My faith in the gods is this: they are indifferent to my suffering.
Tomlos, Destriant of Fener ?827 Burn's Sleep His hands reached into another world. In, then out, in, then out again. Taking, giving – Heboric could not tell which, if either.
Perhaps nothing more than the way a tongue worried a loose tooth, the unceasing probing that triggered stabs of confirmation that things still weren't quite right. He reached in, and touched something, the impulsive gesture bitter as benediction, as if he could not help but repeat, endlessly, a mocking healer's touch.
To the souls lost in the shattered pieces of jade giants, Heboric offered only lies. Oh, his touch told them of his presence, his attention, and they in turn were reminded of the true lives they once possessed, but what sort of gift could such knowledge provide? He voiced no promises, yet they believed in him nonetheless, and this was worse than torture, for both him and them.
The dead city was two days behind them now, yet its ignorant complacency haunted him still, the ghosts and their insensate, repetitive lives measured out stride by stride again and again. Too many truths were revealed in that travail, and when it came to futility Heboric needed no reminders.
Unseasonal clouds painted silver the sky, behind which the sun slid in its rut virtually unseen. Biting insects swarmed in the cooler air, danced in the muted light on the old traders' road on which Heboric and his comrades travelled, rising up in clouds before them.
The horses snorted to clear their nostrils, rippled the skin of their necks and flanks. Scillara worked through her impressive list of curses, fending off the insects with clouds of rustleaf smoke swirling about her head. Felisin Younger did much the same, but without the blue tirade. Cutter rode ahead, and so, Heboric realized, was both responsible for stirring the hordes and blessed by quickly passing through them.
It seemed that Scillara too had noticed the same thing. 'Why isn't he back here? Then the bloodflies and chigger fleas would be chasing all of us, instead of this – this nightmare!'
Heboric said nothing. Greyfrog was bounding along on the south side of the road, keeping pace. Unbroken scrubland stretched out beyond the demon, whilst to the north ran a ridge of hills – the tail end of the ancient mountain range that held the long-dead city.
Icarium's legacy. Like a god loosed and walking the land, Icarium left bloody footprints. Such creatures should be killed. Such creatures are an abomination. Whereas Fener – Fener had simply disappeared. Dragged as the Boar God had been into this realm, most of its power had been stripped away. To reveal itself would be to invite annihilation. There were hunters out there. I need to find a way, a way to send Fener back. And if Treach didn't like it, too bad. The Boar and the Wolf could share the Throne of War. In fact, it made sense. There were always two sides in a war. Us and them, and neither can rightly be denied their faith. Yes, there was symmetry in such a notion. 'It's true,' he said, 'I have never believed in single answers, never believed in this… this divisive clash of singularity. Power may have ten thousand faces, but the look in the eyes of every one of them is the same.' He glanced over to see Scillara and Felisin staring at him.
'There's no difference,' he said, 'between speaking aloud or in one's own head – either way, no-one listens.'
'Hard to listen,' Scillara said, 'when what you say makes no sense.'
'Sense takes effort.'
'Oh, I'll tell you what makes sense, old man. Children are a woman's curse. They start with weighing you down from the inside, then they weigh you down from the outside. For how long? No, not days, not months, not even years. Decades. Babies, better they were born with tails and four legs and eager to run away and crawl into some hole in the ground. Better they could fend for themselves the moment they scuttle free. Now, that would make sense.'
'If that was the way it was,' Felisin said, 'then there'd be no need for families, for villages, for towns and cities. We'd all be living in the wilderness.'
'Instead,' Scillara said, 'we live in a prison. Us women, anyway.'
'It can't be as bad as that,' Felisin insisted.
'Nothing can be done,' Heboric said. 'We each fall into our lives and that's that. Some choices we make, but most are made for us.'
'Well,' Scillara retorted, 'you would think that, wouldn't you? But look at this stupid journey here, Heboric. True, at first we were just fleeing Raraku, that damned sea rising up out of the sands. Then it was that idiot priest of Shadow, and Cutter there, and suddenly we were following you – where? The island of Otataral. Why? Who knows, but it has something to do with those ghost hands of yours, something to do with you righting a wrong. And now I'm pregnant.'
'How does that last detail fit?' Felisin demanded, clearly exasperated.
'It just does, and no, I'm not interested in explaining. Gods below, I'm choking on these damned bugs! Cutter! Get back here, you brainless oaf!'
Heboric was amused by the stunned surprise in the young man's face as he turned round at the shout.
The Daru reined in and waited.
By the time the others arrived, he was cursing and slapping at insects.
'Now you know how we feel,' Scillara snapped.
'Then we should pick up our pace,' Cutter said. 'Is everyone all right with that? It'd be good for the horses, besides. They need some stretching out.'
I think we all need that. 'Set the pace, Cutter. I'm sure Greyfrog can keep up.'
'He jumps with his mouth open,' Scillara said.
'Maybe we should all try that,' Felisin suggested.
'Hah! I'm full up enough as it is!'
No god truly deserved its acolytes. It was an unequal relationship in every sense, Heboric told himself. Mortals could sacrifice their entire adult life in the pursuit of communion with their chosen god, and what was paid in return for such devotion? Not much at best; often, nothing at all. Was the faint touch from something, someone, far greater in power – was that enough?
When I touched Fener…
The Boar God would have been better served, he realized, with Heboric' s indifference. The thought cut into him like a saw-bladed, blunt knife – nothing smooth, nothing precise – and, as Cutter led them into a canter down the track, Heboric could only bare his teeth in a hard grimace against the spiritual pain.
From which rose a susurration of voices, all begging him, pleading with him. For what he could not give. Was this how gods felt?
Inundated with countless prayers, the seeking of blessing, the gift of redemption sought by myriad lost souls. So many that the god could only reel back, pummelled and stunned, and so answer every beseeching voice with nothing but silence.
But redemption was not a gift. Redemption had to be earned.
And so on we ride…
Scillara drew up alongside Cutter. She studied him until he became aware of the attention and swung his head round.
'What is it? What's wrong?'
'Who said anything was wrong?'
'Well, it's been a rather long list of complaints from you of late, Scillara.'
'No, it's been a short list. I just like repeating myself.'
She watched him sigh, then he shrugged and said, 'We're maybe a week from the coast. I'm beginning to wonder if it was a good thing to take this overland route… through completely unpopulated areas. We're always rationing our food and we're all suffering from that, excepting maybe you and Greyfrog. And we're growing increasingly paranoid, fleeing from every dust-trail and journey-house.' He shook his head. '
Nothing's after us. We're not being hunted. Nobody gives a damn what we're up to or where we're going.'
'What if you're wrong?' Scillara asked. She looped the reins over the saddle horn and began repacking her pipe. His horse misstepped, momentarily jolting her. She winced. 'Some advice for you, Cutter. If you ever get pregnant, don't ride a horse.'
'I'll try to remember that,' he said. 'Anyway, you're right. I might be wrong. But I don't think I am. It's not like we've set a torrid pace, so if hunters were after us, they'd have caught up long ago.'
She had an obvious reply to that, but let it go. 'Have you been looking around, Cutter? As we've travelled? All these weeks in this seeming wasteland?'
'Only as much as I need to, why?'
'Heboric's chosen this path, but it's not by accident. Sure, it's a wasteland now, but it wasn't always one. I've started noticing things, and not just the obvious ones like that ruined city we passed near.
