The Malazan Empire, page 140
“No.”
“Lucky you.”
Realization struck the assassin with a sharply drawn breath. “The Path of Hands…”
“The Path…oh.” The mage’s voice rose, “Kalam! If you knew—”
“We didn’t know a damned thing, Quick!”
“They might have a chance,” Quick Ben muttered a moment later. “With Sorry—”
“Apsalar, you mean.”
“Whatever. Let me think, damn you.”
“Oh, terrific,” Kalam growled. “More schemes…”
“I’m losing hold here, friend. Too tired…lost too much blood yesterday, I think. Mallet says…”
The voice trailed away. Cool mist seeped back in around the assassin. Quick Ben was gone. And that’s that. On my own in truth, now. Fiddler…oh, you bastard, we should have guessed, figured it out. Ancient gates…Tremorlor.
He did not move for a long time. Finally he sighed, wiped the top of the chest, removing the last of the crushed rock from its damp surface, and rose.
The captain was awake, and he had company. Salk Elan grinned as Kalam entered the cramped room. “We were just talking about you, partner,” Elan said. “Knowing how set you get in your mind, and wondering how you’d take the news…”
“All right, I’ll bite. What news?”
“This storm—we’re being blown off course. A long way.”
“Meaning?”
“Seems we’ll be making for a different port once it’s spent.”
“Not Unta.”
“Oh, eventually, of course.”
The assassin’s gaze fell to the captain. He looked unhappy, but resigned. Kalam conjured a map of Quon Tali in his mind, studied it a moment, then sighed. “Malaz City. The island.”
“Never seen that legendary cesspool before,” Elan said. “I can’t wait. I trust you’ll be generous enough to show me all the sights, friend.”
Kalam stared at the man, then smiled. “Count on it, Salk Elan.”
They had paused for a rest, almost inured to the curdling cries and screams rising from other paths of the maze. Mappo lowered Icarium to the ground and knelt beside his unconscious friend. Tremorlor’s desire for the Jhag was palpable. The Trell closed his eyes. The Nameless Ones have guided us here, delivering Icarium to the Azath as they would a goat to a hill god. Yet it is not their hands that will be bloodied by the deed. I am the one who will be stained by this.
He struggled to conjure the image of the destroyed town—his birthplace—but it was now haunted by shadows. Doubt had replaced conviction. He no longer believed his own memories. Foolish! Icarium has taken countless lives. Whatever the truth behind my town’s death…
His hands clenched.
My tribe—the shoulder-women—would not betray me. What weight can be placed on Icarium’s dreams? The Jhag remembers nothing. Nothing real. His equanimity softens truth, blurs the edges…smears every color, until the memory is daubed anew. Thus. It is Icarium’s kindness that has snared me…
Mappo’s fists ached. He looked down at his companion, studied the expression of peaceful repose on the Jhag’s blood-smeared face.
Tremorlor shall not have you. I am not to be so used. If the Nameless Ones would deliver you, then they shall have to come for you themselves, and through me first.
He looked up, glared into the heart of the maze. Tremorlor. Reach for him with your roots, and they shall feel the rage of a Trell warrior, his battle dream unleashed, ancient spirits riding his flesh in a dance of murder. This I promise, and so you are warned.
“It’s said,” Fiddler murmured beside him, “that the Azath have taken gods.”
Mappo fixed the soldier with hooded eyes.
Fiddler squinted as he studied the riotous walls on all sides. “What Elder gods—their names forgotten for millennia—are caged here? When did they last see light? When were they last able to move their limbs? Can you imagine an eternity thus endured?” He shifted the weight of the crossbow in his hands. “If Tremorlor dies…imagine the madness unleashed upon the world.”
The Trell was silent for a moment, then he whispered, “What are these darts that you fling at me?”
Fiddler’s brows rose. “Darts? None intended. This place sits on me like a cloak of vipers, that is all.”
“Tremorlor has no hunger for you, soldier.”
Fiddler’s grin was crooked. “Sometimes it pays being a nobody.”
“Now you mock in truth.”
The sapper’s grin fell away. “Widen your senses, Trell. Tremorlor’s is not the only hunger here. Every prisoner in these walls of wood feels our passage. They might well flinch from you and Icarium, but no such fear constrains their regard for the rest of us.”
