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Paran has been used by a god. He’s walked within the sword, Dragnipur. He has the blood of a Hound of Shadow in his veins. And none of us know what changes such things have wrought in him, or even what they portend. He’s been anything but predictable, and he’s almost impossible to manage – oh, he’ll follow orders I give him, but I think if Laseen believes she can use him, she might be in for a surprise.’
‘Toc, listen to me, please. She’s chained down below, and the reach does not encompass the entire room. Listen. I will set you down beyond her grasp. I will bring food, water, blankets – the Seer will pay little heed to her cries, for she is always crying these days. Nor will he probe towards her mind – there are matters of far greater import consuming him.’ ‘He will have you devoured, Seerdomin.’ ‘I was devoured long ago, Malazan.’ ‘I – I am sorry for that.’
‘I have had yet another, equally frustrating conversation with Mok. I’d been wondering, you see, why he and his brothers have not challenged you to combat yet. Both Senu and Thurule have fought Tool – and lost. Mok was next. Turns out the Seguleh will not fight women, unless attacked.
‘Well!’ Lady Envy ran her hands through her hair. ‘I think I’ll head down and stare into a wolf’s miserable eyes for a time! Just to improve my mood, you understand. You know, at least Tool had a sense of humour.’ ‘He is the First Sword.’ Muttering under her breath as she made her way back down the street, slippered feet barely brushing the icy cobbles, Lady Envy only paused when she reached the entrance to the house. ‘Oh! That was quite funny! In an odd way. Well! How extraordinary!’
‘Rides unknowing. He is naught but a shell, sir. There was naught else within him but pain. Its taking has stolen his knowledge of himself. Would you have had that as Buke’s fate as well, sir?’
Now, stop clenching that mule with your knees – the beast hates it. Settle in that saddle as if it was a horse, for it believes itself to be so. It notes how everyone else rides, notes how the horses carry their charges. Its eyes never rest – have you not noticed? This is the most alert beast this world has ever seen, and don’t ask me why.
‘The Tiste Edur are of Elder Shadow,’ Quick Ben noted. ‘Within the seas, shadows swim. Kurald Emurlahn. The Warren of the Tiste Edur, Elder Shadow, is broken, and has been lost to mortals.’ ‘Lost?’ Quick Ben’s brows rose. ‘Never found, you mean. Meanas – where Shadowthrone and Cotillion and the Hounds dwell—’ ‘Is naught but a gateway,’ the Moranth officer finished. Paran grunted. ‘If a shadow could cast a shadow, that shadow would be Meanas – is that what you two are saying? Shadowthrone rules the guardhouse?’
The Hounds of Shadow – they are the guardians of the gate. Damn, that makes too much sense to be in error. But the warren is also shattered. Meaning, that gate might not lead anywhere. Or maybe it belongs to the largest fragment. Does Shadowthrone know the truth? That his mighty Throne of Shadows
The Tiste Edur are active once more, by what we’ve seen here. They’re returning to the mortal world – perhaps they’ve re-awakened the true Throne of Shadow, and maybe they’re about to pay their new gatekeeper a visit.’
The transition was so swift, so effortless, that it left him reeling, stumbling across uneven flagstones
The flagstone directly before him twisted into a new image, one he had not seen before, yet he instinctively recognized it as the one he sought. The carving was rough, worn, the deep grooves forming a chaotic web of shadows. Paran felt himself being pulled forward, down, into the scene. He appeared in a wide, low chamber. Unadorned, dressed stone formed the walls, water-stained and covered in lichen, mould and moss. High to his right and left were wide windows – horizontal slits – both crowded with a riot of creepers and vines that snaked down into the room, onto the floor and through a carpet
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Seven paces ahead, on a raised dais, stood a throne. Carved from a single trunk of crimson wood, unplaned, broad strips of bark on its flanks, many of them split, had pulled away from the wood beneath. Shadows flowed in that bark, swam the deep grooves, spilling out to dart through the surrounding air before vanishing in the chamber’s gloom.
He stepped forward. The shadows raced over the throne in a frenzy. Another step. You want to tell me something, Throne, don’t you? He strode to the dais, reached out— The shadows poured over him. Hound – not Hound! Blood and not blood! Master and mortal! ‘Oh, be quiet! Tell me of this place.’ The wandering isle! Wanders not! Flees! Yes! The Children are corrupted, the souls of the Edur are poisoned! Storm of madness – we elude! Protect us, Hound not Hound! Save us – they come! ‘The wandering isle. This is Drift Avalii, isn’t it? West of Quon Tali. I thought there were supposed to be Tiste
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The Edur have sworn to destroy Mother Dark. You must warn him! Poisoned souls, led by the one who has been slain a hundred times, oh, ‘ware this new Emperor of the Edur, this Tyrant of Pain, this Deliverer of Midnight Tides! Paran pulled himself back with a mental wrench, staggered a step further away, then another.
