The Goddess drew breath,
and all was still..

The Apocalypse
Herulahn

 

'We can't stay here.'

Felisin's eyes narrowed on the mage. 'Why not? That storm outside will kill us. There's no sheltering from it – except here, where there's water ... food—'

'Because we're being hunted,' Kulp snapped, wrapping his arms around himself.

From where he sat against a wall, Heboric laughed. He raised his invisible hands. 'Show me a mortal who is not pursued, and I'll show you a corpse. Every hunter is hunted, every mind that knows itself has stalkers. We drive and are driven. The unknown pursues the ignorant, the truth assails every scholar wise enough to know his own ignorance, for that is the meaning of unknowable truths.'

Kulp looked up from where he sat on the low wall encircling the fountain, the lids of his eyes heavy as he studied the ex-priest. 'I was speaking literally,' he said. 'There are living shapeshifters in this city – their scent rides every wind and it's getting stronger.'

'Why don't we just give up?' Felisin said.

The mage sneered.

'I am not being flippant. We're in Raraku, the home of the Whirlwind. There won't be a friendly face within a hundred leagues of here, not that there's a chance of making it that far in any case.'

'And the faces closer at hand aren't even human,' Heboric added. 'Every mask unveiled, and you know, the presence of D'ivers and Soletaken is most likely not at the Whirlwind's beckoning. All a tragic coincidence, this Year of Dryjhna and the unholy convergence—'

'You're a fool if you think that,' Kulp said. 'The timing is anything but accidental. I've a hunch that someone started those shapeshifters on that convergence, and that someone acted precisely because of the uprising. Or it went the other way around – the Whirlwind goddess guided the prophecy to ensure that the Year of Dryjhna was now, when the convergence was under way, in the interest of creating chaos within the warrens.'

'Interesting notions, Mage,' Heboric said, slowly nodding. 'Natural, of course, coming from a practitioner of Meanas, where deceit breeds like runaway weeds and inevitability defines the rules of the game ... but only when useful.'

Felisin stayed silent, watching the two men. One conversation, here on the surface, yet another beneath. The priest and the mage are playing games, the entwining of suspicion with knowledge. Heboric sees a pattern, his plundering of ghostly lives gave him what he needed, and I think he's telling Kulp that the mage himself is closer to that pattern than he might imagine. 'Here, wielder of Meanas, take my invisible hand . . .'

Felisin decided she had had enough. 'What do you know, Heboric?'

The blind man shrugged.

'Why does it matter to you, lass?' Kulp growled. 'You're suggesting surrender: let the shapeshifters take us – we're dead anyway.'

'I asked, why do we struggle on? Why leave here? We haven't got a chance out in the desert.'

'Stay, then!' Kulp snapped, rising. 'Hood knows you've nothing useful to offer.'

'I've heard all it takes is a bite.'

He went still and slowly turned to her. 'You heard wrong. It's common enough ignorance, I suppose. A bite can poison you, a cyclical fever of madness, but you do not become a shapeshifter.'

'Really, then how are they created?'

'They aren't. They're born.'

Heboric clambered to his feet. 'If we're to walk through this dead city, let us do so now. The voices have stilled, and I am clear of mind.'

'What difference does that make?' Felisin demanded.

'I can guide us on the swiftest route, lass. Else we wander lost until the ones who hunt us finally arrive.'

 

They drank one last time from the pool, then gathered as many of the pale fruits as they could carry. Felisin had to admit to herself that she felt healthier – more mended – than she had in a long time, as if memories no longer bled and she was left with naught but scars. Yet the cast of her mind remained fraught. She had run out of hope.

Heboric led them swiftly down tortuous streets and alleys, through houses and buildings, and everywhere they went, they trod over and around bodies, human, shapeshifter and T'lan Imass, ancient scenes of fierce battle. Heboric's plundered knowledge was lodged in Felisin's mind, a trembling of ancient horror that made every new scene of death they stumbled upon resonate within her. She felt she was close to grasping a profound truth, around which orbited all human endeavour since the very beginning of existence. We do naught but scratch the world, frail and fraught. Every vast drama of civilizations, of peoples with their certainties and gestures, means nothing, affects nothing. Life crawls on, ever on. She wondered if the gift of revelation – of discovering the meaning underlying humanity – offered nothing more than a devastating sense of futility. It's the ignorant who find a cause and cling to it, for within that is the illusion of significance. Faith, a king, queen or Emperor, or vengeance . . . all the bastion of fools.

The wind moaned at their backs, raising small gusts of dust at their feet, rasping like tongues against their skin. It carried in it a faint scent of spice.

Felisin judged an hour had passed before Heboric paused. They stood before the grand entrance to a temple of some kind, where the columns, squat and broad, had been carved into a semblance of tree trunks. A frieze ran beneath the cracked, sagging plinth, each panel a framed image which Kulp's warren-cast light eerily lit from beneath.

