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The T’lan Imass worked in the span of millennia, their purposes their own. Yet their endless war had become her endless war. Laseen’s Empire was a shadow of the First Empire. The difference lay in that the Imass conducted genocide against another species. Malaz killed its own. Humanity had not climbed up since the dark age of the Imass: it had spiraled down.
Morality was not relative, they claimed, nor even existing solely in the realm of the human condition. No, they proclaimed morality as an imperative of all life, a natural law that was neither the brutal acts of beasts nor the lofty ambitions of humanity, but something other, something unassailable.
He’d hoped to see sky, to look one last time on its bright, depthless blue. Instead, he found himself looking at the underside of the belfry’s roof, its ancient stone arch crowded with nesting bats. This detail fixed itself in his head as he felt the blood stream from his chest. He thought he could see beady eyes glittering down at him.
“Those whom the gods choose, ’tis said, they first separate from other mortals—by treachery, by stripping from you your spirit’s lifeblood. The gods will take all your loved ones, one by one, to their death. And, as you harden, as you become what they seek, the gods smile and nod. Each company you shun brings you closer to them. ’Tis the shaping of a tool, son, the prod and pull, and the final succour they offer you is to end your loneliness—the very isolation they helped you create.” Never get noticed, boy.
It’s coming down, Captain. On all sides. So why do we maintain our army? Look to the south. Something’s growing there, so ugly it makes the Imass look like kittens. When I say we’re in trouble, I don’t mean just Genabackis, I mean the world. We’re all in for a fight, Captain. And that’s why we need Darujhistan.” “What’s to the south?” Paran asked skeptically. Kalam answered, his words a breath of fear, “The Pannion Seer. So the rumors are true, then. The Seer’s proclaimed a holy war. The genocide’s begun.”
Baruk had no time to think about Rake’s sudden departure. It was his first mistake of the day.
The figure laughed, a low rumble. “You are a fool, Raest. In this age even a mortal can kill you. The tide of enslavement has reversed itself. It is now we gods who are the slaves, and the mortals our masters—though they know it not.”
But Laseen had left the old wounds to fester, and what was coming would silence Hood himself.
‘History comforts the dull-witted,’ ” the young Malazan said.
The wind came as laughter to his ears, the sound seemingly stained with pleasure at witnessing senseless violence. It was eager for more. The Whirlwind awakened—this goddess is mad, riven with insanity—who is there that can stop her?
Only two kinds of people die in battle, Fiddler had once said, fools and the unlucky. Trading blows with a demon was both unlucky and foolish.
Heboric spoke behind her. “We’ll make it to the coast. I smell water. Close. To the coast, and when we get there, Felisin, you will find that nothing has changed. Nothing at all. Do you grasp my meaning?” She sensed a thousand meanings to his words, yet understood none of them. Up ahead, Baudin gave a shout of surprise.
They studied each other, their eyes searching the altered reflection before them, one set plagued with innocent questing, the other disguising devastating knowledge. And between us, hanging in the balance, a friendship neither understands.
But it occurs to me that even as mortals are but pieces on a gameboard, so too are the gods.” “ ‘Elemental forces in opposition,’ ” she said, smiling. Heboric’s brows rose, then he scowled. “A quote. A familiar one—” “It should be. It’s carved into the Imperial Gate in Unta, after all. Kellanved’s own words, as a means to justify the balance of destruction with creation—the expansion of the Empire, in all its hungry glory.”
The sapper softly cursed, lowering himself into an uneasy crouch. We’re intruders here…He’d heard rumors of warrens that were airless, that were instant death to mortals who dared enter them. There was an arrogance in assuming that every realm in existence bowed to human needs. Intruders—this place cares nothing for us, nor are there any laws demanding that it accommodate us. Mind you, the same could be said for any world.
Fiddler’s gaze was drawn to a bench against the near wall. He hobbled to it and sat down. Leaning his head against the warm stone wall, he closed his eyes. Gods, our struggles are as nothing, our inner scars naught but scratches. Bless you, Hood, for your gift of mortality. I could not live as these Ascendants do—I could not so torture my soul…
Elder Gods, it has been said, embodied a host of unpleasantries.
‘It is all right, sir.’ Paran smiled. ‘The children of my parents are, one and all, capable of virtually anything. We can survive the consequences. Perhaps we lack normal conscience, perhaps we are monsters in truth.
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.
But there’s no escape, is there? Memories and revelations settle in like poisons, never to be expunged.
Blood-bound lives are the web that carries each of us; they make up that which a life climbs, from newborn to child, then child to adulthood. Without such life-forces, one withers and dies. To be alone is to be ill, Warlord, not just spiritually, but physically as well. I am my daughter’s web, and I am alone in that—’
‘Ascendancy is born of experience,’
The soldier’s moment, now, before the battle begins – who would choose such a life? You stand with others, all facing the same threat, all feeling so very alone. In the cold embrace of fear, that sense that all that you are might end in moments. Gods, I’ve no envy for a soldier’s life—
Where resides the comforting knowledge of history’s vast, cyclical sweep, the ebb and flow of wars and of peace? Peace is the time of waiting for war. A time of preparation, or a time of wilful ignorance, blind, blinkered and prattling behind secure walls.
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.
Convergence, the plague of this world.
‘War has its necessities, Korlat, and I have always understood that. Always known the cost. But, this day, by my own hand, I have realized something else. War is not a natural state. It is an imposition, and a damned unhealthy one. With its rules, we willingly yield our humanity. Speak not of just causes, worthy goals. We are takers of life. Servants of Hood, one and all.’
‘My child has made me a prisoner as well,’ the Mhybe whispered. ‘Is this the curse of all mothers?’ ‘It is the curse of love.’
Among his people, it was a long-known truth, perhaps the only truth, that Nature fought but one eternal war. One foe. That, further, to understand this was to understand the world. Every world. Nature has but one enemy. And that is imbalance.
