The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen

by Steven Erikson

The pain of illness had changed him – he could see that within himself, conjured as an image, a scene both peculiar and poignant. He felt as if his own soul had been reduced into something piteous – a bedraggled, sweat-smeared rat, trapped within a rock-fall, twisting and squirming through cracks in a desperate search for a place where the pressure – the vast, shifting weight – relented. A space in which to breathe. And the pain all around me, those sharp stones, are settling, still settling, the spaces between them vanishing … darkness rising like water … Whatever triumphs had been achieved in Darujhistan now seemed trivial to Paran. Saving a city, saving the lives of Whiskeyjack and his squad, the shattering of Laseen’s plans, they had one and all crumbled into ash in the captain’s mind. He was not as he had been, and this new shaping was not to his liking. Pain darkened the world. Pain dislocated. Turned one’s own flesh and bones into a stranger’s house, from which no escape seemed possible. Bestial blood … it whispers of freedom. Whispers of a way out – but not from the darkness. No. Into that darkness, where the Hounds went, deep into the heart of Anomander Rake’s cursed sword – the secret heart of Dragnipur. He almost cursed aloud at that thought, as he worked his way along the hillside trail overlooking the Divide. Day’s light was fading. The wind combing the grasses had begun to fall away, the rasping voice retreating to a murmur. The blood’s whisper was but one of...

It was difficult for the Mhybe to understand – a people plagued by indifference, an apathy that made even the efforts of civil discourse too much to contemplate. There were secret tragedies in the long, tortured past of the Tiste Andii. Wounds that would never heal. Even suffering, the Rhivi had come to realize, was capable of becoming a way of life. To then extend such an existence from decades into centuries, then into millennia, still brought home to the Mhybe a dull shock of horror.

Tenement fires were deadly in Darujhistan, especially when gas was involved. The conflagration that had killed Buke’s wife, mother and four children had been particularly ugly. That Buke himself had been lying drunk and dead to the world in an alley not a hundred paces from the house hadn’t helped in the man’s recovery. Like many of his fellow guards, Gruntle had assumed that Buke would turn to the bottle with serious intent after that. Instead, he’d done the opposite. Taking solitary contracts with poor, vulnerable merchants obviously offered to Buke a greater appeal than the wasting descent of a permanent drunk. Poor merchants were robbed far more often than rich ones. The man wants to die, all right. But swiftly, even honourably. He wants to go down fighting, as did his family, by all accounts. Alas, when sober – as he’s been ever since that night – Buke fights extremely well, and the ghosts of at least a dozen highwaymen would bitterly attest to that. The chill dread that seemed to infuse the air around Bauchelain and, especially, around Korbal Broach, would have deterred any sane guard. But a man eager to embrace death would see it differently, wouldn’t he?

‘Thought you’d be halfway back to Darujhistan,’ Harllo said. Buke studied the guard over the rim of the mug. ‘You are so clean I barely recognize you, friend.’ ‘Ha ha.’ ‘I have found myself a new contract, to answer you, Harllo.’ ‘You idiot,’ Stonny snapped. ‘When are you going to get some sense back into your head, Buke? It’s been years and years since you last cracked a smile or let any light into your eyes. How many bear traps are you going to stick your head in, man?’ ‘Until one snaps,’ Buke said, meeting Stonny’s dark, angry eyes.

Like the laying of a silent shroud, darkness arrived. Paran stood atop the vast barrow, his face caressed by the mildest of winds. He had managed to leave the encampment without running into Whiskeyjack and the Bridgeburners. Night had a way of inviting solitude, and he felt welcome on this mass grave with all its echoing memories of pain, anguish and despair. Among the dead beneath me, how many adult voices cried out for their mothers? Death and dying makes us into children once again, in truth, one last time, there in our final wailing cries. More than one philosopher has claimed that we ever remain children, far beneath the indurated layers that make up the armour of adulthood. Armour encumbers, restricts the body and soul within it. But it also protects. Blows are blunted Feelings lose their edge, leaving us to suffer naught but a plague of bruises, and after a time, bruises fade. Tilting his head back triggered sharp protests from the muscles of his neck and shoulders. He stared skyward, blinking against the pain, the tautness of his flesh wrapped around bones like a prisoner’s bindings. But there’s no escape, is there? Memories and revelations settle in like poisons, never to be expunged. He drew the cooling air deep into his lungs, as if seeking to capture in the breath of the stars their coldness of regard, their indifferent harshness. There are no gifts in suffering. Witness the Tiste Andii.

He rises bloodless from dust, with dead eyes that are pits twin reaches to eternal pain. He is the lodestone to the gathering clan, made anew and dream-racked. The standard a rotted hide, the throne a bone cage, the king a ghost from dark fields of battle. And now the horn moans on this grey-clad dawn drawing the disparate host To war, to war, and the charging frenzy of unbidden memories of ice. LAY OF THE FIRST SWORD IRIG THANN DELUSA (B. 1091)

Paran’s attention was drawn to the flagstones beneath him. Carved into their bleached surfaces were cards of the Deck of Dragons. No, more than just the Deck of Dragons – there’s cards here I don’t recognize. Lost Houses, and countless forgotten Unaligned Houses, and … The captain stepped forward, crouched down to study one image. As he focused his attention on it the world around him faded, and he felt himself moving into the carved scene. A chill wind slid across his face, the air smelling of mud and wet fur. He could feel the earth beneath his boots, cold and yielding. Somewhere in the distance crows cackled. The strange hut he had seen in the carving now stood before him, long and humped, the huge bones and long tusks comprising its framework visible between gaps in the thick, umber fur-skins clothing it. Houses … and Holds, the first efforts at building. People once dwelt within such structures, like living inside the rib-cage of a dragon. Gods, those tusks are huge – whatever beast these bones came from must have been massive … I can travel at will, it seems. Into each and every card, of every Deck that ever existed. Amidst the surge of wonder and excitement he felt ran an undercurrent of terror. The Deck possessed a host of unpleasant places. And this one? A small stone-lined hearth smouldered before the hut’s entrance. Wreathed in the smoke was a rack made of branches, on which hung strips of meat. The clearing, Paran now saw, was ringed with weathered skulls – dou...

