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August 21 - November 3, 2022
Not even the lichen of the tundra is at peace. All is struggle, all is war for dominance. Those who lose, vanish.’
‘In all that is to come, think on forgiveness. Hold to it, but know too that it must not always be freely given.’ Silverfox swung her sleepy gaze to Korlat and the dark eyes suddenly hardened. ‘Sometimes forgiveness must be denied.’
‘No, in the end the minds and senses of all that is alive define what is real – real for us, that is.’ ‘That’s a tautology.’
‘Since you can never crush a black market the next best thing is to run it.’
Death and dying makes us into children once again, in truth, one last time, there in our final wailing cries. More than one philosopher has claimed that we ever remain children, far beneath the indurated layers that make up the armour of adulthood.
You must dismantle your sources, Toc the Younger, lest you do nothing but ape the prejudices of others.’
‘Some stone is sand, some is water. Edged tools can be made of the stone that is water. Crushing tools are made of the stone that is sand, but only the hardest of those.’ ‘And here I’ve gone through life thinking stone is stone.’
‘Forces of nature, Mother,’ he said, ‘are indifferent to justice,
Peace is the time of waiting for war. A time of preparation, or a time of wilful ignorance, blind, blinkered and prattling behind secure walls.
‘Easy answer, as you say. So, are easy answers always right answers, Quick?’
From histories and philosophies and religions came an understanding of human motivation,
‘Every gift is edged.’
‘Names are not for the asking, mortal. Names are earned.’
‘You were sent into a Warren of Chaos, mortal. You survived – in itself an unlikely event – and travelled the slow vortex towards the Rent. Then, when Morn’s portal should have taken you, it instead cast you out. Stone has taken one of your eyes. And the ay here has chosen you in the sharing of her soul. Baaljagg has seen in you a rare worthiness, Aral Fayle—
‘I am Hood’s Herald – do you dare challenge a servant of the lord of death?’ The T’lan Imass’s desiccated lips peeled back. ‘Why would we hesitate, Jaghut? Now ask of your lord, does he dare challenge us?’
‘Commander, your soldiers …’ ‘What of them?’ ‘They are more … and less. No longer what they once were. Raraku, sir, has burned the bridges of their pasts, one and all – it’s all gone.’ He met Whiskeyjack’s eyes in wonder. ‘And they are yours. Heart and soul. They are yours.’
‘Tell me, Talamandas,’ Quick Ben asked with veiled eyes, ‘is survival a right, or a privilege?’ ‘The latter, mortal. The latter. And it must be earned.
An end, an end. Gods, she might be right. He stared at Tool’s fur-clad back, and was almost overcome with a sense of loss. Vast, ineffable loss. ‘You might be wrong, Lady.’ ‘I might,’ she agreed affably. ‘Do you hope that I am, Toc the Younger?’ He nodded. ‘Why?’ she asked. Why? Unhuman creatures sworn to genocide. Brutal, deadly, implacable. Relentless beyond all reason. Toc nodded towards the T’lan Imass ahead of them. ‘Because he’s my friend, Lady Envy.’
‘Well, yes. The Domin is expanding. It has armies, and cities. These are facts. Details are for academics, Toc the Younger. Shouldn’t you be concerning yourself with more salient matters, such as your survival?’
‘A pointless, senseless death.’ ‘They’re all pointless and senseless, friend. Until the living carve meaning out of them. What are you going to carve, Gruntle, out of Harllo’s death? Take my advice, an empty cave offers no comfort.’
Gods forgive me, I ordered that healer to kill himself. If this is the true face of command, then it is a skull’s grin. I want none of it. No more, Paran, you cannot steel yourself to this life, to these choices. Who are you to balance lives? To gauge worth, to measure flesh by the pound? No, this is a nightmare. I’m done with it.
Teach him what? How to live beneath the burden of command? That’s something I can’t manage myself. I need only look into Whiskeyjack’s face to understand that no-one can – no-one who has a heart, anyway. We learn to achieve but one thing: the ability to hide our thoughts, to mask our feelings, to bury our humanity deep in our souls. And that can’t be taught, only shown.
the living hiding behind the dead.
Need, when it overwhelms, becomes poison, Toc the Younger. The great corrupter of love,
And now, marching at their sides, the Malazans. Dujek Onearm. Whiskeyjack. And ten thousand unwavering souls. What made such men and women so intractable in their sense of honour?
