For reasons Wreneck could not grasp, Lord Anomander’s reply silenced Caladan Brood. They trudged on, and no further words came from any of them. With the sun a pale white orb high to the southwest and the afternoon on the turn towards dusk, they came within sight of Dracons Keep.

Wreneck studied the high wall and the gate, and then the freshly mounded earth rising here and there in the land surrounding the fortress. Here there were ravens aplenty. With the day’s end, they would rise from those strange hills and make for the forest branches.

Caladan Brood spoke then. ‘Lord Anomander, what will you do if one day you find yourself in the role of a king, or, indeed, a god?’

‘Should such a day ever arrive,’ the First Son replied, ‘I will weep for the world.’

The gates opened upon their approach. One man emerged, old and worn but wearing the garb of a soldier, and Wreneck saw his pleasure and surprise when Anomander embraced him.

As they moved beneath the gate, Wreneck also saw how Caladan Brood hesitated, his eyes raised and fixed upon the unknown words carved into the lintel stone.

Then, a moment later, they were in the courtyard, and he saw Sandalath, who came to him with a cry, as would a mother for her son.

From a slit in the tower, in the room their brother Arathan had once claimed as his own, Envy and Spite stared down on the newcomers in the courtyard.

‘That’s Lord Anomander,’ said Spite.

Envy nodded. ‘I do not know the other. He has the manner of a beast.’

‘The First Son’s found a pet.’

‘One day,’ said Envy, ‘I will marry Lord Anomander. And I will make him kneel before me.’

Spite snorted. ‘If you make him kneel, you will have broken him.’

‘Yes,’ Envy replied. ‘I will.’

‘That’s an ugly boy,’ Spite observed, through her now endless shivering.

Envy studied the scene below. ‘He will be staying here. With Sandalath – he must be from Abara Delack.’

‘I don’t like him. He makes my eyes sting.’

Yes. He shines bright, does that one. After a moment, Envy gasped, even as Spite flinched back from the window.

For an instant, both girls had seen, in the sudden brightening of the aura surrounding Wreneck, a multitude of figures, ghostly, all blending and flowing through one another, and they had then stilled, suddenly, to lift their gazes to the tower.

Gods! He’s brought gods with him! That boy! A thousand gods!

They see us! They know us!

Unwelcome guests had come to House Dracons. The two girls fled for the cracks.

CHAPTER TEN