His smile was wry. ‘Do we ever?’
‘Please,’ she said, ‘do come in. I will lend for wine and-’
‘No need on my account, High Priestess,’ Anomander Rake walked into (hi small office, eyed the two chairs and then selected the least ornate one to sit down in. He stretched out his legs, fingers lacing together on his lap, and eyed her speculatively.
She raised her arms, ‘Shall I dance?’
‘Shall I sing?’
‘Abyss take me, no. Please.’
‘Do sit down,’ said Rake, indicating the other chair.
She did so, keeping her back straight, a silent question lifting her eyebrows.
He continued watching her.
She let out a breath and slumped back. ‘All right, then. I’m relaxing. See?’
‘You have ever been my favourite,’ he said, looking away.
‘Your favourite what?’
‘High Priestess, of course. What else might I be thinking?’
‘Well, that is the eternal question, isn’t it?’
‘One too many people spend too much time worrying about.’
‘You cannot be serious, Anomander.’
He seemed to be studying her desk-not the things scattered on its surface, but the desk itself. ‘That’s too small for you,’ he pronounced.
She glanced at it. ‘You are deceived, alas. It’s my disorganization that’s too big. Give me a desk the size of a concourse and I’ll still fill it up with junk.’
‘Then it must be your mind that is too big, High Priestess.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘there is so little to think about and so much time.’ She fluttered a hand. ‘If my thoughts have become oversized it’s only out of indolence.’ Her gaze sharpened. ‘And we have become so indolent, haven’t we?’.
‘She has been turned away for a long time,’ Anomander Rake said. ‘That I al-lowed all of you to turn instead to me was ever a dubious enterprise.’
‘You made no effort to muster worship, Son of Darkness, and that is what made it dubious.’
One brow lifted. ‘Not my obvious flaws?’
‘And Mother Dark is without flaws? No, the Tiste Andii were never foolish enough to force upon our icons the impossibility of perfection.’
‘ “Icons,”‘ said Anomander Rake, frowning as he continued studying the desk.
‘Is that the wrong word? I think not,’
‘And that is why I rejected the notion of worship.’
‘Why?’
‘Because, sooner or later, the believers shatter their icons.’
She grunted, and thought about that for a time, before sighing and nodding. ‘A hundred fallen, forgotten civilizations, yes. And in the ruins all those statues… with their faces chopped off. The loss of faith is ever violent, it seems.’
‘Ours was.’
The statement stung her. ‘Ah, we are not so different then, after all. What a de-pressing realization.’
‘Endest Silann,’ he said.
‘Your stare is making the legs of my desk tremble, Lord Rake-am I so un-pleasant that you dare not rest eyes upon me?’
He slowly turned his head and settled his gaze upon her.
And seeing all that was in his eyes almost made her flinch, and she understood, all at once, the mercy he had been giving her-with his face turned away, with his eyes veiled by distraction. But then she had asked for his regard, as much out of vanity as the secret pleasure of her attraction to him-she could not now break this connection. Marshalling her resolve, she said, ‘Endest Silann, yes. The reason for this visit. I understand.’
‘He is convinced he was broken long ago, High Priestess. We both know it is not true.’
She nodded. ‘He proved that when he sustained Moon’s Spawn beneath the sea-proved it to everyone but himself.’
T reveal to him my confidence,’ said Rake, ‘and each time he… contracts. I cannot reach through, it seems, to bolster what I know is within him.’
‘Then it is his faith that is broken.’
He grimaced, made no reply.
‘When the time comes,’ she said, ‘I will be there. To do what I can. Although,’ she added, ‘that may not be much.’
‘You need not elaborate on the efficacy of your presence, High Priestess. We are speaking, as you said, of faith.’
‘And there need be no substance to it. Thank you.’
He glanced away once more, and this time the wry smile she had seen before played again across his features. ‘You were always my favourite,’ he said.
‘Me, or the desk you so seem to love?’
He rose and she did the same. ‘High Priestess,’ he said.
‘Son of Darkness,’ she returned, with another bow.
And out he went, leaving in his wake a sudden absence, an almost audible clap of displacement-but no, that was in her mind, a hint of something hovering there behind her memory of his face, his eyes and all that she had seen there.
Mother Dark, hear me. Meed me. You did not understand your son then. You do not understand him now.
Don’t you seel This was all Draconus’s doing.
‘This ain’t right,’ gasped Reccanto Ilk, each word spraying blood. ‘When it comes to screaming women, they should be leaving the bar, not trying to get in!’
The ragged hole the shrieking, snarling, jaw-snapping women had torn through the tavern’s door was jammed with arms, stretching, fingers clutching, all reaching inward in a desperate attempt to tear through the barrier. Claws stabbed into the Trell’s tattooed shoulders and he ducked his head lower, grunting as the demons battered at the door, planks splintering-but that Trell was one strong bastard, and he was holding ’em back, as he had been doing since that first rush that nearly saw Reccanto’s precious head get torn off.
Thank whatever gods squatted in the muck of this damned village that these demons were so stupid, Not one had tried either of the shuttered windows Hank ing the entrance, although with that barbed hulk, Gruntle, waiting at one of ’em with his cutlasses at the ready, and Paint and the Bole brothers at the other, at least if them demons went and tried one of ’em they’d be cut to pieces in no time. Or so Reccanto hoped, since he was hiding under a table and a table wasn’t much cover, or wouldn’t be if them demons was nasty enough to tear apart Gruntle and Faint and the Boles and the Trell, and Sweetest Sufferance, too, for that matter.
Master Quell and that swampy witch, Precious Thimble, were huddled together at the back, at the barred cellar door, doing Hood knew what. Glanno Tarp was missing-he’d gone with the horses when they went straight and the carriage went left, and Reccanto was pretty sure that the idiot had gone and killed himself bad. Or worse.
