It was hard to feel easy about all this. Hard to find any confidence in the Adjunct’s bold decision. The marines had been flung onto the Letherii shore, not a single landing en masse, in strength, but one scattered, clandestine, at night. Then, as if to defy the tactic, the transports had been set aflame.

  An announcement to be sure.

  We are here. Find us, if you dare. But be assured, in time we will find you.

  While most of another legion remained in ships well off the Letherii coast. And the Adjunct alone knew where the Khundryl had gone. And most of the Perish.

  ‘You have taken to brooding, husband.’

  Withal slowly lifted his head and regarded the onyx-skinned woman sitting opposite him in the cabin. ‘I am a man of deep thoughts,’ he said.

  ‘You’re a lazy toad trapped in a pit of self-obsession.’

  ‘That, too.’

  ‘We will soon be ashore. I would have thought you’d be eager at the gunnel, given all your groaning and moaning. Mother Dark knows, I would never have known you for a Meckros with your abiding hatred of the sea.’

  ‘Abiding hatred, is it? No, more like…frustration.’ He lifted his huge hands. ‘Repairing ships is a speciality. But it’s not mine. I need to be back doing what I do best, wife.’

  ‘Horseshoes?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘Shield-rims? Dagger-hilts? Swords?’

  ‘If need be.’

  ‘Armies always drag smiths with them.’

  ‘Not my speciality.’

  ‘Rubbish. You can fold iron into a blade as well as any weaponsmith.’

  ‘Seen plenty of ’em, have you?’

  ‘With a life as long as mine has been, I’ve seen too much of everything. Now, our young miserable charges are probably down in the hold again. Will you get them or will I?’

  ‘Is it truly time to leave?’

  ‘I think the Adjunct is already off.’

  ‘You go. They still make my skin crawl.’

  She rose. ‘You lack sympathy, which is characteristic of self-obsession. These Tiste Andii are young, Withal. Abandoned first by Anomander Rake. Then by Andarist. Brothers and sisters fallen in pointless battle. Too many losses – they are caught in the fragility of the world, in the despair it delivers to their souls.’

  ‘Privilege of the young, to wallow in world-weary cynicism.’

  ‘Unlike your deep thoughts.’

  ‘Completely unlike my deep thoughts, Sand.’

  ‘You think they have not earned that privilege?’

  He could sense her growing ire. She was, after all, no less Tiste Andii than they were. Some things needed steering around. Volcanic island. Floating mountain of ice. Sea of fire. And Sandalath Drukorlat’s list of sensitivities. ‘I suppose they have,’ he replied carefully. ‘But since when was cynicism a virtue? Besides, it gets damned tiring.’

  ‘No argument there,’ she said in a deadly tone, then turned and marched out.

  ‘Brooding’s different,’ he muttered to the empty chair across from him. ‘Could be any subject, for one thing. A subject not at all cynical. Like the meddling of the gods – no, all right, not like that one. Smithing, yes. Horseshoes. Nothing cynical about horseshoes…I don’t think. Sure. Keeping horses comfortable. So they can gallop into battle and die horribly.’ He fell silent. Scowling.

  Phaed’s flat, heart-shaped face was the colour of smudged slate, a hue unfortunate in its lifelessness. Her eyes were flat, except when filled with venom, which they were now as they rested on Sandalath Drukorlat’s back as the older woman spoke to the others.

  Nimander Golit could see the young woman he called his sister from the corner of his eye, and he wondered yet again at the source of Phaed’s unquenchable malice, which had been there, as far as he could recall, from her very earliest days. Empathy did not exist within her, and in its absence something cold now thrived, promising a kind of brutal glee at every victory, real or imagined, obvious or subtle.

  There was nothing easy in this young, beautiful woman. It began with the very first impression a stranger had upon seeing her, a kind of natural glamour that could take one’s breath away. The perfection of art, the wordless language of the romantic.

  This initial moment was short-lived. It usually died following the first polite query, which Phaed invariably met with cold silence. A silence that transformed that wordless language, dispelling all notions of romance, and filling the vast, prolonged absence of decorum with bald contempt.