The mage was staring up at the images. Hood's breath! he mouthed.

The ex-priest was smiling.

'It's a Deck,' Kulp said.

Yet another pathetic assertion of order.

'The Elder Deck, aye,' Heboric nodded. 'Not Houses but Holds. Realms. Can you discern Death and Life? And Dark and Light? Do you see the Hold of the Beast? Who sits upon that antlered throne, Kulp?'

'It's empty, assuming I'm looking at the one you mean – the frame displays various creatures. The throne is flanked by T'lan Imass.'

'Aye, that is the one. No-one on the throne, you say? Curious.'

'Why?'

'Because every echo of memory tells me there used to be.'

Kulp grunted. 'Well, it's not been defaced – you can see the back of the throne, and it looks as weathered as everywhere else.'

'There should be the Unaligned – can you detect those?'

'No. Perhaps around the sides and back?'

'Possibly. Among them you'll find Shapeshifter.'

'All very fascinating,' Felisin drawled. 'I take it we're to enter this place – since that's where the wind is going.'

Heboric smiled. 'Aye. The far end shall provide our exit.'

The interior of the temple was nothing more than a tunnel, its walls, floor and ceiling hidden behind packed layers of sand. The wind raised its voice the farther in they went. Forty paces later they could discern pale ochre light ahead.

The tunnel narrowed, the howling wind making it difficult to resist being pushed forward headlong, and they were forced to duck into a shambling crouch near the exit point.

Heboric held back just before the threshold to let Kulp pass, then Felisin. The mage was the first to step outside; Felisin followed.

They stood on a ledge, the mouth of a cave high on a cliff face. The wind tore at them as if seeking to cast them out, flinging them into the air – and a fatal drop to jagged rocks two hundred or more arm-spans below. Felisin moved to grip one crumbling edge of the cave mouth. The vista had taken her breath away, weakened her knees.

The Whirlwind raged, not before them but beneath them, filling the vast basin that was the Holy Desert. A fine haze of suspended dust drifted above a floor of seething yellow and orange clouds. The sun was an edgeless ball of red fire to the west, deepening its hue as they watched.

After a long moment Felisin barked a laugh. 'All we need now is wings.'

'I become useful once again,' Heboric said, grinning as he stepped out to stand beside her.

Kulp's head whipped around. 'What do you mean?'

'Tie yourselves to my back – both of you. This man's got a pair of hands and he can use them, and for once my blindness will prove a salvation.'

Kulp peered down the cliff face. 'Climb down this? It's rotten rock, old man—'

'Not the handholds I'll find, Mage. Besides, what choice do you have?'

'Oh, I simply can't wait,' Felisin said.

'All right, but I'll have my warren open,' Kulp said. 'We'll fall just as far, but the landing will be softer – not that it'll make much difference, I suppose, but at least it gives us a chance.'

'You have no faith!' Heboric shouted, his face twisting as he fought back peals of laughter.

'Thanks for that,' Felisin said. How far do we have to be pushed? We're not slipping into madness, we're being nudged, tugged and pulled into it.

A hot, solid pressure closed on her shoulder. She turned. Heboric had laid an invisible hand on her – she could see nothing, yet the thin weave of her shirt's fabric was compressed, slowly darkening with sweat. She could feel its weight. He leaned close. 'Raraku reshapes all who come to it. This is one truth you can cling to. What you were falls away, what you become is something different.' His smile broadened at her snort of disdain. 'Raraku's gifts are harsh, it's true,' he said in a tone of sympathy.

Kulp was readying harnesses. 'These straps are rotting,' he said.

Heboric swung to him. 'Then you must hold tight.'

'This is madness.'

Those were my words.

'Would you rather await the D'ivers and Soletaken?'

The mage scowled.

 

Heboric's body felt like gnarled tree roots. Felisin clung with trembling muscles, not trusting the straining leather straps. Her gaze remained fixed on the ex-priest's wrists – the unseen hands themselves were plunged into the rock face – while below she heard his feet scrambling for purchase again and again. The old man was carrying the weight of the three of them with his hands and arms alone.

The battered cliff was bathed in the setting sun's red glare. As if we're descending into a cauldron of fire, into some demonic realm. And this is a one-way trip – Raraku will claim us, devour us. The sands will bury every dream of vengeance, every desire, every hope. We will all of us drown, here in this desert.

Wind slapped them against the cliff face, then yanked them outward in a biting swirl of airborne sand. They had entered the Whirlwind once again. Kulp shouted something lost in the battering roar. Felisin felt herself being pulled away, raised up horizontal by the frantic, hungry wind. She hooked one arm around Heboric's right shoulder.

Her muscles began shuddering with the strain, her joints burning like fanned coals. She felt the harness straps around her tightening as they slowly, inevitably, assumed the strain. Hopeless. The gods mock us at every turn.

Heboric continued the climb downward, into the heart of the maelstrom.

