‘I would argue that we can only understand how it relates to us by understanding how we, as vessels, relate to others. In fact, just last night I discovered—’

‘Any discovery made in the company of these vagrants is irredeemably tainted by—’

‘Stop interrupting me.’

Bralston’s eyes narrowed at the boy, but Dreadaeleon, for the first time, did not look away, back down or so much as flinch. He met the Librarian’s stare with a searching scowl of his own, sweeping over the man’s dark face.

‘This is far too insignificant a point for a Librarian to harp on,’ Dreadaeleon said firmly. ‘I’m hardly the first wizard to extend his studies through adventuring and I’m sure I won’t be the last, yet you act as though I’m committing some grievous breach of law just by being in these people’s company.’

Bralston’s eyebrow rose a little at that, his lip twitching as if to speak. Dreadaeleon, forcing himself not to dwell on the stupidity of the act, held up a hand to halt him.

‘You have another motive, Librarian.’

‘You are certain?’ Bralston asked, a sliver of spite in his voice.

‘I am more perceptive than you suspect.’

For all the ire he had been holding in his stare alone, for all the disappointment and despair he had seen in the boy, it was only at that moment that Bralston’s shoulders sank with a sigh, only at that moment that he looked at the boy with something more than scrutiny.

‘Perceptive enough,’ he whispered, ‘to know you’ve contracted the Decay?’

With a single word, Dreadaeleon felt the resolve flood out of him, taking everything else within him with it and leaving him nothing to stand on but quivering legs that strained to support him.

‘I don’t have it,’ he replied.

‘You do,’ Bralston insisted.

‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘No, I don’t have it.’

‘I can sense it. I can smell your blood burning and hear your bones splitting. I followed it last night. That’s how I found it. Surely, you can sense it. Surely, you know.’

‘It’s nothing,’ Dreadaeleon said.

‘Concomitant, if I can track you across an ocean through it, it is certainly not nothing. In fact, to even sense it at all, symptoms must be forming by now. Fluctuating temperatures? Loss of consciousness? Instantaneous mutation?’

‘Flaming urine,’ Dreadaeleon said, looking down.

‘The Decay,’ Bralston confirmed.

It was unthinkable, Dreadaeleon told himself. Or perhaps, he simply hadn’t wanted to think about it. He still didn’t want to. He didn’t even want to hear the word, yet it was burned into his brain.

Decay.

The indefinable disease that ravaged wizards, that unknown alteration inside their body that broke down the unseen wall that separated Venarie from body, turning a humble vessel into a twisted, tainted amalgamation of errant magic and bodily function.

It was that which turned men and women into living infernos, turned flesh to snowflakes, caused brains to cook in their own electric currents. It was the killer of wizards, the vice of heretics, the consequence for disregarding the Laws.

And he had it.

He didn’t question Bralston’s diagnosis, didn’t so much as feel the need to deny it anymore. It all made too much sense now: his sudden weakness, his use of the red stones, his altered bodily state.

But then … how did you recover last night?

A fluke, perhaps. Such things would not be unheard-of. In fact, Decay’s fluctuating effects on magic often resulted in sudden, sporadic enhancements. It all made too much sense, followed too cold a logic, too perfect an irony for him to deny it anymore.

‘What …?’ he said with a weak voice. ‘What now? What happens?’

‘Your master told you, I am sure.’

Dreadaeleon nodded weakly. ‘The Decayed report back to the Venarium for …’ He swallowed. ‘Harvesting.’

‘We are wizards. Nothing can be wasted.’

‘I understand.’

Bralston frowned, shaking his head.

‘My duties require a survey of the ocean,’ Bralston said, ‘to scan for any signs of the heretic. After that, I shall return to Cier’Djaal. You will return with me.’

Dreadaeleon nodded weakly. A pained grimace flashed across Bralston’s face.

‘It’s … it’s not so bad, really,’ Bralston said. ‘At the academy in Cier’Djaal, you’ll still be useful to the Venarium. You’ll be able to provide services in research, even after you’re gone. And until then, you’ll be cared for by people who understand you for however long you last.’

