Read Orb Sceptre Throne for Free Online Page B

twigs and leaves. Kiska gasped and ran ahead.
    Their guide.
    She knelt at the stone. Maker towered over her, his featureless domed head bent to peer downwards. Leoman came walking up behind, his hands tucked into his wide weapon belt.
    ‘Is it … dead?’ she asked.
    ‘
For this creature, a curious distinction. What essence animated it before was not its own. And now, though that vital essence might have fled, an even greater potentiality yet remains within
.’
    ‘It was with us.’
    ‘
I thought as much. You arrived soon after
.’
    Kiska swept the remains into its small leather bag. Struggling to keep her voice steady, she asked, ‘And the other? The one like us?’
    ‘
The other is gendered as this one
,’ Maker said, indicating Leoman. ‘
He came to me out of the Vitr
.’
    She blinked up at him. ‘The Vitr?’
    Maker’s blunt head turned to the restless surging sea of light. ‘
The Vitr. That from which all creation comes
.’
    ‘All … creation? Everything?’
    ‘
All that exists. All distils out of the Vitr. And all returns to dissolution. You, I. All life essence. All sentience
.’
    Kiska felt her brows rising higher and higher. ‘
All
? Everything? All races? Surely not the dragons … the Tiste … or the Jaghut.’
    Maker’s shovel hands clenched into fists with a grinding and crackling of rock. The sands at his wide feet hissed and glowed, sintering into black obsidian glass. The beach shuddered and a great landslide of rocks echoed among the distant headlands. Kiska found herself on the ground, and rolled away from the searing heat surrounding Maker.
    ‘
Speak not to me of the meddling Jaghut!
’
    The juddering of the ground faded away. She had covered her face to shield it from the radiance and now her leather sleeve came away red and wet. She coughed and spat out a mouthful of blood. Leoman was dabbing at his nose. ‘My apologies, Maker,’ she managed, coughing more.
    The entity had raised his fists before his blank stone face and seemed to regard them as if astonished. The hands ground open. ‘
No – it is I who must apologize. I am sorry. My anger … they have done me a great wound
.’ The arms fell to hang loose at his sides. ‘
As to those you name dragons, the Eleint. I myself have assisted beings who emerged fully formed from the Vitr. Some took that form. I do not know whether they were the first of their kind, or if others came into existence elsewhere. As to the Tiste … the Andii emerged from eternal night, true, yet what of the vital essence which animates? I believe the underlying energy which moves all originates here, in the Vitr. And for that some would name it the First Light
.’
    Kiska regarded the great shifting sea, awed. First Light? Yet who was to say otherwise? Could this ‘sea’ be nothing less than a great reservoir or source of energy – power, puissance, call it what you would. It was theology, or philosophy, all far beyond her. She returned her attention to Maker. ‘And this other? The one like us?’
    ‘
I aided him in his emergence from the Vitr
…’
    Kiska laughed, and winced at the note of hysteria. ‘Then I assure you, Maker, he is nothing like us.’
    ‘
He is. He is formed as you, and mortal
.’
    ‘Mortal? His name? Does he have a name?’
    Maker shifted, glass crackling, and started a slow lumbering walk down the beach. Kiska moved alongside. ‘
Understand, little one, those who have experienced the Vitr first hand emerge as if freshly born. Newly formed, or re-formed. His mind carries nothing of his prior existence. And he has proved a great help in my work and a balm to my loneliness. I named him Then-aj-Ehliel, Gift of Creation
.’
    ‘Your … work?’ Leoman asked from where he trailed behind.
    Stone grated as the great domed head turned to Leoman. ‘
Why, the bolstering and maintenance of the edge of existence, of course, against the constant erosion of the Vitr
.’
    Kiska found that she’d stopped walking. Her hands covered