‘No. Hood did not exist when these were fashioned, Trull Sengar. Nor are they strictly death-aspected. Their power comes, as Monok Ochem said, from layers. Stone shaped into tools and weapons. Air shaped by throats. Minds that discovered, faint as flickering fires in the sky, the recognition of oblivion, of an end ... to life, to love. Eyes that witnessed the struggle to survive, and saw with wonder its inevitable failure. To know and to understand that we must all die, Trull Sengar, is not to worship death. To know and to understand is itself magic, for it made us stand tall.’

‘It seems, then,’ Trull Sengar muttered, ‘that you Imass have broken the oldest laws of all, with your Vow.’

‘Neither Monok Ochem nor Ibra Gholan will speak in answer to that truth,’ Onrack said. ‘You are right, however. We are the first lawbreakers, and that we have survived this long is fit punishment. And so, it remains our hope that the Summoner will grant us absolution.’

‘Faith is a dangerous thing,’ Trull Sengar sighed. ‘Well, shall we make use of this gate?’

Monok Ochem gestured, and the scene around them blurred, the light fading.

A moment before the darkness became absolute, a faint shout from the Tiste Edur drew Onrack’s attention. The warrior turned, in time to see a figure standing a dozen paces away. Tall, lithely muscled, with a fine umber-hued pelt and long, shaggy hair reaching down past the shoulders. A woman. Her breasts were large and pendulous, her hips wide and full. Prominent, flaring cheekbones, a broad, full-lipped mouth. All this registered in an instant, even as the woman’s dark brown eyes, shadowed beneath a solid brow, scanned across the three T’lan Imass before fixing on Trull Sengar.

She took a step towards the Tiste Edur, the movement graceful as a deer’s—

Then the light vanished entirely.

Onrack heard another surprised shout from Trull Sengar. The T’lan Imass strode towards the sound, then halted, thoughts suddenly scattering, a flash of images cascading through the warrior’s mind. Time folding in on itself, sinking away, then rising once more—

Sparks danced low to the ground, tinder caught, flames flickering.

They were in the crevasse, standing on its littered floor. Onrack looked for Trull Sengar, found the Tiste Edur lying prone on the damp rock a half-dozen paces away.

The T’lan Imass approached.

The mortal was unconscious. There was blood smearing his lap, pooling beneath his crotch, and Onrack could see it cooling, suggesting that it did not belong to Trull Sengar, but to the Eres woman who had ... taken his seed.

His first seed. But there had been nothing to her appearance suggesting virginity. Her breasts had swollen with milk in the past; her nipples had known the pressure of a pup’s hunger. The blood, then, made no sense.

Onrack crouched beside Trull Sengar.