The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen

by Steven Erikson

Now these ashes have grown cold, we open the old book. These oil-stained pages recount the tales of the Fallen, a frayed empire, words without warmth. The hearth has ebbed, its gleam and life’s sparks are but memories against dimming eyes – what cast my mind, what hue my thoughts as I open the Book of the Fallen and breathe deep the scent of history? Listen, then, to these words carried on that breath. These tales are the tales of us all, again yet again. We are history relived and that is all, without end that is all.

The Emperor is dead! So too his right hand—now cold, now severed! But mark these dying shadows, twinned and flowing bloody and beaten, down and away from mortal sight . . . From sceptre’s rule dismissed, from gild candelabra the light now fled, from a hearth ringed in hard jewels, seven years this warmth has bled . . . The Emperor is dead. So too his master’d companion, the rope cut clean. But mark this burgeoning return— faltering dark, the tattered shroud— embracing children in Empire’s dying light. Hear now the dirge faint reprised, before the sun’s fall, this day spills red on buckled earth, and in obsidian eyes vengeance chimes seven times . . . CALL TO SHADOW (I.I. 1–18) FELISIN (B. 1146)

The stains of rust seemed to map blood seas on the black, pocked surface of Mock’s Vane. A century old, it squatted on the point of an old pike that had been bolted to the outer top of the Hold’s wall. Monstrous and misshapen, it had been cold-hammered into the form of a winged demon, teeth bared in a leering grin, and was tugged and buffeted in squealing protest with every gust of wind.

“Hood’s Breath, they’re still looking for his body in the still-hot rubble of that damned city, and here you are, a merchant’s son three thousand leagues from Seven Cities with information only a few are supposed to possess.” He still did not turn. “I know not your sources, but take my advice and keep what you know to yourself.” Ganoes shrugged. “It’s said he betrayed a god.” Finally the man faced him. His face was scarred, and something that might have been a burn marred his jaw and left cheek. For all that, he looked young for a commander. “Heed the lesson there, son.” “What lesson?” “Every decision you make can change the world. The best life is the one the gods don’t notice. You want to live free, boy, live quietly.” “I want to be a soldier. A hero.” “You’ll grow out of it.”

“One day I’ll be a soldier,” Ganoes said. The man grunted. “Only if you fail at all else, son. Taking up the sword is the last act of desperate men. Mark my words and find yourself a more worthy dream.” Ganoes scowled. “You’re not like the other soldiers I’ve talked to. You sound more like my father.” “But I’m not your father,” the man growled. “The world,” Ganoes said, “doesn’t need another wine merchant.” The commander’s eyes narrowed, gauging. He opened his mouth to make the obvious reply, then shut it again. Ganoes Paran looked back down at the burning quarter, pleased with himself. Even a boy, Commander, can make a point.

The old stones of this road have rung with iron black-shod hoofs and drums where I saw him walking up from the sea between the hills soaked red in sunset he came, a boy among the echoes sons and brothers all in ranks of warrior ghosts he came to pass where I sat on the worn final league-stone at day’s end— his stride spoke loud all I needed know of him on this road of stone— the boy walks another soldier, another one bright heart not yet cooled to hard iron MOTHER’S LAMENT ANONYMOUS

It was the eighth day of recruiting and Staff Sergeant Aragan sat bleary-eyed behind his desk as yet another whelp was prodded forward by the corporal. They’d had some luck here in Kan. Fishing’s best in the backwaters, Kan’s Fist had said. All they get around here is stories. Stories don’t make you bleed. Stories don’t make you go hungry, don’t give you sore feet. When you’re young and smelling of pigshit and convinced there ain’t a weapon in all the damn world that’s going to hurt you, all stories do is make you want to be part of them. The old woman was right. As usual. These people had been under the boot so long they actually liked it. Well, Aragan thought, the education begins here.

