He drew out a cloth to wipe the blood from his dagger, then slipped the long-bladed weapon back into its sheat below his right arm.
One of his mages approached. ‘Truthfinder.’
‘Are we done here?’
‘We are. We found the chamber of the altar. A half-dozen tottering priests and priestesses on their knees beseeching their god for deliverance.’ The mage made a sour face. ‘Alas, the Black-Winged Lord wasn’t home.’
‘What a surprise.’
‘Yes, but there was one, sir. A surprise, that is.’
‘Go on.’
‘That altar, sir, it was truly sanctified.’
Orbyn glanced at the mage with narrowed eyes. ‘Meaning?’
‘Touched by Darkness, by the Hold itself.’
‘I did not know such a Hold even existed. Darkness?’
‘The Tiles possess an aspect of Darkness, sir, although only the oldest texts make note of that. Of the Fulcra, sir. The White Crow.’
Orbyn’s breath suddenly caught. He stared hard at the mage standing before him, watched the shadows flit over the man’s lined face. ‘The White Crow. The strange Edur who accompanies Fear Sengar is so named.’
‘If that stranger is so named, then he is not Tiste Edur, sir.’
‘Then what?’
The mage gestured at the bodies lying on all sides. ‘Tiste Andii, they call themselves. Children of Darkness. Sir, I know little of this… White Crow, who travels with Fear Sengar. If indeed they walk together, then something has changed.’
‘What do you mean?’
The Edur and the Andii, sir, were most vicious enemies. If what we have gleaned from Edur legends and the like holds any truth, then they warred, and that war ended with betrayal. With the slaying of the White Crow.’ The mage shook his head. ‘That is why I do not believe in this White Crow who is with Fear Sengar-it is but a name, a name given in error, or perhaps mockery. But if I am wrong, sir, then an old feud has been buried in a deep grave, and this could prove… worrisome.’
Orbyn looked away. ‘We have slaughtered the last of these Andii, have we not?’
‘In this place, yes. Should we be confident that they are the last Andii left? Even in Bluerose? Did not the Edur find kin across the ocean? Perhaps other contacts were made, ones our spies in the fleets did not detect. I am made uneasy, sir, by all of this.’
You do not stand alone in that, mage. ‘Think more on it,’ he said.
‘1 shall.’
As the mage turned to leave Orbyn reached out a huge, plump hand to stay him. ‘Have you spoken with the Factor?’
A frown, as if the mage had taken offence at the question. ‘Of course not, sir.’
‘Good. Of the altar, and the sanctification, say nothing.’ He thought for a moment, then added, ‘Of your other thoughts, say nothing as well.’
‘I would not have done otherwise, sir.’
‘Excellent. Now, gather our soldiers. I would we leave here as soon as we can.’
‘Yes sir, with pleasure.’
heave Letur Anict to his world made simpler. What he would have it to be and what it is, are not the same. And that, dear Factor, is the path to ruin. You will walk it without me.
Clip stood facing south. His right hand was raised, the chain and its rings looped tight. He’d not spun it for more than a dozen heartbeats. His hair, left unbound, stirred in the wind. A few paces away, Silchas Ruin sat on a boulder, running a whetstone along the edge of one of his singing swords.
Snow drifted down from a pale blue sky, some high-altitude version of a sun-shower, perhaps, or winds had lifted the flakes from the young peaks that reared on all sides but directly ahead. The air was bitter, so dry that wool sparked and crackled. They had crossed the last of the broken plateau the day before, leaving behind the mass of shattered black stone that marked its cratered centre. The climb this morning had been treacherous, as so many slabs of stone under foot were sheathed in ice. Reaching the crest of the caldera in late afternoon light, they found themselves looking upon a vast descending slope, stretching north for half a league or more to a tundra plain. Beyond that the horizon reached in a flat, hazy white line. Ice fields, Fear Sengar had said, to which Udinaas had laughed.
Seren Pedac paced restlessly along the ridge. She had been walking with the others, well behind Clip and Silchas Ruin. There was light left to continue, yet the young Tiste Andii had perched himself on the crest to stare back the way they had come. Silent, expressionless.
She walked over to stand before Udinaas, who had taken to carrying the Imass spear again and was now seated on a rock poking the spear’s point into the mossy turf. ‘What is happening here?’ she asked him in a low voice. ‘Do you know?’