An army that waits is soon an army at war with itself.
THE WORLD WAS ENCIRCLED IN RED. THE HUE OF OLD BLOOD, OF IRON rusting on a battlefield. It rose in a wall like a river turned on its side, crashing confused and uncertain against the rough cliffs that rose broken-toothed around the rim of Raraku. The Holy Desert’s most ancient guardians, those bleached limestone crags, now withering beneath the ceaseless storm of the Whirlwind, the raging goddess who could countenance no rival to her dominion. Who would devour the cliffs themselves in her fury.
Whilst the illusion of calm lay within her heart. The old man who had come to be known as Ghost Hands slowly clambered his way up the slope. His ageing skin was deep bronze, his tattooed, blunt and wide face as creased as a wind-clawed boulder. Small yellow flowers cloaked the ridge above him, a rare blossoming of the low-growing desert plant the local tribes called hen’bara. When dried, the flowers made a heady tea, mender of grief, balm against pain in a mortal soul. The old man scrabbled and scraped his way up the slope with something like desperation.
No life’s path is bloodless. Spill that of those blocking your path. Spill your own. Struggle on, wade the growing torrent with all the frenzy that is the brutal unveiling of self-preservation. The macabre dance in the tugging currents held no artistry, and to pretend otherwise was to sink into delusion.
Delusions. Heboric Light Touch, once priest of Fener, possessed no more delusions. He had drowned them one by one with his own hands long ago. His hands-his Ghost Hands-had proved particularly capable of such tasks. Whisperers of unseen powers, guided by a mysterious, implacable will. He knew that he had no control over them and so held no delusions. How could he?
Behind him, in the vast flat where tens of thousands of warriors and their followers were encamped amidst a city’s ruins, such clear-eyed vision was absent. The army was the strong hands, now at rest but soon to raise weapons, guided by a will that was anything but implacable, a will that was drowning in delusions. Heboric was not only different from all those below-he was their very opposite, a sordid reflection in a mangled mirror.
Hen’bara’s gift was dreamless sleep at night. The solace of oblivion.
He reached the ridge, breathing hard from the exertion, and settled down among the flowers for a moment to rest. Ghostly hands were as deft as real ones, though he could not see them-not even as the faint, mottled glow that others saw. Indeed, his vision was failing him in all things. It was an old man’s curse, he believed, to witness the horizons on all sides drawing ever closer. Even so, while the carpet of yellow surrounding him was little more than a blur to his eyes, the spicy fragrance filled his nostrils and left a palpable taste on his tongue.
The desert sun’s heat was bludgeoning, oppressive. It had a power of its own, transforming the Holy Desert into a prison, pervasive and relentless. Heboric had grown to despise that heat, to curse Seven Cities, to cultivate an abiding hatred for its people. And he was trapped among them, now. The Whirlwind’s barrier was indiscriminate, impassable both to those on the outside and those within-at the discretion of the Chosen One.
Movement to one side, the blur of a slight, dark-haired figure. Who then settled down beside him.
Heboric smiled. ‘I thought I was alone.’
‘We are both alone, Ghost Hands.’
‘Of that, Felisin, neither of us needs reminding.’ Felisin Younger, but that is a name I cannot speak out loud. The mother who adopted you, lass, has her own secrets. ‘What is that you have in your hands?’
‘Scrolls,’ the girl replied. ‘From Mother. She has, it seems, rediscovered her hunger for writing poetry.’
The tattooed ex-priest grunted, ‘I thought it was a love, not a hunger.’
‘You are not a poet,’ she said. ‘In any case, to speak plainly is a true talent; to bury beneath obfuscation is a poet’s calling these days.’
‘You are a brutal critic, lass,’ Heboric observed.
‘Call to Shadow, she has called it. Or, rather, she continues a poem her own mother began.’
‘Ah, well, Shadow is a murky realm. Clearly she has chosen a style to match the subject, perhaps to match that of her own mother.’
‘Too convenient, Ghost Hands. Now, consider the name by which Korbolo Dom’s army is now called. Dogslayers. That, old man, is poetic. A name fraught with diffidence behind its proud bluster. A name to match Korbolo Dom himself, who stands square-footed in his terror.’ Heboric reached out and plucked the first flower head. He held it to his nose a moment before dropping it into the leather bag at his belt. ‘ “Square-footed in his terror.” An arresting image, lass. But I see no fear in the Napan. The Malazan army mustering in Aren is nothing but three paltry legions of recruits. Commanded by a woman devoid of any relevant experience. Korbolo Dom has no reason to be afraid.’
The young girl’s laugh was a trill that seemed to cut an icy path through the air. ‘No reason, Ghost Hands? Many reasons, in fact. Shall I list them? Leoman. Toblakai. Bidithal. L’oric. Mathok. And, the one he finds most terrifying of all: Sha’ik. My mother. The camp is a snake-pit, seething with dissent. You have missed the last spitting frenzy. Mother has banished Mallick Rel and Pullyk Alar. Cast them out. Korbolo Dom loses two more allies in the power struggle-’
‘There is no power struggle,’ Heboric growled, tugging at a handful of flowers. ‘They are fools to believe that one is possible. Sha’ik has thrown those two out because treachery flows in their veins. She is indifferent to Korbolo Dom’s feelings about it.’
‘He believes otherwise, and that conviction is more important than what might or might not be true. And how does Mother respond to the aftermath of her pronouncements?’ Felisin swiped the plants before her with the scrolls. ‘With poetry.’
‘The gift of knowledge,’ Heboric muttered. ‘The Whirlwind Goddess whispers in the Chosen One’s ear. There are secrets within the Warren of Shadow, secrets containing truths that are relevant to the Whirlwind itself.’
‘What do you mean?’
Heboric shrugged. His bag was nearly full. ‘Alas, I possess my own prescient knowledge.’ And little good it does me. ‘The sundering of an ancient warren scattered fragments throughout the realms. The Whirlwind Goddess possesses power, but it was not her own, not at first. Just one more fragment, wandering lost and in pain. What was the goddess, I wonder, when she first stumbled onto the Whirlwind? Some desert tribe’s minor deity, I suspect. A spirit of the summer wind, protector of some whirlpool spring, possibly. One among many, without question. Of course, once she made that fragment her own, it did not take long for her to destroy her old rivals, to assert complete, ruthless domination over the Holy Desert.’
‘A quaint theory, Ghost Hands,’ Felisin drawled. ‘But it speaks nothing of the Seven Holy Cities, the Seven Holy Books, the prophecy of Dryjhna the Apocalyptic.’
Heboric snorted. ‘Cults feed upon one another, lass. Whole myths are co-opted to fuel the faith. Seven Cities was born of nomadic tribes, yet the legacy preceding them was that of an ancient civilization, which in turn rested uneasy on the foundations of a still older empire-the First Empire of the T’lan Imass. That which survives in memory or falters and fades away is but chance and circumstance.’
‘Poets may know hunger,’ she commented drily, ‘but historians devour. And devouring murders language, makes of it a dead thing.’
‘Not the historian’s crime, lass, but the critic’s.’
‘Why quibble? Scholars, then.’
‘Are you complaining that my explanation destroys the mysteries of the pantheon? Felisin, there are more worthy things to wonder at in this world. Leave the gods and goddesses to their own sickly obsessions.’
Her laugh struck through him again. ‘Oh, you are amusing company, old man! A priest cast out by his god. An historian once gaoled for his theories. A thief with nothing left worth stealing. I am not the one in need of wonder.’
He heard her climb to her feet. ‘In any case,’ she continued, ‘I was sent to find you.’
‘Oh? Sha’ik seeks more advice that she will no doubt ignore?’
‘Not this time. Leoman.’
