'Too bad they didn't think to ask me first,' he replied in a growl, filling the tankard. 'Now, put that damned sword away, High Mage.'

L'oric hesitated, then he sagged where he stood and slowly resheathed the weapon. 'You are right. I am too tired for this. Too old.' He frowned, then straightened again. 'You thought those T'lan Imass were here for you, didn't you?'

Barathol studied the man over the battered rim of the tankard, and said nothing.

L'oric ran a hand through his hair, looked round as if he'd forgotten where he was.

'Hood's bones, Nulliss,' Barathol said in a sigh, 'find the poor bastard a chair, will you?'

The grey haze and its blinding motes of silver slowly faded, and all at once Felisin Younger could feel her own body again, sharp stones digging into her knees, the smell of dust, sweat and fear in the air.

Visions of chaos and slaughter filled her mind. She felt numbed, and it was all she could do to see, to register the shape of things about her. Before her, sunlight flung sharp-edged shafts against a rock wall rent through with stress fractures. Heaps of windblown sand banked what used to be broad, shallow stone steps that seemed to lead up into the wall itself. Closer, the large knuckles, pale beneath thin, weathered skin, of the hand that clutched her right arm above the elbow, the exposed ligaments of the wrist stretching, making faint sounds like twisting leather. A grip she could not break – she had exhausted herself trying. Close and fetid, the reek of ancient decay, and visible – every now and then – a blood-smeared, rippled blade, broad near its hooked point, narrowing down at the leather-wrapped handle. Black, glassy stone, thinned into translucence along the edge.

Others stood around her, more of the dread T'lan Imass. Spattered with blood, some with missing or mangled limbs, and one with half its face smashed away – but this was old damage, she realized. Their most recent battle, no more than a skirmish, had cost them nothing.

The wind moaned mournfully along the rock wall. Felisin pushed herself to her feet, scraped the embedded stones from her knees. They're dead.

They're all dead. She told herself this again and again, as if the words were newly discovered – not yet meaningful to her, not yet a language she could understand. My friends are all dead. What was the point of saying them? Yet they returned again and again, as if desperate to elicit a response – any response.

A new sound reached her. Scrabbling, seeming to come from the cliffface in front of them. Blinking the stinging sweat from her eyes, she saw that one of the fissures looked to have been widened, the sides chipped away as if by a pick, and it was from this that a bent figure emerged. An old man, wearing little more than rags, covered in dust.

Suppurating sores wept runny liquid on his forearms and the backs of his hands.

Seeing her, he fell to his knees. 'You have come! They promised – but why would they lie?' Amidst the words issuing from his mouth were odd clicking sounds. 'I will take you, now – you'll see. Everything is fine. You are safe, child, for you have been chosen.'

'What are you talking about?' Felisin demanded, once again trying to tug her arm free – and this time she succeeded, as the deathly hand unclenched. She staggered.

The old man leapt to his feet and steadied her. 'You are exhausted – no surprise. So many rules were broken to bring you here-'

She stepped away from him and set a hand against the sun-warmed stone wall. 'Where is here?'

'An ancient city, Chosen One. Once buried, but soon to live once more.

I am but the first who has been called upon to serve you. Others will come – are coming even now, for they too have heard the Whispers. You see, it is the weak who hear them, and oh there are very many, very many of the weak.' More clicking sounds – there were pebbles in his mouth.

Turning, Felisin faced away from the cliff wall, studied the stretch of broken, wasted land beyond. Signs of an old road, signs of tillage… 'We walked this – weeks ago!' She glared at the old man. '

You've taken me back!'

He smiled, revealing worn, chipped teeth. 'This city belongs to you, now, Chosen One-'

'Stop calling me that!'

'Please – you have been delivered and blood has been spilled in that deliverance – it falls to you to give such sacrifice meaning-'

'Sacrifice? That was murder! They killed my friends!'

'I will help you grieve, for that is my weakness, you see? I grieve always – for myself – because of drink, and the thirst always within me. Weakness. Kneel before it, child. Make of it a thing to worship.

There is no point in fighting – the world's sadness is far more powerful than you can ever hope to be, and that is what you must come to understand.'

'I want to leave.'

'Impossible. The Unbound have delivered you. Where could you go even if you might? We are leagues upon leagues from anywhere.' He sucked on the pebbles, swallowed spit, then continued, 'You would have no food.

No water. Please, Chosen One, a temple awaits you within this buried city – I have worked so long, so hard to ready it for you. There is food, and water. And soon there will be more servants, all desperate to answer your every desire – once you accept what you have become.'

He paused to smile again, and she saw the stones – black, polished, at least three, each the size of a knuckle bone. 'Soon, you shall realize what you have become – leader of the greatest cult of Seven Cities, and it will sweep beyond, across every sea and every ocean – it shall claim the world-'

'You are mad,' Felisin said.

'The Whispers do not lie.' He reached for her and she recoiled at that glistening, pustuled hand. 'Ah, there was plague, you see. Poliel, the goddess herself, she bowed before the Chained One – as must we all, even you – and only then shall you come into your rightful power.

Plague – it claimed many, it left entire cities filled with blackened bodies – but others survived, because of the Whispers, and so were marked – by sores and twisted limbs, by blindness. For some it was their tongues. Rotting and falling off, thus leaving them mute. Among others, their ears bled and all sound has left their world. Do you understand? They had weakness, and the Chained One – he has shown how weakness becomes strength. I can sense them, for I am the first. Your seneschal. I sense them. They are coming.'

She continued staring down at his sickly hand, and after a moment he returned it to his side.

Clicking. 'Please, follow me. Let me show you all that I have done.'

Felisin lifted her hands to her face. She did not understand. None of this made any sense. 'What,' she asked, 'is your name?'

'Kulat.'

'And what,' she said in a whisper, 'is mine?'

He bowed. 'They did not understand – none of them did. The Apocalyptic – it is not just war, not just rebellion. It is devastation. Not just of the land – that is but what follows – do you see? The Apocalypse, it is of the spirit. Crushed, broken, slave to its own weaknesses.

Only from such a tormented soul can ruin be delivered to the land and to all who dwell upon it. We must die inside to kill all that lies outside. Only then, once death takes us all, only then shall we find salvation.' He bowed lower. 'You are Sha'ik Reborn, Chosen as the Hand of the Apocalypse.'

'Change of plans,' muttered Iskaral Pust as he scurried about, seemingly at random, moving into and out of the campfire's light. '

Look!' he hissed. 'She's gone, the mangy cow! A few monstrous shadows in the night and poof! Nothing but spiders, hiding in every crack and cranny. Bah! Snivelling coward. I was thinking, Trell, that we should run. Yes, run. You go that way and I'll go this way – I mean, I'll be right behind you, of course, why would I abandon you now? Even with those things on the way…' He paused, pulled at his hair, then resumed his frantic motion. 'But why should I worry? Have I not been loyal? Effective? Brilliant as ever? So, why are they here?'