Deadhouse Gates

Heboric sat down to rest. After a moment, he cocked his head. 'Sorry you had to wait for us, Toblakai-with-the-secret-name, though I imagine you'd have trouble getting your head through that cave mouth in any case.'

The giant savage sneered, revealing filed teeth. 'I collect tokens of the people I kill. Tied here on my belt. One day I will have yours.'

'He means your ears, Heboric,' Felisin said.

'Oh, I know, lass,' the ex-priest said. 'Tortured spirits writhe in this bastard's shadow — every man, woman and child that he's killed. Tell me, Toblakai, did those children beg to live? Did they weep, cry out for their mothers?'

'No more than grown men did,' the giant said, yet Felisin saw that he had paled, though she sensed that it was not his killing of children that bothered him. No, there was something else in what Heboric had said.

Tortured spirits. He's haunted by the ghosts of those he's slain. Forgive me, Toblakai, if I spare you no pity.

'This land is not home to Toblakai,' Heboric said. 'Has the Rebellion's lure of slaughter called you here? From where did you crawl, bastard?'

'I have said to you all that I shall say. When I speak to you next it will be when I kill you.'

Leoman emerged from the hole, cobwebs snagged in his bound hair, the waterskins bulging at his back. 'You will kill no-one until I say so,' he growled to the Toblakai, then swung a glare on Heboric. 'And I've not yet said so.'

There was something in the giant's expression that spoke of immense patience coupled with unwavering certainty. He rose to his full height, accepted a waterskin from Leoman, then set off down the trail.

Heboric stared sightlessly after him. 'The wood of that weapon is soaked in pain. I cannot imagine he sleeps well at night.'

'He barely sleeps at all,' Leoman muttered. 'You shall cease baiting him.'

The ex-priest grimaced. 'You've not seen the ghosts of children tied to his heels, Leoman. But I shall make the effort to keep my mouth shut.'

'His tribe made few distinctions,' Leoman said. 'There was kin, and those who were not kin were the enemy. Now, enough talk.'

A hundred paces on, the road suddenly widened, opening out onto the flat of the mesa. To either side ran row upon row of oblong humps of fired, reddish clay, each hump seven feet long and three wide. Despite the foreshortened horizons created by the suspended dust, Felisin could see that the rows, scores deep, encircled the entire plateau — entirely surrounding the ruined city that lay before them.

The cobbles were fully exposed now, revealing a broad causeway that ran in a straight line towards what had once been a grand gate, worn down by centuries of wind to knee-high stumps of bleached stone — as was the entire city beyond.

'A slow death,' Heboric whispered.

The Toblakai was already striding through the distant gates.

'We must cross through to the other side, down to the harbour,' Leoman said. 'Where we shall find a hidden camp. And a cache … unless it has been pillaged.'

The city's main street was a dusty mosaic of shattered pottery: red-glazed body sherds, grey, black and brown rims. 'I will think of this,' Felisin said, 'when I next carelessly break a pot.'

Heboric grunted. 'I know of scholars who claim they can map entire extinct cultures through the study of such detritus.'

'Now there's a lifetime of excitement,' Felisin drawled.

'Would that I could trade places with one of them!'

'You are not serious, Heboric'

'I am not? Fener's tusk, lass, I am not the adventurous type-'

'Perhaps not at first, but then you were broken. Shattered. Like these pots here.'

'I appreciate the observation, Felisin.'

'You cannot be remade unless you are first broken.'

'You have become very philosophic in your advanced years, I see.'

More than you realize. 'Tell me you've learned no truths, Heboric'

He snorted. 'Aye, I've learned one. There are no truths. You'll understand that yourself, years from now, when Hood's shadow stretches your way.'

'There are truths,' Leoman said ahead of them, not turning as he continued. 'Raraku. Dryjhna. The Whirlwind and the Apocalypse. The weapon in the hand, the flow of blood.'

'You've not made our journey, Leoman,' Heboric growled.

'Your journey was rebirth — as she has said — and so there was pain. Only fools would expect otherwise.'

The old man made no reply to that.

They walked on in the city's sepulchral silence. The foundation stones and the low ridges of inner walls mapped the floor plans of the buildings to either side. A precise geometric plan was evident in the layout of streets and alleys, a half-circle of concentric rings, with the flat side the harbour itself. The remains of a large, palatial structure were visible ahead; the massive stones at the centre had been more successful in withstanding the centuries of erosion.

Felisin glanced back at Heboric. 'Still plagued by ghosts?'

'Not plagued, lass. There was no great unleashing of brutality here. Only sadness, and even that was naught but a subcurrent. Cities die. Cities mimic the cycle of every living thing: birth, vigorous youth, maturity, old age, then finally.. dust and potsherds. In the last century of this place, the sea was already receding, even as a new influence arrived, something foreign. There was a brief renaissance — we'll see evidence of that ahead, at the harbour — but it was short-lived.' He was silent for a dozen or so paces. 'You know, Felisin, I begin to understand something of the lives of the Ascendants. To live for hundreds, then thousands of years. To witness this flowering in all its futile glory, ah, is it any wonder that their hearts grow hard and cold?'

'This journey has brought you closer to your god, Heboric.'

The comment stung him to silence.

She saw what Heboric had hinted at when they reached the city's harbour. What had once been the bay had silted in, yet four cyclopean channels had been constructed, reaching out to vanish in the haze. Each was as wide as three city streets and almost as deep.

'The last ships sailed out from these canals,' Heboric said at her side. 'The heaviest transports scraped bottom at the far mouths, and could only make way with the tide at peak. A few thousand denizens remained, until the aqueducts dried up. This is one story of Raraku, but alas, not the only one, and the others were far more violent, far more bloody. Yet I wonder, which was the more tragic?'

'You waste your thoughts on the past-' Leoman began, but was interrupted by a shout from the Toblakai. The giant had appeared near one of the canal heads. Falling silent, the desert warrior set off towards his companion.

As Felisin moved to follow, Heboric grasped her arm, the unseen hand a cool, tingling contact. He waited until Leoman was beyond earshot, then said, 'I have fears, lass-'

'I'm not surprised,' she cut in. 'That Toblakai means to kill you.'

'Not that fool. I mean Leoman.'

'He was Sha'ik's bodyguard. If I am to become her I'll not need to mistrust his loyalty, Heboric. My only concern is that he and the Toblakai did such a poor job of protecting Sha'ik the first time around.'

'Leoman is no fanatic,' the ex-priest said. 'Oh, he might well make appropriate noises to lead you to believe otherwise, but there is an ambivalence in him. I don't for a moment believe he thinks you are truly Sha'ik reborn. The simple fact is the rebellion needs a figurehead — a young, strong one, not the worn-down old woman that the original Sha'ik must have been. Hood's breath, she was a force in this desert twenty-five years ago. You might want to consider the possibility that these two bodyguards didn't break a sweat in their efforts to defend her.'

She looked at him. The tattoos made an almost solid whirling pattern on his weathered, toadlike face. His eyes were red and rimmed in dried mucus and a thin, grey patina dulled his pupils. 'Then I can also assume they will have greater cause this time around.'