Dust of Dreams (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #9)

by Steven Erikson

She had been a beauty once, with these green eyes and her long fair hair like tresses of gold. But beauty bought smiles for only so long. When the larder gapes empty, beauty gets smudged.

‘Ever had a child, Silchas? I thought not. Giving advice to a child is like flinging sand at an obsidian wall. Nothing sticks. The brutal truth is that we each suffer our own lessons – they can’t be danced round. They can’t be slipped past. You cannot gift a child with your scars – they arrive like webs, constricting, suffocating, and that child will struggle and strain until they break. No matter how noble your intent, the only scars that teach them anything are the ones they earn themselves.’

The mind shaped its habits and habits reshaped the body. A lifelong rider walked with bowed legs, a seafarer stood wide no matter how sure the purchase. Women who twirled strands of their hair would in time come to sit with heads tilted to one side. Some people prone to worry might grind their teeth, and years of this would thicken the muscles of the jaws and file the molars down to smooth lumps, bereft of spurs and crowns.

Fools. Yedan Derryg was not a loquacious man. He might well possess a hundred thousand words in his head, open to virtually infinite rearrangement, but that did not mean he laboured under the need to give them voice. There seemed to be little point in that, and in his experience comprehension diminished as complexity deepened – this was not a failing of skills in communication, he believed, but one of investment and capacity. People dwelt in a swamp of feelings that stuck like gobs of mud to every thought, slowing those thoughts down, making them almost shapeless. The inner discipline demanded in order to cleanse such maladroit tendencies was usually too fierce, too trying, just too damned hard. This, then, marked the unwillingness to make the necessary investment. The other issue was a far crueller judgement, in that it had to do with the recognition that in the world there were numerically far more stupid people than there were smart ones. The difficulty was in the innate cleverness of the stupid in disguising their own stupidity. The truth was rarely displayed in an honest frown or a sincere knotting of the brow. Instead, it was revealed in a flash of suspicion, the hint of diffidence in an offhand dismissal, or, perversely, muteness offered up to convey a level of thoughtful consideration which, in truth, did not exist.

Yedan Derryg had little time for such games. He could smell an idiot from fifty paces off. He watched their sly evasions, listened to their bluster, and wondered again and again why they could never reach that essential realization, which was that the amount of effort engaged in hiding their own stupidity would serve them better used in cogent exercise of what little wits they possessed. Assuming, of course, that improvement was even possible. There were too many mechanisms in society designed to hide and indeed coddle its myriad fools, particularly since fools generally held the majority. In addition to such mechanisms, one could also find various snares and traps and ambushes, one and all fashioned with the aim of isolating and then destroying smart people. No argument, no matter how brilliant, can defeat a knife in the groin, after all. Nor an executioner’s axe. And the bloodlust of a mob was always louder than a lone, reasonable voice. The true danger, Yedan Derryg understood, was to be found in the hidden deceivers – those who could play the fool yet possessed a kind of cunning that, while narrowly confined to the immediate satisfaction of their own position, proved of great skill in exploiting the stupid and the brilliant alike. These were the ones who hungered for power and more often than not succeeded in acquiring it. No genius would willingly accept true power, of course, in full knowledge of its deadly invitations. And fools could never succeed in holding on to ...

Gather a modest horde of such hidden deceivers – those of middling intelligence and clever malice and avaricious ambition – and serious trouble was pretty much assured. A singular example of this was found in the coven of witches and warlocks who, until recently, had ruled the Shak...

When Destriant Run’Thurvian had come to her, speaking of fraught dreams and fierce visions, it was as tinder-dry kindling to the furnace of Krughava’s inviolate sense of purpose, and, it turned out, her belief in her own imminent elevation to heroic status. Few childhood convictions survived the grisly details of an adult’s sensibilities, and although Tanakalian accounted himself still young, still awaiting the temper of wisdom, he had already seen enough to comprehend the true horror waiting beneath the shining surface of the self-avowed hero known to all as the Mortal Sword of the Grey Helms of Perish. Indeed, he had come to suspect that no hero, no matter what the time or the circumstance, was anything like the tales told him so many years ago. Or perhaps it was his growing realization that so many so-called virtues, touted as worthy aspirations, possessed a darker side. Purity of heart also meant vicious intransigence. Unfaltering courage saw no sacrifice as too great, even if that meant leading ten thousand soldiers to their deaths. Honour betrayed could plunge into intractable insanity in the pursuit of satisfaction. Noble vows could drown a kingdom in blood, or crush an empire into dust. No, the true nature of heroism was a messy thing, a confused thing of innumerable sides, many of them ugly, and almost all of them terrifying.

