THERE IS A SILENCE FAR deeper than the mere absence of sound. It can settle on a scene despite, say, the thin wail of a woman weeping. Even the laboured breathing of someone in severe pain does little to disturb such stillness. This silence is a calm, black pool of quiet. It is the sound of shock.

Noetos remembered all too well what such silence sounded like. He had experienced it in the Summer Palace, in the aftermath of the slaughter of the Neherian gentry. It was a stunned disbelief at what had happened coupled with an expectation that he would soon wake up to find nothing of the sort had occurred. But, of course, it had.

No waking from this nightmare.

He watched from a distance as his travelling companions stared at each other, eyes wide, saying nothing. When finally they began to move, it was in slow motion, hands fluttering with the need to do something but not knowing what. The fisherman had been nothing but an observer of the events leading to a man’s castra-tion and the violent death of the one who had wielded the knife, but he could help now with restoring calm. Guidance, order and leadership were what were needed. He made his way towards the tight knot of people, ready to assist.

‘He is gone.’ The one-eyed priest’s voice was a ripple of sound breaking the deep silence as though a pebble had been dropped in a pool.

‘Yes,’ said Duon, looking up, his hand on Dryman’s unmoving chest. ‘He’s gone, all praise to the gods.’ This was followed by a grimace, no doubt as he realised anew just whom he was praising.

Noetos strode across the sandy floor of the enclosure, and his two children followed him. Three piles made up of enormous slabs of rock were the only interruption to the smooth floor, apart from the figures gathered around the dead, the injured and the maimed. And a smaller rock soaked in blood.

The thought came to him that of the three groups drawn together in the contention of the gods, his had fared the worst. Gawl and Dagla were dead. Of the miners, only Tumar and Seren remained. The Fossan fishermen Sautea and Mustar were still with him, but they had come north because of Arathé, not him, and might well leave at any moment. Omiy the alchemist had betrayed him, Bregor had left him and Noetos had not succeeded in getting Cylene to join him. True, the Amaqi had just been reduced from four to three with the death of Dryman, but that had been their only loss.

If you don’t count the loss of thirty thousand soldiers, he reminded himself. Even I haven’t failed that spectacularly.

The Falthans had done best. All eight remained alive, though Stella had apparently lost an arm – she used some form of magic to disguise this, but it was only intermittently effective – and the priest an eye. They haven’t had whirlwinds and Neherians to cope with. He frowned. But now we all have to deal with angry gods and mysterious voices in people’s heads, as well as blood and death delivered by human hands.

‘I didn’t mean the mercenary,’ Conal snapped. ‘The Most High, the Father, he is gone. I have my own voice back again. And I won’t be using it to praise any gods, that’s for certain.’

‘What is it like, priest?’ Heredrew asked him, his voice decep-tively gentle. ‘What does it feel like being forced to do the bidding of the Most High? Do I detect anger, friend? Unhappiness at being made the mouthpiece of a god?’

Conal scowled and turned away. No doubt the continuation of some irrelevant debate, Noetos thought. Some people would argue at a graveside. More important than any argument were the three figures at the centre of the gathering: the dead mercenary, who had been some sort of avatar for one of the gods; the maimed servant, who lay on his back, his breath rasping; and the grieving cosmographer.

It was this last person Noetos made towards. Lenares always made him uncomfortable with her uncanny way of seeing things, her facility with numbers, and her lack of the simple social graces that kept people from hurting each other unintentionally. And in that last, hypocrite, how is she different from you? She was un-predictable, and Noetos was not the only one who found her difficult, he was sure. He was able to overcome his reluctance and approach her not because of some kindness of heart, but because of his regard for Cylene, her twin. The sister Lenares hadn’t yet met.

‘Are you all right, Lenares?’ he asked her.

She looked up at him from where she knelt. ‘Am I all right?’ Those wide eyes, their shape so familiar to him – no, not hers, her sister’s – blinked slowly once, twice, thrice. Noetos wondered whether he ought to repeat the question. Had it not been simple enough?

