What is there left to understand? Choice is an illusion. Freedom is conceit. The hands that reach out to guide your every step, your every thought, come not from the gods, for they are no less deluded than we – no, my friends, those hands come to each of us… from each of us.
You may believe that civilization deafens us with tens of thousands of voices, but listen well to that clamour, for with each renewed burst so disparate and myriad, an ancient force awakens, drawing each noise ever closer, until the chorus forms but two sides, each battling the other. The bloody lines are drawn, fought in the turning away of faces, in the stoppering of ears, the cold denial, and all discourse, at the last, is revealed as futile and worthless.
Will you yet hold, my friends, to the faith that change is within our grasp? That will and reason shall overcome the will of denial?
There is nothing left to understand. This mad whirlpool holds us all in a grasp that cannot be broken; and you with your spears and battlemasks; you with your tears and soft touch; you with the sardonic grin behind which screams fear and self-hatred; even you who stand aside in silent witness to our catastrophe of dissolution, too numb to act – it is all one. You are all one. We are all one.
So now come closer, my friends, and see in this modest cart before you my most precious wares. Elixir of Oblivion, Tincture of Frenzied Dancing, and here, my favourite, Unguent of Male Prowess Unending, where I guarantee your soldier will remain standing through battle after battle…
Hawker's Harangue, recounted by Vaylan Winder, Malaz City, the year the city overflowed with sewage (1123 Burn's Sleep) Rivulets of water, reeking of urine, trickled down the steps leading to Coop's Hanged Man Inn, one of the score of disreputable taverns in the Docks Quarter of Malaz City that Banaschar, once a priest of D' rek, was now in the habit of frequenting. Whatever details had once existed in his mind to distinguish one such place from another had since faded, the dyke of his resolve rotted through by frustration and a growing panic, poisonous enough to immobilize him – in spirit if not in flesh. And the ensuing deluge was surprisingly comforting, even as the waters rose ever higher.
Little different, he observed as he negotiated the treacherous, mouldslimed steps, from this cursed rain, or so the long-time locals called it, despite the clear sky overhead. Mostly rain comes down, they said, but occasionally it comes up, seeping through the crumbling cobbles of the quarter, transforming such beneath-ground establishments as Coop's into a swampy quagmire, the entrance guarded by a whining cloud of mosquitoes, and the stench of overflowed sewers wafting about so thick the old-timers announce its arrival as they would an actual person miserably named Stink – greeted if not welcomed into already sordid company.
And most sordid was Banaschar's company these days. Veterans who avoided sobriety as if it was a curse; whores who'd long since hawked their hearts of gold – if they'd ever had them in the first place; scrawny youths with a host of appropriately modest ambitions – meanest thug in this skein of fetid streets and alleys; master thief of those few belongings the poor possessed; nastiest backstabber with at least fifty knots on their wrist strings, each knot honouring someone foolish enough to trust them; and of course the usual assortment of bodyguards and muscle whose brains had been deprived of air at some point in their lives; smugglers and would-be smugglers, informants and the imperial spies to whom they informed, spies spying on the spies, hawkers of innumerable substances, users of selfsame substances on their way to the oblivion of the Abyss; and here and there, people for whom no category was possible, since they gave away nothing of their lives, their histories, their secrets.
In a way, Banaschar was one such person, on his better days. Other times, such as this one, he could make no claim to possible – if improbable – grandiosity. This afternoon, then, he had come early to Coop's, with the aim of stretching the night ahead as far as he could, well lubricated of course, which would in turn achieve an overlong and hopefully entirely blissful period of unconsciousness in one of the lice-infested rat-traps above the tavern.
It would be easy, he reflected as he ducked through the doorway and paused just within, blinking in the gloom, easy to think of clamour as a single entity, one sporting countless mouths, and to reckon the din as meaningless as the rush of brown water from a sewer pipe. Yet Banaschar had come to a new appreciation of the vagaries of the noise erupting from human throats. Most spoke to keep from thinking, but others spoke as if casting lifelines even as they drowned in whatever despairing recognition they had arrived at – perhaps during some unwelcome pause, filled with the horror of silence. A few others fit neither category. These were the ones who used the clamour surrounding them as a barrier, creating in its midst a place in which to hide, mute and indifferent, fending off the outside world.
More often than not, Banaschar – who had once been a priest, who had once immersed himself within a drone of voices singing the cadence of prayer and chant – sought out such denizens for the dubious pleasure of their company.
Through the haze of durhang and rustleaf smoke, the acrid black-tail swirls from the lamp wicks, and something that might have been mist gathered just beneath the ceiling, he saw, hunched in a booth along the back wall, a familiar figure. Familiar in the sense that Banaschar had more than a few times shared a table with the man, although Banaschar was ignorant of virtually everything about him, including his given name, knowing him only as Foreigner.
A foreigner in truth, who spoke Malazan with an accent Banaschar did not recognize – in itself curious since the ex-priest's travels had been extensive, from Korel to Theft to Mare in the south; from Nathilog to Callows on Genabackis in the east; and, northward, from Falar to Aren to Yath Alban. And in those travels he had met other travellers, hailing from places Banaschar could not even find on any temple map. Nemil, Perish, Shal-Morzinn, Elingarth, Torment, Jacuruku and Stratem. Yet this man whom he now approached, weaving and pushing through the afternoon crowd of sailors and the local murder of veterans, this man had an accent unlike any Banaschar had ever heard.
Yet the truth of things was never as interesting as the mystery preceding the revelation, and Banaschar had come to appreciate his own ignorance. In other matters, after all, he knew far too much – and what had that availed him?
Sliding onto the greasy bench opposite the huge foreigner, the expriest released the clasp on his tattered cloak and shrugged free from its folds – once, long ago it seemed now, such lack of consideration for the unsightly creases that would result would have horrified him – but he had done his share since of sleeping in that cloak, senseless on a vomit-spattered floor and, twice, on the cobbles of an alley – correct comportment, alas, had ceased being a moral necessity.
He leaned back now, the rough cloth bunching behind him, as one of Coop's serving wenches arrived with a tankard of Coop's own Leech Swill, a weak, gassy ale that had acquired its name in an appropriately literal fashion. Warranting the now customary affectation of a one-eyed squint into the brass-hued brew before the first mouthful.
The foreigner had glanced up once, upon Banaschar's arrival, punctuating the gesture with a sardonic half-grin before returning his attention to the fired-clay mug of wine in his hands.
'Oh, Jakatakan grapes are all very well,' the ex-priest said, 'it's the local water that turns that wine you like so much into snake's piss.'
'Aye, bad hangovers,' Foreigner said.
'And that is desirable?'
'Aye, it is. Wakes me up again and again through the night, almost every bell, with a pounding skull and a bladder ready to explode – but if I didn't wake up that bladder would explode. See?'
Banaschar nodded, glanced round. 'More heads than usual for an afternoon.'
'You only think that because you ain't been here roun' this time lately. Three transports and an escort come in three nights past, from Korel.'
The ex-priest studied the other customers a little more carefully this time. 'They talking much?'
'Sounds it to me.'
'About the campaign down there?'
Foreigner shrugged. 'Go ask 'em if you like.'
'No. Too much effort. The bad thing about asking questions-'
'Is gettin' answers, aye – you've said that before.'
'That is another bad thing – the way we all end up saying the same things over and over again.'
'That's you, not me. And, you're gettin' worse.'
Banaschar swallowed two mouthfuls, then wiped his lips with the back of his hand. 'Worse. Yes indeed.'
'Never good,' Foreigner observed, 'seeing a man in a hurry.'
'It's a race,' Banaschar said. 'Do I reach the edge and plunge over or does my salvation arrive in time? Lay down a few coins on the outcome – I'd suggest the former but that's just between you and me.'
The huge man – who rarely met anyone's eyes while talking, and whose massive hands and wrists were scarred and puckered with weals – shook his head and said, 'If that salvation's a woman, only a fool would wager agin me.'
Banaschar grimaced and lifted his tankard. 'A fine idea. Let's toast all the lost loves in the world, friend. What happened to yours or is that too personal a question for this dubious relationship of ours?'
'You jumped on the wrong stone,' the man said. 'My love ain't lost, an' maybe some days I'd think of swapping places wi' you, but not today. Not yesterday neither, nor the day afore that. Come to think of it-'
'No need to continue. My salvation is not a woman, or if she was, it wouldn't be because she's a woman, if you understand me.'
'So, we just had one of them hypothetical conversations?'
'Learned Malazan from an educated sailor, did you? In any case, hypothetical is the wrong word for what you mean, I think. More like, metaphorical.'
'You sure of that?'
'Of course not, but that's not the point, is it? The woman's a broken heart, or maybe just a mud slide you ride until it buries you, until it buries all of us.' Banaschar finished his ale, waved the tankard in the air for a moment, then settled back with a belch. 'Heard about a Napan sailor, drank a keg's worth of Leech Swill, then, standing too close to a lit wick, went and blew off most of his backside. How does that illuminate matters, I wonder?'
'Momentarily, I'd imagine.'
Satisfied with that answer, Banaschar said nothing. A server arrived with a pitcher with which she refilled the ex-priest's tankard. He watched her leave, swaying through the press, a woman with things that needed doing.
It was easy to think of an island as isolated – certainly most islanders shared a narrow perspective, a blend of smug arrogance and self-obsession – but the isolation was superficial, a mere conceit.
Drain the seas and the rocky ground linking everything was revealed; the followers of D'rek, the Worm of Autumn, understood this well enough. Rumours, attitudes, styles, beliefs rattling chains of conviction, all rolled over the waves as easily as the wind, and those that fitted comfortably soon became to the islanders their own – and indeed, as far as they were concerned, had originated with them in the first place.
