‘If they are dust,’ Udinaas muttered, ‘they cannot slaughter anyone.’
It was night. He sat with his back to a sloping rock face, on a ledge perched above the massive Edur encampment. The emperor had sent him off a short while ago. The hulking, gold-smeared bastard was in a foul mood. Wearied from dragging his bulk around, arguments with Hannan, Mosag, the endless logistics of moving an army tens of thousands strong, families in tow. Not all was glory.
‘The dust can rise, Udinaas. Can take shape. Warriors of bone and withered flesh, with swords of stone. Where are these ones from? Which warleader sent them here? They do not answer our questions. They never do. There are no bonecasters among them. They are, like us, lost.’
Udinaas was tired of listening. The wraith was worse than a burrowing tick, buried deep in his brain. He had begun to doubt its existence. More likely the product of madness, a persona invented in his own mind. An inventor of secrets, seeding armies of ghosts to explain the countless voices whispering in his skull. Of course, it would insist otherwise. It might even flit across his vision, creeping disembodied, the sourceless, inexplicably moving shadow where none belonged. But the slave knew his eyes could be deceived. All part of the same corrupted perception.
The wraith hides in the blood of the Wyval. The Wyval hides in the shadow of the wraith. A game of mutual negation. The emperor sensed nothing. Hannan Mosag and his K’risnan sensed nothing. Feather Witch, Mayen, Uruth, the host of bound wraiths, the hunting dogs, the birds and the buzzing insects – all sensed nothing.
And that was absurd.
As far as Udinaas was concerned, in any case – the judgement conjured by some rational, sceptical part of his brain, that knot of consciousness the wraith endlessly sought to unravel – Wither was not real.
Wyval blood. Sister of Dawn, the sword-wielding mistress known to the Edur as Menandore – her and the hungry place between her legs. Infection and something like rape. He thought he understood the connection now. He was indeed infected, and true to Feather Witch’s prediction, that un-human blood was driving him mad. There had been no blazing white bitch who stole his seed. Fevered delusions, visions of self-aggrandizement, followed by the paranoid suspicion that the promised glory had been stolen from him.
Thus explaining his sordid state right now, slave to an insane Tiste Edur. A slave, huddled beneath every conceivable heel. Cowering and useless once all the internal posturing and self-justifications were cast away.
Feather Witch. He had loved her and he would never have her and that was that. The underscored truth laid bare, grisly exposure from which he withheld any direct, honest examination.
Madmen built houses of solid stone. Then circled looking for a way inside. Inside, where cosy perfection waited. People and schemes and outright lies barred his every effort, and that was the heart of the conspiracy. From outside, after all, the house looked real. Therefore it was real. Just a little more clawing at the stone door, a little more battering, one more pounding collision will burst the barrier.
And on and on and round and round. The worn ruts of madness.
He heard scrabbling on the stone below, and a moment later Feather Witch clambered into view. She pulled herself up beside him, her motions jerky, as if fevered.
‘Is it my turn to run?’ he asked.
‘Take me there, Indebted. That dream realm. Where I found you before.’
‘You were right all along,’ Udinaas said. ‘It doesn’t exist.’
‘I need to go there. I need to see for myself.’
‘No. I don’t know how.’
‘Idiot. I can open the path. I’m good at opening paths.’
‘Then what?’
‘Then you choose. Udinaas, take me to the ghosts.’
‘This is not a good place to do that—’
She had one hand clenched around something, and she now reached out and clutched his arm with that hand, and he felt the impression of a tile pressed between them.
And there was fire.
Blinding, raging on all sides.
Udinaas felt a weight push him from behind and he stumbled forward. Through the flames. In the world he had just left, he would now be falling down the cliffside, briefly, then striking the rocky slope and tumbling towards the treeline. But his moccasins skidded across flat, dusty ground.
Twisting, down onto one knee. Feather Witch staggered into view, like him passing unharmed through the wall of fire. He wheeled on her. ‘What have you done?’
A hand closed round the back of his neck, lifted him clear of the ground, then flung him down onto his back. The cold, ragged edge of a stone blade pressed against the side of his neck. He heard Feather Witch scream.
