'Alas, would that I could make such a promise.'
'He cannot,' said Onrack. 'Minala, he now in truth sets out on an unseen path. It is my belief that we shall not see him again.'
'Thank you for the vote of confidence,' Cotillion said.
'My friend has seen better days,' Trull Sengar said, reaching out to slap Onrack on the back. The thump the blow made was hollow, raising dust, and something clattered down within the warrior's chest. 'Oh,' said the Tiste Edur, 'did that do something bad?'
'No,' Onrack replied. 'The broken point of a spear. It had been lodged in bone.'
'Was it irritating you?'
'Only the modest sound it made when I walked. Thank you, Trull Sengar.'
Cotillion eyed the two. What mortal would call a T'lan Imass friend?
And, they fight side by side. I would know more of this Trull Sengar.
But, as with so many things lately, there was no time for that.
Sighing, he turned, and saw that the youth Panek now guarded the choke-point, in Ibra Gholan's absence.
The god headed that way.
Panek swung to face him. 'I miss him,' he said.
'Who?'
'Edgewalker.'
'Why? I doubt that sack of bones could fight his way out of a birchbark coffin.'
'Not to fight at our sides, Uncle. We will hold here. Mother worries too much.'
'Which mother?'
A hideous, sharp-toothed smile. 'Both.'
'Why do you miss Edgewalker, then?'
'For his stories.'
'Oh, those.'
'The dragons. The foolish ones, the wise ones, the living ones and the dead ones. If every world were but a place on the board, they would be the game pieces. Yet no single hand directs them. Each is wild, a will unto itself. And then there are the shadows – Edgewalker explained about those – the ones you can't see.'
'He explained, did he? Well, clearly the hoary bastard likes you more than he does me.'
'They all cast shadows, Uncle,' Panek said. 'Into your realm. Every one of them. That's why there's so many prisoners.'
Cotillion frowned, then, slowly, inexorably as comprehension dawned, the god's eyes widened.
Trull Sengar watched the god move past Panek, one hand tracking along the stone wall, as if Cotillion were suddenly drunk. 'I wonder what that was all about? You'd think Panek just kneed him between the legs.'
'He'd earn a kiss from me if he did that,' Minala said.
'You're too harsh,' Trull said. 'I feel sorry for Cotillion.'
'Then you're an idiot, but of course I've known the truth of that for months.'
He smiled across at her, said nothing.
Minala now eyed the uneven entrance to the chamber of the First Throne. 'What are they doing in there? They never go in there.'
'Considering implications, I suppose,' Trull said.
'And where's Shadowthrone? He's supposed to be here by now. If we get attacked right now…'
We're dead. Trull leaned more heavily on the spear, to ease the weight on his left leg, which was hurting more – marginally – than his right.
Or at least I am. But that's likely whether or not I get healed, once my kin decide to take this seriously. He did not understand their half-hearted skirmishing, the tentative probing by the Den-Ratha. And why were they bothering at all? If they hungered for a throne, it would be that of Shadow, not this petrified bone monstrosity they call the First Throne. But, thinking on it, maybe this does indeed make sense. They have allied themselves with the Crippled God, and with the Unbound T'lan Imass who now serve the Chained One. But my Tiste Edur place little weight on alliances with non-Edur. Maybe that's why all they've done thus far is token blood-letting. A single warlock and veteran warriors and this little fete would be over.
And they would come – they will come, once I am recognized. Yet he could not hide himself from their eyes; he could not stand back whilst they slaughtered these young humans who knew nothing of life, who were soldiers in name only. These lessons of cruelty and brutality did not belong in what a child needed to learn, in what a child should learn.
And a world in which children were subjected to such things was a world in which compassion was a hollow word, its echoes a chorus of mockery and cold contempt.
Four skirmishes. Four, and Minala was now mother to seven hundred destroyed lives, almost half of them facing the mercy of death… until Shadowthrone appears, with his edged gift, in itself cold and heartless.
'Your face betrays you, Trull Sengar. You are driven to weeping yet again.'
The Edur looked across at Onrack, then over to where Minala now stood with Panek. 'Her rage is her armour, friend. And that is my greatest weakness, that I cannot conjure the same within myself. Instead, I stand here, waiting. For the next attack, for the return of the terrible music – the screams, the pain and the dying, the deafening roar of the futility our battle-lust creates… with every clash of sword and spear.'
'Yet, you do not surrender,' the T'lan Imass said.
'I cannot.'
'The music you hear in battle is incomplete, Trull Sengar.'
'What do you mean?'
'Even as I stand at your side, I can hear Minala's prayers, whether she is near us or not. Even when she drags wounded and dying children back, away from danger, I hear her. She prays, Trull Sengar, that you do not fall. That you fight on, that the miracle that is you and the spear you wield shall never fail her. Never fail her and her children.'
Trull Sengar turned away.
'Ah,' Onrack said, 'with your tears suddenly loosed, I friend, I see my error. Where I sought by my words to instil pride in you, I defeat your own armour and wound you deeply. With despair. I am sorry. There remains so much of what it is to live that I have forgotten.' The battered warrior regarded Trull in silence for a moment, then added, '
Perhaps I can give you something else, something more… hopeful.'
'Please try,' Trull said in a whisper.
'At times, down in this chasm, I smell something, a presence. It is faint, animal. It… comforts me, although I do not know why, for I cannot comprehend its source. In those times, Trull Sengar, I feel as if we are being observed. We are being watched by unseen eyes, and in those eyes there is vast compassion.'
'Do you say this only to ease my pain, Onrack?'
'No, I would not so deceive you.'
'What – who does it come from?'
'I do not know – but I have seen that it affects Monok Ochem. Even Ibra Gholan. I sense their disquiet, and this, too, comforts me.'
'Well,' rasped a voice beside them, 'it isn't me.' Shadows coalescing, creating a hunched, hooded shape, wavering indistinct, as if reluctant to commit itself to any particular existence, any single reality.
'Shadowthrone.'
'Healing, yes? Very well. But I have little time. We must hurry, do you understand? Hurry!'
Renewed, once again, to face what will come. Would that I had my own prayers. Comforting words in my mind… to drown out the screams all around me. To drown out my own.