There had been a purge, and the air still smelled of ash from the Mouse Quarter, where mobs had descended on the few dislocated Wickan families resident there – stablers, stitchers and riveters of leather tack, weavers of saddle blankets, an old woman who healed dray horses and mules – and had, with appalling zeal, dragged them from their hovels and shacks, children and elders and all in between; then, after looting them of their scant possessions, the mob had set fire to those homes. Herded into the street and surrounded, the Wickans had then been stoned to death.
Coltaine wasn't dead, people said. That entire tale was a lie, as was the more recent rumour that Sha'ik had been killed by the Adjunct. An imposter, it was said, a sacrificial victim to deflect the avenging army. And as for the rebellion itself, well, it had not been crushed.
It had simply disappeared, the traitors ducking low once more, weapons sheathed and hidden beneath telaba. True enough, the Adjunct had even now chased down Leoman of the Flails, tapping him in Y'Ghatan, but even that was but a feint. The Red Blades were once more free in Aren, the bones of the betrayed High Fist Pormqual broken and scattered along Aren Way, the grasses already growing thick on the barrows holding Pormqual's betrayed army.
Had not concerned residents of Aren journeyed out to the hill known as The Fall? And there dug holes into the barrow in search of the cursed Coltaine's bones? And Bult's, Mincer's, Lull's? Had they not found nothing? All lies. The traitors had one and all disappeared, including Duiker, the imperial historian whose betrayal of his Empress – and of the empire itself – was perhaps the foulest moment of them all.
And finally, the latest news. Of a disastrous siege. Of terrible plague in Seven Cities. Disparate, disconnected, yet like pokers thrust into the fire, sending sparks bursting into the dark. And, in whispers harsh with the conviction of truth, Sha'ik Reborn had reappeared, and now called to her more followers.
The last pebbles on the cart.
Down in the Mouse, the mob had acted on its own. The mob needed no leaders, no imperial directives – the mob understood justice, and on this island – this birthplace of the empire – justice was held in red hands. The battered, pulped corpses were dumped in the river, which was too turgid, too thick with sewage and refuse, the culverts beneath the bridges too narrow to carry those bodies through and out into the bay.
And this too was seen as an omen. The ancient sea god had rejected those corpses. Mael, empowered by the enlivening of faith here on the island, would not accept them into the salty bay of Malaz Harbour – what greater proof was needed?
The Emperor's ghost had been seen, in the overgrown yard of the Deadhouse, a ghost feeding on the souls of the slaughtered Wickans.
In the D'rek temples in Jakata and here in Malaz City, the priests and priestesses had vanished, sent out at night, it was whispered, to hunt down the rest of the Wickans left on the island – the ones who'd fled upon hearing of the purge in Malaz City – for the Worm of Autumn herself hungered for Wickan blood.
An army of citizens was said to be massing on the old borders, at the edge of the Wickan Plains on the mainland, and was about to march, with the aim of destroying every last damned betrayer in their squalid, stinking huts. And had the Empress sent out her legions to disperse that army? No, of course not, for she approved.
The Imperial High Mage Tayschrenn was in Malaz City, ensconced in Mock's Hold. What had brought him here? And why so public a visit – the strange sorceror was legendary for moving unseen, for acting behind the scenes to ensure the health of the empire. He was the very foundation of Laseen's power, after all, her left hand where the right belonged to the Claw. If he was here, it was to overseeHe is here. Banaschar could feel the bastard, an aura brooding and ominous drifting down from Mock's Hold. Day upon day, night after night. And why? Oh, all you fools.
For the same reason I am here.
Six messengers thus far. Six, all paid enough to be reliable, all swearing afterwards that they had passed the urgent missive on – to the Hold's gate watchman, that bent creature said to be as old as Mock's Hold itself, who had in turn nodded each time, saying he would deliver the missive to the High Mage.
And yet, no reply. No summons.
Someone is intercepting my messages. There can be no other possibility. True, I was coy in what I said – how could I not be? But Tayschrenn would recognize my sigil, and he would understand… with heart suddenly pounding, cold sweat on the skin, with trembling hands… he would have understood. Instantly.
Banaschar did not know what to do. The last messenger had been three weeks ago.
'It's that desperate glint in your eye,' the man opposite him said, half-grinning once again, though his gaze slid away as soon as Banaschar focused on him.
'Enamoured, are you?'
'No, but close to curious. Been watching you these weeks. Giving up, but slowly. Most people do that in an instant. Rising from bed, walking to the window, then standing there, motionless, seeing nothing, as inside it all falls down with nary a whisper, nary a cloud of dust to mark its collapse, its vanishing into nothingness.'
'You do better talking and thinking like a damned sailor,' Banaschar said.
'The more I drink, the clearer and steadier I get.'
'That's a bad sign, friend.'
'I collect those. You ain't the only one cursed with waiting.'
'Months!'
'Years for me,' the man said, dipping into his cup with one blunt finger, fishing out a moth that had landed in the wine.
'Sounds like you're the one who should have given up long ago.'
'Maybe, but I've come to a kind of faith. Not long now, I'd swear it.
Not long.'
Banaschar snorted. 'The drowning man converses with the fool, a night to beggar acrobats, jugglers and dancers, come one come all, two silvers buys you endless – and I do mean endless – entertainment.'
'I ain't too unfamiliar with drowning, friend.'
'Meaning?'
'Something tells me, when it comes to fools, you might say the same thing.'
Banaschar looked away. Saw another familiar face, another huge man – shorter than the foreigner opposite but equally as wide, his hairless pate marked with liver spots, scars seaming every part of his body. He was just collecting a tankard of Coop's Old Malazan Dark. The expriest raised his voice. 'Hey, Temper! There's room to sit here!' He sidled along the bench, watched as the old yet still formidable man – a veteran without doubt – made his way over.
At least now the conversation could slip back into the meaningless.
Still. Another bastard waiting… for something. Only, with him, I suspect it'd be a bad thing if it ever arrived.
Somewhere in the vaults of a city far, far away, rotted a wall hanging. Rolled up, home to nesting mice, the genius of the hands that had woven it slowly losing its unwitnessed war to the scurry-beetle grub, tawryn worms and ash moths. Yet, for all that, the darkness of its abandonment hid colours still vibrant here and there, and the scene depicted on that huge tapestry retained enough elements of the narrative that meaning was not lost. It might survive another fifty years before finally surrendering to the ravages of neglect.
The world, Ahlrada Ahn knew, was indifferent to the necessity of preservation. Of histories, of stories layered with meaning and import. It cared nothing for what was forgotten, for memory and knowledge had never been able to halt the endless repetition of wilful stupidity that so bound peoples and civilizations.
The tapestry had once commanded an entire wall, to the right when facing the Obsidian Throne – from which, before the annexation, the High King of Bluerose, Supreme Servant to the Black Winged Lord, had ruled, and flanking the dais, the Council of the Onyx Wizards, all attired in their magnificent cloaks of supple, liquid stone – but no, it was the tapestry that so haunted Ahlrada Ahn.
The narrative began at the end furthest from the throne. Three figures against a midnight background. Three brothers, born in pure Darkness and most cherished by their mother. All cast out, now, although each had come to that in his own time. Andarist, whom she saw as the first betrayer, an accusation all knew was mistaken, yet the knot of falsehoods had closed tight round him and none could pry it loose except Andarist himself – and that he could or would not do. Filled with unbearable grief, he had accepted his banishment, making his final words these: welcome or not, he would continue his guardianship of Mother Dark, in isolation, and in this would be found the measure of his life. Yet even to that promise, she had turned away. His brothers could not but recognize the crime of this, and it was Anomandaris Purake who was first to confront Mother Dark. What words passed between them only they knew, although the dire consequence was witnessed by all – Anomander turned his back on her. He walked away, denying the Darkness in his blood and seeking out, in its stead, the Chaos that ever warred in his veins. Silchas Ruin, the most enigmatic of the brothers, had seemed a man riven by indecision, trapped by impossible efforts at mitigation, at reconciliation, until all constraint was sundered, and so he committed the greatest crime of all. Alliance with Shadow. Even as war broke out among the Tiste – a war that continues unchecked to this day.
There had been victories, defeats, great slaughters, then, in that final gesture of despair, Silchas Ruin and his followers joined with the legions of Shadow and their cruel commander Scabandari – who would come to be known as Bloodeye – in their flight through the gates. To this world. But betrayal ever haunts those three brothers. And so, in the moment of supreme victory against the K'Chain Che'Malle, Silchas Ruin had fallen to Scabandari's knife, and his followers had in turn fallen to Tiste Edur swords.
Such was the second scene in the tapestry. The betrayal, the slaughter. But that slaughter had not been as thorough as the Edur believed. Tiste Andii had survived – the wounded, the stragglers, the elders and mothers and children left well behind the field of battle.
They had witnessed. They had fled.
The third scene portrayed their fraught flight, the desperate defence against their pursuers by four barely grown sorcerors – who would become the founders of the Onyx Order – the victory that gave them respite, enough to make good their escape and, through new unfoldings of magic, elude the hunters and so fashion a sanctuaryIn caves buried beneath mountains on the shore of the inland sea, caves in which grew flowers of sapphire, intricate as roses, from which kingdom, mountains and sea derived their common name. Bluerose, and so, the last and most poignant scene, closest to the throne, closest to my heart.
His people, the few thousand that remained, once more hid in those deep caves, as the tyranny of the Edur raged like madness over all of Lether. A madness that has devoured me.
The Hiroth bireme drummed like thunder in the heaving swells of this fierce north sea the locals called Kokakal, and Ahlrada gripped the rail with both hands as bitter cold spray repeatedly struck his face, as if he was the subject of an enraged god's wrath. And perhaps he was, and if so, then it was well-earned as far as he was concerned.
He had been born the child of spies, and through generation after generation, his bloodline had dwelt in the midst of the Tiste Edur, thriving without suspicion in the chaos of the seemingly endless internecine disputes between the tribes. Hannan Mosag had ended that, of course, but by then the Watchers, such as Ahlrada Ahn and others, were well in place, their blood histories thoroughly mixed and inseparable from the Edur.
