‘Any sort. Belligerent tenement associations have to wait in line just like everyone else.’
‘I have no petition.’
‘Then we didn’t do it, we were never there, you heard wrong, it was someone else.’
‘I am here on behalf of my master, who wishes to meet with your guild to discuss a contract.’
‘We’re backed up. Not taking any more contracts—’
‘Price is not a consideration,’ Bugg cut in, then smiled, ‘within reasonable limits.’
‘Ah, but then it is a consideration. We may well have unreasonable limits in mind. We often have, you know.’
‘I do not believe my master is interested in rats.’
‘Then he’s insane… but interesting. The board will be in attendance tonight on another matter. Your master will be allotted a short period at the meeting’s end, which I will note in the agenda. Anything else?’
‘No. What time tonight?’
‘Ninth bell, no later. Come late and he will be barred outside the chamber door. Be sure he understands that.’
‘My master is always punctual.’
The secretary made a face. ‘Oh, he’s like that, is he? Poor you. Now, begone. I’m busy.’
Bugg abruptly leaned forward and stabbed two fingers into the secretary’s eyes. There was no resistance. The secretary tilted his head back and scowled.
‘Cute,’ Bugg smiled, stepping back. ‘My compliments to the guild sorceror.’
‘What gave me away?’ the secretary asked as Bugg opened the door.
The manservant glanced back. ‘You are far too rat-like, betraying your creator’s obsession. Even so, the illusion is superb.’
‘I haven’t been found out in decades. Who in the Errant’s name are you?’
‘For that answer,’ Bugg said as he turned away, ‘you’ll need a petition.’
‘Wait! Who’s your master?’
Bugg gave a final wave then shut the door. He descended the steps and swung right. A long walk to the quarries was before him, and, as Tehol had predicted, the day was hot, and growing hotter.
****
Summoned to join the Ceda in the Cedance, the chamber of the tiles, Brys descended the last few steps to the landing and made his way onto the raised walkway. Kuru Qan was circling the far platform in a distracted manner, muttering under his breath.
‘Ceda,’ Brys called as he approached. ‘You wished to see me?’
‘Unpleasant, Finadd, all very unpleasant. Defying comprehension. I need a clearer mind. In other words, not mine. Perhaps yours. Come here. Listen.’
Brys had never heard the Ceda speak with such fraught dismay. ‘What has happened?’
‘Every Hold, Finadd. Chaos. I have witnessed a transformation. Here, see for yourself. The tile of the Fulcra, the Dolmen. Do you see? A figure huddled at its base. Bound to the menhir with chains. All obscured by smoke, a smoke that numbs my mind. The Dolmen has been usurped.’
Brys stared down at the tile. The figure was ghostly, and his vision blurred the longer he stared at it. ‘By whom?’
‘A stranger. An outsider.’
‘A god?’
Kuru Qan massaged his lined brow with his fingers as he continued pacing. ‘Yes. No. We hold no value in the notion of gods. Upstarts who are as nothing compared to the Holds. Most of them aren’t even real, simply projections of a people’s desires, hopes. Fears. Of course,’ he added, ‘sometimes that’s all that’s needed.’
‘What do you mean?’
Kuru Qan shook his head. ‘And the Azath Hold, this troubles me greatly. The centre tile, the Heartstone, can you sense it? The Azath Heartstone, my friend, has died. The other tiles clustered together around it, at the end, drawing tight as blood gathers in a wounded body. The Tomb is breached. Portal stands unguarded. You must make a journey for me to the square tower, Finadd. And go armed.’
‘What am I to look for?’
‘Anything untoward. Broken ground. But be careful – the dwellers within those tombs are not dead.’
‘Very well.’ Brys scanned the nearest tiles. ‘Is there more?’
Kuru Qan halted, brows lifting. ‘More? Dragon Hold has awakened. Wyval. Blood-Drinker. Gate. Consort. Among the Fulcra, the Errant is now positioned in the centre of things. The Pack draws nearer, and Shapefinder has become a chimera. Ice Hold’s Huntress walks frozen paths. Child and Seed stir to life. The Empty Hold – you can well see – has become obscured. Every tile. A shadow stands behind the Empty Throne. And look, Saviour and Betrayer, they have coalesced. They are one and the same. How is this possible? Wanderer, Mistress, Watcher and Walker, all hidden, blurred by mysterious motion. I am frightened, Finadd.’
