The Malazan Empire, page 380
‘Trull, take this other end and lead it to a place of shadow. A place where the shadow will not retreat before the sun as the day passes.’
He picked up the rope end and walked to a large, tilted boulder. When he fed the end into the shadows at its base he felt countless hands grasp it. Trull stepped back. The rope was now taut.
Returning to the edge, he saw that Fear had already begun his descent. Rhulad stood staring down.
‘We’re to wait until he reaches the bottom,’ Rhulad said. ‘He will tug thrice upon the rope. He asked that I go next.’
‘Very well.’
‘She has the sweetest lips,’ Rhulad murmured, then looked up and met Trull’s eyes. ‘Is that what you want me to say? To give proof to your suspicions?’
‘I have many suspicions, brother,’ Trull replied. ‘We have sun-scorched thoughts, we have dark-swallowed thoughts. But it is the shadow thoughts that move with stealth, creeping to the very edge of the rival realms—if only to see what there is to be seen.’
‘And if they see nothing?’
‘They never see nothing, Rhulad.’
‘Then illusions? What if they see only what their imagination conjures? False games of light? Shapes in the darkness? Is this not how suspicion becomes a poison? But a poison like white nectar, every taste leaving you thirsting for more.’
Trull was silent for a long moment. Then he said, ‘Fear spoke to me not long ago. Of how one is perceived, rather than how one truly is. How the power of the former can overwhelm that of the latter. How, indeed, perception shapes truth like waves on stone.’
‘What would you ask of me, Trull?’
He faced Rhulad directly. ‘Cease your strutting before Mayen.’
A strange smile, then, ‘Very well, brother.’
Trull’s eyes widened slightly.
The rope snapped three times.
‘My turn,’ Rhulad said. He grasped hold of the rope and was quickly gone from sight.
The knots of these words were anything but loose. Trull drew a deep breath, let it out slowly, wondering at that smile. The peculiarity of it. A smile that might have been pain, a smile born of hurt.
Then he turned upon himself and studied what he was feeling. Difficult to find, to recognize, but…Father Shadow forgive me. I feel…sullied.
The three tugs startled him.
Trull took the heavy rope in his hands, feeling the sheath of beeswax rubbed into the fibres to keep them from rotting. Without the knots for foot- and hand-holds, the descent would be treacherous indeed. He walked out over the edge, facing inward, then leaned back and began making his way down.
Glittering streams ran down the raw stone before him. Red-stained calcretions limned the surface here and there. Flea-like insects skipped across the surface. The scrapes left by the passage of Rhulad and Fear glistened in the fading light, ragged furrows wounding all that clung to the rock.
Knot to knot, he went down the rope, the darkness deepening around him. The air grew cool and damp, then cold. Then his feet struck mossy boulders, and hands reached out to steady him.
His eyes struggled to make out the forms of his brothers. ‘We should have brought a lantern.’
‘There is light from the Stone Bowl,’ Fear said. ‘An Elder Warren. Kaschan.’
‘That warren is dead,’ Trull said. ‘Destroyed by Father Shadow’s own hand.’
‘Its children are dead, brother, but the sorcery lingers. Have your eyes adjusted? Can you see the ground before you?’
A tumble of boulders and the glitter of flowing water between them. ‘I can.’
‘Then follow me.’
They made their way out from the wall. Footing was treacherous, forcing them to proceed slowly. Dead branches festooned with mushrooms and moss. Trull saw a pallid, hairless rodent of some kind slip into a crack between two rocks, tail slithering in its wake. ‘This is the Betrayer’s realm,’ he said.
Fear grunted. ‘More than you know, brother.’
‘Something lies ahead,’ Rhulad said in a whisper.
Vast, towering shapes. Standing stones, devoid of lichen or moss, the surface strangely textured, made, Trull realized as they drew closer, to resemble the bark of the Blackwood. Thick roots coiled out from the base of each obelisk, spreading out to entwine with those of the stones to each side. Beyond, the ground fell away in a broad depression, from which light leaked like mist.
Fear led them between the standing stones and they halted at the pit’s edge.
