The Malazan Empire, page 630
‘You know things—’
‘You damned fool, listen to me! We came to the edge of this place, this high plateau, expecting to see it stretch out nice and flat before us. Instead, it looks like a frozen puddle onto which someone dropped a heavy rock. Splat. All the sides caved inward. Wraith, I don’t need any secret knowledge to work this out. Something big came down from the sky – a meteorite, a sky keep, whatever. We trudged through its ash for days. Covering the ancient snow. Ash and dust, eating into that snow like acid. And the ruins, they’re all toppled, blasted outward, then tilted inward. Out first, in second. Heave out and down, then slide back. Wither, all it takes is for someone to just look. Really look. That’s it. So enough with all this mystical sealshit, all right?’
His tirade had wakened the others. Too bad. Nearly dawn anyway. Udinaas listened to them moving around, heard a cough, then someone hawking spit. Which? Seren? Kettle? The ex-slave smiled to himself. ‘Your problem, Wither, is your damned expectations. You hounded me for months and months, and now you feel the need to have made it – me – worth all that attention. So here you are, pushing some kind of sage wisdom on this broken slave, but I told you then what I’ll tell you now. I’m nothing, no-one. Understand? Just a man with a brain that, every now and then, actually works. Yes, I work it, because I find no comfort in being stupid. Unlike, I think, most people. Us Letherii, anyway. Stupid and proud of it. Belongs on the Imperial Seal, that happy proclamation. No wonder I failed so miserably.’
Seren Pedac moved into the firelight, crouching down to warm her hands. ‘Failed at what, Udinaas?’
‘Why, everything, Acquitor. No need for specifics here.’
Fear Sengar spoke from behind him. ‘You were skilled, I recall, at mending nets.’
Udinaas did not turn round, but he smiled. ‘Yes, I probably deserved that. My well-meaning tormentor speaks. Well-meaning? Oh, perhaps not. Indifferent? Possibly. Until, at least, I did something wrong. A badly mended net – aaii! Flay the fool’s skin from his back! I know, it was all for my own good. Someone’s, anyway.’
‘Another sleepless night, Udinaas?’
He looked across the fire at Seren, but she was intent on the flames licking beneath her outstretched hands, as if the question had been rhetorical.
‘I can see my bones,’ she then said.
‘They’re not real bones,’ Kettle replied, settling down with her legs drawn up. ‘They look more like twigs.’
‘Thank you, dear.’
‘Bones are hard, like rock.’ She set her hands on her knees and rubbed them. ‘Cold rock.’
‘Udinaas,’ Seren said, ‘I see puddles of gold in the ashes.’
‘I found pieces of a picture frame.’ He shrugged. ‘Odd to think of K’Chain Nah’ruk hanging pictures, isn’t it?’
Seren looked up, met his eyes. ‘K’Chain—’
Silchas Ruin spoke as he stepped round a heap of cut stone. ‘Not pictures. The frame was used to stretch skin. K’Chain moult until they reach adulthood. The skins were employed as parchment, for writing. The Nah’ruk were obsessive recorders.’
‘You know a lot about creatures you killed on sight,’ Fear Sengar said.
Clip’s soft laughter sounded from somewhere beyond the circle of light, followed by the snap of rings on a chain.
Fear’s head lifted sharply. ‘That amuses you, pup?’
The Tiste Andii’s voice drifted in, eerily disembodied. ‘Silchas Ruin’s dread secret. He parleyed with the Nah’ruk. There was this civil war going on, you see…’
‘It will be light soon,’ Silchas said, turning away.
Before too long, the group separated as it usually did. Striding well ahead were Silchas Ruin and Clip. Next on the path was Seren Pedac herself, while twenty or more paces behind her straggled Udinaas – still using the Imass spear as a walking stick – and Kettle and Fear Sengar.
Seren was not sure if she was deliberately inviting solitude upon herself. More likely some remnant of her old profession was exerting on her a disgruntled pressure to take the lead, deftly dismissing the presence ahead of the two Tiste warriors. As if they don’t count. As if they’re intrinsically unreliable as guides…to wherever it is we’re going.
