'I can think of a hundred names of those who, in my place right now, would not hesitate.'
Barathol's brows rose. 'A hundred names, you say. And how many of those names still belong to the living?'
L'oric's mouth thinned into a straight line.
'Do you believe,' Barathol went on, 'that I simply walked from Aren all those years ago? I was not the only survivor, High Mage. They came after me. It was damned near one long running battle from Aren Way to Karashimesh. Before I left the last one bleeding out his life in a ditch. You may know my name, and you may believe you know my crime… but you were not there. Those that were are all dead. Now, are you really interested in picking up this gauntlet?'
'They say you opened the gates-'
Barathol snorted, walked over towards, the jug of rum Nulliss had set on the bar. 'Ridiculous. T'lan Imass don't need gates.' The Semk witch found an empty tankard and thunked it on the counter. 'Oh, I opened them all right – on my way out, on the fastest horse I could find. By that time, the slaughter had already begun.'
'Yet you did not stay, did you? You did not fight, Barathol Mekhar!
Hood take you, man, they rebelled in your name!'
'Too bad they didn't think to ask me first,' he replied in a growl, filling the tankard. 'Now, put that damned sword away, High Mage.'
L'oric hesitated, then he sagged where he stood and slowly resheathed the weapon. 'You are right. I am too tired for this. Too old.' He frowned, then straightened again. 'You thought those T'lan Imass were here for you, didn't you?'
Barathol studied the man over the battered rim of the tankard, and said nothing.
L'oric ran a hand through his hair, looked round as if he'd forgotten where he was.
'Hood's bones, Nulliss,' Barathol said in a sigh, 'find the poor bastard a chair, will you?'
The grey haze and its blinding motes of silver slowly faded, and all at once Felisin Younger could feel her own body again, sharp stones digging into her knees, the smell of dust, sweat and fear in the air.
Visions of chaos and slaughter filled her mind. She felt numbed, and it was all she could do to see, to register the shape of things about her. Before her, sunlight flung sharp-edged shafts against a rock wall rent through with stress fractures. Heaps of windblown sand banked what used to be broad, shallow stone steps that seemed to lead up into the wall itself. Closer, the large knuckles, pale beneath thin, weathered skin, of the hand that clutched her right arm above the elbow, the exposed ligaments of the wrist stretching, making faint sounds like twisting leather. A grip she could not break – she had exhausted herself trying. Close and fetid, the reek of ancient decay, and visible – every now and then – a blood-smeared, rippled blade, broad near its hooked point, narrowing down at the leather-wrapped handle. Black, glassy stone, thinned into translucence along the edge.
Others stood around her, more of the dread T'lan Imass. Spattered with blood, some with missing or mangled limbs, and one with half its face smashed away – but this was old damage, she realized. Their most recent battle, no more than a skirmish, had cost them nothing.
The wind moaned mournfully along the rock wall. Felisin pushed herself to her feet, scraped the embedded stones from her knees. They're dead.
They're all dead. She told herself this again and again, as if the words were newly discovered – not yet meaningful to her, not yet a language she could understand. My friends are all dead. What was the point of saying them? Yet they returned again and again, as if desperate to elicit a response – any response.
A new sound reached her. Scrabbling, seeming to come from the cliffface in front of them. Blinking the stinging sweat from her eyes, she saw that one of the fissures looked to have been widened, the sides chipped away as if by a pick, and it was from this that a bent figure emerged. An old man, wearing little more than rags, covered in dust.
Suppurating sores wept runny liquid on his forearms and the backs of his hands.
Seeing her, he fell to his knees. 'You have come! They promised – but why would they lie?' Amidst the words issuing from his mouth were odd clicking sounds. 'I will take you, now – you'll see. Everything is fine. You are safe, child, for you have been chosen.'
'What are you talking about?' Felisin demanded, once again trying to tug her arm free – and this time she succeeded, as the deathly hand unclenched. She staggered.
The old man leapt to his feet and steadied her. 'You are exhausted – no surprise. So many rules were broken to bring you here-'