Dust of Dreams

Chapter Eighteen

Weak and exhausted, Yan Tovis had followed her brother through the gates and into the dead city of Kharkanas. The secret legends possessed by her bloodline had virtually carved into her soul the details before her. When she’d walked the bridge, the echo of the stones underfoot embraced her, as familiar and steeped in sorrow as a dead grandmother’s cloak. Passing beneath the storeyed arch, she felt as if she had returned home-but this home was a forgotten place, as if she had inherited someone else’s nostalgia. Her discomfort turned to distress as she emerged from the cool darkness and saw before her a silent, lifeless vista of tall, smoke-stained buildings, smeared towers and disfigured statues. Tiered gardens had grown past weeds and were now thick with twisted trees, the roots of which had burst the retaining walls, snaking down walls and buckling pavestones. Birds nested on ledges above walls painted white in guano. Heaps of wind-blown leaves mouldered in corners, and plants had pushed up between flagstones.

She could feel the ancient magic, like something fluttering at the edge of her vision. The city had survived the eons far better than it rightly should have. And the sorcery still resisted the relentless siege of time. She looked upon a scene that might have been abandoned little more than a generation ago, when in truth it was ancient beyond imagining.

Mothers will hold children close

Until the world itself crumbles

So wrote some poet from this very city, and Yan Tovis understood it well enough. The child and the home shall never change, if that child’s mother has any say over the matter. But explanations make truths mundane. The poet seeks to awaken in the listener all that is known yet unspoken. Words to conjure an absence of words. But children will grow up, and time will drive spears through the thickest walls. And sometimes the walls are breached from within.

It had always been her habit-and she knew it well enough-to sow uncertainty. In her mind, indecision was a way of life. Her brother, of course, was the very opposite. They stood facing one another in extremity, across a gulf that could not be bridged. When Yedan Derryg stepped beyond challenge, his will was a brutal thing, a terrible force that destroyed lives. When she did not have him facing her-his hands dripping blood and his eyes hard as stone-she came to believe that indecisiveness was the natural order of the world, a state of mind that waited until acted upon, doomed to react and never initiate, a mind that simply held itself in place, passive, resigned to whatever the fates delivered.

They were meant to stand together, meant to fix pressure each upon the other like the counterweights at either end of the bridge, and in that tense balance they might find the wisdom to rule, they might make solid and sure the stones beneath the feet of their people.

He had murdered her witches and warlocks, and it had not been a matter of stepping round her to get to them, for she had proved no obstacle to him. No, she had been frozen in place. Awaiting the knife of fate. Yedan’s knife.

I forgot. And so I failed. I need him back. I need my Witchslayer.

Behind her trooped the vanguard of her people. Pully and Skwish, plump and rosy as maidens, their faces growing slack as the residual magic bled through their meagre defences. The two officers commanding the Watch’s company, Brevity and Pithy, had already begun sending squads on to the side streets, to scout out places to accommodate the refugees. Their calm, drawling instructions were like a farrier’s file over the uneven edge of fear and panic.

She could not see Yedan, nor his horse, but ahead, close to the centre of the city, rose a massive edifice, part temple, part palace and keep, from which five towers rose to spear the heavy gloom of the sky. The Citadel. It occupied an island encircled by a gorge that could be crossed by but one bridge, and that bridge was reached by this main avenue.

Yan Tovis glanced back, found Pithy. ‘Settle the people as best you can-but don’t spread them out too much. Oh, and tell the witches they won’t be able to think straight until they’ve worked a protective circle around themselves.’

At the woman’s nod, Yan faced the heart of the city again, and then set out.

He rode to the Citadel. Of course he did. He was Yedan Derryg. And he wants to see for himself where all the blood was spilled.

Some enormous concussion had cracked the marble pillars flanking the Great Hall. Fissures gaped, many of the columns bowed or tilted precariously, and a fine scattering of white dust coated the mosaic floor. In places that dust had congealed into muddy stains.

Indifferent to the rubbish, Yedan crossed the vast chamber. He could feel a warmth coursing through him, as if he was about to wade into a battle. Currents of power still drifted in this place, thick with discordant emotions. Horror, grief, black rage and terrible agony. Madness had descended upon this citadel, and blood had drenched the world.

He found a side corridor just beyond the Great Hall, its entranceway ornate with arcane carvings: women marching in solemn procession. Tall, midnight-skinned women. Once within the passage, the images on the walls to either side transformed into carnal scenes, growing ever more elaborate as he proceeded to the far end. After a series of cloisters, the function of which was in no way ambiguous, Yedan entered a domed chamber. The Terondai-was that the word? Who could say how time had twisted it? The sacred eye in the darkness, the witness to all things.

There was a time, the secret legends told, when light did not visit this world, and the darkness was absolute. But only the true children of the Mother could survive in such a realm, and no blood remains for ever pure. More, there were other beings dwelling in Night. Some saw truly, others did not.

Light was what seeped in with the wounding of the Mother-a wounding she chose to permit, a wounding and then the birthing that came of it. ‘All children,’ she said, ‘must be able to see. We gift the living with light and darkness and shadow. The truth of our natures cannot be found in the absence of that which we are not. Walk from darkness, walk into shadow, walk beyond into light. These are the truths of being. “Without ground, there can be no sky.” So spoke the Azathanai in the dust of their quarries.’

Secret legends, likely little more than nonsense. Words to give meaning to what already existed, to what existed with or without the guiding hand of sentient beings. To this rock, to that river, to the molten fires from below and the frozen rain from above. He wasn’t much impressed with things like that.

The Terondai was smeared in ashes and cluttered with dried leaves. Shapeless ridges of white dust were all that remained of bodies left lying where they fell. There was no sign of weapons or jewellery, leading Yedan to surmise that looters had been through the chamber-and everywhere else in the Citadel, he suspected. Odd that his bloodline’s secret legends made no mention of those flitting thieves. Yet, weren’t we here at the grisly end? Not wielding weapons. Not making heroic stands. Just… what? Watching? Prompting the question: who in the name of the Shore were we? Their damned servants? Their slaves?

Secret legends, tell us your secret truths.

And what of this ancient claim to some kind of royal bloodline? Rulers of what? The woodshed? The garden island in the river? Yes, he would trot out the righteous assertions that he and his sister were fit to command, if that was what was needed to bend others to his will. They had titles, didn’t they? Twilight. The Watch. And Yan Tovis had done much the same, taking upon herself the role of Queen of the Shake. The burden of privilege-see how we bow beneath its weight.

Jaws bunched, he scanned the chamber once more, now with greater care.

‘You damned fool.’

He twisted round, eyed his sister.

‘You’re in the temple, idiot-get off the damned horse.’

‘There are raised gardens,’ he said. ‘Find some farmers among your lot and get them to start clearing. I’ll send others down to the river-we’ve got plenty of nets.’

‘You want us to occupy the city?’

‘Why not?’

She seemed at a loss for words.

Yedan drew his horse round until he faced her. ‘Twilight, you took us on to the Road of Gallan. The Blind Man’s Road. Now we are in the Realm of Darkness. But the realm is dead. It is preserved in death by sorcery. If this was once our home, we can make it so again. Was that not our destiny?’

‘Destiny? Errant’s balls, why does speaking that word sound like the unsheathing of a sword? Yedan, perhaps we knew this city once. Perhaps our family line reaches back and every story we learned was true. The glory of Kharkanas. But not one of those stories tells us we ruled here. In this city. We were not this realm’s master.’

He studied her for a time. ‘We move on, then.’

‘Yes.’

‘To where?’

‘The forest beyond the river. Through it and out to the other side. Yedan, we have come this far. Let us make the journey to the place where it started. Our true home. The First Shore.’

‘We don’t even know what that means.’

‘So we find out.’

‘The river is still worth a look,’ he said. ‘We’re short of food.’

‘Of course. Now, in honour of those who fell here, brother, get off that damned horse!’

Moments after the two had left the chamber, the stillness that had existed for millennia was broken. A stirring of dead leaves, spinning as if lifted by small whirlwinds. Dust hazed the air, and the strange muted gloom-where light itself seemed an unwelcome stranger-suddenly wavered.

And something like a long, drawn breath slowly filled the chamber. It echoed wretched as a sob.

Brevity followed Pithy to the mouth of the alley. They carried lanterns, shadows rocking on walls as they made their way down half the narrow thoroughfare’s length.

She halted beside her friend and together they stared down at the bodies.

‘Dead?’ Brevity asked.

‘No, sweetie. In the realm of dreams, the both of them.’

‘When did this happen?’

‘Couldn’t a been too long ago,’ Pithy replied. ‘I seen the two wander in here to do that ritual or whatever. Little later I chanced to peek in and saw their torches had gone out. So I come for a look.’

Brevity settled into a crouch and set the lantern to one side. She grasped the witch nearest her and pulled the woman over, peering down at the face. ‘Pully, I think. They look like twins as it is.’

‘Gettin’ more so, too,’ Pithy noted, ‘or so I noticed.’

‘Eyelids fluttering like mad.’

‘Realm of dreams, didn’t I say so?’

Brevity pushed back an eyelid. ‘Rolled right up. Maybe the ritual turned on ’em.’

‘Could be. What should we do?’

‘I’m tempted to bury them.’

‘But they ain’t dead.’

‘I know. But opportunities like this don’t come every day.’

‘What’s broken cannot be mended. You broke us, but that is not all-see what you have done.’

Gallan had been horrified. He could not abide this new world. He wanted a return to darkness and, when he’d done gouging out his own eyes, he found it. Sandalath, her son’s tiny hand held tight within her solid grip, stood looking down on the madman, seeing but not registering all the blood on his face and smeared across the floor-the impossibility of it here at the very threshold to the Terondai. He wept, choking on something again and again-yet whatever was in his mouth he would not spit out-and his lips were glistening crimson, his teeth red as cedar chips.

‘Mother,’ said her son, ‘what’s happened?’

The world changes. Gallan, you fool. What you’ve done does not change it back. ‘An accident,’ she replied. ‘We must find someone to help-’

‘But why is he eating his eyes?’

