‘And I yours, Chosen One.’
‘I come here to wonder,’ she said as he walked into view around the altar to stand facing her.
‘Can you guess what it is I wonder about?’ she asked.
‘No.’
The almost-faded pocks of bloodfly scars only showed themselves when she smiled. ‘The gift of the goddess…’ the smile grew strained, ‘offers only destruction.’
He glanced away, studied the nearby trees. ‘This grove will resist in the way of Raraku,’ he rumbled. ‘It is stone. And stone holds fast.’
‘For a while,’ she muttered, her smile falling away. ‘But there remains that within me that urges… creation.’
‘Have a baby.’
Her laugh was almost a yelp. ‘Oh, you hulking fool, Toblakai. I should welcome your company more often.’
She waved a small hand at the book in her lap. ‘Dryjhna was an author who, to be gracious, lived with malnourished talent. There are naught but bones in this tome, I am afraid. Obsessed with the taking of life, the annihilation of order. Yet not once does he offer anything in its stead. There is no rebirth among the ashes of his vision, and that saddens me. Does it sadden you, Toblakai?’
He stared down at her for a long moment, then said, ‘Come.’
Shrugging, she set the book down on the altar and rose, straightening the plain, worn, colourless telaba that hung loose over her curved body.
He led her into the rows of bone-white trees. She followed in silence.
Thirty paces, then another small clearing, this one ringed tight in thick, petrified boles. A squat, rectangular mason’s chest sat in the skeletal shade cast down by the branches-which had remained intact down to the very twigs. Toblakai stepped to one side, studied her face as she stared in silence at his works-in-progress.
Before them, the trunks of two of the trees ringing the clearing had been reshaped beneath chisel and pick. Two warriors stared out with sightless eyes, one slightly shorter than Toblakai but far more robust, the other taller and thinner.
He saw that her breath had quickened, a slight flush on her cheeks. ‘You have talent… rough, but driven,’ she murmured without pulling her eyes from their study. ‘Do you intend to ring the entire clearing with such formidable warriors?’
‘No. The others will be… different.’
Her head turned at a sound. She stepped quickly closer to Karsa. ‘A snake.’
He nodded. ‘There will be more, coming from all sides. The clearing will be filled with snakes, should we choose to remain here.’
‘Flare-necks.’
‘And others. They won’t bite or spit, however. They never do. They come… to watch.’
She shot him a searching glance, then shivered slightly. ‘What power manifests here? It is not the Whirlwind’s-’
‘No. Nor do I have a name for it. Perhaps the Holy Desert itself.’
She slowly shook her head to that. ‘I think you are wrong. The power, I believe, is yours.’
He shrugged. ‘We shall see, when I have done them all.’
‘How many?’
‘Besides Bairoth and Delum Thord? Seven.’
She frowned. ‘One for each of the Holy Protectors?’
No. ‘Perhaps. I have not decided. These two you see, they were my friends. Now dead.’ He paused, then added, ‘I had but two friends.’
She seemed to flinch slightly at that. ‘What of Leoman? What of Mathok? What of… me?’
‘I have no plans on carving your likenesses here.’
‘That is not what I meant.’
‘When I was young, I wrote poetry, in the path that my mother already walked. Did you know that?’
He smiled at the word ‘young’ but replied in all seriousness, ‘No, I did not.’
‘I… I have resurrected the habit.’
‘May it serve you well.’
She must have sensed something of the blood-slick edge underlying his statement, for her expression tightened. ‘But that is never its purpose, is it. To
‘Confusing the pattern.’
‘As you say. It is far too easy to see you as a knot-browed barbarian, Toblakai. No, the drive to create is something other, isn’t it? Have you an answer?’
He shrugged. ‘If one exists, it will only be found in the search-and searching is at creation’s heart, Chosen One.’
She stared at the statues once more. ‘And what are you searching for? With these… old friends?’
‘I do not know. Yet.’
‘Perhaps they will tell you, one day.’
The snakes surrounded them by the hundreds now, slithering unremarked by either over their feet, around their ankles, heads lifting again and again to flick tongues towards the carved trunks.
‘Thank you, Toblakai,’ Sha’ik murmured. ‘I am humbled… and revived.’
‘There is trouble in your city, Chosen One.’
She nodded. ‘I know.’
‘Are you the calm at its heart?’
A bitter smile twisted her lips as she turned away. ‘Will these serpents permit us to leave?’
‘Of course. But do not step. Instead, shuffle. Slowly. They will open for you a path.’
‘I should be alarmed by all this,’ she said as she edged back on their path.
‘Thank you, yes.’
He watched her make her way out of the clearing. There were vows wrapped tight around Toblakai’s soul. Slowly constricting. Some time soon, something would break. He knew not which, but if Leoman had taught him one thing, it was patience.
When she was gone, the warrior swung about and approached the mason’s chest.
Dust on the hands, a ghostly patina, tinted faintly pink by the raging red storm encircling the world.
The heat of the day was but an illusion in Raraku. With the descent of darkness, the desert’s dead bones quickly cast off the sun’s shimmering, fevered breath. The wind grew chill and the sands erupted with crawling, buzzing life, like vermin emerging from a corpse. Rhizan flitted in a frenzied wild hunt through the clouds of capemoths and chigger fleas above the tent city sprawled in the ruins. In the distance desert wolves howled as if hunted by ghosts.
Heboric lived in a modest tent raised around a ring of stones that had once provided the foundation for a granary. His abode was situated well away from the settlement’s centre, surrounded by the yurts of one of Mathok’s desert tribes. Old rugs covered the floor. Off to one side a small table of piled bricks held a brazier, sufficient for cooking if not warmth. A cask of well-water stood nearby, flavoured with amber wine. A half-dozen flickering oil lamps suffused the interior with yellow light.
He sat alone, the pungent aroma of the hen’bara tea sweet in the cooling air. Outside, the sounds of the settling tribe offered a comforting background, close enough and chaotic enough to keep scattered and random his thoughts. Only later, when sleep claimed all those around him, would the relentless assault begin, the vertiginous visions of a face of jade, so massive it challenged comprehension. Power both alien and earthly, as if born of a
