The Malazan Empire, page 304
Leoman had told him much of this place, secrets that only a true inhabitant would know. The ring of ruined cities, harbours one and all, the old beach ridges with their natural barrows running for league upon league. Shells that had turned hard as stone and would sing low and mournful in the wind—Leoman had presented him with a gift of these, a vest of hide on which such shells had been affixed, armour that moaned in the endless, ever-dry winds. There were hidden springs in the wasteland, cairns and caves where an ancient sea-god had been worshipped. Remote basins that would, every few years, be stripped of sand to reveal long, high-prowed ships of petrified wood that was crowded with carvings—a long-dead fleet revealed beneath starlight only to be buried once more the following day. In other places, often behind the beach ridges, the forgotten mariners had placed cemeteries, using hollowed-out cedar trunks to hold their dead kin—all turned to stone, now, claimed by the implacable power of Raraku.
Layer upon countless layer, the secrets were unveiled by the winds. Sheer cliffs rising like ramps, in which the fossil skeletons of enormous creatures could be seen. The stumps of cleared forests, hinting of trees as large as any Karsa had known from his homeland. The columnar pilings of docks and piers, anchor-stones and the open cavities of tin mines, flint quarries and arrow-straight raised roads, trees that grew entirely underground, a mass of roots stretching out for leagues, from which the ironwood of Karsa’s new sword had been carved—his bloodsword having cracked long ago.
Raraku had known Apocalypse first-hand, millennia past, and Toblakai wondered if it truly welcomed its return. Sha’ik’s goddess stalked the desert, her mindless rage the shriek of unceasing wind along its borders, but Karsa wondered at the Whirlwind’s manifestation—just whose was it? Cold, disconnected rage, or a savage, unbridled argument?
Did the goddess war with the desert?
Whilst, far to the south in this treacherous land, the Malazan army prepared to march.
As he approached the heart of the grove—where a low altar of flatstones occupied a small clearing—he saw a slight, long-haired figure, seated on the altar as if it was no more than a bench in an abandoned garden. A book was in her lap, its cracked skin cover familiar to Toblakai’s eyes.
She spoke without turning round. ‘I have seen your tracks in this place, Toblakai.’
‘And I yours, Chosen One.’
‘I come here to wonder,’ she said as he walked into view around the altar to stand facing her.
As do I.
‘Can you guess what it is I wonder about?’ she asked.
‘No.’
The almost-faded pocks of bloodfly scars only showed themselves when she smiled. ‘The gift of the goddess…’ the smile grew strained, ‘offers only destruction.’
He glanced away, studied the nearby trees. ‘This grove will resist in the way of Raraku,’ he rumbled. ‘It is stone. And stone holds fast.’
‘For a while,’ she muttered, her smile falling away. ‘But there remains that within me that urges…creation.’
‘Have a baby.’
Her laugh was almost a yelp. ‘Oh, you hulking fool, Toblakai. I should welcome your company more often.’
Then why do you choose not to?
She waved a small hand at the book in her lap. ‘Dryjhna was an author who, to be gracious, lived with malnourished talent. There are naught but bones in this tome, I am afraid. Obsessed with the taking of life, the annihilation of order. Yet not once does he offer anything in its stead. There is no rebirth among the ashes of his vision, and that saddens me. Does it sadden you, Toblakai?’
He stared down at her for a long moment, then said, ‘Come.’
Shrugging, she set the book down on the altar and rose, straightening the plain, worn, colourless telaba that hung loose over her curved body.
He led her into the rows of bone-white trees. She followed in silence.
Thirty paces, then another small clearing, this one ringed tight in thick, petrified boles. A squat, rectangular mason’s chest sat in the skeletal shade cast down by the branches—which had remained intact down to the very twigs. Toblakai stepped to one side, studied her face as she stared in silence at his works-in-progress.
Before them, the trunks of two of the trees ringing the clearing had been reshaped beneath chisel and pick. Two warriors stared out with sightless eyes, one slightly shorter than Toblakai but far more robust, the other taller and thinner.
