The Malazan Empire, page 326
Time to leave—footsteps approached from below. He slithered back into the daylight, and the sound he made over the gravel, potsherds and sand was strangely reminiscent of chains. Chains dragging in his wake.
Though there had been none to witness it, a strange glow had suffused L’oric’s tent shortly after noon. Momentary, then all was normal once more.
Now, as dusk finally approached, a second flare of light burgeoned briefly then died away, again unnoticed.
The High Mage staggered through the warren’s impromptu, momentary gate. He was drenched in blood. He stumbled with his burden across the hide-covered floor, then sank to his knees, dragging the misshapen beast into his arms, a single red hand pulling free to stroke its thick, matted hair.
Its whimpers of pain had ceased. Mercifully, for each soft cry had broken anew L’oric’s heart.
The High Mage slowly lowered his head, finally stricken with the grief he had been forced to hold back during his desperate, ineffectual efforts to save the ancient demon. He was filled with self-loathing, and he cursed his own complacency. Too long separated, too long proceeding as if the other realms held no danger to them.
And now his familiar was dead, and the mirrored deadness inside him seemed vast. And growing, devouring his soul as sickness does healthy flesh. He was without strength, for the rage had abated.
He stroked the beast’s blood-caked face, wondering anew at how its ugliness—now so still and free of pain—could nevertheless trigger depthless wellsprings of love from him. ‘Ah, my friend, we were more of a kind than either of us knew. No…you knew, didn’t you? Thus the eternal sorrow in your eyes, which I saw but chose to ignore, each time I visited. I was so certain of the deceit, you see. So confident that we could go on, undetected, maintaining the illusion that our father was still with us. I was…’ He crumpled then and could speak no further for a time.
The failure had been his, and his alone. He was here, ensnaring himself in these paltry games, when he should have been guarding his familiar’s back—as it had done for him for century upon century.
Oh, it had been close in any case—one less T’lan Imass, and the outcome might have proved different—no, now you lie to yourself, L’oric. That first axe-blow had done the damage, had delivered the fatal wound. All that transpired thereafter was born of dying rage. Oh, my beloved was no weakling, and the wielder of that stone axe paid for his ambush. And know this, my friend, I left the second one scattered through the fires. Only the clan leader escaped me. But I will hunt him down. This I swear.
But not yet. He forced clarity into his thoughts, as the weight of the familiar where it lay against his thighs slowly diminished, its very substance ebbing away. Kurald Thyrllan was undefended, now. How the T’lan Imass had managed to penetrate the warren remained a mystery, but they had done so, completing the task they had set out to do with their legendary brutality.
Would the Liosan have sensed the death? Perhaps only the seneschals, at first. Would they speak of it to the others? Not if they pause, for even a moment, and think about it. Of course, they had been the victims of the deceit all along. Osric had vanished—their god was gone—and Kurald Thyrllan was ripe for usurpation. And, eventually, those seneschals would realize that, had it truly been Osric behind the power that answered their prayers, then three T’lan Imass warriors would not have been enough—not nearly enough. My father is many things, but weak does not count among them.
The withered, bird-sized thing that had been his familiar slipped down to the tent floor. L’oric stared at it, then slowly wrapped himself in his own arms. I need…I need help. Father’s companions. Which one? Anomander Rake? No. A companion, yes, on occasion, but never Osric’s friend. Lady Envy? Gods, no! Caladan Brood…but he carries his own burdens, these days. Thus, but one left…
L’oric closed his eyes, and called upon the Queen of Dreams. ‘By your true name, T’riss, I would speak with you. In Osric my father’s name, hear my prayer…’
A scene slowly formed in his mind, a place unfamiliar to him. A formal garden, high-walled, with a circular pool in the centre. Marble benches waited beneath the shadows of the surrounding growth. The flagstones around the pool were rippled with fine, white sand.
He found himself approaching the pool, staring down into the mirrored surface.
Where swam stars in inky blackness.
