The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen, page 584
Bruthen Trana made his way into the wing of the palace closest to the river, and here the air was clammy, the corridors mostly empty. While the flooding that had occurred during the early stages of construction had been rectified, via an ingenious system of subsurface pylons, it seemed nothing could dispel the damp. Holes had been knocked in outer walls to create a flow of air, to little effect apart from filling the musty gloom with the scent of river mud and decaying plants.
Bruthen walked through one such hole, emerging out onto a mostly broken-up cobble path, with felled trees rotting amidst high grasses off to his left and the foundations of a small building to his right. Abandonment lingered in the still air like suspended pollen, and Bruthen was alone as he ascended the path’s uneven slope to arrive at the edge of a cleared area, at the other end of which rose the ancient tower of the Azath, with the lesser structures of the Jaghut to either side. In this clearing there were grave markers, set out in no discernible order. Half-buried urns, wax-sealed at the mouth, from which emerged weapons. Swords, broken spears, axes, maces – trophies of failure, a stunted forest of iron.
The Fallen Champions, the residents of a most prestigious cemetery. All had killed Rhulad at least once, some more than once – the greatest of these, an almost full-blood Tarthenal, had slain the Emperor seven times, and Bruthen could remember, with absolute clarity, the look of growing rage and terror in that Tarthenal’s bestial face each time his fallen opponent arose, renewed, stronger and deadlier than he had been only moments earlier.
He entered the bizarre necropolis, eyes drifting across the various weapons, once so lovingly cared for – many of them bearing names – but now sheathed in rust. At the far end, slightly separated from all the others, stood an empty urn. Months earlier, out of curiosity, he had reached down into it, and found a silver cup. The cup that had contained the poison that killed three Letherii in the throne room – that had killed Brys Beddict.
No ashes. Even his sword had disappeared.
Bruthen Trana suspected that if this man were to return, now, he would face Rhulad again, and do what he did before. No, it was more than suspicion. A certainty.
Unseen by Rhulad, as the new Emperor lay there, cut to shreds on the floor, Bruthen had edged into the chamber to see for himself. And in that moment’s fearful glance, he had discerned the appalling precision of that butchery. Brys Beddict had been perfunctory. Like a scholar dissecting a weak argument, an effort on his part no greater than tying on his moccasins.
Would that he had seen the duel itself, that he had witnessed the artistry of this tragically slain Letherii swordsman.
He stood, looking down at the dusty, web-covered urn.
And prayed for Brys Beddict’s return.
A pattern was taking shape, incrementally, inexorably. Yet the Errant, once known as Turudal Brizad, Consort to Queen Janall, could not discern its meaning. The sensation, of unease, of dread, was new to him. Indeed, he considered, one could not imagine a more awkward state of mind for a god, here in the heart of his realm.
Oh, he had known times of violence; he had walked the ashes of dead empires, but his own sense of destiny was, even then, ever untarnished, inviolate and absolute. And, to make matters worse, patterns were his personal obsession, held to with a belief in his mastery of that arcane language, a mastery beyond challenge.
Then who is it who plays with me now?
He stood in the gloom, listening to the trickle of water seeping down some unseen wall, and stared down at the Cedance, the stone tiles of the Holds, the puzzle floor that was the very foundation of his realm. The Cedance. My tiles. Mine. I am the Errant. This is my game.
While before him the pattern ground on, the rumbling of stones too low and deep to hear, yet their resonance grated in his bones. Disparate pieces, coming together. A function hidden, until the last moment – when all is too late, when the closure denies every path of escape.
Do you expect me to do nothing? I am not just one more of your victims. I am the Errant. By my hand, every fate is turned. All that seems random is by my design. This is an immutable truth. It has ever been. It shall ever be.
Still, the taste of fear was on his tongue, as if he’d been sucking on dirtied coins day after day, running the wealth of an empire through his mouth. But is that bitter flow inward or out?
The grinding whisper of motion, all resolution of the images carved into the tiles…lost. Not a single Hold would reveal itself.
