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Brys smiled at the jest But a taste of ashes had come to his mouth, and he inwardly quailed at the first whispers of dread

CHAPTER SEVEN

You see naught but flesh in the wrought sche – the ritual of our days our lives bedecked with precious import as if we stand unbolstered before tables feast-heavy and tapestries burdened with simple deeds are all that call us and all that we call upon as would flesh blood-swollen by soed and what I see are the bones in ghostly motion, the bones who are the slaves and they weave the solid world underfoot with every stride you take

Slaves Beneath Fisher kel Tath

ACQUITOR SEREN PEDAC WATCHED EDUR CHILDREN PLAYING AMONG the sacred trees The shadorithing in the black bark of the boles were a chaotic swirl ofthe children, to which they seemed entirely indifferent For so

She had, years ago, seen young Nerek playing amidst the scattered bones of their ancestors, and it had left her more shaken than any battlefield she had walked The scene before her now resonated in the sae, and in thethrough thethe holy grove was a broad ay, thewhich sat logs roughly carved into benches Ten paces to Seren’s left was Hull Beddict, seated with his forear his head as he stared at the ground He had neither moved nor spoken in soed greetings no longer echoed between the a faint flavour of sadness in the nored the two Letherii strangers in their s had been provided for the was to be this night, but the company had already been here for five days Normally, a wait of a day or tas to be expected It was clear that the Warlock King was sending thee with this unprecedented delay

Astill was to be found in the e She had seen Arapay, Merude, Beneda and Sollanta a the native Hiroth Den-Ratha, elt in the northernions of Edur territory, were notoriously reluctant to venture from their own lands Even so, the fact of the unified tribes could be made no more apparent and deliberate than it had been, and a truth she had known only in the abstract was given chilling confirmation in its actuality The divisive weaknesses of old were no ed

The Nerek had pulled the wagons close to the guest lodge and were now huddled ae The Tiste Edur had a h those they deehtened the Nerek in soed by the Edur’s indifference Since arriving they had seemed to wither, immune to Buruk’s exhortations, barely inclined to so one in search of Hull, in the hope of convincing hi hiun to wonder whether he’d been inflicted with so pall that had settled on the Nerek Hull Beddict looked old, as if the journey’s end had carried with it a fierce cost, and before him waited still heavier burdens

Seren Pedac pulled her gaze fro children and walked back to where Hull sat on the log bench Men were quick and stubborn with their barriers, but she’d had enough ‘Those Nerek will starve if you don’t do so’

There was no indication that he’d heard her

‘Fine,’ she snapped ‘What’s a few er Outrage She’d wanted to wound him with that, if only to confirm that there was still blood to flow But at her vicious words, he slowly looked up and met her eyes with a soft smile ‘Seren Pedac The Nerek await acceptance by the Tiste Edur, just as we do – although we Letherii are far less sensitive to the spiritual dae the Edur want us to suffer Our skin is thick, after all-’

‘Born of our fixation on our so-called infallible destiny,’ she replied ‘What of it?’

‘I used to think,’ he said, sht but an illusion Bluster and self-righteous arrogance disguising deep-seated insecurities That we lived in perpetual crisis, since self-avowed destinies wear a thousand masks and not one of them truly fits-’