As she saddled her horse she chanced to glance at Tool. The warrior stood staring at her. What kind of thoughts would occupy someone who'd lived through three hundred thousand years? Or did the Imass live? Before meeting Tool she had generally thought of them as undead, hence without a soul, the flesh alone animated by some external force. But now she wasn't so sure.

'Tell me, Tool, what dominates your thoughts?'

The Imass shrugged before replying. 'I think of futility, Adjunct.'

'Do all Imass think about futility?'

'No. Few think at all.'

'Why is that?'

The Imass leaned his head to one side and regarded her. 'Because, Adjunct, it is futile.'

'Let's get going, Tool. We're wasting time.'

'Yes, Adjunct.'

She climbed into the saddle, wondering how the Imass had meant that.

BOOK FOUR- ASSASSINS

BOOK FOUR- ASSASSINS

I dreamed a coin

with shifting face –

so many youthful visages

so many costly dreams,

and it rolled and rang

'round the gilded rim

of a chalice made for gems

Life of Dreams

Ilbares the Hag

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The night held close

as I wandered

my spirit unfooted

to either earth or stone

unravelled from tree

undriven by iron nail

but like the night itself

a thing of air

stripped of light

so I came upon them,

those masons who cut and carved

stone in the night

sighting by stars and battered hand.

'What of the sun?' asked I of them.

'Is not its cloak of revelation

the warmth of reason

in your shaping?'

And one among them answered,

'No soul can withstand

the sun's bones of light

and reason dims

when darkness falls –

so we shape barrows in the night

for you and your kin.'

'Forgive my interruption, then,' said I.

'The dead never interrupt,' said the mason,

'they but arrive.'

Pauper's Stone

Darujhistan

'Yet another night, yet another dream,' Kruppe moaned, 'with naught but a scant fire to keep this wanderer company.' He held his hands over the flickering, undying hearth that had been stoked by an Elder God. It seemed an odd gift, but he sensed a significance to it. 'Kruppe would understand this meaning, for rare and unwelcome is this frustration.'

The landscape around him was barren; even the ploughed earth was gone, with no sign of habitation in sight. He squatted by the lone fire in a tundra wasteland, and the air had the breath of rotting ice. To the north and to the east the horizon gleamed green, almost luminescent though no moon had risen to challenge the stars. Kruppe had never before seen such a thing, yet it was an image fashioned within his mind. 'Disturbing, indeed, proclaims Kruppe. Are these visions of instinct, then, unfurled in this dream for a purpose? Kruppe knows not, and would return to his warm bed this instant, were the choice his.'