Toll the Hounds

nearly sculpted, aye, with skin the perfect hue of polished onyx and eyes in which glittered flecks of hazel and gold, and many were the glances sliding over him as he passed. But he was not mindful of such things, for he was looking for a new life and might well find it here in this glorious, ex-otic city.

In a poor stretch of the Gadrobi District a withered, weathered woman, tall and thin, knelt in her narrow strip of garden and began placing flatstones into a pattern in the dark earth. So much of what the soil could give must first be pre-pared, and these ways were most arcane and mysterious, and she worked as if in a dream, while in the small house behind her still slept her husband, a knuckled monster filled with fear and hate, and his dreams were dark indeed for the sun could not reach the places in his soul.

A woman lounged on the deck of a moored ship in the harbour. Sensing fell kin somewhere in the city and, annoyed, giving much thought to what she would do about it. If anything, anything at all. Something was coming, however, and was she not cursed with curiosity?

An ironmonger held a conversation with his latest investor, who was none other than a noble Councillor and reputedly the finest duellist in all Darujhistan, and therein it was decided that young and most ambitious Gorlas Vidikas would take charge of the iron mines six leagues to the west of the city.

A rickety wagon rocked along the road well past Maiten yet still skirting the lake, and in its bed amidst filthy blankets was the small battered form of a child, still unconscious but judged, rightly so, that he would live. The poor thing.

This track, you see, led to but one place, one fate. The old shepherd had done well and had already buried his cache of coins beneath the stoop behind the shack where he lived with his sickly wife, who had been worn out by seven failed pregnancies, and if there was bitter spite in the eyes she fixed upon the world is it any wonder? But he would do good by her in these last tired years, yes, he would, and he set to one side one copper coin that he would fling to the lake spirits at dusk-an ancient, black-stained coin bearing the head of a man the shepherd didn’t recognize-not that he would, for that face belonged to the last Tyrant of Darujhistan…

The wagon rolled on, on its way to the mines.

Harllo, who so loved the sun, was destined to wake in darkness, and mayhap he was never again to see the day’s blessed light,

Out on the lake the water glittered with golden tears.

As if the sun might relinquish its hard glare and, for just this one moment, weep for the fate of a child.

xx

When can he not stand alone

Where in darkness no shadows are cast

Whose most precious selves deny the throne

While nothing held in life will last a moment longer

Than what’s carved into the very bones

But this is where you would stand

In his place and see all bleak and bridled

An array of weapons each one forged

For violence

When can he not stand alone

Where darkness bleeds into the abyss so vast

Whose every yearning seeks a new home

While each struggle leaves the meek to the stronger

And the fallen lie scattered like stones

But this is the life you would take in hand

To guide him ‘cross the path so broken so riddled

Like the weapon of your will now charged

In cold balance

When can he not stand alone

Where in darkness every shadow is lost

Whose weary selves cut away and will roam

While nothing is left but this shielded stranger

Standing against the wind’s eternal moans

But this is your hero who must stand

Guarding your broken desires the ragged flag unfurled

Rising above the bastion to see your spite purged

In his silence

– Anomandaxis, Book III, Verses 7-10, Fisher Kel That

The swath of ground where all the grasses had been worn away might have marked the passing of a herd of bhederin, if not for the impos-sibly wide ruts left behind by the enormous studded wheels of a wagon, and the rubbish and occasional withered corpses scatttred to either side, vultures and crows danced among the detritus.

Traveller sat slouched in the Seven Cities saddle atop the piebald gelding. Nearby, at the minimum distance that his horse would accept, was the witch, Samar Dev, perched like a child above the long-legged, gaunt and fierce Jhag horse whose name was, she had said, Havok. The beast’s true owner was somewhere ahead, perhaps behind the Skathandi and the Captain’s monstrous carriage, or be-yond it. Either way, she was certain a clash was imminent.

‘He dislikes slavers,’ she had said earlier, as if this explained everything.

No demon, then, but a Toblakai of true blood, a detail that sent pangs of regret and pain through Traveller, for reasons he kept to himself-and though she had seen something of that anguish in his face it appeared she would respect his pri-vacy. Or perhaps feared its surrender, for Samar Dev was a woman, he suspected, prone to plunging into vast depths of emotion.

She had, after all, travelled through warrens to find the trail of the one ahead of them on this plain, and such an undertaking was not embraced on a whim. All to deliver a horse. He knew enough to leave it at that, poor as it might be as justifi-cation for such extremity. The Kindaru had accepted the reason with sage nods, seeing nothing at all unusual in any of it-the horse was a sacred beast, after all, a Jhag, brother to their cherished horses-of-the-rock. They possessed legends with similar themes, and indeed they had spent half the night recounting many of them-and now they had found themselves a new one. Master of the Wolf-Horses met a woman so driven as to be his own reflection, and together they rode into the north, having drawn their threads through the last camp of the Kindaru, and were now entwined each with the other and both with the Kindaru, and though this was a tale not yet done it would nevertheless live on, for as long as lived the Kindaru themselves.

He had noted the grief in Samar Dev’s weary, weathered face, as the many wounds delivered-in all innocence- by the Kindaru slowly sank deeper, piercing her heart, and now compassion swirled dark and raw in her eyes, although the Kindaru were far behind them now. It was clear, brutally so, that both she and Traveller had collected a new thread to twist into their lives.

‘How far ahead?’ she asked.

’Two days at the most.’

‘Then he might have found them by now, or they him.’

‘Yes, it’s possible. If this Skathandi Captain has an army, well; even a Toblakai can die.’

‘I know that,’ she replied. Then added, ‘Maybe.’

‘And there are but two of us, Samar Dev.’

‘If you’d rather cut away from this trail, Traveller, I will not question your de-cision. But I need to find him.’

He glanced away. ‘His horse, yes.’

‘And other things.’