‘Plan on keeping your find?’ Clip asked.
She looked down at the weapon in her right hand. ‘Udinaas can use it as a crutch.’
Clip’s laugh was bitterly cruel. ‘Oh, the injustice, Acquitor. For a storied weapon such as that one.’
She frowned at him. ‘You speak as if you recognise it. Do you?’
‘Let’s just say it belongs with us.’
Frustrated, she moved past him, back towards the camp.
The spear drew attention, frighteningly fast from Silchas Ruin, who – before he spun round to face her – seemed to flinch. Udinaas, too – his head snapping up as she walked towards him. She felt her heart lurch in her chest and was suddenly afraid.
She sought to hide it by holding stubbornly to her original thought. ‘Udinaas, I found this – you can use it to keep your balance.’
He grunted, then nodded. ‘A ground-stone tip – can’t have much of an edge, can it? At least I won’t stumble and poke my eye out, unless I work hard at it, and why would I do that?’
‘Do not mock it,’ Silchas Ruin said. ‘Use it in the manner the Acquitor has suggested, by all means. But know that it is not yours. You will have to surrender it – know that, Udinaas.’
‘Surrender it – to you, perchance?’
Again the flinch. ‘No.’ And Silchas Ruin turned away once more.
Udinaas grinned weakly at Seren. ‘Have you just given me a cursed weapon, Acquitor?’
‘I don’t know.’
He leaned on it. ‘Well, never mind. I’ve a whole collection of curses – one more won’t make much difference.’
Ice was melted, waterskins refilled. Another pot of frozen snow provided the water for a broth of herbs, rinds of myrid fat, berries and nuggets of sap taken from maple trees – the last of which they had seen ten days ago, at an elevation where the air was invigorating and sweetly pungent with life. Here, there were no trees. Not even shrubs. The vast forest surrounding them was barely ankle high – a tangled world of lichen and mosses.
Holding a bowl of the soup in trembling hands, Udinaas spoke to Seren. ‘So, just to get things straight in this epic farce of ours, did you find this spear or did it find you?’
She shook her head. ‘No matter. It’s yours now.’
‘No. Silchas is right. You’ve but loaned it to me, Acquitor. It slides like grease in my hands. I couldn’t use it to fight – even if I knew how, which I don’t.’
‘Not hard,’ Clip said. ‘Just don’t hold it at the sharp end and poke people with it until they fall over. I’ve yet to face a warrior with a spear I couldn’t cut to pieces.’
Fear Sengar snorted.
And Seren knew why. It was enough to brighten this morning, enough to bring a wry smile to her lips.
Clip noted it and sneered, but said nothing.
‘Pack up,’ Silchas Ruin said after a moment. ‘I weary of waiting.’
‘I keep telling you,’ Clip said, spinning the rings once more, ‘it’ll all come in its own time, Silchas Ruin.’
Seren turned to face the rearing peaks to the north. The gold had paled, as if drained of all life, all wonder. Another day of weary travel awaited them. Her mood plunged and she sighed.
Given the choice, this game should have been his own. Not Cotillion’s, not Shadowthrone’s. But enough details had drifted down to Ben Adaephon Delat, heavy and grim as the ash from a forest fire, to make him content, for the moment, to choke on someone else’s problems. Since the Enfilade at Pale, his life had been rather headlong. He felt as if he was plunging down a steep hill, for ever but one step from bone-snapping, blood-spraying disaster.
Used to be he thrived on such feelings. Proof that he was alive.
Yet . . . too many friends had fallen to the wayside on the journey. Far too many, and he was reluctant to let others take their places – not even this humble Tiste Edur with his too-full heart, his raw wound of grief; nor that damned T’lan Imass who now waded through a turgid sea of memories, as if seeking one – just one – that did not sob with futility. The wrong company indeed for Quick Ben – they were such open invitations to friendship. Not pity – which would have been easier. No, their damned nobility demolished that possibility.
And look where all his friends had gone. Whiskeyjack, Hedge, Trotts, Dujek Onearm, Kalam . . . well, wasn’t it always the way, that the pain of loss so easily overwhelmed the . . . the not-yet-lost? And that sad list was only the most recent version. All since Pale. What of all the others, from long ago? Us damned survivors don’t have it easy. Not even close.
