Deadhouse Gates

'All was incomplete, Leoman, until Heboric and I came to you. You and your tragic child companion. The Book, Leoman.'

She heard him remove the clasps, heard the tome pulled free of its hide wrapping. 'Open it,' she told him.

'You must open it — nor is it dawn! The ritual-'

'Open it.'

'You-'

'Where is your faith, Leoman? You do not understand, do you? The test is not mine alone. The test is for each of us. Here. Now. Open the Book, Leoman.'

She heard his harsh breathing, heard it slow, heard it gentled by a fierce will. The skin cover crackled softly.

'What do you see, Leoman?'

He grunted. 'Nothing, of course. There is no light to see by.'

'Look again.'

She heard him and the others gasp. A glow the colour of spun gold had begun emanating from the Book of Dryjhna. On all sides came a distant whisper, then a roar. 'The Whirlwind awakens — but not here, not in the heart of Raraku. The Book, Leoman, what do you see?'

He reached down to touch the first page, peeled it back, then the next, then the one after that. 'But this is not possible — it is blank! Every page!'

'You see what you see, Leoman. Close the Book, give it to the Toblakai, now.'

The giant edged forward and crouched down, his massive, bloodstained hands accepting the Book. He did not hesitate.

A warm light bathed his face as he stared down at the first page. She saw tears fill his eyes and run crooked tracks down his scarred cheeks.

'Such beauty,' she whispered to him. 'And beauty makes you weep. Do you know why you feel such sorrow? No, not yet. One day… Close the Book, Toblakai.

'Heboric-'

'No.'

Leoman slid a dagger free, but was stilled by Felisin's hand.

'No,' the ex-priest repeated. 'My touch-'

'Aye,' she said. 'Your touch.'

'No.'

'You were tested before, Heboric, and you failed. Oh, how you failed. You fear you will fail again-'

'I do not, Felisin,' Heboric's tone was sharp, certain. 'That least of all. I shall not be part of this ritual, nor shall I risk laying hands on that cursed Book.'

'What matter if he opens the Book?' the Toblakai growled. 'He's as blind as an enkar'al. Let me kill him, Sha'ik Reborn. Let his blood seal this ritual.'

'Do it.'

The Toblakai moved in a blur, the wooden sword almost unseen as it slashed for Heboric's head. Had it struck it would have shattered the old man's skull, spraying bits of it for ten paces or more. Instead, Heboric's hands flared, one the hue of dried blood, the other bestial and fur-backed. They shot up to intercept the swing, each closing on one of the giant's wrists — and stopping the swing dead. The wooden sword flew out of the Toblakai's hands, vanishing into the darkness beyond the Book's pale glow.

The giant grunted in pain.

Heboric released the Toblakai's wrists, grasped the giant by his neck and belt, then, in a surge, threw him out into the darkness. There was a thud as he struck and the clay trembled beneath their feet.

Heboric staggered back, his face twisted in shock, and the blazing rage that entwined his hands winked out.

'We could see, then,' Felisin told him. 'Your hands. You were never forsaken, Heboric, no matter what the priests may have believed when they did what they did. You were simply being prepared.'

The old man fell to his knees.

'And so a man's faith is born anew. Know this: Fener would never risk investing you and you alone, Heboric Light Touch. Think on that, and be at ease …'

Out in the darkness, the Toblakai groaned.

Felisin rose to her feet. 'I shall have the Book now, Leoman. Come the dawn.' Felisin, surrendering herself yet again. Remade. Reborn. Is this the last time? Oh no, it most certainly is not.

With dawn an hour away, Icarium led the others to the edge of the warren. Hitching the stock of his crossbow on one hip, Fiddler handed Crokus the lantern, then glanced over at Mappo.

The Trell shrugged. 'The barrier is opaque — nothing of what lies beyond is visible.'

'They know nothing of what is to come,' Iskaral Pust whispered. 'An eternal flare of pain, but shall I waste words in an effort to prepare them? No, not at all, never. Words are too precious to be wasted, hence my coy silence while they hesitate in a fit of immobile ignorance.'

Fiddler gestured with the crossbow. 'You go first, Pust.'

The High Priest gaped. 'Me?' he squealed. 'Are you mad?' He ducked his head. 'They are deceived again, even that gnarled excuse for a soldier — oh, this is too easy!'

Hissing, Crokus stepped forward, raising the lantern high, then strode through the barrier, vanishing from the others. Icarium immediately followed.

With a growl, Fiddler gestured Iskaral Pust forward.

As the two disappeared, Mappo swung to Apsalar and her father. 'You two have been through once before,' he said. 'The warren's aura clings to you both.'

Rellock nodded. 'The false trail. We had to make sure of the D'ivers and Soletaken.'

The Trell swung his gaze to Apsalar. 'What warren is this?'

'I don't know. It has indeed been torn apart. There is little hope of determining its nature given the state it's now in. And my memories tell me nothing of such a warren so destroyed.'

Mappo sighed, rolling his shoulders to ease the tension binding his muscles. 'Ah, well, why assume that the Elder Warrens we know of — Tellann, Omtose Phellack, Kurald Galain — are the only ones that existed?'

The barrier was marked by a change in air pressure. Mappo swallowed and felt his ears pop. He blinked, his senses struggling to manage the flood that rushed upon them. The Trell stood with the others in a forest of towering trees, a mix of spruce, cedar and redwood all thickly braided in moss. Blue-tinged sunlight filtered down. The air smelled of decaying vegetation and insects buzzed. The scene's ethereal beauty descended on Mappo like a cooling balm.

'Don't know what I was expecting,' Fiddler muttered, 'but it wasn't this.'

A large dolomite boulder, taller than Icarium, rose from the mulch directly ahead. Sunlight bathed it in pale green, lifting into view the shadows of grooves, pits and other shapes carved into its surface.

'The sun never moves,' Apsalar said beside the Trell. 'The light is ever at that angle, the only angle that raises those carvings to our eyes.'

The base and sides of the boulder were a mass of hand and paw prints, every one the colour of blood.

The Path of Hands. Mappo turned to Iskaral Pust. 'More of your deceit, High Priest?'

'A lone boulder in a forest? Free of lichen and moss, bleached by another world's harsh sun? The Trell is dense beyond belief, but listen to this!' He offered Mappo a wide smile. Absolutely not! How could I move such an edifice? And look at those ancient carvings, those pits and whorls, how could such things be faked?'

Icarium had walked up to stand before the boulder. He followed the wending track of one of the grooves. 'No, these are real enough. Yet they are Tellann, the kind you would find at a site sacred to the T'lan Imass — the boulder typically surmounting a hilltop on a tundra or plain. I would not expect, of course, that the D'ivers and Soletaken could be aware of such an incongruity-'

'Of course not!' Iskaral burst out, then he frowned at the Jhag. 'Why do you stop?'

'How could I otherwise? You interrupted me-'

'A lie! But no, I must stuff my outrage into a bag, a bag such as the curious sack the Trell carries — such a curious sack, that! Is there another fragment trapped within it? The possibility is … possible. A likely likelihood, indeed, a certain certainty! I need but turn this ingenuous smile on the Jhag to show my benign patience at his foul insult, for I am a bigger man than he, oh yes. All his airs, his posturing, his poorly disguised asides — hark!' Iskaral Pust spun around, squinted into the forest beyond the boulder.