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The simplest divination was the interpretation of the cracks as a map, a means of finding wild herds for the tribe’s hunters.
The scapula was a maze of cracks now, the bone showing blue, beige and calcined white. Before too long it would begin to crumble, as the creature’s spirit surrendered to the overwhelming power flowing through its dwindling life force.
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.
‘Has it been your belief, Shield Anvil, that your rules of conduct existed to appease Fener?’ Itkovian frowned as he leaned on the merlon and stared out at the smoke-wreathed enemy camps. ‘Well, yes—’ ‘Then you have lived under a misapprehension, sir.’
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.’ ‘I do, Shield Anvil.’
‘I carved him inside out, and damn if he didn’t beg.’ She spat. ‘Didn’t work for me – why should it have for him? What a fool. A pathetic, whimpering …’
‘I need make no claim as to my true name, Priestess, only to the title I now demand.’ ‘Title?’ ‘Rath’K’rul. I have come to take my place among the Mask Council, and to tell you this: there is one among you who will betray us all.’
‘Careless,’ the Trimaster murmured, ‘losing her helm.’ ‘Indeed.’ ‘Clever, finding another one.’
The robed man cocked his head. ‘Those who know your own conscience to be clear, brothers and sisters, will thereby be united. The one who cannot make that claim, will likely be dealt with by his god.’
‘Most of your troop’s women, sir.’
‘Korbal was delighted, and makes preparations to recruit them.’ ‘Recruit them, master? Oh, yes sir. Recruit them.’ The necromancer cocked his head. ‘Odd, dear Emancipor Reese uttered those very words, in an identical tone, not half a bell ago.’
‘But – but—’ His lined, pebbled face swung to Bauchelain. ‘That … that man, Korbal – he has – he said – I saw! He has their hearts! He’s sewn them together, a bloody, throbbing mass on the kitchen table! But—’ He spun and thumped the Urdomen on the chest. ‘No wound!’
‘Ah, well, with you and friend Buke here interfering with Korbal Broach’s normal nightly activities, my colleague was forced to modify his habits, his modus operandi, if you will. Now, you see, my friends, he has no need to leave his room in order to satisfy his needs of acquisition. None the less, it should be said, please desist in your misguided efforts.’ The necromancer’s flat grey eyes fixed on Buke. ‘And as for the priest Keruli’s peculiar sorcery now residing within you, unveil it not, dear servant. We dislike company when in our Soletaken forms.’
‘Shut up, Mancy,’ Buke growled. ‘You knew they were Soletaken. Yet you said nothing – but Keruli knew as well.’
Standing in the courtyard, Emancipor Reese watched through watering eyes Buke’s transformation. A blurring of the man, a drawing inward, the air filling with pungent spice. He watched as the sparrow hawk that had been Buke shot upward in a cavorting climbing spiral.
The two rooks swept down, converged on a figure sitting on a bucking roan horse. Waves of magic collided with a midnight flash, the concussion a thunder that reached up to where Buke circled. The sparrowhawk’s beak opened, loosing a piercing cry. The rooks had peeled away. Sorcery hammered them, battered them as they flapped in hasty retreat. The figure on the stamping horse was untouched.
‘It seems,’ the necromancer muttered, ‘we must needs refine our tactics.’ The instinct of self-preservation vanished, then, as Buke softly laughed. Bauchelain froze. One eyebrow arched. Then he sighed. ‘Yes, well. Good day to you, too, Buke.’
His eyes held on the scatter of bones. Massive iron blades glinted there, as well as crumpled, oddly shaped armour and helmets. He saw long, reptilian jaws, rows of jagged teeth. Clinging to some of the shattered skeletons, the remnants of grey skin.
‘Twice tracks, the touches heavy yet light, wider than my hand. Big.’ ‘Big dead wolves.’ ‘No blood, agreed? Barrow stench.’ ‘Black stone dust. Sharp.’ ‘Glittering beneath forearms – the skin …’ ‘Black glass fragments.’ ‘Obsidian. Far south …’
Laederon obsidian has wood-coloured veins. This is Morn.’
‘The demons are here, are they not? Of this world. In this world.’ ‘Barrow stench.’ ‘Yet in the air, ice stench, tundra wind, the smell of frozen peat.’ ‘The wake of the wolves, the killers—’ Whiskeyjack growled, ‘Rhivi scouts, attend to me, please.’
‘Twice as big as the native wolves of this plain. Yes.’ Then his expression cleared as if with revelation. ‘They are like the ghost-runners of our legends. When the eldest shouldermen or women dream their farthest dreams, the wolves are seen.
Never close, always running, all ghostly except the one who leads, who seems as flesh and has eyes of life.
‘Hunting. Driving their quarry, down to this, their trap. Then they destroyed them. A battle of undead. The demons are from barrows far to the south. The wolves are from the dust in the north winds of winter.’
She may look frail and seem powerless, but there is that within her that is capable of driving the T’lan Ay away.
the Matrons, each commanding the equivalent of a modern city, had gathered to meld their disparate ambitions. What they sought, beyond the vast power they already possessed, is not entirely clear. Then again, what need there be for reasons when ambition rules? Suffice to say, an ancient breed was … resurrected, returned from extinction by the Matrons; a more primitive version of the K’Chain Che’Malle themselves.
