Her eyes felt raw, but not a single tear sprang loose. ‘We could not have survived that,’ she said. ‘That assault you described. You called it a miracle that we survived, but I know how—though I never understood its meaning—not until your words today.’

Yedan said, ‘The Watch commanded the legions, and we held until we were told to withdraw. It’s said there were but a handful of us left by then, elite officers one and all. They were the Watch. The Road was open then—we but marched.’

‘It was open because of Blind Gallan.’

‘Yes.’

‘Because,’ she looked up at him, ‘he was told to save us.’

‘Gallan was a poet—’

‘And Seneschal of the Court of Mages in Kharkanas.’

He chewed on this for a while, glanced away, studying the swirling wall of light and the ceaseless sweep of figures in the depths, faces stretched in muted screams—an entire civilization trapped in eternal torment—but she saw not a flicker of emotion touch his face. ‘A great power, then.’

‘Yes.’

‘There was civil war. Who could have commanded him to do anything?’

‘One possessing the Blood of T’iam, and a prince of Kharkanas.’

She watched his eyes slowly widen, but still he stared at the wall. ‘Now why,’ he asked, ‘would an Andii prince have done that?’

She shook her head. ‘It’s said he strode down to the First Shore, terribly wounded, sheathed in blood. It’s said he looked upon the Shake, at how few of us were left, and at the ruin surrounding us—the death of the forests, the charred wreckage of our homes. He held a broken sword in one hand, a Hust sword, and it was seen to fall from his grip. He left it here.’

‘That’s all? Then how do you know he commanded Gallan to do anything?’

‘When Gallan arrived he told the Twilight—he had torn out his eyes by then and was accompanied by an Andii woman who led him by an arm down from the shattered forest—he came down like a man dying of fever but when he spoke, his voice was clear and pure as music. He said to her these words:

“There is no grief in Darkness.
It has taken to the skies.
It leaves a world of ashes and failure.
It sets out to find new worlds, as grief must.
Winged grief commands me:
Make a road for the survivors on the Shore
To walk the paths of sorrow
And charge them the remembrance
Of this broken day
As it shall one day be seen:
As the birth of worlds unending
Where grief waits for us all
In the soul’s darkness.” ’

She slipped out from the weight of his hand and straightened, brushing bone dust from her knees. ‘He was asked, then, who was this Winged Grief? And Gallan said, “There is but one left who would dare command me. One who would not weep and yet had taken into his soul a people’s sorrow, a realm’s sorrow. His name was Silchas Ruin.” ’