‘How do you know?’ Antsy demanded. ‘Can you smell ’em or something?’

‘Oh, not now,’ Bluepearl complained. ‘No more questions tonight. That Mockra’s chewed everything in my skull to pulp. I hate Mockra.’

‘It’s the ghosts,’ said Mallet in that odd, gentle voice of his. He glanced across at Bluepearl. ‘Right? They’re not whispering anything they haven’t been whispering since we moved in. fust the usual moans and begging for blood.’ His gaze shifted to the swords on the table before him. ‘Blood spilled here, that is. Stuff brought in from outside doesn’t count. Luckily.’

Blend said, ‘So try not cutting yourself shaving, Antsy.’

‘There’s been the odd scrap downstairs,’ Picker said, frowning at Mallet. ‘Are you saying that’s been feeding the damned ghosts?’

The healer shrugged. ‘Never enough to make a difference.’

‘We need us a necromancer,’ Bluepearl announced.

We’re getting off track,’ Pieker said. ‘It’s the damned contract we got to worry about, Ws need to find out who’s behind It. We find out who, we throw a cusser through his bedroom window and that’s that. So,’ she continued, looking at the others, ‘we need to conic up with a plan of attack. Information to start. Let’s hear some ideas on that.’

More silence.

Blend stepped away from the door. ‘Someone’s coming/ she said.

Now they could all hear the boots thumping up the stairs, hissed protestations in their wake.

Antsy collected his sword and Bluepearl slowly rose and Picker could smell the sudden awakening of sorcery. She held up a hand. ‘Wait, for Hood’s sake.’

The door was flung open.

In strode a large, well-dressed man, out of breath, his light blue eyes scanning laces until they alighted on Mallet, who rose.

‘Councillor Coll. What is wrong?’

‘I need your help/ the Daru noble said, and Picker could hear the distress in t he man’s voice. ‘High Denul. I need you, now.’ •

Before Mallet could reply, Picker stepped forward. ‘Councillor Coll, did you come here alone?’

The man frowned. Then a vague gesture behind him. ‘A modest escort. Two guards.’ Only then did he note the sword on the table. ‘What is happening here?’

‘Picker,’ said Mallet, ‘I’ll take Bluepearl.’

‘I don’t like-’

But the healer cut her off. ‘We need information, don’t we? Coll can help us. Besides, they wouldn’t have set more than one clan on us to start and you took care of that one. The Guild needs to recover, reassess-we’ve got a day at least.’

Picker looked across at the councillor, who, if he didn’t quite grasp what was going on, now had enough for a fair guess. Sighing, she said to him, ‘Seems there’s someone wants us dead. You might not want to get involved with us right now-’

But he shook his head, fixed his gaze once more on Mallet. ‘Healer, please.’

Mallet nodded to a scowling Bluepearl. ‘Lead on, Councillor. We’re with ya.’

‘… came upon Osserick, stalwart ally, broken and with blood on his face, struck into unconsciousness. And Anomander fell to his knees and called upon the Thousand Gods who looked down upon Osserick and saw the blood on his face. With mercy they struck him awakened and so he stood.

And so stood Anomander and they faced one another, Light upon Dark, Dark upon Light.

‘Now there was rage in Anomander. “Where is Draconnusl” he demanded of his stalwart ally. For when Anomander had departed, the evil tyrant Draconnus, Slayer of Eleint, had been by Anomander’s own hand struck into unconsciousness and there was blood on his face. Osserick, who had taken the charge of guarding Draconnus, fell to his knees and called upon the Thousand Gods, seeking their mercy before Anomander’s fury.’

‘I was bested!’ cried Osserick in answer. ‘Caught by Sister Spite unawares! Oh, the Thousand Clods were turned away, and so was I struck into unconsciousness and see there is blood on my face!’

“One day,” vowed Anomander, and he was then the darkness of a terrible storm, and Osserick quailed like a sun behind a cloud, “this alliance of ours shall end. Our enmity shall be renewed, O Son of Light, Child of Light. We shall contest every span of ground, every reach of sky, every spring of sweet water. We shall battle a thousand times and there shall be no mercy between us. I shall send misery upon your kin, your daughters. I shall blight their minds with Unknowing Dark. I shall scatter them confused on realms unknown and there shall be no mercy in their hearts, for between them and the Thousand Gods there shall ever be a cloud of darkness.”

‘Such was Anomander’s fury, and though he stood alone, Dark upon Light, there was sweetness hngering in the palm of one hand, from the deceiving touch of Lady Envy. Light upon Dark, Dark upon Light, two men, wielded as weapons by two sisters, children of Draconnus. Who stood unseen by any and were pleased by what they saw and all that they heard.

‘It was decided then that Anomander would set out once more, to hunt down the evil tyrant. To destroy him and his cursed sword which is an abomination in the eyes of the Thousand Gods and all who kneel to them. Osserick, it was decided, would set out to hunt Spite and exact righteous vengeance.

‘Of the vow spoken by Anomander, Osserick knew the rage from which it was spawned, and in silence he made vow to answer it in his own time. To spar, to duel, to contest every span of ground, every reach of sky, and every spring of sweet water. But such matters must needs lie upon calm earth, a seed awaiting life.

‘This issue with Draconnus remained before them, after all, and now Spite as well. Did not the Children of Tiam demand punishment! There was blood on the faces of too many Eleint, and so Anomander and so Osserick had taken on themselves this fated hunt.

‘Could the Eleint have known all that would come of this, they would have withdrawn their storm-breath, from both Anomander and Osserick. But these fates were not to be known then, and this is why the Thousand Gods wept

Rubbing his eyes, High Alchemist Baruk leaned back. The original version of this, he suspected, was not the mannered shambles he had just read through. Those quaint but overused phrases belonged to an interim age when the style among historians sought to resurrect some oral legacy in an effort to reinforce the veracity of eyewitnesses to the events described. The result had given him a headache.

He had never heard of the Thousand Gods, and this pantheon could not be found in any other compendium but Dillat’s Dark and Light. Baruk suspected Dillat had simply made them up, which prompted the question: how much else did she invent?

Leaning forward once more, he adjusted the lantern’s wick, then lenfed through the brittle sheets until another section caught his interest.

‘In this day there was war among the dragons. The First Born had all but one bowed necks to K’rul’s bargain. Their children, bereft of all that they would have inherited, htust skyward from the towers in great flurry yet even these were not uuited beyond rejecting the First Born. Factions arose and red rain descended upon all the Realms. Jaws fastened upon necks. Talons opened bellies. The breath of chaos melted flesh from bones.

‘Anomander, Osserick and others had already tasted the blood of Tiam, and now there came more with raging thirst and many a demonic abomination was spawned of this crimson nectar. So long as the Gates of Starvald Demelain remained open, unguarded and held by none, the war would not end, and so the red rain descended upon all the Realms.

‘Kurald Liosan was the first Realm to seal the portal between itself and Starvald Demelain, and the tale that follows recounts the slaughter committed by Osserick in cleansing his world of all the pretenders and rivals, the Soletaken and feral purebloods, even unto driving the very first D’ivers from his land.

‘This begins at the time when Osserick fought Anomander for the sixteenth time and both had blood on their faces before Kilmandaros, she who speaks with her fists, took upon herself the task of driving them apart.