‘Of course she’s not all right, Father,’ Anomer said from beside him, then turned to the girl. ‘Here, come with us, Lenares. You need food and drink. We’ll talk of what we should do about all this after you’ve eaten.’

He stretched down an arm. Hesitantly she took it, although her white face and hurt eyes remained totally focused on Torve.

‘I don’t want to leave him,’ she said.

‘Let those skilled in healing tend him. You should let us tend you.’

Clearly reluctant, Lenares allowed herself to be led away a short distance from Torve, but kept her head turned so the Omeran would not be out of her sight for a moment. Despite her oft-expressed dislike of being touched, she made no motion to prevent Anomer rearranging her dishevelled clothing. She seemed not to notice it.

That’s the other reason she unnerves me, Noetos thought. He had never seen anyone able to devote themselves so completely to one thing at the expense of everything else.

The Omeran servant was in poor condition. His wound had been cauterised but, however well the procedure had been done, the red mess between his legs was clearly giving him intense pain. Noetos was not certain what had happened to precipitate this, but it seemed the mercenary had discovered Torve and Lenares engaged in an intimate act – the intimate act, apparently – and had decided to castrate the fellow.

‘Who was this Dryman, that he could do this to you?’ Noetos asked.

Torve offered no reply.

Captain Duon lowered himself to his haunches with a groan. ‘Aye, that’s the question. I may have some answers for you. It is time to lay everything out for all to hear, I think. Then we can judge what must be done.’

‘Here?’ Arathé asked, her hands flashing. ‘Are we safe here? Won’t the gods hear our conversation?’

‘Who knows?’ the southerner replied. ‘I doubt we’re safe anywhere. But I think we may have a short time to ourselves before the gods return to resume their meddling. The Father has achieved his purpose, and the Son and Daughter are disembodied for now. We must take this time to decide what we are to do next, and for that you need to hear what I have to say.’

Stella raised her head from bending over another prone figure. ‘I do not mean to offend,’ she said, ‘but whatever answers you provide may be somewhat suspect. Before we hear from you, we need to discuss the matter of the voice in your head. I am wary of our plans being overheard.’ 

‘But I can assure you—’ 

Stella shut him up with a wave of her left arm. ‘Later. First we attend to the injured. There is a man over here bleeding from the head. His brother does not seem capable of dealing with him.’

‘You know who those two are, don’t you?’ her guardsman growled. ‘Two of the Umerta boys. Lenares’ brothers. The southerners apparently hired them as porters.’

There was the briefest quiver in the woman’s arm, the smallest suggestion that she wanted to withdraw, but she said, ‘And now they are hurt. We must care for them nonetheless.’ 

‘Like they cared for you?’ Noetos said, pointing at her missing forearm and hand.

‘That . . . wasn’t the Umertas.’

Beside her, the guardsman stared at his feet.

‘More to talk about,’ said Noetos. ‘Or perhaps more secrets. Well, if we are to cleanse and bind these wounds, we need water and cloth.’

‘In hand,’ the guardsman said. ‘Kilfor and his father have gone back to one of the other rooms in this place. There was a pool of cold water there. There’s plenty of cloth in our packs, spare clothes and the like. We have all we need.’

So there was nothing for Noetos to do but sit and wait. Others attended those who needed help, others made decisions, others did the things necessary for human survival and comfort. He sat on the sand and ate food handed to him, then lay down and tried to rest, while all around him people busied themselves.

He found the experience of not being needed profoundly unsettling.

An indeterminate time later – it seemed like an hour, but time felt greasy here and it could have been a few minutes or a day or more – Stella asked Duon to explain the voice in his head. Noetos pricked up his ears at this. He’d been expecting, and dreading, this confrontation and the likely outcome.

‘We’ll speak Bhrudwan,’ Stella said as the others trooped over to where she sat. ‘We’ve all picked up enough of it over these last few months to understand each other.’