From inches away, Felisin watched as the blowing sand began abrading the skin stretched over her elbow joint. The sensation was nothing more than that of a cat's tongue, yet the skin was peeling back, vanishing.

Her legs and body rode the wind, and from everywhere she felt that dreadful rasp of the storm's tongue. I will be nothing but bones and sinew when we reach bottom, tottering fleshless with a rictus grin. Felisin unveiled in all her glory ...

Heboric stepped away from the cliff face. The three of them fell in a heap onto a ragged floor of rocks. Felisin screamed as the stones and sand pressed hard against the ravaged skin of her back. She found herself staring back up the cliff, revealed in patches where the gusting sand momentarily thinned. She thought she saw a figure, fifty arm-spans above them, then it was swallowed once more by the storm.

Kulp tugged at the straps with frantic haste. Felisin rolled clear, pushing herself onto her hands and knees. There's something . . . even I can feel it—

'On your feet, lass!' the mage shouted. 'Quickly!'

Whimpering, Felisin struggled upright. The wind slapped her back down in a lash of pain. Warm hands closed on her, lifted her up into the crook of rope-muscled arms.

'Life's like that,' Heboric said. 'Hold tight.'

They were running, leaning into the raging wind. She squeezed shut her eyes, the agony of her flayed skin flashing like lightning behind her eyelids. Hood take this! AM of it!

They stumbled into sudden calm. Kulp hissed his surprise.

Felisin opened her eyes on a motionless mist of dust, describing a sphere in the midst of the Whirlwind. A large, vague shape was tottering towards them through the haze. The air was redolent with citrus perfume. She struggled until Heboric set her down.

Four pale men in rags were carrying a palanquin on which sat, beneath an umbrella, a vast, corpulent figure wearing voluminous silks in a splash of discordant colours. Slitted eyes peered out from sweat-beaded folds of flesh. The man raised one bloated hand and the bearers halted.

'Perilous!' he squealed. 'Join me, strangers, and take leave of yon dangers – a desert filled with beasts of most unpleasant disposition. I offer humble sanctuary through artful sorcery invested into this chair at great personal expense. Do you hunger? Do you thirst? Ahh, but look at the wounds upon the frail lass! I possess healing unguents, I would see such a delectable morsel with skin smoothed once again into youthful perfection. Tell me, is she perchance a slave? Might I make an offer?'

'I am not a slave,' Felisin said. And I am no longer for sale.

'The reek of lemon is making my blind eyes water,' Heboric whispered. 'I sense greed but no ill will. . .'

'Nor I,' Kulp said beside them. 'Only ... his porters are undead, not to mention strangely ... chewed.'

'I see you hesitate and I applaud caution at all times. Aye, my servants have seen better days, but they are harmless, I assure you,'

'How is it,' Kulp called out, 'you oppose the Whirlwind?'

'Not oppose, sir! I am a true believer and most humble. The goddess grants me ease of passage, for which I make constant propitiation! I am naught but a merchant, my trade is select merchandise – of the magical kind, that is. I am making my return journey to Pan'potsun, you see, after a lucrative venture to Sha'ik's rebel camp.' The man smiled. 'Aye, I know you as Malazans and no doubt enemies of the great cause. But cruel retribution finds no root in my soil, I assure you. And truth to tell, I would enjoy your company, for these dread servants are obsessed with their own deaths and there is no end to their complaints.'

At a gesture, the four bearers set the sedan chair down. Two of them immediately began removing camp gear from the storage rack behind the seat, their movements careless and loose, while the other pair set to levering their master onto his feet.

'There is a most potent salve,' the man wheezed. 'In yon wooden chest – there! The one called Nub carries it. Nub! Set that down, you gnawed grub! Nub the grub, hee! Leave off fumbling with the catch – such nimble escapades will melt your rotting brain. Aai! You've no hands!' The man's eyes had found Heboric, as if for the first time. 'A crime, to have done such a thing! Alas, none of my healing unguents could manage such complex regeneration.'

'Please,' Heboric said, 'do not feel distressed at what I lack, or even at what you lack. I've need for nothing, although this shelter from the wind is most welcome.'

'Yours is assuredly a tragic tale of abandonment, once-priest of Fener, and I shall not pry. And you –' the man swung to Kulp – 'forgive me, the warren of Meanas, perchance?'

'You do more than sell sorcerous trinkets,' Kulp growled, his face darkening.

'Long proximity, kind sir,' the man said, bowing his head. 'Nothing more, I assure you. I have devoted my life to magery, yet I do not practise it. The years have granted me a certain... sensitivity, that is all. My apologies if I gave offence.' He reached out and cuffed one of his servants. 'You, what name did I give you?'

Felisin stared in fascination as the corpse's gnawed lips peeled back in a twisted grin. 'Clam, though I once knew myself as Iryn Thalar—'

'Oh, shut up with what you once knew! You are Clam now.'

