All that K'rul created, you understand, was born of the Elder God's love of possibility. Myriad paths of sorcery spun out a multitude of strands, each wild as hairs in the wind, hackled to the wandering beast. And K'rul was that beast, yet he himself was a parody of life, for blood was his nectar, the spilled gift, red tears of pain, and all that he was, was defined by that singular thirst.
For all that, thirst is something we all share, yes?
Brutho and Nullit speak on Nullit's Last Night Brutho Parlet The land was vast, but it was not empty. Some ancient cataclysm had torn through the scoured bedrock, splitting it with fissures in a chaotic crisscross skein over the plain. If sand had once covered this place, even filling the chasms, wind or water had swept away the very last grain. The stone looked polished and the sun's light bounced from it in a savage glare.
Squinting, Mappo Runt studied the tormented landscape in front of them. After a time, he shook his head. 'I have never seen this place before, Icarium. It seems as though something has just peeled back the skin of the world. Those cracks… how can they run in such random directions?'
The half-blood Jaghut standing at his side said nothing for a moment, his pallid eyes scanning the scene as if seeking a pattern. Then he crouched down and picked up a piece of broken bedrock. 'Immense pressures,' he murmured. 'And then… violence.' He straightened, tossing the rock aside. 'The fissures follow no fault lines – see that nearest one? It cuts directly across the seams in the stone. I am intrigued, Mappo.'
The Trell set down his burlap sack. 'Do you wish to explore?'
'I do.' Icarium glanced at him and smiled. 'None of my desires surprise you, do they? It is no exaggeration that you know my mind better than I. Would that you were a woman.'
'Were I a woman, Icarium, I would have serious concerns about your taste in women.'
'Granted,' the Jhag replied, 'you are somewhat hairy. Bristly, in fact. Given your girth, I believe you capable of wrestling a bull bhederin to the ground.'
'Assuming I had reason to… although none comes to mind.'
'Come, let us explore.'
Mappo followed Icarium out onto the blasted plain. The heat was vicious, desiccating. Beneath their feet, the bedrock bore twisted swirls, signs of vast, contrary pressures. No lichen clung to the stone. 'This has been long buried.'
'Yes, and only recently exposed.'
They approached the sharp edge of the nearest chasm.
The sunlight reached down part-way to reveal jagged, sheer walls, but the floor was hidden in darkness.
'I see a way down,' Icarium said.
'I was hoping you had missed it,' Mappo replied, having seen the same chute with its convenient collection of ledges, cracks for hand- and foot-holds. 'You know how I hate climbing.'
'Until you mentioned it, no. Shall we?'
'Let me retrieve my pack,' Mappo said, turning about. 'We'll likely be spending the night down there.' He made his way back towards the edge of the plain. The rewards of curiosity had diminished for Mappo, over the years since he had vowed to walk at Icarium's side. It was now a sentiment bound taut with dread. Icarium's search for answers was not a hopeless one, alas. And if truth was discovered, it would be as an avalanche, and Icarium would not, could not, withstand the revelations. About himself. And all that he had done. He would seek to take his own life, if no-one else dared grant the mercy.
That was a precipice they had both clung to not so long ago. And I betrayed my vow. In the name of friendship. He had been broken, and it shamed him still. Worse, to see the compassion in Icarium's eyes, that had been a sword through Mappo's heart, an unhealed wound still haunting him.
But curiosity was a fickle thing, as well. Distractions devoured time, drew Icarium from his relentless path. Yes, time. Delays. Follow where he will lead, Mappo Runt. You can do naught else. Until… until what?
Until he finally failed. And then, another would come, if it was not already too late, to resume the grand deceit.
He was tired. His very soul was weary of the whole charade. Too many lies had led him onto this path, too many lies held him here to this day. I am no friend. I broke my vow – in the name of friendship?
Another lie. No. Simple, brutal self-interest, the weakness of my selfish needs.
Whilst Icarium called him friend. Victim of a terrible curse, yet he remained, trusting, honourable, filled with the pleasure of living.
And here I am, happily leading him astray, again and again. Oh, the word for it was indeed shame.
He found himself standing before his pack. How long he had stood there, unseeing, unmoving, he did not know. Ah, now that is just, that I begin to lose myself. Sighing, he picked it up and slung it over a shoulder. Pray we cross no-one's path. No threat. No risk. Pray we never find a way out of the chasm. But to whom was he praying? Mappo smiled as he made his way back. He believed in nothing, and would not presume the conceit of etching a face on oblivion. Thus, empty prayers, uttered by an empty man.
'Are you all right, my friend?' Icarium asked as he arrived.
'Lead on,' Mappo said. 'I must secure my pack first.'
A flash of something like concern in the Jhag's expression, then he nodded and walked over to where the chute debouched, slipped over the edge, and vanished from sight.
Mappo tugged a small belt-pouch free and loosened the drawstrings. He pulled another pouch from the first one and unfolded it, revealing that it was larger than the one it had been stored in. From this second pouch he withdrew another, again larger once unfolded. Mappo then, with some effort, pushed the shoulder pack into this last one.
Tightened the strings. He stuffed that pouch into the next smaller and followed by forcing that one into the small belt-pouch, which he tied at his waist. Inconvenient, though temporary. He would have no quick access to his weapons should some calamity arise, at least for the duration of the descent. Not that he could fight clinging like a drunk goat to the cliff-side in any case.
He made his way to the chute and looked over the edge. Icarium was making swift progress, already fifteen or more man-heights down.
What would they find down there? Rocks. Or something that should have remained buried for all time.
Mappo began his descent.
Before long, the passage of the sun swept all light from the crevasse.
They continued in deep gloom, the air cool and stale. There was no sound, barring the occasional scrape of Icarium's scabbard against stone from somewhere below, the only indication that the Jhag still lived, that he had not fallen, for, had he lost his grip and plummeted, Mappo knew that he would make no outcry.
The Trell's arms were getting tired, the calves of his legs aching, his fingers growing numb, but he maintained his steady pace, feeling strangely relentless, as if this was a descent with no end and he was eager to prove it, the only possible proof being to continue on. For ever. There was something telling in that desire, but he was not prepared to be mindful of it.
The air grew colder. Mappo watched the plumes of his breath frosting the stone face opposite him, sparkling in some faint, sourceless illumination. He could smell old ice, somewhere below, and a whisper of unease quickened his breathing.
A hand on the heel of his left, down-reaching foot startled him.
'We are here,' Icarium murmured.
'Abyss take us,' Mappo gasped, pushing away from the wall and landing with sagging legs on a slick, slanted floor. He flung his arms out to regain balance, then straightened. 'Are you certain? Perhaps this slope is but a ledge, and should we lose our footing-'
'We will get wet. Come, there is a lake of some sort.'
'Ah, I see it. It… glows…'
They edged down until the motionless sweep of water was before them. A vague, greenish-blue illumination, coming from below, revealed the lake's depth. They could see to the bottom, perhaps ten man-heights down, rough and studded with rotted tree stumps or broken stalagmites, pale green and limned in white.
'We descended a third of a league for this?' Mappo asked, his voice echoing, then he laughed.
'Look further in,' Icarium directed, and the Trell heard excitement in his companion's tone.
The stumps marched outward four or five paces, then stopped. Beyond, details indistinct, squatted a massive, blockish shape. Vague patterns marked its visible sides, and its top. Odd, angular projections reached out from the far side, like spider's legs. The breath hissed from Mappo. 'Does it live?' he asked.
'A mechanism of some sort,' Icarium said. 'The metal is very nearly white, do you see? No corrosion. It looks as if it had been built yesterday… but I believe, my friend, that it is ancient.'
Mappo hesitated, then asked, 'Is it one of yours?'
Icarium glanced at him, eyes bright. 'No. And that is the wonder of it.'
'No? Are you sure? We have found others-'
'I am certain. I do not know how, but there is no doubt in my mind.
This was constructed by someone else, Mappo.'
The Trell crouched down and dipped his hand into the water, then snatched it back. 'Gods, that's cold!'
'No obstacle to me,' Icarium said, smiling, the polished lower tusks sliding into view.
'You mean to swim down and examine it? Never mind, the answer is plain. Very well, I shall seek out some level ground, and pitch our camp.'
The Jhag was tugging off his clothes.
Mappo set off along the slope. The gloom was sufficiently relieved by the glowing water that he was able to make certain of each step he took, moving up until his left hand was brushing the cold stone wall.
