House of Chains

Kalam shrugged. ‘Look, I’m hungry-’

‘Do I look appetising?’ she snapped. A quick, appraising glance at Kalam. ‘Mind you, you do!’ She began searching the small room, sniffing at corners, crouching to peer into the jug. ‘I know every room, every hiding place,’ she muttered, shaking her head. ‘And why not? When veered, I was everywhere-’

‘You’re a Soletaken? Ah, spiders…’

‘Oh, aren’t you a clever and long one!’

‘Why not veer again? Then you could search-’

‘If I veered, I’d be the one hunted! Oh no, old Mogora’s not stupid, she won’t fall for that! I’ll find him! You watch!’ She scurried from the room. Kalam sighed. With luck, his stay with these two would be a short one.

Iskaral Pust’s voice whispered in his ear. ‘That was close!’

Cheekbone and orbital ridge were both shattered, the pieces that remained held in place by strips of withered tendon and muscle. Had Onrack possessed anything more than a shrunken, mummified nugget for an eye, it would have been torn away by the Tiste Liosan’s ivory scimitar.

There was, of course, no effect on his vision, for his senses existed in the ghostly fire of the Tellann Ritual-the unseen aura hovering around his mangled body, burning with memories of completeness, of vigour. Even so, the severing of his left arm created a strange, queasy sense of conflict, as if the wound bled in both the world of the ritual ghost-shape and in the physical world. A seeping away of power, of self, leaving the T’lan Imass warrior with vaguely confused thoughts, a malaise of ephemeral… thinness .

He stood motionless, watching his kin prepare for the ritual. He was outside them, now, no longer able to conjoin his spirit with theirs. From this jarring fact there was emerging, in Onrack’s mind, a strange shifting of perspective. He saw only their physicality now-the ghost-shapes were invisible to his sight.

Withered corpses. Ghastly. Devoid of majesty, a mockery of all that was once noble . Duty and courage had been made animate, and this was all the T’lan Imass were, and had been for hundreds of thousands of years. Yet, without choice, such virtues as duty and courage were transformed into empty, worthless words. Without mortality, hovering like an unseen sword overhead, meaning was without relevance, no matter the nature-or even the motivation behind-an act. Any act.

Onrack believed he was finally seeing, when fixing his gaze upon his once-kin, what all those who were not T’lan Imass saw, when looking upon these horrific, undead warriors.

An extinct past refusing to fall to dust. Brutal reminders of rectitude and intransigence, of a vow elevated into insanity.

And this is how I have been seen. Perhaps how I am still seen. By Trull Sengar. By these Tiste Liosan. Thus. How, then, shall I feel? What am I supposed to feel? And when last did feelings even matter?

Trull Sengar spoke beside him. ‘Were you anyone else, I would hazard to read you as being thoughtful, Onrack.’ He was seated on a low wall, the box of Moranth munitions at his feet.

The Tiste Liosan had pitched a camp nearby, a picket line paced out and bulwarks of rubble constructed, three paces between each single-person tent, horses within a staked-out rope corral-in all, the precision and diligence verging on the obsessive.

‘Conversely,’ Trull continued after a moment, his eyes on the Liosan, ‘perhaps your kind are indeed great thinkers. Solvers of every vast mystery. Possessors of all the right answers… if only I could pose the right questions. Thankful as I am for your companionship, Onrack, I admit to finding you immensely frustrating.’

‘Frustrating. Yes. We are.’

‘And your companions intend to dismantle what’s left of you once we return to our home realm. If I was in your place, I’d be running for the horizon right now.’

‘Flee?’ Onrack considered the notion, then nodded. ‘Yes, this is what the renegades-those we hunt-did. And yes, now I understand them.’

‘They did more than simply flee,’ Trull said. ‘They found someone or something else to serve, to avow allegiance to… while at the moment, at least, that option is not available to you. Unless, of course, you choose those Liosan.’

‘Or you.’

Trull shot him a startled look, then grinned. ‘Amusing.’

‘Of course,’ Onrack added, ‘Monok Ochem would view such a thing as a crime, no different from that which has been committed by the renegades.’

The T’lan Imass had nearly completed their preparations. The bonecaster had inscribed a circle, twenty paces across, in the dried mud with a sharpened bhederin rib, then had scattered seeds and dust-clouds of spores within the ring. Ibra Gholan and his two warriors had raised the equivalent of a sighting stone-an elongated chunk of mortared fired bricks from a collapsed building wall-a dozen paces outside the circle, and were making constant adjustments beneath the confusing play of light from the two suns, under Monok Ochem’s directions.