The huge sword slashed horizontally. Brys leapt back, the point of his sword darting out and up in a stop-thrust against the only target within reach.
Letherii steel slipped in between the silver plates of the left gauntlet, sank deep.
Behind them a dolmen exploded, the concussion thundering through the bedrock underfoot. The warrior staggered, then swung his sword in a downward chop. Brys threw himself backward, rolling over one shoulder to regain his feet in a crouch.
The warrior’s sword had driven into the basalt a quarter of its length.
And was stuck fast.
He darted to close. Planting his left leg behind the guardian, Brys set both hands against the armoured chest and shoved.
The effort failed as the guardian held himself upright by gripping the embedded sword.
Brys spun and hammered his right elbow into the iron-sheathed face. Pain exploded in his arm as the head was snapped back, and the Letherii pitched to one side, his left hand taking the longsword from his fast-numbing right.
The warrior tugged on his own sword, but it did not budge.
Brys leapt forward once again, driving his left boot down onto the side of the guardian’s nearest leg, low, a hand’s width above the ankle.
Ancient iron crumpled. Bones snapped.
The warrior sank down on that side, yet remained partly upright by leaning on the jammed sword.
Brys quickly backed away. ‘Enough. I have no desire to kill any more gods.’
The armoured face lifted to regard him. ‘I am defeated. We have failed.’
The Letherii studied the warrior for a long moment, then spoke. ‘The blood seeping from your hands – does it belong to the surviving gods here?’
‘Diminished, now.’
‘Can they heal you?’
‘No. We have nothing left.’
‘Why does the blood leak? What happens when it runs out?’
‘It is power. It steals courage – against you it failed. It was expected that the blood of slain enemies would… it does not matter now.’
‘What of Mael? Can you receive no help from him?’
‘He has not visited in thousands of years.’
Brys frowned. Kuru Qan had said to follow his instincts. He did not like what had come to pass here. ‘I would help. Thus, I would give you my own blood.’
The warrior was silent for a long time. Then, ‘You do not know what you offer, mortal.’
‘Well, I don’t mean to die. I intend to survive the ordeal. Will it suffice?’
‘Blood from a dying or dead foe has power. Compared to the blood from a mortal who lives, that power is minuscule. I say again, you do not know what you offer.’
‘I have more in mind, Guardian. May I approach?’
‘We are helpless before you.’
‘Your sword isn’t going anywhere, even with my help. I would give you mine. It cannot be broken, or so I am told. And indeed I have never seen Letherii steel break. Your two-handed weapon is only effective if your opponent quails and so is made slow and clumsy.’
‘So it would seem.’
Brys was pleased at the wry tone in the warrior’s voice. While there had been no self-pity in the admissions of failure, he had disliked hearing them. He reversed grip on his longsword and offered the pommel to the warrior. ‘Here.’
‘If I release my hands I will fall.’
‘One will do.’
The guardian prised a hand loose and grasped the longsword. ‘By the Abyss, it weighs as nothing!’
‘The forging is a secret art, known only to my people. It will not fail you.’
‘Do you treat all your defeated foes in this manner?’
‘No, only the ones I had no wish to harm in the first place.’
‘Tell me, mortal, are you considered a fine swordsman in your world?’
‘Passing.’ Brys tugged off the leather glove on his right hand, then drew his dagger. ‘This arm is still mostly numb—’
‘I am pleased. Although I wish I could say the same for my face.’
Brys cut his palm, watched as blood blossomed out to whip away on the current. He set the bleeding hand down on the warrior’s left, which was still closed about the grip of the embedded weapon. He felt his blood being drawn between the silver plates.
The warrior’s hand twisted round to grasp his own in a grip hard as stone. A clenching of muscles, and the guardian began straightening.
Brys glanced down and saw that the shattered leg was mending in painful-looking spasms, growing solid beneath the huge warrior’s weight.
Sudden weakness rushed through him.
‘Release my hand,’ the warrior said, ‘lest you die.’
Nodding, Brys pulled his hand free, and staggered back.
‘Will you live?’
