Toll the Hounds

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

With a twist and a snarl, Shan turned on Lock. The huge white-coated beast did not flinch or scurry, but simply loped away, tongue lolling as if in laughter. A short distance off, Pallid watched. Fangs still bared, Shan slipped off into the high grasses once more.

Baran, Blind, Rood and Gear had not slowed during this exchange — it had happened many times before, after all — and they continued on, in a vaguely crescent formation, Rood and Gear on the flanks. Antelope observed them from a rise off to the southwest — the barest tilt of a head from any of the Hounds and they would be off, fast as their bounding legs could take them, their hearts a frenzied drum-roll of bleak terror.

But the Hounds of Shadow were not hunting this day. Not antelope, not bhed shy;erin, nor mule deer nor ground sloth. A host of animals that lived either in states of blessed anonymity or states of fear had no need to lurch from the former into the latter — at least not because of the monstrous Hounds. As for the wolves of the plains, the lumbering snub-nosed bears and the tawny cats of the high grasses, there were none within ten leagues — the faintest wisp of scent had sent them fleeing one and all.

Great Ravens sailed high above the Hounds, minute specks in the vaulted blue.

Shan was displeased with the two new companions, these blots of dirty white with the lifeless eyes. Lock in particular irritated her, as it seemed this one wanted to travel as she did, close by her side, sliding unseen, ghostly and silent. Most annoying of all, Lock was Shan’s able match in such skill.

But she had no interest in surrendering her solitude. Ambush and murder were best served alone, as far as she was concerned. Lock complicated things, and Shan despised complications.

Somewhere, far behind them, creatures pursued. In the profoundly long history of the Hounds of Shadow, they had been hunted many times. More often than not, the hunters came to regret the decision, whether a momentary impulse or an instinctive need; whether at the behest of some master or by the hatred in their souls, their desire usually proved fatal.

Occasionally, however, being hunted was such exquisite pleasure that the Hounds never turned the game. Let the chase go on, and on. Dance from the path of that rage, all that blind need.

All things will cast a shadow. If light blazes infernal, a shadow can grow solid, outlines sharp, motion rippling within. Shape is a reflection, but not all reflec shy;tions are true. Some shadows lie. Deception born of imagination and imagination born of fear, or perhaps it is the other way round and fear ignites imagination — regardless, shadows will thrive.

In the dark conjurings of a sentient mind, all that is imagined can be made real. The beast, and the shadow it casts. The beast’s shadow, and the light from which it is born. Each torn away, made distinct, made into things of nightmare.

Philosophers and fools might claim that light is without shape, that it finds its existence in painting the shape of other things, as wayward as the opening of an eye. That, in the absence of such things, it slants unseen, indeed, invisible. With shy;out other things to strike upon, it does not cavort, does not bounce, does not paint and reflect. Rather, it flows eternal. If this is so, then light is unique in the uni shy;verse.

But the universe holds to one law above all others: nothing is unique.

Fools and philosophers have not, alas, seen the light.

Conjure the shape of beasts, of Hounds and monsters, fiends and nightmares. Of light, of dark, and of shadow. A handful of clay, a gifted breath of life, and forces will seethe in the conflicts inscribed upon their souls.

The Deragoth are the dark, and in their savage solidity would claim ownership of the shadows they cast. Lock and Pallid, however, are the light that gave the Deragoth shape, without whom neither the Deragoth nor the Hounds of Shadow would exist. If the hunters and the hunted so will, one day the beasts shall come together, baleful in mutual regard, perhaps even eager to annihilate one another, and then, in a single instant of dumbfounded astonishment, vanish one and all. Ha hah.

Not all instincts guide one to behaviours of survival. Life is mired in stupidity, after all, and the smarter the life, the stupider it can be. The Hounds of Shadow were neither brilliant nor brainless. They were, in fact, rather clever.

Salutations to this triparate universe, so mutually insistent. And why not? It doesn’t even exist, except in the caged mind that so needs simplification.

A mind, mused Cotillion, like mine.

He glanced across at his companion. But not his. When you stand at the centre of the game, no questions arise. How can that be? What is it like, to be the storm’s eye? What happens, dear Shadowthrone, when you blink?

‘This,’ muttered Shadowthrone, ‘was unexpected.’

‘A damned complication,’ Cotillion agreed. ‘We need the Hounds there, just to ensure nothing goes awry.’

Shadowthrone snorted. ‘It always goes awry. Gods below, I’ve had to use that mad High Priest again.’

‘Iskaral Pust.’ After a moment, Cotillion realized he was smiling. He quickly cast away that expression, since if Shadowthrone saw it he might well go apoplectic. ‘Lovely as she is, Sordiko Qualm is not insurance enough, not for this, anyway.’

‘Nor is Pust!’ snapped Shadowthrone.

They watched the Hounds drawing closer, sensed the beasts’ collective curiosity at this unplanned intercession. Their task now, after all, was simple. Straightforward, even.

Cotillion glanced back over his shoulder, eyes narrowing on the gaunt figure walking towards them. Well, not precisely — the stranger was on his way to a damned reunion, and what would come of that?

‘Too many histories, too many half-truths and outright lies.’ Shadowthrone snarled every word of that statement. ‘Pups of the Tiste Edur — any one will do, it seems, if they know the old commands. But now. .’

‘According to my, er, research, its name is Tulas Shorn, and no, I do not know the gender and what seems to be left of it doesn’t look as if it will provide enough detail to decide either way.’

Shadowthrone grunted, and then said, ‘At least it’s sembled — oh, how I hate dragons! If vermin had a throne, they’d be on it.’

‘Everywhere there’s a mess, they’re in the middle of it, all right. Eleint, Soletaken — hardly a difference, when it comes to trouble.’

‘The chaos of their blood, Cotillion. Imagine how dull it would be without them. . and I so cherish dullness.’

If you say so.

‘So,’ Shadowthrone resumed, ‘how does all this fit with your ridiculously convoluted theories?’

‘They’re only convoluted because they are without substance — if you’ll kindly excuse that inadvertent pun. Light, Dark, Shadow. Hounds of this and that and that. These beasts may exist only because of semantics.’

Shadowthrone snorted. ‘You don’t have to clean up after them — the only possible excuse for such an idiotic suggestion. They smell, they slaver and slobber, they scratch and they lick, Cotillion. Oh, and they tear things to pieces. When it suits them.’

‘Because we expect them to.’

‘Really now.’

‘Listen — what was the mess behind the origin of the Deragoth? Wild beasts from the dusty aeons of past ages, seven left in all the world, and the First Emperor — who was anything but — chooses them as the repositories of his divided soul. All very well, but then we have the Hounds of Shadow, and, presumably, the Hounds of Light-’

‘They’re just damned albinos, Cotillion, a detail probably irrelevant, and besides, there’re only two of them-’

‘That we know of, and we know of them only because they wandered into our realm — why? What or who summoned them?’

‘I did, of course.’

‘How?’

Shadowthrone shrugged. ‘I mused out loud on the need for. . replacements.’

‘And that constitutes summoning? I believe I have also heard you musing on the “need” for a breathlessly beautiful Queen of Shadow, a slave to your every desire-’

‘You were hiding behind the curtain! I knew it!’

‘The point is, where is she?’

The question was left unanswered, as Tulas Shorn had arrived, halting ten paces before them. ‘It seems,’ the undead Tiste Edur said, ‘my Hounds have found new. . pets.’

‘Saw his head off, Cotillion,’ Shadowthrone said. ‘I hate him already.’

Shan slid up beside Cotillion, eyes fixed on Tulas Shorn. A moment later Baran, Rood, Blind and Gear arrived, padding round the rulers of the Realm of Shadow, and onward to encircle the Tiste Edur.

Who held out his hands, as if inviting the beasts to draw close.

None did.

‘They preferred you living, I think,’ Cotillion observed. ‘The dead surrender so much.’

‘If only my sentiments were dead,’ Tulas Shorn said, then sighed as it lowered its hands to its sides once more. ‘Still, it pleases me to see them. But two are missing.’

At that Cotillion glanced round. ‘Well, you’re right.’

‘Killed?’

‘Killed,’ confirmed Shadowthrone.

‘Who?’

‘Anomander Rake.’

At the name Tulas Shorn started.

‘Still around,’ said Shadowthrone, ‘yes. Hee hee. Houndslayer.’

‘And neither of you strong enough to avenge the slayings, it seems. I am astonished that my Hounds have accepted such feeble masters.’

‘I thought it was pets. No matter. Ganrod and Doan died because they were precipitate. Blame poor training. I do.’

‘I am of a mind to test you,’ said Tulas Shorn after a moment.

‘You want the Throne of Shadow, do you?’

‘My first rule was cut short. I have learned since-’

‘Hardly. You died.’ Shadowthrone waved one ephemeral hand. ‘Whatever you learned, you did not learn well enough. Obviously.’

‘You seem certain of that.’

‘He is,’ said Cotillion.

‘Is it simply megalomania, then, that so afflicts him?’

‘Well, yes, but that’s beside the point.’

‘And what is the point?’

‘That you clearly have not learned anything worthwhile.’

‘And why do you say that?’

‘Because you’ve just said that you were of a mind to test us.’

Tulas Shorn cocked its head. ‘Do you imagine the Hounds will defend you?’

‘These ones? Probably not.’

‘Then-’ But the rest of his statement was left unfinished, as Lock and Pallid arrived, heads low, hackles upright like spines, to flank Shadowthrone and Cotillion. Upon seeing them, Tulas Shorn stepped back. ‘By the Abyss,’ it whispered, ‘have you two lost your minds? They cannot be here — they must not be among you-’

‘Why?’ Cotillion demanded, leaning forward in sudden interest.

But the Tiste Edur simply shook its head.

The two bone-white Hounds looked barely restrained, moments from exploding into a deadly charge. The hate was avid in their eyes.

‘Why?’ Cotillion asked again.

‘The. . implacability of forces — we think to tame, but the wildness remains. Control is a delusion in the mind of self-proclaimed masters.’ And that last word dripped with contempt. ‘The leash, you fools, is frayed — don’t you understand anything at all?’

‘Perhaps-’

Tulas Shorn lifted both hands again, but this time in a warding gesture. ‘We’d thought the same, once. We’d deceived ourselves into thinking we were the mas shy;ters, that every force bowed to our command. And what happened? They destroyed everything!’

‘I don’t-’

‘Understand! I see that! They are conjurations — manifestations — they exist to warn you. They are the proof that all that you think to enslave will turn on you.’ And it backed away. ‘The end begins again, it begins again.’

Cotillion stepped forward. ‘Light, Dark and Shadow — these three — are you saying-’

‘Three?’ Tulas Shorn laughed with savage bitterness. ‘What then of Life? Fire and Stone and Wind? What, you fools, of the Hounds of Death? Manifestations, I said. They will turn — they are telling you that! That is why they exist! The fangs, the fury — all that is implacable in nature — each aspect but a variation, a hue in the maelstrom of destruction!’

Tulas Shorn was far enough away now, and the Tiste Edur began veering into a dragon.

As one, all seven Hounds surged forward — but they were too late, as the enormous winged creature launched skyward, rising on a wave of appalling power that sent Cotillion staggering back; that blew through Shadowthrone until he seemed half shredded.

The Soletaken dragon rose higher, as if riding on a column of pure panic, or horror. Or dismay. A pillar reaching for the heavens. Far above, the Great Ravens scattered.