The sun sat heavy and bloated amid a smear of crimson cloud on the horizon. Paran fought to keep his eyes open. It had been a long day. A horrific day. The land around him, once familiar and safe, had become something else, a place stirred with the dark currents of sorcery. He was not looking forward to a night camped in the open. His mount plodded onward, head down, as dusk slowly enveloped them. Pulled by the weary chains of his thoughts, Paran tried to make sense of what had happened since morning. Snatched out from the shadow of that sour-faced, laconic captain and the garrison at Kan, the lieutenant had seen his prospects begin a quick rise. Aide to the Adjunct was an advancement in his career he could not have even imagined a week ago. Despite the profession he had chosen, his father and his sisters were bound to be impressed, perhaps even awed, by his achievement. Like so many other noble-born sons and daughters, he’d long since set his sights on the Imperial military, hungry for prestige and bored with the complacent, static attitudes of the noble class in general. Paran wanted something more challenging than coordinating shipments of wine, or overseeing the breeding of horses. Nor was he among the first to enlist, thus easing the way for entrance into officer training and selective postings. It had just been ill-luck that saw him sent to Kan, where a veteran garrison had been licking its wounds for nigh on eight years. There’d been little respect for an untested l...

1163rd Year of Burn’s Sleep (two years later) 105th Year of the Malazan Empire 9th Year of Empress Laseen’s Rule Through the pallor of smoke ravens wheeled. Their calls raised a shrill chorus above the cries of wounded and dying soldiers. The stench of seared flesh hung unmoving in the haze. On the third hill overlooking the fallen city of Pale, Tattersail stood alone. Scattered around the sorceress the curled remains of burned armor—greaves, breastplates, helms, and weapons—lay heaped in piles. An hour earlier there had been men and women wearing that armor, but of them there was no sign. The silence within those empty shells rang like a dirge in Tattersail’s head. Her arms were crossed, tight against her chest. The burgundy cloak with its silver emblem betokening her command of the 2nd Army’s wizard cadre now hung from her round shoulders stained and scorched. Her oval, fleshy face, usually parading an expression of cherubic humor, was etched with deep-shadowed lines, leaving her cheeks flaccid and pale. For all the smells and sounds surrounding Tattersail, she found herself listening to a deeper silence. In some ways it came from the empty armor surrounding her, an absence that was in itself an accusation. But there was another source of the silence. The sorcery that had been unleashed here today had been enough to fray the fabric between the worlds. Whatever dwelt beyond, in the Warrens of Chaos, felt close enough to reach out and touch. She’d thought her emotions spen...

They were of a kind, then the histories writ large in tattooed tracery the tales a tracking of old wounds but something glowed hard in their eyes—those flame-gnawed arches, that vanishing span, they are their own past each in turn destined to fall in line on the quiet wayside beside the river they refuse to name . . . THE BRIDGEBURNERS (IV.I) TOC THE YOUNGER (B.1141)

Paran tried to sit up, but his limbs refused the command. He dropped his head back, feeling the strange loam yield to its weight. “What has happened?” he rasped. “You were murdered,” the man said lightly. Paran closed his eyes. “Why, then, have I not passed through Hood’s Gate, if that is what it is?” “We’re meddling,” the woman said. Oponn, the Twins of Chance. And my sword, my untested blade purchased years ago, with a name I chose so capriciously—“What does Oponn want from me?” “Only this stumbling, ignorant thing you call your life, dear boy. The trouble with Ascendants is that they try to rig every game. Of course, we delight in . . . uncertainty.” A distant howl stroked the air. “Oops,” the man said. “Come to make certain of things, I’d say. We’d best leave, sister. Sorry, Captain, but it seems you’ll pass through that Gate after all.” “Maybe,” the woman said. Her brother rounded on her. “We agreed! No confrontation! Confrontation’s messy. Unpleasant. I despise discomfiting scenes! Besides, the ones who come don’t play fair.” “Then neither do we,” the sister snapped. She turned to the gate, raised her voice, “Lord of Death! We would speak with you! Hood!” Paran rolled his head, watched as a bent, limping figure emerged from the Gate. Wearing rags, the figure slowly approached. Paran squinted—an old woman, a child with drool on its chin, a deformed young girl, a stunted, broken Trell, a desiccated Tiste Andii— “Oh, make up your mind!” the sister said. The apparition c...

