as any other in that ancient family of what-might-be-gods.
Mockra whispered into life in her mind, as free as wandering thought, unconstrained by a shell of hard bone, by the well-worn pathways of the mind. A tendril lifting free, hovering in the air above her, she gave it the shape of a serpent, head questing, tongue flicking to find the scent of Udinaas, of the man’s very soul-there, sliding forward to close, a touch-
Hot.’
Seren Pedac felt that serpent recoil, felt the ripples sweep back into her in waves of scalding heat.
Fever dreams, the fire of Udinaas’s soul. The man stirred in his blankets.
She would need to be more subtle, would need the essence of the serpent she had chosen. Edging forward once more, finding that raging forge, then burrowing down, through hot sand, beneath it. Oh, there was pain, yes, but it was not, she now realized, some integral furnace of his soul. It was the realm his dream had taken him into, a realm of blistering light-
Her eyes opened onto a torn landscape. Boulders baked red and brittle. Thick, turgid air, the breath of a potter’s kiln. Blasted white sky overhead.
Udinaas wandered, staggering, ten paces away.
She sent her serpent slithering after him.
An enormous shadow slid over them-Udinaas spun and twisted to glare upward as that shadow flowed past, then on, and the silver and gold scaled dragon, gliding on stretched wings, flew over the ridge directly ahead, then, a moment later, vanished from sight.
Seren saw Udinaas waiting for it to reappear. And then he saw it again, now tiny as a speck, a glittering mote in the sky, fast dwindling. The Letherii slave cried out, but Seren could not tell if the sound had been one of rage or abandonment.
No-one likes being ignored.
Stones skittered near the serpent and in sudden terror she turned its gaze, head lifting, to see a woman. Not Menandore. No, a Letherii. Small, lithe, hair so blonde as to be almost white. Approaching Udinaas, tremulous, every motion revealing taut, frayed nerves.
Another intruder.
Udinaas had yet to turn from that distant sky, and Seren watched as the Letherii woman drew still closer. Then, five paces away, she straightened, ran her hands through her wild, burnished hair. In a sultry voice, the strange woman spoke. ‘I have been looking for you, my love.’
He did not whirl round. He did not even move, but Seren saw something new in the lines of his back and shoulders, the way he now held his head. In his voice, when he replied, there was amusement. ‘“My love”?’ And then he faced her, with ravaged eyes, a bleakness like defiant ice in this world of fire. ‘No longer the startled hare, Feather Witch-yes, I see the provocative way you now look at me, the brazen confidence, the invitation. And in all that, the truth that is your contempt still burns through. Besides,’ he added, ‘I heard you scrabbling closer, could smell, even, your fear. What do you want, Feather Witch?’
‘I am not frightened, Udinaas,’ the woman replied.
That name, yes. Feather Witch. The fellow slave, the Caster of the Tiles. Oh, there is history between them beyond what any of us might have imagined.
‘But you are,’ Udinaas insisted. ‘Because you expected to find me alone.’
She stiffened, then attempted a shrug. ‘Menandore feels nothing for you, my love. You must realize that. You are naught but a weapon in her hands.’
‘Hardly. Too blunted, too pitted, too fragile by far.’
Feather Witch’s laugh was high and sharp. ‘Fragile? Errant take me, Udinaas, you have never been that.’
Seren Pedac certainly agreed with her assessment. What reason this false modesty?
‘I asked what you wanted. Why are you here?’
‘I have changed since you last saw me,’ Feather Witch replied. ‘I am now Destra Irant to the Errant, to the last Elder God of the Letherii. Who stands behind the Empty Throne-’
‘It’s not empty.’
‘It will be.’
‘Now there’s your new-found faith getting in the way again. All that hopeful insistence that you are once more at the centre of things. Where is your flesh hiding right now, Feather Witch? In Letheras, no doubt. Some airless, stinking hovel that you have proclaimed a temple-yes, that stings you, telling me I am not in error. About you. Changed, Feather Witch? Well, fool yourself if you like. But don’t think I’m deceived. Don’t think I will now fall into your arms gasping with lust and devotion.’
‘You once loved me.’
‘I once pressed red-hot coins into Rhulad’s dead eyes, too. But they weren’t dead, alas. The past is a sea of regrets, but I have crawled a way up the shore now, Feather Witch. Quite a way, in fact.’
‘We belong together, Udinaas. Destra Irant and T’orrud Segul, and we will have, at our disposal, a Mortal Sword. Letherii, all of us. As it should be, and through us the Errant rises once more. Into power, into domination-it is what our people need, what we have needed for a long time.’
‘The Tiste Edur-’
‘Are on their way out. Rhulad’s Grey Empire-it was doomed from the start. Even you saw that. It’s tottering, crumbling, falling to pieces. But we Letherii will survive. We always do, and now, with the rebirth of the faith in the Errant, our empire will make the world tremble. Destra Irant, T’orrud Segul and Mortal Sword, we shall be the three behind the Empty Throne. Rich, free to do as we please. We shall have Edur for slaves. Broken, pathetic Edur. Chained, beaten, we shall use them up, as they once did to us. Love me or not, Udinaas. Taste my kiss or turn away, it does not matter. You are T’orrud Segul. The Errant has chosen you-’
‘He tried, you mean. I sent the fool away.’
She was clearly stunned into silence.
Udinaas half turned with a dismissive wave of one hand. ‘I sent Menandore away, too. They tried using me like a coin, something to be passed back and forth. But I know all about coins. I’ve smelled the burning stench of their touch.’ He glanced back at her again. ‘And if I am a coin, then I belong to no-one. Borrowed, occasionally. Wagered, often. Possessed? Never for long.’
‘T’orrud Segul-’
‘Find someone else.’
‘You have been chosen, you damned fool!’ She started forward suddenly, tearing at her own threadbare slave’s tunic. Cloth ripped, fluttered on the hot wind like the tattered fragments of some imperial flag. She was naked, reaching out to drag Udinaas round, arms encircling his neck-
His push sent her sprawling onto the hard, stony ground. ‘I’m done with rapes,’ he said in a low, grating voice. ‘Besides, I told you we have company. You clearly didn’t completely understand me-’ And he walked past her, walked straight towards the serpent that was Seren Pedac.
She woke with a calloused hand closed about her throat. Stared up into glittering eyes in the gloom.
She could feel him trembling above her, his weight pinning her down, and he lowered his face to hers, then, wiry beard bristling along her cheek, brought his mouth to her right ear, and began whispering.
‘I have been expecting something like that, Seren Pedac, lor some time. Thus, you had my admiration… of your restraint. Too bad, then, it didn’t last.’
She was having trouble breathing; the hand wrapping her throat was an iron band.
‘I meant what I said about rapes, Acquitor. If you ever do that again, I will kill you. Do you understand me?’
She managed a nod, and she could see now, in his face, the full measure of the betrayal he was feeling, the appalling hurt. That she would so abuse him.
‘Think nothing of me,’ Udinaas continued, ‘if that suits the miserable little hole you live in, Seren Pedac. It’s what wiped away your restraint in the first place, after all. But I have had goddesses use me. And gods try to. And now a scrawny witch I once lusted after, who dreams her version of tyranny is preferable to everyone else’s. I was a slave-I am used to being used, remember? But-and listen carefully, woman-1 am a slave no longer-’
Fear Sengar’s voice came down from above them. ‘Release her throat, Udinaas. That which you feel at the back of your own neck is the tip of my sword-and yes, that trickle of blood belongs to you. The Acquitor is Betrothed to Trull Sengar. She is under my protection. Release her now, or die.’
