all the screaming, she had to have seen that.

Hurting me like she did, but I won’t ever forget the look in her eyes-her face-when I took her life. And I’ll never understand why she looked like the one betrayed. Not me. Gorim’s sister, that wasn’t anything to do with her. I wasn’t out to hurt her. It just happened. But what she did, that was like a knife stabbed into my heart.

She had to know I wasn’t the kind of man to let that pass. I got my pride. And that’s why they all had to die, all of them who knew and laughed behind my back. I needed to deliver a lesson, but then, after it was all done, why, there was no one left to heed it. Just me, which didn’t work, because it made it into a different lesson. Didn’t it?

The dragon waits on the plain. It doesn’t even blink. It did, once, and everything disappeared. Everything and everyone. It won’t ever do that again.

You blink, you lose that time for ever. You can’t even be sure how long that blink lasted. A moment, a thousand years. You can’t even know for sure that what you see now is the same as what you saw before. You can’t. You think it is. You tell yourself that, convince yourself of that. Just a continuation of everything you knew before. What you see is still there. That’s what you tell yourself. That’s the game of reassurance your mind plays. To keep things sane.

But think on that one blink-you’ve all known it-when all that you thought was real suddenly changes. From one side of the blink to the other side. It comes with bad news. It comes with soul-plummeting horror and grief. How long was that blink?

Gods below, it was fucking eternity.