‘Right here,’ Cuttle answered, but did not elaborate.
‘What just happened?’ Koryk asked.
Fiddler studied his squad.
Cuttle spat. ‘What happened, lad? We got slapped down. That’s what happened. Slapped down hard.’
Fiddler stared at the retreating storm.
‘Here comes Borduke’s squad!’
‘Find your horses, everyone,’ Corporal Tarr said. ‘Sergeant’s been knocked about. Collect whatever you can salvage-we gotta wait for the rest of the company, I reckon.’
‘Look at that crater,’ Smiles said. ‘Gods, Sergeant, you couldn’t have been much closer to Hood’s Gate and lived, could you?’
He stared at her. ‘You’ve no idea how right you are, lass.’
And the song rose and fell, and he could feel his heart matching that cadence. Ebb and flow.
They had fled in the wrong direction. Fatal, but unsurprising. The night had been a shambles. The last survivor of Korbolo Dom’s cadre of mages, Fayelle rode a lathered horse in the company of thirteen other Dogslayers down the channel of a long-dead river, boulders and banks high on either side.
Herself and thirteen battered, bloodied soldiers. All that was left.
The clash with Leoman had begun well enough, a perfectly sprung ambush. And would have ended perfectly, as well.
If not for the damned ghosts.
Ambush turned over, onto its back like an upended tortoise. They’d been lucky to get out with their lives, these few. These last.
Fayelle well knew what had happened to the rest of Korbolo’s army. She had felt Henaras’s death. And Kamist Reloe’s.
And Raraku was not finished with them. Oh no. Not at all finished.
They reached a slope leading out of the defile.
She had few regrets-
Crossbow quarrels whizzed down. Horses and soldiers screamed. Bodies thumped onto the ground. Her horse staggered, then rolled onto its side. She’d no time to kick free of the stirrups, and as the dying beast pinned her leg its weight tore the joint from her hip, sending pain thundering through her. Her left arm was trapped awkwardly beneath her as her own considerable weight struck the ground-and bones snapped.
Then the side of her head hammered against rock.
Fayelle struggled to focus. The pain subsided, became a distant thing. She heard faint pleas for mercy, the cries of wounded soldiers being finished off.
Then a shadow settled over her.
‘I’ve been looking for you.’
Fayelle frowned. The face hovering above her belonged to the past. The desert had aged it, but it nevertheless remained a child’s face.
She watched the girl raise a knife between them, angle the point down, then set it against her neck.
Fayelle laughed. ‘Go ahead, you little horror. I’ll wait for you at Hood’s Gate… and the wait won’t be long-’
The knife punched through skin and cartilage.
Fayelle died.
Straightening, Sinn swung to her companions. They were, one and all, busy gathering the surviving horses.
Sixteen left. The Ashok Regiment had fallen on hard times. Thirst and starvation. Raiders. This damned desert.
She watched them for a moment, then something else drew her gaze.
Northward.
She slowly straightened. ‘Cord.’
The sergeant turned. ‘What-oh, Beru fend!’
The horizon to the west had undergone a transformation. It was now limned in white, and it was
‘Double up!’ Cord bellowed. ‘
A hand closed on her shoulder. Shard leaned close. ‘You ride with me.’
‘Ebron!’
‘I hear you,’ the mage replied to Cord’s bellow. ‘And I’ll do what I can with these blown mounts, but I ain’t guaranteeing-’
‘Get on with it! Bell, help Limp onto that horse-he’s busted up that knee again!’
Sinn cast one last glance at Fayelle’s corpse. She’d known, then. What was coming.
Then she was roughly grasped and pulled up onto the saddle behind Shard.
The beast’s head tossed, and it shook beneath them.
‘Queen take us,’ Shard hissed, ‘Ebron’s filled these beasts with
And now they could hear the sound, a roar that belittled even the Whirlwind Wall in its fullest rage.
Raraku had risen.
To claim a shattered warren.
The Wickan warlocks had known what was coming. Flight was impossible, but the islands of coral stood high-higher than any other feature this side of the escarpment-and it was on these that the armies gathered.
To await what could be their annihilation.
The north sky was a massive wall of white, billowing clouds. A cool, burgeoning wind thrashed through the palms around the oasis.
Then the sound reached them.
A roar unceasing, building, of water, cascading, foaming, tumbling across the vast desert.
The Holy Desert, it seemed, held far more than bones and memories. More than ghosts and dead cities. Lostara Yil stood near the Adjunct, ignoring the baleful glares Tene Baralta continued casting her way. Wondering… if Pearl was on that high ground, standing over Sha’ik’s grave… if that ground was in fact high enough.
She wondered, too, at what she had seen these past months. Visions burned into her soul, fraught and mysterious, visions that could still chill her blood if she allowed them to rise before her mind’s eye once more. Crucified dragons. Murdered gods. Warrens of fire and warrens of ashes.
It was odd, she reflected, to be thinking these things, even as a raging sea was born from seeming nothing and was sweeping towards them, drowning all in its path.
Odder, still, to be thinking of Pearl. She was hard on him, viciously so at times. Not because she cared, but because it was fun. No, that was too facile, wasn’t it? She cared indeed.
A weary sigh close beside her. Lostara scowled without turning. ‘You’re back.’
‘As requested,’ Pearl murmured.
Oh, she wanted to hit him for that.
‘The task is… done?’
‘Aye. Consigned to the deep and all that. If Tene Baralta still wants her, he’ll have to hold his breath.’
She looked then. ‘Really? The sea is already that deep?’
