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Brys glanced at the pot ‘There’s wine in it, isn’t there?’

‘Indeed Only the best, at that’

‘Fine Half a bowl’

Tehol and Bugg exchanged pleased slass stands between us The thin face of otherness Risen into difference These sibling worlds You cannot reach through Or pierce this shade so distinct As to lass stands And that is more than all And the between us Gropes but never finds Focus or evenThe between us is ever lost In that barrier of darkness When backs are turned And we do littleourselves

Preface to The Nerek Absolution Myrkas Preadict

LIGHT AND HEAT ROSE IN WAVES FROM THE ROCK, SWIRLED re the narrow track The wraiths had fled to cracks and fissures and huddled there now, like bats awaiting dusk Seren Pedac paused to await Buruk She set her pack down, then tugged at the sweat-sodden, quilted padding beneath her ar it peel away fro less than half her kit, the rest strapped onto the pack, yet it still dragged at her after the long climb to the su frooing back to check on her charge Then, faintly, ca sounds

The poor man

They had been hounded by the wraiths the entire way The ghostly creatures itated and restless Sleep was difficult, and the constantin their peripheral vision, the whispered rustling through their calared a ritty sweat from her brow and walked a few paces ahead on the trail They were almost out of Edur territory Another thousand paces After that, another day’s worth of descent to the river Without the wagons, they would then be able to hire a river boat to take them the rest of the way down to Trate Another day for that

And then? Will he still hold me to the contract ? It seemed pointless, and so she had assumed he would simply release her, at least for the duration of the war, and she would be free to journey back to Letheras But Buruk the Pale had said nothing of that In fact, he had not said e

She turned as he clambered onto the summit’s flat stretch Clothed in dust and streaks of sweat, beneath them a deeply flushed face and neck Seren walked back towards hihed, then asked, ‘Why?’ The as a vicious growl

‘Because we need it, Buruk’

‘You don’t And why speak for et us to the river’