Bleaches for the skin, the secret gestures of communication shared among the hidden Andii, the subtle manipulations to ensure a presence among eminent gatherings – this was Ahlrada Ahn's life – and had the tribes remained in their northern fastness, it would have been… palatable, until such time as he set out on a hunting expedition, from which he would never return – his loss mourned by his adopted tribe, while in truth Ahlrada would have crossed the south edge of the ice wastes, would have walked the countless leagues until he reached Bluerose. Until he came home.
That home was… not as it had once been. The sanctuary was under siege – true, by an unsuspecting enemy, who as yet knew nothing of the catacombs beneath their feet, but they now ruled, the chosen elites in their positions of supreme power, from which all manner of depravity and cruelty descended. From the Emperor, the foul blood flows down, and down… No Letherii reign had ever fallen as far as had Rhulad's and that of his Edur 'nobles'. Pray that it ends. Pray that, one day, historians will write of this dark period in the history of Letheras as The Nightmare Age, a title of truth to warn the future.
He did not believe it. Not a word of the prayer he had voiced in his head ten thousand times. We saw the path Rhulad would take. Saw it when the Emperor banished his own brother – Gods, I was there, in the Nascent. I was one of the 'brothers' of Rhulad, his new extended family of cowering fawners. May the Black Winged Lord preserve me, I watched as the one Edur I admired, the one Edur I respected, was broken down. No, I did more than watch. I added my voice to Rhulad's ritual shorning of Trull. And Trull's crime? Why, nothing more than yet one more desperate attempt to bring Rhulad home. Ah, by the Dark Mother herself… but Ahlrada Ahn had never dared, not once, not even in those early days when Trull struggled to turn the tide, no, he had himself turned away, rejecting every opportunity to unveil words that he knew Trull had needed, and would see and cherish as gifts. I was a coward. My soul fled the risk, and there is no going back.
In the days following Rhulad's ascension to the Letherii crown, Ahlrada had led a company of Arapay warriors out of Letheras, seeking the trail of the new Emperor's betrayers – his brother Fear, and that slave Udinaas. They had failed to discover any sign of them, and in that Ahlrada had found some small measure of victory. Rhulad's rage had nearly resulted in mass executions, Ahlrada and his searchers foremost among them, but the wreckage that remained of Hannan Mosag had managed to impose some control on Rhulad – the Emperor had great need for Tiste Edur warriors, not just in the occupation and rule of the empire, but yet more in the vast expeditions that were even then being planned.
Expeditions such as this one. Had he known what these journeys would entail, Ahlrada might well have elected for the execution Rhulad had been so eager to provide in those early days in Letheras.
Since that time… all that we have done in his cursed name…
We follow him – what has that made of us? Oh, Trull, you were right, and not one of us was brave enough to stand at your side when it mattered most.
His memories of Trull Sengar haunted Ahlrada Ahn. No, his memories of everything haunted him, yet they had converged, found focus in one lone, honourable warrior of the Tiste Edur.
He stood on the huge ship, eyes on the tumultuous seas, his face long since grown numb from the icy spray. Whilst in the waters to all sides more ships rolled in the heavy waves, one half of the Third Edur Imperial Fleet seeking a way round this enormous continent. Below decks and in the rigging, on each and every ship, laboured Letherii crews, even the lesser marines. While their overlords did nothing, beyond consuming wine and the endless courses of meals; or took to their sumptuous beds Letherii slave women, and those that they used up, left broken and raving with the poison of Edur seed, were simply flung over the rail for the ever-following huge grey sharks and the pods of yearling dhenrabi.
One half of the fleet in these seas. Commanded by Tomad Sengar, the Emperor's father.
And how well have we done thus far, dear Tomad? A bare handful of dubious champions, challengers to deliver home and into the cast of your youngest son's manic gaze.
And let us not forget the fallen kin we have found. Where have they come from? Even they don't know. Yet do we treat them as long-lost kin? Do our arms open wide for them? No, they are lesser creatures, blood befouled by failure, by destitution. Our gift is contempt, though we proclaim it liberation.
But, I was thinking of champions… and Rhulad's insatiable hunger that sends out into this world fleet upon fleet. Tomad. How well have we done?
He thought to their latest Guests, down below, and there was the sense, no more than a whisper in the murk of his rolled-up, rotted, moth-eaten soul, that perhaps, this time they had found someone truly formidable. Someone who just might make Rhulad choke on his own blood, even more than once… although, as always, there would come that terrible scream…
We are made, and unmade, and so it goes on. For ever.
And I will never see my home.
With eyes the colour of weathered granite, the Letherii Marine Commander, Atri-Preda Yan Tovis, known to her soldiers as Twilight, looked down upon the sickly man. The gloomy hold of the ship was fetid and damp, the walkway above the keel smeared with puke and slimy mould. Creaks and thumps filled the air with the impact of every wave against the hull. The muted light of lanterns pitched about, making riotous the shadows. 'Here,' she said. 'Drink this.'
The man looked up, red-rimmed eyes set in a face the hue of whale fat.
'Drink?' Even the word seemed nearly sufficient to double him over yet again, but she saw him struggle mightily against the impulse.
'I speak your language not well,' she said. 'Drink. Two swallows.
Wait, then more.'
'I'll not keep it down,' the man said.
'No matter. Two, you feel better. Then more. Sick goes.'
With a trembling hand, he accepted the small patinated glass bottle.
'Ceda make,' Twilight said. 'Made, generations ago. Sick goes.'
He swallowed once, then twice, was motionless for a moment, then he lunged to one side. Spitting, coughing, gasping, then, 'Spirits take me, yes.'
'Better?'
A nod.
'Drink rest. It will stay.'
He did so, then settled back, eyes closed. 'Better. Better, yes.'
'Good. Now, go to him.' She pointed towards the bow, twenty paces further along the walkway, where a figure leaned, huddled against the prow's uplift. 'Preda Tomad Sengar has doubts. Champion will not survive voyage. Will not eat, drink. Wastes away. Go to him. You claim much, his prowess. We see otherwise. We see only weakness.'
The man lying on the walkway would not meet her eyes, but he slowly sat up, then climbed awkwardly, unevenly to his feet. Legs wide to maintain his balance, he straightened. Spat into the palms of his hands, rubbed his palms together for a moment, then swept both hands back through his hair.
Taralack Veed met the woman's eyes. 'Now, you are the one looking ill,' he said, frowning. 'What is wrong?'
Twilight simply shook her head. 'Go. The Preda must be convinced. Else we throw you both over side.'
The Gral warrior turned about and made his way, crablike, up the walkway. To either side of him, pressed together between crates and casks, were chained figures. Grey-skinned like their captors, almost as tall, with many bearing facial traits that revealed Edur blood.
Yet, here they were, rotting in their own filth, their dull, owlish gazes following Taralack as he made his way forward.
The Gral crouched before Icarium, reached out a hand to rest it on the warrior's shoulder. Icarium flinched at the contact.
'My friend,' Taralack said in a low voice. 'I know this is not illness of the flesh that so afflicts you. It is illness of the spirit. You must struggle against it, Icarium.' The Jhag was drawn up, knees to his chest, arms wrapped tight, the position reminding the Gral of the burial style practised by the Ehrlii. For a long moment, there was no response to his words, then a shudder racked the figure curled up before him. 'I cannot do this,' Icarium said, lifting his head to fix despairing eyes upon Taralack. 'I do not wish… I do not wish to kill anyone!'
Taralack rubbed at his face. Spirits below, that draught from Twilight had done wonders. I can do this. 'Icarium. Look down this walkway.
Look upon these filthy creatures – who were told they were being liberated from their oppressors. Who came to believe that in these Edur was their salvation. But no. Their blood is not pure. It is muddied – they were slaves! Fallen so far, knowing nothing of their own history, the glory of their past – yes, I know, what glory? But look upon them! What manner of demons are these Tiste Edur and their damned empire? To so treat their own kind? Now tell me, Icarium, what have I procured for you? Tell me!'
The warrior's expression was ravaged, horror swimming in his eyes – and something else, a light of wildness. 'For what we witnessed,' the Jhag whispered. 'For what we saw them do…'
'Vengeance,' Taralack Veed said, nodding.
Icarium stared at him like a drowning man. 'Vengeance…'
'But you will not be given that chance, Icarium. The Preda loses faith in you – in me – and we are in grave peril of being thrown to the sharks-'
'They ask me to kill their emperor, Taralack Veed. It makes no sense-'
'What they ask,' the Gral said, baring his teeth, 'and what you shall deliver, are two entirely different things.'
'Vengeance,' Icarium said again, as if tasting the word, then he brought both hands to his face. 'No, no, it is not for me. Already too much blood – more can achieve nothing. I will be no different than them!' He reached out suddenly and grasped Taralack, dragging him close. 'Don't you see that? More innocent lives-'
'Innocent? You fool, Icarium – can't you understand? Innocence is a lie! None of us is innocent! Not one! Show me one, please, I beg you – show me that I am wrong!' He twisted round in the Jhag's iron grip, jabbed a finger towards the huddled forms of the slaves. 'We both witnessed, did we not? Yesterday! Two of those pathetic fools, choking the life out of a third one – all three in chains, Icarium, all three starving, dying! Yet, some old quarrel, some old stupidity, unleashed one last time! Victims? Oh yes, no doubt of that. Innocent? Hah! And may the spirits above and below strike me down if my judgement is false!'
Icarium stared at him, then, slowly, his long fingers relaxed their grip on the Gral's hide shirt.