‘Of course not. I overreached, casting my lust upon her. Lesson succinctly delivered. Heed that as well, my young warrior. Not every slap of the hand should ignite a messy feud.’

She glanced back at the puddles. ‘Do I just … mop that up?’ ‘Leave it for the morning – it may be that you will find little more than a stain by then.’ ‘I can point to it when I have guests and say: “This is where two gods melted.”’

There was no doubt that she was Letherii, but that legacy existed only on the surface – her skin, her features, the traits of whatever parents had given her birth and then lost her. But that nascent impression of civilization had since faded, eroded away. She had been given back to the wild, a virgin sacrifice whose soul had been devoured whole. She belonged to the wolves, and, perhaps, to the Wolf God and Goddess, the Lord and Lady of the Beast Throne.

‘Wisdom grows by stripping away beliefs, until the last tether is cut, and suddenly you float free. Only, because your eyes are wide open, you see right away that you can’t float in what you’re in. You can only sink. That’s why the meanest religions work so hard at keeping their followers ignorant. Knowledge is poison. Wisdom is depthless. Staying ignorant keeps you in the shallows. Every Tanno one day takes a final spiritwalk. They cut the last tether, and the soul can’t go back. When that happens, the other Tannos mourn, because they know that the spiritwalker has drowned.’

In my lifelong study of the scores of species of ants to be found in the tropical forests of Dal Hon, I am led to the conviction that all forms of life are engaged in a struggle to survive, and that within each species there exists a range of natural but variable proclivities, of physical condition and of behaviour, which in turn weighs for or against in the battle to survive and procreate. Further, it is my suspicion that in the act of procreation, such traits are passed on. By extension, one can see that ill traits reduce the likelihood of both survival and procreation. On the basis of these notions, I wish to propose to my fellow scholars at this noble gathering a law of survival that pertains to all forms of life. But before I do so, I must add one more caveat, drawn from the undeniable behavioural characteristics of, in my instance of speciality, ants. To whit, success of one form of life more often than not initiates devastating population collapse among competitors, and indeed, sometimes outright extinction. And that such annihilation of rivals may in fact be a defining feature of success. Thus, my colleagues, I wish to propose a mode of operation among all forms of life, which I humbly call – in my four-volume treatise – ‘The Betrayal of the Fittest’.

Hellian scowled. ‘Who am I? Damned if I know. And does it even matter? Gods, I’m sober. Who did that to me?’ She glared at Skulldeath. ‘You? Bastard!’ ‘Not bastard,’ he said. ‘Prince! King in waiting! Me. You … you Queen. My Queen. King and Queen, we. Two tribes now together, make one great tribe. I rule. You rule. People kneel and bring gifts.’ She bared her teeth at him. ‘Listen, idiot, if I never knelt to nobody in my life, there’s no way I’ll make anybody kneel to me, unless,’ she added, ‘we both got something else in mind. Piss on kings and queens, piss on ’em! All that pomp is pure shit, all that …’ she scowled, searching for the word, ‘… all that def’rence! Listen! I’ll salute an orficer, cos that crap’s needed in an army, right? But that’s because somebody needs to be in charge. Don’t mean they’re better. Not purer of blood, not even smarter, you unnerstand me? It’s just – between that orficer and me – it’s just something we agree between us. We agree to it, right? To make it work! Highborn, they’re different. They got expectations. Piss on that! Who says they’re better? Don’t care how fuckin’ rich they are – they can shit gold bricks, it’s still shit, right?’ She jabbed a finger up at Skulldeath. ‘You’re a Hood-damned soldier and that’s all you are. Prince! Hah!’ And then she rolled over and threw up.

And if the bony snake of their children now wandered dying in a glass wilderness, what of it? The adults don’t care. Even the moaners among them – their caring had sharp borders, not far, only a few steps away, patrolled borders with thick walls and bristling towers and on the outside there was agonizing sacrifice and inside there was convenience. Adults knew what to guard and they knew, too, how far to think, which wasn’t far, not far, not far at all. Even words, especially words, could not penetrate those walls, could not overwhelm those towers. Words bounced off obstinate stupidity, brainless stupidity, breathtaking, appalling stupidity. Against the blank gaze, words are useless.

