The Malazan Empire, page 303
And in these truths, Heboric suspected a mystery. Bidithal had not always been a High Mage. Not in title in any case. In the Dhobri language, he had been known as Rashan’ais. The archpriest of the cult of Rashan, which had existed in Seven Cities long before the Throne of Shadow had been reoccupied. In the twisted minds of humanity, it seemed, there was nothing objectionable about worshipping an empty throne. No stranger than kneeling before the Boar of Summer, before a god of war.
The cult of Rashan had not taken well the ascension of Ammanas—Shadowthrone—and the Rope into positions of penultimate power within the Warren of Shadow. Though Heboric’s knowledge of the details was sketchy at best, it seemed that the cult had torn itself apart. Blood had been spilled within temple walls, and in the aftermath of desecrating murder, only those who acknowledged the mastery of the new gods remained among the devotees. To the wayside, bitter and licking deep wounds, the banished slunk away.
Men like Bidithal.
Defeated but, Heboric suspected, not yet finished. For it is the Meanas temples of Seven Cities that most closely mimic this ruin in architectural style…as if a direct descendant of this land’s earliest cults…
Within the Whirlwind, the cast-out Rashan’ais had found refuge. Further proof of his belief that the Whirlwind was but a fragment of a shattered warren, and that shattered warren was Shadow. And if that is indeed the case, what hidden purpose holds Bidithal to Sha’ik? Is he truly loyal to Dryjhna the Apocalyptic, to this holy conflagration in the name of liberty? Answers to such questions were long in coming, if at all. The unknown player, the unseen current beneath this rebellion—indeed, beneath the Malazan Empire itself—was the new ruler of Shadow and his deadly companion. Ammanas Shadowthrone, who was Kellanved—emperor of Malaz and conqueror of Seven Cities. Cotillion, who was Dancer—master of the Talon and the empire’s deadliest assassin, deadlier even than Surly. Gods below, something breathes there…I now wonder, whose war is this?
Distracted by such troubling thoughts as he made his way to Bidithal’s abode, it was a moment before Heboric realized that his name had been called. Eyes straining to focus as he searched for the originator of that call, he was suddenly startled by a hand settling on his shoulder.
‘My apologies, Ghost Hands, if I frightened you.’
‘Ah, L’oric,’ Heboric replied, finally recognizing the tall, white-robed figure standing beside him. ‘These are not your usual haunts, are they?’
A slightly pained smile. ‘I regret that my presence is seen as a haunting—unless of course your use of the word was unmindful.’
‘Careless, you mean. It was. I have been in the company of Leoman, inadvertently breathing fumes of durhang. What I meant was, I rarely see you in these parts, that is all.’
‘Thus explaining your perturbed expression,’ L’oric murmured.
Meeting you, the durhang or Leoman? The tall mage—one of Sha’ik’s three—was not by nature approachable, nor given to drama. Heboric had no idea which warren the man employed in his sorceries. Perhaps Sha’ik alone knew.
After a moment, the High Mage resumed, ‘Your route suggests a visit to a certain resident here in the Circle. Further, I sense a storm of emotions stirring around you, which could lead one to surmise the impending encounter will prove tumultuous.’
‘You mean we might argue, Bidithal and I,’ Heboric growled. ‘Well yes, that’s damned likely.’
‘I myself have but recently departed his company,’ L’oric said. ‘Perhaps a warning? He is much agitated over something, and so short of temper.’
‘Perhaps it was something you said,’ Heboric ventured.
‘Entirely possible,’ the mage conceded. ‘And if so, then I apologize.’
‘Fener’s tusks, L’oric, what are you doing in this damned army of vipers?’
Again the pained smile, then a shrug. ‘Mathok’s tribes have among them women and men who dance with flare-necked vipers—such as are sometimes found where grasses grow deep. It is a complicated and obviously dangerous dance yet one possessed of a certain charm. There are attractions to such exercise.’
‘You enjoy taking risks, even with your life.’
‘I might in turn ask why are you here, Heboric? Do you seek to return to your profession as historian, thus ensuring that the tale of Sha’ik and the Whirlwind will be told? Or are you indeed ensnared with loyalties to the noble cause of liberty? Surely, you cannot say you are both, can you?’
