‘Every child wants, first and foremost,’ replied Anomander, and now at last Kellaras could see his master’s doubt. ‘But not all wants should find answer.’

‘I give you the blade,’ Henarald said. ‘The commission was accepted, as Kellaras is my witness. I bring it to you now. We are all honed well on promises, First Son, are we not?’

‘Then I would not dull your virtue, Lord Hust,’ said Anomander, and he reached down and closed his hand about the weapon’s leather-wrapped grip.

Silchas pushed away from the wall and clapped Andarist on one shoulder. ‘See? We are done as promised, O impatient groom, and so you can be off. But I must catch you up. Captain Scara Bandaris has petitioned my presence in the matter of a score of mongrels in the keeper’s yard.’

Anomander withdrew his hand from the sword. ‘Lord Hust, I will lead you now into the presence of Mother Dark, and by Darkness she will bless this weapon.’

‘I will find you at the gate,’ Andarist said to him.

His brother nodded. ‘Prazek and Dathenar await you below. I would have Kellaras with me.’

‘And I, Galar Baras,’ said Henarald, ‘who attends us without.’ Andarist followed Silchas out of the chamber.

These were fraught days and nights, ever since the mysterious meeting between the Azathanai woman and Mother Dark. The silts left by the flooding river still stained the foundations of the city’s buildings, truly the soiled hand of an ancient god. A dozen citizens had drowned, trapped in cellars or swept from their feet by withdrawing currents and then battered by stone and wood. The fisherfolk who plied Dorssan Ryl had all departed — not a boat remained in Kharkanas, and it was said that the forest now seethed with Deniers on the march — to where, none knew.

Within the Citadel there was confusion and discord. The High Priestess Syntara, skin bleached of all life and seeming health, was said to have fled, seeking sanctuary in some unknown place.

Kellaras understood little of it. He felt as if the world had been jostled, throwing them all about, and balance underfoot remained uncertain, as if even nature’s laws were now unreliable. The priesthood was in chaos. Faith was becoming a battlefield and rumours delivered tales of blood spilled in the forests, Deniers murdered in their huts. And in this time, as far as Kellaras could tell, his lord had done nothing. Planning his brother’s wedding, as would a father, if the father still lived. Awaiting his new sword, which he seems disinclined to hold, much less use.

Prazek and Dathenar get drunk every night, taking whores and priestesses to their beds, and if their eyes are haunted — when caught in a moment of reverie — then in that private silence is where dwells the frightful cause, and nowhere else.

Kellaras now walked with his lord, with Henarald and Galar Baras behind them, and the corridors seemed damp and musty, the tapestries smelling of mould, the stone slick underfoot. Kellaras imagined a swamp rising to take Kharkanas, a siege of water against soil and every wall undermined beneath placid surfaces.

The rumours swirling round Urusander’s Legion were, to the captain’s mind, the most disturbing ones of them all. Entire companies had departed their garrisons, and the standards of disbanded companies had been seen above troops in the outlands. Hunn Raal had left Kharkanas in the night and his whereabouts were unknown.

When faiths take knife in hand, surely every god must turn away.

He had never given much thought to the Deniers. They were people of the forest and the river, of broken denuded hills. Their skin was the colour of whatever ground they squatted upon, their eyes the murky hue of streams and bogs. They were furtive and uneducated, bound to superstitions and arcane, secret rituals. He could not imagine them capable of the conspiracy of infiltration now being levelled against them.

They approached the Chamber of Night, where the air in the corridor was unseemly cold, smelling of clay.

‘She is indeed assailed,’ said Henarald behind them.

Anomander raised a hand and halted. He faced the Lord of Hust. ‘This is indifference, sir.’

‘No reverence given to stone and avenue, then? Even should they lead to her presence?’

‘None by her,’ the First Son replied, studying Henarald and the wrapped weapon cradled in the old man’s arms.

‘What of her temples?’

‘The priests and priestesses know them well, sir, and by their nightly moans and thrashing would sanctify by zeal alone. You will have to query them directly as to their measures of success.’

‘First Son, then it seems we are in tumult.’