Edging forward, one soft step at a time, he came upon the place where she had made a kill. A wapiti, its panic a bitter breath in the air. The humus scuffed by its tiny hoofs, a smear of blood on curled black leaves. Halting, settling down, Gruntle lifted his gaze.
And found her. She had drawn her prey up on to a thick branch from which lianas depended in a cascade of night blossoms. The wapiti – or what remained of it – was draped across the bole, and she was lying along the branch’s length, lambent eyes fixed upon Gruntle.
This leopard was well suited to hunting at night – her coat was black on black, the spots barely discernible.
She regarded him without fear, and this gave Gruntle pause.
A voice then murmured in his skull, sweet and dark. ‘Go on your way, Lord. There is not enough to share . . . even if I so desired, which of course I do not.’
‘I have come for you,’ Gruntle replied.
Her eyes widened and he saw muscles coiling along her shoulders. ‘Do all beasts know riders, then?’
For a moment Gruntle did not comprehend her question, and then understanding arrived with sudden heat, sudden interest. ‘Has your soul travelled far, my lady?’
‘Through time. Through unknown distances. This is where my dreams take me every night. Ever hunting, ever tasting blood, ever shying from the path of the likes of you, Lord.’
‘I am summoned by prayer,’ Gruntle said, knowing even as he said it that it was the truth, that the half-human creatures he had left behind did indeed call upon him, as if to invite the killer answered some innate refusal of random chance. He was summoned to kill, he realized, to give proof to the notion of fate.
‘Curious idea, Lord.’
‘Spare them, Lady.’
‘Who?’
‘You know of whom I speak. In this time, there is but one creature that can voice prayers.’
He sensed wry amusement. ‘You are wrong in that. Although the others have no interest in imagining beasts as gods and goddesses.’
‘Others?’
‘Many nights away from this place, there are mountains, and in them can be found fastnesses where dwell the K’Chain Che’Malle. There is a vast river that runs to a warm ocean, and on its banks can be found the pit-cities of the Forkrul Assail. There are solitary towers where lone Jaghut live, waiting to die. There are the villages of the Tartheno Toblakai and their tundradwelling cousins, the Neph Trell.’
‘You know this world far better than I do, Lady.’
‘Do you still intend to kill me?’
‘Will you cease hunting the half-humans?’
‘As you like, but you must know, there are times when this beast has no rider. There are times too, I suspect, when the beast you now ride also hunts alone.’
‘I understand.’
She rose from her languid perch, and made her way down the trunk of the tree head first, landing lightly on the soft forest floor. ‘Why are they so important to you?’
‘I do not know. Perhaps I pity them.’
‘For our kind, Lord, there is no room for pity.’
‘I disagree. It is what we can give when we ride the souls of these beasts. Hood knows, it’s all we can give.’
‘Hood?’
‘The God of Death.’
‘You come from a strange world, I think.’
Now this was startling. Gruntle was silent for a long moment, and then he asked, ‘Where are you from, Lady?’
‘A city called New Morn.’
‘I know of a ruin named Morn.’
‘My city is no ruin.’
‘Perhaps you exist in a time before the coming of Hood.’
‘Perhaps.’ She stretched, the glow of her eyes thinning to slits. ‘I am leaving soon, Lord. If you are here when I do, the beast that remains will not take kindly to your presence.’
‘Oh? And would she be so foolish as to attack me?’
‘And die? No. But I would not curse her with terror.’
‘Ah, is that pity, then?’
‘No, it is love.’
Yes, he could see how one could come to love such magnificent animals, and find the riding of their souls a most precious gift. ‘I will go now, Lady. Do you think we will meet again?’
‘It does seem we share the night, Lord.’
She slipped away, and even Gruntle’s extraordinary vision failed him from tracking her beyond a few strides. He swung about and padded off in the opposite direction. Yes, he could feel his own grip here weakening, and soon he would return to his own world. That pallid, stale existence, where he lived as if half blind, half deaf, deadened and clumsy.