Heboric scowled. And where Leoman is, so too will be Toblakai. The slayer’s only quality his holding to his vow to never again speak to me. Still, I will feel his eyes upon me. His killer’s eyes. If there’s anyone in the camp who should be banished… He slowly clambered upright. ‘Where will I find him?’
‘In the pit temple,’ she replied.
Of course. And what, dear lass, were you doing in Leoman’s company?
‘I would take you by hand,’ Felisin added, ‘but I find their touch far too poetic.’
She walked at his side, back down the slope, between the two vast kraals which were empty at the moment-the goats and sheep driven to the pastures east of the ruins for the day. They passed through a wide breach in the dead city’s wall, intersecting one of the main avenues that led to the jumble of sprawling, massive buildings of which only foundations and half-walls remained, that had come to be called the Circle of Temples.
Adobe huts, yurts and hide tents fashioned a modern city on the ruins. Neighbourhood markets bustled beneath wide, street-length awnings, filling the hot air with countless voices and the redolent aromas of cooking. Local tribes, those that followed their own war chief, Mathok-who held a position comparable to general in Sha’ik’s command-mingled with Dogslayers, with motley bands of renegades from cities, with cut-throat bandits and freed criminals from countless Malazan garrison gaols. The army’s camp followers were equally disparate, a bizarre self-contained tribe that seemed to wander a nomadic round within the makeshift city, driven to move at the behest of hidden vagaries no doubt political in nature. At the moment, some unseen defeat had them more furtive than usual-old whores leading scores of mostly naked, thin children, weapon smiths and tack menders and cooks and latrine diggers, widows and wives and a few husbands and fewer still fathers and mothers… threads linked most of them to the warriors in Sha’ik’s army, but they were tenuous at best, easily severed, often tangled into a web of adultery and bastardy.
The city was a microcosm of Seven Cities, in Heboric’s opinion. Proof of all the ills the Malazan Empire had set out to cure as conquerors then occupiers. There seemed few virtues to the freedoms to which the ex-priest had been witness, here in this place. Yet he suspected he was alone in his traitorous thoughts. The empire sentenced me a criminal, yet I remain Malazan none the less. A child of the empire, a reawakened devotee to the old emperor’s ‘peace by the sword’. So, dear Tavore, lead your army to this heart of rebellion, and cut it dead. I’ll not weep for the loss.
The Circle of Temples was virtually abandoned compared to the teeming streets the two had just passed through. The home of old gods, forgotten deities once worshipped by a forgotten people who left little behind apart from crumbling ruins and pathways ankle-deep in dusty potsherds. Yet something of the sacred still lingered for some, it seemed, for it was here where the most decrepit of the lost found meagre refuge. A scattering of minor healers moved among these destitute few-the old widows who’d found no refuge as a third or even fourth wife to a warrior or merchant, fighters who’d lost limbs, lepers and other diseased victims who could not afford the healing powers of High Denul. There had once numbered among these people abandoned children, but Sha’ik had seen to an end to that. Beginning with Felisin, she had adopted them all-her private retinue, the Whirlwind cult’s own acolytes. By Heboric’s last cursory measure, a week past, they had numbered over three thousand, in ages ranging from newly weaned to Felisin’s age-close to Sha’ik’s own, true age. To all of them, she was Mother.
It had not been a popular gesture. The pimps had lost their lambs. In the centre of the Circle of Temples was a broad, octagonal pit, sunk deep into the layered limestone, its floor never touched by the sun, cleared out now of its resident snakes, scorpions and spiders and re-occupied by Leoman of the Flails. Leoman, who had once been Elder Sha’ik’s most trusted bodyguard. But the reborn Sha’ik had delved deep into the man’s soul, and found it empty, bereft of faith, by some flaw of nature inclined to disavow all forms of certainty. The new Chosen One had decided she could not trust this man-not at her side, at any rate. He had been seconded to Mathok, though it seemed that the position involved few responsibilities. While Toblakai remained as Sha’ik’s personal guardian, the giant with the shattered tattoo on his face had not relinquished his friendship with Leoman and was often in the man’s sour company.
There was history between the two warriors, of which Heboric was certain he sensed but a fraction. They had once shared a chain as prisoners of the Malazans, it was rumoured. Heboric wished the Malazans had shown less mercy in Toblakai’s case.
‘I will leave you now,’ Felisin said at the pit’s brick-lined edge. ‘When next I desire to clash views with you, I will seek you out.’
Grimacing, Heboric nodded and began making his way down the ladder. The air around him grew cooler in layers as he descended into the gloom. The smell of durhang was sweet and heavy-one of Leoman’s affectations, leading the ex-priest to wonder if young Felisin was following her mother’s path more closely than he had suspected.
The limestone floor was layered in rugs now. Ornate furniture-the portable kind wealthy travelling merchants used-made the spacious chamber seem crowded. Wood-framed screens stood against the walls here and there, the stretched fabric of their panels displaying woven scenes from tribal mythology. Where the walls were exposed, black and red ochre paintings from some ancient artist transformed the smooth, rippled stone into multi-layered vistas-savannas where transparent beasts roamed. For some reason these images remained clear and sharp to Heboric’s eyes, whispering memories of movement ever on the edges of his vision.
Old spirits wandered this pit, trapped for eternity by its high, sheer walls. Heboric hated this place, with all its spectral laminations of failure, of worlds long extinct.
Toblakai sat on a backless divan, rubbing oil into the blade of his wooden sword, not bothering to look up as Heboric reached the base of the ladder. Leoman lay sprawled among cushions near the wall opposite.
‘Ghost Hands,’ the desert warrior called in greeting. ‘You have hen’bara? Come, there is a brazier here, and water-’
‘I reserve that tea for just before I go to bed,’ Heboric replied, striding over. ‘You would speak with me, Leoman?’
‘Always, friend. Did not the Chosen One call us her sacred triangle? We three, here in this forgotten pit? Or perhaps I have jumbled my words, and should reverse my usage of “sacred” and “forgotten”? Come, sit. I have herbal tea, the kind that makes one wakeful.’
Heboric sat down on a cushion. ‘And what need have we to be wakeful?’
Leoman’s smile was loose, telling Heboric that durhang had swept away his usual reticence. ‘Dear Ghost Hands,’ the warrior murmured, ‘it is the need of the hunted. It is the gazelle with its nose to the ground that the lion sups with, after all.’
The ex-priest’s brows rose. ‘And who is stalking us now, Leoman?’
Leaning back, Leoman replied, ‘Why, the Malazans, of course. Who other?’
‘Why, most certainly then we must talk,’ Heboric said in mock earnestness. ‘I had no idea, after all, that the Malazans were planning on doing us harm. Are you certain of your information?’
Toblakai spoke to Leoman. ‘As I have told you before, this old man should be killed.’
Leoman laughed. ‘Ah, my friend, now that you are the only one of us three who still has the Chosen One’s ear… as it were… I would suggest you relinquish that subject. She has forbidden it and that is that. Nor am I inclined to agree with you in any case. It is an old refrain that needs burying.’
‘Toblakai hates me because I see too clearly what haunts his soul,’ Heboric said. ‘And, given his vow to not speak to me, his options for dialogue are sadly limited.’
‘I applaud your empathy, Ghost Hands.’
Heboric snorted. ‘If there is to be subject to this meeting, Leoman, let’s hear it. Else I’ll make my way back to the light.’
‘That would prove a long journey,’ the warrior chuckled. ‘Very well. Bidithal is back to his old ways.’
‘Bidithal, the High Mage? What “old ways”?’
‘His ways with children, Heboric. Girls. His unpleasant… hungers. Sha’ik is not all-knowing, alas. Oh, she knows Bidithal’s old predilections-she experienced them first-hand when she was Sha’ik Elder, after all. But there are close to a hundred thousand people in this city, now. A few children vanishing every week… easily passing virtually unnoticed. Mathok’s people, however, are by nature watchful.’
