Memories of Ice

Gruntle stopped listening, his eyes pulling away, fixing on the clear blue sky directly overhead. I saw you, Harllo. You bastard. Throwing yourself in that creature's path, between us. I saw, damn you.

A corpse beneath rocks, a face in the darkness, smeared in dust, that would never again smile.

A new voice. 'Captain.'

Gruntle turned his head, forced words through the clench of his throat. 'It's done, Keruli,' he said. 'You've been delivered. It's done. Damn you to Hood, get out of my sight.'

The priest bowed his head, withdrew through the haze of Gruntle's anger; withdrew, then was gone.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The harder the world, the fiercer the honour.

Dancer

The bones formed hills, stretching out on all sides. Clattering, shifting beneath Gethol as the Jaghut struggled for purchase against the slope. The blood had slowed its flow down his ruined face, though the vision of one eye was still obscured — blocked by an upthrust shard that glimmered pink-white — and the pain had dulled to a pulsing throb.

'Vanity,' he mumbled through scabbed lips, 'is not my curse.' He gained his balance, straightened, tottering, on the hillside. 'No predicting mortal humans — no, not even Hood could have imagined such … insolence. But ah! The Herald's visage is now broken, and that which is broken must be discarded. Discarded …'

Gethol looked around. The endless hills, the formless sky, the cool, dead air. The bones. The Jaghut's undamaged eyebrow lifted. 'None the less, I appreciate the joke, Hood. Ha ha. Here you have tossed me. Ha ha. And now, I have leave to crawl free. Free from your service. So be it.'

The Jaghut opened his warren, stared into the portal that formed before him, his path into the cold, almost airless realm of Omtose Phellack. 'I know you, now, Hood. I know who — what — you are. Delicious irony, the mirror of your face. Do you in turn, I now wonder, know me?'

He strode into the warren. The familiar gelid embrace eased his pain, the fire of his nerves. The steep, jagged walls of ice to either side bathed him in blue-green light. He paused, tested the air. No stench of Imass, no signs of intrusion, yet the power he sensed around him was weakened, damaged by millennia of breaches, the effrontery of T'lan. Like the Jaghut themselves, Omtose Phellack was dying. A slow, wasting death.

'Ah, my friend,' he whispered, 'we are almost done. You and I, spiralling down into … oblivion. A simple truth. Shall I unleash my rage? No. After all, my rage is not enough. It never was.'

He walked on, through the frozen memories that had begun to rot, there, within his reach, ever narrowing, ever closing in on the Jaghut.

The fissure was unexpected, a deep cleft slashing diagonally across his path. A soft, warm breath flowed from it, sweet with decay and disease. The ice lining its edges was bruised and pocked, riven with dark veins. Halting before it, Gethol quested with his senses. He hissed in recognition. 'You have not been idle, have you? What is this invitation you set before me? I am of this world, whilst you, stranger, are not.'

He moved to step past it, his torn lips twisting into a snarl. Then stopped, head slowly turning. 'I am no longer Hood's Herald,' he whispered. 'Dismissed. A flawed service. Unacceptable. What would you say to me, Chained One?'

There would be no answer, until the decision was made, until the journey's end.

Gethol entered the fissure.

The Crippled God had fashioned a small tent around his place of chaining, the Jaghut saw with some amusement. Broken, shattered, oozing with wounds that never healed, here then was the true face of vanity.

Gethol halted before the entrance. He raised his voice. 'Dispense with the shroud — I shall not crawl to you.'

The tent shimmered, then dissolved, revealing a robed, hooded, shapeless figure sitting on damp clay. A brazier lifted veils of smoke between them, and a mangled hand reached out to fan the sweet tendrils into the hood-shadowed face. 'A most,' the Chained One said in a wheeze, 'a most devastating kiss. Your sudden lust for vengeance was … felt, Jaghut. Your temper endangered Hood's meticulous plans, you see that, do you not? It was this that so … disappointed the Lord of Death. His Herald must be obedient. His Herald must possess no personal desires, no ambitions. Not a worthy … employer … for one such as you.'

Gethol glanced around. 'There is heat beneath me. We chained you to Burn's flesh, anchored you to her bones — and you have poisoned her.'

'I have. A festering thorn in her side … that shall one day kill her. And with Burn's death, this world shall die. Her heart cold, lifeless, will cease its life-giving bounty. These chains must be broken, Jaghut.'

Gethol laughed. 'All worlds die. I shall not prove the weak link, Crippled God. I was here for the Chaining, after all.'