‘I was a middling historian at best, L’oric,’ Heboric muttered, reluctant to elaborate on his reasons for remaining—none of which had any real relevance, since Sha’ik was not likely to let him leave in any case.
‘You are impatient with me. I will leave you to your task, then.’ L’oric made a slight bow as he stepped back.
Watching the man walk away, Heboric stood motionless for a moment longer, then he resumed his journey. Bidithal was agitated, was he? An argument with L’oric, or something behind the veil? The High Mage’s dwelling was before him now, the tent walls and peaked ceiling sun-faded and smoke-stained, a dusty smear of mottled magenta squatting above the thick foundation stones. Huddled just outside the flap entrance was a sunburned, filthy figure, mumbling in some foreign language, face hidden beneath long greasy strands of brown hair. The figure had no hands and no feet, the stumps showing old scar tissue yet still suppurating a milky yellow discharge. The man was using one of his wrist stumps to draw broad patterns in the thick dust, surrounding himself in linked chains, round and round, each pass obscuring what had been made before.
This one belongs to Toblakai. His master work—Sulgar? Silgar. The Nathii. The man was one of the many crippled, diseased and destitute inhabitants of the Circle of Temples. Heboric wondered what had drawn him to Bidithal’s tent.
He arrived at the entrance. In tribal fashion, the flap was tied back, the customary expansive gesture of invitation, the message one of ingenuousness. As he ducked to step through, Silgar stirred, head snapping up.
‘Brother of mine! I’ve seen you before, yes! Maimed—we are kin!’ The language was a tangled mix of Nathii, Malazan and Ehrlii. The man’s smile revealed a row of rotting teeth. ‘Flesh and spirit, yes? We are, you and I, the only honest mortals here!’
‘If you say so,’ Heboric muttered, striding into Bidithal’s home. Silgar’s cackle followed him in.
No effort had been made to clean the sprawling chamber within. Bricks and rubble lay scattered across a floor of sand, broken mortar and potsherds. A half-dozen pieces of furniture were positioned here and there in the cavernous space. There was a large, low bed, wood-slatted and layered in thin mattresses. Four folding merchant chairs of the local three-legged kind faced onto the bed in a ragged row, as if Bidithal was in the habit of addressing an audience of acolytes or students. A dozen small oil lamps crowded the surface of a small table nearby.
The High Mage had his back to Heboric and most of the long chamber. A torch, fixed to a spear that had been thrust upright, its base mounded with stones and rubble, stood slightly behind Bidithal’s left shoulder, casting the man’s own shadow onto the tent wall.
A chill rippled through Heboric, for it seemed the High Mage was conversing in a language of gestures with his own shadow. Cast out in name only, perhaps. Still eager to play with Meanas. In the Whirlwind’s name, or his own? ‘High Mage,’ the ex-priest called.
The ancient, withered man slowly turned. ‘Come to me,’ he rattled, ‘I would experiment.’
‘Not the most encouraging invitation, Bidithal.’ But Heboric approached none the less.
Bidithal waved impatiently. ‘Closer! I would see if your ghostly hands cast shadows.’
Heboric halted, stepped back with a shake of his head. ‘No doubt you would, but I wouldn’t.’
‘Come!’
‘No.’
The dark wrinkled face twisted into a scowl, black eyes glittering. ‘You are too eager to protect your secrets.’
‘And you aren’t?’
‘I serve the Whirlwind. Nothing else is important—’
‘Barring your appetites.’
The High Mage cocked his head, then made a small, almost effeminate wave with one hand. ‘Mortal necessities. Even when I was Rashan’ais, we saw no imperative to turn away from the pleasures of the flesh. Indeed, the interweaving of the shadows possesses great power.’
‘And so you raped Sha’ik when she was but a child. And scourged from her all future chance at such pleasures as you now espouse. I see little logic in that, Bidithal—only sickness.’
‘My purposes are beyond your ability to comprehend, Ghost Hands,’ the High Mage said with a smirk. ‘You cannot wound me with such clumsy efforts.’
‘I’d been given to understand you were agitated, discomfited.’
‘Ah, L’oric. Another stupid man. He mistook excitement for agitation, but I will say no more of that. Not to you.’