As for that corpse, Cartographer, why, the last Ilk had seen of it it was still lashed to a wheel, spinning in a blur as the damned thing spun off its axle and bounded off into the rainy night. Why couldn’t the demons go after it? A damned easier fight-
Repeated blows were turning the door into a shattered wreck, and one of the arms angled down to slash deep gouges across Mappo’s back, making the Trell groan and groaning wasn’t good, since it meant Mappo might just give up trying to hold ’em back and in they’d come, straight for the man hiding under the table. It wasn’t fair. Nothing was fair and what was fair about that, dammit?
He drew out his rapier and clutched the grip in one shaky hand. A lunge from the knees-was such a thing possible? He was about to find out. Oh, yes, he’d skewer one for its troubles, just watch. And if the other two (he was pretty sure there were three of ’em) ripped him up then fine, just fine. A man could only do so much.
Gruntle was shouting something at Mappo, and the Trell bellowed a reply, drawing his legs up under himself as if about to dive to one side-thanks a whole lot, you ogre!-and then all at once Mappo did just that, off to the right, slamming into the legs of the Boles and Faint and taking all three down with him.
An explosion of wood splinters and thrashing arms, clacking fangs, unclean hair and terribly unreasonable expressions, and the three screeching women plunged in.
Two were brought up short pretty fast, as their heads leapt up in gouts of greenish uck and their bodies sprawled in a thrashing mess.
Even as this was happening, the third woman charged straight for Reccanto. He shrieked and executed his lunge from the knees, which naturally wasn’t a lunge at all. More like a fleche, a forward flinging of his upper body, arm and point extended, and as he overbalanced and landed with a bone-creaking thump on the floorboards the rapier’s point snagged on something and the blade bowed alarmingly and so he let go, so that it sprang up, then back down, the pommel” crunching the top of Reccanto’s head, not once, but twice, each time driving his face into the floor, nose crackling in a swirl of stinging tears and bursting into his brain the horrid stench of mouse droppings and greasy dirt-immediately replaced by a whole lot of flowing blood.
It was strangely quiet, and, moaning, Reccanto rolled on to his side and lifted himself up on one elbow.
And found himself staring into the blank, horrible eyes of the woman who’d charged him. The rapier point had driven in between her eyes, straight in, so far that he should be able to see it coming back out from somewhere beneath the back of her skull-but it wasn’t there. Meaning-
‘She broke it!’ he raged, clambering on to his feet. ‘She broke my damned rapier!’
The demonic woman was on her knees, head thrust forward, mouth still stretched open, the weight of her upper body resting on the knocked-over chair that had served as pathetic barricade. The other two, headless, still thrashed on the floor as green goo flowed. Gruntle was studying that ichor where it slathered the broad blades of his cutlasses.
Mappo, the Boles and Faint were slowly regaining their feet.
Sweetest Sufferance, clutching a clay bottle, staggered up to lean against Rec-canto. ‘Too bad about your rapier,’ she said, ‘but damn me, Ilk, that was the neatest fleche I ever did see.’
Reccanto squinted, wiped blood from his streaming nose and lacerated lips, and then grinned. ‘It was, wasn’t it. The timing of a master-’
‘I mean, how could you have guessed she’d trip on one of them rolling heads and go down on her knees skidding like that, straight into your thrust?’
Tripped? Skidded? ‘Yes, well, like I said, I’m a master duellist.’
‘I could kiss you,’ she continued, her breath rank with sour wine, ‘except you went and pissed yourself and there’s limits t’decency, if you know what I mean.’
‘That ain’t piss-we’re all still sopping wet!’
‘But we don’t quite smell the way you do, Ilk.’
Snarling, he lurched away. Damned overly sensitive woman! ‘My rapier,’ he moaned.
‘Shattered inside her skull, I’d wager,’ said Gruntle, ‘which couldn’t have done her brain any good. Nicely done, Reccanto.’
Ilk decided it was time to strut a little.
Whilst Reccanto Ilk walked round like a rooster, Precious Thimble glanced over worriedly at the Boles, and was relieved to see them both apparently unharmed. They hadn’t been paying her enough attention lately and they weren’t paying her any now either. She felt a tremor of unease.
Master Quell was thumping on the cellar door. ‘I know you can hear me,’ he called. ‘You, hiding in there. We got three of ’em-is there more? Three of ’em killed. Is there more?’
Faint was checking her weapons. ‘We got to go and find Glanno,’ she said. ‘Any volunteers?’
Gruntle walked over, pausing to peer out of the doorway. ‘The rain’s letting off-looks as if the storm’s spent. I’ll go wilh you, Faint,’
‘I was asking for volunteers 1 wasn’t volunteering myself.’
‘I’ll go!’ said Amby.
‘I’ll go!’said Jula.
And then they glared at each other, and then grinned as if at some private joke, and a moment later both burst out laughing.
‘What’s so funny?’ Precious Thimble demanded, truly bewildered this time. Have they lost their minds? Assuming they have minds, I mean.
Her harsh query sobered them and both ducked, avoiding her stare.
The cellar door creaked open, drawing everyone’s attention, and a bewhiskered face poked out, eyes wide and rolling. ‘Three, ya said? Ya said three?’
The dialect was Genabackan, the accent south islander.
‘Ya got ah three? Deed?’
Quell nodded. ‘Any more lurking about, host?’
A quick shake of the head, and the tavern keep edged out, flinching when he saw the slaughtered bodies. ‘Oh, darlings,’ he whispered, ‘ahm so soory. So soory!’
‘You know them?’ Quell asked. ‘You know what they were?’
More figures crowded behind the keep, pale faces, frightened eyes. To Quell’s questions the whiskered man flinched. ‘Coarsed,’ he said in a rasp. ‘Our daughters… coarsed.’
‘Cursed? When they come of age, right?’
A jerky nod, and then the man’s eyes widened on the wizard. ‘You know it? You know the coarse?’
