The Crippled God (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #10)

by Steven Erikson

‘That is all faith is, you know. Pity for our souls. Ask my servant and he will tell you. God looks into your eyes, and God cringes.’

‘What happened to our heroic outcome, Fear? To the salvation you gave your life to win? “If I have not challenged myself, if I have not striven to give it all I have, then will I stand head bowed before the world’s judgement.” But the world’s judgement is cruel.’

‘There is nowhere,’ he said, throat tight with grief, ‘In all the world…nowhere. We leave nothing well enough alone. Not ever. The Imass can make claim to empty lands, yes, until someone casts upon it a covetous eye. And then they will begin killing you. Collecting hides and scalps. They will poison your food. Rape your daughters. All in the name of pacification, or resettlement, or whatever other euphemistic bhederin shit they choose to spit out. And the sooner you’re all dead the better, so they can forget you ever existed in the first place. Guilt is the first weed we pluck, to keep the garden pretty and smelling sweet. That is what we do, and you cannot stop us – you never could. No one can.’

‘I knew a warrior once. Awakening from a wound to the head believing he was a dog, and what are dogs if not loyalty lacking wits? So here I stand, woman, and my eyes are filled with tears. For that warrior, who was my friend, who died thinking he was a dog. Too loyal to be sent home, too filled with faith to leave. These are the world’s fallen. When I dream, I see them in their thousands, chewing at their own wounds. So, do not speak to me of freedom. He was right all along. We live in chains. Beliefs to shackle, vows to choke our throats, the cage of a mortal life, this is our fate. Who do I blame? I blame the gods. And curse them with fire in my heart.

‘You pose a dilemma,’ Tulas Shorn said after a moment’s consideration. ‘What you imagine to be mercy may not prove any such thing, should I acquiesce. And then there is this: I am not particularly inclined to mercy, Skan Ahl. Not with respect to you. Do you begin to comprehend my difficulty? I could indeed reach out and swing your skull round, and you may curse me for all time. Or I could elect to do nothing, to leave everything as I have found it – as if I was never here – and so earn your darkest resentment. In either case, you will see me as cruel. Now, this does not offend me overmuch. As I said, I am not stirred to kindness. The matter I face is: how cruel do I wish to be?’

“Courting is the art of growing like mould on the one you want.”’

‘If there is war,’ he said, facing Gruntle again, ‘who profits?’ The man rolled his shoulders, a habit of his, Mappo now knew, as if Trake’s Mortal Sword sought to shift a burden no one else could see. ‘Ever the question, as if answers meant anything, which they don’t. Soldiers are herded into the iron maw and the ground turns to red mud, and someone on a nearby hill raises a fist in triumph, while another flees the field on a white horse.’

There are many forms of courage, I believe, most of which pass unseen by the majority of us. It’s not always about facing death, is it? Sometimes it’s about facing life.’

‘Take any starving land, and you’ll find a fat king. Nobody’d weep at that slaughter in the throne room. Priests blathering on about justice.

The assassin must never die. The shadows must ever remain. We hold the world in check. We are the arbiters of reason. It is our duty, our purpose. I have seen them. I have seen what they can do, and the joy in their eyes at the devastation they can unleash. But their throats are soft. If I must, I will rid the world of them.

‘Armies bathe in blood,’ said Aranict. ‘That is the truth of it, isn’t it, Commander?’ ‘I fear we all bathe in it,’ he replied. ‘Cities permit us to hide from that bleak truth, I think.’ ‘What would it be like, I wonder, if we all ate only vegetables?’ ‘We’d break all the land and the wild animals would have nowhere to live,’ Brys replied.

What do you think makes criminals in the first place?’ ‘Stupidity and greed.’ ‘Besides those? I’ll tell you. It’s looking around, real carefully. It’s seeing what’s really there, and who wins every time, and it’s deciding that despair tastes like shit. It’s deciding to do whatever it takes to sneak through, to win what you can for yourself. It’s also condemning your fellow humans to whatever misery finds them – even if that misery is by your own hand. To hurt another human being is to announce your hatred of humanity – but mostly your thinking is about hating back what already hates you. A thief steals telling herself she’s evening out crooked scales. That’s how we sleep at night, y’see.’

We watched. We grieved. We grew into the iron of anger, and then rage. And now. Now, we are cold and certain. There will be death.