‘Allow me to be equally succinct, Bidithal.’ Heboric stepped closer. ‘If you even so much as look in Felisin’s direction, these hands of mine will twist your head from your neck.’
‘Felisin? Sha’ik’s dearest? Do you truly believe she is a virgin? Before Sha’ik returned, the child was a waif, an orphan in the camp. None cared a whit about her—’
‘None of which matters,’ Heboric said.
The High Mage turned away. ‘Whatever you say, Ghost Hands. Hood knows, there are plenty of others—’
‘All now under Sha’ik’s protection. Do you imagine she will permit such abuses from you?’
‘You shall have to ask her that yourself,’ Bidithal replied. ‘Now leave me. You are guest no longer.’
Heboric hesitated, barely resisting an urge to kill the man now, this instant. Would it even be pre-emptive? Has he not as much as admitted to his crimes? But this was not a place of Malazan justice, was it? The only law that existed here was Sha’ik’s. Nor will I be alone in this. Even Toblakai has vowed protection over Felisin. But what of the other children? Why does Sha’ik tolerate this, unless it is as Leoman has said. She needs Bidithal. Needs him to betray Febryl’s plotting.
Yet what do I care for all of that? This…creature does not deserve to live.
‘Contemplating murder?’ Bidithal murmured, his back turned once more, his own shadow dancing on its own on the tent wall. ‘You would not be the first, nor, I suspect, the last. I should warn you, however, this temple is newly resanctified. Take another step towards me, Ghost Hands, and you will see the power of that.’
‘And you believe Sha’ik will permit you to kneel before Shadowthrone?’
The man whirled, his face black with rage. ‘Shadowthrone? That…foreigner? The roots of Meanas are found in an elder warren! Once ruled by—’ he snapped his mouth shut, then smiled, revealing dark teeth. ‘Not for you. Oh no, not for you, ex-priest. There are purposes within the Whirlwind—your existence is tolerated but little more than that. Challenge me, Ghost Hands, and you will know holy wrath.’
Heboric’s answering grin was hard. ‘I’ve known it before, Bidithal. Yet I remain. Purposes? Perhaps mine is to block your path. I’d advise you to think on that.’
Stepping outside once more, he paused briefly, blinking in the harsh sunlight. Silgar was nowhere to be seen, yet he had completed an elaborate pattern in the dust around Heboric’s moccasins. Chains, surrounding a figure with stumps instead of hands…yet footed. The ex-priest scowled, kicking through the image as he set forth.
Silgar was no artist. Heboric’s own eyes were bad. Perhaps he’d seen only what his fears urged—it had been Silgar himself within the circle of chains the first time, after all. In any case, it was not important enough to make him turn back for a second look. Besides, his own steps had no doubt left it ruined.
None of which explained the chill that clung to him as he walked beneath the searing sun.
The vipers were writhing in their pit, and he was in their midst.
The old scars of ligature damage made his ankles and wrists resemble segmented tree trunks, each pinched width encircling his limbs to remind him of those times, of every shackle that had snapped shut, every chain that had held him down. In his dreams, the pain reared like a thing alive once more, weaving mesmerizing through a tumult of confused, distraught scenes.
The old Malazan with no hands and the shimmering, near solid tattoo had, despite his blindness, seen clearly enough, seen those trailing ghosts, the wind-moaning train of deaths that stalked him day and night now, loud enough in Toblakai’s mind to drown out the voice of Urugal, close enough to obscure his god’s stone visage behind veil after veil of mortal faces—each and every one twisted with the agony and fear that carved out the moment of dying. Yet the old man had not understood, not entirely. The children among those victims—children in terms of recently birthed, as the lowlanders used the word—had not all fallen to the bloodwood sword of Karsa Orlong. They were, one and all, the progeny that would never be, the bloodlines severed in the trophy-cluttered cavern of the Teblor’s history.
Toblakai. A name of past glories, of a race of warriors who had stood alongside mortal Imass, alongside cold-miened Jaghut and demonic Forkrul Assail. A name by which Karsa Orlong was now known, as if he alone was the inheritor of elder dominators in a young, harsh world. Years ago, such a thought would have filled his chest with fierce, bloodthirsty pride. Now it racked him like a desert cough, weakened him deep in his bones. He saw what no-one else saw, that his new name was a title of polished, blinding irony.
