‘Wait!’ Tehol shouted to the giant. ‘No more!’
Rubbing at his temple, Bugg blinked up at Ublala Pung. ‘What was that all about?’ he demanded.
‘Tehol said-’
‘Never mind what I said, Ublala. It was but a passing thought, a musing devoid of substance, a careless utterance disconnected in every way from physical action. Never intended-’
‘You said he needed boxing about the head, Tehol Beddict. You asked me-because it’d got bigger or something, so I needed to puncture it so it’d get smaller again. It didn’t look any bigger to me. But that’s what you said. He was above his situation, you said-’
‘Station, not situation. My point is-both of you-stop looking at me like that. My point was, I was but voicing a few minor complaints of a domestic nature here. Not once suspecting that Ublala Pung would take me so literally.’
‘Master, he is Ublala Pung.’
‘I know, I know. Clearly, all the once-finely honed edges of my intellect have worn off of late.’ Then his expression brightened. ‘But now I have a tutor!’
A victim of the Patriotists,’ Bugg said, eyeing Ublala askance as he made his way over to the pot on the hearth. Abyss below, Master, this barely passes as muddy water.’
Aye, alas, in dire need of your culinary magic. The Patriotists? You broke her out of prison?’
‘In a manner of speaking. I do not anticipate a city-wide manhunt, however. She was to have been one of the ones who simply vanished.’
Ublala Pung grunted a laugh. ‘They’d never find her if it was a manhunt.’
The other two men looked across at him.
The half-blood Tarthenal gestured at the obvious. ‘Look, she’s got breasts and stuff.’
Bugg’s tone was soft as he said to Tehol, ‘She needs gentle healing, Master. And peace.’
‘Well, no better refuge from the dreads of the world than Tehol Beddict’s abode.’
‘A manhunt.’ Ublala laughed again, then shook his head. ‘Them Patriotists are idiots.’
Chapter Eight
When stone is water, time is ice.
When all is frozen in place
fates rain down in fell torrent.
My face revealed, in this stone that is water.
The ripples locked hard to its shape
a countenance passing strange.
Ages will hide when stone is water.
Cycles bound in these depths
are flawed illusions breaking the stream.
When stone is water, time is ice.
When all is frozen in place
our lives are stones in the torrent.
And we rain down, rain down
like water on stone
with every strike of the hand.
– Water and Stone , Elder Fent
The Realm of Shadow was home to brutal places, yet not one could match the brutality of shadows upon the soul. Such thoughts haunted Cotillion these days. He stood on a rise, before him a gentle, elongated slope reaching down to a lake’s placid waters. A makeshift camp was visible on a level terrace forty paces to his left, a single longhouse flanked by half-buried outbuildings, including stable and coop. The entire arrangement-fortunately unoccupied at the time, excepting a dozen hens and a rooster, one irritated rook with a gimp leg and two milk cows-had been stolen from another realm, captured by some vagary of happenstance, or, more likely, the consequence of the breaking of mysterious laws, as seemed to occur sporadically during Shadow Realm’s endless migration.
However it had arrived, Shadowthrone learned of it in time to despatch a flurry of wraiths to lay claim to the buildings and livestock, saving them from predation by roving demons or, indeed, one of the Hounds.
Following the disaster at the First Throne, the score of survivors had been delivered to this place, to wander and wonder at the strange artifacts left by the previous inhabitants: the curved wooden prows surmounting the peaks of the longhouse with their intricate, serpentine carvings; the mysterious totemic jewellery, mostly of silver although amber seemed common as well; the bolts of cloth, wool both coarse and fine; wooden bowls and cups of hammered bronze. Wandering through it all, dazed, a blankness in their eyes…
Recovering.
As if such a thing is possible.
Off to his right, a lone cape-shrouded figure stood at the water’s edge, motionless, seeming to stare out on the unmarred expanse of the lake. There was nothing normal to this lake, Cotillion knew, although the scene it presented from this section of the shore was deceptively serene. Barring the lack of birds. And the absence of molluscs, crustaceans or even insects.
Every scrap of food to feed the livestock-and the miserable rook-was brought in by the wraiths Shadowthrone had assigned to the task. For all of that, the rooster had died mere days after arriving. Died from grief, I expect. Not a single dawn to crow awake.
