The Malazan Empire, page 400
A gelid wave of conviction rose within Trull Sengar, and he knew, solid as a knife in his heart, that something terrible was about to happen.
He stood, alone in the longhouse.
Facing the centre post and its crooked sword.
And he could not move.
Rhulad Sengar’s body was frozen. A pallid grey, stiff-limbed figure lying on the stone platform. Head thrown back, eyes squeezed shut, mouth stretched long as if striving for a breath never found. The warrior’s hands were closed about the grip of a strange, mottled, straight-bladed sword, frost-rimed and black-flecked with dried blood.
Udinaas had filled the nose and ear holes with wax.
He held the pincers, waiting for the first gold coin to reach optimum heat on the iron plate suspended above the coals. He had placed one on the sheet, then, twenty heartbeats later, another. The order of placement for noble-born blooded warriors was precise, as was the allotted time for the entire ritual. Awaiting Udinaas was a period of mind-numbing repetition and exhaustion.
But a slave could be bent to any task. There were hard truths found only in the denigration of one’s own spirit, if one was inclined to look for them. Should, for example, a man require self-justification. Prior to, say, murder, or some other atrocity.
Take this body. A young man whose flesh is now a proclamation of death. The Edur use coins. Letherii use linen, lead and stone. In both, the need to cover, to disguise, to hide away the horrible absence writ there in that motionless face.
Open, or closed, it began with the eyes.
Udinaas gripped the edge of the Letherii coin with the pincers. These first two had to be slightly cooler than the others, lest the eyes behind the lids burst. He had witnessed that once, when he was apprenticed to an elder slave who had begun losing his sense of time. Sizzling, then an explosive spurt of lifeless fluid, foul-smelling and murky with decay, the coin settling far too deep in the socket, the hissing evaporation and crinkling, blackening skin.
He swung round on the stool, careful not to drop the coin, then leaned over Rhulad Sengar’s face. Lowered the hot gold disc.
A soft sizzle, as the skin of the lid melted, all moisture drawn from it so that it tightened round the coin. Holding it fast.
He repeated the task with the second coin.
The heat in the chamber was thawing the corpse, and, as Udinaas worked setting coins on the torso, he was continually startled by movement. Arched back settling, an elbow voicing a soft thud, rivulets of melt water crawling across the stone to drip from the sides, as if the body now wept.
The stench of burnt skin was thick in the hot, humid air. Rhulad Sengar’s corpse was undergoing a transformation, acquiring gleaming armour, becoming something other than Tiste Edur. In the mind of Udinaas he ceased to exist as a thing once living, the work before the slave little different from mending nets.
Chest, to abdomen. Each spear-wound packed with clay and oil, encircled with coins then sealed. Pelvis, thighs, knees, shins, ankles, the tops of the feet. Shoulders, upper arms, elbows, forearms.
One hundred and sixty-three coins.
Udinaas wiped sweat from his eyes then rose and walked, limbs aching, over to the cauldron containing the melted wax. He had no idea how much time had passed. The stench kept his appetite at bay, but he had filled the hollow in his stomach a half-dozen times with cool water. Outside, the rain had continued, battering on the roof, swirling over the ground beyond the walls. A village in mourning—none would disturb him until he emerged.
He would have preferred a half-dozen Edur widows conducting the laying of coins, with him at his usual station tending to the fire. The last time he had done this in solitude had been with Uruth’s father, killed in battle by the Arapay. He had been younger then, awed by the spectacle and his role in its making.
Attaching the handle to the cauldron, Udinaas lifted it from the hearth and carefully carried it back to the corpse. A thick coating over the front and sides of the corpse. A short time for the wax to cool—not too much, so that it cracked when he turned over the body—then he would return to the gold coins.
Udinaas paused for a moment, standing over the dead Tiste Edur. ‘Ah, Rhulad,’ he sighed. ‘You could surely strut before the women now, couldn’t you?’
‘The mourning has begun.’
Trull started, then turned to find Fear standing at his shoulder. ‘What? Oh. Then what has been decided?’
