Dust of Dreams

The smoke-shrouded sky overhead was crowded with both floating mountains—most of them burning—and dragons, and some of these dragons seemed enormous, five, six times the size of the others even though they were clearly more distant. Fire wreathed the scene, as fragments of the aerial fortresses broke apart and plunged down into the midst of the warring factions. Everywhere was slaughter and harrowing destruction.
    ‘Pretty,’ murmured Sinn.
    ‘Let’s check the tower,’ said Grub. All the fires in the scene reminded him of Y’Ghatan, and his vision of Sinn, marching through the flames—she could have walked into this ancient battle. He feared that if he looked closely enough he’d see her, among the hundreds of seething figures, a contented expression on her round-cheeked face, her dark eyes satiated and shining.
    They set off for the square tower.
    Into the gloom of the corridor once more, where Grub paused, waiting for his eyes to adjust. A moment later green flames licked out from the chamber they had just quit, slithering across the stone floor, drawing closer.
    In the ghoulish glow, Sinn smiled.
    The fire followed them up the saddled stairs to the upper landing, which was bare of all furnishings. Beneath a shuttered, web-slung window was slumped a desiccated corpse. Leathery strips of skin here and there were all that held the carcass together, and Grub could see the oddity of the thing’s limbs, the extra joints at knee, elbow, wrist and ankle. The very sternum seemed horizontally hinged midway down, as were the prominent, birdlike collarbones.
    He crept forward for a closer look. The face was frontally flattened, sharpening the angle where the cheekbones swept back, almost all the way to the ear-holes. Every bone he could see seemed designed to fold or collapse—not just the cheeks but the mandibles and brow-ridges as well. It was a face that in life, Grub suspected,could manage a bizarre array of expressions—far beyond what a human face could achieve.
    The skin was bleached white, hairless, and Grub knew that if he so much as touched the corpse, it would fall to dust.
    ‘Forkrul Assail,’ he whispered.
    Sinn rounded on him. ‘How do you know that? How do you know anything about anything?’
    ‘On the tapestry below,’ he said, ‘those lizards. I think they were K’Chain Che’Malle.’ He glanced at her, and then shrugged. ‘This Azath House didn’t die,’ he said. ‘It just . . .
left
.’
    ‘Left? How?’
    ‘I think it just walked out of here, that’s what I think.’
    ‘But you don’t know anything! How can you say things like that?’
    ‘I bet Quick Ben knows, too.’
    ‘
Knows what?
’ she hissed in exasperation.
    ‘This. The truth of it all.’
    ‘Grub—’
    He met her gaze, studied the fury in her eyes. ‘You, me, the Azath. It’s all changing, Sinn. Everything—it’s all changing.’
    Her small hands made fists at her sides. The flames dancing from the stone floor climbed the frame of the chamber’s entranceway, snapping and sparking.
    Grub snorted, ‘The way you make it talk . . .’
    ‘It can shout, too, Grub.’
    He nodded. ‘Loud enough to break the world, Sinn.’
    ‘I would, you know,’ she said with sudden vehemence, ‘just to see what it can do. What
I
can do.’
    ‘What’s stopping you?’
    She grimaced as she turned away. ‘You might shout back.’
     
    Tehol the Only, King of Lether, stepped into the room and, arms out to the sides, spun in a circle. Then beamed at Bugg. ‘What do you think?’
    The manservant held a bronze pot in his battered, blunt hands. ‘You’ve had dancing lessons?’
    ‘No, look at my blanket! My beloved wife has begun embroidering it—see, there at the hem, above my left knee.’
    Bugg leaned forward slightly. ‘Ah, I see. Very nice.’
    ‘Very nice?’
    ‘Well, I can’t quite make out what it’s supposed to be.’
    ‘Me neither.’ He paused. ‘She’s not very good, is she?’
    ‘No, she’s terrible. Of course, she’s an academic.’
    ‘Precisely,’ Tehol agreed.
    ‘After all,’ said Bugg, ‘if she had any skill at sewing and the like—’
    ‘She’d never have settled for the scholarly route?’
    ‘Generally speaking, people useless at everything else become academics.’
    ‘My thoughts inexactly, Bugg. Now, I must ask, what’s wrong?’
    ‘Wrong?’
    ‘We’ve known each other for a long time,’ said Tehol. ‘My senses are exquisitely honed for reading the finest nuances in