The Malazan Empire, page 157
The Bonecaster stared at the woman for a long moment, then his gaze dropped away, past her, and scanned the soft clay ground. ‘An Imass has been here,’ he said. ‘A woman. The Bonecaster—’ the one I could not find in my spiritwalk. The one who chose not to be found ‘What has she done?’
‘She has explored this land,’ the Jaghut replied. ‘She has found a gate far to the south. It is Omtose Phellack.’
‘I am glad,’ Pran Chole said, ‘I am not a mother.’ And you, woman, should be glad I am not cruel. He gestured. Heavy spears flashed past the Bonecaster. Six long, fluted heads of flint punched through the skin covering the Jaghut’s chest. She staggered, then folded to the ground in a clatter of shafts.
Thus ended the thirty-third Jaghut War.
Pran Chole whirled. ‘We’ve no time for a pyre. We must strike southward. Quickly.’
Cannig Tol stepped forward as his warriors went to retrieve their weapons. The Clan Leader’s eyes narrowed on the Bonecaster. ‘What distresses you?’
‘A renegade Bonecaster has taken the children.’
‘South?’
‘To Morn.’
The Clan Leader’s brows knitted.
‘The renegade would save this woman’s children. The renegade believes the Rent to be Omtose Phellack.’
Pran Chole watched the blood leave Cannig Tol’s face. ‘Go to Morn, Bonecaster,’ the Clan Leader whispered. ‘We are not cruel. Go now.’
Pran Chole bowed. The Tellann warren engulfed him.
* * *
The faintest release of her power sent the two Jaghut children upward, into the gate’s maw. The girl cried out a moment before reaching it, a longing wail for her mother, who she imagined waited beyond. Then the two small figures vanished within.
The Bonecaster sighed and continued to stare upward, seeking any evidence that the passage had gone awry. It seemed, however, that no wounds had reopened, no gush of wild power bled from the portal. Did it look different? She could not be sure. This was new land for her; she had nothing of the bone-bred sensitivity that she had known all her life among the lands of the Tarad clan, in the heart of the First Empire.
The Tellann warren opened behind her. The woman spun round, moments from veering into her Soletaken form.
An arctic fox bounded into view, slowed upon seeing her, then sembled back into its Imass form. She saw before her a young man, wearing the skin of his totem animal across his shoulders, and a battered antler headdress. His expression was twisted with fear, his eyes not on her, but on the portal beyond.
The woman smiled. ‘I greet you, fellow Bonecaster. Yes, I have sent them through. They are beyond the reach of your vengeance, and this pleases me.’
His tawny eyes fixed on her. ‘Who are you? What clan?’
‘I have left my clan, but I was once counted among the Logros. I am named Kilava.’
‘You should have let me find you last night,’ Pran Chole said. ‘I would then have been able to convince you that a swift death was the greater mercy for those children than what you have done here, Kilava.’
‘They are young enough to be adopted—’
‘You have come to the place called Morn,’ Pran Chole interjected, his voice cold. ‘To the ruins of an ancient city—’
‘Jaghut—’
‘Not Jaghut! This tower, yes, but it was built long afterward, in the time between the city’s destruction and the T’ol Ara’d – this flow of lava which but buried something already dead.’ He raised a hand, pointed towards the suspended gate. ‘It was this – this wounding – that destroyed the city, Kilava. The warren beyond – do you not understand? It is not Omtose Phellack! Tell me this – how are such wounds sealed? You know the answer, Bonecaster!’
The woman slowly turned, studied the Rent. ‘If a soul sealed that wound, then it should have been freed … when the children arrived—’
‘Freed,’ Pran Chole hissed, ‘in exchange!’
Trembling, Kilava faced him again. ‘Then where is it? Why has it not appeared?’
Pran Chole turned to study the central mound on the plain. ‘Oh,’ he whispered, ‘but it has.’ He glanced back at his fellow Bonecaster. ‘Tell me, will you in turn give up your life for those children? They are trapped now, in an eternal nightmare of pain. Does your compassion extend to sacrificing yourself in yet another exchange?’ He studied her, then sighed. ‘I thought not, so wipe away those tears, Kilava. Hypocrisy ill suits a Bonecaster.’