'My friend,' Taralack said, 'you must eat. You must keep your strength. This empire of the Tiste Edur, it is an abomination, ruled by a madman whose only talent is with a sword, and to that the weak and strong must bow, for such is the cast of the world. To defy the powerful is to invite subjugation and annihilation – you know this, Icarium. Yet you and you alone, friend, possess what is necessary to destroy that abomination. This is what you were born to do. You are the final weapon of justice – do not waver before this flood of inequity. Feed upon what you have witnessed – what we have witnessed – and all that we shall see on the voyage ahead. Feed on it, to fuel the justice within you – until it is blinding with power. Icarium, do not let these terrible Edur defeat you – as they are doing now.'
A voice spoke behind him. Twilight. 'The Preda considers a test. For this warrior.'
Taralack Veed turned, looked up at the woman. 'What do you mean? What sort of test?'
'We fight many wars. We walk paths of Chaos and Shadow.'
The Gral's eyes narrowed. 'We?'
She grimaced. 'The Edur now rule Lether. Where they lead, Letherii must follow. Edur swords make river of blood, and from river of blood, there is river of gold. The loyal have grown rich, so very rich.'
'And the disloyal?'
'They tend the oars. Indebted. It is so.'
'And you, Atri-Preda? Are you loyal?'
She studied him, silent for a half-dozen heartbeats, then she said, '
Each champion believes. By their sword the Emperor shall die. What is believed and what is true is not same,' she said, strangely twisting Taralack's own words. 'To what is true, I am loyal. The Preda considers a test.'
'Very well,' the Gral said, then held his breath, dreading a refusal from Icarium. But none came. Ah, that is good.
The woman walked away, armour rustling like coins spilling onto gravel.
Taralack Veed stared after her.
'She hides herself,' Icarium said in a low, sad voice. 'Yet her soul dies from within.'
'Do you believe, my friend,' the Gral said, turning back to the Jhag once more, 'that she alone suffers in silence? That she alone cowers, her honour besieged by what she must do?'
Icarium shook his head.
'Then think of her when your resolve falters, friend. Think of Twilight. And all the others like her.'
A wan smile. 'Yet you say there is no innocence.'
'An observation that does not obviate the demand for justice, Icarium.'
The Jhag's gaze shifted, down and away, and seemed to focus on the slime-laden planks of the hull to his right. 'No,' he whispered in a hollow tone, 'I suppose it doesn't.'
Sweat glistened on the rock walls, as if the pressure of the world had grown unbearable. The man who had just appeared, as if from nowhere, stood motionless for a time, the dark grey of his cloak and hood making him indistinct in the gloom, but the only witnesses to this peculiarity were both indifferent and blind – the maggots writhing in torn, rotting flesh among the sprawl of bodies that stretched before him down the chasm's elongated, rough floor.
The stench was overpowering, and Cotillion could feel himself engulfed in grief-laden familiarity, as if this was the true scent of existence. There had been times – he was almost certain – when he'd known unmitigated joy, but so faded were they to his recollection that he had begun to suspect the fictional conjuring of nostalgia. As with civilizations and their golden ages, so too with people: each individual ever longing for that golden past moment of true peace and wellness.
So often it was rooted in childhood, in a time before the strictures of enlightenment had afflicted the soul, when what had seemed simple unfolded its complexity like the petals of a poison flower, to waft its miasma of decay.
The bodies were of young men and women – too young in truth to be soldiers, although soldiers they had been. Their memories of solace would likely have been scoured from their minds back when, in a place and a world they had once called home, they hung nailed by iron spikes to wooden crosses, uncomprehending of their crimes. Of course there had been no such crimes. And the blood, which they had shed so profusely, had yielded no evidence of its taint, for neither the name of a people nor the hue of their skin, nor indeed the cast of their features, could make life's blood any less pure, or precious.
Wilful fools with murder in their rotted hearts believed otherwise.
They divided the dead into innocent victim and the rightfully punished, and knew with unassailable conviction upon which side they themselves stood. With such conviction, the plunging of knives proved so very easy.
Here they had fought hard, he observed as he pushed himself into motion. A pitched battle, then an engaged withdrawal. Proof of superior training, discipline and a fierce unwillingness to yield without exacting a price. The enemy had taken their own fallen away, but for these young dead, the chasm itself was now their crypt. Saved from their crucifixions… for this.
There had been so many… pressing tasks. Essential necessities. That we neglected this company, a company we ourselves ensconced here, to defend what we claimed our own. And then, it must have seemed, we abandoned them. And in that grim conclusion they would, he admitted sourly, not be far wrong. But we are assailed on all sides, now. We are in our most desperate moment. Right now… oh, my fallen friends, I am sorry for this…
A conceit among the living, that their words could ease the dead.
Worse, to voice words seeking forgiveness from those dead. The fallen had but one message to deliver to the living, and it had nothing to do with forgiveness. Remind yourself of that, Cotillion. Be ever mindful of what the dead tell you and everyone else, over and over again.
He heard noises ahead. Muted, a rhythmic rasping sound, like iron edges licking leather, then the soft pad of moccasined feet.
The natural corridor of the chasm narrowed, and blocking the chokepoint was a T'lan Imass, sword-point resting on the rock before it, watching Cotillion's approach. Beyond the undead warrior there was the dull yellow glow of lanterns, a passing shadow, another, then a figure stepped into view.
'Stand aside, Ibra Gholan,' Minala said, her eyes on Cotillion.
Her armour was in tatters. A spear-point had punctured chain and leather high on her chest, the left side, just beneath the shoulder.
Old blood crusted the edges. One side of her helm's cheek-guard was gone and the area of her face made visible by its absence was swollen and mottled with bruises. Her extraordinary light grey eyes were fixed on Cotillion's own as she moved past the T'lan Imass. 'They arrive through a gate,' she said. 'A warren lit by silver fire.'
'Chaos,' he said. 'Proof of the alliance we had feared would come to pass. Minala, how many attacks have you repulsed?'
'Four.' She hesitated, then reached up and worked her helm loose, lifting it clear. Sweat-matted, filthy black hair snaked down. 'My children… the losses have been heavy.'
Cotillion could not hold her gaze any longer. Not with that admission.
She went on. 'If not for the T'lan Imass… and Apt, and the Tiste Edur renegade, this damned First Throne would now be in the possession of an army of blood-hungry barbarians.'
'Thus far, then,' Cotillion ventured, 'your attackers have been exclusively Tiste Edur?'
'Yes.' She studied him for a long moment. 'That will not last, will it?'
Cotillion's eyes focused once again on Ibra Gholan.
Minala continued, 'The Edur are but skirmishers, aren't they? And even they have not fully committed themselves to this cause. Why?'
'They are as thinly stretched as we are, Minala.'
'Ah, then I cannot expect more Aptorians. What of the other demons of your realm, Cotillion? Azalan? Dinal? Can you give us nothing?'
'We can,' he said. 'But not now.'
'When?'
He looked at her. 'When the need is greatest.'
Minala stepped close. 'You bastard. I had thirteen hundred. Now I have four hundred still capable of fighting.' She jabbed a finger towards the area beyond the choke-point. 'Almost three hundred more lie dying of wounds – and there is nothing I can do for them!'
'Shadowthrone will be informed,' Cotillion said. 'He will come. He will heal your wounded-'
'When?'
The word was nearly a snarl.
'When I leave here,' he replied, 'I am returning directly to Shadowkeep. Minala, I would speak with the others.'
'Who? Why?'
Cotillion frowned, then said, The renegade. Your Tiste Edur. I have… questions.'
'I have never seen such skill with the spear. Trull Sengar kills, and kills, and then, when it is done and he kneels in the blood of the kin he has slain, he weeps.'
'Do they know him?' Cotillion asked. 'Do they call him by name?'
'No. He says they are Den-Ratha, and young. Newly blooded. But he then says, it is only a matter of time. Those Edur that succeed in withdrawing, they must be reporting the presence of an Edur among the defenders of the First Throne. Trull says that one of his own tribe will be among the attackers, and he will be recognized – and it is then, he says, that they will come in force, with warlocks. He says, Cotillion, that he will bring ruin upon us all.'
'Does he contemplate leaving?' Cotillion asked.
She scowled. 'To that he gives no answer. If he did, I would not blame him. And,' she added, 'if he chooses to stay, I may well die with his name the last curse I voice in this world. Or, more likely, the second last name.'
He nodded, understanding. 'Trull Sengar remains, then, out of honour.'
'And that honour spells our doom.'
Cotillion ran a hand through his hair, mildly surprised to discover how long it had grown. I need to find a hair hacker. One trustworthy enough with a blade at my neck. He considered that. Well, is it any wonder gods must do such mundane tasks for themselves? Listen to yourself, Cotillion – your mind would flee from this moment. Meet this woman's courage with your own. 'The arrival of warlocks among the Tiste Edur will prove a difficult force to counter-'
'We have the bonecaster,' she said. 'As yet he has remained hidden.
Inactive. For, like Trull Sengar, he is a lodestone.'
Cotillion nodded. 'Will you lead me in, Minala?'
In answer she turned about and gestured that he follow.
The cavern beyond was a nightmare vision. The air was fetid, thick as that of a slaughterhouse. Dried blood covered the stone floor like a crumbling, pasty carpet. Pale faces – too young by far – turned to look upon Cotillion with ancient eyes drained of all hope. The god saw Apt, the demon's black hide ribboned with grey, barely healed scars, and crouched at her lone forefoot, Panek, his huge, faceted eye glittering. The forehead above that ridged eye displayed a poorly stitched slice, result of a blow that had peeled back his scalp from just above one side of the eye's orbital, across to the temple opposite.
Three figures rose, emerging from gloom as they walked towards Cotillion. The Patron God of Assassins halted. Monok Ochem, the clanless T'lan Imass known as Onrack the Broken, and the renegade Tiste Edur, Trull Sengar. I wonder, would these three, along with Ibra Gholan, have been enough? Did we need to fling Minala and her young charges into this horror?
