Dust of Dreams

  ‘A most elusive hare. How it leaps and darts, skips free of every slingstone. How it sails over the snares and twitches an ear to every footfall. I have run in enough circles, failing to take the creature into my hands, to feel its pattering heart, its terrified trembling.’

  Ilm Absinos spoke. ‘Inistral Ovan awaits us. We shall gather more on our return journey. It has not been so long since we last walked. Few, if any, will have lost themselves.’

  Brolos Haran seemed to be staring into the south. Now he said, ‘The Ritual is broken. Yet we are not released. In this, I smell the foul breath of Olar Ethil.’

  ‘So you have said before,’ snapped Ilm Absinos. ‘And still, for all your chewing the same words, there remains no proof.’

  ‘We do not know,’ sighed Ulag, ‘who has summoned us. It is curious, but we are closed to her, or him. As if a wall of power stands between us, one that can only be breached from the other side. The summoner must choose. Until such time, we must simply wait.’

  Kalt Urmanal spoke for the first time. ‘None of you understand anything. The waters are . . . crowded.’

  To this, silence was the only reply.

  Kalt snarled, as if impatient with them all. He was still kneeling and it seemed he had little interest in moving. Instead, he pointed. ‘There. Another approaches.’

  Rystalle and the others turned.

  The sudden disquiet was almost palpable.

  She wore the yellow and white fur of the brold, the bear of the snows and ice. Her hair was black as pitch, her face wide and flat, the skin stained deep amber. The pits of her eyes were angled, tilted at the outer corners. The talons of some small creature had been threaded through her cheeks.

  T’lan Imass, yes. But . . . not of our clans.

  Three barbed harpoons were strapped to her back. The mace she carried in one hand was fashioned of some animal’s thighbone, inset with jagged blades of green rhyolite and white chert.

  She halted fifteen paces away.

  Ilm Absinos gestured with her staff. ‘You are a bonecaster, but I do not know you. How can this be? Our minds were joined at the Ritual. Our blood wove a thousand-upon-a-thousand threads. The Ritual claims you as kin, as T’lan Imass. What is your clan?’

  ‘I am Nom Kala—’

  Brolos Haran cut in, ‘We do not know those words.’

  That very admission was a shock to the Orshayn. It was, in fact, impossible. Our language is as dead as we are.

  Nom Kala cocked her head, and then said, ‘You speak the Old Tongue, the secret language of the bonecasters. I am of the Brold T’lan Imass—’

  ‘There is no clan chief who claimed the name of the brold!’

  She seemed to study Brolos for a moment, and then said, ‘There was no clan chief bearing the name of the brold. There was, indeed, no clan chief at all. Our people were ruled by the bonecasters. The Brold clans surrendered the Dark War. We Gathered. There was a Ritual—’

  ‘What!’ Ilm Absinos lurched forward, almost stumbling until her staff brought her up short. ‘Another Ritual of Tellann?’

  ‘We failed. We were camped beneath a wall of ice, a wall that reached to the very heavens. We were assailed—’

  ‘By the Jaghut?’ Brolos asked.

  ‘No—’

  ‘The K’Chain Che’Malle?’

  Once more she cocked her head and was silent.

  The wind moaned.

  A grey fox wandered into their midst, stepping cautiously, nose testing the air. After a moment, it trotted down to the water’s edge. Pink tongue unfurled and the sounds of lapping water tickled the air.

  Watching the fox, Kalt Urmanal put his hands to his face, covering his eyes. Seeing this, Rystalle turned away.

  Nom Kala said, ‘No. The dominion of both was long past.’ She hesitated, and then added, ‘It was held among many of us that the enemy assailing our people were humans—our inheritors, our rivals in the ways of living. We bonecasters—the three of us who remained—knew that to be no more than a half-truth. No, we were assailed by ourselves. By the lies we told each other, by the false comforts of our legends, our stories, our very beliefs.’

  ‘Why, then,’ asked Ulag, ‘did you attempt the Ritual of Tellann?’

  ‘With but three bonecasters left, how could you have hoped to succeed?’ Ilm Absinos demanded, her voice brittle with outrage.

  Nom Kala fixed her attention upon Ulag. ‘Trell-blood, you are welcome to my eyes. To answer your question: it is said that no memory survives the Ritual. We deemed this just. It is said, as well, that the Ritual delivers the curse of immortality. We saw this, too, as just.’