‘The resemblance is there.’
He turned at the liquid voice, to see a woman now seated on the pool’s edge. She looked to be no more than twenty, her hair copper-gold and long. A heart-shaped face, pale, the eyes a light grey. She was not looking at him, her languid gaze on the pool’s unmarred surface instead. ‘Although,’ she added, with a faint smile, ‘you have done well to hide your Liosan traits.’
‘We are skilled in such things, Queen of Dreams.’
She nodded, still not meeting his eyes. ‘As are all the Tiste. Anomander once spent almost two centuries in the guise of a royal bodyguard…human, in the manner you have achieved.’
‘Mistress,’ L’oric said, ‘my father—’
‘Sleeps. We all long ago made our choices, L’oric. Behind us, our paths stretch, long and worn deep. There is bitter pathos in the prospect of retracing them. Yet, for those of us who remain…awake, it seems we do nothing but just that. An endless retracing of paths, yet each step we take is forward, for the path has proved itself to be a circle. Yet—and here is the true pathos—the knowledge never slows our steps.’
‘“Wide-eyed stupid”, the Malazans say.’
‘Somewhat rough-edged, but accurate enough,’ she replied. She reached a long-fingered hand down to the water.
L’oric watched it vanish beneath the surface, but it was the scene around them that seemed to waken, a faint turbulence, the hint of ripples. ‘Queen of Dreams, Kurald Thyrllan has lost its protector.’
‘Yes. Tellann and Thyr were ever close, and now more than ever.’
A strange statement…that he would have to think on later. ‘I cannot do it alone—’
‘No, you cannot. Your own path is about to become fraught, L’oric. And so you have come to me, in the hopes that I will find a suitable…protector.’
‘Yes.’
‘Your desperation urges you to trust…where no trust has been earned—’
‘You were my father’s friend!’
‘Friend? L’oric, we were too powerful to know friendship. Our endeavours far too fierce. Our war was with chaos itself, and, at times, with each other. We battled to shape all that would follow. And some of us lost that battle. Do not misapprehend, I held no deep enmity for your father. Rather, he was as unfathomable as the rest of us—a bemusement we all shared, perhaps the only thing we shared.’
‘You will not help?’
‘I did not say that.’
He waited.
She continued holding her hand beneath the pool’s placid surface, had yet to lift her head and meet his eyes. ‘This will take some time,’ she murmured. ‘The present…vulnerability…will exist in the interval. I have someone in mind, but the shaping towards the opportunity remains distant. Nor do I think my choice will please you. In the meantime…’
‘Yes?’
She shrugged. ‘We had best hope that potentially interested entities remain suitably distracted.’
He saw her expression suddenly change, and when she spoke again the tone was urgent. ‘Return to your realm, L’oric! Another circle has been closed—terribly closed.’ She drew her hand from the pool.
L’oric gasped.
It was covered in blood.
His eyes snapped open, and he was kneeling in his tent once more. Night had arrived, and the sounds outside were muted, peaceful, a city settling down to its evening meal. Yet, he knew, something horrible had happened. He went still, questing outward. His powers—so weakened, so tremulous—‘Gods below!’ A swirl of violence, knotted upon itself, radiating waves of agony—a figure, small, twisted inward, in shredded clothes soaked through with blood, crawling through darkness.
L’oric lurched to his feet, head spinning with anguish.
Then he was outside, and suddenly running.
He found her trail, a smeared track through sand and dust, out beyond the ruins, into the petrified forest. Towards, he knew instinctively, the sacred glade that had been fashioned by Toblakai.
But there would be no succour for her there. Another abode of false gods. And Toblakai was gone, off to cross blades with his own fate.
But she was without clear thought. She was only pain, lancing out to fire instincts of flight. She crawled as would any dying creature.
He saw her at the edge of the glade, small, bedraggled, pulling herself forward in torturous increments.