The Mhybe let Korlat help her to her feet. She felt ashamed at her own weakness, but all her defences had crumbled, her pride was in tatters, and she felt in her soul nothing but helplessness. I was a young woman once. What point in raging at the loss? My seasons have tumbled, it is done. And the life within fades, whilst the life beyond flowers. This is a battle no mortal can win, but where, dear spirits, is the gift of death? Why do you forbid me an end? She straightened slightly in Korlat’s arms. Very well, then. Since you have already so cursed my soul, the taking of my own life can cause me no greater pain. Very well, dear spirits, I shall give you my answer. I shall defy your plans. ‘Take me to my tent,’ she said. ‘No,’ Korlat said. The Mhybe twisted round, glared up at the Tiste Andii. ‘I said—’ ‘I heard you, Mhybe, indeed, more than you intended me to hear. The answer is no. I shall remain at your side, and I am not alone in my faith—’ The Rhivi woman snorted. ‘Faith? You are Tiste Andii! Do you take me for a fool with your claims to faith?’ Korlat’s expression tightened and she looked away. ‘Perhaps you are right.’ Oh, Korlat, I am sorry for that – I would take it back, I swear— ‘None the less,’ the Tiste Andii continued, ‘I shall not abandon you to despair.’ ‘I am familiar with being a prisoner,’ the Mhybe said, angry once again. ‘But I warn you, Korlat – I warn you all, hatred is finding fertile soil within me. And in your compassion, in your every good intentio...

Twenty paces ahead three figures stepped into the street. Gruntle squinted. He recognized the tall woman in the middle. ‘Hello, Nektara. I see you’ve expanded your holdings.’ The scar-faced woman smiled. ‘Why, it’s Gruntle. And Harllo. And who else? Oh, would that be Stonny Menackis? No doubt as unpleasant as ever, my dear, though I still lay down my heart at your feet.’ ‘Unwise,’ Stonny drawled. ‘I never step lightly.’ Nektara’s smile broadened. ‘And you do make that heart race, love. Every time.’

‘For what it’s worth, there’s people who don’t want to see you dead, Buke. They see you wasting away inside, and they care enough so that it pains them—’ ‘Guilt’s a good weapon, Gruntle, or at least it has been for a long time. Doesn’t cut any more, though. If you choose to care, then you better swallow the pain. I don’t give a damn, myself.’ ‘Stonny—’ ‘Is worth more than messing herself up with me. I’m not interested in being saved, anyway. Tell her that.’ ‘You tell her, Buke, and when she puts her fist in your face just remember that I warned you here and now. You tell her – I won’t deliver your messages of self-pity.’ ‘Back off, Gruntle. I’d hurt you bad before you finished using those cutlasses on me.’ ‘Oh, that’s sweet – get one of your few remaining friends to kill you. Seems I was wrong, it’s not just self-pity, is it? You’re not obsessed with the tragic deaths of your family, you’re obsessed with yourself, Buke. Your guilt’s an endlessly rising tide, and that ego of yours is a levee and all you do is keep slapping fresh bricks on it. The wall gets higher and higher, and you’re looking down on the world from a lofty height – with a Hood-damned sneer.’ Buke was pale and trembling. ‘If that’s the way you see it,’ he rasped, ‘then why call me friend at all?’ Beru knows, I’m beginning to wonder. He drew a deep breath, managed to calm himself down. ‘We’ve known each other a long time. We’ve never crossed blades.’ And you were in the habit of getting drunk for days on end...

Midnight comes often in the dusk of my life, when I look back upon all that I have survived. The deaths of so many for whom I cared and loved in my heart, have expunged all sense of glory from my thoughts. To have escaped those random fates has lost all triumph. I know you have seen me, friend, my lined face and silent regard, the cold calcretions that slow my embittered pace, as I walk down the last years, clothed in darkness as are all old men, haunted by memories … THE ROAD BEFORE YOU JHORUM OF CAPUSTAN

The Boar of Summer was the voice of war. Dark and grisly, as ancient as humanity itself. The song of battle – the screams of the dying and the vengeful, the discordant, hacking music of iron weapons, of shields resounding to blows, of hissing arrows and quarrels … And forgive us all, the voice grows to a roar. It is not the time to hide behind temple walls. Not the time for foolish politics. We serve Fener by striding the soaked, steaming earth, weapons bared in quicksilver promise. We are the clash and clangour, the bellows of rage, pain and terror

She slowly rose. ‘Sir, a single rider would do as well. You return me to Capustan to spare me … from what? From seeing K’Chain Che’Malle cut to pieces by these T’lan Imass? Shield Anvil, there is no mercy or compassion in your decision.’ ‘It seems,’ Itkovian said, staring out upon the vast army arrayed around them, ‘you are not lost to us, after all. The Boar of Summer despises blind obedience. You will ride with us, sir.’ ‘Thank you, Shield Anvil.’ ‘Recruit, I trust you have not deluded yourself into believing that witnessing the destruction of more K’Chain Che’Malle will silence the cries within you. Soldiers are issued armour for their flesh and bones, but they must fashion their own for their souls. Piece by piece.’ She looked down at the blood spattered across her uniform. ‘It has begun.’ Itkovian was silent for a moment, studying the recruit at his side. ‘The Capan are a foolish people, to deny freedom to their women. The truth of that is before me.’ She shrugged. ‘I am not unique.’

