I took the stone bowl in both hands and poured out my time onto the ground drowning hapless insects feeding the weeds until the sun stood looking down and stole the stain.
Seeing in the vessel’s cup a thousand cracks I looked back the way I came and saw a trail green with memories lost whoever made this bowl was a fool but the greater he who carried it.
– Stone Bowl, Fisher kel Tath
The pitched sweep of ice had gone through successive thaws and freezes until its surface was pocked and sculpted like the colourless bark of some vast toppled tree. The wind, alternating between warm and cold, moaned a chorus of forlorn voices through this muricated surface, and it seemed to Hedge that with each crunching stamp of his boot, a lone cry was silenced for ever. The thought left him feeling morose, and this motley scatter of refuse dotting the plain of ice and granulated snow only made things worse.
Detritus of Jaghut lives, slowly rising like stones in a farmer’s field. Mundane objects to bear witness to an entire people-if only he could make sense of them, could somehow assemble together all these disparate pieces. Ghosts, he now believed, existed in a perpetually confused state, the way before them an endless vista strewn with meaningless dross-the truths of living were secrets, the physicality of facts for ever withheld. A ghost could reach but could not touch, could move this and that, but never be moved by them. Some essence of empathy had vanished-but no, empathy wasn’t the right word. He could feel, after all. The way he used to, when he had been alive. Emotions swam waters both shallow and deep. Tactile empathy perhaps was closer to the sense he sought. The comfort of mutual resistance.
He had willed himself this shape, this body in which he now dwelt, walking heavily alongside the withered, animate carcass that was Emroth. And it seemed he could conjure a kind of physical continuity with everything around him-like the crunching of his feet-but he now wondered if that continuity was a delusion, as if in picking up this curved shell of some ancient broken pot just ahead of him he was not in truth picking up its ghost. But for that revelation his eyes were blind, the senses of touch and sound were deceits, and he was as lost as an echo.
They continued trudging across this plateau, beneath deep blue skies where stars glittered high in the vault directly overhead, a world of ice seemingly without end. The scree of garbage accompanied them on all sides. Fragments of cloth or clothing or perhaps tapestry, potsherds, eating utensils, arcane tools of wood or ground stone, the piece of a musical instrument that involved strings and raised finger-drums, the splintered leg of a wooden chair or stool. No weapons, not in days, and the one they had discovered early on-a spear shaft-had been Imass.
Jaghut had died on this ice. Slaughtered. Emroth had said as much. But there were no bodies, and there had been no explanation forthcoming from the T’lan Imass. Collected then, Hedge surmised, perhaps by a survivor. Did the Jaghut practise ritual interment? He had no idea. In all his travels, he could not once recall talk of a Jaghut tomb or burial ground. If they did such things, they kept them to themselves.
But when they died here, they had been on the run. Some of those swaths of material were from tents. Flesh and blood Imass did not pursue them-not across this lifeless ice. No, they must have been T’lan. Of the Ritual. Like Emroth here.
‘So,’ Hedge said, his own voice startlingly loud in his ears, ‘were you involved in this hunt, Emroth?’
‘I cannot be certain,’ she replied after a long moment. ‘It is possible.’
‘One scene of slaughter looks pretty much the same as the next, right?’
‘Yes. That is true.’
Her agreement left him feeling even more depressed.
‘There is something ahead,’ the T’lan Imass said. ‘We are, I believe, about to discover the answer to the mystery’
‘What mystery?’
‘The absence of bodies.’
‘Oh, that mystery’
Night came abruptly to this place, like the snuffing out of a candle. The sun, which circled just above the horizon through the day, would suddenly tumble, like a rolling ball, beneath the gleaming, blood-hued skyline. And the black sky would fill with stars that only faded with the coming of strangely coloured brushstrokes of light, spanning the vault, that hissed like sprinkled fragments of fine glass.
Hedge sensed that night was close, as the wind’s pockets of warmth grew more infrequent, the ember cast to what he assumed was west deepening into a shade both lurid and baleful.
He could now see what had caught Emroth’s attention. A hump on the plateau, ringed in dark objects. The shape rising from the centre of that hillock at first looked like a spar of ice, but as they neared, Hedge saw that its core was dark, and that darkness reached down to the ground.
The objects surrounding the rise were cloth-swaddled bodies, many of them pitifully small.
As the day’s light suddenly dropped away, night announced on a gust of chill wind, Hedge and Emroth halted just before the hump.
The upthrust spar was in fact a throne of ice, and on it sat the frozen corpse of a male Jaghut. Mummified by cold and desiccating winds, it nevertheless presented an imposing if ghastly figure, a figure of domination, the head tilted slightly downward, as if surveying a ring of permanently supine subjects.
‘Death observing death,’ Hedge muttered. ‘How damned appropriate. He collected the bodies, then sat down and just died with them. Gave up. No thoughts of vengeance, no dreams of resurrection. Here’s your dread enemy, Emroth.’
‘More than you realize,’ the T’lan Imass replied.
She moved on, edging round the edifice, her hide-wrapped feet plunging through the crust of brittle ice in small sparkling puffs of powdery snow.
Hedge stared up at the Jaghut on his half-melted throne. All thrones should be made of ice, 1 think.
Sit on that numb arse, sinking down and down, with the puddle of dissolution getting ever wider around you. Sit, dear ruler, and tell me all your grand designs.
Of course, the throne wasn’t the only thing falling apart up there. The Jaghut’s green, leathery skin had sloughed away on the forehead, revealing sickly bone, almost luminescent in the gloom; and on the points of the shoulders the skin was frayed, with the polished knobs of the shoulder bones showing through. Similar gleams from the knuckles of both hands where they rested on the now-tilted arms of the chair.
Hedge’s gaze returned to the face. Black, sunken pits for eyes, a nose broad and smashed flat, tusks of black silver. I thought these things never quite died. Needed big rocks on them to keep them from getting back up. Or chopped to pieces and every piece planted under a boulder.
I didn’t think they died this way at all.
He shook himself and set off after Emroth.
They would walk through the night. Camps, meals and sleeping were for still-breathing folk, after all.
‘Emroth!’
The head creaked round.
‘That damned thing back there’s not still alive, is it?’
‘No. The spirit left.’
‘Just… left?’
‘Yes.’
‘Isn’t that, uh, unusual?’
‘The Throne of Ice was dying. Is dying still. There was-is-nothing left to rule, ghost. Would you have him sit there for ever?’ She did not seem inclined to await a reply, for she then said, ‘I have not been here before, Hedge of the Bridgeburners. For I would have known.’
‘Known what, Emroth?’
‘I have never before seen the true Throne of Ice, in the heart of the Hold. The very heart of the Jaghut realm.’
Hedge glanced back. The true Throne of Ice? ‘Who-who was he, Emroth?’
But she did not give answer.
After a time, however, he thought he knew. Had always known.
He kicked aside a broken pot, watched it skid, roll, then wobble to a halt. King on your melting throne, you drew a breath, then let it go. And… never again. Simple. Easy. When you are the last of your kind, and you release that last breath, then it is the breath of extinction.
And it rides the wind.
Every wind.
‘Emroth, there was a scholar in Malaz City-a miserable old bastard named Obo-who claimed he was witness to the death of a star. And when the charts were compared again, against the night sky, well, one light was gone.’
‘The stars have changed since my mortal life, ghost.’
‘Some have gone out?’
‘Yes.’
‘As in… died V
‘The Bonecasters could not agree on this,’ she said. Another observation offered a different possibility. The stars are moving away from us, Hedge of the Bridgeburners. Perhaps those we no longer see have gone too far for our eyes.’
‘Obo’s star was pretty bright-wouldn’t it have faded first, over a long time, before going out?’
‘Perhaps both answers are true. Stars die. Stars move away.’
‘So, did that Jaghut die, or did he move away?’
‘Your question makes no sense.’
Really? Hedge barked a laugh. You’re a damned bad liar, Emroth.’
‘This,’ she said, ‘is not a perfect world.’
The swaths of colours sweeping overhead hissed softly, while around them the wind plucked at tufts of cloth and fur, moaning through miniature gullies and caverns of ice, and closer still, a sound shared by ghost and T’lan Imass, the crackling destruction of their footsteps across the plateau.
Onrack knelt beside the stream, plunging his hands into the icy water, then lifting them clear again to watch the runnels trickling down. The wonder had not left his dark brown eyes since his transformation, since the miracle of a life regained.
A man could have no heart if he felt nothing watching this rebirth, this innocent joy in a savage warrior who had been dead a hundred thousand years. He picked up polished stones as if they were treasure, ran blunt, calloused fingertips across swaths of lichen and moss, brought to his heavy lips a discarded antler to taste with his tongue, to draw in its burnt-hair scent. Walking through the thorny brush of some arctic rose, Onrack had then halted, with a cry of astonishment, upon seeing red scratches on his bowed shins.
The Imass was, Trull Sengar reminded himself yet again, nothing-nothing-like what he would have imagined him to be. Virtually hairless everywhere barring the brown, almost black mane sweeping down past his broad shoulders. In the days since they had come to this strange realm, a beard had begun, thin along Onrack’s jawline and above his mouth, the bristles wide-spaced and black as a boar’s; but not growing at all on the cheeks, or the neck. The features of the face were broad and flat, dominated by a flaring nose with a pronounced bridge, like a knuckle bone between the wide-spaced, deeply inset eyes. The heavy ridge over those eyes was made all the more robust by the sparseness of the eyebrows.
Although not particularly tall, Onrack nevertheless seemed huge. Ropy muscles bound to thick bone, the arms elongated, the hands wide but the fingers stubby. The legs were disproportionately short, bowed so that the knees were almost as far out to the sides as his hips. Yet Onrack moved with lithe stealth, furtive as prey, eyes flicking in every direction, head tilting, nostrils flaring as he picked up scents on the wind. Prey, yet now he needed to satisfy a prodigious appetite, and when Onrack hunted, it was with discipline, a single-mindedness that was fierce to witness.
This world was his, in every way. A blend of tundra to the north and a treeline in the south that reached up every now and then to the very shadow of the huge glaciers stretching down the valleys. The forest was a confused mix of deciduous and coniferous trees, broken with ravines and tumbled rocks, springs of clean water and boggy sinkholes. The branches swarmed with birds, their incessant chatter at times overwhelming all else.
Along the edges there were trails. Caribou moved haphazardly between forest and tundra in their grazing. Closer to the ice, on higher ground where bedrock was exposed, there were goat-like creatures, scampering up ledges to look back down on the two-legged strangers passing through their domain.
Onrack had disappeared into the forest again and again in the first week of their wandering. Each time he reappeared his toolkit had expanded. A wooden shaft, the point of which he hardened in the fire of their camp; vines and reeds from which he fashioned snares, and nets that he then attached to the other end of the spear, displaying impressive skill at trapping birds on the wing.
From the small mammals caught in his nightly snares he assembled skins and gut. With the stomachs and intestines of hares he made floats for the weighted nets he strung across streams, and from the grayling and sturgeon harvested he gathered numerous spines which he then used to sew together the hides, fashioning a bag. He collected charcoal and tree sap, lichens, mosses, tubers, feathers and small pouches of animal fat, all of which went into the hide bag.
But all of these things were as nothing when compared with the burgeoning of the man himself. A face Trull had known only as dried skin taut over shattered bone was now animate with expression, and it was as if Trull had been blind to his friend in the time before, when even vocal inflection had been flat and lifeless.
