The Malazan Empire, page 539
‘Take them with you,’ Minala said. ‘Now. I will remain, as will Apt and Panek. Cotillion, please, take them with you.’
‘I cannot.’
‘Why?’
He glanced over at Onrack. ‘Because, Minala, I am not returning to the Realm of Shadow—’
‘Wherever you are going,’ she said in a suddenly harsh voice, ‘it must be better than this!’
‘Alas, would that I could make such a promise.’
‘He cannot,’ said Onrack. ‘Minala, he now in truth sets out on an unseen path. It is my belief that we shall not see him again.’
‘Thank you for the vote of confidence,’ Cotillion said.
‘My friend has seen better days,’ Trull Sengar said, reaching out to slap Onrack on the back. The thump the blow made was hollow, raising dust, and something clattered down within the warrior’s chest. ‘Oh,’ said the Tiste Edur, ‘did that do something bad?’
‘No,’ Onrack replied. ‘The broken point of a spear. It had been lodged in bone.’
‘Was it irritating you?’
‘Only the modest sound it made when I walked. Thank you, Trull Sengar.’
Cotillion eyed the two. What mortal would call a T’lan Imass friend? And, they fight side by side. I would know more of this Trull Sengar. But, as with so many things lately, there was no time for that. Sighing, he turned, and saw that the youth Panek now guarded the choke-point, in Ibra Gholan’s absence.
The god headed that way.
Panek swung to face him. ‘I miss him,’ he said.
‘Who?’
‘Edgewalker.’
‘Why? I doubt that sack of bones could fight his way out of a birch-bark coffin.’
‘Not to fight at our sides, Uncle. We will hold here. Mother worries too much.’
‘Which mother?’
A hideous, sharp-toothed smile. ‘Both.’
‘Why do you miss Edgewalker, then?’
‘For his stories.’
‘Oh, those.’
‘The dragons. The foolish ones, the wise ones, the living ones and the dead ones. If every world were but a place on the board, they would be the game pieces. Yet no single hand directs them. Each is wild, a will unto itself. And then there are the shadows – Edgewalker explained about those – the ones you can’t see.’
‘He explained, did he? Well, clearly the hoary bastard likes you more than he does me.’
‘They all cast shadows, Uncle,’ Panek said. ‘Into your realm. Every one of them. That’s why there’s so many…prisoners.’
Cotillion frowned, then, slowly, inexorably as comprehension dawned, the god’s eyes widened.
Trull Sengar watched the god move past Panek, one hand tracking along the stone wall, as if Cotillion were suddenly drunk. ‘I wonder what that was all about? You’d think Panek just kneed him between the legs.’
‘He’d earn a kiss from me if he did that,’ Minala said.
‘You’re too harsh,’ Trull said. ‘I feel sorry for Cotillion.’
‘Then you’re an idiot, but of course I’ve known the truth of that for months.’
He smiled across at her, said nothing.
Minala now eyed the uneven entrance to the chamber of the First Throne. ‘What are they doing in there? They never go in there.’
‘Considering implications, I suppose,’ Trull said.
‘And where’s Shadowthrone? He’s supposed to be here by now. If we get attacked right now…’
We’re dead. Trull leaned more heavily on the spear, to ease the weight on his left leg, which was hurting more – marginally – than his right. Or at least I am. But that’s likely whether or not I get healed, once my kin decide to take this seriously. He did not understand their half-hearted skirmishing, the tentative probing by the Den-Ratha. And why were they bothering at all? If they hungered for a throne, it would be that of Shadow, not this petrified bone monstrosity they call the First Throne. But, thinking on it, maybe this does indeed make sense. They have allied themselves with the Crippled God, and with the Unbound T’lan Imass who now serve the Chained One. But my Tiste Edur place little weight on alliances with non-Edur. Maybe that’s why all they’ve done thus far is token blood-letting. A single warlock and veteran warriors and this little fête would be over.
And they would come – they will come, once I am recognized. Yet he could not hide himself from their eyes; he could not stand back whilst they slaughtered these young humans who knew nothing of life, who were soldiers in name only. These lessons of cruelty and brutality did not belong in what a child needed to learn, in what a child should learn. And a world in which children were subjected to such things was a world in which compassion was a hollow word, its echoes a chorus of mockery and cold contempt.