‘Dragnipur needs to feed. Look around us, mortal. There are those who, at long last, fail in pulling this burden. They are carried to the wagon, then, and tossed onto it – you think this preferable? Too weak to move, they are soon buried by those like them. Buried, trapped for eternity. And the more the wagon bears, the greater its weight – the more difficult the burden for those of us still able to heave on these chains. Do you understand? Dragnipur needs to feed. We require … fresh legs. Tell Rake – he must draw the sword. He must take souls. Powerful ones, preferably. And he must do so
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His gaze followed those tracks, back, to the horizon. Where chaos raged. Filling the sky, a storm such as he had never seen before. Rapacious hunger poured from it. Frenzied anticipation. Lost memories. Power born from rendered souls. Malice and desire, a presence almost self-aware, with hundreds of thousands of eyes all fixed on the wagon behind Paran. So … so eager to feed …
‘Darkness has ever warred against Chaos, mortal. Ever retreated. And each time that Mother Dark relented – to the Coming of Light, to the Birth of Shadow – her power has diminished, the imbalance growing more profound. Such was the state of the realms around me in those early times. A growing imbalance. Until Chaos approached the very Gate to Kurald Galain itself.
‘Chaos hungers for the power in those souls – for what Dragnipur has claimed. To feed on such power will make it stronger – tenfold. A hundredfold. Sufficient to breach the Gate. Look to your mortal realm, Ganoes Paran. Devastating, civilization-destroying wars, civil wars, pogroms, wounded and dying gods – you and your kind progress at a perilous pace on the path forged by Chaos. Blinded by rage, lusting for vengeance, those darkest of desires—’ ‘Wait—’ ‘Where history means nothing. Lessons are forgotten. Memories – of humanity, of all that is humane – are lost. Without balance, Ganoes
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Before Holds, there was wandering. Your own words, yes? But you were both right and wrong. Not wandering, but migration. A seasonal round – predictable, cyclical. What seemed aimless, random, was in truth fixed, bound to its own laws. A truth – a power — I failed to recognize.’
‘So the shattering of Dragnipur will release the Gate once more – to its migration.’ ‘To what gave it its own strength to resist Chaos, yes. Dragnipur has bound the Gate of Darkness to flight, for eternity – but should the souls chained to it diminish—’
‘Just as Chaos possesses the capacity to act in its own defence, to indeed alter its own nature to its own advantage in its eternal war, so too can Order. It is not solely bound to Darkness. It understands, if you will, the value of balance.’ Paran felt an intuitive flash. ‘The Houses of the Azath. The Deck of Dragons.’
‘The Houses take souls …’ ‘And bind them in place. Beyond the grasp of Chaos.’
‘Quick Ben and the captain, sir. They’ve got something else planned, stewed up between them, that is. Or so I suspect. I’ve known Quick a long time, you see, up close. I’ve picked up a sense of how he works. We’re here covertly, right? The lead elements for Dujek. But for those two it’s a double-blind – there’s another mission hiding under this one, and I don’t think Onearm knows anything about it.’
‘Is it just you with these suspicions, Healer?’ ‘No. Whiskeyjack’s squad. Hedge. Trotts – the damned Barghast is showing his sharp teeth a lot and when he does that it usually means he knows something’s going on but doesn’t know exactly what, only he won’t let on with that last bit. If you gather my meaning.’ Picker nodded. She’d seen Trotts grinning almost every time she’d set eyes on the warrior the past few days. Unnerving, despite Mallet’s explanation.
Itkovian had chosen to remain in Gruntle’s company. The big Daru and Stonny Menackis wove a succession of tales from their shared past that kept Itkovian entertained, as much from the clash of their disparate recollections as from the often outrageous events the two described.
It had been a long time since Itkovian had last allowed himself such pleasure. He had come to value highly their company, in particular their appalling irreverence. On
The new Shield Anvil had assumed the title and all it demanded – and for the first time Itkovian understood how others must have seen him, when he’d held the Reve’s title. Remote, uncompromising, entirely self-contained. A hard figure, promising brutal justice.
Itkovian well understood how alone the Shield Anvil must be feeling, yet he could think of no way to ease that burden. Every word of advice he gave came, after all, from a man who had – in his own mind at least – failed his god.
‘The Black Moranth, of course. Coming each night, taking whole companies away. There’s only about four thousand Malazans left on the road, and half of them support. Dujek’s gone, too. Whiskeyjack leads the march – they’ve come to Maurik River and are making barges.’ ‘Barges?’ ‘Sure. To float down the river, I guess. Not to cross, since there was a ford there anyway, and the barges are downriver of it besides.’ ‘And the river, of course,’ Gruntle muttered, ‘will take them straight to Maurik. In only a few days.’