L’oric reached her side, a hand reaching to settle at the back of her head, onto sweat-snarled hair. She flinched away with a squeal, fingers clawing against his arm. ‘Felisin! He’s gone! It is L’oric. You are safe with me. Safe, now—’
But still she sought to escape.
‘I shall call upon Sha’ik—’
‘No!’ she shrieked, curling tight on the sand. ‘No! She needs him! She needs him still!’ Her words were blunted by broken lips but understandable none the less.
L’oric sank back, struck mute by the horror. Not simply a wounded creature, then. A mind clear enough to weigh, to calculate, to put itself aside…‘She will know, lass—she can’t help but know.’
‘No! Not if you help me. Help me, L’oric. Just you—not even Heboric! He would seek to kill Bidithal, and that cannot be.’
‘Heboric? I want to kill Bidithal!’
‘You mustn’t. You can’t. He has power—’
He saw the shudder run through her at that.
L’oric hesitated, then said, ‘I have healing salves, elixirs…but you will need to stay hidden for a time.’
‘Here, in Toblakai’s temple. Here, L’oric.’
‘I will bring water. A tent.’
‘Yes!’
The rage that burned in him had contracted down to a white-hot core. He struggled to control it, his resolve sporadically weakened by doubts that he was doing the right thing. This was…monstrous. There would be an answer to it. There would have to be an answer to it.
Even more monstrous, he realized with a chill, they had all known the risk. We knew he wanted her. Yet we did nothing.
Heboric lay motionless in the darkness. He had a faint sense of being hungry, thirsty, but it remained remote. Hen’bara tea, in sufficient amounts, pushed the needs of the outer world away. Or so he had discovered.
His mind was floating on a swirling sea, and it seemed eternal. He was waiting, still waiting. Sha’ik wanted truths. She would get them. And then he was done, done with her.
And probably done with life, as well.
So be it. He had grown older than he had ever expected to, and these extra weeks and months had proved anything but worth the effort. He had sentenced his own god to death, and now Fener would not be there to greet him when he finally stepped free of his flesh and bones. Nor would Hood, come to that.
It did not seem he would awaken from this—he had drunk far more of the tea than he ever had before, and he had drunk it scalding hot, when it was most potent. And now he floated on a dark sea, an invisible liquid warm on his skin, barely holding him up, flowing over his limbs and chest, around his face.
The giant of jade was welcome to him. To his soul, and to whatever was left of his days as a mortal man. The old gifts of preternatural vision had long vanished, the visions of secrets hidden from most eyes—secrets of antiquity, of history—were long gone. He was old. He was blind.
The waters slipped over his face.
And he felt himself sliding down—amidst a sea of stars that swirled in the blackness yet were sharp with sudden clarity. In what seemed a vast distance, duller spheres swam, clustering about the fiery stars, and realization struck him a hammer blow. The stars, they are as the sun. Each star. Every star. And those spheres—they are worlds, realms, each one different yet the same.
The Abyss was not as empty as he’d believed it to be. But…where dwell the gods? These worlds—are they warrens? Or are the warrens simply passageways connecting them?
A new object, growing in his vision as it drifted nearer. A glimmer of murky green, stiff-limbed, yet strangely contorted, torso twisted as if caught in the act of turning. Naked, spinning end over end, starlight playing across its jade surface like beads of rain.
And behind it, another, this one broken—a leg and an arm snapped clean off yet accompanying the rest in its silent, almost peaceful sailing through the void.
Then another.
The first giant cartwheeled past Heboric, and he felt he could simply extend a hand to brush its supple surface as it passed, but he knew it was in truth far too distant for that. Its face came into view. Too perfect for human, the eyes open, an expression too ambiguous to read, though Heboric thought he detected resignation within it.
There were scores now, all emerging from what seemed a single point in the inky depths. Each one displaying a unique posture; some so battered as to be little more than a host of fragments and shards, others entirely unmarred. Sailing out of the blackness. An army.