Toc’s gaze returned to Baaljagg. ‘Ancient memories.’ ‘Memories of ice.’ The T’lan Imass’s cavern eyes were fixed on the Malazan. ‘By this and your earlier words, I conclude that something has occurred – a binding of souls – between you and the ay. How?’ ‘I’m not aware of any binding of souls,’ Toc answered, still staring at the sleeping wolf. ‘I was granted … visions. We shared remembrances, I think. How? I don’t know. There were emotions within it, Tool, enough to make one despair.’ After a moment he returned to cleaning the scrawny creature beneath his hands. ‘Every gift is edged.’ Toc grimaced as he gutted the animal. ‘Edged. I suppose so. I’m beginning to suspect the truth of the legends – lose an eye to receive the gift of true vision.’ ‘How did you lose your eye, Toc the Younger?’ ‘A sizzling chunk from Moon’s Spawn – that deathly rain when the Enfilade was in full swing.’ ‘Stone.’ Toc nodded. ‘Stone.’ Then he stopped, looked up. ‘Obelisk,’ Tool said. ‘In the ancient Deck of Holds, it was known as Menhir. Touched by stone, mortal – Chen’re aral lich’fayle – there, on your brow. I give you a new name. Aral Fayle.’ ‘I don’t recall asking for a new name, Tool.’ ‘Names are not for the asking, mortal. Names are earned.’ ‘Huh, sounds like the Bridgeburners.’ ‘An ancient tradition, Aral Fayle.’ Hood’s breath. ‘Fine!’ he snapped. ‘Only I can’t see that I’ve earned anything—’ ‘You were sent into a Warren of Chaos, mortal. You survived – in itself an unlikely event – and trave...

Wandering among the dismembered corpses of five K’Chain Che’Malle hunters were hundreds of huge, gaunt wolves – with pitted eyes that were a match to those of the T’lan Imass. Studying the silent, terrifying creatures, Itkovian spoke to Pran Chole. ‘Are these … yours, sir?’ The Bonecaster at his side shrugged. ‘Gone from our company for a time. T’lan Ay often accompany us, but are not bound to us … beyond the Ritual itself.’ He was silent for a long moment, then continued, ‘We had thought them lost. But it seems that they too have heard the summons. Three thousand years since our eyes last rested upon the T’lan Ay.’ Itkovian finally looked down on the undead shaman. ‘Is that a hint of pleasure in your voice, Pran Chole?’ ‘Yes. And sorrow.’ ‘Why sorrow? From the looks of it, these T’lan Ay took not a single loss against these K’Chain Che’Malle. Four, five hundred … against five. Swift destruction.’ The Bonecaster nodded. ‘Their kind are skilled at defeating large beasts. My sorrow arises from a flawed mercy, mortal. At the First Gathering, our misplaced love for the ay – these few that remained – led us onto a cruel path. We chose to include them in the Ritual. Our selfish needs were a curse. All that made the flesh and blood ay honourable, proud creatures was taken away. Now, like us, they are husks, plagued by dead memories.’ ‘Even undead, they have majesty,’ Itkovian acknowledged. ‘As with you.’ ‘Majesty in the T’lan Ay, yes. Among the T’lan Imass? No, mortal. None.’ ‘We...

The captain turned and surveyed his company. Veteran soldiers – virtually every one of them. Silent, frighteningly professional. He wondered what it would be like to see out through the eyes of any one of them, through the layers of the soul’s exhaustion that Paran had barely begun to find within himself. Soldiers now and soldiers to the end of their days – none would dare leave to find peace. Solicitude and calm would unlock that safe prison of cold control – the only thing keeping them sane. Whiskeyjack had said to Paran that, once this war was done, the Bridgeburners would be retired. Forcibly if necessary. Armies possessed traditions, and these had less to do with discipline than with the fraught truths of the human spirit. Rituals at the beginning, shared among each and every recruit. And rituals at the end, a formal closure that was recognition – recognition in every way imaginable. They were necessary. Their gift was a kind of sanity, a means of coping. A soldier cannot be sent away without guidance, cannot be abandoned and left lost in something unrecognizable and indifferent to their lives. Remembrance and honouring the ineffable. Yet, when it’s done, what is the once-soldier? What does he or she become? An entire future spent walking backward, eyes on the past – its horrors, its losses, its grief, its sheer heart-bursting living? The ritual is a turning round, a facing forward, a gentle and respectful hand like a guide on the shoulder. Sorrow was a steady, faint ...

None the less, the transition from barren plain to green pastures and signs of human activity was something of a shock to Toc the Younger. He realized, with a dull and faint surge of unease, that he’d grown used to the solitude of the plain the Elin called Lamatath. Absence of people – those outside the group … strangers – had diminished what he now understood to be a constant tension in his life. Perhaps in all our lives. Unfamiliar faces, gauging regard, every sense heightened in an effort to read the unknown. The natural efforts of society. Do we all possess a wish to remain unseen, unnoticed? Is the witnessing of our actions by others our greatest restraint?

‘Enough. You’re telling me too much. I can’t think.’ ‘You won’t, you mean. Harllo’s dead, Gruntle. Time to sober up and grieve.’ ‘You should talk, Buke.’ ‘I’ve done my grieving, friend. Long ago.’ ‘Like Hood you have.’ ‘You misunderstand me. You always have. I have grieved, and that’s faded away. Gone. Now … well, now there’s nothing. A vast, unlit cavern. Ashes. But you’re not like me – maybe you think you are, but you’re not.’ Gruntle reached out, groped for the wet cloth he’d let fall to the floor. Buke collected it and pushed it into his hand. Pressing it against his pounding brow, Gruntle groaned. ‘A pointless, senseless death.’ ‘They’re all pointless and senseless, friend. Until the living carve meaning out of them. What are you going to carve, Gruntle, out of Harllo’s death? Take my advice, an empty cave offers no comfort.’ ‘I ain’t looking for comfort.’ ‘You’d better. No other goal is worthwhile, and I should know. Harllo was my friend as well. From the way those Grey Swords who found us described it, you were down, and he did what a friend’s supposed to do – he defended you. Stood over you and took the blows. And was killed. But he did what he wanted – he saved your hide. And is this his reward, Gruntle? You want to look his ghost in the eye and tell him it wasn’t worth it?’ ‘He should never have done it.’ ‘That’s not the point, is it?’ Silence filled the room. Gruntle scrubbed his bristled face, then slowly lifted bleary eyes to Buke. The old man had tears tracki...

