‘Chains,’ Karsa muttered, swinging round to stare at Urugal. ‘I so dislike chains.’

‘I will see you in the morning, Toblakai? Before you depart?’

‘You shall.’

Karsa listened to the man stride away. His mind was a maelstrom. Chains. They haunted him, had haunted him ever since he and Bairoth and Delum rode out from the village. Perhaps even before then. Tribes fashioned their own chains, after all. As did kinship, and companions, and stories with their lessons in honour and sacrifice. And chains as well between the Teblor and their seven gods. Between me and my gods. Chains again, there in my visions – the dead I have slain, the souls Ghost Hands says I drag behind me. I am – all that I am – has been shaped by such chains.

This new House – is it mine?

The air in the clearing was suddenly cold, bitterly so. A final, thrashing rush as the last of the snakes fled the clearing. Karsa blinked his eyes into focus, and saw Urugal’s indurated visage ... awakening.

A presence, there in the dark holes of the face’s eyes.

Karsa heard a howling wind, filling his mind. A thousand souls moaning, the snapping thunder of chains. Growling, he steeled himself before the onslaught, fixed his gaze on his god’s writhing face.

‘Karsa Orlong. We have waited long for this. Three years, the fashioning of this sacred place. You wasted so much time on the two strangers – your fallen friends, the ones who failed where you did not. This temple is not to be sanctified by sentimentality. Their presence offends us. Destroy them this night.’

The seven faces were all wakeful now, and Karsa could feel the weight of their regard, a deathly pressure behind which lurked something . . . avid, dark and filled with glee.

‘By my hand,’ Karsa said to Urugal, ‘I have brought you to this place. By my hand, you have been freed from your prison of rock in the lands of the Teblor – yes, I am not the fool you believe me to be. You have guided me in this, and now you are come. Your first words are of chastisement? Careful, Urugal. Any carving here can be shattered by my hand, should I so choose.’

He felt their rage, buffeting him, seeking to make him wither beneath the onslaught, yet he stood before it unmoving, and unmoved. The Teblor warrior who would quail before his gods was no more.

‘You have brought us closer,’ Urugal eventually rasped. ‘Close enough to sense the precise location of what we desire. And there you must now go, Karsa Orlong. You have delayed the journey for so long – your journey to ourselves, and on to the path we have set before you. You have hidden too long in the company of this petty spirit who does little more than spit sand.’

‘This path, this journey – to what end? What is it you seek?’

‘Like you, warrior, we seek freedom.’