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

by Steven Erikson

It was a sour and obvious mockery of justice that stripped away the few remaining expectations of civil behavior—stripped away civilization itself, leaving nothing but the chaos of savagery.

This is an enemy we can never defeat, Duiker believed. Yet history tells the stories of those who would challenge that enemy, again and again. Perhaps victory is not achieved by overcoming that enemy, but by joining it, becoming one with it.

This Path of Hands—” he hesitated, then continued—“is perhaps a means to Ascendancy—for the victor.” Fiddler drew a slow, unsteady breath. “Ascendancy means power. Power means control.” He met the Spiritwalker’s tawny eyes. “Should one shapeshifter attain Ascendancy—”

“The sheer…frivolity, Mappo. The materials alone for this tome are a craftsman’s annual wage. No scholar in their right mind would waste such resources—never mind their time—on such a pointless, trite subject. And this is not the only example. Look, Seed Dispersal Patterns of the Purille Flower on the Skar Archipelago, and here, Diseases of White-Rimmed Clams of Lekoor Bay. And I am convinced that these works are thousands of years old. Thousands.”

Indolence takes many forms, but it comes to every civilization that has outlived its will.

Look at you two. Both ancient wanderers of this mortal earth. Why have you not ascended like the rest of them? I’ll tell you. Longevity does not automatically bestow wisdom. Oh no, not at all. I trust you are killing every spider you spy.

“Remember the Round, Heboric? In Unta? Hood’s acolyte, the priest covered in flies…who was naught but flies. He had a message for you. And now, what do I see? Staggering into view, a man aswarm—not in flies but in tattoos. Different gods, but the same message, that’s what I see. Let Fener speak through those peeling lips, old man. Will your god’s words echo Hood’s? Is the world truly a collection of balances, the infinite tottering to and fro of fates and destinies? Boar of Summer, Tusked Sower of War, what do you say?”

And the witnessing of magic left scars, a feeling of overwhelming vulnerability in the face of something beyond one’s control. It made the world suddenly fey, deadly, frightening and bleak. That day in Unta had shifted her place in the world, or at least her sense of it. And she’d felt off-balance ever since. But maybe it wasn’t that. Not that at all. Maybe it was what I lived through on the march to the galleys, maybe it was that sea of faces, the storm of hate and mindless fury, of the freedom and hunger to deliver pain writ so plain in all those so very normal faces. Maybe it was the people that sent me reeling.

with me a while longer,” Kalam

“We are known by our madness—this, the island’s ancient spirit shows us. The memories that survive are all horror, our deeds so dark as to sear the land itself. Keep your eyes open,” he added, spinning his mount around to face the battle that had resumed at the slatted bridge, “we’re not finished yet.”

Nastiness grows like a cancer in any and every organization—human or otherwise, as you well know. And nastiness gets nastier. Whatever evil you let ride becomes commonplace, eventually. Problem is, it’s easier to get used to it than carve it out.”

The image was etching itself into Kalam’s heart like acid into bronze. His limbs felt cold, as if his own claim to life was withdrawing, pooling in his gut. I cannot save him. I cannot even kill him in swift mercy. Not this lad, not a single one of these hundreds of Malazans surrounding this army. I can do nothing. The knowledge was a whisper of madness. The assassin feared but one thing that left him skeined with terror: helplessness. But not the helplessness of being a prisoner, or of undergoing torture—he’d been victim to both, and he well knew that torture could break anyone—anyone at all. But this…Kalam feared insignificance, he feared the inability to produce an effect, to force a change upon the world beyond his flesh.

The lesson of history is that no one learns. Children were dying. He’d crouched, one hand on a mother’s shoulder, and watched with her as life ebbed from the baby in her arms. Like the light of an oil lamp, dimming, dimming, winking out. The moment when the struggle’s already lost, surrendered, and the tiny heart slows in its own realization, then stops in mute wonder. And never stirs again. It was then that pain filled the vast caverns within the living, destroying all it touched with its rage at inequity.

