Telos and Jubal sprinted through the night-clad forest. The appearance of the spider had been their cue to leave. They were in no position to fight it, nor did they want to help The Warden. Telos had said a silent prayer that The Warden might die swiftly, but the sounds of his screams echoing through the forest indicated his Fate would be otherwise.

  “Why does it keep coming after me?” Telos asked.

  “It’s the venom of the baby spiders in your face,” Jubal said, through ragged breaths. He moved with little grace or ease now, staggering between the trees. “The mother is drawn to the threat. When your face stops swelling, you will at last be safe.”

  Telos could feel the swelling was at last going down, but it brought him little comfort; there were miles of forest to go before they were free. The screams of The Warden haunted him, reminded him of the dagger, of the blood. In all his days of thieving, Telos had never had to use a blade on a living being. He’d threatened, of course. Once or twice he had disarmed an opponent. But he’d never struck to kill. Until now. It did not sit easy with him, even in memory.

  It was so dark Telos stumbled over every other tree root. Ironically, the fire The Warden had set to trap them offered illumination, the pillar of flame burning brighter and brighter as the black fires consumed it and spread to nearby trees. All that destruction, all that waste. He dreaded to think what the fire would do the forest unchecked. But there was little he could do about it now.

  A scream, louder than the ones before, split the night air. A few moments later some unknown bird screeched in answer, an almost comic retort. The whole forest shuddered with sympathetic agony. The scream turned Telos’s blood to ice.

  Jubal stopped in his tracks.

  “He’s not dead,” he growled.

  “I don’t know,” Telos replied. “That sounded pretty final to me.”

  “I must be sure.” Jubal made to lurch back the way they had come. Normally, Telos would not once have thought about standing in the giant’s way, but the theront was badly injured, and a simple hand to his chest arrested his motion. The bull-man’s arm was a ruin. Telos couldn’t look at it without feeling queasy.

  “Going back is crazy,” Telos said. “I know you want revenge, but it’s not worth your life.”

  “You know nothing,” Jubal spat, and it was the first time Telos had heard him truly bitter.

  “I know enough to know I would rather you lived.”

  Jubal spat blood on the ground.

  “You should have killed him!”

  “I’m not a killer…”

  Jubal sneered. He leaned down so his huge nostrils blew acridly hot breath into Telos’s face.

  “You lack the strength.”

  Telos cocked his head.

  “You do know who you’re starting to sound like, don’t you?”

  The verbal blow landed.

  Jubal’s eyes went wide. He looked at his one good hand, which clenched and unclenched, fist to palm, war to peace, over and over again. Blood dripped from his horns and fingers.

  All at once, the rage flowed out of him, the way a hand withdrawn from a puppet causes it to fold over, empty. Jubal sat down on a fallen log. He put his head in his palm. Telos heard sobbing.

  “He… he has taken everything from me, now. My sanctuary, my friends, my bow-arm… even my honour. You are right. He has made me his mirror—a killer just like him.”

  Me and my big mouth, Telos thought. He needed Jubal focused. He had no idea how to get out of Yestermere without him.

  Telos knelt.

  “Jubal… Jubal, I know the Black Hand of Eresh is on you. I know that despair, when your world gets ripped up from underneath your feet… It happened to me, once upon a time.” He was thinking of a playhouse, a keyhole, of strange secrets that should not be glimpsed, secrets that rewrote everything he thought was true. “But that moment of darkness was not the end of my life, it was the beginning. As bad as things seem, this is your chance for a new start, a better start. You have helped me to see how I can change my Fate. Maybe we can change yours too?”

  Jubal stared at Telos. Then he threw back his head and laughed. The forest rang with the sound, and was matched only by the roar of the incandescent flames as they devoured pine, birch, oak, and yew. Flowers withered beneath the advance of the inferno. The black fires were consuming all, racing now, eager. But Jubal just sat on a log and bellowed hilarity.

  Telos frowned.

  “I didn’t think it was that funny.”

  Jubal recovered somewhat. “How is it that a man literally cursed by the gods can find the good in every scenario?”

  Telos smiled. “I think I was born that way. Mother always said I was a dreamer.”

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  “A dreamer? More like a madman. Clearly, prison has addled you.” Jubal stood. “But nonetheless, I think I can go a little farther. Laughter is the best medicine, is it not?”

  Telos grinned.

  They ran together. From the hidden places of the forest emerged animals: deer, beetles, badgers, Rynu dragonflies a yard long, and stranger things, all fleeing the flame. There was no sign of the other theronts. Clearly, they had picked another path.

  “Where are we going?” Telos said, assuming that Jubal knew what he was doing, even in the confusion of the forest fire.

  “East!” Jubal said.

  “How can you tell?”

  Jubal point with his good hand at the canopy above. Telos could hardly make out the stars beyond the branches and foliage, but Jubal clearly had better eyes—or knew better where to look—than him.

  They kept running until their throats felt like they were drier than dust, until their lungs wheezed like overused bellows. Telos’s knees felt as though they might give way. He thought again of the destrier, its leg snapping suddenly. Chills wormed up and down his spine. At any moment, the back luck could strike. He didn’t doubt it, anymore. He knew it was real. Everywhere he went, destruction followed.