‘What…’ the woman managed after a time, ‘what has been freed?’
Pran Chole shook his head. He studied the central mound again. ‘I am not sure, but we shall have to do something about it, sooner or later. I suspect we have plenty of time. The creature must now free itself of its tomb, and that has been thoroughly warded. More, there is the T’ol Ara’d’s mantle of stone still clothing the barrow.’ After a moment, he added. ‘But time we shall have.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The Gathering has been called. The Ritual of Tellann awaits us, Bonecaster.’
She spat ‘You are all insane. To choose immortality for the sake of a war – madness. I shall defy the call, Bonecaster.’
He nodded. ‘Yet the Ritual shall be done. I have spiritwalked into the future, Kilava. I have seen my withered face of two hundred thousand and more years hence. We shall have our eternal war.’
Bitterness filled Kilava’s voice. ‘My brother will be pleased.’
‘Who is your brother?’
‘Onos T’oolan, the First Sword.’
Pran Chole turned at this. ‘You are the Defier. You slaughtered your clan – your kin—’
‘To break the link and thus achieve freedom, yes. Alas, my eldest brother’s skills more than matched mine. Yet now we are both free, though what I celebrate Onos T’oolan curses.’ She wrapped her arms around herself, and Pran Chole saw upon her layers and layers of pain. Hers was a freedom he did not envy. She spoke again. ‘This city, then. Who built it’
‘K’ChainChe’Malle.’
‘I know the name, but little else of them.’
Pran Chole nodded. ‘We shall, I expect, learn.’
II
Continents of Korelri and Jacuruku, in the Time of Dying
119,736 years before Burn’s Sleep (three years after the Fall of the
Crippled God)
The Fall had shattered a continent. Forests had burned, the firestorms lighting the horizons in every direction, bathing crimson the heaving ash-filled clouds blanketing the sky. The conflagration had seemed unending, world-devouring, weeks into months, and through it all could be heard the screams of a god.
Pain gave birth to rage. Rage, to poison, an infection sparing no-one.
Scattered survivors remained, reduced to savagery, wandering a landscape pocked with huge craters now filled with murky, lifeless water, the sky churning endlessly above them. Kinship had been dismembered, love had proved a burden too costly to carry. They ate what they could, often each other, and scanned the ravaged world around them with rapacious intent.
One figure walked this landscape alone. Wrapped in rotting rags, he was of average height, his features blunt and unprepossessing. There was a dark cast to his face, a heavy inflexibility in his eyes. He walked as if gathering suffering unto himself, unmindful of its vast weight; walked as if incapable of yielding, of denying the gifts of his own spirit.
In the distance, ragged bands eyed the figure as he strode, step by step, across what was left of the continent that would one day be called Korelri. Hunger might have driven them closer, but there were no fools left among the survivors of the Fall, and so they maintained a watchful distance, curiosity dulled by fear. For the man was an ancient god, and he walked among them.
Beyond the suffering he absorbed, K’rul would have willingly embraced their broken souls, yet he had fed – was feeding – on the blood spilled onto this land, and the truth was this: the power born of that would be needed.
In K’rul’s wake, men and women killed men, killed women, killed children. Dark slaughter was the river the Elder God rode.
Elder Gods embodied a host of harsh unpleasantries.
* * *
The foreign god had been torn apart in his descent to earth. He had come down in pieces, in streaks of flame. His pain was fire, screams and thunder, a voice that had been heard by half the world. Pain, and outrage. And, K’rul reflected, grief. It would be a long time before the foreign god could begin to reclaim the remaining fragments of its life, and so begin to unveil its nature. K’rul feared that day’s arrival. From such a shattering could only come madness.
The summoners were dead. Destroyed by what they had called down upon them. There was no point in hating them, no need to conjure up images of what they in truth deserved by way of punishment. They had, after all, been desperate. Desperate enough to part the fabric of chaos, to open a way into an alien, remote realm; to then lure a curious god of that realm closer, ever closer to the trap they had prepared. The summoners sought power.
All to destroy one man.
