The Malazan Empire, page 329
Yet the majority of the suffering had descended upon the lowborn, upon the common folk. What matter the colour of the collar around a man’s neck, if the chains linked to them were identical?
Better to struggle against helplessness, as far as he was concerned. This blood-soaked Apocalypse was pointless, a misdirected explosion of fury that, when it passed, left the world unchanged.
He bounded across a ditch, crossed through a narrow fringe of overgrown brush, and found himself at the edge of a shallow pit. Twenty paces across and at least thirty paces wide. The town’s refuse was piled here, not entirely successful at covering the mass of lowlander bones.
Here, then, were the Malazans. As tamed and broken as the earth itself. The wealth of flesh, flung back into the ground. Karsa had no doubt that it was their rivals in status who were loudest in exhorting their deaths.
‘And so, once again, Karsa Orlong, we are given the truths of the lowlanders.’ Bairoth Gild’s ghostly voice was palpably bitter. ‘For every virtue they espouse, a thousand self-serving evils belie their piety. Know them, Warleader, for one day they will be your enemy.’
‘I am no fool, Bairoth Gild. Nor am I blind.’
Delum Thord spoke. ‘A place of haunting lies ahead, Karsa Orlong. As ancient as our own blood. Those who live here avoid it, and have always avoided it.’
‘Not entirely,’ Bairoth interjected. ‘Fear has inspired them on occasion. The place is damaged. None the less, the Elder power lingers. The path beckons—will you walk it, Warleader?’
Karsa made his way around the pit. He could see something ahead, earthworks rising to break the flatness of the surrounding plain. Elongated barrows, the slabs of stone that formed them visible in places although they were mostly covered in thorny brush and tufts of yellow grasses. The mounds formed an irregular ring around a larger, circular hill that was flat-topped, though slightly canted as if one side had settled over time. Rising at angles from the summit were standing stones, a score or more.
Rocks from clearing the nearby fields had been discarded in this once-holy site, around the barrows, heaped against the slope of the central hill, along with other detritus: the withered wooden skeletons of ox ploughs, palm fronds from roofs, piles of potsherds and the bones of butchered livestock.
Karsa slipped between two barrows and made his way up the central slope. The nearest standing stone reached barely to his waist. Black symbols crowded it, the spit and charcoal paint relatively recent. The Teblor recognized various signs, such as had been employed as a secret, native language during the Malazan occupation. ‘Hardly a place of fear,’ he muttered. Fully half of the stones were either shattered or toppled, and from the latter Karsa noted that they were, in fact, taller than he was, so deeply had they been anchored in the artificial hill. The summit itself was pitted and uneven.
‘Oh, these are the signs of fear, Karsa Orlong, do not doubt that. This desecration. Were this a place without power, the answer would have been indifference.’
Karsa grunted, stepping carefully on the treacherous ground as he approached the nominal centre of the stone ring. Four smaller slabs had been tilted together there, the wiry grasses stopping a pace away on all sides, leaving only bare earth flecked with bits of charcoal.
And fragments, Karsa noted as he crouched, of bone. He picked one up and studied it in the starlight. From a skull, lowlander in scale though somewhat more robust, the outer edge of an eye socket. Thick…like that of my gods…‘Bairoth Gild. Delum Thord. Do either of you sense the presence of a spirit or a god here?’
‘No,’ Delum Thord replied.
Bairoth spoke. ‘A shaman was buried here, Warleader. His head was severed and left fixed in the apex of the four cardinal stones. Whoever shattered it did so long afterwards. Centuries. Perhaps millennia. So that it would no longer see. No longer watch.’
‘Then why is this place of value to me?’
‘For the way through it offers, Warleader.’
‘The way through what, Bairoth Gild?’
‘Passage westward, into the Jhag Odhan. A trail in the dreamworld. A journey of months will become one of mere days, should you choose to walk it. It lives still, for it was used not long ago. By an army.’
‘And how can I walk this trail?’
Delum Thord replied, ‘We can lead you, Karsa Orlong. For, like the one once buried here, we are neither dead nor alive. The lord Hood cannot find our spirits, for they are here with you. Our presence adds to the god of death’s hatred of you, Warleader.’
