The Twilight herald

'They're adding a tier?'

The sunken theatre was open, with an arched greystone wall run¬ning around three sides. At the stage end the ground fell away into a deep pit, within which a building looking like a warehouse had been constructed so its roof was level with the street. It served as both offices and backstage for the theatre. Mayel guessed that was where his so-called friend had died.

The low single-storey wall enclosing this large chunk of ground had flat-roofed rooms all around its interior. It looked small, compared with the space inside, like a child's toy made out of proportion. Mayel had remembered the theatre as more imposing, even without the wooden palisade now being erected to raise the height of the wall.

As he and Shandek got closer, they could see workmen and scaf¬folds behind the market carts that were trading as usual, ignoring the commotion behind them.

'Another tier,' Shandek confirmed eventually.

They had stopped by a butcher's stall. The woman who was ru

'Eh? Ah, that one.' Shandek sniffed, though Mayel couldn't tell whether it was mild disgust or embarrassment – whoever supplied the woman might well be giving Shandek a cut of the proceeds. 'Been workin' hard on killin' herself slow, that one. Six weeks since her children died in a fire, and she won't see another six.'

As they spoke, the woman jumped at a crash from the scaffold behind. She looked fearfully at the wall a few yards behind her, as if watching it for danger. The wall itself was blank and featureless, yet it was at that she stared, rather than the windows of the new second floor above.

'Folk say she cracked before the fire,' Shandek continued, 'that it was her fault. It's said she'd been jumpin' at shadows, an' talkin' about daemons being after her girls. She set fire to the house to frighten off the shadows. Now she's got nowhere else to live. Either she sleeps in the temples, where the fires burn all night, or she's in the opium dens before nightfall. Her husband will be somewhere about here; she's only good for leavin' at the stall for a short while.'

Shandek fell silent, frowning at the woman for a handful of heart¬beats before nudging Mayel into movement, towards the theatre's main entrance. 'What with people ru

Mayel didn't reply, but submitted to his larger cousin's urging. Even as they walked away, he kept his eyes on the woman for as long as he could. There was an echo of something in her face that made him shiver. For a moment, he thought he heard screams, and the crackle of flames. Then they passed around the corner and the spell was broken.

The main entrance was open, and freshly painted – as they turned in to the open gateway Shandek had to check his stride to avoid a man crouching at the right-hand gate, putting the final touches to the elaborate picture.

Mayel stopped and looked, trying to imagine the whole image, while Shandek muttered an apology for his foot clipping the painter's trailing heel. The painting was not what Mayel had expected, not the usual sort of scenes that hinted at the delights awaiting them within.

'The Broken Spear, Five Wives of the Sea – even The Triumph of Gods would be a more obvious choice than this one,' Mayel muttered.

Against a granite sky of roiling cloud, the aftermath of a battle on a bowl-shaped plain. In the background, a huge castle crowned by five massive towers. One of those towers had been shattered and flames, painted with such skill they seemed real to Mayel, licked at the castle wall. Before the walls towered the varied shapes of the Reapers, Death's violent Aspects, who embodied the ways men feared to die: the emaciated face of the Soldier glared down at the slain around his feet, while the Burning Man stood on a hillock behind him with arms outstretched like a martyr. The Great Wolf was a vague shape in the background, stalking its prey in the blurred shadows, and the Headsman reclined on a distant block of stone with his axe propped on his shoulder. Strangely, it was the Wither Queen who was painted in the greatest detail. Mayel felt her cruel gaze, her pale grey eyes, slice into him. Her lips as thin as dagger-blades were slightly parted, as though she was about to speak his name.

He felt her cold touch on his skin. His mother wasn't the only person Mayel had seen dying of disease; he had known some who had endured agonising months of her cruelty. The Wither Queen robbed her victims of everything, of the person they had once been as much as the life her lord demanded. Though she was a God, Mayel hated her for what she was.

The detail of the plain below the Reapers was vague; angular shapes hinted at a carpet of slaughtered men and creatures. Somehow the magnitude of the horror was increased by the remoteness. Framing the entire plain was a high ridge of grim rocks the colour of sand. Mayel looked closer and realised that there was the faintest of detail on the rocks, almost like the grain of wood. He shivered, thinking of the pine boxes wealthier folk used to bury their dead in.

'Gods, man,' Shandek exclaimed, 'you've quite a skill there. This is better than any I've seen in my life.'

'Thank you, sir. It's…' The painter's voice tailed off as he looked from Shandek to the painting. A small man with the dark skin that spoke of a western heritage, he wore little more than rags, yet his face was clean and his hair carefully trimmed. His expression was one of dazed bemusement, as if he couldn't believe he had been able to produce it. 'It is the best thing I've ever done, by a long way.'

'I didn't know you cared anything about art,' Mayel said to his cousin, unable to tear his eyes from the painting.

'Ah, I've seen a bit in my time.' Shandek gri

'When? You're no collector.'

'No, but I've been in plenty of places belongin' to men who are. You have my compliments, friend. Can you tell us where the man in charge is?'

The painter gave a wince and jabbed his brush towards the interior. 'The minstrel will be in one of the boxes. Sitting in shadow. If you go in they'll find you soon enough.'

'They?' wondered Shandek aloud, but the painter had already re¬turned to his work. Shrugging, Shandek stepped through the gates and glanced into the dim, cramped room where the money-collectors would work, counting the copper pieces as folk filed in. It was empty yet, without even a stool or table.

A walkway led off both left and right, to storerooms of no more than two yards' depth on the outer side, and the boxes for the rich folk further in on the i

Shandek hopped up these and turned to beckon Mayel to follow. The youth hesitated, still u

style reminded him of religious paintings, the ancient and holy images they had been so proud of on the Island of Birds.

Behind him, he felt the presence of Brohm loom close. He'd been shadowing them, and he wasn't going to enter until Mayel had.

'Why did you want me to come here with you?'

'Why?' Shandek puffed his cheeks out in dismissal. 'No great reason, cuz. I wanted to speak to you before I came, thought you might be interested. Also, you got more learnin' than me. These artistic types might say somethin' clever and I wouldn't know whether to agree or stab 'em.'

Mayel sighed and started up the steps. Something nagged at him. I don't want to be here at all, but what am 1 frightened of? Jackdaw won't be here, and what else do I have to be afraid of?