Yet unarmed. Naked, seemingly sexless. There was a perfection to them—their proportions, their flawless surfaces—that suggested to the ex-priest that the giants could never have been alive. They were constructs, statues in truth, though no two were alike in posture or expression.
Bemused, he watched them spin past. It occurred to him that he could turn, to see if they simply dwindled down to another point far behind him, as if he but lay alongside an eternal river of green stone.
His own motion was effortless.
As he swung round, he saw—
—and cried out.
A cry that made no sound.
A vast—impossibly vast—red-limned wound cut across the blackness, suppurating flames along its ragged edges. Grey storms of chaos spiralled out in lancing tendrils.
And the giants descended into its maw. One after another. To vanish. Revelation filled his mind.
Thus, the Crippled God was brought down to our world. Through this…this terrible puncture. And these giants…follow. Like an army behind its commander.
Or an army in pursuit.
Were all of the jade giants appearing somewhere in his own realm? That seemed impossible. They would be present in countless locations, if that was the case. Present, and inescapably visible. No, the wound was enormous, the giants diminishing into specks before reaching its waiting oblivion. A wound such as that could swallow thousands of worlds. Tens, hundreds of thousands.
Perhaps all he witnessed here was but hallucination, the creation of a hen’bara-induced fever.
Yet the clarity was almost painful, the vision so brutally…strange…that he believed it to be true, or at the very least the product of what his mind could comprehend, could give shape to—statues and wounds, storms and bleeding, an eternal sea of stars and worlds…
A moment’s concentration and he was turning about once more. To face that endless progression.
And then he was moving towards the nearest giant.
It was naught but torso and head, its limbs shorn off and spinning in its wake.
The mass burgeoned swiftly before him, too fast, too huge. Sudden panic gripped Heboric. He could see into that body, as if the world within the jade was scaled to his own. The evidence of that was terrible—and horrifying.
Figures. Bodies like his own. Humans, thousands upon thousands, all trapped within the statue. Trapped…and screaming, their faces twisted in terror.
A multitude of those faces suddenly swung to him. Mouths opened in silent cries—of warning, or hunger, or fear—there was no way to tell. If they screamed, no sound reached him.
Heboric added his own silent shriek and desperately willed himself to one side, out of the statue’s path. For he thought he understood, now—they were prisoners, ensnared within the stone flesh, trapped in some unknown torment.
Then he was past, flung about in the turbulent wake of the broken body’s passage. Spinning end over end, he caught a flash of more jade, directly in front of him.
A hand.
A finger, plunging down as if to crush him.
He screamed as it struck.
He felt no contact, but the blackness simply vanished, and the sea was emerald green, cold as death.
And Heboric found himself amidst a crowd of writhing, howling figures.
The sound was deafening. There was no room to move—his limbs were trapped against him. He could not breathe.
A prisoner.
There were voices roaring through his skull. Too many, in languages he could not recognize, much less comprehend. Like storm-waves crashing on a shore, the sound hammered through him, surging and falling, the rhythm quickening as a faint reddish gleam began to stain the green. He could not turn, but did not need to, to know that the wound was moments from swallowing them all.
Then a string of words reached through the tumult, close as if whispered in his ear, and he understood them.
‘You came from there. What shall we find, Handless One? What lies beyond the gash?’
Then another voice spoke, louder, more imperious: ‘What god now owns your hands, old man? Tell me! Even their ghosts are not here—who is holding on to you? Tell me!’
‘There are no gods,’ a third voice cut in, this one female.
‘So you say!’ came yet another, filled with spite. ‘In your empty, barren, miserable world!’
‘Gods are born of belief, and belief is dead. We murdered it, with our vast intelligence. You were too primitive—’
‘Killing gods is not hard. The easiest murder of all. Nor is it a measure of intelligence. Not even of civilization. Indeed, the indifference with which such death-blows are delivered is its own form of ignorance.’
‘More like forgetfulness. After all, it’s not the gods that are important, it is the stepping outside of oneself that gifts a mortal with virtue—’
