If there was magic in the world worthy of its power, this was surely it.
I must tell everyone. There is another kind of sorcery. Awake in the world, awake in our souls.
r /> And her words on that last day, before he set out to place an order with Galast the cooper, for the casks they would need at the estate. ‘I have a surprise for you, beloved husband, for your return. Proof of my feelings for you. You will taste my love, Listar, when you come home. You will taste it, in ways unimagined. See how my love blesses you.’
And so he had, returning home filled with a new hope, and yet something trembled beneath the surface of his thoughts, a visceral fear. Hope, he now knew, was a vicious beast. Every thought a delusion, every imagined scene perfect in its resolution and yet utterly false; and when he found her, with the braided cord about her neck that she must have slipped over the bedroom door’s latch – in a house emptied of servants, who each later swore that they had been sent away by Listar’s express command – and when he comprehended the power of the will that kept tightening the cord while she sat against the door, only then did he understand the blessing of her love for him.
Illness, a mind bent, a soul broken, wherein every cruel impulse had slipped its leash. He knew now the horror behind her eyes, the fleeing child within who had nowhere to run.
He lowered his hands, wiped at his eyes, and looked to the two Bonecasters kneeling opposite him. So many undeserved gifts.
But the Dream will fade. The Dog-Runners will die out.
Abyss take us, that loss is beyond all recompense.
Something left him then. He did not know what it was, could not know, but its departure was like a sob, a relinquishing of unbearable pain. And in its absence, there was … nothing.
Faintly, as he sank to the ground, he heard one of the Bonecasters speak. ‘She makes the home ready. For her husband, for the day he joins her.’
‘It is well,’ the other replied. ‘But still, they make ugly huts.’
‘Let him sleep now – no, stop that, Vastala, leave his lovely black cock alone.’
‘This is my payment. I will have his seed.’
‘He does not give it freely.’
‘No, but I take it freely.’
‘You are such a slut, Vastala.’
‘We can keep him asleep. You can have him after me, when this cock recovers.’
‘He may be asleep, but it surely is awake. Don’t empty him, Vastala. I want my share. Don’t be greedy.’
‘I’m always greedy.’
‘Too greedy, then.’
He heard his wife laughing as a heavy, brawny pair of legs straddled him, as he was pushed inside, and a body began moving rhythmically against him.
‘It is dark enough,’ said someone, ‘when you keep your eyes closed.’
This was, Listar decided, the strangest dream, but one for which he had no complaint.
* * *
Commander Toras Redone had been riding beside him in silence since they’d broken camp that morning. By the day’s end they would reach the Hust encampment. Galar Baras studied the track ahead as it slipped between denuded, pockmarked hills, bending round slopes of tailings, the scoured flats where furnaces had once stood, along with sheds and ditches, all lining the old road to either side.
The day was cool, but he could feel the weather turning, as if a new season was rushing upon them. Word had come on the day they had left Henarald’s estate: Urusander’s Legion had departed Neret Sorr. They had begun their march on Kharkanas.
He listened to the horses’ hoofs strike the frozen ground, at times sharp as the strike of a ballpeen against raw rock. The sword at his hip murmured incessantly.
‘If you think I hate them, you would be wrong.’
Startled, he glanced across at her. She wore a heavy cloak of sable, the hood drawn up to hide her profile, and sat slumped heavily in the saddle. ‘Sir?’
She smiled. ‘Ah, back to the honorifics, then? No more thought of the sweat between us, as we grapple every night beneath the furs? Our breaths shared, out from me and into you, out from you and into me, our taste as one – could two people hold each other tighter? Oh, for a sorcery to merge our flesh. If I could, I would swallow you, Galar Baras, my body a mouth, my arms a forked tongue to wrap about you, to pull you in.’