The haggard witch’s shrug grated bones. ‘I tired of the illusion.’
He looked round once more. The wagon’s track was gone. Vanished. Even the trail behind them had disappeared. ‘But I was following—I saw—’
‘Stop being so stupid,’ Olar Ethil snapped. ‘I stole into your mind, made you see things that weren’t there. You were going the wrong way—who cares about a damned Trygalle carriage? They’re probably all dead by now.’ She gestured ahead. ‘I turned you from that trail, that’s all. Because what we seek is right there.’
‘If I could kill you, I’d do it,’ said Torrent.
‘Stupid as only the young can be,’ she replied with a snort. ‘The only thing young people are capable of learning is regret. That’s why so many of them end up dead, to the eternal regret of their parents. Now, if you’ve finished the histrionics, can we continue on?’
‘I am not a child.’
‘That’s what children always say, sooner or later.’ With that, she set out, trudging past Torrent, whose horse shied away as soon as the bonecaster drew too close.
He steadied the animal, glaring at Olar Ethil’s scaled back.
‘—what we seek is right there.’ His gaze lifted. Another one of those damned dragon towers, rising forlorn on the plain. The bonecaster was marching towards it as if she could topple it with a single kick. No one is more relentless than a dead woman. With all the living ones I’ve known, I shouldn’t be surprised by that. The desolate tower was still a league or more away. He wasn’t looking forward to visiting it, not least because of Olar Ethil’s inexplicable interest in this one in particular; but also because of its scale. A city of stone, built upward instead of outward—what was the point of that?
Well. Self defence. But we’ve already seen how that didn’t work. And what if some lower section caught fire? There’d be no escape for everyone trapped above. No, these were the constructs of idiots, and he wanted nothing to do with them. What’s wrong with a hut? A hooped tent of hides—you can pick it up and carry it anywhere you want to go. Leaving nothing behind. Rest lightly on the soil—so the elders always said.
But why did they say that? Because it made running away easier. Until we ran out of places to run. If we’d built cities, just like the Letherii, why, they would have had to respect us and our claim to the lands we lived on. We would have had rights. But with those huts, with all that resting lightly, they never had to take us seriously, and that made killing us all that much easier.
Kicking his horse into motion, he squinted at that ragged tower. Maybe cities weren’t just to live in. Maybe they were all about claiming the right to live somewhere. The right to take from the surrounding land all they needed to stay alive. Like a giant tick, head burrowed deep, sucking all the blood it can. Before it cuts loose and sets off for a fresh sweep of skin. And another claim of its right to drink deep of the land.
The best way he’d found to kill a tick was with his thumbnail, slicing the insect in half on a flat rock. He remembered a dog trying to eat one once. It had had to spit it out. Ticks tasted foul—too foul even for dogs, which he’d not thought possible. Cities probably tasted even worse.
Listen to me. I’m losing my mind. Damned witch—are you still here? Inside my skull? Making my thoughts go round and round with all these useless ideas?
He rode up beside her. ‘Leave me alone.’
‘You were never that interesting in the first place,’ she replied.
‘Funny, I’d decided that about you long ago,’ said Torrent, ‘but you’re still here.’
She halted and turned round. ‘That will do, then. We’re about to have company, warrior.’
He twisted in his saddle and studied the cloudless sky. ‘The ones Silchas Ruin spoke of? I see nothing—’
‘They come.’
‘To fight?’
‘No. They were fools once, but one must assume that dying has taught them a lesson.’ She paused, and then added, ‘Or not.’
Motion in the wiry grasses caught his eye. A lizard—no—‘Witch, what is that?’
Two skeletal creatures—birds?—edged into view, heads ducking, long tails flicking. They stood on their hind legs, barely taller than the grasses. Leather and gut bindings held the bones in place.
When the first one spoke, the voice formed words in his head. ‘Great One, we are abject. We grovel in servitude—’
The other cut in, ‘Does she believe all that? Keep trying!’
‘Be quiet, Telorast! How can I concentrate on lying with you barging in all the time! Now shhh! Oh, never mind, it’s too late—look at them, they can both hear us. You, especially.’
The creature named Telorast had crept closer to Olar Ethil, almost on all fours. ‘Servitude! As my sister said. Not a real lie. Just a . . . a . . . a temporary truth! Allegiance of convenience, so long as it’s convenient. What could be more honest?’