The thought made him sneer inside. What was this feeling sorry for himself? Pathetic indulgence and nothing else.
Skirting the edge of a submerged ravine, they sloshed through tepid, waist-deep water, their passage swirling up clouds of silts that had rested lightly on some unseen, interminably paved lake-bottom. Tracked now by some kind of fish, their humped backs appearing every now and then to one side or the other, the dorsal fin ribbed, the bulge of water hinting at sizes a little too large for restful contemplation.
Least pleasant of all, Trull Sengar’s comment only moments past that these fish were probably the same kind that had once tried to eat him.
And Onrack the Broken had replied, ‘Yes, they are the same as the ones we fought on the floodwall, although of course they were then in their land-dwelling stage of life.’
‘So why are they here?’ Trull then asked.
‘Hungry,’ Onrack answered.
Enough, right then and there, to stir Quick Ben from his morose taciturnity. ‘Listen to you two! We’re about to be attacked by giant wizard-eating fish and you’re reminiscing! Look, are we in real danger or what?’
Onrack’s robust, prognathous face swung to regard him for a moment, then the T’lan Imass said, ‘We were assuming that you were warding us from them, Quick Ben.’
‘Me?’ He looked about, seeking any sign of dry land – but the milky water stretched on and on.
‘Is it time, then, to make use of your gate?’
Quick Ben licked his lips. ‘I think so. I mean, I’ve recovered from the last time, more or less. And I found somewhere to go. It’s just . . .’
Trull Sengar leaned on his spear. ‘You came out of that magical journey, Quick Ben, wearing the grin of the condemned. If indeed our destination is as fraught as it must be, I can understand your reluctance. Also, having observed you for some time now, it is clear to me that your battle against Icarium has weakened you at some fundamental level – perhaps you fear you will not be able to fashion a gate durable enough to permit the passage of all three of us? If so—’
‘Wait,’ the wizard interjected, silently cursing. ‘All right, I am a little . . . fragile. Ever since Icarium. You see far too much, Trull Sengar. But I can take us all through. That’s a promise. It’s just . . .’ He glanced over at Onrack. ‘Well, there may be some . . . unanticipated, uh, developments.’
Onrack spoke, ‘I am at risk?’
‘I’m not sure. Maybe.’
‘This should not unduly affect your decision,’ the T’lan Imass replied. ‘I am expendable. These fish cannot eat me, after all.’
‘If we leave,’ Quick Ben said, ‘you will be trapped here for ever.’
‘No. I will abandon this form. I will join oblivion in these waters.’
‘Onrack—’ Trull began in clear alarm.
But Quick Ben cut in, ‘You’re coming with us, Onrack. I’m just saying there’s a little uncertainty with what will happen to you. I can’t explain more. It just relates to where we will find ourselves. To the aspect of that realm, I mean.’
Trull Sengar snorted. ‘Sometimes,’ he said with a wry smile, ‘you are truly hopeless, wizard. Best open the gate now, before we end up in the belly of a fish.’ He then pointed behind Quick Ben. ‘That one looks to be the biggest yet – see the others scatter – and it’s coming straight for us.’
Turning, the wizard’s eyes widened.
The waist-deep water did n
ot even reach its eyes, and the monstrous fish was simply bulling its way through the shallows. A damned catfish of some sort, longer than a Napan galley—
Quick Ben raised his arms and shouted in a loud, oddly high-pitched voice: ‘It’s time to leave!’
Fragile. Oh yes, there is that. I poured too much through me trying to beat him back. There’s only so much mortal flesh and bone can take. The oldest rule of all, for Hood’s sake.
He forced open the gate, heard the explosive plunge of water into the realm beyond – the current wrapping round his legs – and he lunged forward, shouting, ‘Follow me!’
Once again, that nauseating, dreadful moment of suffocation, then he was staggering through a stream, water splashing out on all sides, rushing away – and cold wintry air closed in amidst clouds of vapour.
Trull Sengar stumbled past him, using the spear to right himself a moment before falling.
Gasping, Quick Ben turned.
And saw a figure emerge from the white mists.