Mappo looked away. “Forgive me. I’ve spared little thought for anyone else, as you have noted. Still, do not think I would hesitate in defending you if the need arose. I am not one to diminish the honor that is your companionship.”
Fiddler gave a sharp nod, straightened. “A soldier’s pragmatism. I had to know one way or the other.”
“I understand.”
“Sorry if I offended you.”
“Naught but a knife-tip’s prod—you’ve stirred me to wakefulness.”
Iskaral Pust, squatting a few paces away, sputtered. “Muddy the puddle, oh yes! Yank his loyalties this way and that—excellent! Witness the strategy of silence—while the intended victims unravel each other in pointless, divisive discourse. Oh yes, I have learned much from Tremorlor, and so assume a like strategy. Silence, a faint mocking smile suggesting I know more than I do, an air of mystery, yes, and fell knowledge. None could guess my confusion, my host of deluded illusions and elusive delusions! A mantle of marble hiding a crumbling core of sandstone. See how they stare at me, wondering—all wondering—at my secret wellspring of wisdom…”
“Let’s kill him,” Crokus muttered, “if only to put him out of out misery.”
“And sacrifice such entertainment?” Fiddler growled. He resumed his place at point. “Time to go.”
“The blathering of secrets,” the High Priest of Shadow uttered in a wholly different voice, “so they judge me ineffectual.”
The others spun to face him.
Iskaral Pust offered a beatific smile.
A swarm of wasps rose above the tangled root wall, sped over their heads and past—paying them no heed. Fiddler felt his heart thud back into place. He drew a shuddering breath. There were some D’ivers that he feared more than others. Beasts are one thing, but insects…
He glanced back at the others. Icarium hung limp in Mappo’s arms. The Jhag’s head was stained with blood. The Trell’s gaze reached beyond the sapper to the edifice that awaited them. Mappo’s expression was twisted with anguish, so thoroughly unmasked and vulnerable that the Trell’s face was a child’s face, with an attendant need that was all the more demanding for being wholly unconscious. A mute appeal that was difficult to resist.
Fiddler shook himself, pushing his attention past Mappo and his burden. Apsalar, her father and Crokus stood ranged behind the Trell in a protective cordon while beyond them were the Hounds and Iskaral Pust. Five pairs of bestial eyes and one human burned with intent—dubious allies, our rearguard. Talk about a badly timed schism—and that intent was fixed on the unconscious body in Mappo’s arms.
Icarium himself wished it, and in so saying rendered the Trell’s heart. The price of acquiescence is as nothing to the pain of refusal. Yet Mappo will surrender his life to this, and we’re likely to do the same. None of us—not even Apsalar—is cold-hearted enough to stand back, to see the Jhag taken. Hood’s breath, we are fools, and Mappo the greatest fool of us all…
“What’s on your mind, Fid?” Crokus asked, his tone suggesting he had a pretty good idea.
“Sappers got a saying,” he muttered. “Wide-eyed stupid.”
The Daru slowly nodded.
In other paths of the maze, the taking had begun. Shapeshifters—the most powerful of them, the survivors who’d made it this far—had begun their assault on the House of the Azath. A cacophony of screams echoed in the air, battering their senses. Tremorlor defended itself the only way it could, by devouring, by imprisoning—but there are too many, coming too quickly—wood snapped, woven cages shattered, the sound was of a forest being destroyed, branch by branch, tree by tree, an inexorable progression, closer, ever closer to the House itself.
“We’re running out of time!” hissed Iskaral Pust, the Hounds moving in agitation around him. “Things are coming up behind us. Things! How much clearer can I be?”
“We may still need him,” Fiddler said.
“Oh, aye!” the High Priest responded. “The Trell can throw him like a sack of grain!”
“I can bring him around quickly enough,” Mappo growled. “I still carry some of those Denul elixirs from your temple, Iskaral Pust.”
“Let’s get moving,” the sapper said. Something was indeed coming up behind them, making the air redolent with sickly spice. The Hounds had pulled their attention from Mappo and Icarium and now faced the other way, revealing restless nerves as they shifted position. The trail made a sharp bend twenty paces from where the huge beasts stood.