Four skirmishes. Four, and Minala was now mother to seven hundred destroyed lives, almost half of them facing the mercy of death…until Shadowthrone appears, with his edged gift, in itself cold and heartless.
‘Your face betrays you, Trull Sengar. You are driven to weeping yet again.’
The Edur looked across at Onrack, then over to where Minala now stood with Panek. ‘Her rage is her armour, friend. And that is my greatest weakness, that I cannot conjure the same within myself. Instead, I stand here, waiting. For the next attack, for the return of the terrible music – the screams, the pain and the dying, the deafening roar of the futility our battle-lust creates…with every clash of sword and spear.’
‘Yet, you do not surrender,’ the T’lan Imass said.
‘I cannot.’
‘The music you hear in battle is incomplete, Trull Sengar.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Even as I stand at your side, I can hear Minala’s prayers, whether she is near us or not. Even when she drags wounded and dying children back, away from danger, I hear her. She prays, Trull Sengar, that you do not fall. That you fight on, that the miracle that is you and the spear you wield shall never fail her. Never fail her and her children.’
Trull Sengar turned away.
‘Ah,’ Onrack said, ‘with your tears suddenly loosed, friend, I see my error. Where I sought by my words to instil pride in you, I defeat your own armour and wound you deeply. With despair. I am sorry. There remains so much of what it is to live that I have forgotten.’ The battered warrior regarded Trull in silence for a moment, then added, ‘Perhaps I can give you something else, something more…hopeful.’
‘Please try,’ Trull said in a whisper.
‘At times, down in this chasm, I smell something, a presence. It is faint, animal. It…comforts me, although I do not know why, for I cannot comprehend its source. In those times, Trull Sengar, I feel as if we are being observed. We are being watched by unseen eyes, and in those eyes there is vast compassion.’
‘Do you say this only to ease my pain, Onrack?’
‘No, I would not so deceive you.’
‘What – who does it come from?’
‘I do not know – but I have seen that it affects Monok Ochem. Even Ibra Gholan. I sense their disquiet, and this, too, comforts me.’
‘Well,’ rasped a voice beside them, ‘it isn’t me.’ Shadows coalescing, creating a hunched, hooded shape, wavering indistinct, as if reluctant to commit itself to any particular existence, any single reality.
‘Shadowthrone.’
‘Healing, yes? Very well. But I have little time. We must hurry, do you understand? Hurry!’
Renewed, once again, to face what will come. Would that I had my own prayers. Comforting words in my mind…to drown out the screams all around me. To drown out my own.
Somewhere down below, Karsa Orlong struggled to calm Havok, and the sudden hammer of hoofs against wood, sending trembles through the deck beneath Samar Dev’s feet, indicated that it would be some time before the animal quieted. She did not blame the Jhag horse. The air below was foul, reeking with the sick and the dying, with the sour stench that came from hopelessness.
But we are spared that fate. We are Guests, because my giant companion would kill the Emperor. The fool. The arrogant, self-obsessed idiot. I should have stayed with Boatfinder, there on that wild shore. I should have then turned around and walked home. She had so wanted this to be a journey of exploration and discovery, the lure of wonders waiting somewhere ahead. Instead, she found herself imprisoned by an empire gone mad with obsession. Self-righteous, seeing its own might as if it was a gift bestowing piety. As if power projected its own ethos, and the capability to do something was justification enough for doing it. The mindset of the street-corner bully, in his head two or three rules by which he guided his own existence, and by which he sought to shape his world. The ones he must fear, the ones he could drive to their knees, and maybe ones he hungered to be like, or ones he lusted after, but even there the relationship was one of power. Samar Dev felt sick with disgust, fighting a tide of tumultuous panic rising within her – and no dry deck beneath her boots could keep her from that sort of drowning.
She had tried to keep out of the way of the human crew who worked the huge ship’s sails, and finally found a place where she wouldn’t be pushed aside or cursed, at the very prow, holding tight to rat-lines as the waves lifted and dropped the lumbering craft. In a strange way, each plunge that stole her own weight proved satisfying, almost comforting.
