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

by Steven Erikson

‘In the time when I was nothing but pain, when all that came from me was spite, and the hunger to hurt this world, I saw you Malazans as no better than all the rest. Children of your cruel gods. Their tools, their weapons.’ He paused, drew a rattling breath. ‘I should have sensed that you were different – was it not your emperor’s champion who defied Hood at the last Chaining? Did he not cry out that what they sought was unjust? Did he not pay terribly for his temerity?’ Fiddler shook his head. ‘I know nothing about any of that, Lord.’ ‘When he came to me – your emperor – when he offered me a way out…I was mistrustful. And yet…and yet, what do I see now? Here, standing before me? A Malazan.’ Fiddler said nothing. He could hear conversations from all the slope sides of the barrow, voices raised in wonder, and plenty of cursing. ‘You are not like the others. Why is this? I wish to understand, Malazan. Why is this?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘And now you will fight to protect me.’ ‘We can’t break these chains – she was wrong about that.’ ‘No matter, Malazan. If I am to lie here, bound for the rest of days, still – you will fight to defend me.’ Fiddler nodded. ‘I wish I could understand.’ ‘So do I,’ Fiddler said with a grimace. ‘But, maybe, in the scrap to come, you’ll get a… I don’t know…a better sense of us.’ ‘You are going to die for me, a foreign god.’ ‘Gods can live for ever and make real their every desire. We can’t. They got powers, to heal, to destroy, even to resurrect themselv...

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