Onrack now smiled. A sudden lighting of genuine pleasure that not only took Trull’s breath away-and, he admitted, often filled his eyes with tears-but could silence Quick Ben as well, the wizard’s dark face suddenly evincing ineffable wonder, an expression that a well-meaning adult might have upon seeing a child at play.
Everything about this Imass invited friendship, as if his smile alone cast some sorcery, a geas of charm, to which unquestioning loyalty was the only possible response. This glamour Trull Sengar had no interest in resisting. Onrack, after all, is the one brother I chose. But the Tiste Edur could see, on occasion, the gleam of suspicion in the Malazan wizard, as if Quick Ben was catching himself at the edge of some inner precipice, some slide into a place Ben could not, by his very nature, wholly trust.
Trull felt no worry; he could see that Onrack was not interested in manipulating his companions. His was a spirit contained within itself, a spirit that had emerged from a haunted place and was haunted no longer. Dead in a demonic nightmare. Reborn into a paradise. Onrack, my friend, you are redeemed, and you know it, with every sense-with your touch, your vision, with the scents of the land and the songs in the trees.
The previous evening he had returned from a trip into the forest with a sheath of bark in his hands. On it were nuggets of crumbly yellow ochre. Later, beside the fire, while Quick Ben cooked the remaining meat from a small deer Onrack had killed in the forest two days previously, the Imass ground the nuggets into powder. Then, using spit and grease, he made a yellow paste. As he worked these preparations, he hummed a song, a droning, vibrating cadence that was as much nasal as vocal. The range, like his speaking voice, was unearthly. It seemed capable of carrying two distinct tones, one high and the other deep. The song ended when the task was done. There was a long pause; then, as Onrack began applying the paint to his face, neck and arms, a different song emerged, this one with a rapid beat, fast as the heart of a fleeing beast.
When the last daub of paint marked his amber skin, the song stopped.
‘Gods below!’ Quick Ben had gasped, one hand on his chest. ‘My heart’s about to pound right through my cage of bones, Onrack!’
The Imass, settling back in his cross-legged position, regarded the wizard with calm, dark eyes. ‘You have been pursued often. In your life.’
A grimace from Quick Ben, then he nodded. ‘Feels like years and years of that.’
‘There are two names to the song. Agkor Raella and Allish Raella. The wolf song, and the caribou song.’
‘Ah, so my cud-chewing ways are exposed at last.’
Onrack smiled. ‘One day, you must become the wolf.’
‘Might be I already am,’ Quick Ben said after a long moment. ‘I’ve seen wolves-plenty of them around here, after all. Those long-legged ones with the smallish heads-’
Ay.’
Ay, right. And they’re damned shy. I’d wager they don’t go for the kill until the odds are well in their favour. The worst kind of gamblers, in fact. But very good at survival.’
‘Shy,’ Onrack said, nodding. ‘Yet curious. The same pack follows us now for three days.’
‘They enjoy scavenging your kills-let you take all the risks. Makes for a sweet deal.’
‘Thus far,’ Onrack said, ‘there have been few risks.’
Quick Ben glanced over at Trull, then shook his head and said, ‘That mountain sheep or whatever you call it not only charged you, Onrack, but it sent you flying. We thought it’d broken every bone in your body, and you just two days into your new one at that.’
‘The bigger the prey, the more you must pay,’ Onrack said, smiling again. ‘In the way of gambling, yes?’
Absolutely,’ the wizard said, prodding at the meat on the spit. ‘My point was, the wolf is the caribou until necessity forces otherwise. If the odds are too bad, the wolf runs. It’s a matter of timing, of choosing the right moment to turn round and hold your ground. As for those wolves tracking us, well, I’d guess they’ve never seen our kind before-’ ‘No, Quick Ben,’ Onrack said. ‘The very opposite is true.’
Trull studied his friend for a moment, then asked, ‘We’re not alone here?’
‘The ay knew to follow us. Yes, they are curious, but they are also clever, and they remember. They have followed Imass before.’ He lifted his head and sniffed loudly. ‘They are close tonight, those ay. Drawn to my song, which they have heard before. The ay know, you see, that tomorrow 1 will hunt dangerous prey. And when the moment of the kill comes, well, we shall see.’
‘Just how dangerous?’ Trull asked, suddenly uneasy.
‘There is a hunting cat, an emlava-we entered its territory today, for I found the scrapes of its claim, on stone and on wood. A male by the flavour of its piss. Today, the ay were more nervous than usual, for the cat will kill them at every opportunity, and it is a creature of ambush. But I have assured them with my song. I found Tog’tol-yellow ochre-after all.’
‘So,’ Quick Ben said, his eyes on the dripping meat above the flames, ‘if your wolves know we are here, how about the cat?’
‘He knows.’
‘Well, that’s just terrific, Onrack. I’m going to need some warrens close to hand all damned day, then. That happens to be exhausting, you know.’
‘You need not worry with the sun overhead, wizard,’ Onrack said. ‘The cat hunts at night.’
‘Hood’s breath! Let’s hope those wolves smell it before we do!’
‘They won’t,’ the Imass replied with infuriating calm. ‘In scenting its territory, the emlava saturates the air with its sign. Its own body scent is much weaker, freeing the beast to move wherever it will when inside its territory.’
‘Why are dumb brutes so damned smart, anyway?’
‘Why are us smart folk so often stupidly brutal, Quick Ben?’ Trull asked.
‘Stop trying to confuse me in my state of animal terror, Edur.’
An uneventful night passed and now, the following day, they walked yet further into the territory of the emlava. Halting at a stream in mid-morning, Onrack had knelt beside it to begin his ritual washing of hands. At least, Trull assumed it was a ritual, although it might well have been another of those moments of breathless wonder that seemed to afflict Onrack-and no surprise there; Trull suspected he’d be staggering about for months after such a rebirth. Of course, he does not think like us. 1 am much closer in my ways of thought to this human, Quick Ben, than 1 am to any Imass, dead or otherwise. How can that be?
Onrack then rose and faced them, his spear in one hand, sword in the other. ‘We are near the emlava’s lair. Although he sleeps, he senses us. Tonight, he means to kill one of us. I shall now challenge his claim to this territory. If I fail, he may well leave you be, for he will feed on my flesh.’
But Quick Ben was shaking his head. ‘You’re not doing this alone, Onrack. Granted, I’m not entirely sure of how my sorcery will work in this place, but dammit, it’s just a dumb cat, after all. A blinding flash of light, a loud sound-’
‘And I will join you as well,’ Trull Sengar said. ‘We begin with spears, yes? I have fought enough wolves in my time. We will meet its charge with spears. Then, when it is wounded and crippled, we close with bladed weapons.’
Onrack studied them for a moment, then he smiled. ‘I see that I will not dissuade you. Yet, for the fight itself, you must not interfere. I do not think I will fail, and you will see why before long.’
Trull and the wizard followed the Imass up the slope of an outwash fan that filled most of a crevasse, up among the lichen-clad, tilted and folded bedrock. Beyond this black-stone ledge rose a sheer wall of grey shale pocked with caves where sediments had eroded away beneath an endless torrent of glacial melt. The stream in which Onrack had plunged his hands earlier poured out from this cliff, forming a pool in one cavern that extended out to fill a basin before continuing downslope. To the right of this was another cave, triangular in shape, with one entire side formed by a collapse in the shale overburden. The flat ground before it was scattered with splintered bones.
As they skirted the pool Onrack suddenly halted, lifting a hand.
A massive shape now filled the cave mouth.
Three heartbeats later, the emlava emerged.
‘Hood’s breath,’ Quick Ben whispered.
Trull had expected a hunting cat little different from,a mountain lion-perhaps one of the black ones rumoured to live in the deeper forests of his homeland. The creature hulking into view, blinking sleep from its charcoal eyes, was the size of a plains brown bear. Its enormous upper canines projected down past its lower jaw, long as a huntsman’s knife and polished the hue of amber. The head was broad and flat, the ears small and set far back. Behind the short neck, the emlava’s shoulders were hunched, forming a kind of muscled hump. Its fur was striped, black barbs on deep grey, although its throat revealed a flash of white.
‘Not quite built for speed, is it?’
Trull glanced over at Quick Ben, saw the wizard holding a dagger in one hand. ‘We should get you a spear,’ the Tiste Edur said.
‘I’ll take one of your spares-if you don’t mind.’
Trull slipped the bound clutch from his shoulder and said, ‘Take your pick.’
The emlava was studying them. Then it yawned and with that Onrack moved lightly forward in a half-crouch.
As he did so, pebbles scattered nearby and Trull turned. ‘Well, it seems Onrack has allies in this after all.’
The wolves-ay in the Imass language-had appeared and were now closing on Onrack’s position, heads lowered and eyes fixed on the huge cat.
The sudden arrival of seven wolves clearly displeased the emlava, for it then lowered itself until its chest brushed the ground, gathering its legs beneath it. The mouth opened again, and a deep hiss filled the air.
‘We might as well get out of their way,’ Quick Ben said, taking a step back with obvious relief.
‘I wonder,’ Trull said as he watched the momentary stand-off, ‘if this is how domestication first began. Not banding together in a hunt for prey, but in an elimination of rival predators.’
Onrack had readied his spear, not to meet a charge, but to throw the weapon using a stone-weighted antler atlatl. The wolves to his either side had fanned out, edging closer with fangs bared.
‘Not a growl to be heard,’ Quick Ben said. ‘Somehow that’s more chilling.’
‘Growls are to warn,’ Trull replied. ‘There is fear in growls, just as there is in that cat’s hissing.’
The emlava’s single lungful of breath finally whistled down into silence. It refilled its lungs and began again.
Onrack lunged forward, the spear darting from his hand.
Flinching back, the emlava screamed as the weapon drove deep into its chest, just to one side of the neck and beneath the clavicle. At that moment the wolves rushed in.
A mortal wound, however, was not enough to slow the cat as it lashed out with two staggered swings of its forepaws at one of the wolves. The first paw sank talons deep into the wolf’s shoulder, snatching the entire animal closer, within the reach of the second paw, which dragged the yelping wolf closer still. The massive head then snapped down on its neck, fangs burying themselves in flesh and bone.
The emlava, lurching, then drove its full weight down on the dying wolf, probably breaking every bone in its body.
As it did so, four other wolves lunged for its soft belly, two to each side, their canines tearing deep, then pulling away as, screaming, the emlava spun round to fend them off.
Exposing its neck.
Onrack’s sword flashed, point-first, into the cat’s throat.
It recoiled, sending one wolf tumbling, then reared back on its hind legs-as if to wheel and flee back into its cave-but all strength left the emlava then. It toppled, thumped hard onto the ground, and was still.
The six remaining wolves-one limping-padded away, keeping a distance between themselves and the three men, and moments later were gone from sight.
Onrack walked up to the emlava and tugged free his gore-spattered spear. Then he knelt beside the cat’s head.
‘Asking forgiveness?’ Quick Ben queried, his tone only slightly ironic.
The Imass looked over at them. ‘No, that would be dishonest, wizard.’
‘You’re right, it would. I am glad you’re not dumping any blessed spirit rubbish on us. It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it, that there were wars long before there were wars between people. You had your rival hunters to dispose of first.’
‘Yes, that is true. And we found allies. If you wish to find irony, Quick Ben, know that we then hunted until most of our prey was extinct. And our allies then starved-those that did not surrender to our stewardship.’
‘The Imass are hardly unique in that,’ Trull Sengar said.