After fifteen or so paces that hand slipped into a narrow crack, and, upon regaining contact, immediately noted a change of texture and shape in the surface under his blunt fingertips. The Trell halted and began a closer examination along its length.
This stone was basalt, ragged, bulging out until the slope beneath his feet dwindled, then disappeared. Sharp cracks emanated out across the angled floor and into the lake, the black fissures reappearing on the lake's bottom. The basalt was some kind of intrusion, he concluded.
Perhaps the entire crevasse had been created by its arrival.
Mappo retreated until he had room to sit, perched with his back against the rock, eyes on the now rippled surface of the lake. He drew out a reed and began cleaning his teeth as he considered the matter.
He could not imagine a natural process creating such an intrusion.
Contrary as earth pressures were, far beneath the land's surface, there was no colliding escarpment shaping things in this part of the subcontinent.
No, there had been a gate, and the basalt formation had come through it. Catastrophically. From its realm… into solid bedrock on this world.
What was it? But he knew.
A sky keep.
Mappo rose and faced the ravaged basalt once more. And that which Icarium now studies at the bottom of the lake… it came from this. So it follows, does it not, that there must be some sort of portal. A way in. Now he was curious indeed. What secrets lay within? Among the rituals of inculcation the Nameless Ones had intoned in the course of Mappo's vow were tales of the sky keeps, the dread K'Chain Che'Malle fortresses that floated like clouds in the air. An invasion of sorts, according to the Nameless Ones, in the ages before the rise of the First Empire, when the people who would one day found it did little more than wander in small bands – not even tribes, little different, in fact, from mortal Imass. An invasion that, in this region at least, failed. The tales said little of who or what had opposed them. Jaghut, perhaps. Or Forkrul Assail, or the Elder Gods themselves.
He heard splashing and peered through the gloom to see Icarium pull himself, awkwardly, onto the strand. Mappo rose and approached.
'Dead,' Icarium gasped, and Mappo saw that his friend was racked with shivers.
'The mechanism?'
The Jhag shook his head. 'Omtose Phellack. This water… dead ice.
Dead… blood.'
Mappo waited for Icarium to recover. He studied the now swirling, agitated surface of the lake, wondering when last that water had known motion, the heat of a living body. For the latter, it had clearly been thirsty.
'There is a corpse inside that thing,' the Jhag said after a time.
'K'Chain Che'Malle.'
'Yes. How did you know?'
'I have found the sky keep it emerged from. Part of it remains exposed, extruding from the wall.'
'A strange creature,' Icarium muttered. 'I have no memory of ever seeing one before, yet I knew its name.'
'As far as I know, friend, you have never encountered them in your travels. Yet you hold knowledge of them, nonetheless.'
'I need to think on this.'
'Yes.'
'Strange creature,' he said again. 'So reptilian. Desiccated, of course, as one would expect. Powerful, I would think. The hind limbs, the forearms. Huge jaws. Stubby tail-'
Mappo looked up. 'Stubby tail. You are certain of that?'
'Yes. The beast was reclined, and within reach were levers – it was a master of the mechanism's operation.'
'There was a porthole you could look through?'
'No. The white metal became transparent wherever I cast my gaze.'
'Revealing the mechanism's inner workings?'
'Only the area where the K'Chain Che'Malle was seated. A carriage of some sort, I believe, a means of transportation and exploration… yet not intended to accommodate being submerged in water; nor was it an excavating device – the jointed arms would have been insufficient for that. No, the unveiling of Omtose Phellack caught it unawares.
Devoured, trapped in ice. A Jaghut arrived, Mappo, to make certain that none escaped.'
Mappo nodded. Icarium's descriptions had led him to conclude much the same sequence of events. Like the sky keep itself, the mechanism was built to fly, borne aloft by some unknown sorcery. 'If we are to find level ground,' he said, 'it shall have to be within the keep.'
The Jhag smiled. 'Is that a glimmer of anticipation in your eyes? I am beginning to see the Mappo of old, I suspect. Memory or no, you are no stranger to me, and I have been much chagrined of late, seeing you so forlorn. I understood it, of course – how could I not? I am what haunts you, friend, and for that I grieve. Come, shall we find our way inside this fell keep?'
Mappo watched Icarium stride past, and slowly turned to follow him with his eyes.
Icarium, the Builder of Mechanisms. Where did such skills come from?
He feared they were about to find out.
The monastery was in the middle of parched, broken wasteland, not a village or hamlet within a dozen leagues in either direction along the faint tracks of the road. On the map Cutter had purchased in G' danisban, its presence was marked with a single wavy line of reddishbrown ink, upright, barely visible on the worn hide. The symbol of D' rek, Worm of Autumn.
A lone domed structure stood in the midst of a low-walled, rectangular compound, and the sky over it was dotted with circling vultures.
Beside him and hunched in the saddle, Heboric Ghost Hands spat, then said, 'Decay. Rot. Dissolution. When what once worked suddenly breaks.
And like a moth the soul flutters away. Into the dark. Autumn awaits, and the seasons are askew, twisting to avoid all the unsheathed knives. Yet the prisoners of the jade, they are forever trapped.
There, in their own arguments. Disputes, bickering, the universe beyond unseen – they care not a whit, the fools. They wear ignorance like armour and wield spite like swords. What am I to them? A curio.
Less. So it's a broken world, why should I care about that? I did not ask for this, for any of this…'
He went on, but Cutter stopped listening. He glanced back at the two women trailing them. Listless, uncaring, brutalized by the heat. The horses beneath them walked with drooped heads; their ribs were visible beneath dusty, tattered hide. Off to one side clambered Greyfrog, looking fat and sleek as ever, circling the riders with seemingly boundless energy.
'We should visit that monastery,' Cutter said. 'Make use of the well, and if there's any foodstuffs-'
'They're all dead,' Heboric croaked.
Cutter studied the old man, then grunted. 'Explains the vultures. But we still need water.'
The Destriant of Treach gave him an unpleasant smile.
Cutter understood the meaning of that smile. He was becoming heartless, inured to the myriad horrors of this world. A monastery filled with dead priests and priestesses was as… nothing. And the old man could see it, could see into him. His new god is the Tiger of Summer, Lord of War. Heboric Ghost Hands, the High Priest of strife, he sees how cold I have become. And is… amused.
Cutter guided his horse up the side track leading to the monastery.
The others followed. The Daru reined in in front of the gates, which were closed, and dismounted. 'Heboric, do you sense any danger to us?'
'I have that talent?'
Cutter studied him, said nothing.
The Destriant clambered down from his horse. 'Nothing lives in there.
Nothing.'
'No ghosts?'
'Nothing. She took them.'
'Who?'
'The unexpected visitor, that's who.' He laughed, raised his hands. '
We play our games. We never expect… umbrage. Outrage. I could have told them. Warned them, but they wouldn't have listened. The conceit consumes all. A single building can become an entire world, the minds crowding and jostling, then clawing and gouging. All they need do is walk outside, but they don't. They've forgotten that outside exists.
Oh, all these faces of worship, none of which is true worship. Never mind the diligence, it does naught but serve the demon hatreds within.
The spites and fears and malice. I could have told them.'
Cutter walked to the wall, leading his horse. He climbed onto its back, perched on the saddle, then straightened until he was standing.
The top of the wall was within easy reach. He pulled himself up. In the compound beyond, bodies. A dozen or so, black-skinned, mostly naked, lying here and there on the hard-packed, white ground. Cutter squinted. The bodies looked to be… boiling, frothing, melting. They roiled before his eyes. He pulled his gaze away from them. The domed temple's doors were yawning open. To the right was a low corral surrounding a low, long structure, the mud-bricks exposed for two thirds of the facing wall. Troughs with plaster and tools indicated a task never to be completed. Vultures crowded the flat roof, yet none ventured down to feast on the corpses.
Cutter dropped down into the compound. He walked to the gates and lifted the bar clear, then pulled the heavy doors open.
Greyfrog was waiting on the other side. 'Dispirited and distraught. So much unpleasantness, Cutter, in this fell place. Dismay. No appetite.'
He edged past, scuttled warily towards the nearest corpse. 'Ah! They seethe! Worms, aswarm with worms. The flesh is foul, foul even for Greyfrog. Revulsed. Let us be away from this place!'
Cutter spied the well, in the corner between the outbuilding and the temple. He returned to where the others still waited outside the gate.
'Give me your waterskins. Heboric, can you check that outbuilding for feed?'
Heboric smiled. 'The livestock were never let out. It's been days. The heat killed them all. A dozen goats, two mules.'
'Just see if there's any feed.'