‘I hope so,’ he gasped, his head spinning. ‘Now, before I go, tell me their names.’
‘What?’
‘I have a good memory, Guardian. There will be no more enslavement, so long as I remain alive. And beyond my life, I will ensure that those names are not forgotten—’
‘We are ancient gods, mortal. You risk—’
‘You have earned your peace, as far as I am concerned. Against the Tiste Edur – those who came before to chain one of your kin – you will be ready next time. My life can add to your strength, and hopefully it will be sufficient for you to resist.’
The guardian straightened to its full height. ‘It shall, mortal. Your sacrifice shall not be forgotten.’
‘The names! I feel – I am fading—’
Words filled his mind, a tumbling avalanche of names, each searing a brand in his memory. He screamed at the shock of the assault, of countless layers of grief, dreams, lives and deaths, of realms unimaginable, of civilizations crumbling to ruins, then dust.
Stories. So many stories – ah, Errant—
****
‘Errant save us, what have you done?’
Brys found himself lying on his back, beneath him a hard, enamelled floor. He blinked open his eyes and saw Kuru Qan’s wizened face hovering over him.
‘I could not find Mael,’ the King’s Champion said. He felt incredibly weak, barely able to lift a hand to his face.
‘You’ve scarcely a drop of blood left in you, Finadd. Tell me all that happened.’
The Holds forsake me, stories without end … ‘I discovered what the Tiste Edur have done, Ceda. An ancient god, stripped of its names, bound by a new one. It now serves the Edur.’
Kuru Qan’s eyes narrowed behind the thick lenses. ‘Stripped of its names. Relevant? Perhaps. Can one of those names be found? Will it serve to pry it loose from Hannan Mosag’s grasp?’
Brys closed his eyes. Of all the names now held within him… had any of the other gods known its kin’s identity? ‘I may have it, Ceda, but finding it will take time.’
‘You return with secrets, Finadd Brys Beddict.’
‘And barely a handful of answers.’
The Ceda leaned back. ‘You need time to recover, my young friend. Food, and wine, and plenty of both. Can you stand?’
‘I will try…’
****
The humble manservant Bugg walked through the darkness of Sherp’s Last Lane
, so named because poor Sherp died there a few decades past. He had been a fixture in this neighbourhood, Bugg recalled. Old, half blind and muttering endlessly about a mysterious cracked altar long lost in the clay beneath the streets. Or, more specifically, beneath this particular lane.
His body had been found curled up within a scratched circle, amidst rubbish and a half-dozen neck-wrung rats. Peculiar as that had been, there were few who cared or were curious enough to seek explanations. People died in the alleys and streets all the time, after all.
Bugg missed old Sherp, even after all these years, but some things could not be undone.
He had been awakened by a rattling of the reed mat that now served as a door to Tehol’s modest residence. A dirt-smeared child delive
ring an urgent summons. She now scampered a few paces ahead, glancing back every now and then to make sure she was still being followed.
At the end of Sherp’s Last Lane was another alley, this one running perpendicular, to the left leading down to a sinkhole known as Errant’s Heel which had become a refuse pit, and to the right ceasing after fifteen paces in a ruined house with a mostly collapsed roof.
The child led Bugg to that ruin.
One section remained with sufficient headroom to stand, and in this chamber a family now resided. Nerek: six children and a grandmother who’d wandered down from the north after the children’s parents died of Truce Fever – which itself was a senseless injustice, since Truce Fever was easily cured by any Letherii healer, given sufficient coin.
Bugg did not know them, but he knew of them, and clearly they in turn had heard of the services he was prepared to offer, in certain circumstances, free of charge.
A tiny hand reached out to close about his own and the girl led him through the doorway into a corridor where he was forced to crouch beneath the sagging, sloping ceiling. Three paces along and the lower half of another doorway was revealed and, beyond it, a crowded room.
Smelling of death.
Murmured greetings and bowed heads as Bugg entered, his eyes settling on the motionless form lying on a bloody blanket in the room’s centre. After a moment’s study, he glanced up and sought out the gaze of the eldest of the children, a girl of about ten or eleven years of age – though possibly older and stunted by malnutrition, or younger and prematurely aged by the same. Large, hard eyes met his.