He allowed himself a deep cough of anger, silencing the unseen denizens on all sides.
Until some brave monkey, high overhead, flung a stick at him. The thump as it struck the ground near his left hind leg made him start and shy away.
From the darkness overhead he heard chittering laughter.
The storm of chaos cavorted into his vision, consuming half the sky with a swirling madness of lead, grainy black and blazing tendrils of argent. He could see the gust front tearing the ground up in a frenzied wall of dust, rocks and dirt, growing ever closer.
Imminent oblivion did not seem so bad, as far as Ditch was concerned. He was being dragged by the chain shackled to his right ankle. Most of his skin had been scraped away – the white bone and cartilage of his remaining elbow, studded with grit, was visible within haloes of red. His knees were larger versions, and the shackle was slowly carving through his ankle and foot bones. He wondered what would happen when that foot was finally torn off – how it would feel. He’d lie there, motionless at last, perhaps watching that shackle tumble and twist and stutter away. He’d be . . . free.
The torment of this existence should not include pain. That was unfair. Of course, most of that pain was fading now – he was too far gone to curl and flinch, to gasp and sob – but the memories remained, like fire in his skull.
Pulled onward over loose stones, their sharp edges rolling up his back, gouging new furrows through the pulped meat, knuckling against the base of his skull to tear away the last few snarls of hair and scalp. And as the chain snagged, only to give and twist him round, he stared again and again upon that storm in their wake.
Songs of suffering from the groaning wagon somewhere ahead, an unending chorus of misery ever drifting back.
Too bad, he reflected, that the huge demon had not found him in the moments following his collapse, had not lifted him to its shoulder – not that it could carry any more than it already had been carrying. But even if it had done little more than drag him to one side, then the edge of the wagon’s massive wheel would not have crushed his right arm and shoulder, grinding both into pulp until threads of gristle were all that held it to his body. After that, all hopes – faint as they had been – of rising again to add his strength to the procession had vanished. He had become yet one more dead weight, dragged in the wake, adding to the suffering of those who trudged on.
Nearby, almost parallel to him, a huge chain sheathed in moss ended in the remnants of a dragon. Wings like tattered sails, spars snapped and dangling, the mostly skinless head dragged behind a shredded neck. When he had first seen it he had been shocked, horrified. Now, each time it came into view, he felt a wave of dread. That such a creature should have failed was proof of the desperate extremity now plaguing them.
Anomander Rake had stopped killing. The legion was failing. Annihilation edged ever closer.
Life fears chaos. It was ever thus. We fear it more than anything else, because it is anathema. Order battles against dissolution. Order negotiates cooperation as a mechanism of survival, on every scale, from a patch of skin to an entire menagerie of interdependent creatures. That cooperation, of course, may not of essence be necessarily peaceful – a minute exchange of failures to ensure greater successes.
Yes, as I am dragged along here, at the very end of my existence, I begin to understand . . .
See me, see this gift o
f contemplation.
Rake, what have you done?
A calloused hand closed about his remaining arm, lifted him clear of the ground, and he was being carried forward, closer to that crawling wagon.
‘There is no point.’
‘That,’ replied a deep, measured voice, ‘is without relevance.’
‘I am not worth—’
‘Probably not, but I intend to find you room on that wagon.’
Ditch hacked a ragged laugh. ‘Just tear my foot off, good sir, and leave me.’
‘No. There may be need for you, mage.’
Need? Now that was an absurd thing to say. ‘Who are you?’
‘Draconus.’
Ditch laughed a second time. ‘I looked for you . . . seems centuries ago, now.’
‘Now you have found me.’
‘I thought you might know a way of escaping. Now, isn’t that funny? After all, if you had, you would not still be here, would you?’
‘That seems logical.’
An odd reply. ‘Draconus.’
‘What?’
‘Are you a logical man?’
‘Not in the least. Now, here we are.’
