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It had not been imagined – by anyone – that an entire realm could die in such a manner. That the vicious acts of its inhabitants could destroy…everything. Worlds live on, had been the belief – the assumption – regardless of the activities of those who dwelt upon them. Torn flesh heals, the sky clears, and something new crawls from the briny muck. But not this time.
He had once believed that all of existence was under the benign control of a caring omnipotence, after all.
Errant’s blessing, who is now among us?
The world is of your making and one day, my friend, you will stand alone amidst a sea of dead,
the solitary deceit is its solitude, the lie is the lie standing alone, the threads and knots of the multitude tighten in righteous judgement with which you once so freely strangled every truthsayer, every voice of dissent.
‘Children grow up,’ Seren said. ‘Even straight trees spawn crooked branches.’
I hate children with secrets – especially ones with secrets they’re not even aware of.
‘Good idea. Bugg, I need you to build me a box, to very specific specifications which I’ll come up with later.’ ‘A box, Master. Wood good enough?’ ‘What kind of sentence is that? Would good enough.’ ‘No, wood, you know, the burning kind.’ ‘Yes, would that wood will do.’ ‘Size?’ ‘Absolutely. But no lid.’ ‘Finally, you’re getting specific.’ ‘I told you I would.’
Of course, to express power is to enact tyranny, which can be most subtle and soft, or cruel and hard.
‘Why is it, I wonder, that organizations such as yours are invariably run by pitiful human failures? By small-minded psychotics and perverts. All bullied as children, of course. Or abused by twisted parents – I’m sure you have terrible tales to confess, of your miserable youth. And now the power is in your hands, and oh how the rest of us suffer.’
Not everyone could be rich – the system would not permit such equity, for the power and privilege it offered was dependent on the very opposite.
Inequity, else how can power be assessed, how can the gifts of privilege be valued? For there to be rich, there must be poor, and more of the latter than the former.
When he spoke, she could hear the weight of barrowstones.
‘Silchas,’ she said as she moved close, ‘do you have any idea what Kettle was talking about?’ ‘No, Acquitor. But,’ he added, ‘I intend to keep listening.’
Rhulad aimed the weapon at Trull’s chest. ‘I am the Emperor!’ ‘No, you’re not,’ Trull replied. ‘Your sword is Emperor – your sword and the power behind it.’
For bell after bell, Rhulad would mete out justice as best he could. His struggles to understand the lives of the Letherii had touched her in unexpected ways – there was, she had come to believe, a decent soul beneath all that accursed trauma.
Tehol Beddict, wearing his blanket like a sarong, walked with the benign grace of an ascetic from some obscure but harmless cult.
After all, tyranny has no sense of humour. Too thin-skinned, too thoroughly full of its own self-importance.
She squealed her usual delight at the gifts of beaker and fat root, the latter of which, it turned out, was most commonly used by malicious wives to effect the shrinkage of their husbands’ testicles;
Tell Hannan Mosag this: a god in pain is not the same as a god obsessed with evil.
‘You should choose a better god to worship, Ventrala. Tortured spirits like company, even a god’s.’ He paused, then said, ‘Then again, perhaps it is the likes of you who have in turn shaped the Crippled God. Perhaps, without his broken, malformed worshippers, he would have healed long ago.’
Silchas Ruin knows more of the Crippled God than any of us, barring perhaps Rhulad. But he does not hate. No, he feels pity. Pity, even for me.
Kechra. K’Chain Che’Malle, the Firstborn of Dragons.
Well, invaders had to accept the risks – they were thieves as well, weren’t they? Luxuriating in their unearned wealth, squatting on land not their own, arrogant enough to demand that it change to suit their purposes.
Slowly, he settled onto his back, stared up at the night sky. So much room up there, a ceiling beyond the reach of everyone, covering a place in which they could live. Uncrowded, room enough for all. He was glad, he realized, that he had come here, to see, to witness, to understand. Glad, even as he died.
Truth was lost, a chimera reshaped to match agenda,
Consider this then a warning. Liars will lie, and continue to do so, even beyond being caught out. They will lie, and in time, such liars will convince themselves, will in all self-righteousness divest the liars of culpability. Until comes a time when one final lie is voiced, the one that can only be answered by rage, by cold murder, and on that day, blood shall rain down every wall of this vaunted, weaning society.
‘You two,’ Hood said, turning away, ‘are worse than advocates. And you don’t want to know what I do with the souls of advocates.’ A heartbeat later and the Lord of Death was gone. Menandore frowned. ‘Shadowthrone, what are advocates?’ ‘A profession devoted to the subversion of laws for profit,’ he replied, his cane inexplicably tapping as he shuffled back into the woods. ‘When I was Emperor, I considered butchering them all.’ ‘So why didn’t you?’ she asked as he began to fade into a miasma of gloom beneath the trees. Faintly came the reply, ‘The Royal Advocate said it’d be a terrible mistake.’