  You should blame the Warden, not yourself.

  But somehow, he could not blame The Warden, not even after the intended torture. The Warden was a megalomaniac, but he was also a cog in a larger machine. Jubal blamed the Warden for the crimes he had committed, but Telos blamed the one who had given the orders: the King of Yarruk, Gilgamon. Telos found himself wishing he’d succeeded in stealing the Tablet of Mastery, if only to piss his Royal Highness off.

  “A little farther,” Jubal said, even his immense constitution taxed by their ordeal. “Then we will come to a less densely wooded part of the forest. I would not normally venture across the Gorgosan plains, but there is a House not far from Yestermere owned by a man who is sympathetic to theronts. If we push through the night, we might arrive there by morning.”

  Telos nodded. He had no better plan, and heading towards Gorgosa was still his ultimate aim.

  “Onward!” Jubal cried, rising.

  Jubal’s predictions were correct. Soon, they reached a place where the trees thinned and the undergrowth changed, becoming more sparse. The ground descended a slope and then evened out.

  “One good thing may come out of the fire,” Telos said.

  Jubal frowned.

  “What is that?”

  “It will wipe out the Tunnel Spiders.”

  Jubal laughed.

  “I would not be so hopeful. They will likely dig deeper, and outlast the flame.”

  “Then I pity whoever sifts through the ashes.”

  They broke from the treeline and headed over a wide plain cast silver in the starlight. For a while they followed a thick, fast-flowing river. River Nere, Telos thought. It was the same river he had crossed the night of his escape from Ob-Koron. It wound itself through the maze of Yestermere to its south-eastern side, and now turned fully eastward, towards the great seaport city of Gorgosa. Telos could not explain why, but he found the presence of the river comforting.

  The sky was black, immense, but filled with stars. The moon was now receding from its fullness, but Nilldoran seemed impossibly bright, like a sphere of pure gold laid upon a black cloth. Sometimes, when Telos stared for long periods at the planet, he felt a little dizzy, as though he could feel its gravity working on him. They said the Sea of Golden Ghosts was so violent and tempestuous—with rogue waves able to capsize galleons as easily as a child was able to kick over a sandcastle—because of the planet’s baleful influence. But Nereth said the planet was departing, about to go on its orbit into the Great Dark—the farther reaches of the void. What will that mean?

  Telos had paid very little attention to astronomy. Despite being a “dreamer”, his focus had always been on earthly dramas and fantasies. He liked the playhouse, the old stories and histories of gods and men and Daimons, and gold, of course. The movements of planets seemed rather dull to him.

  But he now found himself wracking his brain for any memory of his tutor’s lessons. He vaguely recalled astronomer’s had predicted Nilldoran’s recession would cause some mild earthquakes and tsunamis in the east, but that Yarruk would largely remain unscathed. Telos knew that those devoted to the gods—such as his Aunt Bell—saw the imminent departure of the planet as a sign of troubling times to come, an era of darkness before the planet’s glorious return.

  Having met a few of the gods, Telos wasn’t so sure them leaving was such a bad thing.

  They travelled all through the night. Fear and danger had kept hunger at bay, but Telos now found his belly growling, and his limbs weak with exhaustion. He wanted nothing more than to find some copse of trees and lie down and sleep, but he knew that would likely mean death from the cold. They had to find shelter, and find it quickly before their legs gave out beneath them. Jubal could not carry Telos if he fell; the giant was too injured and himself flagging.

  And then they saw it: the gleam of firelight, the black smoke of Daimonsblood hearths obscuring the stars. A huge House, one of the largest Telos had ever seen, sprawled over the bowl of the vale.

  Despite exhaustion, their pace quickened. When they reached the outer fence that ringed in the horses and barnyard animals, Jubal paused and knelt. He still possessed his cloak, and he drew the hood up and down, concealing his face as he had done when he and Telos first met.

  “If anyone asks, I shall say you have the Kiss of Eresh,” Telos said.

  “Idiot!” Jubal growled, too tired to perceive Telos was merely joking.

  “No one is going to be awake at this hour,” Telos said. “Look, there’s the dawn.”

  Telos pointed. On the horizon, a swollen yellow head was beginning to peek over the rim of the world, its brightness broken only by the silhouette of a black, immense city. Gorgosa, Telos thought. It’s towers stand so tall we can see them even here. He did not want to think about the city now, so he put it from mind. Instead, he stood on shaking legs and walked up to the door of the House. He considered knocking, then simply pushed inside.

  The scene within was pure carnage. Bodies lay draped over tables and chairs as though it were a battleground, but thankfully they were not dead, merely passed out from liquor. There was one person still standing, however, or rather sitting at a table near the door. She raised her head from her hands, her golden locks plastered over her face, her eyes blood red and swimming in their sockets as they struggled to ascertain focus.

  “Oh Beltanus’s balls!” Ylia said, pointing at Telos. “It’s that pretty thief.”

  Then her head slammed down on the table, and she was gone like the rest.

  Telos was about to turn to Jubal and advise they leave when he heard the patter patter of furred footfalls on the floor. He wheeled around just in time to see the huge felidae leaping at him, a look of joy on its massive, leonine face.