Toll the Hounds

  Cotillion was unrelenting.

  For the god, for Traveller, and for Samar Dev and Karsa Orlong, the world beyond this scene had virtually vanished. A moment was taking portentous shape, hewn one piece at a time, like finding a face in the heart of a block of stone. A moment that spun on some kind of decision, one that Traveller must make, here, now, for it was obvious that Cotillion had placed himself in the warrior’s path, and would not step to one side.

  ‘Karsa – if this goes wrong—’

  ‘I have his back,’ said the Toblakai in a growl.

  ‘But what if—’

  An inhuman cry from Traveller cut through her words, cut through every thought, slashing like a knife. Such a forlorn, desperate sound – it did not belong to him, could not, but he had thrust out one arm, as if to shove Cotillion aside.

  They stood too far apart for that. Yet Cotillion, now silent, simply stepped away from Traveller’s path.

  And the warrior walked past, but now it was as if each boot needed to be dragged forward, as if Traveller now struggled against some terrible, invisible tide. That ferocious obsession seemed to have come untethered – he walked as would a man lost.

  Cotillion watched him go, and she saw him lift a forearm to his eyes, as if he did not want the memory of this, as if he could wipe it away with a single, private gesture.

  Although she did not understand, sorrow flooded through Samar Dev. Sorrow for whom? She had no answer that made sense. She wanted to weep. For Traveller. For Cotillion. For Karsa. For this damned city and this damned night.

  The Hounds had trotted off.

  She blinked. Cotillion too had disappeared.

  Karsa shook himself, and then led her onward once more.

  The pressure was building, leaning in on her defences. She sensed cracks, the sifting of dust. And as they stumbled along in Traveller’s wake, Samar Dev realized that the warrior was marching straight for the nexus of that power.

  The taste of fear was bitter on her tongue.

  No, Traveller, no. Change your mind. Change it, please.

  But he would not do that, would he? Would not. Could not. The fate of the fated, oh, that sounds clumsy, and yet . . . what else can it be called? This force of inevitability, both willed and unwilling, both unnecessary and inexorable. The fate of the fated.

  Walking, through a city trapped in a nightmare, beneath the ghoulish light of a moon in its death-throes. Traveller might as well be dragging chains, and at the ends of those chains, none other than Karsa Orlong and Samar Dev. And Traveller might as well be wearing his own collar of iron, something invisible but undeniable heaving him forward.

  She had never felt so helpless.

  In the eternity leading up to the moment of the Lord of Death’s arrival, the world of Dragnipur had begun a slow, deadly and seemingly unstoppable convulsion. Everywhere, the looming promise of annihilation. Everywhere, a chorus of desperate cries, bellowing rage and hopeless defiance. The raw nature of each chained thing was awakened, and each gave that nature voice, and each voice held the flavour of sharp truth. Dragons shrilled, demons roared, fools shrieked in hysteria. Bold heroes and murderous thugs snatched deep breaths that made ribs creak, and then loosed battle cries.

  Argent fires were tumbling down from the sky, tearing down through clouds of ash. An army of unimaginable size, from which no quarter was possible, had begun a lumbering charge, and weapons clashed the rims of shields and this white, rolling wave of destruction seemed to surge higher as if seeking to merge with the storm clouds.

  Feeble, eroded shapes dragged along at the ends of chains now flopped blunted limbs as if to fend off the fast closing oblivion. Eyes rolled in battered skulls, remnants of life and of knowledge flickering one last time.

  No, nothing wanted to die. When death is oblivion, life will spit in its face. If it can.

  The sentient and the mindless were now, finally, all of one mind.

  Shake awake all reason. These gathered instincts are not the end but the means. Rattle the chains if you must, but know that that which binds does not break, and the path is never as wayward as one might believe.

  Ditch stared with one eye into the descending heavens, and knew terror, but that terror was not his. The god that saw with the same eye filled Ditch’s skull with its shrieks. Born to die! I am born to die! I am born to die! Not fair not fair not fair! And Ditch just rattled a laugh – or at least imagined that he did so – and replied, We’re all born to die, you idiot. Let the span last a single heartbeat, let it last a thousand years. Stretch the heartbeat out, crush down the centuries, it’s no different. They feel the same, when the end arrives.