‘Nothing.’ His brother swung away and walked to the hearth. His face twisted as he regarded the low flames. ‘The Warlock King proclaims our efforts a failure. Worse, he believes we betrayed him. He would hide that suspicion, but I see it none the less.’
Trull was silent a moment, then he murmured, ‘I wonder when the betrayal began. And with whom.’
‘You doubted this “gift”, from the very first.’
‘I doubt it even more now. A sword that will not relinquish its grip on a dead warrior. What sort of weapon is this, Fear? What sorcery rages on within it?’ He faced his brother. ‘Did you look closely at that blade? Oh, skilfully done, but there are…shards, trapped in the iron. Of some other metal, which resisted the forging. Any apprentice swordsmith could tell you that such a blade will shatter at first blow.’
‘No doubt the sorcery invested would have prevented that,’ Fear replied.
‘So,’ Trull sighed, ‘Rhulad’s body is being prepared.’
‘Yes, it has begun. The Warlock King has drawn our parents into the privacy of his longhouse. All others are forbidden to enter. There will be…negotiations.’
‘The severing of their youngest son’s hands, in exchange for what?’
‘I don’t know. The decision will be publicly announced, of course. In the meantime, we are left to our own.’
‘Where is Binadas?’
Fear shrugged. ‘The healers have taken him. It will be days before we see him again. Mages are difficult to heal, especially when it’s broken bone. The Arapay who tended to him said there were over twenty pieces loose in the flesh of his hip. All need to be drawn back into place and mended. Muscle and tendons to knit, vessels to be sealed and dead blood expunged.’
Trull walked over to a bench alongside a wall and sat down, settling his head in his hands. The whole journey seemed unreal now, barring the battle-scars on flesh and armour, and the brutal evidence of a wrapped corpse now being dressed for burial.
The Jheck had been Soletaken. He had not realized. Those wolves…
To be Soletaken was a gift belonging to Father Shadow and his kin. It belonged to the skies, to creatures of immense power. That primitive, ignorant barbarians should possess a gift of such prodigious, holy power made no sense.
Soletaken. It now seemed…sordid. A weapon as savage and as mundane as a raw-edged axe. He did not understand how such a thing could be.
‘A grave test awaits us, brother.’
Trull blinked up at Fear. ‘You sense it as well. Something’s coming, isn’t it?’
‘I am unused to this…to this feeling. Of helplessness. Of…not knowing.’ He rubbed at his face, as if seeking to awaken the right words from muscle, blood and bone. As if all that waited within him ever struggled, futile and frustrated, to find a voice that others could hear.
A pang of sympathy struck Trull, and he dropped his gaze, no longer wanting to witness his brother’s discomfort. ‘It is the same with me,’ he said, although the admission was not entirely true. He was not unused to helplessness; some feelings one learned to live with. He had none of Fear’s natural, physical talents, none of his brother’s ease. It seemed his only true skill was that of relentless observation, fettered to a dark imagination. ‘We should get some sleep,’ he added. ‘Exhaustion ill fits these moments. Nothing will be announced without us.’
‘True enough, brother.’ Fear hesitated, then reached out and settled a hand on Trull’s shoulder. ‘I would you stand at my side always, if only to keep me from stumbling.’ The hand withdrew and Fear walked towards the sleeping chambers at the back of the longhouse.
Trull stared after him, stunned by the admission, half disbelieving. As I gave words to comfort him, has he just done the same for me?
Theradas had told him they could hear the sounds of battle, again and again, cutting through the wind and the blowing snow. They’d heard bestial screams of pain, wolf-howls crying in mortal despair. They’d heard him leading the Jheck from their path. Heard, until distance stole from them all knowledge of his fate. And then, they had awaited the arrival of the enemy—who never came.
Trull had already forgotten most of those clashes, the numbers melding into one, a chaotic nightmare unstepped from time, swathed in the gauze of snow stretched and torn by the circling wind, wrapping ever tighter. Bound and carried as if made disparate, disconnected from the world. Is this how the direst moments of the past are preserved? Does this pain-ridden separation occur to each and every one of us—us…survivors? The mind’s own barrow field, the trail winding between the mounded earth hiding the heavy stones and the caverns of darkness with their blood-painted walls and fire-scorched capstones—a life’s wake, forlorn beneath a grey sky. Once walked, that trail could never be walked again. One could only look back, and know horror at the vastness and the riotous accumulation of yet more barrows. More, and more.
