Reaper's Gate & Toll the Hounds - By Steven Erikson Page 0,902

like slime.

The sky was raining kelyk.

She raised her head, and the distance between them seemed to vanish. Her eyes shone with fire, a slow, terrible pulse.

Gods below . . .

Like the worn ridge of a toothless jaw, the Gadrobi Hills rose into view, spanning the north horizon. Kallor halted to study them. An end to this damned plain, to this pointless sweep of grasses. And there, to the northwest, where the hills sank back down, there was a city.

He could not yet see it. Soon.

The temple would be nondescript, the throne within it a paltry thing, poorly made, an icon of insipid flaws. A broken fool once named Munug would writhe before it, in obeisance, the High Priest of Pathos, the Prophet of Failure – enough thematic unity, in fact, to give any king pause. Kallor allowed himself a faint smirk. Yes, he was worthy of such worship, and if in the end he wrested it body and soul from the Crippled God, so be it.

The temple his domain, the score of bent and maimed priests and priestesses his court, the milling mob outside, sharing nothing but chronic ill luck, his subjects. This, he decided, had the makings of an immortal empire.

Patience – it would not do, he realized, to seek to steal the Fallen One's worshippers. There was no real need. The gods were already assembling to crush the Crippled fool once and for all. Kallor did not think they would fail this time. Though no doubt the Fallen One had a few more tricks up his rotted sleeve, not least the inherent power of the cult itself, feeding as it did on misery and suffering – two conditions of humanity that would persist for as long as humans existed.

Kallor grunted. 'Ah, fuck patience. The High King will take this throne. Then we can begin the . . . negotiations.'

He was no diplomat and had no interest in acquiring a diplomat's skills, not even when facing a god. There would be conditions, some of them unpalatable, enough to make the hoary bastard choke on his smoke. Well, too bad.

One more throne. The last he'd ever need.

He resumed walking. Boots worn through. Dust wind-driven into every crease of his face, the pores of his nose and brow, his eyes thinned to slits. The world clawed at him, but he pushed through. Always did. Always would.

One more throne. Darujhistan.

Long ago, in some long lost epoch, people had gathered on this blasted ridge overlooking the flattened valley floor, and had raised the enormous standing stones that now leaned in an uneven line spanning a thousand paces or more. A few had toppled here and there, but among the others Samar Dev sensed a belligerent vitality. As if the stones were determined to stand sentinel for ever, even as the bones of those who'd raised them now speckled the dust that periodically scoured their faces.

She paused to wipe sweat from her forehead, watching as Traveller reached the crest, and then moved off into the shade of the nearest stone, a massive phallic menhir looming tall, where he leaned against it with crossed arms. To await her, of course – she was clearly slowing them down, and this detail irritated her. What she lacked, she understood, was manic obsession, while her companions were driven and this lent them the vigour common to madmen. Which, she had long since decided, was precisely what they were.

She missed her horse, the one creature on this journey that she had come to feel an affinity with. An average beast, a simple beast, normal, mortal, sweetly dull-eyed and pleased by gestures of care and affection.

Resuming her climb, she struggled against the crumbled slope, forcing her legs between the sage brushes – too weary to worry about slumbering snakes and scorpions, or hairy spiders among the gnarled, twisted branches.

The thump of Havok's hoofs drummed through the ground, halting directly above her at the top of the slope. Scowling, she looked up.

Karsa's regard was as unreadable as ever, the shattered tattoo like a web stretching to the thrust of the face behind it. He leaned forward on his mount's neck and said, 'Do we not feed you enough?'

'Hood take you.'

'Why will you not accept sharing Havok's back, witch?'

Since he showed no inclination to move, she was forced to work to one side as she reached the crest, using the sage branches to pull herself on to the summit. Where she paused, breathing hard, and then she held up her hands to