The Cedance had been this way since the day Ezgara Diskanar died. The Errant would be a fool to disregard linkage, but that path of reason had yet to lead him anywhere. Perhaps it was not Ezgara’s death that mattered, but the Ceda’s. He never liked me much. And I stood and watched, as the Tiste Edur edged to one side, as he flung his spear, transfixing Kuru Qan, killing the greatest Ceda since the First Empire. My game, I’d thought at the time. But now, I wonder…
Maybe it was Kuru Qan’s. And, somehow, it still plays out. I did not warn him of that imminent danger, did I? Before his last breath rattled, he would have comprehended that…omission.
Has this damned mortal cursed me? Me, a god!
Such a curse should be vulnerable. Not even Kuru Qan was capable of fashioning something that could not be dismantled by the Errant. He need only understand its structure, all that pinned it in place, the hidden spikes guiding these tiles.
What comes? The empire is reborn, reinvigorated, revealing the veracity of the ancient prophecy. All is as I foresaw.
His study of the blurred pavestones below the walkway became a glare. He hissed in frustration, and watched his breath plume away in the chill.
An unknown transformation, in which I see naught but the ice of my own exasperation. Thus, I see, but am blind, blind to it all.
The cold, too, was a new phenomenon. The heat of power had bled away from this place. Nothing was as it should be.
Perhaps, at some point, he would have to admit defeat. And then I will have to pay a visit to a little, crabby old man. Working as a servant to a worthless fool. Humble, I will come in search of answers. I let Tehol live, didn’t I? That must count for something.
Mael, I know you interfered last time. With unconscionable disregard for the rules. My rules. But I have forgiven you, and that, too, must count for something.
Humility tasted even worse than fear. He was not yet ready for that.
He would take command of the Cedance. But to usurp the pattern, he would first have to find its maker. Kuru Qan? He was unconvinced.
There are disturbances in the pantheons, new and old. Chaos, the stink of violence. Yes, this is a god’s meddling. Perhaps Mael himself is to blame – no, it feels wrong. More likely, he knows nothing, remains blissfully ignorant. Will it serve me to make him aware that something is awry?
An empire reborn. True, the Tiste Edur had their secrets, or at least they believed such truths were well hidden. They were not. An alien god had usurped them, and had made of a young Edur warrior an avatar, a champion, suitably flawed in grisly homage to the god’s own pathetic dysfunctions. Power from pain, glory from degradation, themes in apposition – an empire reborn offered the promise of vigour, of expansion and longevity, none of which was, he had to admit, truly assured. And such are promises.
The god shivered suddenly in the bitter cold air of this vast, subterranean chamber. Shivered, on this walkway above a swirling unknown.
The pattern was taking shape.
And when it did, it would be too late.
‘It’s too late.’
‘But there must be something we can do.’
‘I’m afraid not. It’s dying, Master, and unless we take advantage of its demise right now, someone else will.’
The capabara fish had used its tentacles to crawl up the canal wall, pulling itself over the edge onto the walkway, where it flattened out, strangely spreadeagled, to lie, mouth gaping, gills gasping, watching the morning get cloudy as it expired. The beast was as long as a man is tall, as fat as a mutton merchant from the Inner Isles, and, to Tehol’s astonishment, even uglier. ‘Yet my heart breaks.’
Bugg scratched his mostly hairless pate, then sighed. ‘It’s the unusually cold water,’ he said. ‘These like their mud warm.’
‘Cold water? Can’t you do something about that?’
‘Bugg’s Hydrogation.’
‘You’re branching out?’
‘No, I was just trying on the title.’
‘How do you hydrogate?’
‘I have no idea. Well, I have, but it’s not quite a legitimate craft.’
‘Meaning it belongs in the realm of the gods.’
‘Mostly. Although,’ he said, brightening, ‘with the recent spate of flooding, and given my past experience in engineering dry foundations, I begin to see some possibilities.’
‘Can you soak investors?’
Bugg grimaced. ‘Always seeing the destructive side, aren’t you, Master?’
