The air felt inexplicably thick, unyielding, and night was falling—had they been fighting that long? It was possible, yes—see the ranks of dead on all sides! Saphii and Barghast, and there, on the slope, mounds of dead riders and horses—had the Senan returned? They must have!
Such slaughter!
The fierce charge slammed into the wall of flesh, leather, wood and iron. The sound was a meaty crunch beneath snapping spear shafts. Lunging close, tulwar lashing down, Maral Eb saw a dark-skinned face before him, saw the frozen mask of the fool’s failed courage, and he laughed as he swung his weapon—
The iron blade struck dead centre on the peaked helm.
Sword, helm and head exploded. Maral Eb staggered as his sword-arm jumped out to the side, impossibly light. His eyes fixed on the stump of his wrist, from which frozen pellets of his blood sprayed like seeds. Something struck his shoulder, careened off, and then two commingled bodies fell on to the ground—the impact had driven them together and Maral Eb stared, uncomprehending, at their fused flesh, the exposed roots of blood and muscle beneath split skin.
He could hear dread groaning on all sides, pierced by brief shrieks.
On his knees, the Warleader sought to rise, but the armoured caps of his greaves were frozen to the ground. Leather buckles broke like twigs. He lifted his head—a reddish mist had swallowed the world. What was this? Sorcery? Some poisonous vapour to steal all their strength?
Spirits, no—the mist is blood—blood from burst bodies, ruptured eyeballs—
He understood. The stump of his wrist, the complete absence of pain—even the breaths he dragged into his lungs—the cold, the darkness—
______
He had been thrown to the ground. A horse, one foreleg stamping down, the bones shearing just above the fetlock, twin spikes of jagged bone plunging through his hauberk, his chest, and pinning him to the earth. Screaming, the huge beast fell on to its side, flinging the lifeless hulk of its rider from the saddle, the man’s body breaking like crockery.
The scything foreleg tossed Sagal a few paces away, and he landed again, feeling his hip crumple as if it were no more than a reed basket. Blinking, he watched the cold burn the hide from the thrashing, blinded beast. He found its confusion amusing at first, but then sadness overwhelmed him—not for the hapless animal—he’d never much liked horses—but for everyone on this hillside. Cheated of this battle, of the glory of a rightful victory, the honour of a noble defeat.
The gods were cruel. But then, he’d always known that.
He settled his head back, stared up at the red-stained darkness. A pressure was descending. He could feel it on his chest, in his skull. The Reaper stood above him, one heel pressing down. Sagal grunted as his ribs snapped, the collapse jerking his limbs.
The slingstone caught the hare and spun it round in the air. My heart was in my throat as I ran, light as a whisper, to the grasses where it had fallen. And I stood, looking down on the creature, its panting chest, the tiny droplets of blood spotting its nose. Its spine had broken and the long back legs were perfectly still. But the front paws, they twitched.
My first kill.
I stood, a giant, a god, watching as the life left the hare. Watching, as the depths in the eyes cleared, revealing themselves to be shallow things.
My mother, walking up, her face showing none of the joy she should have shown, none of the pride. I told her about the shallowness that I had seen.
She said, ‘It is easy to believe the well of life is bottomless, and that none but the spirits can see through to the far end of the eyes. To the end that is the soul. Yet we spend all our lives trying to peer through. But we soon discover that when the soul flees the flesh, it takes the depth with it. In that creature, Sagal, you have simply seen the truth. And you will see it again and again. In every beast you slay. In the eyes of every enemy you cut down.’
She’d been poor with words, her voice ever flat and cruel. Poor with most things, in fact, as if everything worth anything in the world wasn’t worth talking about. He’d even forgotten she’d spoken that day, or that she’d been his teacher in the ways of the hunt.
He realized that he still didn’t understand her.
No matter. The shallowness was coming up to meet him.
Sceptre Irkullas crawled, dragging one leg, from the carcass of his horse. He could bear its shrieks no longer, and so he had opened its throat with his knife. Of course, he should have done that after dismounting, instead of simply leaning over his saddle, but his mind had become fogged, sluggish and stupid.