We've been on old roads – loads that were once bigger, level, often raised. Roads from a civilization that's all gone now. And look at that stretch of ground over there,' she pointed southward. 'See the ripples? That's furrowing, old, almost worn away, but when the light lengthens you can start to make it out. It was all once tilled.
Fertile. I've been seeing this for weeks, Cutter. Heboric's track is taking us through the bones of a dead age. Why?'
'Why don't you ask him?'
'I don't want to.'
'Well, since he's right behind us, he's probably listening right now, Scillara.'
'I don't care. I was asking you.'
'Well, I don't know why.'
'I do,' she said.
'Oh. All right, then, why?'
'Heboric likes his nightmares. That's why.'
Cutter met her eyes, then the Daru twisted in his saddle and looked back at Heboric.
Who said nothing.
'Death and dying,' Scillara continued. 'The way we suck the land dry.
The way we squeeze all colour from every scene, even when that scene shows us paradise. And what we do to the land, we also do to each other. We cut each other down. Even Sha'ik's camp had its tiers, its hierarchy, keeping people in their place.'
'You don't have to tell me about that,' Cutter said. 'I lived under something similar, in Darujhistan.'
'I wasn't finished. It's why Bidithal found followers for his cult.
What gave it its strength was the injustice, the unfairness, and the way bastards always seemed to win. You see, Bidithal had been one of those bastards, once. Luxuriating in his power – then the Malazans arrived, and they tore it all apart, and Bidithal found himself on the run, just one more hare fleeing the wolves. For him, well, he wanted it back, all that power, and this new cult he created was for that purpose. The problem was, either he was lucky or a genius, because the idea behind his cult – not the vicious rituals he imposed, but the idea – it struck a nerve. It reached the dispossessed, and that was its brilliance-'
'It wasn't his idea,' Heboric said behind them.
'Then whose was it?' Cutter asked.
'It belongs to the Crippled God. The Chained One. A broken creature, betrayed, wounded, imperfect in the way of street beggars, abandoned urchins, the physically and the morally damaged. And the promise of something better, beyond death itself – the very paradise Scillara spoke of, but one we could not deface. In other words, the dream of a place immune to our natural excesses, to our own depravity, and accordingly, to exist within it is to divest oneself of all those excesses, all those depravities. You just have to die first.'
'Do you feel fear, Heboric?' Scillara asked. 'You describe a very seductive faith.'
'Yes, to both. If, however, its heart is in fact a lie, then we must make the truth a weapon, a weapon that, in the end, must reach for the Crippled God himself. To shy from that final act would be to leave unchallenged the greatest injustice of all, the most profound unfairness, and the deepest betrayal imaginable.'
'If it's a lie,' Scillara said. 'Is it? How do you know?'
'Woman, if absolution is free, then all that we do here and now is meaningless.'
'Well, maybe it is.'
'Then it would not even be a question of justifying anything – justification itself would be irrelevant. You invite anarchy – you invite chaos itself.'
She shook her head. 'No, because there's one force more powerful than all of that.'
'Oh?' Cutter asked. 'What?'
Scillara laughed. 'What I was talking about earlier.' She gestured once more at the ancient signs of tillage. 'Look around, Cutter, look around.'
Iskaral Pust plucked at the thick strands of web covering Mappo Runt's massive chest. 'Get rid of this! Before he wakes up, you damned hag.
You and your damned moon – look, it's going to rain. This is a desert – what's it doing raining? It's all your fault.' He glanced up, smiling evilly. 'She suspects nothing, the miserable cow. Oh I can't wait.' Straightening, he scurried back to the long bamboo stick he'd found – bamboo, for god's sake – and resumed drilling the tiny fixing holes in the base.
Twisted wire eyelets, bound at intervals with wet gut right up to the finely tapered end. A carved and polished wooden spool and half a league's worth of Mogora hair, spun together and felted or something similar, strong enough to reel in anything, including a miserable cow flopping about in the shallows. True, he'd have to wait a year or two, until the little wriggling ones grew to a decent size. Maybe he'd add a few bigger ones – there were those giant catfish he'd seen in that flooded realm, the one with all the monsters padding the shorelines.
Iskaral Pust shivered at the recollection, but a true lover of fishing would understand the lengths an aficionado would go to in the hunt for worthy spawn. Even the extreme necessity of killing demons and such.
Granted, that particular sojourn had been a little hairy. But he'd come back with a string of beauties.
As a child he'd wanted to learn the art of angling, but the women and elders in the tribe weren't interested in that, no, just weirs and collecting pools and nets. That was harvesting, not fishing, but young Iskaral Pust, who'd once run away with a caravan and had seen the sights of Li Heng – for a day and a half, until his great-grandmother had come to retrieve him and drag him screaming like a gutted piglet back to the tribe – well, Iskaral Pust had discovered the perfect expression of creative predation, an expression which was – as everyone knew – the ideal manly endeavour.
Soon, then, and he and his mule would have the ultimate excuse to leave the hoary temple of home. Going fishing, dear. Ah, how he longed to say those words.
'You are an idiot,' Mogora said.
'A clever idiot, woman, and that's a lot more cleverer than you.' He paused, eyeing her, then said, 'Now all I need to do is wait until she's asleep, so I can cut off all her hair – she won't notice, it's not like we have silver mirrors hanging about, is it? I'll mix it all up, the hair from her head, from her ears, from under her arms, from-'
'You think I don't know what you're up to?' Mogora asked, then cackled as only an old woman begotten of hyenas could. 'You are not just an idiot. You're also a fool. And deluded, and immature, and obsessive, and petty, spiteful, patronizing, condescending, defensive, aggressive, ignorant, wilful, inconsistent, contradictory, and you're ugly as well.'
'So what of it?'
She gaped at him like a toothless spider. 'You have a brain like pumice stone – throw stuff at it and it just sinks in! Disappears.
Vanishes. Even when I piss on it, the piss just poofs! Gone! Oh how I hate you, husband. With all your obnoxious, smelly habits – gods, picking your nose for breakfast – I still get sick thinking about it – a sight I am cursed never to forget-'
'Oh be quiet. There's nutritious pollen entombed in snot, as everyone well knows-'
A heavy sigh interrupted him, and both Dal Honese looked down at Mappo. Mogora scrabbled over and began stripping away the webs from the Trell's seamed face.
Iskaral Pust leaned closer. 'What's happened to his skin? It's all lined and creased – what did you do to him, woman?'
'The mark of spiders, Magi,' she replied. 'The price for healing.'
'Every strand's left a line!'
'Well, he was no beauty to begin with.'
A groan, then Mappo half-lifted a hand. It fell back and he groaned again.
'He's now got a spider's brain, too,' Iskaral predicted. 'He'll start spitting on his food – like you do, and you dare call picking my nose disgusting.'
'No self-respecting creature does what you did this morning, Iskaral Pust. You won't get no spiders picking their noses, will you? Ha, you know I'm right.'
'No I don't. I was just picturing a spider with eight legs up its nose, and that reminded me of you. You need a haircut, Mogora, and I'm just the man to do it.'
'Come near me with intentions other than amorous and I'll stick you.'
'Amorous. What a horrible thought-'
'What if I told you I was pregnant?'
'I'd kill the mule.'
She leapt at him..
