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‘All right.’

She watched them walk away. When they were gone from sight she headed over to her friend’s barrow, and felt him close. ‘Where are you taking me this time?’

Her hand in his, she found herself standing on a low hill, and before them was a vast, shallow valley, filled with corpses.

It was dusk, a layer of smoke hanging over the vista. Just above the horizon opposite, a suspended mountain of black stone was burning, columns of smoke billowing from its gashed flanks. Below, the bodies were mostly of some kind of huge, reptilian creature wearing strange armour. Grey-skinned and long-snouted, their forms were contorted and ribboned with slashes, lying in tangled heaps. Here and there in their midst lay other figures. Tall, some with grey skins, some with black.

Standing beside her, he spoke, ‘Over four hundred thousand, Kettle. Here in this valley alone. There are other… valleys. Like this one.’

A score of leathery-winged beasts were crossing the valley at one end, far to their right.

‘Ooh, are those dragons?’

‘Spawn. Locqui Wyval, searching for their master. But he is gone. Once they realize that, they will know to wait. It will prove a long wait.’

‘Are they waiting still?’

‘Yes.’

‘When did this battle happen?’

‘Many thousands of years ago, Kettle. But the damage remains. In a short while, the ice will arrive, sealing all you see. Holding all in stasis, a sorcery of impressive power, so powerful it will prove a barrier to the dead themselves – to the path their spirits would take. I wonder if that was what the Jaghut had intended. In any case, the land was twisted by the magic. The dead… lingered. Here, in the north, and far to the south, as far as Letheras itself. To my mind, an Elder god meddled. But none could have foreseen the consequences, not even an Elder god.’

‘Is that why the tower has become the Hold of Death?’

‘It has? I was not aware of that. This, then, is what comes, when the sorcery finally dies and the world thaws. Balance is reasserted.’

‘Shurq Elalle says we are at war. The Tiste Edur, she says, are invading Lether.’

‘Let us hope they do not arrive before I am free.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they will endeavour to kill me, Kettle.’

‘Why?’

‘For fear that I will seek to kill them.’

‘Will you?’

‘On many levels,’ he replied, ‘there is no reason why I shouldn’t. But no, not unless they get in my way. You and I know, after all, that the true threat waits in the barrows of the Azath grounds.’

‘I don’t think the Edur will win the war,’ she said.

‘Yes, failure on their part would be ideal.’

‘So what else did you want to show me?’

A pale white hand gestured towards the valley. ‘There is something odd to all this. Do you see? Or, rather, what don’t you see?’

‘I don’t see any ghosts.’

‘Yes. The spirits are gone. The question is, where are they?’

Terrified screams echoed as Shurq Elalle walked down the wide, high-ceilinged corridor to the Master Chamber of the Tolls Repository. Guards, servants, clerks and cleaning staff had one and all succumbed to perfectly understandable panic. There was nothing worse, she reflected, than the unexpected visitations of dead relatives.

Ahead, the double doors were wide open, and the lanterns in the huge room beyond were swinging wildly to immanent gusts of spirited haste.

The thief strode into the chamber.

A squalid ghost rushed up to her, rotted face grinning wildly. ‘I touched it! My last coin! I found it in the stacks! And touched it!’

‘I am happy for you,’ Shurq said. ‘Now, where are the counters and readers?’

‘Eh?’

Shurq moved past the ghost. The chamber was seething, spirits hurrying this way and that, others hunched over tumbled scrolls, still others squirming along the shelves. Chests of coins had been knocked over, the glittering gold coins stirring about on the marble floor as gibbering wraiths pawed them.

‘I worked here!’

Shurq eyed the ghost drifting her way. ‘You did?’

‘Oh yes. They put in more shelves, and look at those lantern nooks – what idiot decided on those dust-traps? Dust is a fire hazard. Terrible fire hazard. Why, I was always telling them that. And now I could prove my point – a nudge, a simple nudge of that lantern there, yes…’

‘Come back here! Nothing burns. Understand?’

‘If you say so. Fine. I was just kidding, anyway.’

‘Have you looked at the ledgers?’

‘Yes, yes, and counted. And memorized. I was always good at memorizing; that’s why they hired me. I could count and count and never lose my place. But the dust! Those nooks! Everything might burn, burn terribly-’

‘Enough of that. We have what we need. Time for everyone to leave.’ A chorus of wavering voices answered her. ‘We don’t want to!’

‘There’ll be priests coming. Probably already on their way. And mages, eager to collect wraiths to enslave as their servants for eternity.’

‘We’re leaving!’

‘You,’ said Shurq to the ghost before her, ‘come with me. Talk. Give me details.’

‘Yes, yes. Of course.’

‘Leave that lantern alone, damn you!’

‘Sorry. Terrible fire hazard, oh, the flames there’d be. Such flames, all those inks, the colours!’

‘Everyone!’ the thief shouted. ‘We’re going now! And you, stop rolling that coin – it stays here!’

‘The Seventh Closure,’ Kuru Qan muttered as they made their way back to the palace. ‘It is all spiralling inward. Troubling, this concatenation of details. The Azath dies, a Hold of Death comes into being. A Nameless One appears and somehow possesses the corpse of a child, then fashions an alliance with a denizen of a barrow. A usurper proclaims himself emperor of the Tiste Edur, and now leads an invasion. Among his allies, a demon from the sea, one of sufficient power to destroy two of my best mages. And now, if other rumours are true, it may be the emperor is himself a man of many lives…’ Brys glanced over. ‘What rumours?’

‘Citizens witnessed his death in Trate. The Edur emperor was cut down in battle. Yet he… returned. Probably an exaggeration, but I am nervous none the less at my own assumptions in this matter, Brys. Still, the Tiste Edur have superb healers. Perhaps a binding spell of some sort, cleaving the soul to the flesh until they can arrive… I must give this more thought.’

‘And you believe, Ceda, that all this is somehow linked to the Seventh Closure?’

‘The rebirth of our empire. That is my fear, Champion. That we have in some fatal way misread our ancient prophecy. Perhaps the empire has already appeared.’

‘The Tiste Edur? Why would a Letherii prophecy have anything to do with them?’

Kuru Qan shook his head. ‘It is a prophecy that arose in the last days of the First Empire. Brys, there is so much we have lost. Knowledge, the world of that time. Sorcery gone awry, birthing horrific beasts, the armies of undead who delivered such slaughter among our people, then simply left. Mysterious tales of a strange realm of magic that was torn apart. Could the role of an entire people fit in any of the gaps in our knowing? Yes. And what of other people who are named, yet nothing more than the names survives – no descriptions? Barghast, Jhag, Trell. Neighbouring tribes? We’ll never know.’

They came to the gates. Sleepy guards identified them and opened the lesser postern door. The palace grounds were empty, silent. The Ceda paused and stared up at the hazy stars overhead.

Brys said nothing. He waited, standing at the old man’s side, seeing the night sky reflected in the twin lenses in front of Kuru Qan’s eyes. Wondering what the Ceda was thinking.

Tehol Beddict smiled as she threaded her way through the crowd towards him. ‘Chief Investigator Rucket, I am delighted to see you again.’

‘No you’re not,’ she replied. ‘You’re just trying to put me on the defensive.’