'I had a horrid death—'

'Shut up!' his master shrieked, his face suddenly darkening.

The undead servant fell silent.

'Now,' the man gasped, 'find us that Falari wine – let us celebrate with the Empire's most civil gifts.'

The servant stumbled off. Its nearest companion's head swivelled to follow with desiccated eyes. 'Yours was not as horrid as mine—'

'The Seven Holies preserve us!' the merchant hissed. 'I beg of you, Mage, a spell of silence about these ill-chosen animations! I shall pay in jakata imperials, and pay well!'

'Beyond my abilities,' Kulp muttered.

Felisin's eyes narrowed on the cadre mage. That has to be a lie.

'Ah, well,' the man sighed. 'Gods below, I have not yet introduced myself! I am Nawahl Ebur, humble merchant of the Holy City Pan'potsun. And what names do you three wish to be known by?'

Oddly put.

'I'm Kulp.'

'Heboric.'

Felisin said nothing.

'While the lass is shy,' Nawahl said, his lips curving into an indulgent smile as he looked upon her.

Kulp crouched down at the wooden chest, released the catch and lifted the lid.

'The white clay bowl with the wax seal,' the merchant said.

The wind was a distant moan, the ochre dust of the calm slowly settling around them. Heboric, still gifted with an awareness that dispensed with the need for sight, sat down on a weathered boulder. A faint frown wrinkled his broad forehead, and his tattoos were dull beneath a veil of dust.

Kulp strode to Felisin, the bowl in one hand. 'It's a healing salve,' he affirmed. 'And potent indeed.'

'Why didn't the wind tear your skin, Mage? You've not got Heboric's protection—'

'I don't know, lass. I had my warren open – perhaps that was enough.'

'Why didn't you extend its influence over me?'

He glanced away. 'I thought I had,' he muttered.

The salve was cool and seemed to absorb the pain. Beneath its colourless patina, she saw her skin grow anew. Kulp applied it where she could not reach, and half a bowl later, the last flare of agony was healed. Suddenly exhausted, Felisin sat down on the sand.

A broken-stemmed glass of wine appeared before her face. Nawahl smiled down on her. 'This shall restore you, gentle lass. A pliant current will take the mind past suffering, into life's most peaceful stream. Here, drink, my dear. I care for your well-being most deeply.'

She accepted the glass. 'Why?' she demanded. 'Why do you care most deeply?'

'A man of my wealth can offer you much, child. All that you grant of your free will is my reward. And know, I am most gentle.'

She downed a mouthful of the tart, cool wine. 'Are you now?'

His nod was solemn, his eyes glittering between the folds of dimpled flesh. 'This I promise.'

Hood knows I could do worse. Riches and comfort, ease and indulgences. Durhang and wine. Pillows to lie on . . .

'I sense wisdom in you, my dear,' Nawahl said, 'so I shall not press. Let you, rather, yourself ascend to the proper course.'

Bedrolls had been laid out. One of the undead servants had fanned to life a camp stove, the remnants of one sleeve catching light and smouldering in the process, a detail none commented on.

Darkness swiftly closed in around them. Nawahl commanded the lighting of lanterns and their positioning on poles situated in a circle around the camp. One of the corpses stood beside Felisin and refilled her glass after every mouthful. The creature's flesh looked gnawed. Gaping bloodless wounds lined his pallid arms. All his teeth had fallen out.

Felisin glanced up at him, willing herself against recoiling. 'And how did you die?' she asked sardonically.

'Terribly.'

'But how?'

'I am forbidden to say more. I died terribly, a death to match one of Hood's own nightmares. It was long, yet swift, an eternity that passed in an instant. I was surprised, yet knowing. Small pain, yet great pain, the flood of darkness, yet blinding—'

'All right. I see your master's point.'

'So you shall.'

'Go easy on that, lass,' Kulp said from near the camp stove. 'Best have your wits about you.'

'Why? It's not availed me yet, has it?' In defiance, she drained the glass and held it up to be refilled. Her head was swimming, her limbs seeming to float. The servant splashed wine over her hand.

Nawahl had returned to his wide, padded chair, watching the three of them with a contented smile on his lips. 'Mortal company, such a difference!' he wheezed. 'I am so much delighted, I need only bask in the mundane. Tell me, where do you seek to go? Whatever launched you on such a perilous journey? The rebellion? Is it truly as bloody as I have heard rumoured? Such injustice is ever repaid in full, alas. This lesson is lost, I am afraid.'

'We're going nowhere,' Felisin said.

'Might I convince you to revise your chosen destination, then?'

'And you offer protection?' she asked. 'How reliable? What happens if we run into bandits, or worse?'

'No harm shall come to you, my dear. A man who deals in sorcery has many resorts in defence of selves. Not once in all my travels have I been beset by nefarious fools. Accosted on occasion, yes, but all have turned away when I gifted them wisdom. My dear, you are positively breathtaking – your smooth, sun-honeyed skin is a balm to my eyes.'

