'The what?'
'Jade poison, the demon says. I don't know.'
Cutter looked at Scillara, who rode at his side, head lowered, almost sleeping in the saddle. She's getting fat. Gods, on the meals we cook?
Incredible.
'His madness returns,' Felisin said, her voice fearful. 'Cutter, I don't like this-'
'The road cuts through, there.' He pointed. 'You can see the notch, beside that tree. We'll camp just up ahead, at the base, and make the climb tomorrow.'
Cutter in the lead, they rode forward until they reached Heboric Ghost Hands. The Destriant was glaring at the cliff rearing before them, muttering and shaking his head. 'Heboric?'
A quick, fevered glance. 'This is the war,' he said. Green flames flickered across his barbed hands. 'The old belong to the ways of blood. The new proclaim their own justice.' The old man's toadlike face stretched into a ghastly-grimace. 'These two cannot – cannot – be reconciled. It is so simple, do you see? So simple.'
'No,' Cutter replied, scowling. 'I do not see. What war are you talking about? The Malazans?'
'The Chained One, perhaps he was once of the old kind. Perhaps, yes, he was that. But now, now he is sanctioned. He is of the pantheon. He is new. But then, what are we? Are we of the blood? Or do we bow to the justice of kings, queens, emperors and empresses? Tell me, Daru, is justice written in blood?'
Scillara asked, 'Are we going to camp or not?'
Cutter looked at her, watched as she pushed rustleaf into the bowl of her pipe. Struck sparks.
'They can talk all they want,' Heboric said. 'Every god must choose.
In the war to come. Blood, Daru, burns with fire, yes? Yet… yet, my friend, it tastes of cold iron. You must understand me. I am speaking of what cannot be reconciled. This war – so many lives, lost, all to bury the Elder Gods once and for all. That, my friends, is the heart of this war. The very heart, and all their arguing means nothing. I am done with them. Done with all of you. Treach has chosen. He has chosen. And so must you.'
'I don't like choosing,' Scillara said behind a wreath of smoke. 'As for blood, old man, that's a justice you can never put to sleep. Now, let us find a camp site. I'm hungry, tired and saddlesore.'
Heboric slipped down from his horse, gathered the reins, and made his way towards a side track. 'There's a hollow in the wall,' he said. '
People have camped there for millennia, why not us? One day,' he added as he continued on, 'the jade prison shall shatter, and the fools will stumble out, coughing in the ashes of their convictions. And on that day, they will realize that it's too late. Too late to do a damned thing.'
More sparks and Cutter glanced over to see Felisin Younger lighting her own pipe. The Daru ran a hand through his hair, squinting in the glare of the sun's light reflecting off the cliff-side. He dismounted.
'All right,' he said, leading his horse. 'Let's camp.'
Greyfrog bounded after Heboric, clambering over the rock like a bloated lizard.
'What did he mean?' Felisin asked Cutter as they made their way along the trail. 'Blood and Elder Gods – what are Elder Gods?'
'Old ones, mostly forgotten ones. There's a temple dedicated to one in Darujhistan, must have stood there a thousand years. The god was named K'rul. The worshippers vanished long ago. But maybe that doesn't matter.'
****
Tugging her own horse along in their wake, Scillara stopped listening to Cutter as he went on. Elder gods, new gods, blood and wars, it made little difference to her. She just wanted to rest her legs, ease the aches in her lower back, and eat everything they still had in the saddle-packs.
Heboric Ghost Hands had saved her, drawn her back into life, and that had lodged something like mercy in her heart, stifling her inclination to dismiss the mad old man outright. He was haunted in truth, and such things could drag the sanest mind into chaos. But what value could be found in trying to make sense of all that he said?
The gods, old or new, did not belong to her. Nor did she belong to them. They played their ascendancy games as if the outcome mattered, as if they could change the hue of the sun, the voice of the wind, as if they could make forests grow in deserts and mothers love their children enough to keep them. The rules of mortal flesh were all that mattered, the need to breathe, to eat, drink, to find warmth in the cold of night. And, beyond these struggles, when the last breath had been taken inside, well, she would be in no condition to care about anything, about what happened next, who died, who was born, the cries of starving children and the vicious tyrants who starved them – these were, she understood, the simple legacies of indifference, the consequences of the expedient, and this would go on in the mortal realm until the last spark winked out, gods or no gods.
