The paving stones were exquisitely cut, evenly set, with the thinnest of cracks visible between them. Bemused, Fiddler crouched down, trying to hold his focus as he studied the road's surface — a task made more difficult by the streams of airborne sand racing over the stones. There was no telling its age. While he imagined that, even buried beneath the sands, there would be signs of wear, he could detect none. Moreover, the engineering showed skill beyond any masonry he'd yet seen in Seven Cities.
To his right and left the road ran spearshaft-straight as far as his squinting eyes could see. It stood like a vast breakwater that even this sorcerous storm could not breach.
Crokus leaned close. 'I thought there were no roads in Raraku!' he shouted over the storm's keening wail.
The sapper shook his head, at a loss to explain.
'Do we follow it?' Crokus asked. 'The wind's not as bad up here-'
As far as Fiddler could judge, the road angled southwestward, deep into the heart of Raraku. To the northeast it would reach the Pan'potsun Hills within ten leagues — in that direction they would come to the hills perhaps five leagues south of where they had left them. There seemed little value in that. He stared again down the road to his right. The heart of Raraku. It is said an oasis lies there. Where Sha'ik and her renegades are encamped. How far to that oasis? Can water be found anywhere in between here and there? Surely a road crossing a desert would be constructed to intersect sources of water. It was madness to think otherwise, and clearly the builders of this road were too skilled to be fools. Tremorlor. . If the gods will it, Ms track will lead us to that legendary gate. Raraku has a heart, Quick Ben said. Tremorlor, a House of the Azath.
Fiddler mounted the Gral gelding. 'We follow the road,' he yelled to his companions, gesturing southwestward.
They voiced no complaints, turning to their mounts. They had bowed to his command, Fiddler realized, because both were lost in this land. They relied on him completely. Hood's breath, they think I know what I'm doing. Should I now tell them that the plan to find Tremorlor rests entirely on the faith that the fabled place actually exists? And that Quick Ben's suppositions are accurate, despite his unwillingness to explain the source of his certainty? Do I tell them we're more likely to die out here than anything else — if not from wasting thirst, then at the hands of Sha'ik's fanatical followers?
'Fid!' Crokus cried, pointing up the road. He spun around to see a handful of Gral warriors ascending the bank, less than fifty paces away. Their hunters had split up into smaller parties, as dismissive of the sorcerous storm as Fiddler's group had been. A moment later they saw their quarry and voiced faint war cries as they pulled their horses onto the flat top.
'Do we run?' Apsalar asked.
The Gral had remounted and were now unslinging their lances.
'Looks like they're not interested in conversation,' the sapper muttered. In a louder voice he said, 'Leave them to me! You two ride on!'
'What, again?' Crokus slid back down from his horse. 'What would be the point?'
Apsalar followed suit. She stepped close to Fiddler, her eyes meeting his. 'With you dead, what are our chances of surviving this desert?'
About as bad as with me leading you. He fought the temptation to give voice to his thought, simply shrugging in reply as he unlimbered his crossbow. 'I mean to make this a short engagement,' he said, loading a cusser quarrel into the weapon's slot.
The Gral had pulled their mounts into position on the road. Lances lowered, they kicked the horses into motion.
Despite himself, Fiddler's heart broke for those Gral horses, even as he aimed and fired. The quarrel struck the road three paces in front of the charging tribesmen. The detonation was deafening, the blast a bruised gout of flame that drove back the airborne sand and the wind carrying it, and flung the attackers and their mounts like a god's hand, backward onto the road and off the sides. Blood shot upward to pull sand down like hail. In a moment the wind swept the flames and smoke away, leaving nothing but twitching bodies.
A pointless pursuit, and now pointless deaths. I am not Gral. Would the crime of impersonation trigger such a relentless hunt? I wish I could have asked you, warriors.
'For all that they have twice saved us,' Crokus said, 'those Moranth munitions are horrible, Fiddler.'
Silent, the sapper loaded another quarrel, slipped a leather thong over the bone trigger to lock it, then slung the heavy weapon over a shoulder. Climbing back into the saddle, he gathered the reins in one hand and regarded his comrades. 'Stay sharp,' he said. 'We may ride into another party without warning. If we do, try to break through them.'
He lightly kicked the mare forward.
The wind came as laughter to his ears, the sound seemingly stained with pleasure at witnessing senseless violence. It was eager for more. The Whirlwind awakened — this goddess is mad, riven with insanity — who is there that can stop her? Fiddler's slitted eyes stared down the road, the featureless march of stones leading, ever leading, into an ochre, swirling maw. Into nothingness.
Fiddler growled an oath, pushing away the futility clawing at his thoughts. They would have to find Tremorlor, before the Whirlwind swallowed them whole.
The aptorian was a darker shade thirty paces on Kalam's left, striding with relentless ease through the sand-filled wind. The assassin found himself thankful for the storm — his every clear sighting of his unwanted companion scraped his nerves raw. He'd encountered demons before, on battlefields and in war-ravaged streets. Often they had been thrown into the fray by Malazan mages, and so were allies of a sort, even as they went about exacting the wills of their masters with apparent indifference to all else. On thankfully rarer occasions, he'd come face to face with a demon unleashed by an enemy. At such times survival was his only concern, and survival meant flight. Demons were flesh and blood, to be sure — he'd seen enough of one's insides once, after it had been blown apart by one of Hedge's cusser quarrels, to retain the unwelcome intimacy of the memory — but only fools would try to face down a demon's cold rage and singularity of purpose.
Only two kinds of people die in battle, Fiddler had once said, fools and the unlucky. Trading blows with a demon was both unlucky and foolish.
For all that, the aptorian grated strangely on Kalam's eyes, like an iron blade trying to cut granite. Even to focus too long on the beast was to invite a wave of nausea.
There was nothing welcome in Sha'ik's gift. Gift . . or spy. She's unleashed the Whirlwind and now the goddess rides her, as certain as possession. That's likely to trim short the wick of gratitude. Besides, even Dryjhna would not so readily waste an aptorian demon on something so mundane as escort. So, friend Apt, I cannot trust you.
Over the past few days he'd tried losing the beast, departing camp silently an hour before dawn, plunging into the thickest twists of spinning wind. Outracing the creature was a hopeless task — it could outpace any earthly animal in both speed and endurance, and for all his efforts Apt held on to him like a well-heeled hound — although mercifully at a distance.
The wind scoured the rock-scabbed hills with a voracious fury, carving into cracks and fissures as if hungering to spring loose every last speck of sand. The smooth, humped domes of bleached limestone lining the ridges on either side of the shallow valley he rode along seemed to age before his eyes, revealing countless wrinkles and scars.
He'd left the Pan'potsun Hills behind six days earlier, crossing the seamless border into another sawbacked ridge of hills called the Anibaj. The territory this far south of Raraku was less familiar to him. He'd come close on occasion, following the well-travelled trader tracks skirting the eastern edge of the range. The Anibaj were home to no tribes, although hidden monasteries were rumoured to exist.