Heboric led them swiftly down tortuous streets and alleys, through houses and buildings, and everywhere they went, they trod over and around bodies, human, shapeshifter and T’lan Imass, ancient scenes of fierce battle. Heboric’s plundered knowledge was lodged in Felisin’s mind, a trembling of ancient horror that made every new scene of death they stumbled upon resonate within her. She felt she was close to grasping a profound truth, around which orbited all human endeavour since the very beginning of existence. We do naught but scratch the world, frail and fraught. Every vast drama of civilizations, of peoples with their certainties and gestures, means nothing, affects nothing. Life crawls on, ever on. She wondered if the gift of revelation – of discovering the meaning underlying humanity – offered nothing more than a devastating sense of futility. It’s the ignorant who find a cause and cling to it, for within that is the illusion of significance. Faith, a king, queen or Emperor, or vengeance . . . all the bastion of fools.

The wind moaned at their backs, raising small gusts of dust at their feet, rasping like tongues against their skin. It carried in it a faint scent of spice.

Felisin judged an hour had passed before Heboric paused. They stood before the grand entrance to a temple of some kind, where the columns, squat and broad, had been carved into a semblance of tree trunks. A frieze ran beneath the cracked, sagging plinth, each panel a framed image which Kulp’s warren-cast light eerily lit from beneath.

The mage was staring up at the images. Hood’s breath! he mouthed.

The ex-priest was smiling.

‘It’s a Deck,’ Kulp said.

Yet another pathetic assertion of order.

‘The Elder Deck, aye,’ Heboric nodded. ‘Not Houses but Holds. Realms. Can you discern Death and Life? And Dark and Light? Do you see the Hold of the Beast? Who sits upon that antlered throne, Kulp?’

‘It’s empty, assuming I’m looking at the one you mean – the frame displays various creatures. The throne is flanked by T’lan Imass.’

‘Aye, that is the one. No-one on the throne, you say? Curious.’

‘Why?’

‘Because every echo of memory tells me there used to be.’

Kulp grunted. ‘Well, it’s not been defaced – you can see the back of the throne, and it looks as weathered as everywhere else.’

‘There should be the Unaligned – can you detect those?’

‘No. Perhaps around the sides and back?’

‘Possibly. Among them you’ll find Shapeshifter.’

‘All very fascinating,’ Felisin drawled. ‘I take it we’re to enter this place – since that’s where the wind is going.’

Heboric smiled. ‘Aye. The far end shall provide our exit.’

The interior of the temple was nothing more than a tunnel, its walls, floor and ceiling hidden behind packed layers of sand. The wind raised its voice the farther in they went. Forty paces later they could discern pale ochre light ahead.