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‘I was speaking for the hens.’ ‘But they don’t speak Letherii.’
‘Yes, but yours will see blood spilled. Plenty of it.’ ‘Is there a difference between spilled blood and blood squeezed out slowly, excruciatingly, over the course of a foreshortened lifetime of stress, misery, anguish and despair – all in the name of some amorphous god that no-one dares call holy?
How many, before we all collectively stop and say, “Aaii! That’s enough! No more suffering, please! No more hunger, no more war, no more inequity!” Well, as far as I can see, there are never enough generations. We just scrabble on, and on, devouring all within reach, including our own kind, as if it was nothing more than the undeniable expression of some natural law, and as such subject to no moral context, no ethical constraint – despite the ubiquitous and disingenuous blathering over-invocation of those two grand notions.’
Since when did ethics and morality become weapons of submission?’
Had Bugg told him then, in clear terms that Ublala Pung would comprehend, all might well have turned out differently. The Elder God would look back on this one moment, over all others, during his extended time of retrospection that followed.
Rhulad Sengar, Emperor of a Thousand Deaths, sat alone on his throne, dreaming peace. But even death could not offer that.
The quest was drawing to a close. Just as well. Nothing worse, as far as he was concerned, than those legends of old when the stalwart, noble adventurers simply went on and on, through one absurd episode after another, with each one serving some arcane function for at least one of the wide-eyed fools, as befitted the shining serrated back of morality that ran the length of the story,
‘I suggest a huge mutual suicide,’ Udinaas said. ‘You and all your wretched kin, and you, Clip, you could just jump in to appease your ego or something. Vanish from the mortal realms, all of you, and leave the rest of us alone.’
At some point, no matter how repressive the regime, the citizenry will come to comprehend the vast power in their hands. The destitute, the Indebted, the beleaguered middle classes; in short, the myriad victims. Control was sleight of hand trickery, and against a hundred thousand defiant citizens, it stood no real chance. All at once, the game was up.
‘Of course. But I have lost thirty-one agents since yesterday. And those among them who had families…well, no-one was spared retribution.’ ‘It is a sad truth, Orbyn, that all who have been rewarded by tyranny must eventually share an identical fate.’
We fight our wars and leave in our wake the redolent reek of suffering and misery. These plains are vast, are they not? What terrible cost would we face if we just left each other alone?
‘Quick Ben Delat, lucid as a piss-hole.’
‘We’ll all be good boys, so long as no-one tries to kill us or worse, like making us eat some horrible vegetable rightly extinct on every other realm in the universe.’
Although idiots had a way of being damnably lucky.
When thugs were in power, educated people were the first to feel their fists.
‘The end,’ Senior Assessor said, ‘is never what you imagine. Be comforted by that, my friends.’
‘Never mind the truth. The past is what I say it is. That is the freedom of teaching the ignorant.’
Feather Witch, listen well to your god. To this modest sliver of wisdom. The lives of others are not yours to use. Offer them bliss, yes, but do not be disappointed when they choose misery – because the misery is theirs, and in deciding to choose someone else’s path or their own, they will choose their own.
Open to them your hand to the shore, watch them walk into the sea. Press upon them all they need, see them yearn for all they want.
The shore gives way to the sea. And the sea, my friends, Does not dream of you.
‘It’s all right, Beak, to die alongside your comrades. It’s all right. Do you understand me?’ ‘Yes sir, I do. It is all right, because they’re my friends.’ ‘That’s right, Beak.’ And that’s why no-one needs to worry, Captain.
‘I remember once you being scared witless of a recruit named Sorry, because she was possessed by a god. And now here you are, working for that god. Amazing, how things can turn right round in ways you’d never expect nor even predict.’
Everyone will because you’re all my friends and friends are important. The most important thing in the world. And I’ll show you.’
He saw in Corabb Bhilan Thenu’alas the coursing blood that held in it the power to destroy every cancer that struck him, and he was a man under siege from that disease, but it would never kill. Would not even sicken him.
His friends, yes, the only ones he had ever known. Survival, he realized, could only be found through purity. Of his love for them all – how so many of them had smiled at him, laughed with him. How hands clapped him on the shoulder and even, now and then, tousled his hair.
Those fires were so hot, now, burning – but there was no pain. Pain had been scoured away, cleansed away. Oh, the weight was vast, getting heavier still, but he would not let go. Not of his brothers and his sisters, the ones he so loved. My friends.
To burn, fire needed fuel. To save them all, Beak had used all the fuel within him. In horror, Faradan Sort found herself staring at a collapsed jumble of ashes and scorched bone. But no, there was pattern within that, a configuration, if she could but focus through her tears. Oh. The bones of the arms seemed to be hugging the knees, the crumpled skull settled on them. Like a child hiding in a closet, a child seeking to make himself small, so small… Beak. Gods below…Beak.
That warrior – and his horse – had given their lives to save these last Awl, and it was that fact alone which stayed – for the moment – the hand of Tool, chosen now among all the White Face Barghast – with Humbrall Taur’s tragic death at the landing – as war leader, even though he was not Barghast at all.
It had been impossible to identify anyone among the fallen – and this had delivered upon Tool the deepest wound of all. He had lost a friend there. The betrayal. The slaying. There would be, in Tool, no room for mercy. Not for the Awl. Not for the Letherii army so far from home.