Heboric scowled. ‘And what would you have me do about it?’
‘Are you disinterested?’
‘Of course not. But I am one man, without, as you say, a voice. While Bidithal is one of the three sworn to Sha’ik, one of her most powerful High Mages.’
Leoman began making tea. ‘We share a certain loyalty, friend,’ he murmured, ‘the three of us here. With a certain child.’ He looked up then, leaning close as he set the pot of water on the brazier’s grate, his veiled blue eyes fixing on Heboric. ‘Who has caught Bidithal’s eye. But that attention is more than simply sexual. Felisin is Sha’ik’s chosen heir-we can all see that, yes? Bidithal believes she must be shaped in a manner identical to her mother-when her mother was Sha’ik Elder, that is. The child must follow the mother’s path, Bidithal believes. As the mother was broken inside, so too must the child be broken inside.’
Cold horror filled Heboric at Leoman’s words. He snapped a glare at Toblakai. ‘Sha’ik must be told of this!’
‘She has,’ Leoman said. ‘But she needs Bidithal, if only to balance the schemes of Febryl and L’oric. The three despise each other, naturally. She has been told, Ghost Hands, and so she tasks us three in turn to be… watchful.’
‘How in Hood’s name am I supposed to be watchful?’ Heboric snapped. ‘I am damned near blind! Toblakai! Tell Sha’ik to take that wrinkled bastard and flay him alive, never mind Febryl and L’oric!’
The huge savage bared his teeth at Leoman. ‘I hear a lizard hissing from under its rock, Leoman of the Flails. Such bravado is quickly ended with the heel of a boot.’
‘Ah,’ Leoman sighed to Heboric, ‘alas, Bidithal is not the problem. Indeed, he may prove Sha’ik’s saviour. Febryl schemes betrayal, friend. Who are his co-conspirators? Unknown. Not L’oric, that’s for certain-L’oric is by far the most cunning of the three, and so not a fool by any measure. Yet Febryl needs allies among the powerful. Is Korbolo Dom in league with the bastard? We don’t know. Kamist Reloe? His two lieutenant mages, Henaras and Fayelle? Even if they all were, Febryl would still need Bidithal-either to stand aside and do nothing, or to join.’
‘Yet,’ Toblakai growled, ‘Bidithal is loyal.’
‘In his own way,’ Leoman agreed. ‘And he knows that Febryl is planning treachery, and now but awaits the invitation. Whereupon he will tell Sha’ik.’
‘And all the conspirators will then die,’ Toblakai said.
Heboric shook his head. ‘And what if those conspirators comprise her entire command?’
Leoman shrugged, then began pouring tea. ‘Sha’ik has the Whirlwind, friend. To lead the armies? She has Mathok. And me. And L’oric will remain, that is certain. Seven take us, Korbolo Dom is a liability in any case.’
Heboric was silent for a long moment. He made no move when with a gesture Leoman invited him to partake of the tea. ‘And so the lie is revealed,’ he finally murmured. ‘Toblakai has told Sha’ik nothing. Not him, nor Mathok, nor you, Leoman. This is your way of getting back into power. Crush a conspiracy and thereby eliminate all your rivals. And now, you invite me into the lie.’
‘Not a great lie,’ Leoman replied. ‘Sha’ik has been informed that Bidithal hunts children once more…’
‘But not Felisin in particular.’
‘The Chosen One must not let her personal loyalties place the entire rebellion at risk. She would act too quickly-’
‘And you think I give a damn about this rebellion, Leoman?’
The warrior smiled as he leaned back on the cushions. ‘You care about nothing, Heboric. Not even yourself. But no, that is not true, is it? There is Felisin. There is the child.’
Heboric climbed to his feet. ‘I am done here.’
‘Go well, friend. Know that your company is always welcome here.’
The ex-priest made his way towards the ladder. Reaching it, he paused. ‘And here I’d been led to believe that the snakes were gone from this pit.’
Leoman laughed. ‘The cool air but makes them… dormant. Be careful on that ladder, Ghost Hands.’
After the old man had left, Toblakai sheathed his sword and rose. ‘He will head straight to Sha’ik,’ he pronounced.
‘Will he?’ Leoman asked, then shrugged. ‘No, I think not. Not to Sha’ik…’
Of all the temples of the native cults in Seven Cities, only the ones raised in the name of a particular god displayed an architectural style that could be seen to echo the ancient ruins in the Circle of Temples. And so, in Heboric’s mind, there was nothing accidental to Bidithal’s choice of abode. Had the foundations of the temple the High Mage now occupied still held aloft walls and ceiling, it would be seen to be a low, strangely elongated dome, buttressed by half-arches like the ribs of a vast sea-creature, or perhaps the skeletal framework of a longship. The tent-cloth covering the withered and crumbled remnants was affixed to the few surviving upright wings. These wings and the floor plan gave sufficient evidence of what the temple had originally looked like; and in the Seven Holy Cities and among its more populated lesser kin, a certain extant temple could be found that closely resembled this ruin in style.
And in these truths, Heboric suspected a mystery. Bidithal had not always been a High Mage. Not in title in any case. In the Dhobri language, he had been known as Rashan’ais. The archpriest of the cult of Rashan, which had existed in Seven Cities long before the Throne of Shadow had been reoccupied. In the twisted minds of humanity, it seemed, there was nothing objectionable about worshipping an empty throne. No stranger than kneeling before the Boar of Summer, before a god of war.
The cult of Rashan had not taken well the ascension of Ammanas-Shadowthrone-and the Rope into positions of penultimate power within the Warren of Shadow. Though Heboric’s knowledge of the details was sketchy at best, it seemed that the cult had torn itself apart. Blood had been spilled within temple walls, and in the aftermath of desecrating murder, only those who acknowledged the mastery of the new gods remained among the devotees. To the wayside, bitter and licking deep wounds, the banished slunk away.
Men like Bidithal.
Defeated but, Heboric suspected, not yet finished. For it is the Meanas temples of Seven Cities that most closely mimic this ruin in architectural style… as if a direct descendant of this land’s earliest cults…
Within the Whirlwind, the cast-out Rashan’ais had found refuge. Further proof of his belief that the Whirlwind was but a fragment of a shattered warren, and that shattered warren was Shadow. And if that is indeed the case, what hidden purpose holds Bidithal to Sha’ik? Is he truly loyal to Dryjhna the Apocalyptic, to this holy conflagration in the name of liberty? Answers to such questions were long in coming, if at all. The unknown player, the unseen current beneath this rebellion-indeed, beneath the Malazan Empire itself-was the new ruler of Shadow and his deadly companion. Ammanas Shadowthrone, who was Kellanved-emperor of Malaz and conqueror of Seven Cities. Cotillion, who was Dancer-master of the Talon and the empire’s deadliest assassin, deadlier even than Surly. Gods below, something breathes there… I now wonder, whose war is this?
Distracted by such troubling thoughts as he made his way to Bidithal’s abode, it was a moment before Heboric realized that his name had been called. Eyes straining to focus as he searched for the originator of that call, he was suddenly startled by a hand settling on his shoulder.
‘My apologies, Ghost Hands, if I frightened you.’
‘Ah, L’oric,’ Heboric replied, finally recognizing the tall, white-robed figure standing beside him. ‘These are not your usual haunts, are they?’
A slightly pained smile. ‘I regret that my presence is seen as a haunting-unless of course your use of the word was unmindful.’
‘Careless, you mean. It was. I have been in the company of Leoman, inadvertently breathing fumes of durhang. What I meant was, I rarely see you in these parts, that is all.’
‘Thus explaining your perturbed expression,’ L’oric murmured.
