As he rode out through the gate, Gripp Galas stared after his ex-master. He reached out one hand to his side, groping.

Hish stepped close and clasped that hand, and then felt some of his weight as he seemed to sag.

‘You damned fool,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I thought you knew him.’

* * *

The forest had broken down in this place. It left skeletal trees rising from marsh grasses, and rotting logs blanketed in moss. Black water surrounded every hummock and the smaller islands were made from tufts of grass and reeds. The air smelled of decay and insects swarmed. They were camped upon the verge of this sunken land, brought up in their flight from the south. A dozen fires smouldered, green grasses fed into the flames to fill the air with smoke and so drive back the biting insects. Narad sat near one of them, eyes watering.

They had been criminals marching in file, and he was the last of that line, the last to despoil this miserable congress of civility. The proclamation of his ugliness was smoke-stained, fly-bitten and filthy, and he felt at home in this place, barring the company he kept.

Others had joined them. From the west had come a company commanded by Captain Hallyd Bahann, and with him was a beautiful woman named Tathe Lorat and her daughter, Sheltatha Lore. Their soldiers brought tales of slaughter at a monastery and the pillaging of Abara Delack. And now, riding up from the south, another troop approached and with their sighting the squads around Narad stirred, collecting their weapons and donning their helms. At last, he heard, their captain had arrived.

There were many kinds of curiosity, Narad realized as he stood with the others and fixed his gaze on the riders. To see a face behind a name, if that name was wreathed in tales of heroism, was a clean kind of curiosity. But the face of a monster invited its own fascination, perhaps in the shock of recognition, since every face could be seen in one; or, more to the point, from that one face, it took little imagination to find one’s own. Narad did not know which lure made him strain to see Captain Scara Bandaris, but he knew that a transformation awaited the man.

Since their flight from the slaughter at the wedding site, Narad had begun, with quick glances, to set upon the features of the soldiers around him the semblance of corpses. In his mind he looked upon his companions as if they were lying on the ground, all life gone, with faces frozen in death. Perhaps it was only a game, or perhaps it was a promise, or even a prayer. He wanted them all dead. He wanted to gaze down on the once-laughing eyes and see the look of men and women who no longer had anything to laugh about. He wanted to see the jest of fate, and would show each face he saw a smile they would never answer, and could never challenge.