‘You have wood?’ Mappo asked from the raised stone platform he had been using as a bed and was now sitting on.

Iskaral paused. ‘Wood? Wood’s better than a broom?’

‘For a fire,’ the Trell said. ‘To take out the chill of this chamber.’

‘Wood! No, of course not. But dung, oh yes, plenty of dung. A fire! Excellent. Burn them into a crisp! Are Trell known for cunning? No recollection of that, none among the rare mention of Trell this, Trell that. Finding writings on an illiterate people very difficult. Hmm.’

‘Trell are quite literate,’ Mappo said. ‘Have been for some time. Seven, eight centuries, in fact.’

‘Must update my library, an expensive proposition. Raising shadows to pillage great libraries of the world.’ He squatted down at the fireplace, frowning through the soot covering his face.

Mappo cleared his throat. ‘Burn what into a crisp, High Priest?’

‘Spiders, of course. This temple is rotten with spiders. Kill them on sight, Trell. Use those thick-soled feet, those leathery hands. Kill them all, do you understand?’

Nodding, Mappo pulled the fur blanket closer around him, wincing only slightly as the hide brushed the puckered wounds on the back of his neck. The fever had broken, as much due to his own reserves as, he suspected, the dubious medicines applied by Iskaral’s silent servant. The fangs and claws of D’ivers and Soletaken bred a singularly virulent sickness, often culminating in hallucinations, bestial madness, then death. For many who survived, the madness remained, reappearing on a regular basis for one or two nights nine or ten times each year. It was a madness often characterized by murder.

Iskaral Pust believed Mappo had escaped that fate, but the Trell would not himself be confident of that until at least two cycles of the moon had passed without sign of any symptoms. He did not like to think what he would be capable of when gripped in a murderous rage. Many years ago among the warband ravaging the Jhag Odhan, Mappo had willed himself into such a state, as warriors often did, and his memories of the deaths he delivered remained with him and always would.

If the Soletaken’s poison was alive within him, Mappo would take his own life rather than unleash its will.

Iskaral Pust stabbed the broom into each corner of the small mendicant’s chamber that was the Trell’s quarters, then reached up to the ceiling corners to do the same. ‘Kill what bites, kill what stings, this sacred precinct of Shadow must be pristine! Kill all that slithers, all that scuttles. You were examined for vermin, the both of you, oh yes. No unwelcome visitors permitted. Lye baths were prepared, but nothing on either of you. I remain suspicious, of course.’

‘Have you resided here long, High Priest?’