Shattered stone, jammed and packed tight, stained black by the thick, airless clays now filling every space. Evidence of fire in the burst cracks of foundation blocks. Remnants of ore-laden paints still clinging to fragments of plaster. Ubiquitous pieces of pottery, shapeless clumps of green copper, the mangled black knuckles of silver, the defiant gleam of red-tinged gold-all that remained of past complexities of mortal life, reminders of hands that had once touched, shaped, pressed tips to indent and nails to incise, brushed glaze and paint and dust from chipped rims; hands that left nothing behind but these objects poignant with failure.
Disgusted, nauseated, the god pushed his way through the detritus, and clawed his way clear: a steeply angled space, created by the partially collapsed inner wall. Blue tesserae to paint an image of unbroken sea, but various pieces had fallen away, revealing grey plaster still bearing the grooved patterns left by the undersides of the minute cut tiles. In this cramped space the Errant crouched, gasping. Time told no bright tales. No, time delivered its mute message of dissolution with unrelieved monotony.
By the Abyss, such crushing weight!
The Errant drew a deep breath of the stale, dead air. Then another.
And sensed, not far away, the faint whisper of power. Residual, so meagre as to be meaningless, yet it started the god’s heart pounding hard in his chest. The sanctification remained. No desecration, making what he sought that much simpler. Relieved at the thought of being quickly done with this ghastly place, the Errant set out towards that power.
The altar was beneath a mass of rubble, the limestone wreckage so packed down that it must have come from a collapsing ceiling, the huge weight slamming down hard enough to shatter the stones of the floor beneath that runnelled block of sacred stone. Even better. And… yes, bone dry. He could murmur a thousand nudges into that surrounding matrix. Ten thousand.
Edging closer, the Errant reached down and settled one hand on the altar. He could not feel those runnels, could not feel the water-worn basalt, could not feel the deep-cut channels that had once vented living blood into the salty streams filling the runnels. Ah, we were thirsty in those days, weren’t we?
He awakened his own power-as much as she would give him, and for this task it was more than enough.
The Errant began weaving a ritual.
Advocate Sleem was a tallj thin man. Covering most of his forehead and spreading down onto his left cheek, reaching the line of the jaw, was a skin ailment that created a cracked scale pattern reminiscent of the bellies of newly hatched alligators. There were ointments that could heal this condition, but it was clear that the legendary advocate of Letherii law in fact cultivated this reptilian dermatosis, which so cleverly complemented both his reputation and his cold, lifeless eyes.
He stood now in Bugg’s office, hunched at the shoulders as if to make himself even narrower, and the high collar of his dark green cloak flared out like a snake’s hood behind his elongated, small-eared and hairless head. His regard was languid in that lifeless way of his as he studied Bugg. ‘Did I hear you correctly?’ the advocate asked in a voice that he tried hard to make sibilant, but which instead came out awkward and wavering. The effect, Bugg realized with a faint start, precisely matched what he would imagine a snake would sound like with words emerging from a lip-less mouth. Although, he added to himself, the specific question hardly seemed one he would expect a snake to utter. Snakes don’t ask for clarification.
Do they?
‘You wear a most odd expression,’ Sleem said after a moment. ‘Did my inability to understand you leave you confused, Master Bugg?’
‘Did you truly misunderstand?’
‘That is why I sought reiteration.’
‘Ah. Well, what did you think you heard?’
The eyes blinked. ‘Have we truly uttered all these words to return to my original query?’
‘I invite you to use some more, Sleem.’
‘Rather than simply repeating yourself.’
‘I hate repeating myself.’
Advocate Sleem, Bugg knew, despised discombobu-lation, although that was in all probability not even a word.
‘Master Bugg, as you know, I despise discombobulation.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘You should be, since I charge by the word.’
‘Both our words, or just yours?’
‘It is a little late to ask that now, isn’t it?’ Sleem’s folded hands did something sinuous and vaguely disreputable. ‘You have instructed me, if I understand you correctly-and correct me if I am in error-you have instructed me, then, to approach your financier to request yet another loan with the stated intention to use it to pay a portion of the interest on the previous loan, which if I recall accurately, and I do, was intended to address in part the interest on yet another loan. This leads me to wonder, since I am not your only advocate, just how many loans you have arranged to pay interest on yet other loans?’
‘Well, that was expensive.’
