Toll the Hounds

She looked down and saw tears held back, waiting for Clip’s sudden arrival with his tragic news, and Aranatha nodded and turned away, to feign sleep. ‘

Somewhere beyond the camp waited a soul, motionless as a startled hare. This was sad. Aranatha had loved Kedeviss dearly, had admired her cleverness, her per-cipience. Had cherished her loyalty to Nimander-even though Kedeviss had per-haps suspected the strange circumstances surrounding Phaed’s death, and had seen how Phaed and her secrets haunted Nimander still.

When one can possess loyalty oven in the straits of hill, brutal understanding, then that one understands all there is to understand about compassion.

Kedeviss, you were a gift. And now your soul waits, as it must. For this is the fate of the Tiste Andii. Our fata. We will wait.

Until the wait is over.

Endest Silann stood with his back to the rising sun. And to the city of Black Coral. The air was chill, damp with night’s breath, and the road wending out from the gates that followed the coastline of the Cut was a bleak, colourless ribbon that snaked into stands of dark conifers half a league to the west. Empty of traffic.

The cloak of eternal darkness shrouding the city blocked the sun’s stretching rays, although the western flanks of the jumbled slope to their right was showing gilt edges; and far off to the left, the gloom of the Cut steamed white from the smooth, black surface.

‘There will be,’ said Anomander Rake, ‘unpleasantness.’

‘I know, Lord.’

‘It was an unanticipated complication.’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘I will walk,’ said Rake, ‘until I reach the tree line. Out of sight, at least until then.’

‘Have you waited too long, Lord?’

‘No.’

‘That is well, then.’

Anomander Rake rested a hand on Endest’s shoulder. ‘You have ever been, my friend, more than I deserve.’

Endest Silann could only shake his head, refuting that.

‘If we are to live,’ Rake went on, ‘we must take risks. Else our lives become deaths in all but name. There is no struggle too vast, no odds too overwhelming, for even should we fail-should we fall-we will know that we have lived.’

Endest nodded, unable to speak. There should be tears streaming down his face, but he was dry inside-his skull, behind his eyes, all… dry. Despair was a furnace where everything had burned up, where everything was ashes, but the heat remained, scalding, brittle and fractious.

‘The day has begun.’ Rake withdrew his hand and pulled on his gauntlets. ‘This walk, along this path… I will take pleasure in it, my friend. Knowing that you stand here to see me off.’

And the Son of Darkness set out.

Endest Silann watched. The warrior with his long silver hair flowing, his leather cloak flaring out. Dragnipur a scabbarded slash.

Blue seeped into the sky, shadows in retreat along the slope. Gold painted the tops of the tree line where the road slipped in. At the very edge, Anomander Rake paused, turned about and raised one hand high.

Endest Silann did the same, but the gesture was so weak it made him gasp, and his arm faltered.

And then the distant figure swung round. And vanished beneath the trees.

Xx

Like broken slate

We take our hatred

And pile it high

Rolling with the hills

A ragged line to map

Our rise and fall

And I saw suffused

With the dawn

Crows aligned in rows

Along the crooked wall

Come to feed

Bones lie scattered

At the stone’s foot

The heaped ruin

Of past assaults

The crows face each way

To eye the pickings

On both sides

For all its weakness

The world cannot break

What we make

Of our hatred

I watched the workers

Carry each grey rock

They laboured

Blind and stepped

Unerringly modest paths

Piece by sheared piece

They built a slaughter

Of innocent others

While muttering as they might

Of waves of weather

And goodly deeds

– We The Builders, Hanasp Tular

Pray you never hear an imprecise breath

Caught in its rough web

Every god turns away at the end

And not a whisper sounds

Do not waste a lifetime awaiting death

Caught in its rough web

It hovers in the next moment you must attend

As your last whisper sounds

Pray you never hear an imprecise breath

– Rough Web, Fisher Kel That

The soul knows no greater anguish than to take a breath that begins in love and ends with grief. Time unravels now. Event clashes upon event. So much to ecount, pray this sad-eyed round man does not falter, does not grow too reathless. History has its moments. To dwell within one is to understand nothing. We are rocked in the tumult, and the awareness of one’s own ignorance is a smothering cloak that proves poor armour. You will flinch with the wounds. We shall all flinch.