Toll the Hounds

‘Clever question! From the wagon bloodwood, blackwood, the pitch and the pitch ever leaking out, ever sweating from the grain.’

‘Could I hover high up, as you say,’ asked Ditch, ‘what scene would I see?’

‘Wanderings, Holds, Houses, every god, every goddess, every spirit worth men-tioning. Demon kings and demon queens. Dragons and Elders-oh, all there, all there. All there. Is this where you mean to stay, friend? Is this where you mean to stay?’

Ditch thought of this creature hunkered up against him, that bone needle pricking his skin. ‘No. I plan on crawling round, as much as I can, never stopping. Leave me out of your scene.’

‘You cannot do that! You will ruin everything!’

‘Imagine me invisible, then. Imagine I don’t even exist-I will stay out of your way.’

The sightless eyes were glistening and the Tiste Andii was shaking his head again and again.

‘You will not have me,’ Ditch said. ‘Besides, it will all be ending soon.’

‘Soon? How soon? How soon? How soon? How soon?’

‘The storm looks to be no more than a league behind us.’

‘If you will not join the scene,’ the Tiste Andii said, ‘I will push you off.’

‘Draconus might not like that.’

‘He will understand. He understands more than you, more than you, more and more and more than you!’

‘Just let me rest,’ said Ditch, ‘for a while. I will then climb back down. I don’t want to be up here when the end comes. I want to be standing. Facing the storm.’

‘Do you really imagine the ritual will awaken all at once? Do you do you do you? The flower opens soon, but the night is long, and it will take that long, that long. For the flower to open. Open in the moment before dawn. Open in the mo-ment. Draconus chose you-a mage-for the nexus. I need the nexus. You are the nexus. Lie there, be quiet, don’t move.’

‘No.’

‘1 cannot wait long, friend. Crawl about now if you like, but 1 cannot wait too long. A league away!’

‘What is your name?’ Ditch asked.

‘What matter any of that?’

‘For when I next speak to Draconus.’

‘He knows me.’

‘I don’t.’

‘I am Kadaspala, brother to Enesdia who was wife to Andarist.’

Andarist. That’s one name I recognize. ‘You wanted to murder the brother of your sister’s husband?’

‘I did. For what he did to them, what he did to them. For what he did to them!’

Ditch stared at the anguish in the man’s ravaged face. ‘Who blinded you, Kadaspala?’

‘It was a gift. A mercy. I did not comprehend the truth of that, not the real truth of it, the real truth. No. Besides, I thought my inner sight would be enough-to challenge Draconus. To steal Dragnipur. I was wrong, wrong. I was wrong. The truth is a gift, a mercy.’

‘Who blinded you?’

The Tiste Andii flinched, then seemed to curl into himself. Tears glistened in the pits of his sockets. ‘I blinded myself,’ Kadaspala whispered. ‘When I saw what he’d done. What he’d done. To his brother. To my sister. To my sister.’

Suddenly, Ditch did not want to ask any more questions of this man. He pushed himself from between the two bodies. ‘I am going to… explore.’

‘Come back, mage. Nexus. Come back. Come back.’

We’ll see.

With all this time to reflect on things, Apsal’ara concluded that her biggest mis-take was not in finding her way into Moon’s Spawn. Nor in discovering the vaults and the heaps of magicked stones, ensorcelled weapons, armour, the blood-dipped idols and reliquaries from ten thousand extinct cults. No, her greatest error in judgement had been in trying to stab Anomander Rake in the back.

He’d been amused at finding her. He’d not spoken of executing her, or even chaining in her some deep crypt for all eternity. He’d simply asked her how she had managed to break in. Curiosity, more than a little wonder, perhaps even some admiration. And then she went and tried to kill him.-

The damned sword had been out of its scabbard faster than an eye-blink, the deadly edge slicing across her belly even as she lunged with her obsidian dagger.

Such stupidity. But lessons only became lessons when one has reached the state of humility required to heed them. When one is past all the egotistical ex-cuses and explanations flung up to fend off honest culpability. It was nature to at-tack first, abjuring all notions of guilt and shame. Lash out, white with rage, then strut away convinced of one’s own righteousness.

She had long since left such imbecilic posturing behind. A journey of enlight-

enment, and it had begun with her last mortal breath, as she found herself lying on the hard stone floor, looking up into the eyes of Anomander Rake, and seeing his dismay, his regret, his sorrow.

She could feel the growing heat of the storm, could feel its eternal hunger. Not long now, and then all her efforts would be for naught. The kinks of the chain fi-nally showed some wear, but not enough, not nearly enough. She would be de-stroyed along with everyone else. She was not unique. She was, in fact, no different from every other idiot who’d tried to kill Rake, or Draconus.

The rain trickling down from the wagon bed was warmer than usual, foul with sweat, blood and worse. It streamed over her body. Her skin had been wet for so long it was coming away in ragged pieces, white with death, revealing raw red meat underneath. She was rotting.

The time was coming when she would have to drop down once more, emerge from under the wagon, and see for herself the arrival of oblivion. There would be no pity in its eyes-not that it had any-just the indifference that was the other face of the universe, the one all would have for ever turned away. The regard of chaos was the true source of terror-all the rest were but flavours, variations.

/ was a child once. I am certain of it. A child. I have a memory, one memory of that time. On a barren bank of a broad river. The sky was blue perfection. The caribou were crossing the river, in their tens and tens of thousands.

I remember their up-thrust heads. I remember seeing the weaker ones crowded in; pushed down to vanish in the murky water. These carcasses would wash up down current, where the short-nosed bears and the wolves and eagles and ravens waited for them. But I stood with others. Father, mother, perhaps sisters and brothers-just others-my eyes on the vast herd.

Their seasonal migration, and this was but one of many places of crossing. The caribou often choose different paths. Still, the river had to be crossed, and the beasts would mill for half a morning on the bank, until they plunged into the current, until all at once they were flooding the river, a surging tide of hide and flesh, of breaths drawn in and gusted out.

Not even the beasts display eagerness when accosting the inevitable, when it seems numbers alone can possibly confuse fate, and so each life strikes, strives out into the icy flow. ‘Save me.’ That is what is written in their eyes. ‘Save me above all the others. Save me, so that I may live. Give me this moment, this day, this season. I will follow the laws of my kind

She remembered that one moment when she was a child, and she remembered her sense of awe in witnessing the crossing, in that force of nature, that imposi-tion of will, its profound implacability. She remembered, too, the terror she had felt.

Caribou are not just caribou. The crossing is not just this crossing. The cari-bou are all life. The river is the passing world. Life swims through; riding the cur-rent, swims, drowns, triumphs. Life can ask questions. Life-some of it-can even ask: how is it that I can ask anything at all? And: how is it that I believe that answers answer anything worthwhile? What value this exchange, this pre-cious dialogue, when the truth is unchanged, when some live for a time while others drown, when in the next season there are new caribou while others are for ever gone?

The truth is unchanged.