A piercing scream ripped the air, coming from just beyond that bend, followed by the explosive sounds of battle. It ended abruptly.
“We’ve waited too long!” Pust hissed, cowering behind his god’s Hounds. “Now it comes!”
Fiddler swung his crossbow around, eyes fixed on the place where their pursuer would appear.
Instead, a small, nut-brown creature half flapped, half scampered into view. Tendrils of smoke drifted from it.
“Ai!” Pust shrieked. “They plague me!”
Crokus bolted forward, pushing his way between Shan and Gear as if they were no more than a pair of mules. “Moby?”
The familiar raced toward the Daru and leaped at the last moment to land in the lad’s arms. Where it clung tenaciously, wings twitching. Crokus’s head snapped back. “Ugh, you stink like the Abyss!”
Moby, that damned familiar…Fiddler’s gaze flicked to Mappo. The Trell was frowning.
“Bhok’aral!” The word came from Iskaral Pust as a curse. “A pet? A pet? Madness!”
“My uncle’s familiar,” Crokus said, approaching.
The Hounds shrank from his path.
Oh, lad, much more than that, it seems.
“An ally, then,” Mappo said.
Crokus nodded, though with obvious uncertainty. “Hood knows how he found us. How he survived…”
“Dissembler!” Pust accused, creeping toward the Daru. “A familiar? Shall we ask the opinion of that dead shapeshifter back there? Oh no, we can’t, can we? It’s been torn to pieces!”
Crokus said nothing.
“Never mind,” Apsalar said. “We’re wasting time. To the House—”
The High Priest wheeled on her. “Never mind? What conniving deceit has arrived among us? What foul betrayal hangs over us? There, hanging from the lad’s shirt—”
“Enough!” Fiddler snapped. “Stay here then, Pust. You and your Hounds.” The sapper faced the House again. “What do you think, Mappo? Nothing’s got close to it yet—if we make a run for it…”
“We can but try.”
“Do you think the door will open for us?”
“I do not know.”
“Let’s find out, then.”
The Trell nodded.
They had a clear view of Tremorlor. A low wall surrounded it, made of what appeared to be volcanic rock, jagged and sharp. The only visible break in that wall was a narrow gate, over which arched a weave of vines. The House itself was tawny in color, probably built of limestone, its entrance recessed between a pair of squat, asymmetrical two-story towers, neither of which possessed windows. A winding path of flagstones connected the gate with the shadow-swallowed door. Low, gnarled trees occupied the yard, each surmounting a hump.
A sister to Deadhouse in Malaz City. Little different from the one in Darujhistan. All of a kind. All Azath—though where that name came from and how long ago no one knows or will ever know.
Mappo spoke in a low voice beside the sapper. “It’s said the Azath bridge the realms—every realm. It’s said that even time itself ceases within their walls.”
“And those doors open to but a few, for reasons unknown.” Fiddler scowled at his own words.
Apsalar moved to the front, stepping past the sapper.
Startled, Fiddler grunted. “In a hurry, lass?”
She looked back at him. “The one who possessed me, Fiddler…an Azath welcomed him, once.”
True enough. And why does that make me so nervous now, and here? “So, how’s it done? Special knock? Key under the loose flagstone?”
Her answering smile was a balm to his agitation. “No, something much simpler. Audacity.”
“Well, we’ve plenty of that. We’re here, aren’t we?”
“Aye, we are.”
She led the way, and all followed.
“That conch shell,” Mappo rumbled. “Immense damage was delivered to the Soletaken and D’ivers, is still being delivered, it seems—for the Azath, it may be proving enough.”
“And you pray that is so.”
“Aye, I do.”
“So why didn’t that deathly song destroy us as well?”
“You are asking me, Fiddler? The gift was given to you, was it not?”
“Yes. I saved a little girl—kin to the Spiritwalker.”
“Which Spiritwalker, Fiddler?”
“Kimloc.”
The Trell was silent for half a dozen paces, then a frustrated growl rose from him. “A girl, you said. No matter how close a kin, Kimloc’s reward far outweighed your gesture. More, it seemed precisely intended for its use—the sorcery in that song was aspected, Fiddler. Tell me, did Kimloc know you sought Tremorlor?”
