Toll the Hounds

  The enormous creature’s wings thundered as the dragon checked its speed a hundred paces away, and then it settled almost noiselessly on to the ground. Watching it, Samar Dev’s eyes narrowed. ‘That thing’s not even alive.’

  ‘No,’ Karsa and Traveller said in unison.

  ‘Meaning,’ she continued, ‘it shouldn’t be here.’

  ‘That is true,’ Traveller said.

  In the gloom the dragon seemed to regard them for a moment, and then, in a blurring dissolution, the creature sembled, until they saw a tall, gaunt figure of indeterminate gender. Grey as cobwebs and dust, pallid hair long and ropy with filth, wearing the remnants of a long chain hauberk, unbelted. An empty, splintered scabbard hung from a baldric beneath the right arm. Leggings of some kind of thick hide, scaled and the hue of forest loam, reached down to grey leather boots that rose to just below the knees.

  No light was reflected from the pits of its eyes. It approached with peculiar caution, like a wild animal, and halted at the very edge of the firelight. Whereupon it lifted both hands, brought them together into a peak before its face, and bowed.

  In the native tongue of Ugari, it said, ‘Witch, I greet you.’

  Samar Dev rose, shocked, baffled. Was it some strange kind of courtesy, to address her first? Was this thing in the habit of ignoring ascendants as if they were nothing more than bodyguards? And from her two formidable companions, not a sound.

  ‘And I greet you in return,’ she managed after a moment.

  ‘I am Tulas Shorn,’ it said. ‘I scarce recall when I last walked this realm, if I ever have. The very nature of my demise is lost to me, which, as you might imagine, is proving disconcerting.’

  ‘So it would, Tulas Shorn. I am Samar Dev—’

  ‘Yes, the one who negotiates with spirits, with the sleeping selves of stream and rock, crossroads and sacred paths. Priestess of Burn—’

  ‘That title is in error, Tulas Shorn—’

  ‘Is it? You are a witch, are you not?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘You do not reach into warrens, and so force alien power into this world. Your congress is with the earth, the sky, water and stone. You are a priestess of Burn, chosen among those of whom she dreams, as are others, but you, Samar Dev, she dreams of often.’

  ‘How would you know that?’

  Tulas Shorn hesitated, and then said, ‘There is death in dreaming.’

  ‘You are Tiste Edur,’ said Karsa Orlong, and, baring his teeth, he reached for his sword.

  ‘More than that,’ said Traveller, ‘one of Hood’s own.’

  Samar Dev spun to her two companions. ‘Oh, really! Look at you two! Not killed anything in weeks – how can you bear it? Planning on chopping it into tiny pieces, are you? Well, why not fight for the privilege first?’

  Traveller’s eyes widened slightly at her outburst.

  Karsa’s humourless smile broadened. ‘Ask it what it wants, then, witch.’

  ‘The day I start taking orders from you, Karsa Orlong, I will do just that.’

  Tulas Shorn had taken a step back. ‘It seems I am not welcome here, and so I shall leave.’

  But Samar Dev’s back was up, and she said, ‘I welcome you, Tulas Shorn, even if these ones do not. If they decide to attack you, I will stand in their way. I offer you all the rights of a guest – it’s my damned fire, after all, and if these two idiots don’t like it they can make their own, preferably a league or two away.’

  ‘You are right,’ Traveller said. ‘I apologize. Be welcome, then, Tulas Shorn.’

  Karsa shrugged. ‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘I’ve killed enough Edur. Besides, this one’s already dead. I still want to know what it wants.’

  Tulas Shorn edged in warily – a caution that seemed peculiarly out of place in a corpse, especially one that could veer into a dragon at any moment. ‘I have no urgent motivations, Tartheno Toblakai. I have known solitude for too long and would ease the burden of being my only company.’

  ‘Then join us,’ Karsa said, returning to crouch at the fire. ‘After all,’ he added, ‘perhaps one day I too will tire of my own company.’

  ‘Not any time soon, I would wager,’ said the Tiste Edur.

  Traveller snorted a laugh, and then looked shocked at himself.

