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

by Steven Erikson

You don’t think Felisin would leap at the chance to become such a direct instrument of vengeance against her sister? Against the empire that sent her to a prison mine? Fate may well present itself, but the opportunity still must be embraced, wilfully, eagerly. There was less chance or coincidence in all this—more like a timely convergence of desires and necessities.

You are of Pardu blood, so she will take no heed of you. I, on the other hand, am one-fourth Tiste Andii—’ She started, breath catching. ‘You are?’ He looked back, surprised. ‘You didn’t know? My mother was from Drift Avalii, a half-blood white-haired beauty—or so I’m told, as I have no direct recollection, since she left me with my father as soon as I’d been weaned.’

She felt worn out and weathered; in appearance, she knew, looking ten years older than she was in truth. All the more reason for her alternating fury and dismay at seeing Pearl’s hale, unlined face and his oddly shaped eyes so clear and bright. The lightness of his step made her want to brain him with the flat of her sword.

‘Are you even capable of answering succinctly? “Do your feet hurt?” “Oh, the warrens of Mockra and Rashan and Omtose Phellack, from which arise all aches below the knee—”’

He did not think it likely that the Whirlwind Goddess would detect his presence, so long as he travelled through shadows at every opportunity. And, in a sense, he well knew, night itself was naught but a shadow. Provided he hid well during the day, he expected to be able to reach Sha’ik’s encampment undiscovered.

‘He walks up from the sea.’ Kalam started. An unknown language, yet he understood it. A glance back—and the depression he had just crossed was filled with shimmering water. Five ships rode low in the waters a hundred sweeps of the oar offshore, three of them in flames, shedding ashes and wreckage as they drifted. Of the remaining two, one was fast sinking, whilst the last seemed lifeless, bodies visible on its deck and in the rigging. ‘A soldier.’ ‘A killer.’ ‘Too many spectres on this road, friends. Are we not haunted enough?’

Five of the Seven Protectors are no more. Does that mean nothing? And the sixth will not recover, now that we have banished the black beast itself.’ ‘I wonder, did we indeed drive it from this realm?’ ‘If the Nameless Ones speak true, then yes—’

He waited as the last of the soldiers marched past, then stepped forward to cross the ancient road. And saw, on the opposite side, a tall, gaunt figure in faded orange robes. Black pits for eyes. One fleshless hand gripping an ivory staff carved spirally, on which the apparition leaned as if it was the only thing holding it up. ‘Listen to them now, spirit from the future,’ it rasped, cocking its head.

I am Tanno, the Eleventh and last Seneschal of Yaraghatan, banished by the First Emperor for my treasonous alliance with the Nameless Ones. Did you know what he would do? Would any of us have guessed? Seven Protectors indeed, but far more than that, oh yes, far more…’ Steps halting, the spectre walked onto the road and began dragging itself along in the wake of the column. ‘I gave them a song, to mark their last battle,’ it rasped. ‘I gave them that at least…’

Deep pits marked where cisterns had been built, where the seawater from the other side of the causeway could, stripped of salt by the intervening sands, collect. The remnants of terraces indicated a proliferation of public gardens.

were not Hounds of Shadow. If anything, they were larger, bulkier, massing more like a bear than a dog. Yet, as they now filled their bellies with raw human flesh, they moved with savage grace, primal and deadly. Devoid of fear and supremely confident, as if this strange place they had come to was as familiar to them as their own hunting grounds.

At the distant, virtually inaudible whistle, countless smoky diamonds that had originated from a trader in G’danisban’s market round crumbled into dust—whether placed for safe-keeping in locked chests, worn as rings or pendants, or residing in a merchant’s hoard. And from the dust rose azalan demons, awakened long before their intended moment. But that suited them just fine. They had, one and all, appointed tasks that demanded a certain solitude, at least initially. Making it necessary to quickly silence every witness, which the azalan were pleased to do. Proficiently and succinctly.

