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Ghostly furniture to either side, but it was the chair that held her gaze She crossed to it, then, without re inward as she sank down into the seat

Blinking, Seren looked about

Shadows Silence The faint s just beyond the threshold

‘Seren Pedac’s… empire,’ she whispered

And she had never felt so alone

In the city of Letheras, as companies of Gerun Eberict’s soldiers cut and chopped their way through a mass of cornered citizens who had been part of a procession of the king’s loyalists, on their way to the Eternal Domicile to cheer the investiture, citizens whose blood now spread on the cobbles to s in their tens of thousands wheeled ever closer to the old tower that had once been an Azath and was now the Hold of the Dead; as Tehol Beddict – no longer on his roof – made his way down shadowy streets on his way to Selush, at the behest of Shurq Elalle; as the child, Kettle, who had once been dead but was now verysoftly to herself and plaiting braids of grass; as the rays of the sun lengthened to slant shafts through the haze of s the birth of the empire

The end of the Seventh Closure

But the scribes were in error The Seventh Closure had yet to arrive

Two ainst a ith his arms crossed, near the old palace, the First Consort, Turudal Brizad, the god known as the Errant, looked skyward at the cloud of starlings as the bells sounded, low and tremulous

‘Unpleasant birds,’ he said to his…’

Two ic ic

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

‘A vast underground cavern yawned beneath the basin, the crust brittle and porous Could one have stood in that ancient cave, the rain would have been ceaseless Even so, eleven rivers fed into the marshlands that would one day be the city of Letheras, and the process of erosion that culminated in the collapse of the basin and the catastrophic draining of the rivers and swa one Thus,oneself of its extraordinary depth The lake is, indeed, like a roof hatch with the enor down into the deep of Burdos’ fishing boat – the sole fisher of Settle Lake – nets and all, should come as no surprise Nor should the fact the since that ti boat has plied the waters of Settle Lake In any case, I was, I believe, speaking of the sudden convergence of all those rivers, the inrush of the swa before the settlement of the area by the colonists Fellow scholars, it would have been a draht, would it not?’

Excerpt froiven by Royal Geographer Thula Redsand at the Cutter Academy 19th Annual Commence) Comments recounted by sole survivor, Ibal the Dart

THERE WAS NOTHING NATURAL IN THE DUST THAT LOOMED LIKE A behemoth above the Edur ar into positions opposite Brans Keep The ochre cloud hovered like a standing wave in a cataract, fierce winds whipping southward to either side, carrying ashes and topsoil in a dark, o Letherii armies and the barren hills behind thelory of rebirth yet again Every death was a tier in his climb to unassailable domination Resurrection, Udinaas now understood, was neither serene nor painless It came in screams, in shrieks that rent the air It came in a storm of raw trauma that tore at Rhulad’s sanity asthe same curse And there was no doubt at all in the slave’s od behind it – if it was a god in truth – was a creature of madness

This ti Udinaas had not been surprised at the horror writ on their faces with the e Rhulad’s body of s anew in his terrible eyes He had seen the witness to the dreadful truth

Perhaps, afterwards, when they had thawed – when their hearts started beating once more – there was sympathy Rhulad wept openly, with only the slave’s arm across his shoulders for co hunched and round behind them, until such time as the emperor found himself once more, the child and brother and newly blooded warrior he’d once been – before the sword found his hands – discovered, still cowering but alive within him