This confidence was shattered when Jula and Amby Bole suddenly took it upon themselves to attack the Jaghut. Bellowing, they flung themselves at her, and all three figures lurched about as they struggled, clawed, scratched and bit, until finally they lost their footing and toppled in a multilimbed mass that slopped heavily in the muck.
Quell and Gruntle scrambled over the wall and raced for them.
Glanno Tarp was shrieking something, his words unintelligible as he sought to crawl away from the scrap.
From the Jaghut woman sorcery erupted, a thundering, deafening detonation that lit up the entire corral and all the buildings nearby. Blinking against the sudden blindness, Gruntle staggered in the mud. He heard Quell fall beside him. The coruscating, actinic light continued to bristle, throwing everything into harsh shadows.
Glanno Tarp resumed his shrieks.
As vision returned, Gruntle saw, to his astonishment, that both Boles still lived. In fact, they had each pinned down an arm and were holding tight as the Jaghut woman thrashed and snarled.
Drawing his cutlasses, Gruntle made his way over. ‘Jula! Amby! What are you doing?’
Two mud-smeared faces looked up, and their expressions were dark, twisted with anger.
‘A swamp witch!’ Jula said. ‘She’s one of them swamp witches!’
‘We don’t like swamp witches!’ added Amby. ‘We kill swamp witches!’
‘Master Quell said this one can help us,’ said Gruntle. ‘Or she would have, if not for you two jumping her like that!’
‘Cut her head off!’ said Jula. ‘That usually works!’
‘I’m not cutting her head of. Let her go, you two-’
‘She’ll attack us!’
Gruntle crouched down. ‘Jaghut — stop snarling — listen to me! If they let you go, will you stop fighting?’
Eyes burned as if aflame. She struggled some more, and then ceased all motion. The blazing glare dimmed, and after a few deep, rattling breaths, she nodded. ‘Very well. Now get these two fools off me!’
‘Jula, Amby — let go of her-’
‘We will, once you cut her head off!’
‘Do it now, Boles, or I will cut your heads off.’
‘Do Amby first!’
‘No, Jula first!’
‘I’ve got two cutlasses here, boys, so I’ll do it at the same time. How does that suit you?’
The Boles half lifted themselves up and glared across at each other.
‘We don’t like it,’ said Amby.
‘So leave off her, then.’
They rolled to the sides, away from the Jaghut woman; and she pulled her arms loose and clambered to her feet. The penumbra of sorcery dimmed, winked out. Breathing hard, she spun to face the Bole brothers, who’d rolled in converging arcs until they collided and were now crouched side by side in the mud, eyeing her like a pair of wolves.
Clutching his head, Master Quell stumbled up to them. ‘You idiots,’ he gasped. ‘Jaghut, your husband’s cursed this village. Tralka Vonan. Can you do anything about that?’
She was trying to wipe the mud from her rotted clothes. ‘You’re not from around here,’ she said. ‘Who are you people?’
‘Just passing through,’ Quell said. ‘But our carriage needs repairs — and we got wounded-’
‘I am about to destroy this village and everyone in it — does that bother you?’
Quell licked his muddy lips, made a face, and then said, ‘That depends if you’re including us in your plans of slaughter.’
‘Are you pirates?’
‘No.’
‘Wreckers?’
‘No.’
‘Necromancers?’
‘No.’
Then,’ she said, with another glare at the Boles, ‘I suppose you can live.’
‘Your husband says even if he dies, the curse will persist.’
She bared stained tusks. ‘He’s lying.’
Quell glanced at Gruntle, who shrugged in return and said, ‘I’m not happy with the idea of pointless slaughter, but then, wreckers are the scum of humanity.’
The Jaghut woman walked towards the stone wall. They watched her.
‘Master Quell,’ said Glanno Tarp, ‘got any splints?’
Quell shot Gruntle another look. ‘Told you, the cheap bastard.’
At last the sun rose, lifting a rim of fire above the horizon on this the last day of the wrecker village on the Reach of Woe.
From a window of the tower, Bedusk Pall Kovuss Agape stood watching his wife approaching up the street. ‘Oh,’ he murmured, ‘I’m in trouble now.’
In the moments before dawn, Kedeviss rose from her blankets and walked out into the darkness. She could make out the shape of him, sitting on a large boulder and staring northward. Rings spun on chains, glittering like snared-stars.
Her moccasins on the gravel scree gave her away and she saw him twist round to watch her approach.
‘You no longer sleep,’ she said.
To this observation, Clip said nothing.
‘Something has happened to you,’ she continued. ‘When you awoke in Bastion, you were. . changed. I thought it was some sort of residue from the possession. Now, I am not so sure.’
He put away the chain and rings and then slid down from the boulder, landing lightly and taking a moment to straighten his cloak. ‘Of them all,’ he said in a low voice, ‘you, Kedeviss, are the sharpest. You see what the others do not.’
‘I make a point of paying attention. You’ve hidden yourself well, Clip — or whoever you now are.’
‘Not well enough, it seems.’
‘What do you plan to do?’ she asked him. ‘Anomander Rake will see clearly, the moment he sets his eyes upon you. And no doubt there will be others.’
‘I was Herald of Dark,’ he said.
‘I doubt it,’ she said.
‘I was Mortal Sword to the Black-Winged Lord, to Rake himself.’
‘He didn’t choose you, though, did he? You worshipped a god who never an shy;swered, not a single prayer. A god who, in all likelihood, never even knew you existed.’
‘And for that,’ whispered Clip, ‘he will answer.’
Her brows rose. ‘Is this a quest for vengeance? If we had known-’
‘What you knew or didn’t know is irrelevant.’
‘A Mortal Sword serves.’
‘I said, Kedeviss, I was a Mortal Sword.’
‘No longer, then. Very well, Clip, what are you now?’
In the grainy half-light she saw him smile, and something dark veiled his eyes. ‘One day, in the sky over Bastion, a warren opened. A machine tumbled out, and down-’
She nodded. ‘Yes, we saw that machine.’
‘The one within brought with him a child god — oh, not deliberately. No, the mechanism of his sky carriage, in creating gates, in travelling from realm to realm, by its very nature cast a net, a net that captured this child god. And dragged it here.’
‘And this traveller — what happened to him?’
Clip shrugged.
She studied him, head cocked to one side. ‘We failed, didn’t we?’
He eyed her, as if faintly amused.
‘We thought we’d driven the Dying God from you — instead, we drove him deeper. By destroying the cavern realm where he dwelt.’
‘You ended his pain, Kedeviss,’ said Clip. ‘Leaving only his. . hunger.’
‘Rake will destroy you. Nor,’ she added, ‘will we accompany you to Black Coral. Go your own way, godling. We shall find our own way there-’
He was smiling. ‘Before me? Shall we race, Kedeviss — me with my hunger and you with your warning? Rake does not frighten me — the Tiste Andii do not frighten me. When they see me, they will see naught but kin — until it is too late.’
‘Godling, if in poring through Clip’s mind you now feel you understand the Tiste Andii, I must tell you, you are wrong. Clip was a barbarian. Ignorant. A fool. He knew nothing.’
‘I am not interested in the Tiste Andii — oh, I will kill Rake, because that is what he deserves. I will feed upon him and take his power into me. No, the one I seek is not in Black Coral, but within a barrow outside the city. Another young god — so young, so helpless, so naive.’ His smile returned. ‘And he knows I am coming for him.’