And now he crawled, with the splintered stub of a thigh bone jutting from the leather of his trouser leg. Painless, at least. ‘Brush lips with your blessings’, as the saying went. I used to hate sayings. No, I still do, especially when you find how well they fit the occasion.
But that just reminds us that it’s an old track we’re walking. And all the newness is just our own personal banner of ignorance. Watch us wave it high as if it glitters with profound revelation. Ha.
The field of battle was almost motionless now. Thousands of warriors frozen in the clinches of murder, as if a mad artist had sought to paint rage, in all its frayed shrouds of senseless destruction. He thought back on that towering host of conceits he had constructed, every one of which had led to this battle. Cracked, grinding, descending in chaotic collapse—he so wanted to laugh, but the breaths weren’t coming easy, the air was like a striking serpent in his throat.
He bumped up against another dead horse, and sought to pull himself atop the blistered, brittle beast. One last look, one final sweep of this wretched panorama. The valley locked in its preternatural darkness, the falling sky with its dread weight crushing everything in sight.
Grimacing, he forced himself into a sitting position, one leg held out stiff and dead.
And beheld the scene.
Tens of thousands of bodies, a rotting forest of shapeless stumps, all sheathed in deathly frost. Nothing moved, nothing at all. Flakes of ash were raining down from the starless, impenetrable heavens.
‘End it, then,’ he croaked. ‘They’re all gone … but me. End it, please, I beg you …’
He slid down, no longer able to hold himself up. Closed his eyes.
Was someone coming? The cold collector of souls? Did he hear the crunch of boots, lone steps, drawing closer—a figure, emerging from the darkness in his mind? My eyes are closed. That must mean something.
Was something coming? He dared not look.
He had once been a farmer. He was certain of that much, but trouble had befallen him. Debt? Perhaps, but the word was stingless, as far as Last was concerned, suggesting that it was not a haunting presence in his mind, and when memories were as few and as sketchy as were his, that must count for something.
Instead, he had this: the stench of bonfires, that ashy smear of cleared land, everything raw and torn and nothing in its proper place. High branches stacked in chaotic heaps, moss knotted on every twig. Roots dripping in inverted postures. Enormous boles lying flat and stripped down, great swaths of bark prised loose. Red-stained wood and black gritty rocks pulled from the flecked soil.
The earth could heave and make such a mess, but it had not. It had but trembled, and not from any deep stirring or restlessness, but from the toppling of trees, the bellowing of oxen straining at stumps, the footfalls of mindful men.
Shatter all you see. It’s what makes you feel. Feel … anything.
He remembered his hands deep in the rich warm earth. He remembered closing his eyes—for just a moment—and feeling that pulse of life, of promise and purpose. They would plant crops, nurture a bounty for their future lives. This was just. This was righteous. The hand that shapes is the hand that reaps. This, he told himself, was pure. Sighing, a sure smile curving his lips, he opened his eyes once more. Smoke, mists here and there amidst the ruination. Still smiling, he then withdrew his hands from the warm earth.
To find them covered in blood.
He never counted hi
mself a clever man. He knew enough to know that and not much else. But the world had its layers. To the simple it offered simplicity. To the wise it offered profundity. And the only measure of courage worth acknowledging was found in accepting where one stood in that scheme—in hard, unwavering honesty, no matter how humbling.
He stared down at his hands and knew it for a memory not his own. It was, in fact, an invention, the blunt, almost clumsy imposition of something profound. Devoid of subtlety and deliberately so, which then made it more complicated than it at first seemed.
Even these thoughts were alien. Last was not a thoughtful man.
The heart knows need, and the mind finds reason to justify. It says: destruction leads to creation, so the world has shown us. But the world shows us more than that. Sometimes, destruction leads to oblivion. Extinction. But then, what’s so bad about that? If stupidity does not deserve extinction, what does? The mind is never so clever as to deceive anyone and anything but itself and its own kind.
