The Malazan Empire, page 629
This world was his, in every way. A blend of tundra to the north and a treeline in the south that reached up every now and then to the very shadow of the huge glaciers stretching down the valleys. The forest was a confused mix of deciduous and coniferous trees, broken with ravines and tumbled rocks, springs of clean water and boggy sinkholes. The branches swarmed with birds, their incessant chatter at times overwhelming all else.
Along the edges there were trails. Caribou moved haphazardly between forest and tundra in their grazing. Closer to the ice, on higher ground where bedrock was exposed, there were goat-like creatures, scampering up ledges to look back down on the two-legged strangers passing through their domain.
Onrack had disappeared into the forest again and again in the first week of their wandering. Each time he reappeared his toolkit had expanded. A wooden shaft, the point of which he hardened in the fire of their camp; vines and reeds from which he fashioned snares, and nets that he then attached to the other end of the spear, displaying impressive skill at trapping birds on the wing.
From the small mammals caught in his nightly snares he assembled skins and gut. With the stomachs and intestines of hares he made floats for the weighted nets he strung across streams, and from the grayling and sturgeon harvested he gathered numerous spines which he then used to sew together the hides, fashioning a bag. He collected charcoal and tree sap, lichens, mosses, tubers, feathers and small pouches of animal fat, all of which went into the hide bag.
But all of these things were as nothing when compared with the burgeoning of the man himself. A face Trull had known only as dried skin taut over shattered bone was now animate with expression, and it was as if Trull had been blind to his friend in the time before, when even vocal inflection had been flat and lifeless.
Onrack now smiled. A sudden lighting of genuine pleasure that not only took Trull’s breath away – and, he admitted, often filled his eyes with tears – but could silence Quick Ben as well, the wizard’s dark face suddenly evincing ineffable wonder, an expression that a well-meaning adult might have upon seeing a child at play.
Everything about this Imass invited friendship, as if his smile alone cast some sorcery, a geas of charm, to which unquestioning loyalty was the only possible response. This glamour Trull Sengar had no interest in resisting. Onrack, after all, is the one brother I chose. But the Tiste Edur could see, on occasion, the gleam of suspicion in the Malazan wizard, as if Quick Ben was catching himself at the edge of some inner precipice, some slide into a place Ben could not, by his very nature, wholly trust.
Trull felt no worry; he could see that Onrack was not interested in manipulating his companions. His was a spirit contained within itself, a spirit that had emerged from a haunted place and was haunted no longer. Dead in a demonic nightmare. Reborn into a paradise. Onrack, my friend, you are redeemed, and you know it, with every sense – with your touch, your vision, with the scents of the land and the songs in the trees.
The previous evening he had returned from a trip into the forest with a sheath of bark in his hands. On it were nuggets of crumbly yellow ochre. Later, beside the fire, while Quick Ben cooked the remaining meat from a small deer Onrack had killed in the forest two days previously, the Imass ground the nuggets into powder. Then, using spit and grease, he made a yellow paste. As he worked these preparations, he hummed a song, a droning, vibrating cadence that was as much nasal as vocal. The range, like his speaking voice, was unearthly. It seemed capable of carrying two distinct tones, one high and the other deep. The song ended when the task was done. There was a long pause; then, as Onrack began applying the paint to his face, neck and arms, a different song emerged, this one with a rapid beat, fast as the heart of a fleeing beast.
When the last daub of paint marked his amber skin, the song stopped.
‘Gods below!’ Quick Ben had gasped, one hand on his chest. ‘My heart’s about to pound right through my cage of bones, Onrack!’
The Imass, settling back in his cross-legged position, regarded the wizard with calm, dark eyes. ‘You have been pursued often. In your life.’
A grimace from Quick Ben, then he nodded. ‘Feels like years and years of that.’
‘There are two names to the song. Agkor Raella and Allish Raella. The wolf song, and the caribou song.’
‘Ah, so my cud-chewing ways are exposed at last.’
Onrack smiled. ‘One day, you must become the wolf.’
