‘She’s still alive? Don’t be ridiculous, Ammanas.’
‘Listen, I wasn’t always this old, you know. In any case, every time we end up in the same room I can see the disappointment in her eyes, and hear it in her voice. “Emperor? Oh,
that
empire. So now you’re a god? Oh dear, not
Shadow
? Isn’t it broken? Why did you have to pick a
broken
realm to rule? When your father was your age …” Aagh, and on and on it goes! I’ve been on the run since I was nine years old, and is it any wonder?’
Cotillion was studying him bemusedly.
‘They will walk out from that desert, friend,’ Shadowthrone said. ‘I feel it in my bones.’
‘Didn’t know you had any.’
‘Sticks, then. I feel it in my sticks. Hmm, doesn’t sound sufficiently assuring, does it?’
‘Assuring? No. Creepy? Yes.’
Shadowthrone thumped the cane down, looked round. ‘We’re still here? Why are we still here?’
‘A few last thoughts for the departed, perhaps?’
‘Is it the thing to do? I suppose it is.’
Studying the corpses now, Cotillion grunted. ‘Not interested in just a slap on the wrist, was he?’
‘Children who can’t be touched end up getting away with murder.’
‘That’s your last word to them? It doesn’t make any sense, Shadowthrone.’
‘But it does. The Elder Gods were like spoiled children, with no one to watch over them. The only nonsensical thing about them was that they weren’t all killed off long ago. Just how much can any of us tolerate? That’s the question, the only question, in fact.’ He gestured with the cane. ‘There’s one man’s answer.’
‘I suppose,’ Cotillion mused, ‘we should be thankful that Draconus was chained up inside Dragnipur for all that time. If Rake hadn’t killed him …’
‘Every wayward child should spend a few hundred lifetimes dragging a wagon filled with bodies.’ Shadowthrone grunted. ‘Sounds like something my mother might say. “Only a hundred lifetimes, Kellan? Too weak to handle a thousand, are you? Why, your father …” Aagh! Not again!’
Sechul Lath found himself lying on the ground. His eyes were closed, and he felt no desire to open them. Not yet, anyway.
He heard footsteps, coming closer. Two sets, halting to stand on either side of him.
‘Oh my,’ said a woman’s voice on his left. ‘I suppose it had to happen, eventually. Still … tell me, brother, are you feeling anything?’
‘No,’ replied the man on his right. ‘Why, should I?’
‘Well, we
are
what was the best of him, and we
shall
live on.’
‘Do you think he can hear us, sister?’
‘I imagine so. Do you remember once, we sent a coin spinning?’
‘Long ago now.’
‘If I listen hard …’
‘Probably just your imagination, my love. Some games die with barely a whisper. And as for this new one – I want no part of it.’
She made a sound, something like a laugh. ‘Is that wisdom I’m hearing?’
‘Look at our father,’ he said. ‘When he opens his eyes, when he climbs to his feet, there will be no going back.’
‘No, no going back. Ever again.’
Sechul’s son sighed. ‘I think we should hunt down the Errant, beloved. In our father’s name, we should teach him about the lord’s push.’
‘Draconus will find him. You can be certain of that.’
‘But I want to be there when he does.’
‘Better we should be like this, brother. Come to welcome him before the gates of death. We could help him to his feet, reminding him that our father waits on the other side.’
‘We could guide him to the gate.’
‘Just so.’
‘And then give the Errant—’
‘A nudge.’
His children laughed, and Sechul Lath found himself smiling.
Son, daughter, what a fine gift you give me, before I am sent on my way
.
‘Sister … I see a coin with two heads, both the Errant’s. Shall we send it spinning?’
‘Why not, brother? Prod and pull, ’tis the way of the gods.’
When at last he opened his eyes, they were gone.
And all was well.