Last decided that he was not afraid of justice, and so he stood unmoving, unflinching, as the slayer appeared at the far end of the corridor. Asane’s shrieks had run down to silence. He knew she was dead. All her fears come home at last, and in oblivion there was, for her, relief. Peace.
Murder could wear such pleasant masks.
The slayer met his eyes and at that final moment they shared their understanding. The necessity of things. And Last fell to the sword without a sound.
There had been blood on his hands. Reason enough. Justice delivered.
Forgive me?
Sheb couldn’t remember who he had been. Indebted, a prisoner, a man contemptuous of the law, these things, yes, but where were the details? Everything had flitted away in his growing panic. He’d heard Asane’s death echoing down the corridor. He knew that a murderer now stalked him. There was no reason for it. He’d done nothing to deserve this.
Unless, of course, one counted a lifetime of treachery. But he’d always had good cause for doing the things he did. He was sure of it. Evading imprisonment—well, who sought the loss of freedom? No one but an idiot, and Sheb was no idiot. Escaping responsibility? Of course. Bullies earn little sympathy, while the victims are coddled and cooed over at every turn. Better to be the victim than the bully, provided the mess is over with, all threat of danger past and it’s time for explanations, tales of self-defence and excuses and the truth of it was, none of it mattered and if you could convince yourself with your excuses, all the better. Easy sleeping at night, easier still standing tall atop heaps of righteous indignation. No one is more pious than the guilty. And I should know.
And no one is a better liar than the culpable. So he’d done nothing to deserve any of this. He’d only ever done what he needed to do to get by, to slip round and slide through. To go on living, feeding all his habits, all his wants and needs. The killer had no reason!
Gasping, he ran down corridor after corridor, through strange rooms, on to spiralling ascents and descents. He told himself that he was so lost no one would ever find him.
Lost in my maze of excuses—stop! I didn’t think that. I never said that. Has he found me? Has the bastard found me?
He’d somehow misplaced his weapons, every one of them—how did that happen? Whimpering, Sheb rushed onward—ahead was a bridge of some sort, crossing a cavernous expanse that seemed to be filling with clouds.
All my life, I tried to keep my head down. I never wanted to be noticed. Just grab what I can and get out, get free, until the next thing I need comes up. It was simple. It made sense. No one should kill me for that.
He had no idea how thinking could be so exhausting. Staggering on to the bridge, iron grating under his boots—what was wrong with damned wood? Coughing in the foul vapours of the clouds, eyes stinging, nose burning, he stumbled to a halt.
He’d gone far enough. Everything he did, he’d done for a reason. As simple as that.
But so many were hurt, Sheb.
‘Not my fault they couldn’t get out of the way. If they’d any brains they’d have seen me coming.’
The way you lived forced others into lives of misery, Sheb.
‘I can’t help it if they couldn’t do no better!’
They couldn’t. They weren’t even people.
‘What?’ He looked up, into the killer’s eyes. ‘No, it’s not fair.’
‘That’s right, Sheb. It isn’t, and it never was.’
The blade lashed out.
The ghost shrieked. Suddenly trapped in the Matron’s chamber. Mists roiled. Rautos was on his knees, weeping uncontrollably. Breath was casting her tiles, which were no longer tiles, but coins, glittering and bright—yet every pattern she scanned elicited a snarl from her, and she swept them up yet again—the manic snap and bounce of coins filled the air.
‘No answers,’ she hissed. ‘No answers! No answers!’
Taxilian stood before the enormous throne, muttering under his breath. ‘Sulkit transformed it—and now it waits—everything waits. I don’t understand.’
Sulkit stood nearby. Its entire body had changed shape, elongating, shoulders hunched, its snout foreshortened and broader, fangs gleaming wet with oils. Grey reptilian eyes held fixed, unblinking—the drone was a drone no longer. Now a J’an Sentinel, he stood facing the ghost.
The unhuman regard was unbearable.
Veed strode into the chamber and halted. Sword blade dripping gore, the front of his studded vest spattered and streaked. His face was lifeless. His eyes were the eyes of a blind man. ‘Hello, old friend,’ he said. ‘Where should I start?’