Noetos acknowledged the point as he raised himself to his elbows, then his feet, and followed the others. Most of the Falthans spoke the Bhrudwan common tongue with something approaching fluency, and even the southerners seemed able to understand it, though occasionally they struggled to make themselves understood. Some common language root, no doubt, made it easier to learn.

 More evidence to support the story of the three gods originating from the same place, he supposed.

Arathé sat to one side of Duon, Conal to the other. Torve lay quietly nearby, only the bunching of his facial muscles betraying his pain. The remainder of the travellers gathered in a group facing the three of them. As though they are to be judged, Noetos thought.

Perhaps Duon felt that too. ‘There’s no conspiracy here,’ he said. ‘We kept nothing from you. It’s taken us a long time to realise what is going on in our heads, and even longer to work out that each of us shared the phenomenon with two others.’

‘So what is it?’ the old scholar Phemanderac asked in his reedy voice. ‘Whose voice speaks in your mind?’

Duon sighed and scratched at his unshaven chin, making a rasping sound. ‘More than two years ago now all three of us were in the Undying Man’s fortress of Andratan at the same time. I was visiting as an emissary of the Amaqi Emperor, while Arathé had gone there to learn magic. Conal—’

‘I’ll tell it myself,’ the priest snapped. ‘I was there as an emissary of sorts, part of a delegation from the Koinobia, the religious movement based in Instruere that some know as the Halites.’

‘A spy,’ Phemanderac said.

Conal denied it, but no one was fooled. With a voice cloaked in anger at all the injustices visited upon him, the priest described his heroism and courage in playing his part to undermine the Undying Man. The gist of it, at least as it seemed to Noetos, was that the Father – referred to as the Most High – had used the priest as a mouthpiece. Then, some time after that, months perhaps, he began to have thoughts that were not his own.

‘Thoughts about women?’ Sauxa asked neutrally. ‘Perfectly natural, son. We all have them.’ His son spluttered a laugh.

‘Not about women,’ Conal said, though he coloured. ‘I began to harbour rebellious thoughts about the Koinobia and my master, the Archpriest.’

‘Also perfectly natural,’ muttered Stella. Noetos doubted the priest heard the woman’s words.

‘The point is,’ Duon said, ‘all three of us spent time in Andratan concurrently, and all three of us have since experienced remark-ably similar symptoms. A cynical voice in our heads, goading us to do things to its advantage. A supply of superhuman strength, though not under our control. I experienced it in the fisherman’s company.’ He nodded to Noetos, who sensed what was coming. ‘We wiped out more than a hundred enemies between us, many of them heavily armed.’

The words were out before Noetos could bend the conversa-tion away from the subject. He’d rather it was forgotten; he was trying to forget it himself.

Arathé waved her hands and spoke in her distorted voice. ‘I survived a knife in the back,’ she told them while Anomer translated. ‘The voice exercised magic to keep me alive and heal me quickly.’

She then had to explain the context of her statement to those not familiar with the story of what had happened to her first in Andratan and then months later in Fossa. Questions followed, one or two of them vehemently expressed, particularly from Heredrew the Falthan. Noetos could think of no reason why the man should be so particularly concerned.

Robal then described how Conal had rescued Stella from the rogue Lord of Fear. ‘Never seen such strength and speed,’ the guardsman told them. ‘And afterwards the priest seemed unaware of what he had done.’

More questions followed, another story painstakingly told, more time wasted. This was followed by an account of Conal’s attempt to kill Stella and Heredrew in some Falthan city. This story actu-ally begged a few questions, but Noetos forbore. He was becoming increasingly uneasy about the amount of time they were spending in the House of the Gods. Though he knew it was irrational, though he acknowledged the gods would be able to find them anywhere they went, he still felt vulnerable here. And all the while a dead body lay on the sand a short distance away.

