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

by Steven Erikson

Revealing all that was above them. Lostara said nothing. Her chest had contracted as if unwilling to take another breath. Her heart thundered. Wood. An X-shaped cross, tilting over them, as tall as a four-storey building. The glint of enormous, pitted spikes. And nailed to the cruciform— —a dragon. Wings spread, pinned wide. Hind limbs impaled. Chains wrapped about its neck, holding its massive wedge-shaped head up, as if staring skyward— —to a sea of stars marked here and there with swirls of glowing mist.

‘All the old legends of dragons begin with the statement that they are the essence of sorcery. How, then, could this thing even exist?’ ‘Nature always seeks a balance. Forces strive for symmetry. This dragon answers every other dragon that ever existed, or ever will.’

Stay? He felt no longer able to leave. Chains. She has made for me a house of chains…

Even more monstrous, he realized with a chill, they had all known the risk. We knew he wanted her. Yet we did nothing.

Thus, the Crippled God was brought down to our world. Through this…this terrible puncture. And these giants…follow. Like an army behind its commander.

It was not surprising that men could think such things, could do such things. But that women could as well…that was indeed a bitter thing to countenance.

The wall of the mesa itself seemed to have been smoothed once, long ago, to a height twice Karsa’s own. Faint pictographic images were visible on it, pitted and made colourless by passing centuries. A procession of figures, each scaled to that of a lowlander, bareheaded and wearing naught but a loincloth. They held their hands high overhead, fingers stretched out as if clutching at empty air.

His broken sword had been positioned beside him, handle and blade side by side, with a small bound bundle of desert flowers lying atop them.

On the Jhag Odhan, the past lives still. Not just in my fallen kin, the Jhag—the few that managed to escape the Logros T’lan Imass. There are ancient beasts that walk the treeless lands beside the sheets of ice. Beasts that have died out everywhere else, mostly on the spears of the T’lan Imass. But there were no Imass in the Jhag Odhan. As you said, a refuge.’

‘I am not as you, Urugal. I am not Unbound. You yourself closed the chains about me. By your own hands, you saw to it that the souls of those I have slain will pursue me eternally. You have shaped my haunting, Urugal. Beneath such a curse, I can never be unbound.’ ‘There is place for you none the less,’ Urugal said, ‘in the House of Chains.’ ‘Aye. Knight of Chains, champion of the Crippled God.’ ‘You have learned much, Karsa Orlong.’ He stared down at his bloodied hands. ‘I have, T’lan Imass. As you shall witness.’

future. The Fourteenth Army shall know a long life, but it shall be a restless life. You are doomed to search, destined to ever hunt…for what even you do not know, nor, perhaps, shall you ever know.

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.’

I can’t believe this. I’m defending a mangy bhok’aral…from a D’ivers witch.

‘I trapped a woman in time. Or so it seemed. I painted her likeness in a sacred cave. It is now my belief that, in so doing, I was responsible for the terrible murders that followed, for her leaving the clan. She could not join in the Ritual that made us immortal, for by my hand she had already become so.

‘You are wrong, both of you,’ Karsa said. ‘To be a god is to know the burden of believers. Did you protect? You did not. Did you offer comfort, solace? Were you possessed of compassion? Even pity? To the Teblor, T’lan Imass, you were slave-masters, eager and hungry, making harsh demands, and expecting cruel sacrifices—all to feed your own desires. You were the Teblor’s unseen chains.’ His eyes settled on ’Siballe. ‘And you, woman, ’Siballe the Unfound, you were the taker of children.’

‘You will leave my people—leave the glade. You are done with us, T’lan Imass. I have delivered you here. I have freed you. If you ever appear before me again, I will destroy you. Walk the dreams of the tribal elders, and I will come hunting you. And I shall not relent. I, Karsa Orlong, of the Uryd, of the Teblor Thelomen Toblakai, so avow.’

He had lost his patience with their endless words, especially when the deeds they had done shouted louder, loud enough to overwhelm their pathetic justifications.

Cynnigig nodded. He paused to gesture carelessly with the knife. ‘You’ve done well, disguising the remains.’ ‘The foundations survive, of course. The House’s walls. The anchor-stones in the yard’s corners—all beneath my cloak of soil.’ ‘Foolish, unmindful T’lan Imass, to drive a spear into the grounds of an Azath House.’

You have barred the doors caged the windows every portal sealed to the outside world, and now you find what you feared most— there are killers, and they are in the House.

We have supplanted, you and I, Tavore, Dryjhna and the Book of the Apocalypse—for our own, private apocalypse. The family’s own blood, and nothing more. And the world, then, Tavore—when I show myself to you and see the recognition in your eyes—the world, your world, will shift beneath you. And at that moment, dear sister, you will understand. What has happened. What I have done. And why I have done it.

A sentence not just of living, but of living with; that was the only answer to…everything.

“Strategy belongs to the commander, but tactics are the first field of battle, and it is fought in the command tent.” Dassem’s own words.

