The snakes surrounded them by the hundreds now, slithering unremarked by either over their feet, around their ankles, heads lifting again and again to flick tongues towards the carved trunks.

‘Thank you, Toblakai,’ Sha’ik murmured. ‘I am humbled… and revived.’

‘There is trouble in your city, Chosen One.’

She nodded. ‘I know.’

‘Are you the calm at its heart?’

A bitter smile twisted her lips as she turned away. ‘Will these serpents permit us to leave?’

‘Of course. But do not step. Instead, shuffle. Slowly. They will open for you a path.’

‘I should be alarmed by all this,’ she said as she edged back on their path.

But it is the least of your worries, Chosen One. ‘I will keep you apprised of developments, if you wish.’

‘Thank you, yes.’

He watched her make her way out of the clearing. There were vows wrapped tight around Toblakai’s soul. Slowly constricting. Some time soon, something would break. He knew not which, but if Leoman had taught him one thing, it was patience.

When she was gone, the warrior swung about and approached the mason’s chest.

Dust on the hands, a ghostly patina, tinted faintly pink by the raging red storm encircling the world.

The heat of the day was but an illusion in Raraku. With the descent of darkness, the desert’s dead bones quickly cast off the sun’s shimmering, fevered breath. The wind grew chill and the sands erupted with crawling, buzzing life, like vermin emerging from a corpse. Rhizan flitted in a frenzied wild hunt through the clouds of capemoths and chigger fleas above the tent city sprawled in the ruins. In the distance desert wolves howled as if hunted by ghosts.

Heboric lived in a modest tent raised around a ring of stones that had once provided the foundation for a granary. His abode was situated well away from the settlement’s centre, surrounded by the yurts of one of Mathok’s desert tribes. Old rugs covered the floor. Off to one side a small table of piled bricks held a brazier, sufficient for cooking if not warmth. A cask of well-water stood nearby, flavoured with amber wine. A half-dozen flickering oil lamps suffused the interior with yellow light.

He sat alone, the pungent aroma of the hen’bara tea sweet in the cooling air. Outside, the sounds of the settling tribe offered a comforting background, close enough and chaotic enough to keep scattered and random his thoughts. Only later, when sleep claimed all those around him, would the relentless assault begin, the vertiginous visions of a face of jade, so massive it challenged comprehension. Power both alien and earthly, as if born of a natural force never meant to be altered. Yet altered it had been, shaped, cursed sentient. A giant buried in otataral, held motionless in an eternal prison.

Who could now touch the world beyond, with the ghosts of two human hands-hands that had been claimed then abandoned by a god. But was it Fener who abandoned me, or did I abandon Fener? Which of us, I wonder, is more… exposed?

This camp, this war-this desert-all had conspired to ease the shame of his hiding. Yet one day, Heboric knew, he would have to return to that dreaded wasteland from his past, to the island where the stone giant waited. Return. But to what end?

He had always believed that Fener had taken his severed hands into keeping, to await the harsh justice that was the Tusked One’s right. A fate that Heboric had accepted, as best he could. But it seemed there was to be no end to the betrayals a single once-priest could commit against his god. Fener had been dragged from his realm, left abandoned and trapped on this world. Heboric’s severed hands had found a new master, a master possessed of such immense power that it could war with otataral itself. Yet it did not belong. The giant of jade, Heboric now believed, was an intruder, sent here from another realm for some hidden purpose.

And, instead of completing that purpose, someone had imprisoned it.

He sipped at his tea, praying that its narcotic would prove sufficient to deaden the sleep to come. It was losing its potency, or, rather, he was becoming inured to its effects.

The face of stone beckoned.

The face that was trying to speak.

There was a scratching at the tent flap, then it was pulled aside.

Felisin entered. ‘Ah, still awake. Good, that will make this easier. My mother wants you.’

‘Now?’

‘Yes. There have been events in the world beyond. Consequences to be discussed. Mother seeks your wisdom.’

Heboric cast a mournful glance at the clay cup of steaming tea in his invisible hands. It was little more than flavoured water when cold. ‘I am uninterested in events in the world beyond. If she seeks wise words from me, she will be disappointed.’

‘So I argued,’ Felisin Younger said, an amused glint in her eyes. ‘Sha’ik insists.’

She helped him don a cloak then led him outside, one of her hands light as a capemoth on his back.

The night was bitter cold, tasting of settling dust. They set out along the twisting alleyways between the yurts, walking in silence.

They passed the raised dais where Sha’ik Reborn had first addressed the mob, then through the crumbled gateposts leading to the huge, multi-chambered tent that was the Chosen One’s palace. There were no guards as such, for the goddess’s presence was palpable, a pressure in the chill air.

There was little warmth in the first room beyond the tent flap, but with each successive curtain that they parted and stepped through, the temperature rose. The palace was a maze of such insulating chambers, most of them empty of furniture, offering little in the way of distinguishing one from another. An assassin who proceeded this far, somehow avoiding the attention of the goddess, would quickly get lost. The approach to where Sha’ik resided followed its own torturous, winding route. Her chambers were not central, not at the heart of the palace as one might expect.

With his poor vision and the endless turns and twists, Heboric was quickly confused; he had never determined the precise location of their destination. He was reminded of the escape from the mines, the arduous journey to the island’s west coast-it had been Baudin in the lead, Baudin whose sense of direction had proved unerring, almost uncanny. Without him, Heboric and Felisin would have died.

A Talon, no less. Ah, Tavore, you were not wrong to place your faith in him. It was Felisin who would not co-operate. You should have anticipated that. Well, sister, you should have anticipated a lot of things… But not this.

They entered the square, low-ceilinged expanse that the Chosen One-Felisin Elder, child of the House of Paran-had called her Throne Room. And indeed there was a dais, once the pedestal for a hearth, on which was a tall-backed chair of sun-bleached wood and padding. In councils such as these, Sha’ik invariably positioned herself in that makeshift throne; nor would she leave it while her advisers were present, not even to peruse the yellowed maps the commanders were wont to lay out on the hide-covered floor. Apart from Felisin Younger, the Chosen One was the smallest person there.

Heboric wondered if Sha’ik Elder had suffered similar insecurities. He doubted it.

The room was crowded; among the army’s leaders and Sha’ik’s select, only Leoman and Toblakai were absent. There were no other chairs, although cushions and pillows rested against the base of three of the four tent walls, and it was on these that the commanders sat. Felisin at his side, Heboric made his way to the far side, Sha’ik’s left, and took his place a few short paces from the dais, the young girl settling down beside him.

Some permanent sorcery illuminated the chamber, the light somehow warming the air as well. Everyone else was in their allotted place, Heboric noted. Though they were little more than blurs in his eyes, he knew them all well enough. Against the wall opposite the throne sat the half-blood Napan, Korbolo Dom, shaved hairless, his dusty blue skin latticed in scars. On his right, the High Mage Kamist Reloe, gaunt to the point of skeletal, his grey hair cut short to stubble, a tight-curled iron beard reaching up to prominent cheekbones above which glittered sunken eyes. On Korbolo’s left sat Henaras, a witch from some desert tribe that had, for unknown reasons, banished her. Sorcery kept her youthful in appearance, the heavy languor in her dark eyes the product of diluted Tralb, a poison drawn from a local snake, which she imbibed to inure her against assassination. Beside her was Fayelle, an obese, perpetually nervous woman of whom Heboric knew little.