Recovering, Cotillion turned on Shadowthrone. ‘Are we in trouble?’

The ruler of High House Shadow slowly collected himself back into a vaguely human shape. ‘I can’t be sure,’ he said.

‘Why not?’

‘Why, because I blinked.’

Up ahead, the Hounds had resumed their journey. Lock loped a tad too close alongside Shan and she snarled the beast off.

Tongue lolled, jaw hanging in silent laughter.

So much for lessons in hubris.

There were times, Kallor reflected, when he despised his own company. The day gloried in its indifference, the sun a blinding blaze tracking the turgid crawl of the landscape. The grasses clung to the hard earth the way they always did, seeds drifting on the wind as if on sighs of hope. Tawny rodents stood sentinel above warren holes and barked warnings as he marched past. The shadows of circling hawks rippled across his path every now and then.

Despising himself was, oddly enough, a comforting sensation, for he knew he was not alone in his hate. He could recall times, sitting on a throne as if he and it had merged into one, as immovable and inviolate as one of the matching statues outside the palace (any one of his innumerable palaces), when he would feel the oceanic surge of hate’s tide. His subjects, tens, hundreds of thousands, each and every one wishing him dead, cast down, torn to pieces. Yet what had he been but the perfect, singular representative of all that they despised within themselves? Who among them would not eagerly take his place? Casting down foul judgements upon all whose very existence offended?

He had been, after all, the very paragon of acquisitiveness. Managing to grasp what others could only reach for, to gather into his power a world’s arsenal of weapons, and reshape that world in hard cuts, to make of it what he willed — not one would refuse to take his place. Yes, they could hate him; indeed, they must hate him, for he embodied the perfection of success, and his very existence mocked their own failures. And the violence he delivered? Well, watch how it played out in smaller scenes everywhere — the husband who cannot satisfy his wife, so he beats her down with his fists. The streetwise adolescent bully, pinning his victim to the cobbles and twisting the hapless creature’s arm. The noble walking past the starving beggar. The thief with the avaricious eye — no, none of these are any different, not in their fundamental essence.

So, hate Kallor even as he hates himself. Even in that, he will do it better. Innate superiority expressed in all manner of ways. See the world gnash its teeth — he answers with a most knowing smile.

He walked, the place where he had begun far, far behind him now, and the place to where he was going drawing ever closer, step by step, as inexorable as this crawling landscape. Let the sentinels bark, let the hawks muse with wary eye. Seeds ride his legs, seeking out new worlds. He walked, and in his mind memories unfolded like worn packets of parchment, seamed and creased, scurried up from the bottom of some burlap sack routed as rats, crackling as they opened up in a rain of flattened moths and insect carcasses.

Striding white-faced and blood-streaked down a jewel-studded hallway, dragging by an ankle the corpse of his wife — just one in a countless succession — her arms trailing behind her limp as dead snakes, their throats slashed open. There had been no warning, no patina of dust covering her eyes when she fixed him with their regard that morning, as he sat ordering the Century Candles in a row on the table between them. As he invited her into a life stretched out, the promise of devouring for ever — no end to the feast awaiting them, no need to ever exercise anything like restraint. They would speak and live the language of excess. They would mark out the maps of interminable expansion, etching the ambitions they could now entertain. Nothing could stop them, not even death itself.

Some madness had afflicted her, like the spurt and gush of a nicked artery — there could be no other cause. Madness it had been. Insanity, to have flung away so much. Of what he offered her. So much, yes, of him. Or so he had told himself at the time, and for decades thereafter. It had been easier that way.

He knew now why she had taken her own life. To be offered everything was to be shown what she herself was capable of — the depthless reach of her potential depravity, the horrors she would entertain, the plucking away of every last filament at sensitivity, leaving her conscience smooth, cool to the touch, a thing maybe alive, maybe not, a thing nothing could prod awake. She had seen, yes, just how far she might take herself. . and had then said no.

Another sweet packet, unfolding with the scent of flowers. He knelt beside Vaderon, his war horse, as the animal bled out red foam, its one visible eye fixed on him, as if wanting to know: was it all worth this? What has my life purchased you, my blood, the end of my days?

A battlefield spread out on all sides. Heaps of the dead and the dying, human and beast, Jheck and Tartheno Toblakai, a scattering of Forkrul Assail each one surrounded by hundreds of the fallen, the ones protecting their warleaders, the ones who failed in taking the demons down. And there was no dry ground, the blood was a shallow sea thickening in the heat, and more eyes looked upon nothing than scanned the nightmare seeking friends and kin.

Voices cried, but they seemed distant — leagues away from Kallor where he knelt beside Vaderon, unable to pull his gaze from that one fixating eye. Promises of brotherhood, flung into the crimson mud. Silent vows of honour, courage, service and reward, all streaming down the broken spear shaft jutting from the animal’s massive, broad chest. And yes, Vaderon had reared to take that thrust, a thrust aimed at Kallor himself, because this horse was too stupid to understand anything.

That Kallor had begun this war, had welcomed the slaughter, the mayhem.

That Kallor, this master now kneeling at its side, was in truth a brutal, despicable man, a bag of skin filled with venom and spite, with envy and a child’s selfish snarl that in losing took the same from everyone else.

Vaderon, dying. Kallor, dry-eyed and damning himself for his inability to weep. To feel regret, to sow self-recrimination, to make promises to do better the next time round.

I am as humankind, he often told himself. Impervious to lessons. Pitiful in loss and defeat, vengeful in victory. With every possible virtue vulnerable to exploitation and abuse by others, could they claim dominion, until such virtues became hollow things, sweating beads of poison. I hold forth goodness and see it made vile, and do nothing, voice no complaint, utter no disavowal. The world I make I have made for one single purpose — to chew me up, me and everyone else. Do not believe this bewildered expression. I am bemused only through stupidity, but the clever among me know better, oh, yes they do, even as they lie through my teeth, to you and to themselves.

Kallor walked, over one shoulder a burlap sack ten thousand leagues long and bulging with folded packets. So different from everyone else. Ghost horses run at his side. Wrist-slashed women show bloodless smiles, dancing round the rim of deadened lips. And where dying men cry, see his shadow slide past.

‘I want things plain,’ said Nenanda. ‘I don’t want to have to work.’ And then he looked up, belligerent, quick to take affront.

Skintick was bending twigs to make a stick figure. ‘But things aren’t plain, Nenanda. They never are.’

‘I know that, just say it straight, that’s all.’

‘You don’t want your confusion all stirred up, you mean.’

Nimander roused himself. ‘Skin-’

But Nenanda had taken the bait — and it was indeed bait, since for all that Skintick had seemed intent on his twigs, he had slyly noted Nenanda’s diffidence. ‘Liars like confusion. Liars and thieves, because they can slip in and slip out, when there’s confusion. They want your uncertainty, but there’s nothing uncertain in what they want, is there? That’s how they use you — you’re like that yourself sometimes, Skintick, with your clever words.’

‘Wait, how can they use me if I am them?’

Desra snorted.

Nenanda’s expression filled with fury and he would have risen, if not for Aranatha’s gentle hand settling on his arm, magically dispelling his rage.

Skintick twisted the arms of the tiny figure until they were above the knotted head with its lone green leaf, and held it up over the fire so that it faced Nenanda. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘he surrenders.’

‘Do not mock me, Skintick.’

‘On the contrary, I applaud your desire to have things simple. After all, either you can cut it with your sword or you can’t.’

‘There you go again.’

The bickering would go on half the night, Nimander knew. And as it went on it would unravel, and Skintick would increasingly make Nenanda into a thick-witted fool, when he was not anything of the sort. But words were indeed ephemeral, able to sleet past all manner of defences, quick to cut, eager to draw blood. They were the perfect weapons of deceit, but they could also be, he well knew, the solid pave-stones of a path leading to comprehension — or what passed for comprehension in this murky, impossible world.

There were so many ways to live, one for every single sentient being — and perhaps for the non-sentient ones too — that it was a true miracle whenever two could meet in mutual understanding, or even passive acceptance. Proof, Skintick had once said, of life’s extraordinary flexibility. But then, he had added, it is our curse to be social creatures, so we’ve little choice but to try to get along.

They were camped on a broad terrace above the last of the strange ruins — the day’s climb had been long, dusty and exhausting. Virtually every stone in the rough gravel filling the old drainage channels proved to be some sort of fossil — pieces of what had once been bone, wood, tooth or tusk — all in fragments, pieces. The entire mountainside seemed to be some sort of midden, countless centuries old, and to imagine the lives needed to create so vast a mound was to feel bewildered, weakened with awe. Were the mountains behind this one the same? Was such a thing even possible?

Can’t you see, Nenanda, how nothing is simple? Not even the ground we walk upon. How is this created? Is what we come from and where we end up any different? No, that was badly put. Make it simpler. What is this existence?

As Nenanda might answer, it does a warrior no good to ask such questions. Leave us this headlong plunge, leave to the moment to come that next step, even if it’s over an abyss. There’s no point in all these questions.

And how might Skintick respond to that? Show a bhederin fear and watch it run off a cliff. What killed it? The jagged rocks below, or the terror that made it both blind and stupid? And Nenanda would shrug. Who cares? Let’s just eat the damned thing.

This was not the grand conflict of sensibilities one might think it was. Just two heads on the same coin, one facing right on this side, the other facing left on the other side. Both winking.

And Desra would snort and say, Keep your stupid words, I’ll take the cock in my hand over words any time.

Holding on for dear life, Skintick would mutter under his breath, and Desra’s answering smile fooled no one. Nimander well remembered every conversation among his followers, his siblings, his family, and remembered too how they could repeat themselves, with scant variation, if all the cues were triggered in the right sequence.

He wondered where Clip had gone to — somewhere out beyond this pool of firelight, perhaps listening, perhaps not. Would he hear anything he’d not heard before? Would anything said this night alter his opinion of them? It did not seem likely. They bickered, they rapped against personalities and spun off either laugh shy;ing or infuriated. Prodding, skipping away, ever seeking where the skin was thinnest above all the old bruises. All just fighting without swords, and no one ever died, did they?

Nimander watched Kedeviss — who had been unusually quiet thus far — rise and draw her cloak tighter about her shoulders. After a moment, she set off into the dark.

Somewhere in the crags far away, wolves began howling.

Something huge loomed just outside the flickering orange light, and Samar Dev saw both Karsa and Traveller twist round to face it, and then they rose, reaching for their weapons. The shape shifted, seemed to wag from side to side, and then — at the witch’s eye level had she been standing — a glittering, twisting snout, a broad flattened halo of fur, the smear of fire in two small eyes.

Samar Dev struggled to breathe. She had never before seen such an enormous bear. If it reared, it would tower over even Karsa Orlong. She watched that uplifted head, the flattened nose testing the air. The creature, she realized, clearly relied more on smell than on sight. I thought fire frightened such beasts — not summoned them.

If it attacked, things would happen. . fast. Two swords flashing into its lunge, a deafening bellow, talons scything to sweep away the two puny attackers — and then it would come straight for her. She could see that, was certain of it. The bear had come for her.

De nek okral. The words seemed to foam up to the surface of her thoughts, like things belched from the murky depths of instinct. ‘De nek okral,’ she whispered.

The nostrils flared, dripping.

And then, with a snuffling snort, the beast drew back, out of the firelight. A crunch of stones, and the ground trembled as the animal lumbered away.