‘Where did you find her?’
‘She made it home,’ the girl replied, her tone wooden.
Bugg looked down at the dead grandmother once more. ‘From how far away?’
‘Buried Round, she said.’
‘She spoke, then, before life left her.’ Bugg’s jaw muscles bunched. Buried Round was two, three hundred paces distant. An extraordinary will, in the old woman, to have walked all that distance with two mortal sword-thrusts in her chest. ‘She knew great need, I think.’
‘To tell us who killed her, yes.’
And not to simply disappear, as so many of the destitute do, thus raising the spectre of abandonment – a scar these children could do without.
‘Who, then?’
‘She was crossing the Round, and found herself in the path of an entourage. Seven men and their master, all armed. The master was raging, something about all his spies disappearing. Our grandmother begged for coin. The master lost his mind with anger and ordered his guards to kill her. And so they did.’
‘And is the identity of this master known?’
‘You will find his face on newly minted docks.’
Ah.
Bugg knelt beside the old woman. He laid a hand on her cold, lined forehead, and sought the remnants of her life. ‘Urusan of the Clan known as the Owl. Her strength was born of love. For her grandchildren. She is gone, but she has not gone far.’ He raised his head and met the eyes of each of the six children. ‘I hear the shifting of vast stones, the grinding surrender of a long closed portal. There is cold clay, but it did not embrace her.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘I will prepare this flesh for Nerek interment—’
‘We would have your blessing,’ the girl said.
Bugg’s brows lifted. ‘Mine? I am not Nerek, nor even a priest—’
‘We would have your blessing.’
The manservant hesitated, then sighed. ‘As you will. But tell me, how will you live now?’
As if in answer there was a commotion at the doorway, then a huge figure lumbered into the small room, seeming to fill it entirely. He was young, his size and features evincing Tarthenal and Nerek blood both. Small eyes fixed upon Urusan’s corpse, and the whole face darkened.
‘And who is this?’ Bugg asked. A shifting of vast stones – now this… this shoving aside of entire mountains. What begins here?
‘Our cousin,’ the girl said, her eyes wide and adoring and full of pleading as she looked up at the young man. ‘He works on the harbour front. Unn is his name. Unn, this is the man known as Bugg. A dresser of the dead.’
Unn’s voice was so low-pitched it could barely be heard. ‘Who did this?’
Oh, Finadd Gerun Eberict, to your senseless feast of blood you shall have an uninvited guest, and something tells me you will come to regret it.
****
Selush of the Stinking House was tall and amply proportioned, yet her most notable feature was her hair. Twenty-seven short braids of the thick black hair, projecting in all directions, each wrapped round an antler tine, which meant that the braids curved and twisted in peculiar fashion. She was somewhere between thirty-five and fifty years of age, the obscurity the product of her formidable talent as a disguiser of flaws. Violet eyes, produced by an unusual ink collected from segmented worms that lived deep in the sand of the south island beaches, and lips kept full and red by a mildly toxic snake venom that she painted on every morning.
As she stood before Tehol and Shurq Elalle at the threshold of her modest and unfortunately named abode, she was dressed in skin-tight silks, inviting Tehol against his own sense of decorum to examine her nipples beneath the gilt sheen – and so it was a long moment before he looked up to see the alarm in her eyes.
‘You’re early! I wasn’t expecting you. Oh! Now I’m all nervous. Really, Tehol, you should know better than to do the unexpected! Is this the dead woman?’
‘If not,’ Shurq Elalle replied, ‘then I’m in even deeper trouble, wouldn’t you say?’
Selush stepped closer. ‘This is the worst embalming I’ve ever seen.’
‘I wasn’t embalmed.’
‘Oh! An outrage! How did you die?’
Shurq raised a lifeless brow. ‘I am curious. How often is that question answered by your clients?’
Selush blinked. ‘Enter, if you must. So early!’
‘My dear,’ Tehol said reasonably, ‘it’s less than a couple of hundred heartbeats from the midnight bell.’
