The Malazan Empire, page 390
‘Tell me what you know of the old tower in the forbidden grounds behind the palace.’
‘Not much, except that your undead comrade resides in the vicinity. The girl.’
‘Yes, she does. I have named her Kettle.’
‘We cross here.’ Tehol indicated a footbridge. ‘She means something to you?’
‘That is difficult to answer. Perhaps. It may prove that she means something to all of us, Tehol Beddict.’
‘Ah. And can I be of some help in this matter?’
‘Your offer surprises me.’
‘I endeavour to remain ever surprising, Shurq Elalle.’
‘I am seeking to discover her…history. It is, I think, important. The old tower appears to be haunted in some way, and that haunting is in communication with Kettle. It poses desperate need.’
‘For what?’
‘Human flesh.’
‘Oh my.’
‘In any case, this is why Gerun Eberict is losing the spies he sets on you.’
Tehol halted. ‘Excuse me?’
‘Kettle kills them.’
Steeply sloped, the black wall of rock reached up into the light. The currents swept across its rippled face with unceasing ferocity, and all that clung to it to draw sustenance from that roiling stream was squat, hard-shelled and stubborn. Vast flats stretched out from the base of the trench wall, and these were scoured down to bedrock. Enormous tangled islands of detritus, crushed and bound together by unimaginable pressures, crawled across the surface, like migrating leviathans in the flow of dark water.
Brys stood on the plain, watching the nearest tumbling mass roll past. He knew he was witness to sights no mortal had ever seen, where natural eyes would see only darkness, where the pressures would have long since killed corporeal flesh descending from the surface far above. Yet here he stood, to his own senses as real, as physical, as he had been in the palace. Clothed, armoured, his sword hanging at his hip. He could feel the icy water and its wild torrent in a vague, remote fashion, but the currents could not challenge his balance, could not drag him off his feet. Nor did the cold steal the strength from his limbs.
He drew breath, and the air was cool and damp—it was, he realized, the air of the subterranean chamber of the Cedance.
That recognition calmed his heart, diminished his disorientation.
A god dwells in this place. It seemed well suited for such a thing. Primal, fraught with extremes, a realm of raw violence and immense, clashing forces of nature.
Another mass of wreckage shambled past, and Brys saw, amidst pale, skeletal branches and what seemed to be bundles of unravelled rope, flattened pieces of metal whose edges showed extruded white tendrils. By the Errant, that metal is armour, and those tendrils are…
The detritus tumbled away. As it did, Brys saw something beyond it. Stationary, blockish, vertical shapes rearing from the plain.
He walked towards them.
Dolmens.
This beggared comprehension. It seemed impossible that the plain before him had once known air, sunlight and dry winds.
And then he saw that the towering stones were of the same rock as the plain, and that they were indeed part of it, lifting as solid projections. As Brys drew nearer, he saw that their surfaces were carved, an unbroken skein of linked glyphs.
Six dolmens in all, forming a row that cut diagonally from the angle of the trench wall.
He halted before the nearest one.
The glyphs formed a silver latticework over the black stone, and in the uneven surface beneath the symbols he saw the hints of a figure. Multi-limbed, the head small, sloping and squat, a massive brow ridge projecting over a single eye socket. The broad mouth appeared to be a row of elongated tendrils, the end of each sporting long, thin fangs, and it was closed to form an interlocking, spiny row. Six segmented arms, two—possibly four—legs, barely suggested in the black stone’s undulations.
The glyphs shrouded the figure, and Brys suspected they formed a prison of sorts, a barrier that prevented the emergence of the creature.
The silver seemed to flow in its carved grooves.
Brys circled the dolmen, and saw other shapes on every side, no two alike, a host of nightmarish, demonic beasts. After a long moment’s regard, he moved on to the next standing stone. And found more.
The fourth dolmen was different. On one side the glyphs had unravelled, the silver bled away, and where a figure should have been there was a suggestive indentation, a massive, hulking creature, with snaking tentacles for limbs.