‘Go now, find a priestess-quickly, Orfantal!’

Gallan choked, trying to swallow his eyeballs only to hack them back into his mouth. The holes in his head wept bloody tears.

Ever the poetic statement, Gallan. The grandiose symbol, artfully positioned at the temple door. You will lie here until someone important comes, and then you’ll swallow those damned things down. Even the masterpiece is servant to timing.

Will Mother Dark be struck in the heart by this, Gallan? Or simply disgusted? ‘It’s done, old man,’ she said. ‘No going back.’

He clearly misunderstood her, as he began laughing.

She saw one of the eyes in his mouth roll into view, and for one insane moment it seemed to look up at her.

‘What’s broken cannot be mended. You broke us, but that is not all-see what you have done.’

Sandalath hissed as that echo intruded a second time into her memories. It didn’t belong in the scene she had resurrected. It belonged somewhere else, with someone else. With someone else, not to. Of course that was the horrid thing about it. She heard those words spoken and they indeed came from her, arriving in her own voice, and that voice was from a woman who truly understood what it was to be broken.

And that is the bitter truth. I have not mended. After all this time…

‘You asleep?’ Withal asked from where he lay behind her.

She contemplated the merits of a response, decided against them and remained silent.

‘Talking in your sleep again,’ he muttered, shifting beneath the furs. ‘But what I want to know is, what broke?’

She sat up as if stung by a scorpion. ‘What?’

‘Awake after all-’

‘What did you just say?’

‘Whatever it was, it’s put my heart in my throat and you poised to tear it out. I suppose you could beat me senseless-’

Snarling, she flung the furs back and rose to her feet. The three Venath demons were, inexplicably, digging a huge hole a short distance down from the road. Mape was in the bottom, heaving enormous boulders into Rind’s arms where the demon crouched at the edge. Rind then swung round to transfer the rock to Pule, who pitched it away. What in Hood’s name are they doing? Never mind. She rubbed at her face.

Talking in my sleep? Not those words. Please, not those words.

She walked some way up the Road, eager to be off. But Withal needed some sleep. Humans were absurdly frail. Their every achievement proved similarly fragile. If there weren’t so damned many of them, and if they didn’t display the occasional ant-nest frenzy of creativity, why, they’d have died out long ago. More to the point, if the rest of us hadn’t sneered in our idle witnessing of their pathetic efforts-if we’d wised up, in fact, one or all of us would have wiped them out long ago. Tiste Andii, Jaghut, K’Chain Che’Malle, Forkrul Assail. Gods, Tiste Edur, even. Scabandari, you slaughtered the wrong enemy. Even you, Anomander-you play with them as if they’re pets. But these pets will turn on you. Sooner or later.

She knew she was avoiding the scaly beast gnawing at the roots of her mind. Urging her thoughts to wander away, away from the place where kindred blood still glistened. But it was no use. Words had been spoken. Violence had given answer, and the rise and fall of chests faded into eternal stillness. And that beast, well, it had the sharpest teeth.

Sandalath sighed. Kharkanas. The city awaited her. Not so far away now, her ancient home, her own private crypt, its confines crammed solid with the worthless keepsakes of a young woman’s life.

Watch me chase my dreams

In the transit of dust

Snorting, she swung round, retracing her path to where her husband slept. The demons-Venath, who’d once been allies of the Jaghut. Who gave of their blood to the Trell-and what a fell mix that turned out to be-the demons had all vanished into the hole they’d dug. Why had the damned things attached themselves to Withal? He said he’d found them on the island where he’d been imprisoned by the Crippled God. Which suggested that the Crippled God had summoned and bound the demons. But later, the Nachts had abetted Withal’s escape and seemed instead to be in league with Mael. And now… they’re digging a hole.

‘Never mind,’ said Withal, rolling over and sitting up. ‘You’re worse than a mosquito in a room. If you’re in such a hurry, let’s just go until we get there. I can rest then.’

‘You’re exhausted.’

He eyed her. ‘It ain’t the walking that’s exhausting me, beloved.’

‘You’d better explain that.’

‘I will. But not right now.’

She saw the defiance in his eyes. I could make him talk. But that look in his eyes… it’s cute. ‘Gather up your gear then, husband. And while you do, I will explain something to you. We are following the road that leads to the city where I was born. Now, that’s stressful enough. But it’s something I can handle. Not happily, mind you, but even so. No, there is something else.’

He’d tied up his bedroll and had it tucked under an arm. ‘Go on.’

‘Imagine a pool of black water. Depthless, hidden within a cave where no air stirs and nothing drips. The pool’s surface has not known a single ripple in tens of thousands of years. You’ve come to kneel beside it-all your life-but what you see never changes.’

‘All right.’

‘I still see nothing to change that, Withal. But… somewhere far below the surface, in depths unimaginable… something moves.’

‘Sounds like we should be running the other way.’

‘You’re probably right, but I can’t.’

‘This old life of yours, Sand-you’ve said you were not a fighter-you knew nothing of weapons or warfare. So, what were you in this city home of yours?’

‘There were factions-a power struggle.’ She looked away, up the Road. ‘It went on for generations-yes, that may be hard to believe. Generations among the Tiste Andii. You’d think that after the centuries they’d be entrenched, and maybe they were, for a time. Even a long time. But then everything changed-in my life, I knew nothing but turmoil. Alliances, betrayals, war pacts, treacheries. You cannot imagine how such things twisted our civilization, our culture.’

‘Sand.’

‘I was a hostage, Withal. Valued but expendable.’

‘But that’s a not a life! That’s an interruption in a life!’

‘Everything was breaking down.’ We were supposed to be sacrosanct. Precious. ‘It doesn’t matter now,’ she added. ‘It’s not a career I can pick up again, is it?’

He was staring at her. ‘Would you? If you could?’

‘A ridiculous question.’ ‘What’s broken cannot be mended. You broke us, but that is not all-see what you have done.’

‘Sand.’

‘Of course not. Now, saddle up.’

‘But why is he eating his eyes?’

‘Once, long ago, my son, there was nothing but darkness. And that nothing, Orfantal, was everything.’

‘But why-’

‘He is old. He’s seen too much.’

‘He could have just closed them.’

‘Yes, he could have at that.’

‘Mother?’

‘Yes, Orfantal?’

‘Don’t eat your eyes.’

‘Don’t worry. I am like most people. I can keep my eyes and still see nothing.’

Now, woman, you said no such thing. And be thankful for that. The other rule applies. Mouth working, nothing said. And that is the ease we find for ourselves. After all, if we said everything we could say to each other, we’d have all killed each other long ago.

Gallan, you were a poet. You should have swallowed your tongue.

He had hurt someone, once. And he had known he had done so, and knowing led him into feeling bad. But no one enjoys feeling bad. Better to replace the guilt and shame with something turned outward. Something that burned all within reach, something that would harness all his energies and direct them away from himself. Something called anger. By the time he was done-by the time his rage had run its course-he found himself surrounded in ashes, and the life he had known was for ever gone.

Introspection was an act of supreme courage, one that few could manage. But when all one had left to stir was a heap of crumbled bones, there was nothing else one could do. Fleeing the scene only prolonged the ordeal. Memories clung to the horrors in his wake, and the only true escape was a plunge into madness-and madness was not a thing he could simply choose for himself. More’s the pity. No, the sharper the inner landscape, the fiercer the sanity.

He believed that his family name was Veed. He had been a Gral, a warrior and a husband. He had done terrible things. There was blood on his hands, and the salty, bitter taste of lies on his tongue. The stench of scorched cloth still filled his head.

I have slain. In this admission, he had a place to begin.

Then, all these truths assembled themselves into the frame of his future. Leading to his next thought.

I will slay again.

Not one among those he now hunted could hope to stand before him. Their petty kingdom was no more formidable than a termite mound, but to the insects themselves it was majesty and it was permanence and it was these things that made them giants in their own realm. Veed was the boot, the bronze-sheathed toe that sent walls crashing down, delivering utter ruin. It is what I am made to do.

His path was unerring. Into the sunken pit and through the entrance, finding himself in a chamber crowded with reptilian corpses that swarmed with orthen and maggots. He crossed the room and halted before the inner portal.

They were somewhere far above-they had seen him, he was sure of it. Watched him from the eyes or mouth of the dragon. They did not know who he was, and so they had no reason to fear him. Even so, he knew that they would be cautious. If he simply lunged into their midst, blades flashing, some might escape. Some might fight back. A lucky swing… no, he would need his charm, his ability to put them all at ease. It is possible that this cannot be rushed. I see that now. But I have shown patience before, haven’t I? I have shown a true talent for deceit.

Empty huts are not my only legacy, after all.

He sheathed his weapons.

Spat into the palms of his hands, and slicked back his hair. Then set off on the long ascent.

He could howl into their faces, and they would hear nothing. He could close invisible hands about their throats and they would not even shrug. A slayer has come! The one below-I have sailed the storm of his desires-he seeks to murder you all! His wretched family remained oblivious. Yes, they had seen the stranger. They had seen his deliberate path to the great stone edifice they had claimed as their own. And they had then resumed their mundane activities, as if suffering beneath a geas of careless indifference.

Taxilian, Rautos and Breath followed Sulkit as the K’Chain drone laboured over countless mechanisms. The creature seemed immune to exhaustion, as if the purpose driving it surpassed the needs of the flesh. Not even Taxilian could determine if the drone’s efforts yielded any measurable effect. Nothing sprang to sudden life. No hidden gears churned into rumbling action. Darkness still commanded every corridor; feral creatures still scurried in chambers and made nests in the rubbish.

Last and Asane were busy constructing a nest of their own, when they weren’t hunting orthen or collecting water from the dripping pipes. Sheb maintained vigil over the empty wastes from a perch that he called the Crown, while Nappet wandered without purpose, muttering under his breath and cursing his ill luck at finding himself in such pathetic company.

Blind fools, every one of them!

