Her world had turned black as night. No light rayed through the penumbra of her soul. She was alone in an abyss. A shell had closed around her. Dark insect carapace. Lifeless matter. There was no escape, but the truth was: she did not want to escape. If only I could die here, she thought. If only I could just will it to be.

  For twenty years, she had yearned for him. For twenty years, she had dreamt of the moment of embracing him once more. She had also dreamt of accusing him, of spitting in his face, of yelling and asking him why. Because however frequently she had defended his innocence, somewhere in the back of her mind had lurked the suspicion he might have done something, that he was not being taken without cause. Now she knew the truth: he was taken for what he knew.

  The sins of the past always returned.

  And he had sinned, hadn’t he? He had spared the grisly details, but the confession was plain: he had handed over a child to the monsters of the Shadow Market. He had paid the price of his soul. He deserved the torture, she thought.

  No one deserves what happened to him.

  She couldn’t see anything, now. Her vision was utterly black. The walls were too thick for reality to be permitted in. But she remembered his ruined form. The missing limbs. The hideous scars. The sunken face, eroded by time and cruelty. She had recognised him by his voice; she doubted she would have known it was him from the face alone.

  There were no tears in the blackness, only numbness. But there was sound, a gentle knocking. It sounded almost like a heartbeat. A gentle thud, thud, thud.

  “Ylia…” a voice whispered.

  “Go away!” she snarled.

  She felt suddenly feral, more like a felidae than a human woman. Her hands had tensed into claws, her teeth bared. She would kill the owner of the voice, who dared intrude upon this prison.

  “Ylia…” the voice said softly again.

  “No!” she shrieked. “No! You have no right!”

  The voice went quiet. Ylia stood alone again. The prison was absolute, mind-numbing. But numbness was what she wanted. The grief, anger, confusion, and a thousand other feelings were too much. They were a sea of clamouring madness that battered at the exterior of her new defences. I could grow to like this shell, she thought. I am safe here.

  The thudding sound came again. Someone knocking.

  “Go away!” she screamed.

  “Ylia…” the voice whispered.

  “I said go away!” she nearly tore her vocal cords with that scream, and the dome of her Shell shook and trembled.

  “I’m so sorry… I’m so sorry, Ylia…”

  It was Telos. And he was weeping. He stood on the other side of the wall. He was trying to come in, to help her. Did he not realise her devastation? Could he not comprehend the extent of her loss? Of course he cannot. He lives for himself.

  Her inner voice had thickened and darkened, like Daimonsblood. It dripped and spat its words.

  He has never loved you. Just like your father. All are murderers and traitors, harbouring secrets. You cannot trust any of them.

  She collapsed to her knees. The voice had to be right. Her father was not the man she thought he was. Telos, who reminded her so much of her father, must be the same. The night they shared had been special, for her. But now she saw it all differently. The black prisom of the Shell reflected warped images to her—his glee and delight, were they genuine happiness, or rather the triumph of a philanderer?

  If all he cared about was conquest, then why is he out there, trying to help you?

  This other voice was gentler, softer. Ylia was amazed to discover how many personalities existed within her. She’d always thought of herself rather simply: the outer exterior and the inner voice. But now she dwelt in this inner realm, she had discovered a whole new world—a peopled world. That frightened her.

  “Is this what it is like to be a Daimon?” she wondered aloud.

  Yes, the voices answered as one.

  Her blood ran cold.

  “Wait—”

  Do not be afraid, they said. We have felt your grief, so powerful was it. It reached to us through the darkness of Memory. You have been wronged child. So have we… There are sights we might show you, proofs we might give to you. You are making a mistake.

  Ylia trembled. This could not be happening. Her grief had somehow opened a link between her and the Daimons. This shell was supposed to be her inner world, her protected realm…

  Alas, only the strongest wills can prevent our entry. And you, Ylia, for all your greatness, are not strong-willed.

  She gritted her teeth.

  “What makes you say that?”

  Because you are forgiving. Time and again, the hurts that are done to you… you allow them to pass. You forgive your trespassers. Tell us, when will it end? When will you seek retribution for that which was done to you?

  She shuddered, closed her eyes. But there was no difference now between the horrid waking reality of her dislocating mind and the inner world that lived in thought. All was one horrid dream, or hallucination, made all the more vivid by the flames of loss that’d scoured her senses to within an inch of their toleration.

  “I… I can’t do this! Get out of my head!”

  The words were meant to be strong, but came out as a whimper.