She thought back, often, on their interminable flight from Letheras, the sheer chaos of that trek, its contradictions of direction and purpose; the times when they were motionless – setting down tentative roots in some backwater hamlet or abandoned homestead – but their exhaustion did not ease then, for it was not of blood and flesh. Scabandari Bloodeye’s soul awaited them, like some enervating parasite, in a place long forgotten. Such was the stated purpose, but Seren had begun, at last, to wonder.
Silchas had endeavoured to lead them west, ever west, and was turned aside each time – as if whatever threat the servants of Rhulad and Hannan Mosag presented was too vast to challenge. And that made no sense. The bastard can change into a damned dragon. And is Silchas a pacifist at heart? Hardly. He kills with all the compunction of a man swatting mosquitoes. Did he turn us away to spare our lives? Again, unlikely. A dragon doesn’t leave behind anything alive, does it? Driven north, again and again, away from the more populated areas.
To the very edge of Bluerose, a region once ruled by Tiste Andii – hiding still under the noses of Letherii and Edur – no, I do not trust any of this. I cannot. Silchas Ruin sensed his kin. He must have.
Suspecting Silchas Ruin of deceit was one thing, voicing the accusation quite another. She lacked the courage. As simple as that. Easier, isn’t it, to just go along, and to keep from thinking too hard. Because thinking too hard is what Udinaas has done, and look at the state he’s in. Yet, even then, he’s managing to keep his mouth shut. Most of the time. He may be an ex-slave, he may be ‘no-one’ – but he is not a fool.
So she walked alone. Bound by friendship to none – none here, in any case – and disinclined to change that.
The ruined city, little more than heaps of tumbled stone, rolled past on all sides, the slope ahead becoming ever steeper, and she thought, after a time, that she could hear the whisper of sand, crumbled mortar, fragments of rubble, as if their passage was yet further pitching this landscape, and as they walked they gathered to them streams of sliding refuse. As if our presence alone is enough shift the balance.
The whispering could have been voices, uttered beneath the wind, and she felt – with a sudden realization that lifted beads of sweat to her skin – within moments of understanding the words. Of stone and broken mortar. I am sliding into madness indeed—
‘When the stone breaks, every cry escapes. Can you hear me now, Seren Pedac?’
‘Is that you, Wither? Leave me be.’
‘Are any warrens alive? Most would say no. Impossible. They are forces. Aspects. Proclivities manifest as the predictable – oh, the Great Thinkers who are long since dust worried this in fevered need, as befits the obsessed. But they did not understand. One warren lies like a web over all the others, and its voice is the will necessary to shape magic. They did not see it. Not for what it was. They thought…chaos, a web where each strand was undifferentiated energy, not yet articulated, not yet given shape by an Elder God’s intent.’
She listened, as yet uncomprehending, even as her heart thundered in her chest and her each breath came in a harsh rasp. This, she knew, was not Wither’s voice. Not the wraith’s language. Not its cadence.
‘But K’rul understood. Spilled blood is lost blood, powerless blood in the end. It dies when abandoned. Witness violent death for proof of that. For the warrens to thrive, coursing in their appointed rivers and streams, there must be a living body, a grander form that exists in itself. Not chaos. Not Dark, nor Light. Not heat, not cold. No, a conscious aversion to disorder. Negation to and of all else, when all else is dead. For the true face of Death is dissolution, and in dissolution there is chaos until the last mote of energy ceases its wilful glow, its persistent abnegation. Do you understand?’
‘No. Who are you?’
‘There is another way, then, of seeing this. K’rul realized he could not do this alone. The sacrifice, the opening of his veins and arteries, would mean nothing, would indeed fail. Without living flesh, without organized functionality.
‘Ah, the warrens, Seren Pedac, they are a dialogue. Do you see now?’
‘No!’
Her frustrated cry echoed through the ruins. She saw Silchas and Clip halt and turn about.
Behind her, Fear Sengar called out, ‘Acquitor? What is it you deny?’
Knowing laughter from Udinaas.
