Reaper's Gate & Toll the Hounds - By Steven Erikson Page 0,561

coming with him. Not that it cared. Later, they'd sit down for dinner.

High in the sky overhead, the black specks began a descent. Their equally empty eyes had spied the entrails, spread in lumpy grey ropes on the yellow grasses, now in the lone man's wake. Empty eyes, but a different kind of emptiness. Not that of death's banality, no, but that of life's banality.

The same kind of eyes as Kallor's own.

And this was the mercy in the hare's swift death, for unlike countless hundreds of thousands of humans, the creature's last glimpse was not of Kallor's profoundly empty eyes – a sight that brought terror into the face of every victim.

The world, someone once said, gives back what is given. In abundance. But then, as Kallor would point out, someone was always saying something. Until he got fed up and had them executed.

CHAPTER FIVE

Pray, do not speak to me of weather

Not sun, not cloud, not of the places

Where storms are born

I would not know of wind shivering the heather

Nor sleet, nor rain, nor of ancient traces

On stone grey and worn

Pray, do not regale the troubles of ill health

Not self, not kin, not of the old woman

At the road's end

I will spare no time nor in mercy yield wealth

Nor thought, nor feeling, nor shrouds woven

To tempt luck's send

Pray, tell me of deep chasms crossed

Not left, not turned, not of the betrayals

Breeding like worms

I would you cry out your rage 'gainst what is lost

Now strong, now to weep, now to make fist and rail

On earth so firm

Pray, sing loud the wretched glories of love

Now pain, now drunken, now torn from all reason

In laughter and tears

I would you bargain with the fey gods above

Nor care, nor cost, nor turn of season

To wintry fears

Sing to me this and I will find you unflinching

Now knowing, now seeing, now in the face

Of the howling storm

Sing your life as if a life without ending

And your love, sun's bright fire, on its celestial pace

To where truth is born

Pray, An End to Inconsequential Things

Baedisk of Nathilog

Darujhistan. Glories unending! Who could call a single deed inconsequential? This scurrying youth with his arms full of vegetables, the shouts from the stall in his wake, the gauging eye of a guard thirty paces away, assessing the poor likelihood of catching the urchin. Insignificant? Nonsense! Hungry mouths fed, glowing pride, some fewer coins for the hawker, perhaps, but it seemed all profit did was fill a drunken husband's tankard anyway so the bastard could die of thirst for all she cared! A guard's congenitally flawed heart beat on, not yet pushed to bursting by hard pursuit through the crowded market, and so he lives a few weeks longer, enough to complete his full twenty years' service and so guarantee his wife and children a pension. And of course the one last kiss was yet to come, the kiss that whispered volumes of devotion and all the rest.

The pot-thrower in the hut behind the shop, hands and forearms slick with clay, dreaming, yes, of the years in which a life took shape, when each press of a fingertip sent a deep track across a once smooth surface, changing the future, reshaping the past, and was this not as much chance as design? For all that intent could score a path, that the ripples sent up and down and outward could be surmised by decades of experience, was the outcome ever truly predictable?

Oh, of course she wasn't thinking any such thing. An ache in her left wrist obliterated all thoughts beyond the persistent ache itself, and what it might portend and what herbs she would need to brew to ease her discomfort – and how could such concerns be inconsequential?

What of the child sitting staring into the doleful eye of a yoked ox outside Corb's Womanly Charms where her mother was inside and had been for near a bell now, though of course Mother had Uncle-Doruth-who-was-a-secret for company which was better than an ox that did nothing but moan? The giant, soft, dark-so-dark brown eye stared back and to think in both directions was obvious but what was the ox thinking except that the yoke was heavy and the cart even heavier and it'd be nice to lie down and what could the child be thinking about but beef stew and so no little philosopher was born, although in years to come, why, she'd have her own uncle-who-was-a-secret and thus like her mother enjoy all the fruits of marriage with few of the niggling