Deadhouse Gates

'Tell your commander everything, you understand me? Everything — except about Kalam.'

'I am not stupid, no matter what you may think.'

Her glare softened. 'I know. Forgive me.'

'You'd better ask that of your sister, I think. And Kesen and Vaneb.'

'I will.'

'Tell me, how will you pursue a man who does not want to be pursued?'

A hard grin flashed on her dark features. 'You ask that of a woman?'

'Oh, Minala.. '

She reached up to brush his cheek with one hand. 'No need for tears, Keneb.'

'I blame my sentimental streak,' he said with a weary smile. 'But know this, I shall remain hopeful. Now, go and say goodbye to your sister and the children.'

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Goddess drew breath,

and all was still..

The Apocalypse

Herulahn

'We can't stay here.'

Felisin's eyes narrowed on the mage. 'Why not? That storm outside will kill us. There's no sheltering from it — except here, where there's water … food-'

'Because we're being hunted,' Kulp snapped, wrapping his arms around himself.

From where he sat against a wall, Heboric laughed. He raised his invisible hands. 'Show me a mortal who is not pursued, and I'll show you a corpse. Every hunter is hunted, every mind that knows itself has stalkers. We drive and are driven. The unknown pursues the ignorant, the truth assails every scholar wise enough to know his own ignorance, for that is the meaning of unknowable truths.'

Kulp looked up from where he sat on the low wall encircling the fountain, the lids of his eyes heavy as he studied the ex-priest. 'I was speaking literally,' he said. 'There are living shapeshifters in this city — their scent rides every wind and it's getting stronger.'

'Why don't we just give up?' Felisin said.

The mage sneered.

'I am not being flippant. We're in Raraku, the home of the Whirlwind. There won't be a friendly face within a hundred leagues of here, not that there's a chance of making it that far in any case.'

'And the faces closer at hand aren't even human,' Heboric added. 'Every mask unveiled, and you know, the presence of D'ivers and Soletaken is most likely not at the Whirlwind's beckoning. All a tragic coincidence, this Year of Dryjhna and the unholy convergence-'

'You're a fool if you think that,' Kulp said. 'The timing is anything but accidental. I've a hunch that someone started those shapeshifters on that convergence, and that someone acted precisely because of the uprising. Or it went the other way around — the Whirlwind goddess guided the prophecy to ensure that the Year of Dryjhna was now, when the convergence was under way, in the interest of creating chaos within the warrens.'

'Interesting notions, Mage,' Heboric said, slowly nodding. 'Natural, of course, coming from a practitioner of Meanas, where deceit breeds like runaway weeds and inevitability defines the rules of the game … but only when useful.'

Felisin stayed silent, watching the two men. One conversation, here on the surface, yet another beneath. The priest and the mage are playing games, the entwining of suspicion with knowledge. Heboric sees a pattern, his plundering of ghostly lives gave him what he needed, and I think he's telling Kulp that the mage himself is closer to that pattern than he might imagine. 'Here, wielder of Meanas, take my invisible hand. .'

Felisin decided she had had enough. 'What do you know, Heboric?'

The blind man shrugged.

'Why does it matter to you, lass?' Kulp growled. 'You're suggesting surrender: let the shapeshifters take us — we're dead anyway.'

'I asked, why do we struggle on? Why leave here? We haven't got a chance out in the desert.'

'Stay, then!' Kulp snapped, rising. 'Hood knows you've nothing useful to offer.'

'I've heard all it takes is a bite.'

He went still and slowly turned to her. 'You heard wrong. It's common enough ignorance, I suppose. A bite can poison you, a cyclical fever of madness, but you do not become a shapeshifter.'

'Really, then how are they created?'

'They aren't. They're born.'

Heboric clambered to his feet. 'If we're to walk through this dead city, let us do so now. The voices have stilled, and I am clear of mind.'

'What difference does that make?' Felisin demanded.

'I can guide us on the swiftest route, lass. Else we wander lost until the ones who hunt us finally arrive.'

They drank one last time from the pool, then gathered as many of the pale fruits as they could carry. Felisin had to admit to herself that she felt healthier — more mended — than she had in a long time, as if memories no longer bled and she was left with naught but scars. Yet the cast of her mind remained fraught. She had run out of hope.

Heboric led them swiftly down tortuous streets and alleys, through houses and buildings, and everywhere they went, they trod over and around bodies, human, shapeshifter and T'lan Imass, ancient scenes of fierce battle. Heboric's plundered knowledge was lodged in Felisin's mind, a trembling of ancient horror that made every new scene of death they stumbled upon resonate within her. She felt she was close to grasping a profound truth, around which orbited all human endeavour since the very beginning of existence. We do naught but scratch the world, frail and fraught. Every vast drama of civilizations, of peoples with their certainties and gestures, means nothing, affects nothing. Life crawls on, ever on. She wondered if the gift of revelation — of discovering the meaning underlying humanity — offered nothing more than a devastating sense of futility. It's the ignorant who find a cause and cling to it, for within that is the illusion of significance. Faith, a king, queen or Emperor, or vengeance. . all the bastion of fools.

The wind moaned at their backs, raising small gusts of dust at their feet, rasping like tongues against their skin. It carried in it a faint scent of spice.

Felisin judged an hour had passed before Heboric paused. They stood before the grand entrance to a temple of some kind, where the columns, squat and broad, had been carved into a semblance of tree trunks. A frieze ran beneath the cracked, sagging plinth, each panel a framed image which Kulp's warren-cast light eerily lit from beneath.

The mage was staring up at the images. Hood's breath! he mouthed.

The ex-priest was smiling.

'It's a Deck,' Kulp said.

Yet another pathetic assertion of order.

'The Elder Deck, aye,' Heboric nodded. 'Not Houses but Holds. Realms. Can you discern Death and Life? And Dark and Light? Do you see the Hold of the Beast? Who sits upon that antlered throne, Kulp?'

'It's empty, assuming I'm looking at the one you mean — the frame displays various creatures. The throne is flanked by T'lan Imass.'

'Aye, that is the one. No-one on the throne, you say? Curious.'

'Why?'

'Because every echo of memory tells me there used to be.'