‘Disregard the vicious crowd now, the torrent of sound overwhelming the warrens, the users, the guardians, the parasites and the hunters, the complicit gods elder and young. Shut them away, as Corlos taught you. To remember rape is to fold details into sensation, and so relive each time its terrible truth. He told you this could become habit, an addiction, until even despair became a welcome taste on your tongue. Understand, then – as only you can here – that to take one’s own life is the final expression of despair. You saw that. Buruk the Pale. You felt that, at the sea’s edge. Seren Pedac, K’rul could not act alone in this sacrifice, lest he fill every warren with despair.
‘Dialogue. Presupposition, yes, of the plural. One with another. Or succession of others, for this dialogue must be ongoing, indeed, eternal.
‘Do I speak of the Master of the Holds? The Master of the Deck? Perhaps – the face of the other is ever turned away – to all but K’rul himself. This is how it must be. The dialogue, then, is the feeding of power. Power unimaginable, power virtually omnipotent, unassailable…so long as that other’s face remains…turned away.
‘From you. From me. From all of us.’
She stared wildly about then, at these tilted ruins, this endless scree of destruction.
‘The dialogue, however, can be sensed if not heard – such is its power. The construction of language, the agreement in principle of meaning and intent, the rules of grammar – Seren Pedac, what did you think Mockra was? If not a game of grammar? Twisting semantics, turning inference, inviting suggestion, reshaping a mind’s internal language to deceive its own senses?
‘Who am I?
‘Why, Seren Pedac, I am Mockra.’
The others were gathered round her now. She found herself on her knees, driven there by revelation – there would be bruises, an appalling softness in the tissue where it pressed against hard pavestone. She registered this, as she stared up at the others. Reproachful communication, between damaged flesh and her mind, between her senses and her brain.
She shunted those words aside, then settled into a sweet, painless calm.
As easy as that.
‘Beware, there is a deadly risk in deceiving oneself. You can blind youself to your own damage. You can die quickly in that particular game, Seren Pedac. No, if you must…experiment…then choose another.
‘Corlos would have showed you that, had he the time with you.’
‘So – so he knows you?’
‘Not as intimately as you. There are few so…blessed.’
‘But you are not a god, are you?’
‘You need not ask that, Seren Pedac.’
‘You are right. But still, you are alive.’
She heard amusement in the reply. ‘Unless my greatest deceit is the announcement of my own existence! There are rules in language, and language is needed for the stating of the rules. As K’rul understood, the blood flows out, and then it returns. Weak, then enlivened. Round and round. Who then, ask yourself, who then is the enemy?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Not yet, perhaps. You will need to find out, however, Seren Pedac. Before we are through.’
She smiled. ‘You give me a purpose?’
‘Dialogue, my love, must not end.’
‘Ours? Or the other one?’
‘Your companions think you fevered now. Tell me, before we part, which you would choose. For your experiments?’
She blinked up at the half-circle of faces. Expressions of concern, mockery, curiosity, indifference. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It seems…cruel.’
‘Power ever is, Seren Pedac.’
‘I won’t decide, then. Not yet.’
‘So be it.’
‘Seren?’ Kettle asked. ‘What is wrong with you?’
She smiled, then pushed herself to her feet, Udinaas – to her astonishment – reaching out to help her regain her balance.
Seeing her wince, he half smiled. ‘You landed hard, Acquitor. Can you walk?’ His smile broadened. ‘Perhaps no faster than the rest of us laggards, now?’
‘You, Udinaas? No, I think not.’
He frowned. ‘Just the two of us right now,’ he said.
Her eyes flickered up to meet his, shied away, then returned again – hard. ‘You heard?’
‘Didn’t need to,’ he replied under his breath as he set the Imass walking stick into her hands. ‘Had Wither sniffing at my heels long before I left the north.’ He shrugged.
Silchas Ruin and Clip had already resumed the journey.
Leaning on the Imass spear, Seren Pedac walked alongside the ex-slave, struggling with a sudden flood of emotion for this broken man. Perhaps, true comrades after all. He and I.
‘Seren Pedac.’
‘Yes?’
‘Stop shifting the pain in your knees into mine, will you?’
Stop – what? Oh.
‘Either that or give me that damned stick back.’
