Toll the Hounds Read online

Even without Clip’s earlier warning, Nimander was not inclined to accept such hospitality; nor, he saw with some relief, were any of his kin. They stood, still crowded at the entrance, bemused and uneasy. The pungent air of the low-ceilinged chamber was sweet, overlying strains of acrid sweat and something like living decay.

  Skintick moved up alongside Nimander and they both watched as Clip – Desra at his side – made his way to the counter. ‘A simple jug of wine? Anywhere in this place? Not likely.’

  Nimander suspected Skintick was right. All he could see, at every table, in every hand, was the same long-necked flask with its blackened mouth.

  The moans were louder now, cacophonous like the lowing of beasts in an abattoir. Nimander saw one man – an ancient, bent, emaciated creature – topple face first on to the wood-slatted floor, audibly smashing his nose. Someone close by stepped back, crushing the hapless man’s fingers under a heel.

  ‘So, where is the priest?’ Nenanda asked from behind Nimander and Skintick. ‘It was his invitation, after all.’

  ‘For once, Nenanda,’ Skintick said without turning, ‘I am pleased to have you standing here, hand on sword. I don’t like this.’

  ‘None here can hurt us,’ Nenanda pronounced, yet his tone made it plain he was pleased by Skintick’s words. ‘Listen to me,’ he said, ‘while Clip is not close by – he holds us all in contempt.’

  Nimander slowly turned round, as Skintick said, ‘We’d noticed. What do you make of that, brother?’

  ‘He sees what he chooses to see.’

  Nimander saw that Kedeviss and Aranatha were listening, and the faint doe-like expression on the latter’s face was suddenly gone, replaced by a chilling emptiness that Nimander knew well. ‘It is no matter,’ Nimander said, sudden sweat prickling awake beneath his clothes. ‘Leave it, Nenanda. It is no matter.’

  ‘But it is,’ Nenanda retorted. ‘He needs to know. Why we survived our battles, when all the others fell. He needs to understand.’

  ‘That’s over with, now,’ Nimander insisted.

  ‘No,’ said Skintick, ‘Nenanda is right this time, Nimander. He is right. Clip wants to take us to this dying god, after all. Whatever he plans disregards us, as if we did not exist. Voiceless—’

  ‘Useless,’ cut in Nenanda.

  Nimander looked away. More villagers were collapsing, and those on the floorboards had begun twitching, writhing in pools of their own waste. Sightless eyes rolled ecstatically in sunken sockets. ‘If I have made us . . . voiceless, I am sorry.’

  ‘Enough of that rubbish,’ Skintick said conversationally.

  ‘I agree,’ said Nenanda. ‘I didn’t before – I was angry with you, Nimander, for not telling this so-called Mortal Sword of Darkness. Telling him about us, who we were. What we’ve been through. So I tried to do it myself, but it’s no use. Clip doesn’t listen. Not to anyone but himself.’

  ‘What of Desra?’ Nimander asked.

  Nenanda snorted. ‘She covets her own mystery.’

  That was a sharp observation from Nenanda, surprising Nimander. But it was not an answer to what he had meant with his question.

  Skintick, however, understood. ‘She remains one of us, Nimander. When the need arrives, you need not doubt her loyalty.’

  Kedeviss spoke then, with dry contempt. ‘Loyalty is not one of Desra’s virtues, brothers. Set no weight upon it.’

  Skintick sounded amused when he asked, ‘Which of Desra’s virtues should we set weight upon, then, Kedeviss?’

  ‘When it comes to self-preservation,’ she replied, ‘Desra’s judgement is precise. Never wrong, in fact. She makes surviving the result of profound clarity – Desra sees better and sharper than any of us. That is her virtue.’

  Clip was on his way back, Desra now clinging to his left arm as might a woman struggling against terror.

  ‘The Dying God is about to arrive,’ Clip said. He had put away his chain and rings, and from his palpable unease there now rose, like a dark cloud, the promise of violence. ‘You should all leave. I don’t want to have to cover you, if this turns bad. I won’t have the time, nor will I accept blame if you start dying. So, for all our sakes, get out of here.’

