He’d tied up his bedroll and had it tucked under an arm. ‘Go on.’

‘Imagine a pool of black water. Depthless, hidden within a cave where no air stirs and nothing drips. The pool’s surface has not known a single ripple in tens of thousands of years. You’ve come to kneel beside it-all your life-but what you see never changes.’

‘All right.’

‘I still see nothing to change that, Withal. But… somewhere far below the surface, in depths unimaginable… something moves.’

‘Sounds like we should be running the other way.’

‘You’re probably right, but I can’t.’

‘This old life of yours, Sand-you’ve said you were not a fighter-you knew nothing of weapons or warfare. So, what were you in this city home of yours?’

‘There were factions-a power struggle.’ She looked away, up the Road. ‘It went on for generations-yes, that may be hard to believe. Generations among the Tiste Andii. You’d think that after the centuries they’d be entrenched, and maybe they were, for a time. Even a long time. But then everything changed-in my life, I knew nothing but turmoil. Alliances, betrayals, war pacts, treacheries. You cannot imagine how such things twisted our civilization, our culture.’

‘Sand.’

‘I was a hostage, Withal. Valued but expendable.’

‘But that’s a not a life! That’s an interruption in a life!’

‘Everything was breaking down.’ We were supposed to be sacrosanct. Precious. ‘It doesn’t matter now,’ she added. ‘It’s not a career I can pick up again, is it?’

He was staring at her. ‘Would you? If you could?’

‘A ridiculous question.’ ‘What’s broken cannot be mended. You broke us, but that is not all-see what you have done.’

‘Sand.’

‘Of course not. Now, saddle up.’

‘But why is he eating his eyes?’

‘Once, long ago, my son, there was nothing but darkness. And that nothing, Orfantal, was everything.’

‘But why-’

‘He is old. He’s seen too much.’

‘He could have just closed them.’

‘Yes, he could have at that.’

‘Mother?’

‘Yes, Orfantal?’

‘Don’t eat your eyes.’

‘Don’t worry. I am like most people. I can keep my eyes and still see nothing.’

Now, woman, you said no such thing. And be thankful for that. The other rule applies. Mouth working, nothing said. And that is the ease we find for ourselves. After all, if we said everything we could say to each other, we’d have all killed each other long ago.

Gallan, you were a poet. You should have swallowed your tongue.

He had hurt someone, once. And he had known he had done so, and knowing led him into feeling bad. But no one enjoys feeling bad. Better to replace the guilt and shame with something turned outward. Something that burned all within reach, something that would harness all his energies and direct them away from himself. Something called anger. By the time he was done-by the time his rage had run its course-he found himself surrounded in ashes, and the life he had known was for ever gone.

Introspection was an act of supreme courage, one that few could manage. But when all one had left to stir was a heap of crumbled bones, there was nothing else one could do. Fleeing the scene only prolonged the ordeal. Memories clung to the horrors in his wake, and the only true escape was a plunge into madness-and madness was not a thing he could simply choose for himself. More’s the pity. No, the sharper the inner landscape, the fiercer the sanity.

He believed that his family name was Veed. He had been a Gral, a warrior and a husband. He had done terrible things. There was blood on his hands, and the salty, bitter taste of lies on his tongue. The stench of scorched cloth still filled his head.

I have slain. In this admission, he had a place to begin.

Then, all these truths assembled themselves into the frame of his future. Leading to his next thought.

I will slay again.

Not one among those he now hunted could hope to stand before him. Their petty kingdom was no more formidable than a termite mound, but to the insects themselves it was majesty and it was permanence and it was these things that made them giants in their own realm. Veed was the boot, the bronze-sheathed toe that sent walls crashing down, delivering utter ruin. It is what I am made to do.

His path was unerring. Into the sunken pit and through the entrance, finding himself in a chamber crowded with reptilian corpses that swarmed with orthen and maggots. He crossed the room and halted before the inner portal.

They were somewhere far above-they had seen him, he was sure of it. Watched him from the eyes or mouth of the dragon. They did not know who he was, and so they had no reason to fear him. Even so, he knew that they would be cautious. If he simply lunged into their midst, blades flashing, some might escape. Some might fight back. A lucky swing… no, he would need his charm, his ability to put them all at ease. It is possible that this cannot be rushed. I see that now. But I have shown patience before, haven’t I? I have shown a true talent for deceit.

Empty huts are not my only legacy, after all.

He sheathed his weapons.

Spat into the palms of his hands, and slicked back his hair. Then set off on the long ascent.

He could howl into their faces, and they would hear nothing. He could close invisible hands about their throats and they would not even shrug. A slayer has come! The one below-I have sailed the storm of his desires-he seeks to murder you all! His wretched family remained oblivious. Yes, they had seen the stranger. They had seen his deliberate path to the great stone edifice they had claimed as their own. And they had then resumed their mundane activities, as if suffering beneath a geas of careless indifference.

Taxilian, Rautos and Breath followed Sulkit as the K’Chain drone laboured over countless mechanisms. The creature seemed immune to exhaustion, as if the purpose driving it surpassed the needs of the flesh. Not even Taxilian could determine if the drone’s efforts yielded any measurable effect. Nothing sprang to sudden life. No hidden gears churned into rumbling action. Darkness still commanded every corridor; feral creatures still scurried in chambers and made nests in the rubbish.

Last and Asane were busy constructing a nest of their own, when they weren’t hunting orthen or collecting water from the dripping pipes. Sheb maintained vigil over the empty wastes from a perch that he called the Crown, while Nappet wandered without purpose, muttering under his breath and cursing his ill luck at finding himself in such pathetic company.

Blind fools, every one of them!

The ghost, who once gloried in his omniscience, fled the singular mind of the Gral named Veed and set out to find the ones accompanying Sulkit. The witch Breath was an adept, sensitive to sorcery. If any of them could be reached, awakened to the extremity of his need, it would be her.

He found them in the circular chamber behind Eyes, but the vast domicile of the now-dead Matron was a realm transformed. The ceiling and walls dripped with bitter slime. Viscid pools sheathed the floor beneath the raised dais and the air roiled with pungent vapours. The vast, sprawling bed that had once commanded the dais now looked diseased, twisted as the roots of a toppled tree. Tendrils hung loose, ends dripping, and the atmosphere shrouding the malformed nightmare on the dais was so thick that all within it was blurred, uncertain, as if in that place reality itself was smudged.

Sulkit stood immobile as a statue in front of the dais, its scales streaming fluids-as if it was melting before their eyes-and strange guttural sounds issuing from its throat.