The Malazan Empire, page 500
As he neared, he could hear crashing sounds from within the barrow – for a barrow it was – and when he was thirty paces distant, part of a desiccated body was flung from the hole, skidding in a clatter through the rubble. It came to a stop, then one arm lifted tremulously, dropping back down a moment later. A bone-helmed skull flew into view, ropes of hair twisting about, to bounce and roll in the dust.
Paran reined in, watching as a tall, gaunt figure climbed free of the barrow, slowly straightening. Grey-green skin, trailing dusty cobwebs, wearing a silver-clasped harness and baldric of iron mail from which hung knives in copper scabbards – the various metals blackened or green with verdigris. Whatever clothing had once covered the figure’s body had since rotted away.
A Jaghut woman, her long black hair drawn into a single tail that reached down to the small of her back. Her tusks were silver-sheathed and thus black. She slowly looked round, her gaze finding and settling on him. Vertical pupils set in amber studied Paran from beneath a heavy brow. He watched her frown, then she asked, ‘What manner of creature are you?’
‘A well-mannered one,’ Paran replied, attempting a smile. She had spoken in the Jaghut tongue and he had understood…somehow. One of the many gifts granted by virtue of being the Master? Or long proximity with Raest and his endless muttering? Either way, Paran surprised himself by replying in the same language.
At which her frown deepened. ‘You speak my tongue as would an Imass…had any Imass bothered to learn it. Or a Jaghut whose tusks had been pulled.’
Paran glanced over at the partial corpse lying nearby. ‘An Imass like that one?’
She drew her thin lips back in what he took to be a smile. ‘A guardian left behind – it had lost its vigilance. Undead have a tendency towards boredom, and carelessness.’
‘T’lan Imass.’
‘If others are near, they will come now. I have little time.’
‘T’lan Imass? None, Jaghut. None anywhere close.’
‘You are certain?’
‘I am. Reasonably. You have freed yourself…why?’
‘Freedom needs an excuse?’ She brushed dust and webs from her lean body, then faced west. ‘One of my rituals has been shattered. I must needs repair it.’
Paran thought about that, then asked, ‘A binding ritual? Something, or someone was imprisoned, and, like you just now, it seeks freedom?’
She looked displeased with the comparison. ‘Unlike the entity I imprisoned, I have no interest in conquering the world.’
Oh. ‘I am Ganoes Paran.’
‘Ganath. You look pitiful, like a malnourished Imass – are you here to oppose me?’
He shook his head. ‘I was but passing by, Ganath. I wish you good fortune—’
She suddenly turned, stared eastward, head cocking.
‘Something?’ he asked. ‘T’lan Imass?’
She glanced at him. ‘I am not certain. Perhaps…nothing. Tell me, is there a sea south of here?’
‘Was there one when you were…not yet in your barrow?’
‘Yes.’
Paran smiled. ‘Ganath, there is indeed a sea just south of here, and it is where I am headed.’
‘Then I shall travel with you. Why do you journey there?’
‘To talk with some people. And you? I thought you were in a hurry to repair that ritual?’
‘I am, yet I find a more pressing priority.’
‘And that is?’
‘The need for a bath.’
Too bloated to fly, the vultures scattered with outraged cries, hopping and waddling with wings crooked, leaving the once-human feast exposed in their wake. Apsalar slowed her steps, not sure whether she wanted to continue walking down this main street, although the raucous chattering and bickering of feeding vultures sounded from the side avenues as well, leading her to suspect that no alternative route was possible.
The villagers had died suffering – there was no mercy in this plague, for it had carved a long, tortured path to Hood’s Gate. Swollen glands, slowly closing the throat, making it impossible to eat solid food, and narrowing the air passages, making every breath drawn agony. And, in the gut, gases distending the stomach. Blocked from any means of escape, they eventually burst the stomach lining, allowing the victim’s own acids to devour them from within. These, alas, were the final stages of the disease. Before then, there was fever, so hot that brains were cooked in the skull, driving the person half-mad – a state from which, even were the disease somehow halted then and there – there was no recovery. Eyes wept mucus, ears bled, flesh grew gelatinous at the joints – this was the Mistress in all her sordid glory.
