Reaper's Gale (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #7)

by Steven Erikson

Everything glowed, as if lit from fires within. The once-black stubble of crops blazed back into fierce life. Stones shone like precious gems. Incandescence raged on all sides. Fiddler saw his soldiers and he could see through, in pulsing flashes, to their very bones, the organs huddled within their cages. He saw, along one entire side of Koryk, old fractures on the ribs, the left arm, the shoulder blade, the hip. He saw three knuckle-sized dents on Cuttle’s skull beneath the now translucent helm – a rap he had taken when still a babe, soft-boned and vulnerable. He saw the damage between Smiles’s legs from all the times she savaged herself. 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. He saw in Bottle coruscating waves of raw power, a refulgence devoid of all control – but that would come. It will come. Corporal Tarr crouched down in the hole he’d dug, and the light emanating from him looked solid as iron. Among the others he saw more than any mortal would want to see, yet he could not close his eyes, could not look away. Gesler and Stormy were lit in gold fire. Even Stormy’s beard and hair – all spun gold now – a brutal beauty cascading round his face, and the damned fool was laughing. The world beyond had vanished behind an opaque, curved wall of silver fire. Vague shapes on the other side – yes, h...