Squealing, then spitting and scratching, they rolled in the dust.
The mule watched them with placid eyes.
Crushed and scattered, the tiles that had once made the mosaic of Mappo Runt's life were little more than faint glimmers, as if dispersed at the bottom of a deep well. Disparate fragments he could only observe, his awareness of their significance remote, and for a seemingly long time they had been retreating from him, as if he was slowly, inexorably floating towards some unknown surface.
Until the silver threads arrived, descending like rain, sleeting through the thick, murky substance surrounding him. And he felt their touch, and then their weight, halting his upward progress, and, after a time of motionlessness, Mappo began sinking back down. Towards those broken pieces far below.
Where pain awaited him. Not of the flesh – there was no flesh, not yet – this was a searing of the soul, the manifold wounds of betrayal, of failure, of self-recrimination, the very fists that had shattered all that he had been… before the fall.
Yet still the threads drew the pieces together, unmindful of agony, ignoring his every screamed protest.
He found himself standing amidst tall pillars of stone that had been antler-chiselled into tapering columns. Heavy wrought-iron clouds scudded over one half of the sky, a high wind spinning strands across the other half, filling a void – as if something had punched through from the heavens and the hole was slow in healing. The pillars, Mappo saw, rose on all sides, scores of them, forming some pattern indefinable from where he stood in their midst. They cast faint shadows across the battered ground, and his gaze was drawn to those shadows, blankly at first, then with growing realization. Shadows cast in impossible directions, forming a faint array, a web, reaching out on all sides.
And, Mappo now understood, he stood at its very centre.
A young woman stepped into view from behind one of the pillars. Long hair the colours of dying flames, eyes the hue of beaten gold, dressed in flowing black silks. 'This,' she said in the language of the Trell, 'is long ago. Some memories are better left alone.'
'I have not chosen it,' Mappo said. 'I do not know this place.'
'Jacuruku, Mappo Runt. Four or five years since the Fall. Yet one more abject lesson in the dangers that come with pride.' She lifted her arms, watched as the silks slid free, revealing unblemished skin, smooth hands. 'Ah, look at me. I am young again. Extraordinary, that I once believed myself fat. Does it afflict us all, I wonder, the way one's sense of self changes over time? Or, do most people contend, wilfully or otherwise, a changeless persistence in their staid lives?
When you have lived as long as I have, of course, no such delusions survive.' She looked up, met his eyes. 'But you know this, Trell, don' t you? The gift of the Nameless Ones shrouds you, the longevity haunts your eyes like scratched gemstones, worn far past beauty, far past even the shimmer of conceit.'
'Who are you?' Mappo asked.
'A queen about to be driven from her throne, banished from her empire.
My vanity is about to suffer an ignominious defeat.'
'Are you an Elder Goddess? I believe I know you…' He gestured. 'This vast web, the unseen pattern amidst seeming chaos. Shall I name you?'
'Best you did not. I have since learned the art of hiding. Nor am I inclined to grant favours. Mogora, that old witch, will rue this day.
Mind you, perhaps she is not to blame. There is a whisper in the shadows about you, Mappo. Tell me, what possible interest would Shadowthrone have in you? Or in Icarium, for that matter?'
He started. Icarium. I failed him – Abyss below, what has happened? '
Does he yet live?'
'He does, and the Nameless Ones have gifted him with a new companion.'
She half-smiled. 'You have been… discarded. Why, I wonder? Perhaps some failing of purpose, a faltering – you have lost the purity of your vow, haven't you?'
He looked away. 'Why have they not killed him, then?'
She shrugged. 'Presumably, they foresee a use for his talents. Ah, the notion terrifies you, doesn't it? Can it be true that you have, until this moment, retained your faith in the Nameless Ones?'
'No. I am distressed by the notion of what they will release. Icarium is not a weapon-'
'Oh you fool, of course he is. They made him, and now they will use him… ah, now I understand Shadowthrone. Clever bastard. Of course, I am offended that he would so blithely assume my allegiance. And even more offended to realize that, in this matter, his assumption was correct.' She paused, then sighed. 'It is time to send you back.'
'Wait – you said something – the Nameless Ones, that they made Icarium. I thought-'
'Forged by their own hands, and then, through the succession of guardians like you, Mappo, honed again and yet again. Was he as deadly when he first crawled from the wreckage they'd made of his young life?
As deadly as he is now? I would imagine not.' She studied him. 'My words wound you. You know, I dislike Shadowthrone more and more, as my every act and every word here complies with his nefarious expectation.
I wound you, then realize that he needs you wounded. How is it he knows us so well?'
'Send me back.'
'Icarium's trail grows cold.'
'Now.'
'Oh, Mappo, you incite me unto weeping. I did that, on occasion, when I was young. Although, granted, most of my tears were inspired by self-pity. And so, we are transformed. Leave now, Mappo Runt. Do what you must.'
He found himself lying on the ground, bright sun overhead. Two beasts were fighting nearby – no, he saw as he turned his head, two people.
Slathered in dusty spit, dark streaks of gritty sweat, tugging handfuls of hair, kicking and gouging.
'Gods below,' Mappo breathed. 'Dal Honese.'
They ceased scrapping, looked over.
'Don't mind us,' Iskaral Pust said with a blood-smeared smile, 'we're married.'
There was no outrunning it. Scaled and bear-like, the beast massed as much as the Trygalle carriage, and its long, loping run covered more ground than the terrified horses could manage, exhausted as they now were. The red and black, ridged scales covering the animal were each the size of bucklers, and mostly impervious to missile fire, as had been proved by the countless quarrels that had skidded from its hide as it drew ever closer. It possessed a single, overlarge eye, faceted like an insect's and surrounded by a projecting ridge of protective bone. Its massive jaws held double rows of sabre teeth, each one as long as a man's forearm. Old battle-scars had marred the symmetry of the beast's wide, flat head.
The distance between the pursuer and the pursued had closed to less than two hundred paces. Paran abandoned his over-the-shoulder study of the beast and urged his horse ahead. They were pounding along a rocky shoreline. Twice they had clattered over the bones of some large creature, whale-like although many of the bones had been split and crushed. Up ahead and slightly inland, the land rose into something like a hill – as much as could be found in this realm. Paran waved towards it. 'That way!' he shouted to the driver.
'What?' the man shrieked. 'Are you mad?'
'One last push! Then halt and leave the rest to me!'
The old man shook his head, yet steered the horses up onto the slope, then drove them hard as, hoofs churning in the mud, they strained to pull the huge carriage uphill.
Paran slowed his horse once more, caught a glimpse of shareholders gathered round the back of the carriage, all staring at him as he reined in, directly in the beast's path.
One hundred paces.
Paran fought to control his panicking horse, even as he drew a wooden card from his saddlebag. On which he scored a half-dozen lines with his thumbnail. A moment to glance up – fifty paces, head lowering, jaws opening wide. Oh, a little closeTwo more deeper scores into the wood, then he flung the card out, into the path of the charging creature.
Four soft words under his breathThe card did not fall, but hung, motionless.
The scaled bear reached it, voicing a bellowing roar – and vanished.
Paran's horse reared, throwing him backward, his boots leaving the stirrups as he slid onto its rump, then off, landing hard to skid in the mud. He picked himself up, rubbing at his behind.
Shareholders rushed down to gather round him.