Teach him what? How to live beneath the burden of command? That’s something I can’t manage myself. I need only look into Whiskeyjack’s face to understand that no-one can – no-one who has a heart, anyway. We learn to achieve but one thing: the ability to hide our thoughts, to mask our feelings, to bury our humanity deep in our souls. And that can’t be taught, only shown.

In the Mountain’s Heart she waited, dreaming of peace, so deeply curled around her grief, when he found her, the man’s search was done, and he took upon himself her every scar for power’s embrace is a love that wounds. RISE OF THE DOMIN SCINTALLA OF BASTION (1129–1164)

The pain in Toc’s stomach had dulled; the knot of hunger had tightened, shrunk, become an almost senseless core of need, a need that had itself starved. His ribs were sharp and distinct beneath stretched skin. Fluids were swelling his belly. His joints ached interminably, and he’d felt his teeth loosening in their sockets. The only taste he knew these days was the occasional scrap, and the malty bitterness of his own saliva, washed away every now and then by stale, wine-tinted water from the casks on the wagons or a rare flagon of ale reserved for the First Child’s favoured few. Toc’s fellow lieutenants – and indeed Anaster himself – were well enough fed. They welcomed the endless corpses the march had claimed and continued to claim. Their boiling cauldrons were ever full. The rewards of power. The metaphor made real – I can see my old cynical teachers nodding at that. Here, among the Tenescowri, there is no obfuscating the brutal truth. Our rulers devour us. They always have. How could I ever have believed otherwise? I was a soldier, once. I was the violent assertion of someone else’s will. He had changed, not a difficult truth to recognize in himself. His soul torn by the horrors he saw all around him, the sheer amorality born of hunger and fanaticism, he had been reshaped, twisted almost beyond recognition into something new. The eradication of faith – faith in anything, especially the essential goodness of his kind – had left him cold, hardened and feral. Yet he would ...

‘An end to the foolishness, Mhybe. We’ve need of your counsel. Korlat tells me you are racked with dreams. You cry out against a threat that approaches us, something vast and deadly. Woman, your terror is palpable – even now, I see that my words have rekindled it in your eyes. Describe your visions, Mhybe.’ Struggling against a painfully hammering heart, she barked a rough, broken laugh. ‘You are all fools. Would you seek to challenge my enemy? My deadly, unopposable foe? Will you draw that sword of yours and stand in my stead?’ Whiskeyjack scowled. ‘If that would help.’ ‘There is no need. What comes for me in my dreams comes for us all. Oh, perhaps we soften its terrible visage, the darkness of a cowl, a vague human shape, even a skull’s grin which only momentarily shocks yet remains, none the less, deeply familiar – almost comforting. And we build temples to blunt the passage into its eternal domain. We fashion gates, raise barrows—’ ‘Your enemy is death?’ Whiskeyjack glanced away, then met her eyes again. ‘This is nonsense, Mhybe. You and I are both too old to fear death.’ ‘Face to face with Hood!’ she snapped. ‘That is how you see it – you fool! He is the mask behind which hides something beyond your ability to comprehend. I have seen it! I know what awaits me!’ ‘Then you no longer yearn for it—’ ‘I was mistaken, back then. I believed in my tribe’s spiritworld. I have sensed the ghosts of my ancestors. But they are but memories made manifest, a sense of self desperatel...

If you can, dear friends, do not live through a siege. UBILAST (THE LEGLESS)

‘You question your vows.’ ‘I do, sir. I admit to doubting their veracity.’ ‘Has it been your belief, Shield Anvil, that your rules of conduct existed to appease Fener?’ Itkovian frowned as he leaned on the merlon and stared out at the smoke-wreathed enemy camps. ‘Well, yes—’ ‘Then you have lived under a misapprehension, sir.’ ‘Explain, please.’ ‘Very well. You found a need to chain yourself, a need to enforce upon your own soul the strictures as defined by your vows. In other words, Itkovian, your vows were born of a dialogue with yourself – not with Fener. The chains are your own, as is the possession of the keys with which to unlock them when they are no longer required.’ ‘No longer required?’ ‘Aye. When all that is encompassed by living ceases to threaten your faith.’ ‘You suggest, then, that my crisis is not with my faith, but with my vows. That I have blurred the distinction.’ ‘I do, Shield Anvil.’ ‘Destriant,’ Itkovian said, eyes still on the Pannion encampments, ‘your words invite a carnal flood.’ The High Priest burst out laughing. ‘And with it a dramatic collapse of your dour disposition, one hopes!’

The city still burned in places, thrusting columns of black smoke skyward. The sparrowhawk studied the siege from a point of view that the world’s generals would die for. Wheeling, circling, watching. The Tenescowri ringed the city in a thick, seething band. A third of a million, maybe more. Such a mass of people as Buke had never seen before. And the band had begun to constrict. A strangely colourless, writhing noose, drawing ever closer to the city’s feeble, crumbled walls and what seemed but a handful of defenders. There would be no stopping this assault. An army measured not by bravery, but by something far deadlier, something unopposable: hunger. An army that could not afford to break, that saw only wasting death in retreat. Capustan was about to be devoured. The Pannion Seer is a monster in truth. A tyranny of need. And this will spread. Defeat him? You would have to kill every man, woman and child on this world who are bowed to hunger, everyone who faces starvation’s grisly grin. It has begun here, on Genabackis, but that is simply the heart. This tide will spread. It will infect every city, on every continent, it will devour empires and nations from within. I see you now, Seer. From this height. I understand what you are, and what you will become. We are lost. We are all truly lost.