An unknown span of time passed in which Paran wandered through memories he had thought long lost—his days as a child clinging to his mother’s dress and taking his first, tottering steps; the nights of storm when he raced down the chill hallway to his parents’ bedroom, tiny feet slapping on the cold stone; holding the hands of his two sisters as they stood waiting on the hard cobbles of the courtyard—waiting, waiting for someone. The images seemed to lurch sideways in his head. His mother’s dress? No, an old woman in the service of the household. Not his parents’ bedroom, but those of the servants; and there, in the courtyard with his sisters, they’d stood half the morning, awaiting the arrival of their mother and father, two people they barely knew. In his mind scenes replayed themselves, moments of mysterious import, hidden significance, pieces of a puzzle he couldn’t recognize, shaped by hands not his own and with a purpose he couldn’t fathom. A tremor of fear traveled the length of his thoughts as he sensed that something—someone—was busy reordering the formative events of his life, turning them on end and casting them into the present new shadows. Somehow, the guiding hand . . . played. With him, with his life. It seemed an odd kind of death— Voices reached him. “Aw, Hood take him.” A face bent close to Paran’s own, looked into his open blank eyes. The face was Picker’s. “He didn’t stand a chance,” she said. Sergeant Antsy spoke from a few feet away. “Nobody in the Nin...

Tattersail stared long and hard at the card centered on the field she had laid down. She had chosen a spiral pattern, working her way through the entire Deck of Dragons and arriving with a final card, which could mark either an apex or an epiphany depending on how it placed itself. The spiral had become a pit, a tunnel downward, and at its root, seeming distant and shadow-hazed, waited the image of a Hound. She sensed an immediacy to this reading. High House Shadow had become involved, a challenge to Oponn’s command of the game. Her eyes were drawn to the first card she had placed, at the spiral’s very beginning. The Mason of High House Death held a minor position among the overall rankings, but now the figure etched on the wood seemed to have risen to an eminent placing. Brother to the Soldier of the same House, the Mason’s image was that of a lean, graying man clothed in faded leathers. His massive, vein-roped hands held stone-cutting tools, and around him rose roughly dressed menhirs. Tattersail found she could make out faint glyphs on the stones, a language unfamiliar to her but reminiscent of Seven Cities’ script. In the House of Death the Mason was the builder of barrows, the placer of stones, a promise of death not to one or a few but to many. The language on the menhirs delivered a message not intended for her: the Mason had carved those words for himself, and time had worn the edges—even the man himself appeared starkly weathered, his face latticed with cracks, hi...

“May I speak freely, High Fist?” Dujek barked a laugh. “You think I don’t know it, Whiskeyjack? The plan stinks. A tactical nightmare—” “I don’t agree.” “What?” “I think it will do just as it was intended to do,” the sergeant said dully, his gaze at first on the lightening eastern horizon, then on the soldier standing at the roof’s edge. Because it is intended to get us all killed. The High Fist studied the sergeant’s face, then he said, “Come with me.” He led Whiskeyjack over to where Fiddler stood. The sapper gave them a nod. A moment later all three stood looking down on the city. Pale’s ill-lit streets wound between the rough blocks of buildings that seemed unwilling to yield the night; behind curtains of rain their squatting silhouettes appeared to shiver before the coming dawn. After a while, Dujek said quietly, “Damned lonely out here, isn’t it?” Fiddler grunted. “That it is, sir.” Whiskeyjack closed his eyes. Whatever was happening thousands of leagues away was being played out here. Such was Empire, and it always would be, no matter the place or the people. They were all instruments blind to the hands shaping them. The sergeant had faced that truth long ago. It had galled him then and it galled him now. The only relief, these days, seemed to come with exhaustion.

The bedroom door opened and Mallet entered the room, his round face shiny and flushed. The healer glanced briefly at Quick Ben, then walked to Tattersail, where he crouched down in front of her. “By all rights,” he said quietly, “Captain Paran should be in an Officer’s Hole with five feet of mud on his pretty face.” He nodded to Kalam, who had joined them. “The first wound was fatal, up under his heart. A professional thrust,” he added, with a meaningful look at the assassin. “The second would have done him more slowly, but no less certain.” Kalam grimaced. “So he should be dead. He isn’t. Which means?” “Intervention,” Tattersail answered, a queasy feeling settling in her stomach. Her heavy-lidded gaze fixed on Mallet. “Your Denul skills proved sufficient?” The healer quirked a smile. “It was easy. I had help.” He explained, “The wounds were already closing, the damage already mended. I quickened it some, but that’s all. There’s been a deep trauma, both body and mind. By all rights it should be weeks before he recovers physically. And that alone could be a problem.” “What do you mean?” Tattersail asked. Kalam strode to the table, retrieved a jug of wine and three clay cups. He rejoined them and began pouring as Mallet said, “Healing should never be separated between the flesh and the sense of the flesh. It’s hard to explain. The Denul Warrens involve every aspect of healing, since damage, when it occurs, does so on all levels. Shock is the scar that bridges the gap between...