Someone came to her side, and she was not surprised to see the blonde, blue-eyed witch. No taller than Samar’s shoulder, her arms exposed to reveal the lean, cabled muscles of someone familiar with hard, repetitive work. Indicative as well, she believed, of a particular personality. Hard-edged, judgemental, perhaps even untrustworthy – muscles like wires were ever stretched taut by some inner extremity, a nervous agitation devoured like fuel, unending in its acrid supply.
‘I am named Feather Witch,’ the woman said, and Samar Dev noted, with faint surprise, that she was young. ‘You understand me words?’
‘My words.’
‘My words. He teaches not well,’ she added.
She means the Taxilian. It’s no surprise. He knows what will happen when he outlives his usefulness.
‘You teach me,’ Feather Witch said.
Samar Dev reached out and flicked the withered finger hanging from the young woman’s neck, eliciting both a flinch and a curse. ‘I teach you…nothing.’
‘I make Hanradi Khalag kill you.’
‘Then Karsa Orlong kills every damned person on this ship. Except the chained ones.’
Feather Witch, scowling, was clearly struggling to understand, then, with a snarl, she spun round and walked away.
Samar Dev returned her gaze to the heaving seas ahead. A witch indeed, and one that did not play fair with the spirits. One who did not recognize honour. Dangerous. She will…attempt things. She may even try to kill me, make it look like an accident. There’s a chance she will succeed, which means I had better warn Karsa. If I die, he will understand that it will have been no accident. And so he will destroy every one of these foul creatures.
Her own thoughts shocked her. Ah, shame on me. I, too, begin to think of Karsa Orlong as a weapon. To be wielded, manipulated, and in the name of some imagined vengeance, no less. But, she suspected, someone or something else was already playing that game. With Karsa Orlong. And it was that mystery she needed to pursue, until she had an answer. And then? Am I not assuming that the Toblakai is unaware of how he is being used? What if he already knows? Think on that, woman…
All right. He accepts it…for now. But, whenever he deems it expedient to turn on those unseen manipulators, he will – and they will regret ever having involved themselves in his life. Yes, that well suits Karsa’s own arrogance, his unshakeable confidence. In fact, the more I think on it, the more I am convinced that I am right. I’ve stumbled onto the first steps of the path that will lead me to solving the mystery. Good.
‘What in Hood’s name did you say to her?’
Startled, Samar Dev looked over, to see the Taxilian arrive at her side. ‘Who? What? Oh, her.’
‘Be careful,’ the man said. He waved a filthy hand in front of his bruised, misshapen face. ‘See this? Feather Witch. I dare not fight back. I dare not even defend myself. See it in her eyes – I think she was beaten herself, when a child. That is how these things breed generation after generation.’
‘Yes,’ Samar said, surprised, ‘I believe you are right.’
He managed something like a grin. ‘I was foolish enough to be captured, yes, but that does not make me always a fool.’
‘What happened?’
‘Pilgrimage, of sorts. I paid for passage on a drake – back to Rutu Jelba – trying to flee the plague, and believe me, I paid a lot.’
Samar Dev nodded. Drakes were Tanno pilgrim ships, heavy and stolid and safe against all but the fiercest storms, and on board there would be a Tanno Spiritwalker or at the very least a Tanno Mendicant. No plague could thrive on such a ship – it had been a clever gamble, and drakes were usually half-empty on their return journeys.
‘Dawn broke, a mere two days away from Rutu Jelba,’ the Taxilian continued, ‘and we were surrounded by foreign ships – this fleet. The Spiritwalker sought to communicate, then when it became evident that these Edur viewed us as a prize, to negotiate. Gods below, woman, the sorcery they unleashed upon him! Awful, it sickened the very air. He resisted – a lot longer than they expected, I’ve since learned – long enough to cause them considerable consternation – but he fell in the end, the poor bastard. The Edur chose one of us, me as it turned out, and cut open the others and flung them to the sharks. They needed a translator, you see.’
‘And what, if I may ask, is your profession?’
‘Architect, in Taxila. No, not famous. Struggling.’ He shrugged. ‘A struggle I would willingly embrace right now.’
‘You are working deceit when teaching Feather Witch.’
