‘What gives you reason to so defend him, lord?’
‘I do not defend Draconus, Arathan. I speak in defence of his son’s future. As does a friend, when the necessity arises.’
The admission silenced Arathan. And yet, is he not the Lord of Hate? From where, then, this loving gift?
Gothos reached out and ran his fingers, splayed out, down the icerimed glass of the window. ‘The notion of hatred,’ he said as if catching Arathan’s thoughts, ‘is easily misapplied. One must ask: what is it that this man hates? Is it joy? Hope? Love? Or is it, perhaps, the cruelty by which so many of us live, the unworthy thoughts, the revel of base emotions, the sheer stupidity that sends a civilization lurching onward, step by step into self-destruction? Arathan, you are here, far away from the Tiste civil war, and I am glad for that. So too, I suspect, is your father.’
The shadows stole into the chamber, barring the strange bars of the sun’s last light, streaming in through the streaks the lord’s fingers had left behind on the glass.
Arathan drank the tea and found it surprisingly sweet.
* * *
‘It’s done,’ Brella said dully.
‘But the bleeding does not stop,’ Cred observed, edging closer.
‘I know,’ she mumbled, head dipping. ‘Too many here. Too many … drinking deep.’
‘See the boulder!’ Stark hissed. ‘It bleeds water!’
The stove’s heat made the rock’s face sizzle as the streams whispered down. ‘Brella!’ cried Cred, pulling her close in a rough embrace. ‘Stark, tear some cloth – make bandages! It pours from her!’
Korya stared down upon them. She could feel the spirits, swirling round the three figures below. They flowed into the water trickling down the stone, raced to sudden death in the fierce heat of the stove. Their death-cries were childlike. Others crowded about Brella, an eager mob. Twisting round, Korya glanced back across the fire-studded encampment. The monstrous emanation was drawing closer – she saw small fires dim in a broad swath marking its passing. She heard distant shouts as the sensitive among the army – the adepts – recoiled from its passage.
Brella was doomed. So too the fire-spirits bound to the pumice stones in the stove, and possibly Cred himself. The spirit reaching for them held the memory of global floods, of cold, unlit depths and crushing pressure. Of seas that boiled, and ice that cracked and shattered. Mountains reduced to rubble filled its throat. It crawled. It heaved itself forward, desperate for the taste of mortal blood.
K’rul. You damned fool. We stumble into this sorcery in ignorance. We imagine a world for the taking, filled with small powers eager to answer our needs. We are drunk on wonder, seeking satiation with no thought of the founts we find – or who guards them.
The camp seethed with motion now. A panic seemingly without source tightened throats, constricted chests, bringing pain to every breath drawn, every gasp loosed. She saw figures fall to their knees, hands at their faces. Fires winked out, snuffed by the growing pressure that it seemed only she could see.
‘Oh, enough.’ Korya spread out her arms. See this vessel, old one! Come to me, as a crab finds its perfect shell! I can hold you. I am your Mahybe, your home. Refuge. Lair. Whatever.
She saw a shape taking form, ghostly, ethereal. Wormlike, and yet shouldered behind the blunt, eyeless head. The arms were gnarled and thick, planted on the ground like forelegs, and they were the only limbs visible, as the body snaked out, its distant end vanishing into the earth. The emanation towered over the entire camp, big enough to make a modest meal of the thousand souls cowering there.
Shelter first. And then you can feed.
The head lifted, questing blind, and then somehow Korya felt the old one’s attention fix on her. It surged forward.
Mahybe. A vessel to be filled. Was this to be her task in life? Deadly trap for every ambitious power, every hungry fool?
I will hold you inside. It’s the curse of every woman, after all-
Someone scrabbled up the boulder’s broken side, but she had no time to see who would join her in this fraught moment. The leviathan was coming, and she felt something inside her open up, gaping, widening-
‘Stupid girl,’ a voice beside her said.
Startled, she turned to see Haut. He stretched out one hand, as if to push away the ancient power. Instead, he twisted the hand until it was palm-up, uncurling his fingers.
With a piercing shriek, the leviathan lunged forward, swept down upon them like a toppling tower.
Winds roared in Korya’s skull. She felt the hard, wet stone slam against her knees, but she was blind now, deafened, and whatever had yawned wide inside her was now stoppered shut, ringing like a bell.
Moments later, in a sudden, disorienting shift, she heard the trickling of water, the faint hiss from the heat still bathing the boulder’s opposite side. She opened her eyes, feeling impossibly weak. The roaring was gone, leaving only echoes that drifted through the emptiness within. The leviathan had vanished. ‘W-what?’
Reaching down one-handed, Haut helped her upright. ‘I prepared you for this? Hardly. Here.’ He grasped her right hand and brought it up to set something small, polished and hard into its grip. ‘Don’t break it.’
Then Haut moved away, clambering back down the rocky slope, muttering under his breath and waving both hands, as if fighting off a chorus of unspoken questions.
Korya opened her hand and looked down at what she held.
An acorn? A fucking acorn?
From below, Brella was coughing, but with vigour. And then Stark said, in a faintly wild tone, ‘Can we drink that water now?’
* * *
Varandas stepped in alongside Haut when the captain returned from the outcrop, and they continued on, with Burrugast trailing, towards Hood’s tent.
‘She’s ambitious, this Tiste girl of yours,’ Varandas said.
‘Youth is a thirst that will drink any old thing, once,’ Haut replied. ‘It is that fearlessness we observe with bemusement, and not a little envy. She has grown sensitive, too – I believe she saw the thing, saw the truth of it.’
‘And yet,’ muttered Burrugast behind them, ‘she invited it nonetheless. Foolish. Precipitous. Dangerous. I trust, captain, she’ll not be accompanying us on this march.’
‘I await an Azathanai to take charge of her,’ Haut replied.
‘They care nothing for hostages,’ Varandas said. ‘Nor prodigies. I can think of not one Azathanai who will accede to your wish.’
They were passing among the warriors and their small camps. The sudden, debilitating force that had descended upon everyone had left them shaken, confused, angry. Voices rose in argument, bitter with accusations, as men and women turned on the warlocks and witches in their company. Flushed with firelight, faces swung towards the three Jaghut striding past, but none called out. Overhead, winter’s stars glittered, the sky-spanning band assembled like a belligerent host.
At Varandas’s assertion, Haut shrugged. ‘Then a Dog-Runner, if the Azathanai will not have her.’
‘Send her home,’ said Burrugast. ‘You never did well with pets, Haut. Especially other people’s pets.’
Haut scowled. ‘I warned Raest. Besides, in the end, he could not find dishonour in the tomb I raised for that idiot cat. In any case, this Tiste is not a pet.’
Burrugast grunted. ‘What is she then?’
‘A weapon.’
Varandas sighed. ‘You leave it on the field, and invite anyone to come and collect it. This seems … irresponsible.’
‘Yes,’ Haut agreed, ‘it does, doesn’t it?’
Hood’s tent was small, of a size to suit a single occupant, with that occupant doing little more than sleeping. It had been raised on the floor of what had once been a tower, the walls of which had collapsed long ago. The low foundation stones roughly encircled the camp, with a few scattered blocks drawn up to provide seats around a desultory hearth. Cowled against the chill, Hood sat alone.