Deadhouse Gates

The distant rent closed. All at once other powers were channelling through the mage. Ascendants, grasping Kulp's outrageous intent, swept in to join the game with dark glee. Always a game. Damn you bastards one and all! I take back my prayers! Hear me? Hood take you all!

He realized the pain was gone, the Soletaken dragon withdrawing its attention as soon as other forces arrived to take its place. He remained hovering a few feet above the deck, however, his limbs twitching as the powers using him playfully plucked at his mortality. Not the indifference of an undead, but malice. Kulp began to yearn for the former.

He fell suddenly, cracking both knees on the dirt-smeared deck. Too! done with, now discarded. .

Stormy was at his side, waving a wineskin before the mage's face. Kulp grasped it and poured until his mouth was full of the tart liquid.

'We ride the dragon's wake,' the soldier said. 'Though not on water any more. That gush has closed up tight as a sapper's arse. Whatever you did, Mage, it worked.'

'Not over yet,' Kulp muttered, trying to still his trembling limbs. He swallowed more wine.

'Watch yourself with that, then,' Stormy said with a grin. 'It packs a punch, right to the back of the head-'

'I won't notice the difference — my skull's already full of pulp.'

'You lit up with blue fire, Mage. Never seen anything like it. Make a damned good tavern tale.'

'Ah, I've achieved immortality at last. Take that, Hood!'

'Well enough to stand?'

Kulp was not too proud to accept the soldier's arm as he tottered to his feet. 'Give me a few moments,' he said, 'then I'll try to slip us from the warren … back to our realm.'

'Will the ride be as rough, Mage?'

'I hope not.'

Felisin stood on the forecastle deck, watching the mage and Stormy passing the wineskin between them. She had felt the presence of the Ascendants, the cold, bloodless attention plucking and prodding at the ship and all who were upon it. The dragon was the worst of them all, gelid and remote. Like fleas on its hide, that's all we were to it.

She swung about. Baudin was studying the massive winged apparition cleaving the path ahead, his bandaged hand resting lightly on the carved rail. Whatever they rode rolled beneath them in a whispering surge. The oars still plied with remorseless patience, though it was clear that Silanda was moving more swiftly than anything muscle and bone could achieve — even when those muscles and bones were undead.

Look at us. A handful of destinies. We command nothing, not even our next step in this mad, fraught journey. The mage has his sorcery, the old soldier his stone sword and the other two their faith in the Tusked God. Heboric. . Heboric has nothing. And as for me, I have pocks and scars. So much for our possessions.

'The beast prepares…'

She glanced over at Baudin. Oh yes, I forgot the thug. He has

his secrets, for what that's worth, like as not scant little. 'Prepares what? Are you an expert in dragons as well?'

'Something's opening ahead — there's a change in the sky. See it?'

She did. The unrelieved grey pall had acquired a stain ahead, a smudge of brass that deepened, grew larger. A word to the mage, I think-

But even as she turned, the stain blossomed, filling half the sky. From somewhere far behind them came a howl of curdled outrage. Shadows sped across their path, tumbled to the sides as Silanda's prow clove through them. The dragon crooked its wings, vanishing into a blazing inferno of bronze fire.

Spinning, Baudin wrapped Felisin in his huge arms and ducked down around her as the fire swept over the ship. She heard his hiss as the flames engulfed them.

The dragon's found a warren. . to sear the fleas from its hide!

She flinched as the flames licked around Baudin's protective mass. She could smell him burning — the leather shirt, the skin of his back, his hair. Her gasps drew agony into her lungs.

Then Baudin was running, carrying her effortlessly in his arms, leaping down the companionway to the main deck. Voices were shouting. Felisin caught a glimpse of Heboric — his tattoos wreathed in black smoke — staggering, striking the port rail, then plummeting over the ship's side.

Silanda burned.

Still running, Baudin plunged past the mainmast. Kulp lunged into view and grasped the thug's arms as he tried to scream something the roaring fires swept away. But Baudin had become a thing mindless in its pain. His arm flung outward, and the mage was hurled back through the flames.

Bellowing, Baudin lurched on, a blind, hopeless flight to the sterncastle. The marines had vanished — either incinerated or dying somewhere below decks. Felisin did not struggle. Seeing that no escape was possible, she almost welcomed the bites of fire that now came with increasing frequency.

She simply watched as Baudin carried her over the stern rail.

They fell.

The breath was knocked from her lungs as they struck hard-packed sand. Still clutched in an embrace, they rolled down a steep slope and came to rest amidst a pile of water-smoothed cobbles. The bronze fire was gone.

Dust settling around them, Felisin stared up at bright sunlight. Somewhere near her head flies buzzed, the sound so natural that she trembled — as if desperately held defensive walls were crumbling within her. We've returned. Home. She knew it with instinctive certainty.

Baudin groaned. Slowly he pushed himself away, the cobbles sliding and grating beneath him.

She looked at him. The hair was gone from his head, leaving a flash-burned pate the colour of mottled bronze. His leather shirt was nothing but stitched strips hanging down his broad back like fragments of charred webbing. If anything, the skin of his back was darker and more mottled than that of his head. The bandages on his hand were gone as well, revealing swollen fingers and bruised joints. Incredibly, his skin was not cracked, not split open; instead, he had the appearance of having been gilded. Tempered.

Baudin rose, slowly, each move aching with precision. She saw him blink, draw a deep breath. His eyes widened as he looked down at himself.

Not what you were expecting. The pain fades — I see it in your face — now only a memory. You've survived, but somehow … it all feels different. It feels. You feel.

Can nothing Ml you, Baudin?

He glanced at her, then frowned.

'We're alive,' she said.

She followed suit when he clambered upright. They stood in a narrow arroyo, a gorge where flash floods had swept through with such force as to pack the bends of the channel with skull-sized rocks. The cut was less than five paces wide, the sides twice the height of a man and banded in variously coloured layers of sand.

The heat was fierce. Sweat ran in runnels down her back. 'Can you see anywhere we can climb out?' she asked.

'Can you smell Otataral?' Baudin muttered.

A chill wrapped her bones. We're back on the island- 'No. Can you?'

He shook his head. 'Can't smell a damned thing. Just a thought.'

'Not a nice one,' she snapped. 'Let's find a way out.' You expect me to thank you for saving my life, don't you? You're waiting for even a single word, or maybe something as small as a look, a meeting of the eyes. You can wait for ever, thug.

They worked their way along the choked channel, surrounded by a whirring cloud of flies and their own echoes.

'I'm … heavier,' Baudin said after a few minutes.

She paused, glanced back at him. 'What?'