He nodded.
‘She knows.’
‘Yes, but for the moment she can do nothing about it. This part of the fleet is resupplied – we’ll not be heading landward for some time, and as for Seven Cities ships to capture, well, the plague’s emptied the seas, hasn’t it? Besides, we will be sailing west. For now, I’m safe. And, unless Feather Witch is a lot smarter than I think she is, it will be a long time before she comes to comprehension.’
‘How are you managing it?’
‘I am teaching her four languages, all at once, and making no distinction among them, not even the rules of syntax. For each word I give her four in translation, then think up bizarre rules for selecting one over another given the context. She’s caught me out but once. So. Malazan, the Taxilii Scholar’s Dialect, the Ehrlii variant of the common tongue, and, from my grandfather’s sister, tribal Rangala.’
‘Rangala? I thought that was extinct.’
‘Not until she dies, and I’d swear that old hag’s going to live for ever.’
‘What is your name?’
He shook his head. ‘There is power in names – no, I do not distrust you – it is these Tiste Edur. And Feather Witch – if she discovers my name—’
‘She can compel you. I understand. Well, in my mind I think of you as the Taxilian.’
‘That will suffice.’
‘I am Samar Dev, and the warrior I came with is Toblakai…Sha’ik’s Toblakai. He calls himself Karsa Orlong.’
‘You risk much, revealing your names—’
‘The risk belongs to Feather Witch. I surpass her in the old arts. As for Karsa, well, she is welcome to try.’ She glanced at him. ‘You said we were sailing west?’
He nodded. ‘Hanradi Khalag commands just under half the fleet – the rest is somewhere east of here. They have both been sailing back and forth along this coast for some months, almost half a year, in fact. Like fisher fleets, but the catch they seek walks on two legs and wields a sword. Discovering remnant kin was unexpected, and the state those poor creatures were in simply enraged these Edur. I do not know where the two fleets intend to merge – somewhere west of Sepik, I think. Once that happens,’ he shrugged, ‘we set a course for their empire.’
‘And where is that?’
Another shrug. ‘Far away, and beyond that, I can tell you nothing.’
‘Far away indeed. I have never heard of an empire of humans ruled by Tiste Edur. And yet, this Letherii language. As you noted it is somehow related to many of the languages here in Seven Cities, those that are but branches from the same tree, and that tree is the First Empire.’
‘Ah, that explains it, then, for I can mostly understand the Letherii, now. They use a different dialect when conversing with the Edur – a mix of the two. A trader tongue, and even there I begin to comprehend.’
‘I suggest you keep such knowledge to yourself, Taxilian.’
‘I will. Samar Dev, is your companion truly the same Toblakai as the one so named who guarded Sha’ik? It is said he killed two demons the night before she was slain, one of them with his bare hands.’
‘Until recently,’ Samar Dev said, ‘he carried with him the rotted heads of those demons. He gifted them to Boatfinder – to the Anibari shaman who accompanied us. The white fur Karsa wears is from a Soletaken. He killed a third demon just outside Ugarat, and chased off another in the Anibar forest. He singlehandedly killed a bhederin bull – and that I witnessed with my own eyes.’
The Taxilian shook his head. ‘The Edur Emperor…he too is a demon. Every cruelty committed by these grey-skinned bastards, they claim is by their Emperor’s command. And so too this search for warriors. An emperor who invites his own death – how can this be?’
‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. And not knowing is what frightens me the most. ‘As you say, it makes no sense.’
‘One thing is known,’ the man said. ‘Their Emperor has never been defeated. Else his rule would have ended. Perhaps indeed that tyrant is the greatest warrior of all. Perhaps there is no-one, no-one anywhere in this world, who can best him. Not even Toblakai.’
She thought about that, as the huge Edur fleet, filling the seas around her, worked northward, the untamed wilds of the Olphara Peninsula a jagged line on the horizon to port. North, then west, into the Sepik Sea.
Samar Dev slowly frowned. Oh, they have done this before. Sepik, the island kingdom, the vassal to the Malazan Empire. A peculiar, isolated people, with their two-tiered society. The indigenous tribe, subjugated and enslaved. Rulhun’tal ven’or – the Mudskins…‘Taxilian, these Edur slaves below. Where did they find them?’
