Hoofs kicked at her, and then settled.
She heard laughter in her head-not her own, something cold, contemptuous, fading now into some inner distance, until even the echoes were gone.
Ralata rose to her feet. The thing had flown northeastward. Of course, there could be no tracking such a creature, but at least she had a direction.
She had failed to protect her kin. Perhaps, however, she could avenge them.
The Wastelands were well named, but Torrent had always known that. He had last found water two days past, and the skins strapped to his saddle would suffice him no more than another day. Travelling at night was the only option, now that the full heat of summer had arrived, but his horse was growing gaunt, and all that he could see before them beneath dull moonlight was a vast, flat stretch of sunbaked clay and shards of broken stone.
The first night following the gate and his parting ways with Cafal and Setoc, he had come upon a ruined tower, ragged as a rotten fang, the walls of which seemed to have melted under enormous heat. The destruction was so thorough not a single window or dressed facing survived, and much of the structure’s skeleton was visible as sagging latticework snarled with twisted ropes of rusting metal wire. He had never before seen anything remotely like it, and superstitious fear kept him from riding closer.
Since then, Torrent had seen nothing of interest, nothing to break the monotony of the blasted landscape. No mounds, no hills, not even ancient remnants of myrid, rodara and goat pens, as one often found on the Awl’dan.
It was nearing dawn when he made out a humped shape ahead, directly in his path, barely rising above the cracked rock. The ripple of furs-a torn, frayed hide riding hunched, narrow shoulders. Thin, grey hair seeming to float up from the head in the faint, sighing wind. A girdled skirt of rotted strips of snakeskin flared out from the seated form. He drew closer. The figure’s back was to Torrent, and beyond the wind-tugged hair and accoutrements, it remained motionless as he walked his horse up and halted five paces behind it.
A corpse? From the weathered pate beneath the sparse hair, it was likely. But who would have simply left one of their own out on this lifeless pan?
When the figure spoke, Torrent’s horse started back, nostrils flaring. ‘The fool. I needed him.’
The voice was rough as sand, hollow as a wind-sculpted cave. He could not tell if it belonged to a man or a woman.
It uttered something between a sigh and a hissing snarl, and then asked, ‘What am I to do now?’
The Awl warrior hesitated, and then said, ‘You speak the language of my people. Are you Awl? No, you cannot be. I am the last-and what you wear-’
‘You have no answer, then. I am used to disappointment. Indeed, surprise is an emotion I have not known for so long, I believe I have forgotten its taste. Be on your way then-this world and its needs are too vast for one such as you. He would have fared better, of course, but now he’s dead. I am so… irritated.’
Torrent dismounted, collecting one of his waterskins. ‘You must be thirsty, old one.’
‘Yes, my throat is parched, but there is nothing you can do for that.’
‘I have some water-’
‘Which you need more than I do. Still, it is a kind gesture. Foolish, but most kind gestures are.’
When he walked round to face the elder, he frowned. Much of the face was hidden in the shadow of protruding brows, but it seemed it was adorned in rough strings of beads or threads. He caught the dull gleam of teeth and a shiver whispered through him. Involuntarily he made a warding gesture with his free hand.
Rasping laughter. ‘Your spirits of wind and earth, warrior, are my children . And you imagine such fends work on me? But wait, there is this, isn’t there? The long thread of shared blood between us. I might be foolish, to think such things, but if anyone has earned the right to be a fool, it must surely be me. Thus yielding this… gesture.’
The figure rose in a clatter of bones grating in dry sockets. Torrent saw the long tubes of bare, withered breasts, the skin patched and rotted; a sagging belly cut and slashed, the edges of the wounds dry and hanging, and in the gashes themselves there was impenetrable darkness-as if this woman was as dried up inside as she was on the outside.
Torrent licked parched lips, struggled to swallow, and then spoke in a hushed tone, ‘Woman, are you dead?’
‘Life and death is such an old game. I’m too old to play. Did you know, these lips once touched those of the Son of Darkness? In our days of youth, in a world far from this one-far, yes, but little different in the end. But what value such grim lessons? We see and we do, but we know nothing.’ A desiccated hand made a fluttering gesture. ‘The fool presses a knife to his chest. He thinks it is done. He too knows nothing, because, you see, I will not let go .’