Memories of Ice (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #3)

by Steven Erikson

Had they not joined in chaining Raest, they would all – Imass and Jaghut both – have found themselves kneeling before that Tyrant. A temporary truce of expedience.

The Fall had shattered a continent. Forests had burned, the firestorms lighting the horizons in every direction, bathing crimson the heaving ash-filled clouds blanketing the sky. The conflagration had seemed unending, world-devouring, weeks into months, and through it all could be heard the screams of a god.

K’rul blinked, fixed his dark, heavy eyes on the High King. ‘For this crime, Kallor, we deliver appropriate punishment. Know this: you, Kallor Eiderann Tes’thesula, shall know mortal life unending. Mortal, in the ravages of age, in the pain of wounds and the anguish of despair. In dreams brought to ruin. In love withered. In the shadow of Death’s spectre, ever a threat to end what you will not relinquish.’ Draconus spoke, ‘Kallor Eiderann Tes’thesula, you shall never ascend.’ Their sister said, ‘Kallor Eiderann Tes’thesula, each time you rise, you shall then fall. All that you achieve shall turn to dust in your hands. As you have wilfully done here, so it shall be in turn visited upon all that you do.’ ‘Three voices curse you,’ K’rul intoned. ‘It is done.’

And the fact remained, whatever games the gods played, it was hard-working dirt-poor bastards like him who suffered for it.

If you want to call kicking a hole in a fence before getting obliterated by the man who owns the house “impressive”, go right ahead.’

‘It may be relevant that the Matron was the original soul sealing the Rent. Another hapless creature resides there now, we must presume.’

Pain darkened the world. Pain dislocated. Turned one’s own flesh and bones into a stranger’s house, from which no escape seemed possible.

No matter what, Tavore will take care of Felisin.

… I am to blame for all that’s happened, sir. The cull – the rapes, the murders, the deaths of my parents, and all that Felisin must now endure.’ ‘Captain—’ ‘It is all right, sir.’ Paran smiled. ‘The children of my parents are, one and all, capable of virtually anything. We can survive the consequences. Perhaps we lack normal conscience, perhaps we are monsters in truth. Thank you for the news, Commander.

And now the horn moans on this grey-clad dawn drawing the disparate host To war, to war, and the charging frenzy of unbidden memories of ice.

You must dismantle your sources, Toc the Younger, lest you do nothing but ape the prejudices of others.’

There is no burying the history of our lives.

Granted, that repugnant creature Kruppe was amusing enough, in the manner that an obese rat trying to cross a rope bridge was worth a cackle or three.

‘I am not done with you!’ Kallor hissed. ‘But I am with you,’ the Malazan calmly replied, continuing on.

On the road from Pale, Onearm’s Host – almost ten thousand veterans of the Genabackan Campaign – moved to join the ranks of Caladan Brood’s vast army. The march had begun, onward to war, against an enemy they had never seen and of whom they knew almost nothing.

Midnight comes often in the dusk of my life, when I look back upon all that I have survived. The deaths of so many for whom I cared and loved in my heart, have expunged all sense of glory from my thoughts. To have escaped those random fates has lost all triumph. I know you have seen me, friend, my lined face and silent regard, the cold calcretions that slow my embittered pace, as I walk down the last years, clothed in darkness as are all old men, haunted by memories …

‘Onos is “clanless man”. T’ is “broken”. Ool is “veined” while lan is “flint” and in combination T’oolan is “flawed flint”.’

‘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.’

Tellann’s warren, a place not where, but when. The time of youth. For the world.

Antsy’s mouth hung open, his moustache twitching as if independently alive.

‘Ah, and have you seen their like … animate?’ The wizard scowled. ‘No, but something similar, squatter – the features slightly more pronounced—’ ‘Slightly, aye, slightly. Squatter? No surprise, we never went hungry, for the sea provided. Yet more, Tartheno Toblakai were among us …’ ‘You were T’lan Imass! Hood’s breath!

