Toll the Hounds

No, Traveller, no. Change your mind. Change it, please.

But he would not do that, would he? Would not. Could not. The fate of the fated, oh, that sounds clumsy, and yet… what else can it be called? This force of inevitability, both willed and unwilling, both unnecessary and inexorable. The fate of the fated.

Walking, through a city trapped in a nightmare, beneath the ghoulish light of a moon in its death-throes. Traveller might as well be dragging chains, and at the ends of those chains, none other than Karsa Orlong and Samar Dev. And Traveller might as well be wearing his own collar of iron, something invisible but undeniable heaving him forward.

She had never felt so helpless.

In the eternity leading up to the moment of the Lord of Death’s arrival, the world of Dragnipur had begun a slow, deadly and seemingly unstoppable convulsion. Everywhere, the looming promise of annihilation. Everywhere, a chorus of des-perate cries, bellowing rage and hopeless defiance. The raw nature of each chained thing was awakened, and each gave that nature voice, and each voice held the flavour of sharp truth. Dragons shrilled, demons roared, fools shrieked in hysteria. Bold heroes and murderous thugs snatched deep breaths that made ribs creak, and then loosed battle cries.

Argent fires were tumbling down from the sky, tearing down through clouds of ash. An army of unimaginable size, from which no quarter was possible, had be gun a lumbering charge, and weapons clashed the rims of shields and this white, rolling wave of destruction seemed to surge higher as if seeking to merge with the stormclouds.

Feeble, eroded shapes dragged along at the ends of chains now flopped blunted limbs as if to fend off the fast closing oblivion. Eyes rolled in battered skulls, rem-nants of life and of knowledge flickering one last time.

No, nothing wanted to die. When death is oblivion, life will spit in its face. If it can.

The sentient and the mindless were now, finally, all of one mind.

Shake awake all reason. These gathered instincts are not the end but the means. Rattle the chains if you must, but know that that which binds does not break, and the path is never as wayward as one might believe.

Ditch stared with one eye into the descending heavens, and knew terror, but that terror was not his. The god that saw with the same eye filled Ditch’s skull with its shrieks. Bom to die! I am born to die! I am born to die! Not fair not fair not fair! And Ditch just rattled a laugh-or at least imagined that he did so-and replied, We’re all born to die, you idiot. Let the span last a single heartbeat, let it last a thousand years. Stretch the heartbeat out, crush down the centuries, it’s no different. They feel the same, when the end arrives.

Gods, they feel the same!

No, he was not much impressed by this godling cowering in his soul. Kadaspala was mad, mad to think such a creation could achieve anything. Etch deep into its heart this ferocious hunger to kill, and then reveal the horror of its helplessness-oh, was that not cruel beyond all reason? Was that not its own invitation into insanity?

Kadaspala, you have but made versions of yourself. You couldn’t help it-yes, I see that.

But, damn you, my flesh belonged to me. Not you.

Damn you-

But curses meant nothing now. Every fate was now converging. Hah hah, take that, you pious posers, and you arrogant shits, and all you whining victims-see what comes! It’s all the same, this end, all the same!

And here he was, trapped in the greater scheme. His skin a piece of a tapestry. And its grand scene? A pattern he could never read.

The demon Pearl stood wearing bodies from which a forest of iron roots swept down in loops and coils. It could carry no more, and so it stood, softly weeping, its legs like two failing trunks that shook and trembled. It had long since weighed the value of hatred. For the High Mage Tayschrenn, who first summoned it and bound it to his will. For Ben Adaephon Delat, who unleashed it against the Son of Darkness ond for Anomnnder Rake himself, whose sword bit deep. But the value was an illusion. Hate was a lie that in feeding fills the hater with the bliss of satiation, even as his spirit starves. No, Pearl did not hate. Life was a negotiation between the expected and the unexpected. One made do.

Draconus staggered up. ‘Pearl, my friend, I have come to say goodbye. And to tell you I am sorry.’

‘What saddens you?’ the demon asked.

‘1 am sorry, Pearl, for all of this. For Dragnipur. For the horror forged by my own hands. It was fitting, was it not, that the weapon claimed its maker? I think, yes, it was. It was.’ He paused, and then brought both hands up to his face. For a moment it seemed he would begin clawing his beard from the skin beneath it. In-stead, the shackled hands fell away, down, dragged by the weight of the chains.

‘I too am sorry,’ said Pearl. ‘To see the end of this.’

‘What!’

‘So many enemies, all here and not one by choice. Enemies, and yet working together for so long. It was a wondrous thing, was it not, Draconus? When neces-sity forced each hand to clasp, to work as one. A wondrous thing.’

The warrior stared at the demon. He seemed unable to speak.

Apsal’ara worked her way along the top of the beam. It was hard to hold on, the wagon pitching and rocking so with one last, useless surge forward, and the beam itself thick with the slime of sweat, blood and runny mucus. But something was happening at the portal, that black, icy stain beneath the very centre of the wagon.

A strange stream was flowing into the Gate, an intricate pattern ebbing down through the fetid air from the underside of the wagon’s bed. Each tendril was inky black, the space around it ignited by a sickly glow that pulsed slower than any mortal heart.

Was it Kadaspala’s pathetic god? Seeking to use the tattooist’s insane master-piece as if it was a latticework, a mass of rungs, down which it could clamber and so plunge through the Gate? Seeking to escape.

If so, then she intended to make use of it first.

Let the cold burn her flesh. Let pieces of her simply fall away. It was a better end than some snarling manifestation of chaos ripping out her throat.

She struggled ever closer, her breath sleeting out in crackling plumes that sank down in sparkling ice crystals. It reminded her of her youth, the nights out on the tundra, when the first snows came, when clouds shivered and shed their diamond skins and the world grew so still, so breathless and perfect, that she felt that time itself was but moments from freezing solid-to hold her for ever in that place, hold her youth, hold tight her dreams and ambitions, her memories of the faces she loved-her mother, her father, her kin, her lovers. No one would grow old, no one would die and fall away from the path, and the path itself, why, it would never end.

Leave me in mid-step. My foot never to settle, never to edge me forward that much closer to the end of things. Yes, leave me here. At the very heart of possi-hilitics, not one of which will crash down. No failures to come, no losses, no regrets to kiss upon the lips-I will not feel the cold.

I will not feel the cold-

She cried out in the frigid, deathly air. Such pain-how could she ever get close enough?

Aspal’ara drew herself up, knees beneath her. And eyed that pattern, just there, a body’s length away and still streaming down. If she launched herself from this place, simply threw herself forward, would that flowing net catch her?

Would it simply shatter? Or flow aside, opening up to permit the downward plunge of a body frozen solid, lifeless, eyes open but seeing nothing?

She had a sudden thought, shivering up through her doubts, her fears. And, with aching limbs, she began dragging up the length of her chains, piling the links on the beam in front of her.

Was the Gate’s cold of such power that it could snap these links? If she heaved the heap into that Gate, as much as she could, would the chains break?

And then?