Deadhouse Gates

paces from Fiddler's position, motionless. Its eyes, a dark liquid brown, seemed fixed on the sapper.

He shivered, his gaze flicking once again to Blind. At Icarium's side. . so dose … He understood that proximity all too clearly, as did Mappo. If bargains could be struck with a House of the Azath, then Shadowthrone had managed it. The Hounds would not be taken — as much as Tremorlor would have yearned for such prizes, for the abrupt and absolute removal of these ancient killers — no, the deal involved a much greater prize …

Mappo stood on the Jhag's other side, the burnished long-bone club raised before him. A surge of compassion flooded Fiddler. The Trell was being torn apart from within. He had more than just shapeshifters to guard against — there was, after all, the companion he loved as a brother.

Crokus and Apsalar, the former with his fighting knives out and held in admirably relaxed grips, flanked Servant. Pust slunk along a step behind them.

And this is what we are. This, and no more than this.

He had paused before the bend in response to an instinctive hesitation that seemed to wrap an implacable grip around his spine. Go no farther. Wait. The sapper sighed. Wait for what?

His eyes, still wandering over the group behind him, caught on something, focused.

Rood's hackles had begun a slow rise.

'Hood!''

Movement exploded all around him, a massive shape barrelling into view directly ahead with a roar that turned Fiddler's marrow into spikes of ice. And above, a thudding flapping of leathery wings, huge talons darting down.

The charging Soletaken was a brown bear, as big as a noble-born's carriage, both flanks brushing the root walls of the maze, where arms were pulled, stretched, hands closed on thick fur. The sapper saw one unhuman limb torn from the trio of joints that formed its shoulder, spurting old, black blood. Ignoring these desperate efforts as if they were no more than burrs and thorns, the bear lunged forward.

Fiddler dropped to the root-bound floor — the bark hot and greasy with some kind of sweat — sparing no breath to shout even a warning. Not that it was needed.

The bear's underside swept over him in a blur, the fur pale and smeared in blood, then it was past, even as the sapper rolled to follow its attack.

The bear's attention was fixed exclusively on the blood-red enkar'al hovering before it — another Soletaken, shrieking with rage. The bear's paws lashed out, closing on empty air as the winged reptile darted backward — and into the reach of Mappo's club.

Fiddler could not fathom the strength behind the Trell's two-handed, full-shouldered swing. The weapon's tusked head struck the enkar'al's ridged chest and plunged inward with a snapping of bones. The enkar'al, itself the size of an ox, seemed literally to crumple and fold around that blow. Wing bones broke, neck and head were thrown forward, eyes and nostrils spraying blood.

The reptilian Soletaken was dead before it struck the root wall. Talons and hands received and held it.

'No!' Mappo roared.

Fiddler's gaze darted to Icarium — but the Jhag was not the cause of the Trell's cry, for the Hound Rood had attacked the massive bear, striking it from the side.

With a scream the Soletaken lurched sideways, up against the root wall. Few were the reaching limbs that could hold fast such a beast, yet one awaited it, one wrapped its green-skinned length around the bear's thick neck, and that one possessed a strength beyond even the Soletaken's.

Rood clamped a flailing paw in its jaws, crushing bones, then tore the appendage away with savage shakes of its head.

'Messremb!' the Trell bellowed, struggling in Icarium's restraining grip. 'An ally!'

'A Soletaken!' Iskaral Pust shrieked, dancing around.

Mappo sagged suddenly. 'A friend,' he whispered.

And Fiddler understood. The first friend lost this day. The first. .

Tremorlor laid claim to both shapeshifters as roots snaked out, wrapping around the newcomers. The two beasts now faced each other on their respective walls — their eternal resting places. The Soletaken bear, blood gushing from the stump at the end of one limb, struggled on, but even its prodigious strength was useless against the otherworldly might of the Azath and the arm that held it, now tightening. Messremb's constricted throat struggled to find air. The red rims around its dark-brown eyes took on a bluish cast, the eyes bulging from their damp, streaked nests of fur.

Rood had pulled away and was placidly devouring the severed paw, bones and flesh and fur.

'Mappo,' Icarium said, 'see that stranger's arm crushing the life from him — do you understand? Not an eternal prison for Messremb. Hood will take him — death will take him, as it did the enkar'al…'

The entwining roots from the opposing walls reached out to each other, almost touching.

'The maze finds a new wall,' Crokus said.

'Quickly then,' Fiddler snapped, only now regaining his feet. 'Everyone to this side.'

They moved on, silent once again. Fiddler found his hands trembling incessantly now where they gripped his pitiful weapon. The strengths and savagery he had witnessed minutes earlier clashed with such alarm that it left his mind numb.

We cannot survive this. A hundred Hounds of Shadow would not be enough. Such shapeshifting creatures have arrived in their thousands, all here, all in Tremorlor's grounds — how many will reach the House? Only the strongest. The strongest. . And what is it we dare? To step within the House, to find the gate that will take us to Malaz City, to the Deadhouse itself. Gods, we are but minor players. . with one exception, a man we cannot afford to unleash, a man even the Azath fears.

Sounds of fierce battle assailed them from all sides. The other corridors of this infernal maze played host to a mayhem that Fiddler knew they themselves would soon be unable to avoid. Indeed, those terrible sounds had grown louder, closer. We're getting nearer the House. We're all converging …

He stopped, turning towards the others. He left his warning unspoken, for every face, every set of eyes that met his, bespoke the same knowledge.

Claws clattered ahead and the sapper whirled to see Shan arrive, slowing quickly from a frantic run. Her flanks were heaving, tracked in countless wounds.

Oh, Hood. .

Another sound reached them, approaching from up the trail, from where the Hound had just come.

'He was warned!' Icarium cried. 'Gryllen! You were warned!'

Mappo had wrapped his arms around the Jhag. Icarium's sudden surge of anger stilled the air on all sides — as if an entire warren had drawn breath. The Jhag was motionless in that embrace, yet the sapper saw the Trell's arms strain, stretch to an unseen force. The sound that broke from Mappo was a thing of such pain, such distress and fear that Fiddler sagged, tears starting from his eyes.

The Hound Blind stepped away from Icarium's side, and the shock of seeing her tail dip jolted through the sapper.

Rood and Baran joined Shan, forming a nervous barrier — leaving Fiddler on the wrong side. He scrambled back, his limbs moving jerkily, as if weakened by a gallon of wine in his veins. His gaze held on Icarium, as the edge they now all tottered on finally revealed itself, promising horror.

All three Hounds flinched and jolted back a step. Fiddler spun about. The path ahead was closed into a new wall, a seething, swarming wall. Oh, my, we meet again.

The girl was no more than eleven or twelve, wearing a leather vest on which was stitched overlapping bronze scales — flattened coins, in fact — and the spear she held in her hands was heavy enough to waver as she resolutely maintained her guard stance.

Felisin glanced down at the basketful of braided flowers at the girl's bare, dusty feet. 'You've some skill with those,' she said.

The young sentry glanced again at Leoman, then the Toblakai.

'You may lower your weapon,' the desert warrior said.

The spear's trembling point dropped down to the sand.

The Toblakai's voice was hard, 'Kneel before Sha'ik Reborn!'