Snow drifted down from a pale blue sky, some high-altitude version of a sun-shower, perhaps, or winds had lifted the flakes from the young peaks that reared on all sides but directly ahead. The air was bitter, so dry that wool sparked and crackled. They had crossed the last of the broken plateau the day before, leaving behind the mass of shattered black stone that marked its cratered centre. The climb this morning had been treacherous, as so many slabs of stone under foot were sheathed in ice. Reaching the crest of the caldera in late afternoon light, they found themselves looking upon a vast descending slope, stretching north for half a league or more to a tundra plain. Beyond that the horizon reached in a flat, hazy white line. Ice fields, Fear Sengar had said, to which Udinaas had laughed.
Seren Pedac paced restlessly along the ridge. She had been walking with the others, well behind Clip and Silchas Ruin. There was light left to continue, yet the young Tiste Andii had perched himself on the crest to stare back the way they had come. Silent, expressionless.
She walked over to stand before Udinaas, who had taken to carrying the Imass spear again and was now seated on a rock poking the spear’s point into the mossy turf. ‘What is happening here?’ she asked him in a low voice. ‘Do you know?’
‘Familiar with the jarack bird, Acquitor? The grey-crested thief and murderer of the forest?’
She nodded.
‘And what happens when a jarack female finds a nest containing some other’s bird’s hatchlings? An unguarded nest?’
‘It kills and eats the chicks.’
He smiled. ‘True. Commonly known. But jaracks do something else on occasion, earlier in the season. They push out an egg and leave one of their own. The other birds seem blind to the exchange. And when the jarack hatches, of course it kills and eats its rivals.’
‘Then sounds its call,’ she said. ‘But it’s a call that seems no different from those of the other bird’s chicks. And those birds come with food in their beaks.’
‘Only to be ambushed by the two adult jaracks waiting nearby and killed in the nest. Another meal for their hatchling.’
‘Jaracks are in every way unpleasant birds. Why are we talking about jaracks, Udinaas?’
‘No reason, really. But sometimes it’s worth reminding ourselves that we humans are hardly unique in our cruelty.’
‘The Fent believed that jaracks are the souls of abandoned children who died alone in the forest. And so they yearn for a home and a family, yet are so driven to rage when they find them they destroy all that they desire.’
‘The Fent were in the habit of abandoning children?’
Seren Pedac grimaced. ‘Only in the last hundred or so years.’
‘Impediments to their self-destructive appetites, I should think.’
She said nothing to that comment, yet in her mind’s eye she saw Hull Beddict suddenly standing beside her, drawing to his full height, reaching down to take Udinaas by the throat and dragging the man upright.
Udinaas suddenly bolted forward, choking, one hand clawing up towards her.
Seren Pedac stepped back. No, dammit! She struggled to cast the vision away.
It would not leave.
Eyes bulging, face blackening, Udinaas closed his own hands about his neck, but there was nothing to pull away-
‘Seren!’ Kettle shrieked.
Errant fend! What, how… oh, I’m killing him! Hull Beddict stood, crushing the life from Udinaas. She wanted to reach out to him, drag his grip loose, but she knew she would not be strong enough. No, she realized, she needed someone else-
And conjured into the scene within her mind another figure, stepping close, lithe and half seen. A hand flashing up, striking Hull Beddict in his own throat. The Letherii staggered back, then fell to one knee, even as he released Udinaas. Hull then reached for his sword.
A spear shaft scythed into view, caught Hull flat on the forehead, snapping his head back. He toppled.
The Edur warrior now stood between Hull Beddict and Udinaas, spear held in a guard position.
Seeing him, seeing his face, sent Seren reeling back. Trull Sengar? Trull-
The vision faded, was gone.
Coughing, gasping, Udinaas rolled onto his side.
Kettle rushed to crouch beside the ex-slave.
A hand closed on Seren’s shoulder and swung her round. She found herself staring up into Fear’s face, and wondered at the warrior’s strange expression. He-he could not have seen. That would be-
‘Shorn,’ Fear whispered. ‘Older. A sadness-’ He broke off” then, unable to go on, and twisted away.
She stared after him. A sadness upon his eyes.
Upon his eyes.
‘Deadly games, Acquitor.’
She started, looked over to see that Silchas Ruin was now studying her from where he sat. Beyond him, Clip had not turned round, had not even moved. ‘I did not. I mean. I didn’t-’
‘Imagination,’ Udinaas grated from the ground to her right, ‘is ever quick to judge.’ He coughed again, then laughter broke from his ravaged throat. ‘Ask any jealous man. Or woman. Next time I say something that annoys you, Seren Pedac, just swear at me, all right?’
‘I’m sorry, Udinaas. I didn’t think-’
‘You thought all right, woman.’
Oh, Udinaas. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.
‘What sorcery have you found?’ Fear Sengar demanded, his eyes slightly wild as he glared at her. ‘I saw-’
‘What did you see?’ Silchas Ruin asked lightly, slipping one sword into its scabbard, then drawing the other.
Fear said nothing, and after a moment he pulled his gaze horn Seren Pedac. ‘What is Clip doing?’ he demanded.
‘Mourning, I expect.’
This answer brought Udinaas upright into a sitting position. Glancing at Seren, he nodded, mouthed Jarack.
‘Mourning what?’ Fear asked.
‘All who dwelt within the Andara,’ Silchas Ruin replied, ‘are dead. Slaughtered by Letherii soldiers and mages. Clip is the Mortal Sword of Darkness. Had he been there, they would now still be alive-his kin. And the bodies lying motionless in the darkness would be Letherii. He wonders if he has not made a terrible mistake.’
‘That thought,’ the young Tiste Andii said, ‘was fleeting. They were hunting for you, Fear Sengar. And you, Udinaas.’ He turned, his face appalling in its calm repose. The chains spun out, snapped in the cold air, then whirled back inward again. ‘My kin would have made certain there would remain no evidence that you were there. Nor were the Letherii mages powerful enough-nor clever enough-to desecrate the altar, although they tried.’ He smiled. ‘They brought their lanterns with them, you see.’
‘The gate didn’t stay there long enough anyway,’ Udinaas said in a cracking voice.
Clip’s hard eyes fixed on the ex-slave. ‘You know nothing.’
‘I know what’s spinning from your finger, Clip. You showed us once before, after all.’
Silchas Ruin, finished with the second sword, now sheathed it and rose. ‘Udinaas,’ he said to Clip, ‘is as much a mystery as the Acquitor here. Knowledge and power, the hand and the gauntlet. We should move on. Unless,’ he paused, facing Clip, ‘it is time.’
Time? Time for what?
‘It is,’ Udinaas said, using the Imass spear to get to his feet. ‘They knew they were going to die. Hiding in that deep pit took them nowhere. Fewer young, ever weaker blood. But that blood, well, spill enough of it…’
Clip advanced on the ex-slave.
‘No,’ Silchas Ruin said.
The Mortal Sword stopped, seemed to hesitate, then shrugged and turned away. Chain spinning.
‘Mother Dark,’ Udinaas resumed with a tight smile. ‘Open your damned gate, Clip, it’s been paid for.’
And the spinning chain snapped taut. Horizontally. At each end a ring, balanced as if on end. Within the band closest to them there was… darkness.
Seren Pedac stared, as that sphere of black began growing, spilling out from the ring.
‘She has this thing,’ Udinaas muttered, ‘about birth canals.’