The Jaghut’s eyes fixed on her for a moment, and then he faced one of the walls of ice.

She followed that gaze.

Staggering into darkness he was struck countless times. Fists pounded, fingers raked ragged furrows through his skin. Hands closed about his limbs and pulled.

‘This one is mine!’

‘No, mine!’All at once voices cried out on all sides and a hand closed about Nimander’s waist, plucked him into the air. The giant figure carrying him ran, feet thumping like thunder, up a steep slope, rocks scurrying down, first a trickle, then a roar of cascading stones, with screams in their wake.

Choking dust blinded him.

A sharp-edged crest crunching underfoot, and then a sudden even steeper de-scent, down into a caldera. Grey clouds rising in plumes, sudden coruscating heat foul with gases that stung his eyes, burned in his throat.

He was flung on to hot ash.

The giant creature loomed over him.

Through tears Nimander looked up, saw a strangely child-like face peering down. The forehead sloped back behind an undulating brow-ridge from which the eyebrows streamed down in thick snarls of pale, almost white hair. Round, smooth cheeks, thick lips, a pug nose, a pale bulging wattle beneath the rounded chin. Its skin was bright yellow, its eyes emerald green.

It spoke in the language of the Tiste Andii. ‘I am like you. I too do not belong here.’

The voice was soft, a child’s voice. The giant slowly blinked, and then smiled, revealing a row of dagger like fangs.

Nimander struggled to speak: ‘Where-who-all those people…’

‘Spirits. Trapped like ants in amber. But it is not amber. It is the blood of dragons.’

‘Are you a spirit?’

The huge head shook in a negative. ‘I am an Elder, and I am lost.’

‘Elder.’ Nimander frowned. ‘You call yourself that. Why?’ A shrug like hills in motion. ‘The spirits have so named me.’

‘How did you come to be here?’

‘I don’t know. I am lost, you see.’

‘And before this place?’

‘Somewhere else. I built things. Of stone. But each house I built then vanished-I know not where. It was most… frustrating.’

‘Do you have a name?’

‘Elder?’

‘Nothing else?’

‘Sometimes, I would carve the stone. To make it look like wood. Or bone. I remember… sunsets. Different suns, each night, different suns. Sometimes two. Sometimes three, one fierce, the others like children. I would build another house, if I could. I think, if I could do that, I would stop being lost.’

Nimander sat up. He was covered in volcanic dust, so fine it shed from him like liquid. ‘Build your house, then.’

‘Whenever I begin, the spirits attack me. Hundreds, then thousands. Too many.’

‘I stepped through a wall of ice.’ The memory was suddenly strong. ‘Omtose Phellack-’

‘Oh, ice is like blood and blood is like ice. There are many ways in. None out. You do not belong here because you are not yet dead. You are, lost, like me. We should be friends, I think.’

‘I can’t stay-’

‘I am sorry.’

Panic seethed to life in Nimander. He stood, sinking to his shins in the hot ash. ‘I can’t-Gothos. Find me. Gothos!’

‘I remember Gothos.’ A terrible frown lowered the Elder’s brows. ‘He would appear, just before the last stone was set. He would look upon my house and pronounce it adequate. Adequate! Oh, how I hated that word! My sweat, my blood, and he called them adequate! And then he would walk inside and close the door, and I would place the last stone, and the house would vanish! I don’t think I like Gothos.’

‘I don’t blame you,’ Nimander said, unwilling to voice his suspicion that Gothos’s arrival and the vanishing of the houses were in fact connected; that indeed the Jaghut came to collect them. This Elder builds the Houses of the Azath.

And he is lost.

‘Tell me,’ Nimander said, ‘do you think there are others like you? Others, out there, building houses?’

‘I don’t know.’

Nimander looked round. The jagged walls of the cone enclosed the space. Enormous chunks of pumice and obsidian lay half buried in the grey dust. ‘Elder, do the spirits ever assail you here?’

‘In my pit? No, they cannot climb the sides.’

‘Build your house here.’

‘But-’

‘Use the rim as your foundation.’

‘But houses have corners!’

‘Make it a tower.’

‘A house… within the blood of dragons? But there are no sunsets.’

A house within the blood of dragons. What would happen? What would change! Why do the spirits deny him this? ‘If you are tired of being lost,’ Nimander said, ‘build a house. But before you are done, before you set that last stone, walk into it.’ He paused and looked round, then grunted a laugh. ‘You won’t have any choice; you will be building the thing from the inside out.’

‘But then who will finish it?’

Nimander looked away. He was trapped here, possibly for ever. If he did as Gothos did, if he remained inside the house to await its completion, he might find a way out. He might walk those hidden pathways. And in so doing, he would doom this creature to eternity here. This child, this mason.

And that I cannot do. I am not like Gothos. I am not that cruel.

He heard laughter in his head. Phaed, shrieking with laughter. Then she said, ‘Don’t be an idiot. Take the way out. Leave this fool to his building blocks! He’s pathetic!’

‘I will set the last stone,’ Nimander said. ‘Just make sure it’s small enough for mo to lift and push into place.’ And he looked up, and he saw that the giant was smiling, and no, it no longer looked like a child, and in its eyes something shone and its light flowed down, bathed Nimander.

‘I am different,’ the Elder said in a deep, warm voice, ‘when I build,’

‘Get him out,’Desra said. ‘I cannot.’

‘Why?’

The Jaghut blinked like a lizard. ‘I don’t know how. The gate is Omtose Phel-lack, but the realm beyond is something else, something I want nothing to do with.’

‘But you made this gate-and gates open from both sides.’

‘I doubt he could ever find it,’ the Jaghut said. ‘Even assuming anyone lets him get close.’

‘Anyone? Who’s in there with him?’

‘A few million miserable wretches.’

Desra glared at Skintick. ‘How could you let this happen?’ He was weeping and could only shake his head.

‘Do not blame this one,’ the Jaghut said. ‘Do not blame anyone. Accidents hap-pen.’

‘You drugged us,’ Skintick suddenly accused him, his voice harsh with grief.

‘Alas, I did. And I had my reasons for doing so… which seem to have failed. Therefore I must be more… direct, and oh how I dislike being direct. When next you see Anomander, tell him this from me: he chose wisely. Each time, he chose wisely. Tell him, then, that of all whom I ever met, there is but one who has earned my respect, and he is that one.’

A sudden sob from Skintick.

Desra felt strangely shaken by the Jaghut’s words.

‘And,’ the Jaghut then added, ‘for you. Do not trust Kallor.’

Feeling helpless, useless, she stepped closer to the wall of ice, squinted into its dark depths.

‘Careful, woman. That blood pulls hard on you Tiste.’

And yes, she could feel that, but it was nothing to trust, nothing to even pay attention to-it was the lie she had always known, the lie of something better just ahead, of all the questions answered, just ahead. Another step, one more. One more. Time’s dialogue with the living, and time was a deceitful creature, a liar. Time promised everything and delivered nothing.

She stared into the darkness, and thought she saw movement, deep, deep within.

‘No Jaghut is to be trusted,’ Kallor said,’ glaring at the lowering sun. ‘Especially not Gothos.’

Aranatha studied the ancient warrior with an unwavering gaze, and though he would not meet her sister’s eyes, it was clear to Kedeviss that Kallor felt himselfunder siege. A woman’s attention, devastating barrage of inexorable calculation-even a warrior flinched back.