Silchas Ruin said, without turning, ‘Beware the frozen blood, Wither. It can still take you.’
The wraith hissed a laugh. ‘Like an ant to sap, yes. Oh, but it is so seductive, Master.’
‘You have been warned. If you are snared, I cannot free you.’
The wraith slithered past them, flowed up the ragged steps.
Seren adjusted the leather satchel on her shoulders. ‘The Fent carried supplies balanced on their heads. Would that I could do the same.’
‘The vertebrae become compacted,’ Silchas Ruin said, ‘resulting in chronic pain.’
‘Well, mine are feeling rather crunched right now, so I’m alraid I don’t see much difference.’ She began the climb. ‘You know, as a Soletaken, you could just-’
‘No,’ he said as he followed, ‘there is too much bloodlust In the veering. The draconean hunger within me is where lives my anger, and that anger is not easily contained.’
She snorted, unable to help herself.
‘You are amused, Acquitor?’
‘Scabandari is dead. Fear has seen his shattered skull. You were stabbed and then imprisoned, and now that you are free, all that consumes you is the desire for vengeance-against what? Some incorporeal soul? Something less than a wraith? What will be left of Scabandari by now? Silchas Ruin, yours is a pathetic obsession. At least Fear Sengar seeks something positive-not that he’ll find it since you will probably annihilate what’s left of Scabandari before he gets a chance to talk to it, assuming that’s even possible.’ When he said nothing, she continued, ‘It seems I am now fated to guiding such quests. Just like my last journey, the one that took me to the lands of the Tiste Edur. Everyone at odds, motives hidden and in conflict. My task was singular, of course: deliver the fools, then stand well back as the knives are drawn.’
‘Acquitor, my anger is more complicated than you believe.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘The future you set before us is too simple, too confined. I suspect that when we arrive at our destination, nothing will proceed as you anticipate.’
She grunted. ‘I will accept that, since it was without doubt the case in the village of the Warlock King. After all, the fallout was the conquest of the Letherii Empire.’
‘Do you take responsibility for that; Acquitor?’
‘I take responsibility for very little, Silchas Ruin. That much must be obvious.’
The steps were steep, the edges worn and treacherous. As they climbed, the air thinned, mists swirling in from the tumbling falls on their left, the sound a roar that clambered among the stones in a tumult of echoes. Where the ancient stairs vanished entirely, wooden trestles had been constructed, forming something between a ladder and steps against the sheer, angled rock.
They found a ledge a third of the way up where they could gather to rest. Among the scatter of rubble on the shelf were remnants of metopes, cornices and friezes bearing carvings too fragmented to be identifiable-suggesting that an entire facade had once existed directly above them. The scaffolding became a true ladder here, and off to the right, three man-heights up, gaped the mouth of a cave, rectangular, almost door-shaped.
Udinaas stood regarding that dark portal for a long time, before he turned to the others. ‘I suggest we try it.’
‘There is no need, slave,’ replied Fear Sengar. ‘This trail is straightforward, reliable-’
‘And getting icier the higher we go.’ The Indebted grimaced, then laughed. ‘Oh, there’re songs to be sung, are! there, Fear? The perils and tribulations, the glories of suffering, all to win your heroic triumph. You want the! elders who were once your grandchildren to gather the clan round the fire, for the telling of your tale, a lone warrior’s quest for his god. I can almost hear them now, describing the formidable Fear Sengar of the Hiroth, brother to the Emperor, with his train of followers-the lost child, the inveterate Letherii guide, a ghost, a slave and of course the white-skinned nemesis. The White Crow with his silver-tongued lies. Oh, we have here the gamut of archetypes, yes?’ He reached into the satchel beside him and drew out a waterskin, took a long drink, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘But imagine all of it going for naught, when you pitch from a slippery rung and plunge five hundred man-heights to your ignominious death. Not how the story goes, alas, but then, life isn’t a story now, is it?’ He replaced the skin and shouldered his pack. ‘The embittered slave chooses a different route to the summit, the fool. But then,’ he paused to grin back at Fear, ‘somebody has to be the moral lesson in this epic, right?’