He rose and made his way to his sleeping mat. Wearied by the thought of those whom the Edur worshipped, who had lived tens upon tens of thousands of years, and the interminable horror of all that lay behind them, the endless road of deed and regret, the bones and lives now dust bedding corroded remnants of metal—nothing more, because the burden life could carry was so very limited, because life could only walk onward, ever onward, the passage achieving little more than a stirring of dust in its wake.
Sorrow grown bitter with despair, Trull sank down onto the thinly padded mattress, lay back and closed his eyes.
The gesture served only to unleash his imagination, image after image sobbing to life with silent but inconsolable cries that filled his head.
He reeled before the onslaught, and, like a warrior staggering senseless before relentless battering, he fell backward in his mind, into oblivion.
Like a bed of gold in a mountain stream, a blurred gleam swimming before his eyes. Udinaas leaned back, only now fully feeling the leaden weight of his exhausted muscles, slung like chains from his bones. The stench of burnt flesh had painted his lungs, coating the inside of his chest and seeping its insipid poison into his veins. His flesh felt mired in dross.
He stared down at the gold-studded back of Rhulad Sengar. The wax coating the form had cooled, growing more opaque with every passing moment.
Wealth belongs to the dead, or so it must be for one such as me. Beyond my reach. He considered those notions, the way they drifted through the fog in his mind. Indebtedness and poverty. The defining limits of most lives. Only a small proportion of the Letherii population knew riches, could indulge in excesses. Theirs was a distinct world, an invisible paradise framed by interests and concerns unknown to everyone else.
Udinaas frowned, curious at his own feelings. There was no envy. Only sorrow, a sense of all that lay beyond his grasp, and would ever remain so. In a strange way, the wealthy Letherii had become as remote and alien to him as the Edur. He was disconnected, the division as sharp and absolute as the one before him now—his own worn self and the gold-sheathed corpse before him. The living and the dead, the dark motion of his body and the perfect immobility of Rhulad Sengar.
He prepared for his final task before leaving the chamber. The wax had solidified sufficiently to permit the turning over of the body. Upon entering this house, Rhulad’s parents would expect to find their dead son lying on his back, made virtually unrecognizable by the coins and the wax. Made, in fact, into a sarcophagus, already remote, with the journey to the shadow world begun.
Errant take me, have I the strength for this?
The corpse had been rolled onto wooden paddles with curved handles that were both attached to a single lever. A four-legged ridge pole was set crossways beneath the lever, providing the fulcrum. Udinaas straightened and positioned himself at the lever, taking the Blackwood in both hands and settling on it the weight of his upper body. He hesitated, lowering his head until his brow rested on his forearms.
The shadow wraith was silent, not a single whisper in his ear for days now. The blood of the Wyval slept. He was alone.
He had been expecting an interruption through the entire procedure. Hannan Mosag and his K’risnan, thundering into the chamber. To cut off Rhulad’s fingers, or the entire hands. Having no instructions to the contrary, Udinaas had sheathed the sword in wax, angled slightly as it reached down along the body’s thighs.
He drew a deep breath, then pushed down on the lever. Lifting the body a fraction. Cracks in the wax, a crazed web of lines, but that was to be expected. Easily repaired. Udinaas pushed harder, watching as the body began turning, edging onto its side. The sword’s weight defeated the wax sheathing the blade, and the point clunked down on the stone platform, drawing the arms with it. Udinaas swore under his breath, blinking the sweat from his eyes. Plate-sized sheets of wax had fallen away. The coins, at least—he saw with relief—remained firmly affixed.
He slipped a restraining strap over the lever to hold it in place, then moved to the corpse. Repositioning the sword, he nudged the massive weight further over in increments, until the balance shifted and the body thumped onto its back.