'What would your wife say?' Felisin murmured.

'Alas, I am a widower. My dearest passed through the Hooded One's Gates almost a year ago to this day. Hers was a full, happy life, I am pleased to say – and that gives me great comfort. Ah, would that her spirit could arise and set you at ease with reassurances, my dear.'

Tapu skewers sizzled on the camp stove.

'Mage,' Nawahl said, 'you have opened your warren. Tell me, what do you see? Have I given you cause for mistrust?'

'No, merchant,' Kulp said. 'And I see nothing untoward – yet the spells surrounding us are High castings ... I am impressed.'

'Only the best in protection of oneself, of course.'

The ground trembled suddenly and something huge pushed a brown-furred shoulder into the sphere opposite Felisin. The beast's shoulder was almost three arm-lengths high. After a moment the creature growled and withdrew.

'Beasts! They plague this desert! But fear not, none shall defeat my wards. I urge calm.'

Calm, I am very calm. We're finally safe. Nothing can reach us—

Finger-long claws tore a swath down the sphere's blurry wall, a bellow of rage ripping forth to shiver the air.

Nawahl surged upright with surprising speed. 'Back, damned one! Away! One thing at a time!'

She blinked. One thing at a time?

The sphere glowed as the jagged tears closed. The apparition beyond bellowed again, this time in what was clearly frustration. Claws scored another path, which healed even as it appeared. A body thundered against the barrier, withdrew, then tried again.

'We are safe!' Nawahl cried, his face dark with fury. 'It shall not succeed, no matter how stubborn! But still, how shall we sleep in such racket!'

Kulp strode up to the merchant, who unaccountably backed away a step. The mage then turned to face the determined intruder. 'That's a Soletaken,' he said. 'Very strong—'

From where Felisin sat, all that followed appeared in a seamless flow, with something close to grace. As soon as Kulp swung his back to the merchant, Nawahl seemed to blur beneath his silks, his skin deepening into glistening black fur. Sharp spice overpowered the citrus perfume in a hot gust. Rats poured forth, a growing flood.

Heboric screamed a warning, but it was already too late. The rats flowed over Kulp and swallowed him entirely in a seething cloak, not by the score but in the hundreds.

The mage's shriek was a dull muffle. A moment later the mound of creatures seemed to buckle, their weight crushing Kulp down.

The four bearers stood off to one side, watching.

Heboric plunged into the mass of rats, his ghost-hands now glowing gauntlets of fire, one jade green, the other rust-red. Rats flinched away. Each one he grasped burned into black, mangled flesh and bone. Yet the swarm spread outward, more and more of the silent creatures, clambering over one another, heaving in waves over the ground.

They dissipated from the place where Kulp had lain. Felisin saw the flash of wet bones, a ragged raincape. She could not comprehend its significance.

The Soletaken beyond the wards was attacking the barrier in a frenzy. The torn wounds were slower in closing. A bear's paw and forearm, as wide around as Felisin's waist, plunged through a rent.

The rats rose in a writhing crest to sweep down on Heboric. Still screaming, the ex-priest staggered back.

A hand clutched Felisin's collar from behind and yanked her upright. 'Grab him and run, lass.'

Head spinning, she twisted around, to find herself staring up into Baudin's weathered face. He held in his other hand four of the lanterns. 'Get moving, damn you!' He pushed her hard towards the ex-priest, who was still stumbling back, the tide seething in pursuit. Behind Heboric, two tons of bear was pushing through the barrier.

Baudin leapt past Heboric, smashing one of the lanterns against the ground. Lamp oil sprayed in gushing streaks of flame.

A furious scream erupted from the rats.

The four servants broke into hacking laughter.

The crest crashed over Baudin, but they could not drag him down as they had Kulp. He swung the lanterns, shattering them. Fire leapt around him. A moment later he and hundreds of rats were engulfed in flames.

Felisin reached Heboric. The old man was sheathed in blood from countless small wounds. His sightless eyes seemed focused on an inner horror that matched the scene before them. Grasping an arm, she pulled him to one side.

The merchant's voice filled her mind. Do not fear for yourself, my dear. Wealth and peace, every indulgence to sate your desires, and I am gentle – to those I choose, oh so gentle . . .

She hesitated.

Leave to me this hard-skinned stranger and the old man, then I shall deal with Messremb, that foul, most rude Soletaken who so dislikes me . . .

Yet she heard pain in his words, an edge of desperation. The Soletaken was sundering the barrier, its hungry roar deafening in its reverberations.

Baudin would not fall. He killed rat after rat, all within a shroud of flame, yet they surged over him in ever-growing numbers, the sheer mass of bodies smothering the burning oil.

Felisin glanced at the Soletaken, gauging its awesome power, its fearless rage. She shook her head. 'No. You're in trouble, D'ivers.' She took hold of Heboric once again and dragged him to the dying barrier.