  It was, Nimander would recall later, the moment when he could have stepped forward, could have looked into Clip’s eyes, unwavering, revealing his own defiance and the promise behind it. Instead, he turned to the others. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

  Nenanda’s eyes widened, a muscle twitching one cheek. Then he spun about and marched out of the tavern.

  With an expression that might have been shame, Skintick reached out to prise Desra away from Clip, then guided her out. Aranatha met Nimander’s eyes and nodded – but the meaning of the gesture eluded him, given the vast emptiness in her eyes – then she and Kedeviss exited the taproom.

  Leaving Nimander and Clip.

  ‘It pleases me,’ said Clip, ‘that you take orders as well as you do, Nimander. And that the others still choose to listen to you. Not,’ he added, ‘that I think that will last much longer.’

  ‘Do not confront this dying god,’ Nimander said. ‘Not here, not now.’

  ‘Excellent advice. I have no intention of doing so. I simply would see it.’

  ‘And if it is not pleased at being seen by one such as you, Clip?’

  He grinned. ‘Why do you think I sent you to safety? Now, go, Nimander. Back to our rooms. Comfort your frightened rabbits.’

  Outside, beneath a glorious sweep of bright stars, Nimander found his kin in a tight huddle in the centre of the main street. Rabbits? Yes, it might look that way. From the tavern they could hear the frenzied moaning reach a fierce pitch, and the sound was now echoing, seeming to roll back in from the hills and fields surrounding the village.

  ‘Do you hear that?’ Skintick asked. ‘Nimander? Do you hear it? The scarecrows – they are singing.’

  ‘Mother Dark,’ breathed Kedeviss in horror.

  ‘I want to see one of those fields,’ Skintick suddenly said. ‘Now. Who is with me?’

  When no one spoke, Nimander said, ‘You and me, Skintick. The rest to our rooms – Nenanda, stand vigil until we return.’

  Nimander and Skintick watched as Nenanda purposefully led the others away.

  Then they set out into a side alley, feet thumping on the dusty, hard-packed ground. Another voice had joined all the others, emerging from the temple, a cry of escalating pain, a cry of such suffering that Nimander staggered, his legs like water beneath him. He saw Skintick stumble, fall on to his knees, then push himself upright once more.

  Tears squeezed from his eyes, Nimander forced himself to follow.

  Old house gardens to either side, filled with abandoned yokes, ploughs and other tools, the furrows overgrown with weeds like bleached hair in the starlight. Gods, they’ve stopped eating. All is in the drink. It feeds them even as it kills them.

  That sepulchral wail was dwindling now, but it would rise again, he knew, with the next breath. Midnight in the tavern, the foul nectar was drunk down, and the god in terrible pain was summoned – the gate to his tormented soul forced open. Fed by immortal pain, the prostrate worshippers spasmed in ecstasy – he could see their blackened mouths, the writhing black tongues, the eyes in their smudge-pits; he could see that old man with the smashed nose and the broken fingers—

  And Clip remained inside. Witness to the madness, to its twisted face, and when the eyes opened and fixed on his own—

  ‘Hurry,’ groaned Nimander as he came up against Skintick, but as he moved past his cousin reached out and grasped hold of his tunic, drawing Nimander to a halt.

  They were at the edge of a field.

  Before them, in the cold silver light, the rows of scarecrows were all in motion, limbs writhing like gauze-wrapped serpents or blind worms. Black blood was streaming down. The flowers of the horrid plants had opened, exuding clouds of pollen that flashed like phosphorescence, riding the currents of night air.

  And Nimander wanted to rush into that field, into
the midst of the crucified victims. He wanted to taste that pollen on his tongue, on the back of his throat. He wanted to dance in the god’s pain.

  Skintick, weeping, was dragging him back – though it seemed he was fighting his own battle, so taut were his muscles, so contradictory their efforts that they fell against one another. On to the ground.

  Clawing on their bellies now, back down the dirt track.

  The pollen – the pollen is in the air. We have breathed it, and now – gods below – now we hunger for more. Another terrible shriek, the voice a physical thing, trying to climb into the sky – but there was nothing to grasp, no handholds, no footholds, and so it shot out to the sides, closing icy cold grips upon throats. And a voice, screaming into their faces.

  You dance! You drink deep my agony! What manner of vermin are you? Cease! Leave me! Release me!