Blinking, in a cloud of dust.
A man stood above him. Short but a mass of muscles. Broad shoulders and overlong arms, the honey-coloured skin almost hairless. Long black hair hanging loose, surrounding a wide, heavily featured face. Dark eyes glittered from beneath a shelf-like brow. Furs hung in a roughly sewn cloak, a patchwork of tones and textures, the visible underside pale and wrinkled.
‘Peth tol ool havra d ara.’ The words were thick, the vocal range oddly truncated, as if the throat from which those sounds issued lacked the flexibility of a normal man’s.
‘I don’t understand you,’ Udinaas said. He sensed others gathered round, and could hear Feather Witch cursing as she too was thrown to the ground.
‘Arad havra‘d ara. En‘aralack havra d‘drah.’
Countless scars. Evidence of a broken forearm, the bone unevenly mended and now knotted beneath muscle and skin. The man’s left cheekbone was dimpled inward, his broad nose flattened and pressed to one side. None of the damage looked recent. ‘I do not speak your language.’
The sword-edge lifted away from the slave’s neck. The warrior stepped back and gestured.
Udinaas climbed to his feet.
More fur-clad figures.
A natural basin, steeply walled on three sides. Vertical cracks in the stone walls, some large enough to provide shelter. Where these people lived.
On the final side of the basin, to the Letherii’s left, the land opened out. And in the distance – the slave’s eyes widened – a shattered city. As if it had been pulled from the ground, roots and all, then broken into pieces. Timber framework beneath tilted, heaved cobble streets. Squat buildings pitched at random angles. Toppled columns, buildings torn in half with the rooms and floors inside revealed, many of those rooms still furnished. Vast chunks of rotting ice were visible in the midst of the broken cityscape.
‘What place is this?’ Feather Witch asked.
He turned to see her following his gaze from a few paces away.
‘Udinaas, where have you brought us? Who are these savages?’
‘Vis vol‘raele absi‘arad.’
He glanced at the warrior who’d spoken, then shrugged and returned his attention to the distant city. ‘I want to go and look.’
‘They won’t let you.’
There was only one way to find out. Udinaas set out for the plain.
The warriors simply watched.
After a moment, Feather Witch followed, and came to his side. ‘It looks as if it has just been… left here. Dropped.’
‘It is a Meckros city,’ he said. ‘The wood at the bases, it is the kind that never grows waterlogged. Never rots. And see there’ – he pointed – ‘those are the remnants of docks. Landings. That’s a ship’s rail, dangling from those lines. I’ve never seen a Meckros city, but I’ve heard enough descriptions, and this is one. Plucked from the sea. That ice came with it.’
‘There are mounds, freshly raised,’ she said. ‘Do you see them?’
Raw, dark earth rising from the flats around the ruins, each barrow ringed in boulders. ‘The savages buried the Meckros dead,’ he said.
‘There are hundreds…’
‘And every one big enough to hold hundreds of corpses.’
‘They feared disease,’ she said.
‘
Or, despite their appearance, they are a compassionate people.’
‘Don’t be a fool, Indebted. The task would have taken months.’
He hesitated, then said, ‘That was but one clan, Feather Witch, back there. There are almost four thousand living in this region.’
She halted, grasped his arm and pulled him round. ‘Explain this to me!’ she hissed.
He twisted his arm loose and continued walking. ‘These ghosts hold strong memories. Of their lives, of their flesh. Strong enough to manifest as real, physical creatures. They’re called T’lan Imass—’
Her breath caught. ‘The Beast Hold.’
He glanced at her. ‘What?’
‘The Bone Perch. Elder, Crone, Seer, Shaman, Hunter and Tracker. The Stealers of Fire. Stolen from the Eres’al.’
‘Eres’al. That’s the Nerek goddess. The false goddess, or so claimed our scholars and mages, as justification for conquering the Nerek. I am shocked to discover the lie. In any case, aren’t the images on the tiles those of beasts? For the Beast Hold, I mean.’
