The Crippled God

.’
    Something that looked like white foam was spreading from the base of the locust cloud, surging in tumultuous waves. Gods below. Butterflies . ‘You’re all d’ivers. You’re all one thing, one creature – the flies, the locusts, the butterflies – and this desert is where you live.’ He recalled the bones upon the edge. ‘This desert … is what you made.’
    The butterflies reached him, whipped round him – so many he could no longer see the ground at his feet. The frantic breaths of their wings stole the sweat from his skin, until he began shivering. ‘D’ivers! I would speak to you! Semble! Show yourself to me!’
    The locusts blighted half the sky, devouring the sun. Spinning overhead, and then, in a wave of rage, descending.
    Mappo dropped to his knees, buried his face beneath his arms, hunched down.
    They struck his back like a deluge of darts.
    As more poured down, he grunted at their weight. Bones creaked. He struggled for breath, clenched his jaws against the pain.
    The locusts stabbed again and again with their jaws, driven mad by the feel and scent of living flesh.
    But he was Trell, and his kind had skin like leather.
    The locusts could not draw blood. But the weight grew vast, seeking to crush him. In the gap his arms made for his face he stared at inky darkness, and his gasps snatched up dust from the ground. Deafened by the futile clack of bladed jaws, buried in riotous darkness, he held on.
    He could feel the mind of the d’ivers now. Its fury was not for him alone. Who stung you so? Who in this desert drove you away? Why are you fleeing?
    The being was ancient. It had not sembled in a long time – thousands of years, perhaps more. Lost now to the primitive instincts of the insects. Shards opals diamonds gems leaves drinkers – the wordsslithered into him as if from nowhere, a girl’s sing-song voice that now echoed in his mind. Shards opals diamonds gems leaves drinkers – go away!
    With a deafening roar the vast weight on Mappo’s back burst apart, exploded outward.
    He sat up, tilted back his head. ‘Shards opals diamonds gems leaves drinkers – go away. Go away. Go!’
    A song of banishing .
    The cloud heaved upward, twisted, and then churned past him. Another seething wave of butterflies, and then they too were gone.
    Stunned, Mappo looked round. He was alone. Child, where are you? Such power in your song – are you Forkrul Assail? No matter. Mappo thanks you .
    He was covered in bruises. Every bone ached. But still alive .
    ‘Child, be careful. This d’ivers was once a god. Someone tore it apart, into so many pieces it can never heal. It can’t even find itself. All it knows now is hunger – not for you or me. For something else. Life itself, perhaps. Child, your song has power. Be careful. What you banish you can also summon.’
    He heard her voice again, fainter now, drifting away. ‘ Like the flies. Like the song of the flies .’
    Grunting, he climbed to his feet. Drew his sack round and loosened the drawstrings, reached in and lifted out a waterskin. He drank deep, sighed, drank a second time and then stuffed the skin back into the sack. Tightening the shoulder straps again, he faced east, and resumed running.
    For the edge of the world.
    ‘Nice sword.’
    ‘Alas, this one I must use. I will give my two Letherii swords to you.’
    Ryadd Eleis leaned back against the knobby stone of the cave wall. ‘How did they get the dragons on that blade?’
    Silchas Ruin continued studying the weapon he had unsheathed. The flames of the hearth danced up and down its length. ‘There is something wrong with this,’ he said. ‘The House of Hust burned to the ground with everything else – not Kharkanas itself, of course, that city didn’t burn. Not precisely. But Hust, well, those forges were a prize, you see. And what could not be held had to be destroyed.’
    Ryadd glanced away, at the pearl sky beyond the cave mouth. Another dawn had arrived. He’d been alone for some time. Awakened to find that the Tiste Andii had returned sometime in the night, blown in like a drift of snow. ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying.’
    The white face took on an almost human hue, bathed as it was inthe firelight. But those red eyes were as unnerving as ever. ‘I thought I knew all the weapons forged by the Hust. Even the obscure ones.’
    ‘That one does not look obscure, Silchas,’ said Ryadd. ‘It looks like a hero’s weapon. A famous weapon. One with a