‘They betrayed him,’ Tool continued. ‘Yet, see. This day. He rode to the enemy.’ ‘To save the lives of these children,’ Hetan said. ‘Yes.’ ‘I do not understand.’ ‘You have told me many tales, husband, of your friend. Of Toc the Younger. Of the honour within him. I ask you this: how could he not?’
I have seen the face of sorrow She looks away in the distance Across all these bridges From whence I came
I have seen her face She does not speak She does not weep She does not know me For I am but a stone fitted in place On the bridge where she walks
And grinned. ‘Here, suck on this, you fat winged cow.’ A solid thunk as the cusser shot out, then down. Landing within the gaping cavity of Sheltatha Lore’s belly. The explosion sent chunks of dragon flesh in all directions. The thick, red, foul rain showered down on Hedge and Quick Ben. And what might have been a vertebra hammered Hedge right between the eyes, knocking him out cold. Flung onto his hands and knees by the concussion, Quick Ben stared across at his unconscious friend, then began laughing. Higher-pitched than usual.
The demon god in the ice, the ice that was failing. Moments from release, moments from…‘Ay’edenan of the Spring,’ he said. ‘Ay’edenan tek’ velut !enan.’
Her weight deliciously flattening him for a single exquisite moment before she rolled off.
I built this machine. This place that will forge my beginning. No longer outside the world. No longer outside time itself. Give me this, wounded or not, give me this. If K’rul can, why not me?
Dogs lying in the shade, children on their knees playing with the tiny clay figurines that some travelling Malazan scholar had thought to be of great and sacred significance, but were in truth no more than toys, for all children loved toys.
Karsa Orlong, bold with his claims, brazen in his arrogance, uttered but five words in reply: ‘I will kill you…once.’
The sword-point slashed across his stomach. Fluids gushed, organs following. Squealing, Karos Invictad fell to his knees, stared up at the man standing before him, stared up at the crimson-bladed sword in the man’s hand. ‘No,’ he said in a mumble, ‘but you are dead.’ Brys Beddict’s calm brown eyes shifted from the Invigilator’s face, noted the sceptre still held in Karos’s right hand. His sword seemed to writhe. Burning pain in the Invigilator’s wrist and he looked down. Sceptre was gone. Hand was gone. Blood streamed from the stump.
‘Next time I see Cotillion,’ Quick Ben hissed, ‘I’m going to strangle him with his own rope.’
The brother of Anomander and Andarist, for ever deemed the coldest of the three, the cruellest, Silchas Ruin flew, a white leviathan with murder in its heart. White as bone, with eyes red as death.
‘This ain’t your fight,’ he said to the distant creature. ‘Fucking dragon.’ Then he turned and stared at Hedge. Who, grinning, stared back. ‘No ghost?’ ‘No ghost. Aye, Fid, I’m back.’
‘I feel much better.’ Brys Beddict smiled across at his brother. ‘You look it. So, Tehol, your manservant is an Elder God.’ ‘I’ll take anybody I can find.’
The two women approached the group. As they drew closer, the fat woman stepped to one side and with a surprisingly elegant wave of one plump hand she said, ‘Commander, I present to you Brys Beddict, once Champion to King Ezgara Diskanar – before the Edur conquest – now proclaimed the Saviour. And his brother, Tehol Beddict, financial genius, liberator of the oppressed and not half bad in bed, even now being proclaimed the new Emperor of Lether by his loving subjects.’ The Adjunct seemed at a loss for a reply.
The thought of her made his breath catch in his throat. Oh, he had not known such love could exist. And now, even in the ashes surrounding him here, the future was unfolding like a flower, its scent sweet beyond belief. This is what love means. I finally see— The knife thrust went in under his left shoulder blade, tore through into his heart. Eyes wide in sudden pain, sudden astonishment, Trull felt Rhulad’s head tilt to one side on his lap, then slide down from hands that had lost all strength. Oh, Seren, my love. Oh, forgive me.
Then Hedge asked, ‘Can you do it, Quick? Some place with…with eternal torment. Can you do that, wizard? I asked if you can do that!’
Then the wizard snapped out a hand and pulled Fiddler close, and his face was pale with rage. ‘Don’t you pity him, Fid. You understand me? Don’t you pity him!’ Fiddler shook his head. ‘I – I won’t, Quick. Not for a moment. Let him scream, for all eternity. Let him scream.’ A grim nod, then Quick Ben pushed him back. Hedge wept over the Tiste Edur, wept like a man for whom all light in the world has been lost, and would never return. And Fiddler did not know what to do.
This weapon, my Chosen One, is for you.’ Karsa Orlong faced the Crippled God. ‘No-one chooses me. I do not give anyone that right. I am Karsa Orlong of the Teblor. All choices belong to me.’
Karsa Orlong stared down at the Crippled God. And his sneer broadened, a moment, before he turned away. ‘Do not leave it here! It is for you! Karsa Orlong, it is for you!’
‘I will – to break it on the forge where it was made.’ And he pointed to the ramshackle smithy in the distance. The Crippled God hissed, ‘You said it could never be broken, Withal!’ The weaponsmith shrugged. ‘We’re always saying things like that. Pays the bills.’
