The Malazan Empire, page 395
Feather Witch remained silent, and unease grew.
Udinaas climbed to his feet and threaded his way through the crowd, ignoring the glares from the slaves he edged past. He reached the back wall and made his way along it until he reached the Acquitor’s side.
‘What has gone wrong?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know—’
Feather Witch began speaking once more. ‘Bone Perch now stands as a throne that none shall occupy, for its shape has become inimical to taming. The throne’s back is now hunched, the ribs drawn downward, the shoulder blades steep and narrow. The arms, upon which a ruler’s arms would rest, are risen now, each in the visage of a wolf, and in their eyes burns savage life.’ She paused, then intoned, ‘The Hold of the Beast has found Twin Rulers.’
‘That is impossible,’ Seren Pedac murmured.
‘And before us now…the Hold of the Azath. Its stones bleed. The earth heaves and steams. A silent, unceasing scream shakes the branches of the ancient trees. The Azath stands besieged.’
Voices rose in denial, the slaves shifting about.
‘Ice Hold!’ Feather Witch shouted, head tilted back, teeth bared.
Silence once more, all eyes fixing on her.
‘Riven tomb! Corpses lie scattered before the sundered threshold. Urquall Jaghuthan taezmalas. They are not here to mend the damage. They are forgotten, and the ice itself cannot recall the weight of their passage.’
‘What language was that?’ Seren Pedac asked.
‘Jaghut,’ Udinaas replied, then snapped his mouth shut.
‘What is Jaghut?’
He shrugged. ‘Forgers of the Ice, Acquitor. It is of no matter. They are gone.’
She gripped his arm and swung him round. ‘How do you know this?’
‘The Hold of the Dragon,’ Feather Witch said, her skin glistening with sweat. ‘Eleint Tiam purake setoram n’brael buras—’
‘Draconean words,’ Udinaas said, suddenly revelling in his secret knowledge. ‘“Children of the Mother Tiam lost in all that they surrendered.” More or less. The poetry suffers in translation—’
‘The Eleint would destroy all in their paths to achieve vengeance,’ Feather Witch said in a grating voice. ‘As we all shall see in the long night to come. The Queen lies dead and may never again rise. The Consort writhes upon a tree and whispers with madness of the time of his release. The Liege is lost, dragging chains in a world where to walk is to endure, and where to halt is to be devoured. The Knight strides his own doomed path, soon to cross blades with his own vengeance. Gate rages with wild fire. Wyval—’
Her head snapped back as if struck by an invisible hand, and blood sprayed from her mouth and nose. She gasped, then smiled a red smile. ‘Locqui Wyval waits. The Lady and the Sister dance round each other, each on her own side of the world. Blood-Drinker waits as well, waits to be found. Path-Shaper knows fever in his fell blood and staggers on the edge of the precipice.
‘Thus! The Holds, save one.’
‘Someone stop her,’ Seren Pedac hissed, releasing Udinaas’s arm.
And now it was his turn to grasp her, hold her back. She snapped a glare at him and twisted to escape his grip.
He pulled her close. ‘This is not your world, Acquitor. No-one invited you. Now, stand here and say nothing…or leave!’
‘The Empty Hold has become…’ Feather Witch’s smile broadened, ‘very crowded indeed. ’Ware the brothers! Listen! Blood weaves a web that will trap the entire world! None shall escape, none shall find refuge!’ Her right hand snapped out, spraying the ancient tiles onto the floor. From the rafters far above pigeons burst out of the gloom, a wild, chaotic beat of wings. They circled in a frenzy, feathers skirling down.
‘The Watchers stand in place as if made of stone! Their faces are masks of horror. The Mistresses dance with thwarted desire.’ Her eyes were closed, yet she pointed to one tile after another, proclaiming their identity in a harsh, rasping voice. ‘The Wanderers have broken through the ice and cold darkness comes with its deathly embrace. The Walkers cannot halt in the growing torrent that pulls them ever onward. The Saviours—’
‘What is she saying?’ Seren Pedac demanded. ‘She has made them all plural—the players within the Hold of the Empty Throne—this makes no sense—’
‘—face one another, and both are doomed, and in broken reflection so stand the Betrayers, and this is what lies before us, before us all.’ Her voice trailed away with her last words, and once more her chin settled, head tilting forward, long hair sweeping down to cover her face.
