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him. He motioned aside, mouthing, ‘Here she is.’ Sour nodded. He smacked his lips and stretched. The two shadowed their employer, skulking from towering dolmen to dolmen. The woman was pacing a slow encirclement of the entire installation. As she walked she held a Warren open and the two mages had to glance away wincing and shading their eyes from the powers summoned and manipulated in her hands. The sculpted energy remained behind as a flickering and pulsing wall of power.
    They followed, peering round the pillars, which consisted of stone blocks fitted one on top of the other, tapering to a blunt tip.
    ‘You see what I see?’ Sour fairly yelled to be heard.
    Head turned away, eyes slit, Murk answered, ‘Cutting it off from everything! Nothing’s getting past that wall o’ wards and seals!’
    Together, the two suddenly glanced aside where the rippling barrier of folded Warren-energies stood between them and the outside.
    ‘
Shit!
’ they mouthed as one and both pelted for the opposite side of the maze of standing stones. As he ran past row after row of the columns, Murk noted how they appeared to possess a slight curve, and he realized that they inscribed immense nested circles, one inside the other. Sour was ahead, his worn shoes kicking up sand, only to stop so suddenly that Murk almost ran over him. Righting himself, he saw what had put a halt to his partner’s flight. It was an open circular court or plaza, empty and utterly featureless, lying at the centre of the dolmens, made of what appeared to be raked gravel.
    The shortest way was straight across, but one glance was all Murk needed to see that that was no option. His mage-sight revealed an entirely different version superimposed upon the apparently empty plaza. Something writhed and coursed under the surface just as a monstrous sea-serpent might thrash beneath ocean waves. Murk hit his partner’s shoulder and gestured aside. Together they took off round the plaza’s border. They reached the opposite side of the massive ruin long before Spite appeared, tracing her ward. They watched her complete the intricate and blindingly powerful ritual while they lay flat behind a dune.
    Sour slid further into cover and wiped a sleeve across his slick face. Murk joined him. ‘So … maybe we should just save time and run off now?’ Sour asked.
    Murk rested his arms on his knees. ‘Naw. I’m kinda curious.’
    Sour’s gaze slit almost closed. ‘Curious?
You’re
curious. You mean your wretched Shadow patron’s all curious, ain’t that what you mean!’
    ‘Oh, and you’re sayin’ little Miss Enchantress ain’t!’
    Sour blew a nostril to empty it. ‘Don’t need to be a fortune-teller to know where this is gonna end. With us handed our heads!’
    Murk looked to the darkening sky, now clearing of the thick clouds. ‘You know – when you predict the same damned thing over and over it kinda loses its credibility.’
    ‘Call for rain long enough and you’re bound to be right.’
    Murk threw open his arms. ‘Now that doesn’t even make any goddamned sense!’
    Sour’s wall-eyed gaze shifted to right and left. ‘It will … eventually.’
    ‘Would you stop that!’
    ‘You lovebirds finished your little spat?’ a new voice asked from the cover of nearby brush.
    ‘Whosat?’ Sour called, sinking even lower.
    A fellow straightened from the thicket and approached to squat next to them. It was one of Yusen’s scouts. The man wore leathers, long-knives at his sides, and a plain and battered Malazan-issue iron helmet that brought back plenty of memories to Murk. None of them happy. ‘What’re you doing here?’ he demanded – he was of the opinion that when caught off guard an aggressive front can often compensate.
    The scout shifted a twig from one side of his mouth to the other while eyeing them. ‘Cap’n wants your report.’
    ‘What report?’ Sour asked.
    ‘On what you’ve sniffed out.’
    ‘We ain’t seen nothing,’ Sour answered,