A god walking mortal earth trails blood.

Sayings of the Fool
Thenys Bule

 

'The chain of dogs,' the sailor growled, his voice as dark and heavy as the air of the hold. 'Now there's a curse no man would wish upon his worst enemy. What, thirty thousand starving refugees? Forty? Sweat-jowled noble-born among 'em, too, bleating this and that. Coltaine's hourglass is about run out, I'd wager.'

Kalam shrugged in the gloom, his hands still running along the damp hull. Name a ship Ragstopper and worry starts before you weigh anchor. 'He's survived this long,' he muttered.

The sailor paused in his stacking of bales. 'Look at this, will ya? Three-fifths' stowage gone before e'en the food and water comes 'board. Korbolo Dom's collected Reloe and his army – added up with his own and making what? Fifty thousand swords in all? Sixty? The traitor will catch hold o' that chain at Vathar. Then with the tribes massing to the south, aye, Beru fend, that Wickan mongrel's all but done for.' The man grunted as he heaved another canvas-wrapped bale. 'Heavy as gold ... and that ain't no empty rumour, I'd say. That blob of whale grease calling himself High Fist has his nose up in the wind - look here, his seal's on everything. The rotten worm's turning tail with his loot. Why else is the Imperial Treasurer comin' 'board, hey? And twenty marines besides ...'

'You may have a point,' the assassin said, distracted. He'd yet to find a dry plank.

'You the caulker's man, then, eh? Got a woman here in Aren? Bet you wish you was comin' wi' us, hey? Mind you, we'll be cramped enough what with the Treasurer and two perfumed elects.'

'Perfumed elects?'

'Aye, saw one of 'em come 'board not ten minutes ago. Smooth as rat-spit, that one, all airs and dainty but no amount of flower juice could hide the spunk, if you know what I mean.'

Kalam grinned in the darkness. Not precisely, you old swab, but I can guess. 'What of the other one?' he asked.

'I'd hazard the same, only I ain't seen him yet. Came 'board with the captain, I heard. Seven Cities blood, if you can believe that. That was before the captain sprung us from the harbour hole – not that we deserved to be arrested in the first place – Hood's breath, when a squad of soldiers comes on ya demanding this and that, it's only natural to put a fist in their mawks, hey? We wasn't ten paces from the gangplank – so much for shore leave!'

'Your last port of call?'

'Falar. Big red-haired women all gruff and muscle just like I like 'em. Ah, that was a time!'

'Your haul?'

'Weapons, in advance of Tavore's fleet. Rode the waves like a sow, let me tell you – like we're gonna do this one, too, all the way to Unta. Bulge the belly like that and your master's got wet hands and feet, hey? Good coin, though, I wager.'

Kalam straightened. 'There won't be time for a full refit,' he said.

'Never is, but Beru bless you – do what you can.'

The assassin cleared his throat. 'Sorry to say, you've got me as the wrong man. I'm not one of the caulker's men.'

The sailor paused over a bale. 'Hey?'

Kalam dried his hands on his cloak. 'I'm the other perfumed elect.'

There was silence from the other side of the hold, then a soft muttering, followed by, 'Beg your pardon, sir.'

'No need for that,' the assassin said. 'What's the likelihood of finding one of the captain's guests down here pressing the planks? I'm a cautious man and, alas, my nerves haven't been eased.'

'She ships, to be true,' the sailor said, 'but captain's got three dedicated hands on the pumps, workin' through every flip o' the glass, sir. And she'll ride any blow and that she has, more than once. Captain's got a lucky shirt, y'see.'

'I've seen it,' Kalam said, stepping over a row of chests each bearing the High Fist's seal. He made his way to the hatch, laid a hand on the ladder rail, then paused. 'What's the rebel activity out in the Sahul?'

'Gettin' hotter, sir. Bless them Marines, 'cause we won't be outrunnin' a scow on this run.'

'No escort?'

'Pormqual's commanded Nok's fleet to hold this harbour. We'll have cover crossing Aren Bay out to the edge of Dojal Hading Sea, at least.'

Kalam grimaced at that, but said nothing. He climbed the ladder to the main deck.

Ragstopper wallowed heavily at the Imperial berth. Stevedores and crewmen were busy with their tasks, making it difficult for the assassin to find a place out of anyone's path. He finally found a spot on the sterncastle near the wheel, from which he could observe. A huge Malazan transport, high in the water, sat on the opposite side of the broad stone dock. The horses it had brought from Quon had been unloaded an hour earlier, with only a dozen dockhands left behind with the task of removing the butchered remains of the animals that had not survived the lengthy journey. It was common practice to salt the meat from such losses, provided the ship's cutter pronounced it edible. The hides found innumerable uses on board. The dockhands were left with heads and bones and no shortage of eager buyers crowding the harbour front on the other side of the Imperial barrier.

Kalam had not seen the captain since the morning they had boarded, two days past. The assassin had been shown to the small stateroom Salk Elan had purchased for Kalam's passage, then promptly left to his own devices while the captain went off to manage the release of his gaoled crew.

Salk Elan ... I weary of waiting to make your acquaintance . . .

Voices barked from the gangplank and Kalam glanced over to see the captain arrive on deck. Accompanying him was a tall, stooped man of middle years, his hatchet face painfully thin, his gaunt cheeks powdered light blue in some recent court fashion, and wearing oversized Napan sea gear. This man was flanked by a pair of bodyguards, both huge, their red faces buried in black, snarled beards and rudely plaited moustaches. They wore pot helms with bridge-guards, full shirts of mail, and broad-bladed tulwars at their hips. Kalam was unable to guess at their cultural origins. Neither the bodyguards nor their master stood comfortably on the mildly rocking deck.

'Ah,' said a soft voice behind the assassin, 'that would be Pormqual's treasurer.'

Startled, Kalam turned to find the speaker leaning against the stern rail. A knife's thrust away.

The man smiled. 'You were well described indeed.'

The assassin studied the stranger. He was lean, young, dressed in a loose, sickly green silk shirt. His face was handsome enough, though a touch too sharp-featured to be called friendly. Rings glittered on his long fingers. 'By whom?' Kalam snapped, disconcerted by the man's sudden appearance.

'Our mutual friend in Ehrlitan. I am Salk Elan.'

'I have no friends in Ehrlitan.'

'Poor choice of word, then. One who was indebted to you, and to whom I was in turn indebted, with the result that I was tasked with arranging your departure from Aren, which I have now done, thus freeing me of further obligations – which has proved timely, I might add.'

Kalam could see no obvious weapons on the man, which told him plenty. He sneered. 'Games.'

Salk Elan sighed. 'Mebra, who entrusted you with the Book, which was duly delivered to Sha'ik. You were bound for Aren, or so Mebra concluded. He further suspected that, with your, uh, talents, you were determined to take the Holy Cause into the heart of the Empire. Or rather, through one heart in particular. Among other preparations, I arranged for a tripwire of sorts to be set at the Imperial Warren's gate, which when activated would immediately trigger various prearranged events.' The man swung his head, scanning the sprawling rooftops of the city. His smile broadened. 'Now, as it turned out, my activities in Aren have been curtailed somewhat of late, making such arrangements difficult to maintain. Even more disconcerting, a bounty has been placed on my head – all a dreadful misunderstanding, I assure you, yet I've little faith in Imperial justice, especially when the High Fist's own Guard are involved. Hence, I booked not one berth but two – the cabin opposite yours, in fact.'

'The captain does not strike me as a man with cheap loyalties,' Kalam said, struggling to conceal his alarm – If Mebra worked out I was planning to kill the Empress, who else might have? And this Salk Elan, whoever he is, clearly doesn't know when to shut up . . . unless, of course, he's fishing for a reaction. Besides, there's a classic tactic that might be at work here. No time to test veracity when you're reeling . . .

The treasurer's high-pitched voice wheedled up from the main deck behind him, in varied complaints flung at the captain – who if he made reply did so under his breath.

'No, not cheap,' Salk Elan agreed. 'Nonexistent would be more accurate.'

Kalam grunted, both disappointed at the failed feint and pleased that he'd heard confirmation of his assessment of the captain's character. Hood's breath, Imperial charters aren't worth the oilskin they're written on these days ...

'Yet another source of consternation,' Elan continued, 'the man's far above average in wits, and seems to find his only intellectual stimulus in gestures of subterfuge and obfuscation. No doubt he went overboard – as it were – in his mysterious meeting with you at the inn.'

Kalam grinned in spite of himself. 'No wonder I took an instant liking to him.'

Elan's laugh was soft, yet appreciative. 'And it should be no surprise that I so look forward to our meals at his table each night of this pending voyage.'

Kalam held his smile as he said, 'I'll not make the mistake of leaving my back open to you again, Salk Elan.'

'You were distracted, of course,' the man said, unperturbed. 'I do not expect such a potential opportunity to recur.'

'I'm glad we're understood, because your explanation thus far has more leaks than this ship.'

'Glad? Such understatement, Kalam Mekhar! I am delighted we're so clearly understood!'

Kalam stepped to one side and glanced back down at the main deck. The treasurer was continuing his tirade against the captain. The crew was motionless, all eyes on the scene.

Salk Elan tsked. 'An appalling breach of etiquette, wouldn't you say?'

'Ship's command is the captain's,' the assassin said. 'If he'd the mind to, he'd have put a halt to things by now. Looks to me like the captain's letting this squall run out.'

'Nonetheless, I suggest you and I join the proceedings.'

Kalam shook his head. 'Not our business and there's no value in making it so. Mind you, don't let my opinion stop you.'

'Ah, but it is our business, Kalam. Would you have all the passengers tarred by the crew? Unless you enjoy the cook's spit in your gruel, that is.'

