When great powerrs strode on to the field of battle, things had a way of getting out of hand,
Had it been Cowl who first blinked? Bowing out, yielding ground, fleeing?
Of had it been the Son of Darkness
Spinnock doubted be would ever find out. Such questions were not asked of Anomander Rake. Some time later, it was discovered by the Tiste Andii, Cowl had resurfaced, this time in Darujhistan. Causing more trouble. His stay there had been blessedly brief.
Another vision of Silanah, laying the trap for the Jaghut Tyrant in the Gadrobi Hillss. More wounds, more ferocious magic. Wheeling over the ravaged plain. Five Soletaken Tiste Andii whirling round her like crows escorting an eagle.
Perhaps he was alone,’ Spinnock reflected, in his unease with the alliance between the Tiste Andii and the Eleint. There had been a time, after all, when Anomander Rake had warred against the pureblood dragons. When such crea¬tures broke loose from their long-standing servitude to K’rul; when they had sought to grasp power for themselves. The motivation for Rake’s opposition to them was, typically, obscure. Silanah’s arrival-much later-was yet another event shrouded in mystery.
No, Spinnock Durav was far from thrilled by Silanah’s bloodless regard.
He approached the arched entrance to the New Palace, ascending the flagstone ramp. There were no guards standing outside. There never were. Pushing open one of the twin doors, he strode inside. Before him, a buttressed corridor that humans would find unnaturally narrow. Twenty paces in, another archway, opening out into a spacious domed chamber with a floor of polished blackwood inset with the twenty-eight spiralling teiondai of Mother Dark, all in black silver. The inside of the dome overhead was a mirror image. This homage to the goddess who had turned away was, to Spinnock’s mind, extraordinary; appallingly out of place.
Oh, sages might well debate who had done the turning away back then, but none would dismiss the terrible vastness of the schism. Was this some belated effort at healing the ancient wound? Spinnock found that notion unfathomable. And yet, Anomander Rake himself had commissioned the teiondai, the Invisible Sun and its whirling, wild rays of onyx flame.
If Kurald Galain had a heart in this realm’s manifestation of the warren, it was here, in this chamber. Yet he felt no presence, no ghostly breath of power, as he made his way across the floor to the curling bone-white staircase, fust beyond the turn above wavered a pool of lantern light.
Two human servants were scrubbing the alabaster steps. At his arrival they ducked away.
‘Mind the wet,’ one muttered.
‘I’m surprised,’ Spinnock said as he edged past, ‘there’s need to clean these at all. There are all of fifteen people living in this palace.’