“It shall be yours, my Lord!” Tanaros said fiercely, believing it, his heart blazing within him like the marrow-fire. “I will make it so!”

Blood yet unshed dripped between them.

“Tanaros.” His name, nothing more; everything. The touch of the Shaper’s lips on his brow, chaste and burning. It had been his Gift, once. The quickening of the flesh, joyful blood leaping in the loins. A crude Gift, but his, cut short by Godslayer’s thrust. “May it be so.”

“My Lord,” Tanaros whispered, and knew himself dismissed.

As he took his leave, Lord Satoris turned back to the marrow-fire, gazing at it as if to find answers hidden in the ruby shard. The Shaper’s features were shadowed with unease, a fearful sight of itself. “Where is your weapon Malthus, Brother, and what does he plot?” he murmured. “Why must you force my hand? I did not Sunder the world. And yet I have become what you named me. Is that truly what must come to pass, or is there another way?” He sighed, the sound echoing in the Chamber. “If there is, I cannot see it. Your wrath has been raised against me too long. All things must be as they must.”

Tanaros withdrew quietly, not swiftly enough to avoid hearing the anguish in the Shaper’s final words.

“Uru-Alat!” Lord Satoris whispered. “I would this role had fallen to another.”

SIX

SIX

“COUNSELOR, FORGIVE ME,” THE ARDUAN croaked, falling to her knees.

The Company of Malthus halted beneath the hammer of the sun, a merciless, white-hot blaze in the vivid blue sky. All around them, the scorched landscape extended farther than the eye could see in any direction, red earth baked and cracking, broken only by the strange, towering structures of anthills.

“I told you it was no journey for a woman.” Although his face was drawn beneath beard-stubble, the former Commander of the Borderguard kept his feet, wavering only slightly. “We should have sent her back.”

“Peace, Blaise:” Even Malthus’ voice was cracked and weary. “Fianna is the Archer of Arduan. It is as it must be. None of us can go much farther.” Drawing back his sheltering hood, the Counselor bowed his head and took the Soumanië from its place of concealment beneath his robes, chanting softly and steadily in the Shaper’s tongue. The gem shone like a red star between his hands.

Ants scurried on the cracked earth as it stirred beneath them, departing in black rivulets. Dry spikes of thorn-brush rattled, trembling.

“Look!” It was the young Vedasian, Hobard, who saw it first, pointing. A green tendril of life emerging from the cracks in the desert floor, questing in the open air. “A drought-eater! Yrinna be blessed!”