‘I agree, and so, thank you again, Spinnock Durav.’

‘No more gratitude, please. Unless you would have me voice my own and so overwhelm you with the pathos of my plight.’

To that, she but smiled, ‘Stay miked, Spin, until I leave.’ Another part of the ritual?’ he asked. ‘Would I have so humbly asked if it was?’

When she was gone, Spinnock Durav drew on his clothing once more, thinking back to his own ritual, servicing his sword with a lover’s touch, as if to remind the weapon that the woman he had just made love to was but a diversion, a temporary distraction, and that there was place for but one love in his heart, as befitted a warrior.

True, an absurd ritual, a conceit that was indeed pathetic. But with so little to hold on to, well, Tiste Andii clung tight and fierce to anything with meaning, no matter how dubious or ultimately nonsensical.

Dressed once more, he set out.

The game awaited him. The haunted gaze of Seerdomin, there across from him, with artfully carved but essentially inert lumps of wood, antler and bone on the table between them. Ghostly, irrelevant players to each side.

And when it was done, when victory and defeat had been played out, they would sit for a time, drinking from the pitcher, and Seerdomin might again speak of something without quite saying what it was, might slide round what bothered him with every word, with every ambiguous comment and observation. And all Spinnock would glean was that it had something to do with the Great Barrow north of Black Coral. With his recent refusal to journey out there, ending his own pilgrimage, leaving Spinnock to wonder at the man’s crisis of faith, to dread the arrival of true despair, when all that Spinnock needed from his friend might wither, even die.

And where then would he find hope?

He walked the gloomy streets, closing in on the tavern, and wondered if there was something he could do for Seerdomin. The thought slowed his steps and made him alter his course. Down an alley, out on to another street, this one the side of a modest hill, with the buildings stepping down level by level on each side, a cascade of once brightly painted doors-but who bothered with such things now in this eternal Night? ‘

He came to one door on his left, its flaked surface gouged with a rough sigil, the outline of the Great Barrow in profile, beneath it the ragged imprint of an open hand.

Where worship was born, priests and priestesses appeared with the spontaneity of mould on bread.

Spinnock pounded on the door.

After a moment it opened a crack and he looked down to see a single eye peering up at him.

‘I would speak to her,’ he said.

The door creaked back. A young girl in a threadbare tunic stood in the narrow hallway, now curtseying repeatedly. ‘L-lord,’ she stammered, ‘she is up the stairs-it is late-’

‘Is it? And I am not a “lord”, is she awake?’

A hesitant nod,

‘I will not take much of her time Tell her it is the Tiste Andii warrior she once met in the ruins. She was collecting wood. I was… doing very little. Go, I will wait,’

Uptt he stairs the girl raced, two steps at a time, the dirty soles of her feet flashing with each upward leap.

He heard a door open, close, then open again, and the girl reappeared at the top of the stairs. ‘Come!’ she hissed.

The wood creaked beneath him as he climbed to the next level.

The priestess-ancient, immensely obese-had positioned herself on a once plush chair before an altar of heaped trinkets. Braziers bled orange light to either side, shedding tendrils of smoke that hung thick and acrid beneath the ceiling. The old woman’s eyes reflected that muted glow, murky with cataracts.

As soon as Spinnock entered the small room, the girl left, closing the door behind her.

‘You do not come,’ said the priestess, ‘to embrace the new faith, Spinnock Durav.’

‘I don’t recall ever giving you my name, Priestess.’

‘We all know the one who alone among all the Tiste Andii consorts with us lowly humans. Beyond the old one who bargains for goods in the markets and you are not Endest Silann, who would have struggled on the stairs, and bowed each one near to breaking with his weight.’

‘Notoriety makes me uneasy.’

‘Of course it does. What do you want with me, warrior?’

‘I would ask you something. Is there a crisis among the faithful?’

‘Ah. You speak of Seerdomin, who now denies us in our need.’

‘He does? How? What need?’

‘It is not your concern. Not that of the Tiste Andii, nor the Son of Darkness.’

‘Anomander Rake rules Black Coral, Priestess, and we Tiste Andii serve him.’

‘The Great Barrow lies outside Night. The Redeemer does not kneel before the Son of Darkness.’

‘I am worried for my friend, Priestess. That is all.’

‘You cannot help him. Nor, it is now clear, can he help us.’

‘Why do you need help?’

‘We await the Redeemer, to end that which afflicts his followers.’

‘And how will the Redeemer achieve such a thing, except through chosen mortals?’

She cocked her head, as if startled by his question, then she smiled. ‘Ask that question of your friend, Spinnock Durav. When the game is done and your Lord is victorious yet again, and you call out for beer, and the two of you-so much more alike than you might imagine-drink and take ease in each other’s company.’

‘Your knowledge dismays me.’

‘The Redeemer is not afraid of the Dark.’

Spinnock started, his eyes widening. ‘Embracing the grief of the T’lan Imass is one thing, Priestess. That of the Tiste Andii no, there may be no fear In the Redeemer, but his soul had best awaken to wisdom. Priestess, make this plain in your prayers. The Tiste Andii are not for the Redeemer. God or no, such an embrace will destroy him. Utterly.’ And, by Mother’s own breath, it would destroy us as well.

‘Seerdomin awaits you,’ she said, ‘and wonders, since you are ever punctual.’

Spinnock Durav hesitated, then nodded. Hoping that this woman’s god had more wisdom than she did; hoping, too, that the power of prayer could not bend the Redeemer into ill-conceived desires to reach too far, to seek what could only destroy him, all in that fervent fever of gushing generosity so common to new believers.

‘Priestess, your claim that the Great Barrow lies beyond my Lord’s responsibilities is in error. If the pilgrims are in need, the Son of Darkness will give answer-’

‘And so lay claim to what is not his.’

‘You do not know Anomander Rake.’

‘We need nothing from your Lord.’

‘Then perhaps I can help.’

‘No. Leave now, Tiste Andii.’

Well, he had tried, hadn’t he? Nor did he expect to gain more ground with Seerdomin. Perhaps something more extreme was required. No, Seerdomin is a private man. Let him. be. Remain watchful, yes, as any friend would. And wait.

If he had walked from the nearest coast, the lone figure crossing the grasslands of north Lamatath had travelled a hundred leagues of unsettled prairie. Nowhere to find food beyond hunting the sparse game, all of it notoriously fleet of foot and hoof. He was gaunt, but then, he had always been gaunt. His thin, grey hair was unkempt, drifting out long in his wake. His beard was matted, knotted with filth. His eyes, icy blue, were as feral as any beast of the plain.

A long coat of chain rustled, swinging clear of his shins with each stride. The shadow he cast was narrow as a sword.

In the cloudless sky wheeled vultures or ravens, or both, so high as to be nothing but specks, yet they tracked the solitary figure far below. Or perhaps they but skirled in the blue emptiness scanning the wastes for some dying, weakening creature.

But this man was neither dying nor weak. He walked with the stiff purpose characteristic of the mad, the deranged. Madness, he would have noted, does not belong to the soul engaged with the world, with every hummock and tuft of grass, with the old beach ridges with their cobbles of limestone pushing through the thin, patched skin of lichen and brittle moss. With the mocking stab of shadow that slowly wheeled as the sun dragged itself across the sky. With the sounds of his own breath that were proof that he remained alive, that the world had yet to take him, pull him down, steal the warmth from his ancient flesh. Madness stalked only an inner torment, and Kallor, the High King, supreme emperor of a dozen terrible empires, was, in his heart, a man at peace.