  Samar Dev settled down once more, thinking of Shorn’s words. ‘There is death in dreaming.’ Well, she supposed, there would be at that. Then why did she feel so . . . rattled? What were you telling me, Tulas Shorn?

  ‘Hood has released you?’ Traveller asked. ‘Or was he careless?’

  ‘Careless?’ The Tiste Edur seemed to consider the word. ‘No, I do not think that. Rather, an opportunity presented itself to me. I chose not to waste it.’

  ‘So now,’ said Traveller, eyes fixed on the withered face enlivened only by reflected firelight, ‘you wing here and there, seeking what?’

  ‘Instinct can set one on a path,’ Tulas Shorn said, ‘with no destination in mind.’ It raised both hands and seemed to study them. ‘I have thought to see life once more, awakened within me. I do not know if such a thing is even possible. Samar Dev, is such a thing possible? Can she dream me alive once more?’

  ‘Can she – what? I don’t know. Call me a priestess if you like, but I don’t worship Burn, which doesn’t make me a very good priestess, does it? But if she dreams death, then she dreams life, too.’

  ‘From one to the other is generally in one direction only,’ Traveller observed. ‘Hood will come for you, Tulas Shorn; sooner or later, he will come to reclaim you.’

  For the first time, she sensed evasiveness in the Tiste Edur as it said, ‘I have time yet, I believe. Samar Dev, there is sickness in the Sleeping Goddess.’

  She flinched. ‘I know.’

  ‘It must be expunged, lest she die.’

  ‘I imagine so.’

  ‘Will you fight for her?’

  ‘I’m not a damned priestess!’ She saw the surprise on the faces of Karsa and Traveller, forced herself back from the ragged edge of anger. ‘I wouldn’t know where to start, Tulas Shorn.’

  ‘I believe the poison comes from a stranger’s pain.’

  ‘The Crippled God.’

  ‘Yes, Samar Dev.’

  ‘Do you actually think it can be healed?’

  ‘I do not know. There is physical damage and then there is spiritual damage. The former is more easily mended than the latter. He is sustained by rage, I suspect. His last source of power, perhaps his only source of power whilst chained in this realm.’

  ‘I doubt he’s in the negotiating mood,’ Samar Dev said. ‘And even if he was, he’s anathema to the likes of me.’

  ‘It is an extraordinary act of courage,’ said Tulas Shorn, ‘to come to know a stranger’s pain. To even consider such a thing demands a profound dispensation, a willingness to wear someone else’s chains, to taste their suffering, to see with one’s own eyes the hue cast on all things – the terrible stain that is despair.’ The Tiste Edur slowly shook its head. ‘I have no such courage. It is, without doubt, the rarest of abilities.’

  None spoke then for a time. The fire ate itself, indifferent to witnesses, and in its hunger devoured all that was offered it, again and again, until night and the disinterest of its guests left it to starve, until the wind stirred naught but ashes.

  If Tulas Shorn sought amiable company, it should have talked about the weather.

  In the morning, the undead Soletaken was gone. And so too were Traveller’s and Samar Dev’s horses.

  ‘That was careless of us,’ Traveller said.

  ‘He was a guest,’ Samar Dev said, baffled and more than a little hurt by the betrayal. They could see Havok, standing nervously some distance off, as if reluctant to return from his nightlong hunting, as if he had been witness to something unpleasant.

  There was, however, no sign of violence. The picket stakes remained where they had been pounded into the hard ground.

  ‘It wanted to slow us down,’ Traveller said. ‘One of
Hood’s own, after all.’

  ‘All right,’ Samar Dev glared across at a silent Karsa Orlong, ‘the fault was all mine. I should have left you two to chop the thing to bits. I’m sorry.’

  But Karsa shook his head. ‘Witch, goodwill is not something that needs an apology. You were betrayed. Your trust was abused. If there are strangers who thrive on such things, they will ever remain strangers – because they have no other choice. Pity Tulas Shorn and those like it. Even death taught it nothing.’

  Traveller was regarding the Toblakai with interest, although he ventured no comment.

  Havok was trotting towards them. Karsa said, ‘I will ride out, seeking new mounts – or perhaps the Edur simply drove your beasts off.’

