Tom Lloyd: The ragged man

He suddenly remembered an ancient play: the ghost of a king is granted a boon by Death, to speak to his son before passing on to the land of no time.

'"The journey is long, my heir,"' Mihn whispered to himself, '"the gates sometimes within reach and at others hidden in the mists of afar. They open for you when they are ready to – until then hold your head high and remember: you are a man who walks with Gods."'

After a few more minutes of silence he began to sing softly; a song of praise he had been taught as a child. The familiar, ancient melody immediately reminded him of his home in the cold north of the Land, of the caves the clans built their homes around and the cavern where they worshipped.

When he reached the end of the song he moved straight on to another, preferring that to the unnatural hush. This one was a long and mournful deathbed lament, where pleas of atonement were interspersed with praise of Death's wisdom. Considering where he was going it seemed only sensible.

In the silence of the ghost hour two figures walked through the fens beyond Byora. The expanse stretched for miles; few knew the safe paths and still several of those fell victim each year to the sucking mud or malign spirits. Marsh alder and ghost willows studded the watery landscape, either solitary trees looming in the mist like spectres or small copses huddled and hunched like bitter old men.

The brother and sister walked side by side, neither carrying a lantern, despite the deepening gloom. They were several miles from Byora, at the very heart of the fens. Though the air was cold, the vapour of their breath was barely visible even once the sister stopped and pushed back the hood of her cape to speak.

'This will serve,' Zhia said.

The sun had sunk below the eastern horizon and its light had faded from all but a sliver of the clear evening sky. A low mist surrounded them and everything beyond ten yards in any direction was tinted white and indistinct. In the distance a light flickered, pale blue and cold. From another direction came the cough of a fox and a wordless mutter that faded to nothing when she turned her sapphire eyes that way. The light she ignored. No will o' the wisp would come closer unless someone were floundering in the water, and only then when their struggles had weakened considerably – and that was not going to happen tonight.

Koezh looked at the ground around them. A hump of earth less than a dozen yards across, but firm underfoot thanks to the roots of an ancient marsh alder that bore the scars of a lightning strike. One branch had fallen; grass was already growing up around the wood. Its furthermost twigs were draped in the still water like the fingers of a corpse. The tree was old and with an open break running down the main trunk wouldn't last many more winters, so it was perfect for their purposes.

'And to guard it?'

Zhia drew her long-handled sword and used the tip to cut a circle in the sodden ground around the tree. At her murmured command the circle glowed briefly, a pale blue light similar to the will o' the wisp. That done, she sheathed the sword and drew another from her back, this one wrapped in cloth. She freed her gloved left hand from the folds of her cloak and raised her hood before unwrapping the cloth. Both turned side-on, hiding as much of their faces as possible, as a bright white light shone out and dissipated the surrounding curtain of mist.

Without waiting Zhia pushed the shining crystal sword into the split part of the marsh alder and muttered a few more words. The trunk of the tree closed up over Aenaris and the light winked out. Zhia turned away, fingers touched to her face, hissing with discomfort. The Key of Life shone with light as pure as the sun's; the vampire's cheek now bore a blackened scorch-mark.

Koezh gave a polite cough and drew a dagger from his belt. 'The Key of Life will make the tree stand out if someone passes this way,' he said as he cut a band of bark away from all around the tree's base. A touch of his broadsword made the exposed wood blacken and decay. A little mud covered the damage and made it barely noticeable. 'I doubt that will kill the tree, but it might slow it up a while.'

'I'm rather more concerned some daemon will discover it,' Zhia said pointedly. 'The Devil Stair Lord Styrax created is only a few miles away and who knows how many places in these fens reach down to Ghenna? No human will find their way here, even if we were followed, not once I'm finished.'

'All the same, caution is rarely without worth,' he replied. 'It will take any daemon time to work out how to handle the sword of the Queen of the Gods. Perhaps we should save our concern for finding a new resting place for Aenaris.'

'A permanent one? That won't be necessary.'

Koezh looked askance at his sister. 'My sister the convert? Once more you have faith in a cause?'

'I have faith in my own senses,' Zhia replied, not bothering to rise to his insinuation. 'Players remain in this game who can give us what we want. One of them will win out.'

'Which?'

'Perhaps the shadow after all. Few of the power players consider it any real threat; it seems to be content to wait and let them exhaust themselves fighting each other.'

'And this is the side you wish to support?'

Zhia looked surprised. 'What do you mean, "wish to support"? You'd prefer to do nothing? Prefer the Land to continue as it has for the last seven millennia?'

'I am just one man. I cannot choose a fate for the entire Land.'

She laughed. 'Compassion? Just another part of our Gods-imposed curse – and yet another thing we might be freed of.'

'At what price?'

'Let consequences be someone else's problem, we've had enough of them.'

He regarded her as he used to when they were children and he the reticent elder brother. 'So you are decided?'

'Not at all, that time is yet to come.' Zhia's voice became more insistent. 'Don't you feel it though? Can't you sense change on the horizon? That our time has finally come?'

'I do.' Koezh gave a sigh and looked to the western horizon. The sky was black, and the first stars of night had appeared. 'Yet still I think of the price others might bear.'

At last Mihn came to the ivory doors of Death's chamber and there he stopped. Something inside told him he would be permitted a moment to wonder at the sight – to tremble at the judgment that lay beyond. The doors to the throne room appeared to be more than three hundred feet high, but Mihn guessed measurements meant little in the Herald's Halls. The walk there had taken hours; the ghost of fatigue fluttered through his body, but he was cool and his breath was calm.

The huge doors that dominated the miles-high Herald's Hall were somehow brighter and more real than the hard, cold stone underfoot. The wall they were set into was indistinct, slanted away from Mihn and stretching into the murky distance, with no corners in sight. The doors themselves were composed of a chaotic network of bones, ranging from the smallest finger-bone to thigh-bones broader and longer even than the biggest of white-eyes; bigger than Mihn imagined a dragon's bones would be. White marble formed a peaked frame around them, through which ran threads of faintly glittering silver.

The tangle of interlinked bones was bleached a uniform white. There were gaps Mihn would have been able to slip himself into, perhaps even make his way all the way through, but some fearful part of him pictured the bones closing around him, including him in the structure. He stepped back and looked up and a moment of renewed dizziness washed over him as his mind struggled to accept the sight. When that passed Mihn began to see a purpose to the chaotic structure; a pattern that absorbed the jumble of linked bones to impose a rigid grandeur upon the whole.