The two skeletal reptiles accompanying Apsalar had sprinted ahead, entertaining themselves by frightening the vultures and bursting through buzzing masses of flies. Now they scampered back, unmindful of the blackened, half-eaten corpses they clambered over.
‘Not-Apsalar! You are too slow!’
‘No, Telorast,’ cried Curdle, ‘not slow enough!’
‘Yes, not slow enough! We like this village – we want to play!’
Leading her placid horse, Apsalar began picking her way down the street. A score of villagers had crawled out here for some unknown reason, perhaps in some last, pathetic attempt to escape what could not be escaped. They had died clawing and fighting each other. ‘You are welcome to stay as long as you like,’ she said to the two creatures.
‘That cannot be,’ Telorast said. ‘We are your guardians, after all. Your sleepless, ever-vigilant sentinels. We shall stand guard over you no matter how diseased and disgusting you become.’
‘And then we’ll pick out your eyes!’
‘Curdle! Don’t tell her that!’
‘Well, we’ll wait until she’s sleeping, of course. Thrashing in fever.’
‘Exactly. She’ll want us to by then, anyway.’
‘I know, but we’ve walked through two villages now and she still isn’t sick. I don’t understand. All the other mortals are dead or dying, what makes her so special?’
‘Chosen by the usurpers of Shadow – that’s why she can just saunter through with her nose in the air. We may have to wait before we can pick out her eyes.’
Apsalar stepped past the heap of corpses. Just ahead, the village came to an abrupt end and beyond stood the charred remnants of three outlying buildings. A crow-haunted cemetery surmounted a nearby low hill where stood a lone guldindha tree. The black birds crowded the branches in sullen silence. A few makeshift platforms attested to some early efforts at ceremony to attend the dead, but clearly that had been short-lived. A dozen white goats stood in the tree’s shade, watching Apsalar as she continued on down the road, flanked by the skeletons of Telorast and Curdle.
Something had happened, far to the north and west. No, she could be more precise than that. Y’Ghatan. There had been a battle…and the committing of a terrible crime. Y’Ghatan’s lust for Malazan blood was legendary, and Apsalar feared that it had drunk deep once more.
In every land, there were places that saw battle again and again, an endless succession of slaughter, and more often than not such places held little strategic value in any greater scheme, or were ultimately indefensible. As if the very rocks and soil mocked every conqueror foolish enough to lay claim to them. Cotillion’s thoughts, these. He had never been afraid to recognize futility, and the world’s pleasure in defying human grandiosity.
She passed the last of the burned-out buildings, relieved to have left their stench behind – rotting bodies she was used to, but something of that charred reek slipped beneath her senses like a premonition. It was nearing dusk. Apsalar climbed back into the saddle and gathered up the reins.
She would attempt the warren of Shadow, even though she already knew it was too late – something had happened at Y’Ghatan; at the very least, she could look upon the wounds left behind and pick up the trail of the survivors. If any existed.
‘She dreams of death,’ Telorast said. ‘And now she’s angry.’
‘With us?’
‘Yes. No. Yes. No.’
‘Ah, she’s opened a warren! Shadow! Lifeless trail winding through lifeless hills, we shall perish from ennui! Wait, don’t leave us!’
They climbed out of the pit to find a banquet awaiting them. A long table, four high-backed Untan-style chairs, a candelabra in the centre bearing four thick-stemmed beeswax candles, the golden light flickering down on silver plates heaped with Malazan delicacies. Oily santos fish from the shoals off Kartool, baked with butter and spices in clay; strips of marinated venison, smelling of almonds in the northern D’avorian style; grouse from the Seti plains stuffed with bull-berries and sage; baked gourds and fillets of snake from Dal Hon; assorted braised vegetables and four bottles of wine: a Malaz Island white from the Paran Estates, warmed rice wine from Itko Kan, a full-bodied red from Gris, and the orange-tinted belack wine from the Napan Isles.
Kalam stood staring at the bounteous apparition, as Stormy, with a grunt, walked over, boots puffing in the dust, and sat down in one of the chairs, reaching for the Grisian red.
‘Well,’ Quick Ben said, dusting himself off, ‘this is nice. Who’s the fourth chair for, you think?’
Kalam looked up at the looming bulk of the sky keep. ‘I’d rather not think about that.’
Snorting sounds from Stormy as he launched into the venison strips.