  Spite was reserved for those who saw her truly, and it was in these instances that Nimander felt a chill of premonition, for he knew that Phaed was capable of murder. Woe to the sharp observer who saw, unflinchingly, through to her soul – to that trembling knot of darkness veined with unimaginable fears – then chose to disguise nothing of that awareness.

  Nimander had long since learned to affect a kind of innocence when with Phaed, quick with a relaxed smile which seemed to put her at ease. It was at these moments, alas, when she was wont to confide her cruel sentiments, whispering elaborate schemes of vengeance against a host of slights.

  Sandalath Drukorlat was nothing if not perceptive, which was hardly surprising. She had lived centuries upon centuries. She had seen all manner of creatures, from the honourable to the demonic. It had not taken her long to decide towards which end of the spectrum Phaed belonged. She had answered cold regard with her own; the contempt flung her way was like pebbles thrown at a warrior’s shield, raising not even a scratch. And, most cutting riposte of all, she had displayed amusement at Phaed’s mute histrionics, even unto overt mockery. These, then, were the deep wounds suppurating in Phaed’s soul, delivered by the woman who now stood as a surrogate mother to them all.

  And now, Nimander knew, heart-faced Phaed was planning matricide.

  He admitted to his own doldrums – long periods of flat indifference – as if none of this was in fact worth thinking about. He had his private host of demons, after all, none of which seemed inclined to simply fade away. Unperturbed by the occasional neglect, they played on in their dark games, and the modest hoard of wealth that made up Nimander’s life went back and forth, until the scales spun without surcease. Clashing discord and chaos to mark the triumphant cries, the hissed curses, the careless scattering of coin. He often felt numbed, deafened.

  It may have been that these were the traits of the Tiste Andii. Introverts devoid of introspection. Darkness in the blood. Chimerae, even unto ourselves. He’d wanted to care about the throne they had been defending, the one that Andarist died for, and he had led his charges into that savage battle without hesitation. Perhaps, even, with true eagerness.

  Rush to death. The longer one lives, the less valued is that life. Why is that?

  But that would be introspection, wouldn’t it? Too trying a task, pursuing such questions. Easier to simply follow the commands of others. Another trait of his kind, this comfort in following? Yet who stood among the Tiste Andii as symbols of respect and awe? Not young warriors like Nimander Golit. Not wicked Phaed and her vile ambitions. Anomander Rake, who walked away. Andarist, his brother, who did not. Silchas Ruin – ah, such a family! Clearly unique among the brood of the Mother. They lived larger, then, in great drama. Lives tense and humming like bowstrings, the ferocity of truth in their every word, the hard, cruel exchanges that drove them apart when nothing else would. Not even Mother Dark’s turning away. Their early lives were poems of epic grandeur. And we? We are nothing. Softened, blunted, confused into obscurity. We have lost our simplicity, lost its purity. We are the Dark without mystery.

  Sandalath Drukorlat – who had lived in those ancient times and must grieve in her soul for the fallen Tiste Andii – now turned about and with a gesture beckoned the motley survivors of Drift Avalii to follow. Onto the deck – ‘you have hair, Nimander, the colour of starlight’ – to look upon this squalid harbour town that would be their home for the next little eternity, to use Phaed’s hissing words.

  ‘It used to be a prison, this island. Full of rapists and murderers.’ A sudden look into his eyes, as if seeking something, then she gave him a fleeting smile that was little more than a showing of teeth and said, ‘A good place for murder.’

  Words that, millennia past, could have triggered a civil war or worse, the fury of Mother Dark herself. Words, then, that barely stirred the calm repose of Nimander’s indifference.

  ‘You have hair, Nimander, the colour of—’ But the past was dead. Drift Avalii. Our very own prison isle, where we learned about dying.

  And the terrible price of following.

  Where we learned that love does not belong in this world.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I took the stone bowl

  in both hands

  and poured out my time

  onto the ground

  drowning hapless insects

  feeding the weeds

  until the sun stood

  looking down

  and stole the stain.

