‘Old Man says… the next village.’
‘And then?’
He sighed. ‘I shall send the others back and ride on to the Tower of Hate.’
‘Your son?’
‘He shall ride with me. I believe his tutor left him with gifts for the Lord of Hate.’
‘They will be ill received, I predict. Does the boy return to Kharkanas with you?’
‘He cannot, and the means with which I shall hasten that journey are for me and Calaras and none other.’
‘Then he knows nothing.’
‘Nothing.’
‘Draconus, must all your seeds be errant? Left to grow wild, for ever untamed? Our daughters will be the death of you — you keep them too close, smothered by your neglect. It is no wonder they are venomous.’
‘Perhaps,’ he admitted. ‘I have no answer to my children. All of myself that I see in them is but cause for concern, and I am left wondering why parents give to their children so freely their flaws, yet not their virtues.’
She shrugged. ‘We are all misers with what we believe we have earned, Draconus.’
He reached to her and rested his hand upon her shoulder, and that touch sent a tremble through her. ‘You wear your weight well, Olar Ethil.’
‘If you mean my fat then I call you a liar.’
‘I did not mean your fat.’
After a moment she shook her head. ‘I think not. We are no wiser, Draconus. We fall into the same traps, over and over again. For all that I am fed by my Dog-Runners, I do not understand them; and for all that I nurtured Burn, at my own breast, still I underestimated her. I fear it is that fated disregard that will see the end of me some day.’
‘Will you not see your own death?’
‘I choose not to. Best it come in an instant, unexpected and so not feared. To live in dread of dying is to not live at all. Pray that I am running on my last day, fleet as a hare, my heart filled with fire.’
‘So I shall pray, Olar Ethil. For you.’
‘What of your death, Draconus? You were always one for planning, no matter how many times those plans failed you.’
‘I will,’ he replied, ‘die many deaths.’
‘You have seen them?’
‘No. I have no need for that.’
She looked out upon the water of the spring. Night made it black. Caladan Brood’s sculpture of the Thel Akai still lifted a tormented face to the sky, and would do so for ever. It was aptly named Surrender, and he had forced that sentiment upon the stone itself, refusing all subtlety. She feared Caladan Brood for his honesty and despised him for his talent.
‘I see his mother in his face,’ she said after a time. ‘In his eyes.’
‘Yes.’
‘That must be hard for you.’
‘Yes.’
She pushed her hand into her belly, feeling the skin split, and then the sudden heat of blood and the steady beat of her heart — almost within reach. Instead, her hands closed about the baked clay form of a figurine. She pulled it out. She crouched to wash it clean and then straightened and offered it to Draconus. ‘For your son.’
‘Olar Ethil, he is not yours to protect.’
‘Even so.’
After a moment he nodded and took it from her.
Draconus then squeezed her shoulder and began walking away.
She brushed fingers across her belly but the wound had closed once more. ‘I forgot to ask, what name did you give him?’
Draconus paused and glanced back at her. When he told her, she made a startled sound, and then began laughing.
Arathan slept fitfully, haunted by dreams of the corpses of children floating on a pool of black water. He saw ropes coming from their bellies, as if each one had been tied to something, but those ropes were severed, the ends hacked and shredded. Staring upon this scene, he felt a sudden certainty — in the way of dreams — that the spring, far beneath the surface, spilled out not water but these drowned babies, and the flow was endless.
When he walked out upon them he felt their soft bodies give under his weight, and with each step he grew somehow heavier, until, with a sound like breaking ice, he plunged through Only to awaken, slick with sweat, his chest aching from a breath held overlong against imaginary pressures.
He sat up to see that it was still night. His father was standing near the horses under the strange trees, and it seemed that he stared eastward — into the village or perhaps beyond it. For all Arathan knew, Draconus might be looking upon Kharkanas itself, and the Citadel, and a woman hidden in darkness seated on a throne.