serve to ease the coldest question of all, which is why? We ask it of the Abyss, and no answer arrives but the echo of our own cry.’
‘I meant no challenge, Faror Hend. Your words give me much to think about. I have no memories of the time before.’
‘Yet you recognize Azathanai.’
But T’riss frowned. ‘What is Azathanai?’
Faror Hend blinked, and then her eyes narrowed. ‘There is knowledge hidden within you, T’riss. Hidden with intent. It pushes your thoughts away. It needs you unknowing.’
‘Why would it do that?’
I can think of but one reason. You are dangerous. ‘I don’t know, T’riss. For now, I am taking you to Kharkanas. The problem you pose is well beyond me.’
‘The Vitr is your enemy.’
Faror had turned to feed her horse; now she shot T’riss a sharp look over a shoulder. ‘Is it?’
But the strange woman’s face was blank, her eyes wide and innocent. ‘I believe I am hungry.’
‘We will eat, and then ride on.’
T’riss was as enamoured of food as she had been of water, and would have devoured all that remained of their supplies if not for a word from Faror Hend. The Warden thought to question her guest further, but did not know where to start. The child-like innocence in her seemed to exist like islands, and the seas surrounding them were deep, fathomless. And each island proved barren once reached, while between them, amidst dark tumultuous waves, Faror floundered. But one thing seemed clear: T’riss was losing knowledge, as if afflicted by a disease of the mind, a Loss of Iron; or perhaps the new body she had taken — this woman’s form with its boyish proportions — was imposing its own youthful ignorance. And in the absence of what she had been, something new was emerging, something avid in its appetites.
They mounted up and resumed the journey. The landscape around them was level, dotted here and there by thorny brush, the soil cracked and shrivelled by drought — as it had been since Faror had first joined the Wardens. She sometimes wondered if Glimmer Fate was feeding on the lands surrounding it, drawing away its sustenance as would a river-leech snuggling warm flesh; and indeed, might not this sea of black grasses mark the shallows of the Vitr itself, evidence of the poison seeping out?
Faror Hend’s gaze fell upon her companion, who still rode ahead, the beast beneath T’riss creaking and still leaking dust, dirt and insects. Is she the truth of the Vitr? Is this the message we are meant to take from her? Ignorant of us and indifferent to our destruction? Is she to be the voice of nature: that speaks without meaning; that acts without reason?
But then, if this were true, why the need for a messenger at all? The Sea of Vitr delivered its truth well enough, day after day, year upon year. What had changed? Faror’s eyes narrowed on T’riss. Only her. Up from the depths, cast upon this shore. Newborn and yet not. Alone, but Finarra spoke of others — demons.
The hills drew nearer as the afternoon waned. They met no other riders; saw no signs of life beyond the stunted shrubs and the aimless pursuits of winged insects. The sky was cloudless, the heat oppressive.
The rough ground ahead slowly resolved itself in deepening shadows, the clawed tracks of desiccated, sundered hillsides, the gullies where runoff had once thundered down but now only dust sifted, stirred by dry winds.
Faror’s eyes felt raw with lack of sleep. The mystery posed by T’riss had folded up her mind like a tattered sheet of vellum. Hidden now, all the forbidden words of desire; and even her concern for the fate of the captain — as well as that of Spinnock Durav — was creased and obscured, tucked away and left in darkness.
Closer now, she made out a trail cutting into the ridgeline. It was clear that T’riss had seen it as well, for she guided her mount towards it.
‘Be wary now,’ Faror Hend said.
The woman glanced back. ‘Shall I raise us an army?’
‘What?’
T’riss gestured. ‘Clay and rock, the dead roots beneath. Armed with slivers of stone. Below the deep clays there are bones, as well, and the husks of enormous insects all wonderfully hued.’
‘Can you make anything from the land surrounding you?’
‘If it had occurred to me,’ she replied, reining in, ‘I could have made guardians from the grasses, but in shape only that which I have seen. A horse, or one such as you and me.’
‘Yet you fashioned a sword with which to defend yourself, before we met.’
‘This is true. I cannot explain that, unless I have perhaps seen such a weapon before, only to have since forgotten. It seems my memory is flawed, is it not?’
‘I believe so, yes.’
‘If we are many, the outlaws will avoid us. So you said.’
‘I did.’ Faror hesitated, and then said, ‘What power do you draw upon, T’riss, in the fashioning of such creatures? Does it come from the Vitr?’
‘No. The Vitr does not create, it destroys.’
‘Yet you came from it.’
‘I was not welcome there.’
This was new. ‘Are you certain of that?’
T’riss was still for a moment, and then she nodded. ‘It assailed me. Age upon age, I fought. There was no thought but the struggle itself, and this struggle, I think, consumed all that I once was.’
‘Yet something returns to you.’
‘The questions you would not ask have given me much to think about — no, I do not read your mind. I can only guess them, Faror Hend, but I see well the battles they wage upon your countenance. Even exhaustion cannot dull your unease. I remember the pain of the Vitr: it remains, like a ghost that would swallow me whole.’
‘Whence comes your power, then?’
‘I do not know, but it delivers pain upon this world. I dislike this, but if necessity demands, I will use it.’
‘Then I would rather you did not, T’riss. The world knows enough pain as it is.’
To that T’riss nodded.
‘I suspect now,’ Faror resumed, ‘that you are Azathanai. That you sought to war against the Vitr, or, perhaps, that you set out seeking its source, its purpose. In the battle you waged, much of yourself was lost.’
‘If this is true, Faror Hend, then my only purpose is my own — none other seeks to guide me, or indeed use me. Are you relieved? I am. Do you think that I will return to myself?’
‘I don’t know. It is a worthy hope.’
T’riss turned back and nudged her mount forward.
Faror Hend followed.
The trail was well used, and not long ago a score of shod horses had travelled it, coming round from the west along the range’s edge, the most recent hoofprints heading in the same direction as the two riders.
‘I think we shall find company at the spring,’ said Faror Hend, moving up alongside T’riss. ‘But not outlaws.’
‘Friends?’
Faror’s nod was cautious. ‘A troop, I think. Perhaps a militia, out from Neret Sorr, or Yan Shake to the south.’
‘Let us see.’
They rode on.
The path twisted between crags, climbing steeply in places before levelling out across the spine of the first line of hills. Ahead, a short distance away, the ruins of a gate marked the pass. Off to one side was a lone blockhouse collapsed on two sides, revealing a gut crowded with broken masonry, tiles and withered timbers from the roof. The scatter of shattered tiles crunched under the hoofs of Faror’s plodding horse as they rode past. She saw her mount’s nostrils flare, followed by a pricking of its ears. ‘Not far now,’ she said quietly.
Beyond the gate, they traversed the remnants of a cobbled road, the surface buckled in places; in others the cobbles buried under white dirt made silver in the dying light. Shortly later, they came within sight of the spring, a green-fringed pond half encircled by pale-trunked trees. Figures moved about and horses could be seen, tethered to a long rope strung between two ironwood boles.
