The Errant sympathized with the notion. Such delicate conceits assembled the bones of the soul, after all. He moved past the last of the scapulae, noting the effect of some crushing, no doubt crippling impact. The bone looked like a giant broken plate.
Coming alongside the skull, he saw that the cave of its nearest orbital socket was shattered, above and behind an elongated, partly collapsed snout crowded with serrated teeth. The Elder God paused and studied that damage for some time. He could not imagine what this beast had been; he suspected it was a child of these deep currents, a swimmer through ancient ages, entirely uncomprehending that its time was past. He wondered if mercy had delivered that death blow.
Ah, but he could not fight his own nature, could he? Most of his nudges were fatal ones, after all. The impetus might find many justifications, and clearly mercy numbered among them. This was, he told himself, a momentary obsession. The feel of her hair under his hand . . . a lapse of conscience, then, this tremor of remorse. It would pass.
He pushed on, knowing that at last, he’d found the right trail.
There were places that could only be found by invitation, by the fickle generosity of the forces that gave them shape, that made them what they were. Such barriers defied the hungers and needs of most seekers. But he had learned the secret paths long, long ago. He required no invitations, and no force could stand in the way of his hunger.
The dull gleam of the light in the tower reached him before he could make out anything else, and he flinched at seeing that single mocking eye floating in the gloom. Currents swept fiercely around him as he drew closer, buffeting his body as if desperate to turn him aside. Silts swirled up, seeking to blind him. But he fixed his gaze on that fitful glow, and before long he could make out the squat, blockish house, the black, gnarled branches of the trees in the yard, and then the low stone wall.
Dunes of silt were heaped up against the tower side of the Azath. The mounds in the yard were sculpted, half-devoured, exposing the roots of the leaning trees. As the Errant stepped on to the snaking flagstones of the path, he could see bones scattered out from those sundered barrows. Yes, they had escaped their prisons at long last, but death had arrived first.
Patience was the curse of longevity. It could lure its ageless victim into somnolence, until flesh itself rotted off, and the skull rolled free.
He reached the door. Pushed it open.
The currents within the narrow entranceway swept over him warm as tears. As the portal closed behind him, the Errant gestured. A moment later he was standing on dry stone. Hovering faint on the air around him was the smell of wood-smoke. A wavering globe of lantern light approached from the corridor beyond.
The threadbare figure that stepped into view sent a pang through the Errant. Memories murky as the sea-bottom spun up to momentarily blind him. The gaunt Forkrul Assail was hunched at the shoulders, as if every proof of justice had bowed him down, left him broken. His pallid face was a mass of wrinkles, like crushed leather. Tortured eyes fixed on the Errant for a moment, and then the Assail turned away. ‘Fire and wine await us, Errastas—come, you know the way.’
They walked through the double doors at the conjunction of the corridors, into the dry heat of the hearth room. The Assail gestured at a sideboard as he hobbled to one of the chairs flanking the fireplace. Ignoring the invitation to drink—for the moment—the Errant walked to the other chair and settled into it.
They sat facing one another.
‘You have suffered some,’ said the Assail, ‘since I last saw you, Errastas.’
‘Laughter from the Abyss, Setch, have you seen yourself lately?’
‘The forgotten must never complain.’ He’d found a crystal goblet and he now held it up and studied the flickering flames trapped in the amber wine. ‘When I look at myself, I see . . . embers. They dim, they die. It is,’ he added, ‘well.’ And he drank.
The Errant bared his teeth. ‘Pathetic. Your hiding is at an end, Knuckles.’
Sechul Lath smiled at the old title, but it was a bitter smile. ‘Our time is past.’
‘It was, yes. But now it shall be reborn.’
Sechul shook his head. ‘You were right to surrender the first time—’
‘That was no surrender! I was driven out!’
‘You were forced to relinquish all that you no longer deserved.’ The haunted eyes lifted to trap the Errant’s glare. ‘Why the resentment?’
‘We were allies!’
‘So we were.’
‘We shall be again, Knuckles. You were the Elder God who stood closest to my throne—’
‘Your Empty Throne, yes.’