The Destriant headed towards the outbuilding.
Scillara dismounted, lifted clear the waterskins from Felisin Younger' s saddle and, with her own thrown over a shoulder, approached Cutter.
'Here.'
He studied her. 'I wonder if this is a warning.'
Her brows lifted fractionally, 'Are we that important, Cutter?'
'Well, I don't mean us, specifically. I meant, maybe we should take it as a warning.'
'Dead priests?'
'Nothing good comes of worship.'
She gave him an odd smile, then held out the skins.
Cutter cursed himself. He rarely made sense when trying to talk with this woman. Said things a fool would say. It was the mocking look in her eyes, the expression ever anticipating a smile as soon as he opened his mouth to speak. Saying nothing more, he collected the waterskins and walked back into the compound.
Scillara watched him for a moment, then turned as Felisin slipped down from her horse. 'We need the water.'
The younger woman nodded. 'I know.' She reached up and tugged at her hair, which had grown long. 'I keep seeing those bandits. And now, more dead people. And those cemeteries the track went right through yesterday, that field of bones. I feel we've stumbled into a nightmare, and every day we go further in. It's hot, but I'm cold all the time and getting colder.'
'That's dehydration,' Scillara said, repacking her pipe.
'That thing's not left your mouth in days,' Felisin said.
'Keeps the thirst at bay.'
'Really?'
'No, but that is what I keep telling myself.'
Felisin looked away. 'We do that a lot, don't we?'
'What?'
She shrugged. 'Tell ourselves things. In the hope that it'll make them true.'
Scillara drew hard on the pipe, blew a lungful of smoke upward, watching as the wind took it away.
'You look so healthy,' Felisin said, eyes on her once more. 'Whilst the rest of us wither away.'
'Not Greyfrog.'
'No, not Greyfrog.'
'Does he talk with you much?'
Felisin shook her head. 'Not much. Except when I wake up at night, after my bad dreams. Then he sings to me.'
'Sings?'
'Yes, in his people's language. Songs for children. He says he needs to practise them.'
Scillara shot her a glance. 'Really? Did he say why?'
'No.'
'How old were you, Felisin, when your mother sold you off?'
Another shrug. 'I don't remember.'
That might have been a lie, but Scillara did not pursue it.
Felisin stepped closer. 'Will you take care of me, Scillara?'
'What?'
'I feel as if I am going backwards. I felt… older. Back in Raraku.
Now, with every day, I feel more and more like a child. Smaller, ever smaller.'
Uneasy, Scillara said, 'I have never been much good at taking care of people.'
'I don't think Sha'ik was, either. She had… obsessions…'
'She did fine by you.'
'No, it was mostly Leoman. Even Toblakai. And Heboric, before Treach claimed him. She didn't take care of me, and that's why Bidithal…'
'Bidithal is dead. He got his own balls shoved down his scrawny throat.'
'Yes,' a whisper. 'If what Heboric says really happened. Toblakai…'
Scillara snorted. 'Think on that, Felisin. If Heboric had said that L' oric had done it, or Sha'ik, or even Leoman, well, you might have some reason to doubt. But Toblakai? No, you can believe it. Gods below, how can you not?'
The question forced a faint smile from Felisin and she nodded. 'You are right. Only Toblakai would have done that. Only Toblakai would have killed him… in that way. Tell me, Scillara, do you have a spare pipe?'
'A spare pipe? How about a dozen? Want to smoke them all at once?'
Felisin laughed. 'No, just one. So, you'll take care of me, won't you?'
'I will try.' And maybe she would. Like Greyfrog. Practice. She went looking for that pipe.
Cutter lifted the bucket clear and peered at the water. It looked clean, smelling of nothing in particular. Nonetheless, he hesitated.
Footsteps behind him. 'I found feed,' Heboric said. 'More than we can carry.'
'Think this water is all right? What killed those priests?'
'It's fine. I told you what killed them.'
You did? 'Should we look in the temple?'
'Greyfrog's already in there. I told him to find money, gems, food that hasn't spoiled yet. He wasn't happy about it, so I expect he'll be quick.'
'All right.' Cutter walked to a trough and dumped the water into it, then returned to the well. 'Think we can coax the horses in here?'
'I'll try.' But Heboric made no move to do so.
Cutter glanced over at him, saw the old man's strange eyes fixed on him. 'What's wrong?'
'Nothing, I think. I was noticing something. You have certain qualities, Cutter. Leadership, for one.'
The Daru scowled. 'If you want to be in charge, fine, go ahead.'
'I wasn't twisting a knife, lad. I meant what I said. You have taken command, and that's good. It's what we need. I have never been a leader. I've always followed. It's my curse. But that's not what they want to hear. Not from me. No, they want me to lead them out. Into freedom. I keep telling them, I know nothing of freedom.'
'Them? Who? Scillara and Felisin?'
'I'll get the horses,' Heboric said, turning about and walking off in his odd, toad-like gait.
Cutter refilled the bucket and poured the water into the trough. They would feed the horses here with what they couldn't take with them.
Load up on water. And, even now, loot the temple. Well, he had been a thief once, long ago. Besides, the dead cared nothing for wealth, did they?
A splitting, tearing sound from the centre of the compound behind him.
The sound of a portal opening. Cutter spun round, knives in his hands.
A rider emerged from the magical gate at full gallop. Reining in hard, hoofs skidding in clouds of dust, the dark grey horse a monstrous apparition, the hide worn away in places, exposing tendons, dried muscle and ligaments. Its eyes were empty pits, its mane long and greasy, whipping as the beast tossed its head. Seated in a high-backed saddle, the rider was, if anything, even more alarming in appearance.
Black, ornate armour, patched with verdigris, a dented, gouged helm, open-faced to reveal mostly bone, a few strips of flesh hanging from the cheek ridges, tendons binding the lower jaw, and a row of blackened, filed teeth. In the brief moment as the horse reared, dust exploding outward, Cutter saw more weapons on the rider than he could count. Swords at his back, throwing axes, sheathed handles jutting upward from the saddle, something like a boar-spitter, the bronze point as long as a short sword, gripped in the gauntleted left hand. A long bow, a short bow, knives'Where is he!?' The voice was a savage, enraged roar. Pieces of armour bounced on the ground as the figure twisted round, searching the compound. 'Damn you, Hood! I was on the trail!' He saw Cutter and was suddenly silent, motionless. 'She left one alive? I doubt it. You're no whelp of D'rek. Drink deep that water, mortal, it matters not. You' re dead anyway. You and every damned blood-swishing living thing in this realm and every other!'
He pulled his horse around to face the temple, where Greyfrog had appeared, arms heaped with silks, boxes, foodstuffs and cooking utensils. 'A toad who likes to cook in comfort! The madness of the Grand Ending is upon us! Come any closer, demon, and I'll spit your legs and roast them over a fire – do you think I no longer eat? You are right, but I will roast you in vicious spite, drooling with irony – ah! You liked that, didn't you?' He faced Cutter once more. 'Is this what he wanted me to see? He pulled me from the trail… for this?'
Cutter sheathed his knives. Through the gates beyond came Heboric Ghost Hands, leading the horses. The old man paused upon seeing the rider, head cocking, then he continued on. 'Too late, Soldier,' he said. 'Or too early!' He laughed.
The rider lifted the spear high. 'Treach made a mistake, I see, but I must salute you nonetheless.'
Heboric halted. 'A mistake, Soldier? Yes, I agree, but there is little I can do about it. I acknowledge your reluctant salute. What brings you here?'
'Ask Hood if you want the answer to that!' He upended the spear and drove it point first into the ground, then swung down from the saddle, more fragments of the rotting armour falling away. 'I expect I must look around, as if I cannot already see all there is to see. The pantheon is riven asunder, what of it?'
Heboric pulled the nervous horses towards the trough, giving the warrior a wide berth. As he approached Cutter he shrugged. 'The Soldier of Hood, High House Death. He'll not trouble us, I think.'
'He spoke to me in Daru,' Cutter said. 'At first. And Malazan with you.'
'Yes.'
The Soldier was tall, and Cutter now saw something hanging from a knife-studded belt. An enamel mask, cracked, smudged, with a single streak of red paint along one cheek. The Daru's eyes widened. 'Beru fend,' he whispered. 'A Seguleh!'
At that the Soldier turned, then walked closer. 'Daru, you are far from home! Tell me, do the Tyrant's children still rule Darujhistan?'
Cutter shook his head.
'You look crazed, mortal, what ails you?'
