The Malazan Empire, page 545
Chaur was circling the camp like an excited dog – the roar of surf was much louder now, carried on the wind, and he could not contain his eagerness to discover the source of that sound.
Cutter pulled his attention from Scillara and watched Chaur for a time. ‘What’s with him?’
‘The sea,’ Barathol said. ‘He’s never seen it. He probably doesn’t even know what it is. There’s still some tea, Cutter, and those packets in front of Scillara are your breakfast.’
‘It’s late,’ he said, rising. ‘You should’ve woken me.’ Then he halted. ‘The sea? Beru fend, we’re that close?’
‘Can’t you smell it? Hear it?’
Cutter suddenly smiled – and it was a true smile – the first Barathol had seen on the young man.
‘Did anyone see the moon last night?’ Scillara asked. ‘It was mottled. Strange, like holes had been poked through it.’
‘Some of those holes,’ Barathol observed, ‘seem to be getting bigger.’
She looked over, nodding. ‘Good, I thought so, too, but I couldn’t be sure. What do you think it means?’
Barathol shrugged. ‘It’s said the moon is another realm, like ours, with people on its surface. Sometimes things fall from our sky. Rocks. Balls of fire. The Fall of the Crippled God was said to be like that. Whole mountains plunging down, obliterating most of a continent and filling half the sky with smoke and ash.’ He glanced across at Scillara, then over at Cutter. ‘I was thinking, maybe, that something hit the moon in the same way.’
‘Like a god being pulled down?’
‘Yes, like that.’
‘So what are those dark blotches?’
‘I don’t know. Could be smoke and ash. Could be pieces of the world that broke away.’
‘Getting bigger…’
‘Yes.’ Barathol shrugged again. ‘Smoke and ash spreads. It stands to reason, then, doesn’t it?’
Cutter was quickly breaking his fast. ‘Sorry to make you all wait. We should get going. I want to see what’s in that abandoned village.’
‘Anything seaworthy is all we need,’ Barathol said.
‘That is what I’m hoping we’ll find.’ Cutter brushed crumbs from his hands, tossed one last dried fig into his mouth, then rose. ‘I’m ready,’ he said around a mouthful.
All right, Scillara, you did well.
There were sun-bleached, dog-gnawed bones in the back street of the fisher village. Doors to the residences within sight, the inn and the Malazan assessor’s building were all open, drifts of fine sand heaped in the entranceways. Moored on both sides of the stone jetty were half-submerged fisher craft, the ropes holding them fast stretched to unravelling, while in the shallow bay beyond, two slightly larger carracks waited at anchor next to mooring poles.
Chaur still stood on the spot where he had first come in sight of the sea and its rolling, white-edged waves. His smile was unchanged, but tears streamed unchecked and unabating from his eyes, and it seemed he was trying to sing, without opening his mouth: strange mewling sounds emerged. What had run down from his nose was now caked with wind-blown sand.
Scillara wandered through the village, looking for whatever might prove useful on the voyage they now planned. Rope, baskets, casks, dried foodstuffs, nets, gaffs, salt for storing fish – anything. Mostly what she found were the remnants of villagers – all worried by dogs. Two squat storage buildings flanked the avenue that ran inward from the jetty, and these were both locked. With Barathol’s help, both buildings were broken into, and in these structures they found more supplies than they could ever use.
Cutter swam out to examine the carracks, returning after a time to report that both remained sound and neither was particularly more seaworthy than the other. Of matching length and beam, the craft were like twins.
‘Made by the same hands,’ Cutter said. ‘I think. You could judge that better than me, Barathol, if you’re at all interested.’
‘I will take your word for it, Cutter. So, we can choose either one, then.’
‘Yes. Of course, maybe they belong to the traders we met.’
‘No, they’re not Jelban. What are their names?’
‘Dhenrabi’s Tail is the one on the left. The other’s called Sanal’s Grief. I wonder who Sanal was?’
‘We’ll take Grief,’ Barathol said, ‘and before you ask, don’t.’
Scillara laughed.