The ghost recoiled.
Rautos stood facing his wife. Another evening spent in silence, but now there was something raw in the air. She was searching his face and her expression was strange and bleak. ‘Have you no pity, husband?’
‘Pity,’ he’d replied, ‘is all I have.’
She’d looked away. ‘I see.’
‘You surrendered long ago,’ he said. ‘I never understood that.’
‘Not everyone surrenders willingly, Rautos.’
He studied her. ‘But where did you find your joy, Eskil? Day after day, night after night, where was your pleasure in living?’
‘You stopped looking for that long ago.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You found your hobbies. The only time your eyes came alive. My joy, husband, was in you. Until you went away.’
Yes, he remembered this now. One night, one single night. ‘That was wrong,’ he’d said, his voice hoarse. ‘To put all that … in someone else.’
Her shrug horrified him. ‘Overwhelmed, were you? But Rautos, that’s just not so, is it? After all, you can’t be overwhelmed by something you don’t even bother to notice.’
‘I noticed.’
‘And so you turned away from me. Until, as you say, here you stand with nothing in your heart but pity. You once said you loved me.’
‘I once did.’
‘Rautos Hivanar, what are these things you are digging up from the river bank?’
‘Mechanisms. I think.’
‘What so fascinates you about them?’
‘I don’t know. I cannot glean their purpose, their function—why are we talking about this?’
‘Rautos, listen. They’re just pieces. The machine, whatever it was, whatever it did, it’s broken.’
‘Eskil, go to bed.’
And so she did, ending the last real conversation between them. He remembered sitting down, his hands to his face, outwardly silent and motionless yet inside he was wracked with sobs. Yes, it was broken. He knew that. And not a single piece left made any sense. And all his pity, well, turned out it was all he had for himself, too.
Rautos felt the bite of the blade and in the moment before the pain rushed in, he managed a smile.
Veed stood over the corpse, and then swung his gaze to Taxilian. Held there for a moment, before his attention drifted to Breath. She was on her knees, scraping coins into her hands.
‘No solutions. No answers. They should be here, in these! These fix everything—everyone knows that! Where is the magic?’
‘Illusions, you mean,’ Veed said, grinning.
‘The best kind! And now the water’s rising—I can’t breathe!’
‘He should never have accepted you, Feather Witch. You understand that, don’t you? Yes, they were all mistakes, all fragments of lives he took inside like so much smoke and dust, but you were the worst of them. The Errant drowned you—and then walked away from your soul. He should not have done that, for you were too potent, too dangerous. You ate his damned eye.’
Her head snapped up, a crazed grin smeared across her face. ‘Elder blood! I hold his debt!’
Veed glanced at the ghost. ‘He sought to do what K’rul did so long ago,’ he said, ‘but Icarium is not an Elder God.’ He regarded Feather Witch again. ‘He wanted warrens of his own, enough to trap him in one place, as if it was a web. Trap him in place. Trap him in time.’
‘The debt is mine!’ Feather Witch shrieked.
‘Not any more,’ said Veed. ‘It is now Icarium Lifestealer’s.’
‘He’s broken!’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s not his fault!’
‘No, it isn’t, and no, it’s not fair either. But there is blood on his hands, and terror in his heart. It seems we must all feed him something, doesn’t it? Or perhaps it was the other way round. But the ghost is here now, with us. Icarium is here. Time to die, Feather Witch. Taxilian.’
‘And you?’ Taxilian asked.
Veed smiled. ‘Me, too.’
‘Why?’ Taxilian demanded. ‘Why now?’
‘Because Lifestealer is where he must be. At this moment, he is in place. And we must all step aside.’ And Veed turned to face the ghost. ‘The J’an sees only you, Icarium. The Nest is ready, the flavours altered to your … tastes.’ He gestured and the ghost saw that both Feather Witch and Taxilian had vanished. ‘Don’t think you are quite rid of us—we’re just back inside you, old friend. We’re the stains on your soul.’
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