Dust of Dreams

after all, no matter how overlong my absence.’ A hacking, bitter laugh. ‘I had forgotten your . . . temerity, sir.’
    Tanakalian drew a step closer. ‘Sir, what has happened?’
    ‘
Stay back, I beg you!
’ gasped the Destriant. ‘You must take my words to the Mortal Sword.’
    Something glittered on the polished wooden floor around the kneeling form, as if the man had leaked out on all sides—but the smell was not one of urine, and the liquid, while thick as blood, seemed almost golden in the faint lantern light. Real fear flowed through Tanakalian upon seeing it, and the Destriant’s words barely reached him over the thumping of his own heart. ‘Destriant—’
    ‘I travelled far,’ Run’Thurvian said. ‘Doubts . . . a growing unease. Listen! She is not as we believed. There will be . . . betrayal. Tell Krughava! The vow—
we have made a mistake
!’
    The puddle was spreading, thick as honey, and it seemed the robed shape of the Destriant was diminishing, collapsing into itself.
    He is dying. By the Wolves, he is dying.
‘Destriant,’ Tanakalian said, forcing his terror down, swallowing against the horror of what he was witnessing, ‘will you accept my embrace?’
    The laugh that made its way out sounded as if it had bubbled up through mud. ‘No. I do not.’
    Stunned, the Shield Anvil staggered back.
    ‘You . . . you are . . .
insufficient.
You always were—another one of Krughava’s errors in . . . in judgement. You fail me, and so you shall fail her. The Wolves shall abandon us. The vow betrays them, do you understand? I have seen our deaths—this one here before you, and the ones to come. You, Tanakalian. The Mortal Sword too, and every brother and sister of the Grey Helms.’ He coughed, and something gushed out in the convulsion, spraying the altar with liquid and shapeless gobbets that slid down into the folds of stone fur, traversing the necks of the Wolves.
    The kneeling figure slumped, folded in the middle at an impossible angle. The sound made when Run’Thurvian’s forehead struck the floor was that of a hen’s egg breaking, and that span of bone offered little resistance, so that the man’s face collapsed as well.
    As Tanakalian stared, drawn forward once more, he saw watery streams leaking out from the Destriant’s ruined head.
    The man had simply . . .
melted
. He could see that greyish pulp boiling, thinning down into clear streams of fat.
    And he so wanted to scream, to unleash his horror, but a deeper dread had claimed him.
He would not accept my embrace. I have failed him, he said. I will fail them all, he said.
    Betrayal?
    No, that I cannot believe.
    I will not.
    Although he knew Run’Thurvian was dead, Tanakalian spoke to him nonetheless. ‘The failure, Destriant, was yours, not mine. You journeyed far, did you? I suggest . . . not far enough.’ He paused, struggling to quell the trembling that had come to him. ‘Destriant. Sir. It pleases me that you rejected my embrace. For I see now that you did not deserve it.’
    No, he was not simply a Shield Anvil, in the manner of all those who had come before, all those who had lived and died beneath the burden of that title. He was not interested in passive acceptance. He would take upon himself mortal pain, yes, but not indiscriminately.
    I too am mortal, after all. It is my essence that I am able to weigh my judgement. Of what is worthy. And what is not.
    No, I shall not be as other Shield Anvils. The world has changed—we must change with it. We must change to meet it.
He stared down at the heaped mess that was all that remained of Destriant Run’Thurvian.
    There would be shock. Dismay and faces twisted into distraught fear. The Order would be flung into disarray, and it would fall to the Mortal Sword, and to the Shield Anvil, to steady the rudder, until such time as a new Destriant was raised among the brothers and sisters.
    Of more immediate concern, however, as far as Tanakalian was concerned, was that there would be no sorcerous protection in traversing the channel. In his assessment—shaky as it might be at the moment—he judged that news to be paramount.
    The Mortal Sword would have to wait.
    He had nothing to tell her in any case.
    ‘Did you embrace our brother, Shield Anvil?’
    ‘Of course, Mortal Sword. His pain is with me, now, as is his salvation.’
     
    The mind shaped its habits and habits reshaped the body. A lifelong rider walked with bowed legs, a seafarer stood wide