The Malazan Empire, page 111
The sapper eyed Mappo and Icarium, sensing a new tension between them, though they continued to work together with familiar ease. The tension was in the words unspoken between the two, Fiddler suspected. Changes are coming to us all, it seems. He glanced over at Crokus, who sat rigid with barely restrained impatience on the spare mount he had inherited. He’d caught the lad running through a gamut of close-in knife-fighting moves a short while earlier. The few times the sapper had seen him use the knives before there’d been a kind of desperation marring his technique. Crokus had some skill but he lacked maturity—he was too conscious of himself behind the blades. That had changed, Fiddler realized as he watched the lad go through his routine. Taking cuts was essential to delivering killing thrusts. Knife-fighting was a messy business. Cold determination backed Crokus now—he would do more than just hold his own from now on, the sapper knew. Nor would he be so quick to throw his knives, unless he had plenty of spares tucked within easy reach in the folds of his telaba. Now more likely, I’d hazard.
The late-afternoon sky was hazy ochre, filled with the suspended residue of the Whirlwind, which still raged in the heart of Raraku no more than ten leagues distant. The heat was made even more oppressive by that suffocating cloak.
Mappo freed the snared bhok’aral, earning a nasty bite on the wrist for his kindness. The creature half scampered, half flew back up the cliff face, voicing an abusive torrent as it went.
Fiddler called out to the Trell. “Set us a pace, then!”
Mappo nodded and he and Icarium set off down the trail.
The sapper was glad he was the only one to glance back to see a score of bhok’arala on the cliff face waving farewell, with Iskaral Pust almost falling from the window in his efforts to sweep the nearest creatures from the tower’s stone wall with his broom.
The renegade Korbolo Dom’s army of the Apocalypse was spread over the rumpled carpet of grassy hills that marked the south edge of the plain. On each hilltop stood command tents and the raised banners of various tribes and self-proclaimed battalions. Between small towns of tents and wagons roamed vast herds of cattle and horses.
The encampment’s pickets were marked by three ragged rows of crucified prisoners. Kites and rhizan and capemoths swarmed around each victim.
The outermost line rose above the earthworks and trench less than fifty paces away from Kalam’s position. He lay flat in the high yellow grasses, the heat of the parched ground rising up around him with a smell of dust and sage. Insects crawled over him, their prickling feet tracking aimless paths across his hands and forearms. The assassin ignored them, his eyes on the nearest of the crucified victims.
A young Malazan lad of no more than twelve or thirteen. Capemoths rode his arms from shoulder to wrist, making them look like wings. Rhizan gathered in writhing clumps at his hands and feet, where the spikes had been driven through bones and flesh. The boy had no eyes, no nose—his face was a ravaged wound—yet he still lived.
The image was etching itself into Kalam’s heart like acid into bronze. His limbs felt cold, as if his own claim to life was withdrawing, pooling in his gut. I cannot save him. I cannot even kill him in swift mercy. Not this lad, not a single one of these hundreds of Malazans surrounding this army. I can do nothing. The knowledge was a whisper of madness. The assassin feared but one thing that left him skeined with terror: helplessness. But not the helplessness of being a prisoner, or of undergoing torture—he’d been victim to both, and he well knew that torture could break anyone—anyone at all. But this…Kalam feared insignificance, he feared the inability to produce an effect, to force a change upon the world beyond his flesh.
It was this knowledge that the scene before him was searing into his soul. I can do nothing. Nothing. He stared across the intervening fifty paces into the young man’s sightless sockets, the distance between diminishing with every breath, until he felt close enough to brush his lips against the boy’s sun-cracked forehead. To whisper lies—your death won’t be forgotten, the truth of your precious life which you still refuse to surrender because it’s all you have. You are not alone, child—lies. The lad was alone. Alone with his withering, collapsing life. And when the body became a corpse, when it rotted and fell away to join all those others ringing a place that had once held an army, he would be forgotten. Another faceless victim. One in a number that beggared comprehension.
