He looked up, glared into the heart of the maze. Tremorlor. Reach for him with your roots, and they shall feel the rage of a Trell warrior, his battle dream unleashed, ancient spirits riding his flesh in a dance of murder. This I promise, and so you are warned.

‘It’s said,’ Fiddler murmured beside him, ‘that the Azath have taken gods.’

Mappo fixed the soldier with hooded eyes.

Fiddler squinted as he studied the riotous walls on all sides. ‘What Elder gods – their names forgotten for millennia – are caged here? When did they last see light? When were they last able to move their limbs? Can you imagine an eternity thus endured?’ He shifted the weight of the crossbow in his hands. ‘If Tremorlor dies. .. imagine the madness unleashed upon the world.’

The Trell was silent for a moment, then he whispered, ‘What are these darts that you fling at me?’

Fiddler’s brows rose. ‘Darts? None intended. This place sits on me like a cloak of vipers, that is all.’

‘Tremorlor has no hunger for you, soldier.’

Fiddler’s grin was crooked. ‘Sometimes it pays being a nobody.’

‘Now you mock in truth.’

The sapper’s grin fell away. ‘Widen your senses, Trell. Tremorlor’s is not the only hunger here. Every prisoner in these walls of wood feels our passage. They might well flinch from you and Icarium, but no such fear constrains their regard for the rest of us.’

Mappo looked away. ‘Forgive me. I’ve spared little thought for anyone else, as you have noted. Still, do not think I would hesitate in defending you if the need arose. I am not one to diminish the honour that is your companionship.’

Fiddler gave a sharp nod, straightened. ‘A soldier’s pragmatism. I had to know one way or the other.’

‘I understand.’

‘Sorry if I offended you.’

‘Naught but a knife-tip’s prod – you’ve stirred me to wakefulness.’

Iskaral Pust, squatting a few paces away, sputtered. ‘Muddy the puddle, oh yes! Yank his loyalties this way and that – excellent! Witness the strategy of silence – while the intended victims unravel each other in pointless, divisive discourse. Oh yes, I have learned much from Tremorlor, and so assume a like strategy. Silence, a faint mocking smile suggesting I know more than I do, an air of mystery, yes, and fell knowledge. None could guess my confusion, my host of deluded illusions and elusive delusions! A mantle of marble hiding a crumbling core of sandstone. See how they stare at me, wondering – all wondering – at my secret wellspring of wisdom ...’

‘Let’s kill him,’ Crokus muttered, ‘if only to put him out of our misery.’

‘And sacrifice such entertainment?’ Fiddler growled. He resumed his place at point. ‘Time to go.’

‘The blathering of secrets,’ the High Priest of Shadow uttered in a wholly different voice, ‘so they judge me ineffectual.’

The others spun to face him.

Iskaral Pust offered a beatific smile.