House of Chains

‘They suspect you will join the renegades, don’t they?’



‘Broken kin. Aye, they do.’



‘And will you?’



Onrack studied the Tiste Edur for a moment. ‘Only if you do, Trull Sengar.’



They were at the very edge of cultivated land, and so it was relatively easy to avoid contact with any of the local residents. The lone road they crossed was empty of life in both directions for as far as they could see. Beyond the irrigated fields, the rugged natural landscape reasserted itself. Tufts of grasses, sprawls of water-smoothed gravel tracking down dry gulches and ravines, the occasional guldindha tree.



The hills ahead were saw-toothed, the facing side clawed into near cliffs.



Those hills were where the T’lan Imass had broken the ice sheets, the first place of defiance. To protect the holy sites, the hidden caves, the flint quarries. Where, now, the weapons of the fallen were placed.



Weapons these renegades would reclaim . There was no provenance to the sorcery investing those stone blades, at least with respect to Tellann. They would feed the ones who held them, provided they were kin to the makers-or indeed made by those very hands long ago. Imass, then, since the art among the mortal peoples was long lost. Also, finding those weapons would give the renegades their final freedom, severing the power of Tellann from their bodies.



‘You spoke of betraying your clan,’ Trull Sengar said as they approached the hills. ‘These seem to be old memories, Onrack.’



‘Perhaps we are destined to repeat our crimes, Trull Sengar. Memories have returned to me-all that I had thought lost. I do not know why.’



‘The severing of the Ritual?’



‘Possibly.’



‘What was your crime?’



‘I trapped a woman in time. Or so it seemed. I painted her likeness in a sacred cave. It is now my belief that, in so doing, I was responsible for the terrible murders that followed, for her leaving the clan. She could not join in the Ritual that made us immortal, for by my hand she had already become so. Did she know this? Was this the reason for her defying Logros and the First Sword? There are no answers to that. What madness stole her mind, so that she would kill her closest kin, so that, indeed, she would seek to kill the First Sword himself, her own brother?’



‘A woman not your mate, then.’



‘No. She was a bonecaster. A Soletaken.’



‘Yet you loved her.’



A lopsided shrug. ‘Obsession is its own poison, Trull Sengar.’



A narrow goat trail led up into the range, steep and winding in its ascent. They began climbing.



‘I would object,’ the Tiste Edur said, ‘to this notion of being doomed to repeat our mistakes, Onrack. Are no lessons learned? Does not experience lead to wisdom?’



‘Trull Sengar. I have just betrayed Monok Ochem and Ibra Gholan. I have betrayed the T’lan Imass, for I chose not to accept my fate. Thus, the same crime as the one I committed long ago. I have always hungered for solitude from my kind. In the realm of the Nascent, I was content. As I was in the sacred caves that lie ahead.’



‘Content? And now, at this moment?’



Onrack was silent for a time. ‘When memories have returned, Trull Sengar, solitude is an illusion, for every silence is filled by a clamorous search for meaning.’



‘You’re sounding more… mortal with every day that passes, friend.’



‘Flawed, you mean.’



The Tiste Edur grunted. ‘Even so. Yet look at what you are doing right now, Onrack.’



‘What do you mean?’



Trull Sengar paused on the trail and looked at the T’lan Imass. His smile was sad. ‘You’re returning home.’



A short distance away were camped the Tiste Liosan. Battered, but alive. Which was, Malachar reflected, at least something.



Strange stars gleamed overhead, their light wavering, as if brimming with tears. The landscape stretching out beneath them seemed a lifeless wasteland of weathered rock and sand.



The fire they had built in the lee of a humped mesa had drawn strange moths the size of small birds, as well as a host of other flying creatures, including winged lizards. A swarm of flies had descended on them earlier, biting viciously before vanishing as quickly as they had come. And now, those bites seemed to crawl , as if the insects had left something behind.



There was, to Malachar’s mind, an air of… unwelcome to this realm. He scratched at one of the lumps on his arm, hissed as he felt something squirm beneath the hot skin. Turning back to the fire, he studied his seneschal.



Jorrude knelt beside the hearth, head lowered-a position that had not changed in some time-and Malachar’s disquiet deepened. Enias squatted close by the seneschal, ready to move if yet another fit of anguish overwhelmed his master, but those disturbing sessions were arriving ever less frequently. Orenas remained guarding the horses, and Malachar knew he stood with sword drawn in the darkness beyond the fire’s light.