Midnight Tides (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #5)

by Steven Erikson

There were fools among the Letherii, just as there were fools among the Edur.

Udinaas well understood his own kind. To the Letherii, gold was all that mattered. Gold and its possession defined their entire world. Power, status, self-worth and respect – all were commodities that could be purchased by coin. Indeed, debt bound the entire kingdom, defining every relationship, the motivation casting the shadow of every act, every decision. This devious hunting of the seals was the opening move in a ploy the Letherii had used countless times, against every tribe beyond the borderlands. To the Letherii, the Edur were no different. But they are, you fools.

Udinaas blinked, straining to see it again, telling himself that it was not what it had appeared to be.

Silchas Ruin

Expressions dark with anger and a hunger for vengeance. Here and there, frowns of concern and dismay.

The last full unveiling of Kurald Emurlahn had been by Scabandari Bloodeye, Father Shadow himself.

The Errant would then weave its mysterious skein, forging the Holds themselves. Ice. Eleint. Azath. Beast. And into their midst would emerge the remaining Fulcra. Axe, Knuckles, Blade, the Pack, Shapefinder and White Crow.

Then, as the realms took shape, the spiralling light would grow sharper, and the final Hold would be revealed. The Hold that had existed, unseen, at the very beginning. The Empty Hold – heart of Letherii worship – that was at the very centre of the vast spiral of realms. Home to the Throne that knew no King, home to the Wanderer Knight, and to the Mistress who waited still, alone in her bed of dreams. To the Watcher, who witnessed all, and the Walker, who patrolled borders not even he could see. To the Saviour, whose outstretched hand was never grasped. And, finally, to the Betrayer, whose loving embrace destroyed all it touched.

‘Such powers must be answered. The Errant returns, and casts the seed into blood-soaked earth. Thus rises the Hold of the Azath.

Tehol set out, winding through the seething press in the square. The Down Markets opened out onto it from three sides; a more decrepit collection of useless items for sale Tehol had yet to see. And the people bought in a frenzy, day after blessed day. Our civilization thrives on stupidity. And it only took a sliver of cleverness to tap that idiot vein and drink deep of the riches. Comforting, if slightly depressing. The way of most grim truths.

The man’s need for a bath was legendary.

‘Leave them to me, Urul,’ Tehol said, risking a pat on the man’s damp shoulder.

Moroch’s gaze flashed to Brys, the startled expression giving way to recognition. The man’s own sword was but halfway out of its scabbard.

Leaving the colonies here bereft. We have existed in isolation for a very long time, Finadd. Longer than you might believe.’ ‘Almost seven thousand years.’ The Ceda smiled. ‘Language changes over time. Meaning twists. Mistakes compound with each transcribing. Even those stalwart sentinels of perfection – numbers – can, in a single careless moment, be profoundly altered. Shall I tell you my belief, Finadd? What would you say to my notion that some zeroes were dropped? At the beginning of this the Seventh Closure.’ Seventy thousand years? Seven hundred thousand?

It was said gold was all that mattered to the Letherii. But who, in their right mind, would seek wealth when it meant certain death? They had to have known there would be no escape. Then again, what if I had not stumbled upon them? What if I had not chosen the Calach strand to look for jade? But no, now he was the one being arrogant. If not Trull, then another. The crime would never have gone unnoticed. The crime was never intended to go unnoticed.

He shared the confusion of his fellow warriors. Something was awry here. With both the Letherii and with … us. With Hannan Mosag. Our Warlock King.

Our shadows are dancing. Letherii and Edur, dancing out a ritual – but these are not steps I can recognize. Father Sh...

Nineteen ships of death sailed south, while four K’orthan raiders cut eastward. Four hundred Edur warriors, o...

