Tall, skin pale as the shell of turtle eggs, red-rimmed eyes set deep in elongated, chiselled faces, and too many joints on their long limbs, transforming their stiff expressions of death into something surreal, fevered-but that last detail was no surprise.
And now, a smudge of motion in the darkness beneath the lintel stone. A figure staggering into view. Unlike the dead. No, this one looked… human.
Splashed in blood from head to toe, the man reeled forward, halted at the top of the steps and looked round with wild, enraged eyes. Then, flinging his head back, he screamed at the colourless sky.
No words. Just fury.
Udinaas recoiled, sought to drag himself away.
And the figure saw him. One crimson, dripping hand, lifting, reaching out for him. Beckoning.
As if grasped by the throat, Udinaas lurched closer to the man, to the temple, to the cold scree of corpses. ‘No,’ he muttered, ‘not me. Choose someone else. Not me.’
‘Can you feel this grief, mortal?’
‘Not for me!’
‘But it is. You are the only one left. Are their deaths to be empty, forgotten, without meaning?’
‘
Udinaas tried to hold on to the ground, but the stones pulled loose under his hands, the sandy soil broke free as his nails dragged furrows in his wake. ‘Find someone else!’ His shriek echoed, as if launched directly at the temple, in through the gaping entrance, and echoing within-trapped, stolen away, rebounding until it was no longer his own voice, but that of the temple itself-a mournful cry of dying, of desperate defiance. The temple, voicing its thirst.
And something shook the sky then. Lightning without fire, thunder without sound-an arrival, jarring loose the world.
The entire temple heaved sideways, clouds of dust gasping out from between mortarless joins. It was moments from collapse-
‘No!’ bellowed the figure at the top of the stairs, even as he staggered to regain his balance. ‘This one is mine! My T’orrud Segul! Look at these dead-they must be saved, delivered, they must be-’
And now another voice sounded, behind Udinaas, high, distant, a voice of the sky itself. ‘No, Errant. These dead are Forkrul Assail. Dead by your own hand. You cannot kill them to save them-’
‘Dread witch, you know nothing! They’re the only ones l can save!’
‘The curse of Elder Gods-look at the blood on your hands. It is all of your own making. All of it.’