Udinaas waited until he regained his breath. Another coating of wax was needed, to repair the damage. Then he could stumble out of this nightmare.
A slave needn’t think. There were tasks to be done. Too many thoughts were crawling through him, interfering with his concentration.
He stumbled back to the hearth to retrieve the cauldron of wax.
A strange snapping sound behind him. Udinaas turned. He studied the corpse, seeking the place where the wax had broken loose. There, along the jaw, splitting wide over the mouth. He recalled the facial contortion that had been revealed when the bindings had been removed. It was possible he would have to sew the lips together.
He picked up the cauldron and made his way back to the corpse.
He saw the head jerk back.
A shuddering breath.
And then the corpse screamed.
From nothingness a scene slowly came into resolution, and Trull Sengar found himself standing, once more amidst gusting wind and swirling snow. He was surrounded, a ring of dark, vague shapes. The smeared gleam of amber eyes was fixed on him, and Trull reached for his sword, only to find the scabbard empty.
The Jheck had found him at last, and this time there would be no escape. Trull spun round, and again, as the huge wolves edged closer. The wind’s howl filled his ears.
He searched for a dagger—anything—but could find nothing. His hands were numb with cold, the blowing snow stinging his eyes.
Closer, now, on all sides. Trull’s heart pounded. He was filled with terror, filled as a drowning man is filled by the inrush of deadly water, the shock of denial, the sudden loss of all strength, and with it, all will.
The wolves charged.
Jaws closed on his limbs, fangs punching through skin. He was dragged down beneath the weight of onslaught. A wolf closed its mouth round the back of his neck. Dreadful grinding motions chewed through muscle. Bones snapped. His mouth gushed full and hot with blood and bile. He sagged, unable even to curl tight as the beasts tore at his arms and legs, ripped into his belly.
He could hear nothing but the wind’s shriek, ever climbing.
Trull opened his eyes. He was sprawled on his sleeping mat, pain throbbing in his muscles with the ghost memory of those savage teeth.
And heard screaming.
Fear appeared in the entranceway, his eyes strangely red-rimmed, blinking in bewilderment. ‘Trull?’
‘It’s coming from outside,’ he replied, climbing stiffly to his feet.
They emerged to see figures running, converging on the House of the Dead.
‘What is happening?’
Trull shook his head at his brother’s question. ‘Perhaps Udinaas…’
They set off.
Two slaves stumbled from the building’s entrance, then fled in panic, one of them shouting incoherently.
The brothers picked up their pace.
Trull saw the Letherii Acquitor and her merchant on the bridge, figures rushing past them as they made a slow, hesitant approach.
The screams had not abated. There was pain in those cries, and horror. The sound, renewed breath after breath, made the blood gelid in Trull’s veins. He could almost…
Mayen was in the doorway, which was ajar. Behind her stood the slave Feather Witch.
Neither moved.
Fear and Trull reached them.
Feather Witch’s head snapped round, the eyes half mad as they stared up at first Trull, then Fear.
Fear came to the side of his betrothed in the doorway. He stared inward, face flinching with every scream. ‘Mayen,’ he said, ‘keep everyone else out. Except for Tomad and Uruth and the Warlock King, when they arrive. Trull—’ The name was spoken like a plea.
Mayen stepped back and Trull edged forward.
Side by side, they entered the House of the Dead.
A mass, a hunched shape, covered in wax like peeling skin, revealing the glitter of gold coins, slouched down at the foot of the stone platform, face lowered, forehead on knees, arms wrapped tight about shins but still holding the sword. A mass, a hunched shape, voicing endless shrieks.
The slave Udinaas stood nearby. He had been carrying a cauldron of wax. It lay on its side two paces to the Letherii’s left, the wax spilled out amidst twigs and straw.
Udinaas was murmuring. Soothing words cutting beneath the screams. He was moving closer to the shape, step by careful step.
Fear made to start forward but Trull gripped his upper arm and held him back. He’d heard something in those shrieks. They had come to answer the slave’s low soothings, defiant at first, but now thinning, the voice filling with pleading. Strangled again and again into shudders of raw despair. And through it all Udinaas continued to speak.
