‘Always the Azathanai, like a shadow to our conscience. Your tale is obscure, historian.’

‘A dozen or more creation myths warred for eminence once, until but one survived. Alas, the victor was not this one. We seek reasons for what we are and how we imagine ourselves; and every reason strives to become justification, and every justification a righteous cause. By this a people build an identity and cleave to it. But it is all invention, High Priestess, to make clay into flesh, sticks into bone, and flames into thought. No alternative sits well with us.’

‘What alternative would you have?’

He shrugged. ‘That we are meaningless. Our lives, our selves, our pasts and most of all, our existence in the present. This moment, the next, and the next: each one we find in wonder and near disbelief.’

‘Is this your conclusion, Rise Herat? That we are meaningless?’

‘I try not to think in terms of meaning, Daughter of Night. I but measure life in degrees of helplessness, and in the observation of this, we find, in totality, the purpose of history.’

She sent him away when she began to weep. He did not object. There was no pleasure in witnessing the very helplessness of which he had spoken, and so a single gesture had set him to flight.

Now he stood, upon the tower, and from the gate below there came the creaking of massive doors, and out on to the bridge rode two Sons of Darkness and their entourage. Pure was Anomander’s black skin, and pure silver his long mane, and as the day’s light died, Rise thought he could hear, on the wind, that sundering of light – there, in the rumble of horse hoofs – and before it, on the street, barely discerned figures scattered from its path.

* * *

The dog, a bedraggled mess of mud and burrs, was entangled in a chaotic web of roots, branches and detritus, just beneath the eastern bank of the river. It was limp with exhaustion, struggling to keep its head above the water, as the currents tugged at its limbs.

Unmindful of the bitter cold water and pushing through the current – the stony bottom beneath the undercut bank shifting with every step – Grizzin Farl worked his way closer.

The dog swung its head towards him and he saw its large ears dip as if in shame. Reaching its side, the Azathanai lifted clear his travel sack and flung it over the bank, and then reached down and gently extricated the hapless creature.

‘Most bravery, dear little one,’ he said as he pulled the dog from the water and rested it across the back of his thickly muscled neck, ‘is marked by a strength less than imagined, and a hope farther from reach than one expects.’ He took hold of the roots above and tested to see if they would hold their weight. ‘One day, friend, I will be asked to reveal the heroes of the world, and do you know where I shall take my questioner?’ The roots held and he pulled himself up, out of the dragging current. The dog, still clinging atop his shoulders, licked the side of Grizzin’s face and he nodded. ‘You are quite correct. A cemetery. And in there, before every marker of stone, we shall stand, looking down upon a hero. What think you of that?’