Onrack pulled the body up alongside Trull Sengar. ‘You were not dreaming. Here. Eat.’
‘Might we not cook it?’
The T’lan Imass strode to the seaside edge of the wall. Among the flotsam were the remnants of countless trees, from which jutted denuded branches. He climbed down onto the knotted detritus, felt it shift and roll unsteadily beneath him. It required but a few moments to snap off an armful of fairly dry wood, which he threw back up onto the wall. Then he followed.
He felt the Tiste Edur’s eyes on him as he prepared a hearth.
‘Our encounters with your kind,’ Trull said after a moment, ‘were few and far between. And then, only after your… ritual. Prior to that, your people fled from us at first sight. Apart from those who travelled the oceans with the Thelomen Toblakai, that is. Those ones fought us. For centuries, before we drove them from the seas.’
‘The Tiste Edur were in my world,’ Onrack said as he drew out his spark stones, ‘just after the coming of the Tiste Andu. Once numerous, leaving signs of passage in the snow, on the beaches, in deep forests.’
‘There are far fewer of us now,’ Trull Sengar said. ‘We came here-to this place-from Mother Dark, whose children had banished us. We did not think they would pursue, but they did. And upon the shattering of this warren, we fled yet again-to your world, Onrack. Where we thrived…’
‘Until your enemies found you once more.’
‘Yes. The first of those were… fanatical in their hatred. There were great wars-unwitnessed by anyone, fought as they were within darkness, in hidden places of shadow. In the end, we slew the last of those first Andu, but were broken ourselves in the effort. And so we retreated into remote places, into fastnesses. Then, more Andu came, only these seemed less… interested. And we in turn had grown inward, no longer consumed with the hunger of expansion-’
‘Had you sought to assuage that hunger,’ Onrack said as the first wisps of smoke rose from the shredded bark and twigs, ‘we would have found in you a new cause, Edur.’
Trull was silent, his gaze veiled. ‘We had forgotten it all,’ he finally said, settling back to rest his head once more on the clay. ‘All that I have just told you. Until a short while ago, my people-the last bastion, it seems, of the Tiste Edur-knew almost nothing of our past. Our long, tortured history. And what we knew was in fact false. If only,’ he added, ‘we had remained ignorant.’
Onrack slowly turned to gaze at the Edur. ‘Your people no longer look inward.’
‘I said I would tell you of your enemies, T’lan Imass.’
‘You did.’
‘There are your kind, Onrack, among the Tiste Edur. In league with our new purpose.’
‘And what is this purpose, Trull Sengar?’
The man looked away, closed his eyes. ‘Terrible, Onrack. A terrible purpose.’
The T’lan Imass warrior swung to the corpse of the creature he had slain, drew forth an obsidian knife. ‘I am familiar with terrible purposes,’ he said as he began cutting meat.
‘I shall tell you my tale now, as I said I would. So you understand what you now face.’
‘No, Trull Sengar. Tell me nothing more.’
‘But why?’
Because your truth would burden me. Force me to find my kin once more. Your truth would chain me to this world-to my world, once more. And I am not ready for that . ‘I am weary of your voice, Edur,’ he replied.
The beast’s sizzling flesh smelled like seal meat. A short time later, while Trull Sengar ate, Onrack moved to the edge of the wall facing onto the marsh. The flood waters had found old basins in the landscape, from which gases now leaked upward to drift in pale smears over the thick, percolating surface. Thicker fog obscured the horizon, but the T’lan Imass thought he could sense a rising of elevation, a range of low, humped hills.
‘It’s getting lighter,’ Trull Sengar said from where he lay beside the hearth. ‘The sky is glowing in places. There… and there.’
Onrack lifted his head. The sky had been an unrelieved sea of pewter, darkening every now and then to loose a deluge of rain, though that had grown more infrequent of late. But now rents had appeared, ragged-edged. A swollen orb of yellow light commanded one entire horizon, the wall ahead seeming to drive towards its very heart; whilst directly overhead hung a smaller circle of blurred fire, this one rimmed in blue. ‘The suns return,’ the Tiste Edur murmured. ‘Here, in the Nascent, the ancient twin hearts of Kurald Emurlahn live on. There was no way of telling, for we did not rediscover this warren until after the Breach. The flood waters must have brought chaos to the climate. And destroyed the civilization that existed here.’