Turning his head back, Buke caught a glimpse of a single tenement building just off to his left. Fires surrounded it, but it seemed the squat structure defied the flames. In the glow of the banked bonfires, he saw red-limned, naked corpses. Filling the surrounding streets and alleys. No, that must be a mistake. My eyes deceive. Those dead are lying on rubble. They must be. Gods, the tenement’s ground level isn’t even visible. Buried. Rubble. There cannot be naught but bodies, not piled that high … oh … depthless Abyss! The building was where Gruntle had taken a room. And, assailed by flames, it would not burn. And there, lit on all sides from below, the walls wept. Not water, but blood. Buke wheeled closer, and the closer he flew, the more horrified he became. He could see windows, shutterless, on the first visible floor. Packed with bodies. The same on the next floor, and on the one above that, directly beneath the roof. The entire building was, he realized, virtually solid. A mass of flesh and bone, seeping from the windows tears of blood and bile. A giant mausoleum, a monument to this day. He saw figures on the roof. A dozen, huddled here and there beneath makeshift awnings and lean-to shelters. And one, standing apart, head bowed as if studying the horror in the street below. Tall, hulking. Broad, sloping shoulders. Strangely barbed in shadows. A cutlass hung heavy in each gauntleted hand, stripped and gleaming like bone. A dozen paces behind him a standard had been ra...

Itkovian studied the young man, and saw what he had not expected to see. ‘First Child,’ he said. ‘There is despair within you. I will take it from you, sir, and with it your burdens.’ Anaster jolted as if he had been physically struck. He drew his knees up, climbed onto the seat of the throne, face twitching. A hand closed on the strange obsidian dagger in his belt, then flinched away as if the stone was hot. His mother screamed, clawed up her son’s outstretched arm. Snarling, he pulled himself free. She sank down to the floor, curled up. ‘I am not your father,’ Itkovian continued, ‘but I shall be as him. Unleash your flood, First Child.’ The young man stared, lips peeling back to bare his teeth. ‘Who – what are you?’ he hissed. The captain stepped forward. ‘We forgive your ignorance, sir,’ she said. ‘He is the Shield Anvil. Fener knows grief, so much grief that it is beyond his capacity to withstand it. And so he chooses a human heart. Armoured. A mortal soul, to assume the sorrow of the world. The Shield Anvil. ‘These days and nights have witnessed vast sorrow, profound shame – all of which, we see now, is writ as plain knowledge in your eyes. You cannot deceive yourself, sir, can you?’ ‘You never could,’ Itkovian said. ‘Give me your despair, First Child. I am ready to receive it’ Anaster’s wail rang through the main hall. He clambered still further up the throne’s high back, arms wrapping around himself. All eyes held on him. No-one moved. Chest heaving, the First Child...

‘I am the Shield Anvil.’ I am Fener’s grief. I am the world’s grief. And I will hold. I will hold it all, for we are not yet done.

What the soul can house, flesh cannot fathom. THE REVE OF FENER IMARAK, FIRST DESTRIANT

Dear Fener, find for me the victory in this. He descended the steps, the stone soft and gummy under his boots. His company followed, not a word spoken. They strode through the shattered gate, began picking their way through the corpses on the ramp, then in the street beyond. Uncontested by the living, this would nevertheless prove a long journey. Nor would it be a journey without battle. Assailing them now were what their eyes saw, what their noses smelled, and what they could feel underfoot. A battle that made shields and armour useless, that made flailing swords futile. A soul hardened beyond humanity was the only defence, and for Itkovian that price was too high. I am the Shield Anvil. I surrender to what lies before me. Thicker than smoke, the grief unleashed and now lost, churning this lifeless air. A city has been killed. Even the survivors huddling in the tunnels below – Fener take me, better they never emerge … to see this.

Directly below, the plaza’s expanse was now threaded with figures, Barghast moving in procession from streets and alley mouths, following Humbrall Taur as the warchief approached the Thrall’s gate. The sparrowhawk that had once been Buke heard no sound but the wind, lending the scene below a solemn, ethereal quality. None the less, the raptor drew no closer. Distance was all that kept it sane, was all that had been keeping it sane since the dawn. From here, far above Capustan, vast dramas of death and desperation were diminished, almost into abstraction. Tides of motion, the blurring of colours, the sheer muddiness of humanity – all diminished, the futility reduced to something strangely manageable. Burned-out buildings. The tragic end of innocents. Wives, mothers, children. Desperation, horror and grief, the storms of destroyed lives— No closer. Wives, mothers, children. Burned-out buildings. No closer. Ever again. The sparrowhawk caught an updraught, swept skyward, eyes now on the livening stars as night swallowed the world below. There was pain in the gifts of the Elder Gods. But sometimes, there was mercy.

The birth of Barghast gods rang like a hammer on the anvil of the pantheon. Primordial in their aspect, these ascended spirits emerged from the Hold of the Beast, that most ancient of realms from the long-lost Elder Deck. Possessors of secrets and mysteries born in the bestial shadow of humanity, theirs was a power wreathed in antiquity. Indeed, the other gods must have felt the tremor of their rising, rearing their heads in alarm and consternation. One of their own, after all, had just been abandoned in the mortal realm, whilst a First Hero assumed the warrior mantle in his place. More, the Fallen One had returned to the game in dire malice, corrupting the warrens to announce his deadly desire for vengeance and, it must be said in clear-eyed retrospect, domination. Burn’s sleep was fevered. Human civilization floundered in countless lands, drowning in the mire of spilled blood. These were dark times, and it was a darkness that seemed made for the dawn of the Barghast gods … IN THE WAKE OF DREAMS IMRYGYN TALLOBANT THE YOUNGER