‘Hatred?’
‘For what you have taken and would not give to him. Will not. Would you become your own Keeper of Souls? So he must now fear. When last did Hood know a rival?’
Karsa scowled and spat onto the ground. ‘I have no interest in being his rival. I would break these chains. I would free even you and Bairoth Gild.’
‘We would rather you did not, Warleader.’
‘You and Bairoth Gild are perhaps alone in that sentiment, Delum Thord.’
‘What of it?’ Bairoth snapped.
Karsa said nothing, for he had begun to understand the choice that lay ahead, sometime in the future. To cast off my enemies…I must also cast off my friends. And so Hood follows, and waits. For the day that must come.
‘You hide your thoughts now, Karsa Orlong. This new talent does not please us.’
‘I am warleader,’ Karsa growled. ‘It is not my task to please you. Do you now regret that you follow?’
‘No, Karsa Orlong. Not yet.’
‘Take me into this trail in the dreamworld, Delum Thord.’
The air grew suddenly colder, the smell reminding Karsa of the sloped clearings on high mountain sides when spring arrived, the smell of enlivened, softened lichen and moss. And before him, where there had been night-softened farmland a moment ago, there was now tundra, beneath a heavily overcast sky.
A broad path lay before him, stretching across the rolling land, where the lichen had been crushed, the mosses kicked aside and trampled. As Bairoth Gild had said, an army had passed this way, although by the signs it seemed their journey had been but a moment ago—he half expected to see the tail end of that solemn column on the distant horizon, but there was nothing. Simply an empty, treeless expanse, stretching out on all sides.
He moved forward, in the army’s wake.
This world seemed timeless, the sky unchanging. On occasion, herds appeared, too distant to make out the kind of beasts, rolling across hillsides then slipping from view as they streamed down into valleys. Birds flew in arrowhead formation, a strange long-necked breed high overhead, all of them consistently flying back the way Karsa had come. Apart from the whine of the insects swarming about the Teblor, a strange, unreal silence emanated from the landscape.
A dream world, then, such as the elders of his tribe were wont to visit, seeking portents and omens. The scene not unlike what Karsa had glimpsed when, in delirium, he had found himself before his god, Urugal.
He continued on.
Eventually, the air grew colder, and frost glittered amidst the lichen and moss to either side of the wide trail. The smell of rotting ice filled Karsa’s nose. Another thousand paces brought him to the first dirt-studded sweep of snow, filling a shallow valley on his right. Then shattered chunks of ice, half buried in the ground as if they had fallen from the sky, many of them larger than a lowlander wagon. The land itself was more broken here, the gentle roll giving way to sharp-walled drainage gullies and channels, to upthrust hillsides revealing banded sandstone beneath the frozen, thick skin of peat. Fissures in the stone gleamed with greenish ice.
Bairoth Gild spoke. ‘We are now at the border of a new warren, Warleader. A warren inimical to the army that arrived here. And so, a war was waged.’
‘How far have I travelled, Bairoth Gild? In my world, am I approaching Ugarat? Sarpachiya?’
The ghost’s laughter was like a boulder rolled over gravel. ‘They are behind you now, Karsa Orlong. You approach the land known as the Jhag Odhan.’
It had seemed no more than a half-day’s worth of travel in this dream world.
Signs of the army’s passage grew less distinct, the ground underfoot frozen rock hard and now consisting mostly of rounded stones. Ahead, a plain studded with huge flat slabs of black rock.
Moments later, Karsa was moving among them.
There were bodies beneath the stones. Pinned down.
‘Will you free these, Karsa Orlong?’
‘No, Delum Thord, I shall not. I shall pass through this place, disturbing nothing.’
‘Yet these are not Forkrul Assail. Many are dead, for they had not the power their kind once possessed. While others remain alive, and will not die for a long time. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. Karsa Orlong, do you no longer believe in mercy?’
‘My beliefs are my own, Delum Thord. I shall not undo what I do not understand, and that is all.’
He travelled on, and soon left the terrible plain behind.
