I willingly followed Toc Anaster, even as I resented it. I have my very own addiction and it is called dissatisfaction. And each time it returns, everyone pays. Cafal, I let you down. I cried out my own failure of faith-I forced you to flee me. Where are you now, my soft-eyed priest?
Baaljagg’s dead eyes fixed on her again and again as they walked. She lagged behind the twins. The boy’s weight was making the muscles of her arms burn. She would have to set him down again, and so their pace would suddenly slow to a crawl. Everyone was hungry-even an undead wolf could find little to chase down out here. The withered grasses of the plains were long behind them now. Soil had given way to stones and hard-packed clay. Thorny shrubs clung here and there, their ancient trunks emerging from beds of cacti. Worn watercourses revealed desiccated pieces of driftwood, mostly no more substantial than the bones of her forearm; but occasionally they came upon something far larger, long and thick as a leg, and though she could not be certain she thought that they showed signs of having been worked. Boreholes large enough to insert a thumb-though of course to do so would invite a spider’s bite or a scorpion’s sting-and the faint scaly signs of adze marks. But none of these ancient streams could have borne a boat of any kind, not even a skiff or raft. She could make no sense of any of it.
The north horizon hinted at high towers of stone, like mountains gnawed through from every side, leaving the peaks tottering on narrow spires. They made her uneasy, as if warning her of something. You are in a land that gives nothing. It will devour you, and there is no end to its vast hunger.
They had made a terrible mistake. No, she’d made it. He was leading us east, so we will go east. Why was he leading us in that direction? Stavi, I have no idea.
But here is a truth I have found inside myself. All that dissatisfaction? It’s not at Toc. It’s not at anyone. It’s with me. My inability to find peace, to trust it when I do find it, and to hold on to it.
This addiction feeds itself. It may be incurable.
Another rutted watercourse ahead-no… Setoc’s eyes narrowed. Two ruts, churned up by horse hoofs. A track. The twins had seen the same, for they suddenly ran ahead, halting and looking down. Setoc didn’t catch their words but both turned as she arrived, and in their faces they saw a hardening determination.
Storii pointed. ‘It goes that way. It goes that way, Setoc.’
‘So will we,’ Stavi added.
Southeast, but curving ahead, she saw. Eastward. What is out there? What are we supposed to find?
‘Blablablabla!’ cried the boy, his loud voice-so close to one ear-making her flinch.