My dear! Wait! Oh, you stubborn mortal, why won't you die!

Felisin could not help but grin. That won't work – I should know.

The Whirlwind had begun its own assault against the sphere. Wind-whipped sand rasped against her face.

'Wait!' Heboric gasped. 'Kulp—'

Cold gripped Felisin. He's dead, oh, gods, he's dead! Devoured. And I watched, drunk and uncaring, noticing nothing – 'one thing at a time.' Kulp's dead. She bit back a sob, pushed the ex-priest into, then through, the barrier, even as it finally collapsed. The Soletaken's roar of triumph announced its surging charge into the midst of the rats. Felisin did not turn to watch the attack, did not turn to discover Baudin's fate. Dragging Heboric, she ran into the dusk-darkened storm.

 

They did not get far. The sandstorm's fury battered them, pushed them, finally drove them into the frail shelter offered by an overhanging spur of rock. They collapsed at its base, huddling together, awaiting death.

The alcohol in Felisin pulled her down into sleep. She thought to resist it, then surrendered, telling herself that the horror would soon find them, and to witness her own death offered no comfort. I should tell Heboric the true worth of knowledge now. Yet he will learn that himself. Not long. Not long at all...

She awoke to silence, but no, not silence. Someone nearby was weeping. Felisin opened her eyes. The Whirlwind's storm had ceased. The sky overhead was a golden shroud of suspended dust. It was so thick on all sides that she could see no more than half a dozen paces. Yet the air was still. Gods, the D'ivers is back – but no, the calm was everywhere.

Head aching and mouth painfully dry, she sat up.

Heboric knelt a few paces away, vague behind a refulgent haze. Invisible hands were pressed against his face, pulling the skin into bizarre folds, as if he was wearing a grotesque mask. His whole body heaved with grief and he rocked back and forth with dull, senseless repetition.

Memory flooded Felisin. Kulp. She felt her own face twisting. 'He should have sensed something,' she croaked.

Heboric's head shot up, his sightless eyes red and hooded as they fixed on her. 'What?'

'The mage,' she snapped, wrapping herself in a frail hug. 'The bastard was a D'ivers. He should have known!'

'Gods, girl, would that I had your armour!'

And should I bleed within it, you see nothing, old man. No-one shall see. No-one shall know.

'If I had,' Heboric continued after a moment, 'I would be able to stay at your side, to offer what protection I could – though wondering why I bothered, granted. Yet I would.'

'What are you babbling about?'

'I am fevered. The D'ivers has poisoned me, lass. And it wars with the other strangers in my soul – I do not know if I shall survive this, Felisin.'

She barely heard him. Her attention had been pulled away by a scuffing sound. Someone was approaching, haltingly, a stagger and a scrape of pebbles. Felisin pushed herself to her feet to face the sound.

Heboric fell silent, his head cocked.

The figure that emerged from the ochre mist sank talons into her sanity. She heard a whimper from her own throat.

Baudin was burned, gnawed, parts completely eaten away. He had been charred down to the bone in places, and the heat had swelled the gases in his belly, bloating him until he looked with child, the skin and flesh cracked open. There was nothing left of his features except ragged holes where his eyes, nose and mouth should have been. Yet Felisin knew it was him.

He staggered another step closer, then slowly sank down to the ground.

'What is it?' Heboric demanded in a hiss. 'This time I am truly blind – who has come?'

'No-one,' Felisin said after a long moment. She walked slowly to the thing that had once been Baudin. She sank down into the warm sand, reached out and lifted his head, cradled it on her thighs.

He was aware of her, reaching up an encrusted, fused hand to hover a moment near her elbow before falling back. He spoke, each word like rope on rock. 'I thought... the fire ... immune.'

'You were wrong,' she whispered, an image of armour within her suddenly cracking, fissures spreading. And beneath it, behind it, something was building.

'My vow.'

'Your vow.'

'Your sister ...'

'Tavore.'

'She—'

'Don't. No, Baudin. Say nothing of her.'

He drew a ragged breath. 'You ...'

Felisin waited, hoping the life would flee this husk, flee it now, before—

'You ... were ... not what I expected ...'

Armour can hide anything until the moment it falls away. Even a child. Especially a child.

 

There was nothing to distinguish sky from earth. Gold stillness had embraced the world. Stones pattered down the trail as Fiddler pulled himself onto the crest, the clatter appallingly loud to his ears. She's drawn breath. And waits.

He wiped sweaty dust from his brow. Hood's breath, this bodes ill.

Mappo emerged from the haze ahead. The huge Trell's exhaustion made his walk more of a shamble than usual. His eyes were red-rimmed, the lines that bracketed his prominent canines were deeply etched into his weathered skin. 'The trail winds ever onward,' he said, crouching beside the sapper. 'I believe she's with her father now – they walk together. Fiddler . ..' He hesitated.

