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Jaws bunched, he scanned the chamber once more, now with greater care.

‘You damned fool.’Advertisement

He twisted round, eyed his sister.

‘You’re in the temple, idiot-get off the damned horse.’

‘There are raised gardens,’ he said. ‘Find some farmers among your lot and get them to start clearing. I’ll send others down to the river-we’ve got plenty of nets.’

‘You want us to occupy the city?’

‘Why not?’

She seemed at a loss for words.

Yedan drew his horse round until he faced her. ‘Twilight, you took us on to the Road of Gallan. The Blind Man’s Road. Now we are in the Realm of Darkness. But the realm is dead. It is preserved in death by sorcery. If this was once our home, we can make it so again. Was that not our destiny?’

‘Destiny? Errant’s balls, why does speaking that word sound like the unsheathing of a sword? Yedan, perhaps we knew this city once. Perhaps our family line reaches back and every story we learned was true. The glory of Kharkanas. But not one of those stories tells us we ruled here. In this city. We were not this realm’s master.’

He studied her for a time. ‘We move on, then.’

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‘Yes.’

‘To where?’

‘The forest beyond the river. Through it and out to the other side. Yedan, we have come this far. Let us make the journey to the place where it started. Our true home. The First Shore.’

‘We don’t even know what that means.’

‘So we find out.’

‘The river is still worth a look,’ he said. ‘We’re short of food.’

‘Of course. Now, in honour of those who fell here, brother, get off that damned horse!’

Moments after the two had left the chamber, the stillness that had existed for millennia was broken. A stirring of dead leaves, spinning as if lifted by small whirlwinds. Dust hazed the air, and the strange muted gloom-where light itself seemed an unwelcome stranger-suddenly wavered.

And something like a long, drawn breath slowly filled the chamber. It echoed wretched as a sob.

Brevity followed Pithy to the mouth of the alley. They carried lanterns, shadows rocking on walls as they made their way down half the narrow thoroughfare’s length.

She halted beside her friend and together they stared down at the bodies.

‘Dead?’ Brevity asked.

‘No, sweetie. In the realm of dreams, the both of them.’

‘When did this happen?’

‘Couldn’t a been too long ago,’ Pithy replied. ‘I seen the two wander in here to do that ritual or whatever. Little later I chanced to peek in and saw their torches had gone out. So I come for a look.’

Brevity settled into a crouch and set the lantern to one side. She grasped the witch nearest her and pulled the woman over, peering down at the face. ‘Pully, I think. They look like twins as it is.’

‘Gettin’ more so, too,’ Pithy noted, ‘or so I noticed.’

‘Eyelids fluttering like mad.’

‘Realm of dreams, didn’t I say so?’

Brevity pushed back an eyelid. ‘Rolled right up. Maybe the ritual turned on ’em.’

‘Could be. What should we do?’

‘I’m tempted to bury them.’

‘But they ain’t dead.’

‘I know. But opportunities like this don’t come every day.’

‘What’s broken cannot be mended. You broke us, but that is not all-see what you have done.’

Gallan had been horrified. He could not abide this new world. He wanted a return to darkness and, when he’d done gouging out his own eyes, he found it. Sandalath, her son’s tiny hand held tight within her solid grip, stood looking down on the madman, seeing but not registering all the blood on his face and smeared across the floor-the impossibility of it here at the very threshold to the Terondai. He wept, choking on something again and again-yet whatever was in his mouth he would not spit out-and his lips were glistening crimson, his teeth red as cedar chips.

‘Mother,’ said her son, ‘what’s happened?’

The world changes. Gallan, you fool. What you’ve done does not change it back. ‘An accident,’ she replied. ‘We must find someone to help-’

‘But why is he eating his eyes?’

‘Go now, find a priestess-quickly, Orfantal!’

Gallan choked, trying to swallow his eyeballs only to hack them back into his mouth. The holes in his head wept bloody tears.

Ever the poetic statement, Gallan. The grandiose symbol, artfully positioned at the temple door. You will lie here until someone important comes, and then you’ll swallow those damned things down. Even the masterpiece is servant to timing. pqdm.com