You can’t sleep through this. Face it. It’ll be months before a decent night … sleeping. Or otherwise .
‘ Gruntle thinks he’s going someplace to die. He doesn’t want us to die with him .’
That’s nice, Setoc, thanks for that .
‘ In the Crystal City there is a child … beware the opening of his eyes .’
Listen, sweetie, the little one right here needs his butt wiped and the twins are pretending not to notice but the smell’s getting a tad rank, right? Take this handful of grass .
Life was so much better on the carriage, off delivering whatever.
Faint grunted and then flinched at the pain. Gods, woman, you’re completely insane .
Let me dream of a tavern. Smoky, crowded, a perfect table. We’re all sitting there, working out the shakes. Quell duck-walks to the loo. The Boles make faces at each other and then laugh. Reccanto’s broken a thumb and he’s putting it back in place. Glanno can’t see the barman. He can’t even see the table in front of him. Sweetest Sufferance is looking like a plump cat with a rat’s tail hanging from her mouth .
Another pitcher arrives .
Reccanto looks up . ‘ Who’s paying for this? ’ he asks .
Faint cautiously lifted one hand, moved it up to brush her cheeks. Blissful black, you seem so far away .
In the false dawn, Torrent opened his eyes. Some violence still rocked in his skull – a dream, but already the memory of its details faded. Blinking, he sat up. Chill air stole in beneath his rodara wool blanket, plucking at the beads of sweat on his chest. He glanced over at the horses, but the beasts stood calm, dozing. In the camp the shapes of the others were motionless in the grainy half-light.
Casting the blanket aside, he rose. The greenish glow was paling to the east. The warrior walked over to his horse, greeted it with a low murmur and settled a hand upon its warm neck. Tales of cities and empires, of gas that burned with blue flame, of secret ways through the world that his eyes could not see, all left him disturbed, agitated, though he was not sure why.
He knew Toc had come from such an empire, far away across the ocean, and his lone eye had looked upon scenes Torrent could not imagine. Yet around the Awl warrior now was a more familiar landscape, rougher than the Awl’dan, true, but just as open, sweeping, the earth levelled beneath the vast sky. What other sort of place could an honest man desire? The eyes could reach, the mind could stretch. There was space for everything. A tent or yurt for nightly shelter, a ring of stones to embrace the cookfire, the steam rising from the backs of the herds as the dawn gently broke.
He longed for such a scene, the morning’s greeting one he had always known. Dogs rising from their beds of grass, the soft cry of a hungry babe from one of the yurts, the smell of smoke as hearths were awakened once more.
Sudden emotion gripped him and he fought back a sob. All gone. Why am I still alive? Why do I cling to this misery, this empty life? When you are the last, there is no reason to keep living. All of your veins are cut, the blood drains and drains and there’s no end to it .
Redmask, you murdered us all .
Did his kin await him in the spirit world? He wished he could believe. He wished his faith had never been shattered, crushed under the heel of Letherii soldiers. If the Awl spirits had been stronger, if they had been all the shamans said they were … we would not have died. Not have failed. We would never have fallen . But, if they existed at all, they were weak, ignorant and helpless against change. Balanced on a bowstring, and when that string snapped their world was done with, for ever.
He saw Setoc awaken, watched her stand up, running fingers through the tangles in her hair. Wiping at his eyes, Torrent turned back to his horse, leaned his forehead against the slick coat of its neck. I feel you, friend. You do not question your life. You are in its midst and know no other place, nothing outside it. How I envy you .
She approached him, the faint crunch of stones underfoot, the slow pulse of her breathing. She came up on his left, reaching to stroke the horse in the softness between its nostrils, giving it her scent. ‘Torrent,’ she whispered, ‘who is out there?’
He grunted. ‘Your wolf ghosts are torn, aren’t they? Curious, frightened …’
‘They smell death, and yet power. So much power.’
The hide against his brow was now damp. ‘She calls herself a Bonecaster. A shaman. A witch. Her name is Olar Ethil, and no life burns in her body.’
‘She comes before the dawn, three mornings in a row now. But draws no closer. She hides like a hare, and when the sun’s light finally arrives, she vanishes. Like dust.’