of mayhem, of inescapable annihilation? And did it matter if death arrived as a force beyond the control of anyone, or as the logical consequence of wilful stupidity? No it did not, when there was no one left to ponder such questions.
Fury and folly. Someone here had played the ultimate practical joke. Seeded a world with life, witnessed its burgeoning, and then nudged the sun to anger. Into a deadly storm, a momentary cough of poison light, and the season of life ended. Just so.
Who is-
The god dies when the last believer dies. Rising up bloated and white, sinking down into unseen depths. Crumbling into dust. Expelled in a gust of hot wind. Venomous spears lanced through Skintick’s brain, shearing through every lasttheter that remained. And suddenly he was free, launching skyward. Free, yes, because nothing mattered any more. The hoarders of wealth, the slayers of chil-dren, the rapists of the innocent, all gone. The decriers of injustice, the addicts of victimization, the endlessly offended, gone.
Nothing was fair. Nothing. And that is why you are dying, dear god. That is why. How can you do anything else!? The sun rages!
Meaningless!
We all die. Meaningless!
Who-
A hard slap and he was jolted awake. A seamed, tusked face hovered over him. Vertical pupils set in grey, the whites barely visible. Like a damned goat.
‘You,’ the Jaghut said, ‘are a bad choice for this. Answering despair with laughter like that.’
Skintick stared up at the creature. He couldn’t think of anything to say.
‘There is a last moment,’ Gothos continued, ‘when every sentient creature alive realizes that it’s over, that not enough was done, that hindsight doesn’t survive dying. Not enough was done-you Tiste Andii understood that. Anomander Rake did. He realized that to dwell in but one world was madness. To survive, you must spread like vermin. Rake tore his people loose from their complacency. And for this he was cursed.’
‘I saw-I saw a world dying.’
‘If that is what you saw, then so it is. Somewhere, somewhen. On the paths of the Azath, a distant world slides into oblivion. Potential snuffed out. What did you feel, Skintick?’
‘I felt… free.’
The Jaghut straightened. ‘As I said, a bad choice.’
‘Where-where is Nimander?’ Sounds at the doorway-
Desra rushed into the chamber. She saw Skintick, saw him slowly sitting up. She saw what must be the Jaghut, the hood drawn back to reveal that greenish, unhu-man visage, the hairless pate so mottled it might have been a mariner’s map of islands, a tortured coastline, reefs. He stood tall in his woollen robes. But nowhere could she find Nimander.
The Jaghut’s eyes fixed on her for a moment, and then he faced one of the walls of ice.
She followed that gaze.
Staggering into darkness he was struck countless times. Fists pounded, fingers raked ragged furrows through his skin. Hands closed about his limbs and pulled.
‘This one is mine!’
‘No, mine!’All at once voices cried out on all sides and a hand closed about Nimander’s waist, plucked him into the air. The giant figure carrying him ran, feet thumping like thunder, up a steep slope, rocks scurrying down, first a trickle, then a roar of cascading stones, with screams in their wake.
Choking dust blinded him.
A sharp-edged crest crunching underfoot, and then a sudden even steeper de-scent, down into a caldera. Grey clouds rising in plumes, sudden coruscating heat foul with gases that stung his eyes, burned in his throat.
He was flung on to hot ash.
The giant creature loomed over him.
Through tears Nimander looked up, saw a strangely child-like face peering down. The forehead sloped back behind an undulating brow-ridge from which the eyebrows streamed down in thick snarls of pale, almost white hair. Round, smooth cheeks, thick lips, a pug nose, a pale bulging wattle beneath the rounded chin. Its skin was bright yellow, its eyes emerald green.
It spoke in the language of the Tiste Andii. ‘I am like you. I too do not belong here.’
The voice was soft, a child’s voice. The giant slowly blinked, and then smiled, revealing a row of dagger like fangs.
Nimander struggled to speak: ‘Where-who-all those people…’
‘Spirits. Trapped like ants in amber. But it is not amber. It is the blood of dragons.’
‘Are you a spirit?’
The huge head shook in a negative. ‘I am an Elder, and I am lost.’
‘Elder.’ Nimander frowned. ‘You call yourself that. Why?’ A shrug like hills in motion. ‘The spirits have so named me.’
‘How did you come to be here?’
‘I don’t know. I am lost, you see.’
‘And before this place?’
‘Somewhere else. I built things. Of stone. But each house I built then vanished-I know not where. It was most… frustrating.’
‘Do you have a name?’
‘Elder?’
‘Nothing else?’
‘Sometimes, I would carve the stone. To make it look like wood. Or bone. I remember… sunsets. Different suns, each night, different suns. Sometimes two. Sometimes three, one fierce, the others like children. I would build another house, if I could. I think, if I could do that, I would stop being lost.’
Nimander sat up. He was covered in volcanic dust, so fine it shed from him like liquid. ‘Build your house, then.’
‘Whenever I begin, the spirits attack me. Hundreds, then thousands. Too many.’
‘I stepped through a wall of ice.’ The memory was suddenly strong. ‘Omtose Phellack-’
‘Oh, ice is like blood and blood is like ice. There are many ways in. None out. You do not belong here because you are not yet dead. You are, lost, like me. We should be friends, I think.’
‘I can’t stay-’
‘I am sorry.’
Panic seethed to life in Nimander. He stood, sinking to his shins in the hot ash. ‘I can’t-Gothos. Find me. Gothos!’
‘I remember Gothos.’ A terrible frown lowered the Elder’s brows. ‘He would appear, just before the last stone was set. He would look upon my house and pronounce it adequate. Adequate! Oh, how I hated that word! My sweat, my blood, and he called them adequate! And then he would walk inside and close the door, and I would place the last stone, and the house would vanish! I don’t think I like Gothos.’
‘I don’t blame you,’ Nimander said, unwilling to voice his suspicion that Gothos’s arrival and the vanishing of the houses were in fact connected; that indeed the Jaghut came to collect them. This Elder builds the Houses of the Azath.
And he is lost.
‘Tell me,’ Nimander said, ‘do you think there are others like you? Others, out there, building houses?’
‘I don’t know.’
Nimander looked round. The jagged walls of the cone enclosed the space. Enormous chunks of pumice and obsidian lay half buried in the grey dust. ‘Elder, do the spirits ever assail you here?’
‘In my pit? No, they cannot climb the sides.’
‘Build your house here.’
‘But-’
‘Use the rim as your foundation.’
‘But houses have corners!’