The Empire would exact revenge—if it was able—and the numbers would grow. The Imperial threat was ever thus: The destruction you wreak upon us and our kind, we deliver back to you tenfold. If Kalam succeeded in killing Laseen, then perhaps he would also succeed in guiding to the throne someone with spine enough to avoid ruling from a position of crisis. The assassin and Quick Ben had someone in mind for that. If all goes as planned. But for these, it was too late.
He let out a slow breath, only now realizing he was lying on an ants’ nest and its inhabitants were telling him to leave in no uncertain terms. I lie with the weight of a god on their world, and these ants don’t like it. We’re so much more alike than most would think.
Kalam edged back through the grasses. Not the first scene of horror I’ve witnessed, after all. A soldier learns to wear every kind of armor, and so long as he stays in the trade, it works well enough. Gods, I don’t think my sanity would survive peace!
With that chilling thought seeping like weakness into his limbs, Kalam reached the back slope, out of the victims’ line of sight. He scanned the area, seeking sign of Apt’s presence, but the demon seemed to have vanished. After a moment he rose into a crouch and padded back to the aspen grove where the others waited.
Minala rose from cover as he approached the low brush encircling the silver-leafed trees, crossbow in her hands.
Kalam shook his head. In silence they both slipped between the spindly boles and rejoined the group.
Keneb had succumbed to yet another bout of fever. His wife, Selv, hovered over him in tight-lipped fear that seemed on the edge of panic, holding a water-soaked cloth to Keneb’s forehead and murmuring in an effort to still his thrashing and twitching. The children, Vaneb and Kesen, stood nearby, studiously attending to their horses.
“How bad is it?” Minala asked, carefully uncocking the crossbow.
Kalam was preoccupied with plucking and brushing ants from his body for a moment, then he sighed. “We’ll not get around them. I saw standards from the west tribes—those camps are still growing, meaning the Odhan to the west won’t be empty. Eastward we’d run into villages and towns, all liberated and occupied by garrisons. That whole horizon is nothing but smoke.”
“If it was just you you’d get through,” Minala said, reaching up to brush her black hair from her face. Her light-gray eyes held hard on him. “Just another soldier of the Apocalypse, it would be a simple task to take picket duty on the south edge, then slip away one night.”
Kalam grunted. “Not as easy as you think. There’re mages in that encampment.” And I’ve held the Book in my hands—not likely I’d stay anonymous—
“What difference would that make?” Minala asked. “Maybe you’ve got a reputation, but you’re no Ascendant.”
The assassin shrugged. He straightened, retrieved his pack, set it down and began rummaging through its contents.
“You haven’t answered me, Corporal,” Minala continued, watching him. “Why all this self-importance? You’re not the type to delude yourself, so you must be holding something back from us. Some other…significant detail about yourself.”
“Sorcery,” Kalam muttered, pulling free a small object from the pack. “Not mine. Quick Ben’s.” He held up the object and quirked a wry grin.
“A rock.”
“Aye. Granted, it’d be more dramatic if it was a faceted gem or a torc of gold. But there’s not a mage in this world stupid enough to invest power in a valuable object. After all, who’d steal a rock?”
“I’ve heard legends otherwise—”
“Oh, you’ll find magic embedded in jewels and such—sorcerers make up dozens of them, all cursed in some way or other. Most of them are a kind of magical spying device—the sorcerer can track them, sometimes even see through them. Claws use that intelligence-gathering method all the time.” He tossed the rock in the air, caught it, then suddenly sobered. “This was intended to be used as a last resort…” In the palace at Unta, actually.
“What does it do?”
The assassin grimaced. I haven’t a clue. Quick Ben’s not the expansive type, the bastard. “It’s your shaved knuckle in the hole, Kalam. With this you can stride right into the throne room. I guarantee it.” He glanced around, saw a low, flat rock nearby. “Get everyone ready to move.”
The assassin crouched down before the flat rock, set the stone on it, then found a fist-sized cobble. He hefted it thoughtfully before bringing it crashing down on the stone.
He was shocked as it splattered like wet clay.
Darkness swept over them. Kalam looked up, slowly straightened. Damn, I should’ve guessed.
“Where are we?” Selv demanded in a high, taut voice.
“Mother!”
