What a busy night! And then a runner from Selush had brought him the damned sausage that a man had once used to pick his nose or something.
All right, there was some disrespect in that and it wasn’t worthy, not of Brys Beddict-the Hero’s very own brother! — nor of himself, Ormly of the Rats. So, enough of that, then.
‘Oh, look, sweetcakes, it’s him.’
‘Who, dove-cookie?’
‘Why, I forget his name. Tha’s who.’
Ormly scowled at the pair lolling on the bank like a couple of gaping fish. ‘I called you guardians? You’re both drunk!’
‘You’d be too,’ Ursto Hoobutt said, ‘if ‘n you had to listen to this simperin’ witch ‘ere.’ He wagged his head to mime his wife as he said: ‘Ooh, I wanna baby! A big baby, with only one upper lip but a bottom one too to clamp onto you know where an’ get even bigger! Ooh, syrup-smoochies, oh, please? Can I? Can I? Can I!’
‘You poor man,’ Ormly commiserated, walking up to them. He paused upon seeing the heaved and cracked slabs of ice crowding the centre of the lake. ‘It’s pushing, is it?’
‘Took your time, too,’ Pinosel muttered, casting her husband her third glowering look since Ormly had arrived. She swished whatever was in the jug in her left hand, then tilted it back to drink deep. Then wiped at her mouth, leaned forward and glared up at Ormly from lowered brows. ‘Ain’t gonna have no jus’ one upper lip, neither. Gonna be healthy-’
‘Really, Pinosel,’ Ormly said, ‘the likelihood of that-’
‘You don’t know nothing!’
‘All right, maybe I don’t. Not about the likes of you two, anyway. But here’s what I do know. In the Old Palace there’s a panel in the baths that was painted about six hundred years ago. Of Settle Lake or something a lot like it, with buildings in the background. And who’s sitting there in the grasses on the bank, sharing a jug? Why, an ugly woman and an even uglier man-both looking a lot like you two!’
‘Watchoo yer callin’ ugly,’ Pinosel said, lifting her head with an effort, taking a deep breath to compose her features, then patting at her crow’s nest hair. ‘Sure,’ she said, ‘I’ve had better days.’
‘Ain’t that the truth,’ mumbled Ursto.
‘An’ I ‘eard that! An’ oose fault is that, porker-nose?’
‘Only the people that ain’t no more ‘ere t’worship us an’ all that.’
“Zactly!’
Ormly frowned at the pond and its ice. At that moment a huge slab buckled with a loud crack! And he found himself involuntarily stepping back, one step, two. ‘Is it coming up?’ he demanded.
‘No,’ Ursto said, squinting one-eyed at the groaning heap of ice. ‘That’d be the one needing his finger back.’
The meltwater fringing the lake was bubbling and swirling now, bringing up clouds of silt as some current swept round the solid mass in the middle. Round and round, like a whirlpool only in reverse.
And all at once there was a thrashing, a spray of water, and a figure in its midst-struggling onto the bank, coughing, streaming muddy water, and holding in one incomplete hand a scabbarded sword.
Pinosel, her eyes bright as diamonds, lifted the jug in a wavering toast. ‘Hail the Saviour! Hail the half- drowned dog spitting mud!’ And then she crowed, the cry shifting into a cackle, before drinking deep once more.
Ormly plucked the severed finger from his purse and walked down to where knelt Brys Beddict. ‘Looking for this?’ he asked.
There had been a time of sleep, and then a time of pain. Neither had seemed to last very long, and now Brys Beddict, who had died of poison in the throne room of the Eternal Domicile, was on his hands and knees beside a lake of icy water. Racked with shivers, still coughing out water and slime.
And some man was crouched beside him, trying to give him a severed finger swollen and dyed pink.
He felt his left hand gripping a scabbard, and knew it for his own. Blinking to clear his eyes, he flitted a glance to confirm that the sword still resided within it. It did. Then, pushing the man’s gift away, he slowly settled onto his haunches, and looked round.
Familiar, yes.
The man beside him now laid a warm hand on his shoulder, as if to still his shivering. ‘Brys Beddict,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Tehol is about to die. Brys, your brother needs you now.’
And, as Brys let the man help him to his feet, he drew out his sword, half expecting to see it rusted, useless-but no, the weapon gleamed with fresh oil.
‘Hold on!’ shouted another voice.
The man steadying Brys turned slightly. ‘What is it, Ursto?’
‘The demon god’s about to get free! Ask ‘im!’
‘Ask him what?’
‘The name! Ask ‘im what’s its name, damn you! We can’t send it away without its name!’
Brys spat grit from his mouth. Tried to think. The demon god in the ice, the ice that was failing. Moments from release, moments from… ‘Ay’edenan of the Spring,’ he said. ‘Ay’edenan tek’ velut!enan.’
The man beside him snorted. ‘Try saying that five times fast! Errant, try saying it once!’
But someone was cackling.
‘Brys-’
He nodded. Yes. Tehol. My brother-‘Take me,’ he said. ‘Take me to him.’
‘I will,’ the man promised. ‘And on the way, I’ll do some explaining. All right?’
Brys Beddict, Saviour of the Empty Throne, nodded.
‘Imagine,’ Pinosel said with a gusty sigh, ‘a name in the old tongue. Oh now, ain’t this one come a long way!’
‘You stopped being drunk now, munch-sweets?’ She stirred, clambered onto her feet, then reached down and tugged at her husband. ‘Come on.’
‘But we got to wait-to use the name and send it away!’
‘We got time. Let’s perch ourselves down top of Wormface Alley, have another jug, an’ we can watch the Edur crawl up t’us like the Turtle of the Abyss.’ Ursto snorted. ‘Funny how that myth didn’t last.’
A deeper, colder shadow slid over Hannan Mosag and he halted his efforts. Almost there, yes-where the alley opened out, he saw two figures seated in careless sprawls and leaning against one another. Passing a jug between them.
Squalid drunks, but perhaps most appropriate as witnesses-to the death of this gross empire. The first to die, too. Also fitting enough.
He made to heave himself closer, but a large hand closed about his cloak, just below his collar, and he was lifted from the ground.
Hissing, seeking his power-
Hannan Mosag was slowly turned about, and he found himself staring into an unhuman face. Grey-green skin like leather. Polished tusks jutting from the corners of the mouth. Eyes with vertical pupils, regarding him now without expression.
Behind him the two drunks were laughing.
The Warlock King, dangling in the air before this giant demoness, reached for the sorcery of Kurald Emurlahn to blast this creature into oblivion. And he felt it surge within him-
But now her other hand took him by the throat.
And squeezed.
Cartilage crumpled like eggshells. Vertebrae crunched, buckled, broke against each other. Pain exploded upward, filling Hannan Mosag’s skull with white fire.
As the sun’s bright, unforgiving light suddenly bathed his face.
Sister Dawn-you greet me-
But he stared into the eyes of the demoness, and saw still nothing. A lizard’s eyes, a snake’s eyes.
Would she give him nothing at all?
The fire in his skull flared outward, blinding him, then, with a soft, fading roar, it contracted once more, darkness rushing into its wake.
