‘No point in wasting time,’ muttered Veed, crouching to clean the blade. Then he rose and faced the ghost. ‘Stop screaming. Who do you think summoned me in the first place?’
The ghost recoiled.
‘Now lead me to the others, Lifestealer.’
The ghost howled, fled from the abomination. He had to warn the others!
Grinning, Veed followed.
Stepping down, he crushed the last cinders of the paltry hearth, feeling the nuggets roll under his heel, and then turned to face the lifeless hag. He glared at her scaled back, as if silent accusation could cut her down where she stood. But what Torrent willed, he knew, was weaker than rain. ‘Those are the spires of my people’s legends-the fangs of the Wastelands. You stole the stars, witch. You deceived me-’
Olar Ethil snorted, but did not turn round. She was staring south-at least, he thought of it as south, but such certainties, which he had once believed to be unassailable, had now proved as vulnerable to the deathless woman’s magic as the very stones she lit aflame every night. As vulnerable as the bundles of dead grass from which she conjured slabs of dripping meat, and the bedrock that bled water with the rap of one bony knuckle.
Torrent scratched at his sparse beard. He’d used up the last of the oils young Awl warriors applied to burn off the bristle until such time that a true beard was possible-he must look a fool, but nothing could be done for it. Not that anyone cared anyway. There were no giggling maidens with veiled eyes, no coy dances from his path as he strutted the length of the village. All those old ways were gone now. So were the futures they had promised him.
He pictured a Letherii soldier standing atop a heap of bones-a mountain of white that was all that remained of Torrent’s people. Beneath the rim of his helm, the soldier’s face was nothing but bone, leaving a smile that never wavered.
Torrent realized that he had found a lover, and her name was hate. The Letherii details were almost irrelevant-it could be any soldier, any stranger. Any symbol of greed and oppression. The grasping hand, the gleam of avid hunger in the eyes, the spirit that took all it could by virtue of the strength and might it possessed.
Torrent dreamed of destruction. Vast, sweeping, leaving behind nothing but bones.
He glanced again at Olar Ethil.
‘When you find your voice,’ she said without turning, ‘speak to me, warrior.’
‘Why? What will you answer?’
Her laugh was a hollowed-out cackle. ‘When I do, mountains shall crumble. The seas shall boil. The air shall thicken with poison. My answer, warrior, shall deafen the heavens.’ She spun amidst flapping rags. ‘Do you feel it? The gate-it cracks open and the road will welcome what comes through. And such a road!’ She laughed again.
‘My hate is silent,’ Torrent said. ‘It has nothing to say.’
‘But I have been feeding it nonetheless.’
His eyes widened. ‘This fever comes from you, witch?’
‘No, it ever lurked in your soul, like a viper in the night. I but awakened it to righteousness.’
‘
‘Because it amuses me. Saddle your horse, warrior. We ride to the spires of your legends.’
‘Legends that have outlived the people telling them.’
She cocked her head in his direction. ‘Not yet. Not yet.’ And she laughed again.
‘
Setoc held her ground. ‘I don’t know,’ she replied levelly. ‘He always returned before.’
‘But it’s been days and days! Where is he? Where is Toc?’
‘He serves more than one master, Stavi. It was a miracle he was able to stay with us as long as he did.’
Stavi’s sister looked close to tears, but she’d yet to speak. The boy sat with his back against the lifeless flank of Baaljagg where the huge beast lay as if asleep, nose down between its front paws. Playing with a handful of stones, the boy seemed oblivious to his sisters’ distress. She wondered if perhaps he was simple in the head. Sighing, Setoc said, ‘He turned us into the east-and so that is the direction we shall take-’
‘But there’s nothing out there!’
‘I know, Stavi. I don’t know why he wants us to go there. He wouldn’t explain. But, would you go against his wishes?’ It was an unfair tactic, she knew, the kind meant to extort compliance from children.
It worked, but as every adult knew, not for long.
Setoc gestured. The ay lifted to its feet and trotted ahead, while Setoc picked up the boy and cajoled the twins into her wake. They set out, leaving behind their measly camp.
