Midnight Tides & The Bonehunters - By Steven Erikson Page 0,164

stepped to one side and sat down on a block of limestone. He watched frost form on the ground to the left of the cave, reaching in a point towards the dark opening, the opposite end spreading ever wider in a swirl of fog. The sound of ice crunching underfoot, then a figure appeared from the widening end, as if striding out from nowhere. Tall, naked from the hips upward, grey-green skin. Long, streaked blonde hair hanging loose over the shoulders and down the back. Light grey eyes, the pupils vertical slits. Silver-capped tusks. Female, heavy-breasted. She was wearing a short skirt, her only clothing barring the leather-strapped moccasins, and a wide belt holding a half-dozen scabbards in which stabbing knives resided.

Her attention was on the cave. She anchored her hands on her hips and visibly sighed.

'He's not coming out,' Bugg said.

She glanced over. 'Of course he isn't, now that I'm here.'

'What kind of demon is he?'

'Hungry and insane, but a coward.'

'Did you put him there?'

She nodded. 'Damned humans. Can't leave things well enough alone.'

'I doubt they knew, Jaghut.'

'No excuse. They're always digging. Digging here, digging there. They never stop.'

Bugg nodded, then asked, 'So now what?'

She sighed again.

The frost at her feet burgeoned into angular ice, which then crawled into the cave mouth. The ice grew swiftly, filling the hole. The surrounding stone groaned, creaked, then split apart, revealing solid ice beneath it. Sandy earth and limestone chunks tumbled away.

Bugg's gaze narrowed on the strange shape trapped in the centre of the steaming ice. 'A Khalibaral? Errant take us, Huntress, I'm glad you decided to return.'

'Now I need to find for him somewhere else. Any suggestions?'

Bugg considered for a time, then he smiled.

Brys made his approach between two of the ruined round towers, stepping carefully around tumbled blocks of stone half hidden in the wiry yellow grasses. The air was hot and still, the sunlight molten gold on the tower walls. Grasshoppers rose from his path in clattering panic and, at the faint sensation of crunching underfoot, Brys looked down to see that the ground was crawling with life. Insects, many of them unrecognizable to his eyes, oversized, awkward, in dull hues, scrambling to either side as he walked.

Since they were all fleeing, he was not unduly concerned.

He came within sight of the square tower. The Azath. Apart from its primitive style of architecture, there seemed to be little else to set it apart. Brys was baffled by the Ceda's assertion that a structure of stone and wood could be sentient, could breathe with a life of its own. A building presupposed a builder, yet Kuru Qan claimed that the Azath simply rose into being, drawn together of its own accord. Inviting suspicion on every law of causality generations of scholars had posited as irrefutable truth.

The surrounding grounds were less mysterious, if profoundly more dangerous. The humped barrows in the overgrown yard were unmistakable. Gnarled and stunted, dead trees rose here and there, sometimes from the highest point of the mound, but more often from the flanks. A winding flagstone pathway began opposite the front door, the gate marked by rough pillars of unmortared stone wrapped in vines and runners. The remnants of a low wall enclosed the grounds.

Brys reached the edge of the yard along one side, the gate to his right, the tower to the left. And saw immediately that many of the barrows within sight had slumped on at least one of their sides, as if gutted from within. The weeds covering the mounds were dead, blackened as if by rot.

He studied the scene for a moment longer, then made his way round the perimeter towards the gateway. Striding between the pillars, onto the first flagstone – which pitched down to one side with a grinding clunk. Brys tottered, flinging his arms out for balance, and managed to recover without falling.

High-pitched laughter from near the tower's entrance.

He looked up.

The girl emerged from the shadow cast by the tower. 'I know you. I followed the ones following you. And killed them.'

'What has happened here?'

'Bad things.' She came closer, mould-patched and dishevelled. 'Are you my friend? I was supposed to help it stay alive. But it died anyway, and things are busy killing each other. Except for the one the tower chose. He wants to talk to you.'

'To me?'

'To one of my grown-up friends.'

'Who,' Brys asked, 'are your other grown-up friends?'

'Mother Shurq, Father Tehol, Uncle Ublala, Uncle Bugg.'

Brys was silent. Then, 'What is your name?'

'Kettle.'

'Kettle, how many people have