Dreadaeleon nodded again.

‘Until then …’ Bralston sought for words and, finding nothing, sighed. ‘Try to rest. It will be a difficult journey back.’

He left, disappearing into the village, and Dreadaeleon allowed himself to fall to his knees. Funny, he thought, how the very indication of a disease, the knowledge that life must end, made one suddenly feel as though it were already over.

Ridiculous, he told himself. As though you didn’t already know you’ll have to die sometime. Hell, you’ve been with adventurers. You knew death was inevitable, right? Right. At least this way, you’ll do your duty. You’ll serve the cause. You’ll enforce the Laws. You’ll further knowledge. Harvesting … well, that’s just what happens. You can’t begrudge them that. You use merroskrit. Someday, your bones and skin will be used by another wizard. Everything is balanced. Everything is a circle.

He stared down at his hands: hands that had hurled, hands that had held, hands that had touched. He estimated each one would yield about half a page, one full length of merroskrit when stitched together. He studied his hands, confirmed this guess.

And then he wept.

Lenk’s first memory of this forest had been one of silver.

That night, long ago, even as his body had been racked with pain and his mind seared with fever, the forest had been something living, something full of light and life alike. The leaves were ablaze with moonlight, as though each one had been dipped in silver. The song of birds and the chatter of beasts had rung off the trees, each branch a chime that amplified the noise and sent it echoing in his ears.

That night, a week ago, he himself had barely had a drop of life left in him, the rest of his body filled with pain and desperation. That night, every time he fell, he could barely pull himself up again. That night, he had struggled to hold on: to life, to light, to anything.

This day, he stood tall. Despite the fresh stitches in his shoulder, he felt scarcely any pain. Despite the night before, he found his body light, easily carried by legs that should have been weaker. Despite everything, he found himself with nothing to hold on to.

And in the unrelenting brightness of midmorning, the forest was a tomb.

Mournful trees gathered together to drop a funeral shroud over the forest floor, each branch and leaf trying its hardest to block any trace of light from desecrating the perfect darkness. Life was gone, the forest so silent as to suggest it had never even been there, and the only sound that Lenk could hear was the wind singing wordless dirges through the leaves.

Had life been a hallucination?

It was not a hostile darkness that consumed the forest, but a hallowed one. It did not threaten him with its shadows, but invited him in. It whispered through the branches, commented on how tired he looked, how awful it was that his friends had abandoned him and let him wander out here all alone, mused aloud just how nice it would be to sit down and rest for a while, rest forever.

And he found himself inclined to agree with the procession of trees. A week ago, when it had been brimming with life, he had fought so hard to draw into himself, to survive for a bit longer. Now, as he stood, relatively healthy and free of disease, he felt like collapsing and letting the dark shroud fall upon him.

What had changed? he wondered.

‘Reasons, mostly.’

He nodded. The voice rang clearer here. Perhaps because of the silence, perhaps because he wasn’t fighting it anymore. Perhaps because he recognised the worthiness of its freezing words.

‘Go on.’

‘Consider your motives between then and now. You clung to belief, then; a strong force, admittedly, but ultimately insubstantial. You desperately wished to believe that your companions were alive.’

‘They were, though. That kept me alive.’

‘We kept you alive,’ the voice corrected, without reproach. ‘Our determination, our will, our knowledge that duty must be upheld. That did not come from anyone else.’

‘It was the thought of them, though …’

‘It was the thought of her.’

‘And she …’

‘Lied to us, as did the forest.’

Perhaps it had, Lenk thought. Perhaps there had never been any life here. Perhaps it was always dead and dusky. The other voice, Ulbecetonth’s voice, had been with him, even back then, he realised. She was the fever in his mind, the hallucination in his eye, the will to surrender that pervaded him.

And she had bid him to seek the truth, to follow the ice.

The brook that coursed through the forest floor remained largely unchanged, its babble reduced to a quiet murmur, respectful of the darkness. He knelt and stared into it, saw empty eyes staring back at him.

