Dust of Dreams

A Caste. Fifty. Forty-nine now. Four wield Kep’rah, weapons of sorcery. A Crown commands them, they flow as one.

She looked to the northwest. ‘How far away?’

Your eyes shall find them shortly. They are… mounted.

‘On what?’

Sag’Churok would have sent her an image, but she was beyond such things now. She was closed and closing. Wrought… legs. To match our own. Tireless.

He watched as the Destriant absorbed this information, and then she faced the Jaghut.

‘Guardians. I thought to see… familiar faces.’

One of the spear-wielders stepped forward. ‘Hood would not want us.’

‘If he had,’ said the swordswoman beside him, ‘he would have summoned us.’

‘He would not choose that,’ resumed the first Jaghut, ‘for he knew we would not likely accede.’

‘Hood abused our goodwill,’ the swordswoman said, tusks gleaming with frost, ‘at the first chaining. He knew enough to face away from us at the next one.’ An iron-sheathed finger pointed at the Destriant. ‘Instead, he abused you, child of the Imass. And made of one his deadliest enemy. We yield him no sorrow.’

‘No commiseration,’ said the spear-wielder.

‘No sympathy,’ added one of the slingers.

‘He will stand alone,’ the swordswoman said in a rasp. ‘A Jaghut in solitude.’

Sag’Churok twisted round, studied the glint of metal to the northwest. Not long now.

The swordswoman continued. ‘Human, you keep strange company. They will teach you nothing of value, these Che’Malle. It is their curse to repeat their mistakes, again and again, until they have destroyed themselves and everyone else. They have no gifts for you.’

‘It seems,’ said Kalyth of the Elan, ‘we humans have already learned all they could teach us, whether we ever knew it or not.’

A chilling sound, the rattling laughter of fourteen undead Jaghut.

Then the spear-wielder spoke. ‘Flee. Your hunters shall know the privilege of meeting the last soldiers of the only army the Jaghut ever possessed.’

‘The last to die,’ one added in a growl.

‘And should you see Hood,’ said the swordswoman, ‘remind him of how his soldiers never faltered. Even in his moment of betrayal. We never faltered.’

More laughter.

Pale, trembling, the Destriant returned to Gunth Mach. ‘We go. Leave them to this.’

Sag’Churok hesitated. They are too few, Destriant. I will stay with them.

Fourteen pairs of cold, lifeless eyes fixed on the K’ell Hunter, and, smiling, the swordswoman spoke. ‘There are enough of us. Kep’rah never amounted to much of a threat against Omtose Phellack. Still, you may stay. We appreciate an audience, because we are an arrogant people.’ The ghastly grin broadened. ‘Almost as arrogant as you, Che’Malle.’

‘I think,’ observed the spear-wielder, ‘this one is… humbled.’

His companion shrugged. ‘Into the twilight of a species comes humility, like an old woman who has just remembered she’s still a virgin. Too late to count for anything. I am not impressed.’ And the swordswoman attempted to spit, failed, and quietly cursed.

‘Sag’Churok,’ said the Destriant from Gunth Mach’s saddled back, ‘do not die here. Do you understand me? I need you still. Watch, if you must. See what there is to be seen, and then return to us.’

Very well, Kalyth of the Elan.

The K’ell Hunter watched his beloved carry the human away.

Battered armour rustled and clanked as the Jaghut warriors readied themselves, fanning out along the crest of the hill. As they did so, the frigid air crackled around them.

Sag’Churok spoke: Proud soldiers, do not fear they will pass you by. They pass by nothing they believe they can slay, or destroy.

‘We have observed your folly countless times,’ replied the swordswoman. ‘Nothing of what we are about to face will catch us unawares.’ She turned to her companions. ‘Is not Iskar Jarak a worthy leader?’

‘He is,’ answered a chorus of rough voices.

‘And what did he say to us, before he sent us here?’

And thirteen Jaghut voices answered: “ ‘Pretend they are T’lan Imass.’ ”

The last survivors of the only army of the Jaghut, who had not survived at all, then laughed once more. And that laughter clattered on, to greet the Caste, and on, through the entire vicious, stunning battle that followed.