The Teblor were long fallen from Thelomen Toblakai. Mirrored reflections in flesh only. Kneeling like fools before seven blunt-featured faces carved into a cliffside. Valley dwellers, where every horizon was almost within reach. Victims of brutal ignorance—for which no-one else could be blamed—entwined with deceit, for which Karsa Orlong would seek a final accounting.
He and his people had been wronged, and the warrior who now strode between the dusty white boles of a long-dead orchard would, one day, give answer to that.
But the enemy had so many faces…
Even alone, as he was now, he longed for solitude. But it was denied him. The rattle of chains was unceasing, the echoing cries of the slain endless. Even the mysterious but palpable power of Raraku offered no surcease—Raraku itself, not the Whirlwind, for Toblakai knew that the Whirlwind was like a child to the Holy Desert’s ancient presence, and it touched him naught. Raraku had known many such storms, yet it weathered them as it did all things, with untethered skin of sand and the solid truth of stone. Raraku was its own secret, the hidden bedrock that held the warrior in this place. From Raraku, Karsa believed, he would find his own truth.
He had knelt before Sha’ik Reborn, all those months ago. The young woman with the Malazan accent who’d stumbled into view half carrying her tattooed, handless pet. Knelt, not in servitude, not from resurrected faith, but in relief. Relief, that the waiting had ended, that he would be able to drag Leoman away from that place of failure and death. They had seen Sha’ik Elder murdered while under their protection. A defeat that had gnawed at Karsa. Yet he could not deceive himself into believing that the new Chosen One was anything but a hapless victim that the insane Whirlwind Goddess had simply plucked from the wilderness, a mortal tool that would be used with merciless brutality. That she had proved a willing participant in her own impending destruction was equally pathetic in Karsa’s eyes. Clearly, the scarred young woman had her own reasons, and seemed eager for the power.
Lead us, Warleader.
The words laughed bitterly through his thoughts as he wandered through the grove—the city almost a league to the east, the place where he now found himself a remnant outskirt of some other town. Warleaders needed such forces gathered around them, arrayed in desperate defence of self-delusion, of headlong single-mindedness. The Chosen One was more like Toblakai than she imagined, or, rather, a younger Toblakai, a Teblor commanding slayers—an army of two with which to deliver mayhem.
Sha’ik Elder had been something else entirely. She had lived long through her haunting, her visions of Apocalypse that had tugged and jerked her bones ever onward as if they were string-tied sticks. And she had seen truths in Karsa’s soul, had warned him of the horrors to come—not in specific terms, for like all seers she had been cursed with ambiguity—but sufficient to awaken within Karsa a certain…watchfulness.
And, it seemed, he did little else these days but watch. As the madness that was the soul of the Whirlwind Goddess seeped out like poison in the blood to infect every leader among the rebellion. Rebellion…oh, there was truth enough in that. But the enemy was not the Malazan Empire. It is sanity itself that they are rebelling against. Order. Honourable conduct. ‘Rules of the common’, as Leoman called them, even as his consciousness sank beneath the opaque fumes of durhang. Yes, I would well understand his flight, were I to believe what he would present to us all—the drifting layers of smoke in his pit, the sleepy look in his eyes, the slurred words…ah, but Leoman, I have never witnessed you actually partake of the drug. Only its apparent aftermath, the evidence scattered all about, and the descent into sleep that seems perfectly timed whenever you wish to close a conversation, end a certain discourse…
Like him, Karsa suspected, Leoman was biding his time.
Raraku waited with them. Perhaps, for them. The Holy Desert possessed a gift, yet it was one that few had ever recognized, much less accepted. A gift that would arrive unseen, unnoticed at first, a gift too old to find shape in words, too formless to grasp in the hands as one would a sword.
Toblakai, once a warrior of forest-cloaked mountains, had grown to love this desert. The endless tones of fire painted on stone and sand, the bitter-needled plants and the countless creatures that crawled, slithered or scampered, or slipped through night-air on silent wings. He loved the hungry ferocity of these creatures, their dancing as prey and predator a perpetual cycle inscribed on the sand and beneath the rocks. And the desert in turn had reshaped Karsa, weathered his skin dark, stretched taut and lean his muscles, thinned his eyes to slits.