The ghost, who once gloried in his omniscience, fled the singular mind of the Gral named Veed and set out to find the ones accompanying Sulkit. The witch Breath was an adept, sensitive to sorcery. If any of them could be reached, awakened to the extremity of his need, it would be her.

He found them in the circular chamber behind Eyes, but the vast domicile of the now-dead Matron was a realm transformed. The ceiling and walls dripped with bitter slime. Viscid pools sheathed the floor beneath the raised dais and the air roiled with pungent vapours. The vast, sprawling bed that had once commanded the dais now looked diseased, twisted as the roots of a toppled tree. Tendrils hung loose, ends dripping, and the atmosphere shrouding the malformed nightmare on the dais was so thick that all within it was blurred, uncertain, as if in that place reality itself was smudged.

Sulkit stood immobile as a statue in front of the dais, its scales streaming fluids-as if it was melting before their eyes-and strange guttural sounds issuing from its throat.

‘-awakening behind every wall,’ Taxilian was saying. ‘I’m sure of it.’

‘But nothing like this!’ Rautos said, gesturing at Sulkit. ‘Gods below, this air-I can barely breathe!’

‘You’re both fools,’ Breath snapped. ‘This is a ritual. This is the oldest sorcery of all-the magic of sweat and scent and tears-against this, we’re helpless as children! Kill it, I say! Drive a knife into its back-slash open its throat! Before it’s too late-’

‘No!’ retorted Taxilian. ‘We must let this happen-I feel it-in what the drone does we will find our salvation.’

‘Delusions!’

Rautos had positioned himself between the two, but his expression was taut with fear and confusion. ‘There is a pattern,’ he said, addressing neither of them. ‘Everything the drone has done-everywhere else-it has led to this moment. The pattern-I can almost see it. I want-I want…’

But he didn’t know what he wanted. The ghost spun wild in the currents of the man’s ineffable needs.

‘There will be answers,’ said Taxilian.

Yes! the ghost cried. And it comes with knives in its hands! It comes to kill you all!

Beneath the level of the Womb, Nappet stood beside a strange pipe running the length of the corridor. He had been following alongside it for some time before becoming aware that the waist-high sheath of bronze had begun emanating heat. Dripping sweat, he hesitated. Retrace his route? He might melt before he reached the stairs he had come down. In the gloom ahead, he could make out nothing to indicate side passages. The hot, brittle air burned in his lungs. He was near panic.

Something swirled within the pipe, rushing down its length. A whimper escaped him-he could die here! ‘Move, you fool. But which way? Hurry. Think!’ Finally, he forced himself forward in a stagger-somewhere ahead, there would be salvation. There had to be. He was sure of it.

The air crackled, sparks arcing from the surface of the pipe. He shrieked, broke into a run. Flashes blinded him as lightning ignited in the corridor. Argent roots snapped out, lanced through him. Agony lit his nerves-his screams punched from his chest, tearing his throat-and he flailed with his hands. Arcs leapt between his fingers. Something was roaring-just ahead-bristling with fire.

The wrong way! I went-

Sudden darkness. Silence.

Nappet halted, gasping. He drew a breath and held it.

Desultory trickling sounds from within the pipe, draining away even as he listened.

He sighed unsteadily.

The air reeked of something strange and bitter, stinging his eyes. What had just happened? He had been convinced that he was going to die, cooked like a lightning-struck dog. He had felt those energies coursing through him, as if acid filled his veins. Sweat cooling on his skin, he shivered.

He heard footsteps and turned. Someone was coming up behind him. No lantern illuminated the corridor. He heard the scrape of iron. ‘Sheb? That you? Last? You damned oaf, light a lantern!’

The figure made no reply.

Nappet licked his lips. ‘Who is that? Say something!’

The ghost watched in horror as Veed strode up to Nappet. A single-bladed axe swung in a savage arc that bit into Nappet’s neck. Spittle flew from the man’s mouth as he rocked with the blow. Bone grated and crunched as Veed tugged his weapon free. Blood gouted from the wound and Nappet reached up to press his palm against his neck, his eyes still wide, still filled with disbelief.

The second blow came from the opposite side. His head fell impossibly on its side, rested a moment on his left shoulder, and then rolled off the man’s back. The headless body toppled.

‘No point in wasting time,’ muttered Veed, crouching to clean the blade. Then he rose and faced the ghost. ‘Stop screaming. Who do you think summoned me in the first place?’

The ghost recoiled. I–I did not-

‘Now lead me to the others, Lifestealer.’

The ghost howled, fled from the abomination. He had to warn the others!

Grinning, Veed followed.

Stepping down, he crushed the last cinders of the paltry hearth, feeling the nuggets roll under his heel, and then turned to face the lifeless hag. He glared at her scaled back, as if silent accusation could cut her down where she stood. But what Torrent willed, he knew, was weaker than rain. ‘Those are the spires of my people’s legends-the fangs of the Wastelands. You stole the stars, witch. You deceived me-’

Olar Ethil snorted, but did not turn round. She was staring south-at least, he thought of it as south, but such certainties, which he had once believed to be unassailable, had now proved as vulnerable to the deathless woman’s magic as the very stones she lit aflame every night. As vulnerable as the bundles of dead grass from which she conjured slabs of dripping meat, and the bedrock that bled water with the rap of one bony knuckle.

Torrent scratched at his sparse beard. He’d used up the last of the oils young Awl warriors applied to burn off the bristle until such time that a true beard was possible-he must look a fool, but nothing could be done for it. Not that anyone cared anyway. There were no giggling maidens with veiled eyes, no coy dances from his path as he strutted the length of the village. All those old ways were gone now. So were the futures they had promised him.

He pictured a Letherii soldier standing atop a heap of bones-a mountain of white that was all that remained of Torrent’s people. Beneath the rim of his helm, the soldier’s face was nothing but bone, leaving a smile that never wavered.

Torrent realized that he had found a lover, and her name was hate. The Letherii details were almost irrelevant-it could be any soldier, any stranger. Any symbol of greed and oppression. The grasping hand, the gleam of avid hunger in the eyes, the spirit that took all it could by virtue of the strength and might it possessed.

Torrent dreamed of destruction. Vast, sweeping, leaving behind nothing but bones.

He glanced again at Olar Ethil. Why do you want me, witch? What will you give me? This is an age of promises, isn’t it? It must be, else I exist without reason.

‘When you find your voice,’ she said without turning, ‘speak to me, warrior.’

‘Why? What will you answer?’

Her laugh was a hollowed-out cackle. ‘When I do, mountains shall crumble. The seas shall boil. The air shall thicken with poison. My answer, warrior, shall deafen the heavens.’ She spun amidst flapping rags. ‘Do you feel it? The gate-it cracks open and the road will welcome what comes through. And such a road!’ She laughed again.

‘My hate is silent,’ Torrent said. ‘It has nothing to say.’

‘But I have been feeding it nonetheless.’

His eyes widened. ‘This fever comes from you, witch?’

‘No, it ever lurked in your soul, like a viper in the night. I but awakened it to righteousness.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it amuses me. Saddle your horse, warrior. We ride to the spires of your legends.’

‘Legends that have outlived the people telling them.’

She cocked her head in his direction. ‘Not yet. Not yet.’ And she laughed again.

‘Where is he?’ Stavi screamed, her small fists lifted, as if moments from striking her.

Setoc held her ground. ‘I don’t know,’ she replied levelly. ‘He always returned before.’

‘But it’s been days and days! Where is he? Where is Toc?’

‘He serves more than one master, Stavi. It was a miracle he was able to stay with us as long as he did.’

Stavi’s sister looked close to tears, but she’d yet to speak. The boy sat with his back against the lifeless flank of Baaljagg where the huge beast lay as if asleep, nose down between its front paws. Playing with a handful of stones, the boy seemed oblivious to his sisters’ distress. She wondered if perhaps he was simple in the head. Sighing, Setoc said, ‘He turned us into the east-and so that is the direction we shall take-’

‘But there’s nothing out there!’

‘I know, Stavi. I don’t know why he wants us to go there. He wouldn’t explain. But, would you go against his wishes?’ It was an unfair tactic, she knew, the kind meant to extort compliance from children.

It worked, but as every adult knew, not for long.

Setoc gestured. The ay lifted to its feet and trotted ahead, while Setoc picked up the boy and cajoled the twins into her wake. They set out, leaving behind their measly camp.

She wondered if Toc would ever return. She wondered if he’d any purpose behind his taking care of them, or had it been some residue of guilt or sense of responsibility for the children of his friend? He had left life behind and could not be held to its ways, or the demands it made upon a mortal soul-no, there could be no human motivation to what such a creature did.

And the eye he’d fixed upon her had belonged to a wolf. But even among such beasts, the closeness of the pack was a tense game of submission and dominance. The bliss of brother-and sisterhood hid political machinations and ruthless judgements. Cruelty needed only opportunity. So, he had led this paltry pack of theirs, and his lordship had been uncontested-after all, he could hardly be threatened with death, could he?

She understood, finally, that she could not trust him. And that her relief at his taking command had been the response of a child, a creature eager to cower in the shadow of an adult, praying for protection, willing itself blind to the possibility that the true threat was found in the man-or woman-standing over it. Of course, the twins had lost everything. Their desperate loyalty to a dead man, who had once been their father’s friend, was reasonable under the circumstances. Stavi and Storii wanted him back. Of course they did, and they had begun to look upon Setoc with something like resentment, as if she was to blame for his absence.

Nonsense, but the twins saw no salvation in Setoc. They saw no protector in her. They’d rather she had been the one to vanish.

The boy had his giant wolf. Would it protect them as well? Not a notion to rely upon.

And I have power, though I can’t yet make out its shape, or even its purpose. Who in their dreams is not omnipotent? If in sleep I grow wings and fly high above the land, it does not mean I will awaken cloaked in feathers. We are gods in our dreams. Disaster strikes when we come to believe the same is true in our real lives.

I wish Torrent was here. I wish he’d never left me. I see him in my mind even now. I see him standing atop a mountain of bones, his eyes dark beneath the rim of his helm.

