The Malazan Empire, page 794
Suddenly the shafts pressed hard against her and shoved.
Shouting in alarm, Picker pitched forward, slid on the damp floor as if it was layered in grease. She fought to grasp hold of something, but nothing touched her flailing hands – and then the floor vanished beneath her, and she was falling.
Harllo’s sudden unexpected plummet ended quickly amidst sharp-edged boulders. Gashes ripped across his back, one thigh and the ankle of the same leg. The impact left him stunned. He vaguely heard something strike the rocks nearby, a terrible snapping, crunching sound.
Eventually, he stirred. The pain from the wounds was fierce, and he could feel blood trickling down, but it seemed he’d broken no bones. He crawled slowly to where he’d heard Bainisk land, and heard ragged breathing.
When his probing hands touched warm flesh, he found it wet, broken. And at the brush of his fingertips it flinched away.
‘Bainisk!’
A low groan, and then a gasp.
‘Bainisk, it’s me. We made it down – we got away.’
‘Harllo?’ The voice was awful in its weakness, its pain. ‘Tell me…’
He pulled himself up alongside Bainisk, his eyes making out a rough shape. He found Bainisk’s face, tilted towards him, and Harllo drew himself on to his knees and eased up his friend’s head – feeling strange shards moving under his hands, beneath Bainisk’s blood-matted hair – and then, as gently as he could manage, he settled the head on to his lap.
‘Bainisk.’
The face was crushed along one side. It was a miracle that he could speak at all. ‘I dreamed,’ he whispered. ‘I dreamed of the city. Floating on the lake…going wherever the waves go. Tell me, Harllo, tell me about the city.’
‘You’ll see it soon enough—’
‘Tell me.’
Harllo stroked his friend’s brow. ‘In the city…Bainisk, oh, in the city, there’s shops and everybody has all the money they need and you can buy whatever you want. There’s gold and silver, beautiful silver, and the people are happy to give it away to anyone they like. No one ever argues about anything – why should they? There’s no hunger, no hurts, no hurts of any kind, Bainisk. In the city every child has a mother and a father…and the mother loves her son for ever and ever and the father doesn’t rape her. And you can just pick them for yourself. A beautiful mother, a strong, handsome father – they’d be so happy to take care of you – you’ll see, you’ll see.
‘They’d see how good you are. They’d see right through to your heart, and see it pure and golden, because all you ever wanted to do was to help out, because you were a burden to them and you didn’t want that, and maybe if you helped enough they’d love you, and want you to be with them, to live with them. And when it didn’t work, well, it just means you have to work harder. Do more, do everything.
‘Oh, Bainisk, the city…there are mothers…’
He stopped then, for Bainisk had stopped breathing. He was perfectly still, his whole broken-up body folded over the sharp rocks, his head so heavy in Harllo’s lap.
Leave them there, now.
The city, ah, the city. As dusk closes in, the blue fires awaken. Figures stand in a cemetery surrounded by squat Daru crypts, and they are silent as they watch the workers sealing the door once more. Starlings flit overhead.
Down at the harbour a woman steps lithely on to the dock and breathes deep the squalid air, and then sets out to find her sister.
Scorch and Leff stand nervously at the gate of an estate. They’re not talking much these nights. Within the compound, Torvald Nom paces. He is not sure if he should go home. The night has begun strange, heavy, and his nerves are a mess. Madrun and Lazan Door are throwing knuckles against a wall, while Studious Lock stands on a balcony, watching.
Challice Vidikas sits in her bedroom, holding a glass globe and staring at the trapped moon within its crystal clear sphere.
In a room above a bar Blend sits beside the motionless form of her lover, and weeps.
Below, Duiker slowly looks up as Fisher, cradling a lute, begins a song.
