‘We are as flitting dreams to the Azath,’ Knuckles said. ‘Yet, even though we are but momentary conceits, as our sorry existence might well be defined, we have our uses.’
‘Some of us,’ Kilmandaros said, suddenly dismissive, ‘prove more useful than others. This Tiste Edur’ – a wave of one huge, scarred hand – ‘is of modest value by any measure.’
‘The Azath see what we do not, in each of us. Perhaps, Mother, in all of us.’
A sour grunt. ‘You think this house let me go of its own will – proof of your gullibility, Knuckles. Not even the Azath could hold me for ever.’
‘Extraordinary,’ Knuckles said, ‘that it held you at all.’
This exchange, Bruthen Trana realized, was an old one, following well-worn ruts between the two.
‘Would never have happened,’ Kilmandaros said under her breath, ‘if he’d not betrayed me—’
‘Ah, Mother. I have no particular love for Anomander Purake, but let us be fair here. He did not betray you. In fact, it was you who jumped him from behind—’
‘Anticipating his betrayal!’
‘Anomander does not break his word, Mother. Never has, never will.’
‘Tell that to Osserc—’
‘Also in the habit of “anticipating” Anomander’s imminent betrayal.’
‘What of Draconus?’
‘What of him, Mother?’
Kilmandaros rumbled something then, too low for Bruthen Trana to catch.
Knuckles said, ‘Our Tiste Edur guest seeks the place of Names.’
Bruthen Trana started. Yes! It was true – a truth he had not even known before just this moment, before Knuckle’s quiet words. The place of Names. The Names of the Gods.
‘There will be trouble, then,’ Kilmandaros said, shifting in agitation, her gaze drawn again and again to the scatter of bones. ‘He must remember this house, then. The path – every step – he must remember, or he will wander lost for all time. And with him, just as lost as they have ever been, the names of every forgotten god.’
‘His spirit is strong,’ Knuckles said, then faced Bruthen Trana and smiled. ‘Your spirit is strong. Forgive me – we often forget entirely the outside world, even when, on rare occasions such as this one, that world intrudes.’
The Tiste Edur shrugged. His head was spinning. The place of Names. ‘What will I find there?’ he asked.
‘He forgets already,’ Kilmandaros muttered.
‘The path,’ Knuckles answered. ‘More than that, actually. But when all is done – for you, in that place – you must recall the path, Bruthen Trana, and you must walk it without a sliver of doubt.’
‘But, Knuckles, all my life, I have walked no path without a sliver of doubt – more than a sliver, in fact—’
‘Surprising,’ Kilmandaros cut in, ‘for a child of Scabandari—’
‘I must begin the grains again,’ Knuckles suddenly announced. ‘Into the river – the pattern, Mother, it calls to you once more.’
She swore in some unknown language, bent to scowl down at the bones. ‘I was there,’ she muttered. ‘Almost there – so close, so—’
A faint chime echoed in the chamber.
Her fist thundered again on the dais, and this time the echoes seemed unending.
At a modest signal from Knuckles, Bruthen Trana drained the fine wine and set the goblet down on the marble tabletop.
It was time to leave.
Knuckles led Bruthen Trana back into the corridor. A final glance back into that airy chamber and the Tiste Edur saw Kilmandaros, hands on knees, staring directly at him with those faintly glittering eyes, like two lone, dying stars in the firmament. Chilled to the depths of his heart, Bruthen Trana pulled his gaze away and followed the son of Kilmandaros back to the front door.
At the threshold, he paused for a moment to search Knuckles’s face. ‘The game you play with her – tell me, does such a pattern exist?’
Brows arched. ‘In the casting of bones? Damned if I know.’ A sudden smile, then. ‘Our kind, ah, but we love patterns.’
‘Even if they don’t exist?’
‘Don’t they?’ The smile grew mischievous. ‘Go, Bruthen Trana, and mind the path. Always mind the path.’
The Tiste Edur walked down onto the pavestones. ‘I would,’ he muttered, ‘could I find it.’
Forty paces from the house, he turned to look upon it, and saw nothing but swirling currents, spinning silts in funnels.