‘It’s my opportunistic nature. Most people,’ he added, ‘would view that as a virtue. Now, are you truly telling me you can’t save this poor fish?’
‘Master, it’s already dead.’
‘Is it? Oh. Well, I guess we now have supper.’
‘More like fifteen suppers.’
‘In any case, I have an appointment, so I will see you and the fish at home.’
‘Why, thank you, Master.’
‘Didn’t I tell you this morning walk would prove beneficial?’
‘Not for the capabara, alas.’
‘Granted. Oh, by the way, I need you to make me a list.’
‘Of what?’
‘Ah, I will have to tell you that later. As I said, I am late for an appointment. It just occurred to me: is this fish too big for you to carry by yourself?’
‘Well,’ Bugg said, eyeing the carcass, ‘it’s small as far as capabara go – remember the one that tried to mate with a galley?’
‘The betting on that outcome overwhelmed the Drownings. I lost everything I had that day.’
‘Everything?’
‘Three copper docks, yes.’
‘What outcome did you anticipate?’
‘Why, small rowboats that could row themselves with big flippery paddles.’
‘You’re late for your appointment, Master.’
‘Wait! Don’t look! I need to do something unseemly right now.’
‘Oh, Master, really.’
Spies stood on street corners. Small squads of grey rain-caped Patriotists moved through the throngs that parted to give them wide berth as they swaggered with gloved hands resting on their belted truncheons, and on their faces the bludgeon arrogance of thugs. Tehol Beddict, wearing his blanket like a sarong, walked with the benign grace of an ascetic from some obscure but harmless cult. Or at least he hoped so. To venture onto the streets of Letheras these days involved a certain measure of risk that had not existed in King Ezgara Diskanar’s days of pleasant neglect. While on the one hand this lent an air of intrigue and danger to every journey – including shopping for over-ripe root crops – there were also the taut nerves that one could not quell, no matter how many mouldy turnips one happened to be carrying.
Compounding matters, in this instance, was the fact that he was indeed intent on subversion. One of the first victims in this new regime had been the Rat Catchers’ Guild. Karos Invictad, the Invigilator of the Patriotists, had acted on his first day of officialdom, despatching fully a hundred agents to Scale House, the modest Guild headquarters, whereupon they effected arrests on scores of Rat Catchers, all of whom, it later turned out, were illusions – a detail unadvertised, of course, lest the dread Patriotists announce their arrival to cries of ridicule. Which would not do.
After all, tyranny has no sense of humour. Too thin-skinned, too thoroughly full of its own self-importance. Accordingly, it presents an almost overwhelming temptation – how can I not be excused the occasional mockery? Alas, the Patriotists lacked flexibility in such matters – the deadliest weapon against them was derisive laughter, and they knew it.
He crossed Quillas Canal at a lesser bridge, made his way into the less ostentatious north district, and eventually sauntered into a twisting, shadow-filled alley that had once been a dirt street, before the invention of four-wheeled wagons and side-by-side horse collars. Instead of the usual hovels and back doors that one might expect to find in such an alley, lining this one were shops that had not changed in any substantial way in the past seven hundred or so years. There, first to the right, the Half-Axe Temple of Herbs, smelling like a swamp’s sinkhole, wherein one could find a prune-faced witch who lived in a mudpit, with all her precious plants crowding the banks, or growing in the insect-flecked pool itself. It was said she had been born in that slime and was only half human; and that her mother had been born there too, and her mother and so on. That such conceptions were immaculate went without saying, since Tehol could hardly imagine any reasonable or even unreasonable man taking that particular plunge.
Opposite the Half-Axe was the narrow-fronted entrance to a shop devoted to short lengths of rope and wooden poles a man and a half high. Tehol had no idea how such a specialized enterprise could survive, especially in this unravelled, truncated market, yet its door had remained open for almost six centuries, locked up each night by a short length of rope and a wooden pole.
