Midnight Tides & The Bonehunters - By Steven Erikson Page 0,75

back suddenly. 'It doesn't matter—'

'You have had dreams, haven't you?'

She started, then looked away. 'You are a Debtor's son. You are nothing to me.'

'And you are everything to me, Feather Witch.'

'Don't be an idiot, Udinaas! I might as well wed a hold rat! Now, be quiet, I need to think.'

He slowly sat up, drawing their faces close once again. 'There is no need,' he said. 'I trust you, and so I will explain. She looked deep indeed, but the Wyval was gone. It would have been different, had Uruth sought out my shadow.'

She blinked in sudden comprehension, then: 'That cannot be,' she said, shaking her head. 'You are Letherii. The wraiths serve only the Edur—'

'The wraiths bend a knee because they must. They are as much slaves to the Edur as we are, Feather Witch. I have found an ally ...'

'To what end, Udinaas?'

He smiled again, and this time it was a much darker smile. 'Something I well understand. The repaying of debts, Feather Witch. In full.'

BOOK TWO

PROWS OF THE DAY

We are seized in the age

of our youth

dragged over this road's stones

spent and burdened

by your desires.

And unshod hoofs clatter beneath bones

to remind us of every

fateful charge

upon the hills you have sown

with frozen seeds

in this dead earth.

Swallowing ground

and grinding bit

we climb into the sky so alone

in our fretted ways

a heaving of limbs

and the iron stars burst from your heels

baffling urgency

warning us of your savage bite.

Destriers (Sons to Fathers)

Fisher kel Tath

CHAPTER SIX

The Errant bends fate,

As unseen armour

Lifting to blunt the blade

On a field sudden

With battle, and the crowd

Jostles blind their eyes gouged out

By the strait of these affairs

Where dark fools dance on tiles

And chance rides a spear

With red bronze

To spit worlds like skulls

One upon the other

Until the seas pour down

To thicken metal-clad hands

So this then is the Errant

Who guides every fate

Unerring

Upon the breast of men.

The Casting of Tiles

Ceda Ankaran Qan (1059 Burn's Sleep)

The Tarancede tower rose from the south side of Trate's harbour. Hewn from raw basalt it was devoid of elegance or beauty, reaching like a gnarled arm seven storeys from an artificial island of jagged rocks. Waves hammered it from all sides, flinging spume into the air. There were no windows, no doors, yet a series of glossy obsidian plates ringed the uppermost level, each one as tall as a man and almost as wide.

Nine similar towers rose above the borderlands, but the Tarancede was the only one to stand above the harsh seas of the north.

The sun's light was a lurid glare against the obsidian plates, high above a harbour already swallowed by the day's end. A dozen fisherboats rode the choppy waters beyond the bay, plying the shelf of shallows to the south. They were well out of the sea-lanes and probably heedless of the three ships that appeared to the north, their full-bellied sails as they drove on down towards the harbour, the air around them crowded with squalling gulls.

They drew closer, and a ship's pilot scow set out from the main pier to meet them.

The three harvest ships were reflected in the tower's obsidian plates, sliding in strange ripples from one to the next, the gulls smudged white streaks around them.

The scow's oars suddenly backed wildly, twisting the craft away.

Shapes swarmed across the rigging of the lead ship. The steady wind that had borne the sails fell, sudden as a drawn breath, and canvas billowed down. The figures flitting above the deck, only vaguely human-shaped, seemed to drift away, like black banners, across the deepening gloom. The gulls spun from their paths with shrill cries.

From the scow an alarm bell began clanging. Not steady. Discordant, a cacophony of panic.

No sailor who had lived or would ever live discounted the sea's hungry depths. Ancient spirits rode the currents of darkness far from the sun's light, stirring silts that swallowed history beneath endless layers of indifferent silence. Their powers were immense, their appetites insatiable. All that came down from the lit world above settled into their embrace.

The surface of the seas, every sailor knew, was ephemeral. Quaint sketchings across an ever-changing slate, and lives were but sparks, so easily quenched by the demon forces that could rise from far below to shake their beast hides and so up-end the world.

Propitiation was aversion, a prayer to pass unnoticed, to escape untaken. Blood before the bow, dolphins dancing to starboard and a gob of spit to ride blessed winds. The left hand scrubs, the right hand dries. Wind widdershins on the cleats, sun-bleached rags tied to the sea-anchor's chain. A