Steven Erikson - Dust of Dreams

Although, in truth, he himself struggled against unleashing the full flow of the nectar, forcing open his sleep glands to counteract the ferocious fires within.

The Shi’gal had hunted this night, and in so doing, he had mocked the K’ell, stealing their glory, denying them the pleasure they sought, the pleasure they had been born to pursue.

Come the dawn, Sag’Churok would lead the Seeking well away from that scene of slaughter. Destriant Kalyth need not know anything of it-the frame of her mind was weak enough as it was. The Seeking would work eastward, further out into the wastes, where no food could be found for the strangers. Of course, this caution would likely fail, if the herd was as vast as Gu’Rull had intimated.

And so Sag’Churok knew that his fellow Hunters would find their blood before too long.

They hissed and snorted, quivered and yawned with their jaws. The heavy blades thumped and grated over the ground.

It did not occur to Gu’Rull that the scores upon scores of dogs plaguing the human herd were anything but scavengers, such as the beasts that had once tracked the K’Chain Che’Malle Furies in times of war. And so the Assassin paid no attention whatsoever to the six beasts that had moved parallel to the scouts, and had made no effort to cloud their senses. And even as these beasts now fled south, clearly making for the human herd, Gu’Rull attributed no special significance to their peregrinations. Scavengers were commonplace, their needs singular and far from complex.

The Assassin killed the scouts, both times descending from above, tearing their heads from their shoulders when they each halted upon hearing the moan of Gu’Rull’s wings. Task completed, the Shi’gal rose high into the dark sky, seeking the strong flows of air that he would ride through the course of the day to come-air cold enough to keep him from overheating, for he had discovered that during the day his wings, when fully outstretched, absorbed vast amounts of heat, which in turn strained his equanimity and naturally calm repose.

And that would not do.

Kalyth watched the scene before her fragment and then vanish as if blown away in a gust of wind she could not feel. The old man, the monolith, his polished hands and all his words-they had been a distraction, proof of her ignorance that she had so easily been snared by something-and someone-not meant for her.

But it seemed that willpower alone was not enough, particularly when she had no real destination in mind-she had but mentally reached out for a notion, a vague feeling of the familiar-was it any wonder she stumbled about, aimless, lost, pathetically vulnerable?

Faintly, as if from the ether, she heard the old man say, ‘It ever appears dead, spiked so cruelly and no, you will see no motion, not a twitch. Even the blood does not drip. Do not be deceived. She will be freed. She must. It is necessary.’

She thought he might have said something more, but his voice dwindled, and the landscape before her found a new shape. Wreckage or pyres burned across an unnaturally flat plain. Smoke rolled black and hot, stinging her eyes. She could make no sense of what she saw; the horizons seethed, as if armies contended on all sides but nowhere close.

Heavy shadows scudded over the littered ground and she looked up, but beyond the columns of smoke rising from the pyres, the sky was empty, colourless. Something about those untethered shadows frightened Kalyth, the way they seemed to be converging, gathering speed, and she could feel herself drawn after them, swept into their wake.

It seemed then that she truly left her body behind, and now sailed on the same currents, casting her own paltry, shapeless shadow, and she saw that the wreckage looked familiar-not pyres as such, after all, but crushed and twisted pieces of the kinds of mechanism she had seen in Ampelas Rooted. Her unease deepened. Was this a vision of the future? Or some frayed remnant of the distant past? She suspected that the K’Chain Che’Malle had fought vast wars centuries ago, yet she also knew that a new war was coming.

The horizon drew closer, at a point where the massive shadows seemed destined to converge. Its seething edge was indeed armies locked in battle, yet she could make out little detail. Humans? K’Chain Che’Malle? She could not tell, and even as she swept towards them, they grew indistinct, as if swallowed in dust.

There would be nothing easy in any of this, Kalyth realized. No gifts delivered with simple clarity, with unambiguous meaning. She floundered in sudden panic, trying to pull herself back as the shadows swarmed to a single point, only to vanish, as if plunging through a gate-she did not want to follow. She wanted none of this.

Twin suns blazed to life, blinding her. Searing heat washed over her, building, and she screamed as she withered in the firestorm-but it was too late-

She awoke lying on the damp grasses, lids fluttering open, to find herself staring up at a paling sky. Dull motes still drifted across her vision, but she could feel their loss of strength. Kalyth had returned, no wiser, no surer of the path ahead.

Groaning, she rolled on to her side, and then to her hands and knees. Every bone in her body ached; twinges speared every muscle, and she shivered, chilled right down to the roots of her soul. Lifting her head, she saw that Sag’Churok stood beside her, the Hunter’s terrible eyes fixed on her as if contemplating a hare trapped under his talons.

She looked away and then climbed to her feet. The thin odour of dung smoke reached her and she turned to see Gunth Mach hunkered down before the campfire, her huge hands deftly turning skewers of dripping meat.

The damned creatures had been obsessed with meat from the moment they departed the Nest-on this journey she’d yet to see them unwrap a single root crop or lump of bread (or what passed for bread, for although on the tongue it possessed the consistency of a fresh mushroom, she had seen loaves in countless shapes and sizes). Meat to break the night’s fast, meat at the mid-morning rest stop, meat whilst on the move at afternoon’s waning, and meat at the final meal well after the sun’s setting. She suspected that, if not for her, it would have been eaten raw. The Wastelands offered little else, she had discovered-even the grasses, berries and tubers that had once been common on the plains of the Elan were entirely absent here.

Feeling miserable, and terribly alone, she went over to collect her breakfast.

Stavi looked to her sister and saw, as ever, her own face, although the expression was never a match to her own. Twins they might be, but they were also two sides of a coin, and took turns in what they offered to the world. Hetan knew as much, and had observed more than once how, when one of her first daughters set eyes upon the other, there grew a look of surprise and something like guilt in the child’s face-as if in seeing an unexpected attitude displayed in her other self, she had perhaps ambushed her own innermost feelings.

Not surprisingly, Stavi and Storii were in the habit of avoiding one another’s regard, as much as was possible, as if neither welcomed that flash of confusion. They much preferred to sow confusion in everyone else, particularly, Hetan noted yet again, their adopted father.

Although not within hearing range of the conversation, Hetan could well see how it was proceeding. The girls had stalked the poor man, wicked as a pair of hunting cats, and whatever it was that they wanted from him, they would get. Without fail.

Or so it would be, each and every time, if not for their cruel and clever mother, who, when she took it upon herself, could stride into the midst of the ambush and, with a bare word or gesture, send the two little witches scampering. Knowing this, of course, at least one of the twins would have her attention fixed on Hetan’s location, measuring distances and the intensity of their mother’s attention. Hetan knew that, should she so much as turn towards them, the girls would break off the wheedling, crassly manipulative assault on their father, and, flicking dark, sharp glares her way, scuttle off in the manner of frustrated evil imps the world over.