‘How long have you had it, host? Here, in this village-how long have you had the curse?’
‘Foor yars now. Foor yars.’ And the man edged out. ‘Aai, their heeds! Ya cart erf their heeds!’ Behind him the others set up a wailing.
Precious Thimble met Quell’s eyes and they exchanged a nod. ‘Still about, I’d say,’ Precious said under her breath.
‘Agreed. Should we go hunting?’
She looked round once more. Mappo was dragging the first naked, headless corpse out through the doorway. The green blood had blackened on the floor and left tarry streaks trailing the body. ‘Let’s take that Trell with us, I think.’
‘Good idea.’ Quell walked up to the tavern keep. ‘Is there a constable in this village? Who rules the land-where in Hood’s name are we anyway?’
Owlish blinks of the eyes. ‘Reach of Woe is war ye are. Seen the toower? It’s war the Provost leeves. Yull wan the Provost, ah expeect.’
Quell turned away, rubbed at his eyes, then edged close to Precious Thimble. ‘We’re agreed, then, it’s witchery, this curse.’
‘Witch or warlock,’ she said, nodding.
‘We’re on the Reach of Woe, a wrecker coast. I’d wager it’s the arrival of strangers that wakes up the daughters-they won’t eat their kin, will they?’
‘When the frenzy’s on them,’ said Precious Thimble, ‘they’ll eat anything that moves.’
‘That’s why the locals bolted, then, right. Fine, Witch, go collect Mappo-and this ime, tell him he needs to arm himself. This could get messy.’
Precious Thimble looked over at the last body the Trell was now dragging out-side. ‘Right,’ she said.
Flanked by the Boles, Tula on his right, Amby on his left, Gruntle walked back down to the main street, boots squelching in the mud. The last spits of rain cooled his brow. Oh, he’d wanted a nastier fight. The problem with mindless attackers was their mindlessness, which made them pathetically predictable. And only three of the damned things-
‘I was going first,’ said Amby.
‘No, I was,’ said Tula.
Gruntle scowled. ‘Going where? What are you two talking about?’
‘That window back there,’ said Tula, ’at the tavern. If’n the girlies got in through the door, I was goin’ out through the window-only we couldn’t get the shutters pulled back-’
‘That was your fault,’ said Amby. ‘I kept lifting the latch and you kept pushing it back down.’
‘The latch goes down to let go, Amby, you idiot.’
‘No it goes up-it went up, I saw it-’
‘And then back down-’
‘Up.’
‘Then down.’
Gruntle’s sudden growl silenced them both. They were now following the hoof prints and various furrows of things being dragged in the wake of the animals. In the squat houses to either side, muted lights flickered through thick-glassed win-dows. The sound of draining water surrounded them, along with the occasional distant rumble of thunder. The air mocked with the freshness that came after a storm.
‘There they are,’ said Amby, pointing. ‘Just past that low wall. You see them, Gruntle? You see them?’
A corral. The wreckage of the carriage high bench was scattered along the base of the stone wall.
Reaching it, they paused, squinted at the field of churned-up mud, the horses huddled at the far end-eyeing them suspiciously-and there, something sprawled near the middle. A body. Far off to the left was one of the carriage wheels.
Gruntle leading the way, they climbed the wall and set out for Glanno Tarp.
As they drew closer, they could hear him talking.
‘… and so she wasn’t so bad, compared to Nivvy, but it was years before I surre-alized not all women talked that way, and if I’d a known, well, I probably would never have agreed to it. I mean, I have some decency in me, I’m sure of it. It was the way she carried on pretending she was nine years old, eyes so wide, all those cute things she did which, when you think about, was maybe cute some time, long ago, but now-I mean, her hair was going grey, for Hood’s sake-oh, you found me. Good. No, don’t move me just yet, my leg is broke and maybe a shoulder too, and an arm, wrist, oh, and this finger here, it’s sprained. Get Quell-don’t go moving mc without Quell, all right? Thanks. Now, where was I? Nivvy? No, that stall keeper, Luft, now she didn’t last, for the reasons I experplained before. It was months before I found me a new woman-well, before Coutre found me, would be more reaccurate. She’d just lost all her hair…’
The carriage wheel had moved slightly. Gruntle had caught the motion out of the corner of his eye and, leaving Glanno babbling on to the Boles, who stood looking down with mouths hanging open, he set out for it.
He sheathed his cutlasses and heaved at the wheel. It resisted until, with a thick slurping sound, it lifted clear of the mud and Gruntle pushed it entirely upright.
Cartographer was a figure seemingly composed entirely of clay, still bound by the wrists and ankle to the spokes. The face worked for a time, pushing out lumps of mud from its mouth, and then the corpse said, ‘It’s the jam-smeared bread thing, isn’t it?’
‘Look at that,’Quell said.
Precious Thimble made a warding gesture and then spat thrice, up, down, straight ahead. ‘Blackdog Swamp,’ she said. ‘Mott Wood. This was why I left, dammit! That’s the problem with Jaghut, they show up everywhere.’
Behind them, Mappo grunted but otherwise offered no comment.
The tower was something between square and round, the corners either weath-ered down by centuries and centuries of wind or deliberately softened to ease that same buffeting, howling wind. The entranceway was a narrow gloomy recess be-neath a mossy lintel stone, the moss hanging in beards that dripped in a curtain of rainwater, each drop popping into eroded hollows on the slab of the landing.
‘So,’ said Quell with brittle confidence, ‘the village Provost went and moved into a Jaghut tower. That was brave-’
‘Stupid.’
‘Stupidly brave, yes.’
‘Unless,’ she said, sniffing the air. ‘That’s the other problem with Jaghut. When they build towers, they live in them. For ever.’
Quell groaned. ‘I was pretending not to think that, Witch.’
‘As if that would help.’
‘It helped me!’
