Lorn's mind raced. Among the Malazan Empire, the T'lan Imass were also known as the Silent Host. She'd never known an Imass as loquacious as this Tool. Perhaps it had something to do with this 'unbounding'. Within the Imass, only Commander Logros ever spoke to humans on a regular basis. As for the Bone Casters – Imass shamans – they stayed out of sight. The only one that had ever appeared was one named Olar Ethil, who stood alongside the clan chieftain Eitholos Ilm during the battle of Kartool, which had seen an exchange of sorcery that made Moon's Spawn look like a child's cantrip.

In any case, she'd already learned more of the Imass from this brief conversation with Tool than was present in the Empire Annals. The Emperor had known more, much more, but making records of such knowledge had never been his style. That he had reawakened the Imass had been a theory argued among scholars for years. And now she knew it to be true. How many other secrets would this T'lan Imass reveal in casual conversation?

'Tool,' she said, 'had you ever met the Emperor personally?'

'I awakened before Galad Ketan and after Onak Shendok and, as with all the T'lan Imass, I knelt before the Emperor as he sat upon the First Throne.'

'The Emperor was alone?' Lorn asked.

'No. He was accompanied by the one named Dancer.'

'Damn,' she hissed. Dancer had died beside the Emperor. 'Where is this First Throne, Tool?'

The warrior was silent for a time, then it said, 'Upon the Emperor's death the Logros T'lan Imass gathered minds – a rare thing that was last done before the Diaspora – and a binding resulted. Adjunct, the answer to your question is within this binding. I cannot satisfy you. This holds for all Logros T'lan Imass and for all Kron T'lan Imass.'

'Who are the Kron?'

'They are coming,' Tool replied.

Sudden sweat sprang out on the Adjunct's brow. Logros' legions, when they first arrived on the scene, numbered around nineteen thousand. They were believed now to number fourteen thousand, and the majority of those losses had come beyond the Empire's borders, in this last Jaghut War. Were another nineteen thousand Imass about to arrive? What had the Emperor unleashed?

'Tool,' she asked slowly, almost regretting her need to persist in questioning him, 'what is the significance of these Kron coming?'

'The Year of the Three Hundredth Millennium approaches,' the warrior replied.

'What happens then?'

'Adjunct, the Diaspora ends.'

The Great Raven called Crone rode the high winds above Rhivi Plain. The northern horizon was now a green-tinged curve, growing more substantial with every hour of flight. Weariness weighed down her wings, but the heaven's breath was a strong one. And more, nothing could assail her certainty that changes were coming to this world, and she drew again and again upon her vast reserves of magical power.