‘You are not flesh without soul.’

‘No, I’m more like your reflection. Sort of inverted, aye?’

‘I sense no power from you,’ Emroth said, head tilting a fraction. ‘Nothing. You are not even here.’

Hedge smiled again, and slowly withdrew a cusser from beneath his raincape. He held it up between them. ‘Is this, Emroth?’

‘I do not know what that is.’

‘Aye, but is it even here?’

‘No. Like you it is an illusion.’

‘An illusion, or a manifestation of the will? My will?’

‘There is no value in the distinction,’ the T’lan Imass asserted.

You cannot see the truth within me, for the vision you’d need to see it is not within you. You threw it away, at the Ritual. You wilfully blinded yourselves to the one thing that can destroy you. That is, perhaps, destroying your kind even now-some trouble on the continent of Assail, yes? I have vague recollections of somebody hearing something… well, never mind that. The point here, Emroth, is this: you cannot understand me because you cannot see me. Beyond, that is, what I have willed into existence-this body, this cusser, this face-’

‘In which,’ Emroth said, ‘I now see my destruction.’

‘Not necessarily. A lot depends on our little conversation here. You say you have knelt before a god-no, it’s all right, I’ve already worked out who, Emroth. And you’re now doing its bidding.’ Hedge eyed the cusser in his hand. Its weight felt just right. It’s here, just like back at the Deragoth statues. No different at all. ‘I’ve walked a long way,’ he resumed, ‘starting out in the Jaghut underworld. I don’t recall crossing any obvious borders, or stepping through any gates. And the ice fields we’ve been crossing for what must have been weeks, well, that made sense, too. In fact, I’m not even much surprised we found the Ice Throne-after all, where else would it be?’ With his free hand he gestured at the forest-clad expanse before them. ‘But this…’

‘Yes,’ said the T’lan Imass. ‘You held to the notion of distinction, as do all your kind. The warrens. As if each was separate-’

‘But they are,’ Hedge insisted. ‘I’m not a mage, but I knew one. A very good one, with more than a few warrens at his disposal. Each one is an aspect of power. There are barriers between them. And chaos at their roots, and threading in between.’

‘Then what do you see here, Ghost?’

‘I don’t know, but it isn’t Jaghut. Yet now, well, I’m thinking it’s Elder, just like Jaghut. An Elder Warren. Which doesn’t leave many options, does it? Especially since this is your destination.’

‘In that you would be wrong,’ Emroth replied.

‘But you recognize it.’

‘Of course. It is Tellann. Home.’

‘Yet it’s here, trapped in the Jaghut underworld, Emroth. How can that be?’

‘I do not know.’

‘If it’s not your destination, then, I think I need to know if our finding it changes anything. For you, I mean.’

The head cocked yet further. ‘And upon my answer hangs my fate, Ghost?’

Hedge shrugged. The cusser was too real all right: his arm had begun to ache.

‘I have no answer for you,’ Emroth said, and Hedge might have heard something like regret in the creature’s voice, although more likely that was just his imagination. ‘Perhaps, Ghost,’ she continued after a moment, ‘what we see here is an example of this manifestation of the will.’

The sapper’s eyes widened. ‘Whose?’

‘In the Jaghut Wars, many T’lan Imass fell. Those who could not flee what remained of their bodies were left where they fell, for they had failed. On rare occasions, a Fallen would be gifted, so that its eternal vision looked out upon a vista rather than a stretch of ground or the darkness of earth. The T’lan Imass who were more thoroughly destroyed were believed to have found oblivion. True nonexistence, which we came to hold as the greatest gift of all.’

Hedge glanced away. These damned T’lan Imass were heartbreakers, in every sense of the term.

‘Perhaps,’ Emroth continued, ‘for some, oblivion was not what they found. Dragged down into the Jaghut underworld, the Jaghut realm of death. A place without the war, without, perhaps, the Ritual itself.’

‘Without the war? This is the Jaghut underworld-shouldn’t it be filled with Jaghut? Their souls? Their spirits?’

‘The Jaghut do not believe in souls, Ghost.’

Hedge stared, dumbfounded. ‘But… that’s ridiculous. If no souls, then how in Hood’s name am I here?’

‘It occurs to me,’ Emroth said with rasping dryness, ‘that manifestation of the will can go both ways.’

‘Their disbelief annihilated their own souls? Then why create an underworld?’

‘Verdith’anath is an ancient creation. It may be that the first Jaghut souls found it not to their liking. To create a realm of death is the truest manifestation of will, after all. And yet, what is created is not always solely what was willed. Every realm finds… resident beings. Every realm, once formed, is rife with bridges, gates, portals. If the Jaghut did not find it to their liking, other creatures did.’

‘Like your T’lan Imass.’

‘In the ages of ice that beset our kind,’ Emroth said, ‘there existed pockets of rich land, often surrounded in ice, yet resisting its fierce power. In these pockets, Ghost, the old ways of the Imass persisted. Places of forests, sometimes tundra, and, always, the beasts we knew so well. Our name for such a place was Farl ved ten ara. A refugium.’

Hedge studied the forested hills. ‘There are Imass in there.’

‘I believe that is so.’

‘Do you intend to seek them out, Emroth?’

‘Yes. I must.’

‘And what of your new god?’

‘If you would destroy me, do it now, Ghost.’ With that she turned and began walking towards the Refugium.

Hedge stood, shifted the cusser to his right hand, and gauged distance. The Crippled God would welcome more allies, wouldn’t he just? You go, Emroth, to meet this timeless kin. With your words marshalled to sway them, to offer them a new faith. Your kin. Could be thousands of them. Tens of thousands.

But they’re not what you came for.

Like me, Emroth, you’re heading for the gate. Starvald Demelain. Where anything is possible.

Including the destruction of the warrens.

It’s the blood, you see. The blood of dragons. Outside and inside. Dead and living. Aye, amazing the things you figure out. once you’re dead. But not dead. Aye, it’s all about the will.

The cusser returned to his left hand.

Arm angled back. Then swung forward. He watched the cusser’s arc for the briefest of moments, then, as habit demanded, he pitched sideways, onto the ground-

Even as it lurched up to meet him, a stone cracking hard against his chin. The concussion had of course deafened him, and he stared about, spitting blood from his tooth-sliced tongue. His left arm was gone, as was most of his left hip and thigh. Snow and dust drifting down, sparkling in the sunlight. Pebbles and clods of frozen earth now landing all around him, bouncing, skittering. The snow in the air, sparkling like magic.

He spat more blood, felt his chin with his one remaining hand and found a deep gash there, studded with gravel. He scowled, dismissed these absurd details. No more blood, a tongue whole and ever eager to wag. Smooth chin, unmarred by any gash-well, more or less smooth, under all that stubble. New left leg, hip, arm. Aye, that’s better.

The sapper climbed to his feet.

The crater was appropriately large, suitably deep, reaching down past the skin of ice and snow to the ground underneath, that now steamed sodden and glistening. Pieces of Emroth here and there. Not many. Cussers were like that, after all.

‘Aye,’ Hedge muttered, ‘Fid’s the sentimental one.’

Thirty, then thirty-five paces on, reaching the first sward of riotous grass, the sapper came upon one more fragment of Emroth’s body. And he halted. Stared down for some time. Then slowly turned and studied the way he had come, the borderline between ice and earth.