Terror warred with a palpable hatred on Book’s face as Pilgrim began to propel him towards the pockmarked stone. The Risen priest’s lips worked like overactive slugs as he began to babble, but whether he intended to beg or spit defiance, Pilgrim would never know.

Maisha’s feet made a scrabbling sound as she hurried onto the honeycomb surface of the walkway, a bright flurry of sparks rising from the wick set into the apple-sized iron sphere she held. She moved with a spastic, jerky energy that told of a soul battling immense pain, but somehow she was smiling when she came to a halt. She turned to Pilgrim as she raised the sparkling sphere above her head. “No vengeance!” she called to him, and it seemed to him all her beauty returned in that moment, her smile being so bright. “Promise me!”

Any answer he might have given died as the snake descended from the hole directly above her, jaws widening and closing with such reflexive swiftness it all seemed to happen before he had time to register the fact of her demise. The explosion came as the snake recoiled, its mighty head vanishing in a nova of ichor and flame. The body, writhing and coiling, slipped from the hole to collide with the walkway before tumbling into the void below, leaving only a thin pall of smoke and pools of ichor to mark its passing.

Eight

Chapter Eight

The Glass Sea

“I t’s so…” Seeker blinked in baffled wonder as she gazed at the curved monolith rising in the distance. “Big,” she finished with a sardonic grin that faded quickly as she turned to regard Pilgrim’s unyielding visage.

The Supplicants’ Path had conveyed them onto a ledge overlooking a plain that stretched away towards the Crescent for a distance of at least a dozen miles, and still the temple of the Mad God appeared so immense as to defy understanding. It sat upon a perfectly circular island separated from the plain by a waterless moat, spanned by a single bridge. The Crescent seemed to balance atop the island with unnatural precision, a massive pointed stone curve of impossible architecture that could only be the work of a divine hand. The plain that surrounded it was almost as difficult to comprehend, a vast, dark expanse that resembled the frozen waves of an ocean in the way its uneven surface caught the light. Yet Pilgrim found no wonder in it, no sense of awe. Maisha’s face before the snake’s jaws closed on her lingered in his mind with a clarity that refused to fade. No vengeance, she had said. He knew she meant it kindly, a release from any obligation he would harbour towards her memory, but for him it felt like a curse.

Quite so, my liege, the voice piped up. For without vengeance, what are you?