The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen

by Steven Erikson

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, ...