Marching through the Wastes. Marching to the edge of the world. Trying to find a way to kill a man who cannot die. Landra and Raeta and Tobias went very slowly. Tobias and the Raeta-thing slow as old women, accompanied by grunts and groans and crunches and yelps. Difficult bits, the Raeta-thing had to hold on to Landra’s elbow on account of how she couldn’t see properly out of one eye. So they were going to walk across the Wastes to Illyr? Take them, what, several years? Marith Altrersyr King Ruin King of Shadows Invulnerable would be dead of old age before they got to him.

The landscape got bleaker as they travelled. Bare high grassland, broken every few miles by outcroppings of grey rock. Like a sea with whales breaching, said the thing that had once been Raeta. The rocks tumbled into shapes that tricked the eyes into seeing patterns: pillars, doorways, faces, thrones. A perfectly round lake reflected the sky pale and empty. Nothing moved on it. Smelled funny as they got closer. The water was smooth, solid looking, glistening dark. Fine silk velvet, picked out with gold thread. The water bottles were almost empty, so Landra suggested they get water there. Maybe even wash.

“Water’s poison,” said Tobias.

“Poison?”

He picked up a handful of soil, threw it into the lake. The water hissed, closed over the soil without a ripple. Perfectly smooth surface, like muscles and skin and good cloth.

“Poison.”

Landra blanched.

They tried to camp every night in the shelter of the rock formations. Woke each morning at dawn to the cawing of crows. High off screams of kites and kestrels. The crows sat on the rocks hoping they’d die soon. Flies buzzed round Tobias, drawn by the smell of his smaller, just about scabbing wound. Left Raeta alone.

The Army of Amrath were ahead of them. Spurred on by its exploits in Tyrenae. Eager for more. Three days down from the mountains they had seen the dust clouds behind them, the sound and smell of ten times a thousand horses and men. Kept their distance, cowered in the cover of some rocks when a scouting part rode by.

“Let them get well ahead of us,” Tobias said. “Safer that way. Try and fall in with the idiots following them. If any of them survive this.”

That Marith knew they were all three alive and following him in order to kill him was a stumbling block they didn’t mention. Like the broken sarriss they came across: entirely pointless. That Marith might be unkillable was a stumbling block they didn’t mention either. Like the next broken sarriss they came across: even more pointless.

“What are you?” Tobias asked Raeta. “What is he? Explain!”

She only shook her head, slowly and painfully, and Tobias saw leaves dancing and birds flying and heard the sound of the wind in bare dead trees. “Death,” she said.

They stopped in a place where a troop of soldiers had camped before them. A discarded water bottle, an empty pork barrel, bits of pig bone alive with flies and beetles. They were running out of bread. So the thing that had been Raeta suggested they eat the beetles. Landra looked sickened. Tobias felt his stomach heave. They crunched almost nicely, you shut your eyes and your mind to what it was. Landra blushed scarlet when she traced out graffiti on a rock reading, “Sarene is the most beautiful of women. Sarene likes it up the arse.”

Gods, reading it was wonderful, out here in the filth. Someone out here thinking about sex and love and women, feeling alive enough to scratch it laboriously into solid rock.

Once they found the body of a soldier, stretched out with a clawing hand reaching off to follow his comrade’s tracks. Sword wound deep in the belly. A very slow way to die. The next day they came across a cart and cart horse, abandoned in one of the smooth dead pools. The horse was so covered in insects it was thrashing around like it was still living. So was the man who’d fallen in trying to rescue it. Made a funny sort of high-pitched squeaky clicking sound. Another two dead men a few hours later, floating face down. Another cart sunk and broken. Another dead horse. No more graffiti or salt pork bones. Occasionally they came across groups of stragglers, camp followers staggering dying of thirst and hunger and exhaustion, unable to keep up to follow the army, unable to go back. “Gold,” one woman repeated over and over as she died in the dirt. “Gold. Gold.” “The Illyians killed my father,” a man shouted, stumbling away from them into the dusk. “Revenge!” Tobias felt a nagging horror they would come across Sweet Face.

