Toll the Hounds

Anomander would tell no lie, nor live one,

and would that deafness could

bless him in the days and nights

beyond the black rains of Black Coral.

Alas, this was not to be. .

And so we choose to hear nothing

Of the dreaded creak, the slip and snap

Of wooden wheels, the shudder on stone

And the chiding rattle of chains, as if

Upon some other world is where darkness

Beats out from a cursedly ethereal forge

And no sun rises above horizon’s rippled

Cant — some other world not ours indeed -

Yes bless us so, Anomander, with this

Sanctimony, this lie and soft comfort,

And the slaves are not us, this weight

But an illusion, these shackles could break

With a thought, and all these cries and

Moans are less than the murmurs

Of a quiescent heart — it’s all but a tale,

My friends, this tall denier of worship

And the sword he carries holds nothing,

No memory at all, and if there be a place

In the cosy scheme for lost souls

Pulling onward an uprooted temple

It but resides in an imagination flawed

And unaligned with sober intricacy -

Nothing is as messy as that messy world

And that comfort leaves us abiding

Deaf and blind and senseless in peace

Within our imagined place, this precious order. .

Soliloquy, Anomandaris, Book IV

Fisher kel Tath

Dragon Tower stood like a torch above Black Coral. The spire, rising from the northwest corner of the New Andiian Palace, was solid black basalt, dressed in fractured, faceted obsidian that glistened in the eternal gloom enshrouding the cily. Atop its flat roof crouched a crimson-scaled dragon, wings folded, its wedge head hanging over one side so that it seemed to stare down on the crazed shadowy patchwork of buildings, alleys and streets far below,

There were citizens still in Black Coral — among the humans — who believed that the ferocious sentinel was the stone creation of some master artisan among the ruling Tiste Andii, and this notion left Endest Silann sourly amused. True, he understood how wilful such ignorance could be. The thought of a real, live dragon casting its baleful regard down on the city and its multitude of scurrying lives was to most truly terrifying, and indeed, had they been close enough to see the gleaming hunger in Silanah’s multifaceted eyes, they would have long fled Black Coral in blind panic.

For the Eleint to remain so, virtually motionless, day and night, weeks into months and now very nearly an entire year, was not unusual. And Endest Silann knew this better than most.

The Tiste Andii, once a formidable, if aged, sorcerer in Moon’s Spawn, now a barely competent castellan to the New Andiian Palace, slowly walked Sword Street as it bent south of the treeless park known as Grey Hill. He had left the fiercely lit district of Fish, where the Outwater Market so crowded every avenue and lane that those who brought two-wheeled carts in which to load purchases were forced to leave them in a square just north of Grey Hill. The endless streams of porters for hire — who gathered every dawn near the Cart Square — always added to the chaos between the stalls, pushing through with wrapped bundles towards the carts and slipping, dodging and sliding like eels back into the press. Although the Outwater Market acquired its name because the preponderance of fish sold there came from the seas beyond Night — the perpetual darkness cloaking the city and the surround shy;ing area for almost a third of a league — there could also be found the pale, gem-eyed creatures of Coral Bay’s Nightwater.