Gods, they feel the same!

No, he was not much impressed by this godling cowering in his soul. Kadaspala was mad, mad to think such a creation could achieve anything. Etch deep into its heart this ferocious hunger to kill, and then reveal the horror of its helplessness-oh, was that not cruel beyond all reason? Was that not its own invitation into insanity?

Kadaspala, you have but made versions of yourself. You couldn’t help it-yes, I see that.

But, damn you, my flesh belonged to me. Not you.

Damn you -

But curses meant nothing now. Every fate was now converging. Hah hah, take that, you pious posers, and you arrogant shits, and all you whining victims-see what comes! It’s all the same, this end, all the same!

And here he was, trapped in the greater scheme. His skin a piece of a tapestry. And its grand scene? A pattern he could never read.

The demon Pearl stood wearing bodies from which a forest of iron roots swept down in loops and coils. It could carry no more, and so it stood, softly weeping, its legs like two failing trunks that shook and trembled. It had long since weighed the value of hatred. For the High Mage Tayschrenn, who first summoned it and bound it to his will. For Ben Adaephon Delat, who unleashed it against the Son of Darkness ond for Anomnnder Rake himself, whose sword bit deep. But the value was an illusion. Hate was a lie that in feeding fills the hater with the bliss of satiation, even as his spirit starves. No, Pearl did not hate. Life was a negotiation between the expected and the unexpected. One made do.

Draconus staggered up. ‘Pearl, my friend, I have come to say goodbye. And to tell you I am sorry.’

‘What saddens you?’ the demon asked.

‘1 am sorry, Pearl, for all of this. For Dragnipur. For the horror forged by my own hands. It was fitting, was it not, that the weapon claimed its maker? I think, yes, it was. It was.’ He paused, and then brought both hands up to his face. For a moment it seemed he would begin clawing his beard from the skin beneath it. In-stead, the shackled hands fell away, down, dragged by the weight of the chains.

‘I too am sorry,’ said Pearl. ‘To see the end of this.’

‘What!’

‘So many enemies, all here and not one by choice. Enemies, and yet working together for so long. It was a wondrous thing, was it not, Draconus? When neces-sity forced each hand to clasp, to work as one. A wondrous thing.’

The warrior stared at the demon. He seemed unable to speak.

Apsal’ara worked her way along the top of the beam. It was hard to hold on, the wagon pitching and rocking so with one last, useless surge forward, and the beam itself thick with the slime of sweat, blood and runny mucus. But something was happening at the portal, that black, icy stain beneath the very centre of the wagon.

A strange stream was flowing into the Gate, an intricate pattern ebbing down through the fetid air from the underside of the wagon’s bed. Each tendril was inky black, the space around it ignited by a sickly glow that pulsed slower than any mortal heart.

Was it Kadaspala’s pathetic god? Seeking to use the tattooist’s insane master-piece as if it was a latticework, a mass of rungs, down which it could clamber and so plunge through the Gate? Seeking to escape.

If so, then she intended to make use of it first.

Let the cold burn her flesh. Let pieces of her simply fall away. It was a better end than some snarling manifestation of chaos ripping out her throat.

She struggled ever closer, her breath sleeting out in crackling plumes that sank down in sparkling ice crystals. It reminded her of her youth, the nights out on the tundra, when the first snows came, when clouds shivered and shed their diamond skins and the world grew so still, so breathless and perfect, that she felt that time itself was but moments from freezing solid-to hold her for ever in that place, hold her youth, hold tight her dreams and ambitions, her memories of the faces she loved-her mother, her father, her kin, her lovers. No one would grow old, no one would die and fall away from the path, and the path itself, why, it would never end.

Leave me in mid-step. My foot never to settle, never to edge me forward that much closer to the end of things. Yes, leave me here. At the very heart of possi-hilitics, not one of which will crash down. N o failures to come, no losses, no regrets to kiss upon the lips-I will not feel the cold.

I will not feel the cold -

She cried out in the frigid, deathly air. Such pain-how could she ever get close enough?

Aspal’ara drew herself up, knees beneath her. And eyed that pattern, just there, a body’s length away and still streaming down. If she launched herself from this place, simply threw herself forward, would that flowing net catch her?