The bastard has a point.

He watched Salk Elan step casually down to the main deck, and, after a moment, followed suit.

'Noble sir!' Elan called out.

The treasurer and his two bodyguards all turned.

'I trust you are fully appreciative of the captain's patience,' Elan continued, still approaching. 'On most ships you and your effete servants would be over the side by now, and at least two of you would have sunk like ballast stones – a most pleasing image.'

One of the bodyguards growled and edged forward, a large, hairy hand closing on the grip of his tulwar.

The treasurer was strangely pale beneath the sealskin hood, his face showing not a drop of sweat despite the heat and the heavy swaths of the Napan raincloak covering his thin frame. 'You insolent excuse for a crab's anus!' he squealed. 'Roll back into your hole, blood-smeared turd, before I call on the harbour magistrate to throw you in chains!' The man raised one pallid, long-fingered hand. 'Megara, beat this man senseless!'

The bodyguard with his hand on his weapon stepped forward.

'Belay that!' the captain bellowed. Half a dozen sailors closed in, moving between the moustached bodyguard and Salk Elan. Pins and knives waved about menacingly. The bodyguard hesitated, then backed away.

The captain smiled, anchoring his hands on his hips. 'Now,' he said in a quiet, reasonable tone, 'me and the coin-stacker will resume our discussion in my cabin. In the meantime, my crew will help these two servants out of their Hood-damned chain and stow it somewhere safe. Said servants will then bathe and ship's cutter will examine them for vermin – which I don't tolerate 'board Ragstopper – and when the delousing's done they can help load the last of their master's provisions, minus the leadwood bench which we'll donate to the customs officer to ease our departure. Finally, any further cursing on this ship – no matter how inventive – comes from me and no-one else. That, gentlemen, will be all.'

If the treasurer intended a challenge, it was pre-empted by his sudden collapse onto the deck. The two bodyguards spun about at the loud thump, then stood stock still, staring down at their unconscious master.

After a moment, the captain said, 'Well, not all, it seems. Get the coin-stacker below and get him out of those sealskins. Ship's cutter has more work to do, and we ain't even cast off yet.' He swung to Salk Elan and Kalam. 'Now, you two gentlemen can join me in my cabin.'

 

The room was not much larger than the assassin's own, and almost empty of possessions. It was a few minutes before the captain managed to find three tankards into which he poured local sour ale from a clay jug. Without offering a toast, the man drained half his tankard's contents, then wiped his mouth with the back of one hand. His eyes roved restlessly, not once settling on the two men before him. 'The rules,' he said, grimacing. 'Simple. Stay out of the treasurer's way. The situation is ... confused. With the Admiral under arrest—'

Kalam choked on the ale, then managed to rasp, 'What? By whose command?'

The captain was frowning down at Elan's shoes. 'That would be the High Fist's, of course. No other means, you see, of keeping the fleet in the bay.'

'The Empress—'

'Probably doesn't know. There's been no Claw in the city for months – no-one knows why.'

'And their absence,' Elan said, 'gives implicit authority to Pormqual's decisions, I take it.'

'More or less,' the captain conceded, his eyes now fixed on a crossbeam. He finished his ale, poured more. 'In any case, the High Fist's personal treasurer has arrived with a writ granting him commander status for this voyage, meaning he has the privilege of overriding me if he so chooses. Now, while I hold an Imperial charter, neither me nor my ship and crew are actually in the Imperial Navy, which leaves things, like I said earlier, confused.'

Kalam set his tankard down on the room's lone table. 'Right opposite us is an Imperial transport ship, getting ready to leave as much as we are. Why in Hood's name hasn't Pormqual sent his treasurer and his loot there? It's bigger and better defended, after all—'

'So it is. And it has indeed been commandeered by the High Fist, and will depart for Unta shortly after we do, loaded with Pormqual's household and his precious breeding stallions, meaning it will be very crowded, and rank to boot.' He shrugged as if his shoulders had been tugged upwards by invisible hands. He glanced nervously towards the door before returning his somewhat desperate gaze to the cross-beam overhead. 'Ragstopper's fast when she has to be. Now, that's all. Drink up. The marines will board any moment now, and I mean for us to cast off within the hour.'

 

In the companionway outside the captain's cabin, Salk Elan shook his head and muttered, 'He couldn't have been serious.'

The assassin eyed the man. 'What do you mean?'

'The ale was atrocious. "Drink up" indeed.'

Kalam scowled. 'No Claw in the city – now why would that be?'

The man's shrug was loose. 'Aren's not its old self, alas. Filled with monks and priests and soldiers, the gaols crowded with innocents while Sha'ik's fanatics – only the most cunning left alive, of course – spread murder and mayhem. It's also said the warrens aren't what they used to be, either, though I gather you know more about that than I.' Elan smiled.

'Was that an answer to my question?'

'And am I an expert on the activities of the Claw? Not only have I never run into one of those horrid throat-slitters, I make it policy that my curiosity about them is thoroughly curtailed.' He brightened suddenly. 'Perhaps the treasurer will not survive his heat prostration! Now there's a pleasing thought!'

Kalam swung about and made his way to his cabin. He heard Salk Elan sigh, then head in the opposite direction, ascending the companionway ladder to the main deck.

The assassin closed the door behind him and leaned against it. Better to walk into a trap that you can see than one you can't. Yet the thought gave him scant comfort. He wasn't even sure if there was a trap. Mebra's web was vast – Kalam had always known that, and had himself plucked those strands more than once. Nor, it seemed, had the Ehrlitan spy betrayed him when it came to delivering the Book of Dryjhna – Kalam had placed it into Sha'ik's hands, after all.

Salk Elan was likely a mage, and he also had the look of a man capable of handling himself in a fight. He had not so much as flinched when the treasurer's bodyguard had closed on him.

None of which puts me at ease.

The assassin sighed. And the man knows bad ale when he tastes it. . .

 

When the High Fist's breeding stallions were led through the gate into the Imperial yard, chaos ensued. Stamping, nervous horses jostled with stablers, dockhands, soldiers and various officials. The Master of the Horse shrieked and ran about in an effort to impose some order, fomenting even more confusion in the seething press.

The woman holding the reins of one magnificent stallion was notable only for her watchful calm, and when the Master finally managed to arrange the loading, she was among the first to lead her charge up the broad gangplank onto the Imperial transport. And though the Master knew every one of his workers and every one of the breeders in his care, his attention was so tugged and strained in multiple directions that he did not register that both woman and horse were unknown to him.

Minala had watched Ragstopper cast off two hours earlier, following the boarding of two squads of marines and their gear. The trader was towed clear of the inside harbour before being allowed to stretch sails, flanked by Imperial galleys that would provide escort crossing Aren Bay. Four similar warships awaited the Imperial transport a quarter-league out.

The complement of Marines aboard the Imperial transport was substantial, at least seven squads. Clearly, the Dojal Hading Sea was not secure.

Kalam's stallion tossed his head as he stepped down onto the main deck. The massive hatch that led down into the hold was in fact an elevator, raised and lowered by winches. The first four horses had been led onto the platform.

An old, grizzled stabler standing near Minala eyed her and the stallion. 'The latest in the High Fist's purchases?' he asked.

She nodded.

'Magnificent animal,' the man said. 'He's a good eye, has the High Fist.'

And not much else worth mentioning. The bastard's making a show of his imminent flight, and when he finally leaves, he'll have an entire fleet of warships for escort, no doubt. Ah, Keneb, is this what we've delivered you to?

Get out of Aren, Kalam had said. She'd urged the same to Selv before saying goodbye, but Keneb was among the army's ranks now. Attached to Blistig's City Garrison. They were going nowhere.

Minala suspected she would never see any of them again.

All to chase a man I don't understand. A man I'm not even sure I like. Oh, woman, you're old enough to know better. . .

 

The southern horizon ran in a thin, grey-green vein that wavered in the streams of heat rising from the road. The land that stretched before it was barren, studded with stones except along the path of the potsherd-strewn trader track that branched out from the Imperial Road.

The vanguard sat their horses at the crossroads. To the east and southeast lay the coast, with its clustering of villages and towns and the Holy City of Ubaryd. The skyline in that direction was bruised with smoke.

Slumped in his saddle, Duiker listened with the others as Captain Sulmar spoke.

'—and the consensus on this is absolute, Fist. We've no choice but to hear Nethpara and Pullyk out. It is, after all, the refugees who will suffer the most.'

Captain Lull grunted his contempt.

Sulmar's face paled beneath the dust, but he went on, 'Their rations are at starvation level as it is – oh, there'll be water at Vathar, but what of the wasteland beyond?'

Bult raked fingers through his beard. 'Our warlocks say they sense nothing, but we are still distant – a forest and a wide river between us and the drylands. It may be that the spirits of the land down there are simply buried deep – Sormo has said as much.'

Duiker glanced at the warlock, who offered nothing and who sat wrapped in an Elder's cloak atop his horse, his face hidden beneath the hood's shadow. The historian could see the now constant tremble in Sormo's long-fingered hands where they rested on the saddlehorn. Nil and Nether were still recovering from their ordeal at Gelor Ridge, not once emerging from the covered wagon that carried them, and Duiker had begun to wonder whether they still lived at all. Our last three mages, and two of them are either dead or too weak to walk, while the third has aged ten years for every week of this Hood-cursed journey.

'The tactical advantages must be clear to you, Fist,' Sulmar said after a moment. 'No matter how sundered Ubaryd's walls may be, they'll provide a better defence than a land devoid even of hills—'

'Captain!' Bult barked.

Sulmar subsided, lips pressing into a thin, bloodless line.

