‘Scara, it’s the middle of the night and I’m exhausted!’

‘As am I, but damned if I’ll camp in their company. Who knows what new need they might find for us?’

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

‘SHALL WE FIND AMOROUS BLISS ONLY AMONG THE DEAD?’ LASA Rook asked. ‘Rolling among the flopping limbs so cadaverous and cold, our heat of passion a thing stolen by insensate flesh, to be wasted in the manner of the sun’s heat on a stone?’ The Thel Akai raised her ample arms. ‘The day’s death is but prelude, Hanako of the Scars, a reminder repeated all too often – each night, in fact, as if our souls needed such ominous stirring!’ Her gaze, settling upon him where he sat by the ring of rocks that encircled their modest cookfire, turned suddenly sly. ‘I see your flitting regard, eager cub, upon these breasts of mine, and the lure of my cocked hip with its inviting swell. Death’s threshold awaits us, closer now. On the morrow we shall see for ourselves this modest encampment of the desolate and the despondent, and if you’d an audience to our inaugural rutting, why, a more embittered mob you could not find.’

Sighing, Hanako glanced across to where Erelan Kreed crouched, his unending mutter of words rising and falling to unknown passions, a mélange of languages most of which were utterly foreign to both Hanako and Lasa Rook. He had awakened two nights past, fretful and distracted. Erelan Kreed was, as the Jaghut Raest had predicted, now a stranger, a warrior lost to hidden worlds and memories not his own.

Kreed was turned away from them and the fire, his broad back like a wall blocking the light from his hooded eyes, his tortured face. He rhythmically worked one hand through his beard, pausing every now and then to loose a low, chilling laugh.

‘Never mind him,’ said Lasa Rook. ‘I grow irritated at your lack of attention, Hanako of the Scars. Must I peel away all constraint?’ She began untying the strings of her shirt. ‘So readily exposed in mute invitation’ – the shirt slipped from her shoulders to fall to the ground – ‘these swollen needs, the appurtenances of sensual appetites—’

‘Lady of the Fire, Lasa! Your husbands—’

‘My husbands! Mouldering in the rock-pile! Torn limb from limb from limb! Decayed of countenance, never more to weakly smile or flinch or cringe! From crow-picked tongues, never again a mewled whimper or pathetic beseechment! Ah, the empty echo in my ears! And you, bold young warrior! See how I lick my lips – no, not those lips, fool – and come closer, before death sweeps down upon us with all the senseless weight of boulders and gritty dust!’

Hanako clutched the sides of his head. ‘Enough! What glory is there in such ready surrender?’ As soon as the words left him, he bit down, but too late.