In the Phoenix Inn, an old, worn-out woman, head pounding, shambles to her small cubicle and sinks down on to the bed. There were loves in the world that never found voice. There were secrets never unveiled, and what would have been the point of that? She was no languid beauty. She was no genius wit. Courage failed her again and again, but not this time, as she drew sharp blades lengthways up her wrists, at precise angles, and watched as life flowed away. In Irilta’s mind, this last gesture was but a formality.
Passing through Two-Ox Gate, Bellam Nom sets out on the road. From a hovel among the lepers he hears someone softly sobbing. The wind has died, the smell of rotting flesh hangs thick and motionless. He hurries on, as the young are wont to do.
Much farther down the road, Cutter rides on a horse stolen from Coll’s stable. His chest is filled with ashes, his heart a cold stone buried deep.
He drew a breath, sometime earlier that day, filled with love.
And then released it, black with grief.
Both seem to be gone now, vanished within him, perhaps never to return. And yet, hovering there before his mind’s eye, he sees a woman.
Ghostly, wrapped in black, dark eyes fixed upon his own.
Not this path, my love.
He shakes his head at her words. Shakes his head.
Not my path, my love.
But he rides on.
I will give you my breath, my love. To hold.
Hold it for me, as I hold yours. Turn back.
Cutter shakes his head again. ‘You left me.’
No, I gave you a choice, and the choice remains. My love, I gave you a place to come to, when you are ready. Find me. Come find me.
‘This first.’
Take my breath. But not this one, not this one.
‘Too late, Apsalar. It was always too late.’
The soul knows no greater anguish than to take a breath that begins with love and ends with grief. But there are other anguishes, many others. They unfold as they will, and to dwell within them is to understand nothing.
Except, perhaps, this. In love, grief is a promise. As sure as Hood’s nod. There will be many gardens, but this last one to visit is so very still. Not meant for lovers. Not meant for dreamers. Meant only for a single figure, there in the dark, standing alone.
Taking a single breath.
Chapter Twenty
In hollow grove and steeple chamber
The vine retreats and moss rolls inside
The void from whence it came
In shallow grave and cloven crypt
The bones shiver and shades flee
Into the spaces between breaths
In tilted tower and webslung doorway
Echoes still and whispers will die
Men in masks rap knuckles ’gainst walls
In dark cabinets and beneath bed slats
Puppets clack limbs and painted eyes widen
To the song pouring down from hills
And the soul starts in its cavern drum
Battered and blunted to infernal fright
This is the music of the beast
The clamour of the world at bay
Begun its mad savage charge
The hunt commences my friends
The Hounds are among us.
Prelude
Toll the Hounds
Fisher
Faces of stone, and not one would turn Nimander’s way. His grief was too cold for them, too strange. He had not shown enough shock, horror, dismay. He had taken the news of her death as would a commander hearing of the loss of a soldier, and only Aranatha – in the single, brief moment when she acknowledged anyone or anything – had but nodded in his direction, as if in grim approval.
Skintick’s features were tight with betrayal, once the stunned disbelief wore off, and the closeness he had always felt with Nimander now seemed to have suddenly widened into a chasm no bridge could span. Nenanda had gone so far as to half draw his sword, yet was torn as to who most deserved his blade’s bite: Clip or Nimander. Clip for his shrug, after showing them the crumbled edge of the cliff where she must have lost her footing. Or Nimander, who stood dry-eyed and said nothing. Desra, calculating, selfish Desra, was the first to weep.
Skintick expressed the desire to climb down into the crevasse, but this was a sentimental gesture he had drawn from his time among humans – the need to observe the dead, perhaps even to bury Kedeviss’s body beneath boulders – and his suggestion was met with silence. The Tiste Andii held no regard for corpses. There would be no return to Mother Dark, after all. The soul was flung away, to wander for ever lost.
They set out shortly thereafter, Clip in the lead, continuing on through the rough pass. Clouds swept down the flanks of the peaks, as if the mountains were shedding their mantles of white, and before long the air grew cold and damp, thin in their lungs, and all at once the clouds swallowed the world.