Rava scowled. What had he been thinking about? Ah, yes, the paucity of sincerity that was, ultimately, at the very heart of political triumph. He had long ago discovered that brazen lies could be uttered with impunity, because nothing would come of exposure – should that unlikely consequence ever occur – for even when such lies were indeed exposed, why, in a month or two the finger-pointers would wander off, distracted by something or someone else worthy of their facile outrage. A mien of proper belligerence could weather virtually anything his accusers might throw at him. As with so many battles on a multitude of fields, it was all a matter of nerve.

No, the real fool in the equation was sitting off to one side. Sergeant Urb, whose love for the woman glittered like the troubled waters of a spring, fed unceasingly from the bedrock of his childlike faith. A faith in the belief that one day her thoughts would clear, enough for her to see what was standing right in front of her. That the seduction of alcohol would suddenly sour. The man was an idiot. But there were idiots aplenty in the world. An unending supply, in fact.

‘Very generous, Sergeant. Tell you what, how about we share a meal or two over the next few days, and leave it at that. At least for now.’ ‘I’ve made a mess of this, haven’t I? All right, we’ve got lots of time. See you later, Bottle.’ Paralt poison, maybe a vial’s worth, and then a knife to the heart to go with the slitted wrists, and then the drop over the side. Drowning? Nothing to it. He listened to the boots clump off, wondering if she’d pause at some point to wipe off what was left of him from her soles. Some women were just out of reach. It was a fact. There were ones a man could get to, and then others he could only look at. And they in turn could do the calculations in the span of the barest flutter of an eye – walk up or walk over, or, if need be, run away from. Apes did the same damned thing. And monkeys and parrots and flare snakes: the world was nothing but matches and mismatches, posturing and poses, the endless weighing of fitness. It’s a wonder the useless ones among us ever breed at all.

‘Death, dear soldiers, is just another warren. Any of you know what a warren is? … Gods, you might as well be living in mud huts! A warren, friends, is like a row of jugs on a shelf behind the bar. Pick one, pull the stopper, and drink. That’s what mages do. Drink too much and it kills you. But just enough and you can use it to do magic. It’s fuel, but each jug is different – tastes different, does different magic. Now, there’s a few out there, like our High Mage, who can drink from ’em all, but that’s because he’s insane.’

‘When did you last have a drink?’ Rumjugs asked her. ‘Weeks now. You?’ ‘Same. Funny how things kind of clear up.’ ‘Funny, aye.’ Sunrise smiled to himself at hearing Sweetlard try out that Malazan way of talking. ‘Aye.’ It’s a good word, I think. More a whole attitude than a word, really. With lots of meaning in it, too. A bit of ‘yes’ and a bit of ‘well, fuck’ and maybe some ‘we’re all in this mess together’. So, a word to sum up the Malazans. He uttered his own sigh and settled his head back. ‘Aye,’ he said. And the others nodded. He knew they did, and he didn’t even have to look. We’re tightening up. Just like Dead Hedge said we would. Just like that, aye.

I won’t go mad, Rutt. Don’t you see? I have the power to do nothing. I have all the powers of a god.

She didn’t know why she was doing this. Nor did she understand the man walking at her side. But what difference did knowing make? Just as easy to live in ignorance, scraped clean of expectation, emptied of beliefs and faith, even hopes. Hetan is hobbled. No different in the end from every other woman suffering the same fate. She’s been cut down inside, and the stem lies bruised and lifeless. She was once a great warrior. She was once proud, her wit sharp as a thorn, ever quick to laugh but never with cruelty. She was indeed a host of virtues, but they had availed her nothing. No strength of will survives hobbling. Not a single virtue. This is the secret of humiliation: the deadliest weapon the Barghast have.

The warrior did not pursue, but she heard him cursing as he wandered off. She didn’t think she’d run into many more like him – everyone was crowding around their clan cookfires, hungry and parched and short-tempered as they jostled and fought for position. There’d be a few flick-blade duels this night, she expected. There always were, night before battle. Stupid, of course. Pointless. But, as Onos Toolan might say, the real meaning of ‘tradition’ was … what had he called it? ‘Stupidity on purpose’, that’s what he said. I think. I never much listened. I should have. We all should have.

She almost halted. She’d never before seen things in such a way; she’d never before felt the echo of misery and suffering assailing her from all directions – every scene painted into life by the fires was like a vision of madness. We do this. We do this all the time. To all these creatures who look to us for protection. We do this and think nothing of it. We say we are great thinkers, but I think now, that most of what we do each and every day – and night – is in fact thoughtless. We will ourselves empty to numb us to our cruelty. We stiffen our faces and say we have needs. But to be empty is to have no purchase, nothing to grasp on to, and so in the emptiness we slide and we slide. We fall. Oh, when will it end?