‘Might be I already am,’ Quick Ben said after a long moment. ‘I’ve seen wolves – plenty of them around here, after all. Those long-legged ones with the smallish heads—’
‘Ay.’
‘Ay, right. And they’re damned shy. I’d wager they don’t go for the kill until the odds are well in their favour. The worst kind of gamblers, in fact. But very good at survival.’
‘Shy,’ Onrack said, nodding. ‘Yet curious. The same pack follows us now for three days.’
‘They enjoy scavenging your kills – let you take all the risks. Makes for a sweet deal.’
‘Thus far,’ Onrack said, ‘there have been few risks.’
Quick Ben glanced over at Trull, then shook his head and said, ‘That mountain sheep or whatever you call it not only charged you, Onrack, but it sent you flying. We thought it’d broken every bone in your body, and you just two days into your new one at that.’
‘The bigger the prey, the more you must pay,’ Onrack said, smiling again. ‘In the way of gambling, yes?’
‘Absolutely,’ the wizard said, prodding at the meat on the spit. ‘My point was, the wolf is the caribou until necessity forces otherwise. If the odds are too bad, the wolf runs. It’s a matter of timing, of choosing the right moment to turn round and hold your ground. As for those wolves tracking us, well, I’d guess they’ve never seen our kind before—’
‘No, Quick Ben,’ Onrack said. ‘The very opposite is true.’
Trull studied his friend for a moment, then asked, ‘We’re not alone here?’
‘The ay knew to follow us. Yes, they are curious, but they are also clever, and they remember. They have followed Imass before.’ He lifted his head and sniffed loudly. ‘They are close tonight, those ay. Drawn to my song, which they have heard before. The ay know, you see, that tomorrow I will hunt dangerous prey. And when the moment of the kill comes, well, we shall see.’
‘Just how dangerous?’ Trull asked, suddenly uneasy.
‘There is a hunting cat, an emlava – we entered its territory today, for I found the scrapes of its claim, on stone and on wood. A male by the flavour of its piss. Today, the ay were more nervous than usual, for the cat will kill them at every opportunity, and it is a creature of ambush. But I have assured them with my song. I found Tog’tol – yellow ochre – after all.’
‘So,’ Quick Ben said, his eyes on the dripping meat above the flames, ‘if your wolves know we are here, how about the cat?’
‘He knows.’
‘Well, that’s just terrific, Onrack. I’m going to need some warrens close to hand all damned day, then. That happens to be exhausting, you know.’
‘You need not worry with the sun overhead, wizard,’ Onrack said. ‘The cat hunts at night.’
‘Hood’s breath! Let’s hope those wolves smell it before we do!’
‘They won’t,’ the Imass replied with infuriating calm. ‘In scenting its territory, the emlava saturates the air with its sign. Its own body scent is much weaker, freeing the beast to move wherever it will when inside its territory.’
‘Why are dumb brutes so damned smart, anyway?’
‘Why are us smart folk so often stupidly brutal, Quick Ben?’ Trull asked.
‘Stop trying to confuse me in my state of animal terror, Edur.’
An uneventful night passed and now, the following day, they walked yet further into the territory of the emlava. Halting at a stream in mid-morning, Onrack had knelt beside it to begin his ritual washing of hands. At least, Trull assumed it was a ritual, although it might well have been another of those moments of breathless wonder that seemed to afflict Onrack – and no surprise there; Trull suspected he’d be staggering about for months after such a rebirth. Of course, he does not think like us. I am much closer in my ways of thought to this human, Quick Ben, than I am to any Imass, dead or otherwise. How can that be?
Onrack then rose and faced them, his spear in one hand, sword in the other. ‘We are near the emlava’s lair. Although he sleeps, he senses us. Tonight, he means to kill one of us. I shall now challenge his claim to this territory. If I fail, he may well leave you be, for he will feed on my flesh.’
But Quick Ben was shaking his head. ‘You’re not doing this alone, Onrack. Granted, I’m not entirely sure of how my sorcery will work in this place, but dammit, it’s just a dumb cat, after all. A blinding flash of light, a loud sound—’
‘And I will join you as well,’ Trull Sengar said. ‘We begin with spears, yes? I have fought enough wolves in my time. We will meet its charge with spears. Then, when it is wounded and crippled, we close with bladed weapons.’