Duiker shivered in response to a chill that had nothing to do with the dying day's slow cooling. Such a vast concession, Sulmar, according to a Wickan war chief the rules of courtesy expected from one of lower rank. What skin is this that's wearing so thin on you, Captain? No doubt quickly cast off when you sup wine with Nethpara and Pullyk Alar . . .

Coltaine did not take Sulmar to task. He never did. He met every jibe and dig of noble-born presumption and arrogance in the same manner that he dealt with everything else: cold indifference. It may well have worked for the Wickan, but Duiker could see how bold it was making Sulmar and others like him.

And the captain was not finished. 'This is not just a military concern, Fist. The civil element of the situation—'

'Promote me, Commander Bult,' Lull said, 'so that I may whip this dog until his hide's just a memory.' He bared his teeth at his fellow captain. 'Otherwise, a word with you somewhere private, Sulmar ...'

The man replied with a silent sneer.

Coltaine spoke. 'There is no civil element. Ubaryd will prove a fatal trap should we retake it. Assailed from the land and the sea, we would never hold. Explain that to Nethpara, Captain, as your last task.'

'My last task, sir?'

The Fist said nothing.

'Last,' Bult rumbled. 'Means just that. You've been stripped of rank, drummed out.'

'Begging the Fist's pardon, but you cannot do that.'

Coltaine's head turned and Duiker wondered if the captain had finally got to the Fist.

Sulmar shrugged. 'My Imperial commission was granted by a High Fist, sir. Based on that, it is within my right to ask for adjudication. Fist Coltaine, it has always been the strength of the Malazan Army that a tenet of our discipline insists that we speak our mind. Regardless of your commands – which I will obey fully – I have the right to have my position duly recorded, as stated. If you wish, I can recite the relevant Articles to remind you of these rights, sir.'

There was silence, then Bult swung in his saddle to Duiker. 'Historian, did you understand any of that?'

'As well as you, Uncle.'

'Will his position be duly recorded?'

'Aye.'

'And presumably adjudication requires the presence of advocates, not to mention a High Fist.'

Duiker nodded.

'Where is the nearest High Fist?'

'Aren.'

Bult nodded thoughtfully. 'Then, to resolve this matter of the captain's commission, we must make all haste to Aren.' He faced Sulmar. 'Unless, of course, the views of the Council of Nobles are to take precedence over the issue of the fate of your career, Captain.'

'Retaking Ubaryd will allow relief from Admiral Nok's fleet,' Sulmar said. 'Through this avenue, a swift and safe journey to Aren can be effected.'

'Admiral Nok's fleet is in Aren,' Bult pointed out.

'Yes, sir. However, once news reaches them that we are in Ubaryd, the obvious course will be clear.'

'You mean they will hasten to relieve us?' Bult's frown was exaggerated. 'Now I am confused, Captain. The High Fist holds his army in Aren. More, he holds the entire Seven Cities fleet as well. Neither has moved in months. He has had countless opportunities to despatch either force to our aid. Tell me, Captain, in your family's hunting estates, have you ever seen a deer caught in lantern light? How it stands, frozen, unable to do anything. The High Fist Pormqual is that deer. Coltaine could deliver this train to a place three miles up the coast from Aren and Pormqual would not set forth to deliver us. Do you truly believe that an even greater plight, such as you envisage for us in Ubaryd, will shame the High Fist into action?'

'I was speaking more of Admiral Nok—'

'Who is dead, sick or in a dungeon, Captain. Else he would have sailed long ere now. One man rules Aren, and one man alone. Will you place your life in his hands, Captain?'

Sulmar's expression had soured. 'It seems I have in either case, Commander.' He drew on his riding gloves. 'And it also seems that I am no longer permitted to venture my views—'

'You are,' Coltaine said. 'But you are also a soldier of the Seventh.'

The captain's head bobbed. 'I apologize, Fist, for my presumption. These are strained times indeed.'

'I wasn't aware of that,' Bult said, grinning.

Sulmar swung to Duiker suddenly. 'Historian, what are your views on all this?'

As an objective observer . . . 'My views on what, Captain?'

The man's mouth twitched into a smile. 'Ubaryd, or the River Vathar and the forest and wastes southward? As a civilian who knows well the plight of the refugees, do you truly believe they will survive such a fraught journey?'

The historian said nothing for a long minute, then he cleared his throat and shrugged. 'As ever, the greater of the threats has been the renegade army. The victory at Gelor Ridge has purchased for us time to lick our wounds—'

'Hardly,' Sulmar interjected. 'If anything, we have been pushed even harder since then.'

'Aye, we have, and for good reason. It is Korbolo Dom who now pursues us. The man was a Fist in his own right, and is a very able commander and tactician. Kamist Reloe is a mage, not a leader of soldiers – he wasted his army, thinking to rely upon numbers and numbers alone. Korbolo will not be so foolish. If our enemy arrives at the River Vathar before we do, we are finished—'

'Precisely why we should surprise him and recapture Ubaryd instead!'

'A short-lived triumph,' Duiker replied. 'We'd be left with two days at the most to prepare the city's defences before Korbolo's arrival. As you said, I am a civilian, not a tactician. Yet even I can see that retaking Ubaryd would prove suicidal, Captain.'

Bult shifted in his saddle, making a show of looking around. 'Let us find a cattle-dog, so that we may have yet another opinion. Sormo, where's that ugly beast that's adopted you? The one the marines call Bent?'

The warlock's head lifted slightly. 'Do you really wish to know?' His voice was a rasp.

Bult frowned. 'Aye, why not?'

'Hiding in the grass seven paces from you, Commander.'

It was inevitable that everyone began looking, including Coltaine. Finally, Lull pointed and, after peering for a moment longer, Duiker could make out a tawny body amidst the high prairie spikegrass. Hood's breath!

'I am afraid,' Sormo said, 'that he will offer little in the way of opinion, Uncle. Where you lead, Bent follows.'

'A true soldier, then,' Bult said, nodding.

Duiker guided his horse around on the crossroads, then looked back over the vast column stretching its length northward. The Imperial Road was designed for the swift travel of armies. It was wide and level, the cobbles displaying geometric precision. It could manage a troop of fifteen horsewarriors riding abreast. Coltaine's Chain of Dogs was over an Imperial league long, even with the three Wickan clans riding the grasslands to either side of the road.

'Discussion is ended,' Coltaine announced.

Bult said, 'Report to your companies, captains.' It was not necessary to add, We march for the River Vathar. The command meeting had revealed positions, in particular Sulmar's conflicting loyalties, and beyond the mundane discussion of troop placement, supply issues and so on, nothing else was open to debate.

Duiker felt a wave of pity for Sulmar, realizing the level of pressure the man must be under from Nethpara and Pullyk Alar. The captain was noble-born, after all, and the threat of displeasure visited upon his kin made Sulmar's position untenable.

'The Malazan Army shall know but one set of rules,' Emperor Kellanved had proclaimed, during the first 'cleansing' and 'restructuring' of the military early in his reign. 'One set of rules, and one ruler . . .' His and Dassem Ultor's imposition of merit as the sole means of advancement had triggered a struggle for control within the hierarchies of the Army and Navy commands. Blood was spilled on the palace steps, and Laseen's Claw was the instrument of that surgery. She should have learned from that episode. We had our second cull, but it came far too late.

Captain Lull interrupted Duiker's thoughts. 'Ride back with me, old man. There's something you should see.'

'Now what?'

Lull's grin was ghastly in his raw, ravaged face. 'Patience, please.'

'Ah, well, I've acquired that with plenty to spare, Captain.' Waiting to die, and such a long wait it's been.

Lull clearly understood Duiker's comment. He squinted his lone eye out across the plain, northwest, to where Korbolo Dom's army was, less than three days away and closing fast. 'It's an official request, Historian.'

'Very well. Ride on, then.'

Coltaine, Bult and Sormo had ridden down to the trader track. Voices shouted from the Seventh's advance elements as preparations began to leave the Imperial Road. Duiker saw the cattle-dog Bent loping ahead of the three Wickans. And so we follow. We are indeed well named.

'How fares the corporal?' Lull asked as they rode down the corridor towards Lull's company.

Duiker frowned. List had taken a vicious wound at Gelor Ridge. 'Mending. We face difficulties with the healers – they're wearing down, Captain.'

'Aye.'

'They've drawn so much on their warrens that it's begun to damage their own bodies – I saw one healer's arm snap like a twig when he lifted a pot from a hearth. That frightened me more than anything else I've yet to witness, Captain.'

The man tugged at the patch covering his ruined eye. 'You're not alone in that, old man.'

Duiker fell silent. Lull had nearly succumbed to a septic infection. He had become gaunt beneath his armour, and the scars on his face had set his features into a tortured expression that made strangers flinch. Hood's breath, not just strangers. If the Chain of Dogs has a face, it is Lull's.

They rode between columns of soldiers, smiled at the shouts and grim jests thrown their way, though for Duiker the smile was strained. It was well that spirits were high, the strange melancholy that came with victory drifting away, but the spectre of what lay ahead nevertheless loomed with monstrous certainty. The historian had felt his own spirits deepening to sorrow, for he'd long since lost the ability to will himself into blind faith.

The captain spoke again. 'This forest beyond the river, what do you know of it?'

'Cedar,' Duiker replied. 'Source of Ubaryd's fame in shipbuilding. It once covered both sides of the River Vathar, but now only the south side remains, and even that has dwindled close to the bay.'

'The fools never bothered replanting?'