Intimately close with his enemy in the cramped trench, he saw the warrior open his mouth to cry out the alarm. Bakal’s back-slash with his knife ripped out the man’s throat, even as the dagger sank a second time, the blade snapping as it snagged between two ribs. Blood rushed up to fill Bakal’s throat and he fell against the dying warrior, coughing into the wool of the man’s cloak. He was feeling so very tired now, but there were things still to be done. Find her. Save her. He crawled from the trench. He was having trouble breathing. A memory that had been lost for decades returned to him suddenly: the last time he’d been near death – the Drowning Fever had struck him down, his lungs filling up with phlegm. The thick poultices encasing his chest, the eye-stinging smell of ground mustard seeds – his mother’s face, a blurred thing, hovering, dread hardening to resignation behind her eyes. Crypt walls. We all have them, there inside – you don’t go there often, do you? It’s where you keep your dead. Dead relatives, dead dreams, dead promises. Dead selves, so many of those, so many. When you loot, you only take the best things. The things you can use, the things you can sell. And when you seal it all up again, the darkness remains. It remains. Ah, Mother, it remains. My crypt. My crypt walls.

Beside her, Kalt Urmanal said, ‘See the sword he carries. See how its tip pins the earth. This Onos T’oolan, he is not one for poses. He never was. I remember when I last saw him. He had defeated his challenger. He had shown such skill that ten thousand Imass stood silent with awe. Yet, he stood as one defeated.’ ‘Weary,’ Rystalle murmured. ‘Yes, but not from the fighting. He was weary, Rystalle Ev, of its necessity.’ She considered that, and then nodded. Kalt then added, ‘This warrior I will follow.’ ‘Yes.’

‘Saphii,’ answered Shelemasa. ‘It’s said to calm the stomach, and with the foreign food we’ve been eating of late, such calm will be a welcome respite.’ ‘Perhaps,’ added Rafala, ‘it will soothe the child as well.’ ‘Or kill it outright. At this point I don’t really care which. Heed this miserable Mahib’s warning: do this once to know what it means, but leave it at that. Don’t let the dream serpents back into your thoughts, whispering to you of pregnancy’s bliss. The snake lies to soften your memories. Until there is nothing but clouds and the scent of blossoms in your skull, and before you know it, you’ve gone and done it again.’ ‘Why would the serpents lie, Mahib? Are not children women’s greatest gift?’ ‘So we keep telling ourselves, and each other.’ She sipped more tea. Her tongue tingled as if she’d licked a bell of pepper. ‘But not long ago my husband and I invited our children to a family feast, and my how we did feast. Like starving wolves trying to decide which among us was the stranded bhederin calf. All night our children flung that bloody hide back and forth, each of them cursed to wear it at least once, and finally they all decided to drape the two of us in that foul skin. It was, in short, a most memorable reunion.’ The two younger women said nothing. ‘Parents,’ resumed Hanavat, ‘may choose to have children, but they do not choose their children. Nor can children choose their parents. And so there is love, yes, but there is also war. There is sympathy and there...

He’d been thinking about Leoman lately. No real reason, as far as he could tell, except maybe it was the way Leoman had managed to lead soldiers, turn them into fanatical followers, in fact. He’d once believed that was a gift, a talent. But now he was no longer so sure. In some ways, that gift was the kind that made a man dangerous. Being a follower was risky. Especially when the truth showed up, that truth being that the one doing the leading didn’t really care a whit for any of them. Leoman and people like him collected fanatics the way a rich merchant collected coins, and then he spent them without a moment’s thought. No, the Adjunct was better, no matter what everyone said. They talked as if they wanted a Leoman, but Corabb knew how that was. They didn’t. If they got a Leoman, every one of them would end up getting killed. He believed the Adjunct cared about them, maybe even too much. But between the two, he’d stay with her every time. Dissatisfaction was a disease. It had ignited the Whirlwind and hundreds of thousands had died. Standing over grave pits, who was satisfied? Nobody. It had launched the Malazans into eating their own, and if every Wickan was now dead, who’d be so foolish as to believe the new land the settlers staked out for themselves wouldn’t exact its vengeance? Sooner or later, it would turn them into dust and the wind would just blow them away. Even here, in this camp, among the Bonehunters, dissatisfaction spread like an infection. No reason but bo...

Ah, Badan, what am I to do with you? You keep breaking my heart. But pity and love don’t live together, do they?