Olar Ethil grunted and then said, ‘I have no need of allies among the Eleint.’
‘Not true!’ cried Telorast.
‘Calm down,’ hissed the other one. ‘This is called bargaining. She says we’re useless. We say we don’t really need her help. She says—well, something. Let’s wait to hear what she says, and then we say something back. Eventually, we strike a deal. You see? It’s simple.’
‘I can’t think!’ complained Telorast. ‘I’m too terrified! Curdle, take over—before my bones fall apart!’
The one named Curdle snapped its head back and forth, as if seeking somewhere to hide.
‘You don’t fool me,’ said Olar Ethil. ‘You two almost won the Throne of Shadow. You killed a dozen of your kin to get there. Who stopped you? Was it Anomander Rake? Edgewalker? Kilmandaros?’
At each name the two skeletons cringed.
‘What is it you seek now?’ the bonecaster asked.
‘Power,’ said Telorast.
‘Wealth,’ said Curdle.
‘Survival,’ said Telorast.
Curdle nodded, head bobbing. ‘Terrible times. Things will die.’
‘Lots of things,’ added Telorast. ‘But it will be safe in your shadow, Great One.’
‘Yes,’ said Curdle. ‘Safe!’
‘In turn, we will guard your back.’
‘Yes! That’s it exactly!’
‘Until,’ said Olar Ethil, ‘you find it expedient to betray me. You see my dilemma. You guard my back from other threats, but who will guard my back from you two?’
‘Curdle can’t be trusted,’ said Telorast. ‘I’ll protect you from her, I swear it!’
‘As will I from my sister!’ Curdle spun to face Telorast and snapped her tiny jaws. Clack clack clack!
Telorast hissed in reply.
Olar Ethil turned to Torrent. ‘Eleint,’ she said.
Eleint? Dragons? These two? ‘I always imagined they’d be bigger.’
‘Soletaken,’ said Olar Ethil, and then she regarded the two creatures once more. ‘Or, I think, D’ivers, yes? Born as Tiste Andii, one woman, but two dragons.’
‘Nonsense!’
‘Insane!’
‘Ridiculous!’
‘Impossible!’
‘Impossible,’ conceded Olar Ethil, ‘for most—even among the Andii. Yet, you found a way, didn’t you? How? The blood of the Eleint resists the fever of D’ivers. A ritual would have been necessary. But what kind? Not Kurald Galain, nor Kurald Emurlahn. No, you have made me curious. I will have the answer—this is the bargain I offer. Tell me your secret, and you shall have my protection. Betray me, and I will destroy you both.’
Curdle turned to her companion. ‘If we tell her, we are undone!’
‘We’re already undone, you idiot. We were never meant to be Soletaken. It just happened that way!’
‘But we were true Eleint—’
‘Be quiet!’
Olar Ethil suddenly stepped forward. ‘True Eleint? But that makes no sense! Two who become one? Soletaken? A Tiste Andii Soletaken? No, you twist every truth—I cannot believe a thin
g you say!’
‘Look what you did, Curdle! Now we—aagh!’
Telorast’s cry came when Olar Ethil’s bony hand snapped out, snaring the skeleton. It writhed and strained in her grip. She held it close, as if about to bite its head off.
‘Tell her!’ Telorast shrieked. ‘Curdle! Tell her everything!’
‘I will I will! I promise! Elder One! Listen! I will speak the truth!’
‘Go on,’ said Olar Ethil. Telorast now hung limp in her hand, as if lifeless, but Torrent could see the tip of its tail twitching every few moments.
Curdle leapt to a clear patch of dusty earth. With one talon it inscribed a circle round where it stood. ‘We were chained, Elder, terribly, cruelly chained. In a fragment of Emurlahn. Eternal imprisonment stretched before us—you could not imagine the torment, the torture of that. So close! To our precious prize! But then, the three stood before us, between us and the throne. The bitch with her fists. The bastard with his dread sword. Edgewalker gave us a choice. Kilmandaros and the chains, or Anomander and Dragnipur. Dragnipur! We knew what Draconus had done, you see! We knew what that sword’s bite would do. Swallow our souls! No,’ the skeleton visibly shivered, ‘we chose Kilmandaros.’
‘Two Eleint,’ said Olar Ethil.
