Toll the Hounds

Aranatha opened her eyes, sat up, then reached out to touch Nimander’s shoulder. He awoke, looked at her with a question in his eyes.

‘He has killed Kedeviss,’ she said, the words soft as a breath.

Nimander paled.

‘She was right,’ Aranatha went on, ‘and now we must be careful. Say nothing to anyone else, not yet, or you will see us all die.’

‘Kedeviss.’

‘He has carried her body to a crevasse, and thrown her into it, and now he makes signs on the ground to show her careless steps, the way the edge gave way. He will come to us in shock and grief. Nimander, you must display no suspicion, do you understand?’

And she saw that his own grief would sweep all else aside-at least for now-which was good. Necessary. And that the anger within him, the rage destined to come, would be slow to build, and as it did she would speak to him again, and give him the strength he would need.

Kedeviss had been the first to see the truth-or so it might have seemed. But Aranatha knew that Nimander’s i

Easy to see such a thing and misunderstand it. Easy to see it as a failing, and to then believe him irresolute.

Clip had made this error from the very begi

She looked down and saw tears held back, waiting for Clip’s sudden arrival with his tragic news, and Aranatha nodded and turned away, to feign sleep. ‘

Somewhere beyond the camp waited a soul, motionless as a startled hare. This was sad. Aranatha had loved Kedeviss dearly, had admired her cleverness, her per-cipience. Had cherished her loyalty to Nimander-even though Kedeviss had per-haps suspected the strange circumstances surrounding Phaed’s death, and had seen how Phaed and her secrets haunted Nimander still.

When one can possess loyalty oven in the straits of hill, brutal understanding, then that one understands all there is to understand about compassion.

Kedeviss, you were a gift. And now your soul waits, as it must. For this is the fate of the Tiste Andii. Our fata. We will wait.

Until the wait is over.

Endest Sila

The cloak of eternal darkness shrouding the city blocked the sun’s stretching rays, although the western flanks of the jumbled slope to their right was showing gilt edges; and far off to the left, the gloom of the Cut steamed white from the smooth, black surface.

‘There will be,’ said Anomander Rake, ‘unpleasantness.’

‘I know, Lord.’

‘It was an unanticipated complication.’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘I will walk,’ said Rake, ‘until I reach the tree line. Out of sight, at least until then.’

‘Have you waited too long, Lord?’

‘No.’

‘That is well, then.’

Anomander Rake rested a hand on Endest’s shoulder. ‘You have ever been, my friend, more than I deserve.’

Endest Sila

‘If we are to live,’ Rake went on, ‘we must take risks. Else our lives become deaths in all but name. There is no struggle too vast, no odds too overwhelming, for even should we fail-should we fall-we will know that we have lived.’

Endest nodded, unable to speak. There should be tears streaming down his face, but he was dry inside-his skull, behind his eyes, all… dry. Despair was a furnace where everything had burned up, where everything was ashes, but the heat remained, scalding, brittle and fractious.

‘The day has begun.’ Rake withdrew his hand and pulled on his gauntlets. ‘This walk, along this path… I will take pleasure in it, my friend. Knowing that you stand here to see me off.’

And the Son of Darkness set out.

Endest Sila

Blue seeped into the sky, shadows in retreat along the slope. Gold painted the tops of the tree line where the road slipped in. At the very edge, Anomander Rake paused, turned about and raised one hand high.

Endest Sila

And then the distant figure swung round. And vanished beneath the trees.

Xx

Like broken slate

We take our hatred

And pile it high

Rolling with the hills

A ragged line to map

Our rise and fall

And I saw suffused

With the dawn

Crows aligned in rows

Along the crooked wall

Come to feed

Bones lie scattered

At the stone’s foot

The heaped ruin

Of past assaults

The crows face each way

To eye the pickings

On both sides

For all its weakness

The world ca

What we make

Of our hatred

I watched the workers

Carry each grey rock

They laboured

Blind and stepped

Unerringly modest paths

Piece by sheared piece

They built a slaughter

Of i

While muttering as they might

Of waves of weather

And goodly deeds

– We The Builders, Hanasp Tular

Pray you never hear an imprecise breath

Caught in its rough web

Every god turns away at the end

And not a whisper sounds

Do not waste a lifetime awaiting death

Caught in its rough web

It hovers in the next moment you must attend

As your last whisper sounds

Pray you never hear an imprecise breath

– Rough Web, Fisher Kel That

The soul knows no greater anguish than to take a breath that begins in love and ends with grief. Time unravels now. Event clashes upon event. So much to ecount, pray this sad-eyed round man does not falter, does not grow too reathless. History has its moments. To dwell within one is to understand nothing. We are rocked in the tumult, and the awareness of one’s own ignorance is a smothering cloak that proves poor armour. You will flinch with the wounds. We shall all flinch.

As might a crow or an owl, or indeed a winged eel, hover now a moment above this fair city, its smoke haze, the scurrying figures in the streets and lanes, the im-penetrable dark cracks of narrow alleyways. Thieves’ Road spreads a tangled web between buildings. Animals bawl and wives berate husbands and husbands bellow back, night buckets gush from windows down into the guttered alleys and-in some poorer areas of the Gadrobi District-into streets where pedestrians duck and dodge in the morning ritual of their treacherous journeys to work, or home. Clouds of flies are stirred awake with the dawn’s light. Pigeons revive their hopeless struggle to walk straight lines. Rats creep back into their closed-in refuges after yet another night of seeing far too much. The night’s damp smells are burned off and new stinks arise in pungent vapours.

And on the road, where it passes through the leper colony west of the city, a weary ox and a tired old man escort a burdened cart on which lies a canvas-wrapped figure, worn riding boots visible.

Ahead awaits Two-Ox Gate.

Hover no longer. Plummet both wings and spirit down to the buzzing flies, the animal heat sweet and acrid, the music closeness of the stained burlap. The old man pausing to wipe sweat from his lined brow with its array of warts and moles, and his knees ache and there is dull pain in his chest.