Karsa and Traveller moved their hands away from their weapons, and then both eased back down, resuming their positions facing the fire.

The Toblakai warrior found a stick and dropped it into the flames. Sparks whirled skyward, bright with liberation, only to wink out. His expression looked thoughtful.

Samar Dev glanced down at her trembling hands, and then slipped them beneath the woollen blanket she had wrapped about herself.

‘Strictly speaking,’ said Traveller, ‘not an okral. De nek. .’ He raised his brows. ‘“Short nose”?’

‘How should I know?’ Samar Dev snapped.

His brows lifted higher.

‘I don’t know where those words came from. They just. . arrived.’

‘They were Imass, Samar Dev.’

‘Oh?’

‘Okral is the word for a plains bear, but that was no plains bear — too big, legs too long-’

‘I would not,’ said Karsa, ‘wish to be chased by that beast, even on horseback. That animal was built for running its prey down.’

‘But it was not hunting,’ said Traveller.

‘I don’t know what it was doing,’ Karsa conceded with a loose shrug. ‘But I am glad it changed its mind.’

‘From you two,’ Samar said, ‘it would have sensed no fear. That alone would have made it hesitate.’ Her voice was harsh, almost flinging the words out. She was not sure why she was so angry. Perhaps naught but the aftermath of terror — a terror that neither companion had the decency to have shared with her. They made her feel. . diminished.

Traveller was still studying her, and she wanted to snarl at him. When he spoke, his tone was calm. ‘The old gods of war are returning.’

‘War? The god of war? That was Fener, wasn’t it? The Boar.’

‘Fener, Togg, Fanderay, Treach, and,’ he shrugged, ‘De nek Okral — who can say how many once existed. They arose, I would imagine, dependent on the environment of the worshippers — whatever beast was supreme predator, was the most savage-’

‘But none were,’ cut in Karsa Orlong. ‘Supreme. That title belonged to us two-legged hunters, us bright-eyed killers.’

Traveller continued to stare at Samar Dev. ‘The savagery of the beasts reflected the savagery in the souls of the worshippers. In war, this is what was shared. Boar, tigers, wolves, the great bears that knew no fear.’

‘Is this what Fener’s fall has done, then?’ Samar Dev asked. ‘All the hoary, for shy;gotten ones clambering back to fight over the spoils? And what has that to do with that bear, anyway?’

‘That bear,’ said Traveller, ‘was a god.’

Karsa spat into the fire. ‘No wonder I have never before seen such a beast.’

‘They once existed,’ said Traveller. ‘They once ruled these plains, until all that they hunted was taken from them, and so they vanished, as have so many other proud creatures.’

‘The god should have followed them,’ said Karsa. ‘There are too many faces of war as it is.’

Samar Dev grunted. ‘That’s rich coming from you.’

Karsa eyed her over the flames, and then grinned, the crazed tattoos seeming to split wide open on his face. ‘There need be only one.’

Yours. Yes, Toblakai, I understand you well enough. ‘I have one true fear,’ she said. ‘And that is, when you are done with civilization, it will turn out that you as master of everything will prove no better than the ones you pulled down. That you will find the last surviving throne and plop yourself down on it, and find it all too much to your liking.’

‘That is an empty fear, Witch,’ said Karsa Orlong. ‘I will leave not one throne to sit on — I will shatter them all. And if, when I am done, I am the last left standing — in all the world — then I will be satisfied.’

‘What of your people?’

‘I have listened too long to the whispers of Bairoth Gild and Delum Thord. Our ways are but clumsier versions of all the other ways in which people live — their love of waste, their eagerness to reap every living thing as if belonged to them, as if in order to prove ownership they must destroy it.’ He bared his teeth. ‘We think no differently, just slower. Less. . efficiently. You will prattle on about progress, Samar Dev, but progress is not what you think it is. It is not a tool guided by our hands — not yours, not mine, not Traveller’s. It is not something we can rightly claim as our destiny. Why? Because in truth we have no control over it. Not your machines, Witch, not a hundred thousand slaves shackled to it — even as we stand with whips in hand.’

Now Traveller had turned slightly and was studying the Toblakai with that same curious wonder that she had seen before. ‘What then,’ he asked, ‘is progress, Karsa Orlong?’

The Toblakai gestured into the night sky. ‘The crawl of the stars, the plunge and rise of the moon. Day, night, birth, death — progress is the passage of reality. We sit astride this horse, but it is a beast we can never tame, and it will run for ever — we will age and wither and fall off, and it cares not. Some other will leap aboard and it cares not. It may run alone, and it cares not. It outran the great bears. The wolves and their worshippers. It outran the Jaghut, and the K’Chain Che’Malle. And still it runs on, and to it we are nothing.’

‘Then why not let us ride it for a time?’ Samar Dev demanded. ‘Why not leave us that damned illusion?’

‘Because, woman, we ride it to hunt, to kill, to destroy. We ride it as if it is our right and our excuse both.’

‘And yet,’ said Traveller, ‘is that not precisely what you intend, Karsa Orlong?’

‘I shall destroy what I can, but never shall I claim to own what I destroy. I will be the embodiment of progress, but emptied of greed. I shall be like nature’s fist: blind. And I shall prove that ownership is a lie. The land, the seas, the life to be found there. The mountains, the plains, the cities, the farms. Water, air. We own none of it. This is what I will prove, and by proving it will make it so.’

He leaned forward then and gathered up in his hands a heap of dusty earth. The Toblakai rose to his feet, and dropped the soil on to the fire, snuffing out the flames. Darkness took them all, as if but awaiting this moment. Or, she thought with a chill, as if it has always been there. The light blinded me, else I would have seen it.

As I do now.

God of war, what did you want with me?

With an ear-piercing scream the enkaral crashed down on to Pearl, talons slashing through flesh, dagger fangs closing on the back of the demon’s neck. Grunting, he reached up and closed one hand about the winged beast’s throat, the other forcing its way beneath the enkaral’s upper jaw — fingers sliced into shreds as he reached ever farther and then began prising the mouth back open. The fangs of the lower jaw sank deeper into the muscles of Pearl’s neck, and still he pushed. As this was going on, the talons never ceased their frantic rending along the demon’s lower back, seeking to hook round his spine, seeking to tear loose that column — but the chains and shackles snarled its efforts, as did Pearl’s twisting to evade each stabbing search through his muscles.

Finally, as his grip on the beast’s throat tightened, he could hear the desperate squeal of its breath, and the jaws weakened. Something crunched and all at once Pearl was able to rip the jaws free of his neck. He staggered forward, dragging the huge beast round, both hands closing on its scaled throat — and more things collapsed inside that crushing grip.

The enkaral flailed about, legs kicking wildly now, talons scoring furrows on Pearl’s thighs. He forced the beast down on to the ground. The thrashing slowed, and then, with a spasm, the creature went limp.

Pearl slowly rose, flinging to carcass to one side; a thud, the slap and rustle of chains. The demon then glanced over to the figure walking alongside it. ‘Did I anger it somehow, Draconus?’

The man squinted, shifting the weight of his chains over his other shoulder before replying, ‘No, Pearl. Madness took it, that’s all. You just happened to be near.’

‘Oh,’ said Pearl. And then the demon sighed. ‘Then it is good it was me and not something. . smaller.’

‘Can you continue, Pearl?’

‘I can, yes. Thank you for asking.’

‘Not much longer, I should think.’

‘No, not much longer,’ agreed Pearl. ‘And then?’

‘We will see, won’t we?’

‘Yes, that is true. Draconus?’

‘Pearl?’

‘I think I will welcome an end — is that a terrible thing for me to say?’

The man shook his head, his expression hinting that he might be in pain. ‘No, my friend, it is not.’

Fully one half of the sky was now a seething argent storm. Thunder rolled from the horizon behind them, as the very ground was ripped up, annihilated — their world had acquired an edge, raw as a cliff, and that cliff was drawing closer as vast sections sheared away, as the raging abyss swallowed the toppling stone columns one by one.

And it occurred to Draconus, then, that each of them here, seemingly alone, each with his or her own shackle, his or her own chain, had finally, at long last, come together.

We are an army. But an army in retreat. See the detritus we leave in our wake, the abandoned comrades. See the glaze of our eyes, this veil of numbed exhaustion — when at last we tear it aside, we will find the despair we have harboured for so long, like a black poisoned fruit under a leaf — all revealed as we look into each other’s eyes.

Was the comfort found in mutual recognition of any true worth? Here, at the last? When the common ground is failure? Like a field of corpses after a battle. Like a sea of skulls rolling in the tide. Is not the brotherhood too bitter to bear?

And now, he wanted to. . to what? Yes, to rage, but first, let me close my eyes. Just for a moment. Let me find, again, my will-

‘Draconus?’

‘Yes, Pearl?’

‘Do you hear drums? I hear drums.’

‘The thunder-’ and then he stopped, and turned round, to look back at that fulminating, crazed horizon. ‘Gods below.’

Chaos had found a new way to mock them. With legions in ranks, weapons and armour blazing, with standards spitting lightning into the sky. Emerging in an endless row, an army of something vaguely human, shaped solely by intent, in numbers unimaginable — they did not march so much as flow, like a frothing surge devouring the ground — and no more than a league away. Lances and pike heads flashing, round shields spinning like vortices. Drums like rattling bones, rushing to swarm like maddened wasps.

So close. . has the hunger caught fresh our scent — does the hunger now rush to us, faster than ever before?

Is there something in that storm. . that knows what it wants?

‘I do not understand,’ said Pearl. ‘How can chaos take shapes?’

‘Perhaps, friend, what we are seeing is the manifestation of what exists in all of us. Our secret love of destruction, the pleasure of annihilation, our darkest glee. Perhaps when at last they reach us, we shall realize that they are us and we are them.’ That Dragnipur has but cut us in two, and all chaos seeks is to draw us whole once more.

Oh, really now, Draconus, have you lost your mind?

‘If they are the evil in our souls, Pearl, then there can be no doubt as to their desire.’

‘Perhaps not just our souls,’ mused Pearl, wiping blood from his eyes. ‘Perhaps every soul, since the beginning of creation. Perhaps, Draconus, when each of us dies, the evil within us is torn free and rushes into the realm of Chaos. Or the evil is that which survives the longest. .’

Draconus said nothing. The demon’s suggestions horrified him, and he thought — oh, he was thinking, yes — that Pearl had found a terrible truth. Somewhere among those possibilities.

Somewhere among them. . I think. . there is a secret. An important secret.

Somewhere. .

‘I do not want to meet my evil self,’ said Pearl.

Draconus glanced across at him. ‘Who does?’

Ditch was dreaming, for dreaming was his last road to freedom. He could stride, reaching out to the sides, reshaping everything. He could make the world as he wanted it, as it should be, a place of justice, a place where he could be a god and look upon humanity as it truly was: a mob of unruly, faintly ridiculous children. Watch them grasp things when they think no one’s looking. Watch them break things, hurt things, steal. Listen to their expostulations of innocence, their breathless list of excuses, listen to how they repent and repent and repent and then go and do the same damned things all over again. Children.

With all his godly powers, he would teach them about consequences, that most terrible of lessons, the one resisted the longest. He would teach them because he had learned in the only way possible — with scars and broken bones, with sickness in the soul tasting of fear, with all the irreparable damage resulting from all his own thoughtless decisions.

