CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

 

ATOP THE RAMPARTS of Nydarrow, amid the black and louring stoneworks where the untouched battlements ranged against the starry sky in defiance of all that was holy, a small cottage with warmly glowing windows was set, complete with a wagon outside and four sheep chewing amiably in a rickety bamboo pen. Inside the Bounteous Domicile of Hule Dr Catt sat in an armchair with his feet up by the fireside and opposite him, in another chair, sat Dr Fisher, his satchel and stave beside him.

“Lords, Fishy, I thought I’d never get out alive,” Dr Catt was saying, adjusting his bread on the toasting fork to get a better angle for browning. “But it was worth it.”

“I hope so,” Fisher said, sniffing. “Where did you leave them?”

“Locked in her old study I believe,” Catt said. “Not to worry. She’ll get out of it. Then they’ll go down and not up here, probably.”

“No time to do otherwise,” Fisher said gloomily. “Look what I found in Tzark.” He undid the satchel flap and reached inside, drawing out an old clay tablet, broken off at one end, its face covered in the angled stylus marks of ancient Tzarkish. It predated the coffer and the language used on the coffer by a long way.

“Where was that?”

“Tomb of Xaxtaris II,” Fisher said. “One of the first graves of the civilisation, upon which all others were modelled right up until…”

“But what does it say?” Catt put down his fork, propping it on the fireguard, and was reaching out although Fisher twitched it away, proudly, for a moment to give it a quick whisk with a horsehair brush. Fine sand pattered out of it all over the carpets.

“It says that all that is remembered shall live again and that the dead must not be forgotten.”

Catt peered and then gasped with eagerness as Fisher let him have it. He rotated the tablet and studied the signs. “But… there isn’t any magic here is there? I thought you would have brought something significant, some great…”

“Do you remember the Kinslayer, Catty?”

“What? Well, yes. Not personally. Not in detail. I… what are you getting at?”

“The Tzarkomen rituals are all about being and unbeing, memory and forgetting,” Fisher said slowly. “Underneath Nydarrow there’s a place that’s opened up to Vadakh, the undoing, you say.”

“Yes, I’ve seen it. Seen that creature from there.”

“And the Kinslayer trashed The Book of All Things, which wasn’t a book at all, it was memories inside living people’s heads.”

“Yes.”

“And now Tricky, and whoever she’s with, which includes at least one Slayer who probably does have quite a good memory of the Reckoner and a being made in Tzarkand who uses necromancers’ magic, are going with Wanderer through the ice gate into Vadakh to find the gods.”

“I still don’t…” Dr Catt stopped and sat up. He looked down at the tablet. He looked up at Dr Fisher. “Oh I say, Fishy. That doesn’t mean what I think it means, does it?”

“I’d say it’s all up in the air,” Fisher said. He leaned back and reached over to a little bookshelf upon which several gaming boards rested and took out a carved wooden trinket box, opening it up just enough that they heard the soft chime and whirr of a mechanism and then the sweet, distinctive sounds of a melody began to play.

“‘The Gambler’s Last Wager’,” said Dr Catt, naming the song.

“Mmn, I’m going to need this,” said Dr Fisher. He snapped it closed before any more of the distinctive, roistering tune could ring out, even though it was so quiet it was barely audible outside the Domicile. “You head back in the morning. I have business I must deal with elsewhere. I’ll meet you at the shop in a few days’ time.”

“You will take care, won’t you?” Dr Catt said anxiously as Fisher popped the box into his satchel and began to do up the straps.

Fisher looked back at him and grinned. “Straight home now. No dawdling for hawkers.”

Catt showed a small gap between his finger and thumb to suggest he might dawdle a little bit if the hawkers were very good.

After the door had closed and he was alone again he recovered his toast and found it was burned along one edge. He looked at it from every angle but there were no secret runes there or anything to show what the future might hold.

“Damn,” he said softly, and tossed it onto the coals. He got up and began to pack everything away as fast as he could. If he was quick enough and Tricky slow enough he could catch them up without them realising he had gone far. He wasn’t going to let Fisher go into this alone. Not if the Kinslayer was going to bring himself back the hard way.