The pigeons overhead whipped round and round, the only sound in the massive barn.
‘Contestants to the Empty Throne,’ Feather Witch whispered in a tone heavy with sorrow. ‘Blood and madness…’
Udinaas slowly released his grip on Seren Pedac.
She made no move, as frozen in place as everyone else present.
Udinaas grunted, amused, and said to the Acquitor, ‘She’s not slept well lately, you see.’
Seren Pedac staggered outside, into a solid sheet of cold rain. A hissing deluge on the path’s pebbles, tiny rivers cutting through the sands, the forest beyond seeming pulled down by streaming threads and ropes. An angry susurration from the direction of the river and the sea. As if the world was collapsing in melt water.
She blinked against the cold tears.
And recalled the play of Edur children, the oblivious chatter of a thousand moments ago, so far back in her mind now as to echo like someone else’s reminiscence. Of times weathered slick and shapeless.
Memories rushing, rushing down to the sea.
Like children in flight.
Chapter Eight
Where are the days we once held
So loose in our sure hands?
When did these racing streams
Carve depthless caves beneath our feet?
And how did this scene stagger
And shift to make fraught our deft lies
In the places where youth will meet,
In the lands of our proud dreams?
Where, among all you before me,
Are the faces I once knew?
WORDS ETCHED INTO THE WALL, K’RUL BELFRY, DARUJHISTAN
In the battle that saw Theradas Buhn blooded, a Merude cutlass had laid open his right cheek, snapping the bone beneath the eye and cutting through maxilla and the upper half of his mandible. The savage wound had been slow to heal, and the thread that had been used to seal the gaping hole into his mouth had festered the flesh before his comrades could return the warrior to a nearby Hiroth encampment, where a healer had done what she could—driving out the infection, knitting the bones. The result was a long, crooked scar within a seamed concave depression on that side of his face, and a certain flat look to his eyes that hinted of unseen wounds that would never heal.
Trull Sengar sat with the others five paces from the edge of the ice-field, watching Theradas as he paced back and forth along the crusted line of ice and snow, the red-tipped fox fur of his cloak flashing in the gusting wind. The Arapay lands were behind them now, and with them the grudging hospitality of that subjugated Edur tribe. The Hiroth warriors were alone, and before them stretched a white, shattered landscape.
It looked lifeless, but the Arapay had spoken of night hunters, strange, fur-shrouded killers who came out of the darkness wielding jagged blades of black iron. They took body parts as trophies, to the point of leaving limbless, headless torsos in their wake. None had ever been captured, and the bodies of those who fell were never left where they lay.
Even so, they tended to prey only upon paired Edur hunters. More formidable groups were generally left alone. The Arapay called them Jheck, which meant, roughly, standing wolves.
‘There are eyes upon us,’ Theradas pronounced in his thick, blunted voice.
Fear Sengar shrugged. ‘The ice wastes are not as lifeless as they appear. Hares, foxes, ground owls, white wolves, bears, aranag—’
‘The Arapay spoke of huge beasts,’ Rhulad cut in. ‘Brown-furred and tusked—we saw the ivory—’
‘Old ivory, Rhulad,’ Fear said. ‘Found in the ice. It is likely such beasts are no more.’
‘The Arapay say otherwise.’
Theradas grunted. ‘And they live in fear of the ice wastes, Rhulad, and so have filled them with nightmare beasts and demons. It is this: we will see what we see. Are you done your repasts? We are losing daylight.’
‘Yes,’ Fear said, rising, ‘we should go on.’
Rhulad and Midik Buhn moved out to the flanks. Both wore bear furs, black and silver-collared. Their hands, within fur-lined gauntlets—Arapay gifts—were wrapped round the long spears they used as walking sticks, testing the packed snow before them with each step. Theradas moved to point, fifteen paces ahead, leaving Trull, Fear and Binadas travelling as the core group, pulling the two sleds packed with leather satchels filled with supplies.
