Yet something nagged within Sorry's mind, a vague suspicion that the group was heading into danger – a danger that threatened her as well. Once beyond Worrytown she picked up her pace. As soon as she found herself alone on the road, she opened her Warren of Shadow and slipped into its swift tracks.

The Adjunct could find nothing to set apart the hill they approached. Its grass-cloaked summit was dwarfed by those around it. A half dozen scraggly, wind-twisted scrub oaks climbed one side amid a scree of broken boulders. The summit flattened out into a rough circle, rock pushing through here and there.

Overhead wheeled ravens, so high as to be no more than specks against the muggy grey sky. Lorn watched Tool striding ahead of her, the Imass choosing an unwavering path towards the hill's base. She slumped in her saddle, feeling defeated by the world around her. The midday heat sapped her strength, and the sluggishness reached through to her thoughts – not Oponn's doing, she knew. This was the pervasive dread clinging to the air, the sense that what they were doing was wrong, terribly wrong.

To fling this Jaghut Tyrant into the hands of the Empire's enemy, to trust this Tiste Andii Anomander Rake to destroy it, yet at great cost to himself – thus opening the way for Malazan sorceries in turn to kill the Son of Darkness – now seemed precipitous, absurd in its ambitions.

Tool came to the base of the hill and waited for the Adjunct to arrive. Lorn saw, at Tool's hide-wrapped feet, a grey rock jutting perhaps ten inches from the. earth.

'Adjunct,' the Imass said, 'this is the barrow marker we seek.'

She raised an eyebrow. 'There's hardly any soil cover here at all,' she said. 'Are you suggesting this standing stone has eroded down to its present size?'

'The stone has not eroded,' Tool answered. 'It has stood here since before the sheets of ice came to cover this land. It stood here when the Rhivi Plain was an inland sea, long before the waters withdrew to what is now Lake Azur. Adjunct, the stone is in fact taller than both of us combined, and what you think to be bedrock is shale.'

Lorn was surprised at the hint of anger in Tool's voice. She dismounted and set to hobbling the horses. 'How long do we stay here, then?'

'Until this evening passes. With tomorrow's dawn I will open the way, Adjunct.'

Faintly from above came the cries of ravens. Lorn lifted her head and gazed at the specks wheeling high over them. They'd been with them for days. Was that unusual? She didn't know. Shrugging, she unsaddled the horses.

The Imass remained motionless, his gaze seeming fixed on the stone marker.