House of Chains

awakening.

A presence, there in the dark holes of the face’s eyes.

Karsa heard a howling wind, filling his mind. A thousand souls moaning, the snapping thunder of chains. Growling, he steeled himself before the onslaught, fixed his gaze on his god’s writhing face.

‘Karsa Orlong. We have waited long for this. Three years, the fashioning of this sacred place. You wasted so much time on the two strangers-your fallen friends, the ones who failed where you did not. This temple is not to be sanctified by sentimentality. Their presence offends us. Destroy them this night.’

The seven faces were all wakeful now, and Karsa could feel the weight of their regard, a deathly pressure behind which lurked something… avid, dark and filled with glee.

‘By my hand,’ Karsa said to Urugal, ‘I have brought you to this place. By my hand, you have been freed from your prison of rock in the lands of the Teblor-yes, I am not the fool you believe me to be. You have guided me in this, and now you are come. Your first words are of chastisement? Careful, Urugal. Any carving here can be shattered by my hand, should I so choose.’

He felt their rage, buffeting him, seeking to make him wither beneath the onslaught, yet he stood before it unmoving, and unmoved. The Teblor warrior who would quail before his gods was no more.

‘You have brought us closer,’ Urugal eventually rasped. ‘Close enough to sense the precise location of what we desire. And there you must now go, Karsa Orlong. You have delayed the journey for so long-your journey to ourselves, and on to the path we have set before you. You have hidden too long in the company of this petty spirit who does little more than spit sand.’

‘This path, this journey-to what end? What is it you seek?’

‘Like you, warrior, we seek freedom.’

Karsa was silent. Avid indeed. Then he spoke. ‘I am to travel west. Into the Jhag Odhan.’

He sensed their shock and excitement, then the chorus of suspicion that poured out from the seven gods.

‘West! Indeed, Karsa Orlong. But how do you know this?’ Because, at last, I am my father’s son. ‘I shall leave with the dawn, Urugal. And I will find for you what you desire.’ He could feel their presence fading, and knew instinctively that these gods were not as close to freedom as they wanted him to believe. Nor as powerful.

Urugal had called this clearing a temple, but it was a contested one, and now, as the Seven withdrew, and were suddenly gone, Karsa slowly turned from the faces of the gods, and looked upon those for whom this place had been in truth sanctified. By Karsa’s own hands. In the name of those chains a mortal could wear with pride.

‘My loyalty,’ the Teblor warrior quietly said, ‘was misplaced. I served only glory. Words, my friends. And words can wear false nobility. Disguising brutal truths. The words of the past, that so clothed the Teblor in a hero’s garb-this is what I served. While the true glory was before me. Beside me. You, Delum Thord. And you, Bairoth Gild.’

From the stone statue of Bairoth emerged a distant, weary voice. ‘Lead us, Warleader.’

Karsa flinched. Do I dream this? Then he straightened. ‘I have drawn your spirits to this place. Did you travel in the wake of the Seven?’

‘We have walked the empty lands,’ Bairoth Gild replied. ‘Empty, yet we were not alone. Strangers await us all, Karsa Orlong. This is the truth they would hide from you. We are summoned. We are here.’

‘None,’ came Delum Thord’s voice from the other statue, ‘can defeat you on this journey. You lead the enemy in circles, you defy every prediction, and so deliver the edge of your will. We sought to follow, but could not.’

‘Who, Warleader,’ Bairoth asked, his voice bolder, ‘is our enemy, now?’

Karsa drew himself up before the two Uryd warriors. ‘Witness my answer, my friends. Witness.’

Delum spoke, ‘We failed you, Karsa Orlong. Yet you invite us to walk with you once again.’

Karsa fought back an urge to scream, to unleash a warcry-as if such a challenge might force back the approaching darkness. He could make no sense of his own impulses, the torrential emotions threatening to engulf him. He stared at the carved likeness of his tall friend, the awareness in those unmarred features-Delum Thord before the Forkassal-the Forkrul Assail named Calm-had, on a mountain trail on a distant continent, so casually destroyed him.

Bairoth Gild spoke. ‘We failed you. Do you now ask that we walk with you?’

‘Delum Thord. Bairoth Gild.’ Karsa’s voice was hoarse. ‘It is I who failed you. I would be your warleader once more, if you would so permit me.’

A long moment of silence, then Bairoth replied, ‘At last, something to look forward to.’

Karsa almost fell to his knees, then. Grief, finally unleashed. At an end, his time of solitude. His penance was done. The journey to begin again. Dear Urugal, you shall witness. Oh, how you shall witness.

The hearth was little more than a handful of dying coals. After Felisin Younger left, Heboric sat motionless in the gloom. A short time passed, then he collected an armload of dried dung and rebuilt the fire. The night had chilled him-even the hands he could not see felt cold, like heavy pieces of ice at the end of his wrists.

The only journey that lay ahead of him was a short one, and he must walk it alone. He was blind, but in this no more blind than anyone else. Death’s precipice, whether first glimpsed from afar or discovered with the next step, was ever a surprise. A promise of the sudden cessation of questions, yet there were no answers waiting beyond. Cessation would have to be enough. And so it must be for every mortal. Even as we hunger for resolution. Or, even more delusional: redemption.

Now, after all this time, he was able to realize that every path eventually, inevitably dwindled into a single line of footsteps. There, leading to the very edge. Then… gone. And so, he faced only what every mortal faced. The solitude of death, and oblivion’s final gift that was indifference.

The gods were welcome to wrangle over his soul, to snipe and snap over the paltry feast. And if mortals grieved for him, it was only because by dying he had shaken them from the illusion of unity that comforted life’s journey. One less on the path.

A scratch at the flap entrance, then the hide was drawn aside and someone entered.

‘Would you make of your home a pyre, Ghost Hands?’ The voice was L’oric’s.

The High Mage’s words startled Heboric into a sudden realization of the sweat running down his face, the gusts of fierce heat from the now raging hearth. Unthinking, he had fed the flames with piece after piece of dung.

‘I saw the glow-difficult to miss, old man. Best leave it, now, let it die down.’

‘What do you want, L’oric?’

‘I acknowledge your reluctance to speak of what you know. There is no value, after all, in gifting Bidithal or Febryl with such details. And so I shall not demand that you explain what you’ve sensed regarding this Master of the Deck. Instead, I offer an exchange, and all that we say will remain between the two of us. No-one else.’

‘Why should I trust you? You are hidden-even to Sha’ik. You give no reason as to why you are here. In her cadre, in this war.’

‘That alone should tell you I am not like the others,’ L’oric replied.

Heboric sneered. ‘That earns you less than you might think. There can be no exchange because there is nothing you can tell me that I would be interested in hearing. The schemes of Febryl? The man’s a fool. Bidithal’s perversions? One day a child will slip a knife between his ribs. Korbolo Dom and Kamist Reloe? They war against an empire that is far from dead. Nor will they be treated with honour when they are finally brought before the Empress. No, they are criminals, and for that their souls will burn for eternity. The Whirlwind? That goddess has my contempt, and that contempt does naught but grow. Thus, what could you possibly tell me, L’oric, that I would value?’

‘Only the one thing that might interest you, Heboric Light Touch. Just as this Master of the Deck interests me. I would not cheat you with the exchange. No, I would tell you all that I know of the Hand of Jade, rising from the otataral sands-the Hand that you have touched, that now haunts your dreams.’

‘How could you know these-’ He fell silent. The sweat on his brow was now cold.

‘And how,’ L’oric retorted, ‘can you sense so much from a mere description of the Master’s card? Let us not