He saw that her breath had quickened, a slight flush on her cheeks. ‘You have talent…rough, but driven,’ she murmured without pulling her eyes from their study. ‘Do you intend to ring the entire clearing with such formidable warriors?’
‘No. The others will be…different.’
Her head turned at a sound. She stepped quickly closer to Karsa. ‘A snake.’
He nodded. ‘There will be more, coming from all sides. The clearing will be filled with snakes, should we choose to remain here.’
‘Flare-necks.’
‘And others. They won’t bite or spit, however. They never do. They come…to watch.’
She shot him a searching glance, then shivered slightly. ‘What power manifests here? It is not the Whirlwind’s—’
‘No. Nor do I have a name for it. Perhaps the Holy Desert itself.’
She slowly shook her head to that. ‘I think you are wrong. The power, I believe, is yours.’
He shrugged. ‘We shall see, when I have done them all.’
‘How many?’
‘Besides Bairoth and Delum Thord? Seven.’
She frowned. ‘One for each of the Holy Protectors?’
No. ‘Perhaps. I have not decided. These two you see, they were my friends. Now dead.’ He paused, then added, ‘I had but two friends.’
She seemed to flinch slightly at that. ‘What of Leoman? What of Mathok? What of…me?’
‘I have no plans on carving your likenesses here.’
‘That is not what I meant.’
I know. He gestured at the two Teblor warriors. ‘Creation, Chosen One.’
‘When I was young, I wrote poetry, in the path that my mother already walked. Did you know that?’
He smiled at the word ‘young’ but replied in all seriousness, ‘No, I did not.’
‘I…I have resurrected the habit.’
‘May it serve you well.’
She must have sensed something of the blood-slick edge underlying his statement, for her expression tightened. ‘But that is never its purpose, is it. To serve. Or to yield satisfaction—self-satisfaction, I mean, since the other kind but follows as a returning ripple in a well—’
‘Confusing the pattern.’
‘As you say. It is far too easy to see you as a knot-browed barbarian, Toblakai. No, the drive to create is something other, isn’t it? Have you an answer?’
He shrugged. ‘If one exists, it will only be found in the search—and searching is at creation’s heart, Chosen One.’
She stared at the statues once more. ‘And what are you searching for? With these…old friends?’
‘I do not know. Yet.’
‘Perhaps they will tell you, one day.’
The snakes surrounded them by the hundreds now, slithering unremarked by either over their feet, around their ankles, heads lifting again and again to flick tongues towards the carved trunks.
‘Thank you, Toblakai,’ Sha’ik murmured. ‘I am humbled…and revived.’
‘There is trouble in your city, Chosen One.’
She nodded. ‘I know.’
‘Are you the calm at its heart?’
A bitter smile twisted her lips as she turned away. ‘Will these serpents permit us to leave?’
‘Of course. But do not step. Instead, shuffle. Slowly. They will open for you a path.’
‘I should be alarmed by all this,’ she said as she edged back on their path.
But it is the least of your worries, Chosen One. ‘I will keep you apprised of developments, if you wish.’
‘Thank you, yes.’
He watched her make her way out of the clearing. There were vows wrapped tight around Toblakai’s soul. Slowly constricting. Some time soon, something would break. He knew not which, but if Leoman had taught him one thing, it was patience.
When she was gone, the warrior swung about and approached the mason’s chest.
Dust on the hands, a ghostly patina, tinted faintly pink by the raging red storm encircling the world.
The heat of the day was but an illusion in Raraku. With the descent of darkness, the desert’s dead bones quickly cast off the sun’s shimmering, fevered breath. The wind grew chill and the sands erupted with crawling, buzzing life, like vermin emerging from a corpse. Rhizan flitted in a frenzied wild hunt through the clouds of capemoths and chigger fleas above the tent city sprawled in the ruins. In the distance desert wolves howled as if hunted by ghosts.