‘There’s two things we can do,’ Precious Thimble announced. ‘We can turn right round and ignore the curse and all that and get out of this town as fast as possible.’
‘Or?’
‘We can go up to that door and knock.’
Quell rubbed at his chin, glanced back at a silent Mappo, and then once more eyed the tower. ‘This witchery-this curse here, Precious, that strikes when a woman comes of age.’
‘What about it? It’s a damned old one, a nasty one.’
‘Can you break it?’
‘Not likely. All we can hope to do is make the witch or warlock change her or his mind about it. The caster can surrender it a whole lot more easily than someone else can break it.’
‘And if we kill the caster?’
She shrugged. ‘Could go either way, Wizard. Poof! Gone. Or… not. Anyway, you’re stepping sideways, Quell. We were talking about this… this Provost.’
‘Not sideways, Witch. I was thinking, well, about you and Sweetest Sufferance and Faint, that’s all.’
All at once she felt as if she’d just swallowed a fistful of icy knuckles. Her throat ached, her stomach curdled. ‘Oh, shit.’
‘And since,’ Quell went on remorselessly, ‘it’s going to be a day or two before we can effect repairs-at best – well…’
‘I think we’d better knock,’ she said.
‘All right. Just let me, er, empty my bladder first.’
He walked off to the stone-lined gutter to his left. Mappo went off a few paces in the other direction, to rummage in his sack.
Precious Thimble squinted up at the tower. ‘Well,’ she whispered, ‘if you’re a Jaghut-and I think you are-you know we’re standing right here. And you can smell the magic on our breaths. Now, we’re not looking for trouble, but there’s no chance you don’t know nothing about that curse-we need to find that witch or warlock, you see, that nasty villager who made up this nasty curse, because we’re stuck here for a few days. Understand? There’s three women stuck here. And I’m one of them.’
‘You say something?’ Quell asked, returning.
‘Let’s go,’ she said as Mappo arrived, holding an enormous mace.
They walked to the door.
Halfway there, it swung open.
‘My mate,’ said the Provost, ’is buried in the yard below.’ He was standing at the window, looking out over the tumultuous seas warring with the shoals.
Quell grunted. ‘What yard?’ He leaned forward and peered down. ‘What yard?’
The Provost sighed. ‘It was there two days ago.’ He turned from the window and eyed the wizard.
Who did his best not to quail.
Bedusk Pall Kovuss Agape, who called himself a Jaghut Anap, was simply gi-gantic, possibly weighing more than Mappo and at least a head and a half taller than the Trell. His skin was blue, a deeper hue than any Malazan Napan Quell could recall seeing. The blue even seemed to stain the silver-tipped tusks jutting from his lower jaw.
Quell cleared his throat. He needed to pee again, but that would have to wait.” ‘You lost her long ago?’
‘Who?’
‘Er, your mate?’
Bedusk Agape selected one of the three crystal decanters on the marble table, sniffed at its contents, and then refilled their goblets. ‘Have you ever had a wile, Wizard?’
‘No not that I’m aware of.’
‘Yes, it can be like that at times.’
‘It can?’
The Jaghut gestured towards the window. ‘One moment there, the next… gone.’
‘Oh, the cliff.’
‘No, no. I was speaking of my wife.’
Quell shot Precious Thimble a helpless look. Off near the spiral staircase, Mappo stood examining an elaborate eyepiece of some kind, mounted on a spike with a peculiar ball-hinge that permitted the long black metal instrument to be swivelled about, side to side and up and down. The damned Trell was paying at-tention to all the wrong things.
Precious Thimble looked back at Quell with wide eyes.
‘Loss,’ stammered the wizard, ’is a grievous thing.’
‘Well of course it is,’ said Bedusk Agape, frowning.
‘Urn, not always. If, for example, one loses one’s, er, virginity, or a favourite shiny stone, say…’
The red-rimmed eyes stayed steady, unblinking.
Quell wanted to squeeze his legs together-no, better, fold one over the other-lest his snake start drooling or, worse, spitting.
Precious Thimble spoke in a strangely squeaky voice, ‘Jaghut Anap, the curse afflicting this village’s daughters-’
‘There have been twelve in all,’ said Bedusk Agape. ‘Thus far.’
‘Oh. What happened to the other nine?’
The Jaghut flicked his gaze over to her. ‘You are not the first trouble to arrive in the past few years. Of course,’ he added, after sipping his wine, ‘all the young girls are now sent to the next village along this coast-permanently, alas, which does not bode well for the future of this town.’
‘I thought I saw women down in the tavern cellar,’ said Precious Thimble.
‘Bearing a child prevents the settling of the curse. Mothers are immune. There-fore, if you or your fellow female companions have at any time produced a child, you need not worry.’
‘Um,’ said Precious Thimble, ‘I don’t think any of us qualify.’
‘How unfortunate,’ said Bedusk.
‘So how is it you got elected Provost?’ Quell asked. ‘Just curious, you see-I’m the nosy type, that’s all. I didn’t mean anything-’
‘I believe it was a collective attempt to ameliorate my grief, my solitude. None would deny, I now expect, that such an invitation was ill-conceived.’
‘Oh? Why?’
‘Well, had I remained in my isolation, this terrible curse would not exist, I am afraid,’:
‘It’s your curse, then?’
‘Yes.’
A long moment of silence. From near the staircase, Mappo slowly turned to lace them.
‘Then you can end it,’ said Quell.
‘I could, yes, but I shall not.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you are not that important.’
Quell crossed his legs. ‘May I ask, what happened to your mate?’
‘We argued. I lost. I buried her.’
There seemed to be, at least to the wizard’s thinking, something missing in that answer. But he was getting distracted by his bladder. He couldn’t think straight.
‘So,’ said Precious Thimble in a thin voice, ‘if you lose an argument to someone, you then kill them?’
‘Oh, I didn’t say she was dead.’
