Toll the Hounds

regard of ancestors, spirits, each one a moral lode-

stone that cut through the dissembling, the evasions of responsibility, the denials of culpability-a man of faith, yes, in the traditional sense of ihe word. But these things no longer found harbour in his soul. Ancestors dissolved into the ground, leaving nothing hut crumbling flecks of bone in dark earth. Spirits offered no gifts and those still clinging to life were bitter and savage, too often betrayed, too often spat upon, to hold any love for anyone.

He now believed that mortals were cursed. Some innate proclivity led them again and again on the same path. Mortals betrayed every gift granted them. They betrayed the giver. They betrayed their own promises. Their gods, their ancestors, their children-everywhere, betrayal.

The great forests of Kharkanas had been cut down; the squalid dying islands of growth left behind had each one fallen to fire or blight. The rich soils washed down into the rivers. The flesh of the land was stripped back to reveal bedrock bones. And hunger stalked the children. Mothers wailed, fathers tried on hardened masks of resolve, but before any of this both had looked out upon the ravaged world with affronted disbelief-someone’s to blame, someone always is, but by the Abyss, do not look at me!

But there was nowhere else to look. Mother Dark had turned away. She had left them to fates of their own devising, and in so doing, she had taken away their privilege of blaming someone else. Such was a godless world.

One might think, then, that a people might rise to fullest height, stand proud, and accept the notion of potential culpability for each decision made or not made. Yes, that would be nice. That would be something to behold, to feed riotous optimism. But such a moment, such stature, never came. Enlightened ages belonged to the past or waited for the future. Such ages acquired the gloss of iconic myth, reduced to abstractions. The present world was real, filled with the grit of reality and compromise. People did not stand tall. They ducked.

There was no one about with whom Endest Silann could discuss all this. No one who might-just might- understand the significance of what he was thinking.

Rush headlong. Things are happening. Standing stones topple one against an-other and on and on. Tidal surges lift ever higher. Smoke and screams and violence and suffering. Victims piled in heaps like the plunder of cannibals. This is the meat of glee, the present made breathless, impatience burning like acid. Who has time to comprehend?

Endest Silann stood atop the lesser tower of the keep. He held out one hand, knuckles to the earth, as black rain pooled in the cup of his palm.

Was the truth as miserable as it seemed?

Did it all demand that one figure, one solitary figure, rise to stand tall? To face that litany of destruction, the brutality of history, the lie of progress, the desecra-tion of a home once sacred, precious beyond imagining? One figure? Alone?

7s his own burden not enough? Why must he carry ours? Why have we done this to him? Why, because it’s easier that way, and we so cherish the easy paths, do we not? The least of effort defines our virtues. Trouble us not, for we dislike being troubled.

The children are hungry. The forests are dead, the rivers poisoned. Calamity descends again and again. Diseases flower like mushrooms on corpses. And soon we will war over what’s left. As we did in Kharkanas.

He will take this burden, but what does that mean? That we are freed to stay unchanging? Freed to continue doing nothing?

The black water overflowed the cup, spilled down to become rain once more.

Even the High Priestess did not understand. Not all of it, no. She saw this as a single, desperate gambit, a cast of the knuckles on which rode everything. But if it failed, well, there’d be another game. New players, the same old tired rules. The wealth wagered never lost its value, did it? The heap of golden coins will not crumble. It will only grow bigger yet.

Then, if the players come and go, while the rules never change, does not that heap in fact command the game? Would you bow to this god of gol?? This insen-sate illusion of value?

Bow, then. Press forehead to the hard floor. But when it all goes wrong, show me no affronted disbelief.

Yes, Anomander Rake would take that burden, and carry it into a new world. But he would offer no absolution. He would deliver but one gift-an undeserved one-and that was time.

The most precious privilege of all. And what, pray tell, shall we do with it?

Off to his left, surmounting a much higher tower, a dragon fixed slitted eyes upon a decrepit camp beyond the veil of Night. No rain could blind it, no excuse could brave its unwavering regard. Silanah watched. And waited.

But the waiting was almost over.

Rush then, to this feast. Rush, ye hungry ones, to the meat of glee.

The wall had never been much to begin with. Dismantled in places, unfinished in others. It would never have withstood a siege for any length of time. Despite its execrable condition, the breach made by the Hounds of Shadow was obvious. An entire gate was gone, filled with the flame-licked wreckage of the blockhouses and a dozen nearby structures. Figures now clambered in its midst, hunting sur-vivors, fighting the flames.

Beyond it, vast sections of the city-where heaving clouds of smoke lifted sky-ward, lit bright by raging gas- fires-suddenly ebbed, as if Darujhistan’s very breath had been snatched away. Samar Dev staggered, fell to her knees. The pressure closing about her head felt moments from crushing the plates of her skull. She cried out even as Karsa crouched down beside her.

Ahead, Traveller had swung away from the destroyed gate, seeking instead an-other portal to the east, through which terrified refugees now spilled out into the ramshackle neighbourhood of shanties, where new fires had erupted from knocked-down shacks and in the wake of fleeing squatters. How Traveller intended to push his way through that mob-

‘Witch, you must concentrate.’

‘What?’

‘In your mind, raise a wall. On all sides. Make it strong, give it the power to withstand the one who has arrived,’

She pulled away from his hand. ‘Who? Who has arrived? By the spirits, I can’t stand-’

He slapped her, hard enough to knock her down.Stunned, she stared up at him.

‘Samar Dev, I do not know who, or what-it is not the Hounds. Not even Shad-owthrone. Someone is there, and that someone blazes. I-I cannot imagine such a being-’

‘A god.’

He shrugged. ‘Build your walls.’

The pressure had eased and she wondered at that, and then realized that Karsa had moved round, placing himself between her and the city. She saw sweat running down the Toblakai’s face, streaming like rain. She saw the tightness in his. eyes. ‘Karsa-’

‘If we are to follow, you and me both, then you must do this. Build walls, Witch, and hurry.’

His gaze lifted to something behind her and all at once she felt a breath of power at her back, gusting against her, sinking past clothes, past skin, through flesh and then deep into her bones. She gasped.

The pressure was pushed back, left to rage against immense barriers now shielding her mind.

She climbed to her feet.

Side by side, they set out after Traveller.

He was cutting across a ragged strip of fallow field, dust rising with each stride, making for the gate at a sharp angle.

The surging mob of people blocking the portal seemed to melt back, and she wondered what those refugees had seen in Traveller’s face as he marched straight for them. Whatever it had been, clearly it was not something to be challenged.

A strange, diffuse light now painted the city, the uneven wall, the domes, minarets and spires visible behind it. From a thousand throats erupted a moaning wail. Of shock, of dread. She saw faces lift, one by one. She saw eyes widen.

Grunting, Karsa glanced back, and then halted. ‘Gods below!’

She spun. The giant bear loomed twenty or so paces back, its outline limned by a silver light-and that light-