The God is Not Willing (Witness #1)

by Steven Erikson

Then rises a single figure between the foes, spire of flesh and obdurate will, iron-boned yet shattered of visage. He is no one’s champion, yet everyone’s god.

To witness is to begin to see. To see is to begin to know. To know is to recoil. Yet he stands fast, unarmed, un-armoured against this future, and I do know him: he is the Unwilling God, the Helpless God, the Slayer of All and None.

‘It was not difficult to learn of their names – after all, do not the Uryd still sing of Karsa Orlong, Delum Thord and Bairoth Gild?’

Strange how things said that made no sense could stay in the memory, while all the truths just fell away, abandoned in the way of things that had little relevance.

Listen, reading’s easy. It’s what you do with all the words now in your head that’s hard. Consider. Ten people could read the same damned words and yet walk away with ten different interpretations.’

Bridgeburners. Bonehunters. Coltaine’s Crows. The Malazan Empire had plenty of lost armies in its history. All dead but never forgotten. But that was the problem, wasn’t it? The dead needed forgetting, but like Say No was always saying, remembering’s one thing, but the reason for remembering is quite another.

Stillwater didn’t trust people with manners. Considerate, kind, helpful people – what was wrong with them? Something. You could be damned sure of that.

Folibore said, ‘The God with the Shattered Face lives in a hut outside Darujhistan.’ Stillwater stared. ‘He does? Well, what the fuck for? What’s he doing there?’ ‘No one knows,’ answered Folibore, ‘but he hasn’t moved in years. It’s said he refuses his ascension.

His life seemed to have found a new trajectory. He was tumbling down the stairs, one agonizing step at a time.

Too many of them were stupid. They couldn’t think clearly enough to save their lives. The worst part was, they didn’t know they were stupid. Every failure had an excuse, every loss was someone else’s fault. Stupid people always had a reason to be angry but didn’t have the capacity to understand that they were angry because they were frustrated, and they were frustrated because they didn’t understand, and they didn’t understand because they were stupid.

Stupidity, lad, will defeat every god, crush every dream, topple every empire. Because, in the end, stupid people outnumber smart people. If that wasn’t true, we wouldn’t suffer over and over again, through generation after generation and on for ever.

The Malazan Empire is stretched, exhausted, sinking into complacency. When you’ve proved to be unstoppable, you eventually come to believe in your own immortality. You believe that your sheer immensity guarantees your survival. But that’s a delusion. No empire is too big to fail.

not. Oams mentally shook his head. Just thinking about Kellanved started up a cloudy haze of confusion, as if to invoke any memory having to do with him in turn triggered a latent spell that spanned the entire world. Which was ridiculous.

‘But very well. Dear Mayor, given the nature of the Uprising and its focus on the heinous practice of slavery, the Fist has authorized me to announce the following.’ He then stepped forward, both hands grasping Silgar’s brocaded lapels, and in a single motion, Gruff lifted the portly man from the chair he had been sitting on, dragged him close and said, ‘Fuck you and your reparations.’ He then flung the man against the nearest wall.

Ignorance is like a seed and where it is planted in the guise of a virtue, it becomes a weed that chokes the mind until all reason is lost.

Ignore the wheedling, the self-pity, the cries that we didn’t know any better. We did know better. We’ve always known better.

‘The pantheon got blown apart – sure, you know that much, aye. But then new warrens arrived. Crazy ones, batshit insane ones. Gods fell, and new ones are rising. There are Dragon Decks out there with Houses you’ve never seen before – scores of them!’

‘Fury,’ said Monkrat. ‘Icari’s own blade.’ ‘Icari? Icarium? Ah, Runts.’

‘Not just a feeling, Spindle. Come now, think, man! The Limping Soldier at Death’s Gate, that’s Whiskeyjack. And they’re with him. Our friends who died. They’re all with him. They were blessed in Moon’s Spawn.’ ‘Who blessed them in Moon’s Spawn?’ Spindle demanded. ‘Not the Redeemer. Not Caladan Brood.’ ‘Twice Alive,’ Monkrat replied. ‘Ganoes Fucking Paran, Master of the Deck.’

‘Captain Paran became the Master of the Deck, aye. And now he’s ascended. Now he’s Twice Alive, Lord of Divination, Guardian of the Deck.

Killing us just pushed us all the faster into Ascendancy. The T’lan Imass? Interesting comparison. Just think. A thousand years from now some fool necromancer will call upon the Knights of Death, and some damned army of undead will show up. Iron swords instead of flint, but otherwise? Probably damned near identical to the T’lan Imass. Some ideas are so deadly you just can’t keep ’em down.’

A cycle

What to do, when the god was not willing?

Some people tell themselves that their past is behind them, as if being responsible has a time limit and if you live long enough, you’ve outrun it.’ He shook his head. ‘It all catches up, sooner or later.’

The truth is: ways of killing define progress, not just in our civilization, but in all civilizations. These things evolve and as they evolve, they become more lethal.

It’s what it means to be a Malazan marine. We save people.

‘Even our officers aren’t in charge,’ Stillwater resumed. ‘No, we’re here as servants of every citizen of the empire. Any soldier who forgets that isn’t worthy of the title. And that’s why I became a marine.’

A soft male voice filled her head. ‘It is difficult enough being remembered, resurrected in the minds of all who once knew me, all who once saw me. I dwell in Darkness without form. No other existence is possible for me. If you will hold me here, Illusionist, be brief. They are coming.’

Nightly, women reshape the world. It has always been this way.’

The stupid knew better than to look into their wake. The wise could not help it and so suffered greatly. This was humanity’s great divide, and many a time, Damisk had envied the stupid and all the obstinate incomprehension he saw in their eyes and faces. In the end, it takes wisdom to scream.

When you at last come before me free of all chains, then will I meet your eye. This, Valoc of the Sunyd, is why I am unwilling.

‘It is one thing to measure a man when all goes his way. See such a man thwarted, and his true nature is revealed.’

To live is to lose the faith you were born with to a thousand cuts, each year bleeding into the next. The eyes of the innocent see a world very differently from what you and I see. To know this is to revisit one’s own loss, eye to eye with sad reflection, and to feel once more that dreadful ache in your chest.’

‘No one denies the paths behind us,’ Delas Fana replied. ‘And wisdom’s only value in revisiting such history lies in the lesson we failed to learn the first time around.

Gower, I assume you and your brother will join your clans?’ ‘I will,’ said Gower. ‘But not Nilghan. He is banished from all kin for the duration of one year. For being an ass.’

To be believed in is an obligation. Only by heeding that obligation are you made worthy of that belief.

What worth an empire that turns its back on helpless people, its own citizens or otherwise?

The legacy of short-lived conquest. In a way, as foolish as anything a mortal could do, to think of ownership of what could not be owned, and to fight one another for the right of it.