The Rhivi woman sat above her now, steadily pulling the horn comb through the Mhybe’s hair, humming a child’s song. A woman the Mhybe remembered from her other life. Old, she had seemed back then, a hapless woman who had been kicked in the head by a bhederin and so lived in a simple world. I’d thought it simple. But that was just one more illusion. No, she lives amidst unknowns, amidst things she cannot comprehend. It is a world of terror. She sings to fend off the fear born of her own ignorance. Given tasks to keep her busy. Before I had come along for her, this woman had helped prepare corpses. After all, the spirits worked through such childlike adults. Through her, the spirits could come close to the fallen, and so comfort them and guide them into the world of the ancestors. It could be nothing other than malice, the Mhybe concluded, to have set this woman upon her. Possibly, she was not even aware that the subject of her attentions was still alive. The woman met no-one’s eyes, ever. Recognition had fled with the kick of a bhederin’s hoof. The comb dragged back and forth, back and forth. The humming continued its ceaseless round. Spirits below, I would rather even your terror of the unknown. Rather that, than the knowledge of my daughter’s betrayal – the wolves she has set upon me, to pursue me in my dreams. The wolves, which are her hunger. The hunger, which has already devoured my youth and now seeks yet more. As if anything’s left. Am I to be naught but food for my ...

Silence. Kruppe shivered. The air was pungent with undeath, the gelid exhalation of dying ice, filled with something like loss. Despair. Or perhaps, after this seeming eternity, only its ashes. There is, all about us, ancient knowledge – that cannot be denied. Yet Kruppe wonders, are there memories? True Memories? Of enlivened flesh and the wind’s caress, of the laughter of children? Memories of love? When frozen between life and death, in the glacial in-between, what can exist of mortal feeling? Not even an echo. Only memories of ice, of ice and no more than that. Gods below … such sorrow …

‘And when he is destroyed, Pran Chole, what then?’ The Bonecaster seemed taken aback by the question. ‘Summoner, this is your Gathering. You are flesh and blood – our flesh and blood, reborn. When the last Jaghut is slain—’ ‘A moment, if you please!’ Kruppe said, edging another step forward. Silverfox hissed in exasperation but the Daru continued. ‘Pran Chole, do you recall worthy Kruppe?’ ‘I do.’ ‘Worthy, clever Kruppe, yes? You said you know of but one Jaghut. No doubt accurate enough. None the less, saying such is not quite the same as saying there is but one left, is it? Thus, you are not certain, are you?’ Olar Ethil replied. ‘Mortal, other Jaghut remain. Isolated. Hidden – they have learned to hide very well indeed. We believe they exist, but we cannot find them.’ ‘Yet you seek an official end to the war, do you not?’ A susurration of motion rippled through the undead ranks. Silverfox wheeled on him. ‘How did you know, damn you?’ Kruppe shrugged. ‘Sorrow unsurpassed and unsurpassing. They in truth seek to become dust. Had they eyes, Kruppe would see the truth no plainer writ. The T’lan Imass wish oblivion.’ ‘Which I would only grant if all the Jaghut on this world had ceased to exist,’ Silverfox said. ‘For that is the burden laid upon me. My intended purpose. The threat of tyranny removed, finally, once and for all time. Only then could I grant the T’lan Imass the oblivion they seek – so the Ritual demands of me, for that is a linkage that cannot be broken.’ ‘You mus...

With another faint, wistful smile, Anomander Rake strode past him. Whiskeyjack sheathed his bloodied sword, and followed. He stared at the Tiste Andii’s broad back, at the weapon that hung from it. Anomander Rake, how can you bear this burden? This burden that has so thoroughly broken my heart? But no, that is not what so tears at me. Lord of Moon’s Spawn, you asked me to step aside, and you called it a mercy. I misunderstood you. A mercy, not to the Women of the Dead Seed. But to me. Thus your sorrowed smile when I denied you. Ah, my friend, I saw only your brutality – and that hurt you. Better, for us both, had you crossed blades with me. For us both. And I – I am not worth such friends. Old man, foolish gestures plague you. Be done with it. Make this your last war. Make it your last.

‘That was damned unfortunate.’ ‘It was.’ ‘From the distance, it looked—’ ‘It looked bad, High Fist, because it was.’ ‘Understand, Whiskeyjack, I comprehend your … your mercy. Rake’s sword – but, dammit, could you not have waited?’ Explanations, sound justifications crowded Whiskeyjack’s mind, but all he said was, ‘No.’ ‘Executions demand procedures—’ ‘Then strip me of my rank, sir.’ Dujek winced, looked away. He sighed roughly. ‘That’s not what I meant, Whiskeyjack. I know well enough the significance of such procedures – the real reason for their existing in the first place. A sharing of necessary but brutal acts—’ ‘Diminishes the personal cost, aye,’ Whiskeyjack answered in low tones. ‘No doubt Anomander Rake could have easily managed those few souls added to his legendary list. But I took them instead. I diminished his personal cost. A paltry effort, granted, and one he asked me not to do. But it is done now. The issue is ended.’ ‘The issue is anything but,’ Dujek grated. ‘I am your friend—’ ‘No.’ We’re not at risk of crossing blades, so there won’t be any sharing of this one. ‘No,’ he repeated. Not this time. He could almost hear Dujek’s teeth grinding. Korlat joined them. ‘A strange young man, the one known as Anaster.’ The two Malazans turned at her words. ‘Does that surprise you?’ Dujek asked. She shrugged. ‘There was much hidden within the darkness of his soul, High Fist. More than just a soldier’s face. He could not bear leading his army. Could not bear to see the...

Murillio sighed. ‘Rallick Nom.’ ‘What of him?’ ‘I wish he were here.’ ‘Why?’ ‘So he could kill someone. Anyone. The man’s a wonder at simplifying matters.’ Coll grunted a laugh. ‘“Simplifying matters.” Wait until I tell him that one. Hey, Rallick, you’re not an assassin, you know, you’re just a man who simplifies.’