Heboric lived in a modest tent raised around a ring of stones that had once provided the foundation for a granary. His abode was situated well away from the settlement’s centre, surrounded by the yurts of one of Mathok’s desert tribes. Old rugs covered the floor. Off to one side a small table of piled bricks held a brazier, sufficient for cooking if not warmth. A cask of well-water stood nearby, flavoured with amber wine. A half-dozen flickering oil lamps suffused the interior with yellow light.
He sat alone, the pungent aroma of the hen’bara tea sweet in the cooling air. Outside, the sounds of the settling tribe offered a comforting background, close enough and chaotic enough to keep scattered and random his thoughts. Only later, when sleep claimed all those around him, would the relentless assault begin, the vertiginous visions of a face of jade, so massive it challenged comprehension. Power both alien and earthly, as if born of a natural force never meant to be altered. Yet altered it had been, shaped, cursed sentient. A giant buried in otataral, held motionless in an eternal prison.
Who could now touch the world beyond, with the ghosts of two human hands—hands that had been claimed then abandoned by a god.
But was it Fener who abandoned me, or did I abandon Fener? Which of us, I wonder, is more…exposed?
This camp, this war—this desert—all had conspired to ease the shame of his hiding. Yet one day, Heboric knew, he would have to return to that dreaded wasteland from his past, to the island where the stone giant waited. Return. But to what end?
He had always believed that Fener had taken his severed hands into keeping, to await the harsh justice that was the Tusked One’s right. A fate that Heboric had accepted, as best he could. But it seemed there was to be no end to the betrayals a single once-priest could commit against his god. Fener had been dragged from his realm, left abandoned and trapped on this world. Heboric’s severed hands had found a new master, a master possessed of such immense power that it could war with otataral itself. Yet it did not belong. The giant of jade, Heboric now believed, was an intruder, sent here from another realm for some hidden purpose.
And, instead of completing that purpose, someone had imprisoned it.
He sipped at his tea, praying that its narcotic would prove sufficient to deaden the sleep to come. It was losing its potency, or, rather, he was becoming inured to its effects.
The face of stone beckoned.
The face that was trying to speak.
There was a scratching at the tent flap, then it was pulled aside.
Felisin entered. ‘Ah, still awake. Good, that will make this easier. My mother wants you.’
‘Now?’
‘Yes. There have been events in the world beyond. Consequences to be discussed. Mother seeks your wisdom.’
Heboric cast a mournful glance at the clay cup of steaming tea in his invisible hands. It was little more than flavoured water when cold. ‘I am uninterested in events in the world beyond. If she seeks wise words from me, she will be disappointed.’
‘So I argued,’ Felisin Younger said, an amused glint in her eyes. ‘Sha’ik insists.’
She helped him don a cloak then led him outside, one of her hands light as a capemoth on his back.
The night was bitter cold, tasting of settling dust. They set out along the twisting alleyways between the yurts, walking in silence.
They passed the raised dais where Sha’ik Reborn had first addressed the mob, then through the crumbled gateposts leading to the huge, multi-chambered tent that was the Chosen One’s palace. There were no guards as such, for the goddess’s presence was palpable, a pressure in the chill air.
There was little warmth in the first room beyond the tent flap, but with each successive curtain that they parted and stepped through, the temperature rose. The palace was a maze of such insulating chambers, most of them empty of furniture, offering little in the way of distinguishing one from another. An assassin who proceeded this far, somehow avoiding the attention of the goddess, would quickly get lost. The approach to where Sha’ik resided followed its own torturous, winding route. Her chambers were not central, not at the heart of the palace as one might expect.
With his poor vision and the endless turns and twists, Heboric was quickly confused; he had never determined the precise location of their destination. He was reminded of the escape from the mines, the arduous journey to the island’s west coast—it had been Baudin in the lead, Baudin whose sense of direction had proved unerring, almost uncanny. Without him, Heboric and Felisin would have died.
A Talon, no less. Ah, Tavore, you were not wrong to place your faith in him. It was Felisin who would not co-operate. You should have anticipated that. Well, sister, you should have anticipated a lot of things…
But not this.
