Dust of Dreams

woman instead. ‘Sandalath Drukorlat, please sit. I understand your reluctance—’
    ‘I don’t know why I’m here,’ Sandalath snapped.
    ‘History,’ muttered the ex-priest.
    A long moment of silence, and then the girl named Sinn giggled, and everyone jumped. Seeing this, Brys frowned. ‘Excuse me for interrupting, but is this the place for children?’
    Quick Ben snorted. ‘The girl’s a High Mage, Brys. And the boy’s . . . well, he’s different.’
    ‘Different?’
    ‘Touched,’ said Banaschar. ‘And not in a good way, either. Please, Adjunct, call it off. Send Fiddler back to the barracks. There’s too many here—the safest readings involve a few people, not a mob like this one. Your poor reader’s gonna start bleeding from the ears halfway through.’
    ‘He’s right,’ said Quick Ben, shifting uneasily in his chair. ‘Fid’s ugly enough without earrings of blood and whatnot.’
    The Adjunct faced Fiddler. ‘Sergeant, you know my desire in this—more than anyone else here, you also know my reasons. Speak now honestly, are you capable of this?’
    All eyes fixed on the sapper, and Brys could see how everyone—excepting perhaps Sinn—was silently imploring Fiddler to snap shut the lid on this dread box. Instead, he grimaced, staring at the floor, and said, ‘I can do it, Adjunct. That’s not the problem. It’s . . . unexpected guests.’
    Brys saw the ex-priest flinch at that, and a sudden, hot flood of alarm rose through the King’s Sword. He stepped forward—
    But the Deck was in Fiddler’s hands and he was standing at one end of the table—even though not everyone had taken seats—and three cards clattered and slid on the polished surface.
    The reading had begun.
     
    Standing in the gloom outside the building, the Errant staggered back, as if buffeted by invisible fists. He tasted blood in his mouth, and hissed in fury.
     
    In the main room of her small home, Seren Pedac’s eyes widened and then she shouted in alarm as Pinosel and Ursto Hoobutt ignited into flames where they sat—and she would have lunged forward if not for Bugg’s staying hand. A hand sheathed in sweat.
    ‘Do not move,’ the old man gasped. ‘Those fires burn nothing but them—’
    ‘Nothing but
them
? What does that mean?’
    It was clear that the two ancient gods had ceased being aware of theirsurroundings—she could see their eyes staring out through the blue flames, fixed upon nothing.
    ‘Their essence,’ Bugg whispered. ‘They are being devoured . . . by the power—the power awakened.’ He was trembling as if close to incapacitation, sweat streaming like oil down his face.
    Seren Pedac edged back and placed her hands upon her swollen belly. Her mouth was dry, her heart pounding hard. ‘Who assails them?’
    ‘They stand between your child and that power—as do I, Acquitor. We . . . we can withstand. We must—’
    ‘
Who is doing this?
’
    ‘Not malign—just vast.
Abyss below, this is no ordinary caster of the Tiles!
’ She sat, terrified now, her fear for her unborn son white-hot in her soul, and stared at Pinosel and Ursto Hoobutt—who burned and burned, and beneath the flames they were
melting like wax.
     
    In a crowded room on the top floor of an inn, a flurry of once-dead beasts now scampered, snarled and snapped jaws. The black-furred rat, trailing entrails, had suddenly fallen
upward
to land on the ceiling, claws digging into the plaster, intestines dangling like tiny sausages in a smoke-house. The blue bat-turtle had bitten off the iguana’s tail and that creature escaped in a slithering dash and was now butting at the window’s shutters as if desperate to get out. The flicker bird, shedding oily feathers, flapped in frantic circles over the heads of everyone—none of whom had time to notice, as bottles smashed down, wine spilling like thinned blood, and the barely begun carving of riders on charging horses now writhed and reared on Crump’s lap, whilst he stared bug-eyed, mouth gaping—and moments later the first tiny horse dragged itself free and leapt down from the sapper’s thigh, wooden hoofs clopping across the floor, misshapen lump of rider waving a splinter.
    Bellowing, shouts, shrieks—Ebron vomited violently, and, ducking to avoid that gush, Limp slipped in a puddle of wine and shattered his left knee. He howled.
    Deadsmell started crawling for a corner. He saw Masan Gilani roll under the fancy bed as the flicker bird cracked headlong into