‘Ceda, have you heard from the delegation?’
‘The delegation? No. From the moment of their arrival in the Warlock King’s village, all contact with them has been lost. Blocked by Edur sorcery, of a sort we’ve not experienced before. There is much that is troubling. Much.’
‘I should leave now, Ceda, while there’s still daylight.’
‘Agreed. Then return here with what you have discovered.’
‘Very well.’
****
The track leading to the quarries climbed in zigzag fashion to a notch in the hillside. The stands of coppiced trees on the flanks were sheathed in white dust. Goats coughed in the shade.
Bugg paused to wipe sweaty grit from his forehead, then went on.
Two wagons filled with stonecutters had passed him a short while earlier, and from the frustrated foreman came the unwelcome news that the crew had refused to work the quarry any longer, at least until the situation was resolved.
A cavity had been inadvertently breached, within which a creature of some sort had been imprisoned for what must have been a long, long time. Three ‘cutters had been dragged inside, their shrieks short-lived. The hired necromancer hadn’t fared any better.
Bugg reached the notch and stood looking down at the quarry pit with its geometric limestone sides cut deep into the surrounding land. The mouth of the cavity was barely visible near an area that had seen recent work.
He made his way down, coming to within twenty paces of the cave before he stopped.
The air was suddenly bitter cold. Frowning, Bugg stepped to one side and sat down on a block of limestone. He watched frost form on the ground to the left of the cave, reaching in a point towards the dark opening, the opposite end spreading ever wider in a swirl of fog. The sound of ice crunching underfoot, then a figure appeared from the widening end, as if striding out from nowhere. Tall, naked from the hips upward, grey-green skin. Long, streaked blonde hair hanging loose over the shoulders and down the back. Light grey eyes, the pupils vertical slits. Silver-capped tusks. Female, heavy-breasted. She was wearing a short skirt, her only clothing barring the leather-strapped moccasins, and a wide belt holding a half-dozen scabbards in which stabbing knives resided.
Her attention was on the cave. She anchored her hands on her hips and visibly sighed.
‘He’s not coming out,’ Bugg said.
She glanced over. ‘Of course he isn’t, now that I’m here.’
‘What kind of demon is he?’
‘Hungry and insane, but a coward.’
‘Did you put him there?’
She nodded. ‘Damned humans. Can’t leave things well enough alone.’
‘I doubt they knew, Jaghut.’
‘No excuse. They’re always digging. Digging here, digging there. They never stop.’
Bugg nodded, then asked, ‘So now what?’
She sighed again.
The frost at her feet burgeoned into angular ice, which then crawled into the cave mouth. The ice grew swiftly, filling the hole. The surrounding stone groaned, creaked, then split apart, revealing solid ice beneath it. Sandy earth and limestone chunks tumbled away.
Bugg’s gaze narrowed on the strange shape trapped in the centre of the steaming ice. ‘A Khalibaral? Errant take us, Huntress, I’m glad you decided to return
.’
‘Now I need to find for him somewhere else. Any suggestions?’
Bugg considered for a time, then he smiled.
****
Brys made his approach between two of the ruined round towers, stepping carefully around tumbled blocks of stone half hidden in the wiry yellow grasses. The air was hot and still, the sunlight molten gold on the tower walls. Grasshoppers rose from his path in clattering panic and, at the faint sensation of crunching underfoot, Brys looked down to see that the ground was crawling with life. Insects, many of them unrecognizable to his eyes, oversized, awkward, in dull hues, scrambling to either side as he walked.
Since they were all fleeing, he was not unduly concerned.
He came within sight of the square tower. The Azath. Apart from its primitive style of architecture, there seemed to be little else to set it apart. Brys was baffled by the Ceda’s assertion that a structure of stone and wood could be sentient, could breathe with a life of its own. A building presupposed a builder, yet Kuru Qan claimed that the Azath simply rose into being, drawn together of its own accord. Inviting suspicion on every law of causality generations of scholars had posited as irrefutable truth.