‘So,’ he summarised, before anyone else could launch off into yet another tale, ‘you all hear the voice of someone you do not know. He’s a magician, able to lend you powers you don’t normally have. And, by all accounts, he does not necessarily have our best interests at heart.’

Three nods.

‘You think someone in Andratan put something in your heads.’ Again, three nods. 

‘Then there’s only one solution,’ he said, the words forming before he could question them. Pre-empting the obvious conclusion. ‘You three need to leave the rest of us. It is too dangerous for you to remain.’

There was a general indrawing of breath.

‘Father!’ his son cried out. ‘How can you even suggest such a thing?’ 

Noetos found himself asking the same question. His own daughter, whom he’d thought lost! Yet he had a responsibility to everyone here. 

‘Having a presence amongst us capable of slaying anyone without a moment’s warning is simply intolerable,’ he said.

‘There are many among us with such power,’ growled Heredrew from somewhere behind him, in a voice that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

‘You have that power yourself!’ Duon shouted at the fisherman. ‘Must I tell everyone here all the details of what happened in the Summer Palace at Raceme? You drew power from a voice in your head!’

This was not where he wanted the conversation to go. ‘That magic came from the sacrifice of my daughter, who acted as a conduit for hundreds of refugees from the city,’ he said angrily. ‘A perfectly legitimate exercise of her magical powers. Nothing at all like yours.’

He decided not to mention that the voice in her head might well be able to reach him through her. Might even have assisted him in the Summer Palace. If the others couldn’t figure that out, he’d not help them.

‘You’d drive your own daughter away?’ This from Stella, in the gentlest of voices.

‘I do not see it as driving anyone away,’ Noetos replied wearily, aware – and secretly grateful – that he was going to lose this argument. ‘Rather, we are simply depriving our enemy of information. How can we help our three friends if our every plan is overheard by the voice in their heads?’

‘Spoken like a soldier,’ said Stella. ‘Perhaps I’d feel more comfortable were you to speak like a father.’ She stared at him with something akin to loathing on her face.

Why do people always follow sentiment rather than common sense?

He gave it one more try. ‘As her father, I want Arathé to have the best chance of getting free of this curse that has her in its grip. If that means sending her away – in the company of a priest and a very capable soldier, I remind you – so we can work out in secret how to save her, then that is what, as a father, I ought to do. If I give in to sentiment and keep her here beside me, we all might lose our lives.’

Incredibly, as he scanned his fellow travellers, he found himself facing a dozen hardened expressions. They don’t understand. None of them, it seemed, could take the tough decisions. His son’s atti-tude he could comprehend, but the others were leaders. This ought to be the sort of equation they dealt with on a daily basis. He wondered at the scrupulousness that forced him to argue for what was right and against what he wanted. Was it some failure in him; or was their rejection of his argument their failing?

They hate me, he realised. They think me unfeeling. They will never follow me.

‘You should not send them away,’ said Lenares. ‘If you send them away they will be hurt. The hole in the world will swallow them up. We need to protect them.’

Murmurs of agreement rippled across the group.

‘Very  well,’  Noetos  said,  trying  to  contain  his  anger  and  hide his relief. ‘But this decision should be reviewed often. And those three’ – his finger punched the air in their direction – ‘must report to us every word this voice speaks in their minds. No more secrets.’ Without  waiting  for  a  reply,  he  rose  from  his  position  at  the side  of  the  gathering  and  strode  rapidly  away  across  the  sand, scuffing at the dirt. Walking off his frustration and confusion, just as he had done in Fossa after every argument with Opuntia. Just as unsuccessfully.

He returned a few minutes later – it felt like a few minutes later – to find a fire lit and people eating food that would surely have taken far longer than a few minutes to prepare. Time itself was playing tricks here; but then it was the House of the Gods, in which the rooms moved about and the entrances could seemingly be anywhere. He squatted down near the fire.