Cutter waded alongside one of the swamped sculls beside the jetty. ‘We should bail one of these, to move our supplies out to her.’
Barathol rose. ‘I’ll start bringing those supplies down from the warehouse.’
Scillara watched the huge man make his way up the avenue, then turned her attention to the Daru, who had found a half-gourd bailer and was scooping water from one of the sculls. ‘Want me to help?’ she asked.
‘It’s all right. Finally, I’ve got something to do.’
‘Day and night now.’
The glance he threw her was shy. ‘I’ve never tasted milk before.’
Laughing, she repacked her pipe. ‘Yes you have. You just don’t remember it.’
‘Ah. I suppose you’re right.’
‘Anyway, you’re a lot gentler than that little sweet-faced bloodfly was.’
‘You’ve not given her a name?’
‘No. Leave that to her new mothers to fight over.’
‘Not even in your own mind? I mean, apart from bloodfly and leech and horse tick.’
‘Cutter,’ she said, ‘you don’t understand. I give her a real name I’ll end up having to turn round and head back. I’ll have to take her, then.’
‘Oh. I am sorry, Scillara. You’re right. There’s not much I understand about anything.’
‘You need to trust yourself more.’
‘No.’ He paused, eyes on the sea to the east. ‘There’s nothing I’ve done to make that…possible. Look at what happened when Felisin Younger trusted me – to protect her. Even Heboric – he said I was showing leadership, he said that was good. So, he too trusted me.’
‘You damned idiot. We were ambushed by T’lan Imass. What do you think you could have done?’
‘I don’t know, and that’s my point.’
‘Heboric was the Destriant of Treach. They killed him as if he was nothing more than a lame dog. They lopped limbs off Greyfrog like they were getting ready to cook a feast. Cutter, people like you and me, we can’t stop creatures like that. They cut us down then step over us and that’s that as far as they’re concerned. Yes, it’s a hard thing to take, for anyone. The fact that we’re insignificant, irrelevant. Nothing is expected of us, so better we just hunch down and stay out of sight, stay beneath the notice of things like T’lan Imass, things like gods and goddesses. You and me, Cutter, and Barathol there. And Chaur. We’re the ones who, if we’re lucky, stay alive long enough to clean up the mess, put things back together. To reassert the normal world. That’s what we do, when we can – look at you, you’ve just resurrected a dead boat – you gave it its function again – look at it, Cutter, it finally looks the way it should, and that’s satisfying, isn’t it?’
‘For Hood’s sake,’ Cutter said, shaking his head, ‘Scillara, we’re not just worker termites clearing a tunnel after a god’s careless footfall. That’s not enough.’
‘I’m not suggesting it’s enough,’ she said. ‘I’m telling you it’s what we have to start with, when we’re rebuilding – rebuilding villages and rebuilding our lives.’
Barathol had been trudging back and forth during this conversation, and now Chaur had come down, timidly, closer to the water. The mute had unpacked the supplies from the horses, including Heboric’s wrapped corpse, and the beasts – unsaddled, their bits removed – now wandered along the grassy fringe beyond the tideline, tails swishing.
Cutter began loading the scull.
He paused at one point and grinned wryly. ‘Lighting a pipe’s a good way of getting out of work, isn’t it?’
‘You said you didn’t need any help.’
‘With the bailing, yes.’
‘What you don’t understand, Cutter, is the spiritual necessity for reward, not to mention the clarity that comes to one’s mind during such repasts. And in not understanding, you instead feel resentment, which sours the blood in your heart and makes you bitter. It’s that bitterness that kills people, you know, it eats them up inside.’
He studied her. ‘Meaning, I’m actually jealous?’
‘Of course you are, but because I can empathize with you, I am comfortable withholding judgement. Tell me, can you say the same for yourself?’
Barathol arrived with a pair of casks under his arms. ‘Get off your ass, woman. We’ve got a good wind and the sooner we’re on our way the better.’
She threw him a salute as she rose. ‘There you go, Cutter, a man who takes charge. Watch him, listen, and learn.’
The Daru stared at her, bemused.