'I – I'd heard, I mean – Seguleh usually say nothing – to anyone. Yet you…'
'The fever zeal still grips my mortal kin, does it? Idiots! The Tyrant's army still holds sway in the city, then?'
'Who? What? Darujhistan is ruled by a council. We have no army-'
'Brilliant insanity! No Seguleh in the city?'
'No! Just… stories. Legends, I mean.'
'So where are my masked stick-pivoting compatriots hiding?'
'An island, it's said, far to the south, off the coast, beyond Morn-'
'Morn! Now the sense of it comes to me. They are being held in readiness. Darujhistan's council – mages one and all, yes? Undying, secretive, paranoid mages! Crouching low, lest the Tyrant returns, as one day he must! Returns, looking for his army! Hah, a council!'
'That's not the council, sir,' Cutter said. 'If you are speaking of mages, that would be the T'orrud Cabal-'
'T'orrud! Yes, clever. Outrageous! Barukanal, Derudanith, Travalegrah, Mammoltenan? These names strike your soul, yes? I see it.'
'Mammot was my uncle-'
'Uncle! Hah! Absurd!' He spun round. 'I have seen enough! Hood! I am leaving! She's made her position clear as ice, hasn't she? Hood, you damned fool, you didn't need me for this! Now I must seek out his trail all over again, damn your hoary bones!' He swung back onto the undead horse.
Heboric called out from where he stood by the trough, 'Soldier! May I ask – who do you hunt?'
The sharpened teeth lifted and lowered in a silent laugh. 'Hunt? Oh yes, we all hunt, but I was closest! Piss on Hood's bony feet! Pluck out the hairs of his nose and kick his teeth in! Drive a spear up his puckered behind and set him on a windy mountain top! Oh, I'll find him a wife some day, lay coin on it! But first, I hunt!'
He collected the reins, pulled the horse round. The portal opened. '
Skinner! Hear me, you damned Avowed! Cheater of death! I am coming for you! Now!' Horse and rider plunged into the rent, vanished, and a moment later the gate disappeared as well.
The sudden silence rang like a dirge in Cutter's head. He took a ragged breath, then shook himself. 'Beru fend,' he whispered again. '
He was my uncle…'
'I will feed the horses, lad,' Heboric said. 'Go out to the women.
They've likely been hearing shouting and don't know what's going on.
Go on, Cutter.'
Nodding, the Daru began walking. Barukanal. Mammoltenan… What had the Soldier revealed? What ghastly secret hid in the apparition's words? What do Baruk and the others have to do with the Tyrant? And the Seguleh? The Tyrant is returning? 'Gods, I've got to get home.'
Outside the gates, Felisin and Scillara were seated on the track. Both puffing rustleaf, and although Felisin looked sickly, there was a determined, defiant look in her eyes.
'Relax,' Scillara said. 'She's not inhaling.'
'I'm not?' Felisin asked her. 'How do you do that?'
'Don't you have any questions?' Cutter demanded.
They looked at him. 'About what?' Scillara asked.
'Didn't you hear?'
'Hear what?'
They didn't hear. They weren't meant to. But we were. Why? Had the Soldier been mistaken in his assumptions? Sent by Hood, not to see the dead priests and priestesses of D'rek… but to speak with us.
The Tyrant shall return. This, to a son of Darujhistan. 'Gods,' he whispered again, 'I've got to get home.'
Greyfrog's voice shouted in his skull, 'Friend Cutter! Surprise and alarm!'
'What now?' he asked, turning to see the demon bounding into view.
'The Soldier of Death. Wondrous. He left his spear!'
Cutter stared, with sinking heart, at the weapon clutched between the demon's teeth. 'Good thing you don't need your mouth to talk.'
'Solemn agreement, friend Cutter! Query. Do you like these silks?'
The portal into the sky keep required a short climb. Mappo and Icarium stood on the threshold, staring into a cavernous chamber. The floor was almost level. A faint light seemed to emanate from the walls of stone. 'We can camp here,' the Trell said.
'Yes,' Icarium agreed. 'But first, shall we explore?'
'Of course.'
The chamber housed three additional mechanisms, identical to the one submerged in the lake, each positioned on trestles like ships in drydock. The hatches yawned open, revealing the padded seats within.
Icarium walked to the nearest one and began examining its interior.
Mappo untied the pouch at his belt and began removing the larger one within. A short time later he laid out the bedrolls, food and wine.
Then he drew out from his pack an iron-banded mace, not his favourite one, but another, expendable since it possessed no sorcerous virtues.
Icarium returned to his side. 'They are lifeless,' he said. 'Whatever energy was originally imbued within the machinery has ebbed away, and I see no means of restoring it.'
'That is not too surprising, is it? I suspect this keep has been here a long time.'
'True enough, Mappo. But imagine, were we able to enliven one of these mechanisms! We could travel at great speed and in comfort! One for you and one for me, ah, this is tragic. But look, there is a passageway.
Let us delve into the greater mystery this keep offers.'
Carrying only his mace, Mappo followed Icarium into the broad corridor.
Storage rooms lined the passage, whatever they had once held now nothing more than heaps of undisturbed dust.
Sixty paces in, they reached an intersection. An arched barrier was before them, shimmering like a vertical pool of quicksilver. Corridors went to the right and left, both appearing to curve inward in the distance.
Icarium drew out a coin from the pouch at his belt, and Mappo was amused to see that it was of a vintage five centuries old.
'You are the world's greatest miser, Icarium.'
The Jhag smiled, then shrugged. 'I seem to recall that no-one ever accepts payment from us, no matter how egregious the expense of the service provided. Is that an accurate memory, Mappo?'
'It is.'
'Well, then, how can you accuse me of being niggardly?' He tossed the coin at the silver barrier. It vanished. Ripples rolled outward, went beyond the stone frame, then returned.
'This is a passive manifestation,' Icarium said. 'Tell me, did you hear the coin strike anything beyond?'
'No, nor did it make a sound upon entering the… uh, the door.'
'I am tempted to pass through.'
'That might prove unhealthy.'
Icarium hesitated, then drew a skinning-knife and inserted the blade into the barrier. Gentler ripples. He pulled it out. The blade looked intact. None of the substance had adhered to it. Icarium ran a fingertip along the iron. 'No change in temperature,' he observed.
'Shall I try a finger I won't miss much?' Mappo asked, holding up his left hand.
'And which one would that be, friend?'
'I don't know. I expect I'd miss any of them.'
'The tip?'
'Sound caution.' Making a fist, barring the last, smallest finger, Mappo stepped close, then dipped the finger up to the first knuckle into the shimmering door. 'No pain, at least. It is, I think, very thin.' He drew his hand back and examined the digit. 'Hale.'
'With the condition of your fingers, Mappo, how can you tell?'
'Ah, I see a change. No dirt left, not even crusted under the nail.'
'To pass through is to be cleansed. Do you think?'
Mappo reached in with his whole hand. 'I feel air beyond. Cooler, damper.' He withdrew his hand and peered at it. 'Clean. Too clean. I am alarmed.'
'Why?'
'Because it makes me realize how filthy I've become, that's why.'
'I wonder, will it do the same with our clothes?'
'That would be nice, although it may possess some sort of threshold.
Too filthy, and it simply annihilates the offending material. We might emerge on the other side naked.'
'Now I am alarmed, friend.'
'Yes. Well, what shall we do, Icarium?'
'Do we have any choice?' With that, the Jhag strode through the barrier.
Mappo sighed, then followed.
Only to be clutched at the shoulder and pulled back from a second step – which, he saw, would have been into empty air.
The cavern before them was vast. A bridge had once connected the ledge they stood on to an enormous, towering fortress floating in space, a hundred or more paces opposite them. Sections of that stone span remained, seemingly unsupported, but others had broken away and now floated, motionless, in the air.
Far below, dizzyingly far, the cavern was swallowed in darkness. Above them, a faintly glittering dome of black rough-hewn stone, like a night sky. Tiered buildings rose along the inner walls, rows of dark windows but no balconies. Dust and rubble clouded the air, none of it moving. Mappo said nothing, he was too stunned by the vista before them.
Icarium touched his shoulder, then pointed to something small hovering directly before them. The coin, but not motionless as it had first seemed. It was drifting away, slowly. The Jhag reached out and retrieved it, returning it to the pouch at his waist. 'A worthy return on my investment,' he murmured. 'Since there is momentum, we should be able to travel. Launch ourselves from this ledge. Over to the fortress.'
'Sound plan,' Mappo said, 'but for all the obstacles in between.'
