Trembling, Bugg said, ‘You, I am sending home… not your home. My home.’ A gesture, and the Tiste Edur vanished.
Into Bugg’s warren, away, then down, down, ever down.
Into depthless darkness, where the portal opened once more, flinging Theradas Buhn into icy, black water.
Where the pressure, immense and undeniable, embraced him.
Fatally.
Bugg’s trembling slowed. His roar had been heard, he knew. Upon the other side of the world, it had been heard. And heads had swung round. Immortal hearts had quickened.
‘No matter,’ he whispered.
Then moved forward, down to kneel beside the motionless bodies.
He gathered one of those bodies into his arms.
Rose, and walked away.
The Eternal Domicile. A title of such profound conceit, as thoroughly bound into the arrogance of the Letherii as the belief in their own immutable destiny. Manifest rights to all things, to ownership, to the claiming of all they perceived, the unconscionable, brazen arrogance of it all, as if a thousand gods stood at their backs, burdened with gifts for the chosen.
Trull Sengar could only wonder, what bred such certainties? What made a people so filled with rectitude and intransigence? Perhaps all that is needed… is power . A shroud of poison filling the air, seeping into every pore of every man, woman and child. A poison that twisted the past to suit the mores of the present, illuminating in turn an inevitable and righteous future. A poison that made intelligent people blithely disregard the ugly truths of past errors in judgement, of horrendous, brutal debacles that had stained red the hands of their forefathers. A poison that entrenched the stupidity of dubious traditions, and brought misery and suffering upon countless victims.
Power, then. The very same power we are about to embrace. Sisters have mercy upon our people.
The emperor of the Tiste Edur stood before the grand entrance to the Eternal Domicile. Mottled sword in his right, glittering hand. Dusty bearskin riding shoulders grown massively broad with the weight of gold. Old blood staining his back in map patterns, as if he was redrawing the world. Hair now long, ragged and heavy with oily filth.
Trull was standing behind him, and so could not see his brother’s eyes. But he knew, should he look into them now, he would see the destiny he feared, he would see the poison coursing unopposed, and he would see the madness born of betrayal.
It would have taken little, he knew. The simple reaching out for a nondescript, sad-eyed slave, the closing of hands, to lift Rhulad upright, to guide him back into sanity. That, and nothing more.