Before him now stretched a field of ice, crack-riven, with pools of water reflecting the silver sky. Bones were scattered on it, from hundreds, perhaps thousands of figures. Bones of a type he had seen before. Some still sheathed in withered skin and muscle. Shards of stone weapons lay among them, along with fragments of fur, antlered helms and torn, rotting hides.
The fallen warriors formed a vast semicircle around a low, square-walled tower. Its battered stones were limned in runnelled ice, its doorway gaping, the interior dark.
Karsa picked his way across the field, his moccasins crunching through the ice and snow.
The tower’s doorway was tall enough to permit the Teblor to stride through without ducking. A single room lay within. Broken furniture and the pieces of more fallen warriors cluttered the stone floor. A spiral staircase that seemed made entirely of iron rose from the centre.
From what he could determine from the wreckage, the furniture was of a scale to suit a Teblor, rather than a lowlander.
Karsa made his way up the ice-sheathed staircase.
There was a single level above, a high-ceilinged chamber that had once held wooden shelves on all four walls. Torn scrolls, bound books ripped apart, vials and clay jars containing various pungent mixes crushed underfoot, a large table split in half and pushed up against one wall, and on a cleared space on the floor…
Karsa stepped off the landing and looked down.
‘Thelomen Toblakai, welcome to my humble abode.’
Karsa scowled. ‘I crossed blades with one much like you. He was named Icarium. Like you, yet less so.’
‘Because he is a half-blood, of course. Whilst I am not. Jaghut, not Jhag.’
She lay spread-eagled within a ring of fist-sized stones. A larger stone rested on her chest, from which heat rose in waves. The air in the chamber was a swirling mix of steam and suspended frost.
‘You are trapped within sorcery. The army was seeking you, yet they did not kill you.’
‘Could not would be more accurate. Not immediately, in any case. But eventually, this Tellann Ritual will destroy this core of Omtose Phellack, which will in turn lead to the death of the Jhag Odhan—even now, the north forest creeps onto the plains, whilst from the south the desert claims ever more of the odhan that was my home.’
‘Your refuge.’
She bared her tusks in something like a smile. ‘Among the Jaghut, they are now one and the same, Thelomen Toblakai.’
Karsa looked around, studying the wreckage. He saw no weapons; nor was the woman wearing armour. ‘When this core of Omtose Phellack dies, so will you, yes? Yet you spoke only of the Jhag Odhan. As if your own death was of less importance than that of this land.’
‘It is less important. On the Jhag Odhan, the past lives still. Not just in my fallen kin, the Jhag—the few that managed to escape the Logros T’lan Imass. There are ancient beasts that walk the treeless lands beside the sheets of ice. Beasts that have died out everywhere else, mostly on the spears of the T’lan Imass. But there were no Imass in the Jhag Odhan. As you said, a refuge.’
‘Beasts. Including Jhag horses?’
He watched her strange eyes narrow. The pupils were vertical, surrounded in pearlescent grey. ‘The horses we once bred to ride. Yes, they have gone feral in the odhan. Though few remain, for the Trell come from the west to hunt them. Every year. They drive them off cliffs. As they do to many of the other beasts.’
‘Why did you not seek to stop them?’
‘Because, dear warrior, I was hiding.’
‘A tactic that failed.’
‘A scouting party of T’lan Imass discovered me. I destroyed most of them, but one escaped. From that moment, I knew their army would come, eventually. Granted, they took their time about it, but time is what they have aplenty.’
‘A scouting party? How many did you destroy?’
‘Seven.’
‘And are their remains among those surrounding this tower?’
She smiled again. ‘I would think not, Thelomen Toblakai. To the T’lan Imass, destruction is failure. Failure must be punished. Their methods are…elaborate.’
‘Yet what of the warriors lying below, and those around the tower?’
‘Fallen, but not in failure. Here I lie, after all.’
‘Enemies should be killed,’ the Teblor growled, ‘not imprisoned.’
‘I would not argue that sentiment,’ the Jaghut replied.
‘I sense nothing evil from you.’
‘It has been a long time since I heard that word. In the wars with the T’lan Imass, even, that word had no place.’
‘I must answer injustice,’ he rumbled.
