‘When Gothos woke me this morning, it was with mysterious words.’
‘Nothing new there, surely?’
Arathan shrugged. ‘The mystery is answered.’
He heard her move across the room, and then she came up alongside him. Looking out upon the plain, she gasped.
After a long moment, she said, ‘What did the Lord of Hate say to you, Arathan?’
‘“He is such a fool I fear my heart will burst.”’
‘Just that?’
Arathan nodded.
‘Haut tells me… there is a gate now.’
‘A way into the realm of the dead, yes. Hood means to take it.’
‘To wage his impossible war.’ Then she sighed. ‘Oh, Arathan, how can the heart not break at seeing this?’
They stood side by side, looking down upon a plain where thousands had gathered, in answer to Hood’s call. No, not thousands. Tens of thousands. Jaghut, Thel Akai, Dog-Runners… lost souls, grieving souls, one and all. And still more come.
Oh, Hood, did you know? Could you have even imagined such an answer?
‘And Gothos said nothing more?’
Arathan shook his head. But when I found him again, seated in his chair, I saw that he wept. Children come easy to tears. But the tears of an old man are different. They can break a child’s world like no other thing can. And this morning, I am a child again. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘Nothing.’
I did not walk among them, Fisher kel Tath. Would that I had. He raised a banner of grief, and this detail waves my intent, but Lord Anomander, at this juncture, was not ready to see it. They were too far away. They were caught in their own lives. Too much and too fierce the necessities hounding them.
But think on this. Beneath such a banner, there is no end to those drawn to it, not from the weight of failure, but from the curse of surviving. Against death itself, the only legion who make of it an enemy belongs to the living.
Behold this army. It is doomed.
Still, even a blind man, in this moment, could not but see the shine in your eyes, my friend. You blaze with the poet’s heat, as you imagine this assembly, so silent and so determined, so hopeless and so
… brilliant.
Let us rest for now in this tale.
Time enough, I say, for two old men to weep.
