Toll the Hounds

‘Yes.’ The High Priestess sat up, wincing at some pain in her lower back and rubbing at the spot. ‘Do you remember, Spin, how all of this was so easy, once? Our young bodies seemed made for just that one thing, beauty woven round a knot of need. How we displayed our readiness, how we preened, like the flowers of carnivorous plants? How it made each of us, to ourselves, the most important thing in the world, such was the seduction of that knot of need, seducing first ourselves and then others, so many others-’

‘Speak for yourself,’ Spinnock said, laughing, even as her words prodded something deep inside him, a hint of pain there was no point paying attention to, or so he told himself, still holding his easy smile as he drew closer to the bed. ‘Those journeys into Kurald Galain were denied you for so long, until the rituals of opening seemed devoid of purpose. Beyond the raw pleasure of sex.’

She studied him a moment from beneath heavy lids. ‘Yes.’

‘Has she forgiven us, then?’

Her laugh was bitter. ‘You ask it so plain, as if enquiring after a miffed relative! How can you do such things, Spin? It should have taken you half the night to broach that question.’

‘Perhaps age has made me impatient.’

‘After the torture you just put me through? You have the patience of lichen.’

‘But rather more interesting, I hope.’

She moved to the edge of the bed, set her bare feet on the floor and hissed at the stone’s chill. ‘Where are my clothes?’

‘They burned to ash in the heat of your desire.’

‘There — bring them over, if you please.’

‘Now who is impatient?’ But he collected up her priestly robes.

‘The visions are growing more. . fraught.’

Nodding, he held out her robe.

She rose, turned round and slipped her arms into the sleeves, then settled back into his embrace. ‘Thank you, Spinnock Durav, for acceding to my. . need.’

‘The ritual cannot be denied,’ he replied, stroking her cut-short, midnight-black hair. ‘Besides, did you think I would refuse such a request from you?’

‘I grow tired of the priests. Their ennui is such that most of them must imbibe foul herbs to awaken them to life. More often, of late, we have them simply service us, while they lie there, limp as rotting bananas.’

He laughed, stepping away to find his own clothes. ‘Bananas, yes, a most wondrous fruit to reward us in this strange world. That and kelyk. In any case, the image you describe is unfairly unappetizing.’

‘I agree, and so, thank you again, Spinnock Durav.’

‘No more gratitude, please. Unless you would have me voice my own and so overwhelm you with the pathos of my plight.’

To that, she but smiled. ‘Stay naked, Spin, until I leave.’

‘Another part of the ritual?’ he asked.

‘Would I have so humbly asked if it was?’

When she was gone, Spinnock Durav drew on his clothing once more, thinking back to his own ritual, servicing his sword with a lover’s touch, as if to remind the weapon that the woman he had just made love to was but a diversion, a temporary distraction, and that there was place for but one love in his heart, as befitted a warrior.

True, an absurd ritual, a conceit that was indeed pathetic. But with so little to hold on to, well, Tiste Andii clung tight and fierce to anything with meaning, no matter how dubious or ultimately nonsensical.

Dressed once more, he set out.

The game awaited him. The haunted gaze of Seerdomin, there across from him, with artfully carved but essentially inert lumps of wood, antler and bone on the table between them. Ghostly, irrelevant players to each side.

And when it was done, when victory and defeat had been played out, they would sit for a time, drinking from the pitcher, and Seerdomin might again speak of something without quite saying what it was, might slide round what bothered him with every word, with every ambiguous comment and observation. And all Spinnock would glean was that it had something to do with the Great Barrow north of Black Coral. With his recent refusal to journey out there, ending his own pilgrimage, leaving Spinnock to wonder at the man’s crisis of faith, to dread the arrival of true despair, when all that Spinnock needed from his friend might wither, even die.

And where then would he find hope?

He walked the gloomy streets, closing in on the tavern, and wondered if there was something he could do for Seerdomin. The thought slowed his steps and made him alter his course. Down an alley, out on to another street, this one the side of a modest hill, with the buildings stepping down level by level on each side, a cascade of once brightly painted doors — but who bothered with such things now in this eternal Night?

He came to one door on his left, its flaked surface gouged with a rough sigil, the outline of the Great Barrow in profile, beneath it the ragged imprint of an open hand.

Where worship was born, priests and priestesses appeared with the spontaneity of mould on bread.

Spinnock pounded on the door.

After a moment it opened a crack and he looked down to see a single eye peering up at him.

‘I would speak to her,’ he said.