  Seeing in the vessel’s cup

  a thousand cracks

  a thousand cracks

  I looked back

  the way I came

  and saw a trail green

  with memories lost

  whoever made this bowl

  was a fool but the greater

  he who carried it.

  Stone Bowl

  Fisher kel Tath

  The pitched sweep of ice had gone through successive thaws and freezes until its surface was pocked and sculpted like the colourless bark of some vast toppled tree. The wind, alternating between warm and cold, moaned a chorus of forlorn voices through this muricated surface, and it seemed to Hedge that with each crunching stamp of his boot, a lone cry was silenced for ever. The thought left him feeling morose, and this motley scatter of refuse dotting the plain of ice and granulated snow only made things worse.

  Detritus of Jaghut lives, slowly rising like stones in a farmer’s field. Mundane objects to bear witness to an entire people – if only he could make sense of them, could somehow assemble together all these disparate pieces. Ghosts, he now believed, existed in a perpetually confused state, the way before them an endless vista strewn with meaningless dross – the truths of living were secrets, the physicality of facts for ever withheld. A ghost could reach but could not touch, could move this and that, but never be moved by them. Some essence of empathy had vanished – but no, empathy wasn’t the right word. He could feel, after all. The way he used to, when he had been alive. Emotions swam waters both shallow and deep. Tactile empathy perhaps was closer to the sense he sought. The comfort of mutual resistance.

  He had willed himself this shape, this body in which he now dwelt, walking heavily alongside the withered, animate carcass that was Emroth. And it seemed he could conjure a kind of physical continuity with everything around him – like the crunching of his feet – but he now wondered if that continuity was a delusion, as if in picking up this curved shell of some ancient broken pot just ahead of him he was not in truth picking up its ghost. But for that revelation his eyes were blind, the senses of touch and sound were deceits, and he was as lost as an echo.

  They continued trudging across this plateau, beneath deep blue skies where stars glittered high in the vault directly overhead, a world of ice seemingly without end. The scree of garbage accompanied them on all sides. Fragments of cloth or clothing or perhaps tapestry, potsherds, eating utensils, arcane tools of wood or ground stone, the piece of a musical instrument that involved strings and raised finger-drums, the splintered leg of a wooden chair or stool. No weapons, not in days, and the one they had discovered early on – a spear shaft – had been Imass.

  Jaghut had died on this ice. Slaughtered. Emroth had said as much. But there were no bodies, and there had been no explanation forthcoming from the T’lan Imass. Collected then, Hedge surmised, perhaps by a survivor. Did the Jaghut practise ritual interment? He had no idea. In all his travels, he could not once recall talk of a Jaghut tomb or burial ground. If they did such things, they kept them to themselves.

  But when they died here, they had been on the run. Some of those swaths of material were from tents. Flesh and blood Imass did not pursue them – not across this lifeless ice. No, they must have been T’lan. Of the Ritual. Like Emroth here.

  ‘So,’ Hedge said, his own voice startlingly loud in his ears, ‘were you involved in this hunt, Emroth?’

  ‘I cannot be certain,’ she replied after a long moment. ‘It is possible.’

  ‘One scene of slaughter looks pretty much the same as the next, right?’

  ‘Yes. That is true.’

  Her agreement left him feeling even more depressed.

  ‘There is something ahead,’ the T’lan Imass said. ‘We are, I believe, about to discover the answer to the mystery.’

  ‘What mystery?’

  ‘The absence of bodies.’

  ‘Oh, that mystery.’

  Night came abruptly to this place, like the snuffing out of a candle. The sun, which circled just above the horizon through the day, would suddenly tumble, like a rolling ball, beneath the gleaming, blood-hued skyline. And the black sky would fill with stars that only faded with the coming of strangely coloured brushstrokes of light, spanning the vault, that hissed like sprinkled fragments of fine glass.

  Hedge sensed that night was close, as the wind’s pockets of warmth grew more infrequent, the ember cast to what he assumed was west deepening into a shade both lurid and baleful.

  He could now see what had caught Emroth’s attention. A hump on the plateau, ringed in dark objects. The shape rising from the centre of that hillock at first looked like a spar of ice, but as they neared, Hedge saw that its core was dark, and that darkness reached down to the ground.