The sky tore him apart. Flung across half the world the flaming debris that was his body, and pieces fell and fell, upon one continent and then another. Into the shocked seas. Ah, if there had been more. If there had been enough to annihilate every human on this world, not just the ones whose hubris was so brazen, whose madness reached across the Abyss, to take this wretched thing.

Drown on your hubris, humans. It is all you deserve.

As a species, we are displeased by notions of a mundane disconnect from destiny, and we shall hold to our deadly displeasure until we humans have crumbled to ash and dust. For, as the Elder Races would tell you, were they around to do so, the world has its own dagger, its own iron tongue, its own pyre. And from its flames, there is nowhere to hide.’

Freedom – she understood now – was something so long lost among humans that they had forgotten what it felt like. Bend to your labours! Grasp those coins! Keep the doors locked and fires raging to empty the shadows behind you! Make your brothers and sisters kneel before you, to serve your pleasures. Are you free? You don’t remember the truth of what once was – of what you all so willingly surrendered. I will show you freedom. So I vow: I will show you what it is to be free. On all sides, the ghost wolves howled.

How does one decide which life is the more precious? Are feelings apportioned according to intelligence and self-awareness? Does a tiny creature grieve less deeply than one of greater…stature?

There is no true justice, they will say, without the most basic right that is retribution. Exploit the world at your peril, dear friends. One day someone will decide to speak for that world. One day, someone will come calling.’

It’s nice not being noticed. Maybe one day you humans will finally understand that, and do away with all your mad ambitions, your insipid self-delusional megalomania. You weren’t shat out by some god on high. You weren’t painted in the flesh of the divine – at least, not any more than anyone or anything else. What’s with you all, anyway? You jam a stick up your own arse then preen at how tall and straight you’re standing. Soldier, you think you put your crawling days behind the day you left your mother’s tit? Take it from me – you’re still crawling, lad. Probably always will.’

The things said and the things not said. In the space in between, a thousand worlds. A thousand worlds.

We go round and round and this is the story of the world. Do not flee us. Do not flee this moment, this scene. Do not confuse dislike and abhorrence with angry denial of truths you do not wish to see. I accept your horror and expect no forgiveness. But if you deny, I name you coward. And I have had my fill of cowards.

Tiste Liosan. The Children of Father Light. A star is born in the dark, and the heavens are revealed to all.

I am the First Sword. I am the weapon of the godless, and upon the day I am unsheathed, dust shall take your every dream.

And here is my secret. Heed this well. The weapon of the godless needs no hand to wield it. The weapon of the godless wields itself. It is without fear. It is empty of guilt and disdainful of retribution. It is all that and more, but one thing it is not: a liar. No slaying in the name of a higher power, no promises of redemption. It will not cloak brutality in the zeal that justifies, that absolves. And this is why it is the most horrifying weapon of all.

Kuru Qan once told me that grieving had nothing to do with the ones gone, and everything to do with the ones left behind. We feel the absences in our life like open wounds, and they never really close, no matter how many years pass.’

They will compose a Book of the Fallen.

In that Malazan Book of the Fallen, the historians will write of our suffering, and they will speak of it as the suffering of those who served the Crippled God. As something…fitting. And for our seeming fanaticism they will dismiss all that we were, and think only of what we achieved. Or failed to achieve. And in so doing, they will miss the whole fucking point. Fallen One, we are all your children.

Long, narrow, stretched – but – Errant! They look like the Andii! They look just like them! White-skinned instead of black-skinned. Is that it? Is that the only fucking difference?

But who says my life’s worth any more than this dog’s? Or that its life is worth less than mine? Who stands around measuring these things? The gods? Hah! Good one. No. We do, and that’s the sorriest joke of all.

I truly see our problem, friends. We don’t want the future, we want the past. With a new name. But it’s still the past, that invented realm of nostalgia, all the jagged edges smoothed away. Paradise…for the drinkers of blood.

She moved to stand over him. ‘You will cease speaking ill of him,’ she said in a low voice. ‘We did not always agree. Often we quarrelled. But the Son of Darkness was a man of integrity and honour. No longer will I permit you to spit on his name. He is dead, and your voice lives on like the cry of a cowardly crow, Errastas. You were never his match, and even in death he stands taller than you in all your guises. Do you think I do not hear your resentment? Your envy? It disgusts me.’

