Yedan scanned the beach. ‘What happened to the broken sword?’

She started, recovered. Why, after all this time, could her brother still surprise her? ‘The woman with Gallan picked it up and threw it into the sea.’

His head snapped round. ‘Why would she do that?’

Yan Tovis held up her hands. ‘She never explained.’

Yedan faced the refulgent wall again, as if seeking to pierce its depths, as if looking for the damned sword.

‘It was just a broken sword—’

‘A Hust sword—you said so.’

‘I don’t even know what that means, except it’s the name for Ruin’s weapon.’

He grimaced. ‘It should have healed by now,’ he muttered, walking out on to the strand, eyes scanning the pallid beach. ‘Light would reject it, cast it up.’

She stared after him. Healed? ‘Yedan!’

He glanced back. ‘What?’

‘We cannot live here.’

‘No, of course not.’

‘But something is happening in Kharkanas—I don’t know if I can even go back there.’

‘Once she’s fully returned,’ Yedan said, swinging back, ‘the power should ease.’

‘She? Who?’

‘Don’t be obtuse, sister. Mother Dark. Who else arrives like a fist in our skulls?’ He resumed his search along the First Shore.

‘Errastas,’ she whispered, ‘whatever will you do now?’

Torrent scowled at the hag. ‘Aren’t you even listening?’

Olar Ethil straightened, gathering up her rotted cape of furs and scaled hide. ‘Such a lovely carpet, such a riot of richness, all those supine colours!’

The withered nut of this witch’s brain has finally cracked. ‘I said these carriage tracks are fresh, probably not even a day old.’

Olar Ethil had one hand raised, as if about to wave at someone on the horizon. Instead, one taloned finger began inscribing patterns in the air. ‘Go round, my friends, slow your steps. Wait for the one to pass, through and out and onward. No point in clashing wills, when none of it has purpose. Such a busy plain! No matter, if anyone has cause to quake it’s not me, hah!’

‘An enormous carriage,’ Torrent resumed, ‘burdened. But while that’s interesting, it’s the fact that the tracks simply begin—as if from nowhere—and look at the way the ground cracked at the start, as if the damned thing had landed from the sky, horses and all. Doesn’t any of that make you curious?’

‘Eh? Oh, soon enough, soon enough.’ She dropped her arm and then pointed the same finger at him. ‘The first temple’s a mess. Besieged a decade ago, just a burnt-out husk, now. No one was spared. The Matron took weeks to die—it’s no easy thing, killing them, you know. We have to move on, find another.’

Snarling, Torrent mounted his horse and collected the reins. ‘Any good at running, witch? Too bad.’ He kicked his horse into motion, setting out on the carriage’s weaving trail. Let the thing’s bones clatter into dust in his wake—the best solution to all his ills. Or she could just stand there and stare at every horizon one by one and babble and rant all she wanted—as if the sky ever answered.