House of Chains

He continued on.

Eventually, the air grew colder, and frost glittered amidst the lichen and moss to either side of the wide trail. The smell of rotting ice filled Karsa’s nose. Another thousand paces brought him to the first dirt-studded sweep of snow, filling a shallow valley on his right. Then shattered chunks of ice, half buried in the ground as if they had fallen from the sky, many of them larger than a lowlander wagon. The land itself was more broken here, the gentle roll giving way to sharp-walled drainage gullies and channels, to upthrust hillsides revealing banded sandstone beneath the frozen, thick skin of peat. Fissures in the stone gleamed with greenish ice.

Bairoth Gild spoke. ‘We are now at the border of a new warren, Warleader. A warren inimical to the army that arrived here. And so, a war was waged.’

‘How far have I travelled, Bairoth Gild? In my world, am I approaching Ugarat? Sarpachiya?’

The ghost’s laughter was like a boulder rolled over gravel. ‘They are behind you now, Karsa Orlong. You approach the land known as the Jhag Odhan.’

It had seemed no more than a half-day’s worth of travel in this dream world.

Signs of the army’s passage grew less distinct, the ground underfoot frozen rock hard and now consisting mostly of rounded stones. Ahead, a plain studded with huge flat slabs of black rock.

Moments later, Karsa was moving among them.

There were bodies beneath the stones. Pinned down.

‘Will you free these, Karsa Orlong?’

‘No, Delum Thord, I shall not. I shall pass through this place, disturbing nothing.’

‘Yet these are not Forkrul Assail. Many are dead, for they had not the power their kind once possessed. While others remain alive, and will not die for a long time. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. Karsa Orlong, do you no longer believe in mercy?’

‘My beliefs are my own, Delum Thord. I shall not undo what I do not understand, and that is all.’

He travelled on, and soon left the terrible plain behind.

Before him now stretched a field of ice, crack-riven, with pools of water reflecting the silver sky. Bones were scattered on it, from hundreds, perhaps thousands of figures. Bones of a type he had seen before. Some still sheathed in withered skin and muscle. Shards of stone weapons lay among them, along with fragments of fur, antlered helms and torn, rotting hides.

The fallen warriors formed a vast semicircle around a low, square-walled tower. Its battered stones were limned in runnelled ice, its doorway gaping, the interior dark.

Karsa picked his way across the field, his moccasins crunching through the ice and snow.

The tower’s doorway was tall enough to permit the Teblor to stride through without ducking. A single room lay within. Broken furniture and the pieces of more fallen warriors cluttered the stone floor. A spiral staircase that seemed made entirely of iron rose from the centre.

From what he could determine from the wreckage, the furniture was of a scale to suit a Teblor, rather than a lowlander.

Karsa made his way up the ice-sheathed staircase.

There was a single level above, a high-ceilinged chamber that had once held wooden shelves on all four walls. Torn scrolls, bound books ripped apart, vials and clay jars containing various pungent mixes crushed underfoot, a large table split in half and pushed up against one wall, and on a cleared space on the floor…

Karsa stepped off the landing and looked down.

‘Thelomen Toblakai, welcome to my humble abode.’

Karsa scowled. ‘I crossed blades with one much like you. He was named Icarium. Like you, yet less so.’

‘Because he is a half-blood, of course. Whilst I am not. Jaghut, not Jhag.’

She lay spread-eagled within a ring of fist-sized stones. A larger stone rested on her chest, from which heat rose in waves. The air in the chamber was a swirling mix of steam and suspended frost.

‘You are trapped within sorcery. The army was seeking you, yet they did not kill you.’

‘Could not would be more accurate. Not immediately, in any case. But eventually, this Tellann Ritual will destroy this core of Omtose Phellack, which will in turn lead to the death of the Jhag Odhan-even now, the north forest creeps onto the plains, whilst from the south the desert claims ever more of the odhan that was my home.’

‘Your refuge.’

She bared her tusks in something like a smile. ‘Among the Jaghut, they are now one and the same, Thelomen Toblakai.’

Karsa looked around, studying the wreckage. He saw no weapons; nor was the woman wearing armour. ‘When this core of Omtose Phellack dies, so will you, yes? Yet you spoke only of the Jhag Odhan. As if your own death was of less importance than that of this land.’

‘It is less important. On the Jhag Odhan, the past lives still. Not just in my fallen kin, the Jhag-the few that managed to escape the Logros T’lan Imass. There are ancient beasts that walk the treeless lands beside the sheets of ice. Beasts that have died out everywhere else, mostly on the spears of the T’lan Imass. But there were no Imass in the Jhag Odhan. As you said, a refuge.’

‘Beasts. Including Jhag horses?’

He watched her strange eyes narrow. The pupils were vertical, surrounded in pearlescent grey. ‘The horses we once bred to ride. Yes, they have gone feral in the odhan. Though few remain, for the Trell come from the west to hunt them. Every year. They drive them off cliffs. As they do to many of the other beasts.’

‘Why did you not seek to stop them?’

‘Because, dear warrior, I was hiding.’

‘A tactic that failed.’

‘A scouting party of T’lan Imass discovered me. I destroyed most of them, but one escaped. From that moment, I knew their army would come, eventually. Granted, they took their time about it, but time is what they have aplenty.’

‘A scouting party? How many did you destroy?’

‘Seven.’

‘And are their remains among those surrounding this tower?’

She smiled again. ‘I would think not, Thelomen Toblakai. To the T’lan Imass, destruction is failure. Failure must be punished. Their methods are… elaborate.’

‘Yet what of the warriors lying below, and those around the tower?’

‘Fallen, but not in failure. Here I lie, after all.’

‘Enemies should be killed,’ the Teblor growled, ‘not imprisoned.’

‘I would not argue that sentiment,’ the Jaghut replied.

‘I sense nothing evil from you.’

‘It has been a long time since I heard that word. In the wars with the T’lan Imass, even, that word had no place.’

‘I must answer injustice,’ he rumbled.

‘As you will.’

‘The need overwhelms all caution. Delum Thord would smile.’

‘Who is Delum Thord?’

Not answering, Karsa unslung his pack then threw off his bear cloak and stepped towards the ring of stones.

‘Stay back, warrior!’ the Jaghut hissed. ‘This is High Tellann-’

‘And I am Karsa Orlong, of the Teblor,’ the warrior growled. He kicked at the nearest stones.

Searing flame swept up to engulf Karsa. He snarled and pushed his way through it, reaching down both hands to take the slab of stone, grunting as he lifted it from the woman’s chest. The flames swarmed him, seeking to rend his flesh from his bones, but his growl simply deepened. Pivoting, flinging the huge slab to one side. Where it struck a wall, and shattered.

The flames died.

Karsa shook himself, then looked down once more.

The ring was now broken. The Jaghut’s eyes were wide as she stared up at him, movement stirring her limbs.