‘Well, we’ve seen enough suspicious pebbles on this trail-’
‘You mock me, but I tell you, there is no place in all the world which they have not seen, have not explored, have not interfered with. The Jaghut were right to oust the one they found hiding in their midst. You might think us Thel Akai immune, but there is no telling if an Azathanai hides among us – they choose the flesh they wear, you know-’
‘Well, that is nonsense, Tathenal,’ said Ravast, leaning back again and closing his eyes. ‘Were they as you say, they would not be mortal – they would be gods.’
‘Gods? Well, why not? We worship the rock-gods-’
‘No we don’t. We just blame them when things go wrong.’
‘And when we are blessed we thank them.’
‘No. When things go right, we congratulate ourselves.’
‘Oh, cynical child, does this fresh world so weary you? Are you left exhausted after uncovering all the world’s truths? Will you slouch and slide your jaded eye upon all the fools whose company you are cursed to endure?’
‘You mock my tolerance. It is only my youthful vigour that sustains me.’
‘The Azathanai built this, only to knock it down – not even a Thel Akai could so push these stones, uprooting them like this. I see about us the echoes of old rage. For all we know, our very own rock-gods were Azathanai.’
‘Then it is well that we lost faith.’
‘She hasn’t.’
Ravast frowned at that, and then sat up. ‘I would venture the opposite! It is no faith that makes anyone face death and only death. It is, if anything, surrender. Abjection. There is not a fool to be found who would worship death.’
‘Ah, but she marches not to kneel before the Lord of Rock-Piles, but to war against him.’
‘Might as well beat against a mountainside.’
‘Just so,’ Tathenal said, looking at the rubble around them.
‘There will be no Azathanai among the Jaghut’s company,’ Ravast said. ‘I suspect no more than a handful of fools. Other Jaghut, bound only by some kind of loyalty to the grieving brother. Perhaps a few Dog-Runners, eager to find a song in the deed. And we Thel Akai, of course, for whom such a summons is too outrageous to refuse.’
‘We refused it.’
‘In the name of flocks to keep, gardens to tend, nets to weave. And yet, Tathenal, look at us, here on this trail.’
‘We pursue her to bring her back. With weapons of reason, we will convince her-’
‘Hah! Idiot! She’s but extended our leashes, and knows the patience of the mistress. Look at us here, playing at freedom! But soon we will resume this trek, and she will take up the slack.’
There was a loud grunt from Garelko and they turned to see the man bolt upright, eyes wide. ‘Ah!’ he cried. ‘I dreamed a dragon!’
‘Was no dream, you fool,’ Tathenal said. ‘We met the beast this morning, and saw it off.’
Garelko squinted across at Tathenal. ‘We did? Then it was all real?’
Ravast stared at Tathenal. ‘That was a dragon?’
‘What else could it have been?’
‘I – I don’t know. A giant lizard. Winged. With a long neck. Snaking tail. And scales …’
The other two husbands were now studying him, with little expression. Ravast scowled. ‘By description,’ he muttered, ‘I suppose the comparison is apt.’
Groaning, Garelko stretched. ‘This fusion of dreams and truth has left me out of sorts. For all I know, I’ve not yet wakened, and it is my curse to see both of you haunting me even in my slumber. Pray there comes a day when there are as many girls born among the Thel Akai as boys. Then, a husband can stand alone, face to face with his wife, and there will be peace and everlasting joy in the world.’
Tathenal laughed. ‘You dodder, Garelko. The Tiste make such marriages and are no happier than us. The curse of your dreams has you yearning for the madness they espouse.’
‘Then wake me, I beg you.’
Sighing, Ravast slipped down from the slab. ‘I feel the leash grow taut, and would not welcome a whipping.’
‘You are long since whipped well and truly,’ said Tathenal.
‘Oh, roll over, will you?’
The three Thel Akai readied their gear once more, and in so doing Ravast was reminded again of his lost weapon. To a dragon, no less. Few would ever believe him, and the exhortations of his fellow husbands held little veracity. It was, in any case, an unpleasant notion, this proof of legends and old, half-forgotten tales.
Words momentarily exhausted, they made the trail in silence, and resumed their descent.
* * *
‘Beyond you, I am in need of allies.’
Skillen Droe glanced over at the cloaked figure trudging alongside him. ‘You will find few.’
‘There is a caustic sea, the essence of which is chaos.’
‘I know it.’
‘Mael does not claim it,’ K’rul said. ‘Indeed, none of us does. Ardata has ventured there, to its shoreline, and contemplates a journey into its depths. There is some risk.’
‘Is she alone?’
K’rul hesitated, and then said, ‘I cannot be certain. Ardata guards her realm jealously. It is my thought that we could appeal to that possessiveness.’
‘I will defend you, K’rul. But we are not allies. You have foolishly made yourself vulnerable.’
‘Very well.’
‘I will make this plain to her.’
‘Understood, Droe.’
They walked now along the edge of a vast pit. Its sheer walls were cracked, shattered as if from the blows of some giant hammer. The dusty floor of the crater showed crystalline outcrops that glittered with blue light. A steep ramp had been carved into the opposite cliff-side, curling round until it was out of sight, somewhere against the edge they skirted. Thus far, Skillen Droe could not see where the ramp debouched. There was something strangely protean about the dimensions of this pit, and the landscape surrounding it. They had been edging along it for some time now.
‘This is a quarry, K’rul?’
‘The Builders, I would think. They have, they tell me, reduced entire worlds to rubble, leaving them to float in clouds that ever circle the sun – a sun not our own, one must assume.’
‘The pit is devoid of Sidleways. Its air is still. There is no energy left in it. To descend, K’rul, is to die.’
‘I have no answers to their endeavours, Droe, or the means by which they wield their power. The houses they build here disappear shortly after their completion.’
‘Only to reappear elsewhere, as if grown from seeds.’
‘Something drives them to do what they do,’ K’rul said, pausing to cough for a moment. ‘Or indeed, someone. We share that at least with the Builders – the mystery of our origins. Even the force that cast us down upon the realm, to find flesh and bone, seems beyond our ken. Have we always been? Will we always be? If so, for what purpose?’
Skillen Droe considered K’rul’s words for a time.
Beneath the gloomy sky, they walked on. Their pace was slow, as K’rul seemed to have little strength. If he still dripped blood from his sacrifice, the crimson drops did not touch these dusty silts. No, they bled elsewhere.
‘It is our lack of purpose, K’rul, which drives us onward. Sensing absence, we seek to fill it. Lacking meaning, we seek to find it. Uncertain of love, we confess it. But what is it that we confess? Even a cloud of rubble will one day accrete, making something like a world.’
‘Then, Skillen, if I understand you, beliefs are all we have?’
‘The Builders make houses. From broken stone they build houses, as if to gift the disordered world with order. But, K’rul, unlike you, I am not convinced. Who, after all, broke the stones? It is my thought that the Builders are our enemy. They are not assemblers of reason, or even purpose. Their houses are built to contain. They are prisons – the Builder who dragged you to that house sought to chain you to it, in its yard so perfectly enclosed by that stone wall.’