‘Defied? No. We simply failed to arrive in time – our pursuit of the Jaghut had forced us to venture onto the seas, to dwell among ice-flows and on treeless islands. And in our isolation from kin, among the elder peoples – the Tartheno – we changed … when our distant kin did not.

All extinct now. All nothing more than dust. The Imass have outlasted their own deities. Difficult to imagine, but they are godless in every sense, Toc the Younger.

The first Capan tribes found naught but the barrows of Barghast dead. They levelled them and with the Daru raised a city on our sacred land.

My own belief is that the Toblakai, the Barghast and the Trell are all from the same stock, with the Barghast having more human blood than the other two.

The Moranth claim kinship with the Barghast – they call us their Fallen Kin. But it is they who have fallen, not us.

‘He’s on his way back. It’s protective sorcery that’s keeping him asleep.’ ‘Can you speed things up?’ ‘Sure.’ The healer slapped the wizard. Quick Ben’s eyes snapped open. ‘Ow. You bastard, Mallet.’

sometimes the most telling communication doesn’t use words.’

Need, when it overwhelms, becomes poison, Toc the Younger.

There’s nothing calculated when you’re being human, old friend. That’s what makes you so deadly.’

‘Why did we bury them? Hood’s breath! We honour our enemies – no matter who they might be.

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.

‘The event of siege, alas, offers no relief from property taxes, master. The monies are due. Fortunately, with the evacuation, there is no-one at Daru House to await their arrival.’

Do not embrace this wonder so tightly you crush the life from it.

How many Imass tribes discovered that their gods were in fact Jaghut Tyrants? Hidden behind friendly masks. Tyrants, who manipulated them with the weapon of faith.

Would’ve made a good Emperor, I said. Not wanting the job is the best and only qualification worth considering.’

His blood flowed glacial cold in his veins, and he knew, with dread verging on panic, that the assault had but just begun.

He would be, Brukhalian knew, dead before dawn. Yet, before then, Itkovian would be healed, brutally mended without regard to the mental trauma that accompanied all wounds. The Shield Anvil would assume command once again, but not as the man he had been.

‘He is the Shield Anvil. Fener knows grief, so much grief that it is beyond his capacity to withstand it. And so he chooses a human heart. Armoured. A mortal soul, to assume the sorrow of the world. The Shield Anvil.

‘I am the Shield Anvil.’ I am Fener’s grief. I am the world’s grief. And I will hold. I will hold it all, for we are not yet done.

The hand of vengeance stayed cold only so long. Any soul possessing a shred of humanity could not help but see the reality behind cruel deliverance, no matter how justified it might have at first seemed.

Approaching, Antsy grinned. ‘Hello, Capustan. The Bridgeburners have arrived.’

Towering above wind-whipped waves – no, dunes of sand. Figures, in the monolith’s shadow. Three, three in all. Ragged, broken, dying.

because sometimes a smile is precisely what we all need.’

Quick Ben raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, he made the warrens, after all. We swim his immortal blood – we mages, and everyone else who employs the pathways of sorcery, including the gods. Yours, too, I imagine.’

‘Aye. The High Priest has, by design or chance, come into contact with the Warren of Chaos – an object, perhaps, forged within that warren. The protective seal around his severed hands was obliterated by that vast, uncontrolled surge of power. And, finding Fener, those hands … pushed.’

‘My companion, Korbal Broach, alas, would like to kill you.’ ‘Can’t please everyone.’

‘Thank you. I’ll not deny I am impressed by your mastery of six warrens, Quick Ben. In retrospect, you should have held back on at least half of what you command.’ The man made to rise. ‘But, Bauchelain,’ the wizard replied, ‘I did.’

And what of you, Felisin? With your wide smile and dancing eyes? There is no modesty in the Otataral Mines, nothing to shield you from the worst of human nature. You’ll have been taken under wing none the less, by some pimp or pit-thug. A flower crushed underfoot.

Reluctance to unsheathe those swords and all they represent seems a good thing to me.