The Falls of Loathing now plunged into an earthen abyss below, the water vanishing into deep darkness. From that darkness there arose the worm who was The Warden. It was impossible, maddening almost, but his darkest fears were confirmed. Not only had his enemy survived the fall, but been changed, become stronger.

  The worm was laughing, a sound like stone dissolving in a bath of acid. It rose and began alighting on the crest of the waterfall, but such was its hideous length that it was taking a long time. Telos knew there would be no fleeing. This battle would be decisive.

  “Ready yourselves!” Telos cried. He felt Ylia stiffen next to him. Jubal had unslung the pouch containing Beltanus’ hammer, and was readying the weapon. Qala muttered softly under her breath—some kind of supplication or spell.

  “Mother,” Telos whispered. As he turned to Julya and her party, he saw the men were white-faced, paler than ghosts. One looked like he had emptied the contents of his stomachs over the floor. Telos did not blame them for their fear. He was frightened himself. He had encountered a Daimon once before, when it had assailed Beltanus’s ship. That had been frightening enough and he had not come into direct contact. This was another order of magnitude. “Mother, we have found the Shadow Market. It lies behind the waterfall still.” He pointed to where a flamelight shone from behind the veil of water. A rough stone slope led up to it, still accessible by skirting the edge of the newly opened pit. “If you are set upon your quest, then run for it. If not, then flee this place. There is no shame in it.”

  “You must be joking, son.”

  He looked at his mother with no little surprise.

  She smiled.

  “I am an old woman, Telos. I cannot be afraid of my death anymore. But I will be damned if I let anything hurt my son while I live and have the power to prevent it!”

  “Mother…”

  “Do not say this is beyond me!” she thundered. “I may not be a goddess or a Daimon or a freak of nature, but I have learned to swing a sword, and swing it true.” She made a blade sing from her scabbard, evincing her words. “I shall watch your back, son, while you fight that.”

  But that was no longer monstrous. Indeed, the worm was shrinking. Drawing in on itself. It was like watching some kind of black bile being slowly drained from a reservoir. But the simile was not apt. The flesh was not so much being shed as compressed, until what remained was a gem of diamond-hard darkness.

  And that gem was in the shape of a man.

  He seemed no longer a mere warrior, but a prince. A lord of shadow, mantled in the blackness of self-revelation. He was changed impossibly and yet he was the same; he had always been a dark force radiating like a malignant star, but now he was magnified a thousandfold.

  Perhaps once there had been a good man within him, a man worth saving. But all had become warped beyond sanity. As such, he only resembled a human being. Features were present, correct in some distant sense, but distorted. He looked, Telos realised, like the hideous faces upon the Towers of Memory. He looked like a Daimon’s idea of a man.

  Strangest of all: as he had shrunken and contracted, another form had separated form him, emerging from the ink-dark roil. It resembled a sarcophagus of onyx, although no doubt it was made of some substance totally alien to Telos’s understanding.

  His breath caught in his throat when he realised what it was.

  “The Nergal!” he cried. “We have found it.”

  “I have found it,” The Warden said, straightening. He stood at the top of the waterfall and looked down on them with the same imperious disdain he had shown for the inmates of Ob-Koron. That, of all things, had not changed.

  Telos stepped forward, to the edge of the gulf that separated them.

  “You know not what you do!” Telos cried. “You were once a man of Law. You once sought to protect the people. Although your methods were extreme, you believed you were on the side of justice. But what justice will be served when all of Erethia lies slain?”

  “Not slain,” The Warden cried. Mania made his eyes winking jewels. “Changed, Telos. Changed and bettered. I have learned much on my journey here. I have learned the natural condition of things. The Daimons, Telos, are not what you think. They are not some evil from outside, they are the soul of Erethia itself. They were here first. It was the gods who came and invaded, scourged, and purged.” The Warden’s face contorted into an expression like no human one, half a smile, half a snarl of rage, somehow both at once. “You see, I hated the gods, claimed I did not believe in them, and yet I was guilty of just the same sin.” He pointed at Jubal. “I tried to wipe the theronts from the face of the earth. I was no better than the gods!” The rage fell away, leaving only the dark smile. Telos felt Ylia shudder next to him. “But now I see the truth! And I see the way I can make amends for my wrongs.”

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  “No, Warden. You are merely going to compound them. The Daimons were native to this world, that is true. But they were devouring every form of life. Without the intervention of the gods, this planet would become sterile.”

  “Pah!” The Warden spat. “Sterile? It is the gods who are sterile, Telos. Consider why they would have to raise a mortal into their ranks with their warped science.”

  Telos reeled. He had always thought it odd, and had meant to question it further, but with Danyil and Beltanus’ death, and the myriad of distractions and hardships of their journey, he had not been able to grasp the answer.