Stumbling on the slick, icy stone, Nimander trudged on in Clip’s wake – although the warrior was no longer even visible, there was only one possible path. He could feel judgement hardening upon his back, an ever thickening succession of layers, from Desra, from Nenanda, and most painfully from Skintick, and it seemed the burdens would never relent. He longed for Aranatha to speak up, to whisper the truth to them all, but she was silent as a ghost.
They were now all in grave danger. They needed to be warned, but Nimander could guess the consequences of such a revelation. Blood would spill, and he could not be certain that it would be Clip’s. Not now, not when Clip could unleash the wrath of a god – or whatever it was that possessed the warrior.
Kedeviss had brought to him her suspicions down in the village beside the lakebed, giving firm shape to what he had already begun to believe. Clip had awakened but at a distance, as if behind a veil. Oh, he had always shown his contempt for Nimander and the others, but this was different. Something fundamental had changed. The new contempt now hinted of hunger, avarice, as if Clip saw them as nothing more than raw meat, awaiting the flames of his need.
Yet Nimander understood that Clip would only turn upon them if cornered, if confronted. As Kedeviss had done – even when Nimander had warned her against such a scene. No, Clip still needed them. His way in. As for what would happen then, not even the gods knew. Lord Anomander Rake did not suffer upstarts. He was never slowed by indecisiveness, and in delivering mercy even the cruellest miser could not match his constraint. And as for Clip’s claim to be some sort of emissary from Mother Dark, well, that had become almost irrelevant, unless the god within the warrior was seeking to usurp Mother Dark herself.
This notion disturbed Nimander. The goddess was, after all, turned away. Her leaving had left a void. Could something as alien as the Dying God assume the Unseen Crown? Who would even kneel before such an entity?
It was hard to imagine Anomander Rake doing so, or any of the other Tiste Andii that Nimander and his kin had known. Obedience had never been deemed a pure virtue among the Tiste Andii. To follow must be an act born of deliberation, of clear-eyed, cogent recognition that the one to be followed has earned the privilege. So often, after all, formal structures of hierarchy stood in place of such personal traits and judgements. A title or rank did not automatically confer upon the one wearing it any true virtue, or even worthiness to the claim.
Nimander had seen for himself the flaws inherent in that hierarchy. Among the Malazans, the renegade army known as the Bonehunters, there had been officers Nimander would not follow under any circumstances. Men and women of incompetence – oh, he’d seen how such fools were usually weeded out, through the informal justice system practised by the common soldier, a process often punctuated by a knife in the back, which struck Nimander as a most dangerous habit. But these were human ways, not those of the Tiste Andii.
If Clip and the Dying God that possessed him truly believed they could usurp Mother Dark, and indeed her chosen son, Anomander Rake, as ruler of the Tiste Andii, then that conceit was doomed. And yet, he could not but recall the poisonous lure of saemankelyk. There could be other paths to willing obedience.
And that is why I can say nothing. Why Aranatha is right. We must lull Clip into disregarding us, so that he continues believing we are fools. Because there is the chance, when the moment arrives, that I alone will be standing close enough. To strike. To catch him – them – unawares.
It may be that Anomander Rake and the others in Black Coral will have nothing to fear from Clip, from the Dying God. It may be that they will swat them down with ease.
But we cannot be sure of that.
In truth, I am afraid…
‘I can see water.’
Startled, Nimander glanced back at Skintick, but his cousin would not meet his eyes.
‘Where the valley dips down, eastward – I think that is the Cut that Clip described. And along the north shore of it, we will find Black Coral.’
Clip had halted on an outcropping and was staring down into the misty valley. They had left most of the cloud in their wake, descending beneath its ceiling. Most of the range was now on their left, westward, the nearest cliff-face grey and black and broken only by a dozen or so mountain sheep wending their way along a seam.
Skintick called out to the warrior, ‘That looks to be a long swim across, Clip.’