Meeting you, the durhang or Leoman? The tall mage-one of Sha’ik’s three-was not by nature approachable, nor given to drama. Heboric had no idea which warren the man employed in his sorceries. Perhaps Sha’ik alone knew.
After a moment, the High Mage resumed, ‘Your route suggests a visit to a certain resident here in the Circle. Further, I sense a storm of emotions stirring around you, which could lead one to surmise the impending encounter will prove tumultuous.’
‘You mean we might argue, Bidithal and I,’ Heboric growled. ‘Well yes, that’s damned likely.’
‘I myself have but recently departed his company,’ L’oric said. ‘Perhaps a warning? He is much agitated over something, and so short of temper.’
‘Perhaps it was something you said, ‘Heboric ventured.
‘Entirely possible,’ the mage conceded. ‘And if so, then I apologize.’
‘Fener’s tusks, L’oric, what are you doing in this damned army of vipers?’
Again the pained smile, then a shrug. ‘Mathok’s tribes have among them women and men who dance with flare-necked vipers-such as are sometimes found where grasses grow deep. It is a complicated and obviously dangerous dance, yet one possessed of a certain charm. There are attractions to such exercise.’
‘You enjoy taking risks, even with your life.’
‘I might in turn ask why are you here, Heboric? Do you seek to return to your profession as historian, thus ensuring that the tale of Sha’ik and the Whirlwind will be told? Or are you indeed ensnared with loyalties to the noble cause of liberty? Surely, you cannot say you are both, can you?’
‘I was a middling historian at best, L’oric,’ Heboric muttered, reluctant to elaborate on his reasons for remaining-none of which had any real relevance, since Sha’ik was not likely to let him leave in any case.
‘You are impatient with me. I will leave you to your task, then.’ L’oric made a slight bow as he stepped back.
Watching the man walk away, Heboric stood motionless for a moment longer, then he resumed his journey. Bidithal was agitated, was he? An argument with L’oric, or something behind the veil? The High Mage’s dwelling was before him now, the tent walls and peaked ceiling sun-faded and smoke-stained, a dusty smear of mottled magenta squatting above the thick foundation stones. Huddled just outside the flap entrance was a sunburned, filthy figure, mumbling in some foreign language, face hidden beneath long greasy strands of brown hair. The figure had no hands and no feet, the stumps showing old scar tissue yet still suppurating a milky yellow discharge. The man was using one of his wrist stumps to draw broad patterns in the thick dust, surrounding himself in linked chains, round and round, each pass obscuring what had been made before.
This one belongs to Toblakai. His master work-Sulgar? Silgar. The Nathii. The man was one of the many crippled, diseased and destitute inhabitants of the Circle of Temples. Heboric wondered what had drawn him to Bidithal’s tent.
He arrived at the entrance. In tribal fashion, the flap was tied back, the customary expansive gesture of invitation, the message one of ingenuousness. As he ducked to step through, Silgar stirred, head snapping up.
‘Brother of mine! I’ve seen you before, yes! Maimed-we are kin!’ The language was a tangled mix of Nathii, Malazan and Ehrlii. The man’s smile revealed a row of rotting teeth. ‘Flesh and spirit, yes? We are, you and I, the only honest mortals here!’
‘If you say so,’ Heboric muttered, striding into Bidithal’s home. Silgar’s cackle followed him in.
No effort had been made to clean the sprawling chamber within. Bricks and rubble lay scattered across a floor of sand, broken mortar and potsherds. A half-dozen pieces of furniture were positioned here and there in the cavernous space. There was a large, low bed, wood-slatted and layered in thin mattresses. Four folding merchant chairs of the local three-legged kind faced onto the bed in a ragged row, as if Bidithal was in the habit of addressing an audience of acolytes or students. A dozen small oil lamps crowded the surface of a small table nearby.
The High Mage had his back to Heboric and most of the long chamber. A torch, fixed to a spear that had been thrust upright, its base mounded with stones and rubble, stood slightly behind Bidithal’s left shoulder, casting the man’s own shadow onto the tent wall.
A chill rippled through Heboric, for it seemed the High Mage was conversing in a language of gestures with his own shadow. Cast out in name only, perhaps. Still eager to play with Meanas. In the Whirlwind’s name, or his own? ‘High Mage,’ the ex-priest called.
The ancient, withered man slowly turned. ‘Come to me,’ he rattled, ‘I would experiment.’
‘Not the most encouraging invitation, Bidithal.’ But Heboric approached none the less.
Bidithal waved impatiently. ‘Closer! I would see if your ghostly hands cast shadows.’
Heboric halted, stepped back with a shake of his head. ‘No doubt you would, but I wouldn’t.’
‘Come!’
‘No.’
The dark wrinkled face twisted into a scowl, black eyes glittering.
‘You are too eager to protect your secrets.’
‘And you aren’t?’
‘I serve the Whirlwind. Nothing else is important-’
‘Barring your appetites.’
The High Mage cocked his head, then made a small, almost effeminate wave with one hand. ‘Mortal necessities. Even when I was Rashan’ais, we saw no imperative to turn away from the pleasures of the flesh. Indeed, the interweaving of the shadows possesses great power.’
‘And so you raped Sha’ik when she was but a child. And scourged from her all future chance at such pleasures as you now espouse. I see little logic in that, Bidithal-only sickness.’
‘My purposes are beyond your ability to comprehend, Ghost Hands,’ the High Mage said with a smirk. ‘You cannot wound me with such clumsy efforts.’
‘I’d been given to understand you were agitated, discomfited.’
‘Ah, L’oric. Another stupid man. He mistook excitement for agitation, but I will say no more of that. Not to you.’
‘Allow me to be equally succinct, Bidithal.’ Heboric stepped closer. ‘If you even so much as look in Felisin’s direction, these hands of mine will twist your head from your neck.’
‘Felisin? Sha’ik’s dearest? Do you truly believe she is a virgin? Before Sha’ik returned, the child was a waif, an orphan in the camp. None cared a whit about her-’
‘None of which matters,’ Heboric said.
The High Mage turned away. ‘Whatever you say, Ghost Hands. Hood knows, there are plenty of others-’
‘All now under Sha’ik’s protection. Do you imagine she will permit such abuses from you?’
‘You shall have to ask her that yourself,’ Bidithal replied. ‘Now leave me. You are guest no longer.’
Heboric hesitated, barely resisting an urge to kill the man now, this instant. Would it even be pre-emptive? Has he not as much as admitted to his crimes? But this was not a place of Malazan justice, was it? The only law that existed here was Sha’ik’s. Nor will I be alone in this. Even Toblakai has vowed protection over Felisin. But what of the other children? Why does Sha’ik tolerate this, unless it is as Leoman has said. She needs Bidithal. Needs him to betray Febryl’s plotting.
Yet what do I care for all of that? This… creature does not deserve to live.
‘Contemplating murder?’ Bidithal murmured, his back turned once more, his own shadow dancing on its own on the tent wall. ‘You would not be the first, nor, I suspect, the last. I should warn you, however, this temple is newly resanctified. Take another step towards me, Ghost Hands, and you will see the power of that.’
‘And you believe Sha’ik will permit you to kneel before Shadowthrone?’
The man whirled, his face black with rage. ‘Shadowthrone? That… foreigner! The roots of Meanas are found in an elder warren! Once ruled by-’ he snapped his mouth shut, then smiled, revealing dark teeth. ‘Not for you. Oh no, not for you, ex-priest. There are purposes within the Whirlwind-your existence is tolerated but little more than that. Challenge me, Ghost Hands, and you will know holy wrath.’
Heboric’s answering grin was hard. ‘I’ve known it before, Bidithal. Yet I remain. Purposes? Perhaps mine is to block your path. I’d advise you to think on that.’