'A few efforts, when the threat was finally recognized, but herders had already claimed the land. Goats, Captain. Goats can turn a paradise into a desert in no time at all. They eat shoots, they strip bark entirely around the boles of trees, killing them as surely as a wildfire. However, there's plenty of forest left upriver – we'll be a week or more travelling through it.'

'So I'd heard. Well, I'll welcome the shade ...'

A week or more, indeed. More like eternity – how does Coltaine defend his vast winding train amidst a forest, where ambushes will come from every direction, where troops cannot wheel and respond with anything like swiftness and order? Sulmar's concerns about the dry lands beyond the forest are moot, as far as I'm concerned. And I wonder if I'm alone in thinking that?

They rode between wagons loaded with wounded soldiers. The air was foul here with flesh rotting where forced healing had failed to stem the advance of infection. Soldiers in fever raved and rambled, delirium prying open the doors of their minds to countless other realms – from this nightmare world into countless others. Only Hood's gift offers surcease . . .

Off to their left on the flat grassland, the train's dwindling herds of cattle and goats moved amidst turgid clouds of dust. Wickan cattle-dogs patrolled the edges, accompanied by Weasel Clan riders. The entire herd would be slaughtered at the River Vathar, for the lands beyond the forest would not sustain them. For there are no spirits of the land there.

The historian found himself musing as he eyed the herd. The animals had matched them step for step on this soul-destroying journey. Month after month of suffering. That is one curse we all share – the will to live. Their fates had been decided, though thankfully they knew nothing of that. Yet even that will change in the last moments. The dumbest of beasts seems capable of sensing its own impending death. Hood grants every living thing awareness at the very end. What mercy is that?

'The horse's blood had burned black in its veins,' Lull said suddenly.

Duiker nodded, not needing to ask which horse the captain meant. She carried them all, such a raging claim on her life force, it seared her from within. Such thoughts took him past words, into a place of raw pain.

'It's said,' Lull went on, 'that their hands are stained black now. They are marked for ever more.'

As am I. He thought of Nil and Nether, two children curled foetally beneath the hood of the wagon, there in the midst of their silent kin. The Wickans know that the gift of power is never free. They know enough not to envy the chosen among them, for power is never a game, nor are glittering standards raised to glory and wealth. They disguise nothing in trappings, and so we all see what we'd rather not, that power is cruel, hard as iron and bone, and it thrives on destruction.

'I am falling into your silences, old man,' Lull said softly.

Duiker could only nod again.

'I find myself impatient for Korbolo Dom. For an end to this. I can no longer see what Coltaine sees, Historian.'

'Can you not?' Duiker asked, meeting the man's eye. 'Are you certain that what he sees is different from what you see, Lull?'

Dismay slowly settled on his twisted features.

'I fear,' Duiker continued, 'that the Fist's silences no longer speak of victory.'

'A match to your own growing silence, then.'

The historian shrugged. An entire continent pursues us. We should not have lived this long. And I can take my thoughts no further than that, and am diminished by that truth. All those histories I've read . . . each an intellectual obsession with war, the endless redrawing of maps. Heroic charges and crushing defeats. We are all naught but twists of suffering in a river of pain. Hood's breath, old man, your words weary even yourself- why inflict them on others?

'We need to stop thinking,' Lull said. 'We're well past that point. Now we simply exist. Look at those beasts over there. We're the same, you and I, the same as them. Struggling beneath the sun, pushed and ever pushed to our place of slaughter.'

Duiker shook his head. 'It is our curse that we cannot know the bliss of being mindless, Captain. You'll find no salvation where you're looking, I'm afraid.'

'Not interested in salvation,' Lull growled. 'Just a way to keep going.'

They approached the captain's company. In the midst of the Seventh's infantry stood a knot of haphazardly armed and armoured men and women, perhaps fifty in all. Faces were turned expectantly towards Lull and Duiker.

'Time to be a captain,' Lull muttered under his breath, his tone so dispirited that it stung the historian's heart.

A waiting sergeant barked out a command to stand at attention and the motley gathering made a ragged but deter-mined effort to comply. Lull eyed them for a moment longer, then dismounted and approached.

'Six months ago you knelt before purebloods,' the captain addressed them. 'You shied away your eyes and had the taste of dusty floors on your tongues. You exposed your backs to the whips and your world was high walls and foul hovels where you slept, where you loved, and gave birth to children who would face no better future. Six months ago I wouldn't have wasted a tin jakata on the lot of you.' He paused, nodding to his sergeant.

Soldiers of the Seventh came forward, each carrying folded uniforms. Those uniforms were faded, stained and restitched where weapons had pierced the cloth. Resting atop each pressed bundle was an iron sigil. Duiker leaned forward on his saddle to examine one more closely. The medallion was perhaps four inches in diameter, a circlet of chain affixed to a replica Wickan dog-collar, and in the centre was a cattle-dog's head – not snarling, simply staring outward with hooded eyes.

Something twisted inside the historian so that he barely managed to contain it.

'Last night,' Captain Lull said, 'a representative of the Council of Nobles came to Coltaine. They were burdened with a chest of gold and silver jakatas. It seems the nobles have grown weary of cooking their own food, mending their own clothes ... wiping their own asses—'

At another time such a comment would have triggered dark looks and low grumbling – just one more spit in the face to join a lifetime of others. Instead, the former servants laughed. The antics of when they were children. Children no more.

Lull waited for the laughter to fall away. 'The Fist said nothing. The Fist turned his back on them. The Fist knows how to gauge value ...' The captain paused, a slow frown descending on his scarred features. 'There comes a time when a life can't be bought by coin, and once that line's crossed, there's no going back. You are soldiers now. Soldiers of the Seventh. Each of you will join regular squads in my infantry, to stand alongside your fellow soldiers – and not one of them gives a damn what you were before.' He swung to the sergeant. 'Assign these soldiers, Sergeant.'

Duiker watched the ritual in silence, each issuing of uniform as a man or woman's name was called out, the squads coming forward to collect their new member. Nothing was overplayed, nothing was forced. The perfunctory professionalism of the act carried its own weight, and a deep silence enveloped the scene. The historian saw inductees in their forties, but none was unfit. Decades of hard labour and the culling of two battles had ensured a collection of stubborn survivors.

They will stand, and stand well.

The captain appeared at his side. 'As servants,' Lull softly rumbled, 'they might have survived, been sold on to other noble families. Now, with swords in their hands, they will die. Can you hear this silence, Duiker? Do you know what it signifies? I imagine you do, all too well.'

With all that we do, Hood smiles.

'Write of this, old man.'

Duiker glanced at the captain and saw a broken man.

 

At Gelor Ridge, Corporal List had leapt down into the ditch beside the earthen ramp to avoid a swarm of arrows. His right foot had landed on a javelin head thrust up through the dirt. The iron point had driven through the sole of his boot, then the flesh between his big toe and the next one along.

A small wound, naught but mischance, yet punctures were the most feared of all battle wounds. They carried a fever that seized joints, including those of the jaw, that could make the mouth impossible to open, closing the throat to all sustenance and bringing agonizing death.

The Wickan horsewives had experience of treating such injuries, yet their supply of powders and herbs had long since dwindled, leaving them with but one treatment – burning the wound, and the burning had to be thorough. The hours after the battle of Gelor Ridge, the air was foul with the stench of burned hair and the macabre, sweetly enticing smell of cooked meat.

Duiker found List hobbling in a circle with a determined expression on his thin, sweat-beaded face. The corporal glanced up as the historian approached. 'I can ride as well, sir, though for only an hour at a time. The foot goes numb and it's then that infection could return – or so I'm told.'

Four days ago the historian had walked alongside the travois that carried List, looking down on a young man that he was certain was dying. A harried Wickan horsewife had quickly checked on the corporal during the march. Duiker had seen a grim expression settle into her lined features as she probed with her fingers the swollen glands beneath List's sparsely bearded chin. Then she had glanced up at the historian.

Duiker recognized her then, and she him. The woman who once offered me food.

'It's not good,' he'd said.

She hesitated, then reached under the folds of her hide cloak to withdraw a knuckle-sized, misshapen object that looked to Duiker like nothing more than a knob of mouldy bread. 'A jest of the spirits, no doubt,' she said in Malazan. Then she bent down, grasped List's injured foot – which had been left unbandaged and open to the hot, dry air – and pressed the knob against the puncture wound, binding it in place with a strip of hide.

A jest to make Hood frown.

'You should be ready to rejoin the ranks soon, then,' Duiker now said.

List nodded, approached. 'I must tell you something, sir,' he said quietly. 'My fever showed me visions of what's ahead—'

'That happens sometimes.'

'A god's hand reached out from the darkness, grasped my soul and dragged it forward, through days, weeks. Historian—' List paused to wipe the sweat from his brow – 'the land south of Vathar ... we're going to a place of old truths.'

Duiker's gaze narrowed. 'Old truths? What does that mean, List?'

'Something terrible happened there, sir. Long ago. The earth – it's lifeless—'

That is something only Sormo and the High Command know. 'This god's hand, Corporal, did you see it?'

'No, but I felt it. The fingers were long, too long, with more joints than there should be. Sometimes that grip comes back, like a ghost's, and I start shivering in its icy clutch.'

'Do you recall that ancient slaughter at Sekala Crossing? Did your visions echo those, Corporal?'

List frowned, then shook his head. 'No, what lies ahead of us now is much older, Historian.'

Shouts arose as the train readied to lurch into motion again, down off the Imperial Road and onto the trader track.

Duiker looked out over the studded plain to the south. 'I will walk alongside your travois, Corporal,' he said, 'while you describe for me in detail these visions of yours.'

