The Malazan Empire, page 902
Last and Asane were busy constructing a nest of their own, when they weren’t hunting orthen or collecting water from the dripping pipes. Sheb maintained vigil over the empty wastes from a perch that he called the Crown, while Nappet wandered without purpose, muttering under his breath and cursing his ill luck at finding himself in such pathetic company.
Blind fools, every one of them!
The ghost, who once gloried in his omniscience, fled the singular mind of the Gral named Veed and set out to find the ones accompanying Sulkit. The witch Breath was an adept, sensitive to sorcery. If any of them could be reached, awakened to the extremity of his need, it would be her.
He found them in the circular chamber behind Eyes, but the vast domicile of the now-dead Matron was a realm transformed. The ceiling and walls dripped with bitter slime. Viscid pools sheathed the floor beneath the raised dais and the air roiled with pungent vapours. The vast, sprawling bed that had once commanded the dais now looked diseased, twisted as the roots of a toppled tree. Tendrils hung loose, ends dripping, and the atmosphere shrouding the malformed nightmare on the dais was so thick that all within it was blurred, uncertain, as if in that place reality itself was smudged.
Sulkit stood immobile as a statue in front of the dais, its scales streaming fluids—as if it was melting before their eyes—and strange guttural sounds issuing from its throat.
‘—awakening behind every wall,’ Taxilian was saying. ‘I’m sure of it.’
‘But nothing like this!’ Rautos said, gesturing at Sulkit. ‘Gods below, this air—I can barely breathe!’
‘You’re both fools,’ Breath snapped. ‘This is a ritual. This is the oldest sorcery of all—the magic of sweat and scent and tears—against this, we’re helpless as children! Kill it, I say! Drive a knife into its back—slash open its throat! Before it’s too late—’
‘No!’ retorted Taxilian. ‘We must let this happen—I feel it—in what the drone does we will find our salvation.’
‘Delusions!’
Rautos had positioned himself between the two, but his expression was taut with fear and confusion. ‘There is a pattern,’ he said, addressing neither of them. ‘Everything the drone has done—everywhere else—it has led to this moment. The pattern—I can almost see it. I want—I want . . .’
But he didn’t know what he wanted. The ghost spun wild in the currents of the man’s ineffable needs.
‘There will be answers,’ said Taxilian.
Yes! the ghost cried. And it comes with knives in its hands! It comes to kill you all!
Beneath the level of the Womb, Nappet stood beside a strange pipe running the length of the corridor. He had been following alongside it for some time before becoming aware that the waist-high sheath of bronze had begun emanating heat. Dripping sweat, he hesitated. Retrace his route? He might melt before he reached the stairs he had come down. In the gloom ahead, he could make out nothing to indicate side passages. The hot, brittle air burned in his lungs. He was near panic.
Something swirled within the pipe, rushing down its length. A whimper escaped him—he could die here! ‘Move, you fool. But which way? Hurry. Think!’ Finally, he forced himself forward in a stagger—somewhere ahead, there would be salvation. There had to be. He was sure of it.
The air crackled, sparks arcing from the surface of the pipe. He shrieked, broke into a run. Flashes blinded him as lightning ignited in the corridor. Argent roots snapped out, lanced through him. Agony lit his nerves—his screams punched from his chest, tearing his throat—and he flailed with his hands. Arcs leapt between his fingers. Something was roaring—just ahead—bristling with fire.
The wrong way! I went—
Sudden darkness. Silence.
Nappet halted, gasping. He drew a breath and held it.
Desultory trickling sounds from within the pipe, draining away even as he listened.
He sighed unsteadily.
The air reeked of something strange and bitter, stinging his eyes. What had just happened? He had been convinced that he was going to die, cooked like a lightning-struck dog. He had felt those energies coursing through him, as if acid filled his veins. Sweat cooling on his skin, he shivered.
He heard footsteps and turned. Someone was coming up behind him. No lantern illuminated the corridor. He heard the scrape of iron. ‘Sheb? That you? Last? You damned oaf, light a lantern!’