The mute absence was chilling. Something was loose, and Brys did not think it was a god.
Mael, where are you? Are these your servants?
Or your trophies?
He stared up at the indentation. The absence here was more profound than that which reared before him. His soul whispered…abandonment. Mael was gone. This world had been left to the dark, torrid currents and the herds of detritus.
‘Come for another one, have you?’
Brys whirled. Ten paces away stood a huge figure sheathed in armour. Black, patinated iron studded with rivets green with verdigris. A great helm with full cheek guards vertically slatted down to the jawline, reinforced along the bridge of the nose to the chin. The thin eye slits were caged in a grille mesh that extended down beneath the guards to hang ragged and stiff on shoulders and breastplate. Barnacles crusted the joints of arms and legs, and tendrils of brightly coloured plants clinging to joins in the armour streamed in the current. Gauntlets of overlapping plates of untarnished silver held on to a two-handed sword, the blade as wide as Brys’s hands were long. The sword’s blunt end rested on the bedrock. From those metal-clad hands, he now saw, blood streamed.
The Letherii drew his own longsword. The roiling currents suddenly tugged at him, as if whatever had held him immune to the ravages of this deep world had vanished. The blade was turned and twisted in his hand with every surge of water. To counter such a weapon as that wielded by the warrior, he would need speed, his primary tactic one of evasion. The Letherii steel of his longsword would not break clashing in hard parry, but his arms might.
And now, the currents buffeted him, battled with the sword in his hand. He had no hope of fighting this creature.
The words the warrior had spoken were in a language unknown to Brys, yet he understood it. ‘Come for another one? I am not here to free these demons from their sorcerous cages—’
The apparition stepped forward. ‘Demons? There are no demons here. Only gods. Forgotten gods. You think the skein of words is a prison?’
‘I do not know what to think. I do not know the words written—’
‘Power is remembrance. Power is evocation—a god dies when it becomes nameless. Thus did Mael offer this gift, this sanctuary. Without their names, the gods vanish. The crime committed here is beyond measure. The obliteration of the names, the binding of a new name, the making of a slave. Beyond measure, mortal. In answer I was made, to guard those that remain. It is my task.’ The sword lifted and the warrior took another step closer.
Some fighters delivered an unseen wound before weapons were even drawn. In them, raised like a penumbra, was the promise of mortality. It drew blood, weakened will and strength. Brys had faced men and women with this innate talent before. And he had answered it with…amusement.
The guardian before him promised such mortality, with palpable force.
Another heavy step. A force to match the roiling waters. In sudden understanding, Brys smiled.
The vicious current ceased its maelstrom. Speed and agility returned in a rush.
The huge sword slashed horizontally. Brys leapt back, the point of his sword darting out and up in a stop-thrust against the only target within reach.
Letherii steel slipped in between the silver plates of the left gauntlet, sank deep.
Behind them a dolmen exploded, the concussion thundering through the bedrock underfoot. The warrior staggered, then swung his sword in a downward chop. Brys threw himself backward, rolling over one shoulder to regain his feet in a crouch.
The warrior’s sword had driven into the basalt a quarter of its length. And was stuck fast.
He darted to close. Planting his left leg behind the guardian, Brys set both hands against the armoured chest and shoved.
The effort failed as the guardian held himself upright by gripping the embedded sword.
Brys spun and hammered his right elbow into the iron-sheathed face. Pain exploded in his arm as the head was snapped back, and the Letherii pitched to one side, his left hand taking the longsword from his fast-numbing right.
The warrior tugged on his own sword, but it did not budge.
Brys leapt forward once again, driving his left boot down onto the side of the guardian’s nearest leg, low, a hand’s width above the ankle.
Ancient iron crumpled. Bones snapped.
The warrior sank down on that side, yet remained partly upright by leaning on the jammed sword.
Brys quickly backed away. ‘Enough. I have no desire to kill any more gods.’