Quick Ben snorted. ‘That’s understating it, Trull. So tell us, Onrack, why are you kneeling beside that carcass?’
‘I have made a mistake,’ the Imass replied, climbing to his feet and staring into the cave.
‘Seemed pretty flawless to me.’
‘The killing, yes, Quick Ben. But this emlava, it is female.’
The wizard grunted, then seemed to flinch. ‘You mean the male’s still around?’
‘I do not know. Sometimes they… wander.’ Onrack looked down at the bloodied spear in his hands. ‘My friends,’ he said. ‘I am now… hesitant, I admit. Perhaps, long ago, I would not have thought twice-as you said, wizard, we warred against our competitors. But this realm-it is a gift. All that was lost, because of our thoughtless acts, now lives again. Here. I wonder, can things be different?’
In the silence following that question, they heard, coming from the cave, the first pitiful cry.
‘Did you ever wish, Udinaas, that you could sink inside stone? Shake loose its vast memories-’
The ex-slave glanced at Wither-a deeper smear in the gloom-then sneered. ‘And see what they have seen? You damned wraith, stones can’t see.’
‘True enough. Yet they swallow sound and bind it trapped inside. They hold conversations with heat and cold. Their skins wear away to the words of the wind and the lick of water. Darkness and light live in their flesh-and they carry within them the echoes of wounding, of breaking, of being cruelly shaped-’
‘Oh, enough!’ Udinaas snapped, pushing a stick further into the fire. ‘Go melt away into these ruins, then.’
‘You are the last one awake, my friend. And yes, I have been in these ruins.’
‘Games like those are bound to drive you mad.’
A long pause. ‘You know things you have no right to know.’
‘How about this, then? Sinking into stone is easy. It’s getting out again that’s hard. You can get lost, trapped in the maze. And on all sides, all those memories pressing in, pressing down.’
‘It is your dreams, isn’t it? Where you learn such things. Who speaks to you? Tell me the name of this fell mentor!’
Udinaas laughed. ‘You fool, Wither. My mentor? Why, none other than imagination.’
‘I do not believe you.’
There seemed little point in responding to that declaration. Staring into the flames, Udinaas allowed its flickering dance to lull him. He was tired. He should be sleeping. The fever was gone, the nightmarish hallucinations, the strange nectars that fed the tumbling delusions all seeped away, like piss in moss. The strength 1 felt in those other worlds was a lie. The clarity, a deceit. All those offered ways forward, through what will come, every one a dead end. 1 should have known better.
‘K’Chain Nah’ruk, these ruins.’
‘You still here, Wither? Why?’
‘This was once a plateau on which the Short-Tails built a city. But now, as you can see, it is shattered. Now there is nothing but these dread slabs all pitched and angled-yet we have been working our way downward. Did you sense this? We will soon reach the centre, the heart of this crater, and we will see what destroyed this place.’
‘The ruins,’ said Udinaas, ‘remember cool shadow. Then concussion. Shadow, Wither, in a flood to announce the end of the world. The concussion, well, that belonged to the shadow, right?’
‘You know things-’
‘You damned fool, listen to me! We came to the edge of this place, this high plateau, expecting to see it stretch out nice and flat before us. Instead, it looks like a frozen puddle onto which someone dropped a heavy rock. Splat. All the sides caved inward. Wraith, I don’t need any secret knowledge to work this out. Something big came down from the sky-a meteorite, a sky keep, whatever. We trudged through its ash for days. Covering the ancient snow. Ash and dust, eating into that snow like acid. And the ruins, they’re all toppled, blasted outward, then tilted inward. Out first, in second. Heave out and down, then slide back. Wither, all it takes is for someone to just look. Really look. That’s it. So enough with all this mystical sealshit, all right?’
His tirade had wakened the others. Too bad. Nearly dawn anyway. Udinaas listened to them moving around, heard a cough, then someone hawking spit. Which? Seren? Kettle?
The ex-slave smiled to himself. ‘Your problem, Wither, is your damned expectations. You hounded me for months and months, and now you feel the need to have made it-me-worth all that attention. So here you are, pushing some kind of sage wisdom on this broken slave, but I told you then what I’ll tell you now. I’m nothing, no-one. Understand? Just a man with a brain that, every now and then, actually works. Yes, I work it, because I find no comfort in being stupid. Unlike, I think, most people. Us Letherii, anyway. Stupid and proud of it. Belongs on the Imperial Seal, that happy proclamation. No wonder I failed so miserably.’
Seren Pedac moved into the firelight, crouching down to warm her hands. ‘Failed at what, Udinaas?’
‘Why, everything, Acquitor. No need for specifics here.’
Fear Sengar spoke from behind him. ‘You were skilled, I recall, at mending nets.’
Udinaas did not turn round, but he smiled. ‘Yes, I probably deserved that. My well-meaning tormentor speaks. Well-meaning? Oh, perhaps not. Indifferent? Possibly. Until, at least, I did something wrong. A badly mended net-aaii! Flay the fool’s skin from his back! I know, it was all for my own good. Someone’s, anyway.’
Another sleepless night, Udinaas?’
He looked across the fire at Seren, but she was intent on the flames licking beneath her outstretched hands, as if the question had been rhetorical.
‘I can see my bones,’ she then said.
‘They’re not real bones,’ Kettle replied, settling down with her legs drawn up. ‘They look more like twigs.’
‘Thank you, dear.’
‘Bones are hard, like rock.’ She set her hands on her knees and rubbed them. ‘Cold rock.’
‘Udinaas,’ Seren said, ‘I see puddles of gold in the ashes.’
‘I found pieces of a picture frame.’ He shrugged. ‘Odd to think of K’Chain Nah’ruk hanging pictures, isn’t it?’
Seren looked up, met his eyes. ‘K’Chain-’
Silchas Ruin spoke as he stepped round a heap of cut stone. ‘Not pictures. The frame was used to stretch skin. K’Chain moult until they reach adulthood. The skins were employed as parchment, for writing. The Nah’ruk were obsessive recorders.’
‘You know a lot about creatures you killed on sight,’ Fear Sengar said.
Clip’s soft laughter sounded from somewhere beyond the circle of light, followed by the snap of rings on a chain.
Fear’s head lifted sharply. ‘That amuses you, pup?’
The Tiste Andii’s voice drifted in, eerily disembodied. ‘Silchas Ruin’s dread secret. He parleyed with the Nah’ruk. There was this civil war going on, you see…’
‘It will be light soon,’ Silchas said, turning away.
Before too long, the group separated as it usually did. Striding well ahead were Silchas Ruin and Clip. Next on the path was Seren Pedac herself, while twenty or more paces behind her straggled Udinaas-still using the Imass spear as a walking stick-and Kettle and Fear Sengar.
Seren was not sure if she was deliberately inviting solitude upon herself. More likely some remnant of her old profession was exerting on her a disgruntled pressure to take the lead, deftly dismissing the presence ahead of the two Tiste warriors. As if they don’t count. As if they’re intrinsically unreliable as guides… to wherever it is we’re going.
She thought back, often, on their interminable flight from Letheras, the sheer chaos of that trek, its contradictions of direction and purpose; the times when they were motionless-setting down tentative roots in some backwater hamlet or abandoned homestead-but their exhaustion did not ease then, for it was not of blood and flesh. Scabandari Bloodeye’s soul awaited them, like some enervating parasite, in a place long forgotten. Such was the stated purpose, but Seren had begun, at last, to wonder.
Silchas had endeavoured to lead them west, ever west, and was turned aside each time-as if whatever threat the servants of Rhulad and Hannan Mosag presented was too vast to challenge. And that made no sense. The bastard can change into a damned dragon. And is Silchas a pacifist at heart! Hardly. He kills with all the compunction of a man swatting mosquitoes. Did he turn us away to spare our lives? Again, unlikely. A dragon doesn’t leave behind anything alive, does it? Driven north, again and again, away from the more populated areas.
To the very edge of Bluerose, a region once ruled by Tiste Andii-hiding still under the noses of Letherii and Edur-no, I do not trust any of this. 1 cannot. Silchas Ruin sensed his kin. He must have.
Suspecting Silchas Ruin of deceit was one thing, voicing the accusation quite another. She lacked the courage. As simple as that. Easier, isn’t it, to just go along, and to keep from thinking too hard. Because thinking too hard is what Udinaas has done, and look at the state he’s in. Yet, even then, he’s managing to keep his mouth shut. Most of the time. He may be an ex-slave, he may be ‘no-one’-but he is not a fool.
So she walked alone. Bound by friendship to none-none here, in any case-and disinclined to change that.
The ruined city, little more than heaps of tumbled stone, rolled past on all sides, the slope ahead becoming ever steeper, and she thought, after a time, that she could hear the whisper of sand, crumbled mortar, fragments of rubble, as if their passage was yet further pitching this landscape, and as they walked they gathered to them streams of sliding refuse. As if our presence alone is enough shift the balance.
The whispering could have been voices, uttered beneath the wind, and she felt-with a sudden realization that lifted beads of sweat to her skin-within moments of understanding the words. Of stone and broken mortar. I am sliding into madness indeed-
‘When the stone breaks, every cry escapes. Can you hear me now, Seren Pedac?’
‘Is that you, Wither? Leave me be.’
Are any warrens alive? Most would say no. Impossible. They are forces. Aspects. Proclivities manifest as the predictable-oh, the Great Thinkers who are long since dust worried this in fevered need, as befits the obsessed. But they did not under’ stand. One warren lies like a web over all the others, and its voice is the will necessary to shape magic. They did not see it. Not for what it was. They thought… chaos, a web where each strand was undifferentiated energy, not yet articulated, not yet given shape by an Elder God’s intent.’
She listened, as yet uncomprehending, even as her heart thundered in her chest and her each breath came in a harsh rasp. This, she knew, was not Wither’s voice. Not the wraith’s language. Not its cadence.
‘But K’rul understood. Spilled blood is lost blood, powerless blood in the end. It dies when abandoned. Witness violent death for proof of that. For the warrens to thrive, coursing in their appointed rivers and streams, there must be a living body, a grander form that exists in itself. Not chaos. Not Dark, nor Light. Not heat, not cold. No, a conscious aversion to disorder. Negation to and of all else, when all else is dead. For the true face of Death is dissolution, and in dissolution there is chaos until the last mote of energy ceases its wilful glow, its persistent abnegation. Do you understand?’
‘No. Who are you?’
‘There is another way, then, of seeing this. K’rul realized he could not do this alone. The sacrifice, the opening of his veins and arteries, would mean nothing, would indeed fail. Without living flesh, without organized functionality.
‘Ah, the warrens, Seren Pedac, they are a dialogue. Do you see now?’
‘No!’
Her frustrated cry echoed through the ruins. She saw Silchas and Clip halt and turn about.
Behind her, Fear Sengar called out, ‘Acquitor? What is it you deny?’
Knowing laughter from Udinaas.
‘Disregard the vicious crowd now, the torrent of sound overwhelming the warrens, the users, the guardians, the parasites and the hunters, the complicit gods elder and young. Shut them away, as Corlos taught you. To remember rape is to fold details into sensation, and so relive each time its terrible truth. He told you this could become habit, an addiction, until even despair became a welcome taste on your tongue. Understand, then-as only you can here-that to take one’s own life is the final expression of despair. You saw that. Buruk the Pale. You felt that, at the sea’s edge. Seren Pedac, K’rul could not act alone in this sacrifice, lest he fill every warren with despair.
‘Dialogue. Presupposition, yes, of the plural. One with another. Or succession of others, for this dialogue must be ongoing, indeed, eternal.