‘A battle is coming—listen to me! We can cast aside all these pathetic new gods. We can drown them in blood!’ The Errant leaned forward. ‘Do you fear that it will be you and me alone against them? I assure you, old friend, we shall not be alone.’ He settled back once more, stared into the fire. ‘Your mortal kin have found new power, made new alliances.’
Knuckles snorted. ‘You would trust to the peace and justice of the Forkrul Assail? After all they once did to you?’
‘I trust the necessity they have recognized.’
‘Errastas, my time is at an end.’ He made a rippling gesture with his fingers. ‘I leave it to the Twins.’ He smiled. ‘They were my finest cast.’
‘I refuse to accept that. You will not stand aside in what is to come. I have forgotten nothing. Remember the power we once wielded?’
‘I remember—why do you think I’m here?’
‘I want that power again. I will have it.’
‘Why?’ Knuckles asked softly. ‘What is it you seek?’
‘Everything that I have lost!’
‘Ah, old friend, then you do not remember everything.’
‘No?’
‘No. You have forgotten why you lost it in the first place.’
A long moment of silence.
The Errant rose and went over to pour himself a goblet of wine. He returned and stood looking down upon his fellow Elder God. ‘I am not here,’ he said, ‘for you alone.’
Knuckles winced.
‘I intend, as well, to summon the Clan of Elders—all who have survived. I am Master of the Tiles. They cannot deny me.’
‘No,’ Knuckles muttered, ‘that we cannot do.’
‘Where is she?’
‘Sleeping.’
The Errant grimaced. ‘I already knew that, Setch.’
‘Sit down, Errastas. For now, please. Let us just . . . sit here. Let us drink in remembrance of friendship. And innocence.’
‘When our goblets are empty, Knuckles.’
He closed his eyes and nodded. ‘So be it.’
‘It pains me to see you so,’ the Errant said as he sat back down. ‘We shall return you to what you once were.’
‘Dear Errastas, have you not learned? Time cares nothing for our wants, and no god that has ever existed can be as cruel as time.’
The Errant half-closed his remaining eye. ‘Wait until you see the world I shall make, Setch. Once more, you shall stand beside the Empty Throne. Once more, you shall know the pleasure of mischance, striking down hopeful mortals one by one.’
‘I do remember,’ Knuckles murmured, ‘how they railed at misfortune.’
‘And sought to appease ill fate with ever more blood. Upon the altars. Upon the fields of battle.’
‘And in the dark bargains of the soul.’
The Errant nodded. Pleased. Relieved. Yes, he could wait for this time, this brief healing span. It served and served well.
He could grant her a few more moments of rest.
‘So tell me,’ ventured Knuckles, ‘the tale.’
‘What tale?’
‘The one that took your eye.’
The Errant scowled and looked away, his good mood evaporating. ‘Mortals,’ he said, ‘will eat anything.’
In the tower of the Azath, within a chamber that was an entire realm, she slept and she dreamed. And since dreams existed out
side of time, she was walking anew a landscape that had been dead for millennia. But the air was sharp still, the sky overhead as pure in its quicksilver brilliance as the day of its violent birth. On all sides buildings, reduced to rubble, formed steep-sided, jagged mounds. Passing floods had caked mud on everything to a height level with her hips. She walked, curious, half-disbelieving.
Was this all that remained? It was hard to believe.
The mounds looked strangely orderly, the chunks of stone almost uniform in size. No detritus had drifted down into the streets or lanes. Even the flood silts had settled smooth on every surface.
‘Nostalgia,’ a voice called down.
She halted, looked up to see a white-skinned figure perched atop one of the mounds. Gold hair hanging long, loose, hinting of deep shades of crimson. A white-bladed two-handed sword leaned against one side of his chest, the multifaceted crystal pommel flashing in the brightness. He took many forms, this creature. Some pleasant, others—like this one—like a spit of acid in her eyes.
‘This is your work, isn’t it?’
