Onrack managed a one-sided shrug. ‘They went, Trull Sengar, to kill the Liosan god.’

Little more than bones and scraps of armour, what had once been an army lay in the thick grey ash, encircling a steeply sloped pit of some kind. There was no way to tell whether the army had faced outward – defending some sort of subterranean entrance – or inward, seeking to prevent an escape.

Lostara Yil stood ankle-deep in the trail’s ashes. Watching Pearl walk gingerly among the bones, reaching down every now and then to drag some item free for a closer look. Her throat was raw, her hatred of the Imperial Warren deepening with every passing moment.

‘The scenery is unchanging,’ Pearl had noted, ‘yet never the same. I have walked this path before – this very path. There were no ruins, then. And no heap of bones or hole in the ground.’

And no winds to shift the ashes.

But bones and other larger objects had a way of rising to the surface, eventually. Or so it was true in the sands – why should ashes be any different? None the less, some of those ruins were massive. Vast expanses of flagstones, unstained, devoid even of dust. Tall, leaning towers – like the rotted stubs of fangs. A bridge spanning nothing, its stones so precisely set that a knife-tip could not be slipped between them.

Slapping the dust from his gloved hands, Pearl strode up. ‘Curious indeed.’

Lostara coughed, hacked out grey sputum. ‘Just find us a gate and get us out of here,’ she rasped.

‘Ah, well, as to that, my dear, the gods are smiling down upon us. I have found a gate, and a lively one it is.’

She scowled at him, knowing he sought the inevitable question from her, but she was in no mood to ask it.

‘Alas, I know your thoughts,’ Pearl continued after a moment, with a quick wry grin. He pointed back towards the pit. ‘Down there ... unfortunately. Thus, we are left with a dire choice. Continue on – and risk you spitting out your lungs – in search of a more easily approachable gate. Or take the plunge, as it were.’

‘You’re leaving the choice to me?’

‘Why not? Now, I’m waiting. Which shall it be?’

She drew the scarf over her mouth and nose once more, tightened the straps on her pack, then marched off ... towards the pit.

Pearl fell in step. ‘Courage and foolishness, the distinction so often proves problematic—’

‘Except in hindsight.’ Lostara kicked herself free of a rib cage that had fouled her stride, then swore at the resultant clouds of ash and dust. ‘Who were these damned soldiers? Do you know?’

‘I may possess extraordinary powers of observation and unfathomable depths of intelligence, lass, but I cannot read when there is nothing to be seen. Corpses. Human, in so far as I can tell. The only detail I can offer is that they fought this battle knee-deep in this ash . . . meaning—’