The sight that greeted Ditch as he was heaved round to face forward was, if anything, even more terrifying than anything else he had witnessed since arriving in the accursed realm of Dragnipur. A wall of bodies, projecting feet jammed amongst staring faces, the occasional arm hanging out, twitching, dripping sweat. Here a knee, there a shoulder. Tangles of sodden hair, fingers with dagger-long nails. Human, demon, Forkrul Assail, K’Chain Che’Malle, others of natures Ditch could not even identify. He saw one hand and forearm that appeared to be made entirely of metal, sockets and hinges and rods and a carapace of iron skin visible in mottled, pitted patches. Worst of all were the staring eyes, peering from faces that seemed to have surrendered every possible expression, leaving behind something slack and dull.
‘Make space up top!’ bellowed Draconus.
Cries of ‘No room!’ and ‘Nowhere left!’ greeted him.
Ignoring such protests, Draconus began climbing the wall of flesh. Faces twisted in rage and pain, eyes widened in affronted disbelief, hands clawed at him or beat him with fists, but the huge warrior was indifferent to all of it. Ditch could feel the man’s enormous strength, an implacable certainty to every movement that bespoke something unconquerable. He was awed into silence.
Higher they climbed, and shadows raced in crazed patterns now in the churning glare of the storm, as if the natural gloom of the world clung close to its surface, and here, high above it, the air was clearer, sharper.
The rocking crawl of the wagon below was felt now in the swaying of the wall near the top, a motion groaned out in the slick shifting of flesh and in a wavering song of dull, rhythmic moans and grunts. The wall finally sloped inward, and Ditch was tugged over hummocks of skin, the bodies so tight-packed that the surface beneath him seemed solid, an undulating landscape, sheathed in sweat and flecks of ash and grime. Most of those lying here had settled on their stomachs, as if to stare at the sky – that would vanish for ever as soon as the next body arrived – was too much to bear.
Draconus rolled him into a depression between two backs, one facing one way, the other in the opposite direction. A man, a woman – the sudden contact with the woman’s soft flesh as he was wedged against her startled an awakening in Ditch and he cursed.
‘Take what you can, mage,’ said Draconus.
Ditch heard him leaving.
He could make out distinct voices now, odd nearby sounds. Someone was scrabbling closer and Ditch felt a faint tug on his chain.
‘Almost off, then. Almost off.’
Ditch twisted round to see who had spoken.
A Tiste Andii. He was clearly blind, and both sockets bore the terrible scarring of burns – only deliberate torture could be that precise. His legs were gone, stumps visible just below his hips. He was dragging himself up alongside Ditch, and the mage saw that the creature held in one hand a long sharpened bone with a blackened point.
‘Plan on killing me?’ Ditch asked.
The Tiste Andii paused, lifted his head. Straggly black hair framed a narrow, hollowed-out face. ‘What sort of eyes do you have, friend?’
‘Working ones.’
A momentary smile, and then he squirmed closer.
Ditch managed to shift round so that his ruined shoulder and arm were beneath him, freeing his undamaged arm. ‘It’s crazy, but I still intend to defend myself. Though death – if it even exists here – would be a mercy.’
‘It doesn’t,’ replied the Tiste Andii. ‘I could stab you for the next thousand years and do nothing more than leave you full of holes. Full of holes.’ He paused and the smile flickered once more. ‘Yet I must stab you anyway, since you’ve made a mess of things. A mess, a mess, a mess.’
‘I have? Explain.’
‘There’s no point, unless you have eyes.’
‘I have them, you damned fool!’
‘But can they see?’
He caught the emphasis on the last word. Could he awaken magic here? Could he scrape something from his warren – enough to attenuate his vision? There was nothing to do but try. ‘Wait a moment,’ he said. Oh, the warren was there, yes, as impervious as a wall – yet he sensed something he had not expected. Cracks, fissures, things bleeding in, bleeding out.
The effects of chaos, he realized. Gods, it’s all breaking down! Would there be a time, he wondered – an instant, in the very moment that the storm finally struck them – when he would find his warren within reach? Could he escape before he was obliterated along with everyone and everything else?
‘How long, how long, how long?’ asked the Tiste Andii.
