Reaper's Gate & Toll the Hounds - By Steven Erikson Page 0,740

his weapon arm sagged, suddenly lifeless, he reached across and took the sword with his other hand. Blood ran down from his shoulder – he was losing all strength.

Another edge chopped into him and he tottered, then fell on to his back.

Salind stepped up to stand directly over him.

He stared up into her dark, glittering eyes.

After a moment Nimander lowered his sword. The Dying God was right – this was pointless. 'Show yourself, you damned coward!'

Aranatha was suddenly at his side. 'He must be summoned,' she said.

'You expect him to offer us his name?'

The Dying God spoke. 'Who is here? Who is here?'

'I am the one,' answered Aranatha, 'who will summon you.'

'You do not know me. You cannot know me!'

'I know your path,' she replied. 'I know you spoke with the one named Hairlock, on the floor of the Abyss. And you imagined you could do the same, that you could fashion for yourself a body. Of wood, of twine, of clay—'

'You don't know me!'

'She discarded you,' said Aranatha, 'didn't she? The fragment of you that was left afterwards. Tainted child-like, abandoned.'

'You cannot know this – you were not there!' Aranatha frowned. 'No, I was not there. Yet . . . the earth trembled. Children woke. There was great need. You were the part of her . . . that she did not want.'

'She will pay! And for you – I know you now – and it is too late!'

Aranatha sighed. 'Husband, Blood Sworn to Nightchill,' she intoned, 'child of Thelomen Tartheno Toblakai, Bellurdan Skullcrusher, I summon you.' And she held out her hand, in time for something to slap hard into its grip. A battered, misshapen puppet dangled, one arm snapped off, both legs broken away at the knees, a face barely discernible, seemingly scorched by fire. Aranatha faced Nimander. 'Here is your Dying God.'

Around them the scene began dissolving, crumbling away.

'He does not speak,' Nimander said, eyeing the mangled puppet.

'No,' she said. 'Curious.'

'Are you certain you have him, Aranatha?'

She met his eyes, and then shrugged.

'What did he mean, that he knew you? And how – how did you know his name?'

She blinked, and then frowned down at the puppet she still held out in one hand. 'Nimander,' she whispered in a small voice, 'so much blood . . .'

Reaching out to Clip, Skintick dragged the man close, studied the face, the staring eyes, and saw something flicker to life. 'Clip?'

The warrior shifted his gaze, struggling to focus, and then he scowled. His words came out in an ugly croak. 'Fuck. What do you want?'

Sounds, motion, and then Nimander was there, kneeling on the other side of Clip. 'We seem,' he said, 'to have succeeded.'

'How?'

'I don't know, Skin. Right now, I don't know anything.'

Skintick saw Aranatha standing just near a massive block of stone – the altar. She was holding a doll or puppet of some sort. 'Where's Desra?' he suddenly asked, looking round.

'Over here.'

The foul smoke was clearing. Skintick lifted himself into a sitting position and squinted in the direction of the voice. In the wall behind the altar and to the left, almost hidden between columns, there was a narrow door, through which Desra now emerged. She was soaked in blood, although by the way she moved, none of it was her own. 'Some sort of High Priest, I suppose,' she said. 'Trying to protect a corpse, or what I think is a corpse.' She paused, and then spat on to the floor. 'Strung up like one of those scarecrows, but the body parts . . . all wrong, all sewn together—'

'The Dying God,' said Aranatha, 'sent visions of what he wanted. Flawed. But what leaked out tasted sweet.'

From the corridor Kedeviss and Nenanda arrived. They both looked round, their faces flat, their eyes bludgeoned.

'I think we killed them all,' said Kedeviss. 'Or the rest fled. This wasn't a fight – this was a slaughter. It made no sense—'

'Blood,' said Nimander, studying Clip – who remained lying before him – with something like suspicion. 'You are back with us?'

Clip swung his scowl on to Nimander. 'Where are we?'

'A city called Bastion.'

A strange silence followed, but it was one that Skintick understood. The wake of our horror. It settles, thickens, forms a hard skin – something lifeless, smooth. We're waiting for it to finish all of that, until it can take our weight once more.

And then we leave here.

'We still have far to go,' said Nimander, straightening.

In Skintick's eyes, his kin – his friend – looked aged, ravaged,