‘Yes! Sisters—’
‘Or lovers,’ said Telorast, still lying as if dead.
‘Or that, yes. We don’t remember. Too long ago, too many centuries in chains—the madness! Such madness! But then a stranger found us.’
‘Who?’ barked Olar Ethil.
‘Dessimbelackis,’ said Curdle. ‘He held Chaos in his hands. He told us its secret—what he had made of it. He was desperate. His people—humans—were making a mess of things. They stood as if separate from all the animals of the world. They imagined they were the rulers of nature. And cruel their tyranny, so cruel. Slaughtering the animals, making the lands barren deserts, the skies empty but for vultures.’
‘Soletaken,’ said Olar Ethil. ‘D’ivers. He created a ritual out of chaos—to bind humans to the beasts, to force upon them their animal natures. He sought to teach them a lesson. About themselves.’
‘Yes, Elder. Yes to all of that. He brought the ritual to his people—oh, it was an old ritual, much older than Dessimbelackis, much older than this world. He forced it upon his subjects.’
‘This tale I know well,’ said Olar Ethil. ‘I was there, when we gave answer to that. The swords of the T’lan Imass dripped for days. But, there were no dragons, not there, not then.’
‘You’d begun the slaughter,’ said Curdle. ‘He’d fled even before then, taking his D’ivers form—’
‘The Deragoth.’
‘Yes. He knew you were hunting him. He needed allies. But we were chained, and he could not break those chains. So he offered to take our souls—and he brought us a corpse. A woman. Tiste Andii.’
‘Where did he come by it?’ Olar Ethil asked. ‘Who was she?’
‘He never told us. But when he bound our souls to her, we stood—unchained. We thought we were free. We vowed to serve him.’
‘But you did not, did you?’
Curdle hesitated.
‘You betrayed him.’
‘No! It wasn’t like that! Each time we sought to semble into our true selves, the chains returned! Each time, we found ourselves back within Emurlahn! We were useless to him, don’t you see?’
‘Yet,’ said Olar Ethil, ‘now, you can find your true selves—’
‘Not for long. Never for long,’ said Curdle. ‘If we hold to our Eleint selves, the chains find us. They steal us back. These bones you see here—we can do this much. We can take a body, one or two, and exist within them. But that is all. If we could reach the throne, we could break our bindings! We could escape our prison!’
‘You will never win that throne,’ said Olar Ethil. ‘And, as you are, well, that is useless to me.’
‘Great Elder! You could break those chains!’
‘I could,’ she replied. ‘But I have no reason to. After all, why risk the enmity of Edgewalker? Or Kilmandaros? No, they chained you two for a reason. Had you not sought the throne, you would have lived free.’
‘Eternal punishment—who deserves that?’ Curdle demanded.
Olar Ethil laughed. ‘I have walked with the T’lan Imass. Do not speak to me of eternal punishment.’
Torrent was startled by that. He faced her, his mouth twisting. ‘You did that to them, bonecaster. And now you call it a punishment? Those Imass. What had they done to you, to punish them for all eternity?’
She turned her back on him.
He stared. ‘Spirits of the earth! It was punishment! Olar Ethil—that Ritual—you were cursing them! Look at you—’
She spun round. ‘Yes! Look at me! Do I not choose to wear that curse? My own body, my own flesh! What more can I do—’
‘But wear your remorse?’ He studied her in horror. ‘You miserable, pathetic thing. What was it? Some offhand insult? A jilted love? Did your man sleep with some other woman? Why did you curse them for all eternity, Olar Ethil? Why?’
‘You don’t understand—’
Telorast chose this moment to thrash loose from her grip, landing lightly on the ground then darting a half-dozen paces away, where Curdle scrambled to join her. Olar Ethil stared at the two creatures for a moment—or so it seemed.
‘Why don’t you let it go?’ Torrent asked. ‘Bonecaster. Let them all go.’
‘No! I have no choice in this—none! You mortals are such fools—you just don’t see it, you don’t see anything!’
‘What am I supposed to see?’ Torrent shouted back.
‘I am trying to save your pathetic lives! All of you!’
He was silent for a long moment. Her gnarled hands had closed into fists. Then he said, ‘If to save us, Olar Ethil, means holding prisoner the souls of the T’lan Imass, then, as a pathetic mortal, I tell you: it’s too much. Free them. Leave us to die.’
