Midnight Tides & The Bonehunters - By Steven Erikson Page 0,45

a large, tilted boulder. When he fed the end into the shadows at its base he felt countless hands grasp it. Trull stepped back. The rope was now taut.

Returning to the edge, he saw that Fear had already begun his descent. Rhulad stood staring down.

'We're to wait until he reaches the bottom,' Rhulad said. 'He will tug thrice upon the rope. He asked that I go next.'

'Very well.'

'She has the sweetest lips,' Rhulad murmured, then looked up and met Trull's eyes. 'Is that what you want me to say? To give proof to your suspicions?'

'I have many suspicions, brother,' Trull replied. 'We have sun-scorched thoughts, we have dark-swallowed thoughts. But it is the shadow thoughts that move with stealth, creeping to the very edge of the rival realms – if only to see what there is to be seen.'

'And if they see nothing?'

'They never see nothing, Rhulad.'

'Then illusions? What if they see only what their imagination conjures? False games of light? Shapes in the darkness? Is this not how suspicion becomes a poison? But a poison like white nectar, every taste leaving you thirsting for more.'

Trull was silent for a long moment. Then he said, 'Fear spoke to me not long ago. Of how one is perceived, rather than how one truly is. How the power of the former can overwhelm that of the latter. How, indeed, perception shapes truth like waves on stone.'

'What would you ask of me, Trull?'

He faced Rhulad directly. 'Cease your strutting before Mayen.'

A strange smile, then, 'Very well, brother.'

Trull's eyes widened slightly.

The rope snapped three times.

'My turn,' Rhulad said. He grasped hold of the rope and was quickly gone from sight.

The knots of these words were anything but hose. Trull drew a deep breath, let it out slowly, wondering at that smile. The peculiarity of it. A smile that might have been pain, a smile born of hurt.

Then he turned upon himself and studied what he was feeling. Difficult to find, to recognize, but... Father Shadow forgive me. I feel ... sullied.

The three tugs startled him.

Trull took the heavy rope in his hands, feeling the sheath of beeswax rubbed into the fibres to keep them from rotting. Without the knots for foot- and hand-holds, the descent would be treacherous indeed. He walked out over the edge, facing inward, then leaned back and began making his way down.

Glittering streams ran down the raw stone before him. Red-stained calcretions limned the surface here and there. Flea-like insects skipped across the surface. The scrapes left by the passage of Rhulad and Fear glistened in the fading light, ragged furrows wounding all that clung to the rock.

Knot to knot, he went down the rope, the darkness deepening around him. The air grew cool and damp, then cold. Then his feet struck mossy boulders, and hands reached out to steady him.

His eyes struggled to make out the forms of his brothers. 'We should have brought a lantern.'

'There is light from the Stone Bowl,' Fear said. 'An Elder Warren. Kaschan.'

'That warren is dead,' Trull said. 'Destroyed by Father Shadow's own hand.'

'Its children are dead, brother, but the sorcery lingers. Have your eyes adjusted? Can you see the ground before you?'

A tumble of boulders and the glitter of flowing water between them. 'I can.'

'Then follow me.'

They made their way out from the wall. Footing was treacherous, forcing them to proceed slowly. Dead branches festooned with mushrooms and moss. Trull saw a pallid, hairless rodent of some kind slip into a crack between two rocks, tail slithering in its wake. 'This is the Betrayer's realm,' he said.

Fear grunted. 'More than you know, brother.'

'Something lies ahead,' Rhulad said in a whisper.

Vast, towering shapes. Standing stones, devoid of lichen or moss, the surface strangely textured, made, Trull realized as they drew closer, to resemble the bark of the Blackwood. Thick roots coiled out from the base of each obelisk, spreading out to entwine with those of the stones to each side. Beyond, the ground fell away in a broad depression, from which light leaked like mist.

Fear led them between the standing stones and they halted at the pit's edge.

The roots writhed downward, and woven in their midst were bones. Thousands upon thousands. Trull saw Kaschan, the feared ancient enemies of the Edur, reptilian snouts and gleaming fangs. And bones that clearly belonged to the Tiste. Among them, finely curved wing-bones from Wyval, and, at the very base, the massive skull of an Eleint, the broad, flat bone of its forehead crushed inward, as if by