'Aye. The Whirlwind goddess ...'

'There is ... expectancy ... in the air.'

Fiddler grunted at the understatement.

'Well,' Mappo sighed after a moment, 'let us join the others.'

Icarium had found a flat stretch of rock surrounded by large boulders. Crokus sat with his back against stone, watching the Jhag laying out foodstuffs in the centre. The expression the young Daru swung to the sapper when he arrived belonged to a much older man. 'She's not turning back,' Crokus said.

Fiddler said nothing, unslinging his crossbow and setting it down.

Icarium cleared his throat. 'Come and eat, lad,' he said. 'The realms are overlapping, and all is possible ... including the unexpected. Distress over what has not yet happened avails you nothing. In the meantime, the body demands sustenance, and it will do none of us good if you've no reserves of energy when comes the time to act.'

'It's already too late,' Crokus muttered, but he clambered to his feet nonetheless.

'There is too much mystery in this path to be certain of anything,' Icarium replied. 'Twice we have travelled warrens – their aspects I cannot say. They felt ancient and fragmented, woven into the very rock of Raraku. At one point I smelled the sea...'

'As did I,' Mappo said, shrugging his broad shoulders.

'More and more,' Crokus said, 'her journey takes a tack where such things as rebirth become more probable. I am right in that, aren't I?'

'Perhaps,' Icarium conceded. 'Yet, this pensive air hints at uncertainty as well, Crokus. Be mindful of that.'

'Apsalar is not seeking to flee us,' Mappo said. 'She is lead' ing us. What significance should we place in that? With her godly gifts she could easily mask her trail – that shadow-wrought residue that, to Icarium and to myself, is as plain and undisguised as an Imperial road.'

'There might be something else besides,' Fiddler muttered. Faces swung his way. He drew a deep breath, let it out slowly. 'The lass knows our intent, Crokus – what Kalam and I had planned and what is still – as far as I know – being followed. She could well have taken the notion that by assuming the guise of Sha'ik, she can... indirectly... support our efforts. In a manner wholly her own rather than that of the god who once possessed her.'

Mappo smiled wryly. 'There is much you've held from myself and Icarium, soldier.'

'An Imperial matter,' the sapper said, not meeting the Trell's eyes.

'Yet one that sees advantage in this land's rebellion.'

'Only in the short run, Mappo.'

'In becoming Sha'ik reborn, Apsalar will not simply be engaging in a change of costume, Fiddler. The cause of the goddess will take hold of Apsalar's mind, her soul. Such visions and visitations will change her.'

'She may not realize that particular possibility, I'm afraid.'

'She's not a fool,' Crokus snapped.

'I'm not saying she is,' Fiddler replied. 'Like it or not, Apsalar possesses something of a god's arrogance – I was witness to the full force of that back on Genabackis, and I can see that its stain still resides within her. Consider her present decision to leave Iskaral's temple, alone, in pursuit of her father.'

'In other words,' Mappo said, 'you think she might believe she can withstand the influence of the goddess, even as she assumes the role of prophetess and warleader.'

Crokus scowled. 'My mind's tumbling from one thing to the next. What if the patron god of assassins has reclaimed her? What will it mean if the rebellion is suddenly led by Cotillion – and, by extension, Ammanas? The dead Emperor returns to wreak vengeance.'

There was silence. Fiddler had been gnawing on that possibility like an obsessed hound since it had occurred to him days earlier. The notion of a murdered Emperor turned Ascendant suddenly reaching out from the shadows to reclaim the Imperial throne was anything but a pleasant prospect. It was one thing seeking to assassinate Laseen – that was, in the end, a mortal affair. Gods ruling a mortal Empire, on the other hand, would draw other Ascendants, and in such a contest entire civilizations would be destroyed.

They finished their meal without another word spoken.

The dust filling the air refused to settle; it simply hung motionless, hot and lifeless. Icarium repacked the supplies. Fiddler strode over to Crokus.

'No value in fretting, lad. She's found her father, after all these years – there's something to be said for that, don't you think?'

The Daru's smile was wry. 'Oh, I've thought on that, Fid. And yes, I am happy for her, yet mistrustful. What should have been a wondrous reunion has been compromised. By Iskaral Pust. By Shadow's manipulation. It's soured everything—'

'However you may have envisioned it, Crokus, it belongs to Apsalar.'

The lad was silent for a long minute, then he nodded.

Fiddler retrieved his crossbow and slung it over one shoulder. 'At the very least, we've had a respite from Sha'ik's soldiers and the D'ivers and Soletaken.'

'Where is she leading us, Fid?'

The sapper shrugged. 'I suspect we'll find that out soon enough.'

 

The weathered man stood on the hump of rock, facing Raraku. The shroud of silence was absolute; he could hear his own heart, a steady, mindless rhythm in his chest. It had begun to haunt him.

