The desert sun’s heat was bludgeoning, oppressive. It had a power of its own, transforming the Holy Desert into a prison, pervasive and relentless. Heboric had grown to despise that heat, to curse Seven Cities, to cultivate an abiding hatred for its people. And he was trapped among them, now. The Whirlwind’s barrier was indiscriminate, impassable both to those on the outside and those within-at the discretion of the Chosen One.
Movement to one side, the blur of a slight, dark-haired figure. Who then settled down beside him.
Heboric smiled. ‘I thought I was alone.’
‘We are both alone, Ghost Hands.’
‘Of that, Felisin, neither of us needs reminding.’ Felisin Younger, but that is a name I cannot speak out loud. The mother who adopted you, lass, has her own secrets . ‘What is that you have in your hands?’
‘Scrolls,’ the girl replied. ‘From Mother. She has, it seems, rediscovered her hunger for writing poetry.’
The tattooed ex-priest grunted, ‘I thought it was a love, not a hunger.’
‘You are not a poet,’ she said. ‘In any case, to speak plainly is a true talent; to bury beneath obfuscation is a poet’s calling these days.’
‘You are a brutal critic, lass,’ Heboric observed.
‘ Call to Shadow , she has called it. Or, rather, she continues a poem her own mother began.’
‘Ah, well, Shadow is a murky realm. Clearly she has chosen a style to match the subject, perhaps to match that of her own mother.’
‘Too convenient, Ghost Hands. Now, consider the name by which Korbolo Dom’s army is now called. Dogslayers . That, old man, is poetic. A name fraught with diffidence behind its proud bluster. A name to match Korbolo Dom himself, who stands square-footed in his terror.’ Heboric reached out and plucked the first flower head. He held it to his nose a moment before dropping it into the leather bag at his belt. ‘ “Square-footed in his terror.” An arresting image, lass. But I see no fear in the Napan. The Malazan army mustering in Aren is nothing but three paltry legions of recruits. Commanded by a woman devoid of any relevant experience. Korbolo Dom has no reason to be afraid.’
The young girl’s laugh was a trill that seemed to cut an icy path through the air. ‘No reason, Ghost Hands? Many reasons, in fact. Shall I list them? Leoman. Toblakai. Bidithal. L’oric. Mathok. And, the one he finds most terrifying of all: Sha’ik. My mother. The camp is a snake-pit, seething with dissent. You have missed the last spitting frenzy. Mother has banished Mallick Rel and Pullyk Alar. Cast them out. Korbolo Dom loses two more allies in the power struggle-’
‘There is no power struggle,’ Heboric growled, tugging at a handful of flowers. ‘They are fools to believe that one is possible. Sha’ik has thrown those two out because treachery flows in their veins. She is indifferent to Korbolo Dom’s feelings about it.’
‘He believes otherwise, and that conviction is more important than what might or might not be true. And how does Mother respond to the aftermath of her pronouncements?’ Felisin swiped the plants before her with the scrolls. ‘With poetry.’
‘The gift of knowledge,’ Heboric muttered. ‘The Whirlwind Goddess whispers in the Chosen One’s ear. There are secrets within the Warren of Shadow, secrets containing truths that are relevant to the Whirlwind itself.’
‘What do you mean?’
Heboric shrugged. His bag was nearly full. ‘Alas, I possess my own prescient knowledge.’ And little good it does me . ‘The sundering of an ancient warren scattered fragments throughout the realms. The Whirlwind Goddess possesses power, but it was not her own, not at first. Just one more fragment, wandering lost and in pain. What was the goddess, I wonder, when she first stumbled onto the Whirlwind? Some desert tribe’s minor deity, I suspect. A spirit of the summer wind, protector of some whirlpool spring, possibly. One among many, without question. Of course, once she made that fragment her own, it did not take long for her to destroy her old rivals, to assert complete, ruthless domination over the Holy Desert.’
‘A quaint theory, Ghost Hands,’ Felisin drawled. ‘But it speaks nothing of the Seven Holy Cities, the Seven Holy Books, the prophecy of Dryjhna the Apocalyptic.’
Heboric snorted. ‘Cults feed upon one another, lass. Whole myths are co-opted to fuel the faith. Seven Cities was born of nomadic tribes, yet the legacy preceding them was that of an ancient civilization, which in turn rested uneasy on the foundations of a still older empire-the First Empire of the T’lan Imass. That which survives in memory or falters and fades away is but chance and circumstance.’