She snorted—but he could sense his words had shaken her—‘You would speak for all humanity, Torrent, last of the Awl? You, who dream only of an end?’
‘Make it meaningful and I will not complain.’
‘So wish we all,’ she said in a rasp.
‘Besides,’ Torrent said, ‘it’s not their fight. Not their responsibility. Not yours, either. You seek redemption, bonecaster? Find another way. One that doesn’t devour souls. One that doesn’t close chains about an entire people.’
‘You know so little,’ she said, her tone filled with contempt. ‘The T’lan Imass—my T’lan Imass—do you even know what they are?’
‘Not really. But I’ve put enough together. All your conversations with strangers, and when you speak to the darkness at night—thinking me asleep. You command an army, and they are not far away from us. They are trapped in this Ritual of yours, Olar Ethil. You treat them as slaves.’
‘I need them.’
‘They don’t need you, though, do they?’
‘I summoned them! Without me they would be dust and nothing more!’
‘Maybe that’s how they want it,’ he replied.
‘Not yet. Not yet!’
Torrent gathered his reins. ‘You two,’ he called to the skeletons, ‘here’s my offer. No one, no matter how venal, deserves an eternity of punishment. I will seek a way to free your souls. In return, you guard my back.’
Curdle hopped forward. ‘Against whom?’
He glared across at Olar Ethil. ‘Her, for a start.’
‘We can do that!’ Telorast cried. ‘We’re stronger than she thinks!’
Curdle pranced up alongside Torrent’s horse. ‘Where are we going, Master?’
‘Call me Torrent, and I am not your Master. I make no claim to own you. We are, it seems, riding to that tower.’
‘Rooted!’ crowed Telorast, ‘but which one is it? Curdle? Which one is it?’
‘How should I know? Never been here.’
‘Liar!’
‘So are you!’
> The bickering continued as Torrent urged his mount forward. A short time later he glanced back to see Olar Ethil trudging after him. Unbreakable, and yet . . . broken. You sour old woman. Let it go.
Kebralle Korish led a clan of four men and three women, all that remained of the B’ehn Aralack Orshayn T’lan Imass. Once, not long ago, the Copper Ashes Clan had numbered three thousand one hundred and sixteen. There were memories of living, and then there were the memories of death, such as remained to those of the Ritual. In her memories of death, the final battle with the Order of the Red Spires hung blazing in her mind, a frozen scream, the abrupt howl of annihilation. She had stood upon the edge of the Abyss, longing to join her fallen kin but held back by the duty of her title. She was Clan Chief, and so long as will remained to her, she would be the last of the Copper Ashes to fall.
That time had not yet come, and the wake of the Red Spires was stretched out behind her, lifeless, desolate, the echoes of her scream like a bony hand at her back.
The First Sword had, perversely, elected to retain his corporeal form, walking with the weight of stone across this ravaged land, his long-bladed weapon dragging a careless furrow. The warriors of the Orshayn and the Brold had in turn surrendered the bliss of dust and now strode in a ragged, colourless mass behind him. She walked among them, her seven warriors arrayed around her. They were battered, permanently scarred by the sorcery of the Three. The tattered remnants of skin and tendon that remained were blackened, scorched. The sections of exposed bone were burnt white, webbed with cracks. The flint weapons they held had lost their sepia hue, the reddish brown replaced by mottled mauves and blue-greys. Furs, leather and hides were gone.
Among all in her clan, Kebralle Korish alone had succeeded in drawing close enough to the Three to swing her blade. She remembered, with vivid clarity, the shock upon the face of the Bearded One, when her curved weapon’s edge had bit deep, scoring the flesh deep and wide across his chest. Blood, the gleam of notched ribs, rings of mail scattering against the stones of the parapet. He had staggered in retreat but she was in no mood to relent—
His companions had driven her back, a concatenation of magics hammering her from the ledge. Engulfed in raging sorcery, she had tumbled to the foot of the wall. It should have ended there, but Kebralle was Clan Chief. She had just witnessed the slaughter of almost her entire clan. No, she would not yield to oblivion. When she had risen, shrugging off the terrible chaotic flames, she had looked up to see two of the Three—they were in turn peering down at her. In their faces, disbelief, the stirrings of fear—