It is a most ancient tale. Two gods from before the time of men and women. Longing and love and loss, the beasts doomed to wander through the centuries. A tale of mores, told with the purpose of no resolution. Its meaning, gentle readers, lies not in a soul-warming conclusion, but in all that is unattainable in this world. Who then could have imagined such closure? WINTER’S LOVE SILBARATHA

Destroyer of lives. Seer, how could you have done this to your people? A distant bell rang in the palace behind them. The Seerdomin’s grip tightened. ‘The allotted time is done.’ ‘Back to my own embrace,’ Toc said, his gaze straining to catch, one last time, the world before him. Remember this, for you will not see it again, Toc the Younger. ‘Thank you for the use of your cloak,’ he said. ‘You are welcome, Malazan. These winds were once warm. Come, lean on me while we walk – your weight is as nothing.’ They slowly made their way towards the building. ‘Easily borne, you mean.’ ‘I did not say that, Malazan. I did not say that.’

The new Shield Anvil of the Grey Swords sat motionless, her gaze fixed on Itkovian with unveiled sorrow. And … pity. I am a distraction. Very well. He stepped back, turned about and made his way towards the back of the tarp. He was surprised to find Paran, Whiskeyjack and the dark-skinned man waiting there. A tall, martial woman with midnight skin had joined them and now studied Itkovian with extraordinary, almond-shaped eyes the colour of sun-bleached grass. Meeting that gaze, Itkovian almost staggered. Fener’s tusks, such sadness – an eternity of loss … empty existence— She broke the contact with a startled, then alarmed, expression. Not for me. Not for my embrace. Not that. Some wounds can never be healed, some memories should never be reawakened. Cast no light upon that darkness, sir. It is too much—He came then to another realization. Fener was gone, and with the god had vanished his protection. Itkovian was vulnerable as he had never been before. Vulnerable to the world’s pain, to its grief.

Mok appeared at her side, rain streaming from his enamel mask. ‘I will face him yet,’ he said. ‘Oh really. And when did duelling Tool become more important than your mission to the Seer? How will the First or the Second react to such self-importance?’ ‘The First is the First and the Second is the Second,’ Mok replied laconically. Lady Envy rolled her eyes. ‘How astute an observation.’ ‘The demands of the self have primacy, mistress. Always, else there would be no champions. There would be no hierarchy at all. The Seguleh would be ruled by mewling martyrs blindly trampling the helpless in their lust for the common good. Or we would be ruled by despots who would hide behind an army to every challenge, creating of brute force a righteous claim to honour. We know of other lands, mistress. We know much more than you think.’ She turned to study him. ‘Goodness. And here I have been proceeding on the assumption that entertaining conversation was denied to me.’ ‘We are immune to your contempt, mistress.’ ‘Hardly, you’ve been smarting ever since I reawakened you. Smarting? Indeed, seething.’ ‘There are matters to be discussed,’ Mok said.

Baaljagg and Garath stood three paces beyond, the rain striking their broad backs hard enough to mist with spray. Both animals faced a lone figure, standing in the gloom of the opposite house’s overhanging dormer. For a moment, Lady Envy almost sighed, then the fact that she did not recognize the figure struck home. ‘Oh! And here I was about to say: dear Tool, you waited for us after all! But lo, you are not him, are you?’ The T’lan Imass before them was shorter, squatter than Tool. Three black-iron broadswords of unfamiliar style impaled this undead warrior’s broad, massive chest, two of them driven in from behind, the other from the T’lan Imass’s left. Broken ribs jutted through black, salt-rimed skin. The leather strapping of all three sword handles hung in rotted, unravelled strips from the grips’ wooden underplates. Wispy remnants of old sorcery flowed fitfully along the pitted blades. The warrior’s features were extraordinarily heavy, the brow ridge a skinless shelf of bone, stained dark brown, the cheek bones swept out and high to frame flattened oval-shaped eye sockets. Cold-hammered copper fangs capped the undead’s upper canines. The T’lan Imass did not wear a helm. Long hair, bleached white, dangled to either side of the broad, chinless face, weighted at the ends with shark teeth. A most dreadful, appalling apparition, Lady Envy reflected. ‘Have you a name, T’lan Imass?’ she asked. ‘I have heard the summons,’ the warrior said in a voice that was distinctly femini...

Your friend’s face might prove the mask the daub found in subtle shift to alter the once familiar visage. Or the child who formed unseen in private darkness as you whiled oblivious to reveal cruel shock as a stone through a temple’s pane. To these there is no armour on the soul. And upon the mask is writ the bold word, echoed in the child’s eyes, a sudden stranger to all you have known. Such is betrayal. DEATH VIGIL OF SORULAN MINIR OTHAL

Silverfox, her face pale, was slow to respond. When she did, it was in a rasp, ‘You have no idea what lies between us, Ganoes.’ ‘And it seems you’ve no idea of how to forgive – not her, not yourself. Guilt has become a chasm—’ ‘That is rich indeed, coming from you.’ His smile was tight. ‘I’ve done my climb down, Silverfox, and am now climbing up the other side. Things have changed for both of us.’ ‘So you have turned your back on your avowed feelings for me.’ ‘I love you still, but with your death I succumbed to a kind of infatuation. I convinced myself that what you and I had, so very briefly, was of far vaster and deeper import than it truly was. Of all the weapons we turn upon ourselves, guilt is the sharpest, Silverfox. It can carve one’s own past into unrecognizable shapes, false memories leading to beliefs that sow all kinds of obsessions.’ ‘Delighted to have you clear the air so, Ganoes. Has it not occurred to you that clinical examination of oneself is yet another obsession? What you dissect has to be dead first – that’s the principle of dissection, after all.’ ‘So my tutor explained,’ Paran replied, ‘all those years ago. But you miss a more subtle truth. I can examine myself, my every feeling, until the Abyss swallows the world, yet come no closer to mastery of those emotions within me. For they are not static things; nor are they immune to the outside world – to what others say, or don’t say. And so they are in constant flux.’ ‘Extraordinary,’ she murmured. ‘Capt...