Mappo spoke from where he still stood, ‘She is now, Jaghut.’
Bedusk Agape sighed. ‘That does seem likely, doesn’t it?’
‘How long,’ the Trell asked, ‘was she pinned down? Your mate?’
‘Nine years or so.’
‘And the argument?’
‘I sense a certain belligerence in you, Trell.’
, ‘Belligerence, Jaghut?’ Mappo bared his fangs in a cold grin. ‘Your senses have dulled with disuse, I think.’
‘I see. And you imagine you can best me?’
‘I was asking you about the argument.’
‘Something trivial. I have forgotten the details.’
‘But you found yourself alone, at least until the villagers took pity on you and elected you their Provost. And then… you fell in love?’
Bedusk Agape winced.
Precious Thimble gasped. ‘Oh! I see now. Oh, it’s like that. She spurned you. You got mad, again, only this time you couldn’t very well bury the whole village-’
‘Actually, I considered it.’
‘Um, well, you decided not to, then. So, instead, you worked up a curse, on her and all her young pretty friends, since they laughed at you or whatever. You turned them all into Tralka Vonan. Blood Feeders.’
‘You cannot hope to break my curse, Witch,’ said Bedusk. ‘Even with the wiz-ard’s help, you will fail.’ The Jaghut then faced Mappo. ‘And you, Trell, even if you manage to kill me, the curse will not die.’ He refilled his goblet for the third time. ‘Your women will have a day or so before the curse takes effect. In that time, I suppose, they could all endeavour to become pregnant.’
All at once Quellsat straighter.
But when he saw Precious Thimble’s express, his delighted smile turned somewhat sheepish,
Down on the narrow strand of what had once been beach, at the foot of the raw cliff, waves skirled foam-thick tendrils through the chunks of clay and rock and black hairy roots, gnawing deep channels and sucking back into the sea milky, silt-laden water. The entire heap was in motion, settling, dissolving, sections collapsing under the assault of the waves.
Farther down the beach the strand reemerged, the white sand seemingly studded with knuckles of rust, to mark the thousands of ship nails and rivets that had been scattered in profusion along the shoreline. Fragments of wood formed a snagged barrier higher up, and beyond that, cut into the cliff face, weathered steps led up to a hacked-out cave mouth.
This cave was in fact a tunnel, rising at a steep angle up through the bowels of the promontory, to open out in the floor of the village’s largest structure, a stone and timbered warehouse where the wreckers off-loaded their loot after the long haul of the carts from the cliff base. A tidy enterprise, all things considered, one that gave employment to all the folk of the village-from tending the false fires to rowing the deep-hulled boats out to the reef, where the stripping down of the wrecks took place, along with clubbing survivors and making sure they drowned. The local legend, concocted to provide meagre justification for such cruel en-deavours, revolved around some long-ago pirate raids on the village, and how someone (possibly the Provost, who had always lived here, or the locally famous Gacharge Hadlom Who Waits-but he left so there was no way to ask him) had suggested that, since the sea was so eager to deliver murderers to this shore, why could it not also deliver death to the would-be murderers? And so, once the notion was planted, the earth was tilled, with mallet and pick and flint and fire, and the days of fishing for a living off the treacherous shoals soon gave way to a far more lucrative venture.
Oh, the nets were cast out every now and then, especially in the calm season when the pickings got slim, and who could deny the blessing of so many fish these days, and fat, big ones at that? Why, it wasn’t so long ago that they’d damned near fished out the area.
The beach was comfortable with half-eaten corpses rolling up on to the sands, where crabs and gulls swarmed. The beach helped pick the bones clean and then left them to the waves to bury or sweep away. On this fast-closing night, however, something unusual clawed its way to the shore. Unusual in that it still lived. Crabs scuttled from its path as fast as their tiny legs could manage.
Water sluiced from the figure as it heaved itself upright. Red-rimmed eyes scanned the scene, fixing at last on the steps and the gaping mouth of the cave. After a moment, it set out in that direction, leaving deep footprints that the beach hastened to smooth away.
‘Do you really think I can’t see what’s going on in your skull, Quell? You’re right there, first in line, with the three of us lying in a row, legs spread wide. And in you dive, worse than a damned dog on a tilted fence post. Reccanto waiting for his turn, and Glanno, and Jula and Amby and Mappo here and Gruntle and probably that damned undead-’
‘Hold on a moment,’ growled the Trell.
‘Don’t even try,’ Precious Thimble snapped.
They were marching back to the tavern, Precious Thimble in the lead, the other two hastening to keep up. That she was tiny and needed two steps for every one of theirs seemed irrelevant.
‘Then again,’ she went on, ‘maybe that Jaghut will go and jump the queue, and by the dawn we’ll all be planted with some ghastly monster, half Trell, half Jaghut, half pissy wizard, half-’
’Twins?’ asked Quell.
She swung a vicious glare back at him. ‘Oh, funny.’
‘Anyway,’ added Quell, ‘I’m pretty sure that’s not how things like that work-’
‘How would you know? No, me and Sweetest and Faint, we’re out of here as soon as we can get our gear together-you can collect us somewhere down the road. This damned village can go to Hood, with Bedusk Pall Kovuss Agape in the lead. They’re damned wreckers anyway, and if anybody deserves cursing to damnation, it’s them.’
‘I wouldn’t disagree there,’ said Mappo.
‘Stop trying to get under my skirt, Trell.’
‘What? I wasn’t-’
Quell cut in with a snort. ‘You don’t wear skirts, Witch. Though if you did, it’d be so much easier-’
Now she spun round. ‘What would be, Quell?’
He’d halted and now backed up. ‘Sorry, did I think that out loud?’
‘You think the curse on this village is bad, you just wait and see what I can come up with!’
‘All right, we take your point, Precious. Relax. You three just go, right? We’ll get the carriage fixed up and find you, just like you said.’