“That’s a succinct summary of humankind, I’d say. Who needs tomes and volumes of history? Children are dying. The injustices of the world hide in those three words. Quote me, Duiker, and your work’s done.”

I’ll never return to the List of the Fallen, because I see now that the unnamed soldier is a gift. The named soldier—dead, melted wax—demands a response among the living…a response no one can make. Names are no comfort, they’re a call to answer the unanswerable. Why did she die, not him? Why do the survivors remain anonymous—as if cursed—while the dead are revered? Why do we cling to what we lose while we ignore what we still hold? Name none of the fallen, for they stood in our place, and stand there still in each moment of our lives. Let my death hold no glory, and let me die forgotten and unknown. Let it not be said that I was one among the dead to accuse the living.

Squall Inn claimed to have seen better days, but Kalam suspected it never had. The floor of the main room sagged like an enormous bowl, tilting every wall inward until angled wooden posts were needed to keep them upright. Rotting food and dead rats had with inert patience migrated to the floor’s center, creating a mouldering, redolent heap like an offering to some dissolute god.

“Show me a mortal who is not pursued, and I’ll show you a corpse. Every hunter is hunted, every mind that knows itself has stalkers. We drive and are driven. The unknown pursues the ignorant, the truth assails every scholar wise enough to know his own ignorance, for that is the meaning of unknowable truths.”

It’s the ignorant who find a cause and cling to it, for within that is the illusion of significance. Faith, a king, queen or Emperor, or vengeance…all the bastion of fools.

All those histories I’ve read…each an intellectual obsession with war, the endless redrawing of maps. Heroic charges and crushing defeats. We are all naught but twists of suffering in a river of pain. Hood’s breath, old man, your words weary even yourself—why inflict them on others?

Heboric grunted. “I know of scholars who claim they can map entire extinct cultures through the study of such detritus.” “Now there’s a lifetime of excitement,” Felisin drawled.

“Tell me you’ve learned no truths, Heboric.” He snorted. “Aye, I’ve learned one. There are no truths. You’ll understand that yourself, years from now, when Hood’s shadow stretches your way.” “There are truths,” Leoman said ahead of them, not turning as he continued. “Raraku. Dryjhna. The Whirlwind and the Apocalypse. The weapon in the hand, the flow of blood.” “You’ve not made our journey, Leoman,” Heboric growled. “Your journey was rebirth—as she has said—and so there was pain. Only fools would expect otherwise.”

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.”

friend. At last, dear Elders, I am revealed to you. You chose wrongly. I am a coward. “I wish,” Icarium said slowly, haltingly, “I wish I could understand. The war I see within you breaks my heart, Mappo. You must realize by now…” “Realize what?” the Trell croaked, still unable to meet the Jhag’s eyes. “That I would give my life for you, my only friend, my brother.” Mappo wrapped his arms about himself. “No,” he whispered. “Do not say that.” “Help me end your war. Please.” The Trell drew a deep, ragged breath. “The city of the First Empire, the one upon the old island…” Icarium waited. “Destroyed…by your hand, Icarium. Yours is a blind rage…a rage unequaled. It burns fierce, so fierce all your memory of what you do is obliterated. I watch you—I have watched you stirring those cold ashes, ever seeking to discover who you are, yet there I stand, at your side, bound by a vow to prevent you ever committing such an act again. You have destroyed cities, entire peoples. Once you begin killing, you cannot stop, until all before you is…lifeless.”

“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.”

It is not the goal that brings pleasure, but the journey taken to achieve it!”

We are all lone souls. It pays to know humility, lest the delusion of control, of mastery, overwhelms. And indeed, we seem a species prone to that delusion, again and ever again…

“It’s our nature, isn’t it? Again and again, we cling to the foolish belief that simple solutions exist. Aye, I anticipated a dramatic, satisfying confrontation—the flash of sorcery, the spray of blood. I wanted a sworn enemy dead by my hand. Instead—” he rumbled a laugh—“I had an audience with a mortal woman, more or less…” He shook himself. “In any case, we’ve the Claw’s gauntlet ahead of