'How'd you do that?'
'Where'd it go?'
'Hey, if you coulda done that any time what was we runnin' for?'
Paran shrugged. 'Where – who knows? And as for the "how", well, I am Master of the Deck of Dragons. Might as well make the grand title meaningful.'
Gloved hands slapped his shoulders – harder than necessary, but he noted their relieved expressions, the terror draining from their eyes.
Hedge arrived. 'Nice one, Captain. I didn't think any of you'd make it. From what I saw, though, you left things nearly too late – too close. Saw your mouth moving – some kind of spell or something? Didn't know you were a mage-'
'I'm not. I was saying "I hope this works".'
Once again, everyone stared at him.
Paran walked over to his horse.
Hedge said, 'Anyway, from that hilltop you can see our destination.
The High Mage thought you should know.'
From the top of the hill, five huge black statues were visible in the distance, the intervening ground broken by small lakes and marsh grasses. Paran studied the rearing edifices for a time. Bestial hounds, seated on their haunches, perfectly rendered yet enormous in scale, carved entirely of black stone.
'About what you had expected?' Hedge asked, clambering back aboard the carriage.
'Wasn't sure,' Paran replied. 'Five… or seven. Well, now I know. The two shadow hounds from Dragnipur found their… counterparts, and so were reunited. Then, it seems, someone freed them.'
'Something paid us a visit,' Hedge said, 'the night us ghosts annihilated the Dogslayers. Into Sha'ik's camp.'
Paran turned to regard the ghost. 'You haven't mentioned this before, sapper.'
'Well, they didn't last long anyway.'
'What in Hood's name do you mean, they didn't last long?'
'I mean, someone killed them.'
'Killed them? Who? Did a god visit that night? One of the First Heroes? Or some other ascendant?'
Hedge was scowling. 'This is all second-hand, mind you, but from what I gathered, it was Toblakai. One of Sha'ik's bodyguards, a friend of Leoman's. Afraid I don't know much about him, just the name, or, I suppose, title, since it's not a real name-'
'A bodyguard named Toblakai killed two Deragoth hounds?'
The ghost shrugged, then nodded. 'Aye, that's about right, Captain.'
Paran drew off his helm and ran a hand through his hair – gods below, do I need a bath – then returned his attention to the distant statues and the intervening lowlands. 'Those lakes look shallow – we should have no trouble getting there.'
The carriage door opened and the Jaghut sorceress Ganath emerged. She eyed the black stone monuments. 'Dessimbelackis. One soul made seven – he believed that would make him immortal. An ascendant eager to become a god-'
'The Deragoth are far older than Dessimbelackis,' Paran said.
'Convenient vessels,' she said. 'Their kind were nearly extinct. He found the few last survivors and made use of them.'
Paran grunted, then said, 'That was a mistake. The Deragoth had their own history, their own story and it was not told in isolation.'
'Yes,' Ganath agreed, 'the Eres'al, who were led unto domestication by the Hounds that adopted them. The Eres'al, who would one day give rise to the Imass, who would one day give rise to humans.'
'As simple as that?' Hedge asked.
'No, far more complicated,' the Jaghut replied, 'but for our purposes, it will suffice.'
Paran returned to his horse. 'Almost there – I don't want any more interruptions – so let's get going, shall we?'
The water they crossed stank with decay, the lake bottom thick with black mud and, it turned out, starfish-shaped leeches. The train of horses struggled hard to drag the carriage through the sludge, although it was clear to Paran that Karpolan Demesand was using sorcery to lighten the vehicle in some way. Low mudbanks ribboning the lake afforded momentary respite, although these were home to hordes of biting insects that swarmed hungrily as the shareholders came down from the carriage to pull leeches from horse-legs. One such bank brought them close to the far shore, separated only by a narrow channel of sluggish water that they crossed without difficulty.
Before them was a long, gentle slope of mud-streaked gravel. Reaching the summit slightly ahead of the carriage, Paran reined in.
Nearest him, two huge pedestals surrounded in rubble marked where statues had once been. In the eternally damp mud around them were tracks, footprints, signs of some kind of scuffle. Immediately beyond rose the first of the intact monuments, the dull black stone appallingly lifelike in its rendition of hide and muscle. At its base stood a structure of some kind.
The carriage arrived, and Paran heard the side door open. Shareholders were leaping down to establish a defensive perimeter.
Dismounting, Paran walked towards the structure, Hedge coming up alongside him.
'Someone built a damned house,' the sapper said.
'Doesn't look lived in.'
'Not now, it don't.'
Constructed entirely from driftwood, the building was roughly rectangular, the long sides parallel to the statue's pedestal. No windows were visible, nor, from this side, any entrance. Paran studied it for a time, then headed towards one end. 'I don't think this was meant as a house,' he said. 'More like a temple.'
'Might be right – that driftwood makes no joins and there ain't no chinking or anything to fill the gaps. A mason would look at this and say it was for occasional use, which makes it sound more like a temple or a corral…'
They reached one end and saw a half-moon doorway. Branches had been set in rows in the loamy ground before it, creating a sort of walkway.
Muddy feet had trod its length, countless sets, but none very recent.
'Wore leather moccasins,' Hedge observed, crouching close to study the nearest prints. 'Seams were topside except at the back of the heel where there's a cross-stitch pattern. If this was Genabackis, I'd say Rhivi, except for one thing.'
'What?' Paran asked.
'Well, these folk have wide feet. Really wide.'
The ghost's head slowly turned towards the building's entrance. '
Captain, someone died in there.'
Paran nodded. 'I can smell it.'
They looked over as Ganath and Karpolan Demesand – the latter flanked by the two Pardu shareholders – approached. The Trygalle merchant-mage made a face as the foul stench of rotting meat reached him. He scowled over at the open doorway. 'The ritual spilling of blood,' he said, then uncharacteristically spat. 'These Deragoth have found worshippers. Master of the Deck, will this detail prove problematic?'
'Only if they show up,' Paran said. 'After that, well, they might end up having to reconsider their faith. This could prove tragic for them…'
'Are you reconsidering?' Karpolan asked.
'I wish I had that luxury. Ganath, will you join me in exploring the interior of the temple?'
Her brows rose fractionally, then she nodded. 'Of course. I note that darkness rules within – do you have need for light?'
'It wouldn't hurt.'
Leaving the others, they walked side by side towards the doorway. In a low voice, Ganath said, 'You suspect as I do, Ganoes Paran.'
'Yes.'
'Karpolan Demesand is no fool. He will realize before long.'
'Yes.'
'Then we should display brevity in our examination.'
'Agreed.'
Reaching the doorway, Ganath gestured and a dull, bluish light slowly rose in the chamber beyond.
They stepped within.
A single room – no inner walls. The floor was mud, packed by traffic.
A shattered, up-ended tree-stump dominated the centre, the roots reaching out almost horizontally, as if the tree had grown on flat bedrock, sending its tendrils out to all sides. In the centre of this makeshift altar the core of the bole itself had been carved into a basin shape, filled now by a pool of black, dried blood. Bound spreadeagled to outstretched roots were two corpses, both women, once bloated by decay but now rotted into gelatinous consistency as if melting, bones protruding here and there. Dead maggots lay in heaps beneath each body.
'Sedora Orr,' Paran surmised, 'and Darpareth Vayd.'