‘Do I speak of the Master of the Holds? The Master of the Deck? Perhaps-the face of the other is ever turned away-to all but K’rul himself. This is how it must be. The dialogue, then, is the feeding of power. Power unimaginable, power virtually omnipotent, unassailable… so long as that other’s face remains… turned away.
‘From you. From me. From all of us.’
She stared wildly about then, at these tilted ruins, this endless scree of destruction.
‘The dialogue, however, can be sensed if not heard-such is its power. The construction of language, the agreement in principle of meaning and intent, the rules of grammar-Seren
Pedac, what did you think Mockra was? If not a game of grammar? Twisting semantics, turning inference, inviting suggestion, reshaping a mind’s internal language to deceive its own senses?
‘Who am I?
‘Why, Seren Pedac, 1 am Mockra.’
The others were gathered round her now. She found herself on her knees, driven there by revelation-there would be bruises, an appalling softness in the tissue where it pressed against hard pavestone. She registered this, as she stared up at the others. Reproachful communication, between damaged flesh and her mind, between her senses and her brain.
She shunted those words aside, then settled into a sweet, painless calm.
As easy as that.
‘Beware, there is a deadly risk in deceiving oneself. You can blind youself to your own damage. You can die quickly in that particular game, Seren Pedac. No, if you must… experiment… then choose another.
‘Corlos would have showed you that, had he the time with you.’
‘So-so he knows you?’’
‘Not as intimately as you. There are few so… blessed.’
‘But you are not a god, are you?’
‘You need not ask that, Seren Pedac.’
‘You are right. But still, you are alive.’
She heard amusement in the reply. ‘Unless my greatest deceit is the announcement of my own existence! There are rules in language, and language is needed for the stating of the rules. As K’rul understood, the blood flows out, and then it returns. Weak, then enlivened. Round and round. Who then, ask your-self, who then is the enemy?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Not yet, perhaps. You will need to find out, however, Seren Pedac. Before we are through.’
She smiled. ‘You give me a purpose?’
‘Dialogue, my love, must not end.’
‘Ours? Or the other one?’
‘Your companions think you fevered now. Tell me, before we part, which you would choose. For your experiments?’
She blinked up at the half-circle of faces. Expressions of concern, mockery, curiosity, indifference. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It seems… cruel.’
‘Power ever is, Seren Pedac.’
‘I won’t decide, then. Not yet.’
‘So be it.’
‘Seren?’ Kettle asked. ‘What is wrong with you?’
She smiled, then pushed herself to her feet, Udinaas-to her astonishment-reaching out to help her regain her balance.
Seeing her wince, he half smiled. ‘You landed hard, Acquitor. Can you walk?’ His smile broadened. ‘Perhaps no faster than the rest of us laggards, now?’
‘You, Udinaas? No, I think not.’
He frowned. ‘Just the two of us right now,’ he said.
Her eyes flickered up to meet his, shied away, then returned again-hard. ‘You heard?’
‘Didn’t need to,’ he replied under his breath as he set the Imass walking stick into her hands. ‘Had Wither sniffing at my heels long before I left the north.’ He shrugged.
Silchas Ruin and Clip had already resumed the journey.
Leaning on the Imass spear, Seren Pedac walked alongside the ex-slave, struggling with a sudden flood of emotion for this broken man. Perhaps, true comrades after all. He and I.
‘Seren Pedac’
‘Yes?’
‘Stop shifting the pain in your knees into mine, will you?’
Stop-what? Oh.
‘Either that or give me that damned stick back.’
‘If I say “sorry” then, well…’
‘You give it away. Well, say it if you mean it, and either way we’ll leave it at that.’
‘Sorry.’
His surprised glance delighted her.
The rising sea level had saturated the ground beneath the village. Anyone with half their wits would have moved to the stony, treed terrace bordering the flood plain, but the sordid remnants of the Shake dwelling here had simply levered their homes onto stilts and raised the slatted walkways, living above fetid, salty bog crawling with the white-backed crabs known as skullcaps.
Yan Tovis, Yedan Derryg and the troop of lancers reined in at Road’s End, the ferry landing and its assorted buildings on their left, a mass of felled trees rotting into the ground on their right. The air was chill, colder than it should have been this late into spring, and tendrils of low-lying fog hid most of the salt marsh beneath the stilts and bridged walkways.
Among the outbuildings of the landing-all situated on higher ground-there was a stone-walled stable fronted by a courtyard of planed logs, and beyond that, facing the village, an inn without a name.
Dismounting, Yan Tovis stood beside her horse for a long moment, her eyes closing. We have been invaded. I should be riding to every garrison on this coast-Errant fend, they must know by now. Truth delivered the hard way. The empire is at war.
But she was now Queen of the Last Blood, Queen of the Shake. Opening her weary eyes she looked upon the decrepit fishing village. My people, Errant help me. Running away had made sense back then. It made even more sense now.
Beside her, Yedan Derryg, her half-brother, loosened the strap of his visored helm, then said, ‘Twilight, what now?’
She glanced over at him, watched the rhythmic bunching of his bearded jaw. She understood the question in all its ramifications. What now? Do the Shake proclaim their independence, rising eager in the chaos of a Malazan-Letherii war? Do we gather our arms, our young whom we would call soldiers? The Shake cry out their liberty, and the sound is devoured by the shore’s rolling surf.
She sighed. ‘I was in command on the Reach, when the Edur came in their ships. We surrendered. I surrendered.’
To do otherwise would have been suicidal. Yedan should have said those words, then. For he knew the truth of them. Instead, he seemed to chew again for a moment, before turning to squint at the flat, broad ferry. ‘That’s not slipped its mooring in some time, I think. The coast north of Awl must be flooded.’
He gives me nothing. ‘We shall make use of it, all the way out to Third Maiden Fort.’
A nod.
‘Before that, however, we must summon the witches and warlocks.’
‘You’ll find most of them huddled in the village yonder, Queen. And Pully and Skwish will have announced your return. Taloned toes are tapping the floorboards, I would wager.’
‘Go down there,’ she commanded, facing the inn. ‘Escort them back here-I will be in the tavern.’
‘And if the tavern is not big enough?’
An odd concern. She began walking towards the entrance. ‘Then they can perch on shoulders like the crows they are, Yedan.’
‘Twilight.’
She half turned.
Yedan was tightening the straps of his helm once again. ‘Do not do it.’
‘Do not do what?’
‘Send us to war, sister.’
She studied him.
But he said nothing more, and a moment later he had turned away and set off down towards the village.
She resumed her walk, while her soldiers led the mounts towards the stable, the beasts’ hoofs slipping on the slick logs of the courtyard. They had ridden hard, these last horses drawn from a virtually empty garrison fort just north of Tulamesh-reports of bandits had sent the squads into the countryside and they’d yet to return. Yan Tovis believed they would never do so.
At the entranceway she paused, looking down at the slab of stone beneath her boots, on which were carved Shake runes.
‘This Raised Stone honours Teyan Atovis, Rise, who was claimed by the Shore 1113th Year of the Isle. Slain by the Letherii for Debts Unremitted.’
Yan Tovis grunted. One of her kin, no less, dead a thousand years now. ‘Well, Teyan,’ she muttered, ‘you died of drink, and now your stone straddles the threshold of a tavern.’ True, some list of mysterious, crushing debts had invited his ignoble fall to alcohol and misery, but this grand commemoration had taken a slanted view on the hands guiding the man’s fate. And now… Brullyg would be Rise. Will you wear the crown as well as Teyan did?
She pushed open the door and strode inside.
The low-ceilinged room was crowded, every face turned to her.
A familiar figure pushed into view, her face a mass of wrinkles twisted into a half-smile.
‘Pully,’ Twilight said, nodding. ‘I have just sent the Watch down to the village to find you.’
‘Be well he’ll find Skwish and a score others. They be well weaving cob to web on th’ close sea beyond the shore, Queen, an’ all the truths writ there. Strangers-’
‘I know,’ Yan Tovis interjected, looking past the old hag and scanning the other witches and warlocks, the Shoulderfolk of the Old Ways. Their eyes glittered in the smoky gloom, and Twilight could now smell these Shake elders-half-unravelled damp wool and patchy sealskin, fish-oil and rank sweat, the breath coming from mouths dark with sickened gums or rotting teeth.
If there was a proprietor to this tavern he or she had fled. Casks had been broached and tankards filled with pungent ale. A huge pot of fish soup steamed on the centre hearth and there were countless gourd-shell bowls scattered on the tables. Large rats waddled about on the filthy floor.
Far more witches than warlocks, she noted. This had been a discernible trend among the demon-kissed-fewer and fewer males born bearing the accepted number of traits; most were far too demonic. More than two hundred of the Shoulderfolk. Gathered here.
‘Queen,’ Pully ventured, ducking her head. ‘Cob to web, all of Shake blood know that you now rule. Barring them that’s on the Isle, who only know that your mother’s dead.’
‘So Brullyg is there, anticipating…’
‘Aye, Twilight, that be well he will be Rise, King of the Shake.’
Errant take me. ‘We must sail to the Isle.’
A murmur of agreement amidst the eager quaffing of ale.
‘You intend, this night,’ Yan Tovis said, ‘a ritual.’
‘We are loosening the chains as they say, Queen. There are nets be strung across the path of the world, t’see what we catch.’
‘No.’
Pully’s black eyes narrowed. ‘What’s that?’
‘No. There will be no ritual tonight. Nor tomorrow night, nor the next. Not until we are on the Isle, and perhaps not even then.’
Not a sound in the tavern now.
Pully opened her mouth, shut it, then opened it again. ‘Queen, the shore be alive wi’ voices as they say and the words they are for us. These-these they be the Old Ways, our ways-’
‘And my mother was in the habit of looking away, yes. But I am not.’ She lifted her head and scanned once more the array of faces, seeing the shock, the anger, the growing malice. ‘The Old Ways failed us. Then and now. Your ways,’ she told them in a hard voice, ‘have failed us all. I am Queen. Twilight on the shore. At my side in my rule is the Watch. Brullyg would be Rise-that remains to be seen, for your proclamation is not cause enough, not even close. Rise is chosen by all the Shake. All’
‘Do not mar us, Queen.7 Pully’s smile was gone. Her face was a mask of venom.
Yan Tovis snorted. ‘Will you send a curse my way, old woman? Do not even think it. I mean to see my people survive, through all that will happen. From all of you, I will need healing, I will need blessing. You rule no longer-no, do not speak to me of my mother. I know better than any of you the depths of her surrender. I am Queen. Obey me.’
They were not happy. They had been the true power for so long-if that pathetic curse-weaving in the shadows could be called power-and Yan Tovis knew that this struggle had but just begun, for all their apparent acquiescence. They will begin planning my downfall. It is to be expected.
Yedan Derryg, never mind watching the shore. You must now watch my back.
Fiddler opened his eyes. Dusk had just begun to settle. Groaning, he rolled onto his back. Too many years of sleeping on hard, cold ground; too many years of a tattered rain cape for a mattress, a single blanket of coarse wool for cover. At least now he was sleeping through the day, easing his old bones with the sun’s warmth.
Sitting up, he looked round the glade. Huddled figures on all sides. Just beyond them was Koryk, the sleep’s last watch, sitting on a tree stump. Aye, woodcutters in this forest.
Not that we’ve seen any.