Where her draconic shadow slipped over the land below, the ground erupted in spumes of dust and stones. Fissures spread outward jagged and depthless. Hills slumped, collapsed, their cloak of plants withering, blackening. Where she passed, the earth died. Freedom was a gift, but freedom filled her with desperate rage, and such pain that the rush of air over her scales was agony.
She had no doubt that she possessed a soul. She could see it deep inside, down a tunnel through cracked bedrock, down and ever down, to a crushed knot lying on the floor.
There. That
. And the screams that howled from it made the roots of the mountains shiver, made seas tremble. Made still the winds and lifeless the air itself.
Before her birth, there had been the peace of unknowing, the oblivion of that which did not exist. She neither felt nor cared, because she simply wasn’t. Before the gods meddled, before they tore light from dark, life from death, before they raised their walls and uttered their foul words.
This is, but
this
is not. There shall be magic in the worlds we have made, and by its power shall life rise and in looking upon its myriad faces, we shall see our own – we shall come to know who and what we are. Here, there is magic, but
here,
there is not
.
She could never give her face to the gods – they would not look, they would only turn away. She could awaken all the power of her voice to cry,
I am here! See me! Acknowledge me – your one forgotten child!
But it would achieve nothing.
Because even the vision of the gods must
have a blind spot. And what will you find there? Only me. A crushed knot lying on the floor
.
Her living kin were hunting her now. She did not know how many, but it did not matter. They sought her annihilation.
But … not yet. Leave me this freedom … to do something. To do a thing … a thing that does not destroy, but creates. Please, can I not be more than I am? Please. Do not find me
.
Below her, her flight made a bleeding scar in the earth, and where her eyes reached out, where they touched all the beauty and wonder ahead, her arrival delivered naught but devastation. It was unconscionable. It was unbearable.
See what comes, when every gift is a curse
.
A sudden pressure, far behind her, and she twisted her neck round, glared into her own wake of devastation.
Eleint.
So many!
Rage gave voice to her cry, and that voice shattered the land for leagues on all sides. As its echoes rebounded, Korabas flinched at the damage she had unleashed.
No! Where is
my
beauty? Why is it only for you? No!
I will have this freedom! I will have it!
To do – to do – to do
something.
Her wings strained with the fury of her flight, but she could fly no faster than she was already flying, and it was not enough. The Eleint drew ever closer, and Korabas could see that crushed knot flaring with an inner fire, blazing now with all the anger she had ever felt, had ever taken inside – bound for so long. Anger at the gods. At the makers –
her
makers – for what they did to her.
Eleint! You would kill me and call it freedom? Then come to me and try!
Her rage was waiting for them, waiting for them all.
Mathok reined in, dust and stones scattering from his horse’s hoofs. As the cloud lifted around him he cursed, spat and then said, ‘They’re in the pass, High Fist. The bastards! How did they anticipate us?’
‘Calm down,’ Paran said, turning to glance back at the column. ‘We are in the manifestation of Akhrast Korvalain. The Assail can track our every move.’ He faced the Warleader again. ‘Mathok – are they well placed?’
‘Dug in, sir. And these ones, High Fist, are heavily armoured. Not local – the Assail have hired mercenaries.’
Fist Rythe Bude, standing beside Paran – somewhat too close, as he could smell the spices in her hair – asked, ‘Could you see their standards, Warleader?’
Mathok made a face. ‘Wolf furs, Fist. Wolf skulls too. I didn’t get close enough, but if they had the carcasses of wolf puppies hanging from their ear lobes it wouldn’t have surprised me.’
Paran sighed. ‘Togg and Fanderay. Now that complicates things.’
‘Why should it complicate things?’ Noto Boil demanded, withdrawing the fish spine from his mouth and studying its red tip. ‘There’s nothing complicated about any of this, right, High Fist? I mean, we’re marching double-quick for who knows where but wherever it is it won’t be pretty, and once we get there we’re aiming to link forces with someone who might not even be there, to fight a war against an Elder race and their human slaves for no particular reason except that they’re damned ugly. Complicated? Nonsense. Now Seven Cities …
that
was complicated.’
