Orb ,Sceptre ,Throne

At that she could not suppress an eager glance to Leoman. More! It said more! His answering gaze held warning and caution. She brushed them aside: if this thing wanted to kill them there was little they could do about it. She took a steadying breath. ‘And your name? What should we call you?’

‘No name such as I understand your term. I carry what you would call a title. I am Maker.’

She stared, speechless. All the gods above and below. Maker. The Creator? No. It did not say Creator. It said Maker. Muttering distracted her: Leoman murmuring beneath his breath. She almost laughed aloud. The Seven Cities invocation of the gods! Cynical Leoman thrown back on to his roots! Yet the prayer seemed mouthed more in wonder than devotion.

She tried to speak, couldn’t force words past her dry throat. Her knees felt watery and she stepped back, blinking. Leoman’s hand at her shoulder steadied her. ‘There are others, you say?’ she managed to force out. ‘More of us?’

‘One other like you. One other not.’

‘I see …’ I think. ‘May we meet them? Are they here?’

‘One is.’ An arm as thick and blocky as a stalactite gestured further down the beach. ‘This way.’ Maker turned, stepping, and when the slab-like foot landed the sands beneath Kiska’s feet shuddered and rocks cracked and tumbled down the surrounding headlands.

Now we hear him? Perhaps he has made himself somehow different in order to communicate. Walking alongside, she saw no one else on the sweep of the black sands. Yet some object did lie ahead. A flat polished flag of stone, deep blood-red veined with black. Garnet, perhaps. And on the slab what appeared no more than a wind-gathered pile of trash: a fistful of twigs and leaves. Kiska gasped and ran ahead.

Their guide.

She knelt at the stone. Maker towered over her, his featureless domed head bent to peer downwards. Leoman came walking up behind, his hands tucked into his wide weapon belt.

‘Is it … dead?’ she asked.

‘For this creature, a curious distinction. What essence animated it before was not its own. And now, though that vital essence might have fled, an even greater potentiality yet remains within.’

‘It was with us.’

‘I thought as much. You arrived soon after.’

Kiska swept the remains into its small leather bag. Struggling to keep her voice steady, she asked, ‘And the other? The one like us?’

‘The other is gendered as this one,’ Maker said, indicating Leoman. ‘He came to me out of the Vitr.’

She blinked up at him. ‘The Vitr?’

Maker’s blunt head turned to the restless surging sea of light. ‘The Vitr. That from which all creation comes.’

‘All … creation? Everything?’

‘All that exists. All distils out of the Vitr. And all returns to dissolution. You, I. All life essence. All sentience.’

Kiska felt her brows rising higher and higher. ‘All? Everything? All races? Surely not the dragons … the Tiste … or the Jaghut.’

Maker’s shovel hands clenched into fists with a grinding and crackling of rock. The sands at his wide feet hissed and glowed, sintering into black obsidian glass. The beach shuddered and a great landslide of rocks echoed among the distant headlands. Kiska found herself on the ground, and rolled away from the searing heat surrounding Maker.

‘Speak not to me of the meddling Jaghut!’

The juddering of the ground faded away. She had covered her face to shield it from the radiance and now her leather sleeve came away red and wet. She coughed and spat out a mouthful of blood. Leoman was dabbing at his nose. ‘My apologies, Maker,’ she managed, coughing more.

The entity had raised his fists before his blank stone face and seemed to regard them as if astonished. The hands ground open. ‘No — it is I who must apologize. I am sorry. My anger … they have done me a great wound.’ The arms fell to hang loose at his sides. ‘As to those you name dragons, the Eleint. I myself have assisted beings who emerged fully formed from the Vitr. Some took that form. I do not know whether they were the first of their kind, or if others came into existence elsewhere. As to the Tiste … the Andii emerged from eternal night, true, yet what of the vital essence which animates? I believe the underlying energy which moves all originates here, in the Vitr. And for that some would name it the First Light.’

Kiska regarded the great shifting sea, awed. First Light? Yet who was to say otherwise? Could this ‘sea’ be nothing less than a great reservoir or source of energy — power, puissance, call it what you would. It was theology, or philosophy, all far beyond her. She returned her attention to Maker. ‘And this other? The one like us?’

‘I aided him in his emergence from the Vitr …’

Kiska laughed, and winced at the note of hysteria. ‘Then I assure you, Maker, he is nothing like us.’

‘He is. He is formed as you, and mortal.’

‘Mortal? His name? Does he have a name?’

Maker shifted, glass crackling, and started a slow lumbering walk down the beach. Kiska moved alongside. ‘Understand, little one, those who have experienced the Vitr first hand emerge as if freshly born. Newly formed, or re-formed. His mind carries nothing of his prior existence. And he has proved a great help in my work and a balm to my loneliness. I named him Then-aj-Ehliel, Gift of Creation.’

‘Your … work?’ Leoman asked from where he trailed behind.

Stone grated as the great domed head turned to Leoman. ‘Why, the bolstering and maintenance of the edge of existence, of course, against the constant erosion of the Vitr.’

Kiska found that she’d stopped walking. Her hands covered her face, where they brushed dried flakes of blood. The ground seemed to waver drunkenly and there was a roaring in her ears. Gods below! This was … this was … impossible! What was she doing here? What could she possibly …

Hands supported her: Leoman. ‘Kiska. You are all right?’

She laughed again. All right! ‘Did you hear that? What Maker said.’

‘Yes. Maintaining the shores. I understand.’

Yet the desert nomad sounded unimpressed. Queen of Dreams! Was there nothing that could ruffle this man’s reserve? She brushed away the rest of the dried blood, straightened.

‘Kiska,’ Leoman began gently, ‘the odds that this one could be …’

She pulled away. ‘Yes, yes.’

Maker raised an arm to gesture down the coast. ‘Follow the shore on further. He is there, helping in my work.’

She bowed. ‘Our thanks, Maker. We are in your debt.’

‘Not at all. It is I who am indebted. It is good to see others. Good to speak to others.’

Bowing again, Kiska headed off. As she walked, the sands pulling at her boots, she made every effort to keep her legs from wobbling and gasps of suppressed tears from bursting forth. This was impossible. She had wandered too far. The urgent unanswerable needs that drove her on now seemed … gods, she could hardly even recall them! Oponn’s jest! Even if she found the man she no longer had anything to say to him. No compelling case to make for his return. She had nothing to offer save … herself. And now … now she was no longer so certain of that either.

It took nearly a month of digging. Ebbin worked entirely alone. He trusted no one else with the secret of his discovery; and, in truth, the youths and his two hired guards were quite content to spend their days lazing in the shade while he sweated underground. The dirt and stones he loosened from the blockage he pushed behind him to dump straight down to the water below.

With more funds from his backer he’d bought supplies, including two new lanterns. One lit his work now as he