Three nights since the landing. Ever moving eastward, inland. A strange empire, this. Roads and tracks and the occasional farmstead, barely a handful of towns on the coast that we saw. And where in Hood’s name are these Tiste Edur?
Fiddler climbed to his feet, arching his back to work out the aches and twinges. He’d wanted to be a soldier named Strings, here among the Bonehunters, a different man, a new man. But that hadn’t worked so well. The conceit had fooled no-one. Even worse, he could not convince himself that he had begun anew, that the legacy of past campaigns could be put aside. A life don’t work that way. Dammit. He trudged over to Koryk.
The Seti half-blood glanced up. ‘Some damned war we got ourselves here, Sergeant. I’d even take one of Smiles’s knives in the leg just to get us the smell of blood. Let’s forget these damned Edur and go ahead and start killing Letherii.’
‘Farmers and swineherds, Koryk? We need them on our side, remember?’
‘So far there ain’t been enough of them to muster a damned squad. Least we should show ourselves-’
‘Not yet. Besides, it’s probably been just bad luck we haven’t met the enemy yet. I’d wager other squads have already been in a scrap or two.’
Koryk grunted. ‘I doubt it. All it takes is just one squad to kick the nest and these woods should be swarming. They ain’t.’
Fiddler had nothing to say to that. He scratched himself, then turned away. ‘Shut your eyes for a time now, soldier. We’ll wake you when breakfast’s ready.’
Do your complainin’ now, Koryk, because when this lets hose we’ll look back on sunsets like this one like it was idyllic paradise. Still, how many times could he make that promise? The legacy of the Bonehunters thus far was nothing to sing songs about. Even Y’Ghatan had been a mess, with them whistling a song while they walked right into a trap. It galled him still, that one. He should have smelled trouble. Same for Gesler-aye, we let them down that day. Badly.
Malaz City had been worse. True, weapons had been drawn. There’d even been a shield-line for a few squads of marines. Against Malazans. An undisciplined mob of our own people. Somehow, somewhere, this army needed to fight for real.
The Adjunct had thrown them onto this coast, like a handful of ticks onto a dog’s back. Sooner or later the beast was going to scratch.
As the others wakened to the coming of night, Fiddler walked over to his pack. Stood studying it for a time. The Deck was in there, waiting. And he was sorely tempted. Just to get a taste of what was coming. Don’t be a fool, Fid. Remember Tattersail. Remember all the good it did her.
‘Bad idea, Sergeant.’
Fiddler glanced over, scowled. ‘Stop reading my mind, Bottle. You’re not as good at it as you think.’
‘You’re like a man who’s sworn off drink but carries a flask in his pouch.’
‘Enough of that, soldier.’
Bottle shrugged, looked round. ‘Where’s Gesler gone?’
‘Probably off fertilizing the trees.’
‘Maybe,’ Bottle said, sounding unconvinced. ‘It’s just that I woke up earlier, and didn’t see him then either.’
Gods below. Waving at midges, Fiddler walked over to the far end of the glade, where the other squad was positioned. He saw Stormy standing like a sleep-addled bear-his red hair and beard a wild mass of twig-filled tangles-repeatedly kicking the side of a loudly snoring Shortnose.
‘Stormy,’ Fiddler called out softly, ‘where’s your sergeant gone to?’
‘No idea,’ the huge man replied. ‘He had last watch on this side, though. Hey, Fid, she wouldn’t have burned the Silanda, would she?’
‘Of course not. Listen, if Gesler ain’t back soon you’re going to have to go looking for him.’
Stormy’s small porcine eyes blinked at him. ‘Might be he’s lost? I didn’t think of that.’
‘Never mind that dimwitted act, Corporal.’
‘Yeah. That Koryk you got, he any good at tracking?’. ‘No. Damned near useless in fact, although don’t say that to his face. Bottle-’
‘Oh, him. That one gives me the creeps, Fid. Masturbates like I pick my nose. Now sure, soldiers will do that, but-’
‘He says it’s not him.’
‘Well, if Smiles wants to reach in under the covers-’
‘Smiles? What are you going on about, Stormy?’
‘I mean-’
‘Look, Bottle’s haunted by a damned ghost of some kind-Quick Ben confirmed it, so stop giving me that look. Anyway, that ghost’s, uh, female, and she likes him way too much-’
‘Mages are sick, Fid.’
‘Not a relevant point here, Stormy.’
‘So you say,’ the corporal said, shaking himself then turning away. ‘ “Not a relevant point here,”‘ he mimicked under his breath.
‘I can still hear you, Corporal.’
Stormy waved a wide, hairy hand but did not turn round, instead making his way towards the hearth. He paused in his first step to set his boot down on one of Shortnose’s hands. There was an audible crack and the heavy infantryman made a small sound, then sat up. Stormy continued on, while Shortnose looked down at his hand, frowning at the oddly angled third finger, which he then reset with a tug, before rising and wandering off to find somewhere to empty his bladder.
Fiddler scratched at his beard, then swung about and walked back to his squad.
Aye, we’re a lethal bunch.
Gesler wandered the strange ruins. The light was fast fading, making the place seem even more spectral. Round wells on all sides, at least a dozen scattered among the old trees. The stones were exquisitely cut, fitted without mortar-as he had discovered upon peeling back some moss. He had caught sight of the regular shapes from the edge of the glade, had first thought them to be the pedestals for some colonnaded structure long since toppled over. But the only other stone he found was paving, buckled by roots, making footing treacherous.
Seating himself on the edge of one of the wells, he peered down into the inky blackness, and could smell stagnant water. He felt oddly pleased with himself to find that his curiosity had not been as thoroughly dulled as he’d once believed. Not nearly as bad as, say, Cuttle. Now there was a grim bastard. Still, Gesler had seen a lot in his life, and some of it had permanently stained his skin-not to mention other, more subtle changes. But mostly that host of things witnessed, deeds done, not done, they just wore a man down.
He could not look at the tiny flames of the squad’s hearth without remembering Truth and that fearless plunge into Y’Ghatan’s palace. Or he’d glance down at the crossbow in his hands as they stumbled through this damned forest and recall Pella, skewered through the forehead, sagging against the corner of a building barely a hundred paces into Y’Ghatan itself. With every crow’s cackle he heard the echoes of the screams when dread ghosts had assailed the camp of the Dogslayers at Raraku. A glance down at his bared hands and their battered knuckles, and the vision rose in his mind of that Wickan, Coltaine, down on the banks of the Vathar-gods, to have led that mob that far, with more still to go, with nothing but cruel betrayal at the Fall.
The slaughter of the inhabitants of Aren, when the Logros T’lan Irrtass rose from the dust of the streets and their weapons of stone began to rise and fall, rise and fall. If not for that ex-Red Blade driving open the gates and so opening a path of escape, there would have been no survivors at all. None. Except us Malazans, who could only stand aside and watch the slaughter. Helpless as babes…
A dragon through fire, a ship riding flames-his first sight of a Tiste Edur: dead, pinned to his chair by a giant’s spear. Oar benches where sat decapitated rowers, hands resting on the sweeps, and their severed heads heaped in a pile round the mainmast, eyes blinking in the sudden light, faces twisting into appalling expressions-
So who built twelve wells in a forest? That’s what I want to know.
Maybe.
He recalled a knock at the door, and opening it to see, with absurd delight, a drenched T’lan Imass whom he recognized. Stormy, it’s for you. And aye, I dream of moments like this, you red-haired ox. And what did that say about Gesler himself? Wait, I’m not that curious.
‘There you are.’
Gesler looked up. ‘Stormy. I was just thinking of you.’
‘Thinking what?’
He waved at the well’s black hole. ‘If you’d fit, of course. Most of you would go, but not, alas, your head.’
‘You keep forgetting, Gesler,’ the corporal said as he drew nearer, ‘I was one of the ones who punched back.’
‘Got no recollection of that at all.’
‘Want me to remind you?’
‘What I want is to know why you’re bothering me.’
‘We’re all gettin’ ready to head out.’
‘Stormy.’
‘What?’
‘What do you think about all this?’
‘Someone liked building wells.’
‘Not this. I mean, the war. This war, the one here.’
‘I’ll let you know once we start busting heads.’
‘And if that never happens?’
Stormy shrugged, ran thick fingers through his knotted beard. ‘Just another typical Bonehunter war, then.’
Gesler grunted. ‘Go on, lead the way. Wait. How many battles have we fought, you and me?’
‘You mean, with each other?’
‘No, you damned idiot. I mean against other people. How many?’
‘I lost count.’
‘Liar.’
‘All right. Thirty-seven, but not counting Y’Ghatan since I wasn’t there. Thirty-eight for you, Gesler.’
And how many did we manage to avoid?’
‘Hundreds.’
‘So maybe, old friend, we’re just getting better at this.’
The huge Falari scowled. ‘You trying to ruin my day, Sergeant?’
Koryk tightened the straps of his bulky pack. ‘I just want to kill someone,’ he growled.
Bottle rubbed at his face then eyed the half-blood Seti.
‘There’s always Smiles. Or Tarr, if you jump him when he’s not looking.’
‘You being funny?’
‘No, just trying to deflect your attention from the weakest guy in this squad. Namely, me.’
‘You’re a mage. Sort of. You smell like one, anyway.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘If I kill you, you’d just curse me with your last breath, then I’d be miserable.’
‘So what would change, Koryk?’
‘Having a reason to be miserable is always worse than having no reason but being miserable anyway. If it’s just a way of life, I mean.’ He suddenly drew out the latest weapon in his arsenal, a long-knife. ‘See this? Just like the kind Kalam used. It’s a damned fast weapon, but I can’t see it doing much against armour.’
‘Where Kalam stuck them there wasn’t no armour. Throat, armpit, crotch-you should give it to Smiles.’
‘I grabbed it to keep it from her, idiot.’
Bottle looked over to where Smiles had, moments earlier, disappeared into the forest. She was on her way back, the placid expression on her face hiding all sorts of evil, no doubt. ‘I hope we’re not expected to stand against Edur the way heavies are,’ he said to Koryk while watching Smiles. ‘Apart from you and Tarr, and maybe Corabb, we’re not a big mailed fist kind of squad, are we? So, in a way, this kind of war suits us-subterfuge, covert stuff.’ He glanced over and saw the half-blood glaring at him. Still holding the long-knife. ‘But maybe we’re actually more versatile. We can be half mailed fist and half black glove, right?’
‘Anyway,’ Koryk said, resheathing the weapon, ‘when I said I wanted to kill someone I meant the enemy.’
Tiste Edur.’
‘Letherii bandits will do-there must be bandits around here somewhere.’
‘Why?’
‘What do you mean, why? There’s always bandits in the countryside, Bottle. Led by moustached rogues with fancy names. Zorala Snicker, or Pamby Doughty-’
A loud snort from Smiles, who had just arrived. ‘I remember those stories. Pamby Doughty with the feather in his hat and his hunchback sidekick, Pomolo Paltry the Sly. Stealers of the Royal Treasure of Li Heng. Cutters of the Great Rope that held Drift Avalii in one place. And Zorala, who as a child climbed the tallest tree in the forest, then found he couldn’t get back down, so that’s where he lived for years, growing up. Until the woodsman came-’
‘Gods below,’ Cuttle growled from the blankets he remained under, ‘someone cut her throat, please.’
‘Well,’ Smiles said with a tight, eponymous curve of her mouth, ‘at least I started the night in a good mood.’
‘She means she had a most satisfying-’
‘Clack the teeth together, Koryk, or I’ll cut those braids off when you’re sleeping and trust me, you won’t like what I’ll use ‘em for. And you, Bottle, don’t let that give you any ideas, neither. I took the blame for something you did once, but never again.’
