A statue commanded the centre of the pool. A huge figure, sunk to its thighs, roughly hacked from serpentine as if in defiance of that stone’s potential, for it was well known that serpentine wore well the finest polish – not that Rint had ever seen a solid block anything near the size of this monstrosity, more familiar with small game pieces and the like. None the less, this seemed a most artless effort. The torso and every limb were twisted, the stone seeming to shout its pain. The scum of dried algae stained its thighs, evidence of the spring’s slow failing perhaps. The face, tilted skyward atop a thick, angular neck, offered the heavens a grimace, and this face alone bore signs of a skilled hand. Rint stared up at it, mesmerized.

Raskan moved past the two Borderswords, leading the horses to the pond’s roughly tiled edge.

Sighing, Feren slipped down from the saddle, dropping the reins of her mount so that it could join the other beasts in drinking from the pool.

‘I think it’s meant to be a Thel Akai,’ Rint finally said.

‘Of course it’s a Thel Akai,’ Feren snapped. ‘All that pain.’ She held in one hand three waterskins and now moved to crouch down at the edge, and began filling them.

Feeling foolish, Rint pulled his gaze away from the giant’s tormented face and dismounted. He collected more waterskins from where they hung flaccid from his saddle.

‘What I meant was,’ Feren resumed, ‘why raise a statue in the middle of a watering hole? It’s not even on a pedestal or anything.’

‘Unless it sank in the mud.’

‘And what monuments do you build on mud, brother?’

The water was cool and clear. Beyond the ledge, the pool seemed to drop away to unknown depths, but that was due to the failing light, Rint suspected. ‘I don’t trust magic,’ he said. ‘And this village reeks of it.’

Raskan grunted at that. ‘I feel the same as you, Rint. It makes the skin crawl. If this is what waits this side of Bareth Solitude, well, it’s little wonder we rarely visit these lands. Or the people who choose to live like this.’

Feren straightened and turned round. ‘Someone comes,’ she said.

Rint thought about spitting into the water and decided against it. He imagined Raskan was regretting his words, since it was likely that they had been heard by the Azathanai who now approached. Still crouching, he twisted to regard the newcomer. A woman of middle years, overweight but not grossly so; still, it seemed she sagged from every appendage, and the roll of fat overwhelming her belt had pushed away the front of her hide shirt and so hung exposed, the skin white as snow and creased with stretch marks. She had, Rint decided, once been much fatter.

The woman halted a few paces away, scowling. ‘You do not know me,’ she said in the Tiste language, but with a thick, muted accent.