Watchers of this road and all the fools who travelled it.
Once, on Drift Avalii, almost a year before the first attacks, two half-dead Dal Honese had washed up on the rocky coast. They had been paddling to the island of Geni, for reasons unexplained, in an ancient dugout. Both were naked, as they had used up every scrap of cloth from their garments, to stuff into the cracks in the hull-too many cracks, it turned out, and the beleaguered craft eventually sank, forcing the two men to swim.
The Lord’s nudge brought them to Drift Avalii, and somehow they avoided the murderous reefs and rocks girdling the island.
Dwellers in the dark jungles of their homeland, they were from a tribe ob-sessed with its own ancestors. The dead were not buried. The dead were made part of the mud walls of the village’s huts. When one in a family died, a new room would be begun, at first nothing but a single wall projecting outward. And in that wall was the corpse, clay-filled eye sockets, nose, ears, mouth. Clay like a new skin upon face, limbs, torso. Upright, in cavorting poses as if frozen in a dance. Two more kin needed to die before the room was complete and ready to be roofed with palm fronds and the like.
Some house were big as castles, sprawled out at ground level in a maze of chambers, hundreds of them, dark and airless, in this way, the dead never left, They remained, witnessing all, eternal in judgement this pressure, said the two refugees, could drive one insane, and often did.
The jungle resisted farming. Its soil disliked taming. The huge trees were im-pervious to fire and could turn the edge of an iron axe. Villages were growing too massive, devouring land, while every cleared area around them was exhausted, Rival tribes suffered the same, and before too long wars were unleashed. The dead ancestors demanded vengeance for transgressions. Murdered kin-whose bodies had been stolen and so could not be properly taken care of-represented an open wound, a crime that needed answering.
Blood back and forth, said the two refugees. Blood back and forth, that is all. And when the enemy began destroying villages, burning them to the ground,,,
No answer to the madness but flight.
Nimander thought about all this as he led his mare by the reins along the dusty road. He had no ancestors to haunt him, no ancestors to demand that he do this and that, that he behave in this way but not in that way. Perhaps this was freedom, but it left him feeling strangely… lost.
The two Dal Honese had built a new boat and paddled away-not back home, but to some unknown place, a place devoid of unblinking ghosts staring out from every wall.
Rocking sounds came from the wagon and he turned to see Kallor swinging down on the near side, pausing to adjust his cloak of chain, then walking until he was alongside Nimander.
‘Interesting use of corpses,’ he said.
‘What use would that be?’ Skintick asked with a glance back towards them.
‘To frighten the crows? Not that any right-minded crow would look twice at those foul plants-they’re not even native to this world, after all.’
Nimander saw Skintick’s brows rise. ‘They aren’t?’
Kallor scratched at his beard and, since it seemed he wasn’t in any hurry to re-ply, Skintick faced forward once more.
‘Saemankelyk,’ said Nimander. ‘The Dying God… who will be found in Bas-tion.’
The grey-haired warrior grunted. ‘Nothing changes.’
‘Of course it changes,’ Skintick retorted without turning round. ‘It keeps get-ting worse.’
‘That is an illusion,’ Kallor replied. ‘You Tiste Andii should know that. Your sense of things getting worse comes from growing older. You see more, and what you see wars with your memories of how things used to be.’
‘Rubbish. Old farts like you say that because it suits you. You hope it freezes us in our tracks so we end up doing nothing, which means your precious status quo persists just that much longer-enough for you to live put your life in what-ever comfort you think you’ve earned. You won’t accept culpability for anything, so you tell us that nothing ever changes.’
‘Ah, the fire of youth. Perhaps one day, pup, you’ll be old-assuming your stupidity doesn’t get you killed first-and I’ll find you, somewhere. You’ll be sit-ting on the stone steps of some abandoned temple or, worse, some dead king’s glorious monument. Watching the young people rush by. And I’ll settle down be-side you and ask you: “What’s changed, old man?” And you will squint, chew your gums for a time, then spit on to the cobbles shaking your head.’
‘Plan on living for ever, Kallor?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘What if your stupidity gets you killed?’