She frowned. ‘One for each of the Holy Protectors?’

No. ‘Perhaps. I have not decided. These two you see, they were my friends. Now dead.’ He paused, then added, ‘I had but two friends.’

She seemed to flinch slightly at that. ‘What of Leoman? What of Mathok? What of… me?’

‘I have no plans on carving your likenesses here.’

‘That is not what I meant.’

I know . He gestured at the two Teblor warriors. ‘Creation, Chosen One.’

‘When I was young, I wrote poetry, in the path that my mother already walked. Did you know that?’

He smiled at the word ‘young’ but replied in all seriousness, ‘No, I did not.’

‘I… I have resurrected the habit.’

‘May it serve you well.’

She must have sensed something of the blood-slick edge underlying his statement, for her expression tightened. ‘But that is never its purpose, is it. To serve . Or to yield satisfaction-self-satisfaction, I mean, since the other kind but follows as a returning ripple in a well-’

‘Confusing the pattern.’

‘As you say. It is far too easy to see you as a knot-browed barbarian, Toblakai. No, the drive to create is something other, isn’t it? Have you an answer?’

He shrugged. ‘If one exists, it will only be found in the search-and searching is at creation’s heart, Chosen One.’

She stared at the statues once more. ‘And what are you searching for? With these… old friends?’

‘I do not know. Yet.’

‘Perhaps they will tell you, one day.’

The snakes surrounded them by the hundreds now, slithering unremarked by either over their feet, around their ankles, heads lifting again and again to flick tongues towards the carved trunks.

‘Thank you, Toblakai,’ Sha’ik murmured. ‘I am humbled… and revived.’

‘There is trouble in your city, Chosen One.’

She nodded. ‘I know.’

‘Are you the calm at its heart?’

A bitter smile twisted her lips as she turned away. ‘Will these serpents permit us to leave?’

‘Of course. But do not step. Instead, shuffle. Slowly. They will open for you a path.’

‘I should be alarmed by all this,’ she said as she edged back on their path.

But it is the least of your worries, Chosen One . ‘I will keep you apprised of developments, if you wish.’

‘Thank you, yes.’

He watched her make her way out of the clearing. There were vows wrapped tight around Toblakai’s soul. Slowly constricting. Some time soon, something would break. He knew not which, but if Leoman had taught him one thing, it was patience.

When she was gone, the warrior swung about and approached the mason’s chest.

Dust on the hands, a ghostly patina, tinted faintly pink by the raging red storm encircling the world.

The heat of the day was but an illusion in Raraku. With the descent of darkness, the desert’s dead bones quickly cast off the sun’s shimmering, fevered breath. The wind grew chill and the sands erupted with crawling, buzzing life, like vermin emerging from a corpse. Rhizan flitted in a frenzied wild hunt through the clouds of capemoths and chigger fleas above the tent city sprawled in the ruins. In the distance desert wolves howled as if hunted by ghosts.

Heboric lived in a modest tent raised around a ring of stones that had once provided the foundation for a granary. His abode was situated well away from the settlement’s centre, surrounded by the yurts of one of Mathok’s desert tribes. Old rugs covered the floor. Off to one side a small table of piled bricks held a brazier, sufficient for cooking if not warmth. A cask of well-water stood nearby, flavoured with amber wine. A half-dozen flickering oil lamps suffused the interior with yellow light.

He sat alone, the pungent aroma of the hen’bara tea sweet in the cooling air. Outside, the sounds of the settling tribe offered a comforting background, close enough and chaotic enough to keep scattered and random his thoughts. Only later, when sleep claimed all those around him, would the relentless assault begin, the vertiginous visions of a face of jade, so massive it challenged comprehension. Power both alien and earthly, as if born of a natural force never meant to be altered. Yet altered it had been, shaped, cursed sentient. A giant buried in otataral, held motionless in an eternal prison.

Who could now touch the world beyond, with the ghosts of two human hands-hands that had been claimed then abandoned by a god. But was it Fener who abandoned me, or did I abandon Fener? Which of us, I wonder, is more … exposed ?