earth. The ceiling was high enough for her to stand without hunching, but she was short for her age. Rancept was bent over like a drunk looking for his feet. He made his way to the far end and began working loose the stone trap. She edged up alongside him. ‘Do all the huts have these?’
‘No,’ he replied in a grunt, levering up the door.
Roots had made a tangled web across the tunnel and would have proved impassable but for Rancept’s past efforts at hacking a way through. Sukul frowned. ‘But there are no trees,’ she said.
He lowered himself into the hole, and then paused to look up at her. ‘The roots belong to a tree, but not the way you’d think.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘You’ll see.’ With those muffled words, he sank down and out of sight.
Sukul glanced at Ribs. The animal was shivering. ‘You don’t like this place, do you?’
The crazed eyes gleamed, catching the reflection from some unknown source of light. Noticing that, Sukul’s frown deepened and she looked round. She should have been blind, lost in pitch black; instead, she could make out every detail in this hut: the way the angled flat slabs were perfectly fitted to make the sloped walls, with no signs of mortar; the pit in the centre, artfully ringed in stone, that would have once held a cookfire. But there was no obvious source of light. Shivering, she worked her way down the hole in Rancept’s wake.
The cut ends of thick roots snagged her clothing and dug into her flesh. Tendrils dragged through her hair, earth sifting down. The air was close and surprisingly warm, smelling of mud. She had no idea how Rancept had managed to push his bulk through this tunnel, but he was little more than a vague smudge ahead and was still working his way forward.
Whatever faint, ethereal light had been emanating in the hut behind her, it did not reach far into this passage and soon she was groping her way, fingers brushing roots, and instead of lined stones to either side she found damp clay. There was nothing holding in place the walls or ceiling and she felt a thrill of fear rush through her. From ahead came a faint breath of cooler air.
She could hear Ribs behind her, scrabbling and snuffling.
A moment later her outstretched fingers found nothing and she froze in place. ‘Rancept?’
‘Let yourself adjust,’ he said from somewhere ahead.
‘Adjust to what? There’s no light!’
‘So stop looking with your eyes.’
‘What else should I look with? My thumbs?’
The dog edged past her, dirty fur against her high boot and then the roll of ribs beneath the slack skin. The beast was aptly named. Hands still held out, grasping empty air, she sensed that they were in a cavern. Reaching up, she found no ceiling.
‘This is Dog-Runner magic,’ said Rancept.
‘That’s impossible. There were never any Dog-Runners this far east.’
‘This wasn’t always Tiste land, milady.’
That made no sense either. ‘We were always here. No one argues with that, castellan. You’ve not had much schooling. That’s not your fault, by the way. It’s just how it turned out for you and your family.’
‘Dog-Runner magic is all about fire, and earth. Dog-Runner magic fears the sky. Fire and earth, and tree and root. They’re gone from here because the forests are gone.’
‘Folk tales.’
But he went on. ‘There’s Dog-Runner blood in the Deniers, who hold on in what’s left of the forests of the realm. Pushing them out was easy — just cut down the forests. Didn’t need any war. Didn’t need to round them up or anything. They just melted away. You call all that folk tales, milady. As you like, but this here is a Dog-Runner temple, and if you open your senses, it’ll show itself to you.’
Ribs was back around her legs, trembling. ‘Why is your dog so scared, Rancept?’
‘Memories of the Ay,’ he said in a mutter.
She had no idea what he meant. ‘Just take my hand and lead me across. We have things to do, and lounging in some buried temple isn’t one of them.’
‘Sorry, milady.’ A moment later he took hold of her right hand, with fingers gnarled and rough as roots. ‘Just step, the ground’s level.’
When he guided her forward, however, it was clear that he was taking a circuitous route. ‘What are we going around, Rancept?’
‘It don’t matter, milady.’
‘Tell me.’
‘Easier to look than describe. Very well, uneducated as I am, I’ll try. There’s a Dog-Runner witch squatting on the altar.’
‘What! Someone else is in here?’
‘She won’t bother you. Might be she’s dead but I don’t think so. She’s sleeping, I think.’
Sukul pulled up. ‘All right, you win. Tell me how to see.’
‘Close your eyes-’
At that nonsensical beginning she snorted, in spite of her fear.
‘Close your eyes,’ he said again, this time more forcefully. ‘Picture a cavern in your mind. Earthen walls, a sagging dome for a ceiling. Roots everywhere, even underfoot if you care to feel them. Pushed into the walls all around you are wolf skulls, but bigger wolf skulls than any you’ve ever seen. Big as horse skulls. Those are the Ay, who run with the Dog-Runners and give them that name. There’s hundreds of them here. The roots grip them like the hands of the earth itself.’
Ribs’s trembling had now taken her as well. Her mouth was dry and she felt currents tracking across her skin, caressing her face. ‘The air is moving,’ she whispered.
‘Yes. It never stops moving down here. I don’t know why, but I think it’s the magic’s doing, milady. This energy is restless. She was a powerful witch, I think.’
‘Tell me more,’ Sukul said. ‘About the witch.’
‘The altar she’s sitting on is hard-packed earth. Clay, mostly, along with pretty stones-’
‘Stones?’
‘Pushed in. Offerings. Garnet, onyx, skystone, various raw metals. Gold and the like. And animal claws and fangs, bits of carved ivory. A few feathers. Chipped stone tools. This is how the Dog-Runners give offering to a beloved one.’
‘I see it,’ she said suddenly, her breath quickening.
‘She’s cross-legged on the altar,’ Rancept went on. ‘Or she was at first. Her bones are transformed, into wood, into roots, and what’s left of her hide looks like bark. She grows out of the altar like a tree, milady, and all these roots — all the way up the passage and all around us here — they all grow out from her.’
She gasped. ‘And you cut through them!’
‘I wounded her, yes, in my ignorance. I wounded her deeply, milady.’
Sukul heard the anguish in his soft admission. ‘I’m sorry, Rancept. Has she eyes left? Does she look upon you now?’
‘They’re grown over, so I don’t know. I’ve troubled her dreams, though. I did that and I know it and if I could mend her, I would.’
‘If she still lives, Rancept, they’ll heal. The roots will grow back.’
‘No sign of that yet, milady.’
‘I have never seen a Dog-Runner. Describe her, please.’
He seemed grateful for the command. ‘Her face is polished wood, a deep brown that seems to hold gold in its depths. The wood has grown over the bones of her face. Once, that face would have been fair-skinned, the features heavy but open to all pleasures and joys — this is how the Dog-Runners are. They laugh with ease and weep with even greater ease. Every word is a confession and they do not understand dissembling. To speak with a Dog- Runner, milady, is to be humbled and to feel blessed. Many among the Tiste found resentment in that.’
Though she doubted he could see, she nodded to that observation, well understanding how it would be so. ‘We surrender nothing.’
‘There is wisdom in you, milady, beyond your years.’
But she felt anything but wise at this moment. ‘You believe the witch sleeps.’