The Tiste Edur rarely displayed much awareness of their slaves, and even less understanding of their ways. It was, of course, the privilege of the conquerors to be that way, and the universal fate of the conquered to suffer that disregard. Yet identities persisted. On a personal level. Freedom was little more than a tattered net, draped over a host of minor, self-imposed bindings. Its stripping away changed little, except, perhaps, the comforting delusion of the ideal. Mind bound to self, self to flesh, flesh to bone. As the Errant wills, we are a latticework of cages, and whatever flutters within knows but one freedom, and that is death. The conquerors always assumed that what they conquered was identity. But the truth was, identity could only be killed from within, and even that gesture was but a chimera. Isolation had many children, and dissolution was but one of them – yet its path was unique, for that path began when identity was left behind.

From the building behind him emerged the song of mourning, the Edur cadence of grief. Hunh, hunh, hunh, hunh … A sound that always chilled Udinaas. Like emotion striking the same wall, again and again and again. The voice of the trapped, the blocked. A voice overwhelmed by the truths of the world. For the Edur, grieving was less about loss than about being lost.

At least that’s honest. Letherii use money to purchase the opposite. Well, not quite. More like the illusion of the opposite. Wealth as life’s armour. Keep, fortress, citadel, eternally vigilant army. But the enemy cares nothing for all that, for the enemy knows you are defenceless.

This was Daughter Sheltatha Lore’s hour, when all things material became uncertain. Smudged by light’s retreat, when the air lost clarity and revealed its motes and grains, the imperfections both light and dark so perfectly disguised at other times. When the throne was shown to be empty.

Why not worship money? At least its rewards are obvious and immediate. But no, that was simplistic. Letherii worship was more subtle, its ethics bound to those traits and habits that well served the acquisition of wealth. Diligence, discipline, hard work, optimism, the personalization of glory. And the corresponding evils: sloth, despair and the anonymity of failure. The world was brutal enough to winnow one from the other and leave no room for doubt or mealy equivocation. In this way, worship could become pragmatism, and pragmatism was a cold god.

Feather Witch said that every act made was a prayer, and thus in the course of a day were served a host of gods.

Wine and nectar and rustleaf and the imbibing thereof was a prayer to death, she said. Love was a prayer to life. Vengeance was a prayer to the demons of righteousness. Sealing a business pact was, she said with a faint smile, a prayer to the whisperer of illusions. Attainment for one was born of deprivation for another, after all. A game played with two hands.

‘Is there need,’ Fear asked, ‘when you stand between Rhulad and Mayen?’ Trull clamped his mouth shut. Too off-balance to deflect the question with a disarming reply. Fear took the silence for an answer. ‘And when you stand between them, who do you face?’ ‘I – I am sorry, Fear. Your question was unexpected. Is there need, you ask. My answer is: I don’t know.’ ‘Ah, I see.’ ‘His strutting … irritates me.’

Hannan Mosag had proclaimed this the greatest flaw among the Edur. Old men and the dead were the first whisperers of the word vengeance. Old men and the dead stood at the same wall, and while the dead faced it, old men held their backs to it. Beyond that wall was oblivion. They spoke from the end times, and both knew a need to lead the young onto identical paths, if only to give meaning to all they had known and all they had done.

Because Rhulad must win. In everything, he must win. That is the cliff-edge of his life, the narrow strand he himself fashions, with every slight observed – whether it be real or imagined matters not – every silent moment that, to him, screams scorn upon the vast emptiness of his achievements.

In his mind he argued with that ghost – the Betrayer. The one who sought to murder Scabandari Bloodeye all those thousands of years ago. He argued that every certainty is an empty throne. That those who knew but one path would come to worship it, even as it led to a cliff’s edge. He argued, and in the silence of that ghost’s indifference to his words he came to realize that he himself spoke – fierce with heat – from the foot of an empty throne.