'Ah, good point.'
'There may be an intact bridge, on the opposite side. We could take one of the side passages behind us. If such a bridge exists, likely it will be marked with a silver barrier as this one was.'
'Have you never wished you could fly, Mappo?'
'As a child, perhaps, I am sure I did.'
'Only as a child?'
'It is where dreams of flight belong, Icarium. Shall we explore one of the corridors behind us?'
'Very well, although I admit I hope we fail in finding a bridge.'
Countless rooms, passages and alcoves along the wide, arched corridor, the floors thick with dust, odd, faded symbols etched above doorways, possibly a numerical system of some sort. The air was stagnant, faintly acrid. No furnishings remained in the adjoining chambers. Nor, Mappo realized, any corpses such as the one Icarium had discovered in the mechanism resting on the lake-bed. An orderly evacuation? If so, where had the Short-Tails gone?
Eventually, they came upon another silver door. Cautiously passing through it, they found themselves standing on the threshold of a narrow bridge. Intact, leading across to the floating fortress, which hovered much closer on this, the opposite side from whence they had first seen it. The back wall of the island keep was much rougher, the windows vertical slashes positioned seemingly haphazardly on the misshapen projections, crooked insets and twisted towers.
'Extraordinary,' Icarium said in a low voice. 'What, I wonder, does this hidden face of madness reveal of the makers? These K'Chain Che'
Malle?'
'A certain tension, perhaps?'
'Tension?'
'Between,' Mappo said, 'order and chaos. An inner dichotomy, conflicting impulses…'
'The contradictions evident in all intelligent life,' Icarium said, nodding. He stepped onto the span, then, arms wheeling, began drifting away.
Mappo reached out and just managed to grasp the Jhag's flailing foot.
He pulled Icarium back down onto the threshold. 'Well,' he said, grunting, 'that was interesting. You weighed nothing, when I had you in my grip. As light as a mote of dust.'
Slowly, tentatively, the Jhag clambered upright once more. 'That was most alarming. It seems we may have to fly after all.'
'Then why build bridges?'
'I have no idea. Unless,' he added, 'whatever mechanism invokes this weightlessness is breaking down, losing its precision.'
'So the bridges should have been exempted? Possibly. In any case, see the railings, projecting not up but out to either side? Modest, but sufficient for handholds, were one to crawl.'
'Yes. Shall we?'
The sensation, Mappo decided as he reached the midway point, Icarium edging along ahead of him, was not a pleasant one. Nausea, vertigo, a strange urge to pull one's grip loose due to the momentum provided by one's own muscles. All sense of up and down had vanished, and at times Mappo was convinced they were climbing a ladder, rather than snaking more or less horizontally across the span of the bridge.
A narrow but tall entranceway gaped ahead, where the bridge made contact with the fortress. Fragments of the door it had once held floated motionless before it. Whatever had shattered it had come from within.
Icarium reached the threshold and climbed to his feet. Moments later Mappo joined him. They peered into the darkness.
'I smell… vast… death.'
Mappo nodded. He drew out his mace, looked down at the spiked ball of iron, then slipped the handle back through the leather loop at his belt.
Icarium in the lead, they entered the fortress.
The corridor was as narrow as the doorway itself, the walls uneven, black basalt, wet with condensation, the floor precarious with random knobs and projections, and depressions slick with ice that cracked and shifted underfoot. It ran more or less straight for forty paces. By the time they reached the opening at the end their eyes had adjusted to the gloom.
Another enormous chamber, as if the heart of the keep had been carved out. A massive cruciform of bound, black wood filled the cavern, and on it was impaled a dragon. Long dead, once frozen but now rotting. An iron spike as thick around as Mappo's torso had been driven into the dragon's throat, just above the breast bones. Aquamarine blood had seeped down from the wound and still dripped heavy and turgid onto the stone floor in slow, steady, fist-sized drops.
'I know this dragon,' Icarium whispered.
How? No, ask not.
'I know this dragon,' Icarium said again. 'Sorrit. Its aspect was…
Serc. The warren of the sky.' He lifted both hands to his face. 'Dead.
Sorrit has been slain…'
'A most delicious throne. No, not delicious. Most bitter, foul, illtasting, what was I thinking?'
'You don't think, Curdle. You never think. I can't remember any throne. What throne? There must be some mistake. Not-Apsalar heard wrong, that much is obvious. Completely wrong, an absolute error.
Besides, someone's sitting in it.'
'Deliciously.'
'I told you, there was no throne-'
The conversation had been going on for half the night, as they travelled the strange paths of Shadow, winding across a ghostly landscape that constantly shifted between two worlds, although both were equally ravaged and desolate. Apsalar wondered at the sheer extent of this fragment of the Shadow Realm. If her recollection of Cotillion's memories was accurate, the realm wandered untethered to the world Apsalar called her own, and neither the Rope nor Shadowthrone possessed any control over its seemingly random peregrinations. Even stranger, it was clear that roads of a sort stretched out from the fragment, twisting and wending vast distances, like roots, or tentacles, and sometimes their motions proved independent of the larger fragment.
As with the one they now traversed. More or less following the eastern road leading out from Ehrlitan, skirting the thin ribbon of cedars on their left, beyond which was the sea. And as the traders' track began to curve northward to meet the coastline, the Shadow Road joined with it, narrowing until it was barely the width of the track itself.
Ignoring the ceaseless nattering from the two ghosts flitting behind her, Apsalar pushed on, fighting the lack of sleep and eager to cover as much ground as possible before the sun's rise. Her control of the Shadow Road was growing more tenuous – it vanished with every slip of her concentration. Finally, she halted.
The warren crumbled around them. The sky to the east was lightening.
They stood on the traders' track at the base of a winding climb to the coastal ridge, rhizan darting through the air around them.
'The sun returns! Not again! Telorast, we need to hide! Somewhere!'
'No we don't, you idiot. We just get harder to see, that's all, unless you're not mindful. Of course, Curdle, you are incapable of being mindful, so I look forward to your wailing dissolution. Peace, at last. For a while, at least-'
'You are evil, Telorast! I've always known it, even before you went and used that knife on-'
'Be quiet! I never used that knife on anyone.'
'And you're a liar!'
'Say that again and I'll stick you!'
'You can't! I'm dissolving!'
Apsalar ran a hand across her brow. It came away glistening with sweat. 'That thread of Shadow felt… wrong,' she said.
'Oh yes,' Telorast replied, slipping round to crouch before her in a miasma of swirling grey. 'It's sickly. All the outer reaches are.
Poisoned, rotting with chaos. We blame Shadowthrone.'
'Shadowthrone? Why?'
'Why not? We hate him.'
'And that is sufficient reason?'
'The sufficientest reason of all.'
Apsalar studied the climbing track. 'I think we're close.'
'Good. Excellent. I'm frightened. Let's stop here. Let's go back, now.'
Stepping through the ghost, Apsalar began the ascent.
'That was a vicious thing to do,' Telorast hissed behind her. 'If I possessed you I wouldn't do that to me. Not even to Curdle, I wouldn' t. Well, maybe, if I was mad. You're not mad at me, are you? Please don't be mad at me. I'll do anything you ask, until you're dead. Then I'll dance on your stinking, bloated corpse, because that's what you would want me to do, isn't it? I would if I was you and you were dead and I lingered long enough to dance on you, which I would do.'
Reaching the crest, Apsalar saw that the track continued along the ridge another two hundred paces before twisting back down onto the lee side. Cool morning wind plucked the sweat from her face, sighing in from the vast, dark cape that was the sea on her left. She looked down to see a narrow strand of beach fifteen or so man-heights below, cluttered with driftwood. Along the track to her right, near the far end, a stand of stunted trees rose from a niche in the cliff-side, and in their midst stood a stone tower. White plaster covered its surface for most of its height, barring the uppermost third, where the roughcut stones were still exposed.
She walked towards it as the first spears of sunlight shot over the horizon.
Heaps of slate filled the modest enclosure surrounding the tower. Noone was visible, and Apsalar could hear nothing from within as she strode across to halt in front of the door.
Telorast's faint whisper came to her: 'This isn't good. A stranger lives here. Must be a stranger, since we've never met. And if not a stranger then somebody I know, which would be even worse-'
'Be quiet,' Apsalar said, reaching up to pound on the door – then stopped, and stepping back, stared up at the enormous reptilian skull set in the wall above the doorway. 'Hood's breath!' She hesitated, Telorast voicing minute squeals and gasps behind her, then thumped on the weathered wood with a gloved fist.
