'Do I look like a delusion to you?' she asked. Her smile was neither soft nor stern, her features not plain, but nor were they particularly beautiful. For the first time in a very long time I saw her as she had truly been in life: a village woman, a farmer. Pretty, but mostly in the way she grinned when she had something wicked to say. Sensuous, but mostly when she danced. You could see in her eyes how brilliantly clever she was not for its own sake, but because her sense of practicality demanded it. Beyond and above all those things, however, Aline always had an unwavering determination about her. 'Whether dream or memory, Falcio, I said I would protect you. I always will.'

'It's supposed to be me,' I said. 'I was the swordsman. I was supposed to-'

The sky cracked, the sound crashing down on us while the world around us shook and shivered in its wake. Everything went black then, ended, then a moment later the darkness disappeared, to be replaced once again by the endless bone whiteness of this place.

'Ha!' the King roared. 'Did you see that? That was-'

'Let him figure it out for himself,' Aline said.

I thought about it for a moment, until I realised I'd mistaken the source of the sound. 'It wasn't thunder,' I said. 'It was a heartbeat.'

'One of your last, if you don't get on with it,' Paelis said. 'Hurry. Kest is hiding in this place and you must find him.'

The sky shook again, another heartbeat, and again the world went black before returning. The darkness lasted longer this time. Time to go.

'Who is Kest hiding from?'

King Paelis put a hand on my shoulder. 'From you, Falcio.'

'But why? Why would-?'

'He's your dearest friend,' Aline chided me. 'Do you truly know him so little? Go. You must find him now.'

I started to move, then stopped. 'It should have been you,' I said. I didn't trust myself to be able to leave if I looked back at her. 'You should have been the first Greatcoat.'

She gave no reply, but King Paelis laughed in that reedy tone of his. 'Don't you get it, Falcio? She gave up everything to protect you. She made an oath that held despite fear and death and the Gods themselves. Aline was the first Greatcoat.'

I'm not sure how long I chased Kest in the endless pale shadows as he weaved and ducked around and behind everything that might shield him from me. The sky shook twice more, the final desperate beating of his heart, or mine. Or maybe none of this is real and this is just the last defiant flicker of my life fading away.

Every time I came close to grabbing Kest's shoulder he darted out of the way, and the chase continued anew. This isn't real, I thought. There is no world of bone for us to race through. We're lying on the hard ground. Damn you, Kest, just breathe, and get us out of here.

I shouted for him, again and again, and no sound came from my lips, but he appeared to hear me not that it did me much good. Every time I called out to him, he looked up at the sky instead of at me, and then turned and ran even faster.

I heard the crack of thunder again and this time, the black clouds began to gather together, expanding until they became too big for the sky. They descended upon the countryside, taking on a thick, oily form as they began to smother everything in sight. Breathing became harder and harder as I tried to outrun them.

'Kest!'

He didn't turn now, just kept on running, always ahead of me.

'Kest!' I tried to force a shout from my lips. The clouds were all around us, as though the nightmist we'd unleashed in the mine was pursuing us, even here. I started after Kest again, but pulled to a stop when a shape began to push its way out of the black mists, burning them away with an angry crimson fire. He carried a sword, and spun it so fast I couldn't see the steel, only the trail of flame it left in the air.

Caveil-whose-blade-cuts-water, I thought. The Saint of Swords is coming for me.

Birgid's words from months before came back to me, reminding me that I had been the one destined to face Caveil the one destined to die at his hand.

Instinctively, I reached for my rapiers, but the world of the dead has as much justice in it as the world of the living and so I was still naked and unarmed.

Caveil whipped his sword through the air and I felt the tip striking me a hundred times before I could even draw the breath to scream. By the time I looked down at my flesh, a thousand little cuts were bleeding, and tiny flying insects descended on me, attaching themselves to my wounds, sucking at them like human mouths.

The Saint of Swords brought his blade up high in the air and I saw the very moment where it reached its zenith, and the immeasurable fraction of a second where it held before it began its descent towards my skull.

A pale blur leapt between us: a flash of steel came alongside and knocked Caveil's sword from its path.

'Don't worry, Falcio,' the figure said, taking up a position between me and the Saint. 'I'll protect you!'

It was Kest, but not the man I knew. Instead, the boy I had first known, barely twelve years old, grinning from ear to ear as he struggled to hold up a warsword far too heavy for his size, and far too slow to stop the Saint of Swords. Caveil gave out a soundless laugh and struck out with his own blade, stabbing Kest over and over until a dozen holes in his body revealed the black-smothered world behind him.