There could be wonder and joy among children, too. Too easy to see naught but gloom, wasn’t it? Wonder and joy. Naive creations of beauty. He was not blind to such things, and, like any god, he understood that such gifts were pleas for mercy. An invitation to indulge that reprehensible host of flaws. Art and genius, compassion and passion, they were as islands assailed on all sides. But no island lived for ever. The black, writhing, worm-filled seas ever rose higher. And sooner or later, the hungry storms ate their fill.

Nature might well struggle for balance. And perhaps the egregious imbalance Ditch thought he perceived in his kind was but an illusion, and redress waited, stretched out to match the extremity. A fall as sudden and ferocious as the rise.

In his state of dreaming, it did not occur to him that his dreams were not his own, that this harsh cant of judgement belonged to a tyrant or even a god, or to one such as himself if madness had taken hold. But he was not mad, and nor was he a tyrant, and for all his natural inclination (natural to almost everyone) to wish for true justice he was, after all, wise enough to know the vulnerability of moral notions, the ease with which they were corrupted. Was he dreaming, then, the dreams of a god?

Blind as Kadaspala was, he could sense far too much of Ditch’s visions he could feel the incandescent rage in the flicker of the man’s eyelids, the heat of his breath, the ripples of tautness washing over his face. Oh, this unconscious wizard stalked an unseen world, filled with outrage and fury, with the hunger for retribution.

There were so many paths to godhood. Kadaspala was certain of that. So many paths, so many paths. Refuse to die, refuse to surrender, refuse to die and refuse to surrender and that was one path, stumbled on to without true intent, without even wanting it, and these gods were the bemused ones, the reluctant ones. They were best left alone, for to prod them awake was to risk apocalypse. Reluctant power was the deadliest power of them all, for the anger behind it was long stoked. Long stoked and stoked long and long, so best leave them leave them leave them alone.

Other gods were called into being and the nature of that call took countless forms. A convulsion of natural forces, until the very sludge awakens. Wherever discordant elements clashed, the possibility was born. Life. Intent. Desire and need. But these too were accidental things, in as much as anything could be accidental when all the particles necessary for creation abounded, as they surely did. There were other ways of calling a god into being.

Gather a host of words, a host of words. Gather a host of words. Make them, make them, make them what? Physical, yes, make them physical, from the empty ether to the incision in clay, the stain on stone, the ink on skin. Physical, because the physical created — by its very nature before the eye (or the inner eye) — created and created patterns. And they could be played with played with played with. In numbers and sigils, in astral proportions. They could be coded inside codes inside codes until something is rendered, something both beautiful and absolute. Beautiful in its absoluteness. In its absolution, in its absolved essence, a thing of beauty.

Understand, won’t you, the truth of patterns, how pattern finds truth in the tension of juxtaposition, in the game of meaning meaning the game which is the perfect pattern of language in the guise of imperfection — but what value any of this any of this any of this?

The value is the body of text (hah, the body — the bodies) that in its absoluteness becomes sacred, and in sacredness becomes all that it portrays in its convivial ordering of the essentially meaningless. Patterns where none existed before. Creation from nothing. Awakening from absence of self. And what is the word the beautiful word the precious word and the perfect word that starts the game starts everything everything everything?

Why, the word is birth.

Bodies of text, all these bodies, all this flesh and the ink and the words and the words oh the words. Bodies and bodies, patterns inside patterns, lives and lives and lives all dreaming. . all dreaming one dream.

One dream. One dream one dream one one one dream. One.

A dream of justice.

‘Let the cosmos quake,’ Kadaspala whispered as he etched sigil inside sigil in shy;side sigil, as he wove language and meaning, as the ink rode the piercing and flowed beneath skin pocket by pocket. ‘Quake and quiver, whimper and quaver. A god oh a god yes a god now a god soon a god a god awakens. Lives and lives cut down one and all, cut down, yes, by judgement’s sharp edge — did we deserve it? Did we earn the punishment? Are any of us innocent, any of us at all? Not likely not likely not likely. So, lives and lives and none none none of us did not receive precisely what we deserved.

‘Do you understand? Godling, to you I speak. Listen listen listen well. We are what you come from. The punished, the punished, the victims of justice, the victims of our own stupidity, yes, and who could say that none of us have learned our lesson? Who can say that? Look oh look oh look where we are! Godling, here is your soul, writ in flesh, in flesh, writ here by Kadaspala, who was once blind though he could see and now can see though he is blind. And am I not the very definition of sentience? Blind in life, I can see in death — the definition of mortality, my darling child, heed it and heed it come the moment you must act and decide and stand and sit in judgement. Heed and heed, godling, this eternal flaw.

‘And what, you will wonder, is written upon your soul? What is written here? Here upon the flesh of your soul? Ah, but that is the journey of your life, godling, to learn the language of your soul, to learn it to learn it even as you live it.

‘Soon, birth arrives. Soon, life awakens.

‘Soon, I make a god.’

And even now, the god dreams of justice. For, unlike Ditch, Kadaspala is indeed mad. His code struck to flesh is a code of laws. The laws from which the god shall be born. Consider that, consider that well.

In the context of, say, mercy. .

She was out there, down in the basin, on her knees, head hanging, her torso weaving back and forth to some inner rhythm. After studying her yet again, Seer shy;domin, with a faint gasp, tore his gaze away — something it was getting ever harder to manage, for she was mesmerizing, this child-woman, this fount of corruption, and the notion that a woman’s fall could be so alluring, so perfectly sexual, left him horrified. By this language of invitation. By his own darkness.

Behind him, the Redeemer murmured, ‘Her power grows. Her power over you, Segda Travos.’

‘I do not want to be where she is.’

‘Don’t you?’

Seerdomin turned and eyed the god. ‘Self-awareness can be a curse.’

‘A necessary one.’

‘I suppose so,’ he conceded.

‘Will you still fight her, Segda Travos?’

‘I think so, yes.’

‘Why?’

Seerdomin bared his teeth, ‘Don’t you start with me, Redeemer. The enemy never questions motivations — the enemy doesn’t chew the ground out beneath its own feet.’ He jabbed a finger back at the woman kneeling in the basin. ‘She has no questions. No doubts. What she has instead is strength. Power.’

‘That is true,’ said the Redeemer. ‘All of it. It is why those haunted by uncer shy;tainty must ever retreat. They cannot stand before the self-righteous. Instead, they must slink away, they must hide, they must slip behind the enemy’s lines-’

‘Where every damned one of them is hunted down and silenced — no, Redeemer, you forget, I lived in a tyranny. I kicked in doors. I dragged people away. Do you truly believe unbelievers will be tolerated? Scepticism is a criminal act. Wave the standard or someone else will, and they’ll be coming for you. Redeemer, I have looked in the eyes of my enemy, and they are hard, cold, emptied of everything but hate. I have, yes, seen my own reflection — it haunts me still.’

No further words were exchanged then. Seerdomin looked back down to that woman, the High Priestess who had once been Salind. She was naught but a tool, now, a weapon of some greater force’s will, its hunger. The same force, he now suspected, that drove nations to war, that drove husbands to kill wives and wives to kill husbands. That could take even the soul of a god and crush it into subservience.

When will you rise, Salind? When will you come for me?

This was not the afterlife he had imagined. My fighting should be over. My every need made meaningless, the pain of thoughts for ever silenced.

Is not death’s gift indifference? Blissful, perfect indifference?

She swayed back and forth, gathering strength as only the surrendered could do.

Monkrat walked through the pilgrim camp. Dishevelled as it had once been, now it looked as if a tornado had ripped through it. Tents had sagged; shacks leaned perilously close to collapse. There was rubbish everywhere. The few children still alive after being so long abandoned watched him walk past with haunted eyes peering out from filth-streaked faces. Sores ate into their drawn lips. Their bellies were swollen under the rags. There was nothing to be done for them, and even if there was, Monkrat was not the man to do it. In his mind he had left humanity behind long ago. There was no kinship to nip at his heart. Every fool the world over was on his or her own, or they were slaves. These were the only two states of being — every other one was a lie. And Monkrat had no desire to become a slave, as much as Gradithan or saemenkelyk might want that.

No, he would remain his own world. It was easier that way. Ease was important. Ease was all that mattered.

Soon, he knew, he would have to escape this madness. Gradithan’s ambitions had lost all perspective — the curse of kelyk. He talked now incessantly of the coming of the Dying God, the imminent end of all things and the glorious rebirth to follow. People talking like that disgusted Monkrat. They repeated themselves so often it soon became grossly obvious that their words were wishes and the wish was that their words might prove true. Round and round, all that wasted breath. The mind so liked to go round and round, so liked that familiar track, the familiarity of it. Round and round, and each time round the mind was just that much stupider. Increment by increment, the range of thoughts narrower, the path underfoot more deeply trenched — he had even noted how the vocabulary diminished, as uneasy notions were cast away and all the words associated with them, too. The circular track became a mantra, the mantra a proclamation of stupid wishes that things could be as they wanted them, that in fact they were as they wanted them.

Fanaticism was so popular. There had to be a reason for that, didn’t there? Some vast reward to the end of thinking, some great bliss to the blessing of idiocy. Well, Monkrat trusted none of that. He knew how to think for himself and that was all he knew so why give it up? He’d yet to hear an argument that could convince him — but of course, fanatics didn’t use arguments, did they? No, just that fixed gaze, the threat, the reason to fear.

Aye, he’d had enough. Gods below, he was actually longing for the city where he had been born. There in the shadow of Mock’s Hold, and that blackwater bay of the harbour where slept a demon, half buried in mud and tumbled ballast stones. And who knew, maybe there was no one left there to recognize him — and why would they in any case? His old name was on the toll of the fallen, after all, and beside it was Blackdog Wood, 1159 Burn’s Sleep. The Bridgeburners were gone, dead, destroyed in Pale with the remnants mopped up here at Black Coral. But he’d been a casualty long before then, and the years since then had been damned hard — no, it wasn’t likely that he’d be recognized.

Yes, Malaz City sounded sweet now, as he walked this wretched camp’s main street, the squalling of gulls loud in his ears.

Gradithan, you’ve lost it.

There won’t be any vengeance on the Tiste Andii. Not for me, not for you. It was a stupid idea and now it’s gone too far.

History wasn’t worth reliving. He understood that now. But people never learned that — they never fucking learned that, did they? Round and round.

A fallen pilgrim stumbled out from between two hovels, brown-smeared chin and murky eyes swimming in some dubious rapture painting its lie behind them. He wanted to kick the brainless idiot between the legs. He wanted to stomp on the fool’s skull and see the shit-coloured sludge spill out. He wanted every child to watch him do it, too, so they’d realize, so they’d run for their lives.

Not that he cared.

‘High Priestess.’

She looked up, then rose from behind her desk, came round with a gathering of her robes, and then bowed. ‘Son of Darkness, welcome. Did we have anything arranged?’

His smile was wry. ‘Do we ever?’

‘Please,’ she said, ‘do come in. I will send for wine and-’

‘No need on my account, High Priestess,’ Anomander Rake walked into the small office, eyed the two chairs and then selected the least ornate one to sit down in. He stretched out his legs, fingers lacing together on his lap, and eyed her speculatively.

She raised her arms, ‘Shall I dance?’

‘Shall I sing?’

‘Abyss take me, no. Please.’

‘Do sit down,’ said Rake, indicating the other chair.

She did so, keeping her back straight, a silent question lifting her eyebrows.

He continued watching her.

She let out a breath and slumped back. ‘All right, then. I’m relaxing. See?’