The sounds of something falling over, then of boots crunching on grit and gravel. A bolt was tugged aside, and the door swung open in a cloud of dust.
The man standing within filled the doorway. Napan, massive muscles, blunt face, small eyes. His scalp shaved and white with dust, through which a few streaks of sweat ran down to glisten in his thick, wiry eyebrows.
Apsalar smiled. 'Hello, Urko.'
The man grunted, then said, 'Urko drowned. They all drowned.'
'It's that lack of imagination that gave you away,' she replied.
'Who are you?'
'Apsalar-'
'No you're not. Apsalar was an Imass-'
'Not the Mistress of Thieves. It is simply the name I chose-'
'Damned arrogant of you, too.'
'Perhaps. In any case, I bring greetings from Dancer.'
The door slammed in her face.
Coughing in the dust gusting over her, Apsalar stepped back and wiped grit from her eyes.
'Hee hee,' said Telorast behind her. 'Can we go now?'
She pounded on the door again.
After a long moment, it opened once more. He was scowling. 'I once tried to drown him, you know.'
'No, yes, I recall. You were drunk.'
'You couldn't have recalled anything – you weren't there. Besides, I wasn't drunk.'
'Oh. Then… why?'
'Because he irritated me, that's why. Just like you're doing right now.'
'I need to talk to you.'
'What for?'
She suddenly had no answer to give him.
His eyes narrowed. 'He really thought I was drunk? What an idiot.'
'Well, I suppose the alternative was too depressing.'
'I never knew he was such a sensitive soul. Are you his daughter?
Something… in the way you stand…'
'May I come in?'
He moved away from the door. Apsalar entered, then halted once more, her eyes on the enormous headless skeleton commanding the interior, reaching all the way up to the tower's ceiling. Bipedal, long-tailed, the bones a burnished brown colour. 'What is this?'
Urko said, 'Whatever it was, it could swallow a bhederin in one bite.'
'How?' Telorast asked Apsalar in a whisper. 'It has no head.'
The man heard the question, and he now scowled. 'You have company.
What is it, a familiar or something? I can't see it, and that I don't like. Not at all.'
'A ghost.'
'You should banish it to Hood,' he said. 'Ghosts don't belong here, that's why they're ghosts.'
'He's an evil man!' Telorast hissed. 'What are those?'
Apsalar could just make out the shade as it drifted towards a long table to the right. On it were smaller versions of the skeletal behemoth, three of them crow-sized, although instead of beaks the creatures possessed long snouts lined with needle-like teeth. The bones had been bound together with gut and the figures were mounted so that they stood upright, like sentry meer-rats.
Urko was studying Apsalar, an odd expression on his blunt, strongfeatured face. Then he seemed to start, and said, 'I have brewed some tea.'
'That would be nice, thank you.'
He walked over to the modest kitchen area and began a search for cups.
'It's not that I don't want visitors… well, it is. They always bring trouble. Did Dancer have anything else to say?'
'No. And he now calls himself Cotillion.'
'I knew that. I'm not surprised he's the Patron of Assassins. He was the most feared killer in the empire. More than Surly, who was just treacherous. Or Topper, who was just cruel. I suppose those two still think they won. Fools. Who now strides among the gods, eh?' He brought a clay cup over. 'Local herbs, mildly toxic but not fatal. Antidote to buther snake bites, which is a good thing, since the bastards infest the area. Turns out I built my tower near a breeding pit.'
One of the small skeletons on the tabletop fell over, then jerkily climbed back upright, the tail jutting out, the torso angling almost horizontal.
'One of my ghost companions has just possessed that creature,' Apsalar said. A second one lurched into awkward motion.
'Gods below,' whispered Urko. 'Look how they stand! Of course! It has to be that way. Of course!' He stared up at the massive fossil skeleton. 'It's all wrong! They lean forward – for balance!'
Telorast and Curdle were quickly mastering their new bodies, jaws snapping, hopping about on the tabletop.
'I suspect they won't want to relinquish those skeletons,' Apsalar said.
'They can have them – as reward for this revelation!' He paused, looked round, then muttered, 'I'll have to knock down a wall…'
Apsalar sighed. 'I suppose we should be relieved one of them did not decide on the big version.'
Urko looked over at her with slightly wide eyes, then he grunted. '
Drink your tea – the toxicity gets worse as it cools.'
She sipped. And found her lips and tongue suddenly numb.
Urko smiled. 'Perfect. This way the conversation stays brief and you can be on your way all the sooner.'
'Mathard.'
'It wears off.' He found a stool and sat down facing her. 'You're Dancer's daughter. You must be, although I see no facial similarities – your mother must have been beautiful. It's in your walk, and how you stand there. You're his beget, and he was selfish enough to teach you, his own child, the ways of assassination. I can see how that troubles you. It's there in your eyes. The legacy haunts you – you're feeling trapped, caged in. There's already blood on your hands, isn't there?
Is he proud of that?' He grimaced, then spat. 'I should've drowned him then and there. Had I been drunk, I would have.'
'You are wong.'
'Wong? Wrong, you mean? Am I?'
She nodded, fighting her fury at his trickery. She had come with the need to talk, and he had stolen from her the ability to shape words. '
Nnnoth th-aughther. Mmothethed.'
He frowned.
Apsalar pointed at the two reptilian skeletons now scuttling about on the stone-littered floor. 'Mmothethion.'
'Possession. He possessed you? The god possessed you? Hood pluck his balls and chew slow!' Urko heaved himself to his feet, hands clenching into fists. 'Here, hold on, lass. I have an antidote to the antidote.'
He found a dusty beaker, rubbed at it until a patch of the glazed reddish earthenware was visible. 'This one, aye.' He found another cup and poured it full. 'Drink.'
Sickly sweet, the taste then turning bitter and stinging. 'Oh. That was… fast.'
'My apologies, Apsalar. I'm a miserable sort most of the time, I admit it. And I've talked more since you arrived than I have in years. So I' ll stop now. How can I help you?'
She hesitated, then looked away. 'You can't, really. I shouldn't have come. I still have tasks to complete.'
'For him?'
She nodded.
'Why?'
'Because I gave my word.'
'You owe him nothing, except maybe a knife in his back.'
'Once I am done… I wish to disappear.'
He sat down once more. 'Ah. Yes, well.'
'I think an accidental drowning won't hold any longer, Urko.'
A faint grin. 'It was our joke, you see. We all made the pact… to drown. Nobody got it. Nobody gets it. Probably never will.'
'I did. Dancer does. Even Shadowthrone, I think.'
'Not Surly. She never had a sense of humour. Always obsessing on the details. I wonder, are people like that ever happy? Are they even capable of it? What inspires their lives, anyway? Give 'em too much and they complain. Give 'em too little and they complain some more. Do it right and half of them complain it's too much and the other half too little.'
'No wonder you gave up consorting with people, Urko.'
'Aye, I prefer bones these days. People. Too many of them by far, if you ask me.'
She looked round. 'Dancer wanted you shaken up some. Why?'
The Napan's eyes shifted away, and he did not answer.
Apsalar felt a tremor of unease. 'He knows something, doesn't he?
That's what he's telling you by that simple greeting.'
'Assassin or not, I always liked Dancer. Especially the way he could keep his mouth shut.'
The two reptilian skeletons were scrabbling at the door. Apsalar studied them for a moment. 'Disappearing… from a god.'
'Aye, that won't be easy.'
'He said I could leave, once I'm done. And he won't come after me.'
'Believe him, Apsalar. Dancer doesn't lie, and I suspect even godhood won't change that.'
I think that is what I needed to hear. 'Thank you.' She headed towards the door.
'So soon?' Urko asked.
She glanced back at him. 'Too much or too little?'
He narrowed his gaze, then grunted a laugh. 'You're right. It's about perfect – I need to be mindful about what I'm asking for.'
'Yes,' she said. And that is also what Dancer wanted to remind you about, isn't it?
Urko looked away. 'Damn him, anyway.'
Smiling, Apsalar opened the door. Telorast and Curdle scurried outside. She followed a moment later.
Thick spit on the palms of the hands, a careful rubbing together, then a sweep back through the hair. The outlawed Gral straightened, kicked sand over the small cookfire, then collected his pack and slung it over his shoulders. He picked up his hunting bow and strung it, then fitted an arrow. A final glance around, and he began walking.
The trail was not hard to follow. Taralack Veed continued scanning the rough, broken scrubland. A hare, a desert grouse, a mamlak lizard, anything would do; he was tired of the sun-dried strips of bhederin and he'd eaten the last date two nights previously. No shortage of tubers, of course, but too much and he'd spend half the day squatting over a hastily dug hole.