The man turned, rings spinning on their chain. ‘We will find a way,’ he said. ‘Now, we should continue on, before it gets too dark.’
‘What is your hurry?’ Skintick asked. ‘The entire trail down is bound to be treacherous, especially in this half-light. What would be the point in taking a tumble and…’ Skintick went no further.
And breaking a neck.
In the uncomfortable silence that followed, only the clack of the rings carried on, like a man chewing stones.
After a moment, Clip stepped back from the ledge and set out down the path once more.
Nimander made to follow but Skintick grasped his arm, forcing him round.
‘Enough,’ Skintick growled, and Nenanda moved up beside him, Desra joining them. ‘We want to know what’s going on, Nimander.’
Nenanda spoke. ‘She didn’t just fall – do you think we’re fools, Nimander?’
‘Not fools,’ he replied, and then hesitated, ‘but you must play at being fools…for a little longer.’
‘He killed her, didn’t he?’
At Skintick’s question Nimander forced himself to lock gazes with his cousin, but he said nothing.
Nenanda gave a sudden hiss and whirled to glare at Aranatha, who stood nearby. ‘You must have sensed something!’
Her brows arched. ‘Why do you say that?’
He seemed moments from closing on her with a hand upraised, but she too did not flinch, and after a moment a look of sheer helplessness crumpled Nenanda’s face and he turned from them all.
‘He’s not what he was,’ said Desra. ‘I’ve felt it – he’s…uninterested.’
Of course she was speaking of Clip. Indeed they were not fools, none of them. Still Nimander said nothing. Still he waited.
Skintick could no longer hold Nimander’s gaze. He glanced briefly at Desra and then stepped back. ‘Fools, you said. We must play at being fools.’
Nenanda faced them once more. ‘What does he want with us? What did he ever want? Dragging us along as if we were but his pets.’ His eyes fixed on Desra. ‘Flinging you on your back every now and then to keep the boredom away – and now you’re saying what? Only that he’s become bored by the distraction. Well.’
She gave no sign that his words wounded her. ‘Ever since he awakened,’ she said. ‘I don’t think boredom is a problem for him, not any more. And that doesn’t make sense.’
‘Because,’ added Skintick, ‘he’s still contemptuous of us. Yes, I see your point, Desra.’
‘Then what does he want with us?’ Nenanda demanded again. ‘Why does he still need us at all?’
‘Maybe he doesn’t,’ said Skintick.
Silence.
Nimander finally spoke. ‘She made a mistake.’
‘Confronted him.’
‘Yes.’ He stepped away from Skintick, setting his gaze upon the descent awaiting them. ‘My authority holds no weight,’ he said. ‘I told her to stay away – to leave it alone.’
‘Leave it to Anomander Rake, you mean.’
He faced Skintick again. ‘No. That is too much of an unknown. We – we don’t know the situation in Black Coral. If they’re…vulnerable. We don’t know anything of that. It’d be dangerous to assume someone else can fix all this.’
They were all watching him now.
‘Nothing has changed,’ he said. ‘If he gets even so much as a hint – it must be us to act first. We choose the ground, the right moment. Nothing has changed – do you all understand me?’
Nods. And odd, disquieting expressions on every face but Aranatha’s – he could not read them. ‘Am I not clear enough?’
Skintick blinked, as if surprised. ‘You are perfectly clear, Nimander. We should get moving, don’t you think?’
What – what has just happened here? But he had no answers. Uneasy, he moved out on to the trail.
The rest fell in behind him.
Nenanda drew Skintick back, slowing their progress, and hissed, ‘How, Skin? How did he do that? We were there, about to – I don’t know – and then, all of a sudden, he just, he just—’
‘Took us into his hands once more, yes.’
‘How?’
Skintick simply shook his head. He did not think he could find the right words – not for Nenanda, not for the others. He leads. In the ways of leading, the ways the rest of us do not – and can never – understand.
I looked into his eyes, and I saw such resolve that I could not speak.
