Deadhouse Gates

'Lass-'

She snapped out a hand as if batting away a wasp, and rose to her feet. She turned to find Leoman staring at her, his sun-scoured face striking her suddenly as Raraku's own. Harder than Beneth's, without any of the affectations. Sharper than Baudin, oh, there's wit there, in those cold, dark eyes. 'To Sha'ik's encampment,' she said.

He glanced down at the Book, then back to her.

Felisin raised an eyebrow. 'Would you rather walk through a storm? Let the goddess wait a little longer before renewing her fury, Leoman.'

She saw him reappraise her, a glimmer of uncertainty newly arriving in his eyes, and was pleased. After a moment, he bowed his head.

'Felisin,' Heboric hissed, 'have you any idea-'

'Better than you, old man. Now keep quiet.'

'Perhaps we should part ways now-'

She swung to him. 'No. I think I shall have need for you, Heboric'

He gave her a bitter smile. 'As your conscience, lass? I'm a poor choice.'

Yes, you are, and all the better for that.

The ancient path showed signs of having once been a road, running the length of a ridge that twisted like a crooked spine towards a distant mesa. Cobbles showed like bone where the wind had scoured away the sandy soil. The path was littered with red-glazed potsherds that crunched underfoot.

The Toblakai scouted five hundred paces ahead, unseen in the ochre haze, while Leoman led Felisin and Heboric at a measured pace, rarely speaking. The man was frighteningly gaunt and moved so silently over the ground that Felisin had begun to imagine him no more than a spectre. Nor did Heboric stumble in his blindness as he walked behind her.

Glancing back, she saw him smiling. 'Something amusing you?'

'This road is crowded, lass.'

'The same ghosts as in the buried city?'

He shook his head. 'Not as old. These are memories of an age that followed the First Empire.'

Leoman stopped and turned at that.

Heboric's broad mouth extended into a grin. 'Oh aye, Raraku is showing me her secrets.'

'Why?'

The ex-priest shrugged.

Felisin eyed the desert warrior. 'Does that make you nervous, Leoman?' Because it should.

He glanced at her, his eyes dark and appraising. 'What is this man to you?'

I don't know. 'My companion. My historian. Of great value since I am to make Raraku my home.'

'The Holy Desert's secrets are not his to possess. He plunders them as would any foreign raider. If you desire Raraku's truths, look within yourself.'

She almost gave a laugh at that, but knew its bitterness would frighten even her.

They continued on, the morning's heat rising, the sky turning into gold fire. The ridge narrowed, revealing the ancient road's foundation stones, ten or more feet down on either side, the slope beyond falling away a further fifty or sixty feet. The Toblakai awaited them at a place where the road bed had collapsed to create large, dark holes in the ground. From one of them issued the soft trickle of water.

'An aqueduct beneath the road,' Heboric said. 'It used to flow in a torrent.'

Felisin saw the Toblakai scowl.

Leoman gathered the waterskins and proceeded to crawl down into the hole.

Heboric sat down to rest. After a moment, he cocked his head. 'Sorry you had to wait for us, Toblakai-with- the-secret-name, though I imagine you'd have trouble getting your head through that cave mouth in any case.'

The giant savage sneered, revealing filed teeth. 'I collect tokens of the people I kill. Tied here on my belt. One day I will have yours.'

'He means your ears, Heboric,' Felisin said.

'Oh, I know, lass,' the ex-priest said. 'Tortured spirits writhe in this bastard's shadow — every man, woman and child that he's killed. Tell me, Toblakai, did those children beg to live? Did they weep, cry out for their mothers?'

'No more than grown men did,' the giant said, yet Felisin saw that he had paled, though she sensed that it was not his killing of children that bothered him. No, there was something else in what Heboric had said.

Tortured spirits. He's haunted by the ghosts of those he's slain. Forgive me, Toblakai, if I spare you no pity.

'This land is not home to Toblakai,' Heboric said. 'Has the Rebellion's lure of slaughter called you here? From where did you crawl, bastard?'

'I have said to you all that I shall say. When I speak to you next it will be when I kill you.'

Leoman emerged from the hole, cobwebs snagged in his bound hair, the waterskins bulging at his back. 'You will kill no-one until I say so,' he growled to the Toblakai, then swung a glare on Heboric. 'And I've not yet said so.'

There was something in the giant's expression that spoke of immense patience coupled with unwavering certainty. He rose to his full height, accepted a waterskin from Leoman, then set off down the trail.

Heboric stared sightlessly after him. 'The wood of that weapon is soaked in pain. I cannot imagine he sleeps well at night.'

'He barely sleeps at all,' Leoman muttered. 'You shall cease baiting him.'

The ex-priest grimaced. 'You've not seen the ghosts of children tied to his heels, Leoman. But I shall make the effort to keep my mouth shut.'

'His tribe made few distinctions,' Leoman said. 'There was kin, and those who were not kin were the enemy. Now, enough talk.'

A hundred paces on, the road suddenly widened, opening out onto the flat of the mesa. To either side ran row upon row of oblong humps of fired, reddish clay, each hump seven feet long and three wide. Despite the foreshortened horizons created by the suspended dust, Felisin could see that the rows, scores deep, encircled the entire plateau — entirely surrounding the ruined city that lay before them.

The cobbles were fully exposed now, revealing a broad causeway that ran in a straight line towards what had once been a grand gate, worn down by centuries of wind to knee-high stumps of bleached stone — as was the entire city beyond.

'A slow death,' Heboric whispered.

The Toblakai was already striding through the distant gates.

'We must cross through to the other side, down to the harbour,' Leoman said. 'Where we shall find a hidden camp. And a cache … unless it has been pillaged.'

The city's main street was a dusty mosaic of shattered pottery: red-glazed body sherds, grey, black and brown rims. 'I will think of this,' Felisin said, 'when I next carelessly break a pot.'

Heboric grunted. 'I know of scholars who claim they can map entire extinct cultures through the study of such detritus.'

'Now there's a lifetime of excitement,' Felisin drawled.

'Would that I could trade places with one of them!'

'You are not serious, Heboric'

'I am not? Fener's tusk, lass, I am not the adventurous type-'

'Perhaps not at first, but then you were broken. Shattered. Like these pots here.'

'I appreciate the observation, Felisin.'

'You cannot be remade unless you are first broken.'

'You have become very philosophic in your advanced years, I see.'

More than you realize. 'Tell me you've learned no truths, Heboric'

He snorted. 'Aye, I've learned one. There are no truths. You'll understand that yourself, years from now, when Hood's shadow stretches your way.'