‘Cold iron,’ Mathok growled. ‘The warchief’s soul—it either rages with the fire of life, or is cold with death.

Too old to dream of perfection, perhaps, she had instead discovered a certain delicious appeal in flaws.

The Whirlwind had lifted the mantle of sands to reveal Raraku’s prehistory, the long-lost civilizations that had known only darkness for millennia.

Sloped forehead, solid chinless jaw, a brow ridge so heavy it formed a contiguous shelf over the deep-set eye sockets. The hair still clinging to fragments of scalp was little longer than what had covered the body, dark brown and wavy. More ape-like than a T’lan Imass…the skull behind the face is smaller, as well. Yet it stood taller by far, more human in proportion. What manner of man was this?

‘You are saying Moon’s Spawn was originally one of these skykeeps that arrived here?’ ‘It was. Three have come in the time that I have been here. None survived the Deragoth.’ ‘The what?’ Osric halted and faced his son once more. ‘The Hounds of Darkness. The seven beasts that Dessimbelackis made pact with—and oh, weren’t the Nameless Ones shaken by that unholy alliance? The seven beasts, L’oric, that gave the name to Seven Cities, although no memory survives of that particular truth. The Seven Holy Cities of our time are not the original ones, of course. Only the number has survived.’

‘We are not trusted,’ Trull Sengar muttered. ‘That is true,’ Onrack agreed. ‘None the less, we are needed.’ ‘The least satisfying of alliances.’ ‘Yet perhaps the surest, until such time as the need passes. We must remain mindful, Trull Sengar.’

Every story instructs. The teller ignores this truth at peril.

‘You think too much, Pearl. It’s your most irritating flaw, and, let us be honest, given the severity and sheer volume of your flaws, that is saying something.

His love was for the wrong woman, the wrong Apsalar. And hers was for Crokus, not Cutter. And so they were together, yet apart, intimate yet strangers, and it seemed there was nothing they could do about it.

Imagine talking

Love changes, aye, in the manner of growing to encompass as much of its subject as possible. Virtues, flaws, limitations, everything—love will fondle them all, with child-like fascination.’

Monok Ochem answered from behind them. ‘All Eres were bonecasters, Trull Sengar. For they were the first to carry the spark of awareness, the first so gifted by the spirits.’

‘You should have left her alone,’ Karsa Orlong said quietly, his voice devoid of inflection. Behind and around the giant were gathering ghosts, chained souls. We are both servants of the same god! You fool! Let me speak! I would save Sha’ik! ‘But you didn’t. I know, Bidithal, where your sick desires come from. I know where your pleasure hides—the pleasure you would take from others. Witness.’ Karsa Orlong set down his stone sword, then reached between Bidithal’s legs. A hand closed indiscriminately around all that it found. And tore. Until, with a ripping of tendons and shreds of muscle, a flood of blood and other fluids, the hand came away with its mangled prize. The pain was unbearable. The pain was a rending of his soul. It devoured him.

The hand around his neck relaxed, drew away. Involuntarily, Bidithal drew in an agonizing breath and made to scream— Something soft and bloody was pushed into his mouth. ‘For you, Bidithal. For every nameless girl-child you destroyed. Here. Choke on your pleasure.’ And choke he did. Until Hood’s Gate yawned— And there, gathered by the Lord of Death, waited demons who were of like nature to Bidithal himself, gleefully closing about their new victim. A lifetime of vicious pleasure. An eternity of pain in answer. For even Hood understood the necessity for balance.

A thousand ghostly chains stretched taut behind him, then began pulling. The Teblor growled under his breath and leaned forward. I am the master of these chains. I, Karsa Orlong, yield to none. Not gods, not the souls I have slain. I will walk forward now, and either resistance shall end, or the chains will be snapped.

‘The glory of battle, Koryk, dwells only in the bard’s voice, in the teller’s woven words. Glory belongs to ghosts and poets. What you hear and dream isn’t the same as what you live—blur the distinction at your own peril, lad.’

‘What does it mean? That song?’ ‘Quick Ben will have a better answer to that, I think. But my gut is whispering one thing over and over again. The Bridgeburners, lad, have ascended.’

The Book was in truth naught but a history, a telling of apocalyptic events survived—not of those to come—

His hands following his eyes in the fashioning of forbidden images of that other woman, there in the hidden places.

Of course. This is how you break an unbreakable chain. By dying. I just wanted to know, Tavore, why you did it. And why you did not love me, when I loved you. I—I think that’s what I wanted to know. The boot lifted from her chest. But she could still feel its weight. Heavy. So very heavy… Oh, Mother, look at us now.

Crucified dragons. Murdered gods. Warrens of fire and warrens of ashes.

Of course, we had no choice but to track her down, corner her. And so shatter her, imprison her within eternal darkness.

‘Broken One, there are many things you deserve…but this man is not among them.’

To grieve is a gift best shared.