‘And what is this purpose, Trull Sengar?’
The man looked away, closed his eyes. ‘Terrible, Onrack. A terrible purpose.’
The T’lan Imass warrior swung to the corpse of the creature he had slain, drew forth an obsidian knife. ‘I am familiar with terrible purposes,’ he said as he began cutting meat.
‘I shall tell you my tale now, as I said I would. So you understand what you now face.’
‘No, Trull Sengar. Tell me nothing more.’
‘But why?’
The beast’s sizzling flesh smelled like seal meat. A short time later, while Trull Sengar ate, Onrack moved to the edge of the wall facing onto the marsh. The flood waters had found old basins in the landscape, from which gases now leaked upward to drift in pale smears over the thick, percolating surface. Thicker fog obscured the horizon, but the T’lan Imass thought he could sense a rising of elevation, a range of low, humped hills.
‘It’s getting lighter,’ Trull Sengar said from where he lay beside the hearth. ‘The sky is glowing in places. There… and there.’
Onrack lifted his head. The sky had been an unrelieved sea of pewter, darkening every now and then to loose a deluge of rain, though that had grown more infrequent of late. But now rents had appeared, ragged-edged. A swollen orb of yellow light commanded one entire horizon, the wall ahead seeming to drive towards its very heart; whilst directly overhead hung a smaller circle of blurred fire, this one rimmed in blue. ‘The suns return,’ the Tiste Edur murmured. ‘Here, in the Nascent, the ancient twin hearts of Kurald Emurlahn live on. There was no way of telling, for we did not rediscover this warren until after the Breach. The flood waters must have brought chaos to the climate. And destroyed the civilization that existed here.’
Onrack looked down. ‘Were they Tiste Edur?’
The man shook his head. ‘No, more like your descendants, Onrack. Although the corpses we saw here along the wall were badly decayed.’ Trull grimaced. ‘They are as vermin, these humans of yours.’
‘Not mine,’ Onrack replied.
‘You feel no pride, then, at their insipid success?’
The T’lan Imass cocked his head. ‘They are prone to mistakes, Trull Sengar. The Logros have killed them in their thousands when the need to reassert order made doing so necessary. With ever greater frequency they annihilate themselves, for success breeds contempt for those very qualities that purchased it.’
‘It seems you’ve given this some thought.’
Onrack shrugged in a clatter of bones. ‘More than my kin, perhaps, the edge of my irritation with humankind remains jagged.’
The Tiste Edur was attempting to stand, his motions slow and deliberate. ‘The Nascent required… cleansing,’ he said, his tone bitter, ‘or so it was judged.’
‘Your methods,’ Onrack said, ‘are more extreme than what the Logros would choose.’
Managing to totter upright, Trull Sengar faced the T’lan Imass with a wry grin. ‘Sometimes, friend, what is begun proves too powerful to contain.’
‘Such is the curse of success.’
Trull seemed to wince at the words, and he turned away. ‘I must needs find fresh, clean water.’
‘How long had you been chained?’
The man shrugged. ‘Long, I suppose. The sorcery within the Shorning was designed to prolong suffering. Your sword severed its power, and now the mundane requirements of the flesh return.’
The suns were burning through the clouds, their combined heat filling the air with humidity. The overcast was shredding apart, vanishing before their very eyes. Onrack studied the blazing orbs once more. ‘There has been no night,’ he said.
‘Not in the summer, no. The winters, it’s said, are another matter. At the same time, with the deluge I suspect it is fruitless to predict what will come. Personally, I have no wish to find out.’
‘We must leave this wall,’ the T’lan Imass said after a moment.
‘Aye, before it collapses entirely. I think I can see hills in the distance.’
‘If you have the strength, clasp your arms about me,’ Onrack said, ‘and I will climb down. We can skirt the basins. If any local animals survived, they will be on higher ground. Do you wish to collect and cook more from this beast?’
‘No. It is less than palatable.’
‘That is not surprising, Trull Sengar. It is a carnivore, and has fed long on rotting flesh.’
The ground was sodden underfoot when they finally reached the base of the wall. Swarms of insects rose around them, closing on the Tiste Edur with frenzied hunger. Onrack allowed his companion to set the pace as they made their way between the water-filled basins. The air was humid enough to sheathe their bodies, soaking through the clothing they wore. Although there was no wind at ground level, the clouds overhead had stretched into streamers, racing to overtake them then scudding on to mass against the range of hills, where the sky grew ever darker.
‘We are heading right towards a squall,’ Trull muttered, waving his arms about to disperse the midges.
‘When it breaks, this land will flood,’ Onrack noted. ‘Are you capable of increasing your pace?’
‘No.’
‘Then I shall have to carry you.’
‘Carry, or drag?’
‘Which do you prefer?’
‘Carrying seems somewhat less humiliating.’
Onrack returned his sword to its loop in the shoulder harness. Though the warrior was judged tall among his own kind, the Tiste Edur was taller, by almost the length of a forearm. The T’lan Imass had the man sit down on the ground, knees drawn up, then Onrack squatted and slipped one arm beneath Trull’s knees, the other below his shoulder blades. Tendons creaking, the warrior straightened.
‘There’s fresh gouges all around your skull, or what’s left of it at any rate,’ the Tiste Edur noted.
Onrack said nothing. He set forth at a steady jog. Before long a wind arrived, tumbling down from the hills, growing to such force that the T’lan Imass had to lean forward, his feet thumping along the gravel ridges between the pools. The midges were quickly swept away.
There was, Onrack realized, a strange regularity to the hills ahead. There were seven in all, arrayed in what seemed a straight line, each of equal height though uniquely misshapen. The storm clouds were piling well behind them, corkscrewing in bulging columns skyward above an enormous range of mountains.
The wind howled against Onrack’s desiccated face, snapped at the strands of his gold-streaked hair, thrummed with a low-pitched drone through the leather strips of his harness. Trull Sengar was hunched against him, head ducked away from the shrieking blast.
Lightning bridged the heaving columns, the thunder long in reaching them.
The hills were not hills at all. They were edifices, massive and hulking, constructed from a smooth black stone, seemingly each a single piece. Twenty or more man-lengths high. Dog-like beasts, broad-skulled and small- eared, thickly muscled, heads lowered towards the two travellers and the distant wall behind them, the vast pits of their eyes faintly gleaming a deep, translucent amber. Onrack’s steps slowed. But did not halt.
The basins had been left behind, the ground underfoot slick with wind-borne rain but otherwise solid. The T’lan Imass angled his approach towards the nearest monument. As they came closer, they moved into the statue’s lee.
The sudden falling off of the wind was accompanied by a cavernous silence, the wind to either side oddly mute and distant. Onrack set Trull Sengar down.
The Tiste Edur’s bewildered gaze found the edifice rearing before them. He was silent, slow to stand as Onrack moved past him. ‘Beyond,’ Trull quietly murmured, ‘there should be a gate.’ Pausing, Onrack slowly swung round to study his companion. ‘This is your warren,’ he said after a moment. ‘What do you sense of these… monuments?’
‘Nothing, but I know what they are meant to represent… as do you. It seems the inhabitants of this realm made them into their gods.’