Then, as they drew closer, Cotillion saw Onrack and Trull more clearly. Beaten down, slashed, cut. Half of Onrack's skeletal head was shorn away. Ribs had caved in from some savage blow, and the upper ridge of his hip, on the left side, had been chopped away, revealing the porous interior of the bone. Trull was without armour, and had clearly entered battle lacking such protection. The majority of his wounds – deep gashes, puncture holes – were on his thighs, beneath the hips and to the outside – signs of a spear-wielder's style of parrying with the middle-haft of the weapon. The Edur could barely walk, leaning heavily on the battered spear in his hands.
Cotillion found it difficult to meet the Edur's exhausted, despairfilled eyes. 'When the time comes,' he said to the grey-skinned warrior, 'help shall arrive.'
Onrack the Broken spoke. 'When they win the First Throne, they will realize the truth. That it is not for them. They can hold it, but they cannot use it. Why, then, Cotillion of Shadow, do these brave mortals surrender their lives here?'
'Perhaps we but provide a feint,' Monok Ochem said, the bonecaster's tone as inflectionless as Onrack's had been.
'No,' Cotillion said. 'More than that. It is what they would do upon making that discovery. They will unleash the warren of Chaos in this place – in the chamber where resides the First Throne. Monok Ochem, they shall destroy it, and so destroy its power.'
'Is such a deed cause for regret?' Onrack asked. Shaken, Cotillion had no reply.
Monok Ochem pivoted to regard Onrack the Broken. 'This one speaks the words of the Unbound. He fights not to defend the First Throne. He fights only to defend Trull Sengar. He alone is the reason the Tiste Edur still lives.'
'This is true,' Onrack replied. 'I accept no authority other than my own will, the desires I choose to act upon, and the judgements I make for myself. This, Monok Ochem, is the meaning of freedom.'
'Don't-' Trull Sengar said, turning away.
'Trull Sengar?'
'No, Onrack. Do you not see? You invite your own annihilation, and all because I do not know what to do, all because I cannot decide – anything. And so here I remain, as chained as I was when you first found me in the Nascent.'
'Trull Sengar,' Onrack said after a moment, 'you fight to save lives.
The lives of these youths here. You stand in their stead, again and again. This is a noble choice. Through you, I discover the gift of fighting in defence of honour, the gift of a cause that is worthy. I am not as I once was. I am not as Monok Ochem and Ibra Gholan.
Expedience is no longer enough. Expedience is the murderer's lie.'
'For Hood's sake,' Cotillion said to Monok Ochem, feeling exasperated, brittle with frustration, 'can you not call upon kin? A few hundred T' lan Imass – there must be some lying around somewhere, doing nothing as is their wont?'
The empty eyes remained… empty. 'Cotillion of Shadow. Your companion claimed the First Throne'Then he need only command the T'lan Imass to attend-'
'No. The others journey to a war. A war of self-preservation-'
'To Hood with Assail!' Cotillion shouted, his voice echoing wildly in the cavern. 'This is nothing but damned pride! You cannot win there!
You send clan after clan, all into the same destructive maw! You damned fools – disengage! There is nothing worth fighting for on that miserable nightmare of a continent! Don't you see? Among the Tyrants there, it is nothing but a game!'
'It is the nature of my people,' Onrack said – and Cotillion could detect a certain tone in the words, something like vicious irony – 'to believe in their own supreme efficacy. They mean to win that game, Cotillion of Shadow, or greet oblivion. They accept no alternatives.
Pride? It is not pride. It is the very reason to exist.'
'We face greater threats-'
'And they do not care,' Onrack cut in. 'This you must understand, Cotillion of Shadow. Once, long ago by mortal standards, now, your companion found the First Throne. He occupied it and so gained command over the T'lan Imass. Even then, it was a tenuous grasp, for the power of the First Throne is ancient. Indeed, its power wanes. Shadowthrone was able to awaken Logros T'lan Imass – a lone army, finding itself still bound to the First Throne's remnant power due to little more than mere proximity. He could not command Kron T'lan Imass, nor Bentract, nor Ifayle, nor the others that remained, for they were too distant. When Shadowthrone last sat upon the First Throne, he was mortal, he was bound to no other aspect. He had not ascended. But now, he is impure, and this impurity ever weakens his command. Cotillion, as your companion loses ever more substance, so too does he lose… veracity.'
Cotillion stared at the broken warrior, then looked over at Monok Ochem and Ibra Gholan. 'And these, then,' he said in a low voice, ' represent… token obedience.' The bonecaster said, 'We must seek to preserve our own kind, Cotillion of Shadow.'
'And if the First Throne is lost?'
A clattering shrug.
Gods below. Now, at last, I understand why we lost Logros's undead army in the middle of the Seven Cities campaign. Why they just… left. He shifted his gaze back to Onrack the Broken. 'Is it possible,' he asked, 'to restore the power of the First Throne?'
'Say nothing,' Monok Ochem commanded.
Onrack's half-shattered head slowly turned to regard the bonecaster. '
You do not compel me. I am unbound.'
At some silent order, Ibra Gholan lifted his stone weapon and faced Onrack.
Cotillion raised his hands. 'Wait! Onrack, do not answer my question.
Let's forget I ever asked it. There's no need for this – haven't we enough enemies as it is?'
'You,' said Monok Ochem to the god, 'are dangerous. You think what must not be thought, you speak aloud what must not be said. You are as a hunter who walks a path no-one else can see. We must consider the implications.' The bonecaster turned away, bony feet scraping as he walked towards the chamber of the First Throne. After a moment, Ibra Gholan lowered his blade and thumped off in Monok Ochem's wake.
Cotillion reached up to run his hand through his hair once again, and found his brow slick with sweat.
'And so,' Trull Sengar said, with a hint of a smile, 'you have taken our measure, Cotillion. And from this visit, we in turn receive equally bitter gifts. Namely, the suggestion that all we do here, in defence of this First Throne, is without meaning. So, do you now elect to withdraw us from this place?' His eyes narrowed on the god, and the ironic half-smile gave way to… something else. 'I thought not.'
Perhaps indeed I walk an unseen path – one even I am blind to – but now the necessity of following it could not be greater. 'We will not abandon you,' he said.
'So you claim,' muttered Minala behind him.
Cotillion stepped to one side. 'I have summoned Shadowthrone,' he said to her.
A wry expression. 'Summoned?'
'We grant each other leave to do such things, Minala, as demands dictate.'
'Companions in truth, then. I thought that you were subservient to Shadowthrone, Cotillion. Do you now claim otherwise?'
He managed a smile. 'We are fully aware of each other's complementary talents,' he replied, and left it at that.
'There wasn't enough time,' she said.
'For what?'
'For training. For the years needed… for them. To grow up. To live.'
He said nothing, for she was right.
'Take them with you,' Minala said. 'Now. I will remain, as will Apt and Panek. Cotillion, please, take them with you.'
'I cannot.'
'Why?'
He glanced over at Onrack. 'Because, Minala, I am not returning to the Realm of Shadow-'
'Wherever you are going,' she said in a suddenly harsh voice, 'it must be better than this!'
'Alas, would that I could make such a promise.'
'He cannot,' said Onrack. 'Minala, he now in truth sets out on an unseen path. It is my belief that we shall not see him again.'
'Thank you for the vote of confidence,' Cotillion said.
'My friend has seen better days,' Trull Sengar said, reaching out to slap Onrack on the back. The thump the blow made was hollow, raising dust, and something clattered down within the warrior's chest. 'Oh,' said the Tiste Edur, 'did that do something bad?'
'No,' Onrack replied. 'The broken point of a spear. It had been lodged in bone.'
'Was it irritating you?'
'Only the modest sound it made when I walked. Thank you, Trull Sengar.'
Cotillion eyed the two. What mortal would call a T'lan Imass friend?
And, they fight side by side. I would know more of this Trull Sengar.
But, as with so many things lately, there was no time for that.
Sighing, he turned, and saw that the youth Panek now guarded the choke-point, in Ibra Gholan's absence.
The god headed that way.
Panek swung to face him. 'I miss him,' he said.
'Who?'
'Edgewalker.'
'Why? I doubt that sack of bones could fight his way out of a birchbark coffin.'
'Not to fight at our sides, Uncle. We will hold here. Mother worries too much.'
'Which mother?'
A hideous, sharp-toothed smile. 'Both.'
'Why do you miss Edgewalker, then?'
'For his stories.'
'Oh, those.'
'The dragons. The foolish ones, the wise ones, the living ones and the dead ones. If every world were but a place on the board, they would be the game pieces. Yet no single hand directs them. Each is wild, a will unto itself. And then there are the shadows – Edgewalker explained about those – the ones you can't see.'
'He explained, did he? Well, clearly the hoary bastard likes you more than he does me.'
'They all cast shadows, Uncle,' Panek said. 'Into your realm. Every one of them. That's why there's so many prisoners.'
Cotillion frowned, then, slowly, inexorably as comprehension dawned, the god's eyes widened.
Trull Sengar watched the god move past Panek, one hand tracking along the stone wall, as if Cotillion were suddenly drunk. 'I wonder what that was all about? You'd think Panek just kneed him between the legs.'
'He'd earn a kiss from me if he did that,' Minala said.
'You're too harsh,' Trull said. 'I feel sorry for Cotillion.'
'Then you're an idiot, but of course I've known the truth of that for months.'
He smiled across at her, said nothing.
Minala now eyed the uneven entrance to the chamber of the First Throne. 'What are they doing in there? They never go in there.'
'Considering implications, I suppose,' Trull said.
'And where's Shadowthrone? He's supposed to be here by now. If we get attacked right now…'
We're dead. Trull leaned more heavily on the spear, to ease the weight on his left leg, which was hurting more – marginally – than his right.
