His companions were down, curling around themselves. The Hounds cowered, the massive beasts trembling, ears flat. Mappo crouched over the prone, motionless form of Icarium. In the Trell's hands was his bone club, the flat side of the head spattered with fresh blood and snagged strands of long reddish hair. Mappo finally dropped the weapon and slapped his hands over his ears.
Gods, this
He realized he was going mad, his vision betraying him, for he now saw a wall, a wall of water, sleet grey and webbed with foam, rushing upon them down the path, building higher, escaping the root-walls and tumbling outward. And he found he could see into the wall now, as if it had turned to liquid glass. Wreckage, foundation stones softened by algae, the rotting remains of sunken ships, encrusted, shapeless hunks of oxidized metal, bones, skulls, casks and bronze-bound chests, splintered masts and fittings — the submerged memory of countless civilizations, an avalanche of tragic events, dissolution and decay.
The wave buried them, drove them all down with its immense weight, its relentless force.
Then was gone, leaving them dry as dust.
Silence filled the air, slowly broken by harsh gasps, bestial whimpers, the muted rustling of clothing and weapons.
Fiddler lifted his head, pushing himself to his hands and knees. Ghostly remnants of that flood seemed to stain him through and through, permeating him with ineffable sorrow.
The Spiritwalker had smiled.
He was slow to sense a new tension rising in the air. The sapper looked up. Mappo had retrieved his club and now stood over Icarium's unconscious form. Around him ranged the Hounds. Raised hackles on all sides.
Fiddler scrabbled for his crossbow. 'Iskaral Pust! Call off those Hounds, damn you!'
'The bargain! The Azath will take him!' the High Priest gasped, still staggering about in the stunned aftermath of the Tano's sorcery. 'Now's the time!'
'No,' growled the Trell.
Fiddler hesitated.
'Damned sappers! Who invented them? Madness!'
Fiddler grinned. 'Who invented them? Why, Kellanved, who else — who Ascended to become your god, Pust. I'd have thought you'd appreciate the irony, High Priest.'
'The bargain-'
'Will wait a while longer. Mappo, how hard did you hit him? How long will he be out?'
'As long as I wish, friend.'
'All right then. Call the mutts off, Pust. Let's get to the House.'
The High Priest ceased his circling stagger; he paused, slowly weaving back and forth. Glancing over at Apsalar, he offered her a wide grin.
'As the soldier says,' she said.
The grin vanished. 'The youth of today knows no loyalty. A shame, not at all how things used to be. Wouldn't you agree, Servant?'
Apsalar's father grimaced. 'You heard her.'
'Far too permissive, letting her get her way so. You've spoiled her, man! Betrayed by my own generation, alas! What next?'
'What's next is, we get going,' Fiddler said.
'And it won't be much farther,' Crokus said. He pointed down the path. 'There. I see the House. I see Tremorlor.'
The sapper watched Mappo sling his weapon over a shoulder, then gently lift Icarium. The Jhag hung limply within those massive arms. The scene was touched with such gentle caring that Fiddler had to look away.
The Day of Pure Blood
was a gift of the Seven
from their tombs of sand.
Fortune was a river
the glory a gift of the Seven
that flowed yellow and crimson
across the day.
Thes'soran
In the local Can'eld dialect, it would come to be called Mesh'arn tho'ledann: the Day of Pure Blood. The River Vathar's mouth gushed blood and corpses into Dojal Hading Sea for close to a week after the slaughter, a tide that deepened from red to black amidst pallid, bloated bodies. To the fisher-folk plying those waters, that time was called the Season of Sharks, and more than one net was cut away before a ghastly harvest was pulled aboard.
