Westward, then, for a half-dozen or so days. Whereupon they would come to a long-dead river-bed wending northwestward, the valley sides cut and gnawed by the seasonal run-off from countless centuries past, gnarled now with sage brush and cacti and grey-oaks. Dark hills on the horizon where the sun set, a sacred place, the oldest maps noted, of some tribe so long extinct their name meant nothing.

Out onto the battered road, then, the city falling away behind them.

After a time, Karsa glanced back and bared his teeth at her. 'Listen.

That is better, yes?'

'I hear only the wind.'

'Better than ten thousand tireless contrivances.'

He turned back, leaving Samar to mull on his words. Inventions cast moral shadows, she well knew, better than most, in fact. But… could simple convenience prove so perniciously evil? The action of doing things, laborious things, repetitive things, such actions invited ritual, and with ritual came meaning that expanded beyond the accomplishment of the deed itself. From such ritual self-identity emerged, and with it self-worth. Even so, to make life easier must possess some inherent value, mustn't it?

Easier. Nothing earned, the language of recompense fading away until as lost as that ancient tribe's cherished tongue. Worth diminished, value transformed into arbitrariness, oh gods below, and I was so bold as to speak of freedom! She kicked her horse forward until she came alongside the Toblakai. 'But is that all? Karsa Orlong! I ask you, is that all?'

'Among my people,' he said after a moment, 'the day is filled, as is the night.'

'With what? Weaving baskets, trapping fish, sharpening swords, training horses, cooking, eating, sewing, fucking-'

'Telling stories, mocking fools who do and say foolish things, yes, all that. You must have visited there, then?'

'I have not.'

A faint smile, then gone. 'There are things to do. And, always, witch, ways of cheating them. But no-one truly in their lives is naive.'

'Truly in their lives?'

'Exulting in the moment, witch, does not require wild dancing.'

'And so, without those rituals…'

'The young warriors go looking for war.'

'As you must have done.'

Another two hundred paces passed before he said, 'Three of us, we came to deliver death and blood. Yoked like oxen, we were, to glory. To great deeds and the heavy shackles of vows. We went hunting children, Samar Dev.'

'Children?'

He grimaced. 'Your kind. The small creatures who breed like maggots in rotting meat. We sought – no, I sought – to cleanse the world of you and your kin. You, the cutters of forests, the breakers of earth, the binders of freedom. I was a young warrior, looking for war.'

She studied the escaped slave tattoo on his face. 'You found more than you bargained for.'

'I know all about small worlds. I was born in one.'

'So, experience has now tempered your zeal,' she said, nodding. 'No longer out to cleanse the world of humanity.'

He glanced across and down at her. 'I did not say that.'

'Oh. Hard to manage, I would imagine, for a lone warrior, even a Toblakai warrior. What happened to your companions?'

'Dead. Yes, it is as you say. A lone warrior cannot slay a hundred thousand enemies, even if they are children.'

'A hundred thousand? Oh, Karsa, that's barely the population of two Holy Cities. Your enemy does not number in the hundreds of thousands, it numbers in the tens of millions.'

'That many?'

'Are you reconsidering?'

He shook his head slowly, clearly amused. 'Samar Dev, even tens of millions can die, one city at a time.'

'You will need an army.'

'I have an army. It awaits my return.'

Toblakai. An army of Toblakai, now that would be a sight to loosen the bladder of the Empress herself. 'Needless to say, Karsa Orlong, I hope you never make it home.'

'Hope as you like, Samar Dev. I shall do what needs doing in my own time. None can stop me.'

A statement, not a boast. The witch shivered in the heat.

****
They approached a range of cliffs marking the Turul'a Escarpment, the sheer face of the limestone pocked with countless caves. Cutter watched Heboric Ghost Hands urge his mount into a canter, drawing ahead, then reining in sharply, the reins cutting into his wrists, a flare of greenish fire blossoming at his hands.

'Now what?' the Daru asked under his breath.

Greyfrog bounded forward and halted at the old man's side.

'They sense something,' Felisin Younger said behind Cutter. 'Greyfrog says the Destriant is suddenly fevered, a return of the jade poison.'