Torrent, where are you?

‘They looked near death,’ Yedan Derryg said.

Riding beside her brother, Yan Tovis grimaced. ‘They must have awakened something-I told them to protect themselves, now I’m thinking I may have killed them both.’

‘They may look and act like two giggling girls, Twilight, but they aren’t. You killed no one.’

She twisted in her saddle and looked back down the road. The light of torches and lanterns formed a refulgent island in the midst of buildings at the far end of the city. The light looked like a wound. She faced forward again. Darkness, and yet a darkness through which she could see-every detail precise, every hint of colour and tone looking strangely opaque, solid before her eyes. As if the vision she had possessed all her life-in that now distant, remote world-was in truth a feeble, truncated thing. And yet, this did not feel like a gift-a pressure was building behind her eyes.

‘Besides,’ Yedan added, ‘they’re not yet dead.’

They rode on at a canter as the road climbed out of the valley, leaving behind the weed-snarled fields and brush-crowded farm buildings. Ahead was the wall of trees that marked the beginning of the forest called Ashayn. If the tales were true, Ashayn had fallen-every last tree-to the manic industry of the city, and in the leagues beyond that wasteland great fires had destroyed the rest. But the forest had returned, and the boles of blackwood could not be spanned by a dozen men with hands linked. There was no sign of a road or bridle path, but the floor beneath the high canopy was clear of undergrowth.

The gloom thickened once they rode beneath the towering trees. Among the blackwood she could now see other species, equally as massive, smooth-barked down to the serpentine roots. High above, some kind of parasitic plant created islands of moss, serrated leaves and black blossoms, like huge nests, depending from thick tangles of vines. The air was chill, musty, smelling of wet charcoal and sap.

A third of a league, then half, the horses’ hoofs thumping, hauberks rustling and clasps clicking, but from the forest itself only silence.

The pressure had sharpened to pain, as if a spike had been driven into her forehead. The motion of the horse was making her nauseated. Gasping, leaning forward, she reined in. A hand to her face revealed bright blood from her nostrils. ‘Yedan-’

‘I know,’ he said in a growl. ‘Never mind. Memories return. There’s something ahead.’

‘I don’t think-’

‘You said you wanted to see the First Shore.’

‘Not if it makes my head explode!’

‘Retreat is not possible,’ he said, spitting to one side. ‘What assails us, Yan, does not come from what awaits us.’

What? She managed to lift her head, looked across at him.

Her brother was weeping blood. He spat again, a bright red gout, and then said, ‘Kharkanas… the empty darkness’-he met her eyes-‘is empty no longer.’

She thought back to the two unconscious witches in the city behind them. They will not survive this. They cannot. I brought them all this way, only to kill them. ‘I must go back-’

‘You cannot. Not yet. Ride that way, Twilight, and you will die.’ And he kicked his horse forward.

After a moment she followed.

Goddess of Darkness, have you returned? Are you awakened in rage? Will you slay all you touch?

The black pillars marched past, a cathedral abandoned in some timeless realm, and now they could hear a sound, coming from just beyond the broken black wall ahead. Something like the crashing of waves.

The First Shore.

Where we began-

A glimmer between the boles, flashes of white-

Brother and sister rode clear of the forest. The horses beneath them slowed, halted as the reins grew slack, lifeless.

With red-smeared vision, silence like a wound, they stared, uncomprehending.

The First Shore.

The clouds in the west had blackened and fused into an impenetrable wall. The ground was silver with frost and the grasses crunched and broke underfoot. Hunched beneath furs, Strahl watched the enemy forces forming up on the gentle slope of the valley opposite them. Two hundred paces to his right Maral Eb stood in a vanguard of chosen Barahn warriors, behind him the mixed units of four lesser clans-he had taken command of those warriors who had tasted the humiliation of defeat. A courageous decision, enough to grind away some of the burrs in Strahl’s eyes. Some, but not all.

Breaths plumed in white streams. Warriors stamped to jolt feeling back into their feet. Blew on hands gripping weapons. Across the way, horses bucked and reared amidst the ranks of mounted archers and lancers. Pennons hung grey and dull, standards stiff as planed boards.

The iron taste of panic was in the bitter air, and eyes lifted again and again to stare at the terrifying sky-to the west, the black, seething wall; to the east the cerulean blue sparkling with crystals and the sun burnished white as snow and flanked by baleful sun-dogs. Directly above, a ragged seam bound the two. The blackness was winning the battle, Strahl could see, as tendrils snaked out like roots, bleeding into the morning.

Now on the valley floor phalanxes of kite-shielded Saphii held to the centre, their long spears anchored in the hinged sockets at the hip. D’ras skirmishers spilled out around the bristling squares, among them archers with arrows nocked, edging ever closer. The Akrynnai cavalry held to the wings, struggling to keep formation as they advanced at the walk.

Sceptre Irkullas was wasting no time. No personal challenges on the field, no rousing exhortations before his troops. The Akrynnai wanted this battle joined, the slaughter unleashed, as if the chorus of clashing weapons and the screams of the dying and wounded could wrench the world back to its normal state, could right the sky overhead, could send the cold and darkness reeling away.

Blood to pay, blood to appease. Is that what you believe, Akrynnai?

Strahl stirred into motion, stepping forward until he was five paces in front of the Senan line. He swung round, studied the nearest faces.

Belligerence like bruises beneath the sheen of fear. Hard eyes fixing on his, then shifting away, then back again. White-painted faces cracking in the cold. In turn, his officers stung him with their acuity, as if they sought the first sign of uncertainty, the first waver of doubt in his face. He gave them nothing.

Strange crackling from the silvered sky, as of a frozen lake breaking in the first thaw, and warriors ducked as if fearing the descent of shards of ice. But nothing came of the eerie sounds. The fists of the gods are pounding against the glass of the sky. Cracks craze the scene. It’s all moments from shattering. Well may you duck, my friends. As if that will do any good.

‘Bakal,’ Strahl said, loudly enough to startle the figures he faced, and he saw how the lone word rippled back through the ranks, stirring them to life. ‘And before Bakal, Onos Toolan. Before him, Humbrall Taur. We came in search of an enemy. We came seeking a war.’

He waited, and saw in the nearest faces a host of private wars unleashed. He beheld in those expressions the fiercest battles of will. He saw the spreading stain of shame. And nodded.

‘Here we stand, Senan.’ Behind him he could hear and feel the sudden thunder of soldiers on the advance, of waves of riders sweeping out from the flanks. ‘And I am before you, alone. And I shall speak the words of those before me.’ He held high in his right hand his tulwar, and in his left the weapon’s scabbard.

‘Not this enemy! Not this war!’

Strahl sheathed the sword, slamming the weapon hard to lock it and then holding it high with both hands.

Weapons flashed. Iron vanished. Barked commands from the rear and the Senan forces wheeled round.

And now, we leave.

You wanted this, Maral Eb? Then take it.

Someone was shouting, but Maral Eb’s eyes remained fixed on the enemy as it advanced. The first arrows hissed through the glittering air-almost unseen in the gathering gloom. The phalanxes were readying for a charge, long spears levelled in the first three ranks. On the outer wings horse-archers were fast closing, moments from loosing arrows and then wheeling to rake the front Barghast lines with subsequent salvos.

Bastards fought like babies. Once those Saphii closed, everything would change-

The shouting was suddenly louder and then a hand gripped his shoulder and yanked him round. He glared into the face of one of his bodyguards-but the man was pointing, spittle flying as he shrieked. What was he saying? The damned idiot-what-

Then he saw the growing gap that was his line’s centre.

What? Did they charge-no-I see nothing-but-

‘They’ve withdrawn! Warleader! The Senan!’

‘Don’t be a fool!’ He pushed his way through his milling guards until his view was unobstructed. The Senan were gone. The most powerful of the Barghast White Faces-routed! ‘Get them back!’ he shrieked. ‘Get them back!’

Sceptre Irkullas reined in, a deep frown knitting his features beneath the helm’s flaring rim. What was the centre doing? Do you invite us to march into that maw? Do you really think that will work? Damned barbarians, have you never before faced a phalanx? ‘Rider! Inform the Saphii commander to be certain to hold their squares-if the Barghast want to bite down on that mouthful of spikes, they’re welcome to.’ He twisted round until he spotted a second messenger. ‘Have the lancers draw in closer to our centre and await my orders to charge. Go!’

Another messenger who had been among the skirmishers rode up, saluting. ‘Sceptre! The centre clan is withdrawing from battle!’

‘It’s a feint-’

‘My pardon, Sceptre, but their leader was seen facing his warriors-he sheathed his weapon and held it high, sir. And they did the same back, and then turned round and left the line!’

Errant’s pull! ‘Sound the Saphii advance to close! Before the bastards can plug the hole-ride, soldier! Signallers! To me!’

Sekara the Vile pushed her way through the press for a better look at the treachery. She was in command of the rearguard, the elders, unblooded youths and their mothers, along with eight hundred warriors still recovering from wounds. Their task was to hold the line of wagons should the Akrynnai encircle or pull round to strike for the belly. But with the front centre gone, they would have nothing but enemy at their backs.

She spat out a string of curses at the retreating warriors. ‘Cowards! I will wait for you at the Gate, for every one of you!’ She ran out a half-dozen strides-the last ranks of the Senan were almost within reach. Not of her claws-that would be too risky-but she could spit as well as any Barghast woman, and now-

Someone moved up beside her. She twisted round, teeth bared.

A gauntleted hand hammered her face. Light exploded behind her eyes. Legs giving out, she collapsed in a heap. Her mouth was full of shards of teeth.

Strahl’s voice spoke from directly over her. ‘Sekara, wait at the Gate all you want. But remember, your husband’s already there. Waiting just for you. The dead will say what they dared not say in life. Oh, don’t forget to take your hoard with you.’

She heard his moccasins crunching on the grasses as he set off in the wake of his clan.

My husband? Whenever did he not cower before me? She spat out a mouthful of slimy blood.