Stepping outside once more, he paused briefly, blinking in the harsh sunlight. Silgar was nowhere to be seen, yet he had completed an elaborate pattern in the dust around Heboric’s moccasins. Chains, surrounding a figure with stumps instead of hands… yet footed. The ex-priest scowled, kicking through the image as he set forth.
Silgar was no artist. Heboric’s own eyes were bad. Perhaps he’d seen only what his fears urged-it had been Silgar himself within the circle of chains the first time, after all. In any case, it was not important enough to make him turn back for a second look. Besides, his own steps had no doubt left it ruined.
None of which explained the chill that clung to him as he walked beneath the searing sun.
The vipers were writhing in their pit, and he was in their midst.
The old scars of ligature damage made his ankles and wrists resemble segmented tree trunks, each pinched width encircling his limbs to remind him of those times, of every shackle that had snapped shut, every chain that had held him down. In his dreams, the pain reared like a thing alive once more, weaving mesmerizing through a tumult of confused, distraught scenes.
The old Malazan with no hands and the shimmering, near solid tattoo had, despite his blindness, seen clearly enough, seen those trailing ghosts, the wind-moaning train of deaths that stalked him day and night now, loud enough in Toblakai’s mind to drown out the voice of Urugal, close enough to obscure his god’s stone visage behind veil after veil of mortal faces-each and every one twisted with the agony and fear that carved out the moment of dying. Yet the old man had not understood, not entirely. The children among those victims-children in terms of recently birthed, as the lowlanders used the word-had not all fallen to the bloodwood sword of Karsa Orlong. They were, one and all, the progeny that would never be, the bloodlines severed in the trophy-cluttered cavern of the Teblor’s history.
Toblakai. A name of past glories, of a race of warriors who had stood alongside mortal Imass, alongside cold-miened Jaghut and demonic Forkrul Assail. A name by which Karsa Orlong was now known, as if he alone was the inheritor of elder dominators in a young, harsh world. Years ago, such a thought would have filled his chest with fierce, bloodthirsty pride. Now it racked him like a desert cough, weakened him deep in his bones. He saw what no-one else saw, that his new name was a title of polished, blinding irony.
The Teblor were long fallen from Thelomen Toblakai. Mirrored reflections in flesh only. Kneeling like fools before seven blunt-featured faces carved into a cliffside. Valley dwellers, where every horizon was almost within reach. Victims of brutal ignorance-for which no-one else could be blamed-entwined with deceit, for which Karsa Orlong would seek a final accounting.
He and his people had been wronged, and the warrior who now strode between the dusty white boles of a long-dead orchard would, one day, give answer to that.
But the enemy had so many faces…
Even alone, as he was now, he longed for solitude. But it was denied him. The rattle of chains was unceasing, the echoing cries of the slain endless. Even the mysterious but palpable power of Raraku offered no surcease-Raraku itself, not the Whirlwind, for Toblakai knew that the Whirlwind was like a child to the Holy Desert’s ancient presence, and it touched him naught. Raraku had known many such storms, yet it weathered them as it did all things, with untethered skin of sand and the solid truth of stone. Raraku was its own secret, the hidden bedrock that held the warrior in this place. From Raraku, Karsa believed, he would find his own truth.
He had knelt before Sha’ik Reborn, all those months ago. The young woman with the Malazan accent who’d stumbled into view half carrying her tattooed, handless pet. Knelt, not in servitude, not from resurrected faith, but in relief. Relief, that the waiting had ended, that he would be able to drag Leoman away from that place of failure and death. They had seen Sha’ik Elder murdered while under their protection. A defeat that had gnawed at Karsa. Yet he could not deceive himself into believing that the new Chosen One was anything but a hapless victim that the insane Whirlwind Goddess had simply plucked from the wilderness, a mortal tool that would be used with merciless brutality. That she had proved a willing participant in her own impending destruction was equally pathetic in Karsa’s eyes. Clearly, the scarred young woman had her own reasons, and seemed eager for the power.
Lead us, Warleader.
The words laughed bitterly through his thoughts as he wandered through the grove-the city almost a league to the east, the place where he now found himself a remnant outskirt of some other town. Warleaders needed such forces gathered around them, arrayed in desperate defence of self-delusion, of headlong singlemindedness. The Chosen One was more like Toblakai than she imagined, or, rather, a younger Toblakai, a Teblor commanding slayers-an army of two with which to deliver mayhem.
Sha’ik Elder had been something else entirely. She had lived long through her haunting, her visions of Apocalypse that had tugged and jerked her bones ever onward as if they were string-tied sticks. And she had seen truths in Karsa’s soul, had warned him of the horrors to come-not in specific terms, for like all seers she had been cursed with ambiguity-but sufficient to awaken within Karsa a certain… watchfulness.
And, it seemed, he did little else these days but watch. As the madness that was the soul of the Whirlwind Goddess seeped out like poison in the blood to infect every leader among the rebellion. Rebellion… oh, there was truth enough in that. But the enemy was not the Malazan Empire. It is sanity itself that they are rebelling against. Order. Honourable conduct. ‘Rules of the common’, as Leoman called them, even as his consciousness sank beneath the opaque fumes of durhang. Yes, I would well understand his flight, were I to believe what he would present to us all-the drifting layers of smoke in his pit, the sleepy look his eyes, the slurred words… ah, but Leoman, I have never witnessed you actually partake of the drug. Only its apparent aftermath, the evidence scattered all about, and the descent into sleep that seems perfectly timed whenever you wish to close a conversation, end a certain discourse…
Like him, Karsa suspected, Leoman was biding his time. Raraku waited with them. Perhaps, for them. The Holy Desert possessed a gift, yet it was one that few had ever recognized, much less accepted. A gift that would arrive unseen, unnoticed at first, a gift too old to find shape in words, too formless to grasp in the hands as one would a sword.
Toblakai, once a warrior of forest-cloaked mountains, had grown to love this desert. The endless tones of fire painted on stone and sand, the bitter-needled plants and the countless creatures that crawled, slithered or scampered, or slipped through night-air on silent wings. He loved the hungry ferocity of these creatures, their dancing as prey and predator a perpetual cycle inscribed on the sand and beneath the rocks. And the desert in turn had reshaped Karsa, weathered his skin dark, stretched taut and lean his muscles, thinned his eyes to slits.
Leoman had told him much of this place, secrets that only a true inhabitant would know. The ring of ruined cities, harbours one and all, the old beach ridges with their natural barrows running for league upon league. Shells that had turned hard as stone and would sing low and mournful in the wind-Leoman had presented him with a gift of these, a vest of hide on which such shells had been affixed, armour that moaned in the endless, ever-dry winds. There were hidden springs in the wasteland, cairns and caves where an ancient sea-god had been worshipped. Remote basins that would, every few years, be stripped of sand to reveal long, high-prowed ships of petrified wood that was crowded with carvings-a long-dead fleet revealed beneath starlight only to be buried once more the following day. In other places, often behind the beach ridges, the forgotten mariners had placed cemeteries, using hollowed-out cedar trunks to hold their dead kin-all turned to stone, now, claimed by the implacable power of Raraku.
Layer upon countless layer, the secrets were unveiled by the winds. Sheer cliffs rising like ramps, in which the fossil skeletons of enormous creatures could be seen. The stumps of cleared forests, hinting of trees as large as any Karsa had known from his homeland. The columnar pilings of docks and piers, anchor-stones and the open cavities of tin mines, flint quarries and arrow-straight raised roads, trees that grew entirely underground, a mass of roots stretching out for leagues, from which the ironwood of Karsa’s new sword had been carved-his blood-sword having cracked long ago.
Raraku had known Apocalypse first-hand, millennia past, and Toblakai wondered if it truly welcomed its return. Sha’ik’s goddess stalked the desert, her mindless rage the shriek of unceasing wind along its borders, but Karsa wondered at the Whirlwind’s manifestation-just whose was it? Cold, disconnected rage, or a savage, unbridled argument?