‘I cannot.’
‘Why?’
He glanced over at Onrack. ‘Because, Minala, I am not returning to the Realm of Shadow—’
‘Wherever you are going,’ she said in a suddenly harsh voice, ‘it must be better than this!’
‘Alas, would that I could make such a promise.’
‘He cannot,’ said Onrack. ‘Minala, he now in truth sets out on an unseen path. It is my belief that we shall not see him again.’
‘Thank you for the vote of confidence,’ Cotillion said.
‘My friend has seen better days,’ Trull Sengar said, reaching out to slap Onrack on the back. The thump the blow made was hollow, raising dust, and something clattered down within the warrior’s chest. ‘Oh,’ said the Tiste Edur, ‘did that do something bad?’
‘No,’ Onrack replied. ‘The broken point of a spear. It had been lodged in bone.’
‘Was it irritating you?’
‘Only the modest sound it made when I walked. Thank you, Trull Sengar.’
Cotillion eyed the two. What mortal would call a T’lan Imass friend? And, they fight side by side. I would know more of this Trull Sengar. But, as with so many things lately, there was no time for that. Sighing, he turned, and saw that the youth Panek now guarded the choke-point, in Ibra Gholan’s absence.
The god headed that way.
Panek swung to face him. ‘I miss him,’ he said.
‘Who?’
‘Edgewalker.’
‘Why? I doubt that sack of bones could fight his way out of a birch-bark coffin.’
‘Not to fight at our sides, Uncle. We will hold here. Mother worries too much.’
‘Which mother?’
A hideous, sharp-toothed smile. ‘Both.’
‘Why do you miss Edgewalker, then?’
‘For his stories.’
‘Oh, those.’
‘The dragons. The foolish ones, the wise ones, the living ones and the dead ones. If every world were but a place on the board, they would be the game pieces. Yet no single hand directs them. Each is wild, a will unto itself. And then there are the shadows – Edgewalker explained about those – the ones you can’t see.’
‘He explained, did he? Well, clearly the hoary bastard likes you more than he does me.’
‘They all cast shadows, Uncle,’ Panek said. ‘Into your realm. Every one of them. That’s why there’s so many…prisoners.’
Cotillion frowned, then, slowly, inexorably as comprehension dawned, the god’s eyes widened.
Trull Sengar watched the god move past Panek, one hand tracking along the stone wall, as if Cotillion were suddenly drunk. ‘I wonder what that was all about? You’d think Panek just kneed him between the legs.’
‘He’d earn a kiss from me if he did that,’ Minala said.
‘You’re too harsh,’ Trull said. ‘I feel sorry for Cotillion.’
‘Then you’re an idiot, but of course I’ve known the truth of that for months.’
He smiled across at her, said nothing.
Minala now eyed the uneven entrance to the chamber of the First Throne. ‘What are they doing in there? They never go in there.’
‘Considering implications, I suppose,’ Trull said.
‘And where’s Shadowthrone? He’s supposed to be here by now. If we get attacked right now…’
We’re dead. Trull leaned more heavily on the spear, to ease the weight on his left leg, which was hurting more – marginally – than his right. Or at least I am. But that’s likely whether or not I get healed, once my kin decide to take this seriously. He did not understand their half-hearted skirmishing, the tentative probing by the Den-Ratha. And why were they bothering at all? If they hungered for a throne, it would be that of Shadow, not this petrified bone monstrosity they call the First Throne. But, thinking on it, maybe this does indeed make sense. They have allied themselves with the Crippled God, and with the Unbound T’lan Imass who now serve the Chained One. But my Tiste Edur place little weight on alliances with non-Edur. Maybe that’s why all they’ve done thus far is token blood-letting. A single warlock and veteran warriors and this little fête would be over.
And they would come – they will come, once I am recognized. Yet he could not hide himself from their eyes; he could not stand back whilst they slaughtered these young humans who knew nothing of life, who were soldiers in name only. These lessons of cruelty and brutality did not belong in what a child needed to learn, in what a child should learn. And a world in which children were subjected to such things was a world in which compassion was a hollow word, its echoes a chorus of mockery and cold contempt.