Caveil's gaze returned to me and he smiled as he sent his blade shooting out towards me. But again, Kest managed to bring up his sword and strike, ignoring the fact that he was far too wounded for such a feat even to be possible. He kicked out with a gangly leg and hit Caveil in the stomach, knocking him back into the black clouds.

Kest turned to me, still grinning even as he bled from his wounds. 'Boy, that sure wasn't easy,' he said.

'Kest, come with me,' I said, extending a hand towards him. 'We have to go.'

He shook his head and pointed back to the clouds. 'We can't, Falcio. There are still more people trying to kill you.'

A second figure emerged from the mists, this one taller and broader of shoulder than Caveil. The armour covering his body was made of thick steel plates. The sword he carried was nearly as big as I was.

Shuran.

Even before Kest could lift his sword up in defence, Shuran knocked him aside and began marching towards me, heaving his massive sword back and forth as though he were cutting the space between us apart. His helm covered his face and yet I could see him smiling, his hard jaw set in preparation for the single blow it would take him to cut me in half.

I looked around for something, anything with which to fight back. There was nothing on the cloud-covered ground of use but little black rocks, but when I tried picking one up, intending to throw it at Shuran, even though it was barely bigger than my fist it refused to be lifted, sticking to the earth as though welded there.

Great. Even the rocks in this country are cowards.

I rose back up to my feet. I thought about running away but now my own feet wouldn't obey my commands. Shuran stopped then, barely three feet away from me, and raised his sword overhead.

'Goodbye,' he said.

Just as the heavy sword started down for my head, Kest rose up and parried the attack with his warsword. Shuran grunted in response and lifted up his weapon, just a few inches, before bringing it back down and severing Kest's hand at the wrist, sending it along with his sword crashing to the ground.

The boy Kest ignored the loss of his hand and dropped to his knees. Picking up his sword in his left, he prepared to attack, but Shuran was faster and with a single stroke he took Kest's other hand, leaving him without the means to hold a sword.

'No!' I screamed.

Shuran tried to knock the boy aside to get to me but Kest ducked and came back up after the blade had swung past. He kicked out with his bare foot, striking the Knight in the hip, sending him stumbling backwards. 'I'd better go after him,' he said, before turning to run into the black clouds.

'Kest, no!' I shouted. 'You can't fight now. He's too-'

'Don't worry, Falcio,' the boy shouted back, grinning, 'I've still got two legs to lose, and then my head after that!'

The thunder cracked once again. How long had it been since the last time? Surely this had been the longest gap between beats? With a force of will that was far beyond what I could have imagined, I reached into the clouds and grabbed Kest by the shoulder, hauling him back before he could disappear into the blackness.

'Stop!' I said, not just to him, but to the world around us. 'Stop!'

My command had an odd effect: the landscape shifted again, returning to the unlit white I had seen when I first arrived. I could move again without strain. I was so furious with the boy's reckless desire to protect me that I spun him around to shake him, but when I did, he had become the Kest I knew again, with a man's form and a man's face, his limbs returned to him except for the right hand I had severed months before. He was crying.

'What in hells are you doing?' I demanded.

'Please, Falcio,' he said, the tears streaming down his cheeks. 'Please . . .'

I let go of him. 'Please what? What is it you want?'

He wiped a bare arm across his eyes, then held out the stump towards me. 'Just let me die.'

The thunder that came next was softer than the others, the last tired rumbles of a fading storm. My limbs felt exhausted. I looked down to see that they too were taking on the tired white of the landscape around us.

'I don't understand,' I said, not for the first time.

'Of course you do,' Kest said, his voice devoid of any emotion, even the ambition to sway me. 'You just prefer to pretend that you don't.' He walked a few feet away where a dim shadow of his warsword lay discarded on the ground. He knelt down and picked it up in his left hand, the muscles on his face contorting with pain. 'Look at me,' he said, holding the sword out, tremors running along the length of his arm as he struggled to keep it from falling back to the ground.

'It's only been a few months,' I said. 'The healers warned that you might experience ghostly pains-'

Kest laughed at that, a cold, bitter sound. '"Ghostly pains"? Falcio, this isn't real. You and I aren't made of flesh in this place. This sword isn't made of steel, it's not made of anything. It's just a hallucination.'

'Then why-?'

'Because it still hurts!' he screamed, and threw the blade to the ground. It landed without a sound. 'Don't you see what's happened to me? It's not the sword that gives me pain, it's the very thought of holding it!'

Another echo of thunder, this one barely a stutter, with no sign of lightning following it.

'We have to go, Kest.'

He looked away from me. 'I spent every day of my life since I was twelve years old trying to become the best swordsman in the world, trying to protect you, trying to fight for the things you believe in.'

