'Rallick never mentioned-'
'My, what an observant assassin.'
'Fine!' Murillio snapped. 'Here's what I think! She had a child. She sent it away. Somewhere. She wouldn't have abandoned it, because at some point she would have wanted to use it, as a verifiable heir, as marriage-bait, whatever. Simtal was lowborn; whatever contacts she had from her past were private ones — kept from everyone but those involved, including you, as you well know. I think she sent the child that way, somewhere no-one would think of looking.'
'Almost three, now,' Coll said, slowly leaning back to rest his head against the wall. He closed his eyes. 'Three years of age …'
'Maybe so. But at the time there wasn't any way of finding-'
'You'd have needed my blood. Then Baruk…'
'Right,' Murillio snapped, 'we'd just go and bleed you one night when you were passed-out drunk.'
'Why not?'
'Because, you ox, back then, there didn't seem much point!'
'Fair enough. But I've walked a straight line for months now, Murillio.'
'Then you do it, Coll. Go to Baruk.'
'I will. Now that I know.'
'Listen, friend, I've known a lot of drunks in my time. You look at four, five months being sober and think it's eternity. But me, I see a man still brushing the puke from his clothes. A man who could get knocked right back down. I wasn't going to push — it's too soon-'
'I hear you. I don't curse your decision, Murillio. You were right to be cautious. But what I see — what I see now, that is — is a reason. Finally, a real reason to hold myself up.'
'Coll, I hope you're not thinking you can just walk into whatever household your child's being raised in and take it away-'
'Why not? It's mine.'
'And there's a place waiting for it on your mantelpiece, right?'
'You think I can't raise a child?'
'I know you can't, Coll. But, if you do this right, you can pay to see it grow up well, with opportunities that it might not otherwise have.'
'A hidden benefactor. Huh. That would be … noble.'
'Be honest: it would be convenient, Coll. Not noble, not heroic.'
'And you call yourself a friend.'
'I do.'
Coll sighed. 'And so you should, though I don't know what I've done to deserve such friendship.'
'Since I don't want to depress you further, we'll discuss that subject some other time.'
The massive stone doors to the chamber of the sepulchre swung open.
Grunting, Coll rose from the bench.
The Knight of Death stepped into the hallway to stand directly before Murillio. 'Bring the woman,' the warrior said. 'The preparations are complete.'
Coll strode to the entrance and looked within. A large hole had been carved through the floor's solid stone in the centre of the chamber. Shattered stone rose in heaps banked against a side wall. Suddenly chilled, the Daru pushed past the Knight of Death. 'Hood's breath!' he exclaimed. 'That's a damned sarcophagus!'
'What?' Murillio cried, rushing to join Coll. He stared at the burial pit, then spun to the Knight. 'The Mhybe's not dead, you fool!'
The warrior's lifeless eyes fixed on Coll's companion. 'The preparations,' he said, 'are complete.'
Ankle-deep in dust, she stumbled across a wasteland. The tundra had disintegrated, and with it the hunters, the demonic pursuers who had been such unwelcome company for so long. The desolation surrounding her was, she realized, far worse. No grasses underfoot, no sweet cool wind. The hum of the blackfiies was gone, those avid companions so eager to feed on her flesh — though her scalp still crawled as if some had survived the devastation.
And she was weakening, her youthful muscles failing in some undefinable way. Not weariness alone, but some kind of chronic dissolution. She was losing her substantiality, and that realization was the most terrifying of all.
The sky overhead was colourless, devoid of cloud or even sun, yet faintly illuminated by some unseen source. It seemed impossibly distant — to look upward for too long was to risk madness, mind railing at its inability to comprehend what the eyes were seeing.
So she held her gaze fixed directly ahead as she staggered on. There was nothing to mark the horizon in any direction. She might well be walking in circles for all she knew, though if so it was a vast circle, for she'd yet to cross her own path. She had no destination in mind for this journey of the spirit; nor the will to seek to fashion one in this deathly dreamscape, had she known how.