The fight was fierce and protracted, concluding unsatisfactorily for the five azalan, who were eventually driven off, battered and bleeding and eager to seek deep shadows in which to hide from the coming day. To hide, and lick their wounds. And in the realm known as Shadow, a certain god sat motionless on his insubstantial throne. Already recovered from his shock, his mind was racing.

‘I am not going anywhere,’ she replied from somewhere near the stern. Her words chilled him, so forlorn did they sound.

The fire-making kit was from Darujhistan, and consisted of flint and iron bar, wick-sticks, igniting powder, the fibrous inner lining from tree bark, and a long-burning gel the city’s alchemists rendered from the gas-filled caverns beneath the city. Sparks flashed three times before the powder caught with a hiss and flare of flame. The bark lining followed, then, dipping a wick-stick into the gel, Cutter set it alight. He then transferred the flame to the lantern.

Oh, she might be useful, but she hardly looks inclined, does she? Miserable with knowledge, is my dear lass.’

By the Protector’s decree, Ugarat’s coliseum became the site of a vast conflagration, as everything was burned, destroyed. The scholars were crucified—those that did not fling themselves on the pyre in a fit of madness and grief—and their bodies dumped into the pits containing the smashed relics just outside the city wall.

And Febryl had lost his mind that night, recovering his sanity with dawn staining the horizon, to find that he had murdered his parents. And their servants. That he had unleashed sorcery to flay the flesh from the guards. That such power had poured through him as to leave him old beyond his years, wrinkled and withered, his bones brittle and bent.

There was a throne, of course, upon which was meant to sit a mortal—the progeny race of the T’lan Imass. A human. Alas, humans viewed empire…differently. And their vision did not include T’lan Imass. Thus, betrayal. Then war. An unequal contest, but the T’lan Imass were reluctant to annihilate their mortal children. And so they left—’ ‘Only to return with the shattering of the warren,’ Kamist Reloe muttered, nodding.

Kurald Thyrllan had been born of violence, the shattering of Darkness. The Elder Warren had since branched off in many directions, reaching to within the grasp of mortal humans as Thyr. And, before that, in the guise of life-giving fire, Tellann.

Tellann was a powerful presence here in Seven Cities, obscure and buried deep perhaps, but pervasive none the less. Whereas Kurald Thyrllan had been twisted and left fraught by the shattering of its sister warren. There were no easy passages into Thyrllan, as he well knew.

He despised fighting. Unlike his Liosan kin, he was averse to harsh judgement, to the assertion of a brutally delineated world-view that permitted no ambiguity. He did not believe order could be shaped by a sword’s edge. Finality, yes, but finality stained with failure.

These mysterious T’lan Imass who were Toblakai’s gods. And the sanctification had been wrested from them, leaving this place sacred to something else. But a fissure remained, the trail, perhaps, from a brief visitation.

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?

This was not, after all, Tellann. If anything, he had come to what lay beneath Tellann, as if the Imass, in choosing their sacred sites, had been in turn responding to a sensitivity to a still older power. He understood now that Toblakai’s glade was not a place freshly sanctified by the giant warrior; nor even by the T’lan Imass he had worshipped as his gods. It had, at the very beginning, belonged to Raraku, to whatever natural power the land possessed. And so he had pushed through to a place of beginnings. But did I push, or was I pulled?

Similar to wild cattle, although larger and bearing stubby horns or antlers. Their hides were mottled white and tan, their long manes black.

Seven hounds, black as midnight, of a size to challenge the wild antlered cattle. Moving with casual arrogance along the ridge. And flanking them, like jackals flanking a pride of lions, a score or more of the half-human creatures such as the one he had discovered at the lakeshore.

And now he saw that other observers were tracking the terrible beasts. K’Chain Che’Malle, three of them, the heavy blades at the end of their arms revealing that they were K’ell Hunters, were padding along a parallel course a few hundred paces distant from the hounds. Their heads were turned, fixed on the intruders—who in turn ignored them.

