Dust of Dreams

  There was no silent reply to that. The presence remained unperturbed, as if deaf to Sandalath, deaf and wilfully blind. Not fair. Not fair!

  ‘Sand?’

  She hissed under her breath. ‘The Terondai, now.’

  Beyond the scores of buildings now occupied by the Shake and refugee islanders, Kharkanas remained a place of ghosts. The witches decided they liked that. They had found an estate situated on a terrace overlooking an overgrown park. The outer wall’s main gate had been burned down, leaving ancient soot smears on the marble frame and deep heat cracks latticing the lintel stone. The garden flanking the formal approach was now a snarl of stunted trees on both sides, their roots tilting the flagstones of the path.

  Atop four broad steps double doors marked the entrance to the residence. These had been shattered from the inside. Bronze statues reared on either side of the staircase, each standing on an ornate marble pedestal. If they had been fashioned in the likeness of living creatures, decided Pully, then the world was a stranger place than she had ever imagined. Towering, the statues were of warriors, human from the shoulders down, whilst their necks and heads belonged to a hound. Both sentinels bore weapons. A double-bladed axe for the one on the left, a two-handed sword for the one on the right. Verdigris marred the details of the beastly visages, but there was enough to see that the two were not identical. The sword-wielder was terribly scarred, a slash that had cleaved through one eye, deep enough to bite bone.

  Humming under her breath, Pully set one knee on this particular statue’s horizontal penis, and pulled herself up for a closer look at that face. ‘Now them’s big teeth, an’ precious so.’

  Skwish had already gone inside, likely painting a thick red line down the middle, staking her half of the estate. Pully had forgotten how competitive the cow had been in her youth, but now it was all coming back. Wrinkles gone, bitch returns! An what was I sayin? Right, bitter’s a habit, Skwish. Bitter’s a habit. No matter. Skwish could have her half of the estate and half of every room. But then half of everything was half of nothing. They could live here, yes, but they couldn’t own the place.

  She clambered down from the statue, brushed the dust from her hands, and then ascended the steps and strode inside. Eight paces opposite her was a wall bearing a carved crest of some sort, arcane heraldry announcing the family that had claimed this place, or so she supposed. Even so, one sniff told her there was sorcery in that sigil, latent, possibly a ward but too old to manage much. She could hear Skwish rummaging about in a room down the corridor on the right. Tripped nothing. Dead ward, or as good as. Did you even notice, sister?

  One thing was impossible not to notice. Ever since they’d crawled out of that deathly sleep, they’d felt the presence of the goddess. Mother Dark had looked upon them both, had gathered up their souls like a pair of knuckled dice. A rattle or two, curious fingertips exploring every nuance, every pit and crack. Then the cast. Dismissive, all interest lost. Damned insulting, yes. Infuriating. Who did the hag think she was, anyway? Pully snorted, eyes still on the marble crest. Something about it made her uneasy. ‘Never mind,’ she muttered, and then raised her voice: ‘Skwish!’

  ‘Wha?’

  ‘We ain’t welcome here.’

  Skwish reappeared, stood in the corridor’s gloom. ‘The Queen will take the palace. Her and Witchslayer. We don’t want t’be anywhere close to ’em. There’s power here, Pully. We can use it, we can feed on it—’

  ‘Risky. It ain’t as quiet as I’d like.’

  ‘It’s memories is all.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Skwish rolled her eyes, approached. She halted directly in front of the crest. ‘Old symbols,’ she said. She pointed. ‘See that? That’s the Terondai, and there, that’s the sigil of Mother Dark herself.’

  ‘Empty throne! This ain’t a Royal House, is it?’

  ‘Not quite, but as good as. See that mark? The one in the centre. That’s the Consort—you never was interested in studying the Oldings. So, this house, it belonged to a man lover to some princess or maybe even the queen herself. See, that’s his name, the one there.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘Daraconus, something like that.’

  They heard someone in the courtyard and turned in time to see Captain Brevity climbing the steps.

  ‘What?’ demanded Pully, her harsh voice startling the Letherii.

  ‘Was looking for you,’ Brevity said, slightly out of breath.

  ‘What for?’ Skwish asked.

