“I do not know,” said Kormak. “You would need to ask the dwarf who made it?”
“The Dwarves were the artificers of the Old Ones,” said Olivia. “Who would know them better?”
Luther said, “The Ghul were servants of the Old Ones too. Why did so many of their servants rebel against them, that is what I wonder.”
“Because they wanted what the Old Ones had,” Olivia said. “Or they wanted their own lives to be better.”
“Or they simply hated them,” Luther said. “Their lives were long and the Old Ones cruel.”
Luther looked at Kormak. “It seems the Ghul learned cruelty from their masters too.”
Kormak thought back to the things he had seen in Razhak’s mind. “I think the cruelty was always in them, as it is in all things. A deer sees a lion as cruel. A lion thinks of himself as hungry. It’s all in the point of view.”
“Spoken like a hunter,” said Luther.
“Razhak thinks I am cruel because I hunt him,” Kormak said. “I think he is cruel because he has killed people I knew. We both could be right.”
“I think you hunt him because it is who you are,” Luther said. “You are what you were born to be and what the world has made you.”
“That’s as may be,” Kormak said. “But hunt him I do. And now I must sleep.”
Olivia joined him later. They made love as the desert wind blew around them.
The Sun rose over the desert. Olivia was gone, returned to her tent. Even if all the men present knew what was going on, it seemed the proprieties must still be observed. Kormak donned his gear. They breakfasted, mounted up and rode on.
They were following the little that remained of an ancient road now. The workmanship was not Solari like the road that led to Sunhaven. It was more like a trench that somehow never quite filled with windblown sand. At times Kormak caught sight of the remains of ancient runes worked in moonsilver whose enchantments still kept the path clear. Most of it had been scavenged long ago but what remained was a mere film, like gold leaf, but it still held enough power to maintain a sliver of the Old Magic.
“The Old Ones built this road,” he said.
“Or their servants,” said Olivia.
“We walked a path they trod millennia ago,” said Luther.
“Razhak trod it within this last few days,” Kormak said. A small rat of fear gnawed at his stomach. What if he was too late? What if Razhak had found what he had come for and already departed, or gained so much strength he could not be killed. He reached up and touched the hilt of his dwarf-forged blade for reassurance. Anything could be killed. All it took was the right weapon. His glance wandered to Olivia and then Luther.
Why was he travelling with them? He might only be giving the Ghul more victims. His earlier certainty about wanting witnesses had vanished. The thought occurred to him that they were bait. He did not dismiss it as entirely groundless. Razhak would be burning through Scar’s old body now. He would need a new one soon. Both Luther and his sister were young and fit. They were exactly the sort of bodies the demon would want.
Had he really become so cold, Kormak wondered, that he could use people he liked in this way? He already knew the answer and did not care for it.
Buildings began to appear on the rocky hills they passed. They did not have the clean lines and columns of Solari architecture. They were low built, curved, something of their shape was suggestive of eggs, of igloos, of yurts. There were a few towers and on those were domes and minarets.
Sometimes they passed statues depicting beings too beautiful and potent to be humans. Kormak wondered whether he was looking on the features of ancient Gods or living Old Ones. He suspected it was the latter.
A massive head emerged from the sand, like that of a swimmer standing in deep water. The face was long and lean, the cheekbones high, the ears pointed, the teeth its smile revealed were sharp and two of them were fangs. It was a face at once ascetic and decadent, full of strange hungers and it was possible that the being who wore those features three thousand years ago was still in the world and walking in the light of the Moon.
“Anaskandroth,” Olivia said. She gestured at the head. “The Lord of the Hunt. He was one of those who besieged Tanyth all those centuries ago. His bow shot arrows of silver light and he could bring down anything as far as the horizon.”
Kormak rode closer to her. “How do you know that?”
“Because I read, Sir Kormak.”
“But what do you read, my lady?”
She smiled a secretive smile that reminded him of the expression on the statue’s face. “Am I your lady, Guardian or do you mock me?”
“In this place, at this time, you are.”
“A very qualified statement.”
“I have answered your question but you have not answered mine.”
“There were humans in the armies of the Old Ones who besieged Tanyth, just as there were within its walls. They were the lowest of slaves, the most common of foot soldiers, but a few were scribes. They left records and those records were transcribed. Obviously you did not pay much attention to those scrolls I sent you.”
“I had only one night,” he said, “and for much of it I was otherwise occupied.”
She smiled again. “Excuses, excuses.”
The day wore on. The Holy Sun rose hot and high and they wended their way through the desert. Bare mountains rose in the distance, giant rocks rose from the waste. The trail all but disappeared in many places to reappear when least expected. Kormak found he was glad of the company. He was a man of the far North and felt out of place in this brilliant, sun-blasted land. The shimmering haze in the air deceived the eye and made him think of illusion spells. The ancient ruins scattered around the place reminded him that this land was old and he was a mere mortal.
And yet, for all that, he was happy. Just the act of moving across the empty wilderness provided him with a sense of satisfaction. Looking on new vistas satisfied some deep hunger in his mind. Being reminded of his own mortality made him feel the small pleasures of being alive all the more keenly.
As the shadows lengthened he noticed that something was keeping pace with them. The creatures were too far away to be seen in any detail but there was something about their movements that made Kormak think of monkeys, although there was something else there, a slinking stealth that made him uneasy.
Prince Luther produced a telescope and focused it on the creatures following them. “Lopers,” he said, handing the device to Kormak so that he could take a look.
Kormak raised it to his eye and twisted the bronze tube as he had seen the Prince do. He caught a glimpse of the true nature of the creatures. They moved on all fours like monkeys, but their features were like those of men. Their limbs were enormously elongated, their hands and feet ended in sharp claws. When they opened their mouths he could see that they had fangs there. Their skin was grey and unhealthy looking, their eyes reddish and bloodshot and feral. They looked like some spawn of the Old Ones but they could not be for they were out in the Sun’s light.
“What are they?” Kormak asked. It was Olivia who answered.
“According to Eraclius they were men once, cursed by the Old Ones to eat flesh and drink blood for rebelling against their masters. Amadarius claims it was the Ghul that did it. They and the surviving travellers that encounter them all agree about the drinking of blood and eating flesh. They haunt the lands around Tanyth. They seem able to go for weeks without food or drink but when they encounter prey they like to gorge.”
“They attack mostly at night,” Luther said. “Their sight is better then than ours. They are very hard to kill. Sorcery has given them an unnatural vitality.”
“Undermen,” Kormak said. He knew the Old Ones had done things to humans with their magic, changed them, made them less than human. It was one of their arts. They needed soldiers and workers that could handle holy metals and bypass Elder Signs and go out in the Sun.