Or at least I am. But that's likely whether or not I get healed, once my kin decide to take this seriously. He did not understand their half-hearted skirmishing, the tentative probing by the Den-Ratha. And why were they bothering at all? If they hungered for a throne, it would be that of Shadow, not this petrified bone monstrosity they call the First Throne. But, thinking on it, maybe this does indeed make sense. They have allied themselves with the Crippled God, and with the Unbound T'lan Imass who now serve the Chained One. But my Tiste Edur place little weight on alliances with non-Edur. Maybe that's why all they've done thus far is token blood-letting. A single warlock and veteran warriors and this little fete would be over.
And they would come – they will come, once I am recognized. Yet he could not hide himself from their eyes; he could not stand back whilst they slaughtered these young humans who knew nothing of life, who were soldiers in name only. These lessons of cruelty and brutality did not belong in what a child needed to learn, in what a child should learn.
And a world in which children were subjected to such things was a world in which compassion was a hollow word, its echoes a chorus of mockery and cold contempt.
Four skirmishes. Four, and Minala was now mother to seven hundred destroyed lives, almost half of them facing the mercy of death… until Shadowthrone appears, with his edged gift, in itself cold and heartless.
'Your face betrays you, Trull Sengar. You are driven to weeping yet again.'
The Edur looked across at Onrack, then over to where Minala now stood with Panek. 'Her rage is her armour, friend. And that is my greatest weakness, that I cannot conjure the same within myself. Instead, I stand here, waiting. For the next attack, for the return of the terrible music – the screams, the pain and the dying, the deafening roar of the futility our battle-lust creates… with every clash of sword and spear.'
'Yet, you do not surrender,' the T'lan Imass said.
'I cannot.'
'The music you hear in battle is incomplete, Trull Sengar.'
'What do you mean?'
'Even as I stand at your side, I can hear Minala's prayers, whether she is near us or not. Even when she drags wounded and dying children back, away from danger, I hear her. She prays, Trull Sengar, that you do not fall. That you fight on, that the miracle that is you and the spear you wield shall never fail her. Never fail her and her children.'
Trull Sengar turned away.
'Ah,' Onrack said, 'with your tears suddenly loosed, I friend, I see my error. Where I sought by my words to instil pride in you, I defeat your own armour and wound you deeply. With despair. I am sorry. There remains so much of what it is to live that I have forgotten.' The battered warrior regarded Trull in silence for a moment, then added, '
Perhaps I can give you something else, something more… hopeful.'
'Please try,' Trull said in a whisper.
'At times, down in this chasm, I smell something, a presence. It is faint, animal. It… comforts me, although I do not know why, for I cannot comprehend its source. In those times, Trull Sengar, I feel as if we are being observed. We are being watched by unseen eyes, and in those eyes there is vast compassion.'
'Do you say this only to ease my pain, Onrack?'
'No, I would not so deceive you.'
'What – who does it come from?'
'I do not know – but I have seen that it affects Monok Ochem. Even Ibra Gholan. I sense their disquiet, and this, too, comforts me.'
'Well,' rasped a voice beside them, 'it isn't me.' Shadows coalescing, creating a hunched, hooded shape, wavering indistinct, as if reluctant to commit itself to any particular existence, any single reality.
'Shadowthrone.'
'Healing, yes? Very well. But I have little time. We must hurry, do you understand? Hurry!'
Renewed, once again, to face what will come. Would that I had my own prayers. Comforting words in my mind… to drown out the screams all around me. To drown out my own.
Somewhere down below, Karsa Orlong struggled to calm Havok, and the sudden hammer of hoofs against wood, sending trembles through the deck beneath Samar Dev's feet, indicated that it would be some time before the animal quieted. She did not blame the Jhag horse. The air below was foul, reeking with the sick and the dying, with the sour stench that came from hopelessness.
But we are spared that fate. We are Guests, because my giant companion would kill the Emperor. The fool. The arrogant, self-obsessed idiot. I should have stayed with Boatfinder, there on that wild shore. I should have then turned around and walked home. She had so wanted this to be a journey of exploration and discovery, the lure of wonders waiting somewhere ahead. Instead, she found herself imprisoned by an empire gone mad with obsession. Self-righteous, seeing its own might as if it was a gift bestowing piety. As if power projected its own ethos, and the capability to do something was justification enough for doing it.
The mindset of the street-corner bully, in his head two or three rules by which he guided his own existence, and by which he sought to shape his world. The ones he must fear, the ones he could drive to their knees, and maybe ones he hungered to be like, or ones he lusted after, but even there the relationship was one of power. Samar Dev felt sick with disgust, fighting a tide of tumultuous panic rising within her – and no dry deck beneath her boots could keep her from that sort of drowning.
She had tried to keep out of the way of the human crew who worked the huge ship's sails, and finally found a place where she wouldn't be pushed aside or cursed, at the very prow, holding tight to rat-lines as the waves lifted and dropped the lumbering craft. In a strange way, each plunge that stole her own weight proved satisfying, almost comforting.
Someone came to her side, and she was not surprised to see the blonde, blue-eyed witch. No taller than Samar's shoulder, her arms exposed to reveal the lean, cabled muscles of someone familiar with hard, repetitive work. Indicative as well, she believed, of a particular personality. Hard-edged, judgemental, perhaps even untrustworthy – muscles like wires were ever stretched taut by some inner extremity, a nervous agitation devoured like fuel, unending in its acrid supply.
'I am named Feather Witch,' the woman said, and Samar Dev noted, with faint surprise, that she was young. 'You understand me words?'
'My words.'
'My words. He teaches not well,' she added.
She means the Taxilian. It's no surprise. He knows what will happen when he outlives his usefulness.
'You teach me,' Feather Witch said.
Samar Dev reached out and flicked the withered finger hanging from the young woman's neck, eliciting both a flinch and a curse. 'I teach you… nothing.'
'I make Hanradi Khalag kill you.'
'Then Karsa Orlong kills every damned person on this ship. Except the chained ones.'
Feather Witch, scowling, was clearly struggling to understand, then, with a snarl, she spun round and walked away.
Samar Dev returned her gaze to the heaving seas ahead. A witch indeed, and one that did not play fair with the spirits. One who did not recognize honour. Dangerous. She will… attempt things. She may even try to kill me, make it look like an accident. There's a chance she will succeed, which means I had better warn Karsa. If I die, he will understand that it will have been no accident. And so he will destroy every one of these foul creatures.
Her own thoughts shocked her. Ah, shame on me. I, too, begin to think of Karsa Orlong as a weapon. To be wielded, manipulated, and in the name of some imagined vengeance, no less. But, she suspected, someone or something else was already playing that game. With Karsa Orlong.
And it was that mystery she needed to pursue, until she had an answer.
And then? Am I not assuming that the Toblakai is unaware of how he is being used? What if he already knows? Think on that, woman…
All right. He accepts it… for now. But, whenever he deems it expedient to turn on those unseen manipulators, he will – and they will regret ever having involved themselves in his life. Yes, that well suits Karsa's own arrogance, his unshakeable confidence. In fact, the more I think on it, the more I am convinced that I am right. I've stumbled onto the first steps of the path that will lead me to solving the mystery. Good.
'What in Hood's name did you say to her?'
Startled, Samar Dev looked over, to see the Taxilian arrive at her side. 'Who? What? Oh, her.'
'Be careful,' the man said. He waved a filthy hand in front of his bruised, misshapen face. 'See this? Feather Witch. I dare not fight back. I dare not even defend myself. See it in her eyes – I think she was beaten herself, when a child. That is how these things breed generation after generation.'
'Yes,' Samar said, surprised, 'I believe you are right.'
He managed something like a grin. 'I was foolish enough to be captured, yes, but that does not make me always a fool.'
'What happened?'
'Pilgrimage, of sorts. I paid for passage on a drake – back to Rutu Jelba – trying to flee the plague, and believe me, I paid a lot.'
Samar Dev nodded. Drakes were Tanno pilgrim ships, heavy and stolid and safe against all but the fiercest storms, and on board there would be a Tanno Spiritwalker or at the very least a Tanno Mendicant. No plague could thrive on such a ship – it had been a clever gamble, and drakes were usually half-empty on their return journeys.
'Dawn broke, a mere two days away from Rutu Jelba,' the Taxilian continued, 'and we were surrounded by foreign ships – this fleet. The Spiritwalker sought to communicate, then when it became evident that these Edur viewed us as a prize, to negotiate. Gods below, woman, the sorcery they unleashed upon him! Awful, it sickened the very air. He resisted – a lot longer than they expected, I've since learned – long enough to cause them considerable consternation – but he fell in the end, the poor bastard. The Edur chose one of us, me as it turned out, and cut open the others and flung them to the sharks. They needed a translator, you see.'
'And what, if I may ask, is your profession?'
'Architect, in Taxila. No, not famous. Struggling.' He shrugged. 'A struggle I would willingly embrace right now.'
'You are working deceit when teaching Feather Witch.'
He nodded.
'She knows.'
'Yes, but for the moment she can do nothing about it. This part of the fleet is resupplied – we'll not be heading landward for some time, and as for Seven Cities ships to capture, well, the plague's emptied the seas, hasn't it? Besides, we will be sailing west. For now, I'm safe.
And, unless Feather Witch is a lot smarter than I think she is, it will be a long time before she comes to comprehension.'
'How are you managing it?'
'I am teaching her four languages, all at once, and making no distinction among them, not even the rules or syntax. For each word I give her four in translation, then think up bizarre rules for selecting one over another given the context. She's caught me out but once. So. Malazan, the Taxilii Scholar's Dialect, the Ehrlii variant of the common tongue, and, from my grandfather's sister, tribal Rangala.'
'Rangala? I thought that was extinct.'
'Not until she dies, and I'd swear that old hag's going to live for ever.'
'What is your name?'
He shook his head. 'There is power in names – no, I do not distrust you – it is these Tiste Edur. And Feather Witch – if she discovers my name-'
'She can compel you. I understand. Well, in my mind I think of you as the Taxilian.'