Sleepless, Tattersail lay flat on her back on the bed in the outer room. Her exhaustion had reached a point where even sleep eluded her so she stared at the ceiling, her thoughts wandering in a disordered review of the past seven days. Despite her initial anger at being embroiled in the Bridgeburners’ schemes, she had to acknowledge the excitement she felt. The desire to collect her possessions and open a Warren, away from the Empire, away from Hairlock’s madness and hunger, away from the field of an endless war, now seemed an ancient one, born of a desperation she no longer felt. But it was more than just a renewed sense of humanity that compelled her to stay to see it through—the Bridgeburners, after all, had shown again and again that they could take care of their own affairs. No, she wanted to see Tayschrenn pulled down. It was a truth that frightened her. Hunger for vengeance poisoned the soul. And it was likely that she would have to wait a long time to see Tayschrenn’s just demise. She wondered if, having fed on that poison for so long, she might not end up viewing the world with Hairlock’s shining bright mad eyes. “Too much,” she muttered. “Too much all at once.”

And if this man sees you in his dreams, while you rock in the season’s brooding night ’neath a tree’s stout branch, and your shadow is hooded above the knotted rope, so will the winds of his passing twitch your stiffened limbs into some semblance of running . . . RUMOR BORN FISHER (B.?)

When he arrived at the door Kruppe was so winded that he did not even so much as look up, merely pushed against the weathered panel until it swung inward with a squeal of rusty hinges. “Alas!” he cried, pausing to brush the sleeves of his coat. “A foamy tankard for this . . .” His voice died as he surveyed the array of grimy faces turned to him. “Methinks the business is poor,” he mumbled. The place was indeed an inn—or it had been, perhaps a century past. “’Tis rain in the night air,” he said, to the half-dozen beggars crouched around a thick tallow candle set on the earthen floor. One of the fellows nodded. “We will grant you audience, hapless one.” He waved at a straw mat. “Be seated and entertain our presence.” Kruppe raised an eyebrow. “Kruppe is graced by your invitation, sire.” He dipped his head, then strode forward. “But, please, do not think he is bereft of contributions to this honored gathering.” He sat down cross-legged, grunting with the effort, and faced the one who had spoken. “He would break bread with you all.” From a sleeve he withdrew a small rye loaf. A bread knife appeared in his other hand. “Known to friends and strangers alike is Kruppe, the man now seated before you. Inhabitant of yon glittering Darujhistan, the mystic jewel of Genabackis, the juicy grape ripe for picking.” He produced a chunk of goat cheese and smiled broadly at the faces before him. “And this is his dream.” “So it is,” the beggars’ spokesman said, his lined face crinkling with am...

There is a cabal breathing deeper than the bellows drawing up the emerald fires beneath rain-glistened cobbles, while you may hear the groaning from the caverns below, the whisper of sorcery is less than the dying sigh of a thief stumbling unwilling into Darujhistan’s secret web . . . CABAL (FRAGMENT) PUDDLE (B.1122?)

I see a man crouched in a fire who leaves me cold and wondering what he is doing here so boldly crouched in my pyre . . . GADROBI EPITAPH ANONYMOUS

He had divested himself of his official duties, and as he walked down toward the water, the years of service seemed to slough from his spirit. Bright were the memories of his childhood at these docks, to which he had been ever drawn by the allure of the strange traders as they swung into their berths like weary and weathered heroes returned from some elemental war. In those days it was not uncommon to see the galleys of the Freemen Privateers ease into the bay, sleek and riding low with booty. They hailed from such mysterious ports as Filman Orras, Fort By a Half, Dead Man’s Story, and Exile; names that rang of adventure in the ears of a lad who had never seen his home city from outside its walls. The man slowed as he reached the foot of the stone pier. The years between him and that lad marched through his mind, a possession of martial images growing ever grimmer. If he searched out the many crossroads he had come to in the past, he saw their skies storm-warped, the lands ragged and wind-torn. The forces of age and experience worked on them now, and whatever choices he had made then seemed fated and almost desperate. Is it only the young who know desperation? he wondered, as he moved to sit on the pier’s stone sea-wall. Before him rippled the bay’s sooty waters. Twenty feet below, the rock-studded shore lay sheathed in darkness, the glitter of broken glass and crockery here and there winking like stars.

