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Dassem Ultor, Prince K’azz D’Avore of the Crimson Guard, Caladan Brood and Dujek Onearm. Tattersail if she’d had the ambition. Likely Sha’ik herself. And Whiskeyjack.
‘The Empire honours its debts,’ Coltaine growled. It was a statement that promised to grow in resonance in the time to come, and the momentary silence in the tent told Duiker that he was not alone in that recognition.
‘Perhaps her visions have taken her into the future. Perhaps she knows the Whirlwind shall fail, that even now the Adjunct to the Empress assembles her legions – Unta’s harbour is solid with transports. The Whirlwind’s successes will prove but momentary, a first blood-rush that succeeded only because of Imperial weakness. Sha’ik knows . . . the dragon has been stirred awake, and moves ponderously still, yet when the full fury comes, it shall scour this land from shore to shore.’
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.
Togg’s three masks and a cacophony of noise, throats making sounds they were never meant to make, blood gushing, people dying – everywhere, people dying.
But those mounts will be spent. They did the impossible. They charged uphill, with a speed that grew and grew, with a speed like nothing I have ever seen before. The historian frowned, then spun around. Nil and Nether still stood to either side of the lone mare. A light wind was ruffling the beast’s mane and tail, but it did not otherwise move. A ripple of unease chilled Duiker. What have they done?
of Dogs. He leads, yet is led, he strains forward, yet is held back, he bares his fangs, yet what nips at his heels if not those he is sworn to protect? Ah, there’s profundity in such names, don’t you think?’
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.
What did that bastard call himself? The High King? Kallor . . . the High King without a kingdom. Thousands of years old, if legends speak true, perhaps tens of thousands. He claimed to have once commanded empires, each one making the Malazan Empire no larger than a province. He then claimed to have destroyed them by his own hand, destroyed them utterly. Kallor boasted he had made worlds lifeless . . . And
gathered as many of the pale fruits as they could carry. Felisin had to admit to herself that she felt healthier – more mended – than she had in a long time, as if memories no longer bled and she was left with naught but scars. Yet the cast of her mind remained fraught. She had run out of hope.
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.
‘I am not a slave,’ Felisin said. And I am no longer for sale.
‘Only . . . his porters are undead, not to mention strangely . . . chewed.’
rebellion? Is it truly as bloody as I have heard rumoured? Such injustice is ever repaid in full, alas. This lesson is lost, I am afraid.’
A god walking mortal earth trails blood.
letting this squall run out.’ ‘Nonetheless,
‘I was speaking more of Admiral Nok—’ ‘Who is dead, sick or in a dungeon, Captain. Else he would have sailed long ere now. One man rules Aren, and one man alone. Will you place your life in his hands, Captain?’
Goats can turn a paradise into a desert in no time at all. They eat shoots, they strip bark entirely around the boles of trees, killing them
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?
‘No, but I felt it. The fingers were long, too long, with more joints than there should be. Sometimes that grip comes back, like a ghost’s, and I start shivering in its icy clutch.’ ‘Do you recall that ancient slaughter at Sekala Crossing? Did your visions echo those, Corporal?’
A many-jointed hand. Not a god’s hand, Corporal, though one of such power that you might well have thought so. You’ve been chosen, lad, for whatever reason, to witness an
Elder vision. Out from the darkness comes the cold hand of a Jaghut.
Felisin said. ‘Oh, I know, lass,’ the ex-priest said. ‘Tortured spirits writhe in this bastard’s shadow – every man, woman and child that he’s killed. Tell me, Toblakai, did those children beg to live? Did they weep, cry out for their mothers?’ ‘No more than grown men did,’
shut.’ ‘His tribe made few distinctions,’ Leoman said. ‘There was kin, and those who were not kin were the enemy. Now, enough talk.’
‘Not plagued, lass. There was no great unleashing of brutality here. Only sadness, and even that was naught but a subcurrent. Cities die. Cities mimic the cycle of every living thing: birth, vigorous youth, maturity, old age, then finally . . . dust and potsherds. In the last century of this place, the sea was already receding, even as a new influence arrived, something foreign. There was a brief renaissance – we’ll see evidence of that ahead, at the harbour – but it was short-lived.’ He was silent for a dozen or so paces. ‘You know, Felisin, I begin to understand something of the lives of the
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up into
‘Perhaps. Sha’ik saw far into his future, however. . .’ ‘And what did she see?’ Felisin asked. ‘She would not say. Yet it . . . appalled her.’
