Even after all this, Rojak marvelled, even after the curses I have placed upon these people, the vestiges of humanity remain; the arrogance, the envy, the foolish desires – curses of the Gods that they do not recognise in the faces of all those around them. Oh, how their weaknesses rule them.
As the group neared, they faltered. The Hound supporting Rojak snarled furiously; not yet letting go of the minstrel's arm but tensing under him, readying for the fight. Rojak stared at the big man, daring the mad-eyed wretch to come closer – and astonishingly, he did, shuf¬fling nearer until Rojak could smell his foetid breath.
The man's eyes darted between Rojak's face and his chest – the augury chain, Rojak realised. He was careful not to break the man's gaze. His body was too frail to chance anything. One hasty swipe could pitch him to the ground, never to rise again. Soon, soon he could allow that, but to come so close and be undone by nothing more than a bold animal- He took a calming breath. That could not be permitted.
The leader of the pack sniffed nervously, as if unnerved by the odour of decay that overlaid his own base stench, and reached out a tentative hand. The fingernails were torn and bloody, one ripped off entirely, and the man's fingers twitched and trembled uncertainly. The minstrel summoned enough strength to squeeze the Hound's arm, keeping the creature still.
At last he broke eye contact and looked down. The man was brush¬ing a wondering finger against Death's coin, then his hand began to close about it. He didn't even notice the shadow falling over them, the deepening dark of night that enveloped Rojak. He chuckled and the man froze, arm poised to grip the coin and wrench the chain off him.
'If it is death you want,' he began.
'Then death you shall have,' finished a cruel voice from all about them.
The man let the coin fall from his fingers and staggered back, fall¬ing fearfully to his knees.
'To touch my herald is to ask to share in his blessings,' the shadow continued, and a note of pleasure crept in to its voice. 'So you shall.'
The man gave a distressed wheeze and fell down, his legs sprawled out before him and a look of horror on his face. He raised his hand and a desperate keening rose in his throat. Rojak smelled the familiar corruption on the air as he watched the man's finger start to fester. Fat blisters of pus grew and burst all over his hand. The man howled and swatted frantically at his hand as the pustules swiftly worked their way down towards his blackening elbow, but he succeeded only in spreading the contagion onto his left hand.
He fell onto his back, limbs spasming as the blisters popped and hissed on his skin, spattering a foul paste of blood-streaked pus over his belly that began to distend and strain at the skin. His companions were almost yelping in fear; screaming, they fled into the side streets, leaving the man to his unnatural fate.
Rojak hardly noticed, for his bright eyes were fixed on the crumbling figure before him. Fingers curled and fell to the floor like fat maggots tossed into a fire; the man gurgled in terror as he writhed at Rojak's feet. Distantly, he heard Flitter spewing onto the street and the sound sparked a laugh in his belly.
At last, the decaying shape before him stopped squirming as what remained of the man's life fled under Azaer's touch. He watched the remains a little longer, then, with a fastidious sniff, he turned and let the Hound support him as he set off once more on his final mission.
Up ahead, somewhere in the streets where they were heading, Rojak felt the pulse of a colossal surge of magic arc through the air. It shook the very ground under his feet, and was followed by a bright while flash, then a crash of thunder, like a raging giant – then a sud¬den, terrible silence.
Rojak shuffled on, eyes half closed as he felt the enormous swell of luffering ring out through the city that was so closely linked to his own hotly.
'Abbot Doren, little black-winged bird snug in your nest, so glad you could make your presence felt,' he said softly, as though whispering
into the ear of a beloved child. Against the dark swathe of sky lit by bloody flickering spots, the first screams began. Rojak's tongue flashed out to taste the air, as though he found some lascivious delight in the mingled corruption and rising stench of fear.
In the distance, coal-black clouds obeyed his summons and drew closer.
'Our sheep have gone to fold and the night has no more need of its herald; let the final act begin,' he murmured.
'So tell me about Azaer.'
'Azaer.' The word came back no louder than a whisper, fomenting a buzz of fear that rippled from Aryn Bwr, through Isak's body and out into the city beyond.
'You do not know what you ask.'
'I'm asking for knowledge – and surely I need not remind you that I'm all that stands between you and Death's final judgment.'
'Threats, from a whelp?1 the last king replied with scorn. 'I had legions burning under my hand, Gods screaming their last at my feet.'
'And for that, the deepest pit of the Dark Place has your name carved above its entrance,' Isak said. He had heard there were daemons that restlessly walked the Land searching for the soul of Aryn Bwr, trailing the chains with which they would bind him, if ever they found the enemy of the Gods. He hoped that was just a myth – his own enemies were plentiful enough without vengeful daemons joining their ranks.
'I hear them,' Aryn Bwr said, as if in answer to Isak's thought, until Isak realised he meant only the creatures of the Dark Place. 'I hear them singing my name in the twilight'
'Even here? Amidst all this?'
'They are with me always, and still I fear to know more of Azaer.'
'And yet you won't tell me what you do know about Azaer – what does the shadow hold over you?' Isak asked in amazement.
'Morghien knows. That scarred wanderer was broken when his soul fell under the shadow. To look Azaer in the face is to allow the shadow to see your soul, to look right through you. Your threats are merely of pain and the emptiness of death.'
Suddenly Isak understood. His breath caught as the heat of Scree fell away from his awareness. 'Not just to be faced with the void, but to have the void stare back at you.'
'Azaer is no daemon, no God, no mortal. Look Azaer in the face and you see a horror no daemon could imagine, the part of you that exists in the void.'
'But what is Azaer?' Isak insisted, disturbed as much by the horrific reverence in Aryn Bwr's voice as his words. The most accomplished, the most highly blessed – no matter what he had done with those blessings – of mortals, and Aryn Bwr was in awe of a shadow?
'I have no answers for you there.'
'You must know something. You've stayed hidden all the time I've been in Scree; you're afraid of something in this city. I think your paths have crossed before.'
For a moment there was complete silence. Then-
'Whispers… Shadows speaking to me from a cloudless sky while the stars watched and the moons hid. Long in the night, deep in the night, in the height of summer during the Wars of the Houses, and I, barely adult, yet leading my House's armies, I walked the pickets when 1 could not sleep and found 1 was alone in that. Even the sentries were beyond rousing, though they stood still at their posts. 1 could see dawn lightening the sky on the horizon, but the Land was still dark, so dark that even the shadows had voices.'
Azaer spoke to you?' Isak spoke softly, hesitating to interrupt.
'Perhaps it was a dream, but what figment of the living mind would reveal such truths? These were terrible truths, truths that would change the face of the Land for ever, leading me down paths 1 had feared to tread, and showing me my own soul, its true shape and shine.'
'Paths within you, or hidden places?' Isak asked. 'Why did the shadow come to you? What made you special?'
'Why do shadows do what they do, go where they go? Shadows follow the living, witness to our deepest secrets. The shadow found me because I was the one to be found – even so young, my genius was lauded by all. What use to tell secrets to fools? Even in darkness, the shadows will follow.