With slow, deliberate movements, the man tore up the scroll. He let the ragged pieces drift down, scattering into the gloom of the lake’s shadowed shore. The rising waves swept them outward to dot the turgid swells like flecks of ash. Coming from somewhere in the back of his mind, he thought he heard a coin spinning. It seemed a sad sound. A few minutes later he left the pier. The Eel’s agent, out on his morning stroll, would in passing note his contact’s absence and simply continue on his way. He made his way along the Lakefront Street with the summit of Majesty Hill dwindling behind him. As he passed, the first of the silk merchants appeared, laying out their wares on the wide paved walk. Among the silks the man recognized the dyed lavender twists and bolts of Illem, the pale yellows of Setta and Lest—two cities to the southeast he knew had been annexed by the Pannion Seer in the last month—and the heavy bold twists of Sarrokalle. A dwindled sampling: all trade from the north had ended under Malazan dominion. He turned from the lake at the entry to the Scented Wood and headed into the city. Four streets ahead his single room waited on the second floor of a decaying tenement, gray and silent with the coming dawn, its thin, warped door latched and locked. In that room he allowed no place for memories; nothing to mark him in a wizard’s eye or tell the sharp-witted spy-hunter details of his life. In that room, he remained anonymous even to himself.

Have you seen the one who stands apart cursed in a ritual sealing his kind beyond death the host amassed and whirling like a plague of pollen— he stands apart the First among all ever veiled in time yet outcast and alone a T’lan Imass wandering like a seed unfallen LAY OF ONOS T’OOLAN TOC THE YOUNGER

The sorceress had found the strength to leave her bed. She now stood at the window, leaning with one hand against the frame for support, and looked down on a street crowded with military wagons. The systematic plunder that quartermasters called “resupply” was well under way. The eviction of nobility and gentry from their familial estates for the stationing of the officer corps, of which she was one, had ended days ago, while the repairing of the outer walls, the refitting of sundered gates, and the clearing of “Moon rain” continued apace. She was glad she’d missed the river of corpses that must have filled the city streets during the initial phase of cleanup—wagon after wagon groaning beneath the weight of crushed bodies, white flesh seared by fire and slashed by sword, rat-gnawed and raven-pecked—men, women, and children. It was a scene she had witnessed before, and she had no wish ever to see it again. Now, shock and terror had seeped down and out of sight. Scenes of normality reappeared as farmers and merchants emerged from hiding to meet the needs of occupiers and occupied alike. Malazan healers had swept the city, rooting out the birthing of plague and treating common ailments among all those they touched. No citizen would have been turned from their path. And sentiments began the long, perfectly planned swing. Soon, Tattersail knew, there’d be the culling of the nobility, a scourge that would raise to the gallows the greediest, least-liked nobles. And the executions ...

As she saddled her horse she chanced to glance at Tool. The warrior stood staring at her. What kind of thoughts would occupy someone who’d lived through three hundred thousand years? Or did the Imass live? Before meeting Tool she had generally thought of them as undead, hence without a soul, the flesh alone animated by some external force. But now she wasn’t so sure. “Tell me, Tool, what dominates your thoughts?” The Imass shrugged before replying. “I think of futility, Adjunct.” “Do all Imass think about futility?” “No. Few think at all.” “Why is that?” The Imass leaned his head to one side and regarded her. “Because, Adjunct, it is futile.” “Let’s get going, Tool. We’re wasting time.” “Yes, Adjunct.” She climbed into the saddle, wondering how the Imass had meant that.

I dreamed a coin with shifting face— so many youthful visages so many costly dreams, and it rolled and rang ’round the gilded rim of a chalice made for gems LIFE OF DREAMS ILBARES THE HAG

The night held close as I wandered my spirit unfooted to either earth or stone unraveled from tree undriven by iron nail but like the night itself a thing of air stripped of light so I came upon them, those masons who cut and carved stone in the night sighting by stars and battered hand. “What of the sun?” asked I of them. “Is not its cloak of revelation the warmth of reason in your shaping?” And one among them answered, “No soul can withstand the sun’s bones of light and reason dims when darkness falls— so we shape barrows in the night for you and your kin.” “Forgive my interruption, then,” said I. “The dead never interrupt,” said the mason, “they but arrive.” PAUPER’S STONE DARUJHISTAN

Walk with me on Thieves’ Road hear its song underfoot how clear its tone in misstep as it sings you in two APSALAR’S CANT DRISBIN (B. 1135)