‘Now, to the question you asked earlier,’ Captain Duon said, drawing his gaze across those gathered around the fire and nodding to Noetos. Duon’s features were pinched, his lips pursed, as though about to deliver unwelcome news. ‘Who was Dryman?’

‘He was a liar,’ Lenares said. ‘An evil and cruel man. Look what he did to my Torve!’

Duon was clearly familiar with interruptions from the young cosmographer. ‘Yes, he was a liar, but even more, he was a deceiver. Lenares, you have a great gift, but you did not penetrate Dryman’s disguise.’ His voice was gentle. ‘That is because Dryman had help from a god. You saw how he died. The Father, through Heredrew and Stella, confronted Dryman and spoke to him as the Son. The Father tricked his Son and killed the body he inhabited, Dryman’s body, but the god escaped before Dryman died and so continues to live.’

‘The Father called him Keppia,’ Lenares said. ‘Keppia spoke to the Daughter through Dryman’s lips, and she called him her brother. Yes, he was the Son, Torve told me that.’ Her brow crinkled in concentration. ‘But I don’t know how he managed to hide it from me for so long.’

‘There’s more, Lenares.’ Duon sighed. ‘Dryman was the Emperor of Elamaq.’

Her eyes opened wide; Noetos could not remember seeing her surprised. ‘I know, Torve told me that too. He tried to tell me for weeks, though I didn’t understand. But how did you work it out?’ ‘I  overheard  him  talking  with  Torve,’  Duon  said.  ‘Only  a  few days  ago,  or  I  would  have  warned  everyone.  I’m  sorry  I  didn’t reason this through sooner. In fact, I now have reason to believe the Emperor planned all this well in advance of us leaving Talamaq.’

Lenares stood and started to pace. ‘The . . . No, I would have . . .

But I saw the Emperor on the balcony as the expedition left.’ She paused a moment. ‘No. I saw someone on the balcony. Not the Emperor. Someone pretending to be the Emperor.’ She pulled at her lip. ‘Therefore the Emperor must have been somewhere else. Someone took his place because . . . because the Emperor wanted to leave Talamaq without people knowing. He left with us. Disguised himself as Dryman the mercenary, and I could not tell because I’ve never seen the Emperor’s true face. He always had it hidden behind a golden mask. I knew something was wrong though. I just didn’t know what.’ 

She rubbed at her reddened eyes, then turned away. Everyone watched quietly as she walked the few steps to where the body of the mercenary lay wrapped in cloth. No one spoke.

They all know this is hers to reason out, Noetos realised. She’s the one who prides herself on knowing secret truths about people from their numbers. The others are giving her the opportunity to deal with the blow to her pride.

‘Look,’ she said as she pulled aside the cloth covering the corpse’s bloody face. ‘There’s the callus where his mask rested on the bridge of his nose. Why didn’t I see? I can see now! All the clues were there. Torve tried to tell me, but for so long he could not. I wondered why, I thought Torve was keeping secrets.’ She pulled the cloth over the face. ‘But you weren’t,’ she said, turning to the Omeran. ‘You weren’t. I am sorry, Torve. You had to obey him. You wanted to tell me. But I couldn’t work it out! And because I couldn’t work it out, he cut you.’

‘I tried,’ Torve said, his voice little more than a croak. ‘I tried to tell you.’

The man needs water, Noetos thought, but before the thought was fully formed Stella reached out with a skin. 

The Omeran handed back the water skin, cleared his throat and continued. ‘I didn’t know who he was either, until he revealed himself the night we stayed with the Children of the Desert.’ Noetos had no idea what Torve referred to. ‘That child – I’m so sorry, Lenares, but the Emperor commanded me and I could not disobey him.’

‘I understand,’ Lenares whispered. ‘You are Omeran.’