‘You have ever been my favourite,’ he said, looking away.

‘Your favourite what?’

‘High Priestess, of course. What else might I be thinking?’

‘Well, that is the eternal question, isn’t it?’

‘One too many people spend too much time worrying about.’

‘You cannot be serious, Anomander.’

He seemed to be studying her desk — not the things scattered on its surface, but the desk itself. ‘That’s too small for you,’ he pronounced.

She glanced at it. ‘You are deceived, alas. It’s my disorganization that’s too big. Give me a desk the size of a concourse and I’ll still fill it up with junk.’

‘Then it must be your mind that is too big, High Priestess.’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘there is so little to think about and so much time.’ She fluttered a hand. ‘If my thoughts have become oversized it’s only out of indolence.’ Her gaze sharpened. ‘And we have become so indolent, haven’t we?’

‘She has been turned away for a long time,’ Anomander Rake said. ‘That I al shy;lowed all of you to turn instead to me was ever a dubious enterprise.’

‘You made no effort to muster worship, Son of Darkness, and that is what made it dubious.’

One brow lifted. ‘Not my obvious flaws?’

‘And Mother Dark is without flaws? No, the Tiste Andii were never foolish enough to force upon our icons the impossibility of perfection.’

‘“Icons,”’ said Anomander Rake, frowning as he continued studying the desk.

‘Is that the wrong word? I think not.’

‘And that is why I rejected the notion of worship.’

‘Why?’

‘Because, sooner or later, the believers shatter their icons.’

She grunted, and thought about that for a time, before sighing and nodding. ‘A hundred fallen, forgotten civilizations, yes. And in the ruins all those statues. . with their faces chopped off. The loss of faith is ever violent, it seems.’

‘Ours was.’

The statement stung her. ‘Ah, we are not so different then, after all. What a de shy;pressing realization.’

‘Endest Silann,’ he said.

‘Your stare is making the legs of my desk tremble, Lord Rake — am I so un shy;pleasant that you dare not rest eyes upon me?’

He slowly turned his head and settled his gaze upon her.

And seeing all that was in his eyes almost made her flinch, and she understood, all at once, the mercy he had been giving her — with his face turned away, with his eyes veiled by distraction. But then she had asked for his regard, as much out of vanity as the secret pleasure of her attraction to him — she could not now break this connection. Marshalling her resolve, she said, ‘Endest Silann, yes. The reason for this visit. I understand.’

‘He is convinced he was broken long ago, High Priestess. We both know it is not true.’

She nodded. ‘He proved that when he sustained Moon’s Spawn beneath the sea — proved it to everyone but himself.’

‘I reveal to him my confidence,’ said Rake, ‘and each time he. . contracts. I cannot reach through, it seems, to bolster what I know is within him.’

‘Then it is his faith that is broken.’

He grimaced, made no reply.

‘When the time comes,’ she said, ‘I will be there. To do what I can. Although,’ she added, ‘that may not be much.’

‘You need not elaborate on the efficacy of your presence, High Priestess. We are speaking, as you said, of faith.’

‘And there need be no substance to it. Thank you.’

He glanced away once more, and this time the wry smile she had seen before played again across his features. ‘You were always my favourite,’ he said.

‘Me, or the desk you so seem to love?’

He rose and she did the same. ‘High Priestess,’ he said.

‘Son of Darkness,’ she returned, with another bow.

And out he went, leaving in his wake a sudden absence, an almost audible clap of displacement — but no, that was in her mind, a hint of something hovering there behind her memory of his face, his eyes and all that she had seen there.

Mother Dark, hear me. Heed me. You did not understand your son then. You do not understand him now.

Don’t you see? This was all Draconus’s doing.

‘This ain’t right,’ gasped Reccanto Ilk, each word spraying blood. ‘When it comes to screaming women, they should be leaving the bar, not trying to get in!’

The ragged hole the shrieking, snarling, jaw-snapping women had torn through the tavern’s door was jammed with arms, stretching, fingers clutching, all reaching inward in a desperate attempt to tear through the barrier. Claws stabbed into the Trell’s tattooed shoulders and he ducked his head lower, grunting as the demons battered at the door, planks splintering — but that Trell was one strong bastard, and he was holding ’em back, as he had been doing since that first rush that nearly saw Reccanto’s precious head get torn off.

Thank whatever gods squatted in the muck of this damned village that these demons were so stupid. Not one had tried either of the shuttered windows flanking the entrance, although with that barbed hulk, Gruntle, waiting at one of ’em with his cutlasses at the ready, and Faint and the Bole brothers at the other, at least if them demons went and tried one of ’em they’d be cut to pieces in no time. Or so Reccanto hoped, since he was hiding under a table and a table wasn’t much cover, or wouldn’t be if them demons was nasty enough to tear apart Gruntle and Faint and the Boles and the Trell, and Sweetest Sufferance, too, for that matter.

Master Quell and that swampy witch, Precious Thimble, were huddled together at the back, at the barred cellar door, doing Hood knew what. Glanno Tarp was missing — he’d gone with the horses when they went straight and the carriage went left, and Reccanto was pretty sure that the idiot had gone and killed himself bad. Or worse.

As for that corpse, Cartographer, why, the last Ilk had seen of it it was still lashed to a wheel, spinning in a blur as the damned thing spun off its axle and bounded off into the rainy night. Why couldn’t the demons go after it? A damned easier fight-

Repeated blows were turning the door into a shattered wreck, and one of the arms angled down to slash deep gouges across Mappo’s back, making the Trell groan and groaning wasn’t good, since it meant Mappo might just give up trying to hold ’em back and in they’d come, straight for the man hiding under the table. It wasn’t fair. Nothing was fair and what was fair about that, dammit?

He drew out his rapier and clutched the grip in one shaky hand. A lunge from the knees — was such a thing possible? He was about to find out. Oh, yes, he’d skewer one for its troubles, just watch. And if the other two (he was pretty sure there were three of ’em) ripped him up then fine, just fine. A man could only do so much.

Gruntle was shouting something at Mappo, and the Trell bellowed a reply, drawing his legs up under himself as if about to dive to one side — thanks a whole lot, you ogre! — and then all at once Mappo did just that, off to the right, slamming into the legs of the Boles and Faint and taking all three down with him.

An explosion of wood splinters and thrashing arms, clacking fangs, unclean hair and terribly unreasonable expressions, and the three screeching women plunged in.

Two were brought up short pretty fast, as their heads leapt up in gouts of greenish uck and their bodies sprawled in a thrashing mess.

Even as this was happening, the third woman charged straight for Reccanto. He shrieked and executed his lunge from the knees, which naturally wasn’t a lunge at all. More like a fleche, a forward flinging of his upper body, arm and point extended, and as he overbalanced and landed with a bone-creaking thump on the floorboards the rapier’s point snagged on something and the blade bowed alarmingly and so he let go, so that it sprang up, then back down, the pommel crunching the top of Reccanto’s head, not once, but twice, each time driving his face into the floor, nose crackling in a swirl of stinging tears and bursting into his brain the horrid stench of mouse droppings and greasy dirt — immediately replaced by a whole lot of flowing blood.

It was strangely quiet, and, moaning, Reccanto rolled on to his side and lifted himself up on one elbow.

And found himself staring into the blank, horrible eyes of the woman who’d charged him. The rapier point had driven in between her eyes, straight in, so far that he should be able to see it coming back out from somewhere beneath the back of her skull — but it wasn’t there. Meaning-

‘She broke it!’ he raged, clambering on to his feet. ‘She broke my damned rapier!’

The demonic woman was on her knees, head thrust forward, mouth still stretched open, the weight of her upper body resting on the knocked-over chair that had served as pathetic barricade. The other two, headless, still thrashed on the floor as green goo flowed. Gruntle was studying that ichor where it slathered the broad blades of his cutlasses.

Mappo, the Boles and Faint were slowly regaining their feet.

Sweetest Sufferance, clutching a clay bottle, staggered up to lean against Rec shy;canto. ‘Too bad about your rapier,’ she said, ‘but damn me, Ilk, that was the neatest fleche I ever did see.’

Reccanto squinted, wiped blood from his streaming nose and lacerated lips, and then grinned. ‘It was, wasn’t it. The timing of a master-’

‘I mean, how could you have guessed she’d trip on one of them rolling heads and go down on her knees skidding like that, straight into your thrust?’

Tripped? Skidded? ‘Yes, well, like I said, I’m a master duellist.’

‘I could kiss you,’ she continued, her breath rank with sour wine, ‘except you went and pissed yourself and there’s limits t’decency, if you know what I mean.’

‘That ain’t piss — we’re all still sopping wet!’

‘But we don’t quite smell the way you do, Ilk.’

Snarling, he lurched away. Damned overly sensitive woman! ‘My rapier,’ he moaned.

‘Shattered inside her skull, I’d wager,’ said Gruntle, ‘which couldn’t have done her brain any good. Nicely done, Reccanto.’

Ilk decided it was time to strut a little.

Whilst Reccanto Ilk walked round like a rooster, Precious Thimble glanced over worriedly at the Boles, and was relieved to see them both apparently unharmed. They hadn’t been paying her enough attention lately and they weren’t paying her any now either. She felt a tremor of unease.

Master Quell was thumping on the cellar door. ‘I know you can hear me,’ he called. ‘You, hiding in there. We got three of ’em — is there more? Three of ’em killed. Is there more?’

Faint was checking her weapons. ‘We got to go and find Glanno,’ she said. ‘Any volunteers?’

Gruntle walked over, pausing to peer out of the doorway. ‘The rain’s letting off — looks as if the storm’s spent. I’ll go with you, Faint.’

‘I was asking for volunteers. I wasn’t volunteering myself.’

‘I’ll go!’ said Amby.

‘I’ll go!’ said Jula.

And then they glared at each other, and then grinned as if at some private joke, and a moment later both burst out laughing.

‘What’s so funny?’ Precious Thimble demanded, truly bewildered this time. Have they lost their minds? Assuming they have minds, I mean.

Her harsh query sobered them and both ducked, avoiding her stare.

The cellar door creaked open, drawing everyone’s attention, and a bewhiskered face poked out, eyes wide and rolling. ‘Three, ya said? Ya said three?’

The dialect was Genabackan, the accent south islander.

‘Ya got ah three? Deed?’

Quell nodded. ‘Any more lurking about, host?’

A quick shake of the head, and the tavern keep edged out, flinching when he saw the slaughtered bodies. ‘Oh, darlings,’ he whispered, ‘ahm so soory. So soory!’

‘You know them?’ Quell asked. ‘You know what they were?’

More figures crowded behind the keep, pale faces, frightened eyes. To Quell’s questions the whiskered man flinched. ‘Coarsed,’ he said in a rasp. ‘Our daughters. . coarsed.’

‘Cursed? When they come of age, right?’

A jerky nod, and then the man’s eyes widened on the wizard. ‘You know it? You know the coarse?’

‘How long have you had it, host? Here, in this village — how long have you had the curse?’

‘Foor yars now. Foor yars.’ And the man edged out. ‘Aai, their heeds! Ya cart erf their heeds!’ Behind him the others set up a wailing.

Precious Thimble met Quell’s eyes and they exchanged a nod. ‘Still about, I’d say,’ Precious said under her breath.

‘Agreed. Should we go hunting?’

