‘Not at all, Fist. My shamans have read the sands. They have learned much of your future. The Fourteenth Army shall know a long life, but it shall be a restless life. You are doomed to search, destined to ever hunt... for what even you do not know, nor, perhaps, shall you ever know. Like the sands themselves, wandering for eternity.’

Gamet was scowling. ‘I do not wish to offend, Warchief, but I hold little faith in divination. No mortal – no god – can say we are doomed, or destined. The future remains unknown, the one thing we cannot force a pattern upon.’

The Khundryl grunted. ‘Patterns, the lifeblood of the shamans. But not them alone, yes? The Deck of Dragons – are they not used for divination?’

Gamet shrugged. ‘There are some who hold much store in the Deck, but I am not one of them.’

‘Do you not see patterns in history, Fist? Are you blind to the cycles we all suffer through? Look upon this desert, this wasteland you cross. Yours is not the first empire that would claim it. And what of the tribes? Before the Khundryl, before the Kherahn Dhobri and the Tregyn, there were the Sanid, and the Oruth, and before them there were others whose names have vanished. Look upon the ruined cities, the old roads. The past is all patterns, and those patterns remain beneath our feet, even as the stars above reveal their own patterns – for the stars we gaze upon each night are naught but an illusion from the past.’ He raised the jug again and studied it for a moment. ‘Thus, the past lies beneath and above the present, Fist. This is the truth my shamans embrace, the bones upon which the future clings like muscle.’

The Adjunct slowly turned to study the warchief. ‘We shall reach Vathar Crossing tomorrow, Gall. What will we find?’

The Khundryl’s eyes glittered. ‘That is for you to decide, Tavore Paran. It is a place of death, and it shall speak its words to you – words the rest of us will not hear.’

‘Have you been there?’ she asked.

He nodded, but added nothing more.

Gamet drank down a mouthful of wine. There was a strangeness to this night, to this moment here in the Adjunct’s tent, that left his skin crawling. He felt out of place, like a simpleton who’d just stumbled into the company of scholars. The revelry in the camp beyond was dying down, and come the dawn, he knew, there would be silence. Drunken oblivion was, each time, a small, temporary death. Hood walked where the self once stood, and the wake of the god’s passage sickened mortal flesh afterwards.

He set his cup down on the map table. ‘If you’ll forgive me,’ he muttered, ‘the air in here is too ... close.’

Neither replied as he walked back to the flap.