  Gods, they feel the same!

  No, he was not much impressed by this godling cowering in his soul. Kadaspala was mad, mad to think such a creation could achieve anything. Etch deep into its heart this ferocious hunger to kill, and then reveal the horror of its helplessness – oh, was that not cruel beyond all reason? Was that not its own invitation into insanity?

  Kadaspala, you have but made versions of yourself. You couldn’t help it – yes, I see that.

  But, damn you, my flesh belonged to me. Not you.

  Damn you—

  But curses meant nothing now. Every fate was now converging. Hah hah, take that, you pious posers, and you arrogant shits, and all you whining victims – see what comes! It’s all the same, this end, all the same!

  And here he was, trapped in the greater scheme. His skin a piece of a tapestry. And its grand scene? A pattern he could never read.

  The demon Pearl stood wearing bodies from which a forest of iron roots swept down in loops and coils. It could carry no more, and so it stood, softly weeping, its legs like two failing trunks that shook and trembled. It had long since weighed the value of hatred. For the High Mage Tayschrenn, who first summoned it and bound it to his will. For Ben Adaephon Delat, who unleashed it against the Son of Darkness; and for Anomander Rake himself, whose sword bit deep. But the value was an illusion. Hate was a lie that in feeding fills the hater with the bliss of satiation, even as his spirit starves. No, Pearl did not hate. Life was a negotiation between the expected and the unexpected. One made do.

  Draconus staggered up. ‘Pearl, my friend, I have come to say goodbye. And to tell you I am sorry.’

  ‘What saddens you?’ the demon asked.

  ‘I am sorry, Pearl, for all of this. For Dragnipur. For the horror forged by my own hands. It was fitting, was it not, that the weapon claimed its maker? I think, yes, it was. It was.’ He paused, and then brought both hands up to his face. For a moment it seemed he would begin clawing his beard from the skin beneath it. Instead, the shackled hands fell away, down, dragged by the weight of the chains.

  ‘I too am sorry,’ said Pearl. ‘To see the end of this.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘So many enemies, all here and not one by choice. Enemies, and yet working together for so long. It was a wondrous thing, was it not, Draconus? When necessity forced each hand to clasp, to work as one. A wondrous thing.’

  The warrior stared at the demon. He seemed unable to speak.

  Apsal’ara worked her way along the top of the beam. It was hard to hold on, the wagon pitching and rocking so with one last, useless surge forward, and the beam itself thick with the slime of sweat, blood and runny mucus. But something was happening at the portal, that black, icy stain beneath the very centre of the wagon.

  A strange stream was flowing into the Gate, an intricate pattern ebbing down through the fetid air from the underside of the wagon’s bed. Each tendril was inky black, the space around it ignited by a sickly glow that pulsed slower than any mortal heart.

  Was it Kadaspala’s pathetic god? Seeking to use the tattooist’s insane masterpiece as if it was a latticework, a mass of rungs, down which it could clamber and so plunge through the Gate? Seeking to escape?

  If so, then she intended to make use of it first.

  Let the cold burn her flesh. Let pieces of her simply fall away. It was
a better end than some snarling manifestation of chaos ripping out her throat.

  She struggled ever closer, her breath sleeting out in crackling plumes that sank down in sparkling ice crystals. It reminded her of her youth, the nights out on the tundra, when the first snows came, when clouds shivered and shed their diamond skins and the world grew so still, so breathless and perfect, that she felt that time itself was but moments from freezing solid – to hold her for ever in that place, hold her youth, hold tight her dreams and ambitions, her memories of the faces she loved – her mother, her father, her kin, her lovers. No one would grow old, no one would die and fall away from the path, and the path itself, why, it would never end.

  Leave me in mid-step. My foot never to settle, never to edge me forward that much closer to the end of things. Yes, leave me here. At the very heart of possibilities, not one of which will crash down. No failures to come, no losses, no regrets to kiss upon the lips – I will not feel the cold.

  I will not feel the cold—

  She cried out in the frigid, deathly air. Such pain – how could she ever get close enough?