'That seems a reasonable assumption,' Ganath said. 'The Trygalle sorceress must have been injured in some way, given her stated prowess.'
'Well, that carriage was a mess.'
'Indeed. Have we seen enough, Ganoes Paran?'
'Blood ritual – an Elder propitiation. I would think the Deragoth have been drawn near.'
'Yes, meaning you have little time once you have effected their release.'
'I hope Karpolan is up to this.' He glanced over at the Jaghut. 'In a true emergency, Ganath, can you… assist?'
'Perhaps. As you know, I am not pleased with what you intend here.
What would please me even less, however, is being torn apart by Hounds of Darkness.'
'I share that aversion. Good. So, if I call upon your assistance, Ganath, you will know what to do?'
'Yes.'
Paran turned about. 'It may sound unreasonable,' he said, 'but my sympathy for the likely plight of these worshippers has diminished somewhat.'
'Yes, that is unreasonable. Your kind worship from fear, after all.
And what you unleash here will be the five faces of that fear. And so shall these poor people suffer.'
'If they weren't interested in the attention of their gods, Ganath, they would have avoided the spilling of blood on consecrated ground.'
'Someone among them sought that attention, and the power that might come from it. A High Priest or shaman, I suspect.'
'Well then, if the Hounds don't kill that High Priest, his followers will.'
'A harsh lesson, Ganoes Paran.'
'Tell that to these two dead women.'
The Jaghut made no reply.
They walked from the temple, the light fading behind them.
Paran noted Karpolan Demesand's fixed regard, the dread plain, undeniable, and he slowly nodded. The Trygalle master turned away and, exhausted as he had been earlier, his weariness seemed to increase tenfold.
Hedge came close. 'Could've been shareholders,' he suggested.
'No,' said Ganath. 'Two women, both expensively attired. One must presume that the shareholders met their fate elsewhere.'
Paran said to Hedge, 'Now comes your final task, sapper. Summoning the Deragoth – but consider this first – they're close, and we need time to-'
'Run like Hood's bowels, aye.' Hedge lifted a satchel into view. 'Now, before you ask me where I been hiding this, don't bother. Here in this place, details like that don't matter.' He grinned. 'Some people would like to take gold with 'em when they go. Me, I'll take Moranth munitions over gold any day. After all, you don't know what you're going to meet on the other side, right? So, it's always better holding onto the option of blowing things up.'
'Wise counsel, Hedge. And those munitions will work here?'
'Absolutely, Captain. Death once called this home, remember?'
Paran studied the nearest statue. 'You intend to shatter them.'
'Aye.'
'Timed charge.'
'Aye.'
'Only, you have five to set, and the farthest one looks two, three hundred paces away.'
'Aye. That's going to be a problem – well, let's call it a challenge.
Granted, Fid's better at this finesse stuff than me. But tell me something, Captain – you're sure these Deragoth ain't just going to hang round here?'
'I'm sure. They'll return to their home realm – that's what the first two did, didn't they?'
'Aye, but they had their shadows. Might be these ones will go hunting their own first.'
Paran frowned. He'd not considered that. 'Oh, I see. Into the Realm of Shadow, then.'
'If that's where the Hounds of Shadow are at the moment, aye.'
Damn. 'All right, set your charges, Hedge, but don't start the sand grains running just yet.'
'Right.'
Paran watched the sapper head off. Then he drew out his Deck of Dragons. Paused, glancing over at Ganath, then Karpolan Demesand. Both saw what he held in his hands. The Trygalle master visibly blanched, then hurried back to his carriage. After a moment – and a long, unreadable look – the Jaghut followed suit.
Paran allowed himself a small smile. Yes, why announce yourselves to whomever I'm about to call upon? He squatted, setting the deck facedown on the mudstained walkway of branches. Then lifted the top card and set it down to the right. High House Shadow – who's in charge here, damned Deck, you or me? 'Shadowthrone,' he murmured, 'I require your attention.'
The murky image of the Shadow House remained singularly lifeless on the lacquered card.
'All right,' Paran said, 'I'll revise my wording. Shadowthrone, talk to me here and now or everything you've done and everything you're planning to do will get, quite literally, torn to pieces.'
A shimmer, further obscuring the House, then something like a vague figure, seated on a black throne. A voice hissed out at him, 'This had better be important. I'm busy and besides, even the idea of a Master of the Deck nauseates me, so get on with it.'
'The Deragoth are about to be released, Shadowthrone.'
Obvious agitation. 'What gnat-brained idiot would do that?'
'Can't be helped, I'm afraid-'
'You!'
'Look, I have my reasons, and they will be found in Seven Cities.'
'Oh,' the figure settled back down, 'those reasons. Well, yes. Clever, even. But still profoundly stupid.'
'Shadowthrone,' Paran said, 'the two Hounds of Shadow that Rake killed. The two taken by Dragnipur.'
'What about them?'
'I'm not sure how much you know, but I freed them from the sword.' He waited for another bout of histrionics, but… nothing. 'Ah, so you know that. Good. Well, I have discovered where they went… here, where they conjoined with their counterparts, and were then freed – no, not me. Now, I understand that they have since been killed. For good, this time.'
Shadowthrone raised a long-fingered hand that filled most of the card.
Closed it into a fist. 'Let me see,' the god's voice purred, 'if I understand you.' One finger snapped upward. 'The Nameless Idiots go and release Dejim Nebrahl. Why? Because they're idiots. Their own lies caught up with them, so they needed to get rid of a servant who was doing what they wanted him to do in the first place, only doing it too well!' Shadowthrone's voice was steadily climbing in pitch and volume.
A second finger shot into view. 'Then, you, the Master Idiot of the Deck of Dragons, decide to release the Deragoth, to get rid of Dejim Nebrahl. But wait, even better!' A third finger. 'Some other serious nasty wandering Seven Cities just killed two Deragoth, and maybe that nasty is still close by, and would like a few more trophies to drag behind his damned horse!' His voice was now a shriek. 'And now! Now!'
The hand closed back into a fist, shaking about. 'You want me to send the Hounds of Shadow to Seven Cities! Because it's finally occurred to that worm-ridden walnut you call a brain that the Deragoth won't bother with Dejim Nebrahl until they find my Hounds! And if they come looking here in my realm, there'll be no stopping them!' He halted suddenly, the fist motionless. Then various fingers sprang into view in an increasingly chaotic pattern. Shadowthrone snarled and the frenzied hand vanished. A whisper: 'Pure genius. Why didn't I think of that?' The tone began rising once more. 'Why? Because I'm not an idiot!!'
With that the god's presence winked out.
Paran grunted, then said, 'You never told me if you were going to send the Hounds of Shadow to Seven Cities.'
He thought then that he heard a faint scream of frustration, but perhaps it was only imagined. Paran returned the card to the deck, put it back into an inside pocket, and slowly straightened. 'Well,' he sighed, 'that wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it'd be.'
By the time Hedge returned, both Ganath and Karpolan had reappeared, their glances towards Paran decidedly uneasy.
The ghost gestured Paran closer and said quietly, 'It ain't going to work the way we wanted it, Captain. Too much distance between them – by the time I get to the closest one, the farthest one will have gone up, and if those Hounds are close, well, like I said, it ain't going to work.'
'What do you suggest?'
'You ain't going to like it. I sure don't, but it's the only way.'