Four skirmishes. Four, and Minala was now mother to seven hundred destroyed lives, almost half of them facing the mercy of death…until Shadowthrone appears, with his edged gift, in itself cold and heartless.
‘Your face betrays you, Trull Sengar. You are driven to weeping yet again.’
The Edur looked across at Onrack, then over to where Minala now stood with Panek. ‘Her rage is her armour, friend. And that is my greatest weakness, that I cannot conjure the same within myself. Instead, I stand here, waiting. For the next attack, for the return of the terrible music – the screams, the pain and the dying, the deafening roar of the futility our battle-lust creates…with every clash of sword and spear.’
‘Yet, you do not surrender,’ the T’lan Imass said.
‘I cannot.’
‘The music you hear in battle is incomplete, Trull Sengar.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Even as I stand at your side, I can hear Minala’s prayers, whether she is near us or not. Even when she drags wounded and dying children back, away from danger, I hear her. She prays, Trull Sengar, that you do not fall. That you fight on, that the miracle that is you and the spear you wield shall never fail her. Never fail her and her children.’
Trull Sengar turned away.
‘Ah,’ Onrack said, ‘with your tears suddenly loosed, friend, I see my error. Where I sought by my words to instil pride in you, I defeat your own armour and wound you deeply. With despair. I am sorry. There remains so much of what it is to live that I have forgotten.’ The battered warrior regarded Trull in silence for a moment, then added, ‘Perhaps I can give you something else, something more…hopeful.’
‘Please try,’ Trull said in a whisper.
‘At times, down in this chasm, I smell something, a presence. It is faint, animal. It…comforts me, although I do not know why, for I cannot comprehend its source. In those times, Trull Sengar, I feel as if we are being observed. We are being watched by unseen eyes, and in those eyes there is vast compassion.’
‘Do you say this only to ease my pain, Onrack?’
‘No, I would not so deceive you.’
‘What – who does it come from?’
‘I do not know – but I have seen that it affects Monok Ochem. Even Ibra Gholan. I sense their disquiet, and this, too, comforts me.’
‘Well,’ rasped a voice beside them, ‘it isn’t me.’ Shadows coalescing, creating a hunched, hooded shape, wavering indistinct, as if reluctant to commit itself to any particular existence, any single reality.
‘Shadowthrone.’
‘Healing, yes? Very well. But I have little time. We must hurry, do you understand? Hurry!’
Renewed, once again, to face what will come. Would that I had my own prayers. Comforting words in my mind…to drown out the screams all around me. To drown out my own.
Somewhere down below, Karsa Orlong struggled to calm Havok, and the sudden hammer of hoofs against wood, sending trembles through the deck beneath Samar Dev’s feet, indicated that it would be some time before the animal quieted. She did not blame the Jhag horse. The air below was foul, reeking with the sick and the dying, with the sour stench that came from hopelessness.
But we are spared that fate. We are Guests, because my giant companion would kill the Emperor. The fool. The arrogant, self-obsessed idiot. I should have stayed with Boatfinder, there on that wild shore. I should have then turned around and walked home. She had so wanted this to be a journey of exploration and discovery, the lure of wonders waiting somewhere ahead. Instead, she found herself imprisoned by an empire gone mad with obsession. Self-righteous, seeing its own might as if it was a gift bestowing piety. As if power projected its own ethos, and the capability to do something was justification enough for doing it. The mindset of the street-corner bully, in his head two or three rules by which he guided his own existence, and by which he sought to shape his world. The ones he must fear, the ones he could drive to their knees, and maybe ones he hungered to be like, or ones he lusted after, but even there the relationship was one of power. Samar Dev felt sick with disgust, fighting a tide of tumultuous panic rising within her – and no dry deck beneath her boots could keep her from that sort of drowning.
She had tried to keep out of the way of the human crew who worked the huge ship’s sails, and finally found a place where she wouldn’t be pushed aside or cursed, at the very prow, holding tight to rat-lines as the waves lifted and dropped the lumbering craft. In a strange way, each plunge that stole her own weight proved satisfying, almost comforting.
