Dartun stood up to regard the mess. Blood was sprayed in a circle all around the relic, which remained intact on the ground, a glistening unstained piece of metal. Mere fragments of the boy remained: the odd bone, a tiny segment of skull. At least his fuligin cloak was so intensely dark that the stains were barely showing up on it.

Primed with an explosion detonator. Haven’t seen one of those for a while.

‘They’ll never learn,’ he said out loud; he reached down, scooped up the relic, pocketed it, then walked away.

Two nights earlier, he had felt a stiffness in his legs that he’d never noticed before.

Four days ago, he had grazed his hand on stone, drawing blood.

He’d looked at his injury for an hour, contemplating why this was happening, contemplating that narrowing line between life and death.

If you cannot die, it means you’re not alive to begin with. And now the system of relics is gradually failing me.

Dartun repeated this mantra over and over again in his mind, forcing himself to believe it. Home, in a darkened chamber within the headquarters of the Order of the Equinox, he stared at the relic taken from the dead boy. Every relic was somehow protected against use by any lay person, the secrets of handling it known only to the numerous cultists who frequented these islands. Ignorant meddlers were poisoned for their trouble, or corrupted by holding something unknown, the lucky ones only losing a single limb. Other relics used bolts of energy to stop the heart, and some used a toxic gas. Their fate was never pleasant, but it ensured that cultist secrets remained exactly that. And so it had worked for tens of thousands of years.

He held the artefact up to a shaft of light penetrating a slat in the wooden shutter. This new relic was a type of wend, that would have assisted the Ancients in their travels. Even though it wouldn’t help him regain his immortality, he was always delighted to find another relic, whatever its powers. This one was a particularly wonderful piece of equipment. The internal materials were not of this era, that was nearly always certain, although the casing was some form of current silver, so perhaps it had been modified. Round, fitting easily in the palm of his hand, it absorbed the thin beam of light from the daylight outside, and it held his attention endlessly.

Dartun considered himself the best cultist around. He could not only use relics, but modify them, develop his own devices from the ancient wonders. He could combine them, could manipulate the different technologies for his own research and, over his abnormally long lifetime, he had made countless notes, developed theories, tested them, tried to fill in the numerous gaps in knowledge. He had pushed the boundaries of what was known and, by doing so, blurred the boundaries between life and death. But there was something evading him that he wanted to achieve. And he wanted to attain it more than ever because of his sudden awareness of mortality.

This is the way my world ends, he reflected: not with a whimper, but with a fucking big bang.

Again, today he had contemplated the signs of his ageing.

Deeper lines in his face.

Grey hairs.

Aches.

Cuts and grazes on his skin.

These were the legacy of mortals, things he hadn’t been used to. Every time he identified one of these minor deteriorations, he would stand still and examine it for the best part of an hour, trying to accept the fact that he was dying. It took over nearly every part of his mindspace. There seemed no room to think of anything else.

He finally placed the relic to one side, walked over to one of his numerous bookshelves, selected a notebook. From another shelf he drew a map from a large stack. Then he lit three lanterns, placed one on his desk, set to work.

Last month he had suffered a migraine for two days. His first such inconvenience in hundreds of years.

The main subject of concern for everyone in Villjamur, on Jokull island, and every other island of the Empire, was the Freeze – the ice age, long predicted by astronomers and historians. But it had to have its good points, and for Dartun, it meant that he could finally investigate one of the celebrated myths of the world.

The Realm Gates.

The mythical doors to other worlds. It was said that the Dawnir built them, the race that constructed the islands under the red sun, to link worlds with others. Some priests whispered that there would be direct access to the realms of the gods, some said that instead you could walk straight to the realms of hell. No one seemed to know for certain and, as a result, many assumed that they were simply stories spread by Jorsalir priests. Dartun himself had spent hundreds of years documenting all the historical accounts available. But he had access only to what the empires of the west had detailed, a skewed history. The nations of Varltung and further east passed on their history by word of mouth only, by the warmth of a fire no doubt. Romantic, Dartun thought, but it only gives me one side of the picture. He had, however, pieced together the rough location of where he thought the Realm Gates lay. That meant traversing endless water, over the seas to the north of the Empire’s domains, way beyond Folke and far north of Tineag’l. But the Freeze had now caused the formation of thick and stable ice sheets. It meant he could now explore those regions more easily, without being knocked endless days off course by the hazards of rough seas.

The coming ice age meant he was finally able to travel to other worlds.

The fact that his immortality was fading only spurred him on to achieve this quickly, didn’t it, because there was no more luxury of time. So he would soon be leaving Villjamur accompanied by members of the Order of the Equinox, some of whom had already left in advance. They’d find new worlds to the north. And there was always a vague, desperate hope in his mind that somewhere in these new worlds would lie the technology to help him prolong his life. He had little else to bank on.

There was a knock at the door, and he looked up in surprise. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s me, Verain,’ replied a female voice.

He registered her slender figure before her face; as he tended to do, even though her face was equally exquisite – slender and symmetrical features beneath rook-black hair. She always wore a snug-fitting dark uniform, too. Dartun had come upon her as an orphan girl using a relic to entertain customers for money in some questionable Caveside tavern. Firstly he wondered how she had got hold of it, then he wondered how she had learned to use it. It turned out she’d stolen it off a cultist who’d been trying to get her to give him a blow job, so she’d taken what was his after he’d shown her how to use it. She was only thirteen at the time, but quickwitted from the start. Dartun had immediately hunted down the cultist in question, one from some useless, minor sect. He had beaten him with Dawnir energy and left him with just enough life so that he could realize he didn’t really have a life any more.

It was soon obvious that even at such a young age, Verain connected with the Dawnir technology in a manner worthy of any cultist. So he decided to take her in rather than leave her on the streets of Villjamur. Ten years later, they had entered a relationship. He was flattered by the young woman’s attentions, perhaps, but when he had been immortal he found it easier that way, to be attracted to someone for their looks only, rather than connect with someone who would inevitably die before he did.

Verain smiled at him with one side of her face, as she always did. His attraction to her was mainly sexual. Being immortal meant that he would frequently lose the partners he’d form emotional ties with. None of them had wanted to live forever, even on the rare occasions when he dared to offer that gift, so he had been hurt more times than he cared to remember. It was these light-hearted, purely sexual partnerships that brought him most pleasure, and as little pain as possible. Even now he knew he was dying.