  ‘I doubt that,’ Traveller said.

  And Karsa nodded, leaving Samar Dev to realize that he had offered the possibility for her sake, as if in some clumsy manner seeking to ease her self-recrimination. Moments later, she understood that it had been anything but clumsy. It was not her inward chastisement that he spoke to; rather, for her, he was giving Tulas Shorn the benefit of the doubt, although Karsa possessed no doubt at all – nor, it was clear, did Traveller.

  Well then, I am ever the fool here. So be it. ‘We’d best get walking, then.’

  In setting out, they left behind a cold hearth ringed in stones, and two saddles.

  *

  Almost two leagues away, high in the bright blue sky, Tulas Shorn rode the freshening breeze, the tatters of his wings rapping in the rush of air.

  As he had suspected, the trio had made no effort to hunt down the lost horses. Assuming, as they would, that the dragon had simply obliterated the animals.

  Tulas Shorn had known far too much death, however, to so casually kill innocent creatures. No, instead, the dragon had taken them, one in each massive clawed foot, ten leagues to the south, almost within sight of a small, wild herd of the same species – one of the last such wild herds on the plain.

  Too many animals were made to bow in servitude to a succession of smarter, crueller masters (and yes, those two traits went together). Poets ever wailed upon witnessing fields of slaughter, armies of soldiers and warriors frozen in death, but Tulas Shorn – who had walked through countless such scenes – reserved his sorrow, his sense of tragedy, for the thousands of dead and dying horses, war dogs, the oxen trapped in yokes of siege wagons mired in mud or shattered, the beasts that bled and suffered through no choice of their own, that died in a fog of ignorance, all trust in their masters destroyed.

  The horse knows faith in the continuation of care from its master; that food and water will be provided, that injuries will be mended, that the stiff brush will stroke its hide at day’s end. And in return it serves as best it can, or at least as best it chooses. The dog understands that the two-legged members of its pack cannot be challenged, and believes that every hunt will end in success. These were truths.

  A master of beasts must be as a parent to a host of unruly but trusting children. Stolid, consistent, never wanton in cruelty, never unmindful of the faith in which he or she is held. Oh, Tulas Shorn was not unaware of the peculiarity of such convictions, and had been the subject of mockery even among fellow Tiste Edur.

  Although such mockery had invariably faded when they had seen what had been achieved by this strange, quiet warrior with the Eleint-tainted eyes.

  Gliding high above the Lamatath Plain, now scores of leagues south of the witch and her companions, Tulas Shorn could taste something in the air, so ancient, so familiar, that if the dragon had still possessed functioning hearts, why, they would have thundered. Pleasure, perhaps even anticipation.

  How long had it been?

  Long.

  What paths did they now wander down?

  Alien ones, to be sure.

  Would they remember Tulas Shorn? The first master, the one who had taken them raw and half-wild and taught them the vast power of a faith that would never know betrayal?

  They are close, yes.

  My Hounds of Shadow.

  If he’d had a single moment, a lone instant of unharried terror, Gruntle might have conjured in his mind a scene such as might be witnessed from someone in a passing ship – some craft beyond the raging storm, at the very edge of this absurd insanity. Hands gripping the ratlines, deck pitching wild in the midst of a dishevelled sea, and there, yes . . . something impossible.

  An enormous carriage thrashing through a heaving road of foam, frenzied horses ploughing through swollen, whipped waves. And figures, clinging here and there like half-drowned ticks, and another, perched high on the driver’s bench behind the maddened animals, from whom endless screams pealed forth, piercing the gale and thunder and surge. Whilst on all sides the storm raged on, as if in indignant fury; the winds howled, rain slashing the air beneath bulging, bruised clouds; and the sea rose up in a tumult, spray erupting in tattered sheets.

  Yes, the witness might well stare, agape. Aghast.

  But Gruntle had no opportunity for such musing, no sweet luxury of time to disconnect his mind’s eye from this drenched, exhausted and battered body strapped tight to the roof of the carriage, this careering six-wheeled island that seemed ever tottering on the edge of obliteration. To draw one more breath was the only goal, the singular purpose of existence. Nothing else was remotely relevant.