'The things we believe in,' I said, but the words sounded hollow even to me. All my life I'd wanted to be a great swordsman, someone who defended others. Instead, they had all been protecting me.

Kest shook his head. 'I would do anything to go back and stop her from dying, Falcio. When you met her, those first couple of years . . .'

'Don't,' I warned.

He ignored me. 'I thought maybe you would set aside all your talk of Greatcoats, of fighting the horrible things of this country. I thought you would be happy, that maybe I could find a way to be happy for you. Then . . . Then they took her. A few vicious men in a tavern do the kinds of things such men have been doing for a thousand years and just like that, they broke the world.' He turned back to me. 'Do you think, in whatever hell Fost now occupies . . . do you think he marvels at what he unleashed on the world?'

'Don't blame this on Aline,' I said. 'And don't blame it all on me. It was the King's dream we all-'

He waved me off with his remaining hand. 'Don't start with that shit all over again. There isn't a man alive who loves you as much as I do and even I can't stand to listen to you any more.'

The words stung, a leaden weight as if my heart was too busy trying to push out one last beat to be worried about such trivial things as discovering your best friend can't abide your presence. I looked at his sword lying between us like a line meant not to be crossed. 'So what, then? If you can't be the greatest swordsman in the world then you can't be bothered to live?'

The tears were still streaming down his cheeks. 'Is that so wrong? I've practised every day of my life, read every book, trained with every living master. I've studied everything from fencing to dancing to research every possible way of moving, of perfecting my skill with the blade, all so I could become someone who mattered. Something other than just your . . . I don't even know what to call it.' He held out the stump of his right hand to me. 'What am I now, Falcio, if I can't be who I was?'

The sky sputtered for a moment barely a sound now and I wondered that Kest could feel such pain when there was so little life left in us. I glanced around me: the stillness of the landscape was broken by terrified men and women, scurrying to hiding behind rocks and trees, their hands clasped in prayers that would never be answered.

'Go,' Kest said, 'before it's too late. Do me this one service, this one favour in exchange for those I did you. Live your life and fight the Gods and shout at the oceans; just let me be.'

I waited a moment before replying. I knew my answer, but it was a dangerous thing to say. 'You can be less,' I said at last.

He just stared at me for a long while. Then, 'Less.'

I knelt down and lifted up his warsword. It felt weightless, insubstantial. 'You'll never be the swordsman you once were. Hells, maybe you can't ever hold a blade again at all.' I tossed the weapon away. 'Maybe you never were as good as we all thought; maybe Caveil whose-blade-cuts-water just had an off-day when you met him.'

'This is not helping,' Kest said.

I didn't care. 'We're all less than we were, probably less even than we believed we were.' I pointed to the fading landscape behind us, the cold white slowly turning to an empty grey. 'And our enemies are worse than we thought, and stronger. There're more of them, and I don't think it's ever going to end. We're less than we were, less than we believed, and less than the world needs. Ever since this started I've been haunted by the fear that maybe this time we can't win.'

'You really do save your best speeches for other people, don't you, Falcio?' He snorted then, an uncharacteristic action that made me wonder if all this really was just in my head. But it doesn't matter if it's real, I thought. It still needs to be said. 'Maybe I don't have any good speeches left. But there's this one question that's been nagging at me every day, even when I've discovered how badly I've screwed things up, even when we're outnumbered, even when they send a fucking God against us.'

'What's that?' he asked.

I pointed to hazy figures in the distance, looking around themselves and discovering that in the growing emptiness, there was nothing left to hide behind. 'If not us, then who? Who's going to stand when everyone else kneels? Who's going to argue for the law even when there's no justice to be had? Who's going to try even when the trying is too damned hard?'

We looked at each other a long while before Kest finally said what he'd been holding back. 'They're going to kill you, Falcio. Please don't make me watch while it happens. I won't be able to save you this time.'

I nodded. He was probably right. 'Fair enough. Chances are I'm going to lose my head, my life and my country. So just answer me this: if you're beside me, are my chances of failing more or less than they would be without you?'

'Less,' he said. After a moment he smiled, just a little. 'Son of a bitch. I can't believe I fell for that.'

A feeble crack barely lit the sky before fading into a sigh.

'Come on,' I said, reaching out a hand. 'It's getting harder to hear Ethalia's heartbeat and it will be peculiarly embarrassing if this all ends up being for nothing.'

Kest took my hand in his. 'Where are we going?'

'Follow the thunder,' I said. 'That's usually where the trouble is.'

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT.

The Awakening

I woke to the sound of crying. Oddly, it wasn't Ethalia.