'They might be naught but fevered delusions, Historian—'

'But you don't believe so . . . and neither do I.' His eyes remained on the plain. A many-jointed hand. Not a god's hand, Corporal, though one of such power that you might well have thought so. You've been chosen, lad, for whatever reason, to witness an Elder vision. Out from the darkness comes the cold hand of a Jaghut.

 

Felisin sat on a block of masonry that had fallen from the ancient gate, her arms wrapped around herself, her eyes on the ground before her, steadily rocking in a slow cadence. The motion brought peace to her mind, as if she was nothing more than a vessel filled with water.

Heboric and the giant warrior were arguing. About her, about prophecies and ill chance, about the desperation of fanatics. Mutual contempt swirled and bubbled between the two men, seemingly born in the instant they met, and growing darker with every moment that passed.

The other warrior, Leoman, crouched nearby, matching her silence. He had before him the Holy Book of Dryjhna, guarding the tome in her stead, awaiting what he seemed to see as her inevitable acceptance that she was indeed Sha'ik reborn.

Reborn. Renewed. Heart of the Apocalypse. Delivered by the unhanded in the suspended breath of the goddess. Who waits still. Waits as Leoman waits. Felisin, hinge of the world.

A smile cracked her features.

She rocked to distant cries, the ancient echoes of sudden, soul-jarring deaths – they seemed so far away now. Kulp, devoured beneath a seething mound of rats. Gnawed bones and a shock of white hair streaked red. Baudin, burned in a fire of his own making – oh, the irony of that, he lived by his own rule and died with that same godless claim. Even as he gave up his life for someone else. Still, he'd say he made his vow freely.

These are the things that bring stillness.

Deaths that had already withdrawn, far down the endless, dusty track, too distant to make their demands heard or felt. Grief rapes the mind, and I know all about rape. It's a question of acquiescence. So I shall feel nothing. No rape, no grief.

Stones grated beside her. Heboric. She knew the feeling of his presence and had no need to look up. The one-time priest of Fener was muttering under his breath. Then he fell silent, as if steeling himself to reach into her silence. Rape. A moment later he spoke, 'They want to get moving, lass. They're both far gone. The oasis – Sha'ik's encampment – is a long walk. There's water to be found on the way, but little in the way of food. The Toblakai will hunt, but game's gone very scarce – the Soletaken and D'ivers, I gather. In any case, whether you open the Book or not, we have to move.'

She said nothing, continued rocking.

Heboric cleared his throat. 'For all I rage against their mad, fevered notions, and counsel most strongly against your accepting them ... we need these two, and the oasis. They know Raraku – better than anyone else. If we're to have any chance of surviving . ..'

Surviving.

'I'll grant you,' Heboric went on after a moment, 'I've acquired ... senses ... that make my blindness less of a liability. And these hands of mine, reborn... Nonetheless, Felisin, I'm not enough to guard you. And besides, there is no guarantee that these two will let us walk away from them, if you understand my meaning.'

Surviving.

'Wake up, lass! You've got some decisions to make.'

'Sha'ik drew her blade against the Empire,' she said, eyes still on the dusty ground.

'A foolish gesture—'

'Sha'ik would face the Empress, would send the Imperial armies into a blood-filled Abyss.'

'History recounts similar rebellions, lass, and the tale is an endless echo. Glorious ideals lend a vigour of health to Hood's bleached grin, but it's naught but a glamour, and righteousness—'

'Who cares about what's righteous, old man? The Empress must needs answer Sha'ik's challenge.'

'Aye.'

'And shall despatch an army from Quon Tali.'

'Likely already on the way.'

'And,' Felisin continued, feeling a cold breath touch her flesh, 'who commands this army?'

She heard him draw a sharp breath of his own and felt him flinch back.

'Lass—'

She snapped out a hand as if batting away a wasp, and rose to her feet. She turned to find Leoman staring at her, his sun-scoured face striking her suddenly as Raraku's own. Harder than Beneth's, without any of the affectations. Sharper than Baudin, oh, there's wit there, in those cold, dark eyes. 'To Sha'ik's encampment,' she said.

He glanced down at the Book, then back to her.

Felisin raised an eyebrow. 'Would you rather walk through a storm? Let the goddess wait a little longer before renewing her fury, Leoman.'

She saw him reappraise her, a glimmer of uncertainty newly arriving in his eyes, and was pleased. After a moment, he bowed his head.

'Felisin,' Heboric hissed, 'have you any idea—'

'Better than you, old man. Now keep quiet.'

'Perhaps we should part ways now—'

She swung to him. 'No. I think I shall have need for you, Heboric'

He gave her a bitter smile. 'As your conscience, lass? I'm a poor choice.'

Yes, you are, and all the better for that.

 

The ancient path showed signs of having once been a road, running the length of a ridge that twisted like a crooked spine towards a distant mesa. Cobbles showed like bone where the wind had scoured away the sandy soil. The path was littered with red-glazed potsherds that crunched underfoot.

The Toblakai scouted five hundred paces ahead, unseen in the ochre haze, while Leoman led Felisin and Heboric at a measured pace, rarely speaking. The man was frighteningly gaunt and moved so silently over the ground that Felisin had begun to imagine him no more than a spectre. Nor did Heboric stumble in his blindness as he walked behind her.

Glancing back, she saw him smiling. 'Something amusing you?'

'This road is crowded, lass.'

'The same ghosts as in the buried city?'

He shook his head. 'Not as old. These are memories of an age that followed the First Empire.'

Leoman stopped and turned at that.

Heboric's broad mouth extended into a grin. 'Oh aye, Raraku is showing me her secrets.'

'Why?'

The ex-priest shrugged.

Felisin eyed the desert warrior. 'Does that make you nervous, Leoman?' Because it should.

He glanced at her, his eyes dark and appraising. 'What is this man to you?'

I don't know. 'My companion. My historian. Of great value since I am to make Raraku my home.'

'The Holy Desert's secrets are not his to possess. He plunders them as would any foreign raider. If you desire Raraku's truths, look within yourself.'

She almost gave a laugh at that, but knew its bitterness would frighten even her.

They continued on, the morning's heat rising, the sky turning into gold fire. The ridge narrowed, revealing the ancient road's foundation stones, ten or more feet down on either side, the slope beyond falling away a further fifty or sixty feet. The Toblakai awaited them at a place where the road bed had collapsed to create large, dark holes in the ground. From one of them issued the soft trickle of water.

'An aqueduct beneath the road,' Heboric said. 'It used to flow in a torrent.'

Felisin saw the Toblakai scowl.

Leoman gathered the waterskins and proceeded to crawl down into the hole.

Heboric sat down to rest. After a moment, he cocked his head. 'Sorry you had to wait for us, Toblakai-with-the-secret-name, though I imagine you'd have trouble getting your head through that cave mouth in any case.'

The giant savage sneered, revealing filed teeth. 'I collect tokens of the people I kill. Tied here on my belt. One day I will have yours.'

'He means your ears, Heboric,' Felisin said.

'Oh, I know, lass,' the ex-priest said. 'Tortured spirits writhe in this bastard's shadow – every man, woman and child that he's killed. Tell me, Toblakai, did those children beg to live? Did they weep, cry out for their mothers?'

'No more than grown men did,' the giant said, yet Felisin saw that he had paled, though she sensed that it was not his killing of children that bothered him. No, there was something else in what Heboric had said.

Tortured spirits. He's haunted by the ghosts of those he's slain. Forgive me, Toblakai, if I spare you no pity.

'This land is not home to Toblakai,' Heboric said. 'Has the Rebellion's lure of slaughter called you here? From where did you crawl, bastard?'

'I have said to you all that I shall say. When I speak to you next it will be when I kill you.'

Leoman emerged from the hole, cobwebs snagged in his bound hair, the waterskins bulging at his back. 'You will kill no-one until I say so,' he growled to the Toblakai, then swung a glare on Heboric. 'And I've not yet said so.'

There was something in the giant's expression that spoke of immense patience coupled with unwavering certainty. He rose to his full height, accepted a waterskin from Leoman, then set off down the trail.

Heboric stared sightlessly after him. 'The wood of that weapon is soaked in pain. I cannot imagine he sleeps well at night.'

'He barely sleeps at all,' Leoman muttered. 'You shall cease baiting him.'

The ex-priest grimaced. 'You've not seen the ghosts of children tied to his heels, Leoman. But I shall make the effort to keep my mouth shut.'

'His tribe made few distinctions,' Leoman said. 'There was kin, and those who were not kin were the enemy. Now, enough talk.'

A hundred paces on, the road suddenly widened, opening out onto the flat of the mesa. To either side ran row upon row of oblong humps of fired, reddish clay, each hump seven feet long and three wide. Despite the foreshortened horizons created by the suspended dust, Felisin could see that the rows, scores deep, encircled the entire plateau – entirely surrounding the ruined city that lay before them.

The cobbles were fully exposed now, revealing a broad causeway that ran in a straight line towards what had once been a grand gate, worn down by centuries of wind to knee-high stumps of bleached stone – as was the entire city beyond.

'A slow death,' Heboric whispered.

The Toblakai was already striding through the distant gates.

'We must cross through to the other side, down to the harbour,' Leoman said. 'Where we shall find a hidden camp. And a cache ... unless it has been pillaged.'

The city's main street was a dusty mosaic of shattered pottery: red-glazed body sherds, grey, black and brown rims. 'I will think of this,' Felisin said, 'when I next carelessly break a pot.'

Heboric grunted. 'I know of scholars who claim they can map entire extinct cultures through the study of such detritus.'

'Now there's a lifetime of excitement,' Felisin drawled.

'Would that I could trade places with one of them!'

