Zaifyr walked alone, but for how long, and how far, he did not know.
There was no change in the world around him. The grass spread from horizon to horizon, with no rises into hills, or mountains, or dips into rivers and oceans.
He did not know where Lor Jix and Anguish were. Though he had stepped through the door with both, neither stood on the field. He called out their names, and did so until he realized that there was nothing alive around him. No birds flew, no insects moved, and no animals or people could be seen. Zaifyr was not confident that his voice had even truly emerged in the shout he gave, either. He did not draw a breath and, after he had finished shouting, he felt a heaviness settle on his chest, similar to the weight that had been upon him in Mireea.
He wanted to sit down on the grass, but he did not. Though he did not know why he thought it, he believed that if he did lower himself, he would not rise. The grass would welcome him, unlike any other grass, and he would lie back in it and stare up at the sun. The sun did not move in the clear sky, and it was this stillness, more than anything else, that warned him against sitting on the ground, not to give in to the desire to stop. It would be easy, though. The thought was ever present. He could take a moment to rest. A moment wouldn’t hurt. Nothing of importance would happen in a moment, even here, where time was strangely suspended yet accelerated, as if it had taken place, was taking place, and would soon take place.
Suddenly, a figure appeared before him.
He lay on his back in the grass, a young white man, dark-haired, and with a thin, long face that, though Zaifyr had never seen him before, was familiar. He wore loose-fitting, paint-stained clothes and would occasionally lift his hand to the sky, as if he was painting the sun, though he held no brush, had no paint, and no canvas. The only personal item near him was a rusted sword.
‘My name,’ the man said, after Zaifyr appeared in his line of sight, ‘is Sonen Kint.’
The voice was familiar. ‘Anguish?’
‘No, no.’ The man’s hand turned into a finger and he wagged it with each pronunciation. ‘No, not here. Not now. Not any more. I am not a creation of Se’Saera, not a soldier of a new god. I am a painter. I paint men and women. Even children. Most are prostitutes. I talk to them and I get to know them and I paint them. In each of them there is something beautiful and fragile and raw, but you can only see it when they are naked. When the symbols by which they define themselves are stripped away.’
‘Is that how you changed?’ Zaifyr asked. ‘Was Anguish a symbol?’
‘Sonen is a symbol.’ He laughed, a strange, dreamy laugh. ‘You should listen to this land. We are all symbols. We are all representations. You should sit and let it speak to you. It is—’
‘Paradise,’ finished Lor Jix. The Captain of Wayfair appeared before the two of them, as if he stepped from a world outside the one they were in. ‘We are in the paradise of the gods, where we will want for nothing and need for nothing.’
In Zaifyr’s youth, in the cold mountains of Kakar, the shaman Meihir had told him that when he was dead, Hienka, the Feral God, would take him to a camp with a huge forest stretching below it. From there, he would be able to hunt, to trap, to fight. ‘No god promised this,’ Zaifyr said now, indicating the endless field. ‘This is no paradise.’
‘The Leviathan promised me an ocean, unlike any I had seen before.’ There was a note of bitterness in Jix’s voice. ‘But regardless of what we were promised, this is it.’
‘But this . . .’ Zaifyr’s voice trailed off. Before him, quite clearly, he could see himself. He was laid out on a stone floor. He could feel cold stone against his back, and could feel dirt in his hair, over his face and neck and exposed hands. He could see the shadowed outline of a figure standing over him, but he did not know who it was. The figure was accompanied by two others, though only the first stood close, while the second stood at a distance, like a servant. He could hear words, as well, but he could not understand them. ‘Can you see me?’ he asked Jix, feeling the weight in his chest grow heavier. ‘When you look down, can you?’
‘Look at your chest,’ Jix said, instead. ‘It is as if you have a wound there.’
It came from where he felt heaviest, where his lungs would be, if he was alive, if he had a body. It was much larger than the red smear that had appeared in Mireea, before he had taken the Wanderer’s staff, but it was not dissimilar. He remembered what Anguish had said then – that his family had been bringing his body to his soul, that they had been trying to return him to life – but before he could say anything, he began to retch and water burst from his mouth, black like Leviathan’s Blood.
He lifted his hand to his mouth as he gagged again, but more water burst from him, the second so fierce, so powerful that he stumbled to his knees.
‘Don’t fight it, Zaifyr,’ Se’Saera said, her face appearing before him in the room, and in the field. ‘It will only hurt more.’