The face swung to him briefly and in the darkness Paran saw the flash of teeth. «The pulling will get harder.»
«Where are we?»
«The Warren within the Sword. Did not Dragnipur take your life, too?»
«If it had, would I not be chained as well?»
«True enough. What then are you doing here?»
«I don't know,» Paran admitted. «I saw the Hounds killed by Rake's sword. Then I touched the blood of one of the slain beasts.»
«That explains their confusion. They thought you one of their own: at first. You were wise to submit to that Hound's challenge.»
«Too frightened to move, you mean.»
The stranger laughed. «Even so.»
«What is your name?»
«Names are meaningless. Rake killed me. Long ago. That is enough.»
Paran fell silent. Eternity, chained here, forever pulling. And I ask for the man's name. Would any apology suffice?
The wagon bucked savagely, earth ripped from under its wheels.
Figures fell, wailing. The Hounds howled their fury.
«Gethol's Breath,» the stranger gasped. «Will they never cease?»
«I don't think they will,» Paran said. «Can those chains be broken?»
«No. None have managed it yet, that is, and there are dragons among us. But these Hounds:» He sighed. «It is astonishing, but already I long for the peace their arrival has shattered.»
«Perhaps I can help.»
The stranger barked a laugh. «By all means, try.»
Paran moved away, heading towards the Hounds. He had no plan in mind. But I alone am unchained. The thought stopped him and he smiled. Unchained. No one's tool. He continued on, wondering. He passed figures straining step by step, some silent, some muttering in madness. None raised its head to glance as he passed. The sound of bestial gasping reached him. «Hounds!» Para called. «I would help!»
After a time, they appeared from the gloom. Blood sheathed their shoulders and chests, the flesh. torn and mangled by the collars. The Hounds trembled, muscles jumping along their flanks. Their eyes, level with Paran's own, met his with such numbed, helpless misery that his heart lurched. He reached out to the odd-eyed one. «I would examine your collars, your chains, seeking a flaw.»
The beast walked alongside him-they were ever moving forward, the wagon unceasing in its roll. Paran bent close, running his hands on the collar, seeking a join. There was none. Where the chain attached, the link and the collar seemed of one solid piece. Though he knew little of smithing, he believed this attachment would prove the weakest element and should already show signs of strain. But his fingertips told him otherwise. The iron was not even scratched.
Paran ran his hand along the chain, leaving the Hound's side. He paused noticing the other beast watching his every move, then continued on. From the animal to the wagon, over seventy armspans of length, he ran his hands from link to link, seeking a change in the feel of the iron, seeking heat, gouges. Nothing. He arrived alongside the wagon. The wheel he walked behind was solid wood, a span in width, nicked and gouged but otherwise featureless. The wall of the bed was twenty or more feet high. The slatted sideboards of withered, bone-grey wood showed spaces a finger's width between. Paran flinched back on seeing skeletal fingers crowding the cracks, wriggling helplessly.
The wagon's frame beneath the sideboards drew his attention.
Here the wood was black, glistening with pitch. Chain-ends entered it, countless in number, sinking seamlessly into the wood. Under his touch the frame seemed solid, yet it was as if the chain links passed through it-whatever held them, then, was beyond the wagon's frame.
Paran drew a deep breath of the cool, stale air, then ducked under the bed.
The frame's beam was a dozen spans thick, condensation dripping down from its pitched underside in endless rain. At the inside edge Paran found once again the chains, continuing on further under the wagon., Grasping one, he followed it inward. The links grew colder as did the air around him. Before long he was forced to release the chain, his hands burned by the cold. The rain from the underside of the wagon came down as slivers of ice. Two paces ahead, the chains converged, swallowed by a suspended pool of absolute darkness. Cold poured from it in pulsing waves. Paran could get no closer.
He hissed in frustration as he scrambled along opposite the dark hole, wondering what to do next. Even if he managed to break a chain, he had no idea which ones belonged to the Hounds. As for the others:
Anomander Rake seemed a creature of clear-if cold-justice. To break a chain could unleash ancient horrors upon the realms of the living. Even the stranger he'd spoken with could once have been a Tyrant, a horrible dominator.
Paran unsheathed Chance. As the blade leaped free of the scabbard it bucked wildly in his hands. The captain grinned even as tremors of terror reached through his hands from the sword. «Oponn! Dear Twins, I call on you! Now!»
The air groaned. Paran stumbled over someone, who loosed a stream of curses. Sheathing his sword, he reached down, hand closing on brocaded cloth. He pulled the god to his feet. «Why you?» Paran demanded. «I wanted your sister.»