‘I wouldn’t cut off Koryk’s braids,’ Bottle said. ‘He needs them to sneeze into.’
‘Get moving, Cuttle,’ Fiddler said as he strode among them. ‘Look at Corabb-he’s the only one actually ready-’
‘No I’m not,’ the man replied. ‘I just fell asleep in my armour, Sergeant, and now I need somewhere to pee. Only-’
‘Never mind,’ Fiddler cut in. ‘Let’s see if we can’t stumble onto some Edur tonight.’
‘We could start a forest fire,’ Koryk said.
‘But we happen to be in it,’ Tarr pointed out.
‘It was just an idea.’
Corabb Bhilan Thenu’alas admitted to himself that these Malazans were nothing like the soldiers of the Dogslayers, or the warriors of Leoman’s army. He was not even sure if they were human. More like… animals. Endlessly bickering ones at that, like a pack of starving dogs.
They pretty much ignored him, which was a good thing. Even Bottle, to whom the sergeant had instructed Corabb to stay close. Guarding someone else’s back was something Corabb was familiar with, so he had no issue with that command. Even though Bottle was a mage and he wasn’t too sure about mages. They made deals with gods-but one didn’t have to be a mage to do that, he knew. No, one could be a most trusted leader, a commander whose warriors would follow him into the pit of the Abyss itself. Even someone like that could make deals with gods, and so doom his every follower in a fiery cataclysm even as that one ran away.
Yes, ran away.
He was pleased that he had got over all that. Old history, and old history was old so it didn’t mean anything any more, because… well, because it was old. He had a new history, now. It had begun in the rubble beneath Y’Ghatan. Among these… animals. Still, there was Fiddler and Corabb knew he would follow his sergeant because the man was worth following. Not like some people.
An army of fourteen seemed a little small, but it would have to do for now. He hoped, however, that somewhere ahead-further inland-they’d come to a desert. Too many trees in this wet, bad-smelling forest. And he’d like to get on a horse again, too. All this walking was, he was certain, unhealthy.
As the squad left the glade, slipping into the deeper darkness beyond, he moved alongside Bottle, who glanced over and grimaced. ‘Here to protect me from bats, Corabb?’
The warrior shrugged. ‘If they try attacking you I will kill them.’
‘Don’t you dare. I happen to like bats. I talk to them, in fact.’
‘The same as that rat and her pups you kept, right?’
‘Exactly’
‘I was surprised, Bottle, that you left them to burn on the transports.’
‘I’d never do that. I shipped them onto the Froth Wolf. Some time ago, in fact-’
‘So you could spy on the Adjunct, yes.’
‘It was an act of mercy-the one ship I knew would be safe, you see-’
‘And so you could spy.’
‘All right, fine. So I could spy. Let’s move on to another subject. Did Leoman ever tell you about his bargain with the Queen of Dreams?’
Corabb scowled. ‘I don’t like that subject. It’s old history, which means nobody talks about it any more.’
‘Fine, so why didn’t you go with him? I’m sure he offered.’
‘I will kill the next bat I see.’
Someone hissed from up ahead: ‘Stop that jabbering, idiots!’
Corabb wished he was riding a fine horse, across a sun-blistered desert-no-one could truly understand the magic wonder of water, unless they had spent time in a desert. Here, there was so much of it a man’s feet could rot off and that wasn’t right. ‘This land is mad,’ he muttered.
Bottle grunted. ‘More like deathless. Layer on layer, ghosts tangled in every root, squirming restlessly under every stone. Owls can see them, you know. Poor things.’
Another hiss from ahead of them.
It started to rain.
Even the sky holds water in contempt. Madness.
Trantalo Kendar, youngest son among four brothers in a coastal clan of the Beneda Tiste Edur, rode with surprising grace, unmatched by any of his Edur companions, alas. He was the only one in his troop who actually liked horses. Trantalo had been a raw fifteen years of age at the conquest, unblooded, and the closest he had come to fighting had been as an apprentice to a distantly related aunt who had served as a healer in Hannan Mosag’s army.
Under her bitter command, he had seen the terrible damage war did to otherwise healthy warriors. The ghastly wounds, the suppurating burns and limbs withered from Letherii sorcery. And, walking the fields of battle in search of the wounded, he had seen the same horrid destruction among dead and dying Letherii soldiers.
Although young, something of the eagerness for battle had left him then, driving him apart from his friends. Too many spilled out intestines, too many crushed skulls, too many desperate pleas for help answered by naught but crows and gulls. He had bound countless wounds, had stared into the glazed eyes of warriors shocked by their own mortality, or, worse, despairing with the misery of lost limbs, scarred faces, lost futures.
He did not count himself clever, nor in any other way exceptional-barring, perhaps, his talent for riding horses-but he now rode with eleven veteran Edur warriors, four of them Beneda, including the troop commander, Estav Kendar, Trantalo’s eldest brother. And he was proud to be at the column’s head, first down this coastal track that led to Boaral Keep, where, as he understood it, some sort of Letherii impropriety demanded Edur attention.
This was as far south from Rennis as he had been since managing to flee his aunt’s clutches just inland of the city of Awl. Trantalo had not seen the walls of Letheras, nor the battlefields surrounding it, and for that he was glad, for he had heard that the sorcery in those final clashes had been the most horrifying of them all.
Life in Rennis had been one of strange privilege. To be Tiste Edur alone seemed sufficient reason for both fear and respect among the subservient Letherii. He had exulted in the respect. The fear had dismayed him, but he was not so naive as not to understand that without that fear, there would be none of the respect that so pleased him. ‘The threat of reprisal,’ Estav had told him the first week of his arrival. ‘This is what keeps the pathetic creatures cowering.
And there will be times, young brother, when we shall have to remind them-bloodily-of that threat.’
Seeking to tug down his elation was the apprehension that this journey, down to this in-the-middle-of-nowhere keep, was just that-the delivery of reprisal. Blood-splashed adjudication. It was no wonder the Letherii strove to keep the Edur out of such disputes. We are not interested in niceties. Details bore us. And so swords will be drawn, probably this very night.
Estav would make no special demands of him, he knew. It was enough that he rode point on the journey. Once at the keep, Trantalo suspected he would be stationed to guard the gate or some such thing. He was more than satisfied with that.
The sun’s light was fast fading on the narrow track leading to the keep. They had a short time earlier left the main coastal road, and here on this lesser path the banks were steep, almost chest-high were one standing rather than riding, and braided with dangling roots. The trees pressed in close from both sides, branches almost entwining overhead. Rounding a twist in the trail, Trantalo caught first sight of the stockade, the rough boles-still bearing most of their bark-irregularly tilted and sunken. A half-dozen decrepit outbuildings crouched against a stand of alders and birch to the left and a flatbed wagon with a broken axle squatted in high grasses just to the right of the gate.
Trantalo drew rein before the entrance. The gate was open. The single door, made of saplings and a Z-shaped frame of planks, had been pushed well to one side and left there, its base snarled with grasses. The warrior could see through to the compound beyond, oddly lifeless. Hearing his fellow Edur draw closer at the canter, he edged his horse forward until he made out the smoke-stained facade of the keep itself. No lights from any of the vertical slit windows. And the front door yawned wide.
‘Why do you hesitate, Trantalo?’ Estav inquired as he rode up.
‘Preda,’ Trantalo said, delighting, as ever, in these new Letherii titles, ‘the keep appears to be abandoned. Perhaps we have ridden to the wrong one-’
‘Boaral,’ affirmed a warrior behind Estav. ‘I’ve been here before.’
‘And is it always this quiet?’ Estav asked, one brow lifting in the way Trantalo knew so well.
‘Nearly,’ the warrior said, rising gingerly on the swivelling Letherii stirrups to look round. ‘There should be at least two torches, one planted above that wagon-then one in the courtyard itself.’
No guards?’
‘Should be at least one-could be he’s staggered off to the latrine trench-’
‘No,’ said Estav, ‘there’s no-one here.’ He worked his horse past Trantalo’s and rode through the gate.
Trantalo followed.
The two brothers approached the stepped front entrance to the keep.
‘Estav, something wet on those stairs.’
‘You’re right. Good eye, brother.’ The Beneda warrior dismounted with obvious relief, passing the reins over to Trantalo, then strode towards the steps. ‘Blood-trail.’
‘Perhaps a mutiny?’
The other Edur had left their horses with one of their company and were now moving out across the courtyard to search the stables, smithy, coop and well-house.
Estav stood at the base of the steps, eyes on the ground. ‘A body has been dragged outside,’ he said, tracking the blood-trail.
Trantalo saw his brother’s head lift to face the stable. As it did Estav grunted suddenly, then abruptly sat down.
‘Estav?’
Trantalo looked out to the courtyard, in time to see four warriors crumple. Sudden shouts from the three near the stables, as something like a rock sailed down into their midst.
A flash of fire. A solid, cracking sound. The three were thrown onto their backs. As a small cloud bloomed, there was shrieking.
Trantalo kicked his boots free of the stirrups, swung one leg over then dropped down into a crouch. His mouth was dry as tinder. His heart pounded so hard in his chest he felt half deafened by its drumbeat. Drawing his sword, he hurried over to his brother.
‘Estav?’
Sitting, legs out before him in the careless manner of a child, hands resting on the muddy ground. Something was jutting from his chest. A hand’s length of a shaft, thicker than a normal arrow, the fletching curved fins of leather. Blood had poured down from Estav’s mouth, covering his chin and soaking into the front of his woollen cloak. His staring eyes did not blink.
‘Estav?’
In the courtyard, the sharp clash of blades.
Disbelieving, Trantalo dragged his eyes from his brother’s corpse. Two Edur warriors were attempting a fighting withdrawal, backing towards the uneasy horses that still stood five or so paces in from the gate. The Edur who had been left with them was on his hands and knees, crawling for the opening. There was something jutting from the side of his head.
Difficult to make out who the attackers were in the darkness, but they were well armed and armoured, four in all, maintaining close contact with the last two Edur.
Smudged movement behind them-Trantalo leapt to his feet, about to cry out a warning, when sudden fire filled his throat. Gagging, he lurched away and felt something cold slide out from the side of his neck. Blood gushed down, inside and out. Coughing, drowning, he fell to one knee, almost within reach of his brother. Blindness closing in, he lunged towards Estav, arms outstretched.
Estav?
He never made it.
Managing a straight line, Hellian walked out from the stable. She was slightly shivering, now that the time of serious sweating had passed. Fighting always evened her out. She didn’t know why that was the case, but it was and all in all probably a good thing, too. ‘Someone light a damned lantern,’ she growled. ‘You, Maybe, put that sharper away-we got ‘em all.’ She let out a loud sigh. ‘The big nasty enemy.’
Drawing nearer the two Edur down in front of the keep, she waved her sword. ‘Tavos, check those two. It ain’t enough to stab ‘im then just stand there looking down. Might be one last bite in ‘im, you know.’
‘Both dead as my sex-life,’ Tavos Pond said. ‘Who sniped the first one, Sergeant? Damned fine shot.’
‘Lutes,’ she replied, now watching Urb lead the others on a walk-past of the Edur bodies in the courtyard. ‘Leaned the weapon on my back.’
‘Your back?’
‘I was throwing up, if it’s any of your business. Between heaves, he let go. Got him dead centre, didn’t he?’
‘Aye, Sergeant.’