  Out? There is no out, Ylia. Only in. The world you see is but a mirror of the inner realm. Soon you willsee that the mind-link is all, that—

  But the words were being interrupted. Another sound—or rather, a force—was flowing over them. It was melody, but like no melody she had ever heard in all her days. The woman singing in The Wayfarer’s Rest, even Qala’s hauntingly beautiful song at the funeral of Beltanus, both seemed mere dissonance next to the liquid majesty of this music. It was poetry and song, unearthly and yet felt in the bones. It vibrated at a frequency that made the walls of the shell tremble. She shivered, from joy, from anticipation, from terror. The sound made the deep canals of her ears quiver, as though they were the skin of a drum that’d been struck by a master’s hand.

  What is this? The Daimons screamed. What? No! Her song breaks the pall!

  Flee! Now is not the time!

  And then the walls of the shell came crashing down and light flooded in.

  Ylia blinked, standing in the middle of Scumbay, surrounded by her friends, who looked at her with terrified eyes. Concern lived there, but it was largely buried by fear. Telos and Urgal were nearest to her. Telos had one arm about her shoulders. She must have collapsed and he had caught her. She blinked—the light hurt her eyes.

  Urgal leaned over and licked her face. That made her sob, and Telos pulled her in close. Urgal purred and stroked his furred head against her. How clever he is, she thought. He knows I am distressed. He knows so much.

  She now felt selfish for ever thinking about suicide. She knew Urgal could survive without her or indeed anyone, but they had been companions for so long, and they took care of each other. And Telos… The Daimonic voices had made her doubt him, but the look on his face could not be theatre. He loved her, that much was certain.

  The music was still flowing over her, over them all. It was a woman’s voice, though like no woman of mortal origin. Ylia looked to Qala but the Qi’shathian princess was mute. No, this voice came from somewhere else.

  “W-what is happening? Ylia said.

  Telos swallowed gravely. He looked up and towards the treeline, the deep shadow, from which the song seemed to emanate as though voiced by the darkness itself.

  “I know this song…” he said. He pierced her with his gaze. “It is Nereth.”

  ***

  The Daggerfeet were tethered to stakes and pillars, and left behind. The music crove them mad. They could not be mounted, and attacked any who approached them. They had to proceed on foot.

  Urgal, however, seemed immune to the song. He heard it, for his ears twitched and his eyes burned with fire. He seemed agitated, pacing much to and fro, growling at Ylia. He wants to get going, she thought. He senses, too, that this is the end.

  The others asked her time and time again if she was prepared to continue. She was. The grief and anger were still with her, but the spell had been broken. Her father was dead. She had the closure she had been looking for. And for all his sins, he had helped them at the last.

  She buried him with the help of the others. The soil was wet and inadequate for a proper burial, but it was the best they could do, and the song relentlessly called them.

  They followed Benjamyn’s directions, heading eastward, then north, then partly doubling back on themselves by heading south west. If he had not provided such clear instructions, they would have undoubtedly met their end. For a start, he was right concerning the Hideous Towers. They saw the outskirts of ruins, erupting from the layers of time and darkness, the dissonant effigies staring at them with pupil-less eyes of stone. Something haunted those broken towers, something they had no desire to face. But more than that, the song of Nereth would have mislead them. Had they not been told to take the circuitous route, they would have followed the song directly, and been lead astray.

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  “For that is no doubt why she sings,” Telos had said grimly. “If she did not wish to be found while she bathed, why then would she sing? No, she is like the sirens. She draws men and women to their Fate.”

  “But why?” Ylia whispered. “Surely things would have been simpler for her had you never found her?”

  Telos’s grimace became a dark smile.

  “I have pondered this a long time. I only have one answer: she takes pleasure in it.”

  “That may be true, Telos,” Jubal rumbled. He, of all their party, seemed least perturbed by the music. Where the men and women of Julya’s party walked as though in a trace, staring into the shadows as though longing to flee into its embrace, and Qala constantly shivered, as though the alien chords were affecting her nerves, Jubal walked unhindered, his brow set like a capstone upon a pyramid. “But remember what I told you when we first met. She is the Fate-shaper. Hers if the gift—if not of foresight—of peering into ambiguities and making them certain. She has an end in mind. The end is all she sees.”

  “My question is this…” Qala said, speaking through gritted teeth, her normally sing-song voice distorted with the effort of concentrating as the song taxed her mind. “Does she sing for us or another?”

  “We are about to find out,” Telos said.

  He was right. After another half-hour, in which their already frayed nerves were stretched to breaking point, they reached a clearing. They would have heard the waterfall much sooner, had not Nereth’s song drowned all else. But this close, they could not but hear the thundering gush as water plummeted from fifty feet.

  The lake into which it plunged was expansive, shimmering. Those rainbow fish darted and flashed beneath the surface. The lake drained off into a river, the same one they had found much farther south. Several rocks protruded from out of the water, forming perfect places for bathers to languish.

