Midnight Tides & The Bonehunters - By Steven Erikson Page 0,514

clatter through the rubble. It came to a stop, then one arm lifted tremulously, dropping back down a moment later. A bone-helmed skull flew into view, ropes of hair twisting about, to bounce and roll in the dust.

Paran reined in, watching as a tall, gaunt figure climbed free of the barrow, slowly straightening. Grey-green skin, trailing dusty cobwebs, wearing a silver-clasped harness and baldric of iron mail from which hung knives in copper scabbards – the various metals blackened or green with verdigris. Whatever clothing had once covered the figure's body had since rotted away.

A Jaghut woman, her long black hair drawn into a single tail that reached down to the small of her back. Her tusks were silver-sheathed and thus black. She slowly looked round, her gaze finding and settling on him. Vertical pupils set in amber studied Paran from beneath a heavy brow. He watched her frown, then she asked, 'What manner of creature are you?'

'A well-mannered one,' Paran replied, attempting a smile. She had spoken in the Jaghut tongue and he had understood ... somehow. One of the many gifts granted by virtue of being the Master? Or long proximity with Raest and his endless muttering? Either way, Paran surprised himself by replying in the same language.

At which her frown deepened. 'You speak my tongue as would an Imass ... had any Imass bothered to learn it. Or a Jaghut whose tusks had been pulled.'

Paran glanced over at the partial corpse lying nearby. 'An Imass like that one?'

She drew her thin lips back in what he took to be a smile. 'A guardian left behind – it had lost its vigilance. Undead have a tendency towards boredom, and carelessness.'

'T'lan Imass.'

'If others are near, they will come now. I have little time.'

'T'lan Imass? None, Jaghut. None anywhere close.'

'You are certain?'

'I am. Reasonably. You have freed yourself ... why?'

'Freedom needs an excuse?' She brushed dust and webs from her lean body, then faced west. 'One of my rituals has been shattered. I must needs repair it.'

Paran thought about that, then asked, 'A binding ritual? Something, or someone was imprisoned, and, like you just now, it seeks freedom?'

She looked displeased with the comparison. 'Unlike the entity I imprisoned, I have no interest in conquering the world.'

Oh. 'I am Ganoes Paran.'

'Ganath. You look pitiful, like a malnourished Imass – are you here to oppose me?'

He shook his head. 'I was but passing by, Ganath. I wish you good fortune—'

She suddenly turned, stared eastward, head cocking.

'Something?' he asked. T'lan Imass?'

She glanced at him. 'I am not certain. Perhaps ... nothing. Tell me, is there a sea south of here?'

'Was there one when you were ... not yet in your barrow?'

'Yes.'

Paran smiled. 'Ganath, there is indeed a sea just south of here, and it is where I am headed.'

'Then I shall travel with you. Why do you journey there?'

'To talk with some people. And you? I thought you were in a hurry to repair that ritual?'

'I am, yet I find a more pressing priority.'

'And that is?'

'The need for a bath.'

Too bloated to fly, the vultures scattered with outraged cries, hopping and waddling with wings crooked, leaving the once-human feast exposed in their wake. Apsalar slowed her steps, not sure whether she wanted to continue walking down this main street, although the raucous chattering and bickering of feeding vultures sounded from the side avenues as well, leading her to suspect that no alternative route was possible.

The villagers had died suffering – there was no mercy in this plague, for it had carved a long, tortured path to Hood's Gate. Swollen glands, slowly closing the throat, making it impossible to eat solid food, and narrowing the air passages, making every breath drawn agony. And, in the gut, gases distending the stomach. Blocked from any means of escape, they eventually burst the stomach lining, allowing the victim's own acids to devour them from within. These, alas, were the final stages of the disease. Before then, there was fever, so hot that brains were cooked in the skull, driving the person half-mad – a state from which, even were the disease somehow halted then and there – there was no recovery. Eyes wept mucus, ears bled, flesh grew gelatinous at the joints – this was the Mistress in all her sordid glory.

The two skeletal reptiles accompanying Apsalar had sprinted ahead, entertaining themselves by frightening the vultures and bursting through buzzing masses of flies. Now they scampered back, unmindful of the blackened, halfeaten corpses they clambered over.

'Not-Apsalar! You