‘And you didn’t want t’bring the rum. Well, that’s why I’m in charge and you’re not. Where’s my corporal?’
‘Here.
‘Here.’
‘Gather up them horses-I don’t care what the Fist ordered, we’re going to ride.’
At that Urb glanced over, then approached. ‘Hellian-’
‘Don’t even try to sweet-talk me. I almost remember what you did.’ She drew out her flask and drank down a mouthful. ‘So be careful, Urb. Now, everybody who loosed quarrels go find them and that means all of them!’ She looked back down at the two dead Edur by the entrance.
‘Think we’re the first to draw blood?’ Tavos Pond asked, crouching to clean the blade of his sword on the cloak of the older Edur.
‘Big fat war, Tavos Pond. That’s what we got ourselves here.’
‘They weren’t so hard, Sergeant.’
‘Wasn’t expecting nothing either, were they? You think we can just ambush our way all the way to Letheras? Think again.’ She drank a couple more mouthfuls, then sighed and glowered over at Urb. ‘How soon before they’re the ones doing the ambushin’? That’s why I mean for us to ride-we’re gonna stay ahead of the bad news ‘s long as we can. That way we can be the bad news, right? The way it’s s’posed t’be.’
Corporal Reem walked up to Urb. ‘Sergeant, we got us twelve horses.’
‘So we get one each,’ Hellian said. ‘Perfect.’
‘By my count,’ said Reem with narrowed eyes, ‘someone’s going to have to ride double.’
‘If you say so. Now, let’s get these bodies dragged away-they got any coin? Anybody checked?’
‘Some,’ said Maybe. ‘But mostly just polished stones.’
‘Polished stones?’
‘First I thought slingstones, but none of them’s carrying slings. So, aye, Sergeant. Polished stones.’
Hellian turned away as the soldiers set off to dispose of the Edur corpses. Oponn’s pull, finding this keep, and finding nobody in it but one freshly dead Letherii in the hallway. Place had been cleaned out, although there’d been some foodstocks in the cold-rooms. Not a drop of wine or ale, the final proof, as far as she was concerned, that this foreign empire was a mess and useless besides and pretty much worth destroying down to its very last brick.
Too bad they weren’t going to get a chance to do so.
But then, it does a body good to misunderstand orders on occasion. So, let’s go hunting Edur heads, Hellian faced the courtyard again. Damn this darkness. Easy enough for the mages, maybe. And these grey-shins. ‘Urb,’ she said in a low voice.
He edged closer, warily. ‘Hellian?’
‘We need us to arrange our ambushes for dusk and dawn.’
‘Aye. You’re right. You know, I’m glad our squads were paired up.’
‘Of course you are. You unnerstand me, Urb. You’re the only one who does, you know.’ She wiped her nose with the back of one hand. ‘It’s a sad thing, Urb. A sad thing.’
‘What? Killing these Tiste Edur?’
She blinked at him. ‘No, you oaf. The fact that nobody else unnerstands me.’
‘Aye, Hellian. Tragic’
‘That’s what Banaschar always said to me, no matter what I was talking about. He’d just look at me, like you did there, and say tragic. So what’s all that about?’ She shook the flask-still half full, but another mouthful means I’m running it down, so’s I’ll need to top it up. Gotta be measured about these things, in case something terrible happens and I can’t get a fast refill. ‘Come on, it’s time to ride.’
And if we run into a troop of Letherii?’
Hellian frowned. ‘Then we do as Keneb told us. We talk to ‘em.’
And if they don’t like what we say?’
‘Then we kill ‘em, of course.’
And we’re riding for Letheras?’
She smiled at Urb. Then tapped the side of her slightly numb head with one finger. ‘I memmored th’map-ized, memmized the map. There’s towns, Urb. An’ the closer we get t’Letheras, the more of them. Wha’s in towns, Urb? Taverns. Bars. So, we’re not takin’ a straight, pre-dic-table route.’
‘We’re invading Lether from tavern to tavern?’
Aye/
‘Hellian, I hate to say this, but that’s kind of clever.’
Aye. And that way we can eat real cooked food, too. It’s the civilized way of conductin’ war. Hellian’s way.’
The bodies joined the lone Letherii in the latrine pit. Half naked, stripped of valuables, they were dumped down into the thick, turgid slop, which proved deeper than anyone had expected, as it swallowed up those corpses, leaving not a trace.
The Malazans threw the polished stones after them.
Then rode off down the dark road.
‘That has the look of a way station,’ the captain said under her breath.
Beak squinted, then said, ‘I smell horses, sir. That long building over there.’
‘Stables,’ Faradan Sort said, nodding. ‘Any Tiste Edur here?’
Beak shook his head. ‘Deepest blue of Rashan-that’s their candle, mostly. Not as deep as Kurald Galain. They call it Kurald Emurlahn, but these ones here, well, there’s skuzzy foam on that blue, like what sits on waves outside a harbour. That’s chaotic power. Sick power. Power like pain if pain was good, maybe even strong. I don’t know. I don’t like these Edur here.’
‘They’re here?’
‘No. I meant this continent, sir. There’s just Letherii in there. Four. In that small house beside the road.’
‘No magic?’
‘Just some charms.’
‘I want to steal four horses, Beak. Can you cast a glamour on those Letherii?’
‘The Grey Candle, yes. But they’ll find out after we’ve gone.’
‘True. Any suggestions?’
Beak was happy. He had never been so happy. This captain was asking him things. Asking for suggestions. Advice. And it wasn’t just for show neither. I’m in love with her. To her question he nodded, then tilted up his skullcap helm to scratch in his hair, and said, ‘Not the usual glamour, sir. Something lots more complicated. Finishing with the Orange Candle-’
‘Which is?’
‘Tellann.’
‘Is this going to be messy?’
‘Not if we take all the horses, Captain.’
He watched her studying him, wondered what she saw. She wasn’t much for expressions on that hard but beautiful face. Not even her eyes showed much. He loved her, true, but he was also a little frightened of Faradan Sort.
‘All right, Beak, where do you want me?’
‘In the stables with all the horses ready to leave, and maybe two saddled. Oh, and feed for us to take along.’
‘And I can do all that without an alarm’s being raised?’
‘They won’t hear a thing, sir. In fact, you could go up right now and knock on their door and they won’t hear it.’
Still she hesitated. ‘So I can just walk over to the stables, right out in the open, right now?’
Beak nodded with a broad smile.
‘Gods below,’ she muttered, ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to this.’
‘Mockra has their minds, sir. They’ve got no defences. They’ve never been glamoured before, I don’t think.’
She set out in a half-crouch, moving quickly, although none of that was necessary, and moments later was inside the stables.
It would take some time, Beak knew, for her to do all that he’d asked-I just told a captain what to do! And she’s doing it! Does that mean she loves me right back? He shook himself. Not a good idea, letting his mind wander just now. He edged out from the cover of the trees lining this side of the stony road. Crouched to pick up a small rock, which he then spat on and set back down-to hold the Mockra in place-as he closed his eyes and sought out the White Candle.
Hood. Death, a cold, cold place. Even the air was dead. In his mind he looked in on that realm as if peering through a window, the wooden sill thick with melted candle wax, the white candle itself flickering to one side. Beyond, ash-heaped ground strewn with bones of all sorts. He reached through, closed a hand on the shaft of a heavy longbone, and drew it back. Working quickly, Beak pulled as many bones as would fit through the wandering window, always choosing big ones. He had no idea what the beasts had been to which all these bones belonged, but they would do.
When he was satisfied with the white, dusty pile heaped on the road, Beak closed the window and opened his eyes. Glancing across he saw the captain standing at the stables, gesturing at him.
Beak waved back, then turned and showed the bones the Purple Candle. They lifted from the road like feathers on an updraught, and as the mage hurried over to join Faradan Sort the bones followed in his wake, floating waist-high above the ground.
The captain disappeared back inside the stables before Beak arrived, then emerged, leading the horses, just as he padded up to the broad doors.
Grinning, Beak went into the stables, the bones tracking him. Once inside, smelling that wonderful musty smell of horses, leather, dung and piss-damp straw, he scattered the bones, a few into each stall, snuffing out the purple candle when he was done. He walked over to the mound of straw at one end, closed his eyes to awaken the Orange Candle, then spat into the straw.
Rejoining the captain outside he said to her, ‘We can go now.’
‘That’s it?’
‘Yes sir. We’ll be a thousand paces down the road before the Tellann lights up-’
‘Fire?’
‘Yes sir. A terrible fire-they won’t even be able to get close-and it’ll burn fast but go nowhere else and by the morning there’ll be nothing but ashes.’
‘And charred bones that might belong to horses.’
‘Yes sir.’
‘You’ve done well tonight, Beak,’ Faradan Sort said, swinging up onto one of the saddled horses.
Feeling impossibly light on his feet, Beak leapt onto the other one then looked back, with pride, at the remaining seven beasts. Decent animals, just badly treated. Which made it good that they were stealing them. Malazans knew how to care for their horses, after all.
Then he frowned and looked down at his stirrups.
The captain was doing the same, he saw a moment later, with her own. ‘What is this?’ she demanded in a hiss.
‘Broken?’ Beak wondered.
‘Not that I can see-and yours are identical to mine. What fool invented these?’
‘Captain,’ said Beak, ‘I don’t think we have to worry much about Letherii cavalry, do we?’
‘You’ve that right, Beak. Well, let’s ride. If we’re lucky, we won’t break our necks twenty paces up the road.’
The father of the man named Throatslitter used to tell stories of the Emperor’s conquest of Li Heng, long before Kellanved was emperor of anywhere. True, he’d usurped Mock on Malaz Island and had proclaimed himself the island’s ruler, but since when was Malaz Island anything but a squalid haven for pirates? Few on the mainland took much notice of such things. A new tyrannical criminal in place of the old tyrannical criminal.
The conquest of Li Heng changed all that. There’d been no fleet of ships crowding the river mouth to the south and east of the city; nothing, in fact, to announce the assault. Instead, on a fine spring morning no different from countless other such mornings, Throatslitter’s father, along with thousands of other doughty citizens, had, upon a casual glance towards the Inner Focus where stood the Palace of the Protectress, noted the sudden inexplicable presence of strange figures on the walls and battlements. Squat, wide, wearing furs and wielding misshapen swords and axes. Helmed in bone.
What had happened to the vaunted Guard? And why were tendrils of smoke rising from the barracks of the courtyard and parade ground? And was it-was it truly-the Protectress herself who had been seen plunging from the High Tower beside the City Temple at the heart of the cynosure?
Someone had cut off Li Heng’s head in the Palace. Undead warriors stood sentinel on the walls and, a short time later, emerged in their thousands from the Inner Focus Gate to occupy the city. Li Heng’s standing army-after a half-dozen suicidal skirmishes-capitulated that same day. Kellanved now ruled the city-state, and officers and nobles of the high court knelt in fealty, and the reverberations of this conquest rattled the windows of palaces across the entire mainland of Quon Tali.
‘This, son, was the awakening of the Logros T’lan lmass. The Emperor’s undead army. I was there, on the streets, and saw with my own eyes those terrible warriors with their pitted eyeholes, the stretched, torn skin, the wisps of hair bleached of all colour. They say, son, that the Logros were always there, below Reacher’s Falls. Maybe in the Crevasse, maybe not. Maybe just the very dust that blew in from the west every damned day and night-who can say? But he woke them, he commanded them, and 1 tell you after that day every ruler on Quon Tali saw a skull’s face in their silver mirror, aye.