‘Precisely! See how flustered you’ve made me? Quickly, inside, I must close the door. There! Oh, the dark streets are so frightening. Now, sweetie, let me look more closely at you. My servant was unusually reticent, I’m afraid.’ She abruptly leaned close until her nose was almost touching Shurq’s lips.
Tehol flinched, but luckily neither woman noticed.
‘You drowned.’
‘Really.’
‘In Quillas Canal. Just downstream of Windlow’s Meatgrinders on the last day of a summer month. Which one? Wanderer’s Month? Watcher’s?’
‘Betrayer’s.’
‘Oh! Windlow must have had unusually good business that month, then. Tell me, do people scream when they see you?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Me too.’
‘Do you,’ Shurq asked, ‘get compliments on your hair?’
‘Never.’
‘Well, that was pleasing small-talk,’ Tehol said hastily. ‘We haven’t got all night, alas—’
‘Why, yes we have, you silly man,’ Selush said.
‘Oh, right. Sorry. In any case. Shurq was a victim of the Drownings, and, it turned out, an abiding curse.’
‘Isn’t it always the way?’ Selush sighed, turning to walk to the long table along the back wall of the room.
‘Tehol mentioned roses,’ Shurq said, following.
‘Roses? Dear me, no. Cinnamon and patchouli, I would think. But first, we need to do something about all that mould, and the moss in your nostrils. And then there’s the ootooloo—’
‘The what?’ Shurq and Tehol asked in unison.
‘Lives in hot springs in the Bluerose Mountains.’ She swung about and regarded Shurq with raised brows. ‘A secret among women. I’m surprised you’ve never heard of them.’
‘It would seem my education is lacking.’
‘Well, an ootooloo is a small soft-bodied creature that feeds through a crevice, a sort of vertical slit for a mo
uth. Its skin is covered in cilia with the unusual quality of transmitting sensation. These cilia can take root in membranous flesh—’
‘Hold on a moment,’ Tehol said, aghast, ‘you’re not suggesting—’
‘Most men can’t tell the difference, but it enhances pleasure many times… or so I am led to believe. I have never invited one inside, since the emplacement of an ootooloo is permanent, and it needs, uhm, constant feeding.’
‘How often?’ Shurq demanded, and Tehol heard suitable alarm in her tone.
‘Daily.’
‘But Shurq’s nerves are dead – how can she feel what this ottoolie thing feels?’
‘Not dead, Tehol Beddict, simply unawakened. Besides, before too long, the ootooloo’s cilia will have permeated her entire body, and the healthier the organism the brighter and more vigorous her glowing flesh!’
‘I see. And what of my brain? Will these roots grow in it as well?’
‘Well, we can’t have that, can we, lest you live out the remainder of existence drooling in a hot bath. No, we shall infuse your brain with a poison – well, not a true poison, but the exudation of a small creature that shares those hot springs with the ootooloo. Said exudation is unpalatable to the ootooloo. Isn’t nature wonderful?’
****
Grainy-eyed, Bugg staggered inside his master’s home. It was less than an hour before dawn. He felt drained, more by the blessing he had given than by preparing the old woman’s corpse for burial. Two strides into the single room and he halted.
Seated on the floor and leaning against the wall opposite was Shand. ‘Where is the bastard, Bugg?’
‘Working, although I imagine you are sceptical. I’ve not slept this night and so am unequal to conversation, Shand—’
‘And I care? What kind of work? What’s he doing that has to be done when the rest of the world’s asleep?’
‘Shand, I—’
‘Answer me!’
Bugg walked over to the pot sitting on a grille above the now cool hearth. He dipped a cup into the tepid, stewed tea. ‘Twelve lines of investment, like unseen streams beneath foundations, eating away but yet to reveal a tremor. There are essential trusses to every economy, Shand, upon which all else rests.’
‘You can’t do business in the middle of the night.’
‘Not that kind of business, no. But there are dangers to all this, Shand. Threats. And they need to be met. Anyway, what are you doing out at night without your bodyguard?’