‘Only among the poorer versions. The skins of beasts, draped round dark, squat savages. That is what you will see on the oldest, purest tiles. Do not pretend at ignorance, Udinaas. You brought us here, after all.’
They were approaching the nearest barrows, and could see, studding the raw earth, countless objects. Broken pottery, jewellery, iron weapons, gold, silver, small wooden idols, scraps of cloth. The remnant possessions of the people buried beneath.
Feather Witch made a sound that might have been a laugh. ‘They left the treasure on the surfaces, instead of burying it with the bodies. What a strange thing to do.’
‘Maybe so looters won’t bother digging and disturbing the corpses.’
‘Oh, plenty of looters around here.’
‘I don’t know this realm well enough to say either way,’ Udinaas said, shrugging.
The look she cast him was uneasy.
Closer now, the destroyed city loomed before them. Crusted barnacles clinging to the bases of massive upright wooden pillars. Black, withered strips of seaweed. Above, the cross-sectioned profiles of framework and platforms supporting streets and buildings. And, in the massive chunks of grey, porous ice, swaths of rotting flesh – not human. Oversized limbs, clad in dull scales. A long, reptilian head, dangling from a twisted, torn neck. Entrails spilled from a split belly. Taloned, three-toed feet. Serrated tails. Misshapen armour and harnesses of leather, stretches of brightly coloured cloth, shiny as silk.
‘What are those things?’
Udinaas shook his head. ‘This city was struck by ice, even as it was torn from our world. Clearly, that ice held its own ancient secrets.’
‘Why did you bring us here?’
He rounded on her, struggled to contain his anger, and managed to release it in a long sigh. Then he said, ‘Feather Witch, what was the tile you held in your hand?’
‘One of the Fulcra. Fire.’ She faltered, then resumed. ‘When I saw you, that first time, I lied when I said I saw nothing else. No-one.’
‘You saw her, didn’t you?’
‘Sister Dawn… the flames—’
‘And you saw what she did to me.’
‘Yes.’ A whisper.
Udinaas turned away. ‘Not imagined, then,’ he muttered. ‘Not conjured by my imagination. Not… madness…’
‘It is not fair. You, you’re nothing. An Indebted. A slave. That Wyval was meant for me. Me, Udinaas!’
He flinched from her rage, even as understanding struck him. Forcing a bitter laugh. ‘You summoned it, didn’t you? The Wyval. You wanted its blood, and it had you, and so its poison should have infected you. But it didn’t. Instead, it chose me. If I could, Feather Witch, I’d give it to you. With pleasure – no, that is not true, much as I’d like it to be. Be thankful that blood does not flow in your veins. It is in truth the curse you said it was.’
‘Better to be cursed than—’ She stopped, looked away.
He studied her pale face, and around it the blonde, crinkled hair shivering in the vague, near-lifeless wind. ‘Than what, Feather Witch? A slave born of slaves. Doomed to listen to endless dreams of freedom – a word you do not understand, probably will never understand. The tiles were to be your way out, weren’t they? Not taken in service to your fellow Letherii. But for yourself. You caught a whisper of freedom, didn’t you, deep within those tiles? Or, something you thought was freedom. For what it is worth, Feather Witch, a curse is not freedom. Every path is a trap, a snare, to entangle you in the games of forces beyond all understanding. Those forces probably prefer slaves when they use mortals, since slaves understand intrinsically the nature of the relationship imposed.’
She glared at him. ‘Then why you?’
‘And not you?’ He looked away. ‘Because I wasn’t dreaming of freedom. Perhaps. Before I was a slave, I was Indebted – as you remind me at every opportunity. Debt fashions its own kind of slavery, Feather Witch, within a system designed to ensure few ever escape once those chains have closed round them.’
She lifted her hands and stared at them. ‘Are we truly here? It all seems so real.’
‘I doubt it,’ Udinaas replied.
‘We can’t stay?’
‘In the world of the tiles? You tell me, Feather Witch.’
‘This isn’t the realm of your dreaming, is it?’
He grimaced to hide his amusement at the unintended meaning behind her question. ‘No. I did warn you.’