  The objects surrounding the rise were cloth-swaddled bodies, many of them pitifully small.

  As the day’s light suddenly dropped away, night announced on a gust of chill wind, Hedge and Emroth halted just before the hump.

  The upthrust spar was in fact a throne of ice, and on it sat the frozen corpse of a male Jaghut. Mummified by cold and desiccating winds, it nevertheless presented an imposing if ghastly figure, a figure of domination, the head tilted slightly downward, as if surveying a ring of permanently supine subjects.

  ‘Death observing death,’ Hedge muttered. ‘How damned appropriate. He collected the bodies, then sat down and just died with them. Gave up. No thoughts of vengeance, no dreams of resurrection. Here’s your dread enemy, Emroth.’

  ‘More than you realize,’ the T’lan Imass replied.

  She moved on, edging round the edifice, her hide-wrapped feet plunging through the crust of brittle ice in small sparkling puffs of powdery snow.

  Hedge stared up at the Jaghut on his half-melted throne. All thrones should be made of ice, I think.

  Sit on that numb arse, sinking down and down, with the puddle of dissolution getting ever wider around you. Sit, dear ruler, and tell me all your grand designs.

  Of course, the throne wasn’t the only thing falling apart up there. The Jaghut’s green, leathery skin had sloughed away on the forehead, revealing sickly bone, almost luminescent in the gloom; and on the points of the shoulders the skin was frayed, with the polished knobs of the shoulder bones showing through. Similar gleams from the knuckles of both hands where they rested on the now-tilted arms of the chair.

  Hedge’s gaze returned to the face. Black, sunken pits for eyes, a nose broad and smashed flat, tusks of black silver. I thought these things never quite died. Needed big rocks on them to keep them from getting back up. Or chopped to pieces and every piece planted under a boulder.

  I didn’t think they died this way at all.

  He shook himself and set off after Emroth.

  They would walk through the night. Camps, meals and sleeping were for still-breathing folk, after all.

  ‘Emroth!’

  The head creaked round.

  ‘That damned thing back there’s not still alive, is it?’

  ‘No. The spirit left.’

  ‘Just…left?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Isn’t that, uh, unusual?’

  ‘The Throne of Ice was dying. Is dying still. There was – is – nothing left to rule, ghost. Would you have him sit there for ever?’ She did not seem inclined to await a reply, for she then said, ‘I have not been here before, Hedge of the Bridgeburners. For I would have known.’

  ‘Known what, Emroth?’

  ‘I have never before seen the true Throne of Ice, in the heart of the Hold. The very heart of the Jaghut realm.’

  Hedge glanced back. The true Throne of Ice? ‘Who – who was he, Emroth?’

  But she did not give answer.

  After a time, however, he thought he knew. Had always known.

  He kicked aside a broken pot, watched it skid, roll, then wobble to a halt. King on your melting throne, you drew a breath, then let it go. And…never again. Simple. Easy. When you are the last of your kind, and you release that last breath, then it is the breath of extinction.

  And it rides the wind.

  Every wind.

  ‘Emroth, there was a scholar in Malaz City – a miserable old bastard named Obo – who claimed he was witness to the death of a star. And when the charts were compared again, against the night sky, well, one light was gone.’

  ‘The stars have changed since my mortal life, ghost.’

  ‘Some have gone out?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘As in…died?’

  ‘The Bonecasters could not agree on this,’ she said. ‘Another observation offered a different possibility. The stars are moving away from us, Hedge of the Bridgeburners. Perhaps those we no longer see have gone too far for our eyes.’

  ‘Obo’s star was pretty bright – wouldn’t it have faded first, over a long time, before going out?’

  ‘Perhaps both answers are true. Stars die. Stars move away.’

  ‘So, did that Jaghut die, or did he move away?’

  ‘Your question makes no sense.’

  Really? Hedge barked a laugh. ‘You’re a damned bad liar, Emroth.’

  ‘This,’ she said, ‘is not a perfect world.’

 

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