Reaper's Gate & Toll the Hounds - By Steven Erikson Page 0,650

forcing him to halt – to walk to the road's edge, facing north.

'I'd spotted that,' Skintick muttered, also stopping.

Fifty or so paces from the road, just beyond a strip of the alien plants and its row of wrapped effigies, was a ruin. Only one of the walls of the squarish, tower-like structure rose above man-height. The stones were enormous, fitted without mortar. Trees of a species Nimander had never seen before had rooted on top of the walls, snaking long, thick ropes down to the ground. The branches were skeletal, reaching horizontally out to the sides, clutching mere handfuls of dark, leathery leaves.

Nenanda had stopped the wagon and all were now studying the ruin that had so captured Kallor's attention.

'Looks old,' Skintick said, catching Nimander's eye and winking.

'Jaghut,' Kallor said. And he set out towards it. Nimander and Skintick followed.

In the field, the furrows of earth were bleached, dead, and so too the ghastly plants. Even the terrible clouds of insects had vanished.

Kallor stepped between two corpses, but there was not enough room so he reached out to either side and pushed the stakes over. Dust spat from the bases as the scarecrows sagged, then, pulling free, fell to the ground. The warrior continued on.

'We can hope,' said Skintick under his breath as he and Nimander followed through the gap.

'For what?' Nimander asked.

'That he decides he doesn't like this Dying God. And makes up his mind to do something about it.'

'You believe he is that formidable?'

Skintick shot him a glance. 'When he said he was allied with Anomander and those others, it didn't sound as though he meant he was a soldier or minor officer in some army, did it?'

Nimander frowned, then shook his head.

Skintick hissed wordlessly through his teeth, and then said, 'Like . . . equals.'

'Yes, like that. But it doesn't matter, Skin – he won't help us.'

'I wasn't hoping for that. More like him deciding to do something for his own reasons, but something that ends up solving our problem.'

'I'd wager no coins on that, Skin.'

Drawing closer to the ruin, they fell silent. Decrepit as it was, the tower was imposing. The air around it seemed grainy, somehow brittle, ominously cold despite the sun's fierce heat.

The highest of the walls revealed a section of ceiling just below the uppermost set of stones, projecting without any other obvious support to cast a deep shadow upon the ground floor beneath it. The facing wall reached only high enough to encompass a narrow, steeply arched doorway. Just outside this entrance and to one side was a belly-shaped pot in which grew a few straggly plants with drooping flowers, so incongruous amid the air of abandonment that Nimander simply stared down at them, disbelieving.

Kallor walked up to the entrance, drew off a scaled gauntlet and rapped it against the root-tracked frame. 'Will you greet us?' he demanded in a loud voice.

From within a faint shuffling sound, and then a thin, rasping reply: 'Must I?'

'The ice is long gone, Jaghut. The plains beyond are dry and empty. Even the dust of the T'lan Imass has blown away. Would you know something of the world you have ignored for so long?'

'Why? Nothing changes.'

Kallor turned a pleased smirk upon Nimander and Skintick and then faced the dark doorway once more. 'Will you invite us in, Jaghut? I am the High—'

'I know who you are, O Lord of Futility. King of Ashes. Ruler of Dead Lands. Born to glory and cursed to destroy it every time. Killer of Dreams. Despoiler of—' 'All right, enough of all that. I'm not the one living in ruins.'

'No, but you ever leave them in your wake, Kallor. Come in, then, you and your two Others. I greet you as guests and so will not crush the life from you and devour your souls with peals of laughter. No, instead, I will make some tea.'

Nimander and Skintick followed Kallor into the darkness within.

The air of the two-walled chamber was frigid, the stones sheathed in amber-streaked hoarfrost. Where the other two walls should have been rose black, glimmering barriers of some unknown substance, and to look upon them too long was to feel vertiginous – Nimander almost pitched forward, drawn up only by Skintick's sudden grip, and his friend whispered, 'Never mind the ice, cousin.'

Ice, yes, it was just that. Astonishingly transparent ice—

A figure crouched at a small hearth, long-fingered hands working a blackened kettle on to an iron hook above the coals. 'I ate the last batch of cookies, I'm