‘I have come for you,’ Gruntle replied.
Her eyes widened and he saw muscles coiling along her shoulders. ‘Do all beasts know riders, then?’
For a moment Gruntle did not comprehend her question, and then under-Standing arrived with sudden heat, sudden interest. ‘Has your soul travelled far, my lady?’
‘Through time. Through unknown distances. This is where my dreams take me every night. Ever hunting, ever tasting blood, ever shying from the path of the likes of you, Lord.’
‘I am summoned by prayer,’ Gruntle said, knowing even as he said it that it was the truth, that the half-human creatures he had left behind did indeed call upon him, as if to invite the killer answered some innate refusal of random chance. He was summoned to kill, he realized, to give proof to the notion of fate.
‘Curious idea, Lord.’
‘Spare them, Lady.’
‘Who!’
‘You know of whom I speak. In this time, there is but one creature that can voice prayers.’
He sensed wry amusement. ‘You are wrong in that. Although the others have no interest in imagining beasts as gods and goddesses.’
‘Others’’
‘Many nights away from this place, there are mountains, and in them can be found fastnesses where dwell the K’Chain Che’Malle. There is a vast river that runs to a warm ocean, and on its banks can be found the pit-cities of the Forkrul Assail. There are solitary towers where lone Jaghut live, waiting to die. There are the villages of the Tartheno Toblakai and their tundra-dwelling cousins, the Neph Trell.’
‘You know this world far better than I do, Lady.’
‘Do you still intend to kill me?’
‘Will you cease hunting the half-humans!’
‘As you like, but you must know, there are times when this beast has no rider. There are times too, I suspect, when the beast you now ride also hunts alone.’
‘I understand.’
She rose from her languid perch, and made her way down the trunk of the tree head first, landing lightly on the soft forest floor. ‘Why are they so important to you!’
‘I do not know. Perhaps I pity them.’
‘For our kind, Lord, there is no room for pity.’
‘I disagree. It is what we can give when we ride the souls of these beasts. Hood knows, it’s all we can give.’
‘Hood!’
‘The God of Death.’
‘You come from a strange world, I think.’
Now this was startling. Gruntle was silent for a long moment, and then he asked, ‘Where are you from, Lady!’
‘A city called New Morn .’
‘I know of a ruin named Morn.’
‘My city is no ruin.’
‘Perhaps you exist in a time before the coming of Hood.’
‘Perhaps .’ She stretched, the glow of her eyes thinning to slits. ‘I am leaving soon, Lord. If you are here when I do, the beast that remains will not take kindly to your presence.’
‘Oh? And would she be so foolish as to attack me?’
‘And die? No. But I would not curse her with terror.’
‘Ah, is that pity, then?’
‘No, it is love.’
Yes, he could see how one could come to love such magnificent animals, and find the riding of their souls a most precious gift. ‘I will go now, Lady. Do you think we will meet again?’
‘It does seem we share the night, Lord.’
She slipped away, and even Gruntle’s extraordinary vision failed him from tracking her beyond a few strides. He swung about and padded off in the opposite direction. Yes, he could feel his own grip here weakening, and soon he would re-turn to his own world. That pallid, stale existence, where he lived as if half blind, half deaf, deadened and clumsy.
He allowed himself a deep cough of anger, silencing the unseen denizens on all sides.
Until some brave monkey, high overhead, flung a stick at him. The thump as it struck the ground near his left hind leg made him start and shy away.
From the darkness overhead he heard chittering laughter.
The storm of chaos cavorted into his vision, consuming half the sky with a swirling madness of lead, grainy black and blazing tendrils of argent. He could see the gust front tearing the ground up in a frenzied wall of dust, rocks and dirt, growing ever closer.
Imminent oblivion did not seem so bad, as far as Ditch was concerned. He was being dragged by the chain shackled to his right ankle. Most of his skin had been scraped away-the white bone and cartilage of his remaining elbow, studded with grit, was visible within haloes of red. His knees were larger versions, and the shackle was slowly carving through his ankle and foot bones. He wondered what would happen when that foot was finally torn off-how it would feel. He’d lie there, motionless at last, perhaps watching that shackle tumble and twist and stutter away. He’d be… free.