A rider had appeared on the same ridge that Traveller had come to yesterday, pausing for but a moment before guiding the mount down into the camp.
Traveller swung himself on to his horse and gathered the reins.
‘See the beast she rides!’ gasped the man beside him. ‘It is a Jhag’athend! We are blessed! Blessed!’ And all at once he was running back to the camp.
Traveller set heels to his gelding and rode after the man.
The rider was indeed a woman, and Traveller saw almost immediately that she was of Seven Cities stock. She looked harried, threadbare and worn, but a fe shy;rocious fire blazed in her eyes when they fell upon Traveller as he rode into the camp.
‘Is there anywhere in the world where I won’t run into damned Malazans?’ she demanded.
Traveller shrugged. ‘And I hardly expected to encounter an Ugari woman on the back of a Jhag stallion here on the Lamatath Plain.’
Her scowl deepened. ‘I am told there’s a demon travelling through here, head shy;ing north. Killing everyone in his path and no doubt enjoying every moment of it.’
‘So it seems.’
‘Good,’ snapped the woman.
‘Why?’ Traveller asked.
She scowled. ‘So I can give him his damned horse back, that’s why!’
From her ribs and from the hair of women
Seen swimming sun-warmed rivers in summer’s light,
From untroubled brows and eyes clear and driven
Gazing out from tower windows when falls the night
From hands cupped round pipe bowls alabaster carved
When veiled invitations coy as blossoms under shade
Invite a virgin’s dance a rose-dappled love so starved
Where seen a coarse matron not yet ready to fade
And the tall bones of legs ’neath rounded vessels perched
Swaying lusty as a tropical storm above white coral sands
Where in all these gathered recollections I have searched
To fashion this love anew from soil worked well by my hands
And into the bower garland-woven petals fluttering down
Hovers the newfound woman’s familiar unknown face
For on this earth no solitude is welcomed when found
And she who is gone must be in turn replaced
And by the look in her eye I am a composite man
Assembled alike from stone, twig and stirred sediments
Lovers lost and all those who might have been
We neither should rail nor stoke searing resentments
For all the rivers this world over do flow in but one
Direction
‘I can see your reasons, my love. But won’t you get thirsty?’
Inscription found beneath
capstone of household well,
As fast as his small feet could carry him, the small boy rushed through Two-Ox Gate and out on to the raised cobble road that, if he elected to simply hurry on, and on, would take him to the very edge of the world, where he could stand on the shore staring out upon a trackless ocean, so vast it swallowed the sun every night. Alas, he wasn’t going that far. Out to the hills just past the shanty town to collect dung, a bag full, as much as he could carry balanced on his head.
