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He stroked and twirled now as he frowned down into the fire before him.

What had that grey-haired bard sung? There on the modest stage in K’rul’s Bar earlier in the night, when he had watched on, content with his place in the glorious city he had saved more than once?Advertisement

‘Oh frail city, where strangers arrive…’

‘I need to tell you something, Kruppe.’

The round man glanced up to find a shrouded figure seated on the other flat stone, reaching thin pale hands out to the flames. Kruppe cleared his throat, then said, ‘It has been a long time since Kruppe last found himself perched as you see him now. Accordingly, Kruppe had long since concluded that you wished to tell him something of such vast import that none but Kruppe is worthy to hear.’

A faint glitter from the darkness within the hood. ‘I am not in this war.’

Kruppe stroked the rattails of his beard, delighting himself by saying nothing.

‘This surprises you?’ the Elder God asked.

‘Kruppe ever expects the unexpected, old friend. Why, could you ever expect otherwise? Kruppe is shocked. Yet, a thought arrives, launched brainward by a tug on this handsome beard. K’rul states he is not in the war. Yet, Kruppe suspects, he is nevertheless its prize.’

‘Only you understand this, my friend,’ the Elder God said, sighing. Then cocked its head. ‘I had not noticed before, but you seem sad.’

‘Sadness has many flavours, and it seems Kruppe has tasted them all.’

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‘Will you speak now of such matters? I am, I believe, a good listener.’

‘Kruppe sees that you are sorely beset. Perhaps now is not the time.’

‘That is no matter.’

‘It is to Kruppe.’

K’rul glanced to one side, and saw a figure approaching, grey-haired, gaunt.

Kruppe sang,’”Oh frail city, where strangers arrive”… and the rest?’

The newcomer answered in a deep voice, ‘“… pushing into cracks, there to abide.”‘

And the Elder God sighed.

‘Join us, friend,’ said Kruppe. ‘Sit here by this fire: this scene paints the history of our kind, as you well know. A night, a hearth, and a tale to spin. Dear K’rul, dearest friend of Kruppe, hast thou ever seen Kruppe dance?’

The stranger sat. A wan face, an expression of sorrow and pain.

‘No,’ said K’rul. ‘I think not. Not by limb, not by word.’

Kruppe’s smile was muted, and something glistened in his eyes. ‘Then, my friends, settle yourselves for this night. And witness.’

Book One. Vow to the Sun

This creature of words cuts

To the quick and gasp, dart away

The spray of red rain

Beneath a clear blue sky

Shock at all that is revealed

What use now this armour

When words so easy slant between?

This god of promises laughs

At the wrong things, wrongly timed

Unmaking all these sacrifices

In deliberate malice

Recoil like a soldier routed

Even as retreat is denied

Before corpses heaped high in walls

You knew this would come

At last and feign nothing, no surprise

To find this cup filled

With someone else’s pain

It’s never as bad as it seems

The taste sweeter than expected

When you squat in a fool’s dream

So take this belligerence

Where you will, the dogged cur

Is the charge of my soul

To the centre of the street

Spinning round all fangs bared

Snapping at thirsty spears

Thrust cold and purged of your hands

– Hunting Words, Brathos Of Black Coral

Chapter One

Oh frail city!

Where strangers arrive

Pushing into cracks

There to abide

Oh blue city!

Old friends gather sighs

At the foot of docks

After the tide

Uncrowned city!

Where sparrows alight

In spider tracks

On sills well high

Doomed city!

Closing comes the night

History awakens

Here to abide

– Frail Age, Fisher Kel That

Surrounded in a city of blue fire, she stood alone on the balcony. The sky’s darkness was pushed away, an unwelcome guest on this the first night of the Gedderone Fete. Throngs filled the streets of Darujhistan, happily riotous, good-natured in the calamity of one year’s ending and another’s beginning. The night air was humid and pungent with countless scents.

There had been banquets. There had been unveilings of eligible young men and maidens. Tables laden with exotic foods, ladies wrapped in silks, men and women in preposterous uniforms all glittering gilt-a city with no standing army bred a plethora of private militias and a chaotic proliferation of high ranks held, more or less exclusively, by the nobility. pqdm.com