A voice rumbled above him. ‘That was for Malaz City. Even so, you still owe me one.’

‘After Henaras?’ Pearl mumbled, his words puffing up tiny clouds of dust. ‘You should be owing me one.’

‘Her? Not worth counting.’

Something thumped heavily to the ground beside Pearl. That then groaned.

‘All right,’ the Claw sighed- more dust, a miniature Whirlwind- ‘I owe you one, then.’

‘Glad we’re agreed. Now, make some more noises. Your lass over there’s bound to take a look… eventually.’

Pearl listened to the footfalls pad away. Two sets. The wizard was in no mood to talk, I suppose .

To me, that is.

I believe I am sorely humbled.

Beside him, the trussed shape groaned again.

Despite himself, Pearl smiled.

To the east, the sky paled.

And this night was done.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

On this day, Raraku rises.

xxxiv.II.1.81 ‘Words of the Prophecy’

The Book of Dryjhna the Apocalyptic
The Whirlwind Goddess had once been a raging storm of wind and sand. A wall surrounding the young woman who had once been Felisin of House Paran, and who had become Sha’ik, Chosen One and supreme ruler of the Army of the Apocalypse.

Felisin had been her mother’s name. She had then made it her adopted daughter’s name. Yet she herself had lost it. Occasionally, however, in the deepest hours of night, in the heart of an impenetrable silence of her own making, she caught a glimpse of that girl. As she once had been, the smeared reflection from a polished mirror. Round-cheeked and flushed, a wide smile and bright eyes. A child with a brother who adored her, who would toss her about on one knee as if it was a bucking horse, and her squeals of fear and delight would fill the chamber.

Her mother had been gifted with visions. This was well known. A respected truth. And that mother’s youngest daughter had dreamed that one day she too would find that talent within her.

But that gift only came with the goddess, with this spiteful, horrific creature whose soul was far more parched and withered than any desert. And the visions that assailed Sha’ik were murky, fraught things. They were, she had come to realize, not born of any talent or gift. They were the conjurings of fear.

A goddess’s fear.

And now the Whirlwind Wall had closed, retracted, had drawn in from the outside world to rage beneath Sha’ik’s sun-darkened skin, along her veins and arteries, careening wild and deafening in her mind.

Oh, there was power there. Bitter with age, bilious with malice. And whatever fuelled it bore the sour taste of betrayal. A heart-piercing, very personal betrayal. Something that should have healed, that should have numbed beneath thick, tough scar tissue. Spiteful pleasure had kept the wound open, had fed its festering heat, until hate was all that was left. Hate for… someone, a hate so ancient it no longer possessed a face.

In moments of cold reason, Sha’ik saw it for what it was. Insane, raised to such extremity that she understood that whatever had been the crime against the goddess, whatever the source of the betrayal, it had not earned such a brutal reaction. The proportions had begun wrong. From the very start. Leading her to suspect that the proclivity for madness had already existed, dark flaws marring the soul that would one day claw its way into ascendancy.

Step by step, we walk the most horrendous paths. Stride tottering along the edge of an unsuspected abyss. Companions see nothing amiss. The world seems a normal place. Step by step, no different from anyone else-not from the outside. Not even from the inside. Apart from that tautness, that whisper of panic. The vague confusion that threatens your balance.

Felisin, who was Sha’ik, had come to comprehend this.

For she had walked that same path.

Hatred, sweet as nectar.

I have walked into the abyss.

I am as mad as that goddess. And this is why she chose me, for we are kindred souls…

Then what is this ledge to which I still cling so desperately? Why do I persist in my belief that I can save myself? That I can return… find once more the place where madness cannot be found, where confusion does not exist.

The place… of childhood.

She stood in the main chamber, the chair that would be a throne behind her, its cushions cool, its armrests dry. She stood, imprisoned in a stranger’s armour. She could almost feel the goddess reaching out to engulf her on all sides-not a mother’s embrace, no, nothing like that at all. This one would suffocate her utterly, would drown out all light, every glimmer of self-awareness.

Her ego is armoured in hatred. She cannot look in, she can barely see out. Her walk is a shamble, cramped and stiff, a song of rusty fittings and creaking straps. Her teeth gleam in the shadows, but it is a rictus grin.