'You are not serious, Heboric'

'I am not? Fener's tusk, lass, I am not the adventurous type—'

'Perhaps not at first, but then you were broken. Shattered. Like these pots here.'

'I appreciate the observation, Felisin.'

'You cannot be remade unless you are first broken.'

'You have become very philosophic in your advanced years, I see.'

More than you realize. 'Tell me you've learned no truths, Heboric'

He snorted. 'Aye, I've learned one. There are no truths. You'll understand that yourself, years from now, when Hood's shadow stretches your way.'

'There are truths,' Leoman said ahead of them, not turning as he continued. 'Raraku. Dryjhna. The Whirlwind and the Apocalypse. The weapon in the hand, the flow of blood.'

'You've not made our journey, Leoman,' Heboric growled.

'Your journey was rebirth – as she has said – and so there was pain. Only fools would expect otherwise.'

The old man made no reply to that.

They walked on in the city's sepulchral silence. The foundation stones and the low ridges of inner walls mapped the floor plans of the buildings to either side. A precise geometric plan was evident in the layout of streets and alleys, a half-circle of concentric rings, with the flat side the harbour itself. The remains of a large, palatial structure were visible ahead; the massive stones at the centre had been more successful in withstanding the centuries of erosion.

Felisin glanced back at Heboric. 'Still plagued by ghosts?'

'Not plagued, lass. There was no great unleashing of brutality here. Only sadness, and even that was naught but a subcurrent. Cities die. Cities mimic the cycle of every living thing: birth, vigorous youth, maturity, old age, then finally . .. dust and potsherds. In the last century of this place, the sea was already receding, even as a new influence arrived, something foreign. There was a brief renaissance – we'll see evidence of that ahead, at the harbour – but it was short-lived.' He was silent for a dozen or so paces. 'You know, Felisin, I begin to understand something of the lives of the Ascendants. To live for hundreds, then thousands of years. To witness this flowering in all its futile glory, ah, is it any wonder that their hearts grow hard and cold?'

'This journey has brought you closer to your god, Heboric.'

The comment stung him to silence.

She saw what Heboric had hinted at when they reached the city's harbour. What had once been the bay had silted in, yet four cyclopean channels had been constructed, reaching out to vanish in the haze. Each was as wide as three city streets and almost as deep.

'The last ships sailed out from these canals,' Heboric said at her side. 'The heaviest transports scraped bottom at the far mouths, and could only make way with the tide at peak. A few thousand denizens remained, until the aqueducts dried up. This is one story of Raraku, but alas, not the only one, and the others were far more violent, far more bloody. Yet I wonder, which was the more tragic?'

'You waste your thoughts on the past—' Leoman began, but was interrupted by a shout from the Toblakai. The giant had appeared near one of the canal heads. Falling silent, the desert warrior set off towards his companion.

As Felisin moved to follow, Heboric grasped her arm, the unseen hand a cool, tingling contact. He waited until Leoman was beyond earshot, then said, 'I have fears, lass—'

'I'm not surprised,' she cut in. 'That Toblakai means to kill you.'

'Not that fool. I mean Leoman.'

'He was Sha'ik's bodyguard. If I am to become her I'll not need to mistrust his loyalty, Heboric. My only concern is that he and the Toblakai did such a poor job of protecting Sha'ik the first time around.'

'Leoman is no fanatic,' the ex-priest said. 'Oh, he might well make appropriate noises to lead you to believe otherwise, but there is an ambivalence in him. I don't for a moment believe he thinks you are truly Sha'ik reborn. The simple fact is the rebellion needs a figurehead – a young, strong one, not the worn-down old woman that the original Sha'ik must have been. Hood's breath, she was a force in this desert twenty-five years ago. You might want to consider the possibility that these two bodyguards didn't break a sweat in their efforts to defend her.'

She looked at him. The tattoos made an almost solid whirling pattern on his weathered, toadlike face. His eyes were red and rimmed in dried mucus and a thin, grey patina dulled his pupils. 'Then I can also assume they will have greater cause this time around.'

'Provided you play their game. Leoman's game, to be more precise. He will be the one to speak for you to the army at the encampment – if he has cause he will hint at doubts, and they will tear you apart—'

'I have no fear of Leoman,' Felisin said. 'I understand men like him, Heboric.'

His lips closed to a thin line.

She drew her arm away from that unnatural grip and began walking.

'Beneth was less than a child to this Leoman,' the ex-priest hissed behind her. 'He was a thug, a bully, a tyrant to a handful of the downtrodden. Any man can preen with great ambitions, no matter how pathetic his station, Felisin. You are doing worse than clinging to the memory of Beneth – you are clinging to the airs he projected, and they were naught but delusions—'

She whirled. 'You know nothing!' she hissed, trembling with fury. 'You think I fear what a man can do? Any man? You think you know me? That you can know my thoughts, know what I feel? You presumptuous bastard, Heboric—'

His laughter struck her like a blow, shocking her into silence. 'Dear lass,' he said. 'You would keep me at your side. As what? An ornament? A macabre curiosity? Would you burn out my tongue to balance my blindness? I am here to keep you amused, then, even as you accuse me of presumption. Oh, that is sweet indeed—'

'Stop talking, Heboric,' Felisin said quietly, suddenly weary. 'If one day we do come to understand each other, it will be without words. Who needs swords when we have our tongues, you and I? Let us sheathe them and have done with it.'

He cocked his head. 'One last question, then. Why would you have me stay, Felisin?'

She hesitated before answering him, wondering at how he would take this particular truth. Well, that is something. Not long ago I would not have cared. 'Because it means survival, Heboric. I offer ... for Baudin.'

Head still cocked, the ex-priest slowly wiped one forearm across his dusty brow. 'Perhaps,' he said, 'we'll yet come to understand each other.'

 

The canal mouth was marked by a broad series of stone steps, over a hundred in all. At the base, on what had once been the seabed, a more recent stone wall had been constructed, providing attachment points for a canvas shelter. A ring of stones surrounded an ash-stained firepit nearby, and the old cobbles that had once covered the cache were now tumbled about, a gutted cairn.

The subject of the Toblakai's outcry were the seven half-eaten corpses scattered about the camp, each a mass of flies. The blood in the fine, white sand was only a few hours old, still gummy to the touch. The stench of loosened bowels soured the hazy air.

Leoman crouched by the stairs, studying the bestial prints that marked a bloodstained ascent back up into the city. After a long moment, he glanced over at the Toblakai. 'If you want this one, you'll go on your own,' he said.

The giant bared his teeth. 'I will have no-one else crowding me,' he replied, unslinging his waterskin and bedroll and letting them drop to the ground. He unsheathed his wooden sword, holding it as if it was no more than a twig.

Heboric snorted from where he leaned against the stone wall. 'You plan to hunt down this Soletaken? I take it that in your tribe you are nearing the end of the average expected lifespan, assuming your kin are as stupid as you. Well, I for one will not grieve your death.'

The Toblakai maintained his vow, refusing to address Heboric, though his grin broadened. He swung to Leoman. 'I am Raraku's vengeance against such intruders.'

'If you are, then avenge my kin,' the desert warrior replied.

The Toblakai set off, taking the steps three at a time and not slowing until he reached the top, where he paused to study tracks. A moment later he slipped beyond their line of sight.

'The Soletaken will kill him,' Heboric said.

Leoman shrugged. 'Perhaps. Sha'ik saw far into his future, however...'

'And what did she see?' Felisin asked.

'She would not say. Yet it... appalled her.'

'The Seer of the Apocalypse was appalled?' Felisin looked at Heboric. The ex-priest's expression was drawn taut, as if he'd just heard confirmation of some glimmer of the future he had himself sensed. 'Tell me, Leoman,' she said, 'of her other visions.'

The man had begun dragging the bodies of his kin to one side. He paused at her question, glanced over. 'When you open the Holy Book, they shall be visited upon you. This is Dryjhna's gift... among others.'

'You expect me to go through with this ritual before we reach the encampment.'

'You must. The ritual is the proof that you are truly Sha'ik reborn.'

Heboric grunted. 'And what does that mean, precisely?'

'If she is false, the ritual shall destroy her.'

 

The ancient island rose in a flat-topped hump above the cracked clay plain. Grey, weathered stumps marked mooring poles and more substantial piers just beyond what had once been the shoreline, along with remnants of the usual garbage that had once been dumped over the sides of ships. Sinkholes in what had been the bay's muddy bottom glittered with compacted layers of glittering fish-scale.

Crouching beside Fiddler, Mappo watched as Icarium made his way up the crumbled remains of a sea wall. Crokus stood just behind the Trell, near the hobbled horses. The lad had fallen strangely silent since their last meal stop, a certain economy coming to his movements, as if he had chained himself to his own vow of patience. And seemingly unconsciously, the Daru had begun to emulate Icarium in his speech and mannerisms. Mappo was neither amused nor displeased when he noticed. The Jhag had always been an overwhelming presence, all the more so because he made no affectation or pretence.

Still, better for Crokus had he looked to Fiddler. This soldier's a wonder in his own right.

'Icarium climbs like he knows where he's going,' the sapper observed.

Mappo winced. 'I had come to the same observation,' he ruefully admitted.

'Have you two been here before?'

'I have not, Fiddler. But Icarium ... well, he's wandered this land before.'

'But in returning to a place he'd been to before, how would he know?'

The Trell shook his head. He shouldn't. He never has before. Are those blessed barriers breaking down? Queen of Dreams, return Icarium to the bliss of not knowing. I beg you . . .

'Let us join him,' Fiddler said, slowly straightening.

'I'd rather—'

'As you wish,' the soldier replied, setting off after the Jhag, who had vanished into the thorn-choked city ruins beyond the sea wall. After a moment, Crokus strode past Mappo as well.