She looked round once more. Mappo was dragging the first naked, headless corpse out through the doorway. The green blood had blackened on the floor and left tarry streaks trailing the body. ‘Let’s take that Trell with us, I think.’

‘Good idea.’ Quell walked up to the tavern keep. ‘Is there a constable in this village? Who rules the land — where in Hood’s name are we anyway?’

Owlish blinks of the eyes. ‘Reach of Woe is war ye are. Seen the toower? It’s war the Provost leeves. Yull wan the Provost, ah expeect.’

Quell turned away, rubbed at his eyes, then edged close to Precious Thimble. ‘We’re agreed, then, it’s witchery, this curse.’

‘Witch or warlock,’ she said, nodding.

‘We’re on the Reach of Woe, a wrecker coast. I’d wager it’s the arrival of strangers that wakes up the daughters — they won’t eat their kin, will they?’

‘When the frenzy’s on them,’ said Precious Thimble, ‘they’ll eat anything that moves.’

‘That’s why the locals bolted, then, right. Fine, Witch, go collect Mappo — and this time, tell him he needs to arm himself. This could get messy.’

Precious Thimble looked over at the last body the Trell was now dragging out shy;side. ‘Right,’ she said.

Flanked by the Boles, Tula on his right, Amby on his left, Gruntle walked back down to the main street, boots squelching in the mud. The last spits of rain cooled his brow. Oh, he’d wanted a nastier fight. The problem with mindless attackers was their mindlessness, which made them pathetically predictable. And only three of the damned things-

‘I was going first,’ said Amby.

‘No, I was,’ said Tula.

Gruntle scowled. ‘Going where? What are you two talking about?’

‘That window back there,’ said Tula, ‘at the tavern. If’n the girlies got in through the door, I was goin’ out through the window — only we couldn’t get the shutters pulled back-’

‘That was your fault,’ said Amby. ‘I kept lifting the latch and you kept pushing it back down.’

‘The latch goes down to let go, Amby, you idiot.’

‘No it goes up — it went up, I saw it-’

‘And then back down-’

‘Up.’

‘Then down.’

Gruntle’s sudden growl silenced them both. They were now following the hoof prints and various furrows of things being dragged in the wake of the animals. In the squat houses to either side, muted lights flickered through thick-glassed win shy;dows. The sound of draining water surrounded them, along with the occasional distant rumble of thunder. The air mocked with the freshness that came after a storm.

‘There they are,’ said Amby, pointing. ‘Just past that low wall. You see them, Gruntle? You see them?’

A corral. The wreckage of the carriage high bench was scattered along the base of the stone wall.

Reaching it, they paused, squinted at the field of churned-up mud, the horses huddled at the far end — eyeing them suspiciously — and there, something sprawled near the middle. A body. Far off to the left was one of the carriage wheels.

Gruntle leading the way, they climbed the wall and set out for Glanno Tarp.

As they drew closer, they could hear him talking.

‘. . and so she wasn’t so bad, compared to Nivvy, but it was years before I surre shy;alized not all women talked that way, and if I’d a known, well, I probably would never have agreed to it. I mean, I have some decency in me, I’m sure of it. It was the way she carried on pretending she was nine years old, eyes so wide, all those cute things she did which, when you think about, was maybe cute some time, long ago, but now — I mean, her hair was going grey, for Hood’s sake — oh, you found me. Good. No, don’t move me just yet, my leg is broke and maybe a shoulder too, and an arm, wrist, oh, and this finger here, it’s sprained. Get Quell — don’t go moving me without Quell, all right? Thanks. Now, where was I? Nivvy? No, that stall keeper, Luft, now she didn’t last, for the reasons I experplained before. It was months before I found me a new woman — well, before Coutre found me, would be more reaccurate. She’d just lost all her hair. .’

The carriage wheel had moved slightly. Gruntle had caught the motion out of the corner of his eye and, leaving Glanno babbling on to the Boles, who stood looking down with mouths hanging open, he set out for it.

He sheathed his cutlasses and heaved at the wheel. It resisted until, with a thick slurping sound, it lifted clear of the mud and Gruntle pushed it entirely upright.

Cartographer was a figure seemingly composed entirely of clay, still bound by the wrists and ankle to the spokes. The face worked for a time, pushing out lumps of mud from its mouth, and then the corpse said, ‘It’s the jam-smeared bread thing, isn’t it?’

‘Look at that,’ Quell said.

Precious Thimble made a warding gesture and then spat thrice, up, down, straight ahead. ‘Blackdog Swamp,’ she said. ‘Mott Wood. This was why I left, dammit! That’s the problem with Jaghut, they show up everywhere.’

Behind them, Mappo grunted but otherwise offered no comment.

The tower was something between square and round, the corners either weath shy;ered down by centuries and centuries of wind or deliberately softened to ease that same buffeting, howling wind. The entranceway was a narrow gloomy recess be shy;neath a mossy lintel stone, the moss hanging in beards that dripped in a curtain of rainwater, each drop popping into eroded hollows on the slab of the landing.

‘So,’ said Quell with brittle confidence, ‘the village Provost went and moved into a Jaghut tower. That was brave-’

‘Stupid.’

‘Stupidly brave, yes.’

‘Unless,’ she said, sniffing the air. ‘That’s the other problem with Jaghut. When they build towers, they live in them. For ever.’

Quell groaned. ‘I was pretending not to think that, Witch.’

‘As if that would help.’

‘It helped me!’

‘There’s two things we can do,’ Precious Thimble announced. ‘We can turn right round and ignore the curse and all that and get out of this town as fast as possible.’

‘Or?’

‘We can go up to that door and knock.’

Quell rubbed at his chin, glanced back at a silent Mappo, and then once more eyed the tower. ‘This witchery — this curse here, Precious, that strikes when a woman comes of age.’

‘What about it? It’s a damned old one, a nasty one.’

‘Can you break it?’

‘Not likely. All we can hope to do is make the witch or warlock change her or his mind about it. The caster can surrender it a whole lot more easily than someone else can break it.’

‘And if we kill the caster?’

She shrugged. ‘Could go either way, Wizard. Poof! Gone. Or. . not. Anyway, you’re stepping sideways, Quell. We were talking about this. . this Provost.’

‘Not sideways, Witch. I was thinking, well, about you and Sweetest Sufferance and Faint, that’s all.’

All at once she felt as if she’d just swallowed a fistful of icy knuckles. Her throat ached, her stomach curdled. ‘Oh, shit.’

‘And since,’ Quell went on remorselessly, ‘it’s going to be a day or two before we can effect repairs — at best — well. .’

‘I think we’d better knock,’ she said.

‘All right. Just let me, er, empty my bladder first.’

He walked off to the stone-lined gutter to his left. Mappo went off a few paces in the other direction, to rummage in his sack.

Precious Thimble squinted up at the tower. ‘Well,’ she whispered, ‘if you’re a Jaghut — and I think you are — you know we’re standing right here. And you can smell the magic on our breaths. Now, we’re not looking for trouble, but there’s no chance you don’t know nothing about that curse — we need to find that witch or warlock, you see, that nasty villager who made up this nasty curse, because we’re stuck here for a few days. Understand? There’s three women stuck here. And I’m one of them.’

‘You say something?’ Quell asked, returning.

‘Let’s go,’ she said as Mappo arrived, holding an enormous mace.

They walked to the door.

Halfway there, it swung open.

‘My mate,’ said the Provost, ‘is buried in the yard below.’ He was standing at the window, looking out over the tumultuous seas warring with the shoals.

Quell grunted. ‘What yard?’ He leaned forward and peered down. ‘What yard?’

The Provost sighed. ‘It was there two days ago.’ He turned from the window and eyed the wizard.

Who did his best not to quail.

Bedusk Pall Kovuss Agape, who called himself a Jaghut Anap, was simply gi shy;gantic, possibly weighing more than Mappo and at least a head and a half taller than the Trell. His skin was blue, a deeper hue than any Malazan Napan Quell could recall seeing. The blue even seemed to stain the silver-tipped tusks jutting from his lower jaw.

Quell cleared his throat. He needed to pee again, but that would have to wait.” ‘You lost her long ago?’

‘Who?’

‘Er, your mate?’

Bedusk Agape selected one of the three crystal decanters on the marble table, sniffed at its contents, and then refilled their goblets. ‘Have you ever had a wife, Wizard?’

‘No not that I’m aware of.’

‘Yes, it can be like that at times.’

‘It can?’

The Jaghut gestured towards the window. ‘One moment there, the next. . gone.’

‘Oh, the cliff.’

‘No, no. I was speaking of my wife.’

Quell shot Precious Thimble a helpless look. Off near the spiral staircase, Mappo stood examining an elaborate eyepiece of some kind, mounted on a spike with a peculiar ball-hinge that permitted the long black metal instrument to be swivelled about, side to side and up and down. The damned Trell was paying at shy;tention to all the wrong things.

Precious Thimble looked back at Quell with wide eyes.

‘Loss,’ stammered the wizard, ‘is a grievous thing.’

‘Well of course it is,’ said Bedusk Agape, frowning.

‘Um, not always. If, for example, one loses one’s, er, virginity, or a favourite shiny stone, say. .’

The red-rimmed eyes stayed steady, unblinking.

Quell wanted to squeeze his legs together — no, better, fold one over the other — lest his snake start drooling or, worse, spitting.

Precious Thimble spoke in a strangely squeaky voice, ‘Jaghut Anap, the curse afflicting this village’s daughters-’

‘There have been twelve in all,’ said Bedusk Agape. ‘Thus far.’

‘Oh. What happened to the other nine?’

The Jaghut flicked his gaze over to her. ‘You are not the first trouble to arrive in the past few years. Of course,’ he added, after sipping his wine, ‘all the young girls are now sent to the next village along this coast — permanently, alas, which does not bode well for the future of this town.’

‘I thought I saw women down in the tavern cellar,’ said Precious Thimble.

‘Bearing a child prevents the settling of the curse. Mothers are immune. There shy;fore, if you or your fellow female companions have at any time produced a child, you need not worry.’

‘Um,’ said Precious Thimble, ‘I don’t think any of us qualify.’

‘How unfortunate,’ said Bedusk.

‘So how is it you got elected Provost?’ Quell asked. ‘Just curious, you see — I’m the nosy type, that’s all. I didn’t mean anything-’

‘I believe it was a collective attempt to ameliorate my grief, my solitude. None would deny, I now expect, that such an invitation was ill-conceived.’

‘Oh? Why?’

‘Well, had I remained in my isolation, this terrible curse would not exist, I am afraid.’

‘It’s your curse, then?’

‘Yes.’

A long moment of silence. From near the staircase, Mappo slowly turned to face them.

‘Then you can end it,’ said Quell.

‘I could, yes, but I shall not.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you are not that important.’

Quell crossed his legs. ‘May I ask, what happened to your mate?’

‘We argued. I lost. I buried her.’

There seemed to be, at least to the wizard’s thinking, something missing in that answer. But he was getting distracted by his bladder. He couldn’t think straight.

‘So,’ said Precious Thimble in a thin voice, ‘if you lose an argument to someone, you then kill them?’

‘Oh, I didn’t say she was dead.’

Mappo spoke from where he still stood, ‘She is now, Jaghut.’

Bedusk Agape sighed. ‘That does seem likely, doesn’t it?’

‘How long,’ the Trell asked, ‘was she pinned down? Your mate?’

‘Nine years or so.’

‘And the argument?’

‘I sense a certain belligerence in you, Trell.’

