Still, better for Crokus had he looked to Fiddler. This soldier's a wonder in his own right.

'Icarium climbs like he knows where he's going,' the sapper observed.

Mappo winced. 'I had come to the same observation,' he ruefully admitted.

'Have you two been here before?'

'I have not, Fiddler. But Icarium ... well, he's wandered this land before.'

'But in returning to a place he'd been to before, how would he know?'

The Trell shook his head. He shouldn't. He never has before. Are those blessed barriers breaking down? Queen of Dreams, return Icarium to the bliss of not knowing. I beg you . . .

'Let us join him,' Fiddler said, slowly straightening.

'I'd rather—'

'As you wish,' the soldier replied, setting off after the Jhag, who had vanished into the thorn-choked city ruins beyond the sea wall. After a moment, Crokus strode past Mappo as well.

The Trell grimaced. I must be getting old, to let being distraught cow me so. He sighed, rising from his crouch and lumbering after the others.

The slope of detritus at the base of the sea wall was a treacherous scree of splintered wood, slabs of plaster, brick and potsherds. Halfway up, Fiddler grunted and paused, reaching down to pull free a shaft of grey wood. 'I've some rethinking to do,' he said, glancing back down. 'All this wood's turned to stone.'

'Petrified,' Crokus said. 'My uncle described the process to me once. The wood soaks up minerals. But that's supposed to take tens of thousands of years.'

'Well, a High Mage of the D'riss Warren could manage the same in the blink of an eye, lad.'

Mappo pulled free a fragment of pottery. Not much thicker than an eggshell, the shard was sky blue in colour and very hard. It revealed the torso of a figure painted on the surface, black with a green outline. The image was stiff, stylized, but without doubt human. He let the sherd drop.

'This city was dead long before the sea dried up,' Fiddler said, resuming his climb.

Crokus called up after him, 'How do you know?'

'Because everything's water-worn, lad. Waves crumbled this sea wall. Century after century of waves. I grew up in a port city, remember. I've seen what water can do. The Emperor had Malaz Bay dredged before the Imperial piers were built – revealed old sea walls and the like.' Reaching the top, he paused to catch his breath. 'Showed everyone that Malaz City's older than anybody'd realized.'

'And that the sea levels have risen since,' Mappo observed.

'Aye.'

At the top of the sea wall the city stretched out before them. While the remains were weathered, it was clear that the city had been deliberately destroyed. Every building had been reduced to rubble, revealing a cataclysmic use of force and fury. Scrub brush filled every open space that remained and low, gnarled trees clung to foundation stones and surmounted the mounds of wreckage.

Statuary had been a primary feature of the architecture, lining the broad colonnades and set in niches on every building wall. Marble body parts lay everywhere, each displaying the rigid style that Mappo had seen on the potsherd. The Trell began to sense a familiarity with the assortment of human figures portrayed.

A legend, told on the Jhag Odhan ... a tale told by the elders in my tribe . . .

Icarium was nowhere to be seen.

'Now where?' Fiddler asked.

A frail keening rising in his head, bringing sweat to his dark skin, Mappo stepped forward.

'Caught a scent of something, have you?'

He barely heard the sapper's question.

The city's pattern was hard to distinguish from what remained, yet Mappo followed his own mental map, born of his memory of the legend, its cadence, its precise metering when recounted in the harsh, clashing dialect of archaic Trell. People who possessed no written language carried the use of speech to astonishing extremes. Words were numbers were codes were formulae. Words held secret maps, the measuring of paces, the patterns of mortal minds, of histories, of cities, of continents and warrens.

The tribe Mappo had adopted all those centuries ago had chosen to return to the old ways, rejecting the changes that were afflicting the Trell. The elders had shown Mappo and the others all that was in danger of being lost, the power that resided in the telling of tales, the ritual unscrolling of memory.

Mappo knew where Icarium had gone. He knew what the Jhag would find. His heart thundering savagely in his chest, his pace increased as he scrambled over the rubble, pushing through thickets of thorn which lacerated even his tough hide.

Seven main avenues within each city of the First Empire. The Sky Spirits look down upon the holy number, seven scorpion tails, seven stings facing the circle of sand. To all who would make offerings to the Seven Holies, look to the circle of sand.