'That will suffice.'
'I am Samar Dev, and the warrior I came with is Toblakai… Sha'ik's Toblakai. He calls himself Karsa Orlong.'
'You risk much, revealing your names-'
'The risk belongs to Feather Witch. I surpass her in the old arts. As for Karsa, well, she is welcome to try.' She glanced at him. 'You said we were sailing west?'
He nodded. 'Hanradi Khalag commands just under half the fleet – the rest is somewhere east of here. They have both been sailing back and forth along this coast for some months, almost half a year, in fact.
Like fisher fleets, but the catch they seek walks on two legs and wields a sword. Discovering remnant kin was unexpected, and the state those poor creatures were in simply enraged these Edur. I do not know where the two fleets intend to merge – somewhere west of Sepik, I think. Once that happens,' he shrugged, 'we set a course for their empire.'
'And where is that?'
Another shrug. 'Far away, and beyond that, I can tell you nothing.'
'Far away indeed. I have never heard of an empire of humans ruled by Tiste Edur. And yet, this Letherii language. As you noted it is somehow related to many of the languages here in Seven Cities, those that are but branches from the same tree, and that tree is the First Empire.'
'Ah, that explains it, then, for I can mostly understand the Letherii, now. They use a different dialect when conversing with the Edur – a mix of the two. A trader tongue, and even there I begin to comprehend.'
'I suggest you keep such knowledge to yourself, Taxilian.'
'I will. Samar Dev, is your companion truly the same Toblakai as the one so named who guarded Sha'ik? It is said he killed two demons the night before she was slain, one of them with his bare hands.'
'Until recently,' Samar Dev said, 'he carried with him the rotted heads of those demons. He gifted them to Boatfinder – to the Anibari shaman who accompanied us. The white fur Karsa wears is from a Soletaken. He killed a third demon just outside Ugarat, and chased off another in the Anibar forest. He singlehandedly killed a bhederin bull – and that I witnessed with my own eyes.'
The Taxilian shook his head. 'The Edur Emperor… he too is a demon.
Every cruelty committed by these grey-skinned bastards, they claim is by their Emperor's command. And so too this search for warriors. An emperor who invites his own death – how can this be?'
'I don't know,' she admitted. And not knowing is what frightens me the most. 'As you say, it makes no sense.'
'One thing is known,' the man said. 'Their Emperor has never been defeated. Else his rule would have ended. Perhaps indeed that tyrant is the greatest warrior of all. Perhaps there is no-one, no-one anywhere in this world, who can best him. Not even Toblakai.'
She thought about that, as the huge Edur fleet, filling the seas around her, worked northward, the untamed wilds of the Olphara Peninsula a jagged line on the horizon to port. North, then west, into the Sepik Sea.
Samar Dev slowly frowned. Oh, they have done this before. Sepik, the island kingdom, the vassal to the Malazan Empire. A peculiar, isolated people, with their two-tiered society. The indigenous tribe, subjugated and enslaved. Rulhun'tal ven'or – the Mudskins… '
Taxilian, these Edur slaves below. Where did they find them?'
'I don't know.' The bruised face twisted into a bitter smile. 'They liberated them. The sweet lie of that word, Samar Dev. No, I will think no more on that.'
You are lying to me, Taxilian, I think.
There was a shout from the crow's nest, picked up by sailors in the rigging and passed on below. Samar Dev saw heads turn, saw Tiste Edur appear and make their way astern.
'Ships have been sighted in our wake,' the Taxilian said.
'The rest of the fleet?'
'No.' He lifted his head and continued listening as the lookout called down ever more details. 'Foreigners. Lots of ships. Mostly transports – two-thirds transports, one-third dromon escort.' He grunted. 'The third time we've sighted them since I came on board. Sighted, then evaded, each time.'
'Have you identified those foreigners for them, Taxilian?'
He shook his head.
The Malazan Imperial Fleet. Admiral Nok. It has to be. She saw a certain tension now among the Tiste Edur. 'What is it? What are they so excited about?'
'Those poor Malazans,' the man said with a savage grin. It's the positioning now, you see.'
'What do you mean?'
'If they stay in our wake, if they keep sailing northward to skirt this peninsula, they are doomed.'
'Why?'
'Because now, Samar Dev, the rest of the Edur fleet – Tomad Sengar's mass of warships – is behind the Malazans.'
All at once, the cold wind seemed to cut through all of Samar Dev's clothing. 'They mean to attack them?'
'They mean to annihilate them,' the Taxilian said. 'And I have seen Edur sorcery and I tell you this – the Malazan Empire is about to lose its entire Imperial Fleet. It will die. And with it, every damned man and woman on board.' He leaned forward as if to spit, then, realizing the wind was in his face, he simply grinned all the harder. 'Except, maybe, one or two… champions.'
This was something new, Banaschar reflected as he hurried beneath sheets of rain towards Coop's. He was being followed. Once, such a discovery would have set a fury alight inside him, and he would have made short work of the fool, then, after extracting the necessary details, even shorter work of whoever had hired that fool. But now, the best he could muster was a sour laugh under his breath. 'Aye, Master (or Mistress), he wakes up in the afternoon, without fail, and after a sixth of a bell or so of coughing and scratching and clicking nits, he heads out, onto the street, and sets off, Mistress (or Master), for one of six or so disreputable establishments, and once ensconced among the regulars, he argues about the nature of religion – or is it taxation and the rise in port tithes? Or the sudden drop-off in the coraval schools off the Jakatakan shoals? Or the poor workmanship of that cobbler who'd sworn he could re-stitch that sole on this here left boot – what? True enough, Master (or Mistress), it's all nefarious code, sure as I can slink wi' the best slinkers, and I'm as near to crackin' it as can be…'
His lone source of entertainment these nights, these imagined conversations. Gods, now that is pathetic. Then again, pathos ever amuses me. And long before it could cease amusing him, he'd be drunk, and so went another passage of the sun and stars in that meaningless heaven overhead. Assuming it still existed – who could tell with this solid ceiling of grey that had settled on the island for almost a week now, with no sign of breaking? Much more of this rain and we'll simply sink beneath the waves. Traders arriving from the mainland will circle and circle where Malaz Island used to be. Circle and circle, the pilots scratching their heads… There he went again, yet another conjured scene with its subtle weft of contempt for all things human – the sheer incompetence, stupidity, sloth and bad workmanship – look at this, after all, he limped like some one-footed shark baiter – the cobbler met him at the door barefooted – he should have started up with the suspicion thing about then. Don't you think? 'Well, Empress, it's like this. The poor sod was half-Wickan, and he'd paid for that, thanks to your refusal to rein in the mobs. He'd been herded, oh Great One, with bricks and clubs, about as far as he could go without diving headfirst into the harbour. Lost all his cobbler tools and stuff- his livelihood, you see. And me, well, I am cursed with pity – aye, Empress, it's not an affliction that plagues you much and all the good to you, I say, but where was I? Oh yes, racked with pity, prodded into mercy. Hood knows, the poor broken man needed that coin more than I did, if only to bury that little son of his he was still carrying round, aye, the one with the caved-in skull-' No, stop this, Banaschar.
Stop.
Meaningless mind games, right? Devoid of significance. Nothing but self-indulgence, and for that vast audience out there – the whispering ghosts and their intimations, their suppositions and veiled insults and their so easily bored minds – that audience – they are my witnesses, yes, that sea of murky faces in the pit, for whom my desperate performance, ever seeking to reach out with a human touch, yields nothing but impatience and agitation, the restless waiting for the cue to laugh. Well enough, this oratory pageant served only himself, Banaschar knew, and all the rest was a lie.
The child with the caved-in skull showed more than one face, tilted askew and flaccid in death. More than one, more than ten, more than ten thousand. Faces he could not afford to think about in his day-today, night-through-night stumble of existence. For they were as nails driven deep into the ground, pinning down whatever train he dragged in his wake, and with each forward step the resistance grew, the constriction round his neck stretching ever tighter – and no mortal could weather that – we choke on what we witness, we are strangled by headlong flight, that will not do, not do at all. Don't mind me, dear Empress. I see how clean is your throne.
Ah, here were the steps leading down. Coop's dear old Hanged Man, the stone scaffold streaming with gritty tears underfoot and a challenge to odd-footed descent, the rickety uncertainty – was this truly nothing more than steps down into a tavern? Or now transformed, my temple of draughts, echoing to the vacuous moaning of my fellow-kind, oh, how welcome this embraceHe pushed through the doorway and paused in the gloom, just inside the dripping eaves, his feet planted in a puddle where the pavestones sagged, water running down him to add to its depth; and a half-dozen faces, pale and dirty as the moon after a dust storm, swung towards him… for but a moment, then away again.
My adoring public. Yes, the tragic mummer has returned.
And there, seated alone at a table, was a monstrosity of a man.
Hunched over, tiny black eyes glittering beneath the shadow of a jutting brow. Hairy beyond reason. Twisted snarls exploding out from both ears, the ebon-hued curls wending down to merge with the vast gull's nest that was his beard, which in turn engulfed his neck and continued downward, unabated, to what was visible of the mans bulging chest; and, too, climbed upward to fur his cheeks – conjoining on the way with the twin juts of nostril hairs, as if the man had thrust tiny uprooted trees up his nose – only to then merge uninterrupted with the sprung hemp ropes that were the man's eyebrows, which in turn blended neatly into the appallingly low hairline that thoroughly disguised what had to be a meagre, sloping forehead. And, despite the man's absurd age – rumoured age, actually, since no one knew for certain – that mass of hair was dyed squid-ink black.
He was drinking red-vine tea, a local concoction sometimes used to kill ants.
Banaschar made his way over and sat down opposite the man. 'If I'd thought about it, I'd say I've been looking for you all this time, Master Sergeant Braven Tooth.'
