Surrender to the Will of the Night - By Glen Cook Page 0,191

And stay low. We don’t want to silhouette ourselves against the sky.”

Asgrimmur finally understood that he was far from the old dwarf women. “What did you do?”

“Quiet would be a big help, too.”

Heris crept to the ridgeline, thinking she had changed a lot in very little time. Relatively speaking. Not just since Grade Drocker rescued her but since Grandfather Delari brought Gisors—Piper—back into her life. Not so long ago she had been a slave, a Chaldarean used and abused in what the idiots there were pleased to call the Realm of Peace. Now she was a wild adventuress clambering across an arctic hillside with a demigod, thousands of miles from the cities of her shame.

She reached the vantage she wanted, slowly lifted her head. She beckoned Asgrimmur. “Come up here. Slowly.”

The ascendant did so.

“That’s it, Asgrimmur. The monster god. And his worshippers.” Two starved forms huddled for warmth beside the Instrumentality’s putrescent flank, probably so mad and weak they could do nothing if they did spot the watchers.

The stench was overpowering. Heris breathed through her mouth but that helped only a little.

“That’s the dread Windwalker? That’s why we need to free the Old Ones?”

“That’s him. But others of his kind are loose, now, too.”

Kharoulke the Windwalker, in summer, sprawled across the shingle, just above the agonizing touch of the sea, resembling nothing so much as a decaying jellyfish more massive than a beached pod of blue whales. Unhealed wounds leaked treacle-darkness that dribbled down the god’s side to the shingle, then crept away into the brine.

The ascendant asked, “Why are we worried about that?”

“Because the Instrumentality, diminished, survives inside that offal. Waiting. Because winter always comes. And winter here is long and bitter. The Windwalker will thrive in that. If we don’t conquer it first.”

Heris had to admit it was hard to consider that stinking mass a threat. It was hard to believe that she could not destroy it herself, given logistical and technical support.

She would not get that. However much the Ninth Unknown said he believed in her, he would never support her the way he would her brother.

There was just no way to improve the thinking of men.

The ascendant asked, “Are you going to do more than look?”

“No.”

“It knows we’re here.”

“What?”

“I feel it calling someone to deal with us.”

“The rot. Is it just camouflage…? Asgrimmur?”

“I’m all right. I was … It senses me, not us. It smells the part of me that conquered it two thousand years ago. It wouldn’t have noticed you by yourself. It’s sending someone to deal with me.”

Heris could get her mind around that. The ascendant belonged to the Night. She, on the other hand, could come and go, ephemeral, unnoticed until she attacked that stinking earthly aspect down there.

“We should probably leave, then.” Heris began backing away.

“Too late.”

A spotted thing, brown on a snake’s belly color background, popped over the ridge, fast. Distilled ferocity, it charged the ascendant.

It was no bigger than a squirrel.

Asgrimmur snatched it out of the air. It tried to bite. He smashed its head against a rock, then examined its fingers. “Somebody exaggerated, didn’t they?”

Heris caught her breath. “No. The god’s power to create, and to influence the world around him, has gotten real weak. Can you sense anything on the supernatural level?”

Asgrimmur turned the miniature creature, poked it. “The Instrumentality is disappointed. This thing was Krepnight, the Elect. It was created by the god. It was supposed to be my size but faster, deadlier, and more single-minded.”

The slope shuddered. Rocks shifted but the tremor was not violent enough to initiate a slide. The beached god wobbled and jiggled.

“It’s crazy with rage but doesn’t have strength for anything but trying to stay alive. For a long time, naturally.”

“Handy skill, reading a god’s mind without getting your own baked.”

“I’m not reading its mind, Heris. It would love to have me try. It would make me over into an ascendant Krepnight, the Elect, in three heartbeats. Then it would turn me loose on you and the others.”

“You know that without being able to read its mind?”

“It’s simple. I feel its emotions. I think about what the god side of me would do in its place, if I had its power.” Asgrimmur moved up for a better view of the shingle.

Heris joined him. “Is this safe?”

“It is now. For a while. If you want, you can go throw salt water on just to be nasty.”

“I didn’t remember to bring a bucket.”

“You’d be destroying only what it’s written off already, anyway.”

“And there are