Tall, skin pale as the shell of turtle eggs, red-rimmed eyes set deep in elongated, chiselled faces, and too many joints on their long limbs, transforming their stiff expressions of death into something surreal, fevered-but that last detail was no surprise.
And now, a smudge of motion in the darkness beneath the lintel stone. A figure staggering into view. Unlike the dead. No, this one looked… human.
Splashed in blood from head to toe, the man reeled forward, halted at the top of the steps and looked round with wild, enraged eyes. Then, flinging his head back, he screamed at the colourless sky.
No words. Just fury.
Udinaas recoiled, sought to drag himself away.
And the figure saw him. One crimson, dripping hand, lifting, reaching out for him. Beckoning.
As if grasped by the throat, Udinaas lurched closer to the man, to the temple, to the cold scree of corpses. ‘No,’ he muttered, ‘not me. Choose someone else. Not me.’
‘Can you feel this grief, mortal?’
‘Not for me!’
‘But it is. You are the only one left. Are their deaths to be empty, forgotten, without meaning?’
‘
Udinaas tried to hold on to the ground, but the stones pulled loose under his hands, the sandy soil broke free as his nails dragged furrows in his wake. ‘Find someone else!’ His shriek echoed, as if launched directly at the temple, in through the gaping entrance, and echoing within-trapped, stolen away, rebounding until it was no longer his own voice, but that of the temple itself-a mournful cry of dying, of desperate defiance. The temple, voicing its thirst.
And something shook the sky then. Lightning without fire, thunder without sound-an arrival, jarring loose the world.
The entire temple heaved sideways, clouds of dust gasping out from between mortarless joins. It was moments from collapse-
‘No!’ bellowed the figure at the top of the stairs, even as he staggered to regain his balance. ‘This one is mine! My T’orrud Segul! Look at these dead-they must be saved, delivered, they must be-’
And now another voice sounded, behind Udinaas, high, distant, a voice of the sky itself. ‘No, Errant. These dead are Forkrul Assail. Dead by your own hand. You cannot kill them to save them-’
‘Dread witch, you know nothing! They’re the only ones l can save!’
‘The curse of Elder Gods-look at the blood on your hands. It is all of your own making. All of it.’
A huge shadow swept over Udinaas then. Wheeled round.
Wind gusting, tossing tangled black hair upward from corpses, buffeting the torn fragments of their clothes; then, a sudden pressure, as of vast weight descending, and the dragon was there-between Udinaas and the Errant-long hind limbs stretching downward, claws plunging through cold bodies, crushing them in the snapping of bones as the enormous creature settled on the slope. Sinuous neck curling round, the huge head drawing closer to Udinaas, eyes of white fire.
Its voice filled his skull. ‘Do you know me?’
Argent flames rippling along the golden scales, a presence exuding incandescent heat-Forkrul Assail bodies blackened beneath her, skin crinkling, peeling back. Fats melting, popping from sudden blisters, weeping from joints.
Udinaas nodded. ‘Menandore. Sister Dawn. Rapist.’
Thick, liquid laughter. The head swung away, angled up towards the Errant. ‘This one is mine,’ she said. ‘I claimed him long ago.’
‘Claim what you like, Menandore. Before we are done here, you will give him to me. Of your own will.’
‘Indeed?’
‘As… payment.’
‘For what?’
‘For news of your sisters.’
She laughed again. ‘Do you imagine I don’t know?’
‘But I offer more.’ The god raised his red hands. ‘I can ensure they are removed from your path, Menandore. A simple… nudge.’
The dragon shifted round, regarded Udinaas once more. ‘For this one?’
‘Yes.’
‘Very well, you can have him. But not our child.’
It was the Errant’s turn to laugh. ‘When last did you visit that… child, Menandore?’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Only this. He is grown now. His mind is his own. Not yours, Menandore. You are warned, and this time 1 demand nothing in return. Elder Gods, my dear, can on occasion know mercy.’
She snorted-a gust of raw power. ‘I have heard that. Fine propaganda, the morsel you feed to your starving, pathetic worshippers. This man, this father of my child, he will fail you. T’orrud Segul. He has no faith. The compassion within him is like a meer-rat in a pit of lions-dancing faster than you can see, ever but moments from annihilation. He has played with it for a long time, Errant. You will not catch it, cannot claim it, cannot bind it to your cause.’ She voiced her cruel laughter once more. ‘I took more from him than you realize.’