Trull Sengar’s shout of surprise startled into the air birds from a nearby swath of knee-high trees, and as they raced skyward they spun in a half-circle over the head of Onrack the Broken. At their cries, at the swarm of tiny shadows darting around him, the warrior looked up, then halted.
Quick Ben saw Onrack’s chest swell with an indrawn breath that seemed without end.
The head then tilted down once more.
And the wizard stared into a face of smooth, wind-burnished skin. Eyes of green glittered beneath the heavy ridge of the brow. Twin streams of cold air then plumed down from Onrack’s broad, flattened, oft-broken nose.
From Trull Sengar, ‘Onrack? By the Sisters, Onrack!’
The small eyes, buried in epicanthic folds, shifted. A low, reverberating voice rumbled from the flesh and blood warrior. ‘Trull Sengar. Is this . . . is this mortality?’
The Tiste Edur drew a step closer. ‘You don’t remember? How it feels to be alive?’
‘I – I . . . yes.’ A sudden look of wonder in that heavy, broadly featured face. ‘Yes.’ Another deep breath, then a gust that was nearly savage in its exultation. The strange gaze fixed on Quick Ben once more. ‘Wizard, is this illusion? Dream? A journey of my spirit?’
‘I don’t think so. I mean, I think it’s real enough.’
‘Then . . . this realm. It is Tellann.’
‘Maybe. I’m not sure.’
Trull Sengar was suddenly on his knees, and Quick Ben saw tears streaming down the Tiste Edur’s lean, dusky face.
The burly, muscled warrior before them, still wearing the rotted remnants of fur, slowly looked round at the withered landscape of open tundra. ‘Tellann,’ he whispered. ‘Tellann.’
‘When the world was young,’ Redmask began, ‘these plains surrounding us were higher, closer to the sky. The earth was as a thin hide, covering thick flesh that was nothing but frozen wood and leaves. The rotted corpse of ancient forests. Beneath summer sun, unseen rivers flowed through that forest, between every twig, every crushed-down branch. And with each summer, the sun’s heat was greater, the season longer, and the rivers flowed, draining the vast buried forest. And so the plains descended, settled as the dried-out forest crumbled to dust, and with the rains more water would sink down, sweeping away that dust, southward, northward, eastward, westward, following valleys, rising to join streams. All directions, ever flowing away.’
Masarch sat silent with the other warriors – a score or more now, gathering to hear the ancient tale. None, however – Masarch included – had heard it told in quite this way, the words emerging from the red-scaled mask – from a warrior who rarely spoke yet who spoke now with ease, matching the cadence of elders with perfect precision.
The K’Chain Che’Malle stood nearby, hulking and motionless like a pair of grotesque statues. Yet Masarch imagined that they were listening, even as he and his companions were.
‘The land left the sky. The land settled onto stone, the very bone of the world. In this manner, the land changed to echo the cursed sorceries of the Shamans of the Antlers, the ones who kneel among boulders, the worshippers of stone, the weapon-makers.’ He paused, then said, ‘This was no accident. What I have just described is but one truth. There is another.’ A longer hesitation, then a long, drawn-out sigh. ‘Shamans of the Antlers, gnarled as tree roots, those few left, those few still haunting our dreams even as they haunt this ancient plain. They hide in cracks in the world’s bone. Sometimes their bodies are all but gone, until only their withered faces stare out from those cracks, challenging eternity as befits their terrible curse.’
Masarch was not alone in shivering in the pre-dawn chill, at the images Redmask’s words conjured. Every child knew of those twisted, malevolent spirits, the husks of shamans long, long dead, yet unable to truly die. Rolling stones into strange patterns beneath star-strewn night skies, chewing with their teeth the faces of boulders to make frightening scenes that only appeared at dusk or dawn, when the sun’s light was newborn or fading into death – and far more often the boulders were so angled that it was at the moments of dusk that the deep magic was awakened, the images rising into being from what had seemed random pecules in the stone. Magic to murder the wind in that place—
‘In the time before the plains descended, the shamans and their dread followers made music at the sun’s dying, on the night of its shortest passage, and at other holy times before the snows came. They did not use skin drums. There was no need. No, they used the hide of the earth, the buried forest beneath. They pounded the skin of the world until every beast of the plain trembled, until the bhederin burst into motion, tens of thousands as one, and ran wild through the night – and so they too echoed the music of the Shamans of the Antlers, feeding their dark power.
