This track, you see, led to but one place, one fate. The old shepherd had done well and had already buried his cache of coins beneath the stoop behind the shack where he lived with his sickly wife, who had been worn out by seven failed pregnancies, and if there was bitter spite in the eyes she fixed upon the world is it any wonder? But he would do good by her in these last tired years, yes, he would, and he set to one side one copper coin that he would fling to the lake spirits at dusk-an ancient, black-stained coin bearing the head of a man the shepherd didn’t recognize-not that he would, for that face belonged to the last Tyrant of Darujhistan…

The wagon rolled on, on its way to the mines.

Harllo, who so loved the sun, was destined to wake in darkness, and mayhap he was never again to see the day’s blessed light,

Out on the lake the water glittered with golden tears.

As if the sun might relinquish its hard glare and, for just this one moment, weep for the fate of a child.

xx

When can he not stand alone

Where in darkness no shadows are cast

Whose most precious selves deny the throne

While nothing held in life will last a moment longer

Than what’s carved into the very bones

But this is where you would stand

In his place and see all bleak and bridled

An array of weapons each one forged

For violence

When can he not stand alone

Where darkness bleeds into the abyss so vast

Whose every yearning seeks a new home

While each struggle leaves the meek to the stronger

And the fallen lie scattered like stones

But this is the life you would take in hand

To guide him ‘cross the path so broken so riddled

Like the weapon of your will now charged

In cold balance

When can he not stand alone

Where in darkness every shadow is lost

Whose weary selves cut away and will roam

While nothing is left but this shielded stranger

Standing against the wind’s eternal moans

But this is your hero who must stand

Guarding your broken desires the ragged flag unfurled

Rising above the bastion to see your spite purged

In his silence

– Anomandaxis, Book III, Verses 7-10, Fisher Kel That

The swath of ground where all the grasses had been worn away might have marked the passing of a herd of bhederin, if not for the impos-sibly wide ruts left behind by the enormous studded wheels of a wagon, and the rubbish and occasional withered corpses scatttred to either side, vultures and crows danced among the detritus.

Traveller sat slouched in the Seven Cities saddle atop the piebald gelding. Nearby, at the minimum distance that his horse would accept, was the witch, Samar Dev, perched like a child above the long-legged, gaunt and fierce Jhag horse whose name was, she had said, Havok. The beast’s true owner was somewhere ahead, perhaps behind the Skathandi and the Captain’s monstrous carriage, or be-yond it. Either way, she was certain a clash was imminent.

‘He dislikes slavers,’ she had said earlier, as if this explained everything.

No demon, then, but a Toblakai of true blood, a detail that sent pangs of regret and pain through Traveller, for reasons he kept to himself-and though she had seen something of that anguish in his face it appeared she would respect his pri-vacy. Or perhaps feared its surrender, for Samar Dev was a woman, he suspected, prone to plunging into vast depths of emotion.

She had, after all, travelled through warrens to find the trail of the one ahead of them on this plain, and such an undertaking was not embraced on a whim. All to deliver a horse. He knew enough to leave it at that, poor as it might be as justifi-cation for such extremity. The Kindaru had accepted the reason with sage nods, seeing nothing at all unusual in any of it-the horse was a sacred beast, after all, a Jhag, brother to their cherished horses-of-the-rock. They possessed legends with similar themes, and indeed they had spent half the night recounting many of them-and now they had found themselves a new one. Master of the Wolf-Horses met a woman so driven as to be his own reflection, and together they rode into the north, having drawn their threads through the last camp of the Kindaru, and were now entwined each with the other and both with the Kindaru, and though this was a tale not yet done it would nevertheless live on, for as long as lived the Kindaru themselves.

He had noted the grief in Samar Dev’s weary, weathered face, as the many wounds delivered-in all innocence-by the Kindaru slowly sank deeper, piercing her heart, and now compassion swirled dark and raw in her eyes, although the Kindaru were far behind them now. It was clear, brutally so, that both she and Traveller had collected a new thread to twist into their lives.

‘How far ahead?’ she asked.

’Two days at the most.’

‘Then he might have found them by now, or they him.’

‘Yes, it’s possible. If this Skathandi Captain has an army, well; even a Toblakai can die.’

‘I know that,’ she replied. Then added, ‘Maybe.’

‘And there are but two of us, Samar Dev.’

‘If you’d rather cut away from this trail, Traveller, I will not question your de-cision. But I need to find him.’

He glanced away. ‘His horse, yes.’

‘And other things.’

Traveller considered for a time. He studied the broad, churned-up track. A thou-sand or five thousand; when people were moving in column it was always difficult to tell. The carriage itself would be a thing worth seeing, however, and the direction just happened to be the one he needed to take. The prospect of being forced into a detour was unacceptable. ‘If your friend is smart, he won’t do anything overt. He’ll hide, as best one can on these plains, until he sees an advantage-though what that advantage might be, against so many, I can’t imagine.’

‘So you will stay with me for a while longer?’

He nodded,

‘Then I should tell you some things, I think.’

They guided their horses on to the track and rode at the trot.

Traveller waited for her to continue.

The sun’s heat reminded him of his homeland, the savannahs of Dal Hon, although in this landscape there were fewer flies, and of the enormous herds of countless kinds of beasts-and the ones that hunted them-there was little sign. Here on the Lamatath there were bhederin, a lone breed of antelope, hares, wolves, coyotes, bears and not much else. Plenty of hawks and falcons overhead, of course-but this place did not teem as one might expect and he wondered about that.

Had the conflagration at Morn wiped everything out? Left a blasted landscape slow to recover, into which only a few species drifted down from the north? Or were the K’Chain Che’Malle rabid hunters, indulging in a slaughterfest that did not end until they themselves were extinct?

‘What do you know of the Emperor of a Thousand Deaths?’

He glanced across at her. ‘Not much. Only that he cannot be killed.’

‘Right.’

He waited.

Locusts crawled across the dusty track amidst shredded blades of grass, as if wondering who had beaten them to it. Somewhere high above a raptor loosed a piercing cry, the kind intended to panic a bird in flight.

‘His sword was forged by the power of the Crippled God. Possessing levels of sorcery to which the wielder can reach, each time, only by dying-fighting and dying with that weapon in his hands. The Emperor, a poor ravaged creature, a Tiste Edur, knew that death was but an illusion. He knew, I am certain of it, that he was cursed, so terribly cursed. That sword had driven him mad.’

Traveller imagined that such a weapon would indeed drive its wielder insane. He could feel sweat on the palms of his hands and shifted the reins into his right hand, settling the other on his thigh. His mouth felt unaccountably dry.