Toll the Hounds

enough.’

‘The valley remembers.’

Samar Dev scowled at Karsa. The warrior was getting more cryptic by the day, as if he was being overtaken by something of this land’s ambivalence. For the Dwelling Plain was ill named. Vast stretches of… nothing. Animal tracks but no animals. The only birds in the sky were those vultures that daily tracked them, wheeling specks of patience. Yet Havok had found prey…

The Dwelling Plain was a living secret, its language obscure and wont to drift like waves of heat. Even Traveller seemed uneasy with this place.

She drained the last of her tea and rose. ‘I believe this land was cursed once, long ago.’

‘Curses are immortal,’ said Karsa in a dismissive grunt.

‘Will you stop that?’

‘What? I am telling you what I sense. The curse does not die. It persists.’

Traveller said, ‘I do not think it was a curse. What we are feeling is the land’s memory.’

‘A grim memory, then.’

‘Yes, Samar Dev,’ agreed Traveller. ‘Here, life comes to fail. Beasts too few to breed. Outcasts from villages and cities. Even the caravan tracks seem to wander half lost-none are used with any consistency, because the sources of water are infrequent, elusive.’

‘Or they want to keep bandits guessing.’

‘I have seen no old camps,’ Traveller pointed out. ‘There are no bandits here, I think.’

‘We need to find water.’

‘So you said,’ Karsa said, with an infuriating grin.

‘Why not clean up the breakfast leavings, Toblakai. Astonish me by being use-ful.’ She walked over to her horse, collecting the saddle on the way. She could draw a dagger, she could let slip some of her lifeblood, could reach down into this dry earth and see what was there to be seen. Or she could keep her back turned, her self closed in. The two notions warred with each other. Curiosity and trepi-dation.

She swung the saddle on to the horse’s broad back, adjusted the girth straps and then waited for the animal to release its held breath. Nothing likes to be bound. Not the living, perhaps not the dead. Once, she might have asked Karsa about that, if only to confirm what she already knew-but he had divested him-self of that mass of souls trailing in his wake. Somehow, the day he killed the Em-peror. Oh, two remained, there in that horrid sword of his.

And perhaps that was what was different about him, she realized. Liberation. But then, has he not already begun collecting more? She cinched the strap then half turned to regard the giant warrior, who was using sand to scrub the black-ened pan on which she’d cooked knee-root, challenging the pernicious crust with a belligerent scowl. No, she could sense nothing-not as drawn in as she’d made herself. Thus, sensing nothing didn’t mean anything, did it? Perhaps he had grown at ease with those victims dragged behind him everywhere he went.

A man like that should not smile. Should never smile, or laugh. He should be haunted.

But he was too damned arrogant to suffer haunting, a detail that invariably ir-ritated her, even as she was drawn to it (and was that not irritating in itself?).

‘You chew on him,’ said Traveller, who had come unseen to her side and now spoke quietly, ’as a jackal does an antler. Not out of hunger so much as habit. He is not as complicated as you think, Samar Dev.’

‘Oh yes he is. More so, in fact.’

The man grimaced as he set about saddling his own horse. ‘A child dragged into the adult world, but no strength was lost. No weakening of purpose. He re-mains young enough,’ Traveller said, ‘to still be certain. Of his vision, of his be-liefs, of the way he thinks the world works.’

‘Oh, so precisely when will the world get round to kicking him good and hard between the legs?’

‘For some, it never does.’

She eyed him. ‘You are saying it does no good to rail against injustice.’

‘I am saying do not expect justice, Samar Dev. Not in this world. And not in the one to come.’

‘Then what drives you so, Traveller? What forces your every step, ever closer to whatever destiny waits for you?’

He was some time in answering, although she did not deceive herself into thinking that her words had struck something vulnerable. These men here with her, they were armoured in every way. He cinched the girth straps and dropped the sturrups. ‘We have an escort, Samar Dev.’

‘We do? The vultures?’

‘Well, yes, there are those, too. Great Ravens.’

At that she squinted skyward. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes, but I was speaking of another escort.’

‘Oh, then who? And why doesn’t it show itself?’

Traveller swung himself astride his horse and gathered the reins. Karsa had completed packing the camp gear and was now bridling Havok. ‘I have no an-swers to those questions, Samar Dev. I do not presume to know the minds of Hounds of Shadow.’

She saw Karsa Orlong glance over at that, but there was nothing revealed in his expression beyond simple curiosity.

Gods, he drives me mad!

‘Do they hunt us?’ Karsa asked.

‘No,’ Traveller replied. ‘At least, not me, nor, I imagine, our witch here.’

Karsa mounted his Jhag horse. ‘Today,’ he announced, ‘I shall not ride with you. Instead, I shall find these Hounds of Shadow, for I wish to see them for my-self. And if they in turn see me alone, then they may choose to make plain their desires.’

‘Now what is the point of that?’ demanded Samar Dev.

‘I have faced Hounds before;’ he said. ‘I am happy to invite them close, so they can smell the truth of that.’

‘There is no need,’ said Traveller. ‘Karsa Orlong, the Hounds began as my escort-one in truth-granted me by Shadowthrone. They are not interested in you, I am sure of it.’

Samar Dev rounded on him. ‘Then why did you suggest otherwise?’

He met her eyes and she saw him gritting his teeth, the muscles of his jaws binding. ‘You were right, Witch,’ he said, ‘you know this warrior better than I.’

Karsa snorted a laugh.

They watched him ride off.

Samar Dev wanted to spit-the tea had left her mouth dry, bitter. ‘He probably will at that,’ she muttered, ‘whether the Hounds like it or not.’

Traveller simply nodded.

Skintick knew precisely the day he died. The, final terrible battle waged on Drift Avalii, with four of his closest companions falling, each just beyond his reach, be-yond his own life which he would have sacrificed to take their place. And into the midst of the crumbling defence, Andarist had stepped forward, making of himself a lodestone to the attacking Tiste Edur.

The death of the man whom Skintick thought of as his father remained in his mind, like a scene painted by some chronicler of abject, pathetic moments. And in that sad, regretful face, he had seen all the kin who had fallen before, killed for no cause worth thinking about-or so it seemed at the time. The grey-skinned barbarians desired the throne-perhaps they were collecting such things, as if possession conferred a right, but what did it matter? These games were stupidity, every trophy an absurd icon symbolizing precisely nothing beyond the raging ego of the players.

Honourable souls had died for this, and, once the grief washed away, what was left but this building contempt for all of it? Defending this, fighting for that, win-ning in one moment only to lose in the next. Raw magic blistering flesh, javelins winging to thud into bodies, everything of value spilling out on to dusty cobbles and the ribbons of grass growing exuberant between them.

The things that died in him on that day would be deemed virtues by most. Duty had revealed its lie, shattering