She wondered if Toc would ever return. She wondered if he’d any purpose behind his taking care of them, or had it been some residue of guilt or sense of responsibility for the children of his friend? He had left life behind and could not be held to its ways, or the demands it made upon a mortal soul-no, there could be no human motivation to what such a creature did.
And the eye he’d fixed upon her had belonged to a wolf. But even among such beasts, the closeness of the pack was a tense game of submission and dominance. The bliss of brother-and sisterhood hid political machinations and ruthless judgements. Cruelty needed only opportunity. So, he had led this paltry pack of theirs, and his lordship had been uncontested-after all, he could hardly be threatened with death, could he?
She understood, finally, that she could not trust him. And that her relief at his taking command had been the response of a child, a creature eager to cower in the shadow of an adult, praying for protection, willing itself blind to the possibility that the true threat was found in the man-or woman-standing over it. Of course, the twins had lost everything. Their desperate loyalty to a dead man, who had once been their father’s friend, was reasonable under the circumstances. Stavi and Storii wanted him back. Of course they did, and they had begun to look upon Setoc with something like resentment, as if she was to blame for his absence.
Nonsense, but the twins saw no salvation in Setoc. They saw no protector in her. They’d rather she had been the one to vanish.
The boy had his giant wolf. Would it protect them as well? Not a notion to rely upon.
‘They looked near death,’ Yedan Derryg said.
Riding beside her brother, Yan Tovis grimaced. ‘They must have awakened something-I told them to protect themselves, now I’m thinking I may have killed them both.’
‘They may look and act like two giggling girls, Twilight, but they aren’t. You killed no one.’
She twisted in her saddle and looked back down the road. The light of torches and lanterns formed a refulgent island in the midst of buildings at the far end of the city. The light looked like a wound. She faced forward again. Darkness, and yet a darkness through which she could see-every detail precise, every hint of colour and tone looking strangely opaque, solid before her eyes. As if the vision she had possessed all her life-in that now distant, remote world-was in truth a feeble, truncated thing. And yet, this did not feel like a gift-a pressure was building behind her eyes.
‘Besides,’ Yedan added, ‘they’re not yet dead.’
They rode on at a canter as the road climbed out of the valley, leaving behind the weed-snarled fields and brush-crowded farm buildings. Ahead was the wall of trees that marked the beginning of the forest called Ashayn. If the tales were true, Ashayn had fallen-every last tree-to the manic industry of the city, and in the leagues beyond that wasteland great fires had destroyed the rest. But the forest had returned, and the boles of blackwood could not be spanned by a dozen men with hands linked. There was no sign of a road or bridle path, but the floor beneath the high canopy was clear of undergrowth.
The gloom thickened once they rode beneath the towering trees. Among the blackwood she could now see other species, equally as massive, smooth-barked down to the serpentine roots. High above, some kind of parasitic plant created islands of moss, serrated leaves and black blossoms, like huge nests, depending from thick tangles of vines. The air was chill, musty, smelling of wet charcoal and sap.
A third of a league, then half, the horses’ hoofs thumping, hauberks rustling and clasps clicking, but from the forest itself only silence.
The pressure had sharpened to pain, as if a spike had been driven into her forehead. The motion of the horse was making her nauseated. Gasping, leaning forward, she reined in. A hand to her face revealed bright blood from her nostrils. ‘Yedan-’
‘I know,’ he said in a growl. ‘Never mind. Memories return. There’s something ahead.’
‘I don’t think-’
‘You said you wanted to see the First Shore.’
‘Not if it makes my head explode!’
‘Retreat is not possible,’ he said, spitting to one side. ‘What assails us, Yan, does not come from what awaits us.’
Her brother was weeping blood. He spat again, a bright red gout, and then said, ‘Kharkanas… the empty darkness’-he met her eyes-‘is empty no longer.’
She thought back to the two unconscious witches in the city behind them.
‘You cannot. Not yet. Ride that way, Twilight, and you will die.’ And he kicked his horse forward.
After a moment she followed.