‘If I say “sorry” then, well…’
‘You give it away. Well, say it if you mean it, and either way we’ll leave it at that.’
‘Sorry.’
His surprised glance delighted her.
The rising sea level had saturated the ground beneath the village. Anyone with half their wits would have moved to the stony, treed terrace bordering the flood plain, but the sordid remnants of the Shake dwelling here had simply levered their homes onto stilts and raised the slatted walkways, living above fetid, salty bog crawling with the white-backed crabs known as skullcaps.
Yan Tovis, Yedan Derryg and the troop of lancers reined in at Road’s End, the ferry landing and its assorted buildings on their left, a mass of felled trees rotting into the ground on their right. The air was chill, colder than it should have been this late into spring, and tendrils of low-lying fog hid most of the salt marsh beneath the stilts and bridged walkways.
Among the outbuildings of the landing – all situated on higher ground – there was a stone-walled stable fronted by a courtyard of planed logs, and beyond that, facing the village, an inn without a name.
Dismounting, Yan Tovis stood beside her horse for a long moment, her eyes closing. We have been invaded. I should be riding to every garrison on this coast – Errant fend, they must know by now. Truth delivered the hard way. The empire is at war.
But she was now Queen of the Last Blood, Queen of the Shake. Opening her weary eyes she looked upon the decrepit fishing village. My people, Errant help me. Running away had made sense back then. It made even more sense now.
Beside her, Yedan Derryg, her half-brother, loosened the strap of his visored helm, then said, ‘Twilight, what now?’
She glanced over at him, watched the rhythmic bunching of his bearded jaw. She understood the question in all its ramifications. What now? Do the Shake proclaim their independence, rising eager in the chaos of a Malazan-Letherii war? Do we gather our arms, our young whom we would call soldiers? The Shake cry out their liberty, and the sound is devoured by the shore’s rolling surf.
She sighed. ‘I was in command on the Reach, when the Edur came in their ships. We surrendered. I surrendered.’
To do otherwise would have been suicidal. Yedan should have said those words, then. For he knew the truth of them. Instead, he seemed to chew again for a moment, before turning to squint at the flat, broad ferry. ‘That’s not slipped its mooring in some time, I think. The coast north of Awl must be flooded.’
He gives me nothing. ‘We shall make use of it, all the way out to Third Maiden Fort.’
A nod.
‘Before that, however, we must summon the witches and warlocks.’
‘You’ll find most of them huddled in the village yonder, Queen. And Pully and Skwish will have announced your return. Taloned toes are tapping the floorboards, I would wager.’
‘Go down there,’ she commanded, facing the inn. ‘Escort them back here – I will be in the tavern.’
‘And if the tavern is not big enough?’
An odd concern. She began walking towards the entrance. ‘Then they can perch on shoulders like the crows they are, Yedan.’
‘Twilight.’
She half turned.
Yedan was tightening the straps of his helm once again. ‘Do not do it.’
‘Do not do what?’
‘Send us to war, sister.’
She studied him.
But he said nothing more, and a moment later he had turned away and set off down towards the village.
She resumed her walk, while her soldiers led the mounts towards the stable, the beasts’ hoofs slipping on the slick logs of the courtyard. They had ridden hard, these last horses drawn from a virtually empty garrison fort just north of Tulamesh – reports of bandits had sent the squads into the countryside and they’d yet to return. Yan Tovis believed they would never do so.
At the entranceway she paused, looking down at the slab of stone beneath her boots, on which were carved Shake runes.
‘This Raised Stone honours Teyan Atovis, Rise, who was claimed by the Shore 1113th Year of the Isle. Slain by the Letherii for Debts Unremitted.’
Yan Tovis grunted. One of her kin, no less, dead a thousand years now. ‘Well, Teyan,’ she muttered, ‘you died of drink, and now your stone straddles the threshold of a tavern.’ True, some list of mysterious, crushing debts had invited his ignoble fall to alcohol and misery, but this grand commemoration had taken a slanted view on the hands guiding the man’s fate. And now…Brullyg would be Rise. Will you wear the crown as well as Teyan did?
She pushed open the door and strode inside.
The low-ceilinged room was crowded, every face turned to her.
