Fuck . ‘I feel like I’m back in Mock’s Hold,’ he said in a growl. ‘I feel as if I never left.’

‘And she meets your eyes.’

Abruptly a sob took the assassin, vicious as a body blow and just as unexpected.

His friend waited, saying nothing – and Kalam knew that he wouldn’t, because they’d been through it all together. Because true friends knew when to keep silent, to give all the patience needed. Kalam struggled to lock down on his emotions – he wasn’t even sure what had taken him, in that moment. Maybe this unrelenting pressure. This endless howl no one else even hears .

I stood looking down on the city. I stood knowing I was about to walk a path of blood .

The betrayal didn’t even matter, not to me; the Claw was always full of shits. Did it matter to her either? No. She’d already dismissed it. Just one more knife in her chest, and she was already carrying plenty of those, starting with the one she stuck there with her own hands .

Kalam shook himself. ‘Same direction?’

‘For now,’ Quick Ben replied. ‘Until we get closer. Then – southwest.’

‘To the sword.’

‘To the sword.’

‘Anyone babysitting it, Quick?’

‘I hope not.’

Kalam gathered his reins, drew a deep breath and slowly eased it back out. ‘Quick – how did she manage to cross that desert anyway?’

The wizard shook his head, half smiled. ‘Guess we … underestimated her.’

After a moment, they set out once again.

Wings crooking, Silchas Ruin slid earthward. After a moment, Tulas Shorn followed. To the south they could see something like a cloud, or a swarm. The air hissing past their wings felt brittle, fraught with distant pain rolling like waves across the sky.

Silchas Ruin landed hard on the ground, sembled almost immediately, and staggered forward, hands held over his ears.

Taking his Edur form, Tulas Shorn studied his friend, but drew no closer. Overhead, one of the jade slashes began edging across the face of the sun. A sudden deepening of shadow enveloped them, the gloom eerie and turgid.

Groaning, Silchas finally straightened, stiff as an old man. He looked across. ‘It’s the Hust sword,’ he said. ‘Its howling was driving me mad.’

‘I hear nothing,’ Tulas said.

‘In my skull – I swear I could feel bones crack.’

‘Unsheathe it, friend.’

Silchas Ruin looked over with wide eyes, his expression filling with dread.

‘Grasp it when you veer.’

‘And what will that achieve?’

‘I don’t know. But I cannot imagine that this gift was meant to torture you. Your only other choice, Silchas, is to discard it.’ He gestured southward. ‘We are almost upon them – I am, frankly, astonished that she still lives. But if we delay here much longer …’

‘Tulas, I am afraid.’

‘Of dying? A little late for that.’

Silchas smiled, but it was more of a grimace. ‘Easy for you to say.’

‘I dwelt a long time in the House of Death, tormented by the truth that I failed to achieve what I most wanted in my life. That sense, of terrible incompleteness, overwhelmed me many times. But now I stand with you, my brother, and I will fall in your stead if I can in this battle to come. Oblivion does not frighten me – I see only its blessed release.’

Silchas Ruin studied him. Then he sighed and reached for the sword. Hand closing on its plain grip, he slid the weapon free.

The Hust sword bucked in his hand, voicing a deafening shriek.

Tulas Shorn was driven back a step, and he stared in shock as enormous ghostly chains appeared, writhing from the sword’s patterned blade. Those chains seemed to be anchored deep into the ground, and suddenly the land beneath them was shaking, pitching them about as if the world was rolling its shoulders. From below, a rising thunder—

A blast of dirt and stone lifted skyward off to Tulas Shorn’s left, and he bellowed in shock upon seeing a dragon clawing its way free of the steaming earth. And then, off to the right, another erupted in a shower of debris, and then a third – each one chained as it rose from the ground, wings hammering the dust-filled air.

Their roars – of release – ripped across the plain.

Silchas Ruin stood, both hands now on the sword, as the ethereal chains snapped taut, scissoring wildly above him like the strands of a wind-whipped thread.

Eloth. Ampelas. Kalse .

Tulas Shorn staggered forward. ‘Veer! Silchas Ruin – veer! We have our Storm! He has given us our Storm!’