Rush headlong. Things are happening. Standing stones topple one against an shy;other and on and on. Tidal surges lift ever higher. Smoke and screams and violence and suffering. Victims piled in heaps like the plunder of cannibals. This is the meat of glee, the present made breathless, impatience burning like acid. Who has time to comprehend?
Endest Silann stood atop the lesser tower of the keep. He held out one hand, knuckles to the earth, as black rain pooled in the cup of his palm.
Was the truth as miserable as it seemed?
Did it all demand that one figure, one solitary figure, rise to stand tall? To face that litany of destruction, the brutality of history, the lie of progress, the desecra shy;tion of a home once sacred, precious beyond imagining? One figure? Alone?
The black water overflowed the cup, spilled down to become rain once more.
Even the High Priestess did not understand. Not all of it, no. She saw this as a single, desperate gambit, a cast of the knuckles on which rode everything. But if it failed, well, there’d be another game. New players, the same old tired rules. The wealth wagered never lost its value, did it? The heap of golden coins will not crumble. It will only grow bigger yet.
Yes, Anomander Rake would take that burden, and carry it into a new world. But he would offer no absolution. He would deliver but one gift — an undeserved one — and that was
The most precious privilege of all.
Off to his left, surmounting a much higher tower, a dragon fixed slitted eyes upon a decrepit camp beyond the veil of Night. No rain could blind it, no excuse could brave its unwavering regard. Silanah watched. And waited.
But the waiting was almost over.
Rush then, to this feast. Rush, ye hungry ones, to the meat of glee.
The wall had never been much to begin with. Dismantled in places, unfinished in others. It would never have withstood a siege for any length of time. Despite its execrable condition, the breach made by the Hounds of Shadow was obvious. An entire gate was gone, filled with the flame-licked wreckage of the blockhouses and a dozen nearby structures. Figures now clambered in its midst, hunting sur shy;vivors, fighting the flames.
Beyond it, vast sections of the city — where heaving clouds of smoke lifted sky shy;ward, lit bright by raging gas-fires — suddenly ebbed, as if Darujhistan’s very breath had been snatched away. Samar Dev staggered, fell to her knees. The pressure closing about her head felt moments from crushing the plates of her skull. She cried out even as Karsa crouched down beside her.
Ahead, Traveller had swung away from the destroyed gate, seeking instead an shy;other portal to the east, through which terrified refugees now spilled out into the ramshackle neighbourhood of shanties, where new fires had erupted from knocked-down shacks and in the wake of fleeing squatters. How Traveller intended to push his way through that mob-
‘Witch, you must concentrate.’
‘What?’
‘In your mind, raise a wall. On all sides. Make it strong, give it the power to withstand the one who has arrived.’
She pulled away from his hand. ‘Who? Who has arrived? By the spirits, I can’t stand-’