The D'ivers demon was closing on its quarry, and it was vital that Taralack remain in near proximity, so that he could make certain of the outcome. He was being well paid for the task ahead and that was all that mattered. Gold, and with it, the clout to raise a company of mercenaries. Then back to his village, to deliver well-deserved justice upon those who had betrayed him. He would assume the mantle of warleader then, and lead the Gral to glory. His destiny lay before him, and all was well.
Dejim Nebrahl revealed no digressions, no detours in its path. The D' ivers was admirably singular, true to its geas. There would be no deviation, for it lusted for the freedom that was the reward for the task's completion. This was the proper manner in which to make bargains, and Taralack found himself admiring the Nameless Ones. No matter how dread-filled the tales he had heard of the secret cult, his own dealings with them had been clean, lucrative and straightforward.
It had survived the Malazan conquest, and that was saying something.
The old Emperor had displayed uncanny skill at infiltrating the innumerable cults abounding in Seven Cities, then delivering unmitigated slaughter upon the adherents.
That, too, was worthy of admiration.
This distant Empress, however, was proving far less impressive. She made too many mistakes. Taralack could not respect such a creature, and he ritually cursed her name with every dawn and every dusk, with as much vehemence as he cursed the seventy-four other avowed enemies of Taralack Veed.
Sympathy was like water in the desert. Hoarded, reluctantly meted out in the barest of sips. And he, Taralack Veed, could walk a thousand deserts on a single drop.
Such were the world's demands. He knew himself well enough to recognize that his was a viper's charm, alluring and mesmerizing and ultimately deadly. A viper made guest in a nest-bundle of meer-rats, how could they curse him for his very nature? He had killed the husband, after all, in service to her heart, a heart that had swallowed him whole. He had never suspected that she would then cast him out, that she would have simply made use of him, that another man had been waiting in the hut's shadow to ease the tortured spirit of the grieving widow. He had not believed that she too possessed the charms of a viper.
He halted near a boulder, collected a waterskin from his pack and removed the broad fired-clay stopper. Tugging his loincloth down he squatted and peed into the water-skin. There were no rock-springs for fifteen or more leagues in the direction the D'ivers was leading him.
That path would eventually converge on a traders' track, of course, but that was a week or more away. Clearly, the D'ivers Dejim Nebrahl did not suffer the depredations of thirst.
The rewards of singular will, he well knew. Worthy of emulation, as far as was physically possible. He straightened, tugged the loincloth back up. Replacing the stopper, Taralack Veed slung the skin over a shoulder and resumed his measured pursuit.
Beneath glittering stars and a pale smear in the east, Scillara knelt on the hard ground, vomiting the last of her supper and then nothing but bile as heave after heave racked through her. Finally the spasms subsided. Gasping, she crawled away a short distance, then sat with her back to a boulder.
The demon Greyfrog watched from ten paces away, slowly swaying from side to side.
Watching him invited a return of the nausea, so she looked away, pulled out her pipe and began repacking it. 'It's been days,' she muttered. 'I thought I was past this. Dammit…'
Greyfrog ambled closer, approached the place where she had been sick.
It sniffed, then pushed heaps of sand over the offending spot.
With a practised gesture, Scillara struck a quick series of sparks down into the pipe's bowl with the flint and iron striker. The shredded sweet-grass mixed in with the rustleaf caught, and moments later she was drawing smoke. 'That's good, Toad. Cover my trail… it' s a wonder you've not told the others. Respecting my privacy?'
Greyfrog, predictably, did not reply.
Scillara ran a hand along the swell of her belly. How could she be getting fatter and fatter when she'd been throwing back one meal in three for weeks? There was something diabolical about this whole pregnancy thing. As if she possessed her own demon, huddled there in her belly. Well, the sooner it was out the quicker she could sell it to some pimp or harem master. There to be fed and raised and to learn the trade of the supplicant.
Most women who bothered stopped at two or three, she knew, and now she understood why. Healers and witches and midwives and sucklers kept the babies healthy enough, and the world remained to teach them its ways.
The misery lay in the bearing, in carrying this growing weight, in its secret demands on her reserves.
And something else was happening as well. Something that proved the child's innate evil. She'd been finding herself drifting into a dreamy, pleasant state, inviting a senseless smile that, quite simply, horrified Scillara. What was there to be happy about? The world was not pleasant. It did not whisper contentment. No, the poisonous seduction stealing through her sought delusion, blissful stupidity – and she had had enough of that already. As nefarious as durhang, this deadly lure.
Her bulging belly would soon be obvious, she knew. Unless she tried to make herself even fatter. There was something comforting about all that solid bulk – but no, that was the delusional seduction all over again, finding a new path into her brain.
Well, it seemed the nausea was fully past, now. Scillara regained her feet and made her way back to the encampment. A handful of coals in the hearth, drifting threads of smoke, and three recumbent figures wrapped in blankets. Greyfrog appeared in her wake, moving past her to squat near the hearth. It snapped a capemoth out of the air and stuffed it into its broad mouth. Its eyes were a murky green as it studied Scillara.
She refilled her pipe. Why was it just women that had babies, anyway?
Surely some ascendant witch could have made some sorcerous adjustment to the inequity by now? Or was it maybe not a flaw at all, but an advantage of some sort? Not that any obvious advantages came to mind.
Apart from this strange, suspicious bliss constantly stealing through her. She drew hard on the rustleaf. Bidithal had made the cutting away of pleasure the first ritual among girls in his cult. He had liked the notion of feeling nothing at all, removing the dangerous desire for sensuality. She could not recall if she had ever known such sensations.
Bidithal had inculcated religious rapture, a state of being, she now suspected, infinitely more selfish and self-serving than satisfying one's own body. Being pregnant whispered of a similar kind of rapture, and that made her uneasy.
A sudden commotion. She turned to see that Cutter had sat up.
'Something wrong?' she asked in a low voice.
He faced her, his expression indistinct in the darkness, then sighed shakily. 'No. A bad dream.'
'It's nearing dawn,' Scillara said.
'Why are you awake?'
'No particular reason.'
He shook off the blanket, rose and walked over to the hearth.
Crouched, tossing a handful of tinder onto the glowing coals, waited until it flared to life, then began adding dung chips.
'Cutter, what do you think will happen on Otataral Island?'
'I'm not sure. That old Malazan's not exactly clear on the matter, is he?'
'He is Destriant to the Tiger of Summer.'
Cutter glanced across at her. 'Reluctantly.'
She added more rustleaf to her pipe. 'He doesn't want followers. And if he did, it wouldn't be us. Well, not me, nor Felisin. We're not warriors. You,' she added, 'would be a more likely candidate.'
He snorted. 'No, not me, Scillara. It seems I follow another god.'
'It seems?'
She could just make out his shrug. 'You fall into things,' he said.
A woman. Well, that explains a lot. 'As good a reason as any other,' she said behind a lungful of smoke.
'What do you mean?'
'I mean, I don't see much reason behind following any god or goddess.
If you're worth their interest, they use you. I know about being used, and most of the rewards are anything but, even if they look good at the time.'
'Well,' he said after a moment, 'someone's rewarded you.'
'Is that what you call it?'
'Call what? You're looking so… healthy. Full of life, I mean. And you're not as skinny as before.' He paused, then hastily added, 'Which is good. Half-starved didn't suit you – doesn't suit anyone, of course. You, included. Anyway, that's all.'
She sat, smoking, watching him in the growing light. 'We are quite a burden to you, aren't we, Cutter?'
'No! Not at all! I'm to escort you, a task I happily accepted. And that hasn't changed.'
'Don't you think Greyfrog is sufficient to protect us?'
'No, I mean, yes, he probably is. Even so, he is a demon, and that complicates things – it's not as if he can just amble into a village or city, is it? Or negotiate supplies and passage or stuff like that.'
'Felisin can. So can I, in fact.'
'Well. You're saying you don't want me here?'
'I'm saying we don't need you. Which isn't the same as saying we don't want you, Cutter. Besides, you've done well leading this odd little company, although it's obvious you're not used to doing that.'
'Listen, if you want to take over, that's fine by me.'
Ah, a woman who wouldn't follow, then. 'I see no reason to change anything,' she said offhandedly.
He was staring at her as she in turn regarded him, her gaze as level and as unperturbed as she could manage. 'What is the point of all this?' he demanded.