Someone came to her side, and she was not surprised to see the blonde, blue-eyed witch. No taller than Samar’s shoulder, her arms exposed to reveal the lean, cabled muscles of someone familiar with hard, repetitive work. Indicative as well, she believed, of a particular personality. Hard-edged, judgemental, perhaps even untrustworthy – muscles like wires were ever stretched taut by some inner extremity, a nervous agitation devoured like fuel, unending in its acrid supply.
‘I am named Feather Witch,’ the woman said, and Samar Dev noted, with faint surprise, that she was young. ‘You understand me words?’
‘My words.’
‘My words. He teaches not well,’ she added.
She means the Taxilian. It’s no surprise. He knows what will happen when he outlives his usefulness.
‘You teach me,’ Feather Witch said.
Samar Dev reached out and flicked the withered finger hanging from the young woman’s neck, eliciting both a flinch and a curse. ‘I teach you…nothing.’
‘I make Hanradi Khalag kill you.’
‘Then Karsa Orlong kills every damned person on this ship. Except the chained ones.’
Feather Witch, scowling, was clearly struggling to understand, then, with a snarl, she spun round and walked away.
Samar Dev returned her gaze to the heaving seas ahead. A witch indeed, and one that did not play fair with the spirits. One who did not recognize honour. Dangerous. She will…attempt things. She may even try to kill me, make it look like an accident. There’s a chance she will succeed, which means I had better warn Karsa. If I die, he will understand that it will have been no accident. And so he will destroy every one of these foul creatures.
Her own thoughts shocked her. Ah, shame on me. I, too, begin to think of Karsa Orlong as a weapon. To be wielded, manipulated, and in the name of some imagined vengeance, no less. But, she suspected, someone or something else was already playing that game. With Karsa Orlong. And it was that mystery she needed to pursue, until she had an answer. And then? Am I not assuming that the Toblakai is unaware of how he is being used? What if he already knows? Think on that, woman…
All right. He accepts it…for now. But, whenever he deems it expedient to turn on those unseen manipulators, he will – and they will regret ever having involved themselves in his life. Yes, that well suits Karsa’s own arrogance, his unshakeable confidence. In fact, the more I think on it, the more I am convinced that I am right. I’ve stumbled onto the first steps of the path that will lead me to solving the mystery. Good.
‘What in Hood’s name did you say to her?’
Startled, Samar Dev looked over, to see the Taxilian arrive at her side. ‘Who? What? Oh, her.’
‘Be careful,’ the man said. He waved a filthy hand in front of his bruised, misshapen face. ‘See this? Feather Witch. I dare not fight back. I dare not even defend myself. See it in her eyes – I think she was beaten herself, when a child. That is how these things breed generation after generation.’
‘Yes,’ Samar said, surprised, ‘I believe you are right.’
He managed something like a grin. ‘I was foolish enough to be captured, yes, but that does not make me always a fool.’
‘What happened?’
‘Pilgrimage, of sorts. I paid for passage on a drake – back to Rutu Jelba – trying to flee the plague, and believe me, I paid a lot.’
Samar Dev nodded. Drakes were Tanno pilgrim ships, heavy and stolid and safe against all but the fiercest storms, and on board there would be a Tanno Spiritwalker or at the very least a Tanno Mendicant. No plague could thrive on such a ship – it had been a clever gamble, and drakes were usually half-empty on their return journeys.
‘Dawn broke, a mere two days away from Rutu Jelba,’ the Taxilian continued, ‘and we were surrounded by foreign ships – this fleet. The Spiritwalker sought to communicate, then when it became evident that these Edur viewed us as a prize, to negotiate. Gods below, woman, the sorcery they unleashed upon him! Awful, it sickened the very air. He resisted – a lot longer than they expected, I’ve since learned – long enough to cause them considerable consternation – but he fell in the end, the poor bastard. The Edur chose one of us, me as it turned out, and cut open the others and flung them to the sharks. They needed a translator, you see.’
‘And what, if I may ask, is your profession?’
‘Architect, in Taxila. No, not famous. Struggling.’ He shrugged. ‘A struggle I would willingly embrace right now.’
‘You are working deceit when teaching Feather Witch.’
He nodded.
‘She knows.’