Landra pointed. “Look there.”

Raeta followed her hand, squinting. Her face all screwed up. “Interesting,” Raeta said.

After days and days walking through the dead landscape, actual living breathing moving not dying life. Or some of it wasn’t dying, anyway. They had caught up with a squad of soldiers. A baggage wagon, floundering hopeless in a patch of shimmering poisoned marsh. A thousand yellow irises, a thousand blue and silver dragonflies, the smell of mint. And a dying horse in the water, five men gathered around cursing. Frantic attempts to unload a cargo of grain sacks.

“Fucking gods don’t let the sacks sli—”

Splash. The horse jerked. Poisoned water sprayed up. Sparkling. Dancing. Raised a cloud of dragonflies iridescent in the evening sun.

“Oh gods. Oh hells.”

“Get the rest of the damned sacks.”

Watched sympathetically as the soldiers wrestled most of the remaining cargo onto dry land. The wagon and the horse slowly sank.

“Let me give you a hand there.” Tobias helped a young man lug a sack clear of the marsh water. His leg and arm and ribs shrieked like the horse.

“Bastards fucked off and left us. Thank you.”

Tobias blinked. “Acol? Sweet Face’s friend?”

“Tobe, man! What in all gods happened to you?”

So there was nothing for it but for Acol’s squad of soldiers to adopt them for the duration, promise solemnly to help them get all the way to Illyr. The bulk of the army was well ahead. Days. Maybe weeks. The going was, uh, maybe a bit harder than anyone had anticipated. King Marith had split his forces in two, sent them up along the north and south coasts. The baggage wagons were getting further and further behind. Getting lost. The army was starving, must be. But rushing on. Leaving them behind. Curse it, Friend said, the war will be over, by the time we get the bloody baggage to Illyr.

“You should have joined the army, Tobe,” said Friend. “Still could, you know. You’re still about young enough. You should have seen what we did to Tyrenae! Oh, gods, you missed out there.”

Death, Tobias thought. The sum total of my life now. Raeta wheezed out a breath that sounded like waves crashing on the shore.

I followed him. I was part of his army. I’m no different to these guys. Why me? Why do I have to see it? See him? A little house in Alborn, and a girl to clean it, and a beer or three in the evening, and a fat soft flatulent gut … But we go on, because there’s nothing else. Me, and Landra with her face burned and her heart broken, and a dying wounded cursed damn god.

At night, the soldiers sat round and told stories about Amrath. Every. Single. Night. The Treachery of Illyr. The Wooing of Eltheia. The Fall of Tereen. The Burning of Elarne. The Burning of Balkash. Even the Song of The Magelord Symeon and the Gabeleth. Name a city. Name a way of blowing it to buggery. Yell “Victory!” Repeat.

Gods, that last one brought back happy memories. If he’d known. If he’d only bloody well known.

“Tyrenae was like that. Like something from the songs. Like the Fall of Tereen. We went through it like we were slaughtering cattle.” Acol’s eyes were rapt. “They put up no defence: gods, the look on their faces, when we marched back in through the gates, they thought maybe we were retreating, had given up on the idea of invading Illyr, you could hear people sniggering at us. And then we went for it! Their faces were a picture.” Acol held up a gold necklace. “Look at this! Even nicer than the one I found in Morr Town. And a lot more fun to get.”

Tobias tried to introduce a bit of variety, tell a story from Immish. They told him as one to shut the fuck up.

Landra writhed in discomfort, listening. Every night.

Raeta’s wound was getting worse. It stank. She looked old and grey faced and terrible. Cold grey like the cold grey stones. She sat and listened every night to the stories, her eyes closed, her face turned to the west. Searching for him, Tobias thought. The nights were very dark, out here. The stars were very bright. Hateful, staring down on them. The red star of the Dragon’s Mouth looked huge, out here. Tobias found himself staring back at it.

