Deadhouse Gates (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #2)

by Steven Erikson

Crokus dragged a chair to the table, dropped into it and reached for the wine. “We’re tired of waiting,” he pronounced. “If we have to cross this damned land, then let’s do it. There’s a steaming pile of rubbish behind the garden wall, clogging up the sewage gutter. Crawling with rats. The air’s hot and so thick with flies you can barely breathe. We’ll catch a plague if we stay here much longer.” “Let’s hope it’s the bluetongue, then,” Kalam said. “What’s that?” “Your tongue swells up and turns blue,” Fiddler explained. “What’s so good about that?” “You can’t talk.”

“Can there be magic in mere words?” he asked to no one in particular. Icarium answered. “Magic powerful enough to drive gods to their knees, soldier.”

Remember, Historian, had these warriors won the first time, they would have done to their victims what was done to their own families.”

Duiker was silent for a long moment. “Is that how you want the tale told, soldier?” The man squinted some more, then he nodded. “Just like that, Historian. We ain’t just a Malazan army any more. We’re Coltaine’s.”

“There’s great need to maintain the illusion of order, List. In us all.”

“I know of scholars who claim they can map entire extinct cultures through the study of such detritus.”

“How does Coltaine know such things?” Duiker was startled. “You are asking me? Hood’s breath, lass, the man’s a Wickan!” “And no less a cipher to us, Historian. The clans do as he commands and say nothing. It is not shared certainty or mutual understanding that breeds our silence. It is awe.”

We are not simple creatures. You dream that with memories will come knowledge, and from knowledge, understanding. But for every answer you find, a thousand new questions arise. All that we were has led us to where we are, but tells us little of where we’re going. Memories are a weight you can never shrug off.”

the sapper was left trembling in the realization of his insignificance and that of all his kind. Humans were but one tiny, frail leaf on a tree too massive even to comprehend.

“Pogroms need no reason, sir, none that can weather challenge, in any case. Difference in kind is the first recognition, the only one needed, in fact. Land, domination, pre-emptive attacks—all just excuses, mundane justifications that do nothing but disguise the simple distinction. They are not us. We are not them.”

With dusk an hour away, a lone Khundryl war chief rode up to them at a slow canter, and as he neared they saw that it was the spokesman. He’d been in a scrap and was smeared in blood, at least half of it his own, yet he rode straight in his saddle. He reined in ten paces from Coltaine. The Fist spoke. “You have your answer, it seems.” “We have it, Blackwing.” “The Khundryl.” Surprise flitted on the warrior’s battered face. “You honor us, but no. We strove to break the one named Korbolo Dom, but failed. The answer is not the Khundryl.” “Then you do honor to Korbolo Dom?” The war chief spat at that, growled his disbelief. “Spirits below! You cannot be such a fool! The answer this day…” The war chief yanked free his tulwar from its leather sheath, revealing a blade snapped ten inches above the hilt. He raised it over his head and bellowed, “The Wickans! The Wickans! The Wickans!”