Divided soul. Yours, Rhulad, has been cut in two. By that sword, by the spilled blood between you and each of your brothers, between you and your parents. Between you and your kind. What would you give me, Rhulad Sengar of the Hiroth Tiste Edur, to be healed?
Assuming I could manage such a thing, of course. Which I cannot.
But it was clear to the Errant now that Rhulad had begun to understand one thing at least. The fast approach of convergence, the dread gathering and inevitable clash of powers. Perhaps the Crippled God had been whispering in his sword-bearer’s ear. Or perhaps Rhulad was not quite the fool most believed him to be. Even me, on occasion-and who am I to sneer in contempt? A damned Letherii witch swallowed one of my eyes!
The growing fear was undisguised in the Emperor’s face. Coins bedded in burnt skin. Mottled pocking where the coins were gone. Brutal wealth and wounded penury, two sides of yet another curse to plague this modern age. Yes, divide humanity’s soul. Into the haves, the have’nots. Rhulad, you are in truth a living symbol. But that is a weight no-one can bear for very long. You see the end coming. Or, many endings, and yes, one of them is yours.
Shall it be this foreign army that has, in Triban Gnol’s clever words, proclaimed itself a champion?
Shall it be Icarium, Stealer of Life? The Wanderer through Time?
Or something far more sordid-some perfect ambush by Hannan Mosag; or one final betrayal to annihilate you utterly, as would one committed by your Chancellor?
And why do I believe the answer will be none of those? Not one. Not a single thing so… so direct. So obvious.
And when will this blood stop seeping from this socket? When will these crimson tears end?
The Errant melted into the wall behind him. He’d had enough of Rhulad’s private face. Too much, he suspected, like his own. Imagined unwatched-but am I too being watched? Whose cold gaze is fixed on me, calculating meanings, measuring weaknesses?
Yes, see where I weep, see what I weep.
And yes, this was all by a mortal’s hand.
He moved quickly, unmindful of barriers of mortar and stone, of tapestry and wardrobe, of tiled floors and ceiling beams. Through darkness and light and shadows in all their flavours, into the sunken tunnels, where he walked through ankle-deep water without parting its murky surface.
Into her cherished room.
She had brought stones to build platforms and walkways, creating a series of bridges and islands over the shallow lake that now flooded the chamber. Oil lamps painted ripples and the Errant stood, taking form once more opposite the misshapen altar she had erected, its battered top crowded with bizarre votive offerings, items of binding and investiture, reliquaries assembled to give new shape to the god’s worship. To the worship of me. The gnostic chthonic nightmare might have amused the Errant once, long ago. But now he could feel his face twisting in disdain.
She spoke from the gloomy corner to his left. ‘Everything is perfect, Immortal One.’
Solitude and insanity, most natural bedmates. ‘Nothing is perfect, Feather Witch. Look, all around you in this place-is it not obvious? We are in the throes of dissolution-’
‘The river is high,’ she said dismissively. ‘A third of the tunnels I used to wander are now under water. But I saved all the old books and scrolls and tablets. I saved them all.’
Under water. Something about that disturbed him-not the obvious thing, the dissolution he had spoken of, but… something else.
‘The names,’ she said. ‘To release. To bind. Oh, we shall have many servants, Immortal One. Many.’
‘I have seen,’ the god said, ‘the fissures in the ice. The meltwater. The failing prison of that vast demon of the sea. We cannot hope to enslave such a creature. When it breaks free, there will be devastation. Unless, of course, the Jaghut returns-to effect repairs on her ritual. In any case-and fortunately for everyone-I do not believe that Mael will permit it to get even that far-to escape.’
‘You must stop him!’ Feather Witch said in a hiss.
‘Why?’
‘Because I want that demon!’
‘I told you, we cannot hope to-’
‘I can! I know the names! All of the names!’
He stared across at her. ‘You seek an entire pantheon, Feather Witch? Is one god under your heel not enough?’
She laughed, and he heard something splash in the water near her. ‘The sea remembers. In every wave, every current. The sea, Immortal One, remembers the shore.’
‘What-what does that mean?’
Feather Witch laughed again. ‘Everything is perfect. Tonight, I will visit Udinaas. In his dreams. By morning he will be mine. Ours.’