«Only this stumbling, ignorant thing you call your life, dear boy. The trouble with Ascendants is that they try to rig every game. Of course, we delight in: uncertainty.»
A distant howl stroked the air.
«Oops,» the man said. «Come to make certain of things, I'd say. We'd best leave, sister. Sorry, Captain, but it seems you'll pass through that Gate after all.»
«Maybe,» the woman said.
Her brother rounded on her. «We agreed! No confrontation! Confrontation's messy. Unpleasant. I despise discomfiting scenes! Besides, the ones who come don't play fair.»
«Then neither do we,» the sister snapped. She turned to the gate, raised her voice, «Lord of Death! We would speak with you! Hood!»
Paran rolled his head, watched as a bent, limping figure emerged fro the Gate. Wearing rags, the figure slowly approached. Paran squinted an old woman, a child with drool on its chin, a deformed young girl, a stunted, broken Trell, a desiccated Tiste And?-
«Oh, make up your mind!» the sister said.
The apparition cocked a death's head, the grin of its teeth stained muddy yellow. «You have chosen,» it said in quavering voice. Unimaginatively.»
«You are not Hood.» The brother scowled.
Bones shifted under creaking skin. «The lord is busy.»
«Busy? We do not take kindly to insults,» the sister said.
The apparition cackled, then stopped abruptly. «How unfortunate. A mellifluous, deep-throated laugh would be more to my liking. Ah well, in answer: nor does my lord appreciate your interruption of this natural passage of a soul.»
«Murdered at the hand of a god,» the sister said. «That makes him fair game.»
The creature grunted, shuffled close to look down at Paran. The eye sockets glimmered faintly, as if old pearls hid within the shadows. «What Oponn,» it asked, as it studied Paran, «do you wish of my lord?»
«Nothing from me,» the brother said, turning away.
«Sister?»
«Even for the gods,» she replied, «death awaits, an uncertainty hiding deep within them.» She paused. «Make them uncertain.»
The creature cackled again, and again cut it short. «Reciprocity.»
«Of course,» the sister responded. «I'll look for another, a death premature. Meaningless, even.»
The apparition was silent, then the head creaked in a nod. «In this mortal's shadow, of course.»
«Agreed.»
«My shadow?» Paran asked. «What does that mean, precisely?»
«Much sorrow, alas,» the apparition said. «Someone close to you, shall walk through Death's Gates: in your place.»
«No. Take me instead, I beg of you.»
«Be quiet!» snapped the apparition. «Pathos makes me ill.»
The howl reverberated again, much closer this time.
«We'd best leave,» the brother said.
The apparition opened its jaws as if to laugh, then clacked them shut.
«No,» it muttered, «not again.» It hobbled back to the Gate, pausing once to turn back and wave.
The sister rolled her eyes.
«Time to leave,» the brother repeated uneasily.
«Yes, yes,» his sister said, eyeing Paran.
The captain sighed, looking away. «No final riddles, if you please.»
When he looked back Oponn was gone. Once again he tried to sit up.
Once again he failed.
A new presence arrived, filling the air with tension, a smell of threat.
Sighing, Paran craned his head around. He saw a pair of Hounds-massive hulking creatures, dark, tongues lolling as they sat, watching him. These are what killed the company in Itko Kan. These are the cursed, horrifying beasts. Both Hounds froze, heads hunching towards him, as if seeing the hatred in his eyes. Paran felt his heart go cold at their avid attention. He was slow to realize he had bared his teeth.
A stain of shadow separated the two Hounds, the stain vaguely manshaped and translucent. The shadow spoke. «The one Lorn sent. I would have thought someone of: ability. Though, it must be said, you died well.»
«Evidently not,» Paran said.
«Ah, yes,» the shadow said, «and so it falls to me to complete the task.
Busy hours, these.»
Paran thought of Oponn's conversation with Hood's servant.
Uncertainty. If a god fears anything: «The day you die, Shadowthrone,» he said quietly, «I will be waiting for you on the other side of that gate. With a smile. Gods can die, can't they?»
Something crackled in the portalway of the gate. Shadowthrone and the Hounds flinched.
Paran continued, wondering at his own courage, to bait these Ascendants. Always despised authority, didn't they? «Half-way between life and death-this promise costs me nothing, you see.»
«Liar, the only Warren that can touch you now is-»
«Death,» Paran said. «Of course,» he added, «someone else: interceded, and was certain to leave long before you and your too-loud Hounds arrived.»
The King of High House Shadow edged forward. «Who? What does it plan? Who opposes us?»
«Find your own answers, Shadowthrone. You do understand, don't you, that if you send me on my way now, your: opposition will seek other means? Knowing nothing of who their next tool is, how will you sniff out their next move? You'll be left darting at shadows.»
