Ilgast Rend grunted. ‘I never shared your respect for the Jaghut, commander. They remind me of the Deniers in the manner in which they turned away from the future – as if to wash their hands of it. But we must all face our days and nights, for they are what await us. Not even a Jaghut can walk back into his or her past. No matter how directionless a step seems when taken, it is always forward.’

‘The Lord of Hate would not disagree with you, Lord. Which is why he has chosen to stand still. To take no step at all.’

‘Yet time bends not to his deep root,’ Ilgast retorted in a growl. ‘It but flows around and past. He vows to forget and so is forgotten.’

‘He has slain their civilization,’ Calat Hustain said, ‘and in so doing, proclaimed all knowledge to be dust. And so I am made to feel, Lord, gaping pits awaiting us ahead, that need not have been, if not for the Lord of Hate.’

‘The loss is only in what was written, commander. Might it serve us, in the matter of the Vitr, to seek out the counsel of a Jaghut? All have not dispersed, I understand. Some still reside in their old keeps and holds. I am of a mind to seek one out.’

‘Yet now the Jheleck have laid claim to the abandoned lands.’

Ilgast shrugged. ‘They could claim the heavens, for all it matters. A Jaghut choosing to remain in a tower cannot be moved, and those Soletaken fools should know better.’ He snorted. ‘Like any dog that’s been whipped, it is never humble for long. Stupidity returns triumphant.’

‘Hunn Raal carries word to Kharkanas in the morning,’ Calat Hustain said.

Ilgast regarded the commander with level eyes.

* * *

Trailing the woman she had named T’riss, Faror Hend saw the last of the high grasses dwindle a short distance ahead, and beyond it, worn and rotted, the range of denuded hills lying to the west of Neret Sorr. The sun was past zenith and heat shimmered in the still air. They rode clear and Faror called out to halt.

Their journey through Glimmer Fate had been uneventful, and in her exhaustion Faror had begun to believe that they wandered lost, despite her reading of the night sky, and that they might never find a way through the endless cobwebs and rustling blades. But now, at last, the Fate was behind them. She dismounted, legs weak beneath her. ‘We must rest for a time,’ she said. ‘I wager your horse is tireless, but mine is not.’

The woman slipped down from the grass-bound beast, stepped away. The simulacrum stood motionless, a woven sculpture too robust, too raw to be elegant. The faint wind against its angular form made a soft chorus of whistles. Red and black ants swarmed its neck, emerging from some hidden root-nest.