It should have been an empire to last for millennia, and its day of dying should have been by his own hand, when he at last tired of it.
Raest had never imagined that other Jaghut would find his activities abhorrent, that they would risk themselves and their own power on behalf of these short-lived, small-minded Imass. Yet what astonished Raest more than anything else was that when the Jaghut came they came in numbers, in community. A community whose sole purpose of existence was to destroy his empire, to imprison him.
He had been unprepared.
The lesson was learned, and no matter what the world had become since that time, Raest was ready for it. His limbs creaked at first, throbbing with dull aches bridged by sharp pangs. The effort of digging himself from the frozen earth had incapacitated him for a time, but finally he felt ready to walk the tunnel that opened out into a new land.
Preparation. Already he'd initiated his first moves. He sensed that others had come to him, had freed the path of Omtose Phellack wards and seals.
Perhaps his worshippers remained, fanatics who had sought his release for generations, and even now awaited him beyond the barrow.
The missing Finnest would be his first priority. Much of his power had been stored within the seed, stripped from him and stored there by the Jaghut betrayers. It had not been carried far, and there was nothing that could prevent his recovering it. Omtose Phellack no longer existed in the land above-he could feel its absence like an airless void. Nothing could oppose him now.
Preparation. Raest's withered, cracked face twisted into a savage grin, his lower tusks splitting desiccated skin. The powerful must gather other power, subjugate it to their own will, then direct it unerringly. His moves had already begun.
He sloshed through the slush now covering the barrow's muddy floor.
Before him rose the slanted wall that marked the tomb's barrier. Beyond the lime-streaked earth waited a world to be enslaved. Raest gestured and the barrier exploded outward. Bright sunlight flared in the clouds of steam rolling around him, and he felt waves of cold, ancient air sweeping past him.
The Jaghut Tyrant walked into the light.
The Great Raven Crone rode the hot streams of wind high above the Gadrobi Hills. The burst of power that launched tons of earth and rocks a hundred feet into the sky elicited a cackle from her. She dipped a wing, eyes on the white pillar of steam, and banked towards it.
This, she laughed to herself, should prove interesting.
A wash of air pounded down on to her. Shrieking her outrage, Crone twisted and slid along the shunting wind. Massive shadows flowed over her. Her anger was swept away on a surge of excitement. Head craning, she beat the air with her wings and climbed again. In matters such as these, a proper point of view was essential. Crone climbed higher still, then cocked her head and looked down. By the light of the sun scales flashed iridescent from five ridged backs, but of the five one shone like fire. Sorcerous power bled in ripples from the web of their spread wings.
The dragons sailed silent over the landscape, closing on the billowing dust-cloud above the Jaghut tomb. Crone's black eyes fixed on the dragon that blazed red.
«Silanah!» she screamed, laughing. «Dragnipurake tna Draconiaes! Eleint, eleint!» The day of the Tiste And? had come.
Raest emerged into rich afternoon sunlight. Yellow-grassed hills rose in weathered humps in every direction but the one he faced. To the east behind a thinning curtain of drifting dust stretched an empty plain.
The Jaghut Tyrant grunted. Not so different after all. He raised his arms, feeling wind slide along his cabled muscles. He drew a breath, tasting the life-rich air. He quested lightly with his power and exulted in the waves of fear that answered it-answers that came from the mindless life beneath his feet or hiding in the grasses around him. But higher life, higher concentrations of power, he sensed nothing. He drove his senses down into the ground, seeking what dwelt there. Earth and bedrock, the sluggish molten darkness beneath, down, down to fi the sleeping goddess-young as far as the Jaghut Tyrant was concerned. «Shall I wake you?» he whispered. «Not yet. But I shall make you bleed.» His right hand closed into a fist.
He speared the goddess with pain, driving a fissure through the bedrock, feeling the gush of her blood, enough to make her stir but not awaken.
The line of hills to the north lifted skyward. Magma sprayed into the air amid a rising pillar of smoke, rock and ash. The earth shuddered even as the sound of the eruption swept over Raest in a fierce, hot wind. The Jaghut Tyrant smiled.
He studied the shattered ridge and breathed the heavy, sulphurous air, then turned about and strode west towards the highest hill in that his the not s air, that direction. His Finnest lay beyond it, perhaps three days» walk. He considered opening his Warren, then decided to wait until he reached the hill's summit. From that vantage point, he could better judge the Finnest's location.
Half-way up the slope he heard distant laughter. Raest stiffened just as the day darkened suddenly around him. On the sward before him he saw five enormous shadows sweeping up the slope, then beyond the hill's summit. The sunlight returned. The Jaghut Tyrant looked into the sky above him.
Five dragons banked in perfect formation, their heads dipping to watch him as they glided back in his direction. «Estideein eleint,» he whispered, in his Jaghut tongue. Four were black, barbed in silver along the wings and flying two to either side of the fifth dragon, this one red and twice at large as the others. «Silanah red-wings,» Raest muttered, eyes V&Tv~swin%. «Elder-born and true-blooded Tiarn, you lead Soletaken,4kintblood is alien to this world. I feel you all!» He raised fists to the sky. «Colder than the ice born of Jaghut hands, as dark as blindness-I feel you!»
He lowered his arms. «Harass me not, eleint. I cannot enslave you, but I will destroy you. Know that. I will drive you to the ground, each and all, and with my own hands I shall tear your hearts from your chests.»
His eyes narrowed on the four black dragons. «Soletaken. You would challenge me at the command of another. You would battle with me for no reason of your own. Ah, but if I were to command you I would not throw your lives away so carelessly. I would cherish you, Soletaken, I would give you causes worth believing in, show you the true rewards of power.» Raest scowled, as their derision swept through his mind. «So be it.» The dragons passed low overhead in silence, banking once again and disappearing behind the hills to the south. Raest spread his arms wide and unleashed his Warren. His flesh split as power flowed into him. His arms shed skin like ash. He both felt and heard hills crack all around him, the snapping of stone, the sundering of crags. To all sides the horizons blurred as dust curtained skyward. He faced south. «This is my power! Come to me!» A long minute passed. He frowned at the hills before him, then cried out and whirled to his right just as Silanah and the four black dragons, all less than ten feet above the ground, plunged over the summit of the hill he'd been climbing.
Raest screamed at the whirlwind of power battering him, his shrunken eyes locked on Silanah's blank, empty, deadly gaze-eyes as large as the Jaghut's head-as it bore down upon him with the speed of a springing viper. The red dragon's jaws opened wide and Raest found himself staring down the beast's throat.
He screamed a second time and released his power all at once.
The air detonated as the Warrens collided. Jagged shards of rock ripped in all directions. Starvald Demelain and Kurald Galain warred with Omtose Phellack in a savage maelstrom of will. Grasses, earth and rock withered to fine ash on all sides, and within the vortex stood Raest, his power roaring from him. Lashes of sorcery from the dragons lanced into his body, boring through his withered flesh.