Rocks skittered at his back, and a moment later the Toblakai appeared, dropping a brace of arm-long lizards onto the bleached bedrock. 'Everything's come out for a look around,' the giant youth rumbled. 'For once, a meal worth eating.'

The Toblakai was gaunt. His rages of impatience were gone, and Leoman was thankful for that, though he well knew that a withering of strength was the cause. We wait until Hood comes to take us, the huge barbarian had whispered a few days back, when the Whirlwind had burgeoned in renewed frenzy.

Leoman had had no answer to that. His faith was in tatters. Sha'ik's wrapped corpse still lay between the wind-sculpted stone gateposts. It had shrunk. The tent-cloth shroud had frayed in the ceaseless, clawing wind. The dry knobs of her joints protruded through the worn weave. Her hair, which had continued to grow for weeks, had been pulled free and whipped endlessly in the storm.

Yet now a change had come. The Whirlwind held its immortal breath. The desert, which had been lifted entire from its bones of rock, filling the air, refused to settle.

The Toblakai saw this as the Whirlwind's death. Sha'ik's murder had triggered a prolonged tantrum, a defeated goddess rampaging in frustration and fury. Even as the rebellion spread its bloody cloak over Seven Cities, its heart was dead. The armies of the Apocalypse were the still-twitching limbs on a corpse.

Leoman, plagued with hunger-born visions and fevers, had begun a slow stumbling towards the same belief.

Yet.. .

'This meal,' the Toblakai said, 'will give us the strength needed, Leoman.'

For leaving. And where do we go? To the oasis in the centre of Raraku, where a dead woman's army still waits? Are we the chosen deliverers of the news of tragic failure? Or do we abandon them? Set off for Pan'potsun, then on to Ehrlitan, a flight into anonymity?

The warrior turned. His gaze travelled over the ground and came to rest on the Book of Dryjhna where it waited, unmarred by the Whirlwind, immune even to the dust that found its way into everything. The power abides. Unquenched. When I look upon that tome, I know I cannot let go . . .

'Blades in hand and unhanded in wisdom. Young, yet old, one life whole, another incomplete – she shall emerge renewed...' Did still-hidden truths remain within those words? Had his imagination – his wilful yearning – betrayed him?

The Toblakai squatted before the dead lizards, flipped the first one onto its back and set a knifeblade to its belly. 'I would go west,' he said. 'Into the Jhag 'Odhan ...'

Leoman glanced over. The jhag Odhan, there to come face to face with other giants. The Jhag themselves. The Trell. More savages. The lad will feel right at home in that wasteland. 'This is not over,' the warrior said.

The Toblakai bared his teeth, a hand plunging through the slit in the lizard's belly to re-emerge with slick entrails. 'This one's female. It's said the roe is good for fevers, isn't it?'

'I am not fevered.'

The giant said nothing, but Leoman saw a new set to his shoulders. The Toblakai had made a decision.

'Take what's left of your kill,' the warrior said. 'You'll need it more than I.'

'You jest, Leoman. You do not see yourself as I see you. You are skin on bones. You have devoured your own muscles. I see the skull behind the face when I look at you.'

'I am clear of mind nonetheless.'

The Toblakai grunted. 'A hale man would not say so with such certainty. Is that not the secret revelation of Raraku? "Madness is simply a state of mind."'

'The Sayings of the Fool are aptly named,' Leoman muttered, his voice falling away. A charge was filling the hot, motionless air. The warrior felt his heart beat faster, harder.

The Toblakai straightened, his huge hands smeared with blood.

The two men slowly turned to face the ancient gate. The black hair emerging from the bundled corpse stirred, the strands gently lifting. The suspended dust had begun to swirl beyond the pillars. Sparks winked in its midst, like jewels set in an ochre cloak.

'What?' the Toblakai asked.

Leoman glanced over at the Holy Book. Its hide cover glistened as if with sweat. The warrior took a step towards the gate.

Something was emerging from the dust cloud. Two figures, side by side, their arms locked around one another, staggering, heading straight towards the pillars – and the corpse lying between the bleached gateposts.

'Blades in hand and unhanded in wisdom . . .'

One was an old man, the other a young woman. Heart hammering in his chest, Leoman let his gaze fix on her. So alike. Dark threat pours from her. Pain, and from pain, rage.

There was a thump and a grate of stones beside the warrior. He turned to see the Toblakai on his knees, head bowed before the approaching apparitions.

Raising her head, the woman found first Sha'ik's wrapped corpse, then lifted her eyes higher to fix on Leoman and the kneeling giant. She halted, almost standing over the body, her long black hair rising as if with a static charge.

Younger. Yet the fire within . . . it's the same. Ah, my faith . . .

Leoman lowered himself to one knee. 'You are reborn,' he said.

The woman's low laugh was triumphant. 'So I am,' she said.

She shifted her grip on the old man, whose head hung down, his clothes nothing but rags. 'Help me with him,' she commanded. 'But beware his hands ...'