‘Oh, what would you have begged for, sweetie?’
‘A knife, so I could cut my own throat. Look at me. I’m covered in bites!’
‘They got sharp teeth, all right, them bhokarala-.’
‘Not them, month-old cream puff. These are spider bites!’
‘You deserve even worse! Did you drug her senseless? There’s no other way she’d agree to-’
‘Power! I have power! It’s irresistible, everybody knows that! A man can look like a slug! His hair can stick out like a bhederin’s tongue! He can be knee-high and perfectly proportioned-he can stink, he can eat his own earwax, none of it matters! If he has
‘Well, that’s what’s wrong with the world, then. It’s why ugly people don’t just die out.’ And then she smiled. ‘It’s why you and me, we’re made for each other! Let’s have babies, hundreds of babies!’
Iskaral Pust ran to his mule, scrabbled aboard, and fled for his life.
The mule walked, seemingly unmindful of the rider thrashing and kicking about on its back, and at a leisurely saunter, Mogora kept pace.
The bhokarala, which had been cooing and grooming in a reconciliatory love fest, now flapped up into the air, circling over their god’s head like gnats round the sweetest heap of dung ever beheld.
Approaching thunder startled Picker from her reverie within the strange cave, and she stared upon the carved rock wall, eyes widening to see the image of the carriage blurring as if in motion.
If the monstrosity was indeed pounding straight for her, moments from ex-ploding into the cavern, then she would be trampled, for there was nowhere to go in the hope of evading those rearing horses and the pitching carriage behind them.
An absurd way for her soul to die-
The apparition arrived in a storm of infernal wind, yet it emerged from the wall ghostly, almost transparent, and she felt the beasts and the conveyance tear through her-a momentary glimpse of a manic driver, eyes wide and staring, both legs jutting out straight and splayed and apparently splinted. And still others, on the carriage roof and tossing about on the ends of straps from the sides, expressions stunned and jolted. All of this, sweeping through her, and past-
And a rider lunged into view directly before her, sawing the reins-and this man and his mount were real, solid. Sparks spat out from skidding hoofs, the horse’s eyeless head lifting. Picker staggered back in alarm.
Damned corpses! She stared up at the rider, and then swore. ‘I know you!’
The one-eyed man, enwreathed in the stench of death, settled his horse and looked down upon her, And then he sad, ‘I am Hood’s Herald now, Corporal Picker,’
‘Oh. ls that a promotion?’
‘No, a damned sentence, and you’re not the only one I need to visit, so enough of the sardonic shit and listen to me-’
She bridled. ‘Why? What am I doing here? What’s Hood want with me that he ain’t already got? Hey, take a message back to him! I want to-’
‘I cannot, Picker. Hood is dead.’
‘He’s
‘The Lord of Death no longer exists. Gone. For ever more. Listen, I ride to the gods of war. Do you understand, tore-bearer?
Tore-bearer? She sagged. ‘Ah, shit.’
Toc the Younger spoke then, and told her all she needed to know.
When he was done, she stared, the blood drained from her face, and watched as he gathered the reins once more and prepared to leave.
‘Wait!’ she demanded. ‘I need to get out of here! How do I do that, Toc?’
The dead eye fixed upon her one last time. He pointed at the gourds resting on the stone floor to either side of Picker. ‘Drink. Live up to your name. Pick one, Picker.’
‘Are you mad? You just told me where that blood’s come from!’
‘Drink, and remember all that I have told you.’
And then he was gone.
Remember, yes, she would do that.
There had been more, much more. None of it anything she could hope to forget. ‘All I wanted to do was retire.’
Cursing under her breath, she walked over to the nearest gourd, crouched down before it.
To stand in the heart of Dragnipur, to stand above the very Gate of Darkness, this was, for Anomander Rake, a most final act. Perhaps it was desperation. Or a sac-rifice beyond all mortal measure.
A weapon named Vengeance, or a weapon named Grief-either way, where he had been delivered by that sword was a world of his own making. And all the choices that might have been were as dust on the bleak trail of his life.
He was the Son of Darkness. His people were lost. There was, for him, room to grieve, here at the end of things, and he could finally turn away, as his mother had done so long ago. Turn away from his children. As every father must one day do, in that final moment that was death. The notion of forgiveness did not even occur to him, as he stood on the mound of moaning, tattooed bodies.
He was, after all, not the begging sort.
The one exception was Draconus. Ah, but those circumstances were unique, the crime so faceted, so intricately complicated, that it did no good to seek to prise loose any single detail. In any case, the forgiveness he asked for did not demand an answer. All that mattered was that Draconus be given those words. He could do with them as he pleased.
Anomander Rake stood, eyes fixed heavenward, facing that seething conflagra-tion, the descending annihilation, and he did not blink, did not flinch. For he felt its answer deep within him, in the blood of T’iam, the blood of chaos.
He would stand, then, for all those he had chained here. He would stand for all the others as well. And for these poor, broken souls underfoot. He would stand, and face that ferocious chaos.
Until the very last moment. The very last moment.
Like a mass of serpents, the tattoos swarmed beneath him.
Kadaspala had waited for so long. For this one chance. Vengeance against the slayer of a beloved sister, the betrayer of Andarist, noble Andarist, husband and brother. Oh, he had come to suspect what Anomander Rake intended. Sufficient reparation? All but one Tiste Andii would answer ‘yes’ to that question. All but one.
Nor the knife in its hand. Nor the knife in its hand!
Teeth bared, blind Kadaspala twisted on to his back, the better to see the Son of Darkness, yes, the better to see him. Eyes were not necessary and eyes were not necessary. To see the bastard.
Standing so tall, so fierce, almost within reach.
Atop the mountain of bodies, the moaning bridge of flesh and bone, the sordid barrier at Dark’s door, this living ward-so stupid so stupid! Standing there, eyes lifting up, soul facing down and down and downward-will she sense him? Will she turn? Will she see? Will she understand?
Anomander Rake stands, and the map awakens, its power and his power, awakening.
Wandering Hold, wander no longer. Fleeing Gate, flee no more. This is what he will do. This is the sacrifice he will make, oh so worthy so noble so noble yes and clever and so very clever and who else but Anomander Rake so
