Spinning round once more, he glared across at the squat, octagonal temple fifty paces down the street to his right. Its walls were a chaotic collection of niches and misshapen angles, a veritable plethora of shadows. Iskaral Pust sighed. ‘My new abode. A modest hovel, but it suits my needs. I plan to do it up, of course, when there’s time. Oh, you like the gold place settings and silk napkins? Just something I threw together, mind, but it pleases me well enough. Spiders? No, no spiders round here, oh, no. Simply not allowed. Ghastly creatures, yes, disgusting. Never bathe, don’t you know. Ghastly.’
Wordless singsong at his back.
‘Oh, don’t mind them. My ex-wife’s relations — if I’d have known, well of course I’d never have taken the leap, if you know what I mean. But that’s how it is — get married and you end up saddled with the whole family menagerie. And even though she’s gone now, nothing but a dried-out husk with her legs sticking up in the air, well, I admit to feeling responsible for her hapless kin. No, no, she looked nothing like them. Worse, actually. I confess to a momentary insanity. The curse of being young, I suppose. When did we get married? Why, four, five years ago now, yes. Only seems like a lifetime and I’m glad, so glad, to be done with it now. More wine, sweetness?’
Smiling, Iskaral Pust set out for the temple.
Shadowed steps, leading to a shadowed landing beneath a pitted lintel stone; oh, this was all very well done. The twin doors were huge, very nearly gates, panelled in polished bronze moulded into an enormous image of charging Hounds. Delicious touch! Lovingly rendered, all that snarling terror.
‘Yes, the doors were my idea, by my own hand in fact — I dabble. Sculpture, tapestry, portraiture, caricature, potterature — pottery, I mean, I was simply using the technical term. See this funerary urn, exquisite, yes. She’s inside. Yes, my beloved departed, my belovedly departed, my blessedly departed, hee hee — oh, folding up her limbs was no easy task, let me tell you, quite a tight fit. I know, hard to believe she’s in there, in an urn barely larger than a jar of wine. I have many skills, yes, as befits the most glorious mortal servant of High House Shadow. But I’ll tell you this, she fought hard all the way in!’
He crouched in front of the bronze doors, glowering into the gaping jaws of the Hounds. Reached up one knuckled hand, and rapped Baran’s nose,
A faint, hollow reverberation.
‘I knew it,’ he said, nodding.
The bhokarala fidgeted on the steps, knocking each other on their snouts, then sagely nodding.
The door to the left opened a crack. A hood-shrouded head poked out at about chest height, the face peering up vague and blurry. ‘We don’t want any,’ said a thin, whispery woman’s voice.
‘You don’t want any what?’
‘They’ll soil the furniture.’
Iskaral Pust scowled. ‘She’s insane. Why is everyone I meet insane? Listen, wretched acolyte, step aside. Scrape your pimply forehead on the tiles and kiss my precious feet. I am none other than Iskaral Pust.’
‘Who?’
‘Iskaral Pust! High Priest of Shadow. Magus of the High House. Our god’s most trusted, favoured, valued servant! Now, move aside, let me in! I claim this temple by right of seniority, by right of rightful hierarchy, by right of natural superiority! I will speak with the High Priestess immediately! Wake her up, clean her up, prop her up — whatever you need to do to get her ready for me.’
The door creaked back and all at once the acolyte straightened, revealing herself to be ridiculously tall. She swept her hood back to display an exquisitely moulded face surrounded by long, straight, rust-red hair. In a deep, melodic voice she said, ‘I am High Priestess Sordiko Qualm of the Darujhistan Temple of Shadow.’
‘Ah, a master of disguise. Just like me.’
‘Yes, I can see that.’
‘You can?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, isn’t that funny.’ He tilted his head. ‘Not funny at all.’ Then smiled winningly up at her. ‘And what do you think I am, dear?’
‘Some sort of sunburned toad, I believe.’
‘Just what I want you to think. Now, invite me in, before I lose my temperature.’
‘Temper, you mean.’
‘No, temperature. It’s getting chilly.’
Her amber eyes shifted to the steps behind him. ‘What of your offspring?’
‘Ha ha. Offspring they are not. Never mind them. They can weep, they can whimper, they can grovel, they can-’
‘Right now they are all waving their hands about in perfect mimicry of you, Iskaral Pust. Why would they do that?’
‘Forget them, I said.’
Shrugging, she stepped back.
Iskaral Pust scrambled inside.
Sordiko Qualm shut the door and locked it. ‘Now, you claim to be a High Priest. From where?’
‘Seven Cities, the secret monastery.’
‘What monastery?’
‘The one that’s a secret, of course. You don’t need to know and I don’t need to tell you. Show me to my chambers, I’m tired. And hungry. I want a seven-course supper, plenty of expensive, suitably delicate wine, and nubile female servants eager to appease my delighted whim.’