‘She might have been lying.’

‘Possibly.’

‘She did infect my thoughts.’

‘She did.’

‘But then, she also said she was trying to protect me. It’s probably safe to say that I’m no longer considered worthy of protection by her anymore.’

‘We did kill a few of her children.’

‘Right. So … do I believe her?’

The voice said nothing. He merely sighed. It was a response customary enough not to warrant any greater reaction.

He stared into the water, uncertain as to what he would find. It flowed, clear and straight, as if to tell him that were answer enough. He frowned in disagreement. The last time he had stared into this river, it had frozen over, spoken in words that he heard in harsh, jagged cracks inside his head, a voice altogether different than the one that usually dwelt there.

Or had he even heard it, then? Ulbecetonth’s feverish talons were inside his skull at that point, telling him terrible things, making him see wicked things. Perhaps the voice in the ice was just one more hallucination, one more reason to give up.

But it had spoken so clearly, telling him things in a language he knew by heart and had never heard before. It had whispered to him, told him of fate, of betrayal, of duty, of … of what? He bit his teeth, furrowed his brow, forcing the memory up through his mind like a spike. And when it rose, it drained the haze from his mind, left his sight clear.

Hope.

It had bidden him to survive.

And, at that thought, the forest’s funeral ended and became death. The wind stopped. The last remnants of light vanished from above. The air became freezing cold. And with a cracking sound, the brook froze.

He looked down in it. Eyes that were not his own, nor had ever been in his head, looked back at him. They shifted, glancing farther down the river, and he followed their gaze. The ice crept up on spindly legs, gliding down the water, vanishing into the depths of the dead forest.

‘It wants me to follow,’ he said.

‘It does,’ the voice said. ‘You won’t like what you find.’

‘I know.’

But he rose and he followed, regardless, going deeper into the forest where nothing lived.

Because in the forest where nothing lived, something called to him.

Thirty-Seven

REMORSE

The bottle was without label, without an identity: an amber-coloured stranger standing in an alley made of murky glass, plying stale, sickly poison that bore no guarantee of quality or survival.

And Denaos threw it back along with his head, quaffing down the nameless liquor as though it were water. His stomach no longer protested, long since having grown used to the sudden assaults. His mind barely registered the introduction of a new intoxication, having grown too used to them.

His eyes were bleary from sleeplessness and drink as he stared across the small clearing from the log he sat on. He squinted, trying to see the trees, the leaves, the forest and only the forest.

No good.

The dead woman was still there.

Still staring.

Still smiling.

And to think, he told himself, I had gotten so good at this.

After so many years, so much meditation, so much prayer, so much liquor, he had stopped seeing her. Perhaps, in the periphery of his eye, he might have seen her peering around a corner; in a blinking moment of fitful half-sleep he might have seen the flutter of her white skirt; at the back of his head he could sometimes feel her looking at him. But those had been needle visions, fleeting pricks of a pin against his flesh that existed only in the moment he felt them.

This vision …

This was more like a knife.

A knife sunk deep into his skin.

Twisting.

He had given up trying to ignore her; by this point, it just seemed rude. She clearly wasn’t going to go away. She wasn’t going to stop staring at him, no matter how much he drank or wept or screamed.

So he stared at the gaping wound in her opened neck, the blood that wept without end down her white throat, and tried to understand.

A hallucination, probably, he thought. I’ve been eating nothing but roaches for the past week, roaches known for spraying substances out of their anuses and probably undercooked, at that. Yeah, there’s just enough weirdness about that for hallucinations to be all but certain.

Of course, he reminded himself, he had seen her long before he had even sampled the bitter flavour of roach. It had all started back on the shore, amidst the corpse-strewn ruins. It had begun as soon as he heard the whispering, felt the slimy coils of the two-mouthed, angler-laden creature wrapping about his mind.

A poison of the mind, then, he reasoned. It would make sense for a demon to be able to sink her … or its claws into my brain and leave them there. It makes as much sense as anything else we know about demons, anyway. I should probably ask someone … not Lenk, though.