Beneath yet another heel, his left elbow was crushed. As kicks hammered into his gut, he tried to draw his knees up, only to feel them stamped on and broken. Something burst low in his gut and he felt himself spilling out.
Then a heel landed on the side of his head.
Fifty paces up the street, Hull Beddict approached. He saw a crowd of Tiste Edur, and it was clear they were kicking someone to death. A sudden uneasiness in his stomach, he quickened his pace. There were bodies, he saw, beyond the circle. A soldier in the garb of a palace guard, the shaft of a spear jutting from him. And… an Edur woman.
‘Oh, Errant, what has happened here?’
He made to run-
– and found his path blocked.
A Nerek, and a moment later Hull Beddict recognized him. One of Buruk the Pale’s servants.
Frowning, wondering how he had come to be here, Hull moved to step around the man – who sidestepped once more to block him.
‘What is this?’
‘You have been judged, Hull Beddict,’ the Nerek said. ‘I am sorry.’
‘Judged? Please, I must-’
‘You chose to walk with the Tiste Edur emperor,’ the Nerek said. ‘You chose… betrayal.’
‘An end to Lether, yes – what of it? No more will this damned kingdom destroy people like the Nerek, and the Tarthenal-’
‘We thought we knew your heart, Hull Beddict, but now we see that it has turned black. It is poisoned, because forgiveness is not within you.’
‘Forgiveness?’ He reached out to push the Nerek aside.
From behind, two knives slid into his back, one under each shoulder blade, angling upward.
Arching in shock, Hull Beddict stared at the Nerek standing before him, and saw that the young man was weeping.
He sank to his knees, weakness rising through him, and the storm of thoughts – the emotions and desires that had haunted him for years – they too weakened, fell away into a grey, calm mist. The mist rising yet higher, a sudden coldness in his muscles.
Hull Beddict pitched forward, onto his face, but he never felt the impact with the cobbles.
‘Stop. Please-’
The Tiste Edur turned, to see a Letherii step from where he had been hiding, round the corner of the warehouse. Nondescript, limping, a knout tucked into a rope belt, the man edged forward and continued in the trader tongue, ‘He’s never hurt no-one. Don’t kill him, please. I saw, you see.’
‘You saw what?’ Theradas demanded.
‘The woman, she stabbed herself. Look at the knife, see for yourself.’ Chalas wrung his hands, eyes on the bleeding, motionless form of Tehol. ‘Please, don’t hurt him no more.’
‘You must learn,’ Theradas said, baring his teeth. ‘We heed our emperor’s words. This shall be a day of suffering, old man. Now, leave us, or invite the same fate.’
Chalas surprised them, lunging forward to drape himself over Tehol, shifting to protect as much of him as he could.
Midik Buhn laughed.
Blows rained down, more savage than ever, and it was not long before Chalas lost consciousness. A half- dozen more kicks dislodged the man from Tehol, until the two were lying side by side. With sudden impatience, Theradas slammed his heel down on a head, hard enough to collapse the skull and crush the brain.
Standing on the far side of the bridge, Turudal Brizad felt the malign sorcery wash over him. The soldiers barricading the bridge had died in the grey conflagration a moment earlier, and now it seemed the terrible sorcery would reach out into the rest of the city. Into the nearby buildings, and, for the Errant, enough was enough.
He nudged the wild power coursing through those buildings, angling it ever downward, slipping it past occupied rooms, downward, past the hidden tunnels of the Rat Catchers’ Guild where so many citizens huddled, and into the insensate mud and clays of the long dead swamp. Where it could do nothing, and was slowed, slowed, then trapped.
It was clear, a moment later, that the Warlock King had not detected the manipulation, as the magic was surrendered, the poisoning conduit from the Crippled God closed once more. Hannan Mosag’s flesh would not suffer much more of that, fortunately.
Not that it would matter.
He watched as a score of Tiste Edur set off into the city, seeking, no doubt, the fleeing woman from their tribe. But nothing good would come of it, the Errant knew. Indeed, a most egregious error was in the offing, and he grieved for that.
Reaching with his senses, he gained a vision of an overgrown, broken-up yard surrounding a squat tower, and watched in wonder and awe as a lone figure wove a deadly dance in the midst of five enraged Toblakai gods. Extraordinary – a scene the Errant would never forget. But it could not last much longer, he knew.
Nothing good ever did, alas.
Blinking, he saw that the Tiste Edur emperor was now leading his kin across the bridge. On their way to the Eternal Domicile.
Turudal Brizad pushed himself into motion once more.
The Eternal Domicile, a conjoining of destinations, for yet another sequence of tragic events to come.
The Errant began walking, staying ahead of the Tiste Edur, and feeling, deep within him, the lurching, stumbling measure of time, the countless heartbeats, merging one and all – no need, finally, for a nudge, a push or a pull. No need, it seemed, for anything. He would but witness, now. He hoped.
Seated cross-legged in the street, the lone High Mage of the Crimson Guard present in this fell city, Corlo Orothos, once of Unta in the days before the empire, cocked his head at the heavy, thumping feet of someone approaching from behind. He risked opening his eyes, then raised a hand in time to halt the newcomer.
‘Hello, half-blood,’ he said. ‘Have you come to worship your gods?’
The giant figure looked down at Corlo. ‘Is it too late?’ he asked.
‘No, they’re still alive. Only one man opposes them, and not for much longer. I’m doing all I can, but it’s no easy thing to confuse gods.’
The Tarthenal half-blood frowned. ‘Do you know why we pray to the Seregahl?’
An odd question. ‘To gain their favour?’
‘No,’ Ublala replied, ‘we pray for them to stay away. And now,’ he added, ‘they’re here. That’s bad.’
‘Well, what do you intend to do about it?’
Ublala squinted down at Corlo, said nothing.
After a moment, the High Mage nodded. ‘Go on, then.’
He watched the huge man lumber towards the gateway. Just inside, he paused beside a tree, reached up and broke free a branch as thick as one of Corlo’s thighs. Hefting it in both hands, the half-blood jogged into the yard.
It was tearing him apart, striving to burst free of his skeletal cage, the minuscule, now terribly abused muscles. In their journey across Letheras, they’d left thirty or more dead Soletaken in their wake. And six Tiste Edur who’d come up from the docks eager for a fight.
They’d taken wounds –
Through a red haze, the old Azath tower and its yard came into view, and a surge of eagerness from the Wyval flooded him.
The Master needed help. All was not yet lost.
In a blur of motion, Udinaas was past the strange man sitting cross-legged on the street – he caught the
