One of the crew burst into a laugh that he quickly converted into a cough.
‘We’ll await the harbour master’s response,’ Shurq Elalle said.
Pithy and Brevity returned to their scow, the former taking the oars.
‘Strange women,’ Skorgen Kaban muttered as they watched the wallowing craft pull away.
‘An island full of inbred prisoners,’ Shurq replied in a murmur. ‘Are you at all surprised, Pretty? And if that’s not enough, a full-blooded Shake-who just happens to be I completely mad-is ruling the roost. I tell you this, our stay should be interesting.’
‘I hate interesting.’
‘And probably profitable.’
‘Oh, good. I like profitable. I can swallow interesting so long as it’s profitable.’
‘Get the hands ready to ship the anchor. I doubt we’ll have to wait overlong for the harbour master’s signal flag.’
‘Aye, Captain.’
Udinaas sat watching her clean and oil her sword. An Edur sword, set into her hands by a Tiste Edur warrior. All she needed now was a house so she could bury the damned thing. Oh yes, and the future husband’s fateful return. Now, maybe nothing was meant by it; just a helpful gesture by one of Fear’s brothers-the only Sengar brother Udinaas actually respected. Maybe, but maybe not.
The interminable chanting droned through the stone walls, a sound even grimmer than the blunt grunting of Edur women at mourning. The Onyx Wizards were in consultation. If such an assertion held any truth then the priestly version of their language was incomprehensible and devoid of the rhythm normally found in both song and speech. And if it was nothing but chanting, then the old fools could not even agree on the tempo.
And he had thought the Tiste Edur strange. They were nothing compared to these Tiste Andii, who had carried dour regard to unhuman extremes.
It was no wonder, though. The Andara was a crumbling blackstone edifice at the base of a refuse-cluttered gorge. As isolated as a prison. The cliff walls were honeycombed with caves, pocked with irregular chambers, like giant burst bubbles along the course of winding tunnels. There were bottomless pits, dead ends, passages so steep they could not be traversed without rope ladders. Hollowed-out towers rose like inverted spires through solid bedrock; while over subterranean chasms arched narrow bridges of white pumice, carved into amorphous shapes and set without mortar. In one place there was a lake of hardened lava, smoother than wind-polished ice, the obsidian streaked with red, and this was the Amass Chamber, where the entire population could gather-barefooted-to witness the endless wrangling of the Reve Masters, otherwise known as the Onyx Wizards.
Master of the Rock, of the Air, of the Root, of the Dark Water, of the Night. Five wizards in all, squabbling over orders of procession, hierarchies of propitiation, proper hem-length of the Onyx robes and Errant knew what else. With these half-mad neurotics any burr in the cloth became a mass of wrinkles and creases.
From what Udinaas had come to understand, no more than fourteen of the half-thousand or so denizens-beyond the wizards themselves-were pure Tiste Andii, and of] those, only three had ever seen daylight-which they quaintly called the blinded stars-only three had ever climbed to the world above.
No wonder they’d all lost their minds.
‘Why is it,’ Udinaas said, ‘when some people laugh it sounds more like crying?’
Seren Pedac glanced up from the sword bridging her knees, the oil-stained cloth in her long-fingered hands. ‘I don’t hear anyone laughing. Or crying.’
‘I didn’t necessarily mean out loud,’ he replied.
A snort from Fear Sengar, where he sat on a stone bench near the portal way. ‘Boredom is stealing the last fragments of sanity in your mind, slave. I for one will not miss them.’
‘The wizards and Silchas are probably arguing the manner of your execution, Fear Sengar,’ Udinaas said. ‘You are their most hated enemy, after all. Child of the Betrayer, spawn of lies and all that. It suits your grand quest, for the moment at least, doesn’t it? Into the viper’s den-every hero needs to do that, right? And moments before your doom arrives, out hisses your enchanted sword and evil minions die by the score. Ever wondered what the aftermath of such slaughter must be? Dread depopulation, shattered families, wailing babes-and should that crucial threshold be crossed, then inevitable extinction is assured, hovering before them like a grisly spectre. Oh yes, I heard my share when I was a child, of epic tales and poems and all the rest. But I always started worrying… about those evil minions, the victims of those bright heroes and their intractable righteousness. I mean, someone invades your hide-out, your cherished home, and of course you try to kill and eat them. Who wouldn’t? There they were, nominally ugly and shifty-looking, busy with their own little lives, plaiting nooses or some such thing. Then shock! The alarms are raised! The intruders have somehow slipped their chains and death is a whirlwind in every corridor!’
Seren Pedac sheathed the sword. ‘I think I would like to hear your version of such stories, Udinaas. How you would like them to turn out. At the very least, it will pass the time.’
‘I’d rather not singe Kettle’s innocent ears-’
‘She’s asleep. Something she does a lot of these days.’
‘Perhaps she’s ill.’
‘Perhaps she knows how to wait things out,’ the Acquitor responded. ‘Go on, Udinaas, how does the heroic epic of yours, your revised version, turn out?’
‘Well, first, the hidden lair of the evil ones. There’s a crisis brewing. Their priorities got all mixed up-some past evil ruler with no management skills or something. So, they’ve got dungeons and ingenious but ultimately ineffective torture devices. They have steaming chambers with huge cauldrons, awaiting human flesh to sweeten the pot-but alas, nobody’s been by of late. After all, the lair is reputedly cursed, a place whence no adventurer ever returns-all dubious propaganda, of course. In fact, the lair’s a good market for the local woodcutters and the pitch-sloppers-huge hearths and torches and murky oil lamps-that’s the problem with underground lairs-they’re dark. Worse than that, everyone’s been sharing a cold for the past eight hundred years. Anyway, even an evil lair needs the necessities of reasonable existence. Vegetables, bushels of berries, spices and medicines, cloth and pottery, hides and well-gnawed leather, evil-looking hats. Of course I’ve not even mentioned all the weapons and intimidating uniforms.’
‘You have stumbled from your narrative trail, Udinaas,’ Seren Pedac observed.
‘So I have, and that too is an essential point. Life is like that. We stumble astray. Just like those evil minions. A crisis-no new prisoners, no fresh meat. Children are starving. It’s an unmitigated disaster.’
‘What’s the solution?’
‘Why, they invent a story. A magical item in their possession, something to lure fools into the lair. It’s reasonable, if you consider it. Every hook needs a wriggling worm. And then they choose one among them to play the role of the Insane Master, the one seeking to unlock the dire powers of that magical item and so bring about a utopia of animated corpses stumbling through a realm of ash and rejected tailings. Now, if this doesn’t bring heroes in by the drove, nothing will.’
‘Do they succeed?’
‘For a time, but recall those ill-conceived torture implements. Invariably, some enterprising and lucky fool gets free, then crushes the skull of a dozing guard or three, and mayhem is let loose. Endless slaughter-hundreds, then thousands of untrained evil warriors who forgot to sharpen their swords and never mind the birch-bark shields that woodcutter with the hump sold them.’
Even Fear Sengar grunted a laugh at that. ‘All right, Udinaas, you win. I think I prefer your version after all.’