Toll the Hounds

‘Aye.’



She glanced,over. ‘You got ’em all in the taproom? Damned impressive-’



‘No, I didn’t, but they’re all down. Four of ’em, right at the foot of the stage. Looked like they rushed it.’



Rushed it? But who was up there… ‘We lose our bard, then?’



‘Don’t know,’ Picker said. ‘Didn’t see him.’ Rushed the stage… ‘We lost Bluepearl, too.’



Blend slowly closed her eyes a second time. Oh, she was hurting, and a lot of that hurt couldn’t get sewn up. They caught us. ‘Picker.’



‘They slaughtered everyone, Blend. People with nothing but bad luck being here tonight. Skevos. Hedry, Larmas, little Boothal. All to take us down.’



From up the street came a squad of City Guard, lanterns swinging.



For a scene such as Blend was looking out on right now, there should be a crowd of onlookers, the ones hungry to see injured, dying people, the ones who fed on such things. But there was no one.



Because this was Guild work.



‘Some of us are still breathing,’ Blend said. ‘It’s not good to do that. Leave some marines still breathing.’



‘No, it’s not good at all.’



Blend knew that tone. Still, she wondered. Are we enough? Is there enough in us to do this? Do we still have what’s needed? They’d lost a healer and a mage this night. They’d lost the best of them. Because we were careless.



Antsy joined them as the guards closed in round Barathol and Chaur. ‘Pick, Blend,’ he said, ‘I don’t know about you two, but right now, gods below, I’m feeling old.’



A sergeant of the guard approached. ‘How bad is it inside?’ No one seemed eager to reply.



Six streets away, a world away, Cutter stood in the front yard of a store selling headstones and crypt facades. An array of stylized deities, none of them temple-sanctioned as yet, beseeching blessings upon the future dead. Beru and Burn, Soliel and Nerruse, Treach and the Fallen One, Hood and Fanderay, Hound and tiger, boar and worm. The shop was closed and he looked upon stones still uncarved, awaiting names of loved ones. Against one of the low yard walls stood a row of marble sarcophagi, and against the wall opposite there were tall urns with their flared mouths, narrow necks and swollen bellies, reminding him of pregnant women… birth into death, wombs to hold all that remained of mortal flesh, homes to those who would answer the final question, the last question: what lies beyond? What awaits us all? What shape the gate before me? There were plenty of ways of asking it, but they all meant the same thing, and all sought the one answer. One spoke of death often. The death of a friendship. The death of love. Each echoed with the finality that waited at the very end, but they were faint echoes, ghostly, acting out scenes in puppet shows swallowed in flickering shadows. Kill a love. What lies beyond! Emptiness, cold, drifting ashes, yet does it not prove fertile? A place where a new seed is planted, finding life, growing into itself? Is this how true death is, as well! Prom the dust, a new seed… A pleasing thought. A comforting thought.



The street behind him was modestly crowded, the last of the late night shoppers reluctant to close out this day. Maybe they had nothing to go home to. Maybe they hungered for one more purchase, in the forlorn hope that it would fill whatever emptiness gnawed deep inside.



None wandered into this yard, none wanted the reminder of what waited for them all. Why, then, had he found himself here? Was he seeking some kind of comfort, some reminder that for each and every person, no matter where, the same conclusion was on its way? One could walk, one could crawl, one could run headlong, but one could never turn round and head the other way, could never escape. That, even with the truism that all grief belonged to the living, the ones left behind-facing empty spaces where someone once stood-there could be found a kind of calm repose. We walk the same path, some farther along, some further back, but still and for ever more the same path.



There was, then, the death of love.



And there was, alas, its murder.



‘Crokus Younghand.’



He slowly turned round. A woman stood before him, exquisitely dressed, a cloak of ermine about her shoulders. A heart-shaped face, languid eyes, painted lips, and yes, he knew this face. Had known it, a younger version, a child’s version, perhaps, but now there was nothing of that child-not in the eyes, not even in the sad smile on those full lips. ‘Challice D’Arle.’



Later, he would look back on this moment, on the dark warning contained in the fact that, when he spoke her name of old, she did not correct him.