  He did not know if he was the last one left – he had not opened his eyes in an eternity – and even if he was, why, he knew he would not hold out much longer. He convulsed yet again, but there was nothing left in his stomach – gods, he had never felt so sick in all his life.

  The wind tore at his hair – he’d long since lost his helm – savage as clawed fingers, and he ducked lower. Those unseen fingers then grabbed a handful and pulled his head up.

  Gruntle opened his eyes and found himself staring into a crazed face, the features so twisted that he could not for a moment recognize who was accosting him – some lost sailor from a drowned ship? Flung aboard the carriage as gods rolled in helpless laughter? – but no, it was Faint, and that expression was not abject terror. It was wild, gut-wrenching hilarity.

  She tugged on the rings attached to the iron rails and managed to pull herself yet closer, enough to dip her head down beside his, and in the half-sheltered cave their arms created her voice seemed to come from his own skull. ‘I thought you were dead! So pale, like a damned cadaver!’

  And this left her convulsed with laughter? ‘I damn well wish I was!’ he shouted back.

  ‘We’ve known worse!’

  Now, he’d heard that a dozen times since this venture began, and he had begun to suspect it was one of those perfect lies that people voiced to stay sane no matter what madness they found themselves in. ‘Has Quell ever done anything like this before?’

  ‘Like what? This is the Trygalle Trade Guild, shareholder! This is what we do, man!’

  And when she began laughing again, he planted a hand on her head and pushed her away. Faint retreated, back along the rail, and Gruntle was alone once more.

  How long had it been? Days. Weeks. Decades. He desperately needed fresh water – whatever rain reached his face was as salty as the sea. He could feel himself weakening – even could he find something to eat, he would never hold it down. Outrageous, to think that he could die here, body flopping about on its straps, slowly torn apart by the storm. Not with a weapon in hand, not with a defiant bellow tearing loose from his throat. Not drenched in hot blood, not staring his killer in the eye.

  This was worse than any demise he might imagine. As bad as some unseen disease – the sheer helplessness of discovering that one’s own body could fail all on its own. He could not even roar to the heavens with his last breath – the gesture would flood his mouth, leave him choking, defiance flung straight back at him, right back down his own throat.

  More screaming – laughter? No, this was screaming.

  What now?

  Gruntle snatched a breath and then looked up.

  Walls of water on all sides
– he flinched – and then a swell heaved them skyward, the carriage twisting, pitching. Rings squealed as he was tossed up, until sharp, savage tugs from the straps snatched him back down.

  But he had seen – yes – all his companions – their wide eyes, their gaping mouths – and he had seen, too, the object of their terror.

  They were racing, faster than any wave, straight for a towering cliff-face.

  ‘Land ho!’ shrieked Glanno Tarp from his perch.

  Explosions of foam at the cliff’s base appeared with every lift of the waves. Jagged spires of black rock, reefs, shoals and all those other names for killers of people and ships. And carriages. All looming directly ahead, a third of a league away and closing fast.

  Can those horses climb straight up a cliff-face? Sounds ridiculous – but I won’t put it past them. Not any more.

  Even so, why is everyone screaming?

  A moment later Gruntle had his answer. Another upward pitch, and this time he twisted round and glanced back, into their wake – no reason, at least, he didn’t think there was, but the view, surely, could not be as horrifying as what lay ahead.

  And he saw another wall of water, this one high as a damned mountain.

  Its sickly green flank picked up the carriage and then the horses, and began carrying them into the sky. So fast that the water streamed from the roof, from every flattened shareholder, and even the rain vanished as higher they went, into the gut of the clouds.

  He thought, if he dared open his eyes, he would see stars, the ferment above, to the sides, and indeed below – but Gruntle’s nerve had failed him. He clung, eyes squeezed shut, flesh dry and shivering in the bitter cold of the wind.

  More sound than a mortal brain could comprehend – thunder from beneath, animal squeals and human shrieks, the swollen thrash of blood in every vein, every artery, the hollow howl of wind in his gaping mouth.