explosions of spume betrayed the presence of submerged reefs and shallows.
‘Won’t find any villages here,’ Skintick said. ‘I doubt we’d find much of anything, and as for skirting this coast, well, that looks to be virtually impossible. Unless, of course,’ he added with a smile, ‘our glorious leader can kick rock to rubble to make us a beach. Or summon winged demons to carry us over all this, Failing that, I suggest we return to our camp, burrow down Into the pine needles, and go to sleep,’
No one objected, so they turned about in retrace their route.
Seeing the rage ever bridling and boiling beneath the surface of the young warrior named Nenanda was a constant comfort to Clip. This one he could work with. This one he could shape. His confidence in Nimander, on the other hand, was vir-tually nonexistent. The man had been thrust into a leader’s role and it clearly did no! suit him. Too sensitive by far, Nimander was of the type that the world and all its brutal realities usually destroyed, and it was something of a miracle that it had not yet done so. Clip had seen such pathetic creatures before; perhaps indeed it was a trait among the Tiste Andii. Centuries of life became a travail, an impossible burden. Such creatures burned out fast.
No, Nimander was not worth his time. And Nimander’s closest companion, Skintick, was no better. Clip admitted he saw something of himself in Skintick-that wry mockery, the quick sarcasm-yes, other traits common among the Andii. What Skintick lacked, however, was the hard vicious core that he himself possessed in abundance.
Necessities existed. Necessities had to be recognized, and in that recognition so too must be understood all the tasks required to achieve precisely what was necessary. Hard choices were the only choices that could be deemed virtuous, Clip was well familiar with hard choices, and with the acceptable burden that was virtue. He was prepared to carry such a burden for the rest of what he anticipated would be a very, very long life.
Nenanda might well be worthy to stand at his side, through all that was to come.
Among the young women in this entourage, only Desra seemed potentially useful. Ambitious and no doubt ruthless, she could be the knife in his hidden scabbard. Besides, an attractive woman’s attentions delivered their own reward, did they not? Kedeviss was too frail, broken inside just like Nimander, and Clip could already see death in her shadow. Aranatha was still a child behind those startled eyes, and perhaps always would be. No, of this entire group he had recruited from the Isle, only Nenanda and Desra were of any use to him.
He had hoped for better. After all, these were the survivors of Drift Avalii. They had stood at the side of Andarist himself, crossing blades with Tiste Edur warriors. With demons. They had tasted their share of blood, of triumph and grief. They should now be hardened veterans.
Well, he had managed with worse.
Alone for the moment, with Aranatha wandering off and probably already lost; with Nenanda, Desra and Kedeviss finally asleep; and with Nimander and Skintick somewhere in the woods-no doubt discussing portentous decisions on things relevant only to them-Clip loosened once again the chain and rings wrapped about his hand. There was a soft clink as the gleaming rings met at the ends of the dangling chain, each now spinning slowly, one counter to the other as proof of the power they held. Miniature portals appearing and disappearing, then reappearing once more, all bounded in cold metal.
The fashioning of these items had devoured most of the powers of the Andii dwelling in the subterranean fastness that was-or had been-the Andara. Leaving his kin, as it turned out, fatally vulnerable to their Letherii hunters. The cacophony of souls residing within these rings was now all that remained of those people, his pathetic family of misfits. And his to control.
Sometimes, it seemed, even when things didn’t go as planned, Clip found himself reaping rewards.
Proof, yes, that I am chosen.
The chain swung, rings lifting up and out. Spun into a whine like the cries of a thousand trapped souls, and Clip smiled.
The journey from the Scour Tavern back to the New Palace skirted the ruins of the great fortress, the collapse of which had brought to an end the Pannion Domin. Unlit and now perpetually shrouded in gloom, the heaped rubble of black stone still smelled of fire and death. The ragged edge of this shattered monument was on Spinnock Durav’s left as he walked the street now called Fringe Stagger. Ahead and slightly to the right rose Dragon Tower, and he could feel Silanah’s crimson eyes on him from atop its great height. The regard of an Eleint was never welcome, no matter how familiar Silanah’s presence among Rake’s Tiste Andii.
