Dust of Dreams

‘And ours, yes. The warrens, Icarium-did you imagine they belonged to you and none other? It is too late for that. This day is the day of fire, Icarium. The children wait. The children hear.’

In his mind, even as it crumbled on all sides, he could hear a new voice, a sweet voice, one he had never heard before.

‘I dream we are three

Rutt who is not Rutt and Held

Who cannot be held-

The girl knows silence

Is a game

The boy knows the kiss

Of the Eres’al

The mother of wheeling stars

Who seeds all time

Through me they hear your need

I am the voice of the unborn

In crystal I see fire and I see smoke

I see lizards and Fathers

In crystal I see the boy and the girl.

Heal the wound, God,

Your children are close-’

Rautos whispered-the last words Icarium would remember. ‘Icarium, in the name of a blessed wife… have faith.’

Faith. He took hold of that word.

His hand closed about the eye and he heard the shriek of an Elder God, as he transformed the eye into what he needed. For Root.

A seed.

A Finnest.

Kalyth saw Kalse Uprooted plunge into the maw, and then halt as a storm of lightning tore into it. The very sky seemed to tremble, and then the ground began to shake, and as she stared, she saw stone burst upward from the plain, directly beneath Kalse. The bedrock lifted like gnarled arms, as if an enormous upended tree was flinging roots into the air.

Those roots rose yet higher, touched the base of Kalse Uprooted, and then spread in a frenzy outward. Branches of rock twisted, crowded against the edges of the gate, where fires flared only to vanish. The Wastelands seemed to grow ashen on all sides, as if the very last drops of its lifeblood were being drawn into this savage growth.

The four surviving Nah’ruk sky keeps on this side of the portal unleashed a frenzied assault upon Kalse. Stone exploded. Massive fissures ripped through, spewing molten rock-the entire city was moments from bursting apart.

The stranger fails-but, such glory! To see this! To witness such courage!

The stone tree-if that was what it was-did not cease its mad growth, and she saw roots curl into the wounds in the city’s flanks. Where the lightning struck the writhing stone, the sound of the impacts boomed deeper than any thunder, but everywhere that wounds broke open stone swarmed in to heal the damage.

All at once the attacks ceased. Sudden heat washed down upon Kalyth and she cried out in pain.

The four Nah’ruk sky keeps were engulfed in flames, reeling away from the gate. The fires brightened, and then, in a flash, burst incandescent white at their cores. As she watched, in horror, in wonder, the keeps seemed to be vaporizing before her eyes. Churning, the towering pillars of fire pitched eastward, beneath them the ground blackening with scorching heat.

Gunth Mach spoke in her mind. ‘Destriant. See through my eyes. Do you see?’

‘Yes,’ she whispered.

Two figures stood upon a torn, ruined ridge to the northwest. Sorcery poured from them in terrible waves.

A boy.

A girl.

He didn’t care. The world could be moments from being swallowed by the Abyss itself, Stormy was finally in the midst of war’s sharpest truths and nothing else-nothing-mattered. Laughing, he slashed and hacked at the Nah’ruk as they pressed in, as the dead-eyed lizards sought to clamber over the Ve’Gath, sought by numbers alone to overwhelm this savage wall of denial.

Gesler’s charge down the pocket had pierced the bastards like a boar-sticker, forcing them into the narrow spaces between the frenzied K’ell and the shield-locked Ve’Gath. They fought with appalling ferocity, and died in chilling silence.

His mount was wounded. His mount was probably dying-who could tell? All these lizards fought until their last breath. But its defences had slowed, weakened. There was blood everywhere and he could feel its chest heaving with shuddering cadence.

A short-snouted maw lunged at his face.

Cursing, he pitched back to avoid the snapping dagger teeth, struggled to draw close his short-handled axe-but the damned Nah’ruk surged still closer, clawing its way up the Ve’Gath’s shoulder. His mount staggered-