She read his face: But you just said…
So I did, my young lover. We are contrary creatures, us humans, but that isn’t something we need be afraid of, or even much troubled by. And if you make a list of those people who worship consistency, you’ll find they’re one and all tyrants or would-be tyrants. Ruling over thousands, or over a husband or a wife, or some cowering child. Never fear contradiction, Cutter, it is the very heart of diversity.
Chaur held on to the steering oar whilst Cutter and Barathol worked the sails. The day was bright, the wind fresh and the carrack rode the swells as if its very wood was alive. Every now and then the bow pitched down, raising spray, and Chaur would laugh, the sound child-like, a thing of pure joy.
Scillara settled down amidships, the sun on her face warm, not hot, and stretched out.
We sail a carrack named Grief, with a corpse on board. That Cutter means to deliver to its final place of rest. Heboric, did you know such loyalty could exist, there in your shadow?
Barathol moved past her at one point, and, as Chaur laughed once more, she saw an answering smile on his battered, scarified face.
Oh yes, it is indeed blessed music. So unexpected, and in its innocence, so needed…
The return of certain mortal traits, Onrack the Broken realized, reminded one that life was far from perfect. Not that he had held many illusions in that regard. In truth, he held no illusions at all. About anything. Even so, some time passed – in something like a state of fugue – before Onrack recognized that what he was feeling was…impatience.
The enemy would come again. These caverns would echo with screams, with the clangour of weapons, with voices raised in rage. And Onrack would stand at Trull Sengar’s side, and with him witness, in helpless fury, the death of still more of Minala’s children.
Of course, children was a term that no longer fit. Had they been Imass, they would have survived the ordeal of the passage into adulthood by now. They would be taking mates, leading hunting parties, and joining their voices to the night songs of the clan, when the darkness returned to remind them all that death waited, there at the end of life’s path.
Lying with lovers also belonged to night, and that made sense, for it was in the midst of true darkness that the first fire of life was born, flickering awake to drive back the unchanging absence of light. To lie with a lover was to celebrate the creation of fire. From this in the flesh to the world beyond.
Here, in the chasm, night reigned eternal, and there was no fire in the soul, no heat of lovemaking. There was only the promise of death.
And Onrack was impatient with that. There was no glory in waiting for oblivion. No, in an existence bound with true meaning and purpose, oblivion should ever arrive unexpected, unanticipated and unseen. One moment racing full tilt, the next, gone.
As a T’lan Imass of Logros, Onrack had known the terrible cost borne in wars of attrition. The spirit exhausted beyond reason, with no salvation awaiting it, only more of the same. The kin falling to the wayside, shattered and motionless, eyes fixed on some skewed vista – a scene to be watched for eternity, the minute changes measuring the centuries of indifference. Some timid creature scampering through, a plant’s exuberant green pushing up from the earth after a rain, birds pecking at seeds, insects building empires…
Trull Sengar came to his side where Onrack stood guarding the choke-point. ‘Monok Ochem says the Edur’s presence has…contracted, away from us. For now. As if something made my kin retreat. I feel, my friend, that we have been granted a reprieve – one that is not welcome. I don’t know how much longer I can fight.’
‘When you can no longer fight in truth, Trull Sengar, the failure will cease to matter.’
‘I did not think they would defy her, you know, but now, I see that it makes sense. She expected them to just abandon this, leaving the handful remaining here to their fate. Our fate, I mean.’ He shrugged. ‘Panek was not surprised.’
‘The other children look to him,’ Onrack said. ‘They would not abandon him. Nor their mothers.’
‘And, in staying, they will break the hearts of us all.’
‘Yes.’
The Tiste Edur looked over. ‘Have you come to regret the awakening of emotions within you, Onrack?’
‘This awakening serves to remind me, Trull Sengar.’
‘Of what?’
‘Of why I am called “The Broken”.’
‘As broken as the rest of us.’
‘Not Monok Ochem, nor Ibra Gholan.’
‘No, not them.’
‘Trull Sengar, when the attackers come, I would you know – I intend to leave your side.’
‘Indeed?’