  ‘Visitors.’

  ‘From where?’

  ‘Best come with me, you two. There’s a woman. Tiste Andii.’

  ‘Bluerose?’

  ‘What? No. She was born here.’

  Pully and Skwish exchanged glances. And then Pully scowled. Bad news. Competition. Rival. ‘But she’s not alone?’

  ‘Got a man with her. A Meckros.’

  ‘Where’d they come from, then? They ain’t always been here—we’d a sensed that. The city was empty—’

  ‘Up the road, Pully,’ said Brevity, ‘same as us.’

  ‘We got here first,’ Skwish growled.

  Brevity blinked. ‘It’s a big city, witch. Now, you coming?’

  ‘Where is she?’ Pully asked.

  ‘The temple.’

  Bad news. The worst. ‘Fine then,’ she snapped.

  Yedan Derryg had walked a thousand or more paces along the ethereal First Shore, but now at last he was returning. And in one hand, Yan Tovis saw, he held a sword. The weapon flashed green in the incandescent fall of liquid light. The blade was long as a man’s leg yet thinner than the width of a hand. A wire basket hilt shielded the grip. As he came up to where she stood, something lit his eyes.

  ‘A Hust sword, sister.’

  ‘And it’s healed.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But how can a broken sword grow back?’

  ‘Quenched in dragon’s blood,’ he replied. ‘Hust weapons are immortal, immune to all decay. They can shear other blades in two.’ He held up the sword. ‘This is a five-blade sword—tested against five, cut through them all. Twilight, there is no higher calibre of sword than the one you see here. It was the possession of a Hustas, a Master of the House itself—only children of the Forge could own such weapons.’

  ‘And the woman threw it away.’

  ‘It is a mystery,’ Yedan Derryg said.

  ‘She was Gallan’s escort—’

  ‘Not that. The matter of how a five-blade Hust sword broke in the first place.’

  ‘Ah. I see your point.’

  He looked round. ‘Time dissolves here, this close to the Sea of Light. We have been away from our people too long—’

  ‘Not my fault,’ she said.

  ‘True. Mine. No matter. It is time to go back.’

  Yan Tovis sighed. ‘What am I to do?’ she asked. ‘Find the palace, sink down on to whatever throne I find?’

  The muscles of his jaws knotted beneath his beard and he glanced away. ‘We have things to organize,’ he eventually said. ‘Staff for the palace, officers for the guard. Work teams. Is the river rich with fish? If not, we are in trouble—our stores are depleted. Will crops grow here? Darkness seems to somehow feed the trees and such, but even then, we face a hungry season before anything matures.’

  The list alone exhausted her.

  ‘Leave all that to me,’ Yedan said.

  ‘Indolence for the Queen—I will go mad with boredom.’

  ‘You must visit the temple again, sister. It is no longer empty. It must be sanctified once more.’

  ‘I am no priestess.’

  ‘Royal blood will suffice.’

  She shot him a look. ‘Indeed. How much?’

  Yedan shrugged. ‘Depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘On how thirsty she is.’

  ‘If she drains me dry . . .’

  ‘The threat of boredom will prove unfounded.’

  The bastard was finding himself again. Wit dry a
s a dead oasis, withered palm leaves rustling like the laughter of locusts. Damned Hust sword and the illusion of coming home. Brother. Prince. Witchslayer. He’d been waiting for this all his life. When she had not. I’d believed nothing. Even in my desperation, I walked cold as a ghost doomed to repeat a lifetime’s path to failure. And my blood—gods below—my blood. This realm demands too much of me.

  Yedan faced her again. ‘Sister, we have little time.’

  She started. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The Shake—the very impulse that drove you to set us on the Road of Gallan—it was all meant to bring us here. Kharkanas, the First Shore. We must find out why. We must discover what the goddess wants of us.’

  Horror rippled through Yan Tovis. No. Her eyes lifted past Yedan to the First Shore, to that tumultuous wall of light—and the innumerable vague figures behind the veil. No, please. Not again.

  ‘Mount up, sister. It is time to return.’

