Midnight Tides & The Bonehunters - By Steven Erikson Page 0,209

state right now, slave to an insane Tiste Edur. A slave, huddled beneath every conceivable heel. Cowering and useless once all the internal posturing and self-justifications were cast away.

Feather Witch. He had loved her and he would never have her and that was that. The underscored truth laid bare, grisly exposure from which he withheld any direct, honest examination.

Madmen built houses of solid stone. Then circled looking for a way inside. Inside, where cosy perfection waited. People and schemes and outright lies barred his every effort, and that was the heart of the conspiracy. From outside, after all, the house looked real. Therefore it was real. Just a little more clawing at the stone door, a little more battering, one more pounding collision will burst that barrier.

And on and on and round and round. The worn ruts of madness.

He heard scrabbling on the stone below, and a moment later Feather Witch clambered into view. She pulled herself up beside him, her motions jerky, as if fevered.

'Is it my turn to run?' he asked.

'Take me there, Indebted. That dream realm. Where I found you before.'

'You were right all along,' Udinaas said. 'It doesn't exist.'

'I need to go there. I need to see for myself.'

'No. I don't know how.'

'Idiot. I can open the path. I'm good at opening paths.'

'Then what?'

'Then you choose. Udinaas, take me to the ghosts.'

'This is not a good place to do that—'

She had one hand clenched around something, and she now reached out and clutched his arm with that hand, and he felt the impression of a tile pressed between them.

And there was fire.

Blinding, raging on all sides.

Udinaas felt a weight push him from behind and he stumbled forward. Through the flames. In the world he had just left, he would now be falling down the cliffside, briefly, then striking the rocky slope and tumbling towards the treeline. But his moccasins skidded across flat, dusty ground.

Twisting, down onto one knee. Feather Witch staggered into view, like him passing unharmed through the wall of fire. He wheeled on her. 'What have you done?'

A hand closed round the back of his neck, lifted him clear of the ground, then flung him down onto his back. The cold, ragged edge of a stone blade pressed against the side of his neck. He heard Feather Witch scream.

Blinking, in a cloud of dust.

A man stood above him. Short but a mass of muscles. Broad shoulders and overlong arms, the honey-coloured skin almost hairless. Long black hair hanging loose, surrounding a wide, heavily featured face. Dark eyes glittered from beneath a shelf-like brow. Furs hung in a roughly sewn cloak, a patchwork of tones and textures, the visible underside pale and wrinkled.

'Peth tol ool havra d ara.' The words were thick, the vocal range oddly truncated, as if the throat from which those sounds issued lacked the flexibility of a normal man's.

'I don't understand you,' Udinaas said. He sensed others gathered round, and could hear Feather Witch cursing as she too was thrown to the ground.

'Arad havra'd ara. En'aralack havra d'drah.'

Countless scars. Evidence of a broken forearm, the bone unevenly mended and now knotted beneath muscle and skin. The man's left cheekbone was dimpled inward, his broad nose flattened and pressed to one side. None of the damage looked recent. 'I do not speak your language.'

The sword-edge lifted away from the slave's neck. The warrior stepped back and gestured.

Udinaas climbed to his feet.

More fur-clad figures.

A natural basin, steeply walled on three sides. Vertical cracks in the stone walls, some large enough to provide shelter. Where these people lived.

On the final side of the basin, to the Letherii's left, the land opened out. And in the distance – the slave's eyes widened – a shattered city. As if it had been pulled from the ground, roots and all, then broken into pieces. Timber framework beneath tilted, heaved cobble streets. Squat buildings pitched at random angles. Toppled columns, buildings torn in half with the rooms and floors inside revealed, many of those rooms still furnished. Vast chunks of rotting ice were visible in the midst of the broken cityscape.

'What place is this?' Feather Witch asked.

He turned to see her following his gaze from a few paces away.

'Udinaas, where have you brought us? Who are these savages?'

'Vis vol'raele absi'arad.'

He glanced at the warrior who'd spoken, then shrugged and returned his attention to the distant city. 'I want to go and look.'

'They won't let you.'

There was only one way to find out. Udinaas set out for the plain.

The