One of his hands stroked the sword’s enamel blade, the sensuality of the gesture making her shiver. He said, ‘I deplore your messiness, Kilmandaros.’
‘While you make death seem so . . . tidy.’
He shrugged. ‘Tell me, if on your very last day—day or night, it makes no difference—you find yourself in a room, on a bed, even. Too weak to move, but able to look around—that’s all. Tell me, Kilmandaros, will you not be comforted by the orderliness of all that you see? By the knowledge that it will persist beyond you, unchanged, bound to its own slow, so slow measure of decay?’
‘You ask if I will be what, Osserc? Nostalgic about a room I’m still in?’
‘Is that not the final gift of dying?’
She held up her hands and showed him her fists. ‘Come down here and receive just such a gift, Osserc. I know this body—this face that you show me now. I know the seducer and know him too well. Come down—do you not miss my embrace?’
And in the dread truths of dreams, Osserc then chuckled. The kind of laugh that cut into its victim, that shocked tight the throat. Dismissive, devoid of empathy. A laugh that said: You no longer matter to me. I see your hurt and it amuses me. I see how you cannot let go of the very thing I have so easily flung away: the conceit that we still matter to each other.
So much, yes, in a dream’s laugh.
‘Emurlahn is in pieces,’ he said. ‘And most of them are now as dead as this one. Would you blame me? Anomander? Scabandari?’
‘I’m not interested in your stupid finger-pointing. The one who accuses has nothing to lose and everything to hide.’
‘Yet you joined with Anomander—’
‘He too was not interested in blame. We joined together, yes, to save what we could.’
‘Too bad, then,’ Osserc said, ‘that I got here first.’
‘Where have the people gone, Osserc? Now that you’ve destroyed their city.’
His brows lifted. ‘Why, nowhere.’ He gestured, a broad sweep of one hand, encompassing the rows of mounds around them. ‘I denied them their moment of . . . nostalgia.’
She found herself trembling. ‘Come down here,’ she said in a rasp, ‘your death is long overdue.’
‘Others concur,’ he admitted. ‘In fact, it’s why I’m, uh, lingering here. Only one portal survives. No, not the one you came through—that one has since crumbled.’
‘And who waits for you there, Osserc?’
‘Edgewalker.’
Kilmandaros bared her massive fangs in a broad smile. And then threw a laugh back at him. She moved on.
His voice sounded surprised as he called out behind her. ‘What are you doing? He is angry. Do you not understand? He is angry!’
‘And this is my dream,’ she whispered. ‘Where all that has been is yet to be.’ And still, she wondered. She had no recollection, after all, of this particular place. Nor of meeting Osserc among the shattered remnants of Kurald Emurlahn.
Sometimes it is true, she told herself, that dreams prove troubling.
‘Clouds on the horizon. Black, advancing in broken lines.’ Stormy knuckled his eyes and then glared across at Gesler from a momentarily reddened face. ‘What kind of stupid dream is that?’
‘How should I know? There are cheats who make fortunes interpreting the dreams of fools. Why not try one of those?’
‘You calling me a fool?’
‘Only if you follow my advice, Stormy.’
‘Anyway, that’s why I howled.’
Gesler leaned forward, clearing tankards and whatnot to make room for his thick, scarred forearms. ‘Falling asleep in the middle of a drinking session is unforgivable enough. Waking up screaming, why, that’s just obnoxious. Had half the idiots in here clutching at their chests.’
‘We shouldn’t’ve skipped out on the war-game, Ges.’
‘Not again. It wasn’t like that. We volunteered to go and find Hellian.’ He nodded to the third occupant of the table, although only the top of her head was visible, the hair sodden along one side where it had soaked up spilled ale. Her snores droned through the wood of the table like a hundred pine beetles devouring a sick tree. ‘And look, we found her, only she was in no shape to lead her squad. In fact, she’s in no shape for anything. She could get mugged, raped, even murdered. We needed to stand guard.’
Stormy belched and scratched at his beard. ‘It wasn’t a fun dream, that’s all.’
‘When was the last fun dream you remember having?’
