Reaper's Gate & Toll the Hounds - By Steven Erikson Page 0,551

black, so sickly in appearance that none stopped for a drink, and each found stones to step on rather than simply splash across the shallow span. They ascended towards the field where clouds of insects hovered round the centre stalk of each plant, swarming the pale green flowers before rising in a gust to plunge down on to the next.

As they drew closer, their steps slowed. Even Clip finally halted.

The scarecrows had once been living people. The rags were bound tightly, covering the entire bodies; arms, legs, necks, faces, all swathed in rough cloth that seemed to drip black fluids, soaking the earth. As the wrapped heads were forward slung, threads of the thick dark substance stretched down from the gauze covering the victims' noses.

'Feeding the plants, I think,' Skintick said quietly.

'Blood?' Nimander asked.

'Doesn't look like blood, although there may be blood in it.'

'Then they're still alive.'

Yet that seemed unlikely. None of the forms moved, none lifted a bound head at the sound of their voices. The air itself stank of death.

'They are not still alive,' Clip said. He had stopped spinning the chain.

'Then what leaks from them?'

Clip moved on to the narrow track running up through the field. Nimander forced himself to follow, and heard the others fall in behind him. Once they were in the field, surrounded by the corpses and the man-high plants, the pungent air was suddenly thick with the tiny, wrinkle-winged insects, slithering wet and cool against their faces.

They hurried forward, gagging, coughing.

The furrows were sodden underfoot, black mud clinging to their moccasins, a growing weight that made them stumble and slip as they scrambled upslope. Reaching the ridge at last, out from the rows, down into a ditch and then on to a road. Beyond it, more fields to either side of a track, and, rising from them like an army, more corpses. A thousand hung heads, a ceaseless flow of black tears.

'Mother bless us,' Kedeviss whispered, 'who could do such a thing?'

'"All possible cruelties are inevitable",' Nimander said. '"Every conceivable crime has been committed".' Quoting Andarist yet again.

'Try thinking your own thoughts on occasion,' Desra said drily.

'He saw truly—'

'Andarist surrendered his soul and thought it earned him wisdom,' Clip cut in, punctuating his statement with a snap of rings. 'In this case, though, he probably struck true. Even so, this has the flavour of . . . necessity.'

Skintick snorted. 'Necessity, now there's a word to feed every outrage on decency.'

Beyond the ghastly army and the ghoulish purple-leaved plants squatted a town, quaint and idyllic against a backdrop of low, forested hills. Smoke rose above thatched roofs. A few figures were visible on the high street.

'I think we should avoid meeting anyone,' Nimander said. 'I do not relish the notion of ending up staked above a plant.'

'That will not occur,' said Clip. 'We need supplies and we can pay for them. In any case, we have already been seen. Come, with luck there will be a hostel or inn.'

A man in a burgundy robe was approaching, up the track that met the raised road. Below the tattered hem of the robe his legs were bare and pale, but his feet were stained black. Long grey hair floated out from his head, unkempt and tangled. His hands were almost comically oversized, and these too were dyed black.

The face was lined, the pale blue eyes wide as they took in the Tiste Andii on the road. Hands waving, he began shouting, in a language Nimander had never heard before. After a moment, he clearly cursed, then said in broken Andii, 'Traders of Black Coral ever welcome! Morsko town happy of guests and kin of Son of Darkness! Come!' Clip gestured for his troupe to follow.

The robed man, still smiling like a crazed fool, whirled and hurried back down the track.

Townsfolk were gathering on the high street, watching in silence as they drew nearer. The score or so parted when they reached the edge of the town. Nimander saw in their faces a bleak lifelessness, in their eyes the wastelands of scorched souls, so exposed, so unguarded, that he had to look away.

Hands and feet were stained, and on more than a few the blackness rimmed their gaping mouths, making the hole in their faces too large, too seemingly empty and far too depthless.

The robed man was talking. 'A new age, traders. Wealth! Bastion. Heath. Even Outlook rises from ash and bones. Saemankelyk, glory of the Dying God. Many the sacrifices. Of the willing, oh yes, the