Kneading his brow, Kruppe sat reading in Mammot’s study. . . . and in the Calling Down to earth the God was Crippled, and so Chained in its place. In the Calling Down many lands were sundered by the God’s Fists, and things were born and things were released. Chained and Crippled was this God Kruppe glanced up from the ancient tome and rolled his eyes. “Brevity, Kruppe prays for brevity!” He returned to the faded handwritten script. and it bred caution in the unveiling of its powers. The Crippled God bred caution but not well enough, for the powers of the earth came to it in the end. Chained was the Crippled God, and so Chained was it destroyed. And upon this barren plain that imprisoned the Crippled God many gathered to the deed. Hood, gray wanderer of Death, was among the gathering, as was Dessembrae, then Hood’s Warrior—though it was here and in this time that Dessembrae shattered the bonds Hood held upon him. Also among the gathering were Kruppe groaned and flipped pages. The list seemed interminable, absurdly long. From this account he half expected to see his grandmother’s name among those listed. Finally, after three pages, he found the names he sought. and among those that came from the vaulted heavens of silver, the Tiste Andii, dwellers of Darkness in the Place before Light, Black Dragons numbering five, and in their league sailed red-winged Silanah, said to dwell among the Tiste Andii in their Fang of Darkness descending from the vaulted heavens of silver

There’s a spider here in this corner in that— her three eyes tiptoe in darkness, her eight legs track my spine, she mirrors and mocks my pacing. There’s a spider here who knows all of me her web my history full writ. Somewhere in this strange place a spider waits for my panicked flight . . . THE CONSPIRACY BLIND GALLAN (B.1078)

The vial struck the rooftop and shattered with a thin tinkle. Beyond, the three assassins paused. Quick Ben remained, his eyes on the white smoke rising from the glass shards. A figure took form within the smoke, growing in size. Its shape was almost insubstantial, the smoke stretching like threads in places, curling like wool in others. All that was visible within it was its eyes, two black slits, which it swung to Quick Ben. “You,” it said, its voice that of a child, “are not Master Tayschrenn.” “That’s right,” Quick Ben said, “but I’m in his legion. Your service remains with the Empire.” He pointed across the roof. “There are three who are the Empire’s enemies, Demon. Tiste Andii, here to oppose the Malazan Empire.” “My name is Pearl,” the Korvalah demon said softly, then turned to the three assassins, who had spread out along the far edge. “They are not fleeing,” Pearl said, with a note of surprise. Quick Ben wiped sweat from his forehead. He glanced down. Kalam was a vague shape waiting in the alley below. “I know,” he said to Pearl. That observation had unnerved him as well. One of Tayschrenn’s Korvalahrai could level a city if it so chose. “They accept my challenge,” Pearl said, facing Quick Ben again. “Should I pity them?” “No,” he answered. “Just kill them and be done with it.” “Then I return to Master Tayschrenn.” “Yes.” “What is your name, Wizard?” He hesitated, then said, “Ben Adaephon Delat.” “You are supposed to be dead,” Pearl said. “Your name is so marked o...

Beyond these thin hide walls a child sits, before her on worn silk a Deck is arrayed. She cannot yet speak and the scenes before her she’s never before seen in this life. The child gazes upon a lone card named Obelisk, the stone gray she can feel its roughness in her mind. Obelisk stands buried in a grassy knoll like a knuckle protruded from the earth, past and future. This child’s eyes are wide with terror, for cracks have appeared in the stone of stones and she knows the shattering is begun. SILVERFOX OUTRIDER HURLOCHEL, 6TH ARMY

Even as night fell, the heat remained oppressive. Lorn walked around the hill’s summit to stretch her legs. She found evidence of past excavations, scars that dug into the shale. And evidence of the Gadrobi herders remained, from as far back as when they fashioned stone tools. Against the south side of the hill the ground had been carved out, not in search of a barrow but as a stone quarry. It appeared that beneath the shale was flint, chocolate brown, sharp-edged and crusted in white chalk. Curious, Lorn investigated further, scrambling down into the cavity. Stone flakes carpeted the pit’s base. She crouched and picked up a piece of flint. It was the tip of a spear point, expertly shaped. The echo of this technology was found in Tool’s chalcedony sword. She needed no further proof of the Imass’s assertions. Humans had indeed come from them, had indeed inherited a world. Empire was a part of them, a legacy flowing like blood through human muscle, bone, and brain. But such a thing could easily be seen as a curse. Were they destined one day to become human versions of the T’lan Imass? Was war all there was? Would they bow to it in immortal servitude, no more than deliverers of death? Lorn sat down in the quarry and leaned against the chiseled, weathered stone. The Imass had conducted a war of extermination lasting hundreds of thousands of years. Who or what had the Jaghut been? According to Tool, they’d abandoned the concept of government, and turned their backs on empires, ...

