But he’d run out of that time. Another blow got through, the strange wooden sword slicing as if glass-edged into his left hip. The leg on that side gave out beneath the biting wound. He looked up through sweat-stinging eyes, and saw the one-eyed Seregahl towering directly over him, teeth bared in triumph.
Then a tree branch struck the god in the head. Against its left temple, hard enough to snap the head right over to bounce from the opposite shoulder. The grin froze, and the Toblakai staggered. A second impact caught it, this time coming from behind, up into the back of the skull, the branch exploding into splinters. The god bent forward-
– as a knee drove up into its crotch – and forearms hammered its back, pushing it further down, the knee rising again, this time to crunch against the god’s face.
The grin, Iron Bars saw from where he crouched, was entirely gone now.
The Avowed rolled to one side a moment before the Toblakai landed atop him. Rolled, and rolled, stumbling to his feet finally to pivot round. And, rising to his name above the agony in his hip, straightening. Once more facing the Seregahl.
Where, it seemed, one of their own kind was now fighting them – a mortal Tarthenal, who had wrapped his huge arms around one of the gods from behind, trapping its arms to its sides as he squeezed. The remaining three gods had staggered back, as if in shock, and the moment was, to the Avowed’s eyes, suddenly frozen.
Two, then three heartbeats.
The cloudiness cleared from the Avowed’s eyes. A flicker of energy returned to his exhausted limbs. The pain faded away.
That mortal Tarthenal was moments from dying, as the other three stirred awake and moved forward.
Iron Bars raced to intercept them.
The odds were getting better.
Two huddled shapes on the street. Tiste Edur standing around, still kicking, still breaking bones. One stamped down, and brains sprayed out onto the cobbles.
Bugg slowed to a stagger, his face twisting with grief, then rage.
He roared.
Heads turned.
And the manservant unleashed what had remained hidden and quiescent within him for so long.
Fourteen Tiste Edur, standing, all reached up to clamp their ears – but the gesture was never completed, as thirteen of them imploded, as if beneath vast pressure, in horrible contractions of flesh, the wild spurt of blood and fluids, skulls collapsing inward.
Imploded, only to explode outward a moment later. In bloody pieces, spattering the warehouse wall and out across the street.
The fourteenth Tiste Edur, the one who had just crushed a head beneath his heel, was lifted into the air. Writhing, his eyes bulging horribly, wastes streaming down his legs.
As Bugg stalked forward.
Until he was standing before Theradas Buhn of the Hiroth. He stared up at the warrior, at his bloated face, at the agony in his eyes.
Trembling, Bugg said, ‘You, I am sending home… not your home. My home.’ A gesture, and the Tiste Edur vanished.
Into Bugg’s warren, away, then down, down, ever down.
Into depthless darkness, where the portal opened once more, flinging Theradas Buhn into icy, black water.
Where the pressure, immense and undeniable, embraced him.
Fatally.
Bugg’s trembling slowed. His roar had been heard, he knew. Upon the other side of the world, it had been heard. And heads had swung round. Immortal hearts had quickened.
‘No matter,’ he whispered.
Then moved forward, down to kneel beside the motionless bodies.
He gathered one of those bodies into his arms.
Rose, and walked away.
The Eternal Domicile. A title of such profound conceit, as thoroughly bound into the arrogance of the Letherii as the belief in their own immutable destiny. Manifest rights to all things, to ownership, to the claiming of all they perceived, the unconscionable, brazen arrogance of it all, as if a thousand gods stood at their backs, burdened with gifts for the chosen.
Trull Sengar could only wonder, what bred such certainties? What made a people so filled with rectitude and intransigence? Perhaps all that is needed… is power. A shroud of poison filling the air, seeping into every pore of every man, woman and child. A poison that twisted the past to suit the mores of the present, illuminating in turn an inevitable and righteous future. A poison that made intelligent people blithely disregard the ugly truths of past errors in judgement, of horrendous, brutal debacles that had stained red the hands of their forefathers. A poison that entrenched the stupidity of dubious traditions, and brought misery and suffering upon countless victims.
Power, then. The very same power we are about to embrace. Sisters have mercy upon our people.
The emperor of the Tiste Edur stood before the grand entrance to the Eternal Domicile. Mottled sword in his right, glittering hand. Dusty bearskin riding shoulders grown massively broad with the weight of gold. Old blood staining his back in map patterns, as if he was redrawing the world. Hair now long, ragged and heavy with oily filth.
Trull was standing behind him, and so could not see his brother’s eyes. But he knew, should he look into them now, he would see the destiny he feared, he would see the poison coursing unopposed, and he would see the madness born of betrayal.
It would have taken little, he knew. The simple reaching out for a nondescript, sad-eyed slave, the closing of hands, to lift Rhulad upright, to guide him back into sanity. That, and nothing more.
Rhulad turned to face them. ‘The doors stand unbarred.’
Hannan Mosag said, ‘Someone waits within, sire. I sense… something.’
‘What do you ask of us, Warlock King?’
‘Permit me and my K’risnan to enter first, to see what awaits us. In the corridor…’
Rhulad’s eyes narrowed, then he waved them forward, and added, ‘Fear, Trull, Binadas, join us. We shall follow immediately behind.’
Hannan Mosag in the lead, the K’risnan and the slaves dragging the two sacks immediately behind him, then Rhulad and his brothers, all approached the doors of the Eternal Domicile.
Standing just outside the throne room’s entrance, Brys Beddict saw movement down the corridor, on this side of the motionless form of the Ceda. The Champion reached for his sword, then let his hand fall away as the First Consort, Turudal Brizad, emerged from the shadows, approaching nonchalantly, his expression calm.
‘I did not,’ Brys said in a low voice, ‘expect to see you again, First Consort.’
Turudal’s soft eyes lifted past Brys to look into the throne room beyond. ‘Who waits, Champion?’
‘The king, his concubine. The First Eunuch and the Chancellor. And six of my guards.’
Turudal nodded. ‘Well, we will not have to wait much longer. The Tiste Edur are but moments behind me.’
‘How fares the city?’
‘There has been fighting, Brys Beddict. Loyal soldiers lie dead in the streets. Among them, Moroch Nevath.’
‘And Gerun Eberict? What of him?’
Turudal cocked his head, then frowned. ‘He pursues… a woman.’
Brys studied the man. ‘Who are you, Turudal Brizad?’
The eyes met his own. ‘Today, a witness. We have come, after all, to the day of the Seventh Closure. An end, and a beginning-’
Brys raised a hand to silence the man, then took a step past him.
The Ceda was stirring in the hallway beyond. Then, rising to his feet, adjusting his grimy, creased robes, he lifted the lenses to his face and settled them in place.
Turudal Brizad turned to join Brys. ‘Ah, yes.’
The silhouettes of a group of tall figures had appeared at the distant doors, which were now open.
‘The Ceda…’
‘He has done very well, thus far.’
Brys shot the First Consort a baffled look. ‘What do you mean? He has done… nothing.’
Brows rose. ‘No? He has annihilated the sea-god, the demon chained by Hannan Mosag. And he has been preparing for this moment for days now. See where he stands? See the tile he has painted beneath himself? A tile from which all the power of the Cedance shall pass, upward, into his hands.’