‘Are you done, Boil?’
‘
Noto
Boil, sir, if you please. And yes, I am. For now.’
‘What makes this complicated,’ Paran resumed, ‘is that I have no real interest in fighting worshippers sworn to the Wolves of Winter. In fact, I sympathize with their cause, and while I might disagree with the means by which they intend to express their particular faith—’ He turned to Rythe Bude. ‘Gods, listen to me. I’m starting to sound like Boil!’
‘
Noto
Boil.’
‘The point is, we need to get through that pass. Mathok – any other routes through the south mountains?’
‘How the Hood should I know? I’ve never been here before!’
‘All right, never mind. Silly question.’
‘Let’s just pound right through ’em, High Fist. I figure just under five thousand—’
Fist Rythe Bude choked, coughed and then said, ‘
Five thousand?
Entrenched? Gods, this will be a bloodbath!’
Noto Boil cleared his throat. ‘High Fist, a modest suggestion.’
‘Go on.’
‘You’re Master of the Deck of Dragons, sir. Talk to the Wolves of Winter.’
Paran lifted a brow. ‘Talk to them? Tell you what – the next pit full of wolves you get thrown into, try a little negotiating, Noto.’
‘Noto
Boil
.’
‘You could swap bones.’ This from Gumble, where he was lying sprawled atop a flat rock. ‘Sniff their butts – they like that, I’m told. Lie on your back, maybe.’
‘Somebody find us a big snake,’ Mathok growled, glaring at the toad.
Gumble sighed loudly, his bloated body deflating to half its normal size. ‘I sense my comments are not viewed as constructive, leading me
to conclude that I am in the company of fools. What’s new about that, I wonder?’
Paran withdrew his helm and wiped grimy sweat from his forehead. ‘So we do this the hard way. No, Fist Bude, not straight-into-the-teeth kind of hard way. Signal the corps – we’re marching straight through the night. I want us formed up opposite the enemy come the dawn.’
‘Sounds like straight into the teeth, sir.’
‘And that’s what it will
look
like, too. There might end up being some fighting, but with luck, not much.’
‘And how’s that going to work out, sir?’
‘I intend to make them surrender, Fist. Gumble, get your fat lump off that rock and find your erstwhile artist and tell him it’s time. He’ll know what that means.’
‘He’s hardly mine, High Fist, and as for erstwhile—’
‘Go, before Mathok decides to skewer you with that lance.’
‘To raucous cheers from friend and foe alike,’ Noto Boil muttered, the fish spine working up and down with every word.
‘Look at him go,’ Rythe Bude commented. ‘Didn’t know he could scramble that fast.’
Paran walked back to his horse, took the reins from one of the foundling children now accompanying the army. Swinging into the saddle, he looked down at the dirty-faced boy. ‘Still want your reward?’
A swift nod.
Paran reached down, lifted the boy up behind him. ‘Hold tight, we’re going to canter. Maybe even gallop. You ready for this?’
Another nod, but the thin arms closing about Paran were tight.
‘Let’s go see this pass, then.’ Kicking his horse forward, Paran glanced across at Mathok as the Warleader pulled up alongside him. ‘Well?’
‘Well what?’ the warrior growled.
‘That’s hardly a happy expression you’re wearing.’
‘You got a sharp eye there, High Fist.’
‘So what’s the problem?’
‘There’s only a problem, sir, if you pull this off.’
‘Are you always this hungry for a fight, Mathok?’
‘Sharp eye, dumb mouth.’
Paran grinned. ‘Can’t have everything, you know.’
‘So I’m learning, High Fist.’
‘Would’ve made us a decent captain,’ Kalam observed, as he walked with Quick Ben. They were watching Paran, flanked by a mob of Seven Cities horse-raiders, ride off towards the foot of the raw, worn range of mountains ahead. The assassin drew his cloak tighter over his broad shoulders. ‘Too bad he came to us too late.’