‘As you will.’
‘The need overwhelms all caution. Delum Thord would smile.’
‘Who is Delum Thord?’
Not answering, Karsa unslung his pack then threw off his bear cloak and stepped towards the ring of stones.
‘Stay back, warrior!’ the Jaghut hissed. ‘This is High Tellann—’
‘And I am Karsa Orlong, of the Teblor,’ the warrior growled. He kicked at the nearest stones.
Searing flame swept up to engulf Karsa. He snarled and pushed his way through it, reaching down both hands to take the slab of stone, grunting as he lifted it from the woman’s chest. The flames swarmed him, seeking to rend his flesh from his bones, but his growl simply deepened. Pivoting, flinging the huge slab to one side. Where it struck a wall, and shattered.
The flames died.
Karsa shook himself, then looked down once more.
The ring was now broken. The Jaghut’s eyes were wide as she stared up at him, movement stirring her limbs.
‘Never before,’ she sighed, then shook her head as if in disbelief. ‘Ignorance, honed into a weapon. Extraordinary, Thelomen Toblakai.’
Karsa crouched down beside his pack. ‘Are you hungry? Thirsty?’
She was slow in sitting up. The T’lan Imass had stripped her, leaving her naked, but she seemed unaffected by the bitter cold air now filling the chamber. Though she appeared young, he suspected she was anything but. He felt her eyes watching him as he prepared the meal.
‘You crossed swords with Icarium. There had ever been but a single conclusion to such an ill-fated thing, but that you are here is proof that you somehow managed to avoid it.’
Karsa shrugged. ‘No doubt we will resume our disagreement the next time we meet.’
‘How did you come to be here, Karsa Orlong?’
‘I am seeking a horse, Jaghut. The journey was long, and I was led to understand that this dream world would make it shorter.’
‘Ah, the ghost-warriors hovering behind you. Even so, you take a grave risk travelling the Tellann Warren. I owe you my life, Karsa Orlong.’ She cautiously climbed to her feet. ‘How can I repay you?’
He straightened to face her, and was surprised—and pleased—to see that she almost matched him in height. Her hair was long, murky brown, tied at the back. He studied her for a moment, then said, ‘Find for me a horse.’
Her thin eyebrows rose fractionally. ‘That is all, Karsa Orlong?’
‘Perhaps one more thing—what is your name?’
‘That is what you would ask?’
‘No.’
‘Aramala.’
He nodded and turned once more to readying the meal. ‘I would know all you can tell me, Aramala, of the seven who first found you.’
‘Very well. If I may ask something in turn. You passed through a place on your way here, where Jhag had been…imprisoned. I shall of course free those who have survived.’
‘Of course.’
‘They are half-bloods.’
‘Aye, so I am told.’
‘Do you not wonder at what the other half is?’
He glanced up, then slowly frowned.
She smiled. ‘There is much, I think, that I must tell you.’
Some time later, Karsa Orlong strode from the tower. He moved on, resuming the trail of the army where it began once again beyond the frozen ground of Omtose Phellack.
When he finally emerged from the warren, into the heat of late afternoon on the world of his birth, he found himself on the edge of a ridge of battered hills. Pausing, he glanced behind him, and could make out, at the very rim of the horizon, a city—probably Sarpachiya—and the glimmer of a vast river.
The hills ahead formed a spine, a feature on the land that he suspected showed up only on local maps. There were no farms on the lowlands before it, no herds on its broken slopes.
The T’lan Imass had reappeared in this place before him, though their passage onwards, into those hills, left no sign, for decades had passed in this world since that time. He was on the edge of the Jhag Odhan.
Dusk had arrived by the time he reached the foothills and began making his way up the weathered slope. The exposed rock here had a diseased look, as if afflicted by some kind of unnatural decay. Pieces of it collapsed under his feet as he climbed.
The summit was little more than a ridge, less than three paces across, crusted with rotten stone and dead grasses. Beyond, the land fell away sharply, forming a broad valley marked by sunken, banded sandstone mesas rising from its base. The valley’s opposite side, five thousand or more paces distant, was a sheer cliff of rust-coloured rock.