  But what The Warden said made sense, a terrible, awful kind of sense.

  And this explained why the gods were divided, why some sought the eradication of humanity and others recognised their need. Was Nereth a purist, then? Revolted by the idea of merging with mortals? And were Beltanus and Eresh more pragmatic, realising that without mankind the gods would dwindle?

  He could barely organise his thoughts, but he knew he could not let this deter him from his purpose.

  “That does not matter,” Telos said, slowly. “What matters is that the Daimons will not stop until the entire world is subsumed. Think of it, Warden. The people of Gorgosa and Yestermere, of Aurelia, all those people dead.”

  “Not dead,” The Warden repeated. “But drawn into something greater, something more. You have glimpsed it, have you not? The mind-link!” His eyes were wild fires burning. “But come, I will not try to tempt you. I know it is foolish. You have set your heart, and I must give you credit that you are almost as stubborn as I.” He grinned, but there were too many teeth in his mouth, a ghastly mis-approximation of humanity. “You ask me to consider the innocents who will perish. That is ironic, is it not? For you are the one who wishes to use this… weapon.” He touched the black lid of the Nergal. Telos could feel its power, though he could not put a name to what he felt, only that it made his skin crawl, his tongue dry in his mouth.

  “Yes,” The Warden whispered. “The gods’ senses are not as acute as a Daimons, but they are potent enough to know a little. You do feel it, don’t you? Tell me: do you know what this is, Telos?”

  Telos trembled.

  “It matters not…”

  “It matters a great deal.” And suddenly the false veneer of humour vanished, replaced by the implacable mask of a dead thing. “It matters everything, Telos. What dwells within this sarcophagus is not a weapon, it is a living thing. A Daimon, in fact. Mutated and warped beyond recognition, anathema even to its own kind. It is an infection, Telos, an infection designed to blacken Daimonkind.” He sneered. “I never believed in destiny, but even I must profess, there is a note of poetry in this. It was disease, after all, that changed my family forever. And now I must be the one to prevent it from spreading.”

  Telos had no answer, but Jubal stepped forward.

  “What if we did not use The Nergal? If it is such a cursed thing as you say, then we would not want to use it. What if some kind of peace could be agreed? You gave us theronts no opportunity for peace. And you say you regret those actions. Why don’t we avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. Can we not share Erethia? Daimon and man? The world is wide enough.”

  Telos was stunned. How could Jubal say this, when his people had been nigh-on eradicated by the man before him? But then, Jubal was a man of honour, through and through. And perhaps he, too, tired of war and killing.

  His words hovered in the air like a sweet smell. And for a moment, Telos thought Jubal had achieved what no other mortal or even god could. The Warden’s eyes had widened, and his mouth opened in surprise.

  The world seemed to hold its breath.

  And then a dark wind blew, carrying away the sweet smell of incense. A cloud overcast the sun. Telos looked skyward. Wait, was that truly a cloud, or something else? A ship? It could not be. If it was, it would be of such astronomical size it rivaled a moon. He shivered. Cold had suddenly come to the humid jungle.

  The Warden’s eyes, likewise, were ice.

  “You speak fairly and reasonably Jubal.” The Warden pronounced his words like one droning memorised lines, or remembering the poem of a dream. He was vacant, staring not at them but into some vast jungle of remembrance. “And in some distant recess of my heart, I see the truth and sense of it. Why should an accord not be possible?” And suddenly he returned from that far place. Rage twisted his features. A demented glow shone in his eyes. “But no. Peace is impossible. Why? Because you have allied yourselves with the gods. And while the gods live, Daimons can no know peace. If Yarruk and Aurelia must burn, so be it. If Sumyr must be reduced to ash, and its ground sowed with salt, never to produce harvest again… so be it. If we must cross the Void, and assail Nilldoran, and burn its shining spires. Then so be it! You offer me not peace, but more chains. And we are free!”

  His final words seemed spoken not with one voice but many, and a dark light shone from his flesh that wounded the eye. Telos gritted his teeth.

  “You are forgotten even unto yourself,” Telos said.

  “And I will be remembered for all of Time!” the Warden sneered. “I give you one chance to accept your Fate willingly. Bow now, Telos. Bow before the God-King.”

  It was Telos’ turn to sneer.

  “You were greater when you were but a man…”

  The Warden smiled.

  “The same might be said of you, God-spawn. But let us not argue over the past, for it is dead. We face one another in the present. And now, destiny will be decided.”

  Telos readied himself to fight, but then he felt a blur of movement beside him.

  “Fuck this!” Ylia cried.

  She drew the god-steel Basilisk from her blouse, aimed, and pulled the trigger.