  ‘Then against whom did you wage war?’

  ‘No one. We were done with fighting, Trell-blood.’

  ‘Then why not simply choose death?’

  ‘We severed all allegiance to the spirits—we had been lying to them for too long.’

  The fox lifted its head, eyes suddenly wide, ears pricked. It then trotted in its light-footed way along the rim of the pool. Slipped beneath some firebrush, and vanished inside a den.

  How much time passed before another word was spoken? Rystalle could not be certain, but the fox reappeared, a marmot in its jaws, and bounded away, passing so close to Rystalle that she could have brushed its back with her hand. A flock of tiny birds descended to prance along the muddy verge. Somewhere in the shallows ruddered a carp.

  Ilm Absinos said, in a whisper, ‘The spirits died when we died.’

  ‘A thing that dies to us is not necessarily dead,’ Nom Kala replied. ‘We do not have that power.’

  ‘What does your name mean?’ Ulag asked.

  ‘Knife Drip.’

  ‘How did the ritual fail?’

  ‘The wall of ice fell on us. We were all killed instantly. The Ritual was therefore uncompleted.’ She paused, and then added, ‘Given the oblivion that followed, failure seemed a safe assumption—were we capable of making assumptions. But now, it appears, we were in error.’

  ‘How long ago?’ Ulag asked her. ‘Do you know?’

  She shrugged. ‘The Jaghut were gone a hundred generations. The K’Chain Che’Malle had journeyed to the eastern lands two hundred generations previously. We traded with the Jheck, and then with the Krynan Awl and the colonists of the Empire of Dessimbelackis. We followed the ice in its last retreat.’

  ‘How many of you will return, Knife Drip?’

  ‘The other two bonecasters have awakened and even now approach us. Lid Ger—Sourstone. And Lera Epar—Bitterspring. Of our people, we cannot yet say. Maybe all. Perhaps none.’

  ‘Who summoned us?’

  One more time she cocked her head. ‘Trell-blood, this is our land. We have heard clear his cry. You cannot? We are summoned, T’lan Imass, by the First Sword. A legend among the Brold that, it seems, was not a lie.’

  Ulag was rocked back as if struck a blow. ‘Onos T’oolan? But . . . why?’

  ‘He summons us beneath the banner of vengeance,’ she replied, ‘and in the name of death. My new friends, the T’lan Imass are going to war.’

  The birds launched into the air like a tent torn loose of its tethers, leaving upon the soft clays nothing but a scattering of tiny tracks.

  Bitterspring walked towards the other T’lan Imass. The emptiness of the land was a suffocating pressure. When everything goes, it is fitting that we are cursed to return, lifeless as the world we have made. Still . . . am I beyond betrayal? Have I ceased to be a slave to hope? Will I once again tread the old, worn trails?

  Life is done, but the lessons remain. Life is done, but the trap still holds me tight. This is the meaning of legacy. This is the meaning of justice.

  What was, is.

  The wind was insistent, tugging at worn strips of cloth, the shredded ends of leather straps, loose strands of hair. It moaned as if in search of a voice. But the lifeless thing that was Toc the Younger held its silence, its immutability in the midst of the life surrounding it.

  Setoc settled down on aching legs an
d waited. The two girls and the strange boy had huddled together nearby and were fast asleep.

  Their saviour had carried them leagues from the territory of the Senan Barghast, north and east across the undulating prairie. The horse under them had made none of the normal sounds a horse should make. None of the grunting breaths, the snorts. It had not once sawed at the bit or dipped its head seeking a mouthful of grass. Its tattered hide remained dry, not once twitching to the frustrated deerflies, even as its ropy muscles worked steadily and its hoofs drummed the hard ground. Now it stood motionless beneath its motionless rider.

