The floor was solid rock, uneven and littered with still more bones. No walls were in sight.
The magic that had slowly lowered them dissipated. Pearl took two strides then gestured, and, as if he had flung aside an invisible current, the glimmering outlines of a gate appeared before them. The Claw grunted.
‘Now what?’ Lostara asked.
‘Thyr. Or, to be more precise, the Elder Warren from which Thyr derived. I can’t recall its name. Kurald something. Tiste. Not Edur, not Andu, but the other one. And…’ he added in a low voice, ‘the last things to use it left tracks.’
Lostara stared down at the threshold. Somewhat obscured, but discernible none the less. Dragons . ‘I can make out at least three sets,’ she said after a moment.
‘More like six, maybe more. Those two sets’-he pointed-‘were the last to leave. Big bastards. Well, that answers the question of who, or what, was capable of subduing the Otataral Dragon. Other dragons, of course. Even so, it could not have been easy.’
‘Thyr, you said. Can we use it?’
‘Oh, I imagine so.’
‘Well, what are we waiting for?’
He shrugged. ‘Follow me, then.’
Staying close, she fell in step behind him.
They strode through the gate.
And stumbled into a realm of gold fire.
Wild storms on all horizons, a raging, blinding sky.
They stood on a scorched patch of glittering crystals, the past passage of immense heat having burnished the sharp-edged stones with myriad colours. Other such patches were visible here and there.
Immediately before them rose a pillar, shaped like an elongated pyramid, withered and baked, with only the surface facing them dressed smooth. Words in an unknown language had been carved on it.
The air was searing in Lostara’s lungs, and she was sodden with sweat.
But it was, for the moment, survivable.
Pearl walked up to the pillar.
‘We have to get out of here!’ Lostara shouted.
The firestorms were deafening, but she was certain he heard her, and chose to ignore it.
Lostara rarely tolerated being ignored. She strode after him. ‘Listen to me!’
‘Names!’ He spun to her. ‘The names! The ones who imprisoned the Otataral Dragon! They’re all here!’
A growing roar caught her attention, and she turned to face right-to see a wall of flame rolling towards them. ‘Pearl!’
He looked, visibly blanched. Stepped back-and his foot skidded out from beneath him, dropping him hard onto his backside. Blankly, he reached down under him, and when he brought his gloved hand back up, it was slick with blood.
‘Did you-’
‘No!’ He clambered upright-and now they both saw the blood-trail, cutting crossways over the patch, vanishing into the flames on the other side.
‘Something’s in trouble!’ Pearl said.
‘So are we if we don’t get moving!’
The firestorm now filled half the sky-the heat-
He grasped her arm and they plunged around the pillar-
— into a glittering cavern. Where blood had sprayed, gouted out to paint walls and ceiling, and where the shattered pieces of a desiccated warrior lay almost at their feet.
A T’lan Imass.
Lostara stared down at it. Rotted wolf fur the colour of the desert, a broken bone-hafted double-bladed axe of reddish-brown flint almost entirely obscured beneath a pool of blood. Whatever it had attacked had struck back. The warrior’s chest was crushed flat. Both arms had been torn off at the shoulders. And the T’lan Imass had been decapitated. A moment’s search found the head, lying off to one side.
‘Pearl-let’s get out of here.’
He nodded. Then hesitated.
‘Now what?’
‘Your favourite question,’ he muttered. Then he scrambled over to collect the severed head. Faced her once more. ‘All right. Let’s go.’
The strange cave blurred, then vanished.
And they were standing on a sun-bleached rock shelf, overlooking a stony basin that had once known a stream.
Pearl grinned over at her. ‘Home.’ He held up the ghastly head before him and spoke to it. ‘I know you can hear me, T’lan Imass. I’ll find for you the crotch of a tree for your final resting place, provided I get some answers.’
The warrior’s reply was strangely echoing, the voice thick and halting. ‘What is it you wish to know?’
Pearl smiled. ‘That’s better. First off, your name.’
‘Olar Shayn, of the Logros T’lan Imass. Of Ibra Gholan’s clan. Born in the Year of the Two-Headed Snake-’