  Apsal’ara drew herself up, knees beneath her. And eyed that pattern, just there, a body’s length away and still streaming down. If she launched herself from this place, simply threw herself forward, would that flowing net catch her?

  Would it simply shatter? Or flow aside, opening up to permit the downward plunge of a body frozen solid, lifeless, eyes open but seeing nothing?

  She had a sudden thought, shivering up through her doubts, her fears. And, with aching limbs, she began dragging up the length of her chains, piling the links on the beam in front of her.

  Was the Gate’s cold of such power that it could snap these links? If she heaved the heap into that Gate, as much as she could, would the chains break?

  And then?

  She snarled. Yes, and then what? Run like a hare, leave the wagon far behind, flee the legions of chaos?

  And when the Gate itself is destroyed, where will I run then? Will this world even exist?

  She realized then that such questions did not matter. To be free, even if only for a moment, would be enough.

  Apsal’ara, the Mistress of Thieves. How good was she? Why, she slipped the chains of Dragnipur!

  She continued piling up links of the chains, her breaths coming in agonized, lung-numbing gasps.

  Draconus stumbled away from Pearl’s side. He could not bear the emotions the demon stirred to life within him. He could not understand such a power to forgive, never mind the sheer madness of finding something worthwhile in this cursed realm. And to see Pearl standing there, almost crushed beneath the twitching, dripping bodies of fallen comrades, no, that too was too much.

  Kadaspala had failed. The pattern was flawed; it had no power to resist what was about to assail them. It had been a desperate gambit, the only kind Draconus had left, and he could not even rail at the blind, legless Tiste Andii. None of us were up to this.

  The moment Rake ceased killing things, we were doomed.

  And yet, he found he had no rage left in him when he thought of Anomander Rake. In fact, he had begun to understand, even sympathize with that exhausted desire to end things. To end everything. The delusion was calling it a game in the first place. That very founding principle had assured ultimate failure. Bored gods and children with appalling power, these were the worst sorts of arbiters in this scheme of existence. They fought change even as they forced it upon others; they sought to hold all they claimed even as they struggled to steal all they could from rivals. They proclaimed love only to kill it in betrayal and spite.

  Yes, Draconus understood Rake. Any game that played with grief was a foul thing, an abomination. Destroy it. Bring it all down, Rake. Rake, my heir, my son in spirit, my unknown and unknowable inheritor. Do as you must.

  I stand aside.

  Oh, bold words.

  When the truth is, I have no choice.

  The force that suddenly descended upon the realm of Dragnipur was of such magnitude that, for an instant, Draconus believed the chaos had finally reached them, and he was driven to his knees, stunned, half blinded. The immense pressure bore down, excruciating, and Draconus ducked his head, covered it with his arms, and felt his spine bowing beneath a crushing presence.

  If there was sound, he heard nothing. If there was light, he saw only darkness. If there was air, he could not draw it into his lungs. He felt his bones groaning—

  The torture eased with the settling of a skeletal, long-fingered hand on his right shoulder.

  Sounds rose once more, strangely muted. A renewed storm of wailing terror and dismay. In front of Draconus the world found its familiar details, although they seemed ghostly, ephemeral. He was able, at last, to breathe deep – and he tasted death.

  Someone spoke above him. ‘He is indeed a man of his word.’

  And Draconus twisted round, lifted his gaze – the hand on his shoulder rasping away with a rustle of links – and stared up at the one who had spoken. At Hood, the Lord and High King of the Dead.

  ‘No!’ Draconus bellowed, rising only to stagger back, almost tripping on his chains. ‘No! What has he done? By the Abyss, what has Rake done?’

  Hood half raised his arms and seemed to be staring down at the manacles enclosing his gaunt wrists.

  Disbelief collapsed into shock, and then raw horror. This made no sense. Draconus did not understand. He could not – gods – he could not believe—

  He spun round, then, and stared at the legions of chaos – oh, they had been pushed back, a league or more, by the arrival of this singular creature, by the power of Hood. The actinic storm clouds had tumbled in retreat, building anew and seeming to thrash in frustration – yes, an interlude had been purchased. But – ‘Wasted. All wasted! Why? This has achieved nothing! Hood – you were betrayed. Can you not see that? No—’ Draconus clutched at his head. ‘Rake, oh Rake, what did you want of this? How could you think it would achieve anything?’

