Toll the Hounds (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #8)

by Steven Erikson

Lady Vidikas, who had once been Challice Estraysian, had just seen her future. And was discovering, here in this night and standing against this rail, that the past was a better place to be.

Chillbais thumped his wings as hard as he could, an obese demon in the darkness above the blue, blue city.

Two hands closed round his head. One clamped tight over his mouth, and all at once his lungs were full of water. He was drowning. The hand tightened, fingers pinching his nostrils shut. Darkness rose within him, and the world slowly went away.

just nearing that age among young women when it was impossible for a man to tell whether she was twenty or thirty. And by that point, all such judgement was born of wilful self-delusion and hardly mattered anyway.

That all victories were ultimately transitory in the face of patient nature might well be cause for optimism. No wound was too deep to heal. No outrage too horrendous to one day be irrelevant.

‘“All possible cruelties are inevitable”,’ Nimander said. ‘“Every conceivable crime has been committed”.’

Youth was a time for harsh judgement. Such fires ebbed with age. Certainty itself withered.

In that last moment, yes, there was nothing to see, so what else to do but go away?

History meant nothing, because the only continuity was human stupidity.

‘It’s that quiet one who worries me,’ Antsy continued. ‘He’s got that blank look, like the worst kinda killer.’ ‘He’s a simpleton, Antsy,’ said Blend. ‘Worst kinda killer there is.’

‘Drink, friend! Drink deep the unknown and unknowable future!’

No one grows attached to dead things, not even mothers.

Big fucking yikes, Kallor

Just how many rules of civil behaviour were designed to perpetuate such egregious schemes of power and control of the few over the many?

And, pointing to a nearby ruin, he smiled like a man who had forgotten what real smiling signified.

‘Call me Fisher.’

What a great reveal!

Lead, yes, with lies, with iron words – duty, honour, patriotism, freedom – that fed the wilfully stupid with grand purpose, with reason for misery and delivering misery in kind.

‘When you speak of Karsa Orlong,’ Traveller said, ‘I am frightened.’

This here will mark an advancement in your careers, I am sure, and so you will be diligent as befits your secret suspicion that you have exceeded your competence.

Savage

‘Kruppe struggles to taste the wonder of this wondrous vintage, so gasted of flabber is he at said horrendous tale.

‘Darujhistan,’ said Karsa Orlong. ‘I have heard of that city. Defied the Malazan Empire and so still free. I will see it for myself.’

The tyrant thrives when the first fucking fool salutes.

There were looks that killed, and then there were looks that conducted torture.

A bludgeon of wives (surely that must be the plural assignation)! A prattle of prostitutes!

Honour meant, after all, a preparedness, a willingness to weigh and measure, to judge rightful balance with no hand tilting the scales.

As if happiness was the only legitimate way of being.

Sadness belonged. As rightful as joy, love, grief and fear. All conditions of being.

His sadness was an absolute thing, and he never came up for air.

Some thoughts, possessing a frightening kind of self-awareness, knew to hide deep beneath others, riding unseen the same currents, where they could grow unchallenged, unexposed by any horrified recognition.

The healer, Ditch, has devastating news. But you still have your dignity. You still have that. Oh yes, he still has his dignity. See the calm resignation in these steady eyes, the steeled expression, the courage of no choice. Be impressed, won’t you?

Milky eyes stared, as if cataracts were punishment for having seen too much

In a welter of blood from ear and temple, the guard fell to the ground, alive but temporarily unwilling to acknowledge the fact.

The Toblakai gestured into the night sky. ‘The crawl of the stars, the plunge and rise of the moon. Day, night, birth, death – progress is the passage of reality. We sit astride this horse, but it is a beast we can never tame, and it will run for ever – we will age and wither and fall off, and it cares not. Some other will leap aboard and it cares not. It may run alone, and it cares not. It outran the great bears. The wolves and their worshippers. It outran the Jaghut, and the K’Chain Che’Malle. And still it runs on, and to it we are nothing.’

Fanaticism was so popular. There had to be a reason for that, didn’t there? Some vast reward to the end of thinking, some great bliss to the blessing of idiocy.

When one can possess loyalty even in the straits of full, brutal understanding, then that one understands all there is to understand about compassion.

‘If we are to live,’ Rake went on, ‘we must take risks. Else our lives become deaths in all but name. There is no struggle too vast, no odds too overwhelming, for even should we fail – should we fall – we will know that we have lived.’

History has its moments. To dwell within one is to understand nothing. We are rocked in the tumult, and the awareness of one’s own ignorance is a smothering cloak that proves poor armour.

Survivors do not mourn together. They each mourn alone, even when in the same place. Grief is the most solitary of all feelings. Grief isolates, and every ritual, every gesture, every embrace, is a hopeless effort to break through that isolation. None of it works. The forms crumble and dissolve. To face death is to stand alone.

Except, perhaps, this. In love, grief is a promise. As sure as Hood’s nod. There will be many gardens, but this last one to visit is so very still. Not meant for lovers. Not meant for dreamers. Meant only for a single figure, there in the dark, standing alone. Taking a single breath.

No, Pearl did not hate. Life was a negotiation between the expected and the unexpected. One made do.

The dust dreams of the world it had once been. But the dust, alas, does not command the wind.

The Hounds moved on. It does no good to molest a mule.

‘Crokus. Crokus Younghand.’ He hesitated, then said, ‘I was once a thief.’ ‘Be one again,’ said Karsa, teeth bared, ‘and steal me a Hound’s life this night.’ Shit. ‘I’ll try.’ ‘That will do,’ the Toblakai replied.

‘There is no struggle too vast, no odds too overwhelming, for even should we fail – should we fall – we will know that we have lived.’

And the water is clear between them.

‘All right. It’s from Hood, I think.’ Samar Dev snorted. ‘Let me guess. “Keep up the good work, yours truly”.’