‘Don’t know. Been some time, I think. But maybe we just forget those ones. Maybe we only remember the bad ones.’
Gesler refilled their tankards. ‘So there’s a storm coming. Impressive subtlety, your dreams. Prophetic, even. You sleep to the whispers of the gods, Stormy.’
‘Now ain’t you in a good mood, Ges. Remind me not to talk about my dreams no more.’
‘I didn’t want you talking about them this time round. It was the scream.’
‘Not a scream, like I told you. It was a howl.’
‘What’s the difference?’
Scowling, Stormy reached for his tankard. ‘Only, sometimes, maybe, gods don’t whisper.’
‘Furry women still haunting your dreams?’
Bottle opened his eyes and contemplated throwing a knife into her face. Instead, he slowly winked. ‘Good afternoon, Captain. I’m surprised you’re not—’
‘Excuse me, soldier, but did you just wink at me?’
He sat up on his cot. ‘Was that a wink, Captain? Are you sure?’
Faradan Sort turned away, muttering under her breath as she marched towards the barracks door.
Once the door shut behind her, Bottle sat back, frowning. Now, messing with an officer’s head was just, well, second nature. No, what disturbed him was the fact that he was suddenly unsure if she’d spoken at all. As a question, it didn’t seem a likely fit, not coming from Faradan Sort. In fact, he doubted she even knew anything about his particular curse—how could she? There wasn’t a fool alive who confided in an officer. Especially ones who viciously killed talented, happily married scorpions for no good reason. And if she did indeed know something, then it meant someone had traded that bit of information in exchange for something else. A favour, a deal, which was nothing less than a behind-the-back betrayal of every common soldier in the legion.
Who was vile enough to do that?
He opened his eyes and looked around. He was alone in the barracks. Fiddler had taken the squad out for that field exercise, the war-game against Brys Beddict’s newly assembled battalions. Complaining of a bad stomach, Bottle had whined and groaned his way out of it. Not for him some useless trudging through bush and farmland; besides, it hadn’t been so long ago that they were killing Letherii for real. There was a good chance someone—on either side—would forget that everyone was friends now. The point was, he’d been the first one quick enough with the bad-stomach complaint, so no one else could take it up—he�
�d caught the vicious glare from Smiles, which of course he’d long got used to since he was always faster off the mark than she was.
Smiles. Bottle fixed his gaze on her cot, studied it through a suspicious squint. Behind-the-back shit was her forte, wasn’t it? Aye, and who else had it in for him?
He swung his feet to the floor and—gods, that stone was cold!—padded over to her berth.
It paid to approach these things cautiously. If anyone was in the habit of rigging booby traps to just about everything they didn’t want anyone else to touch, it was that spitting half-mad kitten with the sharp eye-stickers. Bottle drew his eating knife and began probing under the thin mattress, leaning close to peer at seams and seemingly random projections of tick straw—any one of which could be coated in poison—projections which, he discovered, turned out to be, uh, random projections of tick straw. Trying to lull me into something . . . I can smell it.
He knelt and peeked under the frame. Nothing obvious, and that made him even more suspicious. Muttering, Bottle crawled round to kneel in front of her lockbox. Letherii issue—not something they’d be taking with them. She’d not have had much time to rig it, not deviously, anyway. No, the needles and blades would be poorly hidden.
She’d sold him out, but she would learn to regret doing that.
Finding nothing on the outside of the trunk, he slipped his knife point into the lock and began working the mechanism.
Discovering that the lockbox wasn’t even locked froze him into a long moment of terror, breath held, sudden sweat beading his forehead. A snare for sure. A killer snare. Smiles doesn’t invite people in, oh no, not her. If I just lift this lid, I’m a dead man.
He whirled upon hearing the scrape of boots, and found himself looking up at Corabb Bhilan Thenu’alas. ‘Hood’s breath, soldier, stop sneaking up on me like that!’
‘What’re you doing?’ Corabb asked.
‘Me? What’re you doing? Don’t tell me the scrap’s already over—’
‘No. I lost my new sword. Sergeant got mad and sent me home.’
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