Gone. The Tiste Andii had vanished, that red dragon with them, leaving everything else behind. Books, treasures, everything. Not a word to anyone, not a single hint. Damned mysterious, but then what was odd about that? They weren’t human. They didn’t think like humans. In fact —
‘ Gods below! ’
From the high palace, from the towers, a sudden conflagration, swirling darkness that spread out in roiling clouds, and then broke into pieces .
Shouts from the crews. Fear, alarm. Dread .
Distant cries … raining down .
Spindle was on his knees, the tin cup rolling away from trembling hands. The last time … gods! The last time he’d seen —
Great Ravens filled the sky. Thousands, spinning, climbing, a raucous roar. The sun momentarily vanished behind their vast cloud .
Shivering, his peace shattered, he could feel old tears rising from some deep well inside. He’d thought it sealed. Forgotten. But no . ‘ My friends ,’ he whispered . ‘ The tunnels … oh, my heart, my heart …’
Great Ravens, pouring out from the high places of the city, winging ever higher, massing, drifting out over the bay .
‘ Leaving. They’re leaving .’
And as they swarmed above the city, as they boiled out over the sea to the east, a hundred horrid, crushing memories wheeled into Spindle, and there took roost .
Only a bastard would say it had all been for the good. That the finding of faith could only come from terrible suffering. That wisdom was borne on scars. Only a bastard .
He knelt .
And as only a soldier could, he wept .
Something had drawn Banaschar to the small crowd of soldiers. It might have been curiosity; at least, that was how it must have looked, but the truth was that his every motion now, from one place to next, was his way of fleeing. Fleeing the itch. The itch of temple cellars, of all that had been within my reach. If I could have known. Could have guessed .
The Glass Desert defied him. That perfect luxury that was a drunk’s paradise, all that endless wine that cost him not a single coin, was gone. I am damned now. As I swore to Blistig, as I said to them all, sobriety has come to pass for poor old Banaschar. Not a drop in his veins, not a hint upon his fevered breath. Nothing of the man he was .
Except for the itch .
The soldiers – regulars, he thought – were gathered about an overturned boulder. They’d been rolling it to pin down a corner of the kitchen tent. There’d been something hiding under it.
Banaschar edged in for a look.
A worm, coiled in sleep, though it had begun to stir, lifting a blind head. Long as an eel from Malaz Harbour, but there the similarity ended. This one had mouths all over it.
‘Can’t say I like the look of that thing,’ one of the soldiers was saying.
‘Looks slow,’ observed another.
‘You just woke it up. It crawls by day, is my guess. All those hungry mouths … Hood’s breath, we better turn all the rocks in camp. The thought of lying down to sleep with them out hunting whatever …’
Someone glanced up and noticed Banaschar. ‘Look, that useless priest of D’rek’s here. What, come for a look at your baby?’
‘Myriad are the forms of the Autumn Worm—’
‘What’s that? A myrid worm, y’say?’
‘I’ve seen the like,’ Banaschar said, silencing them all. In my dreams. When the itch turns to something that bites. That chews and gnaws and I can’t see it, can’t find it. When I scream in the night . ‘That was good advice,’ he added. ‘Scour the camp – spread the word. Find them. Kill them all.’
A boot heel slammed down.
The worm writhed, and then uncoiled and lifted its head as would a spitting serpent.
Soldiers backed away, swearing.
Banaschar was jostled to one side. Iron flashed, a sword blade descending, slicing the worm in two. He looked up to see Faradan Sort. She glowered at the ring of soldiers. ‘Stop wasting time,’ she snapped. ‘The day grows hotter, soldiers. Get this done and then find some shade.’
The two sections of the worm had squirmed until contacting one another, at which point they constricted in mortal battle.
Someone threw a coin down, puffing dust. ‘The shorter myrid.’
‘I’ll see you on that.’ A second coin landed near the first one.
Faradan Sort’s sword lashed down, again and again, until bits of worm lay scattered glistening in the white dust. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘the next bet I hear placed – on anything – will see the fool hauling water from here to the Eastern Ocean. Am I understood? Good. Now get to work, all of you.’