They entered the square, low-ceilinged expanse that the Chosen One—Felisin Elder, child of the House of Paran—had called her Throne Room. And indeed there was a dais, once the pedestal for a hearth, on which was a tall-backed chair of sun-bleached wood and padding. In councils such as these, Sha’ik invariably positioned herself in that makeshift throne; nor would she leave it while her advisers were present, not even to peruse the yellowed maps the commanders were wont to lay out on the hide-covered floor. Apart from Felisin Younger, the Chosen One was the smallest person there.
Heboric wondered if Sha’ik Elder had suffered similar insecurities. He doubted it.
The room was crowded; among the army’s leaders and Sha’ik’s select, only Leoman and Toblakai were absent. There were no other chairs, although cushions and pillows rested against the base of three of the four tent walls, and it was on these that the commanders sat. Felisin at his side, Heboric made his way to the far side, Sha’ik’s left, and took his place a few short paces from the dais, the young girl settling down beside him.
Some permanent sorcery illuminated the chamber, the light somehow warming the air as well. Everyone else was in their allotted place, Heboric noted. Though they were little more than blurs in his eyes, he knew them all well enough. Against the wall opposite the throne sat the half-blood Napan, Korbolo Dom, shaved hairless, his dusty blue skin latticed in scars. On his right, the High Mage Kamist Reloe, gaunt to the point of skeletal, his grey hair cut short to stubble, a tight-curled iron beard reaching up to prominent cheekbones above which glittered sunken eyes. On Korbolo’s left sat Henaras, a witch from some desert tribe that had, for unknown reasons, banished her. Sorcery kept her youthful in appearance, the heavy languor in her dark eyes the product of diluted Tralb, a poison drawn from a local snake, which she imbibed to inure her against assassination. Beside her was Fayelle, an obese, perpetually nervous woman of whom Heboric knew little.
Along the wall opposite the ex-priest were L’oric, Bidithal and Febryl, the latter shapeless beneath an oversized silk telaba, its hood opened wide like the neck of a desert snake, tiny black eyes glittering out from its shadow. Beneath those eyes gleamed twin fangs of gold, capping his upper canines. They were said to hold Emulor, a poison rendered from a certain cactus that gifted not death, but permanent dementia.
The last commander present was on Felisin’s left. Mathok. Beloved of the desert tribes, the tall, black-skinned warrior possessed an inherent nobility, but it was the kind that seemed to irritate everyone around him, barring perhaps Leoman who appeared to be indifferent to the war chief’s grating personality. There was, in fact, little to give cause to the dislike, for Mathok was ever courteous, even congenial, quick to smile—perhaps too quick at that, as if the man dismissed everyone as not worth taking seriously. With the exception of the Chosen One, of course.
As Heboric settled, Sha’ik murmured, ‘Are you with us this evening, Ghost Hands?’
‘Well enough,’ he replied.
An undercurrent of tense excitement was in her voice, ‘You had better be, old man. There have been…startling developments. Distant catastrophes have rocked the Malazan Empire…’
‘How long ago?’ Heboric asked.
Sha’ik frowned at the odd question, but Heboric did not elaborate. ‘Less than a week. The warrens have been shaken, one and all, as if by an earthquake. Sympathizers of the rebellion remain in Dujek Onearm’s army, delivering to us the details.’ She gestured to L’oric. ‘I’ve no wish to talk all night. Elaborate on the events, L’oric, for the benefit of Korbolo, Heboric, and whoever else knows nothing of all that has occurred.’
The man tilted his head. ‘Delighted to, Chosen One. Those of you who employ warrens will no doubt have felt the repercussions, the brutal reshaping of the pantheon. But what specifically happened? The first answer, simply, is usurpation. Fener, Boar of Summer, has, to all intents and purposes, been ousted as the preeminent god of war.’ He was merciful enough to not glance at Heboric. ‘In his place, the once First Hero, Treach. The Tiger of Summer—’
Ousted. The fault is mine and mine alone.
Sha’ik’s eyes were shining, fixed on Heboric. The secrets they shared taut between them, crackling yet unseen by anyone else.