We’ll stand side by side, Strahl, to welcome you. To tear you to pieces! A curse upon the Senan! Choose what you will, you shall not see the fangs until it is too late!

The ground shook. A shock wave thundered through the Barghast. Screams battered the frozen air. The battle was joined.

Sekara regained her feet, her face already swollen and hot. ‘Other side of the wagons!’ she shouted. ‘Everyone-through! And then form up!’

She saw them lurch into motion.

Yes, hold for a time. Time enough for me to run. Darkness, such a blessing! She staggered towards the wagons.

Another sleet of arrows and Sagal ducked behind his hide shield. Two thuds bit into the thickly matted reeds and he flinched as his forearm was pricked. Warm blood trickled beneath his vambrace. He cursed. His brother had done the best he could in selecting this site, but to deal with these Akrynnai horse-archers most effectively they would have done better to find broken ground. A proper range of hills, plenty of rock, gullies and draws.

Instead, the bastards didn’t even have to close-at least for as long as they had arrows-and Barghast were dying without even the honour of clashing blades with the enemy. The rattling pass of the horses continued its deadly sweep.

The next time, Sagal would straighten and lead a charge-right into the path of the riders-see how you will fare with three thousand White Faces in your midst!

The descent of arrows fell off and Sagal waited a moment longer-he could still hear those horse hoofs-but sound was doing strange things this morning. Yet, they seemed… heavier than before. He lowered his shield and straightened. Blinking, struggling to make out details in the infernal gloom.

Crazed motion rising up from the valley, the entire hillside trembling-

Three chevrons of lancers had come in behind the screen of archers. There was no time to close ranks, to lift and settle pikes. He stared, furious, and then unsheathed his tulwar. ‘They come! They come!’

The Barghast seemed to grunt like some massive beast stirring awake. As thousands of levelled lances churned up the slope, the White Faces answered with a roar, and at the last instant, the mass of Barahn warriors heaved into the iron fangs. The front lines vanished, ducking beneath the lanceheads, heavy blades chopping into horses’ forelegs. Beasts shrieked, went down, and all at once the charge ground to a halt against a seething wall of carnage, the points of the chevrons flattening out in wild, vicious maelstrom.

Deluged in the fluids of a gutted horse, Sagal surged back to his feet, howling like a demon. Time to deliver slaughter! The fools closed-the fools charged! They could have held back all day until the Barahn on this flank were nothing but a heap of arrow-studded meat-but their impatience betrayed them! Laughing, he hacked at everything in sight. Cut deep into thighs, slashed through wrists, chopped at the stamping legs of the horses.

He could feel the cavalry attempting to withdraw, a giant snagged weapon, its edges nicked and blunted. Bellowing, he pushed deeper into the press, knowing his fellow warriors were all doing the same. They would not let go easily, no, they would not do that.

Half the Free Cities of Genabackis have flung their cavalry at us-and we destroyed them all!

Sceptre Irkullas stared as the heavy lancers fought to extricate themselves from the outer flanks of the Barghast position. Scores of fine warriors and superbly trained mounts were going down with every breath he drew into his aching lungs, but there was no help for it. He needed that retreat as ugly as it could be, slow enough to draw more and more of the enemy down the slope. He needed to see that entire flank committed to the slaughter, before he could command the horse-archers in behind the Barghast, followed quickly by his skirmishers and then a phalanx of Saphii to ensure the entire flank was thoroughly cut off and exposed on the hillside. Then he would send the bulk of his lancers and mounted axe-wielders, the hammer to the Saphii anvil.

The other flank was not going as well, he saw, as the commander there had managed to lock shields and lift pikes to ward off the cavalry charge, and now the horse-archers were resuming their sweeps across the face of the line-this was a game of attrition that served the Akrynnai well enough, but it took longer. How many arrows could the Barghast suffer?

His final regard he fixed on the centre, and a surge of pleasure washed up against the chill of the day. The Saphii phalanxes had driven deep into the gap, effectively bisecting the enemy line. On the far side, the isolated enemy was locked in a bloody, fighting withdrawal back towards the outside flank-those Barghast knew how to fight on foot-better than any other soldiers he’d ever seen, but they were losing cohesion, pitching wayward as Saphii spears drove them back, and back; as the Saphii kaesanderai-the jalak-wielding in-fighters-shot forward into every gap, their curved shortswords slashing and hacking.

Elements of the lead phalanx had pushed into the rearguard, and flames were rising from the wagons-likely fired by the Barghast after they’d broken and fled through the barrier. That phalanx was falling out into a curling line to close any hope of retreat by the far flank.

The savages had found their last day, and they were welcome to it.

Irkullas lifted his gaze and studied the sky. The sight horrified him. Day was dying before his eyes. Ragged black arteries, like slow lightning, had arced through the morning sky until it seemed nothing but fragments of blue remained. It shatters. The day-it shatters!

He could see something now, a darkness descending, falling and falling closer still.

What is happening? The air-so cold, so empty-Errant defend us-what-

Kashat reached over his shoulder and tore the arrow loose. Someone cried out behind him, but he had no time for that. ‘We hold!’ he screamed, then stumbled as fresh blood rushed down his back. His right arm was suddenly useless, hanging at his side, and now the leg it thumped against was growing numb. Spirits below, it was but a prick-a damned puny arrow-I don’t understand. ‘We hold!’ The shout filled his mind, but this time it came out weak as a whisper.

The army was split in two. No doubt the Sceptre believed that that would prove the death of the Barghast. The fool was in for a surprise. The White Faces had fought as clans for generations. Even a damned family could stand on its own. The real bloodbath had yet to begin.

He struggled to straighten. ‘Stupid arrow. Stupid fuck-’

A second arrow punched through his left cheek, just under the bone and deep into his nasal passage. The impact knocked his head back. Blood filled his vision. Blood poured down his throat. He reached up with his one working hand and tore the bolt from his face. ‘-ing arrows!’ But his voice was a thick, spattering gargle.

He struggled to find cover behind his shield as more arrows hissed down. The ground beneath him was wet with blood-his own-and he stared down at that black pool. The stuff filling his mouth he swallowed down as fast as he could, but he was beginning to choke and his belly felt heavy as a grain sack.

Try another charge, you cowards. We will lock jaws on your throat. We will tear the life from you. We shall stand on a mountain of your bodies.

An arrow caught a warrior’s helmet-almost close enough to be within reach-and Kashat saw the bolt shatter as if it was the thinnest sliver of ice. Then he saw the helmet slide in two pieces from the man’s head. Reeling, the warrior stared a moment at Kashat-with eyes burst and crazed with frost-before he collapsed.

Arrows were exploding everywhere. The screams of warriors cut short with a suddenness that curled horror round Kashat’s soul. Another impact on his shield and the rattan beneath the hide broke like glass.

What is happening? The agony of his wounds had ceased. He felt strangely warm, a sensation that left him elated.

Horses were falling just beyond the line. Bowstrings shivered into sparkling dust, the laminated ribs snapping as glues gave out. He saw Akrynnai soldiers-their faces twisted and blue-tumbling from saddles. The enemy was a mass of confusion.

Charge! We must charge! Kashat forced himself upright. Flinging away the remnants of his shield, he tugged his sword into his left hand. Pushing forward, as if clawing through a deadly current, he raised his weapon.

Behind him, hundreds followed, moving slow as if in a dream.

Maral Eb, a mass of mixed clans behind him, led yet another charge into the bristling wall of Saphii. He could see the terror in their eyes, their disbelief at the sheer ferocity of the White Faces. The shattered stumps of spears marred the entire side, but thus far they had held, pounded and at times close to buckling, as the savagery of the Warleader’s assaults drove like a mailed fist into the square.

The air felt inexplicably thick, unyielding, and night was falling-had they been fighting that long? It was possible, yes-see the ranks of dead on all sides! Saphii and Barghast, and there, on the slope, mounds of dead riders and horses-had the Senan returned? They must have!

Such slaughter!

The fierce charge slammed into the wall of flesh, leather, wood and iron. The sound was a meaty crunch beneath snapping spear shafts. Lunging close, tulwar lashing down, Maral Eb saw a dark-skinned face before him, saw the frozen mask of the fool’s failed courage, and he laughed as he swung his weapon-

The iron blade struck dead centre on the peaked helm.

Sword, helm and head exploded. Maral Eb staggered as his sword-arm jumped out to the side, impossibly light. His eyes fixed on the stump of his wrist, from which frozen pellets of his blood sprayed like seeds. Something struck his shoulder, careened off, and then two commingled bodies fell on to the ground-the impact had driven them together and Maral Eb stared, uncomprehending, at their fused flesh, the exposed roots of blood and muscle beneath split skin.

He could hear dread groaning on all sides, pierced by brief shrieks.

On his knees, the Warleader sought to rise, but the armoured caps of his greaves were frozen to the ground. Leather buckles broke like twigs. He lifted his head-a reddish mist had swallowed the world. What was this? Sorcery? Some poisonous vapour to steal all their strength?

Spirits, no-the mist is blood-blood from burst bodies, ruptured eyeballs-

He understood. The stump of his wrist, the complete absence of pain-even the breaths he dragged into his lungs-the cold, the darkness-

He had been thrown to the ground. A horse, one foreleg stamping down, the bones shearing just above the fetlock, twin spikes of jagged bone plunging through his hauberk, his chest, and pinning him to the earth. Screaming, the huge beast fell on to its side, flinging the lifeless hulk of its rider from the saddle, the man’s body breaking like crockery.

The scything foreleg tossed Sagal a few paces away, and he landed again, feeling his hip crumple as if it were no more than a reed basket. Blinking, he watched the cold burn the hide from the thrashing, blinded beast. He found its confusion amusing at first, but then sadness overwhelmed him-not for the hapless animal-he’d never much liked horses-but for everyone on this hillside. Cheated of this battle, of the glory of a rightful victory, the honour of a noble defeat.

The gods were cruel. But then, he’d always known that.

