Icarium's legacy. Like a god loosed and walking the land, Icarium left bloody footprints. Such creatures should be killed. Such creatures are an abomination. Whereas Fener – Fener had simply disappeared. Dragged as the Boar God had been into this realm, most of its power had been stripped away. To reveal itself would be to invite annihilation. There were hunters out there. I need to find a way, a way to send Fener back. And if Treach didn't like it, too bad. The Boar and the Wolf could share the Throne of War. In fact, it made sense. There were always two sides in a war. Us and them, and neither can rightly be denied their faith. Yes, there was symmetry in such a notion. 'It's true,' he said, 'I have never believed in single answers, never believed in this… this divisive clash of singularity. Power may have ten thousand faces, but the look in the eyes of every one of them is the same.' He glanced over to see Scillara and Felisin staring at him.

'There's no difference,' he said, 'between speaking aloud or in one's own head – either way, no-one listens.'

'Hard to listen,' Scillara said, 'when what you say makes no sense.'

'Sense takes effort.'

'Oh, I'll tell you what makes sense, old man. Children are a woman's curse. They start with weighing you down from the inside, then they weigh you down from the outside. For how long? No, not days, not months, not even years. Decades. Babies, better they were born with tails and four legs and eager to run away and crawl into some hole in the ground. Better they could fend for themselves the moment they scuttle free. Now, that would make sense.'

'If that was the way it was,' Felisin said, 'then there'd be no need for families, for villages, for towns and cities. We'd all be living in the wilderness.'

'Instead,' Scillara said, 'we live in a prison. Us women, anyway.'

'It can't be as bad as that,' Felisin insisted.

'Nothing can be done,' Heboric said. 'We each fall into our lives and that's that. Some choices we make, but most are made for us.'

'Well,' Scillara retorted, 'you would think that, wouldn't you? But look at this stupid journey here, Heboric. True, at first we were just fleeing Raraku, that damned sea rising up out of the sands. Then it was that idiot priest of Shadow, and Cutter there, and suddenly we were following you – where? The island of Otataral. Why? Who knows, but it has something to do with those ghost hands of yours, something to do with you righting a wrong. And now I'm pregnant.'

'How does that last detail fit?' Felisin demanded, clearly exasperated.

'It just does, and no, I'm not interested in explaining. Gods below, I'm choking on these damned bugs! Cutter! Get back here, you brainless oaf!'

Heboric was amused by the stunned surprise in the young man's face as he turned round at the shout.

The Daru reined in and waited.

By the time the others arrived, he was cursing and slapping at insects.

'Now you know how we feel,' Scillara snapped.

'Then we should pick up our pace,' Cutter said. 'Is everyone all right with that? It'd be good for the horses, besides. They need some stretching out.'

I think we all need that. 'Set the pace, Cutter. I'm sure Greyfrog can keep up.'

'He jumps with his mouth open,' Scillara said.

'Maybe we should all try that,' Felisin suggested.

'Hah! I'm full up enough as it is!'

No god truly deserved its acolytes. It was an unequal relationship in every sense, Heboric told himself. Mortals could sacrifice their entire adult life in the pursuit of communion with their chosen god, and what was paid in return for such devotion? Not much at best; often, nothing at all. Was the faint touch from something, someone, far greater in power – was that enough?

When I touched Fener…

The Boar God would have been better served, he realized, with Heboric' s indifference. The thought cut into him like a saw-bladed, blunt knife – nothing smooth, nothing precise – and, as Cutter led them into a canter down the track, Heboric could only bare his teeth in a hard grimace against the spiritual pain.

From which rose a susurration of voices, all begging him, pleading with him. For what he could not give. Was this how gods felt?

Inundated with countless prayers, the seeking of blessing, the gift of redemption sought by myriad lost souls. So many that the god could only reel back, pummelled and stunned, and so answer every beseeching voice with nothing but silence.

But redemption was not a gift. Redemption had to be earned.

And so on we ride…

Scillara drew up alongside Cutter. She studied him until he became aware of the attention and swung his head round.

'What is it? What's wrong?'

'Who said anything was wrong?'

'Well, it's been a rather long list of complaints from you of late, Scillara.'

'No, it's been a short list. I just like repeating myself.'

She watched him sigh, then he shrugged and said, 'We're maybe a week from the coast. I'm beginning to wonder if it was a good thing to take this overland route… through completely unpopulated areas. We're always rationing our food and we're all suffering from that, excepting maybe you and Greyfrog. And we're growing increasingly paranoid, fleeing from every dust-trail and journey-house.' He shook his head. '

Nothing's after us. We're not being hunted. Nobody gives a damn what we're up to or where we're going.'

'What if you're wrong?' Scillara asked. She looped the reins over the saddle horn and began repacking her pipe. His horse misstepped, momentarily jolting her. She winced. 'Some advice for you, Cutter. If you ever get pregnant, don't ride a horse.'

'I'll try to remember that,' he said. 'Anyway, you're right. I might be wrong. But I don't think I am. It's not like we've set a torrid pace, so if hunters were after us, they'd have caught up long ago.'

She had an obvious reply to that, but let it go. 'Have you been looking around, Cutter? As we've travelled? All these weeks in this seeming wasteland?'

'Only as much as I need to, why?'

'Heboric's chosen this path, but it's not by accident. Sure, it's a wasteland now, but it wasn't always one. I've started noticing things, and not just the obvious ones like that ruined city we passed near.

We've been on old roads – loads that were once bigger, level, often raised. Roads from a civilization that's all gone now. And look at that stretch of ground over there,' she pointed southward. 'See the ripples? That's furrowing, old, almost worn away, but when the light lengthens you can start to make it out. It was all once tilled.

Fertile. I've been seeing this for weeks, Cutter. Heboric's track is taking us through the bones of a dead age. Why?'

'Why don't you ask him?'

'I don't want to.'

'Well, since he's right behind us, he's probably listening right now, Scillara.'

'I don't care. I was asking you.'

'Well, I don't know why.'

'I do,' she said.

'Oh. All right, then, why?'

'Heboric likes his nightmares. That's why.'

Cutter met her eyes, then the Daru twisted in his saddle and looked back at Heboric.

Who said nothing.

'Death and dying,' Scillara continued. 'The way we suck the land dry.

The way we squeeze all colour from every scene, even when that scene shows us paradise. And what we do to the land, we also do to each other. We cut each other down. Even Sha'ik's camp had its tiers, its hierarchy, keeping people in their place.'

'You don't have to tell me about that,' Cutter said. 'I lived under something similar, in Darujhistan.'

'I wasn't finished. It's why Bidithal found followers for his cult.

What gave it its strength was the injustice, the unfairness, and the way bastards always seemed to win. You see, Bidithal had been one of those bastards, once. Luxuriating in his power – then the Malazans arrived, and they tore it all apart, and Bidithal found himself on the run, just one more hare fleeing the wolves. For him, well, he wanted it back, all that power, and this new cult he created was for that purpose. The problem was, either he was lucky or a genius, because the idea behind his cult – not the vicious rituals he imposed, but the idea – it struck a nerve. It reached the dispossessed, and that was its brilliance-'