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

by Steven Erikson

Kalam found within himself conflicting loyalties. By birth he was among the occupied, but he had by choice fought under the standards of the Empire. He’d fought for Emperor Kellanved. And Dassem Ultor, and Whiskeyjack, and Dujek Onearm. But not Laseen. Betrayal cut those bonds long ago.

“High Priest Iskaral Pust of the Tesem Temple of Shadow—

“Nothing. Wise words are like arrows flung at your forehead. What do you do? Why, you duck, of course.

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.

Youth’s game, and he’d long grown weary of it. Yet he’d stayed, nailed to a single tree but only because he’d grown used to the scenery around it. It was amazing what could be endured when in the grip of inertia. He had reached a point where anything strange, unfamiliar, was cause for fear.

Although he sat within arm’s reach of the tattooed old man, Kulp could sense his own warren. It felt ready—almost eager—for release. The mage was frightened. Meanas was a remote warren, and every fellow practitioner Kulp had met characterized it the same way: cool, detached, amused intelligence. The game of illusions was played with light, dark, texture and shadows, crowing victory when it succeeded in deceiving an eye, but even that triumph felt emotionless, the satisfaction clinical. Accessing the warren always had the feel of interrupting a power busy with other things. As if shaping a small fraction of that power was a distraction barely worth acknowledging.

Distempered. Do you know the Chain of Dogs?” Fiddler started, blinked as if shaken from a trance. “What?” “It’s begun, though not yet known. Anabar Thy’lend. Chain of Dogs in the Malazan tongue.

“The gutter under the flood, raising ripples on the plunging surface. A river of blood, the flow of words from a hidden heart. All things sundered. Spiders in every crook and corner.”

The Malazan engineers are a unique breed. Cantankerous, foul-mouthed, derisive of authority, secretive and thick-headed. They are the heartstone of the Malazan Army…

He knew men such as these. Their courage held so long as they outnumbered their victims, the hollow glory they thirsted for came with overpowering and terrorizing the helpless. Such creatures were common in the world, and a land locked in war left them to run free, the brutal truths behind every just cause. They were given a name in the Ehrlii tongue: e’ptarh le’gebran, the vultures of violence.

Hentos Ilm paused, attention still on Heboric. “Elder. Kurald Emurlahn.” “I’ve heard of Kurald Galain—the Tiste Andii warren.” “This is Tiste Edur. You surprise me, Mage. You are Meanas Rashan, which is the branch of Kurald Emurlahn accessible to mortal humans. The warren you use is the child of this place.” Kulp was scowling at the Bonecaster’s back. “This makes no sense. Meanas Rashan is the warren of Shadow. Of Ammanas and Cotillion, and the Hounds.” “Before Shadowthrone and Cotillion,” Hentos Ilm said, “there were Tiste Edur.”

“You ever think that maybe what you are is what’s trapping you inside whatever it is you’re trapped inside?”

If you seek the crumbled bones of the T’lan Imass, gather into one hand the sands of Raraku

Oh, Hood, Soletaken or D’ivers…but such power! Who in the Abyss has such power? He could think of but two: Anomander Rake, the Son of Darkness, and Osric. Both Soletaken, both supremely arrogant. If there were others, the tales of their activities would have reached him, he was certain. Warriors talk about heroes. Mages talk about Ascendants. He would have heard.

“Somewhere among those scattered words is recounted the creation of shapeshifters—the forces that are Soletaken and D’ivers are that old, Fiddler. They were old even in Elder times. No one species can claim propriety, and that includes the four Founding Races: Jaghut, Forkrul Assail, Imass and K’Chain Che’Malle.

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 creatures worshipped the High Priest. Not like a dog its master, but like acolytes their god. Offerings, obscure symbols and fitful icons crowded their awkward rituals. Many of those rituals seemed to involve bodily wastes. When you can’t produce holy books, produce what you can, I suppose. The creatures drove Iskaral Pust to distraction. He cursed them, and had taken to carrying rocks in a sack. He flung the missiles at the bhok’arala at every opportunity.

The historian, now witness, stumbling in the illusion that he will survive. Long enough to set the details down on parchment in the frail belief that truth is a worthwhile cause. That the tale will become a lesson heeded. Frail belief? Outright lie, a delusion of the worst sort. 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.”

The unseen energy of life’s thoughts is food for the gods, did you know that? This is why they must—they must—be fickle!”

To a blind man his entire body is a ghost. Felt but not seen. Thus, I raise invisible arms, move invisible legs, my invisible chest rising and falling to unseen air. So now I stretch fingers, then make fists. I am everywhere solid—and always have been—if not for the deceit perpetrated by my own eyes.”

“Time makes of us believers. Timelessness makes of us unbelievers.” Another Saying of the Fool, another sly quote voiced by the sages of my homeland. Used most often when dismissing precedent; a derisive scoff at the lessons of history. The central assertion of sages was to believe nothing. More, that assertion was a central tenet of those who would become assassins.

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?

The soldier’s companions had all gone through their first blooding, and that was a threshold both feared and anticipated. Imagination whispered untruths that only experience could shatter.

Togg’s three masks of war. Before the day’s done we’ll each of us wear them all. Terror, rage and pain. We won’t take the ridge—

Life forces were powerful, almost beyond comprehension, and the sacrifice of one animal to gift close to five thousand others with appalling strength and force of will was on the face of it worthy and noble. If not for a dumb beast’s incomprehension at its own destruction beneath the loving hands of two heartbroken children.

The animals had matched them step for step on this soul-destroying journey. Month after month of suffering. That is one curse we all share—the will to live. Their fates had been decided, though thankfully they knew nothing of that. Yet even that will change in the last moments. The dumbest of beasts seems capable of sensing its own impending death. Hood grants every living thing awareness at the very end. What mercy is that?

Tremorlor, the Throne of Sand is said to lie within Raraku. A House of the Azath, it stands alone on uprooted soil where all tracks are ghosts and every ghost leads to Tremorlor’s door.

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. The shock of that unmanned him, mocking his audacity with an endless echo of ages and realms trapped within this mad, riotous prison.

“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.”

She nodded. “This is Dassem Ultor’s daughter. The First Sword recovered her after Hood was done using her, and brought her here, it seems.” “Before breaking his vow to Hood—” “Aye, before Dassem cursed the god he once served.” “That was years ago, Apsalar,” Fiddler said. “I know.”

But it occurs to me that even as mortals are but pieces on a gameboard, so too are the gods.” “ ‘Elemental forces in opposition,’

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…