The Trell grimaced. I must be getting old, to let being distraught cow me so. He sighed, rising from his crouch and lumbering after the others.

The slope of detritus at the base of the sea wall was a treacherous scree of splintered wood, slabs of plaster, brick and potsherds. Halfway up, Fiddler grunted and paused, reaching down to pull free a shaft of grey wood. 'I've some rethinking to do,' he said, glancing back down. 'All this wood's turned to stone.'

'Petrified,' Crokus said. 'My uncle described the process to me once. The wood soaks up minerals. But that's supposed to take tens of thousands of years.'

'Well, a High Mage of the D'riss Warren could manage the same in the blink of an eye, lad.'

Mappo pulled free a fragment of pottery. Not much thicker than an eggshell, the shard was sky blue in colour and very hard. It revealed the torso of a figure painted on the surface, black with a green outline. The image was stiff, stylized, but without doubt human. He let the sherd drop.

'This city was dead long before the sea dried up,' Fiddler said, resuming his climb.

Crokus called up after him, 'How do you know?'

'Because everything's water-worn, lad. Waves crumbled this sea wall. Century after century of waves. I grew up in a port city, remember. I've seen what water can do. The Emperor had Malaz Bay dredged before the Imperial piers were built – revealed old sea walls and the like.' Reaching the top, he paused to catch his breath. 'Showed everyone that Malaz City's older than anybody'd realized.'

'And that the sea levels have risen since,' Mappo observed.

'Aye.'

At the top of the sea wall the city stretched out before them. While the remains were weathered, it was clear that the city had been deliberately destroyed. Every building had been reduced to rubble, revealing a cataclysmic use of force and fury. Scrub brush filled every open space that remained and low, gnarled trees clung to foundation stones and surmounted the mounds of wreckage.

Statuary had been a primary feature of the architecture, lining the broad colonnades and set in niches on every building wall. Marble body parts lay everywhere, each displaying the rigid style that Mappo had seen on the potsherd. The Trell began to sense a familiarity with the assortment of human figures portrayed.

A legend, told on the Jhag Odhan ... a tale told by the elders in my tribe . . .

Icarium was nowhere to be seen.

'Now where?' Fiddler asked.

A frail keening rising in his head, bringing sweat to his dark skin, Mappo stepped forward.

'Caught a scent of something, have you?'

He barely heard the sapper's question.

The city's pattern was hard to distinguish from what remained, yet Mappo followed his own mental map, born of his memory of the legend, its cadence, its precise metering when recounted in the harsh, clashing dialect of archaic Trell. People who possessed no written language carried the use of speech to astonishing extremes. Words were numbers were codes were formulae. Words held secret maps, the measuring of paces, the patterns of mortal minds, of histories, of cities, of continents and warrens.

The tribe Mappo had adopted all those centuries ago had chosen to return to the old ways, rejecting the changes that were afflicting the Trell. The elders had shown Mappo and the others all that was in danger of being lost, the power that resided in the telling of tales, the ritual unscrolling of memory.

Mappo knew where Icarium had gone. He knew what the Jhag would find. His heart thundering savagely in his chest, his pace increased as he scrambled over the rubble, pushing through thickets of thorn which lacerated even his tough hide.

Seven main avenues within each city of the First Empire. The Sky Spirits look down upon the holy number, seven scorpion tails, seven stings facing the circle of sand. To all who would make offerings to the Seven Holies, look to the circle of sand.

Fiddler called out somewhere behind him, but the Trell did not respond. He'd found one of the curving avenues and was making for the centre.

The seven scorpion-sting thrones had once towered over the enclosure, each seventy-seven arm-spans high. Each had been shattered ... by sword blows, by an unbreakable weapon in hands powered by a rage almost impossible to comprehend.

Little remained of the offerings and tributes that had once crowded the circle of sand, with one exception, before which Icarium now stood. The Jhag was motionless, his head tilted upwards to take in the immense construction that rose before him.

Its iron gears showed no rust, no corrosion, and would still be moving in a measure that could not be seen by mortal eyes. The enormous disc that dominated the structure stood at an angle, its marble face smothered with etched symbols. It faced the sun, though that fiery orb was barely visible through the sky's golden haze.

Mappo slowly walked towards Icarium and stopped two paces behind him.

His presence was sensed, for Icarium spoke. 'How can this be, friend?'

It was the voice of a lost child, and it twisted like a barbed shaft in the Trell's heart.

'This is mine, you see,' the Jhag continued. 'My ... gift. Or so I can read, in this ancient Omtose script. More, I have marked – with knowing – its season, its year of construction. And see how the disc has turned, so that I may see the Omtose correspondence for this year ... allowing me to calculate ...'

His voice fell away.

Mappo hugged himself, unable to speak, unable even to think. Anguish and fear filled him until he too felt like a child, come face to face with a nightmare.

'Tell me, Mappo,' Icarium continued after a long moment, 'why did the destroyers of this city not destroy this as well? True, sorcery invested it, made it immune to time's own ravages ... but so too were these seven thrones ... so too were many other gifts in this circle. All things made can be broken, after all. Why, Mappo?'

The Trell prayed his friend would not turn around, would not reveal his face, his eyes. The child's worst fears, the nightmare's face – a mother, a father, all love stripped away, replaced by cold intent, or blind disregard, the simple lack of caring . . . and so the child wakens shrieking . . .

Do not turn, Icarium, I cannot bear to see your face.

'Perhaps I made an error,' Icarium said, still in that quiet, innocent tone. Mappo heard Fiddler and Crokus arrive on the sand behind him. Something in the air held them to silence, stalled their approach. 'A mistake in the measurement, a slip of the script. It's an old language, Omtose, faint in my memory – perhaps as faint back then, when I first built this. The knowledge I seem to retain feels ... precise, yet I am not perfect, am I? My certainty could be a self-delusion.'

No, Icarium, you are not perfect.

'I calculate that ninety-four thousand years have passed since I last stood here, Mappo. Ninety-four thousand. There must be some error in that. No city ruin could survive that long, could it?'

Mappo found himself shrugging. How could we know one way or the other?

'The investiture of sorcery, perhaps...'

Perhaps.

'Who destroyed this city, I wonder?'

You did, Icarium, yet even in your rage a part of you recognized what you yourself had built, and left it intact.

'They had great power, whoever they were,' the Jhag continued. 'T'lan Imass arrived here, sought to drive the enemy back – an old alliance between the denizens of this city and the Silent Host. Their shattered bones lie buried in the sand beneath us. In their thousands. What force was there that could do such a thing, Mappo? Not Jaghut, even in their preeminence a thousand millennia past. And the K'Chain Che'Malle have been extinct for even longer. I do not understand this, friend ...'

A callused hand fell on Mappo's shoulder, offered a solid grip briefly, then withdrew as Fiddler stepped past the Trell.

'The answer seems clear enough to me, Icarium,' the soldier said, halting at the Jhag's side. 'An Ascendant power. The fury of a god or goddess unleashed this devastation. How many tales have you heard of ancient empires reaching too high in their pride? Who were the Seven Holies to begin with? Whoever they were, they were honoured here, in this city and no doubt its sister cities throughout Raraku. Seven thrones, look at the rage that assailed each of them. Looks ... personal, to me. A god's or a goddess's hand slapped down here, Icarium – but whoever it was has since drifted away from mortal minds, for I, at least, cannot think of any known Ascendant able to unleash such power on the mortal plain as we see here—'

'Oh, they could,' Icarium said, a hint of renewed vigour in his voice, 'but they have since learned the greater value of subtlety when interfering in the activities of mortals – the old way was too dangerous in every respect. I suspect you have answered my question, Fiddler...'

The sapper shrugged.

Mappo found his heart slowing. Just do not again think of that lone, surviving artefact, Icarium. Sweat dripping in an uneven patter on the sand, he shivered, drew a deep breath. He glanced back at Crokus. The lad's attention was elsewhere in such a studied pose of casual indifference that the Trell was left wondering at his state of mind.

'Ninety-four thousand years – that must be an error,' Icarium said. He turned from the structure, offering the Trell a weak smile.

The scene blurred in Mappo's eyes. He nodded and looked away to fight back a renewed surge of sorrow.

'Well,' Fiddler said, 'shall we resume our pursuit of Apsalar and her father?'

Icarium shook himself, then murmured, 'Aye. We are close ... to many things, it seems.'

A perilous journey indeed.

 

The night of his leavetaking all those centuries ago, in the hours when the last of his old loyalties was ritually shriven from him, Mappo had knelt before the tribe's eldest shoulder-woman in the smoky confines of her yurt. 'I must know more,' he'd whispered. 'More of these Nameless Ones, who would so demand this of me. Are they sworn to a god?'

'Once, but no more,' the old woman had replied, unable or unwilling to meet his eye. 'Cast out, cast down. In the time of the First Empire which was not, in truth, the first – for the T'lan Imass claimed that title long before. They were the left hand, another sect the right hand – both guiding, meant to be clasped. Instead, those who would come to be Unnamed, in their journeys into mysteries—' She chopped with one hand, a gesture Mappo had not seen before among the tribe's elders. A gesture, he realized with a start, of a Jhag. 'Mysteries of another led them astray. They bowed to a new master. That is all there is to say.'

'Who was this new master?'

The woman shook her head, turned away.

'Whose power resides in those staves they carry?'

She would not answer.

In the passage of time, Mappo believed he had found the answer to that question, but it was a knowledge devoid of comfort.

 

They left the ancient island behind and struck out across the clay plain as the day's light slowly faded from the sky. The horses were suffering, needing water that even Icarium and Mappo's desert craft could not find. The Trell had no idea how Apsalar and her father fared, yet they'd managed to stay ahead, day after day.

