Then another voice spoke, louder, more imperious: ‘What god now owns your hands, old man? Tell me! Even their ghosts are not here – who is holding on to you? Tell me!’

‘There are no gods,’ a third voice cut in, this one female.

‘So you say!’ came yet another, filled with spite. ‘In your empty, barren, miserable world!’

‘Gods are born of belief, and belief is dead. We murdered it, with our vast intelligence. You were too primitive—’

‘Killing gods is not hard. The easiest murder of all. Nor is it a measure of intelligence. Not even of civilization. Indeed, the indifference with which such death-blows are delivered is its own form of ignorance.’

‘More like forgetfulness. After all, it’s not the gods that are important, it is the stepping outside of oneself that gifts a mortal with virtue—’

‘Kneel before Order? You blind fool—’

‘Order? I was speaking of compassion—’

‘Fine, then go ahead! Step outside yourself, Leandris! No, better yet. Step outside.’

‘Only the new one can do that, Cassa. And he’d better be quick about it.’

Twisting, Heboric managed to look down, to catch a glimpse of his left forearm, the wrist, the hand – that was not there. A god. A god has taken them. I was blind to that – the jade’s ghost hands made me blind to that—

He tilted his head back, as the screams and shrieks suddenly rose higher, deafening, mind-numbing. The world turned red, the red of blood—

Something tugged on his arms. Hard. Once. Twice.

Darkness.

Heboric opened his eyes. Saw above him the colourless canvas of his tent. The air was cold.

A barely human sound escaped him, and he rolled onto his side beneath the blankets, curling tight into a ball. Shivers thrummed through him.

A god. A god has found me.

But which god?

It was night, perhaps only a bell from dawn. The camp outside was silent, barring the distant, sorrow-filled howls of desert wolves.

After a while, Heboric stirred once more. The dung fire was out. No lanterns had been lit. He drew aside the blankets and slowly sat up.

Then stared down at his hands, disbelieving.

They remained ghostly, but the otataral was gone. The power of the jade remained, pulsing dully. Yet now there were slashes of black through it. Lurid – almost liquid – barbs banded the backs of his hands, then tracked upward, shifting angle as they continued up his forearms.

His tattoos had been transformed.

And, in this deepest darkness, he could see. Unhumanly sharp, every detail crisp as if it was day outside.

His head snapped round at a sound and a motion – but it was simply a rhizan, alighting light as a leaf on the tent roof.

A rhizan! On the tent roof?

Heboric’s stomach rumbled in sudden hunger.

He looked down at his tattoos once more. I have found a new god. Not that I was seeking one. And I know who. What.