House of Chains

‘I’m not sure. I didn’t like their… attention.’

‘I am not surprised,’ Cotillion muttered.

‘I have one more request,’ Cutter said, facing the god again. ‘This task you shall set me on-if I am assailed during it, can I call upon Blind?’

‘The Hound?’ The astonishment was clear in Cotillion’s voice.

‘Aye,’ Cutter replied, his gaze now on the huge beast. ‘Her attention… comforts me.’

‘That makes you rarer than you could imagine, mortal. Very well. If the need is dire, call upon her and she will come.’

Cutter nodded. ‘Now, what would you have me do on your behalf?’

The sun had cleared the horizon when Apsalar returned. After a few hours’ sleep, Cutter had risen to bury Rellock above the tide line. He was checking the boat’s hull one last time when a shadow appeared alongside his own.

‘You had visitors,’ she said.

He squinted up at her, studied her dark, depthless eyes. ‘Aye.’

‘And do you now have an answer to my question?’

Cutter frowned, then he sighed and nodded. ‘I do. We’re to explore an island.’

‘An island? Is it far?’

‘Middling, but getting farther by the moment.’

‘Ah. Of course.’

Of course.

Overhead, gulls cried in the morning air on their way out to sea. Beyond the shoals, their white specks followed the wind, angling south-westward.

Cutter set his shoulder to the prow and pushed the craft back out onto the water. Then he clambered aboard. Apsalar joined him, making her way to the tiller.

What now ? A god had given him his answer.

There had been no sunset in the realm the Tiste Edur called the Nascent for five months. The sky was grey, the light strangely hued and diffuse. There had been a flood, and then rains, and a world had been destroyed.

Even in the wreckage, however, there was life.

A score of broad-limbed catfish had clambered onto the mud-caked wall, none less than two man-lengths from blunt head to limp tail. They were well-fed creatures, their silvery-white bellies protruding out to the sides. Their skins had dried and fissures were visible in a latticed web across their dark backs. The glitter of their small black eyes was muted beneath the skin’s crinkled layer.

And it seemed those eyes were unaware of the solitary T’lan Imass standing over them.

Echoes of curiosity still clung to Onrack’s tattered, desiccated soul. Joints creaking beneath the knotted ropes of ligaments, he crouched beside the nearest catfish. He did not think the creatures were dead. Only a short time ago, these fish had possessed no true limbs. He was witness, he suspected, to a metamorphosis.

After a moment, he slowly straightened. The sorcery that had sustained the wall against the vast weight of the new sea still held along this section. It had crumbled in others, forming wide breaches and foaming torrents of silt-laden water rushing through to the other side. A shallow sea was spreading out across the land on that side. There might come a time, Onrack suspected, when fragments of this wall were this realm’s only islands.

The sea’s torrential arrival had caught them unawares, scattering them in its tumbling maelstrom. Other kin had survived, the T’lan Imass knew, and indeed some had found purchase on this wall, or on floating detritus, sufficient to regain their forms, to link once more so that the hunt could resume.

But Kurald Emurlahn, fragmented or otherwise, was not amenable to the T’lan Imass. Without a Bonecaster beside him, Onrack could not extend his Tellann powers, could not reach out to his kin, could not inform them that he had survived. For most of his kind, that alone would have been sufficient cause for… surrender. The roiling waters he had but recently crawled from offered true oblivion. Dissolution was the only escape possible from this eternal ritual, and even among the Logros-Guardians of the First Throne itself-Onrack knew of kin who had chosen that path. Or worse…

The warrior’s contemplation of choosing an end to his existence was momentary. In truth, he was far less haunted by his immortality than most T’lan Imass.

There was always something else to see, after all.

He detected movement beneath the skin of the nearest catfish, vague hints of contraction, of emerging awareness. Onrack drew forth his two-handed, curved obsidian sword. Most things he stumbled upon usually had to be killed. Occasionally in self-defence, but often simply due to an immediate and probably mutual loathing. He had long since ceased questioning why this should be so.

From his massive shoulders hung the rotted skin of an enkar’al, pebbled and colourless. It was a relatively recent acquisition, less than a thousand years old. Another example of a creature that had hated him on first sight. Though perhaps the black rippled blade swinging at its head had tainted its response.