them. If so, then the answer would be to annihilate them once they are no longer useful.’
‘There is the unpleasant ring of truth to your words, Onrack.’
‘I am generally unpleasant, Trull Sengar.’
‘So I am learning. You say the souls of two Hounds are imprisoned within these-which ones again?’
‘We now walk between them.’
‘What are they doing here, I wonder?’
‘The stone has been shaped to encompass them, Trull Sengar. No-one asks the spirit or the god, when the icon is fashioned, if it wishes entrapment. Do they? The need to make such vessels is a mortal’s need. That one can rest eyes on the thing one worships is an assertion of control at worst, or at best the illusion that one can negotiate over one’s own fate.’
‘And you find such notions suitably pathetic, Onrack?’
‘I find most notions pathetic, Trull Sengar.’
‘Are these beasts trapped for eternity, do you think? Is this where they go when they are destroyed?’
Onrack shrugged. ‘I have no patience with these games. You possess your own knowledge and suspicions, yet would not speak them. Instead, you seek to discover what I know, and what I sense of these snared spirits. I care nothing for the fate either way of these Hounds of Shadow. Indeed, I find it unfortunate that-if these two were slain in some other realm and so have ended up here-there are but five remaining, for that diminishes my chances of killing one myself. And I think I would enjoy killing a Hound of Shadow.’
The Tiste Edur’s laugh was harsh. ‘Well, I won’t deny that confidence counts for a lot. Even so, Onrack of the Logros, I do not think you would walk away from a violent encounter with a Hound.’
The T’lan Imass halted and swung towards Trull Sengar. ‘There is stone, and there is stone.’
‘I am afraid I do not understand-’
In answer, Onrack unsheathed his obsidian sword. He strode up to the nearer of the two statues. The creature’s forepaw was itself taller than the T’lan Imass. He raised his weapon two-handed, then swung a blow against the dark, unweathered stone.
An ear-piercing crack ripped the air.
Onrack staggered, head tilting back as fissures shot up through the enormous edifice.
It seemed to shiver, then exploded into a towering cloud of dust.
Yelling, Trull Sengar leapt back, scrambling as the billowing dust rolled outward to engulf him.
The cloud hissed around Onrack. He righted himself, then dropped into a fighting stance as a darker shape appeared through the swirling grey haze.
A second concussion thundered-this time behind the T’lan Imass-as the other statue exploded. Darkness descended as the twin clouds blotted out the sky, closing the horizons to no more than a dozen paces on all sides.
The beast that emerged before Onrack was as tall at the shoulder as Trull Sengar’s full height. Its hide was colourless, and its eyes burned black. A broad, flat head, small ears…
Faint through the grey gloom, something of the two suns’ light, and that reflected from the moons, reached down-to cast beneath the Hound a score of shadows.
The beast bared fangs the size of tusks, lips peeling back in a silent snarl that revealed blood-red gums.
The Hound attacked.
Onrack’s blade was a midnight blur, flashing to kiss the creature’s thick, muscled neck-but the swing cut only dusty air. The T’lan Imass felt enormous jaws close about his chest. He was yanked from his feet. Bones splintered. A savage shake that ripped the sword from his hands, then he was sailing through the grainy gloom-
To be caught with a grinding snap by a second pair of jaws.
The bones of his left arm shattered into a score of pieces within its taut hide of withered skin, then it was torn entirely from his body.
Another crunching shake, then he was thrown into the air once more. To crash in a splintered heap on the ground, where he rolled once, then was still.
There was thunder in Onrack’s skull. He thought to fall to dust, but for the first time he possessed neither the will nor, it seemed, the capacity to do so.
The power was shorn from him-the Vow had been broken, ripped away from his body. He was now, he realized, as those of his fallen kin, the ones that had sustained so much physical destruction that they had ceased to be one with the T’lan Imass.
He lay unmoving, and felt the heavy tread of one of the Hounds as it padded up to stand over him. A dust- and shard-flecked muzzle nudged him, pushed at the broken ribs of his chest. Then lifted away. He listened to its breathing, the sound like waves riding a tide into caves, could feel its presence like a heaviness in the damp air.
After a long moment, Onrack realized that the beast was no longer looming over him. Nor could he hear the heavy footfalls through the wet earth. As if it and its companion had simply vanished.
Then the scrape of boots close by, a pair of hands dragging him over, onto his back.
Trull Sengar stared down at him. ‘I do not know if you can still hear me,’ he muttered. ‘But if it is any consolation, Onrack of the Logros, those were not Hounds of Shadow. Oh, no, indeed. They were the real ones. The Hounds of Darkness, my friend. I dread to think what you have freed here…”
Onrack managed a reply, his words a soft rasp. ‘So much for gratitude.’
Trull Sengar dragged the shattered T’lan Imass to a low wall at the city’s edge, where he propped the warrior into a sitting position. ‘I wish I knew what else I could do for you,’ he said, stepping back.
‘If my kin were present,’ Onrack said, ‘they would complete the necessary rites. They would sever my head from my body, and find for it a suitable place so that I might look out upon eternity. They would dismember the headless corpse and scatter the limbs. They would take my weapon, to return it to the place of my birth.’
‘Oh.’
‘Of course, you cannot do such things. Thus, I am forced into continuation, despite my present condition.’ With that, Onrack slowly clambered upright, broken bones grinding and crunching, splinters falling away.
Trull grunted, ‘You could have done that before I dragged you.’
‘I regret most the loss of an arm,’ the T’lan Imass said, studying the torn muscles of his left shoulder. ‘My sword is most effective when in the grip of two hands.’ He staggered over to where the weapon lay in the mud. Part of his chest collapsed when he leaned down to retrieve it. Straightening, Onrack faced Trull Sengar. ‘I am no longer able to sense the presence of gates.’
‘They should be obvious enough,’ the’Tiste Edur replied. ‘I expect near the centre of the city. We are quite a pair, aren’t we?’
‘I wonder why the Hounds did not kill you.’
‘They seemed eager to leave.’ Trull set off down the street directly opposite, Onrack following. ‘I am not even certain they noticed me-the dust cloud was thick. Tell me, Onrack. If there were other T’lan Imass here, then they would have done all those things to you? Despite the fact that you remain… functional?’
‘Like you, Trull Sengar, I am now shorn. From the Ritual. From my own kind. My existence is now without meaning. The final task left to me is to seek out the other hunters, to do what must be done.’
The street was layered in thick, wet silt. The low buildings to either side, torn away above the ground level, were similarly coated, smoothing every edge-as if the city was in the process of melting. There was no grand architecture, and the rubble in the streets revealed itself to be little more than fired bricks. There was no sign of life anywhere.
They continued on, their pace torturously slow. The street slowly broadened, forming a vast concourse flanked by pedestals that had once held statues. Brush and uprooted trees marred the vista, all a uniform grey that gradually assumed an unearthly hue beneath the now-dominant blue sun, which in turn painted a large moon the colour of magenta.
At the far end was a bridge, over what had once been a river but was now filled with silt. A tangled mass of detritus had ridden up on one side of the bridge, spilling flotsam onto the walkway. Among the garbage lay a small box.
Trull angled over towards it as they reached the bridge. He crouched down. ‘It seems well sealed,’ he said, reaching out to pry the clasp loose, then lifting the lid. ‘That’s odd. Looks like clay pots. Small ones…’
Onrack moved up alongside the Tiste Edur. ‘They are Moranth munitions, Trull Sengar.’
