Lifting his gaze, still facing into the north, Onos Toolan then saw something else.
A vague shape that appeared to be sitting on the ground, curled over.
He rose, the girls reaching up to take his arms, the boy clinging to one shin. And then he moved forward, taking them all with him. When the boy complained, Storii picked him up in her arms. But Onos Toolan walked on, his steps coming faster and faster.
It was not possible. It was—
And then once more he was running.
She must have heard his approach, for she looked up and then over, and sat watching him rushing towards her.
He almost fell against her, his arms wrapping tight round her, lifting her with his embrace.
Hetan gasped. ‘Husband! I have missed you. I – I don’t know where I am. I don’t know what has happened …’
‘Nothing has happened,’ he whispered, as the children screamed behind them.
‘Onos – my toes …’
‘What?’
‘I have someone else’s toes, husband, I swear it—’
The children collided with them.
In the distance ahead, on a faint rise of land, Onos Toolan saw a figure seated on a horse. The darkness was taking the vision – dissolving it before his eyes.
And then he saw it raise one hand.
Straightening, Onos Toolan did the same. I see you, my brother.
I see you.
When at last the light left the rise of land, the vision faded from his eyes.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I have heard voices thick with sorrow
I have seen faces crumble with grief
I have beheld broken men rise to stand
And witnessed women walk from small graves
Yet now you would speak of weakness
Of failings worth nothing but scorn
You would show all the sides of your fear
Brazen as trophies in the empty shell of conquest
But what have you won when the night draws close
To make stern your resolve among these shadows
When at last we are done with the world
When we neither stand nor fall nor wake from stillness
And the silent unknowing waits for us?
I have heard my voice thick with sorrow
I have felt my face crumble with grief
I have broken and turned away from graves
And I have grasped tight this hand of weakness
And walked in the company of familiar failings
Scorn lies in the dust and in the distance behind
Every trophy fades from sight
The night lies ahead drawing me into its close
For when I am done with this world
In the unknowing I will listen for the silence
To await what is to come
And should you seek more
Find me in this place
Before the rising dawn
BANASCHAR REMEMBERED HOW SHE HAD STOOD, THE SWORD IN ITS scabbard lying on the map table before her. A single oil lamp had bled weak light and weaker shadows in the confines of the tent. The air was close and damp and it settled on things like newborn skin. A short time earlier, she had spoken to Lostara Yil with her back to that weapon, and Banaschar did not know if Tavore had used those words before and the question of that gnawed at him in strange, mysterious ways.
If they had been words oft repeated by the Adjunct, then what tragic truths did that reveal about her? But if she’d not said them before – not ever – then why had he heard them as if they were echoes, rebounding from some place far away and long ago?
Lostara had been to see Hanavat, to share in the gift of the son that had been born. The captain’s eyes had been red from weeping and Banaschar understood the losses these women were now facing – the futures about to be torn away from them. He should not have been there. He should not have heard the Adjunct speak.
‘It is not enough to wish for a better world for the children. It is not enough to shield them with ease and comfort. Lostara Yil, if we do not sacrifice our own ease, our own comfort, to make the future’s world a better one, then we curse our own children. We leave them a misery they do not deserve; we leave them a host of lessons unearned.
‘I am no mother, but I need only look at Hanavat to find the strength I need.’
The words were seared into his memory. In the voice of a childless woman, they left him more shaken, more distraught than he perhaps would otherwise have been.
Was this what they were fighting for? Only one among a host of reasons, surely – and in truth he could not quite see how this path they’d chosen could serve such aspirations. He did not doubt the nobility of the Adjunct’s motivations, nor even the raw compassion so driving her to seek what was, in most eyes, virtually impossible. But there was something else here, something still hidden.
How many great compassions arose from a dark source? A private place of secret failings?
After she had sent Lostara away, Tavore had turned once more to the sword, and after a time Banaschar had stirred from his seat on the war-gear chest, risen and walked to her side.
‘I have stopped running, Adjunct.’
She was silent, her eyes fixed on the weapon in its battered, scratched scabbard.
‘I – I wish to thank you for that. Proof,’ he added with a sour smile, ‘of your gifts of achieving the impossible.’
‘Priest,’ she said, ‘the Chal’Managa – the Snake – that was a manifestation of D’rek, was it not?’
He found himself unable to meet her eyes, but managed a simple shrug. ‘I think so. For a time. Her children were lost. In her eyes, anyway. And that made her just as lost, I suppose. Together, they needed to find their way.’
‘Those details do not interest me,’ she said, tone hardening. ‘Banaschar, tell me. What does she want? Why is she so determined to be here? Will she seek to oppose me?’
‘Why would you think I have answers to those questions, Adjunct?’
‘Because she never left you either. She needed at least one of her worshippers to live on, and for some unknown reason she chose you.’
He wanted to sit down again. Anywhere. Maybe even on the floor. ‘Adjunct, it is said that a worm finding itself in a puddle of ale will get drunk and then drown. I’ve often thought about that, and I admit, I’ve come to suspect that any puddle will do, and getting drunk has nothing to do with it. The damned things drown anyway. And yet, oddly enough, without any puddles the worms don’t show up at all.’
‘We have left the new lake behind us, Priest. No one drowned, not even you.’
‘They’re just children now.’
‘I know.’
Banaschar sighed, nodded down at the sword. ‘She will protect it, Adjunct.’
He heard her breath catch, and then, ‘But … that might well kill her.’
He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
‘Are you certain of this, Demidrek?’
‘Demi— Gods below, Adjunct – are you a student of theology as well? Tayschrenn was—’
‘As the last surviving priest of the Worm of Autumn, the honorific belongs to you, Banaschar.’
‘Fine, but where are the gold-stitched robes and the gaudy rings?’
An aide entered behind them, coughed and then said, ‘Adjunct, three horses are saddled and waiting outside.’
‘Thank you.’
Suddenly Banaschar was chilled, his hands cold and stiff as if he’d left them in buckets of ice-water. ‘Adjunct – we do not know if the heart will be freed. If you—’
‘They will succeed, Demidrek. Your own god clearly believes that—’
‘Wrong.’
She was startled to silence.
‘It’s simpler than that, Adjunct,’ Banaschar went on, the words tasting of ashes. ‘D’rek doesn’t care if the Crippled God is whole or not – if he’s little more than a gibbering fool, or a gutted body with a huge hole in his chest, it doesn’t matter. Whatever you have of him, she wants it gone.’