  She rubbed at her face. They needed water. They needed food. She didn’t know where they were. Close to the Wastelands? Perhaps. She thought she could make out a range of hills or mountains far to the east, a dusty grimace of rock shimmering through the waves of heat. Lolling in the saddle behind Toc, she had been slipping into and out of strange dreams, fragmented visions of a squalid farmstead, the rank sweat of herds and small boys shouting. One boy with a face she thought she knew, but it was twisted with fear, and then hard with sudden resolve. A face that had transformed in an instant to one that awaited death. In one so young, nothing was more horrifying. Dreaming of children, but not these children here, not even Barghast children. At times, she found herself wheeling high above this lone warrior who rode with a girl in front, a girl behind, a girl and a boy in the crooks of his arms. She could smell scorched feathers, and all at once the land far below was a sea of diamonds, cut in two by a thin, wavering line.

  She was fevered, or so she concluded now as she sat, mouth dry, eyes stinging with grit. Was this meant to be a rest? Something in her was resisting sleep. They needed water. They needed to eat.

  A mound a short distance away caught her eye. Groaning, she stood, dragged herself closer.

  A cairn, almost lost in the knee-high grasses. A wedge-shaped stone set atop a thinner slab, and beneath that a mound of angled rocks. The wedge was carved on its sides. Etching the eyes of a wolf. Mouth open with the slab forming the lower jaw, the scratchings of fangs and teeth. Worn down by centuries of wind and rain. She reached out a trembling hand, set her palm against the rough, warm stone.

  ‘We are being hunted.’

  The rasping pronouncement drew her round. She saw Toc stringing his bow, heard the wind hum against the taut gut. A new voice in the air. She joined him, gazed westward. A dozen or more riders. ‘Akrynnai,’ she said. ‘They will see our Barghast clothing. They will seek to kill us. Then again,’ she added, ‘if you ride to them, they may change their minds.’

  ‘And why would that be?’ he asked, even as he kicked his horse forward.

  She saw the Akrynnai horse-warriors fan out, saw lances being readied.

  Toc rode straight for them, an arrow nocked to the bowstring.

  As they drew closer, Setoc saw the Akrynnai falter, even as their lances lifted defensively. Moments later the warriors scattered, horses bucking beneath them. Within a few more heartbeats, all were in flight. Toc slowly wheeled his mount and rode back to where she stood.

  ‘It seems you were right.’

  ‘Their horses knew before they did.’

  He halted his mount, returned the arrow to its quiver and deftly unstrung the bow.

  ‘Actually, you’ll need those,’ Setoc said. ‘We need food. We need water, too.’

  It seemed he’d stopped listening, and his head was turned to the east.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘More hunters?’

  ‘She wasn’t satisfied,’ he muttered. ‘Of course not. What can one do better than an army can? Not much. But he won’t like it. He never did. In fact, he may turn them all away. Well now, Bonecaster, what would you do about that? If he releases them?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. She? Him? What army?’

  His head turned to look past her. She swung round. The boy was on his feet, walking over to the wolf cairn. He sang, ‘Blalalalalalala . . .’

  ‘I wish he’d stop doing that,’ she said.

  ‘You are not alone in that, Setoc of the Wolves.’

  She started, turned back to eye the undead warrior. ‘I see you now, Toc Anaster, and it seems you have but one eye—dead as it is. But that first night, I saw—’

  ‘What? What did you see?’

  The eye of a wolf. She waved towards the cairn. ‘You brought us here.’

  ‘No. I took you away. Tell me, Setoc, are the beasts innocent?’

  ‘Innocent? Of what?’

  ‘Did they deserve their fate?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did it matter? Whether they deserved it or not?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Setoc, what do the Wolves want?’

  She knew by his intonation that he meant the god and the goddess—she knew they existed, even if she didn’t know their names, or if they even had ones. ‘They want us all to go away. To leave them alone. Them and their children.’

  ‘Will we?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  She struggled for an answer.

  ‘Because, Setoc, to live is to wage war. And it just happens that no other thing is as good at waging war as we are.’

  ‘I don’t believe you! Wolves don’t wage war against anything!’

  ‘A pack marks out its territory and that pack will drive off any other pack that seeks to encroach upon it. The pack defends its claim—to the land, and to the animals it preys upon in that land.’

  ‘But that’s not war!’

  He shrugged. ‘Mostly, it’s just the threat of war, until threat alone proves insufficient. Every creature strives for dominance, among its own kind and within its territory. Even a pack of dogs will find its king, its queen, and they will rule by virtue of their strength and the threat their strength implies, until they are usurped by the next in line. What can we make of this? That politics belong to all social creatures? So it would seem. Setoc, could the Wolves kill us humans, every one of us, would they?’