The surrounding grounds were less mysterious, if profoundly more dangerous. The humped barrows in the overgrown yard were unmistakable. Gnarled and stunted, dead trees rose here and there, sometimes from the highest point of the mound, but more often from the flanks. A winding flagstone pathway began opposite the front door, the gate marked by rough pillars of unmortared stone wrapped in vines and runners. The remnants of a low wall enclosed the grounds.
Brys reached the edge of the yard along one side, the gate to his right, the tower to the left. And saw immediately that many of the barrows within sight had slumped on at least one of their sides, as if gutted from within. The weeds covering the mounds were dead, blackened as if by rot.
He studied the scene for a moment longer, then made his way round the perimeter towards the gateway. Striding between the pillars, onto the first flagstone – which pitched down to one side with a grinding clunk. Brys tottered, flinging his arms out for balance, and managed to recover without falling.
High-pitched laughter from near the tower’s entrance.
He looked up.
The girl emerged from the shadow cast by the tower. ‘I know you. I followed the ones following you. And killed them.’
‘What has happened here?’
‘Bad things.’ She came closer, mould-patched and dishevelled. ‘Are you my friend? I was supposed to help it stay alive. But it died anyway, and things are busy killing each other. Except for the one the tower chose. He wants to talk to you.’
‘To me?’
‘To one of my grown-up friends.’
‘Who,’ Brys asked, ‘are your other grown-up friends?’
‘Mother Shurq, Father Tehol, Uncle Ublala, Uncle Bugg.’
Brys was silent. Then, ‘What is your name?’
‘Kettle.’
‘Kettle, how many people have you killed in the past year?’
She cocked her head. ‘I can’t count past eight and two.’
‘Ah.’
‘Lots of eight and twos.’
‘And where do the bodies go?’
‘I bring them back here and push them into the ground.’
‘All of them?’
She nodded.
‘Where is this friend of yours? The one who wants to talk to me?’
‘I don’t know if he’s a friend. Follow me. Step where I step.’
She took him by the hand and Brys fought to repress a shiver at that clammy grip. Off the flagstoned path, between barrows, the ground shifting uncertainly beneath each cautious step. There were more insects, but of fewer varieties, as if some kind of attrition had occurred on the grounds of the Azath. ‘I have never seen insects like these before,’ Brys said. ‘They’re… big.’
‘Old, from the times when the tower was born,’ Kettle said. ‘Eggs in the broken ground. Those stick-like brown ones with the heads at both ends are the meanest. They eat at my toes when I sit still too long. And they’re hard to crush.’
‘What about those yellow, spiky ones?’
‘They don’t bother me. They eat only birds and mice. Here.’
She had stopped before a crumpled mound on which sat one of the larger trees in the yard, the wood strangely streaked grey and black, the twigs and branches projecting in curves rather than sharp angles.
Roots spread out across the entire barrow, the remaining bark oddly scaled, like snake skin.
Brys frowned. ‘And how are we to converse, with him in there and me up here?’
‘He’s trapped. He says you have to close your eyes and think about nothing. Like you do when you fight, he says.’
Brys was startled. ‘He’s speaking to you now?’
‘Yes, but he says that isn’t good enough, because I don’t know enough… words. Words and things. He has to show you. He says you’ve done this before.’
‘It seems I am to possess no secrets,’ Brys said.
‘Not many, no, so he says he’ll do the same in return. So you can trust each other. Somewhat.’
‘Somewhat. His word?’
She nodded.
Brys smiled. ‘Well, I appreciate his honesty. All right, I will give this a try.’ He closed his eyes. Kettle’s cold hand remained in his, small, the flesh strangely loose on the bones. He pulled his thoughts from that detail. A fighter’s mind was not in truth emptied during a fight. It was, instead, both coolly detached and mindful. Concentration defined by a structure which was in turn assembled under strict laws of pragmatic necessity. Thus, observational, calculating, and entirely devoid of emotion, even as every sense was awakened.
He felt himself lock into that familiar, reassuring structure.
