Dust of Dreams

fur.
    Tattoos—see them now—see them!
    All at once, as the tattoos settled into place, he knew himself.
    I am Heboric Ghost Hands. Destriant to a cast-down god. I see him—
    I see you, Fener.
    The shape, so massive, so lost. Unable to move.
    His god was trapped, and, like Heboric, was mute witness to the blazing jade suns as they bore down. He and his god were in their path, and these were forces that could not be pushed aside. No shield existed solid enough to block what was coming.
    The Abyss cares nothing for us. The Abyss comes to deliver its own arguments, against which we cannot stand.
    Fener, I have doomed you. And you, old god, you have doomed me.
    Yet, I no longer regret. For this is as it should be. After all, war knows no other language. In war we invite our own destruction. In war we punish our children with a broken legacy of blood.
    He understood now. The gods of war and what they meant, what their very existence signified. And as he stared upon those jade suns searing ever closer, he was overwhelmed by the futility hiding behind all this arrogance, this mindless conceit.
    See us wave our banners of hate.
    See where it gets us.
    A final war had begun. Facing an enemy against whom no defence was possible. Neither words nor deeds could fool this clear-eyed arbiter. Immune to lies, indifferent to excuses and vapid discourses on necessity, on the weighing of two evils and the facile righteousness of choosing the lesser one—and yes, these were the arguments he was hearing, empty as the ether they travelled.
    We stood tall in paradise. And then called forth the gods of war, to bring destruction down upon ourselves, our world, the very earth, its air, its water, its myriad life. No, show me no surprise, no innocent bewilderment. I see now with the eyes of the Abyss. I see now with my enemy’s eyes, and so I shall speak with its voice.
    Behold, my friends, I am justice.
    And when at last we meet, you will not like it.
    And if irony awakens in you at the end, see me weep with these tears of jade, and answer with a smile.
    If you’ve the courage.
    Have you, my friends, the courage?

Book One

The Sea Does Not
Dream of You

 
     
     

I will walk the path forever walked

One step ahead of you
And one step behind
I will choke in the dust of your passing
And skirl more into your face
It all tastes the same
Even when you feign otherwise
     

But here on the path forever walked

The old will lie itself anew
We can sigh like kings
Like empresses on gift-carts
Resplendent in imagined worth.
     

I will walk the path forever walked

Though my time is short
As if the stars belong
Cupped here in my hands
Showering out these pleasures
That so sparkle in the sun
When down they drift settling flat
     

To make this path forever walked

Behind you behind me
Between the step past, the step to come
Look up look up once
Before I am gone
     
    T ELLER OF T ALES
    F ASSTAN OF K OLANSE

Chapter One
    Abject misery lies not in what the blanket reveals, but in what it hides.
    K ING T EHOL THE O NLY OF L ETHER

    W
ar had come to the tangled, overgrown grounds of the dead Azath tower in the city of Letheras. Swarms of lizards had invaded from the river’s shoreline. Discovering a plethora of strange insects, they began a feeding frenzy.
    Oddest among the arcane bugs was a species of two-headed beetle. Four lizards spied one such creature and closed in, surrounding it. The insect noted threats from two directions and made a careful half-turn, only to find two additional threats, whereupon it crouched down and played dead.
    This didn’t work. One of the lizards, a wall-scampering breed with a broad mouth and gold-flecked eyes, lunged forward and gobbled up the insect.
    This scene was played out throughout the grounds, a terrible slaughter, a rush to extinction. The fates, this evening, did not appear kind to the two-headed beetles.
    Not all prey, however, was as helpless as it might initially seem. The role of the victim in nature is ephemeral, and that which is fed upon might in time feed upon the feeders in the eternal drama of survival.
    A lone owl, already engorged on lizards, was the sole witness to the sudden wave of writhing deaths on the rumpled earth below, as from the mouths of dying lizards, grotesque shapes emerged. The extinction of the two-headed beetles proved not as imminent a threat as it had seemed only moments earlier.
    But owls, being among the least clever of birds, are unmindful of such lessons. This one