“She was a good woman,” Seeker told him. “But chose her own end and met it well. A death to be honoured. A memory to be cherished.” He knew that her people were not given to overt expressions of sympathy, in fact children born to the beast charmer clans were punished for it. So this, he knew, must be hard for her.

“Only one more day’s journey,” he said, nodding at the Crescent. “And your prayer will be heard.”

“If he chooses to hear it. He may find yours just as worthy.”

“I doubt worthiness has much to do with it,” Book said. He kept his features as inexpressive as possible, but an accusatory glare shone through whenever he looked at Pilgrim, causing the voice to repeat a frequent observation.

Why do you allow him to live? it asked. You risk too much for the pleasure of watching the Mad God’s cruelties. And what guarantee do you have the crazed loon will kill him in any case? Do it now, my liege.

“This way,” Priest said, making for a set of weathered stone steps carved into the ledge’s westward flank. Pilgrim inclined his head at Book and gestured for him to go ahead, which he did after another poorly concealed glare of hatred.

The sky grew dark with cloud by the time they descended the stairs to step upon the dark surface of the plain, bringing a stiff wind seeded with rain. It added to the notion of the ground before them being some kind of petrified sea. The surface was formed of a hard black crystal that rose and fell as it stretched away on either side, in some places shaped into facsimiles of cresting waves or swirling currents. Pilgrim found it hard to credit this as the work of the elements, a suspicion confirmed by Priest as they began their trek across the tract of windswept glass.

“Once this was a vast mirror of obsidian,” he said. “Crafted by the Absolved as a perfect reflection of the heavens. For centuries, not a crack nor a scratch marred its surface no matter how many supplicants strode across it. After the fall it became this. None know why, but it’s thought he could no longer tolerate the sight of perfection and so rendered it into a storm-tossed sea.”

“Perfection is an impossibility,” Book said, a quotation from the Injunctions of the First Risen. “It is through our imperfections that we come to know ourselves.”

“Then,” Seeker told him, “you must know yourself very well.”

Rain began to fall in earnest as the sky disappeared behind a thick veil of cloud. Lacking shelter, they had no option but to wrap their cloaks tight about them and forge on across the jagged plain. Soon lightning joined the gale and the deluge, completing the sense of being adrift in a maelstrom far from land.

“Do you think he knows we’re coming?” Seeker shouted above the wind’s howl.