And was stunned by the strength of the will that tugged him away. He fought against a rising panic, knowing he was helpless before such power. Then relented.
****
Above him, a sky transformed. Sickly, swirling green light surrounding a ragged black wound large enough to swallow a moon. Clouds twisted, tortured and shorn through by the descent of innumerable objects, each object seeming to fight the air as it fell, as if this world was actively resisting the intrusion. Objects pouring from that wound, tunnelling through layers of the sky.
On the landscape before him was a vast city, rising up from a level plain with tiered gardens and raised walkways. A cluster of towers rose from the far side, reaching to extraordinary heights. Farmland reached out from the city’s outskirts in every direction for as far as Brys could see, strange shadows flowing over it as he watched.
He pulled his gaze from the scene and looked down, to find that he stood on a platform of red-stained limestone. Before him steep steps ran downward, row upon row, hundreds, to a paved expanse flanked by blue-painted columns. A glance to his right revealed a sharply angled descent. He was on a flat-topped pyramid-shaped structure, and, he realized with a start, someone was standing beside him, on his left. A figure barely visible, ghostly, defying detail. It was tall, and seemed to be staring up at the sky, focused on the terrible dark wound.
Objects were striking the ground now, landing hard but with nowhere near the velocity they should have possessed. A loud crack reverberated from the concourse between the columns below, and Brys saw that a massive stone carving had come to rest there. A bizarre beast-like human, squatting with thickly muscled arms reaching down the front, converging with a two-handed grip on the penis. Shoulders and head were fashioned in the likeness of a bull. A second set of legs, feminine, were wrapped round the beast-man’s hips, the platform on which he crouched cut, Brys now saw, into a woman’s form, lying on her back beneath him. From nearby rose the clatter of scores of clay tablets – too distant for Brys to see if there was writing on them, though he suspected there might be – skidding as if on cushions of air before coming to a rest in a scattered swath.
Fragments of buildings –
cut limestone blocks, cornerstones, walls of adobe, wattle and daub. Then severed limbs, blood-drained sections of cattle and horses, a herd of something that might have been goats, each one turned inside out, intestines flopping. Dark-skinned humans – or at least their arms, legs and torsos.
Above, the sky was filling with large pallid fragments, floating down like snow.
And something huge was coming through the wound. Wreathed in lightning that seemed to scream with pain, shrieks unending, deafening.
Soft words spoke in Brys’s mind. ‘My ghost, let loose to wander, perhaps, to witness. They warred against Kallor; it was a worthy cause. But… what they have done here…’
Brys could not pull his eyes from that howling sphere of lightning. He could see limbs within it, the burning arcs entwined about them like chains. ‘What – what is it?’
‘A god, Brys Beddict. In its own realm, it was locked in a war. For there were rival gods. Temptations…’
‘Is this a vision of the past?’ Brys asked.
‘The past lives on,’ the figure replied. ‘There is no way of knowing… standing here. How do we measure the beginning, the end – for all of us, yesterday was as today, and as it will be tomorrow. We are not aware. Or perhaps we are, yet choose – for convenience, for peace of mind – not to see. Not to think.’ A vague gesture with one hand. ‘Some say twelve mages, some say seven. It does not matter, for they are about to become dust.’
The massive sphere was roaring now, burgeoning with frightening speed as it plunged earthward. It would, Brys realized, strike the city.
‘Thus, in their effort to enforce a change upon the scheme, they annihilate themselves, and their own civilization.’
‘So they failed.’
The figure said nothing for a time.
And the descending god struck; a blinding flash, a detonation that shook the pyramid beneath them and sent fissures through the concourse below. Smoke, rising in a column that then billowed outward, swallowing the world in shadow. Wind rushed outward in a shock, flattening trees in the farmland, toppling the columns lining the concourse. The trees then burst into flame.
‘In answer to a perceived desperation, fuelled by seething rage, they called down a god. And died with the effort. Does that mean that they failed in their gambit? No, I do not speak of Kallor. I speak of their helplessness which gave rise to their desire for change. Brys Beddict, were their ghosts standing with us now, here in the future world where our flesh resides, thus able to see what their deed has wrought, they would recognize that all that they sought has come to pass.