Dessembrae knows the sorrows in our souls. He walks at the side of each mortal a vessel of regret on the fires of vengeance. Dessembrae knows the sorrows and would now share them with us all. THE LORD OF TRAGEDY HOLY BOOK PRAYER (CANON OF KASSAL)

The captain looked away, squinting into the darkness. What’s this human urge, he wondered, that brings us to such devastation?

Rumors like tattered flags wind-snapped and echoing in the streets below told the tale of the days upon us . . . ’Twas said an eel had slipped ashore or not one but a thousand under a jagged moon that might be dead, ’twas whispered that a claw scraped slow on the city’s cobbles, even as a dragon was seen sailing high silver and black in the night sky. ’Twas heard, they say, a demon’s death cry on the rooftops on a night of blood, even as the master’s hundred hands lost a hundred daggers to the dark, and ’twas rumored then, a lady masked highborn had offered to unbidden guests a fête to remember . . . RUMOR BORN FISHER (B.?)

Few can see the dark hand holding aloft the splinter, or the notched chains fated to be heard before death’s rattle, but hark the wheel of minions and victims who moan the lord’s name in the dark heart of Moon’s Spawn . . . SILVERFOX OUTRIDER HURLOCHEL, 6TH ARMY

This blue city hides under its cloak a hidden hand that holds like stone a blade envenomed by the eight-limbed Paralt— the sting brings death in the span of grief that marks a final breath— so this hand defies sorcery’s web and trembles the gossamer strand of a spider’s deadly threat. This hand beneath the blue city’s cloak drives home Power’s gentle balance. THE CONSPIRACY BLIND GALLAN (B.1078)

But someone died here alas. Who drinks of this now and then and stirs the ashes of thine own pyre? Maker of Paths, you were never so thirsty in youth . . . OLD TEMPLE SIVYN STOR (B.1022)

The Flaying of Fander, She-Wolf of Winter, marks the Dawn of Gedderone. The priestesses race down the streets, strips of wolf-fur streaming from their hands. Banners are unfurled. The noises and smells of the market rise into the morning air. Masks are donned, the citizens discard the year’s worries and dance across the day into night. The Lady of Spring is born anew. It is as if the gods themselves pause their breath . . . FACES OF DARUJHISTAN MASKRAL JEMRE (B. 1101)

It is said that the matron’s blood like ice brought forth into this world a birthing of dragons and this flowing river of fate brought light into dark and dark into light, unveiling at last in cold, cold eyes the children of chaos . . . T’MATHA’S CHILDREN HEBORIC

The flowering of light from darkness brought into my sight there on the field a host of dragons caught like a crest of wind before the eternal flame. I saw the ages in their eyes a worldly map inscribed in each whirled scale on their hides. Their sorcery bled from them like the breathing of stars and I knew then that dragons had come among us . . . ANOMANDARIS FISHER (B.?)

She watched the sea of people, its tide of faces swirling past. The latent madness there made her uneasy, especially with the city’s guards maintaining an aloof distance. She wondered at the taint of terror in that multitude of faces, and how almost every face seemed familiar. Darujhistan blurred in her mind, becoming a hundred other cities, each rising out of her past as if on parade. Joy and fear, agony and laughter—the expressions merged into one, the sounds coming to her no different from each other. She could distinguish nothing, the faces becoming expressionless, the sounds a roar of history without meaning. Lorn passed a hand over her eyes, then staggered back a step and reeled into the alley’s shadows behind her. She slid down one wall into a sagging crouch. A celebration of insignificance. Is that all we are in the end? Listen to them! In a few hours the city’s intersections would explode. Hundreds would die instantly, thousands to follow. Amid the rubble of shattered cobbles and toppled buildings would be these faces, locked in expressions somewhere between joy and terror. And from the dying would come sounds, hopeless cries that dwindled in the passing of pain. She’d seen them all before, those faces. She knew them all, knew the sound of their voices, sounds mired in human emotions, sounds clear and pure with thought, and sounds wavering in that chasm between the two. Is this, she wondered, my legacy? And one day I’ll be just one more of those faces, frozen in d...

