She tore her gaze from his, turning back to the girl. It had changed now, its eyes taking on a red glow, perhaps an unwitting emanation from the being that wore it like a mask. Its accusatory stare, however, remained firmly in place. “It has to be,” Seeker breathed. “I have searched for so long since the slavers stole her. Spilled so much blood. It can’t all be for nothing.”

Chena growled again, but this time there was no query in the sound. The hyena’s lips quivered as she bared her teeth, claws scraping stone and the thick fur of her neck bristling like thorns. Where before she had seemed incapable of sensing the creature, now she glared at the phantom girl with feral enmity. Leg muscles bulged as she tensed, crouching in readiness for the leap, jaws snapping in anticipation.

“NO!”

Seeker launched herself at Chena, dropping her scimitar to wrap her arms about the hyena’s neck. “No, dearest one.”

So, the voice said as Seeker buried her head in Chena’s fur and wept. Love severs the lure, it seems.

Pilgrim lifted his gaze in time to see the wraith’s mask dissolve. The little girl twisted, head swelling and limbs elongating, the creature’s solidity fading into something that resembled a smear of silver grey gossamer. He caught a glimpse of a gnashing, toothless mouth and glowing red eyes riven by a combination of misery and fury, then it was gone, whirling away between the spires just as the sun broke to paint them with a dull yellow glow.

Five

Chapter Five

The Library of Bones

T he ground remained a uniform plain of cracked, hard-packed soil as they made their way between the towering spires. Over the course of several miles throughout the next day, Pilgrim saw no vestige of the roads, walls or parks he would have expected to find in such a huge conurbation.

“It’s a sea bed,” Book explained. “Except the sea has long since vanished. Boiled away by the Mad God’s rage, was it not, my priestly friend?”

“The spires rose from the waves of the Azure Sea, it is true,” Priest replied, his unperturbed tone once again displaying a resistance to the scholar’s caustic observations. “But the sea didn’t boil, it drained when the dams to the west collapsed.”