only high enough to encompass a narrow, steeply arched doorway. Just outside this entrance and to one side was a belly-shaped pot in which grew a few Straggly plants with drooping flowers, so incongruous amid the air of abandonment that Nimander simply stared down at them, disbelieving. Kallor walked up to the entrance, drew off a sealed gauntlet and wrapped it against the root-tracked frame. ‘Will you greet us?’ he demanded in a loud voice.
From within a faint shuffling sound, and then a thin, rasping reply: ‘Must I?’
‘The lce is long gone, Jaghut. The plains beyond are dry and empty. Even the dust of the T’lan Imass has blown away. Would you know something of the world you have ignored for so long?’
‘Why? Nothing changes.’
Kallor turned a pleased smirk upon Nimander and Skintick and then faced the dark doorway once more. ‘Will you invite us in, Jaghut? I am the High-’
‘I know who you are, O Lord of Futility. King of Ashes. Ruler of Dead Lands. Born to glory and cursed to destroy it every time. Killer of Dreams. Despoiler of-’
‘All right, enough of all that. I’m not the one living in ruins.’
‘No, but you ever leave them in your wake, Kallor. Come in, then, you and your two Others. I greet you as guests and so will not crush the life from you and devour your souls with peals of laughter. No, instead, I will make some tea.’
Nimander and Skintick followed Kallor into the darkness within.
The air of the two-walled chamber was frigid, the stones sheathed in amber-streaked hoarfrost. Where the other two walls should have been rose black, glimmering barriers of some unknown substance, and to look upon them too long was to feel vertiginous-Nimander almost pitched forward, drawn up only by Skintick’s sudden grip, and his friend whispered, ‘Never mind the ice, cousin.’
Ice, yes, it was just that. Astonishingly transparent ice-
A figure crouched at a small hearth, long-fingered hands working a blackened kettle on to an iron hook above the coals. ‘I ate the last batch of cookies, I’m afraid.’ The words drifted out inflectionless from beneath a broad- brimmed black felt hat. ‘Most people pass by, when they pass by. Seeing nothing of interest. None draw close to admire my garden.’
‘Your garden?’ Skintick asked.
‘Yes. Small, I know. Modest.’
‘The pot with the two flowers.’
‘Just so. Manageable-anything larger and the weeding would drive me mad, you see.’
‘Taking up all your time,’ Kallor commented, looking round. ‘Just so.’
A long stone altar provided the Jaghut with his bed, on which pale furs were neatly folded. A desk sat nearby, the wood stained black, the chair before it high-backed and padded in deerskin. On a niche set in the highest wall squatted a three-legged silver candlestick, oxidized black. Beeswax candles flickered in gut-tered pools. Leaning near the altar was an enormous scabbarded greatsword, the cross-hilt as long as a child’s arm. Cobwebs coated the weapon.
‘You know my name,’ Kallor said. ‘But I have not yet heard yours.’
‘That is true.’
Something dangerous edged into Kallor’s voice as he said, ‘I would know the name of my host.’’Once, long ago, a wolf god came before me, Tell me, Kallor, do you understand the nature of beast gods? Of course not. You are only a beast in the unfairly pejo-rative sense-unfair to beasts, that is. How is it, then, that the most ancient gods of this world were, one and all, beasts?’
‘The question does not interest me, Jaghut.’
‘What of the answer?’
‘You possess one?’
The hands reached out and lifted the kettle from the hook as steam rushed up round the long fingers. ‘This must now steep for a time. Am I unusual in my penchant for evading such direct questions? A trait exclusive to Jaghut? Hardly. Knowledge may be free; my voice is not. I am a miser, alas, although I was not always this way.’
‘Since I see little value in this particular matter,’ said Kallor, ‘I would not bargain with you.’
‘Ah, and what of the Others with you? Might not they be interested?’ Clearing his throat, Skintick said, ‘Venerable one, we possess nothing of worth to one such as you.’
‘You are too modest, Tiste Andii.’
‘I am?’
‘Each creature is born from one not its kind. This is a wonder, a miracle forged in the fires of chaos, for chaos indeed whispers in our blood, no matter its particular hue. If I but scrape your skin, so lightly as to leave but a momentary streak, that which I take from you beneath my nail contains every truth of you, your life, even your death, assuming violence does not claim you. A code, if you will, seemingly precise and so very ordered. Yet chaos churns. For all your similarities to your father, neither you nor the one named Nimander-nor any of your brothers and sisters-is identical to Anomander Dragnipurake. Do you refute this?’
‘Of course not-’
‘For each kind of beast there is a first such beast, more different from its parents than the rest of its kin, from which a new breed in due course emerges. Is this firstborn then a god?’
‘You spoke of a wolf god,’ Skintick said. ‘You began to tell us a story.’
‘So I did. But you must be made to understand. It is a question of essences. To see a wolf and know it as pure, one must possess an image in oneself of a pure wolf, a perfect wolf.’
‘Ridiculous,’ Kallor grunted. ‘See a strange beast and someone tells you it is a wolf-and from this one memory, and perhaps a few more to follow, you have fashioned your image of a wolf. In my empires, philosophers spewed such rubbish for centuries, until, of course, I grew tired of them and had them tortured and executed.’
A strange muffled noise came from the hunched-over Jaghut. Nimander saw the shoulders shaking and realized the ancient was laughing.
‘I have killed a few Jaghut,’ Kallor said; not a boast, simply a statement. A warning.
‘The tea is ready,’ the Jaghut said, pouring dark liquid into four clay cups that Nimander had not noticed before. ‘You might wonder what I was doing when thewolf god found me, I was living. In disguise. We had gathered to imprison a tyrant, until our allies tumed upon us and resumed the slaughter. I believe I may be cursed to ever be in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
‘T’lan Amass allies,’ Kallor said. ‘Too bad they never found you.’
‘Kron, the clan of Bek’athana Ilk who dwelt in the Cliffs Above the Angry Sea. forty-three hunters and a Bonecaster. They found me.’
Skintick squatted to pick up two of the cups, straightening to hand one to Nimander. The steam rising from the tea was heady, hinting of mint and cloves and something else. The taste numbed his tongue.
‘Where is mine?’ Kallor demanded. ‘If I must listen to this creature I will drink his tea.’
Smiling, Skintick pointed down to where the cups waited on the ground.
Another soft laugh from the Jaghut. ‘Raest was the name of the Tyrant we defeated. One of my more obnoxiously arrogant offspring. I did not mourn his fall. In any case, unlike Raest, I was never the strutting kind. It is a sign of weakness to shine blinding bright with one’s own power. Pathetic diffidence. A need that undermines. I was more… secure.’
He had Kallor’s attention now. ‘You killed forty-three T’lan Imass and a bonecaster?’
‘I killed them all.’ The Jaghut sipped from his own cup. ‘I have killed a few T’lan Imass,’ he said, the intonation a perfect mimicry of Kallor’s own claim a few moments past. ‘Tell me, then, do you like my abode? My garden?’
‘Solitude has driven you mad,’ Kallor said.
‘You would know all about that now, wouldn’t you, O Lord of Failures? Par-take of the tea, lest I take offence.’
Teeth bared, Kallor bent down to retrieve his cup.
The Jaghut’s left hand shot out, closing about Kallor’s wrist. ‘You wounded that wolf god,’ he said.
Nimander stared as he saw the old man struggle to twist free of that grip. Veins standing out on his temple, jaw muscles bunching beneath the beard. But there was no pulling loose. There was no movement at all from that