  Given enough time, some ghastly concatenation of ages, lifetimes compressed, crushed down layer upon layer. Details smoothed into the indefinite. Deeds hollowed out like bubbles in pumice. Dreams flattened into gradients of coloured sands that crumbled to the touch. Looking back was unpleasant, and the vaster that field of sediment, the grislier the vista. Sechul Lath had once chosen a bowed, twisted frame to carry the legacies of his interminable existence. Beauty and handsome repose—after all that he had done—was, as far as he was concerned, too hypocritical to bear. No, in form he would seek justice, the physicality of punishment. And this was what had so galled Errastas.

  Sechul was tempted to find for himself that bent body once again. The world took those flat sediments and twisted them into tortured shapes. He understood that. He favoured such pressures and the scarred visages they made in stone and flesh.

  The sky was blood red and cloudless, the rocky barren soil suffused with streaks of orange and yellow minerals tracking the landscape. Wind-sculpted mesas girdled the horizon, encircling the plain. This warren possessed no name—none that he knew, at any rate. No matter, it had been scoured clean long ago.

  Kilmandaros strode at his side in a half-hitching gait, lest she leave him and Errastas far behind. She had assumed her favoured form, bestial and hulking, towering over her two companions. He could hear her sliding breath as it rolled in and out of four lungs, the rhythm so discordant with his own that he felt strangely breathless. Mother or not, she was never a comforting presence. She wore violence like a fur cloak riding her shoulders, a billowing emanation that brushed him again and again.

  She was a singular force of balance, Sechul knew—had always known. Creation was her personal anathema, and the destruction in her hands was its answer. She saw no value in order, at least the kind that was imposed by a sentient will. Such efforts were an affront.

  Kilmandaros was worshipped still, in countless cultures, but there was nothing benign in that sensibility. She bore a thousand names, a thousand faces, and each and every one was a source of mortal dread. Destroyer, annihilator, devourer. Her fists spoke in the cruel forces of nature, in sundered mountains and drowning floods, in the ground cracking open and in rivers of molten lava. Her skies were ever dark, seething and swollen. Her rain was the rain of ash and cinders. Her shadow destroyed lives.

  The Forkrulian joints of her limbs and their impossible articulations were often seen as physical proof of nature gone awry. Broken bones that nonetheless descended with vast, implacable power. A body that could twist like madness. Among the believers, she personified the loosing of rage, the surrendering of reason and the rejection of control. Her cult was written in spilled blood, disfigurement and the virtue of violence.

  Dear mother, what lessons do you have for your son?

  Errastas walked ahead, a man convinced he knew where he was going. The worlds awaited his guiding hand, that nudge that all too often invited Kilmandaros into her swath of mindless destruction. Yet between them was Sechul Lath, Lord of Chance and Mischance, Caster of Knuckles. He could smile the mockery of mercy, or he could spit and turn away. He could shape every moment of his mother’s violence. Who lives, who dies? The decision was his.

  His was the purest worship of them all. So it had always been and so it would always remain. No matter what god or goddess a mortal fool prayed to, Sechul Lath was the arbiter of all they sought. ‘Save me.’ ‘Save us.’ ‘Make us rich.’ ‘Make us fruitful.’ The gods never even heard such supplications from their followers. The need, the desire, snared each prayer, spun them swirling into Sechul’s domain.

  He could open himself, even now, to the cries of mortals beyond counting, each and every one begging for an instant of his time, his regard. His blessing.

  But he’d stopped listening long ago. He’d spawned the Twins and left them to inherit the pathetic game. How could one not grow weary of that litany of prayers? Each and every desire, so heartfelt, invariably reduced to a knot of sordidness. To gain for oneself, someone else must lose. Joy was purchased in reams of sorrow. Triumphs stood tall on heaps of bones. Save my child? Another must die. Balance! All must balance! Can existence be any crueller than that? Can justice be any emptier? To bless you with chance, I must curse another with mischance. To this law even the gods must bow. Creation, destruction, life, death—no, I am done with it! Done with it all!

  Leave it to my Oponnai. The Twins must ever face one another, lest existence unravel. They are welcome to it.

  No, he’d had his fill of mortal blood.

