She felt Hood was with her now, in these hours and those since their return to this world. She found herself musing on him as if he was her lover, driven deep inside her with a claim that felt permanent and oddly reassuring.
And now, I fear only Heboric and Kulp. It's said gods fear mortals more than they do each other. Is that the source of my terror? Have I captured an echo of Hood within me? The god of death must surely dream rivers of blood. Perhaps I have been his all this time.
Thus I am blessed.
Heboric turned suddenly, seeming to regard her with his sunburned, swollen-shut eyes.
Can you now read my mind, old man?
Heboric's broad mouth twisted wryly. After a moment he swung back, continued on.
The chamber ended in a portalway that funnelled their path into a low-ceilinged tunnel. Past torrents of water had smoothed and polished the heavy stones on every side. Kulp maintained the diffuse, sourceless light as they stumbled onward.
We shamble like animated corpses, cursed in a journey without end. Felisin smiled. Hood's own.
They came to what had once been a street, narrow and crooked, its cobbles heaved and buckled. Low residential buildings crowded the sides beneath a roof of crusted, compacted glass. Along all the walls in sight ran narrow bands of similar substance, as if marking water levels or layers in the sand that had once filled every space.
In the street lay more bodies, but there was no peace to be found in their twisted, malformed shapes. Heboric paused, cocking his head. 'Ah, now we come upon altogether different memories.'
Kulp crouched down beside a figure. 'Soletaken, caught in the act of veering. Into something ... reptilian.'
'Soletaken and D'ivers,' the ex-priest said. 'The ritual unleashed powers that ran wild. Like a plague, shapeshifting claimed thousands, unwelcomed, no initiation – many went mad. Death filled the city, every street, every house. Families were torn apart by their own.' He shook himself. 'All within but a handful of hours,' he whispered.
Kulp's eyes fixed on another figure, almost lost in the midst of a pile of mineralized corpses. 'Not just Soletaken and D'ivers...'
Heboric sighed. 'No.'
Felisin approached the subject of the mage's rapt attention. She saw thick, nut-brown limbs – an arm and a leg, still attached to an otherwise dismembered torso. Withered skin wrapped the thick bones. I've seen this before. On the Silanda. T'lan Imass.
'Your immortal custodians,' Kulp said.
'Aye.'
'They took losses here.'
'Oh, that they did,' Heboric said. 'Appalling losses. There is a bond between the T'lan Imass and Soletaken and D'ivers, a mysterious kinship that was unsuspected by the dwellers of this city – though they claimed for themselves the proud title of First Empire. That would have irritated the T'lan Imass – assuming such creatures can feel irritation – to have so boldly assumed a title that rightly belonged to them. Yet what drew them here was the ritual, and the need to set things right.'
Kulp was frowning behind the battered mask of his features. 'Our brushes with Soletaken ... and the Imass. What's beginning again, Heboric?'
'I don't know, Mage. A return to that ancient gate? Another unleashing?'
'That Soletaken dragon we followed ... it was undead.'
'It was T'lan Imass,' the ex-priest elaborated. 'A Bonecaster. Perhaps it is the old gate's custodian, drawn once again in answer to an impending calamity. Shall we move on? I can smell water – the spring we seek lives yet.'
The pool lay in the centre of a garden. Pale undergrowth carpeted the cracked flagstones on the footpath, white and pink leaves like shreds of flesh, colourless globes of some kind of fruit depending from vines wrapping stone columns and fossilized tree trunks. A garden thriving in darkness.
Eyeless white fish darted in the pool, seeking shadows as the sorcerous light pulsed bright.
Felisin fell to her knees, reached trembling hands down, slipped them into the cool water. The sensation rushed through her with ecstasy.
'Residue of alchemies,' Heboric said behind her.
She glanced back. 'What do you mean?'
'There will be .. . benefits ... in drinking this nectar.'
'Is this fruit edible?' Kulp asked, hefting one of the pale globes.
'It was when it was bright red, nine thousand years ago.'
The thick ash hung motionless in their wake for as far as Kalam could see, though distance in the Imperial Warren was not a thing easily gauged. Their trail had the appearance of being as straight as a spear shaft. His frown deepened.