‘Yes, but for the moment she can do nothing about it. This part of the fleet is resupplied – we’ll not be heading landward for some time, and as for Seven Cities ships to capture, well, the plague’s emptied the seas, hasn’t it? Besides, we will be sailing west. For now, I’m safe. And, unless Feather Witch is a lot smarter than I think she is, it will be a long time before she comes to comprehension.’
‘How are you managing it?’
‘I am teaching her four languages, all at once, and making no distinction among them, not even the rules of syntax. For each word I give her four in translation, then think up bizarre rules for selecting one over another given the context. She’s caught me out but once. So. Malazan, the Taxilii Scholar’s Dialect, the Ehrlii variant of the common tongue, and, from my grandfather’s sister, tribal Rangala.’
‘Rangala? I thought that was extinct.’
‘Not until she dies, and I’d swear that old hag’s going to live for ever.’
‘What is your name?’
He shook his head. ‘There is power in names – no, I do not distrust you – it is these Tiste Edur. And Feather Witch – if she discovers my name—’
‘She can compel you. I understand. Well, in my mind I think of you as the Taxilian.’
‘That will suffice.’
‘I am Samar Dev, and the warrior I came with is Toblakai…Sha’ik’s Toblakai. He calls himself Karsa Orlong.’
‘You risk much, revealing your names—’
‘The risk belongs to Feather Witch. I surpass her in the old arts. As for Karsa, well, she is welcome to try.’ She glanced at him. ‘You said we were sailing west?’
He nodded. ‘Hanradi Khalag commands just under half the fleet – the rest is somewhere east of here. They have both been sailing back and forth along this coast for some months, almost half a year, in fact. Like fisher fleets, but the catch they seek walks on two legs and wields a sword. Discovering remnant kin was unexpected, and the state those poor creatures were in simply enraged these Edur. I do not know where the two fleets intend to merge – somewhere west of Sepik, I think. Once that happens,’ he shrugged, ‘we set a course for their empire.’
‘And where is that?’
Another shrug. ‘Far away, and beyond that, I can tell you nothing.’
‘Far away indeed. I have never heard of an empire of humans ruled by Tiste Edur. And yet, this Letherii language. As you noted it is somehow related to many of the languages here in Seven Cities, those that are but branches from the same tree, and that tree is the First Empire.’
‘Ah, that explains it, then, for I can mostly understand the Letherii, now. They use a different dialect when conversing with the Edur – a mix of the two. A trader tongue, and even there I begin to comprehend.’
‘I suggest you keep such knowledge to yourself, Taxilian.’
‘I will. Samar Dev, is your companion truly the same Toblakai as the one so named who guarded Sha’ik? It is said he killed two demons the night before she was slain, one of them with his bare hands.’
‘Until recently,’ Samar Dev said, ‘he carried with him the rotted heads of those demons. He gifted them to Boatfinder – to the Anibari shaman who accompanied us. The white fur Karsa wears is from a Soletaken. He killed a third demon just outside Ugarat, and chased off another in the Anibar forest. He singlehandedly killed a bhederin bull – and that I witnessed with my own eyes.’
The Taxilian shook his head. ‘The Edur Emperor…he too is a demon. Every cruelty committed by these grey-skinned bastards, they claim is by their Emperor’s command. And so too this search for warriors. An emperor who invites his own death – how can this be?’
‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. And not knowing is what frightens me the most. ‘As you say, it makes no sense.’
‘One thing is known,’ the man said. ‘Their Emperor has never been defeated. Else his rule would have ended. Perhaps indeed that tyrant is the greatest warrior of all. Perhaps there is no-one, no-one anywhere in this world, who can best him. Not even Toblakai.’
She thought about that, as the huge Edur fleet, filling the seas around her, worked northward, the untamed wilds of the Olphara Peninsula a jagged line on the horizon to port. North, then west, into the Sepik Sea.
Samar Dev slowly frowned. Oh, they have done this before. Sepik, the island kingdom, the vassal to the Malazan Empire. A peculiar, isolated people, with their two-tiered society. The indigenous tribe, subjugated and enslaved. Rulhun’tal ven’or – the Mudskins…‘Taxilian, these Edur slaves below. Where did they find them?’