The figure made no reply.
Nappet licked his lips. ‘Who is that? Say something!’
The ghost watched in horror as Veed strode up to Nappet. A single-bladed axe swung in a savage arc that bit into Nappet’s neck. Spittle flew from the man’s mouth as he rocked with the blow. Bone grated and crunched as Veed tugged his weapon free. Blood gouted from the wound and Nappet reached up to press his palm against his neck, his eyes still wide, still filled with disbelief.
The second blow came from the opposite side. His head fell impossibly on its side, rested a moment on his left shoulder, and then rolled off the man’s back. The headless body toppled.
‘No point in wasting time,’ muttered Veed, crouching to clean the blade. Then he rose and faced the ghost. ‘Stop screaming. Who do you think summoned me in the first place?’
The ghost recoiled. I—I did not—
‘Now lead me to the others, Lifestealer.’
The ghost howled, fled from the abomination. He had to warn the others!
Grinning, Veed followed.
Stepping down, he crushed the last cinders of the paltry hearth, feeling the nuggets roll under his heel, and then turned to face the lifeless hag. He glared at her scaled back, as if silent accusation could cut her down where she stood. But what Torrent willed, he knew, was weaker than rain. ‘Those are the spires of my people’s legends—the fangs of the Wastelands. You stole the stars, witch. You deceived me—’
Olar Ethil snorted, but did not turn round. She was staring south—at least, he thought of it as south, but such certainties, which he had once believed to be unassailable, had now proved as vulnerable to the deathless woman’s magic as the very stones she lit aflame every night. As vulnerable as the bundles of dead grass from which she conjured slabs of dripping meat, and the bedrock that bled water with the rap of one bony knuckle.
Torrent scratched at his sparse beard. He’d used up the last of the oils young Awl warriors applied to burn off the bristle until such time that a true beard was possible—he must look a fool, but nothing could be done for it. Not that anyone cared anyway. There were no giggling maidens with veiled eyes, no coy dances from his path as he strutted the length of the village. All those old ways were gone now. So were the futures they had promised him.
He pictured a Letherii soldier standing atop a heap of bones—a mountain of white that was all that remained of Torrent’s people. Beneath the rim of his helm, the soldier’s face was nothing but bone, leaving a smile that never wavered.
Torrent realized that he had found a lover, and her name was hate. The Letherii details were almost irrelevant—it could be any soldier, any stranger. Any symbol of greed and oppression. The grasping hand, the gleam of avid hunger in the eyes, the spirit that took all it could by virtue of the strength and might it possessed.
Torrent dreamed of destruction. Vast, sweeping, leaving behind nothing but bones.
He glanced again at Olar Ethil. Why do you want me, witch? What will you give me? This is an age of promises, isn’t it? It must be, else I exist without reason.
‘When you find your voice,’ she said without turning, ‘speak to me, warrior.’
‘Why? What will you answer?’
Her laugh was a hollowed-out cackle. ‘When I do, mountains shall crumble. The seas shall boil. The air shall thicken with poison. My answer, warrior, shall deafen the heavens.’ She spun amidst flapping rags. ‘Do you feel it? The gate—it cracks open and the road will welcome what comes through. And such a road!’ She laughed again.
‘My hate is silent,’ Torrent said. ‘It has nothing to say.’
‘But I have been feeding it nonetheless.’
His eyes widened. ‘This fever comes from you, witch?’
‘No, it ever lurked in your soul, like a viper in the night. I but awakened it to righteousness.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it amuses me. Saddle your horse, warrior. We ride to the spires of your legends.’
‘Legends that have outlived the people telling them.’
She cocked her head in his direction. ‘Not yet. Not yet.’ And she laughed again.
‘Where is he?’ Stavi screamed, her small fists lifted, as if moments from striking her.
Setoc held her ground. ‘I don’t know,’ she replied levelly. ‘He always returned before.’
‘But it’s been days and days! Where is he? Where is Toc?’
