‘That whatever crisped this realm had already happened,’ Lostara cut in. ‘Meaning, they either survived the event, or were interlopers ... like us.’

‘Very possibly emerging from the very gate we now approach.’

‘To cross blades with whom?’

Pearl shrugged. ‘I have no idea. But I have a few theories.’

‘Of course you do,’ she snapped. ‘Like all men – you hate to say you don’t know and leave it at that. You have an answer to every question, and if you don’t you make one up.’

‘An outrageous accusation, my dear. It is not a matter of making up answers, it is rather an exercise in conjecture. There is a difference—’

‘That’s what you say, not what I have to listen to. All the time. Endless words. Does a man even exist who believes there can be too many words?’

‘I don’t know,’ Pearl replied.

After a moment she shot him a glare, but he was studiously staring ahead.

They came to the edge of the slope and halted, looking down.

The descent would be treacherous, jumbled bones, swords jagged with decay, and an unknown depth of ash and dust. The hole at the base was perhaps ten paces across, yawning black.

‘There are spiders in the desert,’ Lostara muttered, ‘that build such traps.’

‘Slightly smaller, surely.’

She reached down and collected a thigh bone, momentarily surprised at its weight, then tossed it down the slope.

A thud.

Then the packed ash beneath their boots vanished.

And down they went, amidst explosions of dust, ashes and splinters of bone. A hissing rush – blind, choking – then they were falling through a dry downpour. To land heavily on yet another slope that tumbled them down a roaring, echoing avalanche.

It was a descent through splintered bones and bits of iron, and it seemed unending.

Lostara was unable to draw breath – they were drowning in thick dust, sliding and rolling, sinking then bursting free once more. Down, down through absolute darkness. A sudden, jarring collision with something – possibly wood – then a withered, rumpled surface that seemed tiled, and down once more.

Another thump and tumble.

Then she was rolling across flagstones, pushed on by a wave of ash and detritus, finally coming to a crunching halt, flat on her back, a flow of frigid air rising up on her left side – where she reached out, groping, then down, to where the floor should have been. Nothing. She was lying on an edge, and something told her that, had she taken this last descent, Hood alone would greet her at its conclusion.

Coughing from slightly further up the slope on her right. A faint nudge as the heaped bones and ashes on that side shifted.

Another such nudge, and she would be pushed over the edge. Lostara rolled her head to the left and spat, then tried to speak. The word came out thin and hoarse. ‘Don’t.’

Another cough, then, ‘Don’t what?’

‘Move.’