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

by Steven Erikson

I went in search of death In the cast down wreckage Of someone’s temple nave I went in search among flowers Nodding to the wind’s words Of woeful tales of war I went among the blood troughs Behind the women’s tents All the children that never were And in the storm of ice and waves I went in search of the drowned Among bony shells and blunt worms Where the grains swirled Each and every one crying out its name its life its loss I went on the current roads That led me nowhere known And in the still mists afield Where light itself crept uncertain I went in search of wise spirits Moaning their truths in dark loam But the moss was silent, too damp to remember my search Finding at last where the reapers sow Cutting stalks to take the season I failed in my proud quest To a scything flint blade And lying asward lost to summer Bared as its warm carapace of youthful promise was sent away into autumn’s reliquary sky Until the bones of night Were nails glittering in the cold oblivion, and down the darkness death came to find me Before Q’uson Tapi Toc Anaster