Did the goddess war with the desert?
Whilst, far to the south in this treacherous land, the Malazan army prepared to march.
As he approached the heart of the grove-where a low altar of flat-stones occupied a small clearing-he saw a slight, long-haired figure, seated on the altar as if it was no more than a bench in an abandoned garden. A book was in her lap, its cracked skin cover familiar to Toblakai’s eyes.
She spoke without turning round. ‘I have seen your tracks in this place, Toblakai.’
‘And I yours, Chosen One.’
‘I come here to wonder,’ she said as he walked into view around the altar to stand facing her.
As do I.
‘Can you guess what it is I wonder about?’ she asked.
‘No.’
The almost-faded pocks of bloodfly scars only showed themselves when she smiled. ‘The gift of the goddess…’ the smile grew strained, ‘offers only destruction.’
He glanced away, studied the nearby trees. ‘This grove will resist in the way of Raraku,’ he rumbled. ‘It is stone. And stone holds fast.’
‘For a while,’ she muttered, her smile falling away. ‘But there remains that within me that urges… creation.’
‘Have a baby.’
Her laugh was almost a yelp. ‘Oh, you hulking fool, Toblakai. I should welcome your company more often.’
Then why do you choose not to?
She waved a small hand at the book in her lap. ‘Dryjhna was an author who, to be gracious, lived with malnourished talent. There are naught but bones in this tome, I am afraid. Obsessed with the taking of life, the annihilation of order. Yet not once does he offer anything in its stead. There is no rebirth among the ashes of his vision, and that saddens me. Does it sadden you, Toblakai?’
He stared down at her for a long moment, then said, ‘Come.’
Shrugging, she set the book down on the altar and rose, straightening the plain, worn, colourless telaba that hung loose over her curved body.
He led her into the rows of bone-white trees. She followed in silence.
Thirty paces, then another small clearing, this one ringed tight in thick, petrified boles. A squat, rectangular mason’s chest sat in the skeletal shade cast down by the branches-which had remained intact down to the very twigs. Toblakai stepped to one side, studied her face as she stared in silence at his works-in-progress.
Before them, the trunks of two of the trees ringing the clearing had been reshaped beneath chisel and pick. Two warriors stared out with sightless eyes, one slightly shorter than Toblakai but far more robust, the other taller and thinner.
He saw that her breath had quickened, a slight flush on her cheeks. ‘You have talent… rough, but driven,’ she murmured without pulling her eyes from their study. ‘Do you intend to ring the entire clearing with such formidable warriors?’
‘No. The others will be… different.’
Her head turned at a sound. She stepped quickly closer to Karsa. ‘A snake.’
He nodded. ‘There will be more, coming from all sides. The clearing will be filled with snakes, should we choose to remain here.’
‘Flare-necks.’
‘And others. They won’t bite or spit, however. They never do. They come… to watch.’
She shot him a searching glance, then shivered slightly. ‘What power manifests here? It is not the Whirlwind’s-’
‘No. Nor do I have a name for it. Perhaps the Holy Desert itself.’
She slowly shook her head to that. ‘I think you are wrong. The power, I believe, is yours.’
He shrugged. ‘We shall see, when I have done them all.’
‘How many?’
‘Besides Bairoth and Delum Thord? Seven.’
She frowned. ‘One for each of the Holy Protectors?’
No. ‘Perhaps. I have not decided. These two you see, they were my friends. Now dead.’ He paused, then added, ‘I had but two friends.’
She seemed to flinch slightly at that. ‘What of Leoman? What of Mathok? What of… me?’
‘I have no plans on carving your likenesses here.’
‘That is not what I meant.’
I know. He gestured at the two Teblor warriors. ‘Creation, Chosen One.’
‘When I was young, I wrote poetry, in the path that my mother already walked. Did you know that?’
He smiled at the word ‘young’ but replied in all seriousness, ‘No, I did not.’
‘I… I have resurrected the habit.’
‘May it serve you well.’
She must have sensed something of the blood-slick edge underlying his statement, for her expression tightened. ‘But that is never its purpose, is it. To serve. Or to yield satisfaction-self-satisfaction, I mean, since the other kind but follows as a returning ripple in a well-’
‘Confusing the pattern.’
‘As you say. It is far too easy to see you as a knot-browed barbarian, Toblakai. No, the drive to create is something other, isn’t it? Have you an answer?’
He shrugged. ‘If one exists, it will only be found in the search-and searching is at creation’s heart, Chosen One.’
She stared at the statues once more. ‘And what are you searching for? With these… old friends?’
‘I do not know. Yet.’
‘Perhaps they will tell you, one day.’
The snakes surrounded them by the hundreds now, slithering unremarked by either over their feet, around their ankles, heads lifting again and again to flick tongues towards the carved trunks.
‘Thank you, Toblakai,’ Sha’ik murmured. ‘I am humbled… and revived.’
‘There is trouble in your city, Chosen One.’
She nodded. ‘I know.’
‘Are you the calm at its heart?’
A bitter smile twisted her lips as she turned away. ‘Will these serpents permit us to leave?’
‘Of course. But do not step. Instead, shuffle. Slowly. They will open for you a path.’
‘I should be alarmed by all this,’ she said as she edged back on their path.
But it is the least of your worries, Chosen One. ‘I will keep you apprised of developments, if you wish.’
‘Thank you, yes.’
He watched her make her way out of the clearing. There were vows wrapped tight around Toblakai’s soul. Slowly constricting. Some time soon, something would break. He knew not which, but if Leoman had taught him one thing, it was patience.
When she was gone, the warrior swung about and approached the mason’s chest.
Dust on the hands, a ghostly patina, tinted faintly pink by the raging red storm encircling the world.
The heat of the day was but an illusion in Raraku. With the descent of darkness, the desert’s dead bones quickly cast off the sun’s shimmering, fevered breath. The wind grew chill and the sands erupted with crawling, buzzing life, like vermin emerging from a corpse. Rhizan flitted in a frenzied wild hunt through the clouds of capemoths and chigger fleas above the tent city sprawled in the ruins. In the distance desert wolves howled as if hunted by ghosts.
Heboric lived in a modest tent raised around a ring of stones that had once provided the foundation for a granary. His abode was situated well away from the settlement’s centre, surrounded by the yurts of one of Mathok’s desert tribes. Old rugs covered the floor. Off to one side a small table of piled bricks held a brazier, sufficient for cooking if not warmth. A cask of well-water stood nearby, flavoured with amber wine. A half-dozen flickering oil lamps suffused the interior with yellow light.
He sat alone, the pungent aroma of the hen’bara tea sweet in the cooling air. Outside, the sounds of the settling tribe offered a comforting background, close enough and chaotic enough to keep scattered and random his thoughts. Only later, when sleep claimed all those around him, would the relentless assault begin, the vertiginous visions of a face of jade, so massive it challenged comprehension. Power both alien and earthly, as if born of a natural force never meant to be altered. Yet altered it had been, shaped, cursed sentient. A giant buried in otataral, held motionless in an eternal prison.
Who could now touch the world beyond, with the ghosts of two human hands-hands that had been claimed then abandoned by a god. But was it Fener who abandoned me, or did I abandon Fener? Which of us, I wonder, is more… exposed?
This camp, this war-this desert-all had conspired to ease the shame of his hiding. Yet one day, Heboric knew, he would have to return to that dreaded wasteland from his past, to the island where the stone giant waited. Return. But to what end?