  And upon one such stone there lay a woman. Ylia had always been open to female beauty, though she had never ultimately lain with a woman. But this woman could have claimed her. She was a luminous giantess. Crow-black hair and resplendent flesh. Her eyes were diadems that winked and flashed. Beltanus had been a mighty Engine of a man, a towering inferno of power. This being was something else. She seemed magically wrought, made from starlight hardened in the crucible of earth. Ylia’s mouth dropped open. And she was not the only one. Heploss, Jacinth, and the men at Julya’s back staggered as they beheld her. Jubal made a noise of choking wonderment. Qala began to pray, uttering protestations to the Kwei-Shin, most notably Koronzon, for protection.

  Only Telos seemed unmoved. He strode forward to the head of their pack. Urgal leapt to his side, snarling and growling like he had done with Beltanus. He doesn’t fear gods, Ylia thought.

  Nereth’s song at last ceased. Ylia felt dizzy with its absence. The goddess drew in her languorous, over-long limbs and stood in the centre of the lake. She peered at them, a sneer coming to her lips. So beautiful but so awful too, Ylia thought. She could never love anyone. She only knows disdain. Perhaps that was a consequence of her gift? If one were to know the future, how could one become attached to anything? To live eternal in the midst of impermanence was hard enough. But to know the ends of things? That was madness.

  Nereth clicked her fingers and robes formed from the shimmering air, clothing her in indigo translucence. Afterimages lingered on her vision, as they had when she had looked too long at the screens in Beltranus’s ship.

  “You are not the fish I hoped to lure,” Nereth said, coldly. That surprised Ylia, both the admission of ignorance the ignorance itself. Did Nereth not see all ends, then? She recalled her words to Qala in the Mermaid Palace: Doom isn’t certain. Not yet.

  Nereth cocked her head. “You have come far, Telos Daggeron, since our meeting in Yestermere. That much I will admit. But you are a fool to have come here.”

  Telos strode forward, reaching the edge of the water. Urgal hissed and spat by his side.

  “No, Nereth. You are the fool. A fool to think you could control the Daimons. A fool to think you could eradicate humanity. You have toyed with Fate long enough. Now, we claim it back.”

  Nereth’s laughter rang throughout the glade, made the waters stir and ripple, the fish flee to the deep darkness of the pool.

  “What a pretty speech! What swaggering indolence! Do you think because Beltanus has inserted some tiny vestige of our power into your feeble frame that this makes you a god? Do you even know what a god is? You understand not even the first principles of magic, of our nature. You are a blindman staggering about upon a precipice. I need only touch you and you shall fall.”

  “He may not understand magic, but I do.” Qala stepped forward. Ylia trembled to see the Qi’shathian princess meet the gaze of a full blown goddess. The sternness of her face was a thing of immortal wonderment, like the Colossus rising above ancient Sumyr. Qala blazed. “I have studied magic my whole life, but in the last few months, I have found my abilities pushed to their absolute limits. And I believe I have stumbled upon truths you desire hidden.”

  Nereth sneered.

  “Spare me your incoherent theories. Spare me all your talk.” Nereth’s eyes swept over the party, and one by one the members of their fellowship were harrowed. Heploss, Jacinth, and the others were first to avert their gaze. Julya held on boldly but even she bowed her head eventually, weeping inconsolably and silently. Jubal gritted his teeth and snorted, but he too turned away. Telos and Qala met her eyes longest but trembled head to toe as though the act were torture.

  Ylia was last to feel Nereth’s gaze. It pierced her like a physical blade. She felt stripped and naked, as though an inexpert surgeon were rummaging around in the confines of her skull.

  When the pain subsided, she was sobbing like Julya. She felt the profound enormity of her unworthiness. Who was she to stand here, before a goddess? A tavern-owner and a whore. A silly little girl. A nobody.

  But then something strange happened. Nereth’s baleful look fell fully upon Urgal—and stopped. Her face contorted. Her eyes widened.

  “Y-you! You cannot be here!” she spat.

  Nereth looked wildly about now, as though suspecting unseen agents. It was as though they had produced a rabbit out of a hat like some carnival performer. Only, the rabbit was contagious with some filthy disease. Horror and awe and—dare Ylia say it—fear.

  “No!” Nereth hissed. She reached for something upon her wrist.

  But Urgal was faster.

  The felidae suddenly bounded forward. Ylia screamed but Urgal paid her no heed.

  He sprinted through the shallows, then bounded onto a stone. With a second leap he cleared a terrific distance, his agility astonishing even for a felidae. Nereth took a strange metal device from her belt, similar to the spear Telos had once possessed, and suddenly it was unfurling into a weapon.

  “No!” Ylia cried.

  The staff—ten feet in length—swung. But the goddess, for all her power, speed, and foresight, missed.

  Urgal landed. Ylia expected the cat to savage Nereth, but instead he reached out and placed a single paw upon her bare foot.

  “No!” Now Nereth was the one screaming, recoiling.

  And Urgal—Urgal was changing.

