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‘All this, Haut? For the grief of one slain woman?’ She stepped back from him, and then faced the plains once more. Stared at the motionless, lifeless night sky. He speaks true. No breath to draw barring those needed for words. My heart … I hear nothing, not even the swish of blood in the veins. ‘Hood used the magic,’ she suddenly announced. ‘All that the one you name K’rul has given to the world. He’s taken it all inside.’
‘Stilled every fire,’ Haut said. ‘Nothing burns. The exhalation of heat, the very vigour of life, all stopped. As within, so without. But then, is this not what death is? Stepping out from time’s incessant flow? Slipping from sight?’ He sighed, and then shrugged. ‘We are in the Long Night, we who choose to follow him. But you, Korya, here you do not belong.’
‘And I’m to knock Arathan unconscious and drag him away from here?’
‘Gothos holds at bay Hood’s … imposition. He creates a refuge, signified by his Folly, his unending tome, his eternal narrative. To defy the death of time, he would tell a story.’
‘His story.’
‘It may be his,’ Haut agreed. ‘Indeed, it may be precisely what he says it is. A suicide note, a confessional to failure. And yet, do you see this subtle defiance? While the tale continues, there can be no surrender to despair.’
‘No,’ she snapped, ‘of course not. The lord has his hate, after all.’
‘Burning hot as the sun, yes.’
‘Does his hate include Hood?’
‘Hood? Abyss take me, no. He loves the man as only a brother can.’
‘Yet, a brother not.’
Haut shrugged. ‘And now Gethol, returned from something worse than death. A prison we all thought was eternal. Sometimes the deeds of the past, Korya, lead to a place where no words are possible. And yet, does not the love remain? Thus, the three of them, one the spark of hate, one the sigh of grief, and one – well, one stands between the two.’
‘Will Gethol join Hood, then?’
‘I would think not, but all of that is between them. When I spoke of Gothos’s refuge, I meant to say that Arathan is protected.’
‘What of me?’
‘You are a Mahybe, Korya, a vessel formed to contain. By this alone, death cannot reach you.’
She grunted. ‘Oh, you’ve made me immortal, have you?’ When he said nothing, she slowly turned from the dead night sky above the plain. ‘Haut?’
‘Hold on to your potential,’ he said, ‘for as long as you can. There’s enough room inside you for a dozen lifetimes, maybe more. That’s down to your resilience and your cleverness.’
‘To what end?’
‘One day, the Azathanai Errastas will seek domination over the sorcery now suffusing this realm. And he will make it a thing of spilled blood, and should he succeed, magic will prove the cruellest gift of all.’
‘You would set me against an Azathanai?’
Haut offered her a wry smile. ‘Already I pity him.’
* * *
‘What took so long?’ Lasa Rook moaned plaintively, pulling sweaty strands of blonde hair from her face. ‘Look upon the beasts, O Lord of Duration, and see how the quick and the fierce suffices. By the tumbled rock-pile, Hanako, you have worn me out!’
He sat up, blinking, his twin hearts only now slowing their savage syncopation. He squinted into the north.
Lasa Rook continued, ‘Was it worth the wait? Does my bruised flower answer? No. Instead, the mumble below continues, tremors of the flesh and the spirit trembling like a startled fawn in the night. Oh, dear pup, you have dragged the moon to the ground! You have spun the stars with such abandon as to shatter the wheel! The body reels, the earth shudders. Now look upon me in the days to come and see the knowing glint in my eye, the sly knowledge of our terrible secret—’
‘Not so secret,’ Hanako said.
She sat up, her hair full of twigs and grass blades, and twisted round. ‘Hanako! We are attended by three hoary ghosts! Aaii! They stagger in the manner of revenants, with crumpled visages and eyes withered like dusty dates!’
‘Your husbands,’ Hanako said, ‘drawn to us, no doubt, by your shrieks.’ He lumbered to his feet. ‘Apologies dry upon my tongue. Shame and remorse chill my hearts, and in the face of righteous challenge, I shall raise no blade to defend myself.’
‘Oh,’ Lasa Rook said, squinting. ‘They are not dead then?’