«Madness, mortal!» the male Twin snapped. «To call me here! So close to the Queen of Darkness-here, within a god-slaying sword!»
Paran shook him. Filled with a mindless, bestial rage, the captain shook the god. He heard the Hounds howl, and fought back a sudden desire to join his voice to their cries.
The Twin, terror in his bright eyes, clawed at Paran. «What-what are you doing?»
Paran stopped, his attention drawn to two chains that had gone slack.
«They're coming.»
The wagon seemed to leap upward, rocked as it had never been before. The thunder of the impact filled the air, wood and ice cascading down.
«They have your scent, Twin.»
The god shrieked, battered his fists into Paran's face, scratching, kicking, but the captain held on. «Not the luck that pulls.» He spat blood.
«The luck: that pushes-»
The wagon was hammered again, its wheels bucking into the air to come down with a splintering, echoing concussion. Paran had no time to wonder at the savage strength that coursed through him, a strength sufficient to hold down a god gripped in panic. He simply held on.
«Please!» the Twin begged. «Anything! just ask it! Anything within my powers.»
«The Hounds» chains,» Paran said. «Break them.»
«I–I cannot!»
The wagon shuddered sickeningly, distant wood splintering. Paran dragged the Twin a pace as it rolled forward again. «Think of a way,» he said. «Or the Hounds will have you.»
«I–I cannot be sure, Paran.»
«What? You can't be sure of what?»
The Twin gestured towards the blackness. «In there. The chains are held in place within it-within the Warren of Darkness, within Kurald Galain. Should they enter: I do not know-I cannot be certain, but the chains may disappear.»
«How can they enter?»
«They could be leaving one nightmare only to enter another.»
«It cannot be worse, Twin. I asked you, how?»
«Bait.»
«What?»
The Twin smiled shakily. «As you said, they're coming. But, Paran, you must release me. By all means, hold me before the portal, but please, at the last moment:»
«I release my hold on you.»
The god nodded.
«Very well.»
The Hounds struck the wagon again, and this time they broke through. Clutching the Twin, Paran spun round to see the beasts charging out of the gloom. His captive shrieked.
The Hounds leaped.
Paran released the god, dropping flat to the ground as the Hounds passed through the air above. The Twin vanished. The Hounds flashed past, disappeared into the portal in silence, and were gone.
Paran rolled to his feet, even as darkness reached out for him, not with the cold of oblivion but with a breath like warm, sighing wind.
He opened his eyes to find himself on his hands and knees on the plain's yellowed grass, beside a flattened, blood-smeared patch where the body of a Hound had once lain. Insects buzzed close by. His head aching, Paran climbed to his feet. The other Hound's body was gone as well. What had he done? And why? Of all the things that the Twin could have offered him: Tattersail: Toc the Younger: Then again, to pluck a soul back through Hood's Gate was not likely within Oponn's power to achieve. Had he freed the Hounds? He realized he would probably never know.
He staggered over to the horses. At least, for a short time there, he had been unchained. He had been free, and what he had done he had done, by his own choice. My own choice.
He looked to the south. Darujhistan and the Adjunct await me. Finish what you started, Paran. Finish it once and for all.
«Damn inconvenient,» Coll growled as Crokus completed tying the bandage. «She was good,» he added. «She knew exactly what to do. I'd say she'd been trained. Sort of fits, since she was dressed like a mercenary.»
«I still don't understand,» Crokus said, sitting back on his haunches. He glanced at Murillio and Kruppe. Both remained unconscious. «Why did she attack us? And why didn't she kill me?»
Coll did not reply. He sat glaring at his horse, which stood a dozen feet away, quietly cropping grass. He'd already voiced a dozen foul curses at the beast, and Crokus suspected that their relationship had been, as Kruppe would put it, irretrievably compromised.
«What's this?» Coll grunted.
Crokus realized that the man was looking past the horse, a frown deepening the lines of his forehead.
The boy turned, then let out a wild shout, springing backwards and snatching at his daggers. His boot caught a stone and he sprawled. He jumped to his feet, one blade freed and in his hand. «It's her!» he yelled.
«The woman from the bar! She's a killer, Coll.»
«Easy, lad,» Coll said. «She looks anything but dangerous, despite that sword on her hip. Hell,» he added, pushing himself straighter, «if anything, she looks completely lost.»
Crokus stared at the woman, who stood at the summit's edge. «Hood's Breath,» he muttered. Coll was right. He'd never seen anyone look so bewildered, so utterly at a loss. She was looking at them, tensed as if ready to flee. All the poise, the deadly confidence she'd possessed in the Phoenix Inn was gone, as if it had never been. Crokus sheathed his dagger.
