Errastas sought a resurrection but what he sought was impossible. Each generation of gods was weaker-oh, they strode forth blazing with power, but that was the glow of youth and it quickly dissipated. And the mortal worshippers, they too, in their tiny, foreshortened lives, slid into cynical indifference, and those among them who held any faith at all soon backed into corners, teeth bared in their zeal, their blind fanaticism-where blindness was a virtue and time could be dragged to a halt, and then pulled backward. Madness. Stupidity.
None of us can go back. Errastas, what you seek will only precipitate your final fall, and good riddance. Still, lead on, old friend. To the place where I will do what must be done. Where I will end… everything.
Ahead, Errastas halted, turning to await them. His lone eye studied them, flicking back and forth. ‘We are close,’ he said. ‘We hover directly above the portal we seek.’
‘She is chained below?’ Kilmandaros asked.
‘She is.’
Sechul Lath rubbed the back of his neck, looked away. The distant range of stone fangs showed their unnatural regularity. Among them could be seen stumps where entire mountains had been uprooted, plucked from the solid earth. They built them here. They were done with this world. They’d devoured every living thing by then. Such bold… confidence. He glanced back at Errastas. ‘There will be wards.’
‘Demelain wards, yes,’ Errastas said.
At that, Kilmandaros growled.
Speak then, Errastas, of dragons. She is ready. She is ever ready.
‘We must be prepared,’ Errastas continued. ‘Kilmandaros, you must exercise restraint. It will do us no good to have you break her wards and then simply kill her.’
‘If we knew why they imprisoned her in the first place,’ Sechul said, ‘we might have what we will need to bargain with her.’
Errastas’s shrug was careless. ‘That should be obvious, Knuckles. She was uncontrollable. She was the poison in their midst.’
She was the balance, the counter-weight to them all. Chaos within, is this wise? ‘Perhaps there’s another way.’
Errastas scowled. ‘Let’s hear it, then,’ he said, crossing his arms.
‘K’rul must have participated. He must have played a role in this chaining-after all, he had the most to lose. She was the poison as you say, but if she was so to her kin that was incidental. Her true poison was when she was loose in K’rul’s blood-in his warrens. He needed her chained. Negated.’ He paused, cocked his head. ‘Don’t you think it curious that the Crippled God has now taken her place? That he is the one now poisoning K’rul?’
‘The diseases are not related,’ Errastas said. ‘You spoke of another way. I’m still waiting to hear it, Knuckles.’
‘I don’t have one. But this could prove a fatal error on our part, Errastas.’
He gestured dismissively. ‘If she will not cooperate, then Kilmandaros can do what she does best. Kill the bitch, here and now. You still think me a fool? I have thought this through, Sechul. The three of us are enough, here and now, to do whatever is necessary. We shall offer her freedom-do you truly imagine she will reject that?’
‘What makes you so certain she will honour whatever bargain she agrees to?’
Errastas smiled. ‘I have no worries in that regard. You will have to trust me, Knuckles. Now, I have been patient long enough. Shall we proceed? Yes, I believe we shall.’
He stepped back and Kilmandaros lumbered forward.
‘Here?’ she asked.
‘That will do, yes.’
Her fists hammered down on to the ground. Hollow thunder rumbled beneath the plain, the reverberation trembling through Sechul’s bones. The fists began their incessant descent, pounding with immortal strength, as dust slowly lifted to obscure the horizons. The stone beneath the hardened ash was not sedimentary; it was the indurated foam of pumice. Ageless, trapped in the memory of a single moment of destruction. It knew nothing of eternities.
Sechul Lath lowered himself into a squat. This could take some time. Sister, can you hear us? We come a-knocking…
‘What?’ Torrent demanded. ‘What did you just say?’
The haggard witch’s shrug grated bones. ‘I tired of the illusion.’
He looked round once more. The wagon’s track was gone. Vanished. Even the trail behind them had disappeared. ‘But I was following-I saw-’
‘Stop being so stupid,’ Olar Ethil snapped. ‘I stole into your mind, made you see things that weren’t there. You were going the wrong way-who cares about a damned Trygalle carriage? They’re probably all dead by now.’ She gestured ahead. ‘I turned you from that trail, that’s all. Because what we seek is right there.’
‘If I could kill you, I’d do it,’ said Torrent.
‘Stupid as only the young can be,’ she replied with a snort. ‘The only thing young people are capable of learning is regret. That’s why so many of them end up dead, to the eternal regret of their parents. Now, if you’ve finished the histrionics, can we continue on?’
‘I am not a child.’
‘That’s what children always say, sooner or later.’ With that, she set out, trudging past Torrent, whose horse shied away as soon as the bonecaster drew too close.
He steadied the animal, glaring at Olar Ethil’s scaled back.
‘-what we seek is right there.’ His gaze lifted. Another one of those damned dragon towers, rising forlorn on the plain. The bonecaster was marching towards it as if she could topple it with a single kick. No one is more relentless than a dead woman. With all the living ones I’ve known, I shouldn’t be surprised by that. The desolate tower was still a league or more away. He wasn’t looking forward to visiting it, not least because of Olar Ethil’s inexplicable interest in this one in particular; but also because of its scale. A city of stone, built upward instead of outward-what was the point of that?
Well. Self defence. But we’ve already seen how that didn’t work. And what if some lower section caught fire? There’d be no escape for everyone trapped above. No, these were the constructs of idiots, and he wanted nothing to do with them. What’s wrong with a hut? A hooped tent of hides-you can pick it up and carry it anywhere you want to go. Leaving nothing behind. Rest lightly on the soil-so the elders always said.
But why did they say that? Because it made running away easier. Until we ran out of places to run. If we’d built cities, just like the Letherii, why, they would have had to respect us and our claim to the lands we lived on. We would have had rights. But with those huts, with all that resting lightly, they never had to take us seriously, and that made killing us all that much easier.
Kicking his horse into motion, he squinted at that ragged tower. Maybe cities weren’t just to live in. Maybe they were all about claiming the right to live somewhere. The right to take from the surrounding land all they needed to stay alive. Like a giant tick, head burrowed deep, sucking all the blood it can. Before it cuts loose and sets off for a fresh sweep of skin. And another claim of its right to drink deep of the land.
The best way he’d found to kill a tick was with his thumbnail, slicing the insect in half on a flat rock. He remembered a dog trying to eat one once. It had had to spit it out. Ticks tasted foul-too foul even for dogs, which he’d not thought possible. Cities probably tasted even worse.
Listen to me. I’m losing my mind. Damned witch-are you still here? Inside my skull? Making my thoughts go round and round with all these useless ideas?
He rode up beside her. ‘Leave me alone.’
‘You were never that interesting in the first place,’ she replied.
‘Funny, I’d decided that about you long ago,’ said Torrent, ‘but you’re still here.’
She halted and turned round. ‘That will do, then. We’re about to have company, warrior.’