He settled his head back, stared up at the red-stained darkness. A pressure was descending. He could feel it on his chest, in his skull. The Reaper stood above him, one heel pressing down. Sagal grunted as his ribs snapped, the collapse jerking his limbs.

The slingstone caught the hare and spun it round in the air. My heart was in my throat as I ran, light as a whisper, to the grasses where it had fallen. And I stood, looking down on the creature, its panting chest, the tiny droplets of blood spotting its nose. Its spine had broken and the long back legs were perfectly still. But the front paws, they twitched.

My first kill.

I stood, a giant, a god, watching as the life left the hare. Watching, as the depths in the eyes cleared, revealing themselves to be shallow things.

My mother, walking up, her face showing none of the joy she should have shown, none of the pride. I told her about the shallowness that I had seen.

She said, ‘It is easy to believe the well of life is bottomless, and that none but the spirits can see through to the far end of the eyes. To the end that is the soul. Yet we spend all our lives trying to peer through. But we soon discover that when the soul flees the flesh, it takes the depth with it. In that creature, Sagal, you have simply seen the truth. And you will see it again and again. In every beast you slay. In the eyes of every enemy you cut down.’

She’d been poor with words, her voice ever flat and cruel. Poor with most things, in fact, as if everything worth anything in the world wasn’t worth talking about. He’d even forgotten she’d spoken that day, or that she’d been his teacher in the ways of the hunt.

He realized that he still didn’t understand her.

No matter. The shallowness was coming up to meet him.

Sceptre Irkullas crawled, dragging one leg, from the carcass of his horse. He could bear its shrieks no longer, and so he had opened its throat with his knife. Of course, he should have done that after dismounting, instead of simply leaning over his saddle, but his mind had become fogged, sluggish and stupid.

And now he crawled, with the splintered stub of a thigh bone jutting from the leather of his trouser leg. Painless, at least. ‘Brush lips with your blessings’, as the saying went. I used to hate sayings. No, I still do, especially when you find how well they fit the occasion.

But that just reminds us that it’s an old track we’re walking. And all the newness is just our own personal banner of ignorance. Watch us wave it high as if it glitters with profound revelation. Ha.

The field of battle was almost motionless now. Thousands of warriors frozen in the clinches of murder, as if a mad artist had sought to paint rage, in all its frayed shrouds of senseless destruction. He thought back on that towering host of conceits he had constructed, every one of which had led to this battle. Cracked, grinding, descending in chaotic collapse-he so wanted to laugh, but the breaths weren’t coming easy, the air was like a striking serpent in his throat.

He bumped up against another dead horse, and sought to pull himself atop the blistered, brittle beast. One last look, one final sweep of this wretched panorama. The valley locked in its preternatural darkness, the falling sky with its dread weight crushing everything in sight.

Grimacing, he forced himself into a sitting position, one leg held out stiff and dead.

And beheld the scene.

Tens of thousands of bodies, a rotting forest of shapeless stumps, all sheathed in deathly frost. Nothing moved, nothing at all. Flakes of ash were raining down from the starless, impenetrable heavens.

‘End it, then,’ he croaked. ‘They’re all gone… but me. End it, please, I beg you…’

He slid down, no longer able to hold himself up. Closed his eyes.

Was someone coming? The cold collector of souls? Did he hear the crunch of boots, lone steps, drawing closer-a figure, emerging from the darkness in his mind? My eyes are closed. That must mean something.

Was something coming? He dared not look.

He had once been a farmer. He was certain of that much, but trouble had befallen him. Debt? Perhaps, but the word was stingless, as far as Last was concerned, suggesting that it was not a haunting presence in his mind, and when memories were as few and as sketchy as were his, that must count for something.

Instead, he had this: the stench of bonfires, that ashy smear of cleared land, everything raw and torn and nothing in its proper place. High branches stacked in chaotic heaps, moss knotted on every twig. Roots dripping in inverted postures. Enormous boles lying flat and stripped down, great swaths of bark prised loose. Red-stained wood and black gritty rocks pulled from the flecked soil.

The earth could heave and make such a mess, but it had not. It had but trembled, and not from any deep stirring or restlessness, but from the toppling of trees, the bellowing of oxen straining at stumps, the footfalls of mindful men.

Shatter all you see. It’s what makes you feel. Feel… anything.

He remembered his hands deep in the rich warm earth. He remembered closing his eyes-for just a moment-and feeling that pulse of life, of promise and purpose. They would plant crops, nurture a bounty for their future lives. This was just. This was righteous. The hand that shapes is the hand that reaps. This, he told himself, was pure. Sighing, a sure smile curving his lips, he opened his eyes once more. Smoke, mists here and there amidst the ruination. Still smiling, he then withdrew his hands from the warm earth.

To find them covered in blood.

He never counted himself a clever man. He knew enough to know that and not much else. But the world had its layers. To the simple it offered simplicity. To the wise it offered profundity. And the only measure of courage worth acknowledging was found in accepting where one stood in that scheme-in hard, unwavering honesty, no matter how humbling.

He stared down at his hands and knew it for a memory not his own. It was, in fact, an invention, the blunt, almost clumsy imposition of something profound. Devoid of subtlety and deliberately so, which then made it more complicated than it at first seemed.

Even these thoughts were alien. Last was not a thoughtful man.

The heart knows need, and the mind finds reason to justify. It says: destruction leads to creation, so the world has shown us. But the world shows us more than that. Sometimes, destruction leads to oblivion. Extinction. But then, what’s so bad about that? If stupidity does not deserve extinction, what does? The mind is never so clever as to deceive anyone and anything but itself and its own kind.

Last decided that he was not afraid of justice, and so he stood unmoving, unflinching, as the slayer appeared at the far end of the corridor. Asane’s shrieks had run down to silence. He knew she was dead. All her fears come home at last, and in oblivion there was, for her, relief. Peace.

Murder could wear such pleasant masks.

The slayer met his eyes and at that final moment they shared their understanding. The necessity of things. And Last fell to the sword without a sound.

There had been blood on his hands. Reason enough. Justice delivered.

Forgive me?

Sheb couldn’t remember who he had been. Indebted, a prisoner, a man contemptuous of the law, these things, yes, but where were the details? Everything had flitted away in his growing panic. He’d heard Asane’s death echoing down the corridor. He knew that a murderer now stalked him. There was no reason for it. He’d done nothing to deserve this.

Unless, of course, one counted a lifetime of treachery. But he’d always had good cause for doing the things he did. He was sure of it. Evading imprisonment-well, who sought the loss of freedom? No one but an idiot, and Sheb was no idiot. Escaping responsibility? Of course. Bullies earn little sympathy, while the victims are coddled and cooed over at every turn. Better to be the victim than the bully, provided the mess is over with, all threat of danger past and it’s time for explanations, tales of self-defence and excuses and the truth of it was, none of it mattered and if you could convince yourself with your excuses, all the better. Easy sleeping at night, easier still standing tall atop heaps of righteous indignation. No one is more pious than the guilty. And I should know.

And no one is a better liar than the culpable. So he’d done nothing to deserve any of this. He’d only ever done what he needed to do to get by, to slip round and slide through. To go on living, feeding all his habits, all his wants and needs. The killer had no reason!

Gasping, he ran down corridor after corridor, through strange rooms, on to spiralling ascents and descents. He told himself that he was so lost no one would ever find him.

Lost in my maze of excuses-stop! I didn’t think that. I never said that. Has he found me? Has the bastard found me?

He’d somehow misplaced his weapons, every one of them-how did that happen? Whimpering, Sheb rushed onward-ahead was a bridge of some sort, crossing a cavernous expanse that seemed to be filling with clouds.

All my life, I tried to keep my head down. I never wanted to be noticed. Just grab what I can and get out, get free, until the next thing I need comes up. It was simple. It made sense. No one should kill me for that.

He had no idea how thinking could be so exhausting. Staggering on to the bridge, iron grating under his boots-what was wrong with damned wood? Coughing in the foul vapours of the clouds, eyes stinging, nose burning, he stumbled to a halt.

He’d gone far enough. Everything he did, he’d done for a reason. As simple as that.

But so many were hurt, Sheb.

‘Not my fault they couldn’t get out of the way. If they’d any brains they’d have seen me coming.’

The way you lived forced others into lives of misery, Sheb.

‘I can’t help it if they couldn’t do no better!’

They couldn’t. They weren’t even people.

‘What?’ He looked up, into the killer’s eyes. ‘No, it’s not fair.’

‘That’s right, Sheb. It isn’t, and it never was.’

The blade lashed out.

The ghost shrieked. Suddenly trapped in the Matron’s chamber. Mists roiled. Rautos was on his knees, weeping uncontrollably. Breath was casting her tiles, which were no longer tiles, but coins, glittering and bright-yet every pattern she scanned elicited a snarl from her, and she swept them up yet again-the manic snap and bounce of coins filled the air.

‘No answers,’ she hissed. ‘No answers! No answers!’

Taxilian stood before the enormous throne, muttering under his breath. ‘Sulkit transformed it-and now it waits-everything waits. I don’t understand.’

Sulkit stood nearby. Its entire body had changed shape, elongating, shoulders hunched, its snout foreshortened and broader, fangs gleaming wet with oils. Grey reptilian eyes held fixed, unblinking-the drone was a drone no longer. Now a J’an Sentinel, he stood facing the ghost.

The unhuman regard was unbearable.

Veed strode into the chamber and halted. Sword blade dripping gore, the front of his studded vest spattered and streaked. His face was lifeless. His eyes were the eyes of a blind man. ‘Hello, old friend,’ he said. ‘Where should I start?’

The ghost recoiled.

Rautos stood facing his wife. Another evening spent in silence, but now there was something raw in the air. She was searching his face and her expression was strange and bleak. ‘Have you no pity, husband?’

‘Pity,’ he’d replied, ‘is all I have.’

She’d looked away. ‘I see.’

‘You surrendered long ago,’ he said. ‘I never understood that.’

‘Not everyone surrenders willingly, Rautos.’