‘Belligerence, Jaghut?’ Mappo bared his fangs in a cold grin. ‘Your senses have dulled with disuse, I think.’

‘I see. And you imagine you can best me?’

‘I was asking you about the argument.’

‘Something trivial. I have forgotten the details.’

‘But you found yourself alone, at least until the villagers took pity on you and elected you their Provost. And then. . you fell in love?’

Bedusk Agape winced.

Precious Thimble gasped. ‘Oh! I see now. Oh, it’s like that. She spurned you. You got mad, again, only this time you couldn’t very well bury the whole village-’

‘Actually, I considered it.’

‘Um, well, you decided not to, then. So, instead, you worked up a curse, on her and all her young pretty friends, since they laughed at you or whatever. You turned them all into Tralka Vonan. Blood Feeders.’

‘You cannot hope to break my curse, Witch,’ said Bedusk. ‘Even with the wiz shy;ard’s help, you will fail.’ The Jaghut then faced Mappo. ‘And you, Trell, even if you manage to kill me, the curse will not die.’ He refilled his goblet for the third time. ‘Your women will have a day or so before the curse takes effect. In that time, I suppose, they could all endeavour to become pregnant.’

All at once Quell sat straighter.

But when he saw Precious Thimble’s expression, his delighted smile turned somewhat sheepish,

Down on the narrow strand of what had once been beach, at the foot of the raw cliff, waves skirled foam-thick tendrils through the chunks of clay and rock and black hairy roots, gnawing deep channels and sucking back into the sea milky, silt-laden water. The entire heap was in motion, settling, dissolving, sections collapsing under the assault of the waves.

Farther down the beach the strand reemerged, the white sand seemingly studded with knuckles of rust, to mark the thousands of ship nails and rivets that had been scattered in profusion along the shoreline. Fragments of wood formed a snagged barrier higher up, and beyond that, cut into the cliff face, weathered steps led up to a hacked-out cave mouth.

This cave was in fact a tunnel, rising at a steep angle up through the bowels of the promontory, to open out in the floor of the village’s largest structure, a stone and timbered warehouse where the wreckers off-loaded their loot after the long haul of the carts from the cliff base. A tidy enterprise, all things considered, one that gave employment to all the folk of the village — from tending the false fires to rowing the deep-hulled boats out to the reef, where the stripping down of the wrecks took place, along with clubbing survivors and making sure they drowned. The local legend, concocted to provide meagre justification for such cruel en shy;deavours, revolved around some long-ago pirate raids on the village, and how someone (possibly the Provost, who had always lived here, or the locally famous Gacharge Hadlorn Who Waits — but he left so there was no way to ask him) had suggested that, since the sea was so eager to deliver murderers to this shore, why could it not also deliver death to the would-be murderers? And so, once the notion was planted, the earth was tilled, with mallet and pick and flint and fire, and the days of fishing for a living off the treacherous shoals soon gave way to a far more lucrative venture.

Oh, the nets were cast out every now and then, especially in the calm season when the pickings got slim, and who could deny the blessing of so many fish these days, and fat, big ones at that? Why, it wasn’t so long ago that they’d damned near fished out the area.

The beach was comfortable with half-eaten corpses rolling up on to the sands, where crabs and gulls swarmed. The beach helped pick the bones clean and then left them to the waves to bury or sweep away. On this fast-closing night, however, something unusual clawed its way to the shore. Unusual in that it still lived. Crabs scuttled from its path as fast as their tiny legs could manage.

Water sluiced from the figure as it heaved itself upright. Red-rimmed eyes scanned the scene, fixing at last on the steps and the gaping mouth of the cave. After a moment, it set out in that direction, leaving deep footprints that the beach hastened to smooth away.

‘Do you really think I can’t see what’s going on in your skull, Quell? You’re right there, first in line, with the three of us lying in a row, legs spread wide. And in you dive, worse than a damned dog on a tilted fence post. Reccanto waiting for his turn, and Glanno, and Jula and Amby and Mappo here and Gruntle and probably that damned undead-’

‘Hold on a moment,’ growled the Trell.

‘Don’t even try,’ Precious Thimble snapped.

They were marching back to the tavern, Precious Thimble in the lead, the other two hastening to keep up. That she was tiny and needed two steps for every one of theirs seemed irrelevant.

‘Then again,’ she went on, ‘maybe that Jaghut will go and jump the queue, and by the dawn we’ll all be planted with some ghastly monster, half Trell, half Jaghut, half pissy wizard, half-’

‘Twins?’ asked Quell.

She swung a vicious glare back at him. ‘Oh, funny.’

‘Anyway,’ added Quell, ‘I’m pretty sure that’s not how things like that work-’

‘How would you know? No, me and Sweetest and Faint, we’re out of here as soon as we can get our gear together — you can collect us somewhere down the road. This damned village can go to Hood, with Bedusk Pall Kovuss Agape in the lead. They’re damned wreckers anyway, and if anybody deserves cursing to damnation, it’s them.’

‘I wouldn’t disagree there,’ said Mappo.

‘Stop trying to get under my skirt, Trell.’

‘What? I wasn’t-’

Quell cut in with a snort. ‘You don’t wear skirts, Witch. Though if you did, it’d be so much easier-’

Now she spun round. ‘What would be, Quell?’

He’d halted and now backed up. ‘Sorry, did I think that out loud?’

‘You think the curse on this village is bad, you just wait and see what I can come up with!’

‘All right, we take your point, Precious. Relax. You three just go, right? We’ll get the carriage fixed up and find you, just like you said.’

She whirled about once more and resumed her march.

Gruntle saw the three in the street, closing fast on the entrance to the tavern. He shouted to catch their attention and hurried over.

‘Master Quell, your driver is a heap of broken bones back there, but he’s still breathing.’

‘Well, he should have let go of the damned reins,’ Quell said in a growl. ‘And now I got to do healing and that takes time. That’s just great — how am I supposed to fix the carriage? Why can’t anybody else do anything useful a round here? You, Witch — go and heal Glanno-’

‘I can’t do that! Oh, I can set splints and spit on wounds to chase infection away, but it’s sounding as if he needs a whole lot more than that. Right, Gruntle?’

The tattooed warrior shrugged. ‘Probably.’

‘Don’t even try,’ she snarled at him, and then stalked into the tavern,

Gruntle stared after her. ‘What did she mean? Try what?’

‘Getting under her skirt,’ said Quell.

‘But she doesn’t wear-’

‘That’s not the point,’ the wizard cut in. ‘You’re thinking like a man. That’s your mistake. It’s all our mistakes, in fact. It’s why we’re standing out here, three men, no women. If we’d gone and said, why, Precious, we wouldn’t even think of it, you know what she’d say then? “What’s wrong with me? Am I too ugly or something?” and we’d be in trouble all over again!’

Gruntle glanced bemusedly at Mappo, who, rather cryptically, simply nodded.

Quell straightened his still-wet clothes. ‘Lead me to him, then, Gruntle.’

At one end of the corral there was a stable and next to it, a loading platform built of weathered planks that marked one end of a huge, solidly built warehouse. Tula and Amby had helped Glanno sit up, and Cartographer, cut loose from the wheel, was staggering in circles as he plucked and scraped manure off his face, neck, and rotted clothes.

Glanno had reached the eleventh love of his life, some woman named Herboo Nast, ‘. . who wore a fox round her neck — not just its fur, you understand, the actual animal, paws trussed up in berbraided silk, gamuzzled in leather, but it was the beast’s eyes I remember most — that look. Panic, like it’d just realized it was trapped in its worst nightlymare. Not that she wasn’t good-looking, in that goatlike way of hers — you know, those long curly hairs that show up under their chin after a certain age — did I mention how I liked my women experientialled? I do. I most certainly do. I wanna see decades and decades of miserable livin’ in their eyes, so that when I arrive, why, it’s like a fresh spring rain on a withered daisy. Which one was I talking about? Fox, goat, panic, trussed up, right, Herboo Nast-’

He stopped then, so abruptly that neither Tula nor Amby noticed the sudden, ominous silence, and just kept on with the smiles and nods with which they had accompanied Glanno’s monologue, and they were still smiling and nodding when the figure that had appeared on the warehouse loading platform — the one whose arrival had so thoroughly stunned Glanno Tarp’s flapping tongue — walked up to halt directly in front of all three, as the horses bolted for the most distant corner of the corral in a drumroll of hoofs.

‘No losses so far and that’s good,’ said Quell as he and Gruntle walked towards the corral.

‘I didn’t know you were a practitioner of Denul,’ Gruntle said.

‘I’m not, not really, I mean. I have elixirs, unguents, salves, and some of those are High Denul, for emergencies.’

‘Like now.’

‘Maybe, We’ll see.’

‘Broken legs-’

‘Doesn’t need legs to drive the carriage, does he? Besides, he might decline my services.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘Healing expenses cut into his share. He could come out of this owing the Guild rather than the other way round.’ He shrugged. ‘Some people refuse.’

‘Well,’ said Gruntle, ‘he said to get you, so I don’t think he’s going to. refuse, Master Quell.’

They reached the low stone wall and then halted.

‘Who in Hood’s name is that?’ Gruntle asked, squinting at the tall ragged fig shy;ure standing with the Bole brothers.

Quell grunted, and then said, ‘Well, and it’s just a guess, mind you, but I’d say that that’s the Provost’s wife.’

‘He’s married to a Jaghut?’

‘Was, until he buried her, but then the yard collapsed into the sea, taking her with it. And now she’s back and I’d wager a trip’s profit she’s not in the best of moods.’ And then he smiled up at Gruntle. ‘We can work all this out. Oh, yes, we can work all this out, now.’

This confidence was shattered when Jula and Amby Bole suddenly took it upon themselves to attack the Jaghut. Bellowing, they flung themselves at her, and all three figures lurched about as they struggled, clawed, scratched and bit, until finally they lost their footing and toppled in a multilimbed mass that slopped heavily in the muck.

Quell and Gruntle scrambled over the wall and raced for them.

Glanno Tarp was shrieking something, his words unintelligible as he sought to crawl away from the scrap.

From the Jaghut woman sorcery erupted, a thundering, deafening detonation that lit up the entire corral and all the buildings nearby. Blinking against the sudden blindness, Gruntle staggered in the mud. He heard Quell fall beside him. The coruscating, actinic light continued to bristle, throwing everything into harsh shadows.

Glanno Tarp resumed his shrieks.

As vision returned, Gruntle saw, to his astonishment, that both Boles still lived. In fact, they had each pinned down an arm and were holding tight as the Jaghut woman thrashed and snarled.

Drawing his cutlasses, Gruntle made his way over. ‘Jula! Amby! What are you doing?’

Two mud-smeared faces looked up, and their expressions were dark, twisted with anger.

‘A swamp witch!’ Jula said. ‘She’s one of them swamp witches!’

‘We don’t like swamp witches!’ added Amby. ‘We kill swamp witches!’

‘Master Quell said this one can help us,’ said Gruntle. ‘Or she would have, if not for you two jumping her like that!’

‘Cut her head off!’ said Jula. ‘That usually works!’

‘I’m not cutting her head of. Let her go, you two-’

‘She’ll attack us!’

Gruntle crouched down. ‘Jaghut — stop snarling — listen to me! If they let you go, will you stop fighting?’

Eyes burned as if aflame. She struggled some more, and then ceased all motion. The blazing glare dimmed, and after a few deep, rattling breaths, she nodded. ‘Very well. Now get these two fools off me!’

