There was nothing obvious to make simple this designation of friend or foe; not the chalky white skin and angular body of the Forulkan, nor the savage bestiality of the Jheleck. Of course, there had always been bandits and other criminals, who made a profession from preying upon their own kind, but then Galar did not understand them either. Such fools dispensed with trust, and so suffered lives of loneliness and fear. Even among their own kind, such fraternity as existed was rife with betrayal and treachery. The existence of a lifelong criminal was a pitiful one, for all the wealth they might gather, and for all the power they might come to possess.

In a world emptied of virtues, all things became vices, including wealth and even family, and each day arrived with bleaker aspect than the last.

This war will unleash the criminal in all of us, I fear.

As he rode in the company of this train of wagons, he could feel the future settling on everyone, thick and suffocating, under heavy skies that might never break.

This last day of the journey seemed to mock all of that, with its cerulean sky and the warm wind that came up from the south. The low hills flanking the road showed the pocks of old mines, from which rough tracks wended down; and here and there could be seen old basins excavated out centuries past, where foul water had settled and, upon drying up, left discoloured, toxic sands. Galar could see the remains of wooden structures: buildings and trestles, scaffolding and ramps, but the forests that had once cloaked these hills and the broad shallow valleys around them were long gone.

There were legacies to be found in every scene of ruination, and as much as Galar sought to grasp only those that led to triumph, even to hold these too tightly could cut him to the bone.

He rode at the head of the column, avoiding the dust. Henarald’s delivery of the sword to Lord Anomander, and the blessing that had – or had not – occurred in the Chamber of Night still left Galar rattled, and he need only catch a glimpse of his hand gripping the reins, seeing the ebon hue of his skin, to be reminded of that time. In revisiting that fated day in the Citadel, he found himself shaking his head again and again: at times in wonder, but more often in disbelief. Every uttered word had seemed to blaze with fire – even those words that Galar had himself spoken had felt like incantations, or fragments plucked from some disordered, ethereal poem that all who were present somehow shared.

If this was among the gifts of standing in a god’s presence, then Galar Baras at last understood the rewards of faith. In those heady words so laden with meanings; in the confessions and frustrations, the mysteries and the furies, there had been frightening power. In such moments, he realized, worlds could be changed, broken down, reshaped and twisted anew.