The two Elders stared at it for a time, then Mael grunted. ‘Yes, I see, now. Rather curious choice, Gothos.’
‘The only kind I make,’ the Jaghut replied. ‘Go on, then, Kilmandaros, proceed with your subtle conclusion to the Soletaken’s pathetic existence.’
The dragon hissed, screamed in rage and fear as the Elder Goddess advanced.
When she drove a fist into Scabandari’s skull, centred on the ridge between and above the draconic eyes, the crack of the thick bone rang like a dirge down the length of the crevasse, and with the impact blood spurted from t he Goddess’s knuckles.
The dragon’s broken head thumped heavily onto the broken bedrock, fluids spilling out from beneath the sagging body.
Kilmandaros wheeled to face Gothos.
He nodded. ‘I have the poor bastard.’
Mael stepped towards the Jaghut, holding out a hand. ‘I will take the Finnest then-’
‘No.’
Both Elders now faced Gothos, who smiled once more. ‘Repayment of the debt. For each of you. I claim the Finnest, the soul of Scabandari, for myself. Nothing remains between us, now. Are you not pleased?’
‘What do you intend to do with it?’ Mael demanded.
‘I have not yet decided, but I assure you, it will be most curiously unpleasant.’
Kilmandaros made fists again with her hands and half raised them. ‘I am tempted, Jaghut, to send my children after you.’
‘Too bad they’ve lost their way, then.’
Neither Elder said another word as Gothos departed from the fissure. It always pleased him, outwitting doddering old wrecks and all their hoary, brutal power. Well, a momentary pleasure, in any case.
The best kind.
Upon her return to the rent, Kilmandaros found another figure standing before it. Black-cloaked, white-haired. An expression of arched contemplation, fixed upon the torn fissure.
About to enter the gate, or waiting for her? The Elder Goddess scowled. ‘You are not welcome in Kurald Emurlahn,’ she said.
Anomandaris Purake settled cool eyes upon the monstrous creature. ‘Do you imagine I contemplate claiming the throne for myself?’
‘You would not be the first.’
He faced the rent again. ‘You are besieged, Kilmandaros, and Edgewalker is committed elsewhere. I offer you my help.’
‘With you, Tiste Andii, my trust is not easily earned.’
‘Unjustified,’ he replied. ‘Unlike many others of my kind, I accept that the rewards of betrayal are never sufficient to overwhelm the cost. There are Soletaken now, in addition to feral dragons, warring in Kurald Emurlahn.’
‘Where is Osserc?’ the Elder Goddess asked. ‘Mael informed me that he-’
‘Was planning to get in my way again? Osserc imagined I would take part in slaying Scabandari. Why should I? You and Mael were more than enough.’ He grunted then. ‘I can picture Osserc, circling round and round. Looking for me. Idiot.’
‘And Scabandari’s betrayal of your brother? You have no desire to avenge that?’
Anomandaris glanced at her, then gave her a faint smile. ‘The rewards of betrayal. The cost to Scabandari proved high, didn’t it? As for Silchas, well, even the Azath do not last for ever. I almost envy him his new-found isolation from all that will afflict us in the millennia to come.’
‘Indeed. Do you wish to join him in a similar barrow?’
‘I think not.’
‘Then I imagine that Silchas Ruin will not be inclined to forgive you your indifference, the day he is freed.’
‘You might be surprised, Kilmandaros.’
‘You and your kind are mysteries to me, Anomandaris Purake.’
‘I know. So, Goddess, have we a pact?’
She cocked her head. ‘I mean to drive the pretenders from the realm-if Kurald Emurlahn must die, then let it do so on its own.’
‘In other words, you want to leave the Throne of Shadow unoccupied.’
‘Yes.’
He thought for a time, then he nodded. ‘Agreed.’
‘Do not wrong me, Soletaken.’
‘I shall not. Are you ready, Kilmandaros?’
‘They will forge alliances,’ she said. ‘They will all war against us.’
Anomandaris shrugged. ‘I have nothing better to do today.’
The two Ascendants then walked through the gate, and, together, they closed the rent behind them. There were other paths, after all, to this realm. Paths that were not wounds.
Arriving within Kurald Emurlahn, they looked upon a ravaged world.
Then set about cleansing what was left of it.
Preda Bivatt, a captain in the Drene Garrison, was far from home. Twenty-one days by wagon, commanding an expedition of two hundred soldiers of the Tattered Banner Army, a troop of thirty Bluerose light cavalry, and four hundred support staff, including civilians, she had, after delivering orders for the setting of camp, slid down from the back of her horse to walk the fifty-odd paces to the edge of the bluff.
When she reached the rise the wind struck her a hammer blow to her chest, as if eager to fling her back, to scrape her from this battered lip of land. The ocean beyond the ridge was a vision from an artist’s nightmare, a seascape torn, churning, with heavy twisting clouds shredding apart overhead. The water was more white than blue-green, foam boiling, spume flying out from between rocks as the waves pounded the shore.
Yet, she saw with a chill rushing in to bludgeon her bones, this was the place.
A fisher boat, blown well off course, into the deadly maelstrom that was this stretch of ocean, a stretch that no trader ship, no matter how large, would willingly venture into. A stretch that had, eighty years ago, caught a Meckros City and had torn it to pieces, pulling into the depths twenty thousand or more dwellers of that floating settlement.
The fisher crew had survived, long enough to draw their beleaguered craft safely aground in hip-deep water thirty or so paces from the bedrock strand. Catch lost, their boat punched into kindling by relentless waves, the four Letherii managed to reach dry land.
To find… this.
Tightening the strap of her helm, lest the wind tear it and her head from her shoulders, Preda Bivatt continued scanning the wreckage lining this shoreline. The promontory she stood on was undercut, dropping away three man-heights to a bank of white sand heaped with elongated rows of dead kelp, uprooted trees, and remnants of eighty-year-old Meckros City. And something else. Something more unexpected.
– War canoes. The seagoing kind, each as long as a coral-face whale, high-prowed, longer and broader of beam than Tiste Edur craft. Not flung ashore as wreckage-no, not one she could see displayed anything like damage. They were drawn up in rows high along the beach, although it was clear that that had happened some time past-months at least, perhaps years.
A presence at her side. The merchant from Drene who had been contracted to supply this expedition. Pale-skinned, his hair pallid blond, so fair as to be nearly white. The wind was blasting red the man’s round face, but she could see his light blue eyes fixed on the array of war canoes, tracking, first westward along the beach, then eastward. ‘I have some talent,’ he said to her, loudly so as to be heard over the gale.
Bivatt said nothing. The merchant no doubt had skill with numbers-his claim to talent. And she was an officer in the Letherii Army, and could well gauge the likely complement of each enormous craft without his help. A hundred, give or take twenty.
‘Preda?’
‘What?’
The merchant gestured helplessly. ‘These canoes.’ He waved up the beach, then down. ‘There must be…’ And t hen he was at a loss for words.
She well understood him.
Yes. Rows upon rows, all drawn up to this forbidding shore. Drene, the nearest city of the kingdom, was three weeks away, to the southwest. Directly south of here was the land of the Awl’dan, and of the tribes’ seasonal rounds with their huge herds virtually all was known. The Letherii were in the process of conquering them, after all. There had been no report of anything like this.