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Glittering streams ran down the raw stone before him Red-stained calcretions limned the surface here and there Flea-like insects skipped across the surface The scrapes left by the passage of Rhulad and Fear glistened in the fading light, ragged furroounding all that clung to the rock
Knot to knot, he went down the rope, the darkness deepening around hirew cool and damp, then cold Then his feet struck mossy boulders, and hands reached out to steady hiled to ht a lantern’
‘There is light from the Stone Bowl,’ Fear said ‘An Elder Warren Kaschan’
‘That warren is dead,’ Trull said ‘Destroyed by Father Shadon hand’
‘Its children are dead, brother, but the sorcery lingers Have your eyes adjusted? Can you see the ground before you?’
A tu water between them ‘I can’
‘Then follow me’
Theywas treacherous, forcing them to proceed slowly Dead branches festooned with mushrooms and moss Trull saw a pallid, hairless rodent of so in its wake ‘This is the Betrayer’s realrunted ‘More than you know, brother’
‘So lies ahead,’ Rhulad said in a whisper
Vast, towering shapes Standing stones, devoid of lichen or ely textured, made, Trull realized as they drew closer, to resemble the bark of the Blackwood Thick roots coiled out fro out to entith those of the stones to each side Beyond, the ground fell away in a broad depression, froht leaked likestones and they halted at the pit’s edge
The roots writhed doard, and woven in their midst were bones Thousands upon thousands Trull saw Kaschan, the feared ancient enes And bones that clearly belonged to the Tiste A-bones from Wyval, and, at the very base, the massive skull of an Eleint, the broad, flat bone of its forehead crushed inward, as if by the blow of a gigantic, gauntleted fist
Leafless scrub had grown up frorey and clenching Then the breath hissed between Trull’s teeth The scrub was stone, growing not in thewood
‘Kaschan sorcery,’ Fear said after a time, ‘is born of sounds our ears cannot hear, fors that hold all round Sounds that bend and stretch light, as a tidal inflow up a river is drawn apart at theWith this sorcery, they fashioned fortresses of stone that rode the sky like clouds With this sorcery, they turned Darkness in upon itself with a hunger none who caer that fed first and foreely muted as he spoke ‘Kaschan sorcery was sent into the warren of Mother Dark, like a plague Thus was sealed the gate from Kurald Galain to every other realm Thus was Mother Dark driven into the very core of the Abyss, witness to an endless swirl of light surrounding her – all that she would one day devour, until the last speck ofMother Dark Thus the Kaschan, who are long dead, set upon Mother Dark a ritual that will end in her ht to cast Shadow, and so Shadow too is doomed to die
‘When Scabandari Bloodeye discovered what they had done, it was too late The end, the death of the Abyss, cannot be averted The journey of all that exists repeats on every scale, brothers From those realms too small for us to see, to the Abyss itself The Kaschan locked all things into e towards extinction This was their vengeance An act born, perhaps, of despair Or the fiercest hatred iinable Witness to their own extinction, they forced all else to share that fate’
His brothers were silent The dull echoes of Fear’s last words faded away
Then Rhulad grunted ‘I see no signs of this final convergence, Fear’
‘A distant death, aye More distant than one could iine Yet it will come’
‘And what is that to us?’
‘The Tiste Invasions drove the Kaschan to their last act Father Shadow earned the enod, of every ascendant Because of the Kaschan ritual, the eternal gaht and Shadoould one day end And with it, all of existence’ He faced his brothers ‘I tell you this secret knowledge so that you will better understand what happened here, as done And why Hannan Mosag speaks of enemies far beyond the mortal Letherii’