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Osserc spat into the embers. ‘Bargain with the Azathanai and they will own your life, Scara. No, we will find another way, and if we die upon the trail, so be it. I have this night won nothing but the truth of my own pathetic soul. My friend, I stand here, shamed before you.’
Glancing away, Scabandari found himself studying the pallid gleam of the distant Vitr Sea. ‘We have the trail ahead, then, to forge in you a new soul.’
Osserc’s abrupt laugh was harsh, filled with self-contempt. ‘You have little to work with, I’m afraid.’
‘Regret is a worthy temper,’ Scabandari said. ‘It shall be where we begin.’
‘Your faith may prove misplaced, Scara.’
He smiled. ‘I am hardly immune to lessons still to learn, Osserc. Very well then, let us test the measure of each other, and the day we stand before the Wise City, open ourselves one more time to the other, and see all there is to be seen.’
After a long moment, Osserc nodded. ‘In a back chamber of the temple there are supplies. Water and food. I’ve not seen the Azathanai eat, or drink for other than simple pleasure.’
‘Then we’ll take what we can carry, and be on our way.’
‘Scara, it’s the middle of the night and I’m exhausted!’
‘As am I, but damned if I’ll camp in their company. Who knows what new need they might find for us?’
TWENTY-THREE
‘SHALL WE FIND AMOROUS BLISS ONLY AMONG THE DEAD?’ LASA Rook asked. ‘Rolling among the flopping limbs so cadaverous and cold, our heat of passion a thing stolen by insensate flesh, to be wasted in the manner of the sun’s heat on a stone?’ The Thel Akai raised her ample arms. ‘The day’s death is but prelude, Hanako of the Scars, a reminder repeated all t
oo often – each night, in fact, as if our souls needed such ominous stirring!’ Her gaze, settling upon him where he sat by the ring of rocks that encircled their modest cookfire, turned suddenly sly. ‘I see your flitting regard, eager cub, upon these breasts of mine, and the lure of my cocked hip with its inviting swell. Death’s threshold awaits us, closer now. On the morrow we shall see for ourselves this modest encampment of the desolate and the despondent, and if you’d an audience to our inaugural rutting, why, a more embittered mob you could not find.’
Sighing, Hanako glanced across to where Erelan Kreed crouched, his unending mutter of words rising and falling to unknown passions, a mélange of languages most of which were utterly foreign to both Hanako and Lasa Rook. He had awakened two nights past, fretful and distracted. Erelan Kreed was, as the Jaghut Raest had predicted, now a stranger, a warrior lost to hidden worlds and memories not his own.
Kreed was turned away from them and the fire, his broad back like a wall blocking the light from his hooded eyes, his tortured face. He rhythmically worked one hand through his beard, pausing every now and then to loose a low, chilling laugh.
‘Never mind him,’ said Lasa Rook. ‘I grow irritated at your lack of attention, Hanako of the Scars. Must I peel away all constraint?’ She began untying the strings of her shirt. ‘So readily exposed in mute invitation’ – the shirt slipped from her shoulders to fall to the ground – ‘these swollen needs, the appurtenances of sensual appetites—’
‘Lady of the Fire, Lasa! Your husbands—’
‘My husbands! Mouldering in the rock-pile! Torn limb from limb from limb! Decayed of countenance, never more to weakly smile or flinch or cringe! From crow-picked tongues, never again a mewled whimper or pathetic beseechment! Ah, the empty echo in my ears! And you, bold young warrior! See how I lick my lips – no, not those lips, fool – and come closer, before death sweeps down upon us with all the senseless weight of boulders and gritty dust!’
Hanako clutched the sides of his head. ‘Enough! What glory is there in such ready surrender?’ As soon as the words left him, he bit down, but too late.
Lasa Rook’s gasp trailed away, leaving nothing but silence, although as he glared at the fire he heard her collecting up her shirt. Then she spoke. ‘This path of mine proves in error, then. Oh, my foolish ways now turn about to let loose the most vicious snarl. The pup at bay, cock limp and awaiting the tree, modest claws readied for scratching the earth, a scent piddled here, a proud strut there. Foolish Lasa Rook, were you blind? This one seeks to do the seducing! Not for him the come hither! No! As the Lord of Temper told you plain as day, this one requires the conquest!’
Hanako moaned and said nothing.
The laugh that came from Erelan Kreed at that moment was appalling in its cruelty, and then the warrior spoke to them both for the first time since consciousness returned. ‘My sister hunts me. There is no refuge. We must traverse the night, children of Kilmandaros. The bitch wants my seed and will take it from this Thel Akai corpse if necessary. Into the timeless realm for us, then, and best we be quick about it.’
Straightening, Hanako took a step towards Erelan Kreed. ‘Who speaks with your tongue, Erelan?’
‘Blood is memory, child. Need is immortal. Above all, vengeance never dies, never fades and never grows cold. In my heart there burns refusal, a fire nothing can quench. Refusal and defiance, such wildness in these two sentiments, such pure … horror.’ He bared his teeth at them. ‘Only among the Jaghut will she hesitate.’
When it was clear that he would say nothing more, Hanako turned to Lasa Rook, met her flat, sober eyes. ‘I believe,’ he said, ‘we should hurry.’
She tilted her head back to regard him with level eyes. ‘To you, Hanako of the Scars, I am now closed. Sting at my indifference, see me turn away again and again. A wall around me I shall raise, even in the realm of the dead, with corpses stacked high. I am the widow’s trap, forever closed, forever sealed away—’
‘Lasa Rook, I was speaking of resuming our journey.’
‘—and your hunger for me shall grow, a poison in your soul—’
‘There is a dragon hunting us! ’
She blinked. ‘I heard him,’ she said in a low tone. ‘His sister wants his seed. How peculiar! What sister would ever desire a brother’s seed? Lifelong proximity alone would incite such levels of revulsion as to spew out a veritable ocean of disgust and derision! Why, if I think of my own brothers in such light, all that lives within me curdles and puckers, a flinching retreat so sour I feel the need to spit.’ She looked over at Erelan Kreed. ‘On your feet then, bold warrior, dragon-blooded. Lasa Rook and Hanako of the Scars shall stand in defence of your dignity!’
