Like him, Karsa suspected, Leoman was biding his time. Raraku waited with them. Perhaps, for them. The Holy Desert possessed a gift, yet it was one that few had ever recognized, much less accepted. A gift that would arrive unseen, unnoticed at first, a gift too old to find shape in words, too formless to grasp in the hands as one would a sword.

Toblakai, once a warrior of forest-cloaked mountains, had grown to love this desert. The endless tones of fire painted on stone and sand, the bitter-needled plants and the countless creatures that crawled, slithered or scampered, or slipped through night-air on silent wings. He loved the hungry ferocity of these creatures, their dancing as prey and predator a perpetual cycle inscribed on the sand and beneath the rocks. And the desert in turn had reshaped Karsa, weathered his skin dark, stretched taut and lean his muscles, thinned his eyes to slits.

Leoman had told him much of this place, secrets that only a true inhabitant would know. The ring of ruined cities, harbours one and all, the old beach ridges with their natural barrows running for league upon league. Shells that had turned hard as stone and would sing low and mournful in the wind-Leoman had presented him with a gift of these, a vest of hide on which such shells had been affixed, armour that moaned in the endless, ever-dry winds. There were hidden springs in the wasteland, cairns and caves where an ancient sea-god had been worshipped. Remote basins that would, every few years, be stripped of sand to reveal long, high-prowed ships of petrified wood that was crowded with carvings-a long-dead fleet revealed beneath starlight only to be buried once more the following day. In other places, often behind the beach ridges, the forgotten mariners had placed cemeteries, using hollowed-out cedar trunks to hold their dead kin-all turned to stone, now, claimed by the implacable power of Raraku.

Layer upon countless layer, the secrets were unveiled by the winds. Sheer cliffs rising like ramps, in which the fossil skeletons of enormous creatures could be seen. The stumps of cleared forests, hinting of trees as large as any Karsa had known from his homeland. The columnar pilings of docks and piers, anchor-stones and the open cavities of tin mines, flint quarries and arrow-straight raised roads, trees that grew entirely underground, a mass of roots stretching out for leagues, from which the ironwood of Karsa’s new sword had been carved-his blood-sword having cracked long ago.

Raraku had known Apocalypse first-hand, millennia past, and Toblakai wondered if it truly welcomed its return. Sha’ik’s goddess stalked the desert, her mindless rage the shriek of unceasing wind along its borders, but Karsa wondered at the Whirlwind’s manifestation-just whose was it? Cold, disconnected rage, or a savage, unbridled argument?

Did the goddess war with the desert?

Whilst, far to the south in this treacherous land, the Malazan army prepared to march.

As he approached the heart of the grove-where a low altar of flat-stones occupied a small clearing-he saw a slight, long-haired figure, seated on the altar as if it was no more than a bench in an abandoned garden. A book was in her lap, its cracked skin cover familiar to Toblakai’s eyes.

She spoke without turning round. ‘I have seen your tracks in this place, Toblakai.’

‘And I yours, Chosen One.’

‘I come here to wonder,’ she said as he walked into view around the altar to stand facing her.

As do I.

‘Can you guess what it is I wonder about?’ she asked.

‘No.’

The almost-faded pocks of bloodfly scars only showed themselves when she smiled. ‘The gift of the goddess…’ the smile grew strained, ‘offers only destruction.’

He glanced away, studied the nearby trees. ‘This grove will resist in the way of Raraku,’ he rumbled. ‘It is stone. And stone holds fast.’

‘For a while,’ she muttered, her smile falling away. ‘But there remains that within me that urges… creation.’

‘Have a baby.’

Her laugh was almost a yelp. ‘Oh, you hulking fool, Toblakai. I should welcome your company more often.’

Then why do you choose not to?

She waved a small hand at the book in her lap. ‘Dryjhna was an author who, to be gracious, lived with malnourished talent. There are naught but bones in this tome, I am afraid. Obsessed with the taking of life, the annihilation of order. Yet not once does he offer anything in its stead. There is no rebirth among the ashes of his vision, and that saddens me. Does it sadden you, Toblakai?’

He stared down at her for a long moment, then said, ‘Come.’

Shrugging, she set the book down on the altar and rose, straightening the plain, worn, colourless telaba that hung loose over her curved body.

He led her into the rows of bone-white trees. She followed in silence.

Thirty paces, then another small clearing, this one ringed tight in thick, petrified boles. A squat, rectangular mason’s chest sat in the skeletal shade cast down by the branches-which had remained intact down to the very twigs. Toblakai stepped to one side, studied her face as she stared in silence at his works-in-progress.

Before them, the trunks of two of the trees ringing the clearing had been reshaped beneath chisel and pick. Two warriors stared out with sightless eyes, one slightly shorter than Toblakai but far more robust, the other taller and thinner.

He saw that her breath had quickened, a slight flush on her cheeks. ‘You have talent… rough, but driven,’ she murmured without pulling her eyes from their study. ‘Do you intend to ring the entire clearing with such formidable warriors?’

‘No. The others will be… different.’

Her head turned at a sound. She stepped quickly closer to Karsa. ‘A snake.’

He nodded. ‘There will be more, coming from all sides. The clearing will be filled with snakes, should we choose to remain here.’

‘Flare-necks.’

‘And others. They won’t bite or spit, however. They never do. They come… to watch.’

She shot him a searching glance, then shivered slightly. ‘What power manifests here? It is not the Whirlwind’s-’

‘No. Nor do I have a name for it. Perhaps the Holy Desert itself.’

She slowly shook her head to that. ‘I think you are wrong. The power, I believe, is yours.’

He shrugged. ‘We shall see, when I have done them all.’

‘How many?’

‘Besides Bairoth and Delum Thord? Seven.’

She frowned. ‘One for each of the Holy Protectors?’

No. ‘Perhaps. I have not decided. These two you see, they were my friends. Now dead.’ He paused, then added, ‘I had but two friends.’

She seemed to flinch slightly at that. ‘What of Leoman? What of Mathok? What of… me?’

‘I have no plans on carving your likenesses here.’

‘That is not what I meant.’

I know. He gestured at the two Teblor warriors. ‘Creation, Chosen One.’

‘When I was young, I wrote poetry, in the path that my mother already walked. Did you know that?’

He smiled at the word ‘young’ but replied in all seriousness, ‘No, I did not.’

‘I… I have resurrected the habit.’

‘May it serve you well.’

She must have sensed something of the blood-slick edge underlying his statement, for her expression tightened. ‘But that is never its purpose, is it. To serve. Or to yield satisfaction-self-satisfaction, I mean, since the other kind but follows as a returning ripple in a well-’

‘Confusing the pattern.’

‘As you say. It is far too easy to see you as a knot-browed barbarian, Toblakai. No, the drive to create is something other, isn’t it? Have you an answer?’

He shrugged. ‘If one exists, it will only be found in the search-and searching is at creation’s heart, Chosen One.’

She stared at the statues once more. ‘And what are you searching for? With these… old friends?’

‘I do not know. Yet.’

‘Perhaps they will tell you, one day.’