The assortment proceeding down the alley was similar only in its peculiarity. Wooden stakes and pegs in one, sandal thongs in another – not the sandals, just the thongs. A shop selling leaky pottery – not an indication of incompetence: rather, the pots were deliberately made to leak at various, precise rates of loss; a place selling unopenable boxes, another toxic dyes. Ceramic teeth, bottles filled with the urine of pregnant women, enormous amphorae containing dead pregnant women; the excreta of obese hogs; and miniature pets – dogs, cats, birds and rodents of all sorts, each one reduced in size through generation after generation of selective breeding – Tehol had seen guard dogs standing no higher than his ankle, and while cute and appropriately yappy, he had doubts as to their efficacy, although they were probably a terror for the thumbnail-sized mice and the cats that could ride an old woman’s big toe, secured there by an ingenious loop in the sandal’s thong.
Since the outlawing of the Rat Catchers’ Guild, Adventure Alley had acquired a new function, to which Tehol now set about applying himself with the insouciance of the initiated. First, into the Half-Axe, clawing his way through the vines immediately beyond the entrance, then drawing up one step short of pitching head-first into the muddy pool.
Splashing, thick slopping sounds, then a dark-skinned wrinkled face appeared amidst the high grasses fringing the pit. ‘It’s you,’ the witch said, grimacing then slithering out her overlong tongue to display all the leeches attached to it.
‘And it’s you,’ Tehol replied.
The red protuberance with all its friends went back inside. ‘Come in for a swim, you odious man.’
‘Come out and let your skin recover, Munuga. I happen to know you’re barely three decades old.’
‘I am a map of wisdom.’
‘As a warning against the perils of overbathing, perhaps. Where’s the fat root this time?’
‘What have you got for me first?’
‘What I always have. The only thing you ever want from me, Munuga.’
‘The only thing you’ll never give, you mean!’
Sighing, Tehol drew out from under his makeshift sarong a small vial. He held it up for her to see.
She licked her lips, which proved alarmingly complicated. ‘What kind?’
‘Capabara roe.’
‘But I want yours.’
‘I don’t produce roe.’
‘You know what I mean, Tehol Beddict.’
‘Alas, poverty is more than skin deep. Also, I have lost all incentive to be productive, in any sense of the word. After all, what kind of a world is this that I’d even contemplate delivering a child into?’
‘Tehol Beddict, you cannot deliver a child. You’re a man. Leave the delivering to me.’
‘Tell you what, climb out of that soup, dry out and let me see what you’re supposed to look like, and who knows? Extraordinary things might happen.’
Scowling, she held out an object. ‘Here’s your fat root. Give me that vial, then go away.’
‘I so look forward to next time—’
‘Tehol Beddict, do you know what fat root is used for?’
Her eyes had sharpened with suspicion, and Tehol realized that, were she indeed to dry out, she might be rather handsome after all, in a vaguely amphibian way. ‘No, why?’
‘Are you required to partake of it in some bizarre fashion?’
He shook his head.
‘Are you certain? No unusual tea smelling yellow?’
‘Smelling yellow? What does that mean?’
‘If you smelled it, you’d know. Clearly, you haven’t. Good. Get out, I’m puckering.’
A hasty departure, then, from the Half-Axe. Onward, to the entrance to Grool’s Immeasurable Pots. Presumably, that description was intended to emphasize unmatched quality or something similar, since the pots themselves were sold as clocks, and for alchemical experiments and the like, and such functions were dependent on accurate rates of flow.
He stepped inside the cramped, damp shop.
‘You’re always frowning when you come in here, Tehol Beddict.’
‘Good morning, Laudable Grool.’
‘The grey one, yes, that one there.’
‘A fine-looking pot—’
‘It’s a beaker, not a pot.’
‘Of course.’
‘Usual price.’
‘Why do you always hide behind all those pots, Laudable Grool? All I ever see of you is your hands.’
‘My hands are the only important part of me.’
‘All right.’ Tehol drew out a recently removed dorsal fin. ‘A succession of spines, these ones from a capabara. Gradating diameters—’