The roots writhed downward, and woven in their midst were bones. Thousands upon thousands. Trull saw Kaschan, the feared ancient enemies of the Edur, reptilian snouts and gleaming fangs. And bones that clearly belonged to the Tiste. Among them, finely curved wing-bones from Wyval, and, at the very base, the massive skull of an Eleint, the broad, flat bone of its forehead crushed inward, as if by the blow of a gigantic, gauntleted fist.
Leafless scrub had grown up from the chaotic mat on the slopes, the branches and twigs grey and clenching. Then the breath hissed between Trull’s teeth. The scrub was stone, growing not in the manner of crystal, but of living wood.
‘Kaschan sorcery,’ Fear said after a time, ‘is born of sounds our ears cannot hear, formed into words that loosen the bindings that hold all matter together, that hold it to the ground. Sounds that bend and stretch light, as a tidal inflow up a river is drawn apart at the moment of turning. With this sorcery, they fashioned fortresses of stone that rode the sky like clouds. With this sorcery, they turned Darkness in upon itself with a hunger none who came too close could defy, an all-devouring hunger that fed first and foremost upon itself.’ His voice was strangely muted as he spoke. ‘Kaschan sorcery was sent into the warren of Mother Dark, like a plague. Thus was sealed the gate from Kurald Galain to every other realm. Thus was Mother Dark driven into the very core of the Abyss, witness to an endless swirl of light surrounding her—all that she would one day devour, until the last speck of matter vanishes into her. Annihilating Mother Dark. Thus the Kaschan, who are long dead, set upon Mother Dark a ritual that will end in her murder. When all Light is gone. When there is naught to cast Shadow, and so Shadow too is doomed to die.
‘When Scabandari Bloodeye discovered what they had done, it was too late. The end, the death of the Abyss, cannot be averted. The journey of all that exists repeats on every scale, brothers. From those realms too small for us to see, to the Abyss itself. The Kaschan locked all things into mortality, into the relentless plunge towards extinction. This was their vengeance. An act born, perhaps, of despair. Or the fiercest hatred imaginable. Witness to their own extinction, they forced all else to share that fate.’
His brothers were silent. The dull echoes of Fear’s last words faded away.
Then Rhulad grunted. ‘I see no signs of this final convergence, Fear.’
‘A distant death, aye. More distant than one could imagine. Yet it will come.’
‘And what is that to us?’
‘The Tiste Invasions drove the Kaschan to their last act. Father Shadow earned the enmity of every Elder god, of every ascendant. Because of the Kaschan ritual, the eternal game among Dark, Light and Shadow would one day end. And with it, all of existence.’ He faced his brothers. ‘I tell you this secret knowledge so that you will better understand what happened here, what was done. And why Hannan Mosag speaks of enemies far beyond the mortal Letherii.’
The first glimmerings of realization whispered through Trull. He dragged his gaze from Fear’s dark, haunted eyes, and looked down into the pit. To the very base, to the skull of that slain dragon. ‘They killed him.’
‘They destroyed his corporeal body, yes. And imprisoned his soul.’
‘Scabandari Bloodeye,’ Rhulad said, shaking his head as if to deny all that he saw. ‘He cannot be dead. That skull is not—’
‘It is,’ Fear said. ‘They killed our god.’
‘Who?’ Trull demanded.
‘All of them. Elder gods. And Eleint. The Elder gods loosed the blood in their veins. The dragons spawned a child of indescribable terror, to seek out and hunt down Scabandari Bloodeye. Father Shadow was brought down. An Elder god named Kilmandaros shattered his skull. They then made for Bloodeye’s spirit a prison of eternal pain, of agony beyond measure, to last until the Abyss itself is devoured.
‘Hannan Mosag means to avenge our god.’
Trull frowned. ‘The Elder gods are gone, Fear. As are the Eleint. Hannan Mosag commands six tribes of Tiste Edur and a fragmented warren.’
‘Four hundred and twenty-odd thousand Edur,’ Rhulad said. ‘And, for all our endless explorations, we have found no kin among the fragments of Kurald Emurlahn. Fear, Hannan Mosag sees through stained thoughts. It is one thing to challenge Letherii hegemony with summoned demons and, if necessary, iron blades. Are we now to wage war against every god in this world?’