  But immortal blood, ah, that was another matter. With it, he could . . . he could . . . what? I can break the fulcrum. I can send the scales crashing down. It’s all pointless anyway—the Che’Malle saw to that. We rise and we fall, but each and every time the cycle renews, our rise is never as high as the last time, and the fall in turn takes us farther down. Mortals are blind to this spiral. All will end. Energies will lose their grip, and all will fade away.

  I have seen it. I know what’s coming.

  Errastas sought a resurrection but what he sought was impossible. Each generation of gods was weaker—oh, they strode forth blazing with power, but that was the glow of youth and it quickly dissipated. And the mortal worshippers, they too, in their tiny, foreshortened lives, slid into cynical indifference, and those among them who held any faith at all soon backed into corners, teeth bared in their zeal, their blind fanaticism—where blindness was a virtue and time could be dragged to a halt, and then pulled backward. Madness. Stupidity.

  None of us can go back. Errastas, what you seek will only precipitate your final fall, and good riddance. Still, lead on, old friend. To the place where I will do what must be done. Where I will end . . . everything.

  Ahead, Errastas halted, turning to await them. His lone eye studied them, flicking back and forth. ‘We are close,’ he said. ‘We hover directly above the portal we seek.’

  ‘She is chained below?’ Kilmandaros asked.

  ‘She is.’

  Sechul Lath rubbed the back of his neck, looked away. The distant range of stone fangs showed their unnatural regularity. Among them could be seen stumps where entire mountains had been uprooted, plucked from the solid earth. They built them here. They were done with this world. They’d devoured every living thing by then. Such bold . . . confidence. He glanced back at Errastas. ‘There will be wards.’

  ‘Demelain wards, yes,’ Errastas said.

  At that, Kilmandaros growled.

  Speak then, Errastas, of dragons. She is ready. She is ever ready.

  ‘We must be prepared,’ Errastas continued. ‘Kilmandaros, you must exercise restraint. It will do us no good to have you break her wards and then simply kill her.’

  ‘If we knew why they imprisoned her in the first place,’ Sechul said, ‘we might have what we will need to bargain with her.’

  Errastas’s shrug was careless. ‘That should be obvious, Knuckles. She was uncontrollable. She was the poison in their midst.’

  She was the balance, the counter-weight to them all. Chao
s within, is this wise? ‘Perhaps there’s another way.’

  Errastas scowled. ‘Let’s hear it, then,’ he said, crossing his arms.

  ‘K’rul must have participated. He must have played a role in this chaining—after all, he had the most to lose. She was the poison as you say, but if she was so to her kin that was incidental. Her true poison was when she was loose in K’rul’s blood—in his warrens. He needed her chained. Negated.’ He paused, cocked his head. ‘Don’t you think it curious that the Crippled God has now taken her place? That he is the one now poisoning K’rul?’

  ‘The diseases are not related,’ Errastas said. ‘You spoke of another way. I’m still waiting to hear it, Knuckles.’

  ‘I don’t have one. But this could prove a fatal error on our part, Errastas.’

  He gestured dismissively. ‘If she will not cooperate, then Kilmandaros can do what she does best. Kill the bitch, here and now. You still think me a fool? I have thought this through, Sechul. The three of us are enough, here and now, to do whatever is necessary. We shall offer her freedom—do you truly imagine she will reject that?’

  ‘What makes you so certain she will honour whatever bargain she agrees to?’

  Errastas smiled. ‘I have no worries in that regard. You will have to trust me, Knuckles. Now, I have been patient long enough. Shall we proceed? Yes, I believe we shall.’

  He stepped back and Kilmandaros lumbered forward.

  ‘Here?’ she asked.

  ‘That will do, yes.’

  Her fists hammered down on to the ground. Hollow thunder rumbled beneath the plain, the reverberation trembling through Sechul’s bones. The fists began their incessant descent, pounding with immortal strength, as dust slowly lifted to obscure the horizons. The stone beneath the hardened ash was not sedimentary; it was the indurated foam of pumice. Ageless, trapped in the memory of a single moment of destruction. It knew nothing of eternities.

  Sechul Lath lowered himself into a squat. This could take some time. Sister, can you hear us? We come a-knocking . . .

  ‘What?’ Torrent demanded. ‘What did you just say?’