‘Torve, you should not have to tell this,’ said Duon. ‘But it must be  told,  so  allow  me  to  continue.  The  Emperor  seems  to  have conceived a desire to torture innocent people, and he forced his servant Torve to accompany him on their expeditions. I overheard him  commanding  Torve  to  obey  him  in  this,  which  was  when  I began to piece this together. Too late to be of any use, regrettably.’ ‘We  tortured  hundreds  of  people,’  Torve  said,  his  eyes  closed, his voice like stone grating on stone. ‘The innocent and the guilty. Anyone unfortunate enough to find themselves in the dungeons of  Talamaq  Palace.  My  master  kept  notes.  He . . . he  wanted  to discover the secrets of death.’

‘Because he wanted to live forever,’ Lenares said triumphantly. ‘I saw that when I first met him.’

‘Yes. I did not want to help him, but he was my lord. Despite appearances, he was a good master. He treated me like a human, a real person, and even loved me in his own way. He loved me more than he loved anyone else.’ The man’s voice broke. ‘I loved him in return. He made me into more than any Omeran has been for a thousand years. He taught me how to read, gave me books, and granted me access to the Great Library. He dressed me in finery and took me to his court, despite the murmurs from the Alliances. He relied on my counsel. I would have done almost anything for him, even without the need to obey him. But not torture people; I didn’t ever want to do that, even though—’ He swallowed, lowered his face, then looked up again a moment later, his eyes clouded. ‘I enjoyed the science of death, the thoughts it generated, the speculations we shared as we took people through the gates of death.’ He lowered his head and hissed, whether in pain or heartache, Noetos could not tell.

‘When he sent me north with his army I was saddened and gladdened both. I was sent from his side for the first time since I was gifted to him as a child, and felt abandoned. Yet I was relieved also, because now, I believed, the torture would stop. But when Dryman revealed himself to me I was forced once again to help him. We researched dozens of people on our way north. I am so sorry. His death – it has lifted a great burden from me, but . . .’ His face crumpled.

‘I don’t understand this,’ Phemanderac said, wriggling uncom-fortably and grunting as he resettled his bony backside on the sand. ‘Everyone has a choice to disobey, even if it costs their life. You seem a good man, Torve. How could you do such things?’

‘Omerans are bred to obey,’ Lenares said. ‘Everyone knows that. Mahudia said that just as an olive tree cannot produce grapes, so an Omeran cannot go against his master’s commands. Three thousand years of careful breeding has produced animals that cannot disobey their masters.’ 

‘Animals?’ Phemanderac looked puzzled. ‘Torve is a man, not an animal.’

Duon snorted. ‘Not to the Amaqi. They – we – destroyed every race of men who opposed us, save the Omerans who, in return for their continued existence as a race, pledged to serve us. I am embarrassed to say it, but our religion declared them less than human many centuries ago, which gave us the right to do with them what we desired. Most of them live brutalised lives of unques-tioning service. Torve here is a well-known exception, and at the court was often referred to as the Emperor’s pet.’

‘So it’s impossible for you to disobey your master?’ Arathé signalled, Anomer stepping forward to translate. At Torve’s nod, she frowned. ‘How terrible. But you tried?’ Another nod, more emphatic this time.

Noetos did not have to open his mind to her to be able to read her thoughts.

‘Why?’ said Lenares suddenly, breaking a short silence.

‘Why what?’ Noetos responded, more gruffly than he intended. ‘Why did the Emperor leave Talamaq and travel north with his army? And why in disguise?’

‘I seek answers to the same questions,’ Duon said. ‘And I have a third: given he was both Emperor and god, why did he allow his army to be destroyed in the Valley of the Damned?’

‘He wanted it to be destroyed,’ Torve said. ‘He encouraged the most powerful Alliances to supply their best soldiers and their strongest sons for this expedition, but my master never intended them to get past the Marasmos. He told me later that he recruited mercenaries from all parts of the empire, save Talamaq itself, and salted the Marasmian army with them. He supplied gold and weapons to the Marasmians. Thus, by ridding himself of the major Talamaq houses, he strengthened his hold on the empire.’

‘So he never intended his expedition to succeed?’ Duon’s face had gone white.