  First he grew. Then fur fell out. His muscles remained, if anything expanding, shifting. His legs extended and straightened, the knees bending the other way. His head raised up.

  He was man-shaped, but greater than a man. Larger even than Nereth. An eleven-foot giant. He might have been the most beautiful, well-muscled male Ylia had ever seen, except that he was too muscled. Obscene. Grotesque, even. His hands were larger than dinner plates and the fingers looked capable of crushing a human spine. His teeth were feline, fanged. His eyes were flaming coals. His hair was a fiery orange and long, past the collarbone—like Urgal’s mane had been. Bestial, he hunched over, growling and roaring with the pain of his transformation.

  “Sister!” the man spat. “How I have longed for this day!”

  Nereth answered him with a scream, swinging her staff. The man—who must be another god—moved to intercept the staff, but clearly he was still groggy from his change, uncertain of his limbs and their proportions. The staff connected with the side of his head and there was a flash of blue-white light. He screamed and flew backward, landing with a crash in the water, face-up, floating. He did not stir.

  Ylia blinked. She was too stunned to speak. She could not comprehend what she had just seen.

  Urgal… Urgal changed into… into a man. No, a god! He was a god!

  Nereth breathed heavily, letting out a sigh of relief. The god drifted unconscious across the lake, carried by the momentum of Nereth’s blow, coming to rest on a far beach. He looked not dead but asleep. His massive chest rose and fell.

  Urgal!

  Nereth turned on them, a snarl contorting her features.

  “Well, you are full of surprises. But it matters not. The time has come to end this silly game.”

  Telos now leapt onto the stone protruding from the water. He drew Darkbite, which gleamed felly in the dying light. He was so small compared to her. And yet, Ylia sensed power radiating from him.

  “Pray with me,” Qala whispered.

  “What?” Ylia said, taken aback.

  “The gods…” Qala whispered quickly. “They are creatures of flesh and blood, but there is also some other matter to them, maybe in the blood. And this matter… it responds to sound, to words, to meaning.”

  “I don’t…”

  “This is how magic works!” Qala hissed, urgently. “It is prayer, invocation. The name of the god draws the essence of the god.”

  Ylia’s eyes widened.

  “And Telos is now a god!”

  Qala nodded.

  “His power waxes with us, with our belief. We must pray to him now. Increase him. It is our only chance.”

  But Nereth stared at Telos, and a cruel smile curved her mouth.

  “You think that I would chance all my carefully laid plans in a crude brawl?” She sneered. “You may bear the Godseed, but you have much to learn about being a god, Telos!”

  She reached over and touched her wrist. There, a bracelet formed from nothingness, bearing a black stone upon it. The amulet flashed once, and the black stone illuminated. Shadows spread from Nereth’s back, condensed, became solid.

  Wings.

  The huge pinions of a raven spread, filling the glade. They glistened with a thousand hues of onyx, shimmering and Void-like. Wider and wider they spread, until they seemed to cover not just the glade, but all of Memory, blotting out the sun.

  “Farewell, Telos.”

  Nereth beat her wings once and she rocketed in the sky with unnatural speed. There, clouds parted to reveal the gunmental, warped hull of a sky-ship.

  “No!” Telos cried. “No! Ylia, shoot her!”

  Ylia unslung her bow, fitted an arrow, and aimed. But she was far, far too slow. Nereth had gained the sanctuary of her ship, far higher than a bow could accurately shoot. It was over. There would be no showdown, no righting of wrongs. They had failed.

  “Telos… I’m… I’m so sorry,” Ylia cried.

  Telos turned, opened his mouth.

  But no words came out, for the ground beneath them had started to rumble violently.

  “An earthquake?” Julya said. “Here?”

  “Telos, back!” Jubal roared.

  The ground beneath Telos opened and erupted, and from the pit emerged something darker even than Nereth’s wings. Armoured, serpentine, and taller than the towers of Memory, it loomed over them, more godlike than the god herself, a monolith of dark immensity, speaking with a mouth of razor-fangs.

  Telos somersaulted backward, his super-enhanced agility saving his life once more. Her landed on the shoreline, while the lake itself imploded, water and earth and wildlife sucked down into an oblivion of sound and groaning fury.

  “TELOS!” the worm cried, words emerging where there should not be words. That was more horrifying to Ylia than even the shape of the thing. “TELOS DAGGERON. AT LAST, YOU HAVE COME. AT LAST, WE ARE MET. HOW I HAVE LONGED FOR THIS DAY, THIEF!”

  Ylia’s eyes widened for a second time. Colours swam before her vision. She felt faint. Qala reached out and gripped her arm, supporting her. This could not be. Of all the impossibilities and horrors of the last few hours, one shock after another and each of seismic intensity, this was the maddest and deepest of all.

  The Warden had come.