‘The fleet of ships came later, under the command of three madmen ~ Crust, Vrko and Nok-but first to step ashore was none other than Surly and you know who she’d become, don’t you?’
Didn’t he just. Command of the T’lan lmass didn’t stop the knife in the back, did it? This detail was the defining revelation of Throatslitter’s life. Command thousands, tens of thousands. Command sorcerors and imperial fleets. Hold in your hand the lives of a million citizens. The real power was none of this. The real power was the knife in the hand, the hand at a fool’s back.
The egalitarian plunge. There, Father, you old crab, a word you’ve never heard among the fifty or so you knew about in your long, pointless life. Paint on pots, now there’s a useless skill, since pots never survive, and so all those lovely images end up in pieces, on the pebbled beaches, in the fill between walls, on the fields of the farmers. And it’s true enough, isn’t it, Father, that your private firing of ‘The Coming of the Logros’ proved about as popular as a whore’s dose of the face-eater?
Eldest son or not, mixing glazes and circling a kiln on firing day was not the future he dreamed about. But you can paint me, Father, and call it ‘The Coming of the Assassin. My likeness to adorn funeral urns-those who fell to the knife, of course. Too bad you never understood the world well enough to honour me. My chosen profession. My war against inequity in this miserable, evil existence.
And striking my name from the family line, well now, really, that was uncalled for.
Fourteen years of age, Throatslitter found himself in the company of secretive old men and old women. The why and the how were without relevance, even back then. His future was set out before him, in measured strides, and not even the gods could drive him from this cold path.
He wondered about his old masters from time to time. All dead, of course. Surly had seen to that. Not that death meant failure. Her agents had failed in tracking down Throatslitter, after all, and he doubted he was the only one to evade the Claws. He also wondered if indeed he was still on the path-torn away, as he had been, from the Malazan Empire. But he was a patient man; one in his profession had to be, after all.
Still, the Adjunct has asked for loyalty. For service to an. unknown cause. We are to be unwitnessed, she said. That suits me fine. It’s how assassins conduct their trade. So he would go along With her and this Oponn-pushed army of sorry fools. For now.
He stood, arms crossed, shoulders drawn forward as he leaned against the wall, and could feel the occasional touch, light as a mouse’s paw, on his chest as he watched, with half-hearted interest, the proceedings in Brullyg’s private chamber.
The poor Shake ruler was sweating and no amount of his favoured ale could still the trembling of his hands as he sat huddled in his high-backed chair, eyes on the tankard in his grip rather than on the two armoured women standing before him.
Lostara Yil, Throatslitter considered, was if anything better-looking than T’amber had been. Or at least more closely aligned with his own tastes. The Pardu tattoos were sensuality writ on skin, and the fullness of her figure-unsuccessfully disguised by her armour-moved with a dancer’s grace (when she moved, which she wasn’t doing now, although the promise of elegance was unmistakable). The Adjunct stood in grim contrast, the poor woman. Like those destined to dwell in the shadows of more attractive friends, she suffered the comparison with every sign of indifference, but Throatslitter-who was skilled at seeing unspoken truths-could read the pain that dull paucity delivered, and this was a human truth, no more or less sordid than all the other human truths. Those without beauty compensated in other ways, the formal but artificial ways of rank and power, and that was just how things were the world over.
Of course when you’ve finally got that power, it doesn’t matter how ugly you are, you can breed with the best. Maybe this explained Lostara’s presence at Tavore’s side. But Throatslitter was not entirely sure of that. He didn’t think they were lovers. He wasn’t even convinced they were friends.
Aligned near the wall to the right of the door stood the rest of the Adjunct’s retinue. Fist Blistig, his blunt, wide face shadowed with some kind of spiritual exhaustion. Doesn’t pay, Adjunct, to keep close a man like that-he drains life, hope, faith. No, Tavore, you need to get rid of him and pro-mote some new Fists. Faradan Sort. Madan tul’Rada. Fiddler. Not Captain Kindly, though, don’t even think that, woman. Not unless you want a real mutiny on your hands.
Mutiny. Well, there, he’d said it. Thought it, actually, but that was close enough. To conjure the word was to awaken the possibility, like making the scratch to invite the fester. The Bonehunters were now scattered to the winds and that was a terrible risk. He suspected that, at the end of this bizarre campaign, her soldiers would come trickling back in paltry few number, if at all.
Unwitnessed. Most soldiers don’t like that idea. True, it made them hard-when she told them-but that fierceness can’t last. The iron is too cold. Its taste too bitter. Gods, just look at Blistig for the truth of that.
Beside the Fist stood Withal, the Meckros blacksmith-the man we went to Malaz City to get, and we still don’t know why. Oh, there’s blood in your shadow, isn’t there? Malazan blood. Tamber’s. Kalam’s. Maybe Quick Ben’s, too. Are you worth it? Throatslitter had yet to see Withal speaking to a soldier. Not one, not a word of thanks, not an apology for the lives sacrificed. He was here because the Adjunct needed him. For what? Hah, not like she’s talking, is it? Not our cagey Tavore Varan.
To Withal’s right stood Banaschar, a deposed high priest of D’rek, if the rumours were true. Yet another passenger in this damned renegade army. But Throatslitter knew Banaschar’s purpose. Coin. Thousands, tens of thousands. He’s our paymaster, and all this silver and gold in our pouches was stolen from somewhere. Has to be. Nobody’s that rich. The obvious answer? Why, how about the Worm of Autumn’s temple coffers?
Pray to the Worm, pay an army of disgruntled malcontents. Somehow, all you believers, I doubt that was in your prayers.
Poor Brullyg had few allies in this chamber. Balm’s source of lust, this Captain Shurq Elalle of the privateer Undying Gratitude, and her first mate, Skorgen Kaban the Pretty. And neither seemed eager to leap to Brullyg’s side of the sandpit.
But that Shurq, she was damned watchful. Probably a lot more dangerous than the usurper of this cruddy island.
The Adjunct had been explaining, in decent traders’ tongue, the new rules of governance on Second Maiden Fort, and with each statement Brullyg’s expression had sagged yet further.
Entertaining, if one was inclined towards sardonic humour.
‘Ships from our fleet,’ she was now explaining, ‘will be entering the harbour to resupply. One at a time, since it wouldn’t do to panic your citizens-’
A snort from Shurq Elalle, who had drawn her chair to one side, almost in front of where Throatslitter leaned against the wall, to permit herself a clear view of host and guests. Beside her, Skorgen was filling his prodigious gut with Brullyg’s favourite ale, the tankard in one hand, the finger of the other hand exploring the depths of one mangled, rose-red ear. The man had begun a succession of belches, each released in a heavy sigh, that had been ongoing for half a bell now, with no sign of ending. The entire room stank of his yeasty exhalations.
The captain’s derisive expostulation drew the Adjunct’s attention. ‘I understand your impatience,’ Tavore said in a cool voice, ‘and no doubt you wish to leave. Unfortunately, I must speak to you and will do so shortly-’
‘Once you’ve thoroughly detailed Brullyg’s emasculation, you mean.’ Shurq lifted one shapely leg and crossed it on the other, then laced together her hands on her lap, smiling sweetly up at the Adjunct.
Tavore’s colourless eyes regarded the pirate captain for a long moment, then she glanced over to where stood her retinue. ‘Banaschar.’
‘Adjunct?’
‘What is wrong with this woman?’
‘She’s dead,’ the ex-priest replied. ‘A necromantic curse.’
Are you certain?’
Throatslitter cleared his throat and said, Adjunct, Corporal Deadsmell said the same thing when we saw her down in the tavern.’
Brullyg was staring at Shurq with wide, bulging eyes, his jaw hanging slack.
At Shurq’s side, Skorgen Kaban was suddenly frowning, his eyes darting. Then he withdrew the finger that had been plugging one ear and looked down at the gunk smeared all over it. After a moment, Pretty slid that finger into his mouth.
‘Well,’ Shurq sighed up at Tavore, ‘you’ve done it now, haven’t you? Alas, the coin of this secret is the basest of all, namely vanity. Now, if you possess some unpleasant bigotry regarding the undead, then I must re-evaluate my assessment of you, Adjunct. And your motley companions.’
To Throatslitter’s surprise, Tavore actually smiled. ‘Captain, the Malazan Empire is well acquainted with undead, although few possessing your host of charms.’
Gods below, she’s flirting with this sweet’Scented corpse!
‘Host indeed,’ murmured Banaschar, then was so rude as to offer no elaboration. Hood-damned priests. Good for nothing at all.
‘In any case,’ Tavore resumed, ‘we are without prejudice in this matter. I apologize for posing the question leading to this unveiling. I was simply curious.’
‘So am I,’ Shurq replied. ‘This Malazan Empire of yours-do you have any particular reason for invading the Lether Empire?’
‘I was led to understand that this island is independent-’
‘So it is, since the Edur Conquest. But you’re hardly invading one squalid little island. No. You’re just using this to stage your assault on the mainland. So let me ask again, why?’
‘Our enemy,’ the Adjunct said, all amusement now gone, ‘are the Tiste Edur, Captain. Not the Letherii. In fact, we would encourage a general uprising of Letherii-’
‘You won’t get it,’ Shurq Elalle said.
‘Why not?’ Lostara Yil asked.
‘Because we happen to like things the way they are. More or less.’ When no-one spoke, she smiled and continued, ‘The Edur may well have usurped the rulers in their absurd half-finished palace in Letheras. And they may well have savaged a few Letherii armies on the way to the capital. But you will not find bands of starving rebels in the forests dreaming of independence.’
‘Why not?’ Lostara demanded again in an identical tone.
‘They conquered, but we won. Oh, I wish Tehol Beddict was here, since he’s much better at explaining things, but let me try. I shall imagine Tehol sitting here, to help me along. Conquest. There are different kinds of conquests. Now, we have Tiste Edur lording it here and there, the elite whose word is law and never questioned. After all, their sorcery is cruel, their judgement cold and terribly simplistic. They are, in fact, above all law-as the Letherii understand the notion-’
‘And,’ Lostara pressed, ‘how do they understand the notion of law?’
‘Well, a set of deliberately vague guidelines one hires an advocate to evade when necessary.’
‘What were you, Shurq Elalle, before you were a pirate?’
A thief. I’ve employed a few advocates in my day. In any case, my point is this. The Edur rule but either through ignorance or indifference-and let’s face it, without ignorance you don’t get to indifference-they care little about the everyday administration of the empire. So, that particular apparatus remains Letherii and is, these days, even less regulated than it has been in the past.’ She smiled again, one leg rocking. As for us lower orders, well, virtually nothing has changed. We stay poor. Debt-ridden and comfortably miserable and, as Tehol might say, miserable in our comfort.’
‘So,’ Lostara said, ‘not even the Letherii nobles would welcome a change in the present order.’
‘Them least of all.’
‘What of your Emperor?’
‘Rhulad? From all accounts, he is insane, and effectively isolated besides. The empire is ruled by the Chancellor, and lie’s Letherii. He was also Chancellor in the days of King Diskanar, and he was there to ensure that the transition went smoothly.’
A grunt from Blistig, and he turned to Tavore. ‘The marines, Adjunct,’ he said in a half-moan.
And Throatslitter understood and felt a dread chill seeping through him. We sent them in, expecting to find allies, expecting them to whip the countryside into a belligerent frenzy. But they won’t get that.
The whole damned empire is going to rise up all right. To tear out their throats.
Adjunct, you have done it again.