She whirled about once more and resumed her march.
Gruntle saw the three in the street, closing fast on the entrance to the tavern. He shouted to catch their attention and hurried over.
‘Master Quell, your driver is a heap of broken bones back there, but he’s still breathing.’
‘Well, he should have let go of the damned reins,’ Quell said in a growl. ‘And now I got to do healing and that takes time. That’s just great-how am I supposed to fix the carriage? Why can’t anybody else do anything useful a round here? You, Witch-go and heal Glanno-’
‘I can’t do that! Oh, I can set splints and spit on wounds to chase infection away, but it’s sounding as if he needs a whole lot more than that. Right, Gruntle?’
The tattooed warrior shrugged. ‘Probably. ‘
‘Don’t even try,’ she snarled at him, and then stalked into the tavern,
Gruntle stared alter her. ‘What did she mean? Try what?’
‘Getting under her skirt,’ said Quell.
‘But she doesn’t wear-’
‘That’s not the point,’ the wizard cut in. ‘You’re thinking like a man. That’s your mistake. It’s all our mistakes, in fact. It’s why we’re standing out here, three men, no women. If we’d gone and said, why, Precious, we wouldn’t even think of it, you know what she’d say then? “What’s wrong with me? Am I too ugly or something?” and we’d be in trouble all over again!’
Gruntle glanced bemusedly at Mappo, who, rather cryptically, simply nodded.
Quell straightened his still-wet clothes. ‘Lead me to him, then, Gruntle.’
At one end of the corral there was a stable and next to it, a loading platform built of weathered planks that marked one end of a huge, solidly built warehouse. Tula and Amby had helped Glanno sit up, and Cartographer, cut loose from the wheel, was staggering in circles as he plucked and scraped manure off his face, neck, and rotted clothes.
Glanno had reached the eleventh love of his life, some woman named Herboo Nast, ‘… who wore a fox round her neck-not just its fur, you understand, the actual animal, paws trussed up in berbraided silk, gamuzzled in leather, but it was the beast’s eyes I remember most-that look. Panic, like it’d just realized it was trapped in its worst nightlymare. Not that she wasn’t good-looking, in that goatlike way of hers-you know, those long curly hairs that show up under their chin after a certain age-did I mention how I liked my women experientialled? I do. I most certainly do. I wanna see decades and decades of miserable livin’ in their eyes, so that when I arrive, why, it’s like a fresh spring rain on a withered daisy. Which one was I talking about? Fox, goat, panic, trussed up, right, Herboo Nast-’
He stopped then, so abruptly that neither Tula nor Amby noticed the sudden, ominous silence, and just kept on with the smiles and nods with which they had accompanied Glanno’s monologue, and they were still smiling and nodding when the figure that had appeared on the warehouse loading platform-the one whose arrival had so thoroughly stunned Glanno Tarp’s flapping tongue-walked up to halt directly in front of all three, as the horses bolted for the most distant corner of the corral in a drumroll of hoofs.
‘No losses so far and that’s good,’ said Quell as he and Gruntle walked towards the corral.
‘I didn’t know you were a practitioner of Denul,’ Gruntle said.
‘I’m not, not really, I mean. I have elixirs, unguents, salves, and some of those are High Denul, for emergencies.’
‘Like now.’
‘Maybe, We’ll see.’
‘Broken legs-’
‘Doesn’t need legs to drive the carriage, does he? Besides, he might decline my services.’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘Healing expenses cut into his share. He could come out of this owing the Guild rather than the other way round.’ He shrugged. ‘Some people refuse.’
‘Well,’ said Gruntle, ‘he said to get you, so I don’t think he’s going to. refuse, Master Quell.’
They reached the low stone wall and then halted.
‘Who in Hood’s name is that?’ Gruntle asked, squinting at the tall ragged fig-ure standing with the Bole brothers.
Quell grunted, and then said, ‘Well, and it’s just a guess, mind you, but I’d say that that’s the Provost’s wife.’
‘He’s married to a Jaghut?’
‘Was, until he buried her, but then the yard collapsed into the sea, taking her with it. And now she’s back and I’d wager a trip’s profit she’s not in the best of moods.’ And then he smiled up at Gruntle. ‘We can work all this out. Oh, yes, we can work all this out, now.’
This confidence was shattered when Jula and Amby Bole suddenly took it upon themselves to attack the Jaghut. Bellowing, they flung themselves at her, and all three figures lurched about as they struggled, clawed, scratched and bit, until finally they lost their footing and toppled in a multilimbed mass that slopped heavily in the muck.
Quell and Gruntle scrambled over the wall and raced for them.
Glanno Tarp was shrieking something, his words unintelligible as he sought to crawl away from the scrap.
From the Jaghut woman sorcery erupted, a thundering, deafening detonation that lit up the entire corral and all the buildings nearby. Blinking against the sudden blindness, Gruntle staggered in the mud. He heard Quell fall beside him. The coruscating, actinic light continued to bristle, throwing everything into harsh shadows.
Glanno Tarp resumed his shrieks.
As vision returned, Gruntle saw, to his astonishment, that both Boles still lived. In fact, they had each pinned down an arm and were holding tight as the Jaghut woman thrashed and snarled.
Drawing his cutlasses, Gruntle made his way over. ‘Jula! Amby! What are you doing?’
Two mud-smeared faces looked up, and their expressions were dark, twisted with anger.
‘A swamp witch!’ Jula said. ‘She’s one of them swamp witches!’
‘We don’t like swamp witches!’ added Amby. ‘We kill swamp witches!’
‘Master Quell said this one can help us,’ said Gruntle. ‘Or she would have, if not for you two jumping her like that!’
‘Cut her head off!’ said Jula. ‘That usually works!’
‘I’m not cutting her head of, Lit her go, you two-’
‘She’ll attack us!’
Gruntle crouched down. ‘Jaghut stop snarling-listen to me! If they let you go, will you stop fighting?’
