Reaper's Gate & Toll the Hounds - By Steven Erikson Page 0,907

Bole brothers looked thoughtful, as if working on possible answers. Then, noticing each other's frown, both broke into smiles. Amby snorted then had to wipe goo from his upper lip with the back of one hand.

'I must be mad,' Precious whispered.

Quell asked, 'This is some kind of gate you've drawn here, Cartographer?'

'Absent of investiture, but yes. I have no power to give it. But then, you do.'

'Maybe,' Quell mused, 'but I don't recognize anything you've drawn, and that makes me nervous.'

Cartographer walked along one side and pointed a withered finger down at the far end of the map. 'Do you see this straight, wide groove? All the rest funnels into this path, the path we need to take. The best maps show you the right direction. The best maps are the ones that lead you to a specific destination.'

Reccanto Ilk scratched at his head, looking bewildered. 'But that's what maps are for – what's he glommering on about?'

'Not all maps,' corrected Cartographer, with a shake of his head – and nothing, Precious concluded, could ever be as solemn as a dead man's shake of the head. 'Objective rendition is but one form in the art of cartography, and not even the most useful one.'

'If you say so,' said Master Quell. 'I'm still uneasy.'

'You have few other options, Wizard. The carriage is damaged. The marital argument is even now extending beyond the town's limits and will soon engulf this entire island in a conflagration of disputing versions of who-said-what.'

'He's smarter than he was before,' observed Faint.

'That's true,' said Reccanto.

'I gather more of myself, yes,' said Cartographer, giving them all another ghastly smile.

Flinches all round.

'How come,' asked Quell, 'you never showed this talent before?'

The corpse straightened. 'I have displayed numerous talents on this journey, each one appropriate to the situation at the time. Have you forgotten the coconuts?'

Faint rolled her eyes and said, 'How could we forget the coconuts?'

'Besides,' resumed Cartographer, 'as an uninvited guest, I feel a pressing need to contribute to the enterprise.' One ragged hand gestured at the scribbles on the track. 'Invest power into this, Master Quell, and we can be on our way.'

'To somewhere we can stop for a time?'

Cartographer shrugged. 'I am not able to predict the situations awaiting us, only that in general they are not particularly threatening.'

Quell looked as if he needed to piss again. Instead, he turned back to the carriage. 'Everyone on board. Precious, you're with me as usual. Same for you, Mappo.' He paused. 'The rest of you, get ready.'

'For what?' Gruntle asked.

'For anything, of course.'

Reccanto, still strutting after his extraordinary on-the-knees skewering lunge, slapped one hand on the huge warrior's back. 'Don't fret, friend, you'll get used to all this eventually. Unless,' he added, 'it kills you first.'

Cartographer held up some ropes. 'Who will kindly tie me to a wheel?'

Night sweeps across the Dwelling Plain. Along the vast vault of the sky the stars are faint, smudged, as if reluctant to sharpen to knife points amidst the strangely heavy darkness. The coyotes mute their cries for this night. Wolves flee half blind in formless terror, and some will run until their hearts burst.

South of the western tail of the Gadrobi Hills, a lone chain-clad figure pauses in his journey, seeing at last the faint bluish glow that is the ever-beating heart of the great, legendary city.

Darujhistan.

Three leagues west of him, three more strangers gaze upon that selfsame glow, and in the eyes of one of them – unseen by the others – there is such dread, such anguish, as would crush the soul of a lesser man. His gauntleted hand steals again and again to the leather-wrapped grip of his sword.

He tells himself that vengeance answered is peace won, but even he does not quite believe that. Beyond the city awaiting him, the future is a vast absence, a void he now believes he will never see, much less stride into.

Yet, for all the tumultuous, seething forces of will within these arrayed strangers, none among them is the cause of the night's thick, palpable silence.

Less than a league north of the three strangers, seven Hounds are arrayed along a ridge, baleful eyes fixed upon the glow of the city.

The beasts possess the capacity to detect a rabbit's rapid heartbeat half a league away, so they hear well the tolling of the twelfth bell, announcing the arrival of midnight in the city of Darujhistan.

And as one, the seven Hounds lift their massive heads, and give voice to a howl.

The stars are