The strange feature was situated on a flat stretch, part of which had been broken and planted by the nuns a few decades past – without much success – and beyond which rose low hummocks, many of which bore springs near the fissured rocks of their summits. The endless leak of water cut deep channels into the sides of those hills, converging into a single stream that only broke up again among the furrows of withered weeds. But the depression remained dry, and it was this peculiarity that made Caplo frown. ‘Consecrated? That blessing is not yours to make.’
Ruvera shrugged. ‘The river god is dead. Lost to the curse of Dark. Betrayed, in fact, but no matter. The woman on her throne in Kharkanas has no regard for us, and we would do well to shrink from her attention. Husband, seek out and tell me what answers you.’
‘Did you make this pit by your own hand?’ Resh asked.
‘Of course not.’
Caplo grunted and spoke before Resh could answer his wife. ‘Then let us ponder its creation, with cogent reason. See the drainage channels from the hills beyond. They reach a level to match the land around the basin, and if not for the irrigation scars would plunge into the ground and course onward, unseen. Yet here, below the crust of the surface, there was buried a lens of wind-blown sand and silts. So. The springs fed their water and the water found its hidden path, cutting through that lens, sweeping it away, thus yielding a depression of the crust.’ He turned to Ruvera. ‘Nothing sacred in its making. Nothing holy in its manifestation. It was the same hidden seepage that defeated the nuns who sought to grow crops here.’
‘I await you, husband,’ said the witch, her face set as if denying Caplo’s presence, and any words he might utter.
‘I am … uncertain,’ admitted Resh after a moment. ‘Caplo’s reason is sound, but it remains mundane, if not shallow. Something else thrives beneath the surface. No gift of the river god. Perhaps not holy at all.’
‘But powerful, husband! Tell me you can feel it!’
‘I wonder … is this Denul?’
‘If the sorcery here heals,’ Ruvera said in a low voice, ‘it is the cold kind. The hardening of scars, the marring of skin. It refutes sympathy.’
‘I sense nothing,’ said Caplo.
‘Husband?’
Resh shook his head. ‘Very well, Ruvera. Awaken it. Demonstrate.’
She drew a deep breath. ‘Let us take this expression of power, and make it into a god. We need only the will to do so, to choose to shape what waits in promise. We perch on a precipice here, but a ledge remains, enough to walk on, enough to stand upon. And from this narrow strand, we can reach out to both sides, both worlds.’
‘You invent from shadows,’ Caplo said. ‘I have never trusted imagination – or if I once did, no longer. Make your idol, then, witch, and show me it is worthy of a bow and scrape. Or palsied genuflection. Make me kneel abject and humbled. But if I see the impress of your palms and fingertips in the clay, woman, I will refuse worship and call you a charlatan.’
‘The hag you still call Mother shows her teeth at last.’
To that, Caplo simply shrugged.
‘Ruvera,’ said Resh, eyeing her, ‘I see you hesitate.’
‘I have reached down before,’ she replied, ‘and brushed … something. Enough to feel its strength. Enough to know its promise.’
‘Then why decry the assassin’s presence, wife?’
‘It may be,’ she said, eyes on the depression, ‘that the power requires a sacrifice. Blood. My blood.’ She swung to Caplo. ‘Do not defend my life. We have lost our god. We possess nothing, and yet our need is vast. I am willing.’
‘Kurald Galain’s squall descends to a secular war,’ Caplo said. ‘A civil war. We can stand outside it, now. No sacrifice is necessary, Ruvera. I may not like you, but I will not see you cast away your life.’
‘Even to stand apart, assassin, will need strength.’ She waved vaguely northward. ‘They will demand we choose sides, sooner or later. Captain Finarra Stone remains as guest to Father Skelenal, and asks that we commit ourselves in Mother Dark’s name. But our family remains unruly. Our patriarch dithers. He has no strength. Sheccanto fares even worse. We must choose another god. Another power.’
Resh clawed at his beard, and then nodded. ‘It falls to us, yes. Caplo-’
‘I will decide in the moment,’ the assassin said. ‘A knife commits but once.’
Ruvera hissed in frustration, and then dismissed him with a chopping hand. Facing the depression again, she closed her eyes.
Caplo stood waiting, unsure whether to fix his attention upon the witch, or the innocuous depression before them. Beneath his heavy woollen cloak he closed gloved hands around the grips of his knives.
Resh’s sharply drawn breath drew the assassin’s attention upon the shallow basin, where he saw the withered grasses lining it stir, then flatten away from the edge, as if they were the spiky petals of a vast flower. The cracked soil in the centre of the pit now blurred strangely, forcing Caplo to blink and struggle to focus – but his efforts failed, and the blurring deepened, the mottled colours melting, smearing. And now something was rising from below. A body of some sort, lying supine. In the instant of its first appearance, it seemed but bones, peat-stained and burnished; in the next the skeleton vanished beneath the meat of muscles and the stretched strings of tendons and ligaments. Then skin slipped on to the form, rising from below like mud, and its hue was dark. Hair grew from that skin, covering the entire body, thickest beneath the arms and at the groin.
If standing, the creature would have been only slightly shorter than the average Tiste.
Caplo edged forward, tugged by curiosity. He studied the manifestation’s peculiar, bestial face – how the mouth and jaw projected, drawing out and flattening the broad nose. The closed eyes were nestled deep in their sockets, the brow half enclosing them thick and jutting. The forehead sloped back beneath the black, dense hair of the scalp. The creature’s ears were small and flat against the sides of the head.
He noted the rise and fall of its narrow but powerful chest the moment before the creature opened its eyes.
Lips stretched back, revealing thick, stained teeth, and from its throat droned a dull, broken sound. The apparition then shivered, blurred and suddenly broke apart.
Ruvera cried out, and Caplo heard Resh’s curse. The assassin’s knives were out, but the weapons were no answer to his confusion, as in the place where a body had been lying moments before there now appeared a dozen creatures, sleek and black, weasel-like but larger, heavier. Fangs glistened and eyes flashed.
And then a full score of the beasts swarmed out from the pit.
Caplo heard the witch shriek, but he could do nothing for her as three of the creatures lunged towards him. He leapt back, slashing out with his knives. One edge sliced hide, but then the hilt snagged in fur and savage jaws closed around his hand. They crunched down through the bones, and heavy molars began grinding and tearing through. Screaming, Caplo tore his hand from the creature’s mouth.
Another beast hammered into his midriff, claws ripping to get through his clothing. He staggered back, disbelieving. The third apparition’s canines punched through flesh as its jaws closed on his left thigh. The weight pulled him down to the ground. He still held one knife, and twisting round, he drove the blade into the base of the beast’s skull, tore the weapon free and slammed it into the side of the animal clinging to his chest. The creature’s jaws, which had been striving to reach his throat, snapped shut, just missing the assassin’s neck. A wet cough sprayed blood out from its mouth. Rolling on to his side, Caplo stabbed again and felt death take his attacker.
The first apparition returned to bite into his upper arm, above the mangled hand. The pressure of those jaws crushed bones as if they were dry sticks. Caplo dragged it close with his arm and cut open its throat, down to the vertebrae.
He rolled again, pulling his arm loose from the now slack jaws. He staggered to his feet in a half-crouch, and, glaring, readied himself to meet the next assault. But the scene before him was motionless. He heard the barks of the creatures, but some distance away and fast dwindling. Warlock Resh knelt on the ground a few paces away, the carcasses of two beasts before him. His cloak had been shredded, revealing the heavy chain beneath it. Here and there, massive claws were snagged in the links, dangling like fetish charms.