'Out with it, sapper.'
'Leave me behind. Get going. Now.'
'Hedge-'
'No, listen, it makes sense. I'm already dead – I can find my own way out.'
'Maybe you can find your own way out, Hedge. More likely what's left of you will get torn to pieces, if not by the Deragoth, then any of a host of other local nightmares.'
'Captain, I don't need this body – it's just for show, so's you got a face to look at. Trust me, it's the only way you and the others are going to get out of this alive.'
'Let's try a compromise,' Paran said. 'We wait as long as we can.'
Hedge shrugged. 'As you like, just don't wait too long, Captain.'
'Get on your way, then, Hedge. And… thank you.'
'Always an even trade, Captain.'
The ghost headed off. Paran turned to Karpolan Demesand. 'How confident are you,' he asked, 'about getting us out of here fast?'
'This part should be relatively simple,' the Trygalle sorceror replied. 'Once a path is found into a warren, its relationship to others becomes known. The Trygalle Trade Guild's success is dependent entirely upon its Surveyants – its maps, Ganoes Paran. With each mission, those maps become more complete.'
'Those are valuable documents,' Paran observed. 'I trust you keep them well protected.'
Karpolan Demesand smiled, and said nothing.
'Prepare the way, then,' Paran said.
Hedge was already out of sight, lost somewhere in the gloom beyond the nearest statues. Mists had settled in the depressions, but the mercurial sky overhead seemed as remote as ever. For all that, Paran noticed, the light was failing. Had their sojourn here encompassed but a single day? That seemed… unlikely.
The bark of a munition reached him – a sharper. 'That's the signal,'
Paran said, striding over to his horse. 'The farthest statue will go first.' He swung himself into the saddle, guided his horse closer to the carriage, into which Karpolan and Ganath had already disappeared.
The shutter on the window slid to one side as he arrived.
'Captain-'
A thunderous detonation interrupted him, and Paran turned to see a column of smoke and dust rising.
'Captain, it seems – much to my surprise-'
A second explosion, closer this time, and another statue seemed to simply vanish.
'As I was saying, it appears my options are far more limited than I first-'
From the distance came a deep, bestial roar.
The first Deragoth'Ganoes Paran! As I was saying-'
The third statue detonated, its base disappearing within an expanding, billowing wave of smoke, stone and dust. Front legs shorn through, the huge edifice pitched forward, jagged cracks sweeping through the rock, and began its descent. Then struck.
The carriage jumped, then bounced back down on its ribbed stanchions.
Glass broke somewhere inside.
The reverberations of the concussion rippled through the ground.
Horses screamed and fought their bits, eyes rolling.
A second howl shook the air.
Paran squinted through the dust and smoke, seeking Hedge somewhere between the last statue to fall and the ones yet to be destroyed. But in the gathering darkness he saw no movement. All at once, the fourth statue erupted. Some vagary of sequence tilted the monument to one side, and as it toppled, it struck the fifth.
'We must leave!'
The shriek was Karpolan Demesand's.
'Hold on-'
'Ganoes Paran, I am no longer confident-'
'Just hold it-'
A third howl, echoed by the Deragoth that had already arrived – and those last two roars were… close.
'Shit.' He could not see Hedge – the last statue, already riven with impact fissures, suddenly pitched downward as the munitions at its base exploded.
'Paran!'
'All right – open the damned gate!' The train of horses reared, then surged forward, slewing the carriage round as they began a wild descent on the slope. Swearing, Paran kicked his horse into motion, risking a final glance back-to see a huge, hump-shouldered beast emerge from the clouds of dust, its eyes lambent as they fixed on Paran and the retreating carriage.
The Deragoth's massive, broad head lowered, and it began a savagely fast sprint.
'Karpolan!'
The portal opened like a popped blister – watery blood or some other fluid spraying from its edges – directly in front of them. A charnel wind battered them. 'Karpolan? Where-'
The train of horses, screaming one and all, plunged into the gate, and a heartbeat later Paran followed. He heard it sear shut behind him, and then, from all sides – madness.
Rotted faces, gnawed hands reaching up, long-dead eyes imploring as decayed mouths opened – 'Take us! Take us with you!'
'Don't leave!'
'He's forgotten us – please, I beg you-'
'Hood cares nothing-'
Bony fingers closed on Paran, pulled, tugged, then began clawing at him. Others had managed to grab hold of projections on the carriage and were being dragged along.
The pleas shifted into anger – 'Take us – or we will tear you to pieces!'
'Cut them – bite them – tear them apart!'
Paran struggled to free his right arm, managed to close his hand on the grip of his sword, then drag it free. He began flailing the blade on each side.
The shrieks from the horses were insanity's own voice, and now shareholders were screaming as well, as they hacked down at reaching hands and arms.
Twisting about in his saddle as he chopped at the clawing limbs, Paran glimpsed a sweeping vista – a plain of writhing figures, the undead, every face turned now towards them – undead, in their tens of thousands – undead, so crowding the land that they could but stand, out to every horizon, raising now a chorus of despair'Ganath!' Paran roared. 'Get us out of here!'
A sharp retort, as of cracking ice. Bitter wind swirled round them, and the ground pitched down on one side.
Snow, ice, the undead gone.
Wheeling blue sky. Mountain cragsHorses skidding, legs splaying, their screams rising in pitch. A few animated corpses, flailing about. The carriage, looming in front of Paran, its back end sliding round.
They were on a glacier. Skidding, sliding downward at ever increasing speed.
Distinctly, Paran heard one of the Pardu shareholders: 'Oh, this is much better.'
Then, eyes blurring, horse slewing wildly beneath him, there was only time for the plunging descent – down, it turned out, an entire mountainside.
Ice, then snow, then slush, the latter rising like a bow wave before horses and sideways-descending carriage, rising and building, slowing them down. All at once, the slush gave way to mud, then stoneFlipping the carriage, the train of horses dragged with it.
Paran's own mount fared better, managing to angle itself until it faced downhill, forelegs punching snow and slush, seeking purchase. At the point it reached the mud, and having seen what awaited it, the horse simply launched into a charge. A momentary stumble, then, as the ground levelled out, it slowed, flanks heaving – and Paran turned in the saddle, in time to see the huge carriage tumble to a shattered halt. The bodies of shareholders were sprawled about, upslope, in the mud, limp and motionless on the scree of stones, almost indistinguishable from the corpses.
The train of horses had broken loose, yet all but one were down, legs kicking amidst a tangle of traces, straps and buckles.
Heart still hammering the anvil of his chest, Paran eased his horse to a stop, turning it to face upslope, then walking the exhausted, shaky beast back towards the wreckage.
A few shareholders were picking themselves up here and there, looking dazed. One began swearing, sagging back down above a broken leg.
'Thank you,' croaked a corpse, flopping about in the mud. 'How much do I owe you?'
The carriage was on its side. The three wheels that had clipped the mud and stone had shattered, and two opposite had not survived the tumbling. Leaving but a single survivor, spinning like a millstone.
Back storage hatches had sprung open, spilling their contents of supplies. On the roof, still strapped in place, was the crushed body of a shareholder, blood running like meltwater down the copper tiles, his arms and legs hanging limp, the exposed flesh pummelled and grey in the bright sunlight.