«Easier to follow you,» the god conceded. «I must speak with my companion-»
«As you like,» Paran interrupted. «I wish I could stand.»
The god rasped laughter. «If you stand, you walk. One way only. You have a reprieve-and if Hood comes to gather you to your feet, the guiding hand is his, not ours. Excellent. And if you live, so shall my shadow follow you.»
Paran grunted. «My shadow's a crowded place, these days.» His eyes fell once again on the Hounds. The creatures watched him still, their eyes faint coals. I'll have you yet. As if fanned by his silent promise, the red glows sharpened.
The god resumed speaking, but the world had darkened around Paran, fading, dwindling, until the voice was gone, and with it all awareness but the faint, renewed spinning of a coin.
An unknown span of time passed in which Paran wandered through memories he had thought long lost-his days as a child clinging to his mother's dress and taking his first, tottering steps; the nights of storm when he raced down the chill hallway to his parents» bedroom, tiny feet slapping on the cold stone; holding the hands of his two sisters as they stood waiting on the hard cobbles of the courtyard-waiting, waiting for someone. The images seemed to lurch sideways in his head. His mother's dress? No, an old woman in the service of the household. Not his parents» bedroom, but those of the servants; and there, in the courtyard with his sisters, they'd stood half the morning, awaiting the arrival of their mother and father, two people they barely knew.
In his mind scenes replayed themselves, moments of mysterious import, hidden significance, pieces of a puzzle he couldn't recognize, shaped by hands not his own and with a purpose he couldn't fathom.
A tremor of fear travelled the length of his thoughts as he sensed that something-someone-was busy reordering the formative events of his life, turning them on end and casting them into the present new shadows. Somehow, the guiding hand: played. With him, with his life.
It seemed an odd kind of death. Voices reached him.
«Aw, hell.» A face bent close to Paran's own, looked into his open blank eyes. The face was Picker's. «He didn't stand a chance,» she said. Sergeant Antsy spoke from a few feet away. «Nobody in the Ninth would've done him like this,» he said. «Not right here in the city.»
Picker reached out and touched the chest wound, her fingers surprisingly soft on his torn flesh. «This isn't Kalam's work.»
«You all right here?» Antsy asked. «I'm going to get Hedge and Mallet, and whoever else has shown up.»
«Go ahead,» Picker replied, seeking and finding the second wound, eight inches below the first. «This one came later, right-handed and weak.»
A very odd death indeed, Paran thought. What held him here? Had there been another: place? A place of heat, searing yellow light? And voices, figures faint, indistinct, there beneath the arch of: of crowds strangely held in place, eyes closed, mouths open. A chorus of the dead: Had he gone somewhere only to return to these real voices, these real hands on his flesh? How could he see through the empty glass of his eyes, or feel the woman's gentle touch on his body? And what of the pain, rising as from a great depth like a leviathan?
Picker withdrew her hands and rested her elbows on her thighs as she crouched before Paran. «Now, how come you're still bleeding, Captain? Those knife wounds are at least an hour old.»
The pain reached the surface. Paran felt his gummy lips split. The hinges of his jaw cracked and he drew in a savage gasp. Then screamed.
Picker bolted backwards, her sword appearing in her hand as if from nowhere as she backed to the alley's far wall. «Shedenul's mercy!»
Boots pounded on the cobbles off to her right and her head whipped around. «Healer! The bastard's alive!»
The third bell after midnight tolled sonorously through the city of Pale, echoing down streets emptied by the curfew. A light rain had begun, casting the night sky with a murky gold hue. In front of the large, rambling estate, two blocks from the old palace, that had become part of the 2nd's quarters, two marines wrapped in black raincapes stood guard outside the main gate.
«Damned miserable night, ain't it?» one said, shivering.
The other shifted his pike to his left shoulder and hawked a mouthful of phlegm into the gutter. «You just guessing, mind,» he said, wagging his head. «Any other brilliant insights you feel ready to toss my way, you just speak up, hear?»
«What did I do?» the first man demanded, hurt.
The second soldier stiffened. «Hush, someone coming up the street.»
The guard waited tensely, hands on their weapons. A figure crossed from the opposite side and stepped into the torchlight.
«Halt,» the second guard growled. «Advance slowly, and you'd better have business here.»
The man took a step closer. «Kalam, Bridgeburners, the Ninth,» he said quietly.
The marines remained wary, but the Bridgeburner kept his distance, his dark face glistening in the rain. «What's your business here?» the second guard asked.
Kalam grunted and glanced back down the street. «We didn't expect to be coming back. As for our business, well, it's better that Tayschrenn don't know about it. You with me, soldier?»