‘About us. The Mott Irregulars. We think maybe he’d planned on leaving us behind. Up north. Blackdog Forest. There might have been some kind of order, back then, something about us staying while he went south. We’re not sure. We can’t remember.’ Gruntle cleared his throat. ‘Have you considered informing the warlord of your presence?’ ‘Well, we don’t want to make him mad. I think there was some kind of order, you see. Something like “go away”, maybe.’
We don’t like Kallor. We usually ignore his orders. So,
We don’t like necromancers, especially the Bole brothers don’t like necromancers. They had one squatting on their land, you know, holed up in some old ruined tower in the swamp. Wraiths and spectres every night. So finally the Boles had to do something about it, and they went and rousted the squatter. It was messy, believe me – anyway, they strung up what was left of him at the Low Crossroads, just as a warning to others, you see.’
We’d just taken the city of Oraz and were marching west to Mott – which promptly surrendered with the exception of the outlanders in Mott Wood. Dujek didn’t want a company of renegades preying on our supply lines with us pushing ever inland, so he sent the Bridgeburners into Mott Wood with the aim of hunting them down. A year and a half later and we were still there. The Irregulars were running circles around us. And the times they’d decided to stand and fight, it was as if some dark swamp god possessed them – they bloodied our noses more than once. Did the same to the Gold Moranth.
‘they’re a deceptive bunch, keep coming back like a bad infestation of gut-worms – which we’ve learned to live with.’ ‘So you know what your enemy knows of you,’ Humbrall nodded. ‘More or less.’
Squat, sprawling warehouses were on her left, civic buildings, taverns, inns and trader shops on her right. Overhead, hauling ropes linked the upper floors of the warehouses to the flat rooftops of the trader shops, festooned now with seagrasses as if decorated for a maritime festival.
She approached the westernmost reaches of the city, the smell of the sea behind her giving way to a sweeter taint of freshwater decay from the river beyond the warehouses on her left.
If her Lord was well, then she would have to stand before him and formally sever her service – ending a relationship that had existed for fourteen thousand years, or, rather, suspending it for a time. For the remaining years of a mortal man’s life.
Korlat would find herself the ranking commander to the dozen Tiste Andii who, like her, had remained with Brood’s army. She would make that responsibility shortlived, for she had no wish to rule her kin. She would free them to decide their own fates.
How often have I seen my kin fall on the field of battle, and have known – deep in my soul – that my brothers and sisters did not die through an inability to defend themselves? They died, because they had chosen to die. Slain by their own despair.
Does Anomander Rake lead us away from despair – is that his only purpose, his only goal? Is his a theme of denial? If so, then, dear Mother Dark, he was right in seeking to confound our understanding, in seeking to keep us from ever realizing his singular, pathetic goal. And I – I should never have pursued these thoughts, should never have clawed my way to this conclusion.
Oh, Whiskeyjack, how will I be able to tell you this? Our desires were … simplistic. Foolishly romantic. The world holds no paradise for you and me, dear lover. Thus, all I can offer is that you join me, that you stay at my side.
‘It could mean the difference between joining a sound, efficacious force and finding naught but chopped up corpses,’ Whiskeyjack said. He shook himself. ‘Decide what you will, then. We will leave you the barges, of course, but my forces will cross first – we’ll risk the exhaustion.’
‘You anticipated this,’ Kallor hissed, ‘didn’t you?’ That you would win the day, yes, I think he did.
The Malazans had built well, each barge carrying broad, solid ramps that neatly joined bow to bow, while the sterns had been designed to fit flush once the backwash guards had been removed. The bridge they formed when linked was both flexible where required, and secure everywhere else, and it was surprisingly wide – capable of allowing two wagons to travel side by side.
A change had come to her, he sensed. Some bleak resolve had hardened all that was within her. Perhaps it was the possible death of Anomander Rake that had forced such induration upon her spirit. Or, perhaps, it was their future paths they had so naively entwined without regard for the harsh demands of the real world. The past was ever restless, for them both.
Anomander Rake was a man of solitude – an almost pathological independence. He was indifferent to the needs of others, for whatever reassurance or confirmation they might expect or demand. He said he would be there for the assault on Coral, and so he will.
We threw ourselves into the sprint too soon, too far from our prey. In our senseless haste, we’ve left fifty thousand White Face Barghast far behind. This decision may be a fatal one … Feeling old beyond his years, burdened by flaws born of a spirit mired deep in exhaustion, Whiskeyjack rejoined the vanguard.
Kallor spun and strode from the tent. Outside, he approached his horse.
A few miserable Great Ravens, huddled beneath a wagon, were me only witnesses to his sudden smile.
Lady Envy watched Baaljagg and Garath splash through it towards the forest-crowded strand. Sighing, she parted the veil on her warren, enough to permit her to cross without getting wet.