‘You must. The ritual is the proof that
Still, better for Crokus had he looked to Fiddler. This soldier’s a wonder in his own right.
Seven main avenues within each city of the First Empire. The Sky Spirits look down upon the holy number, seven scorpion tails, seven stings facing the circle of sand. To all who would make offerings to the Seven Holies, look to the circle of sand.
‘This is mine, you see,’ the Jhag continued. ‘My . . . gift. Or so I can read, in this ancient Omtose script. More, I have marked – with knowing – its season, its year of construction. And see how the disc has turned, so that I may see the Omtose correspondence for this year . . . allowing me to calculate . . .’
‘A mistake in the measurement, a slip of the script. It’s an old language, Omtose, faint in my memory – perhaps as faint back then, when I first built this. The knowledge I seem to retain feels . . . precise, yet I am not perfect, am I? My certainty could be a self-delusion.’ No, Icarium, you are not perfect. ‘I calculate that ninety-four thousand years have passed since I last stood here, Mappo. Ninety-four thousand. There must be some error in that. No city ruin could survive that long, could it?’
You did, Icarium, yet even in your rage a part of you recognized what you yourself had built, and left it intact.
‘T’lan Imass arrived here, sought to drive the enemy back – an old alliance between the denizens of this city and the Silent Host. Their shattered bones lie buried in the sand beneath us. In their thousands. What force was there that could do such a thing, Mappo? Not Jaghut, even in their pre-eminence a thousand millennia past. And the K’Chain Che’Malle have been extinct for even longer. I do not understand this, friend .
‘Who was this new master?’ The woman shook her head, turned away. ‘Whose power resides in those staves they carry?’ She would not answer. In the passage of time, Mappo believed he had found the answer to that question, but it was a knowledge devoid of comfort.
A fragmented warren. What on earth has happened to this land?
The legends claim that Icarium emerged from this place, strode out from Raraku. A warren torn to pieces – Raraku changes all who stride its broken soil – gods, have we indeed come to the place where Icarium’s living nightmare was born?
‘There are some who claim the Azath are in truth benign, a force to keep power in check, that they arise where and when there is need. My friend, I am beginning to see much truth in those claims.’
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.
rules the pack.’ ‘Perhaps it does. Attitude, Corporal, has a certain efficacy that should never be underestimated.’
‘Let’s just say I’ve had my fill of imperious little girls. I’m Corporal Gesler and that’s our ship, the Silanda.’ ‘Few would choose that name these days, Corporal,’ the historian said. ‘We ain’t inviting a curse. This is the Silanda. We come on her . . . somewhere far from here. So, are you what’s left of them Wickans as landed in Hissar?’
‘The crew’s dead but that don’t slow ’em any.’ ‘Had their heads chopped off, too,’ Stormy said, startling the historian with a bright grin. ‘Just can’t hold good sailors down, I always say.’ ‘Mostly Tiste Andii,’ Gesler added, ‘only a handful of humans. And some others, in the cabin . . . Stormy, what did Heboric call ’em?’ Tiste Edur, sir.’
‘I know you by reputation, Gesler. Once a captain, then a sergeant, now a corporal. You’ve got your boots to the sky on the ladder—’
‘Stormy? Not Cartheron Fist’s Adjutant Stormy—’ ‘Once upon a time.’ ‘Hood’s breath!’ Lull swung to Coltaine. ‘Fist, we’ve got two of the Emperor’s Old Guard here . . . as Coastal Marines.’
‘What is it, lass? What’s wrong—’ Nil answered, his voice a whisper. ‘That blood – that man has almost ascended!’
Abyss below, all three of them . . . And . . . Coltaine?
muscles. ‘Ah, well, why assume that the Elder Warrens we know of – Tellann, Omtose Phellack, Kurald Galain – are the only ones that existed?’
‘And it means to defend itself,’ the Trell said. ‘If it can.’ Mappo scratched his jaw. The responses of a living entity.
An assassin’s. Once mortal, then Ascendant.
Assassins bow to the altar of efficiency, Icarium, and efficiency is brutal. It sacrifices mortal lives without a second thought, all for whatever is perceived as the greater need. At least it was so in the case of Dancer, who did not kill for coin, but for a cause that was less self-aggrandizing than you might think. In his mind, he was a man who fixed things. He viewed himself as honourable. A man
