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The cascade of sudden deaths, inexplicable and outrageous accidents, miserable ends and terrible murders filled every abode, every corner and every hovel in a spreading tide, a most fatal flood creeping out through the hapless city on all sides. No age was spared, no weight of injustice tipped these scales. Death took them all: well born and destitute, the ill and the healthy, criminal and victim, the unloved and the cherished.
So many last breaths: coughed out, sighed, whimpered, bellowed in defiance, in disbelief, in numbed wonder. And if such breaths could coalesce, could form a thick, dry, pungent fugue of dismay, in the city on this night not a single globe of blue fire could be seen.
There were survivors. Many, many survivors — indeed, more survived than died — but alas, it was a close run thing, this measure, this fell harvest.
The god walked eastward, out from Gadrobi District and into Lakefront, and, from there, up into the Estates.
This night was not done. My, not done at all.
Unseen in the pitch black of this moonless, smoke-wreathed night, a massive shape sailed low over the Gadrobi Hills, westward and out on to the trader’s road. As it drew closer to the murky lights of Worrytown, the silent flier slowly dropped lower until its clawed talons almost brushed the gravel of the road.
Above it, smaller shapes beat heavy wings here and there, wheeling round, plummeting and then thudding themselves back up again. These too uttered no calls in the darkness.
To one side of the track, crouched in high grasses, a coyote that had been about to cross the track suddenly froze.
Heady spices roiled over the animal in a warm, sultry gust, and where a moment earlier there had been black, shapeless clouds sliding through the air, now there was a figure — a man-thing, the kind the coyote warred with in its skull, fear and curiosity, opportunity and deadly betrayal — walking on the road.
But this man-thing, it was. . different.
As it came opposite the coyote, its head turned and regarded the beast.
The coyote trotted out. Every muscle, every instinct, cried out for a submissive surrender, and yet as if from some vast power outside itself, the coyote held its head high, ears sharp forward as it drew up alongside the figure.
Who reached down to brush gloved fingers back along the dome of its head.
And off the beast bounded, running as fast as it legs could carry it, out into the night, the vast plain to the south.
Freed, blessed, beneficiary of such anguished love that it would live the rest of its years in a grassy sea of joy and delight.
Transformed. No special reason, no grim purpose. No, this was a whimsical touch, a mutual celebration of life. Understand it or stumble through. The coyote’s role is done, and off it pelts, heart bright as a blazing star.
Gifts to start the eyes.
Anomander Rake, Son of Darkness, walked between the shanties of Worrytown. The gate was ahead, but no guards were visible. The huge doors were barred.
From beyond, from the city itself, fires roared here and there, thrusting bulging cloaks of spark-lit smoke up into the black night.
