Reaper's Gate & Toll the Hounds - By Steven Erikson Page 0,499

don't understand. I was to have been interred in a crypt. A fine, solid crypt – I saw it myself. Richly appointed and proof against thieves, with casks of wine and seasoned meats and fruit for the journey—' She gestured down at the rags she was wearing. 'I was to be dressed in my finest clothes, wearing all my jewellery.'

He was watching her. 'Wealthy, then.'

'Yes.' She looked back down at the dead dog on the end of the leash.

'Not any more.'

She glared across at him, then realized that such anger was, well, pointless. 'I have never seen this town before. It looks to be falling apart.'

'Aye, it's all falling apart. You have that right.'

'I don't know where I live – oh, that sounds odd, doesn't it?' She looked round again. 'It's all dust and rot, and is that a storm coming?' She pointed down the main street towards the horizon, where heavy, strangely luminous clouds now gathered above denuded hills.

They stared at them for a time. The clouds seemed to be raining tears of jade.

'I was once a priest,' the man said, as his dog edged up against his feet and lay there, gasping, with blood dripping from its mouth. 'Every time we saw a storm coming, we closed our eyes and sang all the louder.'

She regarded him in some surprise. 'You were a priest? Then . . . why are you not with your god?'

The man shrugged. 'If I knew the answer to that, the delusion I once possessed – of enlightenment – would in truth be mine.' He suddenly straightened. 'Look, we have a visitor.'

Approaching with a hitched gait was a tall figure, so desiccated that its limbs seemed little more than tree roots, its face naught but rotted, weathered skin stretched over bone. Long grey hair drifted out unbound from a pallid, peeling scalp.

'I suppose,' the woman muttered, 'I need to get used to such sights.'

Her companion said nothing, and they both watched as the gaunt, limping creature staggered past, and as they turned to follow its progress they saw another stranger, cloaked in frayed dark grey, hooded, of a height to match the other.

Neither seemed to take note of their audience, as the hooded one said, 'Edgewalker.'

'You have called me here,' said the one named Edgewalker, 'to . . . mitigate.'

'I have.'

'This has been a long time in coming.'

'You might think that way, Edgewalker.'

The grey-haired man – who was clearly long dead – cocked his head and asked, 'Why now?'

The hooded figure turned slightly, and the woman thought he might be looking down on the dead dog. 'Disgust,' he replied.

A soft rasping laugh from Edgewalker.

'What ghastly place is this?' hissed a new voice, and the woman saw a shape – no more than a smeared blur of shadows – whisper out from an alley, though he seemed to be hobbling on a cane, and all at once there were huge beasts, two, four, five, padding out around the newcomer.

A grunt from the priest beside the woman. 'Hounds of Shadow. Could my god but witness this!'

'Perhaps it does, through your eyes.'

'Oh, I doubt that.'

Edgewalker and his hooded companion watched the shadowy form approach. Short; wavering, then growing more solid. Black-stick cane thumping on the dirt street, raising puffs of dust. The Hounds wandered away, heads lowered as they sniffed the ground. None approached the carcass of the woman's dog, nor the gasping beast at the feet of her newfound friend.

The hooded one said, 'Ghastly? I suppose it is. A necropolis of sorts, Shadowthrone. A village of the discarded. Both timeless and, yes, useless. Such places,' he continued, 'are ubiquitous.'

'Speak for yourself,' said Shadowthrone. 'Look at us, waiting. Waiting. Oh, if I were one for decorum and propriety!' A sudden giggle. 'If any of us were!'

All at once the Hounds returned, hackles raised, gazes keen on something far up the main street.

'One more,' whispered the priest. 'One more and the last, yes.'

'Will all this happen again?' the woman asked him, as sudden fear ripped through her. Someone is coming. Oh, gods, someone is coming. 'Tomorrow? Tell me!'

'I would imagine not,' the priest said after a moment. He swung his gaze to the dog carcass lying in the dust. 'No,' he said again, 'I imagine not.'

From the hills, thunder and jade rain slashing down like the arrows from ten thousand battles. From down the street, the sudden rumble of carriage wheels.

She turned at that latter sound and smiled. 'Oh,' she said in relief, 'here comes my ride.'

He had once