opposition, yet inextricably bound. Do you now feel as if you have come home, Icarium? 1 remember you, striding from the sea, a refugee from a realm you had laid to waste. Yet your father did not await you-he had gone, he had walked down the throat of an Azath. Icarium, he was Jaghut, and among the faghut no father reaches across to take his child’s hand.
Are you sick, ojd man?’
Blinking, Bugg looked across to see a servant from one of the nearby estates, returning from market with a basket of foodstuffs balanced on his head. Only with grief, dear mortal. He shook his head.
‘It was the floods,’ the servant went on. ‘Shifting the clay.’
Aye.’
‘Scale House fell down-did you hear? Right into the street. Good thing it was empty, hey? Though I heard there was a fatality-in the street.’ The man suddenly grinned. A cat!’ Laughing, he resumed his journey.
Bugg stared after him; then, with a grunt, he set off for the gate.
¦
He waited on the terrace, frowning down at the surprisingly deep trench the crew had managed to excavate into the bank, then outward, through the bedded silts of the river itself. The shoring was robust, and Bugg could see few leaks from between the sealed slats. Even so, two workers were on the pump, their bared backs slick with sweat.
Rautos Hivanar came to his side. ‘Bugg, welcome. I imagine you wish to retrieve your crew.’
‘No rush, sir,’ Bugg replied. ‘It is clear to me now that this project of yours is… ambitious. How much water is coming up from the floor of that pit?’
‘Without constant pumping, the trench would overflow in a little under two bells.’
‘I bring you a message from your servant, Venitt Sathad, who visited on his way out of the city. He came to observe our progress on the refurbishment of the inn you recently acquired, and was struck with something of a revelation upon seeing the mysterious mechanism we found inside an outbuilding. He further suggested it was imperative that you see it for yourself. Also, he mentioned a collection of artifacts… recovered from this trench, yes?’
The large man was silent for a moment, then he seemed to reach a decision, for he gestured Bugg to follow.
They entered the estate, passing through an elongated, shuttered room in which hung drying herbs, down a corridor and into a workroom dominated by a large table and prism lanterns attached to hinged arms so that, if desired, they could be drawn close or lifted clear when someone was working at the table. Resting on the polished wood surface were a dozen or so objects, both metal and fired clay, not one of which revealed any obvious function.
Rautos Hivanar still silent and standing now at his side, Bugg scanned the objects for a long moment, then reached out and picked up one in particular. Heavy, unmarked by pitting or rust, seamlessly bent almost to right angles.
‘Your engineers,’ Rautos Hivanar said, ‘could determine no purpose to these mechanisms.’
Bugg’s brows rose at the man’s use of the word ‘mechanism’. He hefted the object in his hands.
‘I have attempted to assemble these,’ the merchant continued, ‘to no avail. There are no obvious attachment points, yet, somehow, they seem to me to be of a piece. Perhaps some essential item is still buried beneath the river, but we have found nothing for three days now, barring a wheelbarrow’s worth of stone chips and shards-and these were recovered in a level of sediment far below these artifacts, leading me to believe that they pre-date them by centuries, if not millennia.’
‘Yes,’ Bugg muttered. ‘Eres’al, a mated pair, preparing flint for tools, here on the bank of the vast marsh. He worked the cores, she did the more detailed knapping. They came here for three seasons, then she died in childbirth, and he wandered with a starving babe in his arms until it too died. He found no others of his kind, for they had been scattered after the conflagration of the great forests, the wildfires sweeping out over the plains. The air was thick with ash. He wandered, until he died, and so was the last of his line.’ He stared unseeing at the artifact, even as its weight seemed to burgeon, threatening to tug at his arms, to drag him down to his knees. ‘But Icarium said there would be no end, that the cut thread was but an illusion-in his voice, then, I could hear his father.’
A hand closed on his shoulder and swung him round. Startled, he met Rautos Hivanar’s sharp, glittering eyes. Bugg frowned. ‘Sir?’
‘You-you are inclined to invent stories. Or, perhaps, you are a sage, gifted with unnatural sight. Is this what I am hearing, old man? Tell me, who was this Icarium? Was that the name of the Eres’al? The one who died?’
‘I am sorry, sir.’ He raised the object higher. ‘This artifact-you will find it is identical to the massive object at the inn, barring scale. I believe this is what your servant wanted you to realize-as he himself did when he first looked upon the edifice once we had brought down the walls enclosing it.’
‘Are you certain of all this?’
‘Yes.’ Bugg gestured at the array of items on the table. ‘A central piece is missing, as you suspected, sir. Alas, you will not find it, for it is not physical. The framework that will hold it together is one of energy, not matter. And,’ he added, still in a distracted tone, ‘it has yet to arrive.’
He set the artifact back down and walked from the chamber, back up the corridor, through the dry-rack room, out onto the terrace. Unmindful of the two workers pausing to stare across at him as Rautos Hivanar appeared as if in pursuit-the merchant’s hands were spread, palms up, as if beseeching, although the huge man said not a word, his mouth working in silence, as though he had been struck mute. Bugg’s glance at the large man was momentary. He continued on, along the passage between estate wall and compound wall, to the side postern near the front gate.
He found himself once more on the street, only remotely noticing the passers-by in the cooler shade of afternoon.
It has yet to arrive.
And yet, it comes.
‘Watch where you’re walking, old man!’
‘Leave off him-see how he weeps? It’s an old man’s right to grieve, so leave him be.’
‘Must be blind, the clumsy fool…’
And here, long before this city was bom, there stood a temple, into which Icarium walked-as lost as any son, the child severed from the thread. But the Elder God within could give him nothing. Nothing beyond what he himself was preparing to do.
Could you have imagined, K’rul, how Icarium would, take what you did? Take it into himself as would any child seeking a guiding hand? Where are you, K’rul? Do you sense his return? Do you know what he seeks?
‘Clumsy or not, it’s a question of manners and proper respect.’
Bugg’s threadbare tunic was grasped and he was dragged to one side, then flung up against a wall. He stared at a battered face beneath the rim of a helm. To one side, scowling, another guard.
‘Do you know who we are?’ the man holding him demanded, baring stained teeth.
‘Karos Invictad’s thugs, aye. His private police, the ones who kick in doors at the middle of night. The ones who take mothers from babes, fathers from sons. The ones who, in the righteous glory that comes with unchallenged power, then loot the homes of the arrested, not to mention raping the daughters-’
Bugg was thrown a second time against the wall, the back of his head crunching hard on the pitted brick.
‘For that, bastard,’ the man snarled, ‘you’ll Drown.’
Bugg blinked sweat from his eyes, then, as the thug’s words penetrated, he laughed. ‘Drown? Oh, that’s priceless. Now, take your hands off me or I will lose my temper.’
Instead, the man tightened his hold on the front of Bugg’s tunic, while the other said, ‘You were right, Kanorsos, he needs beating.’
‘The bully’s greatest terror,’ Bugg said, ‘comes when he meets someone bigger and meaner-’
‘And is that you?’
Both men laughed.
Bugg twisted his head, looked round. People were hurrying past-it was never wise to witness such events,