This trail and its goal has naught to do with Sha'ik. We have been led far from the places of such activity, far from where Sha'ik was killed, far from the oasis. Fiddler knows our destination. He has divined the knowledge from whatever secrets he holds within him. Indeed, we all suspect, though we speak nothing of it – perhaps Crokus alone remains ignorant, but I may well be underestimating the young man. He's grown within himself. . . Mappo glanced across to Fiddler. We go to the place you sought all along, soldier.

Dusk closed in on the barren landscape, but enough light remained to reveal a chilling convergence of tracks. Soletaken and D'ivers by the score, the number frightening to contemplate, closing to join the twin footsteps of Apsalar and her father.

Crokus fell back a dozen paces as they walked their horses. Mappo took little note of the detail until, a short while later, he whirled at a shout from the Daru. Crokus was on the ground, grappling with a man in the dusty gloom. Shadows flitted across the cracked clay. The lad managed to pin the man down, gripping his wrists.

'I knew you were lurking about, you weasel!' Crokus snarled. 'For hours and hours, since before the island! All I had to do was wait and now I've got you!'

The others backtracked to where Crokus straddled Iskaral Pust. The High Priest had ceased his writhing efforts to escape. 'Another thousand paces!' he hissed. 'And the deceit is complete! Have you seen the signs of my glorious success? Any of you? Are you all dimwits? Oh, so unkind in my nefarious thoughts! But see me respond to their accusations with manly silence, hah!'

'You might let him up,' Icarium said to Crokus. 'He'll not run now.'

'Let him up? How about stringing him up?'

'The next tree we come to, lad,' Fiddler said, grinning, 'and that's a promise.'

The Daru released the High Priest. Iskaral scrambled to his feet, crouching like a rat deciding which way to dart. 'Deadly proliferation! Do I dare accompany them? Do I risk the glory of witnessing with my own eyes the fullest yield of my brilliant efforts? Well disguised, this uncertainty, they know nothing!'

'You're coming with us,' Crokus growled, hands on the two daggers jutting from his belt. 'No matter what happens.'

'Why, of course, lad!' Iskaral spun to face the Daru, his head bobbing. 'I was but hastening to catch up!' He ducked his head. 'He believes me, I can see it in his face. The soft-brained dolt! Who is a match for Iskaral Pust? No-one! I must remain quietly triumphant, so very quietly. The key to understanding lies in the unknown nature of warrens. Can they be torn into fragments? Oh yes, oh, yes indeed. And that is the secret of Raraku! They wander more than one world, all unknowing ... and before us, ah, the slumbering giant that is the heart! The true heart, not Sha'ik's grubby oasis, oh, such fools abound!' He paused, looked up at the others. 'Why do you stare so? We should be walking. A thousand paces, no more, to your heart's desire, hee hee!' He broke into a dance, knees jerking high as he jumped in place.

'Oh, for Hood's sake!' Crokus grasped the High Priest's collar, flung him stumbling forward. 'Let's go.'

'The cajoling good-humoured jostling of youth,' Iskaral murmured. 'Such warm comradely gestures, oh, I am softened, am I not?'

Mappo glanced at Icarium and found the Jhag staring at him. Their gazes locked. A fragmented warren. What on earth has happened to this land? The question was shared in silence, though in the Trell's mind a further thought ensued. The legends claim that Icarium emerged from this place, strode out from Raraku. A warren torn to pieces – Raraku changes all who stride its broken soil – gods, have we indeed come to the place where Icarium's living nightmare was born?

They continued on. Overhead, the sky's faded bronze deepened to impenetrable black, a starless void that seemed to be slowly sinking, lowering itself around them. Iskaral Pust's muttering dwindled as if swallowed up by the night. Mappo could see that both Fiddler and Crokus were having difficulty, though both continued walking, hands held out like blind men.

A dozen strides in front of the others, Icarium halted, turned.

Mappo tilted his head, acknowledging that he too had spied the two figures standing fifty paces further on. Apsalar and Servant – the only name by which I know that old man, a simple but ominous title.

The Jhag strode over to take one of Crokus's outstretched hands. 'We have found them,' he said in a low tone that nevertheless carried, bringing everyone to a stop. 'They await us, it seems,' Icarium continued, 'before a threshold.'

'Threshold?' Fiddler snapped. 'Quick Ben never mentioned anything like that. Threshold to what?'

'A knotted, torn piece of warren!' Iskaral Pust hissed. 'Oh, see how the Path of Hands has led into it – the fools followed, one and all! The High Priest of Shadow was tasked to set a false trail, and look, oh, look how he has done so!'

Crokus turned to the sound of Iskaral Pust's voice. 'But why did her father lead us here? So that we may all be set upon and slaughtered by a horde of Soletaken and D'ivers?'

'Servant journeys home, you withered mole carcass!' The High Priest danced in place again. 'If the convergence does not kill him first, of course! Hee hee! And takes her, and the sapper, too – and you, lad. You! Ask the Jhag what waits within the warren! Waits like a clenched hand holding down this fragment of realm!'

Apsalar and her father approached side by side.

Mappo had wondered at this reunion, but no expectations he'd envisioned would match the reality. Crokus had yet to notice them, and was instead drawing his daggers and preparing to close in on the sound of the High Priest's voice. Icarium stood behind the Daru, a moment from disarming him. The scene was almost comic, for Crokus could see nothing, and Iskaral Pust began throwing his voice so that it emerged from a dozen places at once, while he continued his capering dance.

Fiddler, cursing under his breath, had removed a battered lantern from his pack and was now hunting for a flint.

'Do you dare tread the path?' Iskaral Pust sang out. 'Do you dare? Do you dare?'

Apsalar halted before Mappo. 'I knew you would win through,' she said. She swung her head. 'Crokus! I am here—'

He whirled, sheathed his daggers and closed.

Sparks flashed and bounced from where Fiddler crouched.

The Trell watched as the Daru's reaching arms were captured by Apsalar and guided around her in a tight embrace. Oh, lad, you do not know how poignant your blindness is . . .

An aura that was an echo of a god clung to her, yet it had become wholly her own. The Trell's sense of it did not leave him at ease.

Icarium came close to Mappo. Tremorlor,' he said.

'Aye.'

'There are some who claim the Azath are in truth benign, a force to keep power in check, that they arise where and when there is need. My friend, I am beginning to see much truth in those claims.'

The Trell nodded. This torn warren possesses such pain. If it could wander, drift, it would deliver horror and chaos. Tremorlor holds it here – Iskaral Pust speaks the truth – but even so, how Raraku has twisted on all sides . . .

'I sense Soletaken and D'ivers within,' Icarium said. 'Closing, seeking to find the House—'

'Believing it to be a gate.'

The lantern glowed into light, a lurid yellow that reached no more than a few paces in any direction. Fiddler rose from his crouch, eyes on Mappo. 'There is a gate there, just not the one the shapeshifters seek. Nor will they get to it – the grounds of the Azath will take them.'

'As it might all of us,' spoke a new voice.

They turned to see Apsalar's father standing nearby. 'Now,' he grated, 'I'd be obliged if you could bend your efforts into talkin' my daughter out of going any farther – we can't try the gate, 'cause it's inside the House ...'

'Yet you led her here,' Fiddler said. 'Granted, we were looking for Tremorlor in any case, but whatever reasons you have are Iskaral Pust's, aren't they?'

Mappo spoke, 'Do you have a name, Servant?'

The old man grimaced. 'Rellock.' Glancing back to Fiddler, he shook his head. 'I can't guess the High Priest's motives. I only did what I was told. A final task for the High Priest, one to clear the debt and I always clears my debt, even to gods.'

'They gave you back the arm you'd lost,' the sapper said.

'And spared me and the life of my daughter, the day the Hounds came. No-one else survived, you know ...'

Fiddler grunted. 'It was their Hounds, Rellock.'

'Even so, even so. It's the false trail, you see, the one that leads the shapeshifters astray, leads them—'

'Away from the true gate,' Icarium said, nodding. 'The one beneath Pust's temple.'

Rellock nodded. 'We had to finish the false trail, is all, me and my daughter. Plantin' signs, leaving trails and the like. Now that's done. We hid in shadow while the shapeshifters rushed in. If I'm fated to die in bed in my village in Itko Kan, then it don't matter how long's the walk.'

'Rellock wants to go back to fishing, hee hee!' Iskaral Pust sang. 'But the place you left is not what you return to, oh no. From one day to the next, never mind years. Rellock's done work guided by the hands of gods, yet he dreams of dragging nets, with the sun on his face and lines between his toes! He is the heart of the Empire – Laseen should take note! Take note!'

Fiddler returned to his horse, drew out the crossbow and set the crank, then locked it. 'The rest of you can choose as you like; I've got to go in.' He paused, glancing back at the horses. 'And we should let the beasts go.' He walked over to his mount and began loosening the girth straps. He sighed, patting the Gral gelding on the neck. 'You've done me proud, but you'll do better out here – lead the others, friend, to Sha'ik's camp ...'

After a moment, the others strode to their own mounts.

Icarium turned to the Trell. 'I too must go.'

Mappo closed his eyes, willing a stillness to his inner turmoil. Gods, I am a coward. In all ways imaginable, a coward.

'Friend?'

The Trell nodded.

'Oh, you will all go!' the High Priest of Shadow crooned, still dancing. 'Seeking answers and yet more answers! But in my silent thoughts I snigger and warn you all with words that you will not hear – beware sleight of hand. Compared to the Azath, my immortal lords are but fumbling children!'