And perhaps that is the final, most devastating truth. The gods care nothing for ascetic impositions on mortal behaviour. Care nothing for rules of conduct, for the twisted morals of temple priests and monks. Perhaps indeed they laugh at the chains we wrap around ourselves – our endless, insatiable need to find flaws within the demands of life. Or perhaps they do not laugh, but rage at us. Perhaps our denial of life’s celebration is our greatest insult to those whom we worship and serve.
‘Very well. You found a need to chain yourself, a need to enforce upon your own soul the strictures as defined by your vows. In other words, Itkovian, your vows were born of a dialogue with yourself – not with Fener. The chains are your own, as is the possession of the keys with which to unlock them when they are no longer required.’ ‘No longer required?’ ‘Aye. When all that is encompassed by living ceases to threaten your faith.’ ‘You suggest, then, that my crisis is not with my faith, but with my vows. That I have blurred the distinction.’
‘That beast is a strange one, indeed. Never seen a mule so … so watchful. Of everything. Queen of Dreams, that’s the oddest looking range of mountains I’ve ever seen!’
A mula é um soletaken. Seria o alquimista?
A battle that made shields and armour useless, that made flailing swords futile. A soul hardened beyond humanity was the only defence, and for Itkovian that price was too high. I am the Shield Anvil. I surrender to what lies before me. Thicker than smoke, the grief unleashed and now lost, churning this lifeless air. A city has been killed. Even the survivors huddling in the tunnels below – Fener take me, better they never emerge … to see this.
We are all pushed into a world of madness, yet it must now fall to each of us to pull back from this Abyss, to drag ourselves free of the descending spiral. From horror, grief must be fashioned, and from grief, compassion.
I comprehend you, now, Rath’Fener, but comprehension is not synonymous with absolution. The justice that is your punishment does not waver. Thus, you were made to know pain.
‘In any case, those severed hands were as poison to Fener. He could not touch them, nor could he remove them from his realm. He burned the tattoos announcing his denial upon the high priest’s skin, and so sealed the virulent power of the hands, at least for the time being. And that should have been that. Eventually, the priest would die, and his spirit would come to Fener to retrieve what had been cruelly and wrongfully taken from him. That spirit would then become the weapon of Fener’s wrath, his vengeance upon the priests of the fouled temple, and indeed upon the Claw and the Empress
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The curse of great minds. Arriving young to an idea, surviving the siege that invariably assails it, then, finally, standing guard on the ramparts long after the war’s over, weapons dull in leaden hands
‘A man possessing power must act decisively,
‘Betrayal, aye. Poliel, Mistress of Pestilence, aspires to the role of Consort to the King in Chains. A Herald has been … recruited. An ancient warrior seeks to become Reaver; whilst the House has found, in a distant land, its Mortal Sword. Mowri now embraces the Three – Cripple, Leper and Fool – which are in place of Spinner, Mason and Soldier. Most disturbing of all, ancient power trembles around the last of the dread cards … mortal, the Master of the Deck must not remain blind to the threat.’
‘To one side, my friend. What I do is a mercy—’ ‘No, it is a judgement, Anomander Rake. And,’ he added, eyes on Dragnipur’s black blade, ‘a sentence.’
I have found myself in a living nightmare, and the monster that stalks me is none other than myself.
‘War has its necessities, Korlat, and I have always understood that. Always known the cost. But, this day, by my own hand, I have realized something else. War is not a natural state. It is an imposition, and a damned unhealthy one. With its rules, we willingly yield our humanity. Speak not of just causes, worthy goals. We are takers of life. Servants of Hood, one and all.’
The march of armies, he reflected, was timeless.
Of all the weapons we turn upon ourselves, guilt is the sharpest, Silverfox. It can carve one’s own past into unrecognizable shapes, false memories leading to beliefs that sow all kinds of obsessions.’
Flesh and blood Bonecaster, you’ve become colder than the T’lan Imass you now command. I suppose, then, they have indeed found a worthy master. Beru fend us all.
‘Very good. Pray, then, that there is mercy in my soul. True, I’ve yet to find any myself, though I admit I’ve little searched. But perhaps it exists. Hold to that, my friend.
‘Upon faith you hold to success? Madness! We must prepare for the worst!’
Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.’ ‘Can you explain that?’
Diversity is worth celebrating, Humbrall Taur, for it is the birthplace of wisdom.’
To grieve is the gift of the living