Gone. As if I had imagined the entire thing.
But I was warned, wasn’t I? Something about a path.
‘Remember…’
Lost. Again. Memories tugged free, snatched away by the ferocious winds of water.
He swung round again and set off, staggering, step by step, towards something he could not dredge up from his mind, could not even imagine. Was this where life ended? In some hopeless quest, some eternal search for a lost dream?
Remember the path. Oh, Father Shadow, remember…something. Anything.
Where the huge chunks of ice had been, there were now stands of young trees. Alder, aspen, dogwood, forming a tangled fringe surrounding the dead Meckros City. Beyond the trees were the grasses of the plains, among them deep-rooted bluestems and red-lipped poppies that cloaked the burial mounds where resided the bones of thousands of people.
The wreckage of buildings still stood here and there on their massive pylons of wood, while others had tilted, then toppled, spilling out their contents onto canted streets. Weeds and shrubs now grew everywhere, dotting the enormous, sprawling ruin, and among the broken bones of buildings lay a scatter of flowers, a profusion of colours on all sides.
He stood, balanced on a fallen pillar of dusty marble allowing him a view of the vista, the city stretching to his left, the ragged edge and green-leafed trees with the mounds beyond on his right. His eyes, a fiery amber, were fixed on something on the far horizon directly ahead. His broad mouth held its habitual downturn at the corners, an expression that seemed ever at war with the blazing joy within his eyes. His mother’s eyes, it was said. But somehow less fierce and this, perhaps, was born of his father’s uneasy gift – a mouth that did not expect to smile, ever.
His second father, his true father. The thread of blood. The one who had visited in his seventh week of life. Yes, while it had been a man named Araq Elalle who had raised him, whilst he lived in the Meckros City, it had been the other – the stranger in the company of a yellow-haired bonecaster – who had given his seed to Menandore, Rud Elalle’s mother. His Imass minders had not been blind to such truths, and oh how Menandore had railed at them afterwards.
‘I took all that I needed from Udinaas! And left him a husk and nothing more. He can never sire another child – a husk! A useless mortal – forget him, my son. He is nothing.’ And from the terrible demand in her blazing eyes, her son had recoiled.
Rud Elalle was tall now, half a hand taller than even his mother. His hair, long and wild in the fashion of the Bentract Imass warriors, was a sun-bleached brown. He wore a cloak of ranag hide, deep brown and amber-tipped the fur. Beneath that was a supple leather shirt of deerskin. His leggings were of thicker, tougher allish hide. On his feet were ranag leather moccasins that reached to just below his knees.
A scar ran down the right side of his neck, gift of a boar’s dying lunge. The bones of his left wrist had been broken and were now misaligned, the places of the breaks knotted protrusions bound in thick sinews, but the arm had not been weakened by this; indeed, it was now stronger than its opposite. Menandore’s gift, that strange response to any injury, as if his body sought to armour itself against any chance of the same injury’s recurring. There had been other breaks, other wounds – life among the Imass was hard, and though they would have protected him from its rigour, he would not permit that. He was among the Bentract, he was of the Bentract. Here, with these wondrous people, he had found love and fellowship. He would live as they lived, for as long as he could.
Yet, alas, he felt now…that ti
me was coming to an end. His eyes remained fixed on that distant horizon, even as he sensed her arrival, now at his side. ‘Mother,’ he said.
‘Imass,’ she said. ‘Speak our own language, my son. Speak the language of dragons.’
Faint distaste soured Rud Elalle. ‘We are not Eleint, Mother. That blood is stolen. Impure—’
‘We are no less children of Starvald Demelain. I do not know who has filled your mind with these doubts. But they are weaknesses, and now is not the time.’
‘Now is not the time,’ he repeated.
She snorted. ‘My sisters.’
‘Yes.’
‘They want me. They want him. Yet, in both schemes, they have not counted you a threat, my son. Oh, they know you are grown now. They know the power within you. But they know nothing of your will.’
‘Nor, Mother, do you.’
He heard her catch her breath, was inwardly amused at the suddenly crowded silence that followed.