The armoured face lifted to regard him. ‘I am defeated. We have failed.’
The Letherii studied the warrior for a long moment, then spoke. ‘The blood seeping from your hands—does it belong to the surviving gods here?’
‘Diminished, now.’
‘Can they heal you?’
‘No. We have nothing left.’
‘Why does the blood leak? What happens when it runs out?’
‘It is power. It steals courage—against you it failed. It was expected that the blood of slain enemies would…it does not matter now.’
‘What of Mael? Can you receive no help from him?’
‘He has not visited in thousands of years.’
Brys frowned. Kuru Qan had said to follow his instincts. He did not like what had come to pass here. ‘I would help. Thus, I would give you my own blood.’
The warrior was silent for a long time. Then, ‘You do not know what you offer, mortal.’
‘Well, I don’t mean to die. I intend to survive the ordeal. Will it suffice?’
‘Blood from a dying or dead foe has power. Compared to the blood from a mortal who lives, that power is minuscule. I say again, you do not know what you offer.’
‘I have more in mind, Guardian. May I approach?’
‘We are helpless before you.’
‘Your sword isn’t going anywhere, even with my help. I would give you mine. It cannot be broken, or so I am told. And indeed I have never seen Letherii steel break. Your two-handed weapon is only effective if your opponent quails and so is made slow and clumsy.’
‘So it would seem.’
Brys was pleased at the wry tone in the warrior’s voice. While there had been no self-pity in the admissions of failure, he had disliked hearing them. He reversed grip on his longsword, and offered the pommel to the warrior. ‘Here.’
‘If I release my hands I will fall.’
‘One will do.’
The guardian prised a hand loose and grasped the longsword. ‘By the Abyss, it weighs as nothing!’
‘The forging is a secret art, known only to my people. It will not fail you.’
‘Do you treat all your defeated foes in this manner?’
‘No, only the ones I had no wish to harm in the first place.’
‘Tell me, mortal, are you considered a fine swordsman in your world?’
‘Passing.’ Brys tugged off the leather glove on his right hand, then drew his dagger. ‘This arm is still mostly numb—’
‘I am pleased. Although I wish I could say the same for my face.’
Brys cut his palm, watched as blood blossomed out to whip away on the current. He set the bleeding hand down on the warrior’s left, which was still closed about the grip of the embedded weapon. He felt his blood being drawn between the silver-plates.
The warrior’s hand twisted round to grasp his own in a grip hard as stone. A clenching of muscles, and the guardian began straightening.
Brys glanced down and saw that the shattered leg was mending in painful-looking spasms, growing solid beneath the huge warrior’s weight.
Sudden weakness rushed through him.
‘Release my hand,’ the warrior said, ‘lest you die.’
Nodding, Brys pulled his hand free, and staggered back.
‘Will you live?’
‘I hope so,’ he gasped, his head spinning. ‘Now, before I go, tell me their names.’
‘What?’
‘I have a good memory, Guardian. There will be no more enslavement, so long as I remain alive. And beyond my life, I will ensure that those names are not forgotten—’
‘We are ancient gods, mortal. You risk—’
‘You have earned your peace, as far as I am concerned. Against the Tiste Edur—those who came before to chain one of your kin—you will be ready next time. My life can add to your strength, and hopefully it will be sufficient for you to resist.’
The guardian straightened to its full height. ‘It shall, mortal. Your sacrifice shall not be forgotten.’
‘The names! I feel—I am fading—’
Words filled his mind, a tumbling avalanche of names, each searing a brand in his memory. He screamed at the shock of the assault, of countless layers of grief, dreams, lives and deaths, of realms unimaginable, of civilizations crumbling to ruins, then dust.
Stories. So many stories…ah, Errant—
‘Errant save us, what have you done?’
Brys found himself lying on his back, beneath him a hard, enamelled floor. He blinked open his eyes and saw Kuru Qan’s wizened face hovering over him.