As the echo of the whore’s footsteps faded, Janall, Queen of the House of Chains, curled up into a ball on the slick, befouled
‘You have lied to yourself. You all do, and call it faith. I am your god. I am what you made me.
The argument was this: a civilization shackled to the strictures of excessive control on its populace, from choice of religion through to the production of goods, will sap the will and the ingenuity of its people
Dead pirates were better, Shurq Elalle mused. There was a twisted sort of justice in the dead preying upon the living, especially when it came to stealing all their treasured possessions.
‘Citizens of Lether have been murdered. It is my responsibility to give answer to that, and so I shall.’ ‘And who will win?’ Brohl Handar asked. ‘We will, of course.’ ‘No, Atri-Preda. You will lose. As will the Awl. The victors are men such as Factor Letur Anict. Alas, such people as the Factor view you and your soldiers little differently from how they view their enemies. You are to be used, and this means that many of you will die. Letur Anict does not care. He needs you to win this victory, but beyond that his need for you ends…until a new enemy is found.
Tell me, do empires exist solely to devour? Is there no value in peace? In order and prosperity and stability and security? Are the only worthwhile rewards the stacks of coin in Letur Anict’s treasury? He would have it so – all the rest is incidental and only useful if it serves him.
‘Life is an invitation to disease,’ the huge warrior rumbled from the shadows.
Every scrap of food to feed the livestock – and the miserable rook – was brought in by the wraiths Shadowthrone had assigned to the task. For all of that, the rooster had died mere days after arriving. Died from grief, I expect. Not a single dawn to crow awake.
Panek, Aystar and the other surviving children – well, hardly children any more. They’d seen battle, they’d seen their friends die, they knew the world – every world – was an unpleasant place where a human’s life was not worth much.
Into the viper’s den – every hero needs to do that, right? And moments before your doom arrives, out hisses your enchanted sword and evil minions die by the score. Ever wondered what the aftermath of such slaughter must be? Dread depopulation, shattered families, wailing babes – and should that crucial threshold be crossed, then inevitable extinction is assured, hovering before them like a grisly spectre.
But I always started worrying…about those evil minions, the victims of those bright heroes and their intractable righteousness. I mean, someone invades your hide-out, your cherished home, and of course you try to kill and eat them. Who wouldn’t? There they were, nominally ugly and shifty-looking, busy with their own little lives, plaiting nooses or some such thing. Then shock! The alarms are raised! The intruders have somehow slipped their chains and death is a whirlwind in every corridor!’
‘Perhaps she knows how to wait things out,’ the Acquitor responded. ‘Go on, Udinaas, how does the heroic epic of yours, your revised version, turn out?’ ‘Well, first, the hidden lair of the evil ones. There’s a crisis brewing. Their priorities got all mixed up – some past evil ruler with no management skills or something.
‘You just stated the central argument – both for and against the institution of slavery. I was wasted, was I? Or of necessity kept under firm heel. Too many people like me on the loose and no ruler, tyrant or otherwise, could sit assured on a throne. We would stir things up, again and again. We would challenge, we would protest, we would defy. By being enlightened, we would cause utter mayhem. So, Fear, kick another basket of fish over here, it’s better for everyone.’
The ritual fails. Ice, which had been held in check, held timeless, has begun to move once more. It falters in the warmth of this age, yet its volume is so vast that, even melted, it will effect vast change.
‘Fear that yields respect is not a bad thing, sir.
‘What can you see of the horizon’s bruised smear, that cannot be blotted out by a raised hand?’
I could, however, tell you of the army I originally belonged to, before the Grey Swords.’ He glanced over with his one glittering eye, and Redmask saw amusement there, a kind of mad hilarity that left him uneasy. ‘I could tell you of the Malazans.’ ‘I have not heard of that tribe.’ Anaster Toc laughed again. ‘Not a tribe. An empire.
‘You’ll need a new song.’ ‘Then you must create it,’ Redmask replied. ‘Choose one from among the Malazans. Something appropriate.’ ‘Aye,’ the man muttered, ‘a dirge.’
That there were three thousand and twelve sects at New Year One is only surprising in that there were once tens of thousands, resulting from a previous misguided policy of extensive education provided to every citizen of Cabal – a policy since amended in the interests of unification.
‘Only this: the One God, having written nothing down, having left all matters of interpretation of faith and worship to the unguided minds of over-educated mortals, is unequivocally insane.’
But so be it, as kings and queens say when it’s all swirled down the piss-hole.
Contemplate this fist, dear husband.