He nodded to the far horizon. ‘Do you see them, Mother?’
‘Unimportant. Mayhap they will survive, but I would not wager upon it. Understand me, Rud, with what is to come, not one of us is safe. Not one. You, me, your precious Bentract—’
He turned at that, and his eyes were all at once a mirror of his mother’s – bright with rage and menace.
She very nearly flinched, and he saw that and was pleased. ‘I will permit no harm to come to them, Mother. You wish to understand my will. Now you do.’
‘Foolish. No, insanity. They are not even alive—’
‘In their minds, they are. In my mind, Mother, they are.’
She sneered. ‘Do the new ones now among the Bentract hold to such noble faith, Rud? Have you not seen their disdain? Their contempt for their own deluded kin? It is only a matter of time before one of them speaks true – shattering the illusion for all time—’
‘They will not,’ Rud said, once more eyeing the distant party of wanderers who were now, without question, approaching the ruined city. ‘You do not visit often enough,’ he said. ‘Disdain and contempt, yes, but now, too, you will see fear.’
‘Of you? Oh, my son, you fool! And do your adopted kin know to guard your back against them? Of course not, for that would reveal too much, would invite awkward questions – and the Imass are not ones to be easily turned away when seeking truth.’
‘My back will be guarded,’ Rud said.
‘By whom?’
‘Not you, Mother?’
She hissed in a most reptilian manner. ‘When? While my sisters are busy trying to kill me? When he has the Finnest in his hand and casts eyes upon all of us?’
‘If not you,’ he said easily, ‘then someone else.’
‘Wiser to kill the newcomers now, Rud.’
‘And my kin would have no questions then?’
‘None but you alive to answer, and you of course may tell them anything you care to. Kill those new Imass, those strangers with their sly regard, and be quick about it.’
‘I think not.’
‘Kill them, or I will.’
‘No, Mother. The Imass are mine. Shed blood among my people – any of them – and you will stand alone the day Sukul and Sheltatha arrive, the day of Silchas Ruin who comes to claim the Finnest.’ He glanced across at her. Could white skin grow still paler? ‘Yes, all in a single day. I have been to the Twelve Gates – maintaining my vigil as you have asked.’
‘And?’ The query was almost breathless.
‘Kurald Galain is most perturbed.’
‘They draw close?’
‘You know that as well as I do – my father is with them, is he not? You steal his eyes when it suits you—’
‘Not as easy as you think.’ Her tone was genuine in its bitterness. ‘He…baffles me.’
Frightens you, you mean. ‘Silchas Ruin will demand the Finnest.’
‘Yes, he will! And we both know what he will do with it – and that must not be permitted!’
Are you sure of that, Mother? Because, you see, I am not. Not any more. ‘Silchas Ruin may well demand. He may well make dire threats, Mother. You have said so often enough.’
‘And if we stand side by side, my son, he cannot hope to get past us.’
‘Yes.’
‘But who will be guarding your back?’
‘Enough, Mother. I warned them to silence and I do not think they will attempt anything. Call it faith – not in the measure of their fear. Instead, my faith rests in the measure of…wonder.’
She stared at him, clearly confused.
He felt no inclination to elaborate. She would see, in time. ‘I would go to welcome these new ones,’ he said, eyes returning to the approaching strangers. ‘Will you join me, Menandore?’
‘You must be mad.’ Words filled with affection – yes, she could never rail at him for very long. Something of his father’s ethereal ease, perhaps – an ease even Rud himself could remember from that single, short visit. An ease that would slip over the Letherii’s regular, unimpressive features, whenever the wave of pain, dismay – or indeed any harsh emotion – was past and gone, leaving not a ripple in its wake.
That ease, Rud now understood, was the true face of Udinaas. The face of his soul.
Father, I do so look forward to seeing you again.
His mother was gone – at least from his side. At a sudden gust of wind Rud Elalle glanced up and saw the white and gold mass of her dragon form, lurching skyward with every heave of the huge wings.
The strangers had all halted, still three hundred paces away, and were staring up, now, as Menandore lunged yet higher, slid across currents of air for a moment, until she faced them, and then swept down, straight for the small party. Oh, how she loved to intimidate lesser beings.
