Deadhouse Gates

weaknesses plaguing her cause. All a lie. We were deceived, and now we are suffering the cost.

'The Mezla army is as a great beast,' the sergeant said as they neared the city's edge, 'wounded by countless strikes, flanks streaming with blood. The beast staggers onward, blind with pain. In three days, Dosii, the beast shall fall.'

The historian nodded thoughtfully, recalling the seasonal boar hunts in the forests of northern Quon Tali. A tracker had told him that among the hunters who were killed in such hunts, most met their fate after the boar had taken a fatal wound. An unexpected, final lashing out, a murderous lunge that seemed to defy Hood's grip on the beast. Seeing victory only moments away stripped caution from the hunters. Duiker heard something of that overconfidence in the mutineer's words. The beast streamed with blood, but it was not yet dead.

The sun climbed the sky as they travelled south.

The chamber's floor sagged like a bowl, carpeted in thick, feltlike drifts of dust. Almost a third of a league into the hill's stone heart, the rough-cut walls had cracked like glass, fissures reaching down from the vaulted roof. In the centre of the room lay a fishing boat resting on one flank, its lone mast's unreached sail hanging like rotted webbing. The dry, hot air had driven the dowels from the joins and the planks had contracted, splaying beneath the boat's own weight.

'This is no surprise,' Mappo said from the portal way.

Icarium's lips quirked slightly, then he stepped past the Trell and approached the craft. 'Five years? Not longer — I can still smell the brine. Do you recognize the design?'

'I curse myself for having taken no interest in such things,' Mappo sighed. 'Truly I should have anticipated moments like these — what was I thinking?'

'I believe,' Icarium said slowly, resting a hand on the boat's prow, 'this is what Iskaral Pust wished us to find.'

'I thought the quest was for a broom,' the Trell muttered.

'No doubt his broom will turn up of its own accord. It was not the goal of the search we were to value, but the journey.'

Mappo's eyes narrowed suspiciously on his friend, then his canines showed in an appreciative grin. 'That is always the way, isn't it?' He followed the Jhag into the chamber. His nostrils flared. 'I smell no brine.'

'Perhaps I exaggerated.'

'I'll grant you it does not look like it's been here for centuries. What are we to make of this, Icarium? A fishing boat, found in a room deep within a cliff in a desert thirty leagues from anything bigger than a spring. The High Priest sets before us a mystery.'

'Indeed.'

'Do you recognize the style?'

'Alas, I am as ignorant of water craft and other things of the sea as you, Mappo. I fear we have already failed in Iskaral Pust's expectations.'

The Trell grunted, watching Icarium begin examining the boat.

'There are nets in here, deftly made. A few withered things that might have been fish once … ah!' The Jhag reached down. Wood clattered. He straightened, faced Mappo, in his hands the High Priest's broom.

'Do we now sweep the chamber?'

'I think our task is to return this to its rightful owner.'

'The boat or the broom?'

Icarium's brows rose. 'Now that is an interesting question, friend.'

Mappo frowned, then shrugged. If there had been anything clever in his query, it was there purely by chance. He was frustrated. Too long underground, too long inactive and at the whim of a madman's schemes. It was an effort to bend his mind to this mystery, and indeed he resented the assumption that it was worth doing at all. After a long moment, he sighed. 'Shadow swept down on this craft and its occupant, plucked them both away and delivered them here. Was this Pust's own boat? He hardly strikes me as from fisher bloodlines. I've not heard a single dockside curse pass his lips, no salty metaphors, no barbed catechisms.'

'So, not Iskaral Pust's craft.'

'No. Leaving…'

'Well, either the mule or Servant.'

Mappo nodded. He rubbed his bristled jaw. 'I'll grant you a mule in a boat dragging nets through shoals might be interesting enough to garner a god's curiosity, sufficient to collect the two for posterity.'

'Ah, but what would be the value without a lake or pond to complete the picture? No, I think we must eliminate the mule. This craft belongs to Servant. Recall his adept climbing skills-'

'Recall the horrid soup-'

'That was laundry, Mappo.'

'Precisely my point, Icarium. You are correct. Servant once plied waters in this boat.'

'Then we are agreed.'

'Aye. Hardly a move up in the world for the poor man.'

Icarium shook himself. He raised the broom like a standard. 'More questions for Iskaral Pust. Shall we begin the return journey, Mappo?'

Three hours later the two weary men found the High Priest of Shadow seated at the table in the library. Iskaral Pust was hunched over a Deck of Dragons. 'You're late,' he snapped, not looking up. 'The Deck keens with fierce energy. The world outside is in flux — your love of ignorance is not worthy of these precipitous times. Attend this field, travellers, or remain lost at your peril.'

Snorting his disgust, Mappo strode to where the jugs of wine waited on a shelf. It seemed even Icarium had been brought short by the High Priest's words, as he dropped the broom clattering on the floor and pulled back a chair opposite Iskaral Pust. The frustrated air about the Jhag did not make likely an afternoon of calm conversation. Mappo poured two cups of wine, then returned to the table.

The High Priest raised the Deck in both hands, closed his eyes and breathed a silent prayer to Shadowthrone. He began a spiral field, laying the centre card first.

'Obelisk!' Iskaral squealed, shifting nervously on his chair. 'I knew it! Past present future, the here, the now, the then, the when-'

'Hood's breath!' Mappo breathed.

The second card landed, its upper left corner overlapping Obelisk's lower right. 'The Rope — Shadow Patron of Assassins, hah!' Subsequent cards followed in swift succession, Iskaral Pust announcing their identities as if his audience were ignorant or blind. 'Oponn, the male Twin upright, the luck that pushes, ill luck, terrible misfortune, miscalculation, poor circumstance … Sceptre … Throne … Queen of High House Life … Spinner of High House Death … Soldier of High House Light.. Knight of Life, Mason of Dark …' A dozen more cards followed, then the High Priest sat back, his eyes thinned to slits, his mouth hanging open. 'Renewal, a resurrection without the passage through Hood's Gates. Renewal…' He looked up, met Icarium's eyes. 'You must begin a journey. Soon.'

'Another quest?' the Jhag asked so quietly that Mappo's hackles rose in alarm.

'Aye! Can you not see, fool?'

'See what?' Icarium whispered.

Clearly ignorant that his life hung by a thread, Iskaral Pust rose, wildly gesturing at the field of cards. 'It's right here in front of you, idiot! As clear as my Lord of Shadow could make it! How have you survived this long?' In his frenzy, the High Priest snatched at the wispy patches of hair that remained on his head, yanking the tufts this way and that. He was fairly hopping in place. 'Obelisk! Can't you see? Mason, Spinner, Sceptre, Queens and Knights, Kings and fools!'

Icarium moved lightning fast, across the table, both hands closing around the High Priest's neck, snatching him into the air and dragging him across the tabletop. Iskaral Pust gurgled, his eyes bulging as he kicked feebly.

'My friend,' Mappo warned, fearing he would have to step in and pry Icarium's hands from his victim's neck before lasting damage was done.

The Jhag threw the man back down, shaken by his own anger. He drew a deep breath. 'Speak plainly, priest,' he said calmly.