‘He serves more than one master, Stavi. It was a miracle he was able to stay with us as long as he did.’
Stavi’s sister looked close to tears, but she’d yet to speak. The boy sat with his back against the lifeless flank of Baaljagg where the huge beast lay as if asleep, nose down between its front paws. Playing with a handful of stones, the boy seemed oblivious to his sisters’ distress. She wondered if perhaps he was simple in the head. Sighing, Setoc said, ‘He turned us into the east—and so that is the direction we shall take—’
‘But there’s nothing out there!’
‘I know, Stavi. I don’t know why he wants us to go there. He wouldn’t explain. But, would you go against his wishes?’ It was an unfair tactic, she knew, the kind meant to extort compliance from children.
It worked, but as every adult knew, not for long.
Setoc gestured. The ay lifted to its feet and trotted ahead, while Setoc picked up the boy and cajoled the twins into her wake. They set out, leaving behind their measly camp.
She wondered if Toc would ever return. She wondered if he’d any purpose behind his taking care of them, or had it been some residue of guilt or sense of responsibility for the children of his friend? He had left life behind and could not be held to its ways, or the demands it made upon a mortal soul—no, there could be no human motivation to what such a creature did.
And the eye he’d fixed upon her had belonged to a wolf. But even among such beasts, the closeness of the pack was a tense game of submission and dominance. The bliss of brother- and sisterhood hid political machinations and ruthless judgements. Cruelty needed only opportunity. So, he had led this paltry pack of theirs, and his lordship had been uncontested—after all, he could hardly be threatened with death, could he?
She understood, finally, that she could not trust him. And that her relief at his taking command had been the response of a child, a creature eager to cower in the shadow of an adult, praying for protection, willing itself blind to the possibility that the true threat was found in the man—or woman—standing over it. Of course, the twins had lost everything. Their desperate loyalty to a dead man, who had once been their father’s friend, was reasonable under the circumstances. Stavi and Storii wanted him back. Of course they did, and they had begun to look upon Setoc with something like resentment, as if she was to blame for his absence.
Nonsense, but the twins saw no salvation in Setoc. They saw no protector in her. They’d rather she had been the one to vanish.
The boy had his giant wolf. Would it protect them as well? Not a notion to rely upon.
And I have power, though I can’t yet make out its shape, or even its purpose. Who in their dreams is not omnipotent? If in sleep I grow wings and fly high above the land, it does not mean I will awaken cloaked in feathers. We are gods in our dreams. Disaster strikes when we come to believe the same is true in our real lives.
I wish Torrent was here. I wish he’d never left me. I see him in my mind even now. I see him standing atop a mountain of bones, his eyes dark beneath the rim of his helm.
Torrent, where are you?
‘They looked near death,’ Yedan Derryg said.
Riding beside her brother, Yan Tovis grimaced. ‘They must have awakened something—I told them to protect themselves, now I’m thinking I may have killed them both.’
‘They may look and act like two giggling girls, Twilight, but they aren’t. You killed no one.’
She twisted in her saddle and looked back down the road. The light of torches and lanterns formed a refulgent island in the midst of buildings at the far end of the city. The light looked like a wound. She faced forward again. Darkness, and yet a darkness through which she could see—every detail precise, every hint of colour and tone looking strangely opaque, solid before her eyes. As if the vision she had possessed all her life—in that now distant, remote world—was in truth a feeble, truncated thing. And yet, this did not feel like a gift—a pressure was building behind her eyes.
‘Besides,’ Yedan added, ‘they’re not yet dead.’
They rode on at a canter as the road climbed out of the valley, leaving behind the weed-snarled fields and brush-crowded farm buildings. Ahead was the wall of trees that marked the beginning of the forest called Ashayn. If the tales were true, Ashayn had fallen—every last tree—to the manic industry of the city, and in the leagues beyond that wasteland great fires had destroyed the rest. But the forest had returned, and the boles of blackwood could not be spanned by a dozen men with hands linked. There was no sign of a road or bridle path, but the floor beneath the high canopy was clear of undergrowth.
