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‘What is Korabas?’

‘For this we must veer. Kallor’s dead warren should suffice. Korabas is an Eleint, Ryadd. She is the Otataral Dragon. There is chaos in a human soul-it is your mortal gift, but be aware-like fire it can turn in your hands.’Advertisement

‘Even to one named “Hands of Fire”?’

The Tiste Andii’s red eyes seemed to flatten. ‘My warning was precise.’

‘What do we seek in meeting this Korabas?’

Silchas slapped the ashes from his palms. ‘They will free her, and that we cannot stop. I mean to convince you that we should not even try.’

Rud found his fists were still clenched tight, aching at the ends of his arms. ‘You give me too little.’

‘Better than too much, Ryadd.’

‘Because like my mother, you fear me.’

‘Yes.’

‘Between you and your brothers, Silchas Ruin, who was the most honest?’

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The Tiste Andii cocked his head, and then smiled.

A short time later, two dragons lifted into the darkness, one gleaming polished gold that slid in and out of the gloom in lurid smears; the other was bone white, the pallor of a corpse in the night-save for the twin embers of its eyes.

They rose high and higher still above the Wastelands, and then vanished from the world.

In their wake, in a nest of rocks, the small fire glowed fitfully in its bed of ashes, eating the last of itself. Until nothing was left.

Sandalath Drukorlat gave the hapless man one last shake that sent spittle whipping from his lips, and then threw him further up the shoreline. He scrambled to his feet, fell over, got up a second time and stumbled unsteadily away.

Withal cleared his throat. ‘Sweetness, you seem a little short of temper lately.’

‘Challenge yourself, husband. Find something to improve my mood.’

He glanced out at the crashing waves, licked salt from around his mouth. The three Nachts were sending the scrawny refugee off with hurled shells and dead crabs, although not a single missile managed to strike the fleeing man. ‘The horses have recovered, at least.’

‘Their misery has just begun.’

‘I couldn’t quite make out what happened, but I take it the Shake vanished through a gate. And, I suppose, we’re going to chase after them.’

‘And before they left, one of their own went and slaughtered almost all of the witches and warlocks-the very people I wanted to question!’

‘We could always go to Bluerose.’

She stood straight, almost visibly quivering. He’d heard, once, that lightning went from the ground up and not the other way round. Sandalath looked ready to ignite and split the heavy clouds overhead. Or cut a devastating path through the ramshackle, stretched-out camp of those islanders Yan Tovis had left behind-the poor fools lived in squalid driftwood huts and wind-torn tents, all along the highwater line like so much wave-tossed detritus. And though the water was ever rising, so that the spray of the tumultuous seas now drenched them, not one had the wherewithal to move.

Not that they had anywhere to go. The forest was a blackened wasteland of stumps and ash for as far as he could see.

Just outside Letheras, Sandalath had cut open a way into a warren, a place she called Rashan, and the ride through it had begun in terrifying darkness that quickly dulled to torrid monotony. Until it began falling apart. Chaos, she said. Inclusions, she said. Whatever that means. And the horses went mad.

They had emerged into the proper world on the slope facing this strand, the horses’ hoofs pounding up clouds of ash and cinders, his wife howling in frustration.

Things had eased up since then.

‘What in Hood’s name are you smiling about?’

Withal shook his head. ‘Smiling? Not me, beloved.’

‘Blind Gallan,’ she said.

There had been more and more of this lately. Incomprehensible expostulations, invisible sources of irritation and blistering fury. Face it, Withal, the honeymoon’s over.

‘In the habit of popping up like a nefarious weed. Spouting arcane nonsense impressing the locals. Never trust a nostalgic old man-or old woman, I suppose. Every tale they spin has a hidden agenda, a secret malice for the present. They make the past-their version of it-into a kind of magic potion. “Sip this, friends, and return to the old times, when everything was perfect.” Bah! If it’d been me doing the blinding, I wouldn’t have stopped there. I would have scooped out his entire skull.’

‘Wife, who is this Gallan?’

She bridled, jabbed a finger at him. ‘Did you think I hadn’t lived before meeting you? Oh, pity poor Gallan! And if he left a string of women in the wake of his wanderings, why, be so good as to indulge the sad creature-well, this is what comes of it, isn’t it?’ pqdm.com