‘that they physically deviated from the other K’Chain Che’Malle in having short, stubby tails rather than the normal, long, tapered ones. This made them not as swift – more upright, suited to whatever world and civilization they had originally belonged to. Alas, these new children were not as tractable as the Matrons were conditioned to expect among their brood – more explicitly, the Short-Tails would not surrender or merge their magical talents with their mothers’. The result was a civil war, and the sorceries unleashed were apocalyptic.
‘The Rent,’
‘She sought to harness the power of a gate itself, but not simply a common warren’s gate. Oh no, she elected to open the portal that led to the Realm of Chaos.
Destroy the Pannion Domin. It must be done. For me, for my T’lan Imass, awaits the task of destroying the threat hiding behind the Pannion Seer, the threat that is the K’Chain Che’Malle.’
‘A feint?’ Dujek repeated in disbelief. ‘By whom?’
Consider the infection of the warrens. Granted, its focus seems to emanate from the Pannion Domin, and granted, as well, that the poison’s taint is that of the Warren ofChaos. Granted all of that, one must then ask: why would a K’Chain Che’Malle Matron, who is the repository of a vast wellspring of sorcery, seek to destroy the very conduits of her power? If she was present when Morn was destroyed – when the Rent was created – why would she then try to harness chaos again?
caught a hint, but we’d failed to make the connection. Brood, Korlat, Kallor
He caught a flashing glimpse, through a jagged tear in the dustcloud, of the line of hills on the other side the valley. Impossibly, they were rising, fast, the bedrock splitting the grassy hide, loosing gouts of dust, rock-shards and smoke.
Even now, the ground continued to heave beneath the sliding scree. Distant detonations shook the air, trembled through Whiskeyjack’s battered bones.
Beyond, black, steaming bedrock towered, the spine of a new mountain range, still growing, still rising, lifting and tilting the floor of the valley where the Malazan now lay. The sky behind it churned iron-grey with steam and smoke.
The scree was gone, leaving a gaping, raw cliff-face. Most of the mesa’s summit was simply no longer there, obliterated, leaving a small, flat-topped island … where Whiskeyjack now saw figures moving, rising. Horses scrambling upright. Faintly, came the brazen complaint of a mule.
To the north, cutting a path down along the side of a distant valley, then through distant hills, a narrow, steaming crack was visible, a fissure in the earth that seemed depthless.
He saw Caladan Brood, hammer hanging down from his hands, motionless … and standing before the warlord, on an island of his own, was Kruppe. Brushing dust from his clothes. The crack that had been born where the hammer had struck the earth, parted neatly around the short, fat Daru, joining again just behind him.
‘Aye, I hear you. Ever notice those copper ornaments she’s wearing – there, you can see the pair on her wrist. Kruppe’s gifts, from Darujhistan.’ ‘What about them?’ ‘Well, as I was saying. Ever noticed them? It’s a strange thing. They get brighter, shinier, when she’s sleeping.’
Now consider how an ascendant like Caladan Brood would feel, upon the realization that he is being manipulated? Enough to shatter the control of his temper? Enough to see him unlimber his hammer and seek to obliterate that smug, pompous puppet-master.’
Kruppe is a mortal man. But gifted with an intelligence that is singular in its prowess. And I mean that most literally. Singular, Dujek. If an Elder God was suddenly flung back into this realm, would he not seek out as his first ally the greatest of minds?’
‘Kruppe. Who gave us the Trygalle Trade Guild, the only traders capable of supplying us on the route we chose to march. Kruppe, who brought to the Mhybe the surviving possessions of the First Rhivi, for her to wear and so diminish the pain she feels, and those ornaments are, I suspect, yet to fully flower. Kruppe, the only one Silverfox will speak with, now that Paran is gone. And, finally, Kruppe, who has set himself in the Crippled God’s path.’
Whiskeyjack should’ve been Emperor, when the old one got knocked off. Not Laseen. But she knew who her rival was, didn’t she just. That’s why she stripped him of rank, turned him into a Hood-damned sergeant and sent him away, far away.’
Would’ve made a good Emperor, I said. Not wanting the job is the best and only qualification worth considering.’
‘And was he capable of such a remarkable feat?’ The two marines looked confused. One turned to her companion. ‘Seen him out of his boots?’ The other shook her head. ‘No. Still, they might be remarkable. Why not?’
‘Then it’d be a boot to the backside, but I said by the scruff of the neck.’ ‘Well, feet that could do that would be remarkable, wouldn’t they?’
‘Because he’s a soldier, you idiot. Laseen’s taking the throne was messy enough. The whole empire was shaky. People start stabbing and jumping into a blood-wet throne and sometimes it don’t stop, sometimes it’s like dominoes, right? One after another after another, and the whole thing falls apart. He was the one we all looked to, right? Waiting to see how he’d take it, Laseen and all that. And when he just saluted and said, “Yes, Empress,” well, things just settled back down.’ ‘He was giving her a chance, you see.’ ‘Of course. And do you lasses now believe he made a mistake?’ The women
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‘What do you figure he and Tattersail talk about, anyway?’ ‘The old woman, is my guess.’ ‘I’d figured the same.’ ‘They got something in the works.’ ‘My suspicions exactly.’ ‘And Tattersail’s in charge.’ ‘So she is.’ ‘Which is good enough for me.’
‘Ah, but she is not yet ready to receive such truths, alas. This is a journey of the spirit. She must begin it within herself. Kruppe and Silverfox can only do so much, despite our apparent omnipotence.’