Torve grimaced with pain; the conversation was clearly claiming what strength he’d regained. ‘His supposed expedition, no. But his true expedition, yes. We went north, Captain, because you reported what you had learned of the Bhrudwan tales of the Undying Man, though I am sure you merely confirmed what he already knew. My master greatly desires – desired – immortality and planned to wrest the secret from the Bhrudwans. He did not believe he needed an army to do this. In fact, the fewer people involved in his true purpose, the better.’

‘He wanted to be immortal, did he?’ asked Heredrew, leaning forward, a look of strange intensity on his face. ‘Maybe he ought to have done his research more thoroughly before settling on such a desire.’

‘Perhaps speaking to an immortal or two might have cured him of the craving.’ Stella sounded angry. ‘They might have told him how very poor a bargain he would likely make.’

Heredrew spoke again. ‘So this man, with the aid of a god, planned to become immortal by – doing what exactly? How did he think he would achieve it?’

‘By drinking the blood of the Undying Man,’ Torve said to the tall Falthan.

Heredrew chuckled. ‘From what I hear of the Undying Man, I suspect your Emperor underestimated the strength needed to complete his task. How, after all, do you obtain the blood of an immortal? Especially one as powerful as the Lord of Bhrudwo?’

‘My master was a very patient man, and he had the assistance of a god. I believe that without the intervention of another god he would have achieved his goal.’

‘Good thing he didn’t then,’ old Sauxa said, sucking at his teeth. ‘Better one insane tyrant than two.’

‘Better none at all,’ said Robal, making to rise.

‘You gave me your word!’ Stella hissed at the guardsman, grab-bing his arm.

Robal growled, but went no further. People turned their heads to them, but neither Stella nor Robal offered any explanation. The guardsman settled back on his haunches.

Secrets, secrets. ‘Still not telling us everything?’ Noetos said. ‘How can we make decisions unless all the truth is exposed? I, for one, would have appreciated knowing I was travelling north with a god-possessed emperor. I presume there are no more hidden emperors or the like among us?’

The silence at this question stretched on a little too long. Noetos found himself growing faintly suspicious and more than a little angry. Lenares sat there pulling at her lip as though she wanted to say something, but even she kept quiet. It smacked of a conspiracy.

‘No?’ he said eventually. ‘Then we are all who we seem? Excel-lent. We had one bad man among us, but now he’s dead. So we can carry on to do what we intended to do. Except – what was that exactly?’

‘Different things for different people, as you well know,’ said Kilfor.

The  plainsman’s  father  spread  out  his  hands.  ‘Then  that’s  the next step. Deciding what we intend to do from this point. Me, I make decisions best on a full belly and with a wench by my side.’ ‘Your belly always looks full, old man,’ said his son. ‘And you’ll get no volunteers for the other.’

Sauxa barked a laugh. ‘Nevertheless, it’s time to eat. Then I hope we quickly finish with all this talk so I can leave this uncanny place. Men of Chardzou like their walls open to the breeze so they can see their enemies coming. These cliffs make me nervous.’

Kilfor grunted. ‘Aye, old man, I’m with you on that.’

Beyond the Wall of Time (UK/US)  by Russell Kirkpatrick is available in all good bookstores now.

The wall of time has fallen, leaving the Gods free to indulge their hunger for violence. Few know of their escape into mortal lands – and these few struggle against the control of the malevolent mage Husk and with their own problems.

Queen Stella, still in hiding, must make a deal with the Undying Man. His word is suspect, but her options are limited. Fisherman Noetos seeks revenge for the deaths of his loved ones, not yet realising the enemy is closer than even he can imagine. And the unconventional cosmographer Lenares is the only one with the power to prevent the Gods destroying the world – if she can get someone to believe her. 

The queen, fisherman and cosmographer must travel to Andratan to confront Husk. But whether they can break free of his hold on them, and defeat the Gods, is another matter entirely.