A dragon filled his vision, low over the water—so fast as to lift a thrashing wave in its wake—and the talons spread wide, the huge clawed hands reaching down. He threw his arms over his face and head as the enormous scaled fingers closed like a cage around him, then snatched him skyward.

He was pure Liosan in appearance, tall and pale as snow, his long, wavy hair silver and streaked with gold. His eyes seemed to rage with an inner fire, its tones a match to his hair, silver licked by gold. He was wearing plain grey leathers, the sword at his belt virtually identical to the one L’oric carried.

‘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.

You are a frustrating man. No wonder Anomander Rake lost his temper.

The Deragoth’s only act of domestication. Most scholars, in their species-bound arrogance, believe that humans domesticated dogs, but it may well have been the other way round, at least to start. Who ran with whom?’ ‘But those creatures aren’t humans. They’re not even Imass.’ ‘No, but they will be, one day. I’ve seen others, scampering on the edges of wolf packs. Standing upright gives them better vision, a valuable asset to complement the wolves’ superior hearing and sense of smell. A formidable combination, but the wolves are the ones in charge. That will eventually change…

Here, in this trapped memory.

Like Anomander Rake, Osric was more dragon than anything else. They were kin in blood, if not in personality.

Osric began to descend—and L’oric suddenly saw a vast white emptiness, as if the mountain rearing before them had been cut neatly in half. They were approaching that edge. A vaguely level, snow-crusted stretch was the dragon’s destination. Its southern side was marked by a sheer cliff. To the north…opaque oblivion.

There were…things near the faded edge of the memory. Some of them moving about feebly. Osric stomped through the deep snow towards them, speaking as he went. ‘Creatures stumble out. You will find such all along the verge. Most of them quickly die, but some linger.’ ‘What are they?’ ‘Demons, mostly.’

Dog-sized and reptilian, with four hands, similar to an ape’s. A wide, flat head with a broad mouth, two slits for nostrils, and four liquid, slightly protruding eyes in a diamond pattern, the pupils vertical and, in the harsh glare of the snow and sky, surprisingly open.

And how, Greyfrog, did you come here? ‘Sudden moroseness. One hop too far.’

Shadow, after all, was born of the clash between Light and Dark. And Meanas is, in essence, drawn from the warrens of Thyrllan and Galain, Thyr and Rashan. It is, if you will, a hybrid discipline.’

‘Most sorcerous arts available to mortal humans are, Chosen One.

They would not appreciate the freeing, of course. Not at first. But she could help them in that. Kind words and plenty of durhang to blunt the physical pain…and the outrage.

He spilled into her at the moment of death, his shudders becoming twitches, the breath hissing from a suddenly slack mouth as his forehead struck the stone floor beside her right ear.

I am a vessel ever filled, yet there’s always room for more. More durhang. More men and their seeds. My master found my place of pleasure and removed it. Ever filled, yet never filled up. There is no base to this vessel. This is what he has done. To all of us. She

‘There will be a convergence, Felisin. With some…unexpected guests. And I do not think anyone here will survive their company for long. There will be…vast slaughter.’

She glanced over at the scaled, ape-like creature with its four eyes. ‘Safe, you said. At least until it gets hungry.’

In the week it took to cross those hills, Karsa saw naught but signs of shepherd camps and boundary cairns, and the only grazing creatures were antelope and a species of large deer that fed only at night, spending days bedded down in low areas thick with tall, yellow grasses. Easily flushed then run down to provide Karsa with an occasional feast.

A House is just another prison. And I have had enough of prisons. Raise walls around me, and I will knock them down. Doubt my words, Crippled God, to your regret… Chapter Twenty-two Otataral, I believe, was born of sorcery.

If we hold that magic feeds on hidden energies, then it follows that there are limits to those energies. Sufficient unveiling of power that subsequently cascades out of control could well drain those life-forces dry.

Careless examination might suggest that the former is alive, whilst the latter is not. In this manner, perhaps otataral is not quite as negating as it would first appear…