Faint jade light limned the broken ground, as if darkness itself could be painted into a mockery of life. The rider who sat upon a motionless, unbreathing horse, was silent, feeling like a creature too vast to approach any shore-he could look on with one dead eye or the other dead eye. He could remember what it was like to be a living thing among other living things.
The heat, the promise, the uncertainties and all the hopes to sweeten the bitterest seas.
But that shore was for ever beyond him now.
They could feel the warmth of that fire. He could not. And never again.
The figure that rose from the dust beside him said nothing for a time, and when she spoke it was in the spirit language-her voice beyond the ears of the living. ‘We all do as we must, Herald.’
‘What you have done, Olar Ethil…’
‘It is too easy to forget.’
‘Forget what?’
‘The truth of the T’lan Imass. Did you know, a fool once wept for them?’
‘I was there. I saw the man’s barrow-the gifts…’
‘The most horrid of creatures-human and otherwise-are so easily, so carelessly recast. Mad murderers become heroes. The insane wear the crown of geniuses. Fools flower in endless fields, Herald, where history once walked.’
‘What is your point, bonecaster?’
‘The T’lan Imass. Slayers of Children from the very beginning. Too easy to forget. Even the Imass themselves, the First Sword himself, needed reminding. You all needed reminding.’
‘To what end?’
‘Why do you not go to them, Toc the Younger?’
‘I cannot.’
‘No,’ she nodded, ‘you cannot. The pain is too great. The loss you feel.’
‘Yes,’ he whispered.
‘Nor should they yield love to you, should they? Any of them. The children…’
‘They should not, no.’
‘Because, Toc the Younger, you are the brother of Onos T’oolan. His true brother now. And for all the mercy that once dwelt in your mortal heart, only ghosts remain. They must not love you. They must not believe in you. For you are not the man you once were.’
‘Did you think I needed reminding, too, Olar Ethil?’
‘I think… yes.’
She was right. He felt inside for the pain he’d thought-he’d believed-he had lived with for so long. As if lived was even the right word. When he found it, he saw at last its terrible truth. A ghost. A memory. I but wore its guise.
The dead have found me.
I have found the dead.