Toll the Hounds

‘Three?’ Tulas Shorn laughed with savage bitterness. ‘What then of Life? Fire and Stone and Wind? What, you fools, of the Hounds of Death? Manifestations, I said. They will turn-they are telling you that! That is why they exist! The fangs, the fury-all that is implacable in nature-each aspect but a variation, a hue in the maelstrom of destruction!’

Tulas Shorn was far enough away now, and the Tiste Edur began veering into a dragon.

As one, all seven Hounds surged forward-but they were too late, as the enormous winged creature launched skyward, rising on a wave of appalling power that sent Cotillion staggering back; that blew through Shadowthrone until he seemed half shredded.

The Soletaken dragon rose higher, as if riding on a column of pure panic, or horror. Or dismay. A pillar reaching for the heavens. Far above, the Great Ravens scattered.

Recovering, Cotillion turned on Shadowthrone. ‘Are we in trouble?’

The ruler of High House Shadow slowly collected himself back into a vaguely human shape. ‘I can’t be sure,’ he said.

‘Why not?’

‘Why, because I blinked.’

Up ahead, the Hounds had resumed their journey. Lock loped a tad too close alongside Shan and she snarled the beast off.

Tongue lolled, jaw hanging in silent laughter.

So much for lessons in hubris.

There were times, Kallor reflected, when he despised his own company. The day gloried in its indifference, the sun a blinding blaze tracking the turgid crawl of the landscape. The grasses clung to the hard earth the way they always did, seeds drifting on the wind as if on sighs of hope. Tawny rodents stood sentinel above warren holes and barked warnings as he marched past. The shadows of circling hawks rippled across his path every now and then.

Despising himself was, oddly enough, a comforting sensation, for he knew he was not alone in his hate. He could recall times, sitting on a throne as if he and it had merged into one, as immovable and inviolate as one of the matching statuesHillside the palace (any one of his innumerable palaces), when he would feel the oceanic surge of hate’s tide. His subjects, tens, hundreds of thousands, each and every one wishing him dead, cast down, torn to pieces. Yet what had he been but the perfect, singular representative of all that they despised within themselves? Who among them would not eagerly take his place? Casting down foul judgements upon all whose very existence offended?

He had been, after all, the very paragon of acquisitiveness. Managing to grasp what others could only reach for, to gather into his power a world’s arsenal of weapons, and reshape that world in hard cuts, to make of it what he willed-not one would refuse to take his place. Yes, they could hate him; indeed, they must hate him, for he embodied the perfection of success, and his very existence mocked their own failures. And the violence he delivered? Well, watch how it played out in smaller scenes everywhere-the husband who cannot satisfy his wife, so he beats her down with his fists. The streetwise adolescent bully, pinning his victim to the cobbles and twisting the hapless creature’s arm. The noble walking past the starving beggar. The thief with the avaricious eye-no, none of these are any different, not in their fundamental essence.

So, hate Kallor even as he hates himself. Even in that, he will do it better. Innate superiority expressed in all manner of ways. See the world gnash its teeth-he answers with a most knowing smile.

He walked, the place where he had begun far, far behind him now, and the place to where he was going drawing ever closer, step by step, as inexorable as this crawling landscape. Let the sentinels bark, let the hawks muse with wary eye. Seeds ride his legs, seeking out new worlds. He walked, and in his mind memories unfolded like worn packets of parchment, seamed and creased, scurried up from the bottom of some burlap sack routed as rats, crackling as they opened up in a rain of flattened moths and insect carcasses.

Striding white-faced and blood-streaked down a jewel-studded hallway, dragging by an ankle the corpse of his wife-just one in a countless succession-her arms trailing behind her limp as dead snakes, their throats slashed open. There had been no warning, no patina of dust covering her eyes when she fixed him with their regard that morning, as he sat ordering the Century Candles in a row on the table between them. As he invited her into a life stretched out, the promise of devouring for ever-no end to the feast awaiting them, no need to ever exercise anything like restraint. They would speak and live the language of excess. They would mark out the maps of interminable expansion, etching the ambitions they could now entertain. Nothing could stop them, not even death itself.

Some madness had afflicted her, like the spurt and gush of a nicked artery-there could be no other cause. Madness it had been. Insanity, to have flung away so much. Of what he offered her. So much, yes, of him. Or so he had told himself at the time, and for decades thereafter. It had been easier that way.