Onrack studied them for a moment, then he smiled. ‘I see that I will not dissuade you. Yet, for the fight itself, you must not interfere. I do not think I will fail, and you will see why before long.’
Trull and the wizard followed the Imass up the slope of an outwash fan that filled most of a crevasse, up among the lichen-clad, tilted and folded bedrock. Beyond this blackstone ledge rose a sheer wall of grey shale pocked with caves where sediments had eroded away beneath an endless torrent of glacial melt. The stream in which Onrack had plunged his hands earlier poured out from this cliff, forming a pool in one cavern that extended out to fill a basin before continuing downslope. To the right of this was another cave, triangular in shape, with one entire side formed by a collapse in the shale overburden. The flat ground before it was scattered with splintered bones.
As they skirted the pool Onrack suddenly halted, lifting a hand.
A massive shape now filled the cave mouth.
Three heartbeats later, the emlava emerged.
‘Hood’s breath,’ Quick Ben whispered.
Trull had expected a hunting cat little different from a mountain lion – perhaps one of the black ones rumoured to live in the deeper forests of his homeland. The creature hulking into view, blinking sleep from its charcoal eyes, was the size of a plains brown bear. Its enormous upper canines projected down past its lower jaw, long as a huntsman’s knife and polished the hue of amber. The head was broad and flat, the ears small and set far back. Behind the short neck, the emlava’s shoulders were hunched, forming a kind of muscled hump. Its fur was striped, black barbs on deep grey, although its throat revealed a flash of white.
‘Not quite built for speed, is it?’
Trull glanced over at Quick Ben, saw the wizard holding a dagger in one hand. ‘We should get you a spear,’ the Tiste Edur said.
‘I’ll take one of your spares – if you don’t mind.’
Trull slipped the bound clutch from his shoulder and said, ‘Take your pick.’
The emlava was studying them. Then it yawned and with that Onrack moved lightly forward in a half-crouch.
As he did so, pebbles scattered nearby and Trull turned. ‘Well, it seems Onrack has allies in this after all.’
The wolves – ay in the Imass language – had appeared and were now closing on Onrack’s position, heads lowered and eyes fixed on the huge cat.
The sudden arrival of seven wolves clearly displeased the emlava, for it then lowered itself until its chest brushed the ground, gathering its legs beneath it. The mouth opened again, and a deep hiss filled the air.
‘We might as well get out of their way,’ Quick Ben said, taking a step back with obvious relief.
‘I wonder,’ Trull said as he watched the momentary stand-off, ‘if this is how domestication first began. Not banding together in a hunt for prey, but in an elimination of rival predators.’
Onrack had readied his spear, not to meet a charge, but to throw the weapon using a stone-weighted antler atlatl. The wolves to his either side had fanned out, edging closer with fangs bared.
‘Not a growl to be heard,’ Quick Ben said. ‘Somehow that’s more chilling.’
‘Growls are to warn,’ Trull replied. ‘There is fear in growls, just as there is in that cat’s hissing.’
The emlava’s single lungful of breath finally whistled down into silence. It refilled its lungs and began again.
Onrack lunged forward, the spear darting from his hand.
Flinching back, the emlava screamed as the weapon drove deep into its chest, just to one side of the neck and beneath the clavicle. At that moment the wolves rushed in.
A mortal wound, however, was not enough to slow the cat as it lashed out with two staggered swings of its forepaws at one of the wolves. The first paw sank talons deep into the wolf’s shoulder, snatching the entire animal closer, within the reach of the second paw, which dragged the yelping wolf closer still. The massive head then snapped down on its neck, fangs burying themselves in flesh and bone.
The emlava, lurching, then drove its full weight down on the dying wolf, probably breaking every bone in its body.
As it did so, four other wolves lunged for its soft belly, two to each side, their canines tearing deep, then pulling away as, screaming, the emlava spun round to fend them off.
Exposing its neck.