The Elder God had crossed the ruined continent, had looked upon the still-living flesh of the Fallen God, had seen the unearthly maggots that crawled forth from that rotting, endlessly pulsing meat and broken bone. Had seen what those maggots flowered into. Even now, as he reached the battered shoreline of Jacuruku, the ancient sister continent to Korelri, they wheeled above him on their broad, black wings. Sensing the power within him, they were hungry for its taste.
But a strong god could ignore the scavengers that trailed in his wake, and K’rul was a strong god. Temples had been raised in his name. Blood had for generations soaked countless altars in worship of him. The nascent cities were wreathed in the smoke of forges, pyres, the red glow of humanity’s dawn. The First Empire had risen, on a continent half a world away from where K’rul now walked. An empire of humans, born from the legacy of the T’lan Imass, from whom it took its name.
But it had not been alone for long. Here, on Jacuruku, in the shadow of long-dead K’Chain Che’Malle ruins, another empire had emerged. Brutal, a devourer of souls, its ruler was a warrior without equal.
K’rul had come to destroy him, had come to snap the chains of twelve million slaves – even the Jaghut Tyrants had not commanded such heartless mastery over their subjects. No, it took a mortal human to achieve this level of tyranny over his kin.
Two other Elder Gods were converging on the Kallorian Empire. The decision had been made. The three – last of the Elder – would bring to a close the High King’s despotic rule. K’rul could sense his companions. Both were close; both had been comrades once, but they all – K’rul included – had changed, had drifted far apart. This would mark the first conjoining in millennia.
He could sense a fourth presence as well, a savage, ancient beast following his spoor. A beast of the earth, of winter’s frozen breath, a beast with white fur bloodied, wounded almost unto death by the Fall. A beast with but one surviving eye to look upon the destroyed land that had once been its home – long before the empire’s rise. Trailing, but coming no closer. And, K’rul well knew, it would remain a distant observer of all that was about to occur. The Elder god could spare it no sorrow, yet was not indifferent to its pain.
We each survive as we must, and when time comes to die, we find our places of solitude …
The Kallorian Empire had spread to every shoreline of Jacuruku, yet K’rul saw no-one as he took his first steps inland. Lifeless wastes stretched on all sides. The air was grey with ash and dust, the skies overhead churning like lead in a smith’s cauldron. The Elder God experienced the first breath of unease, sidling chill across his soul.
Above him the god-spawned scavengers cackled as they wheeled.
A familiar voice spoke in K’rul’s mind. Brother, I am upon the north shore.
‘And I the west’
Are you troubled?
‘I am. All is … dead.’
Incinerated. The heat remains deep beneath the beds of ash. Ash … and bone.
A third voice spoke. Brothers, I am come from the south, where once dwelt the cities. All destroyed. The echoes of a continent’s death-cry still linger. Are we deceived? Is this illusion?
K’rul addressed the first Elder who had spoken in his mind. ‘Draconus, I too feel that death-cry. Such pain … indeed, more dreadful in its aspect than that of the Fallen One. If not a deception as our sister suggests, what has he done?’
We have stepped onto this land, and so all share what you sense, K’rul, Draconus replied. I, too, am not certain of its truth. Sister, do you approach the High King’s abode?
The third voice replied, I do, brother Draconus. Would you and brother K’rul join me now, that we may confront this mortal as one?
‘We shall.’
Warrens opened, one to the far north, the other directly before K’rul.
The two Elder Gods joined their sister upon a ragged hilltop where wind swirled through the ashes, spinning funereal wreaths skyward. Directly before them, on a heap of burnt bones, was a throne.
The man seated upon it was smiling. ‘As you can see,’ he rasped after a moment of scornful regard, ‘I have … prepared for your arrival. Oh yes, I knew you were coming. Draconus, of Tiam’s kin. K’rul, Opener of the Paths.’ His grey eyes swung to the third Elder. ‘And you. My dear, I was under the impression that you had abandoned your … old self. Walking among the mortals, playing the role of middling sorceress – such a deadly risk, though perhaps this is what entices you so to the mortal game. You’ve stood on fields of battles, woman. One stray arrow…’ He slowly shook his head.
