'No, Kruppe, I am not.'
'Shall we await them?'
'Something tells me they prefer it this way — at a distance. We go on, Daru. We're almost there.'
Kruppe scanned the low grass-backed hills on all sides. The sun's morning light was sharp, stripping away the last of shadows in the broad, shallow basins. They were, barring the two Malazan soldiers a thousand paces behind them, entirely alone. 'A modest army, it seems,' he observed. 'Entrenched in gopher holes, no doubt.'
'Their gift, and curse,' Silverfox replied. 'As dust, in all things, the T'lan Imass.'
Even as she spoke — their mounts carrying them along at a slow trot — shapes appeared on the flanking hills. Gaunt wolves, loping in silence. The T'lan Ay, at first only a score to either side, then in their hundreds.
Kruppe's mule brayed, ears snapping and head tossing. 'Be calmed, beast!' the Daru cried, startling the animal yet further.
Silverfox rode close and stilled the mule with a touch to its neck.
They approached a flat-topped hill between two ancient, long-dry river beds, the channels wide, their banks eroded to gentle slopes. Ascending to the summit, Silverfox reined in and dismounted.
Kruppe hastily followed suit.
The T'lan Ay remained circling at a distance. The wolves numbered in the thousands, now, strangely spectral amidst the dust lifted into the air by their restless padding.
Arriving behind Rhivi and Daru, and ignored by the T'lan Ay, the two marines walked their horses up the slope.
'It's going to be a hot one,' one commented.
'Plenty hot,' the other woman said.
'Good day to miss a scrap, too.'
'That it is. Wasn't much interested in fighting Tenescowri in any case. A starving army's a pathetic sight. Walking skeletons-'
'Curious image, that,' Kruppe said. 'All things considered.'
The two marines fell silent, studying him.
'Excuse my interrupting the small talk,' Silverfox said drily. 'If you would all take position behind me. Thank you, no, a little farther back. Say, five paces, at the very least. That will do. I'd prefer no interruptions, if you please, in what follows.'
Kruppe's gaze — and no doubt that of the women flanking him — had gone past her, to the lowlands surrounding the hill, where squat, fur-clad, desiccated warriors were rising from the ground in a sea of shimmering dust. A sudden, uncannily silent conjuration.
As dust, in all things.
But the dust had found shape.
Uneven ranks, the dull glimmer of flint weapons a rippling of grey, black and russet brown amidst the betel tones of withered, polished skin. Skull helms, a few horned or antlered, made of every slope and every basin a spread of bone, as of stained, misaligned cobbles on some vast plaza. There was no wind to stir the long, ragged hair that dangled beneath those skullcaps, and the sun's light could not dispel the shadow beneath helm and brow ridge that swallowed the pits of the eyes. But every gaze was fixed on Silverfox, a regard of vast weight.
Within the span of a dozen heartbeats, the plain to all sides had vanished. The T'lan Imass, in their tens of thousands, now stood in its place, silent, motionless.
The T'lan Ay were no longer visible, ranging beyond the periphery of the amassed legions. Guardians. Kin, Hood-forsworn.
Silverfox turned to face the T'lan Imass.
Silence.
Kruppe shivered. The air was pungent with undeath, the gelid exhalation of dying ice, filled with something like loss.
Despair. Or perhaps, after this seeming eternity, only its ashes.
There is, all about us, ancient knowledge — that cannot be denied. Yet Kruppe wonders, are there memories? True memories? Of enlivened flesh and the wind's caress, of the laughter of children? Memories of love?
When frozen between life and death, in the glacial in-between, what can exist of mortal feeling? Not even an echo. Only memories of ice, of ice and no more than that. Gods below. such sorrow.
Figures approached the slope before Silverfox. Weaponless, robed in furs from ancient, long-extinct beasts. Kruppe's eyes focused on one in particular, a broad-shouldered Bonecaster, wearing an antlered skullcap and the stained fur of an arctic fox. With a shock the Daru realized that he knew this apparition.
Ah, we meet again, Pran Chole. Forgive me, but my heart breaks at the sight of you — at what you have become.
The antlered Bonecaster was the first to address Silverfox. 'We are come,' he said, 'to the Second Gathering.'
'You have come,' Silverfox grated, 'in answer to my summons.'