‘To fight,’ finished Skwish.
‘But …’ they deserve better .
‘Go down t’the Shore, Highness. Een you tain’t above the First Shore.’
Yan Tovis grimaced. ‘You think to force me, Pully? Skwish?’
‘If yer brother—’
‘Hadn’t killed all your allies,’ Yan Tovis said, nodding. ‘Yes. Oddly enough, I don’t think he fully comprehended the consequences. Did he? A hundred and more witches and warlocks … yes, they could compel me, perhaps. But you two? No.’
‘Is a mistake, Highness.’
‘Didn’t stop you feeding on my blood, did it? Made young again, and now you roll like sluts in every man’s tent.’
‘Een Witchslayer says—’
‘Yes, you all say. “Kneel, O Queen.” “Surrender to the Shore, sister.” You know, the only person here who comes close to understanding me isn’t even human. And what did I do? I destroyed the friendship growing between us by forcing her on to the Throne of Dark. I fear she will never forgive me.’ Yan Tovis gestured suddenly. ‘Both of you, leave me now.’
‘As witches we got to warn yee—’
‘And so you have, Pully. Now go, before I call Yedan up here to finish what he started all those months ago.’
She listened to their footfalls in the sand, and then through the grasses.
Below, on the Shore, Captain Pithy was departing, moving off to the left, probably making her way to the Letherii encampment. Her brother remained, though now he began walking the length of the strand. Like a caged cat .
But remember, dear brother. The Hust sword broke .
She lifted her gaze, studied the hissing storm of light, high above the blurred shapes of Liosan warriors. She was not sure, but at times lately she’d thought she’d seen vast shapes wheeling up there.
Clouds. Thunderheads .
Rightness was a vicious word. Is it right to demand this of us? Is it right to invite us in one breath and threaten us in the next? Am I not queen of the Shake? Are these not my subjects? You would I simply give them to you? Their blood, their lives?
Errant’s nudge, how I envy Sandalath Drukorlat, the Queen with no subjects .
The liquid sky of Lightfall was a thick, opaque swirl. No thunder-heads today. Seeing that should have relieved her, but it didn’t.
Upon the Great Spire overlooking Kolanse Bay, five Pures ascended the steep stairs carved into the crater’s ravaged flank. To their right, as they climbed towards the Altar of Judgement, the slope fell away to a sheer cliff, and far below the seas thrashed, the waters raging into foaming spume the colour of mare’s milk. Centuries of pounding fury had gnawed into the Spire, down to its very roots, apart from a narrow, treacherous isthmus on the inland side.
From above, foul winds bled down, pulled towards the waves in endless streams. At times Shriven had been poisoned in their pilgrimage, here on the weathered pumice steps, but the Pures could withstand such vicissitudes, and when they passed the shrivelled corpses huddled against the stairs they simply stepped over them.
The Pure who was named Reverence led the way. She was Eldest among those who remained in close proximity to the Great Spire. Tall even for a Forkrul Assail, she was exceedingly gaunt, almost skeletal. Thousands of years upon this world had turned her once white skin a sickly grey, worn through to bruised tones around her joints, including those of her double-hinged jaw and the vertical epiphysis that bisected her face from chin to forehead. One eye had been blinded centuries past in a battle with a Jaghut, a tusk slash as they struggled to tear out each other’s throat, and the ferocity of that bite had dented the bones of the socket, collapsing the brow ridge on that side.
She favoured her right leg, as the effort of the ascent shot lancing pain through her left hip. A T’lan Imass sword-thrust had very nearly disembowelled her on another rise of stone steps, on a distant continent and long, long ago. Even as the flint weapon stabbed into her, she had torn the warrior’s head from its shoulders. The demands of adjudication are not for the weak , she would say from time to time, whispered as something akin to a mantra, tempering true once more the iron of her will.
Yes, the climb had been a long one, for them all, but soon the summit would heave into view, pure and bristling, and the final death-blows would be delivered. Judgement upon humanity. Judgement upon this broken, wounded world. We shall cleanse. It is not what we chose for ourselves. This burden in truth does not belong to us, but who will stand to defend this world? Who but the Forkrul Assail can destroy all the humans in this realm? Who but the Forkrul Assail can slay their venal gods?