‘We have come,’ K’rul said, ‘to end your reign of terror.’
Kallor’s brows rose. ‘You would take from me all that I have worked so hard to achieve? Fifty years, dear rivals, to conquer an entire continent. Oh, perhaps Ardatha still held out – always late in sending me my rightful tribute – but I ignored such petty gestures. She has fled, did you know? The bitch. Do you imagine yourselves the first to challenge me? The Circle brought down a foreign god. Aye, the effort went … awry, thus sparing me the task of killing the fools with my own hand. And the Fallen One? Well, he’ll not recover for some time, and even then, do you truly imagine he will accede to anyone’s bidding? I would have—’
‘Enough,’ Draconus growled. ‘Your prattling grows wearisome, Kallor.’
‘Very well,’ the High King sighed. He leaned forward. ‘You’ve come to liberate my people from my tyrannical rule. Alas, I am not one to relinquish such things. Not to you, not to anyone.’ He settled back, waved a languid hand. ‘Thus, what you would refuse me, I now refuse you.’
Though the truth was before K’rul’s eyes, he could not believe it. ‘What have—’
‘Are you blind?’ Kallor shrieked, clutching at the arms of his throne. ‘It is gone! They are gone! Break the chains, will you? Go ahead – no, I surrender them! Here, all about you, is now free! Dust! Bones! All free!’
‘You have in truth incinerated an entire continent?’ the sister Elder whispered. ‘Jacuruku—’
‘Is no more, and never again shall be. What I have unleashed will never heal. Do you understand me? Never. And it is all your fault. Yours. Paved in bone and ash, this noble road you chose to walk. Your road.’
‘We cannot allow this—’
‘It has already happened, you foolish woman!’
K’rul spoke within the minds of his kin. It must be done. I will fashion a … a place for this. Within myself.
A warren to hold all this? Draconus asked in horror. My brother—
No, it must be done. Join with me now, this shaping will not be easy—
It will break you, K’rul, his sister said. There must be another way.
None. To leave this continent as it is … no, this world is young. To carry such a scar …
What of Kallor? Draconus enquired. What of this … this creature?
We mark him, K’rul replied. We know his deepest desire, do we not?
And the span of his life?
Long, my friends.
Agreed.
K’rul blinked, fixed his dark, heavy eyes on the High King. ‘For this crime, Kallor, we deliver appropriate punishment. Know this: you, Kallor Eiderann Tes’thesula, shall know mortal life unending. Mortal, in the ravages of age, in the pain of wounds and the anguish of despair. In dreams brought to ruin. In love withered. In the shadow of Death’s spectre, ever a threat to end what you will not relinquish.’
Draconus spoke, ‘Kallor Eiderann Tes’thesula, you shall never ascend.’
Their sister said, ‘Kallor Eiderann Tes’thesula, each time you rise, you shall then fall. All that you achieve shall turn to dust in your hands. As you have wilfully done here, so it shall be in turn visited upon all that you do.’
‘Three voices curse you,’ K’rul intoned. ‘It is done.’
The man on the throne trembled. His lips drew back in a rictus snarl. ‘I shall break you. Each of you. I swear this upon the bones of seven million sacrifices. K’rul, you shall fade from the world, you shall be forgotten. Draconus, what you create shall be turned upon you. And as for you, woman, unhuman hands shall tear your body into pieces, upon a field of battle, yet you shall know no respite – thus, my curse upon you, Sister of Cold Nights. Kallor Eiderann Tes’thesula, one voice, has spoken three curses. Thus.’
* * *
They left Kallor upon his throne, upon its heap of bones. They merged their power to draw chains around a continent of slaughter, then pulled it into a warren created for that sole purpose, leaving the land itself bared. To heal.
The effort left K’rul broken, bearing wounds he knew he would carry for all his existence. More, he could already feel the twilight of his worship, the blight of Kallor’s curse. To his surprise, the loss pained him less than he would have imagined.
The three stood at the portal of the nascent, lifeless realm, and looked long upon their handiwork.
Then Draconus spoke, ‘Since the time of All Darkness, I have been forging a sword.’