'Point? No point. Just making conversation, Cutter. Unless… is there something in particular you would like to talk about?'
She watched him pull back in every way but physically, as he said, '
No, nothing.'
'You don't know me well enough, then, is that it? Well, we'll have plenty of time.'
'I know you… I think. I mean, oh, you're right, I don't know you at all. I don't know women, is what I really mean. And how could I? It's impossible, trying to follow your thoughts, trying to make sense out of what you say, what is hidden behind your words-'
'Would that be me, specifically, or women in general?'
He threw more dung on the fire. 'No,' he muttered, 'nothing in particular I'd like to talk about.'
'All right, but I have a few topics…'
He groaned.
'You were given the task,' she said. 'To escort us, correct? Who gave you that task?'
'A god.'
'But not Heboric's god.'
'No.'
'So there's at least two gods interested in us. That's not good, Cutter. Does Ghost Hands know about this? No, he wouldn't, would he?
No reason to tell him-'
'It's not hard to figure out,' Cutter retorted. 'I was waiting for you. In Iskaral Pust's temple.'
'Malazan gods. Shadowthrone or Cotillion. But you're not Malazan, are you?'
'Really, Scillara,' Cutter said wearily, 'do we have to discuss this right now?'
'Unless,' she went on, 'your lover was. Malazan, that is. The original follower of those gods.'
'Oh, my head hurts,' he mumbled, hands up over his eyes, the fingers reaching into his hair, then clenching as if to begin tearing it out.
'How – no, I don't want to know. It doesn't matter. I don't care.'
'So where is she now?'
'No more.'
Scillara subsided. She pulled out a narrow-bladed knife and began cleaning her pipe.
He suddenly rose. 'I'll start on breakfast.'
A sweet boy, she decided. Like damp clay in a woman's hands. A woman who knew what she was doing, that is.
Now the question is, should I be doing this? Felisin adored Cutter, after all. Then again, we could always share.
'Smirking observation. Soft-curved, large-breasted woman wants to press flesh with Cutter.'
Not now, Greyfrog, he replied without speaking aloud as he removed food from the pack.
'Alarm. No, not now indeed. The others are wakening from their uneasy dreams. Awkward and dismay to follow, especially with Felisin Younger.'
Cutter paused. What? Why – but she's barely of age! No, this can't be.
Talk her out of it, Greyfrog! 'Greyfrog's own advances unwelcome. Despondent sulk. You, Cutter, of seed-issuing capacity, capable of effecting beget. Past revelation.
Human women carry breeding pond in bellies. But one egg survives, only one. Terrible risk! You must fill pond as quickly as possible, before rival male appears to steal your destiny. Greyfrog will defend your claim. Brave self-sacrifice, such as Sentinel Circlers among own kind.
Altruistic enlightenment of reciprocity and protracted slant reward once or even many times removed. Signifier of higher intelligence, acknowledgement of community interests. Greyfrog is already Sentinel Circler to soft-curved, large-breasted goddess-human.'
Goddess? What do you mean, goddess? 'Lustful sigh, is worthy of worship. Value signifiers in male human clouding the pond's waters in Greyfrog's mind. Too long association.
Happily. Sexual desires long withheld. Unhealthy.'
Cutter set a pot of water on the fire and tossed in a handful of herbs. What did you say earlier about uneasy dreams, Greyfrog? 'Observation, skimming the mind ponds. Troubled. Approaching danger.
There are warning signs.'
What warning signs? 'Obvious. Uneasy dreams. Sufficient unto themselves.'
Not always, Greyfrog. Sometimes it's things from the past that haunt us. That's all.
'Ah. Greyfrog will think on this. But first, pangs. Greyfrog is hungry.'
The grey haze of the heat and the dust made the distant walls barely visible. Leoman of the Flails rode at the head of the ragged column, Corabb Bhilan Thenu'alas at his side, as a company of riders approached from Y'Ghatan's gates.
'There,' Corabb said, 'front rider on the right of the standardbearer, that is Falah'd Vedor. He looks… unhappy.'
'He'd best begin making peace with that sentiment,' Leoman said in a growl. He raised a gloved hand and the column behind him slowed to a halt.
They watched the company close.
'Commander, shall you and I meet them halfway?' Corabb asked.
'Of course not,' Leoman snapped.
Corabb said nothing more. His leader was in a dark mood. A third of his warriors were riding double. A much-loved old healer witch had died this very morning, and they'd pinned her corpse beneath a slab of stone lest some wandering spirit find her. Leoman himself had spat in the eight directions to hallow the ground, and spilled drops of his own blood from a slash he opened on his left hand onto the dusted stone, voicing the blessing in the name of the Apocalyptic. Then he had wept. In front of all his warriors, who had stood silent, awestruck by the grief and the love for his followers Leoman had revealed in that moment.
The Falah'd and his soldiers approached, then drew to a halt five paces in front of Leoman and Corabb.
Corabb studied Vedor's sallow, sunken face, murky eyes, and knew him for an addict of d'bayang poppy. His thick-veined hands trembled on the saddle horn, and, when it became evident that Leoman would not be the first to speak, he scowled and said, 'I, Falah'd Vedor of Y'
Ghatan, the First Holy City, do hereby welcome you, Leoman of the Flails, refugee of Sha'ik's Fall in Raraku, and your broken followers.
We have prepared secure barracks for your warriors, and the tables wait, heaped with food and wine. You, Leoman, and your remaining officers shall be the Falah'd's guests in the palace, for as long as required for you to reprovision your army and recover from your flight. Inform us of your final destination and we shall send envoys in advance to proclaim your coming to each and every village, town and city on your route.'
Corabb found he was holding his breath. He watched as Leoman nudged his horse forward, until he was positioned side by side with the Falah'd.
'We have come to Y'Ghatan,' Leoman said, in a low voice, 'and it is in Y'Ghatan that we shall stay. To await the coming of the Malazans.'
Vedor's stained mouth worked for a moment without any sound issuing forth, then he managed a hacking laugh. 'Like a knife's edge, your sense of humour, Leoman of the Flails! It is as your legend proclaims!'
'My legend? Then this, too, will not surprise you.' The kethra knife was a blinding flash, sweeping to caress Vedor's throat. Blood spurted, and the Falah'd's head rolled back, thumped on the rump of the startled horse, then down to bounce and roll in the dust of the road. Leoman reached out to steady the headless corpse still seated in the saddle, and wiped the blade on the silken robes.
From the company of city soldiers, not a sound, not a single motion.
The standard-bearer, a youth of perhaps fifteen years, stared openmouthed at the headless body beside him.
'In the name of Dryjhna the Apocalyptic,' Leoman said, 'I now rule the First Holy City of Y'Ghatan. Who is the ranking officer here?'
A woman pushed her horse forward. 'I am. Captain Dunsparrow.'
Corabb squinted at her. Solid features, sun-darkened, light grey eyes.
Twenty-five years of age, perhaps. The glint of a chain vest was just visible beneath her plain telaba. 'You,' Corabb said, 'are Malazan.'
The cool eyes fixed on him. 'What of it?'
'Captain,' Leoman said, 'your troop will precede us. Clear the way to the palace for me and my warriors. The secure barracks spoken of by the late Falah'd will be used to house those soldiers in the city garrison and from the palace who might be disinclined to follow my orders. Please ensure that they are indeed secured. Once you have done these things, report to me in the palace for further orders.'
'Sir,' the woman said, 'I am of insufficient rank to do as you ask-'
'No longer. You are now my Third, behind Corabb Bhilan Thenu'alas.'
Her gaze briefly flicked back to Corabb, revealing nothing. 'As you command, Leoman of the Flails, Falah'd of Y'Ghatan.'
Dunsparrow twisted in her saddle and bellowed out to her troops, '
About face! Smartly now, you damned pig-herders! We advance the arrival of the new Falah'd!'
Vedor's horse turned along with all the others, and began trotting, the headless body pitching about in its saddle.
Corabb watched as, twenty paces along, the dead Falah'd's mount came up alongside the captain. She noted it and with a single straightarmed shove sent the corpse toppling.
Leoman grunted. 'Yes. She is perfect.'
A Malazan. 'I have misgivings, Commander.'
'Of course you have. It's why I keep you at my side.' He glanced over.
'That, and the Lady's tug. Come now, ride with me into our new city.'
They kicked their horses into motion. Behind them followed the others.
'Our new city,' Corabb said, grinning. 'We shall defend it with our lives.'
Leoman shot him an odd look, but said nothing.
Corabb thought about that. Commander, I have more misgivings…