Acol said, “We’ll be at the Nimenest soon. Three days, tops, if the wagons can keep from getting stuck.” And then bloody what? None of this is real, thought Tobias. I’m dying, somewhere in Sorlost, in the Emperor’s palace, that mage is torching me, I’m bloody dying delirious, I’ll wake to see myself die and that, gods, I’ll feel so relieved about. Oh gods. Please.

“Anyway,” said Acol. “I’m turning in. Need to keep rested for the fun ahead.”

“Good idea, mate. Keep your strength up.”

“Gods,” Tobias said when the soldiers were all bedded down in their possibly familiar looking wool blankets, “any chance I can kill him?”

“I … I have an idea,” said Landra.

“What?”

“To kill him.”

“Him?”

Landra’s face was pale. Her voice had a shake in it. Oh. Him. Tobias thought: this is not going to be good. I really think this is not going to be good.

Landra gestured to them to move a little further away from the soldiers’ campfire. “I …” She looked at them, edgy, frightened, eager. “I … There is something,” she said, “the stories … made me think of it. There is something in … in Illyr. In Ethalden. That might … that could … Bronze and iron cannot kill him. Men cannot kill him. But there might be something in Ethalden, a thing powerful enough to destroy him. Might be.”

Ethalden. The Tower of Life and Death. Shit yourself in terror saying it even as you marvelled at just how naff the old bastard’s taste in names had been. No. Please. No. I’ve been there once. I’m not going there again, with Marith there. Said kind of trying for casually witty: “The Illyian army, perchance?”

“Shut up, Tobias,” said Raeta. “Well?”

“What’s the one thing Amrath was ever afraid of?” said Landra.

“His mum,” said Tobias. “The pitiful size of his willy. His total sexual inadequacy. Someone finding out who his dad really was.” Something Amrath was afraid of. A story I think I might have heard recently, and once before in a caravan inn. Oh gods. Oh gods.

“The gabeleth,” said Landra. “The one thing that defeated Amrath and Serelethe’s power. The magelord Symeon had to destroy it for Him. And Amrath was afraid of Symeon, that he could do it where He had failed. Had him killed in turn. The gabeleth could destroy Marith. Perhaps. Don’t you think?”

Two nights ago, their dear friends the soldiers of the light infantry, the mighty guardians of the baggage cart, had told the story, singing it loud out into the night.

A great fortress, Amrath raised in Illyr. Its walls were made of gold and mage glass, and its banqueting halls were carved of onyx and red jade. A mustering ground for armies. A prison for his enemies. A warning to all men. Its towers were so high they blocked out the very sunlight. Its chambers rang with shadows and screams. Blood was its mortar. Tears were its mortar. Ashes were its mortar. It was built on the bodies of the dead.

But Amrath could find no pleasure in his fortress. For each month at the dark of the moon, a soldier or a serving maid or a noble was found dead in their bed, and not a mark on them but the burning marks of a great fire running all up the length of their right arm. But no smoke was smelled, and no cries were heard, and what was killing them and how they died no man knew. And the guards and the maids and the nobles began to lose faith in Amrath, if he could not keep his own people safe within his own walls.

So Amrath and his mother Serelethe were in despair, for try as they might, they could not find an answer to the mystery, and their people were dying and muttering against them. And Amrath had angry words with Serelethe, who had promised him mastery of an empire but could not defend his own men for him. And so things went badly in Ethalden.

Now, this had been going on for a year, and no man was any closer to finding the truth of it, when there came to Ethalden a young mage, a wandering sorcerer from Tarboran where the fires burn. And he stood before the throne of Amrath, and dared look even Amrath full in the face. And he promised Amrath that he knew the secret that was plaguing his fortress, and could destroy it. And all he wanted in return was a chance to stand beside Amrath, and be his lieutenant, and lead his armies with fire and blood.

So Amrath roared a great roar of laughter, and promised the mage gold and silver and precious jewels, and a lordship, and the command of his armies, if he should only defeat the evil that was plaguing him. For he saw in the mage a brother, and a comrade, and a tool to be used. He gave the mage a great chamber for lodgings, and put all of his wealth and his power at his disposal.