The gloom thickened once they rode beneath the towering trees. Among the blackwood she could now see other species, equally as massive, smooth-barked down to the serpentine roots. High above, some kind of parasitic plant created islands of moss, serrated leaves and black blossoms, like huge nests, depending from thick tangles of vines. The air was chill, musty, smelling of wet charcoal and sap.
A third of a league, then half, the horses’ hoofs thumping, hauberks rustling and clasps clicking, but from the forest itself only silence.
The pressure had sharpened to pain, as if a spike had been driven into her forehead. The motion of the horse was making her nauseated. Gasping, leaning forward, she reined in. A hand to her face revealed bright blood from her nostrils. ‘Yedan—’
‘I know,’ he said in a growl. ‘Never mind. Memories return. There’s something ahead.’
‘I don’t think—’
‘You said you wanted to see the First Shore.’
‘Not if it makes my head explode!’
‘Retreat is not possible,’ he said, spitting to one side. ‘What assails us, Yan, does not come from what awaits us.’
What? She managed to lift her head, looked across at him.
Her brother was weeping blood. He spat again, a bright red gout, and then said, ‘Kharkanas . . . the empty darkness’—he met her eyes—‘is empty no longer.’
She thought back to the two unconscious witches in the city behind them. They will not survive this. They cannot. I brought them all this way, only to kill them. ‘I must go back—’
‘You cannot. Not yet. Ride that way, Twilight, and you will die.’ And he kicked his horse forward.
After a moment she followed.
Goddess of Darkness, have you returned? Are you awakened in rage? Will you slay all you touch?
The black pillars marched past, a cathedral abandoned in some timeless realm, and now they could hear a sound, coming from just beyond the broken black wall ahead. Something like the crashing of waves.
The First Shore.
Where we began—
A glimmer between the boles, flashes of white—
Brother and sister rode clear of the forest. The horses beneath them slowed, halted as the reins grew slack, lifeless.
With red-smeared vision, silence like a wound, they stared, uncomprehending.
The First Shore.
The clouds in the west had blackened and fused into an impenetrable wall. The ground was silver with frost and the grasses crunched and broke underfoot. Hunched beneath furs, Strahl watched the enemy forces forming up on the gentle slope of the valley opposite them. Two hundred paces to his right Maral Eb stood in a vanguard of chosen Barahn warriors, behind him the mixed units of four lesser clans—he had taken command of those warriors who had tasted the humiliation of defeat. A courageous decision, enough to grind away some of the burrs in Strahl’s eyes. Some, but not all.
Breaths plumed in white streams. Warriors stamped to jolt feeling back into their feet. Blew on hands gripping weapons. Across the way, horses bucked and reared amidst the ranks of mounted archers and lancers. Pennons hung grey and dull, standards stiff as planed boards.
The iron taste of panic was in the bitter air, and eyes lifted again and again to stare at the terrifying sky—to the west, the black, seething wall; to the east the cerulean blue sparkling with crystals and the sun burnished white as snow and flanked by baleful sun-dogs. Directly above, a ragged seam bound the two. The blackness was winning the battle, Strahl could see, as tendrils snaked out like roots, bleeding into the morning.
Now on the valley floor phalanxes of kite-shielded Saphii held to the centre, their long spears anchored in the hinged sockets at the hip. D’ras skirmishers spilled out around the bristling squares, among them archers with arrows nocked, edging ever closer. The Akrynnai cavalry held to the wings, struggling to keep formation as they advanced at the walk.
Sceptre Irkullas was wasting no time. No personal challenges on the field, no rousing exhortations before his troops. The Akrynnai wanted this battle joined, the slaughter unleashed, as if the chorus of clashing weapons and the screams of the dying and wounded could wrench the world back to its normal state, could right the sky overhead, could send the cold and darkness reeling away.
Blood to pay, blood to appease. Is that what you believe, Akrynnai?