Fear slowly nodded. ‘You are here,’ he told them, ‘and you have been told what is known. Not to see you bend to one knee and praise the Warlock King’s name. He seeks power, brothers. He needs power, and he cares nothing for its provenance, nor its taint.’
‘Your words are treasonous,’ Rhulad said, and Trull heard a strange delight in his brother’s voice.
‘Are they?’ Fear asked. ‘Hannan Mosag has charged us to undertake a perilous journey. To receive for him a gift. To then deliver it into his hands. A gift, brothers, from whom?’
‘We cannot deny him,’ Trull said. ‘He will simply choose others to go in our stead. And we will face banishment, or worse.’
‘Of course we shall not deny him, Trull. But we must not journey like blind old men.’
‘What of Binadas?’ Rhulad asked. ‘What does he know of this?’
‘Everything,’ Fear replied. ‘More, perhaps, than Uruth herself.’
Trull stared down once more at the mouldy dragon skull at the bottom of the pit. ‘How are you certain that is Scabandari Bloodeye?’
‘Because it was the widows who brought him here. The knowledge was passed down every generation among the women.’
‘And Hannan Mosag?’
‘Uruth knows he has been here, to this place. How he discovered the truth remains a mystery. Uruth would never have told me and Binadas, if not for her desperation. The Warlock King is drawing upon deadly powers. Are his thoughts stained? If not before, they are now.’
Trull’s eyes remained on that skull. A blunt, brutal execution, that mailed fist. ‘We had better hope,’ he whispered, ‘that the Elder gods are indeed gone.’
Chapter Four
There are tides beneath every tide
And the surface of water
Holds no weight
TISTE EDUR SAYING
The Nerek believed the Tiste Edur were children of demons. There was ash in their blood, staining their skin. To look into an Edur’s eyes was to see the greying of the world, the smearing of the sun and the rough skin of night itself.
As the Hiroth warrior named Binadas strode towards the group, the Nerek began keening. Fists beating their own faces and chests, they fell to their knees.
Buruk the Pale marched among them, screaming curses and shrieking demands, but they were deaf to him. The merchant finally turned to where stood Seren Pedac and Hull Beddict, and began laughing.
Hull frowned. ‘This will pass, Buruk,’ he said.
‘Oh, will it now? And the world itself, will that too pass? Like a deathly wind, our lives swirling like dust amidst its headlong rush? Only to settle in its wake, dead and senseless—and all that frenzied cavorting empty of meaning? Hah! Would that I had hired Faraed!’
Seren Pedac’s attention remained on the approaching Tiste Edur. A hunter. A killer. One who probably also possessed the trait of long silences. She could imagine this Binadas, sharing a fire in the wilderness with Hull Beddict. In the course of an evening, a night and the following morning, perhaps a half-dozen words exchanged between them. And, she suspected, the forging of a vast, depthless friendship. These were the mysteries of men, so baffling to women. Where silences could become a conjoining of paths. Where a handful of inconsequential words could bind spirits in an ineffable understanding. Forces at play that she could sense, indeed witness, yet ever remaining outside them. Baffled and frustrated and half disbelieving.
Words knit the skein between and among women. And the language of gesture and expression, all merging to fashion a tapestry that, as every woman understood, could tear in but one direction, by deliberate, vicious effort. A friendship among women knew but one enemy, and that was malice.
Thus, the more words, the tighter the weave.
Seren Pedac had lived most of her life in the company of men, and now, on her rare visits to her home in Letheras, she was viewed by women who knew her with unease. As if her choice had made her loyalty uncertain, cause for suspicion. And she had found an unwelcome awkwardness in herself when in their company. They wove from different threads, on different frames, discordant with her own rhythms. She felt clumsy and coarse among them, trapped by her own silences.
To which she answered with flight, away from the city, from her past. From women.
Yet, in the briefest of moments, in a meeting of two men with their almost indifferent exchange of greetings, she was knocked a step back—almost physically—and shut out. Here, sharing this ground, this trail with its rocks and trees, yet in another world.
Too easy to conclude, with a private sneer, that men were simple. Granted, had they been strangers, they might well be circling and sniffing each other’s anuses right now. Inviting conclusions that swept aside all notions of complexity, in their place a host of comforting generalizations. But the meeting of two men who were friends destroyed such generalizations and challenged the contempt that went with them, invariably leading a woman to anger.