He studied her. ‘But where did you find your joy, Eskil? Day after day, night after night, where was your pleasure in living?’

‘You stopped looking for that long ago.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You found your hobbies. The only time your eyes came alive. My joy, husband, was in you. Until you went away.’

Yes, he remembered this now. One night, one single night. ‘That was wrong,’ he’d said, his voice hoarse. ‘To put all that… in someone else.’

Her shrug horrified him. ‘Overwhelmed, were you? But Rautos, that’s just not so, is it? After all, you can’t be overwhelmed by something you don’t even bother to notice.’

‘I noticed.’

‘And so you turned away from me. Until, as you say, here you stand with nothing in your heart but pity. You once said you loved me.’

‘I once did.’

‘Rautos Hivanar, what are these things you are digging up from the river bank?’

‘Mechanisms. I think.’

‘What so fascinates you about them?’

‘I don’t know. I cannot glean their purpose, their function-why are we talking about this?’

‘Rautos, listen. They’re just pieces. The machine, whatever it was, whatever it did, it’s broken.’

‘Eskil, go to bed.’

And so she did, ending the last real conversation between them. He remembered sitting down, his hands to his face, outwardly silent and motionless yet inside he was wracked with sobs. Yes, it was broken. He knew that. And not a single piece left made any sense. And all his pity, well, turned out it was all he had for himself, too.

Rautos felt the bite of the blade and in the moment before the pain rushed in, he managed a smile.

Veed stood over the corpse, and then swung his gaze to Taxilian. Held there for a moment, before his attention drifted to Breath. She was on her knees, scraping coins into her hands.

‘No solutions. No answers. They should be here, in these! These fix everything-everyone knows that! Where is the magic?’

‘Illusions, you mean,’ Veed said, grinning.

‘The best kind! And now the water’s rising-I can’t breathe!’

‘He should never have accepted you, Feather Witch. You understand that, don’t you? Yes, they were all mistakes, all fragments of lives he took inside like so much smoke and dust, but you were the worst of them. The Errant drowned you-and then walked away from your soul. He should not have done that, for you were too potent, too dangerous. You ate his damned eye.’

Her head snapped up, a crazed grin smeared across her face. ‘Elder blood! I hold his debt!’

Veed glanced at the ghost. ‘He sought to do what K’rul did so long ago,’ he said, ‘but Icarium is not an Elder God.’ He regarded Feather Witch again. ‘He wanted warrens of his own, enough to trap him in one place, as if it was a web. Trap him in place. Trap him in time.’

‘The debt is mine!’ Feather Witch shrieked.

‘Not any more,’ said Veed. ‘It is now Icarium Lifestealer’s.’

‘He’s broken!’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s not his fault!’

‘No, it isn’t, and no, it’s not fair either. But there is blood on his hands, and terror in his heart. It seems we must all feed him something, doesn’t it? Or perhaps it was the other way round. But the ghost is here now, with us. Icarium is here. Time to die, Feather Witch. Taxilian.’

‘And you?’ Taxilian asked.

Veed smiled. ‘Me, too.’

‘Why?’ Taxilian demanded. ‘Why now?’

‘Because Lifestealer is where he must be. At this moment, he is in place. And we must all step aside.’ And Veed turned to face the ghost. ‘The J’an sees only you, Icarium. The Nest is ready, the flavours altered to your… tastes.’ He gestured and the ghost saw that both Feather Witch and Taxilian had vanished. ‘Don’t think you are quite rid of us-we’re just back inside you, old friend. We’re the stains on your soul.’

The ghost looked down and saw grey-green skin, long-fingered, scarred hands. He lifted them to touch his face, fingers brushing the tusks jutting from his lower jaw. ‘What must I do?’

But Veed was gone. He was alone in the chamber.

The J’an Sentinel, Sulkit, stood watching him. Waiting.

Icarium faced the throne. A machine. A thing of veins and arteries and bitter oils. A binder of time, the maker of certainty.

The flavours swirled round him. The entire towering city of stone and iron trembled.

I am awake-no. I am… reborn.

Icarium Lifestealer walked forward to take his throne.

The shore formed a ragged line, the bleak sweep of darkness manifested in all the natural ways-the sward leading to the bank that then dropped to the beach itself, the sky directly overhead onyx as a starless night yet smeared with pewter clouds-the realm behind them, then, a vast promise of purity at their backs. But the strand glowed, and as Yan Tovis dismounted and walked down her boots sank into the incandescent sand. Reaching down-not yet ready to fix her gaze on what was beyond the shoreline-she scooped up a handful. Cool, surprisingly light-she squinted.

Not crumbled coral. Not stone.

‘It’s bone,’ said Yedan Derryg, standing a few paces to her left. ‘See that driftwood? Long bones, mostly. Those cobbles, they’re-’

‘Yes,’ she snapped. ‘I know.’ She flung away the handful of bone fragments.

‘It was easier,’ he continued, ‘from back there. We’re too close-’

‘Be quiet, will you?’

Suddenly defiant, she willed herself to look-and reeled back a step, breath hissing from between her teeth.

A sea indeed, yet one that rose like a wall, its waves rolling down to foam at the waterline. She grunted. But this was not water at all. It was… light.

Behind her, Yedan Derryg said, ‘Memories return. When they walked out from the Light, their purity blinded us. We thought that a blessing, when in truth it was an attack. When we shielded our eyes, we freed them to indulge their treacherous ways.’

‘Yedan, the story is known to me-’

‘Differently.’

She came near to gasping in relief as she turned from the vast falling wall to face her brother. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The Watch serves the Shore in its own way.’

‘Then, in turn, I must possess knowledge that you don’t-is that what you’re saying, brother?’

‘The Queen is Twilight, because she can be no other. She holds the falling of night. She is the first defender against the legions of light that would destroy darkness itself. But we did not ask for this. Mother Dark yielded, and so, to mark that yielding, Twilight relives it.’

‘Again and again. For ever.’

Yedan’s bearded jaws bunched, his face still stained with blood. Then he shook his head. ‘Nothing’s for ever, sister.’

‘Did we really lack sophistication, Yedan? Back then? Were we really that superstitious, that ignorant?’

His brows lifted.

She gestured at the seething realm behind her. ‘This is the true border of Thyrllan. It’s that and nothing more. The First Shore is the shore between Darkness and Light. We thought we were born on this shore-right here-but that cannot be true! This shore destroys-can you not feel it? Where do you think all these bones came from?’

‘This was a gift to no one,’ Yedan replied. ‘Look into the water, sister. Look deep into it.’

But she would not. She had already seen what he had seen. ‘They cannot be drowning-no matter what it looks like-’

‘You are wrong. Tell me, why are there so few Liosan? Why is the power that is Light so weak in all the other worlds?’

‘If it wasn’t we would all die-there’d be no life anywhere at all!’

He shrugged. ‘I have no answer to that, sister. But I think that Mother Dark and Father Light, in binding themselves to each other, in turn bound their fates. And when she turned away, so did he. He had no choice-they had become forces intertwined, perfect reflections. Father Light abandoned his children and they became a people lost-and lost they remain.’

She was trembling. Yedan’s vision was monstrous. ‘It cannot be. The Tiste Andii weren’t trapped. They got away.’

‘They found a way out, yes.’

‘How?’

He cocked his head. ‘Us, of course.’

‘What are you saying?’

“In Twilight was born Shadow.”

‘I was told none of this! I don’t believe you! What you’re saying makes no sense, Yedan. Shadow was the bastard get of Dark and Light-commanded by neither-’

‘Twilight, Shadow is everything we have ever known. Indeed, it is everywhere.’

‘But it was destroyed!’

‘Shattered, yes. Look at the beach. Those bones-they belong to the Shake. We were assailed from both sides-we didn’t stand a chance-that any of us survived at all is a miracle. Shadow was first shattered by the legions of Andii and the legions of Liosan. Purity cannot abide imperfection. In the eyes of purity, it becomes an abomination.’

She was shaking her head. ‘Shadow was the realm of the Edur-it has nothing to do with us, with the Shake.’

Yedan smiled-she could not even recall the last time he had done that and the sight of it jolted her. He nodded. ‘Our very own bastard get.’

She sank down to her knees in the bed of crumbled bone. She could hear the sea now, could hear the waves rolling down-and beneath all of that she could hear the deluged voices of the doomed behind the surface. He turned away when she did. But his children had no way out. We held against them, here. We stood and we died defending our realm. ‘Our blood was royal,’ she whispered.

Her brother was beside her now, and one hand rested on her shoulder. ‘Scar Bandaris, the last prince of the Edur. King, I suppose, by then. He saw in us the sins not of the father, but of the mother. He left us and took all the Edur with him. He told us to hold, to ensure his escape. He said it was all we deserved, for we were our mother’s children, and was she not the seducer and the father the seduced?’ He was silent for a moment, and then he grunted and said, ‘I wonder if the last of us left set out on his trail with vengeance in mind, or was it because we had nowhere else to go? By then, after all, Shadow had become the battlefield of every Elder force, not just the Tiste-it was being torn apart, with blood-soaked forces dividing every spoil, every territory-what were they called again? Yes, warrens. Every world was made an island, isolated in an ocean of chaos.’

Her eyes felt raw, but not a single tear sprang loose. ‘We could not have survived that,’ she said. ‘That assault you described. You called it a miracle that we survived, but I know how-though I never understood its meaning-not until your words today.’

Yedan said, ‘The Watch commanded the legions, and we held until we were told to withdraw. It’s said there were but a handful of us left by then, elite officers one and all. They were the Watch. The Road was open then-we but marched.’

‘It was open because of Blind Gallan.’

‘Yes.’

‘Because,’ she looked up at him, ‘he was told to save us.’

‘Gallan was a poet-’

‘And Seneschal of the Court of Mages in Kharkanas.’

He chewed on this for a while, glanced away, studying the swirling wall of light and the ceaseless sweep of figures in the depths, faces stretched in muted screams-an entire civilization trapped in eternal torment-but she saw not a flicker of emotion touch his face. ‘A great power, then.’