‘But the land fell away in the end – in grasping eternity, the shamans slew the very earth itself. This curse is without rest. This curse would close about our necks – each and every one of us here – this very night, if it could.’
Redmask was silent for a time then, as if allowing the terror to run free through the hearts of his audience. Eventually he resumed. ‘The Shamans of the Antlers gathered their deathless warriors then, and set out to wage war. Abandoning this plain – and from that time, only those who fell in battle were returned here. Broken pieces. Failed and withered as the plain itself, never again to reach or even look skyward. Such was their curse.
‘We do not forgive. It is not in us to forgive. But nor will we forget.
‘Bast Fulmar, the Valley of Drums. The Letherii believe we hold it in great awe. They believe this valley was the site of an ancient war between the Awl and the K’Chain Che’Malle – although the Letherii know not the true name of our ancient enemy. Perhaps indeed there were skirmishes, such that memory survives, only to twist and bind anew in false shapes. Many of you hold to those new shapes, believing them true. An ancient battle. One we won. One we lost – there are elders who are bold with the latter secret, as if defeat was a knife hidden in their heart-hand.’ Redmask shrugged at the notion, dismissing it. Pale light was creeping close. Birdsong rose from the low shrubs.
‘Bast Fulmar,’ Redmask said again. ‘Valley of Drums. Here, then, is its secret truth. The Shamans of the Antlers drummed the hide of this valley before us. Until all life was stolen, all the waters fled. They drank deep, until nothing was left. For at this time, the shamans were not alone, not for that fell ritual. No, others of their kind had joined them – on distant continents, hundreds, thousands of leagues away, each and all on that one night. To sever their life from the earth, to sever this earth from its own life.’
Silence, then, not a single warrior even so much as drawing breath. Held – too long—
Redmask released them with another sigh. ‘Bast Fulmar. We rise now to make war. In the Valley of Drums, my warriors, Letherii sorcery will fail. Edur sorcery will fail. In Bast Fulmar, there is no water of magic, no stream of power from which to steal. All used up, all taken to quench the fire that is li
fe. Our enemy is not aware. They will find the truth this day. Too late. Today, my warriors, shall be iron against iron. That and nothing more.’
Redmask then rose. ‘Release the truth – to every warrior. Then make ready. We march to battle. To victory.’
Courage surged through Masarch’s chest, and he found he was on his feet, trembling, and now moving off into the fading gloom, whispering his words to all that he passed. Again and again.
‘Bast Fulmar sings this day. It sings: there is no magic. There is no magic!’
Stablers gathering the horses and leading them across the courtyard behind her, Atri-Preda Yan Tovis left the reins of her mount in the hands of an aide, then strode towards the estate’s squat, brooding entrance. Thirty leagues south of the port town of Rennis, Boaral Keep was the birthplace of the Grass Jackets Brigade, but that was a long century past and now some third or fourth son of a remotely related Boaral held this fortress, clinging to the antiquated noble title of Dresh-Preda, or Demesne Lord. And in his command, a garrison consisting of barely a dozen soldiers, at least two of whom – at the outer gate – were drunk.
Weary, saddlesore, and feeling decidedly short on patience, Yan Tovis ascended the four broad, shallow steps to the lintel-capped main doors. No guard in sight. She wrenched the latch clear, then kicked open the heavy door and marched into the gloomy foyer within, startling two old women with buckets and khalit vine mops.
They flinched back, eyes down, hastily genuflecting.
‘Where is Dresh Boaral?’ Twilight demanded as she tugged free her gauntlets.
The hags exchanged glances, then one attempted something like a curtsy before saying, ‘Ma’am, he be well sleeping it off, aye. An’ us, we be well cleaning up his supper.’
A muffled snort from the other servant.
Only now did Yan Tovis detect the acrid smell of bile beneath that of lye soap. ‘Where then is the Master at Arms?’
‘Ma’am,’ another curtsy, then, ‘he be ridin’ off wi’ four soljers, west as they say, t’reach the coast fast as a clam squirt, an’ that’s a cloud ain’t e’en settled yet.’