  ‘I have missed you, Draconus,’ Hood said.

  And he twisted round once more, glaring at the god. Jaghut. Yes, the mad, unknowable Jaghut. ‘You damned fool! You asked for this, didn’t you? Have you lost your mind?’

  ‘A bargain, old friend,’ Hood replied, still studying the chains on his wrists. ‘A . . . gamble.’

  ‘What will happen? When chaos claims you? When chaos devours the realm of death itself? You have betrayed the gods, all of them. You have betrayed all life. When you fall—’

  ‘Draconus,’ Hood cut in with a sigh, reaching up now to pull back the hood, revealing that withered Jaghut face, the clawed lines of eternal sorrow. ‘Draconus, my friend,’ he said softly, ‘surely you do not think I have come here alone?’

  He stared at the god, for a moment uncomprehending. And then – he caught a distant roar of sound, edging in from three of the four horizons, and those indistinct skylines were now . . . seething.

  As the armies of the dead marched at the behest of their Lord.

  From one side, a score of riders was fast approaching.

  ‘Hood,’ Draconus said, numbed, baffled, ‘they are unchained.’

  ‘So they are.’

  ‘This is not their fight.’

  ‘Perhaps. That is, as yet, undecided.’

  Draconus shook his head. ‘They cannot be here. They cannot fight the enemy – those dead, Hood, all they have left is their identities, each soul, barely holding on. You cannot do this to them! You cannot ask this of them!’

  The god was now eyeing the wagon. ‘All I shall ask,’ he said, ‘of the fallen, Draconus, is that they choose. Of their own will. After this, I shall ask nothing of them. Ever again.’

  ‘So who will claim the dead?’

  ‘Let the gods see to their own.’

  The coldness of that response staggered Draconus. ‘And what of those who worship no gods?’

  ‘Yes, what of them?’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘After thi
s,’ Hood said, still studying the wagon, ‘the dead will not be my concern. Ever again.’

  The approaching riders rode rotted, skeletal mounts. Ragged capes flailed out behind the warriors. From the advancing armies, countless standards wavered and pitched about amidst up-thrust spearheads. The numbers were indeed unimaginable. Broken fragments of war songs arrived like tatters of wind. The realm groaned – Draconus could not comprehend the weight that must now be crushing down the weapon’s wielder. Could Draconus have withstood it? He did not know. But then, perhaps even at this moment Anomander Rake himself was dying, bones snapping, blood spurting . . .

  But there was more. Here, before his eyes.

  All the creatures chained to the wagon had ceased pulling the enormous edifice – for the first time in millennia, the wagon had stopped rolling. And those creatures stood or knelt, staring outward, silent, perhaps disbelieving, as legions of the dead closed in. A flood, an ocean of iron and bone—

  The riders arrived. Strangers all to Draconus. Six trotted their withered mounts closer. One of them was masked, and he had seen those masks before – a host slain in succession by Anomander Rake. Seguleh. The marks upon this one told Draconus that he was looking upon the Second. Had he challenged the First? Or had someone challenged him?

  The Second was the first to speak. ‘This is the sorry shithole you want us to fight for, Hood? Flinging ourselves into the maw of chaos.’ The masked face seemed to scan the huddled, bedraggled creatures in their chains. ‘What are these, that we must now die again for? That we must cease for? Miserable wretches, one and all! Useless fools, bah! Hood, you ask too much.’

  The Lord of Death did not even face the Seguleh as he replied, ‘Do you now change your mind, Knight?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I was just complaining.’ He drew out a pair of notched, rust-stained swords. ‘You know me better than that. Still, oh, how I wanted Skinner. To lose him this way – by the Tyrant, it galls.’

  ‘That is why,’ said Hood, ‘you will not lead the Dead into this war.’

  ‘What? I am the Knight of Death! The damned bony fist himself! I demand—’