She straightened, facing them, brushing the sand from her hands. ‘Well?’
‘You can get in,’ Murk said, ‘but can you get out?’
‘You leave that to me.’
‘What’s with the digging?’
‘Have to break the bindings.’
Murk shook a negative. ‘No. It’s suspended over the Abyss. Break the bonds and it’s lost for ever.’
The rumbling growl that escaped Spite did not sound human. Murk felt the tiny hairs of his forearms straightening in atavistic fear.
‘It’s like one of them trick musical instruments,’ Sour said.
Both Murk and Spite eyed the squat fellow with his matted unwashed hair, scrunched-up frog-face, and one squinted eye higher than the other. ‘A what?’ Murk asked.
‘A conun-drum,’ he said with a grin.
Murk stared anew, studying the man. By all the gods … sometimes I wonder, I really do.
Spite’s eyes seethed now, almost roiling with a deep crimson glow as she regarded the plaza. ‘What if we left two in place? I might manage against two.’
Murk tilted his head, considering. ‘Maybe. Opposite tendrils.’
‘Yes, good. Can you break the bonds?’
‘Have to give a look. Sour here might be better at that than I.’
Her scepticism couldn’t have been more obvious. ‘Really? Well, get to it.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
After Spite stalked off Yusen approached. ‘What’s the word?’
‘Sour and I are gonna give the dolmens a poke.’ The man’s frowned disapproval vexed Murk. ‘What did you expect? You took the job.’
‘I’ll earn my pay, mage. Don’t have to like it.’
‘Yeah, well, life’s tough all over.’
A ghost of a smile flitted across the officer’s face. ‘That’s my line.’ He gestured to nearby troopers. ‘Ostler, Tanner, Dee … you’re with these two.’
That’s better. We ain’t dead yet.
* * *
The view from one of the windows of the Dead House offered a prospect on the harbour and the dark waters of Malaz Bay beyond. Osserc preferred this view. Such a preference was, he could admit, all too human of him. He had slipped now into his elder, slimmer version of the Tiste form. He allowed himself such an indulgence, for, having succeeded in one long-blunted ambition, that of penetrating the Azath, he now felt another all too human emotion … that of a vague troubling dissatisfaction.
He let out a long breath, sending cobwebs fluttering across the glazing. Now he must face the mountain of smugness waiting downstairs and sit himself before him and endure the predictable ritual of the petitioner before the possessor.
It was, to be frank, all too exquisitely distasteful. And he would rather die. Almost.
His mouth hardening, he turned. Enough. The inevitable awaits, as it so prosaically does. And he would face it. Was that not his strength? Accepting what must come — what cannot be avoided? So he had thought … once.
The stairs creaked beneath his feet. In the main hall the only source of light was a fire burning in a stone hearth at one end. At the long battered main table waited the House’s current … what? Resident? Custodian? Curator? Curse? Or just plain servant? He did not know, not having been accepted among the Azath in the usual manner. As was his manner. Not the usual, that is.
All the appearance was, of course, an illusion — only the inner essence being real. He regarded the fellow hunched at the table, amber firelight flickering from coarse iron-grey hair, lined green-tinged skin and prominent thrusting tusks. A Jaghut, and not just any Jaghut. Gothos himself, hoary old teller of tales and self-appointed judge of all. Once known, appropriately enough, as the Lord of Hate.
He sat opposite. The figure did not stir, though Osserc glimpsed the shimmer of light within the eyes hidden by their cascade of wiry hair. Osserc crossed his legs, set one hand atop the other on one knee, and exhaled a long tired breath.
The two regarded one another in silence for some time after that exhalation. The fire continued to burn, though neither stirred to feed it. At length Osserc inhaled through his nose and plucked a bit of dust from his trousers. ‘Is this all there is, then,’ he offered as a statement. ‘Disappointing.’
Gothos’ habitual sour expression deepened even further. ‘You disappoint me. How conceited to think that existence should arrange itself merely to be interesting to you.’
Osserc clenched his teeth so tightly he heard them creak. After a time he managed to loosen his jaws enough to grate his answer. ‘Such was not my expectation, I assure you. Yet still. One must admit to the … mundaneness of it.’
Now the wide hunched shoulders fell even further and Gothos slouched back against the high-backed chair. He shook his head in exaggerated frustration. ‘The mere fact that you sought does not somehow call into being that which you sought. Or imply that there should be anything to seek at all. Typical backwards thinking.’ A clawed hand rose to wave as if dispersing smoke or fumes. ‘Positing a question does not magically create an answer.’
Lips tight, Osserc snapped his gaze to the murky ceiling. His entwined clenched fingers shook until they became numb. Eventually he mastered himself enough to clear his throat and say, slow and thick, ‘You try my patience, Gothos.’
Now a one-sided smile crept up the Jaghut’s lips and the hidden gaze seemed to sharpen. ‘Really? I rather hoped to break it.’
‘Break it? Or exhaust it?’
A slow shrug of the shoulders. ‘The choice is yours — as the way out is through me.’
‘Through you? You mean that to leave I must twist your arm, or some such childishness?’
Gothos inspected the blackened nails of one hand, each broken and striated. ‘If that is the best you can think of … but I’d rather hoped for more from you. But be that as it may. The way is open. You may go whenever you should choose. As has been the case since you entered, of course. However …’ and he shrugged again.
Osserc’s answering smile was as brittle as old dead branches. ‘I see. I may go … but without any answers.’ Gothos merely stared back. Osserc settled into his chair. Once more he eased his hands one on the top of the other over his crossed legs. ‘I understand. We must face one another until you relinquish what you know. Very well. You were foolish to enter into this with me, Gothos. The will of any other you would crush. But not mine.’
To this Gothos, as was his wont, gave no answer.
The fire continued to burn though neither stirred to feed it.
* * *
The great lumbering beast that was the army of the Thaumaturgs lurched onward, threading east through the jagged mounts that stood like rotten bones from the forest canopy, and Cohort Leader Pon-lor watched it go.
After the ordered columns of soldiers came the roped human chains of bearers, their feet great lumps of black mud, hunched almost double beneath their massive loads, hands clutching the cloth bindings that supported the fat baskets and boxes and ran round as tumplines to their heads. Then came the supply train of carts and further bearers and labourers, all conveying the necessary materiel and services of an army on the march in hostile territory: the small portable smithies, the various messes, the infirmaries, and behind them yet more tramping bearers bringing along even further materiel and supplies. With this sauntering mass came a second army — the camp followers. Wives and husbands and children of officers and soldiers, and surgeons and clerks and tradesmen. Plus their mistresses and prostitutes. And their soothsayers, petty traders and merchants, unsanctioned private healers, minor apothecaries, arrack and palm-wine tappers, professional gamblers, singers, dancers and thieves.
Last to disappear up the broad mud-churned track to be swallowed into the jungle’s hanging fat leaves went the great groaning siege wains, oxen-pulled, their tall wheels of solid wood levered along by hunched slaves and labourers, mud-smeared, straining and chanting in unison.