“I certainly didn’t tell him as much.”
“Did he touch you at any time—the brush of a finger against your arm, anything?”
“He asked to, as I recall. He wanted my story. I declined. But Hood’s breath, Mappo, I truly cannot recall if there was some chance contact.”
“I think there must have been.”
“If so, I forgive him the indiscretion.”
“I imagine he anticipated that as well.”
Even as Tremorlor withstood the assault that raged from all sides, the battles were far from over, and in some places the sound of shattering wood was a seemingly unstoppable progression, coming ever closer.
Apsalar increased pace as one of those unseen, sundering avalanches drew near the group, driving for the arched gate. A moment later, amidst a rising roar, they all broke into a run.
“Where?” Fiddler demanded as he scrambled forward, head darting as he searched frantically in all directions. “Where in Hood’s name is it?”
The answer came in a sudden sleet of ice-cold water from above, the savage opening of a warren. Emerging from within that hovering, strangely suspended spray—not fifty paces behind them—the enormous head and maw of a dhenrabi lunged into view, wreathed in uprooted sea grasses, kelp and strange, skeletal branches.
A swarm of wasps rose before it and was devoured entire without pause.
Three more dhenrabi appeared from that torrential portal. The roiling spume of water that held them seemed to burn off wherever it descended upon the roots of the maze, yet the creatures remained suspended, riding the hissing maelstrom.
Images flashed through Fiddler within the span of a single heartbeat. Kansu Sea. Not a Soletaken after all—not a single beast, but a pack. A D’ivers. And I’m out of cussers—
A moment later, it became clear just how untested the Hounds of Shadow had been thus far. He felt the power emanate from the five beasts—so similar was it to that of dragons, it rolled like a breath, a surge of raw sorcery that preceded the Hounds as they sprang forward with blurring speed.
Shan was the first to reach the lead dhenrabi, the first to plunge into its gaping, serrated mouth—and vanish within that yawning darkness. The creature reared back lightning-quick, and if that massive, blunt visage could show surprise, it did so now.
Gear reached the next one, and the dhenrabi lunged, not to swallow, but to bite down, to flense with the thousand jagged plates of its teeth. The Hound’s power buckled under those snapping jaws, but did not shatter. An instant later, Gear was through, past those teeth, burying itself within the creature—where it delivered mayhem.
The other Hounds made for the remaining two dhenrabi. Only Blind remained with the group.
The lead dhenrabi began thrashing now, whipping its enormous bulk as the torrent of its warren collapsed around it—crushing flat walls of the maze, where long-imprisoned victims stirred amidst the wreckage, withered limbs reaching skyward through mud-churned water, clutching air. The second dhenrabi fell into the same writhing tumult.
A hand clutched Fiddler’s arm, pulling him hard around.
“Come on,” Crokus hissed. Moby was still clinging to his shirt. “We’ve got more company, Fid.”
And now the sapper saw the object of the Daru’s attention—off to his right, almost behind Tremorlor, still a thousand paces distant, yet fast approaching. A swarm like no other. Bloodflies, in a solid black cloud the size of a thunderhead, billowing, surging toward them.
Leaving the dhenrabi in the throes of violent death behind them, the group sprinted for the House.
As he passed beneath the leafless arch of vines, the sapper saw Apsalar reach the door, close her hands on the broad, heavy ring-latch and twist it. He saw the muscles rise on her forearms, straining. Straining.
Then she staggered back a step, as if dismissively, contemptuously shoved. As Fiddler, trailed by Crokus, Mappo with his charge, Apsalar’s father, then Pust and Blind, reached the flat, paved landing, he saw her spin round, her expression one of shock and disbelief.
It won’t open. Tremorlor has refused us.
The sapper skidded to a halt, whirled.
The sky was black, alive, and coming straight for them.
At Vathar’s sparse, blistered edge, where the basolith of bedrock sank once more beneath its skin of limestone, and the land that stretched southward before and below their vantage point was nothing but studded stones in windswept, parched clay, they came upon the first of the Jaghut tombs.
