Orb Sceptre Throne

And I can’t see a damned thing. He shook the rope to signal retrieval. Please, gods, please … let there be another lantern somewhere in camp!

But there was no other lantern. After overturning all his equipment, his tent and that of his guards, Ebbin was reduced to having himself lowered clutching a single soft tallow candle. All through the descent he shielded the meagre flame as one might a precious gem. Just before his feet once more touched the frigid water he shook the rope to order a halt.

In the cool dead air he held out the candle. Hadn’t it been here? Was he mistaken?

He squinted at the curved wall of eroded ancient stones, shifted the candle from side to side. Gods, please! What a discovery this would be! Then it was there. Not a sealed smooth barrier of bricks and mortar raised across a tunnel but a dark jagged hole of pushed-in stones.

Ebbin’s heart broke.

Failure. Looted. Like all the rest. He was not the first. For a time he sat, hunched, wax dribbling down his fingers. Then, sighing, he roused himself to reach out. Leaning perilously far he just managed to clutch a stone and pull himself over. He raised the candle. A tunnel. Smooth-sided. And something ahead. Rubble?

Intrigued, he shifted his weight even further to lean upon the smashed opening. It was slow going, as he had to hold the candle upraised in one hand the entire time, but eventually, awkwardly, he slid forward into the tunnel and left the sling seat twisting behind. He edged onward through the dusty cobwebbed chute, candle held out before him.

It was a rockfall. A barrier of dirt and debris. How old? He glanced back to the hammered opening and his heart soared anew. Did they get no further? Could what lay beyond as yet remain … inviolate?

Perhaps. He would have to find out. He studied the packed dirt and rock with an assessor’s eye. Looks like this will call for some old-fashioned digging after all. He began pushing himself backwards.

This could take some time.

In the surf of a shimmering sea of light a man struggled to push a creature four times his size free of the heaving waves. The liquid tore and ate at the creature like acid. Steam frothed and sizzled, bubbling over its sides. Inhuman screams of agony and rage sounded. It flailed its limbs in terror, delivering desperate rock-shattering blows deflected from the man only by flashes of argent power. The brilliant waves crashed over them both as the man knelt, struggling to roll the creature.

Between waves he urged, ‘Crawl! Crawl! You can do it!’

‘I burn!’ it shrieked, raging and crying.

‘Crawl!’

‘I die …’

‘No!’

From rocks up the beach came running and limping a motley collection of mismatched creatures. They dashed into the surf, shrieking and gasping as the liquid burst into smoke around them. Their flesh sloughed off in strips, eaten by the acid light. ‘No! Get back!’ the man bellowed, terrified. Together, all pulling and tugging, they heaved the giant figure on to the black sand beach. A number of the smaller ones sank from sight beneath the frothing waves and the man searched frantically, blindly feeling about. He dragged out two tiny smoking figures then fell, exhausted, on to the sands.

The huge creature snarled in an effort to gain its bird-like clawed feet. Its flesh was melted to the bone in places. Clear ichor ran from its wounds as it lurched to the man who lay gasping and knelt next to him.

‘Why …?’

The man rose to his elbows. The luminescent water ran from him leaving no wounds. His long black hair lay plastered to his skull. ‘You were cast out through no fault of your own. Cast out to dissolve into nothingness. That is not right. Not right.’

The creature’s glowing furnace eyes blinked its wonder. ‘You are unhurt. Immune … you are … Eleint?’

‘No. I am just a man.’

A grunt of disbelief from the giant. ‘You are more than that. I am Korus, High Born of Aral Gamelon. What is your name?’

The man lowered his gaze. ‘I do not know it. It is lost to me. I was given a new one: Thenaj.’

Korus settled back upon his thick haunches, examined one clawed scarred hand where his armoured flesh had been scoured away entirely. Pale tendons shifted, exposed to the air. ‘Well, Thenaj. Such as I am, I am yours.’

Angered, the man waved aside the offer. ‘No. You are your own now. Free of all compellings. Free of all the summonings and abuse of exploiters of the Warrens, damn them all to dissolution! Free to do as you please.’

The huge demon cocked his armoured head. His golden eyes shifted, taking in the desolate shore of black sands. ‘Then I shall remain.’

Thenaj nodded his gratitude. ‘Good. Then help me with the little ones — their courage is greater than their wisdom.’

In the estate district of Darujhistan a tall, hook-nosed man returned to long-delayed work of drawing a new map of the city copied from an older version, one that bore upon it an obscuring rust-red stain. He worked bent over, face close to the vellum, the quill scratching patiently.

‘The city ever renews itself, Master Baruk?’ observed someone close to his elbow.

The High Alchemist jumped, his forearm striking a crystal inkpot and overturning it. An impenetrable black wash marched across the map. Baruk turned slowly to stare down at the squat rotund figure beside him, a figure so short as to barely see over the high table.

‘Oh dear. Kruppe is most apologetic. If something should happen — as it cannot help but do — such will be looked back upon as a most portentous omen.’

Baruk cleaned the quill on a scrap of rag. ‘It was only an accident.’ He dropped the quill into its holder. ‘And in any case, how did you … I doubled all the wards.’

Watery, bulging frog-like eyes blinked innocently back up at him. Baruk’s shoulders slumped. ‘We both know what is threatening. There have been warnings enough. Death’s death, for the love of all the gods. The green banner of the night sky. The shattering and rebirth of the moon. The breaking of Dragnipur …’ He waved a hand. ‘Choose any you wish.’

‘As it is the proclivity of all to do.’ The fat man sighed contentedly as he settled into a plush chair. ‘In the ease of hindsight … or is that behindsight?’ The bulging eyes seemed to cross and the man held a white silk handkerchief to his face. ‘Gods wipe such a sight!’

From his high stool Baruk studied the man. He pressed steepled fingers to his chin, his gaze sharpening. ‘I fear you will not fare as well this time.’

A demon waddled up to sit at Kruppe’s slippered feet — a figure even more squat and obese than he. It struck Baruk that had Chillbais possessed a tail, it would most certainly be wagging. From one voluminous sleeve, rather dirty and threadbare, it must be said, came a stoppered sample jar. Baruk’s gaze sharpened even further as he recognized the jar. Kruppe uncorked it and fished out the sample, which itself was a fish, a small white one. This he held out over Chillbais, who snapped up the offering. Kruppe petted the demon’s knobbled bald head.

‘That was a rare blind albino cave fish from the deserts of the Jhag Odhan, Kruppe.’

‘And tasty too. I highly recommend them. On toast.’

‘And to what, other than the raiding of my sample shelves and the bribing and suborning of my servants, do I owe this visit? I am reminded of your earlier call not so long ago, and I am not reassured.’

The fat man sniffed the jar’s milky fluid, wrinkled his nose, and set it aside. ‘Kruppe wonders now, in the presentsight, as it were — or is it is? — what pedestrian activities or seemingly innocuous events will, in the hindsight of the future, be seen to be foreshadowings of the grievous event which may, or may not, come to pass, and which, by the forewarning, may thusly be headed off.’ He set his pale hands under his chin and beamed up at Baruk, who blinked, frowning.