‘I could not find Mael,’ the King’s Champion said. He felt incredibly weak, barely able to lift a hand to his face.
‘You’ve scarcely a drop of blood left in you, Finadd. Tell me all that happened.’
The Holds forsake me, stories without end…‘I discovered what the Tiste Edur have done, Ceda. An ancient god, stripped of its names, bound by a new one. It now serves the Edur.’
Kuru Qan’s eyes narrowed behind the thick lenses. ‘Stripped of its names. Relevant? Perhaps. Can one of those names be found? Will it serve to pry it loose from Hannan Mosag’s grasp?’
Brys closed his eyes. Of all the names now held within him…had any of the other gods known its kin’s identity? ‘I may have it, Ceda, but finding it will take time.’
‘You return with secrets, Finadd Brys Beddict.’
‘And barely a handful of answers.’
The Ceda leaned back. ‘You need time to recover, my young friend. Food, and wine, and plenty of both. Can you stand?’
‘I will try…’
The humble manservant Bugg walked through the darkness of Sherp’s Last Lane, so named because poor Sherp died there a few decades past. He had been a fixture in this neighbourhood, Bugg recalled. Old, half blind and muttering endlessly about a mysterious cracked altar long lost in the clay beneath the streets. Or, more specifically, beneath this particular lane.
His body had been found curled up within a scratched circle, amidst rubbish and a half-dozen neck-wrung rats. Peculiar as that had been, there were few who cared or were curious enough to seek explanations. People died in the alleys and streets all the time, after all.
Bugg missed old Sherp, even after all these years, but some things could not be undone.
He had been awakened by a rattling of the reed mat that now served as a door to Tehol’s modest residence. A dirt-smeared child delivering an urgent summons. She now scampered a few paces ahead, glancing back every now and then to make sure she was still being followed.
At the end of Sherp’s Last Lane was another alley, this one running perpendicular, to the left leading down to a sinkhole known as Errant’s Heel which had become a refuse pit, and to the right ceasing after fifteen paces in a ruined house with a mostly collapsed roof.
The child led Bugg to that ruin.
One section remained with sufficient headroom to stand, and in this chamber a family now resided. Nerek: six children and a grandmother who’d wandered down from the north after the children’s parents died of Truce Fever—which itself was a senseless injustice, since Truce Fever was easily cured by any Letherii healer, given sufficient coin.
Bugg did not know them, but he knew of them, and clearly they in turn had heard of the services he was prepared to offer, in certain circumstances, free of charge.
A tiny hand reached out to close about his own and the girl led him through the doorway into a corridor where he was forced to crouch beneath the sagging, sloping ceiling. Three paces along and the lower half of another doorway was revealed and, beyond it, a crowded room.
Smelling of death.
Murmured greetings and bowed heads as Bugg entered, his eyes settling on the motionless form lying on a bloody blanket in the room’s centre. After a moment’s study, he glanced up and sought out the gaze of the eldest of the children, a girl of about ten or eleven years of age—though possibly older and stunted by malnutrition, or younger and prematurely aged by the same. Large, hard eyes met his.
‘Where did you find her?’
‘She made it home,’ the girl replied, her tone wooden.
Bugg looked down at the dead grandmother once more. ‘From how far away?’
‘Buried Round, she said.’
‘She spoke, then, before life left her.’ Bugg’s jaw muscles bunched. Buried Round was two, three hundred paces distant. An extraordinary will, in the old woman, to have walked all that distance with two mortal sword-thrusts in her chest. ‘She knew great need, I think.’
‘To tell us who killed her, yes.’
And not to simply disappear, as so many of the destitute do, thus raising the spectre of abandonment—a scar these children could do without.
‘Who, then?’
‘She was crossing the Round, and found herself in the path of an entourage. Seven men and their master, all armed. The master was raging, something about all his spies disappearing. Our grandmother begged for coin. The master lost his mind with anger and ordered his guards to kill her. And so they did.’
‘And is the identity of this master known?’