‘I have been waiting for you to say that. Only not in such a tone of regret.’
‘Expecting anger?’
She nodded.
‘I had plenty of that,’ he admitted. ‘But it went away.’
‘How? How do you make it go away?’
He met her eyes, then simply shook his head. A casual turning away, gaze once more upon the ruins. ‘This destruction, this slaughter. A terrible thing to do.’
‘Maybe they deserved it. Maybe they did something—’
‘Feather Witch, the question of what is deserved should rarely, if ever, be asked. Asking it leads to deadly judgement, and acts of unmitigated evil. Atrocity revisited in the name of justice breeds its own atrocity. We Letherii are cursed enough with righteousness, without inviting yet more.’
‘You live soft, Udinaas, in a very hard world.’
‘I told you I was not without anger.’
‘Which you bleed away, somehow, before it can hurt anyone else.’
‘So I do all the bleeding, do I?’
She nodded. ‘I’m afraid you do, Udinaas.’
He sighed and turned. ‘Let’s go back.’
Side by side, they made their way towards the waiting savages and their village of caves.
‘Would that we could understand them,’ Feather Witch said.
‘Their shaman is dead.’
‘Damn you, Udinaas!’
Into the basin, where something had changed. Four women had appeared, and with them was a young boy. Who was human.
The warrior who had spoken earlier now addressed the boy, and he replied in the same language, then looked over at Udinaas and Feather Witch. He pointed, then, with a frown, said, ‘Letherii.’
‘Do you understand me?’ Udinaas asked.
‘Some.’
‘You are Meckros?’
‘Some. Letherii Indebted. Indebted. Mother and father. They fled to live with Meckros. Live free, freedom. In freedom.’
Udinaas gestured towards the ruined city. ‘Your home?’
‘Some.’ He took the hand of one of the women attending him. ‘Here.’
‘What is your name?’
‘Rud Elalle.’
Udinaas glanced at Feather Witch. Rud meant found in the Meckros trade tongue. But, of course, he realized, she would not know that. ‘Found Elalle,’ he said in the traders’ language, ‘can you understand me better?’
The boy’s face brightened. ‘Yes! Good, yes! You are a sailor, like my father was. Yes.’
; ‘These people rescued you from the city?’
‘Yes. They are Bentract. Or were, whatever that means – do you know?’
He shook his head. ‘Found, were there any other survivors?’
‘No. All dead. Or dying, then dead.’
‘And how did you survive?’
‘I was playing. Then there were terrible noises, and screams, and the street lifted then broke, and my house was gone. I slid towards a big crack that was full of ice fangs. I was going to die. Like everyone else. Then I hit two legs. Standing, she was standing, as if the street was still level.’
‘She?’
‘This is traders’ tongue, isn’t it?’ Feather Witch said. ‘I’m starting to understand it – it’s what you and Hulad use when together.’
‘She was white fire,’ the boy said. ‘Tall, very very tall, and she reached down and picked me up.’ He made a gesture to mime a hand gripping the collar of his weathered shirt. ‘And she said: Oh no he won’t. Then we were walking. In the air. Floating above everything until we all arrived here. And she was swearing. Swearing and swearing.’
‘Did she say anything else, apart from swearing?’
‘She said she worked hard on this beget, and that damned legless bastard wasn’t going to ruin her plans. Not a chance, no, not a chance, and he’ll pay for this. What’s beget mean?’
‘I thought so,’ Feather Witch muttered in Letherii.
No.
‘Remarkable eyes,’ Feather Witch continued. ‘Must be hers. Yours are much darker. Duller. But that mouth…’
No. ‘Found,’ Udinaas managed, ‘how old are you?’
‘I forget.’
‘How old were you before the ice broke the city?’
‘Seven.’
Triumphant, Udinaas spun to face Feather Witch.
‘Seven,’ the boy said again. ‘Seven weeks. Mother kept saying I was growing too fast, so I must be tall for my age.’
Feather Witch’s smile was strangely broken.
The Bentract warrior spoke again.
The boy nodded, and said, ‘Ulshun Pral says he has a question he wants to ask you.’