‘Yes.’

‘There was civil war. Who could have commanded him to do anything?’

‘One possessing the Blood of T’iam, and a prince of Kharkanas.’

She watched his eyes slowly widen, but still he stared at the wall. ‘Now why,’ he asked, ‘would an Andii prince have done that?’

She shook her head. ‘It’s said he strode down to the First Shore, terribly wounded, sheathed in blood. It’s said he looked upon the Shake, at how few of us were left, and at the ruin surrounding us-the death of the forests, the charred wreckage of our homes. He held a broken sword in one hand, a Hust sword, and it was seen to fall from his grip. He left it here.’

‘That’s all? Then how do you know he commanded Gallan to do anything?’

‘When Gallan arrived he told the Twilight-he had torn out his eyes by then and was accompanied by an Andii woman who led him by an arm down from the shattered forest-he came down like a man dying of fever but when he spoke, his voice was clear and pure as music. He said to her these words:

“There is no grief in Darkness.

It has taken to the skies.

It leaves a world of ashes and failure.

It sets out to find new worlds, as grief must.

Winged grief commands me:

Make a road for the survivors on the Shore

To walk the paths of sorrow

And charge them the remembrance

Of this broken day

As it shall one day be seen:

As the birth of worlds unending

Where grief waits for us all

In the soul’s darkness.” ’

She slipped out from the weight of his hand and straightened, brushing bone dust from her knees. ‘He was asked, then, who was this Winged Grief? And Gallan said, “There is but one left who would dare command me. One who would not weep and yet had taken into his soul a people’s sorrow, a realm’s sorrow. His name was Silchas Ruin.” ’

Yedan scanned the beach. ‘What happened to the broken sword?’

She started, recovered. Why, after all this time, could her brother still surprise her? ‘The woman with Gallan picked it up and threw it into the sea.’

His head snapped round. ‘Why would she do that?’

Yan Tovis held up her hands. ‘She never explained.’

Yedan faced the refulgent wall again, as if seeking to pierce its depths, as if looking for the damned sword.

‘It was just a broken sword-’

‘A Hust sword-you said so.’

‘I don’t even know what that means, except it’s the name for Ruin’s weapon.’

He grimaced. ‘It should have healed by now,’ he muttered, walking out on to the strand, eyes scanning the pallid beach. ‘Light would reject it, cast it up.’

She stared after him. Healed? ‘Yedan!’

He glanced back. ‘What?’

‘We cannot live here.’

‘No, of course not.’

‘But something is happening in Kharkanas-I don’t know if I can even go back there.’

‘Once she’s fully returned,’ Yedan said, swinging back, ‘the power should ease.’

‘She? Who?’

‘Don’t be obtuse, sister. Mother Dark. Who else arrives like a fist in our skulls?’ He resumed his search along the First Shore.

‘Errastas,’ she whispered, ‘whatever will you do now?’

Torrent scowled at the hag. ‘Aren’t you even listening?’

Olar Ethil straightened, gathering up her rotted cape of furs and scaled hide. ‘Such a lovely carpet, such a riot of richness, all those supine colours!’

The withered nut of this witch’s brain has finally cracked. ‘I said these carriage tracks are fresh, probably not even a day old.’

Olar Ethil had one hand raised, as if about to wave at someone on the horizon. Instead, one taloned finger began inscribing patterns in the air. ‘Go round, my friends, slow your steps. Wait for the one to pass, through and out and onward. No point in clashing wills, when none of it has purpose. Such a busy plain! No matter, if anyone has cause to quake it’s not me, hah!’

‘An enormous carriage,’ Torrent resumed, ‘burdened. But while that’s interesting, it’s the fact that the tracks simply begin-as if from nowhere-and look at the way the ground cracked at the start, as if the damned thing had landed from the sky, horses and all. Doesn’t any of that make you curious?’

‘Eh? Oh, soon enough, soon enough.’ She dropped her arm and then pointed the same finger at him. ‘The first temple’s a mess. Besieged a decade ago, just a burnt-out husk, now. No one was spared. The Matron took weeks to die-it’s no easy thing, killing them, you know. We have to move on, find another.’

Snarling, Torrent mounted his horse and collected the reins. ‘Any good at running, witch? Too bad.’ He kicked his horse into motion, setting out on the carriage’s weaving trail. Let the thing’s bones clatter into dust in his wake-the best solution to all his ills. Or she could just stand there and stare at every horizon one by one and babble and rant all she wanted-as if the sky ever answered.

A carriage. People. Living people. That’s what he needed now. The return of sanity-hold on, it dropped out of the sky, don’t forget. What’s so normal about that?

‘Never mind,’ he muttered, ‘at least they’re alive.’

Sandalath made it to the bridge before collapsing. Cursing, Withal knelt at her side and lifted her head until it rested on his lap. Blood was streaming from her nose, ears and the corners of her eyes. Her lips glistened as if painted.

The three Nachts-or whatever they were called in this realm-had vanished, fled, he assumed, from whatever was assailing his wife. As for himself, he felt nothing. This world was desolate, lifeless, probably leagues from any decent body of water-but oh how he wished he could take her and just sail out of this madness.

Instead, it looked as though his wife was dying.

Crimson froth bubbled from her mouth as she began mumbling something-he leaned closer-words, yes, a conversation. Withal leaned back, snorting. When she’d thought him asleep, she’d said the same lines over and over again. As if they were a prayer, or the beginning of one.

‘What’s broken cannot be mended. You broke us, but that is not all-see what you have done.’

There was the touch of a lament in her tone, but one so emptied of sentiment it cut like a dagger. A lament, yes, but infused with chill hatred, a knuckled core of ice. Complicated, aye, layered-unless he was just imagining things. The truth could be as silly as a childhood song sung to a broken doll, its head lolling impossibly with those stupid eyes underneath the nose and the mouth looking like a wound to the forehead-

Withal shook himself. The oldest memories might be smells, tastes, or isolated images-but rarely all three at once-at least in so far as he knew from his own experience. Crammed into his skull, a crowded mess with everything at the back so tightly pressed all the furniture was crushed, and to reach in was to come up with a few pieces that made no sense at all-

Gods, he was tired. And here she was, dragging him all this way, only to die in his lap and abandon him at the gates of a dead city.

‘… see what you have done.’

Her breathing had deepened. The blood had stopped trickling down-he wiped her mouth with a grimy cuff. She suddenly sighed. He leaned closer. ‘Sand? Can you hear me?’

‘Nice pillow… but for the smell.’

‘You’re not going to die?’

‘It’s over now,’ she said, opening her eyes-but only for a moment as she gasped and shut them again. ‘Ow, that hurts.’

‘I can get some water-from the river here-’

‘Yes, do that.’

He shifted her from his lap and settled her down on the road. ‘Glad it’s over, Sand. Oh, by the way, what’s over?’

She sighed. ‘Mother Dark, she has returned to Kharkanas.’

‘Oh, that’s nice.’

As he made his way down the wreckage-cluttered bank, waterskins flopping over one shoulder, Withal allowed himself a savage grimace. ‘Oh, hello, Mother Dark, glad you showed up. You and all the rest of you gods and goddesses. Come back to fuck with a thousand million lives all over again, huh? Now, I got an idea for you all, aye, I do.

‘Get lost. It’s better, you see, when we ain’t got you to blame for our mess. Understand me, Mother Dark?’ He crouched at the edge of black water and pushed the first skin beneath the surface, listening to the gurgle. ‘And as for my wife, hasn’t she suffered enough?’

A voice filled his head. ‘Yes.’

The river swept past, the bubbles streamed from the submerged skin until no bubbles were left. Still, Withal held it down, as if drowning a maimed dog. He wasn’t sure he’d ever move again.

The descent of darkness broke frozen bone and flesh across the width of the valley, spilling out beyond the north ridge, devouring the last flickering flames from the burning heaps that had once been Barghast wagons.

The vast battlefield glistened and sparkled as corpses and carcasses shrivelled, losing their last remnants of moisture, and earth buckled, lurching upward in long wedges of stone-hard clay that jostled bodies. Iron steamed and glowed amongst the dead.

The sky above was devoid of all light, but the ashes drifting down were visible, as if each flake was lit from within. The pressure continued pushing everything closer to the ground, until horses and armoured men and women became flattened, rumpled forms. Weapons suddenly exploded, white-hot shards hissing.

The hillsides groaned, visibly contracted as something swirled in the very centre of the valley, a darkness so profound as to be a solid thing.

A hill cracked in half with a thunderous detonation. The air seemed to tear open.

From the swirling miasma a figure emerged, first one boot then the other crunching down on desiccated flesh, hide and bone, striding out from the rent, footfalls heavy as stone.

The darkness seethed, pulsed. The figure paused, held out a gauntleted left hand.

Lightning spanned the blackness, a thousand crashing drums. The air itself howled, and the darkness streamed down. Withered husks that had once been living things spun upright as if reborn, only to pull free of the ground and whirl skyward like rotted autumn leaves.

Shrieking wind, torn banners of darkness spiralling inward, wrapping, twisting, binding. Cold air rushed in like floodwaters through a crumbling dam, and all it swept through burst into dust that roiled wild in its wake.

Hammering concussions shook the hills, sheared away slopes leaving raw cliffs, boulders tumbling and pitching through the remnants of carnage. And still the darkness streamed down, converging, coalescing into an elongated sliver forming at the end of the figure’s outstretched hand.

A final report, loud as the snapping of a dragon’s spine, and then sudden silence.

A sword, bleeding darkness, dripping cold.

Overhead, late afternoon sunlight burned the sky.

He slowly scanned the ground, even as desiccated fragments of hide and flesh began raining from the heavens, and then he stepped forward, bending down to retrieve a battered scabbard. He slid the sword home.

A sultry wind swept down the length of the valley, gathering streamers of steam.

He stood for a time, studying the scene on all sides.

‘Ah, my love. Forgive me.’

He set out, boots crunching on the dead.

Returned to the world.

Draconus.