Eyes burned as if aflame. She struggled some more, and then ceased all motion. The blazing glare dimmed, and after a few deep, rattling breaths, she nodded. ‘Very well. Now get these two fools off me!’
‘Jula, Amby-let go of her-’
‘We will, once you cut her head off!’
‘Do it now, Boles, or I will cut your heads off.’
‘Do Amby first!’
‘No, Jula first!’
‘I’ve got two cutlasses here, boys, so I’ll do it at the same time. How does that suit you?’
The Boles half lifted themselves up and glared across at each other.
‘We don’t like it,’ said Amby.
‘So leave off her, then.’
They rolled to the sides, away from the Jaghut woman; and she pulled her arms loose and clambered to her feet. The penumbra of sorcery dimmed, winked out. Breathing hard, she spun to face the Bole brothers, who’d rolled in converging arcs until they collided and were now crouched side by side in the mud, eyeing her like a pair of wolves.
Clutching his head, Master Quell stumbled up to them. ‘You idiots,’ he gasped. ‘Jaghut, your husband’s cursed this village. Tralka Vonan. Can you do anything about that?’
She was trying to wipe the mud from her rotted clothes. ‘You’re not from around here,’ she said. ‘Who are you people?’
‘Just passing through,’ Quell said. ‘But our carriage needs repairs-and we got wounded-’
‘I am about to destroy this village and everyone in it-does that bother you?’
Quell licked his muddy lips, made a face, and then said, ‘That depends if you’re including us in your plans of slaughter.’
‘Are you pirates?’
‘No.’
‘Wreckers?’
‘No.’
‘Necromancers?’
‘No.’
Then,’ she said, with another glare at the Boles, ‘I suppose you can live.’
‘Your husband says even if he dies, the curse will persist.’
She bared stained tusks. ‘He’s lying.’
Quell glanced at Gruntle, who shrugged in return and said, ‘I’m not happy with the idea of pointless slaughter, but then, wreckers are the scum of humanity.’
The Jaghut woman walked towards the stone wall. They watched her.
‘Master Quell,’ said Glanno Tarp, ‘got any splints?’
Quell shot Gruntle another look. ‘Told you, the cheap bastard.’
At last the sun rose, lifting a rim of fire above the horizon on this the last day of the wrecker village on the Reach of Woe.
From a window of the tower, Bedusk Pall Kovuss Agape stood watching his wife approaching up the street. ‘Oh,’ he murmured, ‘I’m in trouble now.’
In the moments before dawn, Kedeviss rose from her blankets and walked out into the darkness. She could make out the shape of him, sitting on a large boulder and staring northward. Rings spun on chains, glittering like snared-stars.
Her moccasins on the gravel scree gave her away and she saw him twist round to watch her approach.
‘You no longer sleep,’ she said.
To this observation, Clip said nothing.
‘Something has happened to you,’ she continued. ‘When you awoke in Bastion, you were… changed. I thought it was some sort of residue from the possession. Now, I am not so sure.’
He put away the chain and rings and then slid down from the boulder, landing lightly and taking a moment to straighten his cloak. ‘Of them all,’ he said in a low voice, ‘you, Kedeviss, are the sharpest. You see what the others do not.’
‘I make a point of paying attention. You’ve hidden yourself well, Clip-or whoever you now are.’
‘Not well enough, it seems.’
‘What do you plan to do?’ she asked him. ‘Anomander Rake will see clearly, the moment he sets his eyes upon you. And no doubt there will be others.’
‘I was Herald of Dark,’ he said.
‘I doubt it,’ she said.
‘I was Mortal Sword to the Black-Winged Lord, to Rake himself.’
‘He didn’t choose you, though, did he? You worshipped a god who never an-swered, not a single prayer. A god who, in all likelihood, never even knew you existed.’
‘And for that,’ whispered Clip, ‘he will answer.’
Her brows rose. ‘Is this a quest for vengeance? If we had known-’
‘What you knew or didn’t know is irrelevant.’
‘A Mortal Sword serves.’
‘I said, Kedeviss, I was a Mortal Sword.’
‘No longer, then. Very well, Clip, what are you now?’
In the grainy half-light she saw him smile, and something dark veiled his eyes. ‘One day, in the sky over Bastion, a warren opened. A machine tumbled out, and down-’
She nodded. ‘Yes, we saw that machine.’
‘The one within brought with him a child god-oh, not deliberately. No, the mechanism of his sky carriage, in creating gates, in travelling from realm to realm, by its very nature cast a net, a net that captured this child god. And draped it here,’
‘And this traveller-what happened to him?’
Clip shrugged.
She studied him, head cocked to one side. ‘We failed, didn’t we?’
He eyed her, as if faintly amused.
‘We thought we’d driven the Dying God from you-instead, we drove him deeper. By destroying the cavern realm where he dwelt.’
‘You ended his pain, Kedeviss,’ said Clip. ‘Leaving only his… hunger.’
‘Rake will destroy you. Nor,’ she added, ‘will we accompany you to Black Coral. Go your own way, godling. We shall find our own way there-’
He was smiling. ‘Before me? Shall we race, Kedeviss-me with my hunger and you with your warning? Rake does not frighten me-the Tiste Andii do not frighten me. When they see me, they will see naught but kin-until it is too late.’
‘Godling, if in poring through Clip’s mind you now feel you understand the Tiste Andii, I must tell you, you are wrong. Clip was a barbarian. Ignorant. A fool. He knew nothing.’
‘I am not interested in the Tiste Andii-oh, I will kill Rake, because that is what he deserves. I will feed upon him and take his power into me. No, the one I seek is not in Black Coral, but within a barrow outside the city. Another young god-so young, so helpless, so naive.’ His smile returned. ‘And he knows I am coming for him.’
‘Must we then stop you ourselves?’
