Toll the Hounds

A short time later, the ship slipping easily just out from the shoreline, on a westward heading, they both stood at the port rail and observed the funeral procession’s end, there at a new long barrow rising modestly above the surrounding hills. Crowds upon crowds of citizens ringed the mound. The silence of the scene, with the bells faint and distant, made it seem ethereal, like a painted image, solemn through the smoke haze. They could see the cart, the ox.

Spite sighed. ‘My sister once loved him, you know.’

‘Anomander Rake? No, I didn’t know that.’

‘His death marks the beginning.’

‘Of what?’

‘The end, Cutter.’

He had no response to that. A few moments drifted past. ‘You said she loved him once. What happened?’

‘He acquired Dragnipur. At least, I imagine that was the cause. She is well named, is my sister.’

Envy.

Cutter shot her a glance, thinking of her own name, this beautiful woman at his side, and wisely he said nothing, nothing at all.

The bell that wasn’t there had finally stopped its manic ringing, and Scillara was able to climb back on to the temple roof, so that she could gaze out over the city. She could see the lake, where one lone ship had unfurled sails to ride the morning breeze. She knew those sails and she tracked them for a time.

Who was on board? Well, Spite for certain. And, if he’d any sense, Barathol. With smiling Chaur at his side, the giant child with his childish love that would never know betrayal, at least until the day, hopefully decades hence, when the blacksmith bowed to old age and took to bed for the last time. She could almost see him, his face, the deep wrinkles, the dimming of his dark eyes, and all the losses of his life falling away, veil by veil, until he ceased looking outward entirely.

Chaur would not understand. What he would feel would crash blind as a boar in a thicket, crash right through him. It would be a dreadful thing to witness, to see the poor child tangled in the clutches of pain he could not understand, and loss he could not fathom.

Who would care for him then?

And what of dear Scillara? Why was she not with them? She wished she had an answer to that. But she had come to certain truths about herself. Destined, she now believed, to provide gentle comfort to souls in passing. A comforting bridge, yes, to ease the loneliness of their journey.

She seemed doomed to ever open her arms to the wrong lover, to love fully yet never be so loved in return. It made her pathetic stock in this retinue of squandered opportunities that scrawled out the history of a clumsy life.

Could she live with that? Without plunging into self-pity? Time would tell, she supposed.

Scillara packed her pipe, struck sparks and drew deep.

A sound behind her made her turn-

As Barathol stepped close, one hand sliding up behind her head, leaned forward and kissed her. A long, deep, determined kiss. When he finally pulled away, she gasped. Eyes wide, staring up into his own.

He said, ‘I am a blacksmith. If I need to forge chains to keep you, I will.’

She blinked, and then gave him a throaty laugh. ‘Careful, Barathol. Chains bind both ways.’

His expression was grave. ‘Can you live with that?’

‘Give me no choice.’

Ride, my friends, the winds of love! There beside a belfry where a man and a woman find each other, and out in the taut bellows of sails where another man stares westward and dreams of sweet moonlight, a garden, a woman who is the other half of his soul.

Gentle gust through a door, sweet sigh, as a guard comes home and is engulfed by his wife, who had suffered an eternal night of fears, but she holds him now and all is well, all is right, and children yell in excitement and dance in the kitchen.

The river of grief has swept through Darujhistan, and morning waxes in its wake. There are lives to rebuild, so many wounds to mend.

A bag of coins thumps on to the tabletop before a woman new to her blessed widowhood, and she feels as if she has awakened from a nightmare of decades, and this is, for her, a private kind of love, a moment for herself and no one else.

Picker strides into the bar and there waits Blend, tears in her eyes, and Samar Dev watches from a table and she smiles but that smile is wistful and she wonders what doors wait for her, and which ones will prove unlocked, and what might lie beyond.

And in a temple, Iskaral Pust blots dry the ink and crows over his literary ge shy;nius. Mogora looks on with jaded eyes, but is already dreaming of alliances with Sordiko Qualm.

The bhokarala sit in a clump, exchanging wedding gifts.

Two estate guards, after a busy night, burst into a brothel, only to find nobody there. Love will have to wait, and is anyone really surprised at their ill luck?

At the threshold of a modest home and workshop, Tiserra stands facing the two loves of her life. And, for the briefest of moments, her imagination runs wild. She then recovers herself and, in a light tone, asks, ‘Breakfast?’

Torvald is momentarily startled.

Rallick just smiles.