‘Do you suspect,’ Quick Ben ventured as he sat down, ‘there is some significance to the selection provided us?’ He collected an alabaster goblet and poured himself a helping of the Paran white. ‘Or is it the sheer decadence that he wants to rub our noses in?’
‘My nose is just fine,’ Stormy said, tipping his head to one side and spitting out a bone. ‘Gods, I could eat all of this myself! Maybe I will at that!’
Sighing, Kalam joined them at the table. ‘All right, at least this gives us time to talk about things.’ He saw the wizard glance suspiciously at Stormy. ‘Relax, Quick, I doubt Stormy can hear us above his own chewing.’
‘Hah!’ the Falari laughed, spitting fragments across the table, one landing with a plop in the wizard’s goblet. ‘As if I give a Hood’s toenail about all your self-important preening! You two want to talk yourselves blue, go right ahead – I won’t waste my time listening.’
Quick Ben found a silver meat-spear and delicately picked the piece of venison from the goblet. He took a tentative sip, made a face, and poured the wine away. As he refilled the goblet, he said, ‘Well, I’m not entirely convinced Stormy here is irrelevant to our conversation.’
The red-bearded soldier looked up, small eyes narrowing with sudden unease. ‘I couldn’t be more irrelevant if I tried,’ he said in a growl, reaching again for the bottle of red.
Kalam watched the man’s throat bob as he downed mouthful after mouthful.
‘It’s that sword,’ said Quick Ben. ‘That T’lan Imass sword. How did you come by it, Stormy?’
‘Huh, santos. In Falar only poor people eat those ugly fish, and the Kartoolii call it a delicacy! Idiots.’ He collected one and began scooping the red, oily flesh from the clay shell. ‘It was given to me,’ he said, ‘for safekeeping.’
‘By a T’lan Imass?’ Kalam asked.
‘Aye.’
‘So it plans on coming back for it?’
‘If it can, aye.’
‘Why would a T’lan Imass give you its sword? They generally use them, a lot.’
‘Not where it was headed, assassin. What’s this? Some kind of bird?’
‘Yes,’ said Quick Ben. ‘Grouse. So, where was the T’lan Imass headed, then?’
‘Grouse. What’s that, some kind of duck? It went into a big wound in the sky, to seal it.’
The wizard leaned back. ‘Don’t expect it any time soon, then.’
‘Well, it took the head of a Tiste Andii with it, and that head was still alive – Truth was the only one who saw that – the other T’lan Imass didn’t, not even the bonecaster. Small wings – surprised the thing could fly at all. Not very well, hah, since someone caught it!’ He finished the Grisian and tossed away the bottle. It thumped in the thick dust. Stormy then reached for the Napan belack. ‘You know what’s the problem with you two? I’ll tell ya. I’ll tell ya the problem. You both think too much, and you think that by thinking so much you get somewhere with all that thinking, only you don’t. Look, it’s simple. Something you don’t like gets in your way you kill it, and once you kill it you can stop thinking about it and that’s that.’
‘Interesting philosophy, Stormy,’ said Quick Ben. ‘But what if that “something” is too big, or too many, or nastier than you?’
‘Then you cut it down to size, wizard.’
‘And if you can’t?’
‘Then you find someone else who can. Maybe they end up killing each other, and that’s that.’ He waved the half-empty bottle of belack. ‘You think you can make all sortsa plans? Idiots. I squat down and shit on your plans!’
Kalam smiled at Quick Ben. ‘Stormy’s onto something there, maybe.’
The wizard scowled. ‘What, squatting—’
‘No, finding someone else to do the dirty work for us. We’re old hands at that, Quick, aren’t we?’
‘Only, it gets harder.’ Quick Ben gazed up at the sky keep. ‘All right, let me think—’
‘Oh we’re in trouble now!’
‘Stormy,’ said Kalam, ‘you’re drunk.’
‘I ain’t drunk. Two bottlesa wine don’t get me drunk. Not Stormy, they don’t.’
‘The question,’ said the wizard, ‘is this. Who or what defeated the K’Chain Che’Malle the first time round? And then, is that powerful force still alive? Once we work out the answers to those—’
‘Like I said,’ the Falari growled, ‘you talk and talk and talk and you ain’t getting a damned thing.’