‘Jula, Amby — let go of her-’

‘We will, once you cut her head off!’

‘Do it now, Boles, or I will cut your heads off.’

‘Do Amby first!’

‘No, Jula first!’

‘I’ve got two cutlasses here, boys, so I’ll do it at the same time. How does that suit you?’

The Boles half lifted themselves up and glared across at each other.

‘We don’t like it,’ said Amby.

‘So leave off her, then.’

They rolled to the sides, away from the Jaghut woman; and she pulled her arms loose and clambered to her feet. The penumbra of sorcery dimmed, winked out. Breathing hard, she spun to face the Bole brothers, who’d rolled in converging arcs until they collided and were now crouched side by side in the mud, eyeing her like a pair of wolves.

Clutching his head, Master Quell stumbled up to them. ‘You idiots,’ he gasped. ‘Jaghut, your husband’s cursed this village. Tralka Vonan. Can you do anything about that?’

She was trying to wipe the mud from her rotted clothes. ‘You’re not from around here,’ she said. ‘Who are you people?’

‘Just passing through,’ Quell said. ‘But our carriage needs repairs — and we got wounded-’

‘I am about to destroy this village and everyone in it — does that bother you?’

Quell licked his muddy lips, made a face, and then said, ‘That depends if you’re including us in your plans of slaughter.’

‘Are you pirates?’

‘No.’

‘Wreckers?’

‘No.’

‘Necromancers?’

‘No.’

Then,’ she said, with another glare at the Boles, ‘I suppose you can live.’

‘Your husband says even if he dies, the curse will persist.’

She bared stained tusks. ‘He’s lying.’

Quell glanced at Gruntle, who shrugged in return and said, ‘I’m not happy with the idea of pointless slaughter, but then, wreckers are the scum of humanity.’

The Jaghut woman walked towards the stone wall. They watched her.

‘Master Quell,’ said Glanno Tarp, ‘got any splints?’

Quell shot Gruntle another look. ‘Told you, the cheap bastard.’

At last the sun rose, lifting a rim of fire above the horizon on this the last day of the wrecker village on the Reach of Woe.

From a window of the tower, Bedusk Pall Kovuss Agape stood watching his wife approaching up the street. ‘Oh,’ he murmured, ‘I’m in trouble now.’

In the moments before dawn, Kedeviss rose from her blankets and walked out into the darkness. She could make out the shape of him, sitting on a large boulder and staring northward. Rings spun on chains, glittering like snared-stars.

Her moccasins on the gravel scree gave her away and she saw him twist round to watch her approach.

‘You no longer sleep,’ she said.

To this observation, Clip said nothing.

‘Something has happened to you,’ she continued. ‘When you awoke in Bastion, you were. . changed. I thought it was some sort of residue from the possession. Now, I am not so sure.’

He put away the chain and rings and then slid down from the boulder, landing lightly and taking a moment to straighten his cloak. ‘Of them all,’ he said in a low voice, ‘you, Kedeviss, are the sharpest. You see what the others do not.’

‘I make a point of paying attention. You’ve hidden yourself well, Clip — or whoever you now are.’

‘Not well enough, it seems.’

‘What do you plan to do?’ she asked him. ‘Anomander Rake will see clearly, the moment he sets his eyes upon you. And no doubt there will be others.’

‘I was Herald of Dark,’ he said.

‘I doubt it,’ she said.

‘I was Mortal Sword to the Black-Winged Lord, to Rake himself.’

‘He didn’t choose you, though, did he? You worshipped a god who never an shy;swered, not a single prayer. A god who, in all likelihood, never even knew you existed.’

‘And for that,’ whispered Clip, ‘he will answer.’

Her brows rose. ‘Is this a quest for vengeance? If we had known-’

‘What you knew or didn’t know is irrelevant.’

‘A Mortal Sword serves.’

‘I said, Kedeviss, I was a Mortal Sword.’

‘No longer, then. Very well, Clip, what are you now?’

In the grainy half-light she saw him smile, and something dark veiled his eyes. ‘One day, in the sky over Bastion, a warren opened. A machine tumbled out, and down-’

She nodded. ‘Yes, we saw that machine.’

‘The one within brought with him a child god — oh, not deliberately. No, the mechanism of his sky carriage, in creating gates, in travelling from realm to realm, by its very nature cast a net, a net that captured this child god. And dragged it here.’

‘And this traveller — what happened to him?’

Clip shrugged.

She studied him, head cocked to one side. ‘We failed, didn’t we?’

He eyed her, as if faintly amused.

‘We thought we’d driven the Dying God from you — instead, we drove him deeper. By destroying the cavern realm where he dwelt.’

‘You ended his pain, Kedeviss,’ said Clip. ‘Leaving only his. . hunger.’

‘Rake will destroy you. Nor,’ she added, ‘will we accompany you to Black Coral. Go your own way, godling. We shall find our own way there-’

He was smiling. ‘Before me? Shall we race, Kedeviss — me with my hunger and you with your warning? Rake does not frighten me — the Tiste Andii do not frighten me. When they see me, they will see naught but kin — until it is too late.’

‘Godling, if in poring through Clip’s mind you now feel you understand the Tiste Andii, I must tell you, you are wrong. Clip was a barbarian. Ignorant. A fool. He knew nothing.’

‘I am not interested in the Tiste Andii — oh, I will kill Rake, because that is what he deserves. I will feed upon him and take his power into me. No, the one I seek is not in Black Coral, but within a barrow outside the city. Another young god — so young, so helpless, so naive.’ His smile returned. ‘And he knows I am coming for him.’

‘Must we then stop you ourselves?’

‘You? Nimander, Nenanda, all you pups? Now really, Kedeviss.’

‘If you-’

His attack was a blur — one hand closing about her throat, the other covering her mouth. She felt her throat being crushed and scrabbled for the knife at her belt.

He spun her round and flung her down to the ground, so hard that the back of her head crunched on the rocks. Dazed, her struggles weakened, flailed, fell away.

Something was pouring out from his hand where it covered her mouth, some shy;thing that numbed her lips, her jaws, then forced its way into her mouth and down her throat. Thick as tree sap. She stared up at him, saw the muddy gleam of the Dying God’s eyes — dying no longer, now freed — and thought: what have we done?

He was whispering. ‘I could stop now, and you’d be mine. It’s tempting.’

Instead, whatever oozed from his hand seemed to burgeon, sliding like a fat, sleek serpent down her throat, coiling in her gut.

‘But you might break loose — just a moment’s worth, but enough to warn the others, and I can’t have that.’

Where the poison touched, there was a moment of ecstatic need, sweeping through her, but that was followed almost instantly by numbness, and then something. . darker. She could smell her own rot, pooling like vapours in her brain.

He is killing me. Even that knowledge could not awaken any strength within her.

‘I need the rest of them, you see,’ he was saying. ‘So we can walk in, right in, without anyone suspecting anything. I need my way in, that’s all. Look at Nimander.’ He snorted. ‘There is no guile in him, none at all. He will be my shield. My shield.’

He was no longer gripping her neck. It was no longer necessary.

Kedeviss stared up at him as she died, and her final, fading thought was: Nimander. . guileless? Oh, but you don’t. . And then there were nothing.

The nothing that no priest dared speak of, that no holy scripture described, that no seer or prophet set forth in ringing proclamation. The nothing, this nothing, it is the soul in waiting.

Comes death, and now the soul waits.

Aranatha opened her eyes, sat up, then reached out to touch Nimander’s shoulder. He awoke, looked at her with a question in his eyes.

‘He has killed Kedeviss,’ she said, the words soft as a breath.

Nimander paled.

‘She was right,’ Aranatha went on, ‘and now we must be careful. Say nothing to anyone else, not yet, or you will see us all die.’

‘Kedeviss.’

‘He has carried her body to a crevasse, and thrown her into it, and now he makes signs on the ground to show her careless steps, the way the edge gave way. He will come to us in shock and grief. Nimander, you must display no suspicion, do you understand?’

And she saw that his own grief would sweep all else aside — at least for now — which was good. Necessary. And that the anger within him, the rage destined to come, would be slow to build, and as it did she would speak to him again, and give him the strength he would need.

Kedeviss had been the first to see the truth — or so it might have seemed. But Aranatha knew that Nimander’s innocence was not some innate flaw, not some fatal weakness. No, his innocence was a choice he had made. The very path of his life. And he had his reasons for that.

Easy to see such a thing and misunderstand it. Easy to see it as a failing, and to then believe him irresolute.

Clip had made this error from the very beginning. And so too this Dying God, who knew only what Clip believed, and thought it truth.

She looked down and saw tears held back, waiting for Clip’s sudden arrival with his tragic news, and Aranatha nodded and turned away, to feign sleep.

Somewhere beyond the camp waited a soul, motionless as a startled hare. This was sad. Aranatha had loved Kedeviss dearly, had admired her cleverness, her percipience. Had cherished her loyalty to Nimander — even though Kedeviss had perhaps suspected the strange circumstances surrounding Phaed’s death, and had seen how Phaed and her secrets haunted Nimander still.

When one can possess loyalty even in the straits of full, brutal understanding, then that one understands all there is to understand about compassion.

Kedeviss, you were a gift. And now your soul waits, as it must. For this is the fate of the Tiste Andii. Our fate. We will wait.

Until the wait is over.

Endest Silann stood with his back to the rising sun. And to the city of Black Coral. The air was chill, damp with night’s breath, and the road wending out from the gates that followed the coastline of the Cut was a bleak, colourless ribbon that snaked into stands of dark conifers half a league to the west. Empty of traffic.

The cloak of eternal darkness shrouding the city blocked the sun’s stretching rays, although the western flanks of the jumbled slope to their right was showing gilt edges; and far off to the left, the gloom of the Cut steamed white from the smooth, black surface.

‘There will be,’ said Anomander Rake, ‘unpleasantness.’

‘I know, Lord.’

‘It was an unanticipated complication.’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘I will walk,’ said Rake, ‘until I reach the tree line. Out of sight, at least until then.’

‘Have you waited too long, Lord?’

‘No.’

‘That is well, then.’

Anomander Rake rested a hand on Endest’s shoulder. ‘You have ever been, my friend, more than I deserve.’

Endest Silann could only shake his head, refuting that.

‘If we are to live,’ Rake went on, ‘we must take risks. Else our lives become deaths in all but name. There is no struggle too vast, no odds too overwhelming, for even should we fail — should we fall — we will know that we have lived.’

Endest nodded, unable to speak. There should be tears streaming down his face, but he was dry inside — his skull, behind his eyes, all. . dry. Despair was a furnace where everything had burned up, where everything was ashes, but the heat remained, scalding, brittle and fractious.

‘The day has begun.’ Rake withdrew his hand and pulled on his gauntlets. ‘This walk, along this path. . I will take pleasure in it, my friend. Knowing that you stand here to see me off.’

And the Son of Darkness set out.

Endest Silann watched. The warrior with his long silver hair flowing, his leather cloak flaring out. Dragnipur a scabbarded slash.

Blue seeped into the sky, shadows in retreat along the slope. Gold painted the tops of the tree line where the road slipped in. At the very edge, Anomander Rake paused, turned about and raised one hand high.

Endest Silann did the same, but the gesture was so weak it made him gasp, and his arm faltered.

And then the distant figure swung round.

And vanished beneath the trees.