He had always believed that Fener had taken his severed hands into keeping, to await the harsh justice that was the Tusked One’s right. A fate that Heboric had accepted, as best he could. But it seemed there was to be no end to the betrayals a single once-priest could commit against his god. Fener had been dragged from his realm, left abandoned and trapped on this world. Heboric’s severed hands had found a new master, a master possessed of such immense power that it could war with otataral itself. Yet it did not belong. The giant of jade, Heboric now believed, was an intruder, sent here from another realm for some hidden purpose.
And, instead of completing that purpose, someone had imprisoned it.
He sipped at his tea, praying that its narcotic would prove sufficient to deaden the sleep to come. It was losing its potency, or, rather, he was becoming inured to its effects.
The face of stone beckoned.
The face that was trying to speak.
There was a scratching at the tent flap, then it was pulled aside.
Felisin entered. ‘Ah, still awake. Good, that will make this easier. My mother wants you.’
‘Now?’
‘Yes. There have been events in the world beyond. Consequences to be discussed. Mother seeks your wisdom.’
Heboric cast a mournful glance at the clay cup of steaming tea in his invisible hands. It was little more than flavoured water when cold. ‘I am uninterested in events in the world beyond. If she seeks wise words from me, she will be disappointed.’
‘So I argued,’ Felisin Younger said, an amused glint in her eyes. ‘Sha’ik insists.’
She helped him don a cloak then led him outside, one of her hands light as a capemoth on his back.
The night was bitter cold, tasting of settling dust. They set out along the twisting alleyways between the yurts, walking in silence.
They passed the raised dais where Sha’ik Reborn had first addressed the mob, then through the crumbled gateposts leading to the huge, multi-chambered tent that was the Chosen One’s palace. There were no guards as such, for the goddess’s presence was palpable, a pressure in the chill air.
There was little warmth in the first room beyond the tent flap, but with each successive curtain that they parted and stepped through, the temperature rose. The palace was a maze of such insulating chambers, most of them empty of furniture, offering little in the way of distinguishing one from another. An assassin who proceeded this far, somehow avoiding the attention of the goddess, would quickly get lost. The approach to where Sha’ik resided followed its own torturous, winding route. Her chambers were not central, not at the heart of the palace as one might expect.
With his poor vision and the endless turns and twists, Heboric was quickly confused; he had never determined the precise location of their destination. He was reminded of the escape from the mines, the arduous journey to the island’s west coast-it had been Baudin in the lead, Baudin whose sense of direction had proved unerring, almost uncanny. Without him, Heboric and Felisin would have died.
A Talon, no less. Ah, Tavore, you were not wrong to place your faith in him. It was Felisin who would not co-operate. You should have anticipated that. Well, sister, you should have anticipated a lot of things… But not this.
They entered the square, low-ceilinged expanse that the Chosen One-Felisin Elder, child of the House of Paran-had called her Throne Room. And indeed there was a dais, once the pedestal for a hearth, on which was a tall-backed chair of sun-bleached wood and padding. In councils such as these, Sha’ik invariably positioned herself in that makeshift throne; nor would she leave it while her advisers were present, not even to peruse the yellowed maps the commanders were wont to lay out on the hide-covered floor. Apart from Felisin Younger, the Chosen One was the smallest person there.
Heboric wondered if Sha’ik Elder had suffered similar insecurities. He doubted it.
The room was crowded; among the army’s leaders and Sha’ik’s select, only Leoman and Toblakai were absent. There were no other chairs, although cushions and pillows rested against the base of three of the four tent walls, and it was on these that the commanders sat. Felisin at his side, Heboric made his way to the far side, Sha’ik’s left, and took his place a few short paces from the dais, the young girl settling down beside him.
Some permanent sorcery illuminated the chamber, the light somehow warming the air as well. Everyone else was in their allotted place, Heboric noted. Though they were little more than blurs in his eyes, he knew them all well enough. Against the wall opposite the throne sat the half-blood Napan, Korbolo Dom, shaved hairless, his dusty blue skin latticed in scars. On his right, the High Mage Kamist Reloe, gaunt to the point of skeletal, his grey hair cut short to stubble, a tight-curled iron beard reaching up to prominent cheekbones above which glittered sunken eyes. On Korbolo’s left sat Henaras, a witch from some desert tribe that had, for unknown reasons, banished her. Sorcery kept her youthful in appearance, the heavy languor in her dark eyes the product of diluted Tralb, a poison drawn from a local snake, which she imbibed to inure her against assassination. Beside her was Fayelle, an obese, perpetually nervous woman of whom Heboric knew little.
Along the wall opposite the ex-priest were L’oric, Bidithal and Febryl, the latter shapeless beneath an oversized silk telaba, its hood opened wide like the neck of a desert snake, tiny black eyes glittering out from its shadow. Beneath those eyes gleamed twin fangs of gold, capping his upper canines. They were said to hold Emulor, a poison rendered from a certain cactus that gifted not death, but permanent dementia.
The last commander present was on Felisin’s left. Mathok. Beloved of the desert tribes, the tall, black-skinned warrior possessed an inherent nobility, but it was the kind that seemed to irritate everyone around him, barring perhaps Leoman who appeared to be indifferent to the war chief’s grating personality. There was, in fact, little to give cause to the dislike, for Mathok was ever courteous, even congenial, quick to smile-perhaps too quick at that, as if the man dismissed everyone as not worth taking seriously. With the exception of the Chosen One, of course.
As Heboric settled, Sha’ik murmured, ‘Are you with us this evening, Ghost Hands?’
‘Well enough,’ he replied.
An undercurrent of tense excitement was in her voice, ‘You had better be, old man. There have been… startling developments. Distant catastrophes have rocked the Malazan Empire…’
‘How long ago?’ Heboric asked.
Sha’ik frowned at the odd question, but Heboric did not elaborate. ‘Less than a week. The warrens have been shaken, one and all, as if by an earthquake. Sympathizers of the rebellion remain in Dujek Onearm’s army, delivering to us the details.’ She gestured to L’oric. ‘I’ve no wish to talk all night. Elaborate on the events, L’oric, for the benefit of Korbolo, Heboric, and whoever else knows nothing of all that has occurred.’
The man tilted his head. ‘Delighted to, Chosen One. Those of you who employ warrens will no doubt have felt the repercussions, the brutal reshaping of the pantheon. But what specifically happened? The first answer, simply, is usurpation. Fener, Boar of Summer, has, to all intents and purposes, been ousted as the pre-eminent god of war.’ He was merciful enough to not glance at Heboric. ‘In his place, the once First Hero, Treach. The Tiger of Summer-’
Ousted. The fault is mine and mine alone.
Sha’ik’s eyes were shining, fixed on Heboric. The secrets they shared taut between them, crackling yet unseen by anyone else.
L’oric would have continued, but Korbolo Dom interrupted the High Mage. ‘And what is the significance of that to us? War needs no gods, only mortal contestants, two enemies and whatever reasons they invent in order to justify killing each other.’ He paused, smiling at L’oric, then shrugged. ‘All of which satisfies me well enough.’
His words had pulled Sha’ik’s gaze from Heboric. An eyebrow rising, she addressed the Napan. ‘And what are your reasons, specifically, Korbolo Dom?’
‘I like killing people. It is the one thing I am very good at.’
‘Would that be people in general?’ Heboric asked him. ‘Or perhaps you meant the enemies of the Apocalypse.’
‘As you say, Ghost Hands.’
There was a moment of general unease, then L’oric cleared his throat and said, ‘The usurpation, Korbolo Dom, is the one detail that a number of mages present may already know. I would lead us, gently, towards the less well known developments on far-away Genabackis. Now, to continue. The pantheon was shaken yet again-by the sudden, unexpected taking of the Beast Throne by Togg and Fanderay, the mated Elder Wolves that had seemed eternally cursed to never find each other-riven apart as they were by the Fall of the Crippled God. The full effect of this reawakening of the ancient Hold of the Beast is yet to be realized. All I would suggest, personally, is to those Soletaken and D’ivers among us: ’ware the new occupants of the Beast Throne. They may well come to you, eventually, to demand that you kneel before them.’ He smiled. ‘Alas, all those poor fools who followed the Path of the Hand. The game was won far, far away-’
‘We were the victims,’ Fayelle murmured, ‘of deception. By minions of Shadowthrone, no less, for which there will one day be a reckoning.’
