light-every torch in its sconce had been capped-yet his eyes could penetrate the gloom, in time to see a score of priests rushing for him.
Shouting a warning, Nimander unsheathed his sword-
The fools were human. In this darkness they were half blind. He slashed out, saw a head roll off shoulders, the body crumpling. A back swing intercepted an arm thrusting a dagger at his chest. The sword’s edge sliced through wrist bones and the severed hand, still gripping the weapon, thumped against his chest before falling away. Angling the sword point back across his torso, Nimander stabbed the one-handed priest in the throat.
In his peripheral vision he caught Clip’s form rolling on to the floor as Skintick freed his arms to defend himself.
The sickly sound of edge biting meat echoed in the chamber, followed by the spatter of blood across tiles.
Nimander stop-thrust another charging priest, the point pushing hard between ribs and piercing the man’s heart. As he fell he sought to trap the sword but Nimander twisted round and with a savage tug tore his weapon free.’
A knife scraped the links of his chain hauberk beneath his left arm and he pulled away and down, cross- stabbing and feeling the sword punch into soft flesh. Stomach acids spurted up the blade and stung his knuckles. The priest folded round the wound. Nimander kicked hard into his leg, shin-high, breaking bones. As the man sagged away, he pushed forward to close against yet another one.
Sword against dagger was no contest. As the poor creature toppled, sobbing from a mortal wound, Nimander whipped his sword free and spun to meet the next attacker.
There were none left standing.
Skintick stood nearby, slamming his still bloodied sword back into the scabbard at his belt, then crouching to retrieve Clip. Desra, weapon dripping, hovered close to Aranatha who, unscathed, walked past, gaze fixed on the set of ornate doors marking some grand inner entranceway. After a moment Desra followed.
From the outer doors the frenzied sounds of fighting continued, human shrieks echoing, bouncing in crazed cacophony. Nimander looked back to see that Kedeviss and Nenanda still held the portal, blood and bile spreading beneath theirhoots to trace along the indents and impressions of the tiles, Nimander stared at that detail, transfixed, until a nudge from Skintick shook him free.
‘Come on,’ Nimander said in a rasp, setting out into Aranatha’s wake.
Desra felt her entire body surging with life. Not even sex could match this feeling, A score of insane priests rushing upon them, and the three of them simply cut them all down. With barely a catch of breath-she had seen Nimander slaughter the last few, with such casual grace that she could only look on in wonder. Oh, he believed himself a poor swordsman, and perhaps when compared to Nenanda, or Kedeviss, he was indeed not their equal. Even so-Bastion, your children should never have challenged us. Should never have pushed us to this.
Now see what you’ve done.
She hurried after her brainless sister.
Skintick wanted to weep, but he knew enough to save that for later, for that final stumble through, into some future place when all this was over and done with, when they could each return to a normal life, an almost peaceful life.
He had never been one for prayers, especially not to Mother Dark, whose heart was cruel, whose denial was an ever-bleeding wound in the Tiste Andii. Yet he prayed none the less. Not to a god or goddess, not to some unknown force at ease with the gift of mercy. No, Skintick prayed for peace.
A world of calm.
He did not know if such a world existed, anywhere. He did not know if one such as he deserved that world. Paradise belonged to the innocent. Which was why it was and would ever remain… empty. And that is what makes it a paradise.
At the outer doors, the slaughter continued. Kedeviss saw Nenanda smiling, and had she the time, she would have slapped him. Hard. Hard enough to shake the glee from his eyes. There was nothing glorious in this. The fools came on and on, crushing each other in their need, and she and Nenanda killed them one by one by one.
Oh, fighting against absurd odds was something they were used to; something they did damnably well. That was no source of pride. Desperate defence demanded expedience and little else. And the Tiste Andii were, above all else, an expedient people.
And so blood spilled down, bodies crumpled at their feet, only to be dragged clear by the next ones to die.
She killed her twentieth worshipper, and he was no different from the nineteenth, no different from the very first one, back there on the steps.
Blood like rain. Blood like tears. It was all so pointless.
Nenanda began laughing. Moments later, the worshippers changed their tactics. With frenzied screams I hey pushed forward en masse, and those Nenanda and Kedeviss mortally wounded were simply heaved ahead, dying, flailing shields of flesh and bone. As the mob drove onward, the two Tiste Andii were forced from the threshold-
And the attackers poured in with triumphant shrieks.
Nenanda stopped laughing.
Nimander was at the inner doorway when he heard the savage cries behind him. Spinning round, he saw Nenanda and Kedeviss retreating under an onslaught of maddened figures. ‘Skintick!’
His cousin shifted Clip’s body on to Nimander’s shoulders, then turned and, drawing his sword once more, plunged into the melee. Nimander staggered into the passageway.
Why! Why are we doing this? We deliver Clip to the Dying God, like a damned sacrifice. Ahead, he saw Desra and Aranatha approaching the far end, where it seemed there was another chamber. The altar room-where he awaits us-‘Stop!’ he shouted.
Only Desra glanced back.
Aranatha strode within.
The reek of burning kelyk assailed Nimander and he stumbled as he moved forward beneath the slack, dragging weight of Clip’s unconscious form. The raw glyphs swarmed on the walls to either side. Projecting busts of some past deity showed battered faces, sections crushed and others sheared off by recent demolition. Lone eyes leered down. Half-mouths smiled with a jester’s crook. Passing by one after another.
Trembling, Nimander forced himself forward. He saw Desra stride after Aranatha.
The glyphs began weeping, and all at once he felt as if time itself was dissolving. Sudden blindness, the terrible sounds of fighting behind him diminishing, as if pulled far away, until only the rush of blood remained, a storm in his head.
Through which, faintly and then rising, came a child’s voice. Singing softly.
Seerdomin emerged from Night, squinted against the mid-morning glare. Silver clouds ahead, heaped above the barrow like the sky’s detritus. Rain slanted down on the mound.
Tulwar in his hand, he hurried on, boots slipping in the salt-crusted mud of the track.
She had gone out, alone.
Spinnock Durav-the only friend he had left-had professed his love for her. But he had not understood-yes, she would refuse his help. But such refusal must be denied. He should have comprehended that.
Gods below, this was not Seerdomin’s fight. She was not his fight. Yet lie found hlmsell driven on, cold wlth fear, feverish with dread, and every-thing that he saw around him seemed to scream its details, as if even the mun-dane truths could burn, could sting like acid in his eyes. Ruts and broken spokes, potsherds, pools of opaque water, exposed roots like the hackles of the earth each one ferociously demanding his attention. We are as it is, they seemed to shout, we are all there is! We are-
Not his fight, but Spinnock had not understood. He was Tiste Andii. He was a creature of centuries and what was avoided one day could be addressed later-decades, millennia, ages later. In their eyes, nothing changed. Nothing could change. They were a fallen people. The dream of getting back up had faded to dust.
She had gone out. Alone. Out where the conspirators strutted in the light of day, insanely plotting the return of suffering. Where they abused the sanctuary of an indifferent god. Maybe she was now back among her kind-if that was true, then Spinnock Durav deserved to hear the truth of that.
A rat slithered into the ditch a few strides ahead. He drew closer to the filth of the encampment, its stench so foul not even the rain could wash it away.
Would he be challenged? He hoped so. If the conspirators hid themselves, he might have trouble rooting them