One of the Pardu women picked herself up from the mud and limped over to come alongside Paran as he reined in near the carriage. 'Captain,' she said, 'I think we should make camp.' He stared down at her. 'Are you all right?' She studied him for a moment, then turned her head and spat out a red stream. Wiped her mouth, then shrugged. 'Hood knows, we've had worse trips…'
The savage wound of the portal, now closed, still marred the dustladen air. Hedge stepped out from where he'd been hiding near one of the pedestals. The Deragoth were gone – anything but eager to remain overlong in this deathly, unpleasant place.
So he'd stretched things a little. No matter, he'd been convincing enough, yielding the desired result.
Here I am. On my own, in Hood's own Hood-forsaken pit. You should've thought it through, Captain. There was nothing sweet in the deal for us, and only fools agree to that. Well, being fools is what killed us, and we done learned that lesson.
He looked round, trying to get his bearings. In this place, one direction was good as another. Barring the damned sea, of course. So, it's done. Time to explore…
The ghost left the wreckage of the destroyed statues behind, a lone, mostly insubstantial figure walking the denuded, muddy land. As bowlegged as he had been in life.
Dying left no details behind, after all. And most certainly, nothing like absolution awaited the fallen.
Absolution comes from the living, not the dead, and, as Hedge well knew, it has to be earned.
She was remembering things. Finally, after all this time. Her mother, camp follower, spreading her legs for the Ashok Regiment before it was sent to Genabackis. After it had left, she just went and died, as if without those soldiers she could only breathe out, never again in – and it was what you drew in that gave you life. So, just like that.
Dead. Her offspring was left to fare for itself, alone, uncared for, unloved.
Mad priests and sick cults and, for the girl born of the mother, a new camp to follow. Every path of independence was but a dead-end sidetrack off that more deeply rutted road, the one that ran from parent to child – this much was clear to her now.
Then Heboric, Destriant of Treach, had dragged her away – before she found herself breathing ever out – but no, before him, there had been Bidithal and his numbing gifts, his whispered assurances of mortal suffering being naught more than a layered chrysalis, and upon death the glory would break loose, unfolding its iridescent wings. Paradise.
Oh, that had been a seductive promise, and her drowning soul had clung to the solace of its plunging weight as she sank deathward. She had once dreamed of wounding young, wide-eyed acolytes, of taking the knife in her own hands and cutting away all pleasure. Misery loves – needs – company; there is nothing altruistic in sharing. Self-interest feeds on malice and all else falls to the wayside.
She had seen too much in her short life to believe anyone professing otherwise. Bidithal's love of pain had fed his need to deliver numbness. The numbness within him made him capable of delivering pain.
And the broken god he claimed to worship – well, the Crippled One knew he would never have to account for his lies, his false promises. He sought out lives in abeyance, and with their death he was free to discard those whose lives he had used up. This was, she realized, exquisite enslavement: a faith whose central tenet was unprovable.
There would be no killing this faith. The Crippled God would find a multitude of mortal voices to proclaim his empty promises, and within the arbitrary strictures of his cult, evil and desecration could burgeon unchecked.
A faith predicated on pain and guilt could proclaim no moral purity. A faith rooted in blood and suffering'We are the fallen,' Heboric said suddenly.
Sneering, Scillara pushed more rustleaf into the bowl of her pipe and drew hard. 'A priest of war would say that, wouldn't he? But what of the great glory found in brutal slaughter, old man? Or have you no belief in the necessity of balance?'
'Balance? An illusion. Like trying to focus on a single mote of light and seeing naught of the stream and the world that stream reveals. All is in motion, all is in flux.'
'Like these damned flies,' Scillara muttered.
Cutter, riding directly ahead, glanced back at her. 'I was wondering about that,' he said. 'Carrion flies – are we heading towards a site of battle, do you think? Heboric?'
He shook his head, amber eyes seeming to flare in the afternoon light.
'I sense nothing of that. The land ahead is as you see it.'
They were approaching a broad basin, dotted with a few tufts of dead, yellow reeds. The ground itself was almost white, cracked like a broken mosaic. Some larger mounds were visible here and there, constructed, it seemed, of sticks and reeds. Reaching the edge, they drew to a halt.
Fish bones lay in a heaped carpet along the fringe of the dead marsh's shoreline, blown there by the winds. On one of the closer mounds they could see bird bones and the remnants of eggshells. These wetlands had died suddenly, in the season of nesting.
Flies swarmed the basin, swirling about in droning clouds.
'Gods below,' Felisin said, 'do we have to cross this?'
'Shouldn't be too bad,' Heboric said. 'It's not far across. It'd be dark long before we finish if we try to go round this. Besides,' he waved at the buzzing flies, 'we haven't even started to cross yet they've found us, and skirting the basin won't escape them. At least they're not the biting kind.'
'Let's just get this over with,' Scillara said.
Greyfrog bounded down into the basin, as if to blaze a trail with his opened mouth and snapping tongue.
Cutter nudged his horse into a trot, then, as flies swarmed him, a canter.
The others followed.
Flies alighting like madness on his skin. Heboric squinted as countless hard, frenzied bodies collided with his face. The very sunlight had dimmed amidst this chaotic cloud. Trapped in his sleeves, inside his threadbare leggings and down the back of his neck – he gritted his teeth, resolving to weather this minor irritation.
Balance. Scillara's words disturbed him for some reason – no, perhaps not her words, but the sentiment they revealed. Once an acolyte, now rejecting all forms of faith – something he himself had done, and, despite Treach's intervention, still sought to achieve. After all, the gods of war needed no servants beyond the illimitable legions they always had and always would possess.
Destriant, what lies beneath this name? Harvester of souls, possessing the power – and the right – to slay in a god's name. To slay, to heal, to deliver justice. But justice in whose eyes? I cannot take a life.
Not any more. Never again. You chose wrong, Treach.
All these dead, these ghosts…
The world was harsh enough – it did not need him and his kind. There was no end to the fools eager to lead others into battle, to exult in mayhem and leave behind a turgid, sobbing wake of misery and suffering and grief.
He'd had enough.
Deliverance was all he desired now, his only motive for staying alive, for dragging these innocents with him to a blasted, wasted island that had been scraped clean of all life by warring gods. Oh, they did not need him.
Faith and zeal for retribution lay at the heart of the true armies, the fanatics and their malicious, cruel certainties. Breeding like fly-blow in every community. But worthy tears come from courage, not cowardice, and those armies, they are filled with cowards.
Horses carrying them from the basin, the flies spinning and swirling in mindless pursuit.
Onto a track emerging from the old shoreline beside the remnants of a dock and mooring poles. Deep ruts climbing a higher beach ridge, from the age when the swamp had been a lake, the ruts cut ragged by the claws of rainwater that found no refuge in roots – because the verdancy of centuries past was gone, cut away, devoured.
We leave naught but desert in our wake.
Surmounting the crest, where the road levelled out and wound drunkenly across a plain flanked by limestone hills, and in the distance, a third of a league away directly east, a small, decrepit hamlet.
Outbuildings with empty corrals and paddocks. To one side of the road, near the hamlet's edge, a half-hundred or more heaped tree-trunks, the wood grey as stone where fires had not charred it – but it seemed that even in death, this wood defied efforts at its destruction.
Heboric understood that obdurate defiance. Yes, make yourself useless to humankind. Only thus will you survive, even when what survives of you is naught but your bones. Deliver your message, dear wood, to our eternally blind eyes.
