As they skirted the pool Onrack suddenly halted, lifting a hand.

A massive shape now filled the cave mouth.

Three heartbeats later, the emlava emerged.

‘Hood’s breath,’ Quick Ben whispered.

Trull had expected a hunting cat little different from,a mountain lion-perhaps one of the black ones rumoured to live in the deeper forests of his homeland. The creature hulking into view, blinking sleep from its charcoal eyes, was the size of a plains brown bear. Its enormous upper canines projected down past its lower jaw, long as a huntsman’s knife and polished the hue of amber. The head was broad and flat, the ears small and set far back. Behind the short neck, the emlava’s shoulders were hunched, forming a kind of muscled hump. Its fur was striped, black barbs on deep grey, although its throat revealed a flash of white.

‘Not quite built for speed, is it?’

Trull glanced over at Quick Ben, saw the wizard holding a dagger in one hand. ‘We should get you a spear,’ the Tiste Edur said.

‘I’ll take one of your spares-if you don’t mind.’

Trull slipped the bound clutch from his shoulder and said, ‘Take your pick.’

The emlava was studying them. Then it yawned and with that Onrack moved lightly forward in a half-crouch.

As he did so, pebbles scattered nearby and Trull turned. ‘Well, it seems Onrack has allies in this after all.’

The wolves-ay in the Imass language-had appeared and were now closing on Onrack’s position, heads lowered and eyes fixed on the huge cat.

The sudden arrival of seven wolves clearly displeased the emlava, for it then lowered itself until its chest brushed the ground, gathering its legs beneath it. The mouth opened again, and a deep hiss filled the air.

‘We might as well get out of their way,’ Quick Ben said, taking a step back with obvious relief.

‘I wonder,’ Trull said as he watched the momentary stand-off, ‘if this is how domestication first began. Not banding together in a hunt for prey, but in an elimination of rival predators.’

Onrack had readied his spear, not to meet a charge, but to throw the weapon using a stone-weighted antler atlatl. The wolves to his either side had fanned out, edging closer with fangs bared.

‘Not a growl to be heard,’ Quick Ben said. ‘Somehow that’s more chilling.’

‘Growls are to warn,’ Trull replied. ‘There is fear in growls, just as there is in that cat’s hissing.’

The emlava’s single lungful of breath finally whistled down into silence. It refilled its lungs and began again.

Onrack lunged forward, the spear darting from his hand.

Flinching back, the emlava screamed as the weapon drove deep into its chest, just to one side of the neck and beneath the clavicle. At that moment the wolves rushed in.

A mortal wound, however, was not enough to slow the cat as it lashed out with two staggered swings of its forepaws at one of the wolves. The first paw sank talons deep into the wolf’s shoulder, snatching the entire animal closer, within the reach of the second paw, which dragged the yelping wolf closer still. The massive head then snapped down on its neck, fangs burying themselves in flesh and bone.

The emlava, lurching, then drove its full weight down on the dying wolf, probably breaking every bone in its body.

As it did so, four other wolves lunged for its soft belly, two to each side, their canines tearing deep, then pulling away as, screaming, the emlava spun round to fend them off.

Exposing its neck.

Onrack’s sword flashed, point-first, into the cat’s throat.

It recoiled, sending one wolf tumbling, then reared back on its hind legs-as if to wheel and flee back into its cave-but all strength left the emlava then. It toppled, thumped hard onto the ground, and was still.

The six remaining wolves-one limping-padded away, keeping a distance between themselves and the three men, and moments later were gone from sight.

Onrack walked up to the emlava and tugged free his gore-spattered spear. Then he knelt beside the cat’s head.

‘Asking forgiveness?’ Quick Ben queried, his tone only slightly ironic.

The Imass looked over at them. ‘No, that would be dishonest, wizard.’

‘You’re right, it would. I am glad you’re not dumping any blessed spirit rubbish on us. It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it, that there were wars long before there were wars between people. You had your rival hunters to dispose of first.’

‘Yes, that is true. And we found allies. If you wish to find irony, Quick Ben, know that we then hunted until most of our prey was extinct. And our allies then starved-those that did not surrender to our stewardship.’

‘The Imass are hardly unique in that,’ Trull Sengar said.

Quick Ben snorted. ‘That’s understating it, Trull. So tell us, Onrack, why are you kneeling beside that carcass?’

‘I have made a mistake,’ the Imass replied, climbing to his feet and staring into the cave.

‘Seemed pretty flawless to me.’

‘The killing, yes, Quick Ben. But this emlava, it is female.’

The wizard grunted, then seemed to flinch. ‘You mean the male’s still around?’

‘I do not know. Sometimes they… wander.’ Onrack looked down at the bloodied spear in his hands. ‘My friends,’ he said. ‘I am now… hesitant, I admit. Perhaps, long ago, I would not have thought twice-as you said, wizard, we warred against our competitors. But this realm-it is a gift. All that was lost, because of our thoughtless acts, now lives again. Here. I wonder, can things be different?’

In the silence following that question, they heard, coming from the cave, the first pitiful cry.

‘Did you ever wish, Udinaas, that you could sink inside stone? Shake loose its vast memories-’

The ex-slave glanced at Wither-a deeper smear in the gloom-then sneered. ‘And see what they have seen? You damned wraith, stones can’t see.’

‘True enough. Yet they swallow sound and bind it trapped inside. They hold conversations with heat and cold. Their skins wear away to the words of the wind and the lick of water. Darkness and light live in their flesh-and they carry within them the echoes of wounding, of breaking, of being cruelly shaped-’

‘Oh, enough!’ Udinaas snapped, pushing a stick further into the fire. ‘Go melt away into these ruins, then.’

‘You are the last one awake, my friend. And yes, I have been in these ruins.’

‘Games like those are bound to drive you mad.’

A long pause. ‘You know things you have no right to know.’

‘How about this, then? Sinking into stone is easy. It’s getting out again that’s hard. You can get lost, trapped in the maze. And on all sides, all those memories pressing in, pressing down.’

‘It is your dreams, isn’t it? Where you learn such things. Who speaks to you? Tell me the name of this fell mentor!’

Udinaas laughed. ‘You fool, Wither. My mentor? Why, none other than imagination.’

‘I do not believe you.’

There seemed little point in responding to that declaration. Staring into the flames, Udinaas allowed its flickering dance to lull him. He was tired. He should be sleeping. The fever was gone, the nightmarish hallucinations, the strange nectars that fed the tumbling delusions all seeped away, like piss in moss. The strength 1 felt in those other worlds was a lie. The clarity, a deceit. All those offered ways forward, through what will come, every one a dead end. 1 should have known better.

‘K’Chain Nah’ruk, these ruins.’

‘You still here, Wither? Why?’

‘This was once a plateau on which the Short-Tails built a city. But now, as you can see, it is shattered. Now there is nothing but these dread slabs all pitched and angled-yet we have been working our way downward. Did you sense this? We will soon reach the centre, the heart of this crater, and we will see what destroyed this place.’

‘The ruins,’ said Udinaas, ‘remember cool shadow. Then concussion. Shadow, Wither, in a flood to announce the end of the world. The concussion, well, that belonged to the shadow, right?’