It was said that, further out in the wastes, there was water beneath the ice, salt-laden remnants from an inland sea, and cavernous pockets hidden beneath thin-skin mantles of snow. Treachery waited underfoot, forcing them to travel slowly.
The wind swept down upon them, biting at exposed skin, and they were forced to lean forward against its gusting, frigid blasts.
Despite the furs enshrouding him, Trull felt the shock of that sudden cold, a force mindless and indifferent, yet eager to steal. Flooding his air passages in a numbing assault. And within that current, a faint smell of death.
The Edur wrapped swaths of wool about their faces, leaving the barest of slits for their eyes. Conversations were quickly abandoned, and they walked in silence, the crunch of their fur-lined moccasins muffled and distant.
The sun’s warmth and turn of season could not win the war in this place. The snow and ice rose on the wind to glitter overhead, mocking the sun itself with twin mirror images, leading Trull to suspect that the wind held close to the ground, whilst high overhead the suspended ice crystals hovered unmoving, inured to the passing of seasons, of years.
He tilted his head to stare upward for a moment, wondering if that glistening, near-opaque canopy above them held the frozen memories of the past, minute images locked in each crystal, bearing witness to all that had occurred below. A multitude of fates, perhaps reaching back to when there was sea, in place of the ice. Did unknown creatures ply the waters in arcane, dugout canoes all those thousands of years ago? Would they one day become these Jheck?
The Letherii spoke of Holds, that strange pantheon of elements, and among them there was the Hold of Ice. As if winter was born of sorcery, as if ice and snow were instruments of wilful destruction. Something of that notion was present in Edur legends as well. Ice plunging down to steal the land that was soaked in Tiste blood, the brutal theft of hard-won territories committed as an act of vengeance, perhaps the gelid flowering of some curse uttered in a last breath, a final defiance.
The sentiment, then—if one such existed—was of old enmity. Ice was a thief, of life, land and righteous reward. Bound in death and blood, an eternal prison. From all this, it could earn hatred.
They continued through the day, moving slowly but steadily, through jumbled fields of broken, upthrust shards of ice that in the distance seemed simply white, but when neared was revealed to possess countless shades of greens, blues and browns. They crossed flats of wind-sculpted, hard-packed snow that formed rippled patterns as smooth as sand. Strange fault lines where unseen forces had sheered the ice, pushing one side up against the other, grinding opposing paths as if the solid world beneath them jostled in wayward migration.
Towards late afternoon, a muted shout from Theradas halted them. Trull, who had been walking with his eyes on the ground before him, looked up at the muffled sound and saw that Theradas was standing before something, gesturing them forward with a fur-wrapped hand. A few moments later they reached his side.
A broad crevasse cut across their path, the span at least fifteen paces. The sheer walls of ice swept down into darkness, and from its depths rose a strange smell.
‘Salt,’ Binadas said after pulling away his face-covering. ‘Tidal pools.’
Rhulad and Midik joined them from the flanks. ‘It seems to stretch to the very horizon,’ Rhulad said.
‘The break looks recent,’ Binadas observed, crouching at the edge. ‘As if the surface is shrinking.’
‘Perhaps summer has managed a modest alteration to these wastes,’ Fear mused. ‘We have passed sealed faults that might be the remnant scars from similar wounds in the past.’
‘How will we cross?’ Midik asked.
‘I could draw shadows from below,’ Binadas said, then shook his head, ‘but the notion makes me uneasy. If there are spirits within, they might well prove unruly. There are layers of sorcery here, woven in the snow and ice, and they do not welcome Emurlahn.’
‘Get out the ropes,’ Fear said.
‘Dusk approaches.’
‘If necessary we will camp below.’
Trull shot Fear a look. ‘What if it closes whilst we are down there?’
‘I do not think that likely,’ Fear said. ‘Besides, we will remain unseen this night, hidden as we will be in the depths. If there are indeed beasts in this land—though we’ve seen no true signs as yet—then I would rather we took every opportunity to avoid them.’
Wet pebbles skidded under his moccasins as Trull alighted, stepping clear of the ropes. He looked around, surprised at the faint green glow suffusing the scene. They were indeed on a seabed. Salt had rotted the ice at the edges, creating vast caverns crowded with glittering pillars. The air was cold, turgid and rank.