“You don’t dare harm me,” Simtal said, straightening. “Turban Orr will hunt you down.” The assassin took another step forward. “I’m here only to talk, Lady Simtal,” he said. “You won’t be harmed, no matter what you deserve.” “Deserve? I’ve done nothing—I don’t even know you.” “Neither did Councilman Lim,” Rallick said quietly. “And tonight the same could be said for Turban Orr. Both men paid for their ignorance, alas. Fortunate that you missed the duel, Lady. It was unpleasant, but necessary.” His eyes hardened on the pale woman. “Allow me to explain. Turban Orr’s offer of contract to the Assassins’ Guild is now officially canceled. Coll lives, and now his return to this house is assured. You’re done with, Lady Simtal. Turban Orr is dead.” He turned and walked from the room, closing the door behind him. Murillio rose slowly. He looked into Simtal’s eyes, seeing there a growing terror. Undermined by the stripping away of her links to power, her once secure defenses collapsed. He watched as she seemed physically to contract, her shoulders drawing inward, her hands clasped at her stomach, knees bending. Then he could look no longer. The Lady Simtal was gone, and he dared not study too closely the creature in her place. He unsheathed his ornamental dagger and tossed it on the bed. Without another word or gesture, he left the room, knowing with certainty that he would have been the last man to see her alive.

It was said she turned the blade on herself then to steal the magic of life. CALL TO SHADOW (IX. II) FELISIN (B.1146)

She’d watched the Coin Bearer race down the street, seeming not even to have noticed Moon’s Spawn hanging so close overhead. A moment later, she followed. With the Coin in her hands, the Empress would bring Oponn to its knees. Like a drowning voice, deep within her mind, came a question heavy with dismay and despair: What of your doubts? What of the woman who’d once challenged Tayschrenn, in Pale? Has so much changed? Has so much been destroyed? The Adjunct shook her head, dispelling the plaintive cries. She was the arm of the Empress. The woman called Lorn was dead, had been dead for years, and would remain forever dead. And now the Adjunct moved through these hollow shadows, in a city cowering in fear. The Adjunct was a weapon. Its edge could bite deep, or it could snap, break. She might once have called the latter “death.” Now, it was no more than the misfortune of war, a flaw in the weapon’s design.

I am the House imprisoning in my birth demonic hearts, so locked in each chamber some trembling enraged antiquity. And these roots of stone spread the deepest cracks in parched ground holding forever the dream of fruit, ah, pilgrims come to my door and starve . . . AZATH (II.III) ADAEPHON (B.?)

I have seen a rumor born swathed in snug mystery left lying under the sun in the hills of the Gadrobi where the sheep have scattered on wolf-laden winds and the shepherds have fled a whispering of sands and it blinked in the glare a heart hardened into stone while the shadow of the Gates of Nowhere crept ’cross the drifting dust of home I have seen this rumor born a hundred thousand hunters of the heart in a city bathed in blue light . . . RUMOR BORN (I. I-IV) FISHER

What see you in the horizon’s bruised smear That cannot be blotted out By your raised hand? THE BRIDGEBURNERS TOC THE YOUNGER

He came shambling into Judgment’s Round from the Avenue of Souls, a misshapen mass of flies. Seething lumps crawled on his body in mindless migration, black and glittering and occasionally falling away in frenzied clumps that exploded into fragmented flight as they struck the cobbles. The Thirsting Hour was coming to a close and the priest staggered in its wake, blind, deaf and silent. Honoring his god on this day, the servant of Hood, Lord of Death, had joined his companions in stripping naked and smearing himself in the blood of executed murderers, blood that was stored in giant amphorae lining the walls of the temple’s nave. The brothers had then moved in procession out onto the streets of Unta to greet the god’s sprites, enjoining the mortal dance that marked the Season of Rot’s last day. The guards lining the Round parted to let the priest pass, then parted further for the spinning, buzzing cloud that trailed him. The sky over Unta was still more gray than blue, as the flies that had swept at dawn into the capital of the Malazan Empire now rose, slowly winging out over the bay toward the salt marshes and sunken islands beyond the reef. Pestilence came with the Season of Rot, and the Season had come an unprecedented three times in the past ten years. The air of the Round still buzzed, was still speckled as if filled with flying grit. Somewhere in the streets beyond a dog yelped like a thing near death but not near enough, and close to the Round’s central fountain the a...