  ‘If they understood it was them or us, yes! Why shouldn’t they?’

  ‘I was but asking questions,’ Toc replied. ‘I once knew a woman who could flatten a city with the arch of a single perfect eyebrow.’

  ‘Did she?’ Setoc asked, pleased to be the one asking questions.

  ‘Occasionally. But, not every city, not every time.’

  ‘Why not?’

  The undead warrior smiled, the expression chilling her. ‘She liked a decent bath every now and then.’

  After Toc had set off in search of food, Setoc set about building a hearth with whatever stones she could find. The boy was sitting in front of the cairn, still singing his song. The twins had awakened but neither seemed to have anything to say. Their eyes were glazed and Setoc knew it for shock.

  ‘Toc’ll be back soon,’ she told them. ‘Listen, can you make him stop that babbling? Please? It’s making my skin crawl. I mean, has he lost his mind, the little one? Or are they all like that? Barghast children aren’t, at least not that I remember. They stay quiet, just like you two are doing right now.’

  Neither girl replied. They simply watched her.

  The boy suddenly shouted.

  At the cry the ground erupted twenty paces beyond the cairn. Stones spat through a cloud of dust.

  And something clambered forth.

  The twins shrieked. But the boy was laughing. Setoc stared. A huge wolf, long-limbed, with a long, flat head and heavy jaws bristling with fangs, stepped out from the dust, and then paused to shake its matted, tangled coat. The gesture cut away the last threads of fear in Setoc.

  From the boy, a new song. ‘Ay ay ay ayayayayayayay!’

  At its hunched shoulders, the creature was taller than Setoc. And it had died long, long ago.

  Her eyes snapped to the boy. He summoned it. With that nonsense song, he summoned it.

  Can—can I do the same? What is the boy to me? What is being made here?

  One of the twins spoke: ‘He needs Toc. At his s
ide. At our brother’s side. He needs Tool’s only friend. They have to be together.’

  And the other girl, her gaze levelled on Setoc, said, ‘And they need you. But we have nothing. Nothing.’

  ‘I don’t understand you,’ Setoc said, irritated by the stab of irrational guilt she’d felt at the girl’s words.

  ‘What will happen,’ the girl asked, ‘when you raise one of your perfect eyebrows?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘ “Wherever you walk, someone’s stepped before you.” Our father used to say that.’

  The enormous wolf stood close to the boy. Dust still streamed down its flanks. She had a sudden vision of this beast tearing out the throat of a horse. I saw these ones, but as ghosts. Ghosts of living things, not all rotted skin and bones. They kept their distance. They were never sure of me. Yet . . . I wept for them.

  I can’t level cities.

  Can I?

  The apparitions rose suddenly, forming a circle around Toc. He slowly straightened from gutting the antelope he’d killed with an arrow to the heart. ‘If only Hood’s realm was smaller,’ he said, ‘I might know you all. But it isn’t and I don’t. What do you want?’

  One of the undead Jaghut answered: ‘Nothing.’

  The thirteen others laughed.

  ‘Nothing from you,’ the speaker amended. She had been female, once—when such distinctions meant something.

  ‘Then why have you surrounded me?’ Toc asked. ‘It can’t be that you’re hungry—’

  More laughter, and weapons rattled back into sheaths and belt-loops. The woman approached. ‘A fine shot with that arrow, Herald. All the more remarkable for the lone eye you have left.’

  Toc glared at the others. ‘Will you stop laughing, for Hood’s sake!’

  The guffaws redoubled.

  ‘The wrong invocation, Herald,’ said the woman. ‘I am named Varandas. We do not serve Hood. We did Iskar Jarak a favour, and now we are free to do as we please.’

  ‘And what pleases you?’

  Laughter from all sides.

  Toc crouched back down, resumed gutting the antelope. Flies spun and buzzed. In the corner of his vision he could see one of the animal’s eyes, still liquid, still full, staring out at nothing. Iskar Jarak, when will you summon me? Soon, I think. It all draws in—but none of that belongs to the Wolves. Their interests lie elsewhere. What will happen? Will I simply tear in half? He paused, looked up to see the Jaghut still encircling him. ‘What are you doing here?’