Quick Ben settled back, rubbing at his eyes. ‘Fine, then. Go on, Stormy, let’s hear your brilliance.’
‘First, you’re assuming those lizard things are your enemy in the firs’ place. Third, if the legends are true, those lizards defeated themselves, so what in Hood’s soiled trousers are you panicking ’bout? Second, the Adjunct wanted to know all ’bout them and where they’re going and all that. Well, the sky keeps ain’t going nowhere, and we already know what’s inside ’em, so we done our job. You idiots want to break into one – what for? You ain’t got a clue what for. And five, you gonna finish that white wine, wizard? ’Cause I ain’t touching that rice piss.’
Quick Ben slowly sat forward and slid the bottle towards Stormy.
No better gesture of defeat was possible, Kalam decided. ‘Finish up, everyone,’ he said, ‘so we can get outa this damned warren and back to the Fourteenth.’
‘Something else,’ said Quick Ben, ‘I wanted to talk about.’
‘So go ahead,’ Stormy said expansively, waving a grouse leg. ‘Stormy’s got your answers, yes he does.’
‘I’ve heard stories…a Malazan escort, clashing with a fleet of strange ships off the Geni coast. From the descriptions of the foe, they sound like Tiste Edur. Stormy, that ship of yours, what was it called?’
‘The Silanda. Dead grey-skinned folk, all cut down on the deck, and the ship’s captain, speared right through, pinned to his Hood-damned chair in his cabin – gods below, the arm that threw that…’
‘And Tiste Andii…heads.’
‘Bodies were below, manning the sweeps.’
‘Those grey-skinned folk were Tiste Edur,’ Quick Ben said. ‘I don’t know, maybe I shouldn’t put the two together, but something about them makes me nervous. Where did that Tiste Edur fleet come from?’
Kalam grunted, then said, ‘It’s a big world, Quick. They could’ve come from anywhere, blown off course by some storm, or on an exploratory mission of some kind.’
‘More like raiding,’ Stormy said. ‘If they attacked right off like they did. Anyway, where we found the Silanda in the first place – there’d been a battle there, too. Against Tiste Andii. Messy.’
Quick Ben sighed and rubbed his eyes again. ‘Near Coral, during the Pannion War, the body of a Tiste Edur was found. It had come up from deep water.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ve a feeling we haven’t seen the last of them.’
‘The Shadow Realm,’ Kalam said. ‘It was theirs, once, and now they want it back.’
The wizard’s gaze narrowed on the assassin. ‘Cotillion told you this?’
Kalam shrugged.
‘It keeps coming back to Shadowthrone, doesn’t it? No wonder I’m nervous. That slimy, slippery bastard—’
‘Oh Hood’s balls,’ Stormy groaned, ‘give me that rice piss, if you’re gonna go on and on. Shadowthrone ain’t scary. Shadowthrone’s just Ammanas, and Ammanas is just Kellanved. Just like Cotillion’s Dancer. Hood knows, we knew the Emperor well enough. And Dancer. They up to something? No surprise. They were always up to something, from the very start. I tell you both right now,’ he paused for a swig of rice wine, made a face, then continued, ‘when all the dust’s settled, they’ll be shining like pearls atop a dung-heap. Gods, Elder Gods, dragons, undead, spirits and the scary empty face of the Abyss itself – they won’t none a them stand a chance. You want to worry about Tiste Edur, wizard? Go ahead. Maybe they ruled Shadow once, but Shadowthrone’ll take ’em down. Him and Dancer.’ He belched. ‘An’ you know why? I’ll tell you why. They never fight fair. That’s why.’
Kalam looked over at the empty chair, and his eyes slowly narrowed.
Stumbling, crawling, or dragging themselves along through the bed of white ash, they all came to where Bottle sat, the sky a swirl of stars overhead. Saying nothing, not one of those soldiers, but each in turn managing one gentle gesture – reaching out and with one finger, touching the head of Y’Ghatan the rat.
Tender, with great reverence – until she bit that finger, and the hand would be snatched back with a hissed curse.
One after another, Y’Ghatan bit them all.
She was hungry, Bottle explained, and pregnant. So he explained. Or tried to, but no-one was really listening. It seemed that they didn’t even care, that her bite was part of the ritual, now, a price of blood, the payment of sacrifice.
