‘In which,’ Emroth said, ‘I now see my destruction.’
‘Not necessarily. A lot depends on our little conversation here. You say you have knelt before a god-no, it’s all right, I’ve already worked out who, Emroth. And you’re now doing its bidding.’ Hedge eyed the cusser in his hand. Its weight felt just right. It’s here, just like back at the Deragoth statues. No different at all. ‘I’ve walked a long way,’ he resumed, ‘starting out in the Jaghut underworld. I don’t recall crossing any obvious borders, or stepping through any gates. And the ice fields we’ve been crossing for what must have been weeks, well, that made sense, too. In fact, I’m not even much surprised we found the Ice Throne-after all, where else would it be?’ With his free hand he gestured at the forest-clad expanse before them. ‘But this…’
‘Yes,’ said the T’lan Imass. ‘You held to the notion of distinction, as do all your kind. The warrens. As if each was separate-’
‘But they are,’ Hedge insisted. ‘I’m not a mage, but I knew one. A very good one, with more than a few warrens at his disposal. Each one is an aspect of power. There are barriers between them. And chaos at their roots, and threading in between.’
‘Then what do you see here, Ghost?’
‘I don’t know, but it isn’t Jaghut. Yet now, well, I’m thinking it’s Elder, just like Jaghut. An Elder Warren. Which doesn’t leave many options, does it? Especially since this is your destination.’
‘In that you would be wrong,’ Emroth replied.
‘But you recognize it.’
‘Of course. It is Tellann. Home.’
‘Yet it’s here, trapped in the Jaghut underworld, Emroth. How can that be?’
‘I do not know.’
‘If it’s not your destination, then, I think I need to know if our finding it changes anything. For you, I mean.’
The head cocked yet further. ‘And upon my answer hangs my fate, Ghost?’
Hedge shrugged. The cusser was too real all right: his arm had begun to ache.
‘I have no answer for you,’ Emroth said, and Hedge might have heard something like regret in the creature’s voice, although more likely that was just his imagination. ‘Perhaps, Ghost,’ she continued after a moment, ‘what we see here is an example of this manifestation of the will.’
The sapper’s eyes widened. ‘Whose?’
‘In the Jaghut Wars, many T’lan Imass fell. Those who could not flee what remained of their bodies were left where they fell, for they had failed. On rare occasions, a Fallen would be gifted, so that its eternal vision looked out upon a vista rather than a stretch of ground or the darkness of earth. The T’lan Imass who were more thoroughly destroyed were believed to have found oblivion. True nonexistence, which we came to hold as the greatest gift of all.’
Hedge glanced away. These damned T’lan Imass were heartbreakers, in every sense of the term.
‘Perhaps,’ Emroth continued, ‘for some, oblivion was not what they found. Dragged down into the Jaghut underworld, the Jaghut realm of death. A place without the war, without, perhaps, the Ritual itself.’
‘Without the war? This is the Jaghut underworld-shouldn’t it be filled with Jaghut? Their souls? Their spirits?’
‘The Jaghut do not believe in souls, Ghost.’
Hedge stared, dumbfounded. ‘But… that’s ridiculous. If no souls, then how in Hood’s name am I here?’
‘It occurs to me,’ Emroth said with rasping dryness, ‘that manifestation of the will can go both ways.’
‘Their disbelief annihilated their own souls? Then why create an underworld?’
‘Verdith’anath is an ancient creation. It may be that the first Jaghut souls found it not to their liking. To create a realm of death is the truest manifestation of will, after all. And yet, what is created is not always solely what was willed. Every realm finds… resident beings. Every realm, once formed, is rife with bridges, gates, portals. If the Jaghut did not find it to their liking, other creatures did.’
‘Like your T’lan Imass.’
‘In the ages of ice that beset our kind,’ Emroth said, ‘there existed pockets of rich land, often surrounded in ice, yet resisting its fierce power. In these pockets, Ghost, the old ways of the Imass persisted. Places of forests, sometimes tundra, and, always, the beasts we knew so well. Our name for such a place was Farl ved ten ara. A refugium.’
Hedge studied the forested hills. ‘There are Imass in there.’