Faint jade light limned the broken ground, as if darkness itself could be painted into a mockery of life. The rider who sat upon a motionless, unbreathing horse, was silent, feeling like a creature too vast to approach any shore-he could look on with one dead eye or the other dead eye. He could remember what it was like to be a living thing among other living things.
The heat, the promise, the uncertainties and all the hopes to sweeten the bitterest seas.
But that shore was for ever beyond him now.
They could feel the warmth of that fire. He could not. And never again.
The figure that rose from the dust beside him said nothing for a time, and when she spoke it was in the spirit language-her voice beyond the ears of the living. ‘We all do as we must, Herald.’
‘What you have done, Olar Ethil…’
‘It is too easy to forget.’
‘Forget what?’
‘The truth of the T’lan Imass. Did you know, a fool once wept for them?’
‘I was there. I saw the man’s barrow-the gifts…’
‘The most horrid of creatures-human and otherwise-are so easily, so carelessly recast. Mad murderers become heroes. The insane wear the crown of geniuses. Fools flower in endless fields, Herald, where history once walked.’
‘What is your point, bonecaster?’
‘The T’lan Imass. Slayers of Children from the very beginning. Too easy to forget. Even the Imass themselves, the First Sword himself, needed reminding. You all needed reminding.’
‘To what end?’
‘Why do you not go to them, Toc the Younger?’
‘I cannot.’
‘No,’ she nodded, ‘you cannot. The pain is too great. The loss you feel.’
‘Yes,’ he whispered.
‘Nor should they yield love to you, should they? Any of them. The children…’
‘They should not, no.’
‘Because, Toc the Younger, you are the brother of Onos T’oolan. His true brother now. And for all the mercy that once dwelt in your mortal heart, only ghosts remain. They must not love you. They must not believe in you. For you are not the man you once were.’
‘Did you think I needed reminding, too, Olar Ethil?’
‘I think… yes.’
She was right. He felt inside for the pain he’d thought-he’d believed-he had lived with for so long. As if lived was even the right word. When he found it, he saw at last its terrible truth. A ghost. A memory. I but wore its guise.
The dead have found me.
I have found the dead.
And we are the same.
‘Where will you go now, Toc the Younger?’
He gathered the reins of his horse and looked back at the distant fire. It was a spark. It would not last the night. ‘Away.’
Snow drifted down, the sky was at peace.
The figure on the throne had been frozen, lifeless, for a long, long time.
A fine shedding of dust from the corpse marked that something had changed. Ice then crackled. Steam rose from flesh slowly thickening with life. The hands, gripping the arms of the throne, suddenly twitched, fingers uncurling.
Light flickered in its pitted eyes.
And, looking out from mortal flesh once more, Hood, who had once been the Lord of Death, found arrayed before him fourteen Jaghut warriors. They stood in the midst of frozen corpses, weapons out but lowered or resting across shoulders.
One spoke. ‘What was that war again?’
The others laughed.
The first one continued, ‘Who was that enemy?’
The laughter this time was louder, longer.
‘Who was our commander?’
Heads rocked back and the thirteen roared with mirth.
The first speaker shouted, ‘Does he live? Do we?’
Hood slowly rose from the throne, melted ice streaming down his blackened hide. He stood, and eventually the laughter fell away. He took one step forward, and then another.
The fourteen warriors did not move.
Hood lowered to one knee, head bowing. ‘I seek… penance.’
A warrior far to the right said, ‘Gathras, he seeks penance. Do you hear that?’
The first speaker replied. ‘I do, Sanad.’
‘Shall we give it, Gathras?’ another asked.
‘Varandas, I believe we shall.’
‘Gathras.’
‘Yes, Haut?’
‘What was that war again?’
The Jaghut howled.
The Errant was lying on wet stone, on his back, unconscious, the socket of one eye a pool of blood.
Kilmandaros, breathing hard, stepped close to look down upon him. ‘Will he live?’