The assassin turned to see Kesen and Vaneb stumbling in knee-deep ash. Ash that was filled with charred bones. The horses were shying, tossing their heads as gray dust rose like smoke.
Hood’s breath, we’re in the Imperial Warren! Kalam found himself standing on a broad, raised disc of gray basalt. Sky merged with land in a formless, colorless haze. I could wring your neck, Quick Ben! The assassin had heard rumors that such a warren had been created and the description matched, but the tales he’d picked up on Genabackis suggested that it was barely nascent, extending no more than a few hundred leagues—if leagues mean much here—in a ring around Unta. Instead, it reaches all the way into Seven Cities. And Genabackis? Why not? Quick Ben, there could be a Claw riding your shoulder right now…
The children had settled their horses and were now in the saddles, well away from the grisly scorched mound. Kalam glanced over to see Minala and Selv tying Keneb onto his saddle.
The assassin approached his own stallion. The beast snorted disdainfully as he swung himself up and gathered the reins.
“We’re in a warren, aren’t we?” Minala asked. “I’d always believed all those tales of other realms were nothing but elaborate inventions wizards and priests used to prop up all the fumbling around they did.”
Kalam grunted. He’d been run through enough warrens and plunged into enough chaotic maelstroms of sorcery to take it for granted. Minala had just reminded him that for most people such a reality was remote, viewed with skepticism if acknowledged at all. Is such ignorance a comfort or a source of blind fear?
“I take it we’re safe from Korbolo Dom here?”
“I certainly hope so,” the assassin muttered.
“How do we select a direction? There’re no landmarks, no trail…”
“Quick Ben says you travel with an intention in mind and the warren will take you there.”
“And the destination you have in mind?”
Kalam scowled, was silent for a long moment. Then he sighed. “Aren.”
“How safe are we?”
Safe? We’ve stepped into a hornets’ nest. “We’ll see.”
“Oh, that’s a comfort!” Minala snapped.
The image of the crucified Malazan boy rose once again in the assassin’s thoughts. He glanced over at Keneb’s children. “Better this risk than a…different certainty,” he muttered.
“Are you going to explain that comment?”
Kalam shook his head. “Enough talk. I’ve a city to visualize…”
Lostara Yil walked her mount up to the gaping hole, understanding at once that, although she had never seen one before, this was a portalway into another warren. Its edges had begun fading, like a wound closing.
She hesitated. The assassin had chosen a shortcut, a means of slipping past the traitor’s army between him and Aren. The Red Blade knew she had no choice but to follow, for the trail would prove far too cold should she manage the long way to Aren. Even getting through Korbolo Dom’s forces would likely prove impossible—as a Red Blade she was bound to be recognized, even wearing unmarked armor as she did now.
Still, Lostara Yil hesitated.
Her horse reared back squealing as a figure staggered from the portalway. A man, gray-clothed, gray-skinned—even his hair was gray—straightened before her, glanced around with strangely luminous eyes, then smiled.
“Not a hole I expected to fall through,” he said in lilting Malazan. “My apologies if I startled you.” He sketched a bow, the gesture resulting in clouds of dust cascading from him. The gray was ash, Lostara realized. Dark skin revealed itself in patches on the man’s lean face.
He eyed her knowingly. “You carry an aspected sigil. Hidden.”
“What?” Her hand drifted toward her sword hilt.
The man caught the motion, his smile broadening. “You are a Red Blade, an officer in fact. Which makes us allies.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Who are you?”
“Call me Pearl. Now, it seems you were about to enter the Imperial Warren. I suggest we do so before continuing our conversation—before the portalway closes.”
“Can you not keep it open, Pearl? After all, you were traveling it…”
The man’s exaggerated frown was mocking. “Alas, this is a door where no door should be possible. Granted, north of here even the Imperial Warren is fraught with…unwelcome intruders…but their means of entry is far more…primitive, shall we say…in nature. So, since this portalway is clearly not of your making, I suggest we take immediate advantage of its presence.”
“Not until I know who you are, Pearl. Rather, what you are.”
“I am a Claw, of course. Who else is granted the privilege of traveling the Imperial Warren?”
She nodded at the portalway. “Someone’s just granted that privilege to himself.”
