Midnight Tides & The Bonehunters - By Steven Erikson Page 0,43

about to be unleashed. I know, then, why I am where I have arrived. And when is an answer the night is yet to whisper – no, not whisper, but howl. The call to the chase by Darkness itself.

Udinaas realized he was among the enemy. Not as a Letherii sentenced to a life of slavery. That was as nothing to the peril his new blood felt, here in this heart of Edur and Kurald Emurlahn.

Feather Witch would have been better, I suppose, but Mother Dark moves unseen even in things such as these.

He made his way into the main chamber.

And came face to face with Uruth.

'These are not the hours to wander, slave,' she said.

He saw that she was trembling.

Udinaas sank to the floor and set his forehead against the worn planks.

'Prepare the cloaks of Fear, Rhulad and Trull, for travel this night. Be ready before the moon's rise. Food and drink for a morning's repast.'

He quickly climbed to his feet to do as she bid, but was stopped by an outstretched hand.

'Udinaas,' Uruth said. 'You do this alone, telling no-one.'

He nodded.

Shadows crept out from the forest. The moon had risen, prison world to Menandore's true father, who was trapped within it. Father Shadow's ancient battles had made this world, shaped it in so many ways. Scabandari Bloodeye, stalwart defender against the fanatic servants of implacable certitude, whether that certitude blazed blinding white, or was the all-swallowing black. The defeats he had delivered – the burying of Brother Dark and the imprisonment of Brother Light there in that distant, latticed world in the sky – were both gifts, and not just to the Edur but to all who were born and lived only to one day die.

The gifts of freedom, a will unchained unless one affixed upon oneself such chains – the crowding host's uncountable, ever-rattling offers, each whispering promises of salvation against confusion – and wore them like armour.

Trull Sengar saw chains upon the Letherii. He saw the impenetrable net which bound them, the links of reasoning woven together into a chaotic mass where no beginning and no end could be found. He understood why they worshipped an empty throne. And he knew the manner in which they would justify all that they did. Progress was necessity, growth was gain. Reciprocity belonged to fools and debt was the binding force of all nature, of every people and every civilization. Debt was its own language, within which were used words like negotiation, compensation and justification, and legality was a skein of duplicity that blinded the eyes of justice.

An empty throne. Atop a mountain of gold coins.

Father Shadow had sought a world wherein uncertainty could work its insidious poison against those who chose intransigence as their weapon – with which they held wisdom at bay. Where every fortress eventually crumbled from within, from the very weight of those chains that exerted so inflexible an embrace.

In his mind he argued with that ghost – the Betrayer. The one who sought to murder Scabandari Bloodeye all those thousands of years ago. He argued that every certainty is an empty throne. That those who knew but one path would come to worship it, even as it led to a cliff's edge. He argued, and in the silence of that ghost's indifference to his words he came to realize that he himself spoke – fierce with heat – from the foot of an empty throne.

Scabandari Bloodeye had never made that world. He had vanished in this one, lost on a path no-one else could follow.

Trull Sengar stood before the corpse and its mound of rotting leaves, and felt desolation in his soul. A multitude of paths waited before him, and they were all sordid, sodden with despair.

The sound of boots on the trail. He turned.

Fear and Rhulad approached. Wearing their cloaks. Fear carried Trull's own in his arms, and from the man's shoulders hung a small pack.

Rhulad's face was flushed, and Trull could not tell if it was born of anxiety or excitement.

'I greet you, Trull,' Fear said, handing him the cloak.

'Where are we going?'

'Our father passes this night in the temple. Praying for guidance.'

'The Stone Bowl,' Rhulad said, his eyes glittering. 'Mother sends us to the Stone Bowl.'

'Why?'

Rhulad shrugged.

Trull faced Fear. 'What is this Stone Bowl? I have never heard of it.'

'An old place. In the Kaschan Trench.'

'You knew of this place, Rhulad?'

His younger brother shook his head. 'Not until tonight, when Mother described it. We have all walked the edge of the Trench.