Ditch found he could indeed scrape a residue of power. A few words muttered under his breath, and all at once he saw what had been hidden before – he saw, yes, the flesh he was lying on.
A mass of tattoos blanketed every exposed patch of skin, lines and images crossing from one body to the next, yet nowhere could he see solid areas – all was made up of intricate, delicate traceries, patterns within patterns. He saw borders that dipped and twisted. He saw elongated figures with stretched faces and misshapen torsos. Not a single body atop this massive wagon had been exempted – barring Ditch’s own.
The Tiste Andii must have heard his gasp, for he laughed. ‘Imagine yourself hovering . . . oh, say fifteen man-heights overhead. Fifteen man-heights. Overhead, overhead. Hovering in the air, just beneath the ceiling of nothingness, the ceiling of nothingness. Looking down upon all this, all this, all this. Aye, it looks awry to you from where you crouch, but from up there, from up there, from up there – you will see no mounds of flesh, no knobs of skin-stretched bones – you’ll see no shadows at all – only the scene. The scene, yes, laid flat you’d swear. You’d swear it to every god and goddess you can think of. Flat! Laid flat, laid flat!’ Ditch struggled to comprehend what he was seeing – he did not dare attempt what the Tiste Andii had suggested, fearing the effort would drive him mad; no, he would not try to imagine himself plucked free of his flesh, his soul floating somewhere overhead. It was difficult enough to comprehend the obsession of this creation – a creation by a blind man. ‘You’ve been up here for a long time,’ Ditch finally said. ‘Avoiding getting buried.’
‘Yes and yes. I was among the first on the wagon. Among the first. Murdered by Draconus, because I sought to wrest Dragnipur from him – oh, Anomandaris Purake was not the first to try. I was. I was. I was. And if I had won the sword, why, my first victim would have been Anomandaris himself. Is that not a bitter joke, friend? It is, it is.’
‘But this’ – Ditch gestured with his one hand – ‘it has to be a recent effort—’
‘No, only the last layer, the last layer, the last layer.’
‘What – what do you use for ink?’
‘Clever question! From the wagon bloodwood, blackwood, the pitch and the pitch ever leaking out, ever sweating from the grain.’
‘Could I hover high up, as you say,’ asked Ditch, ‘what scene would I see?’
‘Wanderings, Holds, Houses, every god, every goddess, every spirit worth mentioning. Demon kings and demon queens. Dragons and Elders – oh, all there, all there. All there. Is this where you mean to stay, friend? Is this where you mean to stay?’
Ditch thought of this creature hunkered up against him, that bone needle pricking his skin. ‘No. I plan on crawling round, as much as I can, never stopping. Leave me out of your scene.’
‘You cannot do that! You will ruin everything!’
‘Imagine me invisible, then. Imagine I don’t even exist – I will stay out of your way.’
The sightless eyes were glistening and the Tiste Andii was shaking his head again and again.
‘You will not have me,’ Ditch said. ‘Besides, it will all be ending soon.’
‘Soon? How soon? How soon? How soon? How soon?’
‘The storm looks to be no more than a league behind us.’
‘If you will not join the scene,’ the Tiste Andii said, ‘I will push you off.’
‘Draconus might not like that.’
‘He will understand. He understands more than you, more than you, more and more and more than you!’
‘Just let me rest,’ said Ditch, ‘for a while. I will then climb back down. I don’t want to be up here when the end comes. I want to be standing. Facing the storm.’
‘Do you really imagine the ritual will awaken all at once? Do you do you do you? The flower opens soon, but the night is long, and it will take that long, that long. For the flower to open. Open in the moment before dawn. Open in the moment. Draconus chose you – a mage – for the nexus. I need the nexus. You are the nexus. Lie there, be quiet, don’t move.’
‘No.’
‘I cannot wait long, friend. Crawl about now if you like, but I cannot wait too long. A league away!’
‘What is your name?’ Ditch asked.
‘What matter any of that?’
‘For when I next speak to Draconus.’
‘He knows me.’