The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen

by Steven Erikson

He would embrace them. He would take their pain. In this world, where all had been taken from him, where he walked without purpose, burdened with the lives and deaths of tens of thousands of mortal souls – unable to grant them peace, unable – unwilling – to simply cast them off, he was not yet done. He would embrace them. These T’lan Imass, who had twisted all the powers of the Warren of Tellann into a ritual that devoured their souls. A ritual that had left them – in the eyes of all others – as little more than husks, animated by a purpose they had set outside themselves, yet were chained to – for eternity. Husks, yet … anything but. And that was a truth Itkovian had not expected, had no way to prepare for. Insharak Ulan, who was born third to Inal Thoom and Sultha A’rad of the Nashar Clan that would come to be Kron’s own, in the spring of the Year of Blighted Moss, below the Land of Raw Copper, and I remember— I remember— A snow hare, trembling, no more than a dusk-shadow’s length from my reach, my child’s arm and hand stretching. Streaks in the white, the promise of summer. Trembling hand, trembling hare, born together in the snows just past. Reaching out. Lives touching – small-heart-patter, slow-drum-hunger my chest’s answer to the world’s hidden music – I remember— Kalas Agkor – my arms wrapped about little Jala, little sister, hot with fever but the fire grew too hot, and so, in my arms, her flesh cooled to dawn-stone, mother keening – Jala was the ember now lifeles...