The tall figure stopped. ‘I see no reason to answer your questions.’
‘I am concerned… for my companion. If she’s alive, she’s somewhere above us, on the surface. You said you were under attack. I fear for her-’
‘We sense the presence of strangers, Cutter. Above us, there are Tiste Edur. But no-one else. She is drowned, this companion of yours. There is no point in holding out hope.’
The Daru sat down suddenly. He felt sick, his heart stuttering with anguish. And despair.
‘Death is not an unkind fate,’ Darist said above him. ‘If she was a friend, you will miss her company, and that is the true source of your grief-your sorrow is for yourself. My words may displease you, but I speak from experience. I have felt the deaths of many of my kin, and I mourn the spaces in my life where they once stood. But such losses serve only to ease my own impending demise.’
Cutter stared up at the Tiste Andu. ‘Darist, forgive me. You may be old, but you are also a damned fool. And I begin to understand why Rake left you here then forgot about you. Now, kindly shut up.’ He pushed himself upright, feeling hollowed out inside, but determined not to surrender to the despair that threatened to overwhelm him.
‘Your anger leaves me undamaged,’ Darist said. He turned and gestured to the double doors directly ahead. ‘Through here you will find a place to rest. Your salvage awaits there, as well.’
‘Will you tell me nothing of the battle above?’
‘What is there to tell you, Cutter? We have lost.’
‘Lost! Who is left among you?’
‘Here in the Hold, where stands the Throne, there is only me. Now, best rest. We shall have company soon enough.’
The howls of rage reverberated through Onrack’s bones, though he knew his companion could hear nothing. These were cries of the spirits-two spirits, trapped within two of the towering, bestial statues rearing up on the plain before them.
The cloud cover overhead had broken apart, was fast vanishing in thinning threads. Three moons rode the heavens, and there were two suns. The light flowed with shifting hues as the moons swung on their invisible tethers. A strange, unsettling world, Onrack reflected.
The storm was spent. They had waited in the lee of a small hill while it thrashed around the gargantuan statues, the wind howling past from its wild race through the rubble-littered streets of the ruined city lying beyond. And now the air steamed.
‘What do you see, T’lan Imass?’ Trull asked from where he sat hunched, his back to the edifices.
Shrugging, the T’lan Imass turned away from his lengthy study of the statues. ‘There are mysteries here… of which I suspect you know more than I.’
The Tiste Edur glanced up with a wry expression. ‘That seems unlikely. What do you know of the Hounds of Shadow?’
‘Very little. The Logros crossed paths with them only once, long ago, in the time of the First Empire. Seven in number. Serving an unknown master, yet bent on destruction.’
Trull smiled oddly, then asked, ‘The human First Empire, or yours?’
‘I know little of the human empire of that name. We were drawn into its heart but once, Trull Sengar, in answer to the chaos of the Soletaken and D’ivers. The Hounds made no appearance during that slaughter.’ Onrack looked back at the massive stone Hound before them. ‘It is believed,’ he said slowly, ‘by the bonecasters, that to create an icon of a spirit or a god is to capture its essence within that icon. Even the laying of stones prescribes confinement. Just as a hut can measure out the limits of power for a mortal, so too are spirits and gods sealed into a chosen place of earth or stone or wood… or an object. In this way power is chained, and so becomes manageable. Tell me, do the Tiste Edur concur with that notion?’
Trull Sengar climbed to his feet. ‘Do you think we raised these giant statues, Onrack? Do your bonecasters also believe that power begins as a thing devoid of shape, and thus beyond control? And that to carve out an icon- or make a circle of stones-actually forces order upon that power?’
Onrack cocked his head, was silent for a time. ‘Then it must be that we make our own gods and spirits. That belief demands shape, and shaping brings life into being. Yet were not the Tiste Edur fashioned by Mother Dark? Did not your goddess
Trull’s smile broadened. ‘I was referring to these statues, Onrack. To answer you-I do not know if the hands that fashioned these were Tiste Edur. As for Mother Dark, it may be that in creating us, she but simply separated what was not separate before.’
‘Are you then the shadows of Tiste Andu? Torn free by the mercy of your goddess mother?’
‘But Onrack, we are all torn free.’
‘Two of the Hounds are here, Trull Sengar. Their souls are trapped in the stone. And one more thing of note- these likenesses cast no shadows.’
‘Nor do the Hounds themselves.’
‘If they are but reflections, then there must be Hounds of Darkness, from which they were torn,’ Onrack persisted. ‘Yet there is no knowledge of such…’ The T’lan Imass suddenly fell silent.
Trull laughed. ‘It seems you know more of the human First Empire than you first indicated. What was that tyrant emperor’s name? No matter. We should journey onward, to the gate-’
‘Dessimbelackis,’ Onrack whispered. ‘The founder of the human First Empire. Long vanished by the time of the unleashing of the Beast Ritual. It was believed he had… veered.’
‘D’ivers?’
‘Aye.’
‘And beasts numbered?’
‘Seven.’
Trull stared up at the statues, then gestured. ‘We didn’t build these. No, I am not certain, but in my heart I feel… no empathy. They are ominous and brutal to my eyes, T’lan Imass. The Hounds of Shadow are not worthy of worship. They are indeed untethered, wild and deadly. To truly command them, one must sit in the Throne of Shadow-as master of the realm. But more than that. One must first draw together the disparate fragments. Making Kurald Emurlahn whole once more.’
‘And this is what your kin seek,’ Onrack rumbled. ‘The possibility troubles me.’
The Tiste Edur studied the T’lan Imass, then shrugged. ‘I did not share your distress at the prospect-not at first. And indeed, had it remained… pure, perhaps I would still be standing alongside my brothers. But another power acts behind the veil in all this-I know not who or what, but I would tear aside that veil.’
‘Why?’
Trull seemed startled by the question, then he shivered. ‘Because what it has made of my people is an abomination, Onrack.’
The T’lan Imass set out towards the gap between the two nearest statues.
After a moment, Trull Sengar followed. ‘I imagine you know little of what it is like to see your kin fall into dissolution, to see the spirit of an entire people grow corrupt, to struggle endlessly to open their eyes-as yours have been opened by whatever clarity chance has gifted you.’
‘True,’ Onrack replied, his steps thumping the sodden ground.
‘Nor is it mere naivete,’ the Tiste Edur went on, limping in Onrack’s wake. ‘Our denial is wilful, our studied indifference conveniently self-serving to our basest desires. We are a long-lived people who now kneel before short-term interests-’
‘If you find that unusual,’ the T’lan Imass muttered, ‘then it follows that the one behind the veil has need for you only in the short term-if indeed that hidden power is manipulating the Tiste Edur.’
‘An interesting thought. You may well be right. The question then is, once that short-term objective is reached, what will happen to my people?’
‘Things that outlive their usefulness are discarded,’ Onrack replied.
‘Abandoned. Yes-’
‘Unless, of course,’ the T’lan Imass went on, ‘they would then pose a threat to one who had so exploited