Off to one side Midik and Rhulad had drawn bundles of wood out from a pack and were preparing a cookfire. Binadas and Fear were reloading the sleds to keep the food satchels off the wet ground, and Theradas had set off to scout the caverns.
Trull strode to a shallow pool and crouched down at its edge. The saline water swarmed with tiny grey shrimps. Barnacles crowded the waterline.
‘The ice is dying.’
At Fear’s words behind him, Trull rose and faced his brother. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘The salt gnaws its flesh. We are at the lowest region of the ancient seabed, I believe. Where the last of the water gathered, then slowly evaporated. Those columns of salt are all that remains. If the entire basin was like this place, then the canopy of ice would have collapsed—’
‘Perhaps it does just that,’ Binadas suggested, joining them. ‘In cycles over thousands of years. Collapse, then the salt begins its work once again.’
Trull stared into the gloomy reaches. ‘I cannot believe those pillars can hold up all this ice. There must be a cycle of collapse, as Binadas has said.’ His eyes caught movement, then Theradas emerged, and Trull saw that the warrior had his sword out.
‘There is a path,’ Theradas said. ‘And a place of gathering. We are not the first to have come down here.’
Rhulad and Midik joined them. No-one spoke for a time.
Then Fear nodded and asked, ‘How recent are the signs, Theradas?’
‘Days.’
‘Binadas and Trull, go with Theradas to this place of gathering. I will remain here with the Unblooded.’
The path began twenty paces in from the crevasse, a trail cleared of cobbles and detritus that wound between the rough, crystalline columns of salt. Melt water dripped from the rotting ceiling in a steady downpour. Theradas led them onward another thirty paces, where the path ended at the edge of a vast roughly domed expanse devoid of pillars.
Near the centre squatted a low, misshapen altar stone. Votive offerings surrounded it—shells, mostly, among which the odd piece of carved ivory was visible. Yet Trull spared it but a momentary glance, for his gaze had been drawn to the far wall.
A sheer plane of ice a hundred paces or more across, rising in a tilted overhang—a wall in which countless beasts had been caught in mid-stampede, frozen in full flight. Antlers projected from the ice, heads and shoulders—still solid and immobile—and forelegs lifted or stretched forward. Frost-rimed eyes dully reflected the muted blue-green light. Deeper within, the blurred shapes of hundreds more.
Stunned by the vista, Trull slowly walked closer, round the altar, half expecting at any moment to see the charging beasts burst into sudden motion, onrushing, to crush them all beneath countless hoofs.
As he neared, he saw heaped bodies near the base, beasts that had fallen out from the retreating ice, had thawed, eventually collapsing into viscid pools.
Tiny black flies rose in clouds from the decaying flesh and hide, swarmed towards Trull as if determined to defend their feast. He halted, waved his hands until they dispersed and began winging back to the rotting carcasses. The beasts—caribou—had been running on snow, a packed layer knee-deep above the seabed. He could still see the panic in their eyes—and there, smeared behind an arm’s length of ice, the head and shoulders of an enormous wolf, silver-haired and amber-eyed, running alongside a caribou, shoulder to shoulder. The wolf’s head was raised, jaws open, close to the victim’s neck. Canines as long as Trull’s thumb gleamed beneath peeled-back lips.
Nature’s drama, life unheeding of the cataclysm that rushed upon it from behind—or above. The brutal hand of a god as indifferent as the beasts themselves.
Binadas came to his side. ‘This was born of a warren,’ he said.
Trull nodded. Sorcery. Nothing else made sense. ‘A god.’
‘Perhaps, but not necessarily so, brother. Some forces need only be unleashed. A natural momentum then burgeons.’
‘The Hold of Ice,’ Trull said. ‘Such as the Letherii describe in their faith.’
‘The Hand of the Watcher,’ Binadas said, ‘who waited until the war was done before striding forward to unleash his power.’
Trull had thought himself more knowledgeable than most Edur warriors regarding the old legends of their people. With Binadas’s words echoing in his head, however, he felt woefully ignorant. ‘Where have they gone?’ he asked. ‘Those powers of old? Why do we dwell as if…as if alone?’