‘Yes. I intend to challenge their leader. To slay him or be destroyed in the attempt. Perhaps, if I can deliver a truly frightful cost, they will reconsider their alliance with the Crippled God. At the very least, they may withdraw and not return for a long time.’
‘I understand.’ Trull then smiled in the gloom. ‘I will miss your presence at my side in those final moments, my friend.’
‘Should I succeed in what I intend, Trull Sengar, I shall return to your side.’
‘Then you had better be quick killing that leader.’
‘Such is my intention.’
‘Onrack, I hear something new in your voice.’
‘Yes.’
‘What does it mean?’
‘It means, Trull Sengar, that Onrack the Broken, in discovering impatience, has discovered something else.’
‘What?’
‘This: I am done with defending the indefensible. I am done with witnessing the fall of friends. In the battle to come, you shall see in me something terrible. Something neither Ibra Gholan nor Monok Ochem can achieve. Trull Sengar, you shall see a T’lan Imass, awakened to anger.’
Banaschar opened the door, wavered for a moment, leaning with one hand against the frame, then staggered into his decrepit room. The rank smell of sweat and unclean bedding, stale food left on the small table beneath the barred window. He paused, considering whether or not to light the lantern – but the oil was low and he’d forgotten to buy more. He rubbed at the bristle on his chin, more vigorously than normal since it seemed his face had gone numb.
A creak from the chair against the far wall, six paces distant. Banaschar froze in place, seeking to pierce the darkness. ‘Who’s there?’ he demanded.
‘There are few things in this world,’ said the figure seated in the chair, ‘more pathetic than a once-Demidrek fallen into such disrepair, Banaschar. Stumbling drunk into this vermin-filled hovel every night – why are you here?’
Banaschar stepped to his right and sank heavily onto the cot. ‘I don’t know who you are,’ he said, ‘so I see no reason to answer you.’
A sigh, then, ‘You send, one after another for a while there, cryptic messages. Pleading, with increasing desperation, to meet with the Imperial High Mage.’
‘Then you must realize,’ Banaschar said, struggling to force sobriety into his thoughts – the terror was helping – ‘that the matter concerns only devotees of D’rek—’
‘A description that no longer fits either you or Tayschrenn.’
‘There are things,’ Banaschar said, ‘that cannot be left behind. Tayschrenn knows this, as much as I—’
‘Actually, the Imperial High Mage knows nothing.’ A pause, accompanying a gesture that Banaschar interpreted as the man studying his fingernails, and something in his tone changed. ‘Not yet, that is. Perhaps not at all. You see, Banaschar, the decision is mine.’
‘Who are you?’
‘You are not ready yet to know that.’
‘Why are you intercepting my missives to Tayschrenn?’
‘Well, to be precise, I have said no such thing.’
Banaschar frowned. ‘You just said the decision was yours.’
‘Yes I did. That decision centres on whether I remain inactive in this matter, as I have been thus far, or – given sufficient cause – I elect to, um, intervene.’
‘Then who is blocking my efforts?’
‘You must understand, Banaschar, Tayschrenn is the Imperial High Mage first and foremost. Whatever else he once was is now irrelevant—’
‘No, it isn’t. Not given what I have discovered—’
‘Tell me.’
‘No.’
‘Better yet, Banaschar, convince me.’
‘I cannot,’ he replied, hands clutching the grimy bedding to either side.
‘An imperial matter?’
‘No.’
‘Well, that is a start. As you said, then, the subject pertains to once-followers of D’rek. A subject, one presumes, related to the succession of mysterious deaths within the cult of the Worm. Succession? More like slaughter, yes? Tell me, is there anyone left? Anyone at all?’
Banaschar said nothing.
‘Except, of course,’ the stranger added, ‘those few who have, at some time in the past and for whatever reasons, fallen away from the cult. From worship.’
‘You know too much of this,’ Banaschar said. He should never have stayed in this room. He should have been finding different hovels every night. He hadn’t thought there’d be anyone, anyone left, who’d remember him. After all, those who might have were now all dead. And I know why. Gods below, how I wish I didn’t.