And the strange, malicious desire to step between them.
On a cobbled beach, a man looks down and sees one rock, then another and another. A woman looks down and sees…rocks. But perhaps even this is simplistic. Man as singular and women as plural. More likely we are bits of both, some of one in the other.
We just don’t like admitting it.
He was taller than Hull, shoulders level with the Letherii’s eyes. His hair was brown and bound in finger-length braids. Eyes the colour of wet sand. Skin like smeared ash. Youthful features, long and narrow barring the broad mouth.
Seren Pedac knew the Sengar name. It was likely she had seen this man’s kin, among the delegations she had treated with in her three official visits to Hannan Mosag’s tribe.
‘Hiroth warrior,’ Buruk the Pale said, shouting to be heard above the wailing Nerek, ‘I welcome you as guest. I am—’
‘I know who you are,’ Binadas replied.
At his words the Nerek voices trailed off, leaving only the wind moaning its way up the trail, and the constant trickling flow of melt water from the higher reaches.
‘I bring to the Hiroth,’ Buruk was saying, ‘ingots of iron—’
‘And would test,’ Hull Beddict interrupted, ‘the thickness of the ice.’
‘The season has turned,’ Binadas replied to Hull. ‘The ice is riven with cracks. There has been an illegal harvest of tusked seals. Hannan Mosag will have given answer.’
Seren Pedac swung to the merchant. Studied Buruk the Pale’s face. Alcohol, white nectar and the bitter wind had lifted the blood vessels to just beneath the pallid skin on his nose and cheeks. The man’s eyes were bleary and shot with red. He conveyed no reaction at the Edur’s words. ‘Regrettable. It is unfortunate that, among my merchant brethren, there are those who choose to disregard the agreements. The lure of gold. A tide none can withstand.’
‘The same can be said of vengeance,’ Binadas pointed out.
Buruk nodded. ‘Aye, all debts must be repaid.’
Hull Beddict snorted. ‘Gold and blood are not the same.’
‘Aren’t they?’ Buruk challenged. ‘Hiroth warrior, the interests I represent would adhere now and evermore to the bound agreements. Alas, Lether is a many-headed beast. The surest control of the more voracious elements will be found in an alliance—between the Edur and those Letherii who hold to the words binding our two peoples.’
Binadas turned away. ‘Save your speeches for the Warlock King,’ he said. ‘I will escort you to the village. That is all that need be understood between us.’
Shrugging, Buruk the Pale walked back to his wagon. ‘On your feet, Nerek! The trail is downhill from here on, isn’t it just!’
Seren watched the merchant climb into the covered back, vanishing from sight, as the Nerek began scurrying about. A glance showed Hull and Binadas facing each other once more. The wind carried their words to her.
‘I will speak against Buruk’s lies,’ Hull Beddict said. ‘He will seek to ensnare you with smooth assurances and promises, none of which will be worth a dock.’
Binadas shrugged. ‘We have seen the traps you laid out before the Nerek and the Tarthenal. Each word is a knot in an invisible net. Against it, the Nerek’s swords were too blunt. The Tarthenal too slow to anger. The Faraed could only smile in their confusion. We are not as those tribes.’
‘I know,’ Hull said. ‘Friend, my people believe in the stacking of coins. One atop another, climbing, ever climbing to glorious heights. The climb signifies progress, and progress is the natural proclivity of civilization. Progress, Binadas, is the belief from which emerge notions of destiny. The Letherii believe in destiny—their own. They are deserving of all things, born of their avowed virtues. The empty throne is ever there for the taking.’
Binadas was smiling at Hull’s words, but it was a wry smile. He turned suddenly to Seren Pedac. ‘Acquitor. Join us, please. Do old wounds mar Hull Beddict’s view of Lether?’
‘Destiny wounds us all,’ she replied, ‘and we Letherii wear the scars with pride. Most of us,’ she added with an apologetic look at Hull.
‘One of your virtues?’
‘Yes, if you could call it that. We have a talent for disguising greed under the cloak of freedom. As for past acts of depravity, we prefer to ignore those. Progress, after all, means to look ever forward, and whatever we have trampled in our wake is best forgotten.’