Itkovian pulled his gaze from the encampment ahead to study the hulking warrior at his side. ‘We must assume our enemy is preparing for us. Yet, within the Domin, the last grains of the bell-glass are even now trickling down.’ Treach’s Mortal Sword grunted. ‘You know something the rest of us don’t?’ ‘Not specifically, sir. I have but drawn conclusions based on such details as I was able to observe when viewing Kulpath’s army, and the Tenescowri.’ ‘Well, don’t keep them to yourself.’ Itkovian returned his gaze to the south. After a moment he sighed. ‘Cities and governments are but the flowering head of a plant whose stalk is the commonalty, and it is the commonalty whose roots are within the earth, drawing the necessary sustenance that maintains the flower. The Tenescowri, sir, is the Domin’s surviving commonalty – people torn from their land, from their villages, their homes, their farms. All food production has ceased, and in its place has arisen the horror of cannibalism. The countryside before us is indeed razed, but not in answer to us. It has been a wasteland for some time, sir. Thus, while the flower still blazes its colour, it is in fact already dead.’ ‘Drying from a hook beneath the Crippled God’s shelf?’ Itkovian shrugged. ‘Caladan Brood and the High Fist have selected cities as their destinations. Lest, Setta, Maurik and Coral. Of these, I believe only the last still lives. None of the others would be able to feed a defending army; indeed, not even its own citize...

‘You have mentioned the name earlier. Who is Tool?’ ‘Onos T’oolan, First Sword. The last time I saw him, he was even more bedraggled than you, dear, so there’s hope for you yet.’ ‘Onos T’oolan. I saw him but once.’ ‘The First Gathering, no doubt.’ ‘Yes. He spoke against the ritual.’ ‘So of course you hate him.’ The T’lan Imass did not immediately reply. The structure shifted wildly beneath them, their end pitching down as the floe punched clear, then lifting upward once more. There was not even a waver to Lanas Tog’s stance. She spoke. ‘Hate him? No. Of course I disagreed. We all did, and so he acquiesced. It is a common belief.’ Lady Envy waited, then crossed her arms and asked, ‘What is?’ ‘That truth is proved by weight of numbers. That what the many believe to be right, must be so. When I see Onos T’oolan once more, I will tell him: he was the one who was right.’ ‘I don’t think he holds a grudge, Lanas Tog. I suppose, thinking on it, that makes him unique among the T’lan Imass, doesn’t it?’ ‘He is the First Sword.’

‘Do you intend to attempt harm upon these travellers, sir?’ ‘You well know who they are.’ ‘I do.’ ‘I had a friend … ‘Aye, the one named Buke. I recall him. A man broken by sorrow. I once offered to take his burdens, but he refused me.’ Gruntle’s head snapped round at that. ‘You did? He did?’ Itkovian nodded. ‘Perhaps I should have been more … direct.’ ‘You should have grabbed him by the throat and done it no matter what he wanted. That’s what the new Shield Anvil’s done to that one-eyed First Child of the Dead Seed, Anaster, isn’t it? And now the man rides at her side—’ ‘Rides unknowing. He is naught but a shell, sir. There was naught else within him but pain. Its taking has stolen his knowledge of himself. Would you have had that as Buke’s fate as well, sir?’ The man grimaced.

They had carried the Mhybe into the temple five days past, settling her into a room that had once belonged to a ranking priest. They had unloaded the wagon and stored their food and water in the cellars amidst the shards of hundreds of shattered jugs and the floor and the walls made sticky with wine, the air thick and cloying and rank as an innkeeper’s apron. Every meal since had tasted wine-soaked, reminding Coll of the almost two years he had wasted as a drunk, drowning in misery’s dark waters as only a man in love with self-pity can. He would have liked to call the man he had been a stranger now, but the world had a way of spinning unnoticed, until what he’d thought he’d turned his back on suddenly faced him again. Even worse, introspection – for him at least – was a funnel in sand, a spider waiting at the bottom. And Coll well knew he was quite capable of devouring himself.

‘You chew on things like no other man I’ve known,’ Gruntle said. Blinking, Itkovian glanced over at the Daru. ‘Sir?’ ‘Well, not quite true, come to think of it. Buke…’ On Itkovian’s other side, Stonny sniffed. ‘Buke? Buke was a drunk.’ ‘More than that, you miserable woman,’ Gruntle replied. ‘He carried on his shoulders—’ ‘None of that,’ Stonny warned. To Itkovian’s surprise, Gruntle fell abruptly silent. Buke … ah, I recall. On his shoulders, the deaths of loved ones. ‘There is no need, Stonny Menackis, for such uncharacteristic sensitivity. I see how I appear, to you both, similar to Buke. I am curious: did your sad friend seek redemption in his life? While he may have refused me when I was Shield Anvil, he might well have drawn strength from some inner resolve.’ ‘Not a chance, Itkovian,’ Stonny said. ‘Buke drank to keep his torment at bay. He wasn’t looking for redemption. He wanted death, plain and simple.’ ‘Not simple,’ Gruntle objected. ‘He wanted an honourable death, such as his family was denied – by that honour he would redeem them in exchange. I know, a twisted notion, but what went on in his mind is less a mystery to me than to most, I suspect.’ ‘Because you’ve thought the same,’ Stonny snapped. ‘Even though you didn’t lose a family to some tenement fire. Even though the worst thing you’ve lost is maybe that harlot who married that merchant—’ ‘Stonny,’ the Daru growled, ‘I lost Harllo. I nearly lost you.’ The admission clearly left her speechless. Ah, these two …...