What happened then without doubt surprised Menandore more than even Rud – who gave an involuntary shout of surprise as two feline shapes launched into the air from the midst of the party. Dog-sized, forelegs lashing upward as Rud’s mother sailed overhead – and she snapped her hind legs up tight against her belly in instinctive alarm, even as a thundering beat of her wings lifted her out of harm’s way. At sight of her neck twisting round, eyes flashing in an outraged glare – indignant indeed – Rud Elalle laughed, and was satisfied to see that the sound reached his mother, enough to draw her glare and hold it, until the dragon’s momentum carried her well past the strangers and their defiant pets, out of the moment when she might have banked hard, jaws hingeing open to unleash deadly magic down on the obstreperous emlava and their masters.
The threat’s balance tilted away – as Rud had sought with that barking laugh – and on she flew, dismissing all in her wake, including her son.
And, were it in his nature, he would then have smiled. For he knew his mother was smiling, now. Delighted to have so amused her only son, her child who, like any Imass, saved his laughter for the wounds his body received in the ferocious games of living. And even her doubts, etched in by this conversation just past, would smooth themselves over for a time.
A little time. When they returned, Rud also knew, they would sting like fire. But by then, it would be too late. More or less.
He climbed down from the toppled column. It was time to meet the strangers.
‘That,’ Hedge announced, ‘is no Imass. Unless they breed ’em big round here.’
‘Not kin,’ Onrack observed with narrowed eyes.
Hedge’s ghostly heart was still pounding hard in his ghostly chest in the wake of that damned dragon. If it hadn’t been for the emlava cubs and their brainless lack of fear, things might well have got messy. A cusser in Hedge’s left hand. Quick Ben with a dozen snarly warrens he might well have let loose all at once. Trull Sengar and his damned spears – aye, dragon steaks raining down from the sky.
Unless she got us first.
No matter, the moment had passed, and he was thankful for that. ‘Maybe he’s no kin, Onrack, but he dresses like an Imass, and those are stone chips at the business end of that bone club he’s ca
rrying.’ Hedge glanced across at Quick Ben – feeling once again the surge of delight upon seeing a familiar face, the face of a friend – and said, ‘I wish Fid was here, because just looking at that man has the hairs standing on the back of my neck.’
‘If you’ve already got a bad feeling about this,’ the wizard replied, ‘why do you need Fid?’
‘Confirmation, is why. The bastard was talking to a woman, who then veered into a dragon and thought to give us a scare. Anybody keeping scaly company makes me nervous.’
‘Onrack,’ said Trull Sengar as the man drew closer, walking with a casual, almost loose stride, ‘I think we approach the place where Cotillion wanted us to be.’
At that, Hedge scowled. ‘Speaking of scaly – dealing with Shadowthrone’s lackey makes all this stink even worse—’
‘Leaving once more unspoken the explanation for what you’re doing here, Hedge,’ the Tiste Edur replied with a faint smile at the sapper – that damned smile, so bloody disarming that Hedge almost spilled out every secret in his head, just to see that smile grow into something more welcoming. Trull Sengar was like that, inviting friendship and camaraderie like the sweet scent of a flower – probably a poisonous one – but that might be just me. My usual paranoia. Well earned, mind. Still, there doesn’t seem to be anything poisonous about Trull Sengar.
It’s just that I don’t trust nice people. There, it’s said – at least here in my head. And no, I don’t need any Hood-kissed reason either. He stepped too close to one of the emlava cubs and had to dance away to avoid lashing talons. He glared at the hissing creature. ‘Your hide’s mine, you know that? Mine, kitty. Take good care of it in the meantime.’
The eyes burned up at him, and the emlava cub opened wide its jaws to loose yet another whispering hiss.
Damn, those fangs are getting long.
Onrack had moved out ahead, and now the Imass stopped. Moments later they had all drawn up to stand a few paces behind him.
The tall, wild-haired warrior walked closer. Five paces from Onrack he halted, smiled and said something in some guttural language.
Onrack cocked his head. ‘He speaks Imass.’
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