In the silence following that question, they heard, coming from the cave, the first pitiful cry.
‘Did you ever wish, Udinaas, that you could sink inside stone? Shake loose its vast memories-’
The ex-slave glanced at Wither-a deeper smear in the gloom-then sneered. ‘And see what they have seen? You damned wraith, stones can’t see.’
‘True enough. Yet they swallow sound and bind it trapped inside. They hold conversations with heat and cold. Their skins wear away to the words of the wind and the lick of water. Darkness and light live in their flesh-and they carry within them the echoes of wounding, of breaking, of being cruelly shaped-’
‘Oh, enough!’ Udinaas snapped, pushing a stick further into the fire. ‘Go melt away into these ruins, then.’
‘You are the last one awake, my friend. And yes, I have been in these ruins.’
‘Games like those are bound to drive you mad.’
A long pause. ‘You know things you have no right to know.’
‘How about this, then? Sinking into stone is easy. It’s getting out again that’s hard. You can get lost, trapped in the maze. And on all sides, all those memories pressing in, pressing down.’
‘It is your dreams, isn’t it? Where you learn such things. Who speaks to you? Tell me the name of this fell mentor!’
Udinaas laughed. ‘You fool, Wither. My mentor? Why, none other than imagination.’
‘I do not believe you.’
There seemed little point in responding to that declaration. Staring into the flames, Udinaas allowed its flickering dance to lull him. He was tired. He should be sleeping. The fever was gone, the nightmarish hallucinations, the strange nectars that fed the tumbling delusions all seeped away, like piss in moss. The strength 1 felt in those other worlds was a lie. The clarity, a deceit. All those offered ways forward, through what will come, every one a dead end. 1 should have known better.
‘K’Chain Nah’ruk, these ruins.’
‘You still here, Wither? Why?’
‘This was once a plateau on which the Short-Tails built a city. But now, as you can see, it is shattered. Now there is nothing but these dread slabs all pitched and angled-yet we have been working our way downward. Did you sense this? We will soon reach the centre, the heart of this crater, and we will see what destroyed this place.’
‘The ruins,’ said Udinaas, ‘remember cool shadow. Then concussion. Shadow, Wither, in a flood to announce the end of the world. The concussion, well, that belonged to the shadow, right?’
‘You know things-’
‘You damned fool, listen to me! We came to the edge of this place, this high plateau, expecting to see it stretch out nice and flat before us. Instead, it looks like a frozen puddle onto which someone dropped a heavy rock. Splat. All the sides caved inward. Wraith, I don’t need any secret knowledge to work this out. Something big came down from the sky-a meteorite, a sky keep, whatever. We trudged through its ash for days. Covering the ancient snow. Ash and dust, eating into that snow like acid. And the ruins, they’re all toppled, blasted outward, then tilted inward. Out first, in second. Heave out and down, then slide back. Wither, all it takes is for someone to just look. Really look. That’s it. So enough with all this mystical sealshit, all right?’
His tirade had wakened the others. Too bad. Nearly dawn anyway. Udinaas listened to them moving around, heard a cough, then someone hawking spit. Which? Seren? Kettle?
The ex-slave smiled to himself. ‘Your problem, Wither, is your damned expectations. You hounded me for months and months, and now you feel the need to have made it-me-worth all that attention. So here you are, pushing some kind of sage wisdom on this broken slave, but I told you then what I’ll tell you now. I’m nothing, no-one. Understand? Just a man with a brain that, every now and then, actually works. Yes, I work it, because I find no comfort in being stupid. Unlike, I think, most people. Us Letherii, anyway. Stupid and proud of it. Belongs on the Imperial Seal, that happy proclamation. No wonder I failed so miserably.’
Seren Pedac moved into the firelight, crouching down to warm her hands. ‘Failed at what, Udinaas?’
‘Why, everything, Acquitor. No need for specifics here.’
Fear Sengar spoke from behind him. ‘You were skilled, I recall, at mending nets.’
Udinaas did not turn round, but he smiled. ‘Yes, I probably deserved that. My well-meaning tormentor speaks. Well-meaning? Oh, perhaps not. Indifferent? Possibly. Until, at least, I did something wrong. A badly mended net-aaii! Flay the fool’s skin from his back! I know, it was all for my own good. Someone’s, anyway.’