Sag’Churok, watching from a hundred paces away, felt the oil sheathing his hide thicken in the bitter gusts of Omtose Phellack, as the ancient Hold of Ice trembled to the impacts of Kep’rah, as it in turn lashed out-bursting flesh, sending frozen pieces and fragments flying.

In the midst of the conflagration, iron spoke with iron in that oldest of tongues.

Sag’Churok watched. And listened. And when he had seen and heard enough, he did as the Destriant commanded. He left the battle behind. Knowing the outcome, knowing a yet deeper, still sharper bite of humility.

Jaghut. Though we shared your world, we never saw you as our foe. Jaghut, the T’lan Imass never understood-some people are simply too noble to be rivals. But then, perhaps it was that very nobility they so despised.

Iskar Jarak, you who commanded them… what manner of thing are you? And how did you know? I wish you could answer me that one question. How did you know precisely what to say to your soldiers?

Sag’Churok would never forget that laughter. The sound was carved into his very hide; it rode the swirls of his soul, danced light on the heady flavours of his relief and wonder. Such knowing amusement, both wry and sweet, such a cruel, breathtaking sound.

I have heard the dead laugh.

He knew he would ride that laughter through the course of his life. It would hold him up. Give him strength.

Now I understand, Kalyth of the Elan, what made your eyes so bright on this day.

Behind him, the earth shook. And the song of laughter went on and on.

The swollen trunks of segmented trees rose from the shallows of the swamp, so bloated that Grub thought they might split open at any moment, disgorging… what? He had no idea, but considering the horrific creatures they had seen thus far-mercifully from a distance-it was likely to be so ghastly it would haunt his nightmares for the rest of his life. He swatted at a gnat chewing on his knee and crouched further down behind the bushes.

The buzz and whine of insects, the slow lap of water on the sodden shoreline, and the deep, even breathing of something massive, each exhalation a sharp whistle that went on… and on.

Grub licked sweat from his lips. ‘It’s big,’ he whispered.

Kneeling at his side, Sinn had found a black leech and let each of its two suckers fasten on to the tip of a finger. She spread the fingers and watched how the slimy thing stretched. But it was getting fatter. ‘It’s a lizard,’ she said.

‘A dragon.’

‘Dragons don’t breathe, not like we do, anyway. That’s why they can travel between worlds. No, it’s a lizard.’

‘We lost the path-’

‘There never was a path, Grub,’ Sinn replied. ‘There was a trail, and we’re still on it.’

‘I preferred the desert.’

‘Times change,’ she said, and then grinned. ‘That’s a joke, by the way.’

‘I don’t get it.’

She made a face. ‘Time doesn’t change, Grub, just the things in it.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘This trail, of course. It’s as if we’re walking the track of someone’s life, and it was a long life.’ She waved with her free hand. ‘All this, it’s what’s given shape to the mess at the far end-which was where we started from.’

‘Then we’re going back in time?’

‘No. That would be the wrong direction, wouldn’t it?’

‘Get that thing off your fingers before it sucks you dry.’

She held it out and he tugged it loose, which wasn’t as easy as he would have liked. The puckered wounds at the ends of Sinn’s fingers bled freely. Grub tossed the creature away.

‘Think he’ll smell it?’ Sinn asked.

‘He who?’

‘The lizard. My blood.’

‘Gods below!’

Her eyes were bright. ‘Do you like this place? The air, it makes you drunk, doesn’t it? We’re back in the age when everything was raw. Unsettled. But maybe not, maybe we’re from the raw times. But here, I think, you could stay for ten thousand years and nothing would change, nothing at all. Long ago, time was slower.’

‘I thought you said-’

‘All right, change was slower. Not that anything living would sense that. Everything living just knows what it knows, and that never changes.’

She was easier when she never said anything, Grub decided, but he kept that thought to himself. Something was stirring, out in the swamp, and Grub’s eyes widened when he studied the waterline and realized that it had crept up by a full hand’s span. Whatever it was, it had just displaced a whole lot of water. ‘It’s coming,’