House of Chains (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #4)

by Steven Erikson

On the ship, when I hung in chains from the mast, you were my only hold on this world. Without you and your endless words, Torvald Nom, the madness I had feigned would have become a madness in truth. I was a Teblor warleader. I was needed, but I myself did not need. I had followers, but not allies, and only now do I understand the difference. And it is vast. And from this, I have come to understand what it is to possess regrets.

There’s little value in seeking to find reasons for why people do what they do, or feel the way they feel. Hatred is a most pernicious weed, finding root in any kind of soil. It feeds on itself.’

The Fenn had fallen far from their past glories, yet they remembered enough to know their old name. You cannot even make that claim. Your kind walked this earth when the T’lan Imass were still flesh. From your blood came the Barghast and the Trell. You are Thelomen Toblakai.’

Embracing what to all intents and purposes could be called immortality, was, he had begun to believe, presaged by a turning away. Was it not a mortal’s fate—fate, he knew, was the wrong word, but he could think of no other—was it not a mortal’s fate, then, to embrace life itself, as one would a lover? Life, with all its fraught, momentary fragility. And could life not be called a mortal’s first lover? A lover whose embrace was then rejected in that fiery crucible of ascendancy?

Anyone could become a killer. Anyone at all.

Shining eyes following his every move, mapping his every step, memorizing his every gesture—what could he teach them? The art of mayhem? As if children needed help in that.

One day, perhaps, you will see for yourself that regrets are as nothing. The value lies in how they are answered.’

The azalan turned suddenly, nostrils twitching. The broad, squat head dipped down on its long, thickly muscled neck. Down to the tent’s back wall at the base. Where urine from the latrine pit had soaked through. A soft cluck, then the demon wheeled about and lifted a hind limb. Two penises dropped into view from a fold of flesh. Twin streams reached down to the sodden carpet. Kalam reeled back at the stench, back, out through the flap and outside into the chill night air, where he remained, on hands and knees, gagging. A moment later the demon emerged. Lifted its head to test the air, then surged into the shadows—and was gone.

‘Death is not an unkind fate,’ Darist said above him. ‘If she was a friend, you will miss her company, and that is the true source of your grief—your sorrow is for yourself. My words may displease you, but I speak from experience. I have felt the deaths of many of my kin, and I mourn the spaces in my life where they once stood. But such losses serve only to ease my own impending demise.’

As for Mother Dark, it may be that in creating us, she but simply separated what was not separate before.’ ‘Are you then the shadows of Tiste Andii? Torn free by the mercy of your goddess mother?’ ‘But Onrack, we are all torn free.’

All that breaks must be discarded even as the thunder of faith returns ever fading echoes.

‘Urugal the Woven. Beroke Soft Voice, Kahlb the Silent Hunter, Thenik the Shattered, ’Siballe the Unfound, Halad the Giant, Imroth the Cruel. Faces in the Rock, gods of the Teblor.

have vanished. Look upon the ruined cities, the old roads. The past is all patterns, and those patterns remain beneath our feet, even as the stars above reveal their own patterns—for the stars we gaze upon each night are naught but an illusion from the past.’