'But you ain't much of a thinker, are you?' The huge man did not bother looking up. 'Can't be, if you were looking for me. What you're seeing here is an escape – no, outright flight – Hood knows who's deciding these pathetic nitwits they keep sending me deserve the name of recruits. In the Malazan Army, by the Abyss! The world's gone mad.
Entirely mad.'
'The gatekeeper,' Banaschar said. 'Top of the stairs, Mock's Hold. The gate watchman, Braven Tooth, I assume you know him. Seems he's been there as long as you've been training soldiers.'
'There's knowing and there's knowing. That bell-backed old crab, now, let me tell you something about him. I could send legion after legion of my cuddly little recruits up them stairs, with every weapon at their disposal, and they'd never get past him. Why? I'll tell you why.
It ain't that Lubben's some champion or Mortal Sword or something. No, it's that I got more brains lodged up my left nostril waitin' for my finger than all my so-called recruits got put together.'
'That doesn't tell me anything about Lubben, Braven Tooth, only your opinion of your recruits, which it seems I already surmised.'
'Just so,' said the man, nodding.
Banaschar rubbed at his face. 'Lubben. Listen, I need to talk with someone, someone holed up in Mock's. I send messages, they get into Lubben's hands, and then… nothing.'
'So who's that you want to talk to?'
'I'd rather not say.'
'Oh, him.'
'So, is Lubben dropping those messages down that slimy chute the effluence of which so decorously paints the cliff-side?'
'Efflu-what? No. Tell you what, how about I head up there and take that You'd rather not say by the overlong out-of-style braid on top of his head and give 'im a shake or three?'
'I don't see how that would help.'
'Well, it'd cheer me up, not for any particular gripe, mind you, but just on principle. Maybe You'd rather not say'd rather not talk to you, have you thought of that? Or maybe you'd rather not.'
'I have to talk to him.'
'Important, huh?'
'Yes.'
'Imperial interest?'
'No, at least I don't think so.'
'Tell you what, I'll grab him by his cute braid and dangle him from the tower. You can signal from below. I swing him back and forth and it means he says "Sure, come on up, old friend". And if I just drop ' im it means the other thing. That, or my hands got tired and maybe slipped.'
'You're not helpful at all, Braven Tooth.'
'Wasn't me sitting at your table, was you sitting at mine.'
Banaschar leaned back, sighing. 'Fine. Here, I'll buy you some more tea-'
'What, you trying to poison me now?'
'All right, how about we share a pitcher of Malazan Dark?'
The huge man leaned forward, meeting Banaschar's eyes for the first time. 'Better. Y'see, I'm in mourning.'
'Oh?'
'The news from Y'Ghatan.' He snorted. 'It's always the news from Y'
Ghatan, ain't it? Anyway, I've lost some friends.'
'Ah.'
'So, tonight,' Braven Tooth said, 'I plan on getting drunk. For them.
I can't cry unless I'm drunk, you see.'
'So why the red-vine tea?'
Braven Tooth looked up as someone arrived, and gave the man an ugly smile. 'Ask Temper here. Why the red-vine tea, you old hunkered-down bastard?'
'Plan on crying tonight, Braven Tooth?'
The Master Sergeant nodded.
Temper levered himself into a chair that creaked alarmingly beneath him. Red-shot eyes fixed on Banaschar. 'Makes his tears the colour of blood. Story goes, he's only done it once before, and that was when Dassem Ultor died.'
Gods below, must I witness this tonight? 'It's what I get,' Braven Tooth muttered, head down once more, 'for believin' everything I hear.'
Banaschar frowned at the man opposite him. Now what does that mean?
The pitcher of ale arrived, as if conjured by their silent desires, and Banaschar, relieved of further contemplation – and every other demanding stricture of thought – settled back, content to weather yet another night.
'Aye, Master (or Mistress), he sat with them veterans, pretending he belonged, but really he's just an imposter. Sat there all night, until Coop had to carry him out. Where is he now? why, in his smelly, filthy room, dead to the world. Yes indeed, Banaschar is dead to the world.'
The rain descended in torrents, streaming over the battlements, down along the blood-gutters, and the cloud overhead had lowered in the past twenty heartbeats, swallowing the top of the old tower. The window Pearl looked through had once represented the pinnacle of island technology, a fusing of sand to achieve a bubbled, mottled but mostly transparent glass. Now, a century later, its surface was patinated in rainbow patterns, and the world beyond was patchy, like an incomplete mosaic, the tesserae melting in some world-consuming fire. Although sight of the flames eluded Pearl, he knew, with fearful certainty, that they were there, and no amount of rain from the skies could change that.
It had been flames, after all, that had destroyed his world. Flames that took her, the only woman he had ever loved. And there had been no parting embrace, no words of comfort and assurance exchanged. No, just that edgy dance round each other, and neither he nor Lostara had seemed capable of deciding whether that dance was desire or spite.
Even here, behind this small window and the thick stone walls, he could hear the battered, encrusted weather vane somewhere overhead, creaking and squealing in the buffeting gusts of wind assailing Mock's Hold. And he and Lostara had been no different from that weather vane, spinning, tossed this way and that, helpless victim to forces ever beyond their control. Beyond, even, their comprehension. And didn't that sound convincing? Hardly.
The Adjunct had sent them on a quest, and when its grisly end arrived, Pearl had realized that the entire journey had been but a prelude – as far as his own life was concerned – and that his own quest yet awaited him. Maybe it had been simple enough – the object of his desire would proclaim to his soul the consummation of that quest. Maybe she had been what he sought. But Pearl was not certain of that, not any more.
Lostara Yil was dead, and that which drove him, hounded him, was unabated. Was in fact growing.
Hood take this damned, foul city anyway. Why must imperial events ever converge here? Because, he answered himself, Genabackis had Pale.
Korel had the Stormwall. Seven Cities has Y'Ghatan. In the heart of the Malazan Empire, we have Maiaz City. Where it began, so it returns, again and again. And again. Festering sores that never heal, and when the fever rises, the blood wells forth, sudden, a deluge.
He imagined that blood sweeping over the city below, climbing the cliff-side, lapping against the very stones of Mock's Hold. Would it rise higher? 'It is my dream,' said the man sitting cross-legged in the room behind him.
Pearl did not turn. 'What is?'
'Not understanding this reluctance of yours, Claw.'
'I assure you,' Pearl said, 'the nature of my report to the Empress will upend this tidy cart of yours. I was there, I saw-'
'You saw what you wanted to see. No witness in truth but myself, regarding the events now being revisited. Revised, yes? As all events are, for such is the exercise of quill-clawed carrion who title themselves historians. Revisiting, thirsting for a taste, just a taste, of what it is to know trauma in one's quailing soul.
Pronouncing with authority, yes, on that in which the proclaimant in truth has no authority. I alone survive as witness. I alone saw, breathed the air, tasted the treachery.'
Pearl would not turn to face the fat, unctuous man. He dare not, lest his impulse overwhelm him – an impulse to lift an arm, to flex the muscles of his wrist just so, and launch a poison-sheathed quarrel into the flabby neck of Mallick Rel, the Jhistal priest of Mael.
He knew he would likely fail. He would be dead before he finished raising that arm. This was Mallick Rel's chamber, after all, his residence. Wards carved into the floor, rituals suspended in the damp air, enough sorcery to set teeth on edge and raise hairs on the nape of the neck. Oh, officially this well-furnished room might be referred to as a cell, but that euphemistic absurdity would not last much longer.
The bastard's agents were everywhere. Whispering their stories in taverns, on street corners, beneath the straddled legs of whores and noblewomen. The Jhistal priest was fast becoming a hero – the lone survivor of the Fall at Aren, the only loyal one, that is. The one who managed to escape the clutches of the traitors, be they Sha'ik's own, or the betrayers in the city of Aren itself. Mallick Rel, who alone professes to know the truth.
There were seeds from a certain grass that grew on the Seti Plains, Pearl recalled, that were cleverly barbed, so that when they snagged on something, or someone, they were almost impossible to remove.
Barbed husks, that weakened and cracked apart only after the host had travelled far. Such were rumours, carried on breaths from one host to the next, the barbs holding fast. And when the necessary time has passed, when every seed is in place, what then? What shall unfold at Mallick Rel's command? Pearl did not want to think about it.
Nor did he want to think about this: he was very frightened.
'Claw, speak with him.'
'Him. I admit, I cannot yet decide which "him" you are referring to, priest. In neither case, alas, can I fathom your reasons for making such a request of me. Tayschrenn is no friend of yours-'
'Nor is he a fool, Claw. He sees far ahead, does Tayschrenn. No, there is no reason I would urge you to speak with the Imperial High Mage.
His position grows ever more precarious as it is. You seek, yes, to confabulate? Plainly, then, I urge you, Claw, to descend to the catacombs, and there speak with Korbolo Dom. You have not heard his story, and in humility I would advise, it is time that you did.'
Pearl closed his eyes on the rain-lashed scene through the window. 'Of course. He was in truth an agent of Laseen's, even when he fought on behalf of Sha'ik. His Dogslayers, they were in place to turn upon Sha' ik and crush her utterly, including killing both Toblakai and Leoman of the Flails. But there, during the Chain of Dogs, he stumbled upon a greater betrayal in the making. Oh yes, Mallick Rel, I can see how you and he will twist this – I imagine you two have worked long and hard, during those countless "illegal" sojourns of yours down in the catacombs – indeed, I know of them – the Claw remain outside your grasp, and that will not change, I assure you.'
'It is best,' the man said in his sibilant voice, 'that you consider my humble suggestion, Claw, for the good of your sect.'
'For the good of…' Gods below, he feels ready to threaten the Claw!
How far has all this madness gone? I must speak with Topper – maybe it's not too late…
'This rain,' Mallick Rel continued behind him, 'it shall make the seas rise, yes?'