The mage walked the corridors of the fortress, sniffing the air and looking at the stone. And at length he stopped in a certain place, a small room in the outer keep looking down over the city, and he gave a great cry and said, “This is the place. And now we shall see what we shall see.” And he ordered the men with him to dig.

The men dug and the men dug, and they broke open the great stones of the walls, and they found there buried the body of a young girl, with her right arm burned through to the bone from her wrist to her shoulder, and the marks of a knife on her throat.

Well, Amrath, he ordered the body buried with full honour, as though the girl was his own sister. Ten horses, they burned over her grave. But still the dying did not stop, for at the next month at the dark of the moon one of the mage’s very servants was found dead and cold with no mark on him but the burning marks of a great fire running all up the length of his right arm. And the mage knew then that he was dealing with no ghost but a gabeleth, a demon summoned up from the twilight places by the shedding of the girl’s blood. And he was greatly afeared, for such a thing is very powerful.

But the mage had promised Amrath he would destroy that which was harming his people. And he feared Amrath near as much as he did the gabeleth. So he locked himself away in his chamber with his books and his magics, and for three days he did not eat or sleep but only worked at his spells. And at the end of three days he went back to the room where he had found the girl’s body, bringing with him his staff, and his sword, and a silver ring. And there he fought the demon.

Three days and three nights they fought, and fire raged through the skies above Ethalden, and Serelethe herself cried out for fear. So terrible was the battle that every child birthed on those three days in all Ethalden and for thirty leagues beyond was born dead. So terrible was the battle that the sick died and healthy men went mad and ran screaming into the sea, or set themselves afire and were burned to death where they stood.

And at the end of three days, the mage overcame the demon, and peace returned to Ethalden, the Tower of Life and Death. And Amrath’s heart was pleased.

For Amrath had feared the gabeleth.

“The gabeleth.” Landra was very pale. Her hands opening and closing on her stupid little scrap of yellow cloth. “The demon was so powerful, even Amrath and Serelethe feared it. If Marith cannot be killed with bronze or iron or a gestmet’s magic, then perhaps … a demon … a thing even Amrath feared … perhaps he could be killed with that.”

“The demon, uh, was destroyed …” Oh no, Tobias thought. Oh hells. Oh gods. Oh fuck. Oh no. I could have been in his bloody army, Tobias thought. Victorious and glorious and all that. I could have been home in Alborn. A little house and a girl and a pint of Immish gold or three of a night. I could have been warm and safe and cosy and dead.

“Symeon overcame it. But he didn’t destroy it. It was not alive, and so it could not die. He imprisoned it. He imprisoned it in the silver ring. In my family,” said Landra, “we have a story that Amrath wore the ring all His life, out of fear of it. No one says what happened to it after Amrath’s death. I always assumed that He … that He died wearing the ring.”

Amrath lies unburied, somewhere in the ruins of Ethalden. Wearing a silver ring?

“There’s nothing in Ethalden,” said Tobias. “Nothing. Just rubble and dead earth. I’ve been there. I’ve seen it. Just dead earth.”

So many things, he thought, that I’ve seen. A dragon. A dead whale. A god walking the forests, my friend and my companion. Beautiful Thalia smiling at me. And what else is there we can do, indeed? See Marith destroyed. What else is there left for me? I’ve been dead since Tyrenae, he thought.

Landra shivered violently as a night bird screeched out in the marshes. Far off, staring into the dark, Tobias thought he could see the lights of ten times a thousand campfires. The army of the Ansikanderakesis Amrakane. Somewhere out there in the dark. Like trying to think that there were whales out swimming beneath the cold grey sea, dragons dancing on the west wind.

Not campfires, he thought. Marsh lights. Glow flies. Tricks of his eyes.

“If bronze and iron cannot kill him, if he is Amrath returned, if he is Death,” said Landra.

Marching through the Wastes. Marching to the edge of the world.

Marching to find a ring with a demon in it, on the finger of a dead god, unburied in the ashes of a ruined tower. To kill a man who cannot die.

Gods and demons and fuck.