‘She has the sweetest lips,’ Rhulad murmured, then looked up and met Trull’s eyes. ‘Is that what you want me to say? To give proof to your suspicions?’ ‘I have many suspicions, brother,’ Trull replied. ‘We have sun-scorched thoughts, we have dark-swallowed thoughts. But it is the shadow thoughts that move with stealth, creeping to the very edge of the rival realms – if only to see what there is to be seen.’ ‘And if they see nothing?’ ‘They never see nothing, Rhulad.’ ‘Then illusions? What if they see only what their imagination conjures? False games of light? Shapes in the darkness? Is this not how suspicion becomes a poison? But a poison like white nectar, every taste leaving you thirsting for more.’ Trull was silent for a long moment. Then he said, ‘Fear spoke to me not long ago. Of how one is perceived, rather than how one truly is. How the power of the former can overwhelm that of the latter. How, indeed, perception shapes truth like waves on stone.’

The knots of these words were anything but loose. Trull drew a deep breath, let it out slowly, wondering at that smile. The peculiarity of it. A smile that might have been pain, a smile born of hurt.

Then he turned upon himself and studied what he was feeling. Difficult to find, to recognize, but … Father Shadow forgive me. I feel … sullied.

‘Kaschan sorcery,’ Fear said after a time, ‘is born of sounds our ears cannot hear, formed into words that loosen the bindings that hold all matter together, that hold it to the ground. Sounds that bend and stretch light, as a tidal inflow up a river is drawn apart at the moment of turning. With this sorcery, they fashioned fortresses of stone that rode the sky like clouds. With this sorcery, they turned Darkness in upon itself with a hunger none who came too close could defy, an all-devouring hunger that fed first and foremost upon itself.’ His voice was strangely muted as he spoke. ‘Kaschan sorcery was sent into the warren of Mother Dark, like a plague. Thus was sealed the gate from Kurald Galain to every other realm. Thus was Mother Dark driven into the very core of the Abyss, witness to an endless swirl of light surrounding her – all that she would one day devour, until the last speck of matter vanishes into her. Annihilating Mother Dark. Thus the Kaschan, who are long dead, set upon Mother Dark a ritual that will end in her murder. When all Light is gone. When there is naught to cast Shadow, and so Shadow too is doomed to die.

Holy fuck tgat is a black hole in Dragnipur.

On a cobbled beach, a man looks down and sees one rock, then another and another. A woman looks down and sees … rocks. But perhaps even this is simplistic. Man as singular and women as plural. More likely we are bits of both, some of one in the other. We just don’t like admitting it.

Binadas was smiling at Hull’s words, but it was a wry smile.

The canal awaited those who could not. The Drownings were more than public spectacle, they were the primary event among a host of activities upon which fortunes were gambled every day in Letheras. Since few criminals ever managed to make it across the canal with their burden, distance and number of strokes provided the measure for wagering bets. As did Risings, Flailings, Flounderings and Vanishings.

In the minds of the two guards, three titles. Master of the Sword, Finadd and King’s Champion – all were cause for envy and admiration. They might have wondered at him at that moment, however. The way he stood, as if entirely alone in a large, overwhelming world. Eyes clearly fixed on some inner landscape. Weariness in his shoulders. They might have wondered, but if so it was a brief, ephemeral empathy, quickly replaced by those harder sentiments, envy and admiration. And the gruff assertion that supreme ability purchased many things, including isolation. And the man could damn well live with it.

She sensed as well that there were living creatures buried there, most of them driven mad by centuries upon centuries snared in ancient roots that held them fast. Others remained ominously silent and motionless, as if awaiting eternity’s end.

Among the hundreds of creatures buried in the grounds of the Azath, only one was capable of listening to the conversation between the two undead on the surface above. The Azath was relinquishing its hold on this denizen, not out of weakness, but out of necessity. The Guardian was anything but ready. Indeed, might never be ready. The choice itself had been flawed, yet another sign of faltering power, of age crawling forward to claim the oldest stone structure in the realm. The Azath tower was indeed dying. And desperation forced a straying onto unprecedented paths. Among all the prisoners, a choice had been made. And preparations were under way, slow as the track of roots through stone, but equally inexorable. But there was so little time. The urgency was a silent scream that squeezed blood from the Azath tower. Five kin creatures, taken and held since the time of the K’Chain Che’Malle, were almost within reach of the surface. And this was not good, for they were Toblakai.