Pearl’s eyes sparkled. “And this is what you shall tell me about, Red Blade.”
She sat in silence, thinking, then nodded. “Yes. Ideal. I shall accompany you.”
Pearl took a step backward and beckoned with one gloved hand.
Lostara Yil tapped heels to her mount’s flanks.
Quick Ben’s shaved knuckle in the hole was slower in closing than anyone had anticipated. Seven hours after the Red Blade and the Claw had vanished within the Imperial Warren, stars glittered in the moonless sky overhead, and still the portalway gaped, its red-lined edges fading to dull magenta.
Sounds drifted into the glade, echoes of panic and alarm in Korbolo Dom’s encampment. Parties of riders set out in all directions, bearing torches. Mages risked their warrens, seeking trails through the now perilous pathways of sorcery.
Thirteen hundred Malazan children had vanished, the liberation unseen by the pickets or the mounted patrols. The X-shaped wooden crosses were bare, with only stains of blood, urine and excrement to show that living beings had once hung from them in agony.
In the darkness the plain was strangely alive with shadows, flowing sourcelessly over the motionless grasses.
Apt strode silently into the glade, her daggerlike fangs gleaming their natural grin. Sweat glistened on her black hide, the thick spiny bristles of her hair wet with dew. She stood erect, her single forelimb clutching the limp body of a young boy. Blood dripped from his hands and feet, and his face had been horribly chewed and pecked, leaving him eyeless and with a gaping red hole where his nose had been. Faint breaths from fevered, shallow lungs showed in misty plumes that drifted forlornly in the clearing.
The demon squatted down on her haunches and waited.
Shadows gathered, pouring like liquid between the trees to hover before the portalway.
Apt cocked her head and spread wide her mouth in something like a canine yawn.
A vague shape took form within the shadows. The glowing eyes of guardian Hounds appeared to flank the figure.
“I thought I had lost you,” Shadowthrone whispered to the demon. “Snared so long by Sha’ik and her doomed goddess. Yet this night you return, not alone—oh no, not alone, aptorian. You’ve grown ambitious since you were but a Demon Lord’s concubine. Tell me, my dear, what am I to do with over a thousand dying mortals?”
The Hounds were eyeing Apt as if the demon was a potential meal.
“Am I a cutter? A healer?” Shadowthrone’s voice was rising, octave by octave. “Is Cotillion a kindly uncle? Are my Hounds farmyard skulkers and orphans’ puppies?” The shadow that was the god flared wildly. “Have you gone entirely insane?”
Apt spoke in a rapid, rasping series of clicks and hisses.
“Of course Kalam wanted to save them!” Shadowthrone shrieked. “But he knew it was impossible! Only vengeance was possible! But now! Now I must exhaust my powers healing a thousand maimed children! And for what?”
Apt spoke again.
“Servants? And precisely how big do you think Shadow Keep is, you one-armed imbecile!”
The demon said nothing, her slate-gray multifaceted eye glimmering in the starlight.
Shadowthrone hunched suddenly, his gauzelike cloak wrapping close as he hugged himself. “An army of servants,” he whispered. “Servants. Abandoned by the Empire, left to their fates at the hand of Sha’ik’s bloodlusted bandits. There will be…ambivalence…in their scarred, malleable souls…” The god glanced up at the demon. “I see long-term benefits in your precipitous act, demon. Lucky for you!”
Apt hissed and clicked.
“You wish to claim for your own the one in your clutches? And—if indeed you are to resume your guardianship of the Bridgeburner assassin—how precisely will you coordinate such conflicting responsibilities?”
The demon replied.
Shadowthrone spluttered. “Such nerve, you coddled bitch! No wonder you fell from the Aptorian Lord’s favor!” He fell silent, then, after a moment, flowed forward. “Forced healing demands a price,” Shadowthrone murmured. “The flesh recovers while the mind writhes with the memory of pain, that bludgeon of helplessness.” He raised a sleeve-shrouded hand to the boy’s forehead. “This child who shall ride you shall be…unpredictable.” He hissed a laugh as the wounds began closing, as new flesh formed on the boy’s ravaged face. “What manner of eyes do you wish him to have, my dear?”