Greyfrog had dropped back and now leapt ten paces to Cutter's right.
It seemed even the demon had reached its stomach's limit of flies, for its broad mouth was shut, the second lids of its eyes, milky white, closed until the barest slits were visible. And the huge creature was very nearly black with those crawling insects.
As was Cutter's youthful back before him. As was the horse the Daru rode. And, to all sides, the ground seethed, glittering and rabid with motion.
So many flies.
So many…
'Something to show you, now…'
Like a savage beast suddenly awakened, Heboric straightened in his saddle**** Scillara's mount cantered a stride behind the Destriant's, a little to the old man's left, whilst in her wake rode Felisin. She cursed in growing alarm as the flies gathered round the riders like midnight, devouring all light, the buzzing cadence seeming to whisper words that crawled into her mind on ten thousand legs. She fought back a screamAs her horse shrieked in mortal pain, dust swirling and spinning beneath it, dust rising and finding shape.
A terrible, wet, grating sound, then something long and sharp punched up between her mount's shoulder-blades, blood gouting thick and bright from the wound. The horse staggered, forelegs buckling, then collapsed, the motion flinging Scillara from the saddleShe found herself rolling on a carpet of crushed insects, the hoofs of Heboric's horse pounding down around her as the creature shrilled in agony, pitching to the left – something snarling, a barbed flash of skin, feline and fluid, leaping from the dying horse's backAnd figures, emerging as if from nowhere amidst spinning dust, blades of flint flashing – a bestial scream – blood slapping the ground beside her in a thick sheet, instantly blackened by flies – the blades chopping, cutting, slashing into flesh – a piercing shriek, rising in a conflagration of pain and rage – something thudded against her as Scillara sought to rise on her hands and knees, and she looked over.
An arm, tattooed in a tiger-stripe pattern, sliced clean midway between elbow and shoulder, the hand, a flash of fitful, dying green beneath swarming flies.
She staggered upright, stabbing pain in her belly, choking as insects crowded into her mouth with her involuntary gasp.
A figure stepped near her, long stone sword dripping, desiccated skull-face swinging in her direction, and that sword casually reached out, slid like fire into Scillara's chest, ragged edge scoring above her top rib, beneath the clavicle, then punching out her back, just above the scapula.
Scillara sagged, felt herself sliding from that weapon as she fell down onto her back.
The apparition vanished within the cloud of flies once more.
She could hear nothing but buzzing, could see nothing but a chaotic, glittering clump swelling above the wound in her chest, through which blood leaked – as if the flies had become a fist, squeezing her heart.
Squeezing…
Cutter had had no time to react. The bite of sudden sand and dust, then his horse's head was simply gone, ropes of blood skirling down as if pursuing its flight. Down beneath the front hoofs, that stumbled, then gave way as the decapitated beast collapsed.
Cutter managed to roll free, gaining his feet within a maelstrom of flies.
Someone loomed up beside him and he spun, one knife free and slashing across in an effort to block a broad, hook-bladed scimitar of rippled flint. The weapons collided, and that sword swept through Cutter's knife, the strength behind the blow unstoppableHe watched it tear into his belly, watched it rip its way free, and then his bowels tumbled into view.
Reaching down to catch them with both hands, Cutter sank as all life left his legs. He stared down at the flopping mess he held, disbelieving, then landed on one side, curling round the terrible, horrifying damage done to him.
He heard nothing. Nothing but his own breathing, and the cavorting flies, now closing in as if they had known all along that this was going to happen.
The attacker had risen from the very dust, on the right side of Greyfrog. Savage agony as a huge chalcedony longsword cut through the demon's forelimb, severing it clean in a gush of green blood. A second cut sliced through the back leg on the same side, and the demon struck the ground, kicking helplessly with its remaining limbs.
Grainy with flies and thundering pain – a momentary scene played out before the demon's eyes. Broad, bestial, clad in furs, a creature of little more than skin and bone, stepping placidly over Greyfrog's back leg, which was lying five paces distant, kicking all by itself.
Stepping into the black cloud.
Dismay. I can hop no more.
Even as he had leapt from the back of his horse, two flint swords had caught him, one slashing through muscle and bone, severing an arm, the other thrusting point first into, then through, his chest. Heboric, throat filled with animal snarls, twisted in mid-air in a desperate effort to pull himself free of the impaling weapon. Yet it followed, tearing downward – snapping ribs, cleaving through lung, then liver – and finally ripping out from his side in an explosion of bone shards, meat and blood.
The Destriant's mouth filled with hot liquid, spraying as he struck the ground, rolled, then came to a stop.
Both T'lan Imass walked to where he lay sprawled in the dust, stone weapons slick with gore.
Heboric stared up at those empty, lifeless eyes, watched as the tattered, desiccated warriors stabbed down, rippled points punching into his body again and again. He watched as one flashed towards his face, then shot down into his neckVoices, beseeching, a distant chorus of dismay and despair – he could reach them no longer – those lost souls in their jade-swallowed torment, growing fainter, farther and farther away – I told you, look not to me, poor creatures. Do you see, finally, how easy it was to fail you?
I have heard the dead, but I could not serve them. Just as I have lived, yet created nothing.
He remembered clearly now, in a single dread moment that seemed unending, timeless, a thousand images – so many pointless acts, empty deeds, so many faces – all those for whom he did nothing. Baudin, Kulp, Felisin Paran, L'oric, Scillara… Wandering lost in this foreign land, this tired desert and the dust of gardens filling brutal, sun-scorched air – better had he died in the otataral mines of Skullcup. Then, there would have been no betrayals. Fener would hold his throne. The despair of the souls in their vast jade prisons, spinning unchecked through the Abyss, that terrible despair – it could have remained unheard, unwitnessed, and so there would have been no false promises of salvation.
Baudin would not have been so slowed down in his flight with Felisin Paran – oh, I have done nothing worthwhile in this all too-long life.
These ghost hands, they have proved the illusion of their touch – no benediction, no salvation, not for anyone they dared touch. And these reborn eyes, with all their feline acuity, they fade now into their senseless stare, a look every hunter yearns for in the eyes of their fallen foe.
So many warriors, great heroes – in their own eyes at least – so many had set off in pursuit of the giant tiger that was Treach – knowing nothing of the beast's true identity. Seeking to defeat him, to stand over his stilled corpse, and look down into his blank eyes, yearning to capture something, anything, of majesty and exaltation and take it within themselves.
But truths are never found when the one seeking them is lost, spiritually, morally. And nobility and glory cannot be stolen, cannot be earned in the violent rape of a life. Gods, such pathetic, flailing, brutally stupid conceit… it was good, then, that Treach killed every damned one of them. Dispassionately. Ah, such a telling message in that.
Yet he knew. The T'lan Imass who had killed him cared nothing for all of that. They had acted out of exigency. Perhaps somewhere in their ancient memories, of the time when they were mortal, they too had sought to steal what they themselves could never possess. But such pointless pursuits no longer mattered to them.
Heboric would be no trophy.
And that was well.
And in this final failure, it seemed there would be no other survivors, and in some ways that was well, too. Appropriate. So much for glory found within his final thoughts.
And is that not fitting? In this last thought, I fail even myself.
He found himself reaching… for something. Reaching, but nothing answered his touch. Nothing at all.