Toll the Hounds - Page 46/467

Aboard the ship itself, the captain remained. Now she was wearing loose, flowing robes of black and crimson silks, her face white as moonlight as she frowned at the city before her. A scent on the air, some lingering perfume redolent with memories… oh, of all places, but was this truly an accident? Spite did not believe in accidents.

And so she hesitated, knowing what her first step on to solid stone would reveal-perhaps, she decided, it would do to wait for a time.

Not long.

Just long enough

In another part of Darujhistan, a merchant of iron dispatched yet another message to the Master of the Assassins’ Guild, then retired to his secret library to pore once more over ancient, fraught literature. Whilst not too far away sat a merchant guard with fading barbed tattoos, frowning down at a cup of spiced, hot wine in his huge, scarred hands; and from the next room came a child’s laughter, and this sound made him wince.

Down among the new estates of certain once-criminal moneylenders who had since purchased respectability, a destitute Torvald Nom stealthily approached the high, spike-topped wall of one such estate. Debts, was it? Well, fine easily solved. Had he lost any of his skills? Of course not. If anything… such talents had been honed by the rigours of a legendary journey across half the damned world. His glorius return to Darujhistan still awaited him. Come the morning, aye, come the morning…

At this moment, in a small chamber above the taproom of the Phoenix Inn, a man was lying on his back on a bed, still weak from blood loss, and in his thoughts he walked the cemetery of his past, fingers brushing the tops of weathered tombstones and grave markers, seeing the knots of tangled grass climbing the sides of dusty urns, while stretching away in his wake was the shadow of his youth-fainter, longer, fraying now at the very edges. He would not lift his hand yet to feel his own face, to feel the wrinkles and creases that wrote out in tired glyphs his age, his waning life.

Oh, flesh could be healed, yes…

Below, amidst a mob of bellowing, reeling drunks and screeching whores of both sexes, a small round man, seated as ever at his private table, paused with his mouth stuffed full of honeyed bread, and, upon hearing the tenth bell sound through the city, cocked his head and settled his tiny, beady eyes upon the door to Phoenix Inn.

Arrivals.

Glory and portent, delightful reunion and terrible imminence, winged this and winged that and escapes and releases and pending clashes and nefarious demands for recompense over a single mouthful of spat wine, such a night!

Such a night!

Chapter Four

We were drowning amidst petals and leaves

On the Plain of Sethangar

Where dreams jostled like armies on the flatland

And to sing of the beauty of all these blossoms

Was to forget the blood that fed every root

On the Plain of Sethangar

We cried out for shelter from this fecund storm

The thrust and heave of life on the scouring winds

Was dry as a priest’s voice in fiery torment

On the Plain of Sethangar

And no wise words could be heard in the roar

Of the laughing flowers reaching out to the horizon

As the pungent breath left us drunk and stagger’d

On the Plain of Sethangar

Must we ever die in the riches of our profligacy

Succumbing to the earth cold and dark each time

Only to burst free wide-eyed in innocent birth

On the Plain of Sethangar?

Which god strides this field scythe in hand

To sever the grandiose mime with edged judgement

Taking from our souls all will in bundled sheaves

On the Plain of Sethangar

To feed as befits all burdensome beasts?

Flowers will worship the tree’s fickle blessing of light

Forests reach into the sweetness of a sky beyond touch

Even as streams make pilgrimage to the sea

And the rain seeks union with all flesh and blood

Hills will hold fast over every plain, even Sethangar

And so we dream of inequity’s end

As if it lay within our power

There in the plainness of our regard

So poorly blinded to beauty…

– Declamation (fragment) (?), Keneviss Brot, first century, Burn’s Sleep

Groaning like a beast in its death throes, the ship seemed to clamber up on to the black rocks before the keel snapped and the hull split with a splintering cry. Cut and bloodless corpses rolled and slid from the deck, spilling into the thrashing foam where pale limbs flopped and waved in the tumult before the riptide dragged ibem tumbling over the broken sea floor, out and down Into the depths. The lone living figure, who had tied himself to the tiller, wag now tangled in frayed ropes at the stern, scrabbling to reach his knife before the next huge wave exploded over the wreck. A salt-bleached hand-the skin of the palm banging in blighted strips-tugged the broad-bladed weapon free. He slashed at the ropes binding him to the upthrust tiller as the hull thundered to the impact of another wave and white spume cascaded over him.