Bidithal smiled at her words, but said nothing.
L’oric’s shrug affected indifference. ‘As to that, Fayelle, my tale is far from done. Allow me, if you will, to shift to mundane-though if anything even more important-events. A very disturbing alliance had been forged on Genabackis, to deal with a mysterious threat called the Pannion Domin. Onearm’s Host established an accord with Caladan Brood and Anomander Rake. Supplied by the supremely wealthy city of Darujhistan, the joined armies marched off to wage war against the Domin. We were, truth be told, relieved by this event from a short-term perspective, though we recognized that in the long term such an alliance was potentially catastrophic to the cause of the rebellion here in Seven Cities. Peace on Genabackis would, after all, free Dujek and his army, leaving us with the potential nightmare of Tavore approaching from the south, and Dujek and his ten thousand disembarking at Ehrlitan then marching down from the north.’
‘An unpleasant thought,’ Korbolo Dom growled. ‘Tavore alone will not cause us much difficulty. But the High Fist and his ten thousand… that’s another matter. Granted, most of the soldiers are from Seven Cities, but I would not cast knuckles on the hope that they would switch sides. Dujek owns them body and soul-’
‘Barring a few spies,’ Sha’ik said, her voice strangely flat.
‘None of whom would have contacted us,’ L’oric said, ‘had things turned out… differently.’
‘A moment, please,’ young Felisin cut in. ‘I thought that Onearm and his host had been outlawed by the Empress.’
‘Thus permitting him to forge the alliance with Brood and Rake,’ L’oric explained. ‘A convenient and temporary ploy, lass.’
‘We don’t want Dujek on our shores,’ Korbolo Dom said ‘Bridgeburners. Whiskeyjack, Quick Ben, Kalam, Black Moranth and their damned munitions-’
‘Permit me to ease your pattering heart, Commander,’ L’oric murmured. ‘We shall not see Dujek. Not anytime soon, at any rate. The Pannion War proved… devastating. The ten thousand lost close to seven thousand of their number. The Black Moranth were similarly mauled. Oh, they won, in the end, but at such a cost. The Bridgeburners… gone. Whiskeyjack… dead.’
Heboric slowly straightened. The room was suddenly cold.
‘And Dujek himself,’ L’oric went on, ‘a broken man. Is this news pleasing enough? There is this: the scourge that is the T’lan Imass is no more. They have departed, one and all. No more will their terrors be visited upon the innocent citizens of Seven Cities. Thus,’ he concluded, ‘what has the Empress left? Adjunct Tavore. An extraordinary year for the empire. Coltaine and the Seventh, the Aren Legion, Whiskeyjack, the Bridgeburners, Onearm’s Host-we will be hard-pressed to best that.’
‘But we shall,’ Korbolo Dom laughed, both hands closed into pale-knuckled fists. ‘Whiskeyjack! Dead! Ah, blessings to Hood this night! I shall make sacrifice before his altar! And Dujek-oh, his spirit will have been broken indeed. Crushed!’
‘Enough gloating,’ Heboric growled, sickened.
Kamist Reloe was leaning far forward, ‘L’oric!’ he hissed. ‘What of Quick Ben?’
‘He lives, alas. Kalam did not accompany the army-no-one knows where he has gone. There were but a handful of survivors from the Bridgeburners, and Dujek disbanded them and had them listed as casualties-’
‘Who lived?’ Kamist demanded.
L’oric frowned. ‘A handful, as I said. Is it important?’
‘Yes!’
‘Very well.’ L’oric glanced over at Sha’ik. ‘Chosen One, do you permit me to make contact once more with my servant in that distant army? It will be but a few moments.’
She shrugged. ‘Proceed.’ Then, as L’oric lowered his head, she slowly leaned back in her chair. ‘Thus. Our enemy has faced irreparable defeat. The Empress and her dear empire reel from the final gush of life-blood. It falls to us, then, to deliver the killing blow.’
Heboric suspected he was the only one present who heard the hollowness of her words.
Sister Tavore stands alone, now.
And alone is what she prefers. Alone is the state in which she thrives. Ah, lass, you would pretend to excitement at this news, yet it has achieved the very opposite for you, hasn’t it. Your fear of sister Tavore has only deepened. Freezing you in place.
L’oric began speaking without raising his head. ‘Blend. Toes. Mallet. Spindle. Sergeant Antsy. Lieutenant Picker… Captain Paran.’
There was a thump from the high-backed chair as Sha’ik’s head snapped back. All colour had left her face, the only detail Heboric could detect with his poor eyes, but he knew the shock that would be written on those features. A shock that rippled through him as well, though it was but the shock of recognition-not of what it portended for this young woman seated on this throne.
Unmindful, L’oric continued, ‘Quick Ben has been made High Mage. It is believed the surviving Bridgeburners departed by warren to Darujhistan, though my spy is in fact uncertain of that. Whiskeyjack and the fallen Bridgeburners… were interred… in Moon’s Spawn, which has-gods below! Abandoned! The Son of Darkness has abandoned Moon’s Spawn!’ He seemed to shiver then, and slowly looked up, blinking rapidly. A deep breath, loosed raggedly. ‘Whiskeyjack was killed by one of Brood’s commanders. Betrayal, it seemed, plagued the alliance.’
‘Of course it did,’ Korbolo Dom sneered.
‘We must consider Quick Ben,’ Kamist Reloe said, his hands wringing together incessantly on his lap. ‘Will Tayschrenn send him to Tavore? What of the remaining three thousand of Onearm’s Host? Even if Dujek does not lead them-’
‘They are broken in spirit,’ L’oric said. ‘Hence, the wavering souls among them who sought me out.’
‘And where is Kalam Mekhar?’ Kamist hissed, inadvertently glancing over his shoulder then starting at his own shadow on the wall.
‘Kalam Mekhar is nothing without Quick Ben,’ Korbolo Dom snarled. ‘Even less now that his beloved Whiskeyjack is dead.’
Kamist rounded on his companion. ‘And what if Quick Ben is reunited with that damned assassin? What then?’
The Napan shrugged. ‘We didn’t kill Whiskeyjack. Their minds will be filled with vengeance for the slayer among Brood’s entourage. Do not fear what will never come to pass, old friend.’
Sha’ik’s voice rang startlingly through the room. ‘Everyone out but Heboric! Now!’
Blank looks, then the others rose.
Felisin Younger hesitated. ‘Mother?’
‘You as well, child. Out.’
L’oric said, ‘There is the matter of the new House and all it signifies, Chosen-’
‘Tomorrow night. We will resume the discussion then. Out!’
A short while later Heboric sat alone with Sha’ik. She stared down at him in silence for some time, then rose suddenly and stepped down from the dais. She fell to her knees in front of Heboric, sufficiently close for him to focus on her face. It was wet with tears.
‘My brother lives!’ she sobbed.
And suddenly she was in his arms, face pressed against his shoulders as shudders heaved through her small, fragile frame.
Stunned, Heboric remained silent.
She wept for a long, long time, and he held her tight, unmoving, as solid as he could manage. And each time the vision of his fallen god rose before his mind’s eye, he ruthlessly drove it back down. The child in his arms-for child she was, once more-cried in nothing other than the throes of salvation. She was no longer alone, no longer alone with only her hated sister to taint the family’s blood.
For that-for the need his presence answered-his own grief would wait.