  A thousand footsteps charging through Nimander’s brain, dancers unending, unable to stop even had they wanted to, which they did not, no, let it go on, and on – gods, for ever!

  There, in the trap of his mind, he saw the old man and his blood- and nectar-smeared face, saw the joy in the eyes, saw the suppleness of his limbs, his straightened back – every crippling knob and protuberance gone. Tumours vanished. He danced in the crowd, one with all the others, exalted and lost in that exaltation.

  Nimander realized that he and Skintick had reached the main street. As the god’s second cry died away, some sanity crept back into his mind. He pushed himself on to his feet, dragging Skintick up with him. Together, they ran, staggering, headlong for the inn – did salvation beckon? Or had Nenanda and the others fallen as well? Were they now dancing in the fields, selves torn away, flung into that black, turgid river?

  A third cry, yet more powerful, more demanding.

  Nimander fell, pulled down by Skintick’s weight. Too late – they would turn about, rise, set out for the field – the pain held him in its deadly, delicious embrace – too late, now—

  He heard the inn’s door slam open behind them.

  Then Aranatha was there, blank-eyed, dark skin almost blue, reaching down to grasp them both by their cloaks. The strength she kept hidden was unveiled suddenly, and they were being dragged towards the door – where more hands took them, tugged them inside—

  And all at once the compulsion vanished.

  Gasping, Nimander found himself lying on his back, staring up at Kedeviss’s face, wondering at her calculating, thoughtful expression.

  A cough from Skintick at his side. ‘Mother Dark save us!’

  ‘Not her,’ said Kedeviss. ‘Just Aranatha.’

  Aranatha, who flinches at shadows, ducks beneath the cry of a hunting hawk. She hides her other self behind a wall no power can surmount. Hides it. Until it’s needed.

  Yes, he could feel her now, an emanation of will filling the entire chamber. Assailed, but holding. As it would.

  As it must.

  Another cough from Skintick. ‘Oh, dear . . .’

  And Nimander understood. Clip was out there. Clip, face to face with the Dying God. Unprotected.

  Mortal Sword of Darkness. Is that protection enough? But he feared it was not. Feared it, because he did not believe Clip was the Mortal Sword of anything. He faced Skintick. ‘What do we do?’

  ‘I don’t know. He may already be . . . lost.’

  Nimander glanced over at Aranatha. ‘Can we make it to the tavern?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘We should never have left him,’ announced Nenanda.

  ‘Don’t be an idiot,’ Kedeviss snapped.

  Skintick still sat on the floor, clawing periodically at his face, wracked with shivers. ‘What manner of sorcery afflicts this place? How can a god’s blood do this?’

  Nimander shook his head. ‘I have never heard of anything like what is happening here, Skintick. The Dying God. It bleeds poison.’ He struggled to keep from weeping. Everything seemed stretched thin, moments from tearing to pieces, a reality all at once in tatters, whipped away on mad winds.

  Skintick’s sigh was ragged. ‘Poison. Then why do I thirst for more?’

  There was no answer for that. Is this a truth made manifest? Do we all feed on the pain of others? Do we laugh and dance upon suffering, simply because it is not our own? Can such a thing become addictive? An insatiable need?

  All at once the distant moaning changed pitch, became screams. Terrible, raw – the sounds of slaughter. Nenanda was suddenly at the door, his sword out.

  ‘Wait!’ cried Kedeviss. ‘Listen! That’s not him. That’s them! He’s murdering them all – do you want to help, Nenanda? Do you?’

  Nenanda seemed to slump. He stepped back, shaken, lost.

  The shrieks did not last long. And when the last one wavered, sank into silence, even the Dying God’s cries had stilled. Beyond the door of the inn, there was nothing, as if the village – the entire outside world – had been torn away.

  Inside, none slept. Each had pulled away from the others, coveting naught but their own thoughts, listening only to the all too familiar voice that was a soul’s conversation with itself. On the faces of his kin, Nimander saw, there was dull shock, a bleakness to the staring, unseeing eyes. He felt the surrender of Aranatha’s will, her power, as the threat passed, as she withdrew once more so far inward that her expression grew slack, almost lifeless, the shy, skittering look not ready to awaken once more.