Onrack’s sword flashed, point-first, into the cat’s throat.
It recoiled, sending one wolf tumbling, then reared back on its hind legs – as if to wheel and flee back into its cave – but all strength left the emlava then. It toppled, thumped hard onto the ground, and was still.
The six remaining wolves – one limping – padded away, keeping a distance between themselves and the three men, and moments later were gone from sight.
Onrack walked up to the emlava and tugged free his gore-spattered spear. Then he knelt beside the cat’s head.
‘Asking forgiveness?’ Quick Ben queried, his tone only slightly ironic.
The Imass looked over at them. ‘No, that would be dishonest, wizard.’
‘You’re right, it would. I am glad you’re not dumping any blessed spirit rubbish on us. It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it, that there were wars long before there were wars between people. You had your rival hunters to dispose of first.’
‘Yes, that is true. And we found allies. If you wish to find irony, Quick Ben, know that we then hunted until most of our prey was extinct. And our allies then starved – those that did not surrender to our stewardship.’
‘The Imass are hardly unique in that,’ Trull Sengar said.
Quick Ben snorted. ‘That’s understating it, Trull. So tell us, Onrack, why are you kneeling beside that carcass?’
‘I have made a mistake,’ the Imass replied, climbing to his feet and staring into the cave.
‘Seemed pretty flawless to me.’
‘The killing, yes, Quick Ben. But this emlava, it is female.’
The wizard grunted, then seemed to flinch. ‘You mean the male’s still around?’
‘I do not know. Sometimes they…wander.’ Onrack looked down at the bloodied spear in his hands. ‘My friends,’ he said. ‘I am now…hesitant, I admit. Perhaps, long ago, I would not have thought twice – as you said, wizard, we warred against our competitors. But this realm – it is a gift. All that was lost, because of our thoughtless acts, now lives again. Here. I wonder, can things be different?’
In the silence following that question, they heard, coming from the cave, the first pitiful cry.
‘Did you ever wish, Udinaas, that you could sink inside stone? Shake loose its vast memories—’
The ex-slave glanced at Wither – a deeper smear in the gloom – then sneered. ‘And see what they have seen? You damned wraith, stones can’t see.’
‘True enough. Yet they swallow sound and bind it trapped inside. They hold conversations with heat and cold. Their skins wear away to the words of the wind and the lick of water. Darkness and light live in their flesh – and they carry within them the echoes of wounding, of breaking, of being cruelly shaped—’
‘Oh, enough!’ Udinaas snapped, pushing a stick further into the fire. ‘Go melt away into these ruins, then.’
‘You are the last one awake, my friend. And yes, I have been in these ruins.’
‘Games like those are bound to drive you mad.’
A long pause. ‘You know things you have no right to know.’
‘How about this, then? Sinking into stone is easy. It’s getting out again that’s hard. You can get lost, trapped in the maze. And on all sides, all those memories pressing in, pressing down.’
‘It is your dreams, isn’t it? Where you learn such things. Who speaks to you? Tell me the name of this fell mentor!’
Udinaas laughed. ‘You fool, Wither. My mentor? Why, none other than imagination.’
‘I do not believe you.’
There seemed little point in responding to that declaration. Staring into the flames, Udinaas allowed its flickering dance to lull him. He was tired. He should be sleeping. The fever was gone, the nightmarish hallucinations, the strange nectars that fed the tumbling delusions all seeped away, like piss in moss. The strength I felt in those other worlds was a lie. The clarity, a deceit. All those offered ways forward, through what will come, every one a dead end. I should have known better.
‘K’Chain Nah’ruk, these ruins.’
‘You still here, Wither? Why?’
‘This was once a plateau on which the Short-Tails built a city. But now, as you can see, it is shattered. Now there is nothing but these dread slabs all pitched and angled – yet we have been working our way downward. Did you sense this? We will soon reach the centre, the heart of this crater, and we will see what destroyed this place.’
‘The ruins,’ said Udinaas, ‘remember cool shadow. Then concussion. Shadow, Wither, in a flood to announce the end of the world. The concussion, well, that belonged to the shadow, right?’
