‘Now then. To work.’

Takaar had eaten well that morning. Fish from the tributary of the River Shorth that ran not three hundred yards from him, spouting into a fabulous waterfall down the cliffs a little way to the south. He would need all the strength of that last meal in the hours to come, if his suppositions were correct.

Going back into his hut, Takaar glanced around at the walls and table as he always did.

‘Should I die today, what will be the judgement of the elves when my work is found?’

That you are a filthy coward who has researched a thousand ways to die and yet has not the courage to use any of them on purpose. The fact that your death was an accident would be the final insult.

‘Why do I listen to you?’

Because deep down in the dying embers of your sanity and morality, you know that I am right.

Three hundred pots sat on rough shelves around the walls. Each one marked and named on the carved wood hanging at the right-hand end of each shelf. Too few had detailed descriptions of properties, effects and the more complex notes on mixing and various cooking methods, but even if he did die today, if was a start. A bright TaiGethen or Silent priest could take it on.

Takaar pulled his fine knife from his boot. He’d spent day upon day honing the blade to little more than a spike with a needle tip. He took the cloth lid from the venom pot and looked inside. The taipan had yielded a decent amount of the toxin. More than enough to kill him a hundred times over.

Takaar dipped his knife point into the pot and withdrew it, assessing the small teardrop glistening on it. It was mid-sized in his terms. A gamble given what he’d seen out in the wild. He did his last equipment check. Saw the food, the water, the cloths and the hollowed-out log bucket. They sat next to a hammock raised three feet from the ground between the two tree trunks around which he’d built the hut.

Takaar pricked his skin with the blade point, just on the underside of his wrist. He breathed very deeply. This was the time when he felt exhilaration and empowerment. The time to join with nature in a way no TaiGethen, no elf, had ever done. To survive was to understand more. And to find another weapon to use against the Garonin.

Are you really so deluded? Actually, I suppose you are. The Garonin are gone. You ran away from them and slammed the door in their faces, remember? Or does that not fit with your convenient truth?

‘Now there you really are wrong. You never escape the Garonin. Trust me. They’ll be back.’

Trust is not something anyone will have in you ever again.

‘That is part of my penance. Now shush. I have symptoms and reactions to feel.’

The world will be a richer place if you have overdosed this time.

Takaar ignored his tormentor. He stood tall and breathed deeply, trying to speed the venom around his body. He ran on the spot, pumping his arms, feeling his heart rate increase. Nothing. Nothing while the sun crept around the forest a notch and the rain began to fall from the clouds that moved to cover it.

‘Too slow,’ he said. ‘Too slow.’

The poisonous secretions of the yellow-backed tree frog were far quicker to act on the elven body. Indeed, he’d have been unable to stand already and he’d be fighting to breathe. The taipan’s venom was slow and that was a disappointment. So far, all he could note was a slight blurring of his vision and an unsteadiness in his step. Still, everything had its uses.

Takaar moved towards his hammock. His head felt thick and there was an ache beginning to grow at the back of his skull. He swallowed. Or he tried to. There was difficulty there. Takaar raised his eyebrows.

‘Better.’

Takaar put a hand on the left tree trunk, ready to lever himself into the hammock. He felt hot. Sweat was beading on his brow and under his arms. A pain in his stomach added to that in his head. His eyes misted over and he swayed. The symptoms may be slow to appear but they were comprehensive when they arrived.

Takaar found he had his whole arm wrapped around the tree trunk to keep himself upright. He didn’t remember making the move. He lifted a leg to get himself in- Sildaan was screaming at someone. Words that Silent Priest Sikaant could not make out had disturbed his meditation. The priest broke the seal on the chamber of relics in which he had spent the last three days and pushed open the door. From his left, grief and anger was coming from the worker village set behind the temple. To his right, across the dome and out onto the apron, the air smelled wrong. Sildaan’s voice echoed against the walls of Aryndeneth, ugly and discordant.

Sikaant shivered. There was a deeper chill in the temple than the blessed cool imparted by the ancient stones. He crossed soundlessly beneath the dome, his eyes fixed on the bright square of the open doors. Two priests stared out from the shadow. They stood shoulder to shoulder and just to the left of the opening.

Sildaan’s words began to reach him with a clarity he regretted when he heard them. No longer shouted but strident and terrible. Heretic.

‘How can you look so forlorn? Why can’t you grasp this? I have never agreed with Takaar’s law. And I am very, very far from being alone. You cannot enforce harmony. It grows or it doesn’t. You have been presiding over a veneer, nothing more. And it is about to be shattered into a million fragments and scattered into oblivion.

‘What is desirable about relinquishing our position as the ruling thread? Do you really think that merely by telling a Tuali or a Gyalan that we love them as equals makes it so? They don’t believe it. They retain their hatred of us. Every thread does. And the truth of that is about to be seen. First in Ysundeneth and soon, everywhere. Even here.’

Any confusion in Sikaant’s mind was cleared up the moment he could see the scene on the temple apron. Men defiled it. A few of the thirty stared out into the forest, guarding in vain against an attack that, if it came, they would not see until it was upon them. Most watched Sildaan pacing around three kneeling priests. All had their heads up and proud though their hands were bound. All of them had swords held to their throats by human warriors.

‘You will see, should I let you live, that the price of this false peace has been too high. I agree with those in every thread who consider that Takaar’s actions on Hausolis were the ultimate message of failure of Takaar’s law. And of Takaar himself.’

One of the priests spoke. Ipuuran. Ever a fearless advocate.

‘You think the denouncement will tear the threads apart. You are wrong. A thousand years of peace is too long a time to throw away. Peace that cost nothing.’

‘Nothing?’ Sildaan was screaming again. ‘It cost the Ynissul everything. Our position, our birthright. Our respect. The love of our own god. You’re blind if you cannot see what is coming. You like Myriin and all the TaiGethen and Silent who hide under the canopy have no notion of what simmers beneath the lid of the harmony.’

‘Lorius will-’ began Ipuuran.

‘Lorius. Ha! Lorius is going to do exactly what he has been urged to do. You think he will be able to quell what is coming while standing and denouncing Takaar? Oh dear. He is as stupid as you. He firmly believes in the harmony and that it will endure whatever obstacles he removes from the path of chaos. He thinks his words will give him position among the lesser threads, but they hate him almost as much as they do every living and breathing Ynissul. Barring Jarinn, perhaps.

‘What happens at the Gardaryn is happening at our design, O great temple priest. That is why the humans are here. Because only they can prevent the slaughter of those born to rule. And so we will. When the blood-letting is done, the power of the elves will once again rest with the Ynissul. Just as it should be.’