‘You? Nimander, Nenanda, all you pups? Now really, Kedeviss.’
‘If you-’
His attack was a blur-one hand closing about her throat, the other covering her mouth. She felt her throat being crushed and scrabbled for the knife at her belt.
He spun her round and flung her down to the ground, so hard that the back of her head crunched on the rocks. Dazed, her struggles weakened, flailed, fell away.
Something was pouring out from his hand where it covered her mouth, some-thing that numbed her lips, her jaws, then forced its way into her mouth and down her throat. Thick as tree sap. She stared up at him, saw the muddy gleam of the Dying God’s eyes-dying no longer, now freed-and thought: what have we done?
He was whispering. ‘I could stop now, and you’d be mine. It’s tempting.’
Instead, whatever oozed from his hand seemed to burgeon, sliding like a fat, sleek serpent down her throat, coiling in her gut.
‘But you might break loose-just a moment’s worth, but enough to warn the others, and I can’t have that.’
Where the poison touched, there was a moment of ecstatic need, sweeping through her, but that was followed almost instantly by numbness, and then something… darker. She could smell her own rot, pooling like vapours in her brain.
he is killing me. Even that knowledge could not awaken any strength within her.
‘I need the rest of them, you see,’ he was saying. ‘So we can walk in, right in, without anyone suspecting anything. I need my way in, that’s all. Look at Nimander.’ He snorted. ‘There is no guile in him, none at all. He will be my shield. My shield.’
He was no longer gripping her neck. It was no longer necessary.
Kedeviss stared up at him as she died, and her final, fading thought was: Nimander… guileless? Oh, but you don’t… And then there were nothing.
The nothing that no priest dared speak of, that no holy scripture described, that no seer or prophet set forth in ringing proclamation. The nothing, this nothing, it is the soul in waiting.
Comes death, and now the soul waits.
Aranatha opened her eyes, sat up, then reached out to touch Nimander’s shoulder. He awoke, looked at her with a question in his eyes.
‘He has killed Kedeviss,’ she said, the words soft as a breath.
Nimander paled.
‘She was right,’ Aranatha went on, ‘and now we must be careful. Say nothing to anyone else, not yet, or you will see us all die.’
‘Kedeviss.’
‘He has carried her body to a crevasse, and thrown her into it, and now he makes signs on the ground to show her careless steps, the way the edge gave way. He will come to us in shock and grief. Nimander, you must display no suspicion, do you understand?’
And she saw that his own grief would sweep all else aside-at least for now-which was good. Necessary. And that the anger within him, the rage destined to come, would be slow to build, and as it did she would speak to him again, and give him the strength he would need.
Kedeviss had been the first to see the truth-or so it might have seemed. But Aranatha knew that Nimander’s innocence was not some innate flaw, not some fatal weakness. No, his innocence was a choice he had made. The very path of his life. And he had his reasons for that.
Easy to see such a thing and misunderstand it. Easy to see it as a failing, and to then believe him irresolute.
Clip had made this error from the very beginning. And so too this Dying God, who knew only what Clip believed, and thought it truth.
She looked down and saw tears held back, waiting for Clip’s sudden arrival with his tragic news, and Aranatha nodded and turned away, to feign sleep. ‘
Somewhere beyond the camp waited a soul, motionless as a startled hare. This was sad. Aranatha had loved Kedeviss dearly, had admired her cleverness, her per-cipience. Had cherished her loyalty to Nimander-even though Kedeviss had per-haps suspected the strange circumstances surrounding Phaed’s death, and had seen how Phaed and her secrets haunted Nimander still.
When one can possess loyalty oven in the straits of hill, brutal understanding, then that one understands all there is to understand about compassion.
Kedeviss, you were a gift. And now your soul waits, as it must. For this is the fate of the Tiste Andii. Our fata. We will wait.
Until the wait is over.
Endest Silann stood with his back to the rising sun. And to the city of Black Coral. The air was chill, damp with night’s breath, and the road wending out from the gates that followed the coastline of the Cut was a bleak, colourless ribbon that snaked into stands of dark conifers half a league to the west. Empty of traffic.
The cloak of eternal darkness shrouding the city blocked the sun’s stretching rays, although the western flanks of the jumbled slope to their right was showing gilt edges; and far off to the left, the gloom of the Cut steamed white from the smooth, black surface.
‘There will be,’ said Anomander Rake, ‘unpleasantness.’
‘I know, Lord.’
‘It was an unanticipated complication.’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘I will walk,’ said Rake, ‘until I reach the tree line. Out of sight, at least until then.’
‘Have you waited too long, Lord?’
‘No.’
‘That is well, then.’
Anomander Rake rested a hand on Endest’s shoulder. ‘You have ever been, my friend, more than I deserve.’
Endest Silann could only shake his head, refuting that.
‘If we are to live,’ Rake went on, ‘we must take risks. Else our lives become deaths in all but name. There is no struggle too vast, no odds too overwhelming, for even should we fail-should we fall-we will know that we have lived.’
Endest nodded, unable to speak. There should be tears streaming down his face, but he was dry inside-his skull, behind his eyes, all… dry. Despair was a furnace where everything had burned up, where everything was ashes, but the heat remained, scalding, brittle and fractious.
‘The day has begun.’ Rake withdrew his hand and pulled on his gauntlets. ‘This walk, along this path… I will take pleasure in it, my friend. Knowing that you stand here to see me off.’
And the Son of Darkness set out.
Endest Silann watched. The warrior with his long silver hair flowing, his leather cloak flaring out. Dragnipur a scabbarded slash.
Blue seeped into the sky, shadows in retreat along the slope. Gold painted the tops of the tree line where the road slipped in. At the very edge, Anomander Rake paused, turned about and raised one hand high.
Endest Silann did the same, but the gesture was so weak it made him gasp, and his arm faltered.
And then the distant figure swung round. And vanished beneath the trees.