  Desra stood at the window, the inside shutters pulled to either side, staring out upon an empty main street as the night crawled on, leaving Nimander to wonder at the nature of her internal dialogue – if such a thing existed, if she was not just a creature of sensation, riding currents of instinct, every choice re-framed into simple demands of necessity.

  ‘There is cruelty in your thoughts.’

  Phaed. Leave me alone, ghost.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong. I approve. Desra is a slut. She has a slut’s brain, the kind that confuses giving with taking, gift with loss, invitation with surrender. She is power’s whore, Nimander, and so she stands there, waiting to see him, waiting to see this strutting murderer that she would take to her bed. Confusions, yes. Death with life. Desperation with celebration. Fear with need and lust with love.’

  Go away.

  ‘But you don’t really want that, because then it would leave you vulnerable to that other voice in your head. The sweet woman murmuring all those endearing words – do I recall ever hearing such when she was alive?’

  Stop.

  ‘In the cage of your imagination, blissfully immune to all that was real – the cruel indifferences, yes – you make so much of so little, Nimander. A chance smile. A look. In your cage she lies in your arms, and this is the purest love, isn’t it? Unsullied, eternal—’

  Stop, Phaed. You know nothing. You were too young, too self-obsessed, to see anything of anyone else, unless it threatened you.

  ‘And she was not a threat?’

  You never wanted me that way – don’t be absurd, ghost. Don’t invent—

  ‘I invent nothing! You were just too blinded to see what was right in front of you! And did she die at the spear of a Tiste Edur? Did she truly? Where was I at that moment, Nimander? Do you recall seeing me at all?’

  No, this was too much.

  But she would not relent. ‘Why do you think the idea of killing Sandalath was so easy for me? My hands were already stained—’

  Stop!

  Laughter, ringing through his head.

  He willed himself to say nothing, waited for those chilling peals of mirth to dwindle, grow ever fainter.

  When she spoke again in his mind there was no humour at all in her tone. ‘Nenanda wants to replace you. He wants the command you possess, the respect the others hold for you. He will take it, when he sees his chance. Do not trust him, Nimander. Strike first. A knife in the back – just as you acted to stop me, so you must do again, and this time you cannot fail. There will be no Withal there to finish the task. You will have to do it yourself.’

>   Nimander lifted his gaze, looked upon Nenanda, the straight back, the hand resting on pommel. No, you are lying.

  ‘Delude yourself if you must – but not for much longer. The luxury must be short-lived. You will need to show your . . . decisiveness, and soon.’

  And how many more kin do you want to see dead, Phaed?

  ‘My games are done with. You ended them once and for all. You and the swordsmith. Hate me if you will, but I have talents, and I gift them to you, Nimander – you were the only one to ever listen to me, the only one to whom I opened my heart—’

  Heart? That vile pool of spite you so loved to swim in – that was your heart?

  ‘You need me. I give strength where you are weakest. Oh, make the bitch murmur of love, fill her mouth with all the right words. If it helps. But she cannot help you with the hard choices a leader must make. Nenanda believes he can do better – see it in his eyes, so quick to challenge.’

  ‘It’s growing light,’ Desra said from the window. She turned. ‘I think we should go out. To the tavern. It may be he is wounded. It may be he needs our help.’

  ‘I recall him not asking for it,’ growled Nenanda.

  ‘He is not all-powerful,’ said Desra, ‘though he might affect such – it comes with being so young.’

  Nimander stared across at her. Where did that insight come from?

  ‘Clip is vulnerable?’ Kedeviss asked in mock surprise. ‘Be quick to take advantage of that, Desra.’

  ‘The endless siege that is your envy grows wearisome, Kedeviss.’

  Kedeviss paled at that and said nothing.

  Oh, we are a vicious bunch, are we not? Nimander rubbed at his face, then said, ‘Let’s go, then, and see for ourselves what has become of him.’

  Desra was first through the door.

  Out into pale silvery light, a cerulean sky devoid of clouds, looking somehow speckled with grit. The harvested plants drooped in their racks, sodden with dew, the bulbs like swollen heads lined up in rows above the latticework. Nimander saw, as he paused out on the street, that the temple’s doors were ajar.

  Clip was lying on the wooden sidewalk in front of the tavern, curled up, so covered in dried blood that he might have been a figure moulded in black mud.