Spinnock could well recall the last few times he had been witness to the dragon unleashed. Flames ripping through the forest that was Mott Wood, crashing down in a deluge, with a deafening concussion that drowned out every death-cry as countless unseen creatures died. Among them, perhaps a handful of Crimson Guard, a dozen or so Mott Irregulars. Like using an axe to kill ants.
Then, from the very heart of that fiery maelstrom, virulent sorcery lashed out, striking Silanah in a coruscating wave. Thunder hammering the air, the dragon’s scream of pain. The enormous beast writhing, slashing her way free, then, trailing ropes of blood, flying back towards Moon’s Spawn.
He recalled Anomander Rake’s rage, and how he could hold it in his eyes like a demon chained to his will, even as he stood motionless, even as he spoke in a calm, almost bored tone. A single word, a name.
Cowi.
And with that name, oh, how the rage flared in those Draconean eyes.
There had begun, then, a hunt. The kind only a fool would choose to join. Rake, seeking out the deadliest wizard among the Crimson Guard. At one point, Spinnock remembered standing on the high ledge on the face of Moon’s Spawn, watching the mage-storms fill half the northern night sky. Flashes, the knight charge of thunder through a smoke-wreathed sky. He had wondered, then, if the world was on the very edge of being torn apart, and from the depths of his soul had risen a twisted, malignant thought. Again…
When great powerrs strode on to the field of battle, things had a way of getting out of hand,
Had it been Cowl who first blinked? Bowing out, yielding ground, fleeing?
Of had it been the Son of Darkness
Spinnock doubted be would ever find out. Such questions were not asked of Anomander Rake. Some time later, it was discovered by the Tiste Andii, Cowl had resurfaced, this time in Darujhistan. Causing more trouble. His stay there had been blessedly brief.
Another vision of Silanah, laying the trap for the Jaghut Tyrant in the Gadrobi Hillss. More wounds, more ferocious magic. Wheeling over the ravaged plain. Five Soletaken Tiste Andii whirling round her like crows escorting an eagle.
Perhaps he was alone,’ Spinnock reflected, in his unease with the alliance between the Tiste Andii and the Eleint. There had been a time, after all, when Anomander Rake had warred against the pureblood dragons. When such crea¬tures broke loose from their long-standing servitude to K’rul; when they had sought to grasp power for themselves. The motivation for Rake’s opposition to them was, typically, obscure. Silanah’s arrival-much later-was yet another event shrouded in mystery.
No, Spinnock Durav was far from thrilled by Silanah’s bloodless regard.
He approached the arched entrance to the New Palace, ascending the flagstone ramp. There were no guards standing outside. There never were. Pushing open one of the twin doors, he strode inside. Before him, a buttressed corridor that humans would find unnaturally narrow. Twenty paces in, another archway, opening out into a spacious domed chamber with a floor of polished blackwood inset with the twenty-eight spiralling teiondai of Mother Dark, all in black silver. The inside of the dome overhead was a mirror image. This homage to the goddess who had turned away was, to Spinnock’s mind, extraordinary; appallingly out of place.
Oh, sages might well debate who had done the turning away back then, but none would dismiss the terrible vastness of the schism. Was this some belated effort at healing the ancient wound? Spinnock found that notion unfathomable. And yet, Anomander Rake himself had commissioned the teiondai, the Invisible Sun and its whirling, wild rays of onyx flame.
If Kurald Galain had a heart in this realm’s manifestation of the warren, it was here, in this chamber. Yet he felt no presence, no ghostly breath of power, as he made his way across the floor to the curling bone-white staircase, fust beyond the turn above wavered a pool of lantern light.
Two human servants were scrubbing the alabaster steps. At his arrival they ducked away.
‘Mind the wet,’ one muttered.
‘I’m surprised,’ Spinnock said as he edged past, ‘there’s need to clean these at all. There are all of fifteen people living in this palace.’