‘The Son of Darkness, who understood the true burden of a surrendered future, the fatality of empty faith. The Warlord of the Sleeping Goddess, who would defy the eternal patience of the earth itself, and Stonewielder, the One who stood facing Caladan Brood, ensuring the world’s balance. These two are destined to walk disparate paths, but what they seek is much the same. The Queen of Dreams, whose pool had grown still as death itself. The Lord of Tragedy – and, well, a host of others, all drawn into the fold.’

‘libations in the name of death continue unabated,

‘Then I’m going with you. My wife can go somewhere else. She keeps talking about babies but I don’t want babies – they get in the way of having fun, and people who end up having them spend all day talking about how great it is, but they look miserable even when they’re smiling. Or worse, there’re those ones who think their baby is the God of Genius reborn and even its poo smells like flowers, and all they do is talk about them for ever and ever and it’s so boring I want to run away, or break their necks, or drown them all in the slop bucket.’

In clouds of spinning dust and pelting rubble, in the wild fires of chaotic magic, the dragons returned to the world.

And hail welcome to the dragon.

The Hust sword howled as he slammed into the front line. The blade was gorged on draconic blood. It had drunk deep the red wine of Hounds’ blood. It had bathed in the life-ends of a thousand Liosan soldiers. Now it shook off the chains of constraint.

They did not hesitate. Darkness bloomed, erupted like black smoke under water, and three black dragons rose above the strand. As they closed, eight more Liosan veered, and the air filled with the roars of dragons.

‘Give me your name, Liosan.’ ‘I am Kadagar Fant, Lord of Light.’ ‘Lord of Light.’ ‘I call upon the ancient custom of Hostage.’ ‘We have no need of hostages. Your army is destroyed, Lord.’ ‘I will speak for the Liosan. There shall be peace.’ The woman nodded. ‘Yes, there shall be peace. Lord Kadagar Fant, on behalf of the Tiste Andii, welcome to Darkness.’ The knife flashed up towards his eye.

‘That’s it, then,’ he muttered, ‘Master-Sergeant Pores, fire Quartermaster Pores. Can I do that, Lieutenant? You can, because I’m telling you so, or do I need to take this to Fist Kindly? Please, sir, no, don’t do that. He hates me! Odd, he doesn’t hate me, Master-Sergeant. Really, sir? I’m certain of it, Master-Sergeant. Reasonably. I hope. All right, no more excuses for the old man – he hates us all. This is what happens to a bald man who starts collecting combs—’

No, as far as he could see, civilization was a madman’s mechanism that, for all its good intentions, ended up ensnaring the gentle gifts, stifling them, leaving them to wander mazes only to die alone and in the dark.

‘It is not enough to wish for a better world for the children. It is not enough to shield them with ease and comfort. Lostara Yil, if we do not sacrifice our own ease, our own comfort, to make the future’s world a better one, then we curse our own children. We leave them a misery they do not deserve; we leave them a host of lessons unearned.

‘We should all live a life of hobbies. Doing only what gives us pleasure, only what rewards us in secret, private ways.’

‘You can’t steer anyone away from the path they’re going to take. You can show ’em that there’s plenty of other paths – you can do that much – but past that? They’ll go where they go.’

There is nothing more dangerous than a man without a sense of humour.

I’m mostly a nice guy. Made a career of avoiding blood and fighting and all the unpleasant stuff. The challenge was pulling that off while being in an army. But…not as hard as it sounds. No matter. It’s not as if I’m afraid of war. It’s the chaos I don’t like. Kindly’s combs…now, you see, those I do understand. That man I understand. Through and through. And being his one unruly comb, why, how perfect was that? Mostly a nice guy, like I said. But Blistig tried killing me, for a few empty casks. I don’t feel like being nice any more.

A word whispered into the Crippled God’s mind – faint, yet still voiced in a howl of terror. T’iam. Manifesting. Awakening to slay the Otataral Dragon.

‘You said you would be unwitnessed. Yet, that proved untrue, did it not?’ She shrugged. ‘For each moment recorded in the annals of history, how many more are lost? Highness, we shall be forgotten. All of this, it will fade into the darkness, as all things will. I do not regret that.’

And now the page before us blurs. An age is done. The book must close. We are abandoned to history. Raise high one more time the tattered standard of the Fallen. See through the drifting smoke to the dark stains upon the fabric. This is the blood of our lives, this is the payment of our deeds, all soon to be forgotten. We were never what people could be. We were only what we were. Remember us.