House of Chains

CHAPTER TWELVE

GLISTENING SILVER, THE ARMOUR LAY OVER A T-SHAPED STAND. OIL had dripped down from the ragged knee-length tassels to form a pool on the flagstoned floor beneath. The sleeves were not loose, but appeared intended to be worn almost skin-tight. It had seen much use, and where mended the rings appeared to be a darker, carbon-stained iron.

Beside it, on a free-standing iron frame with horizontal hooks, waited a two-handed sword, the scabbard parallel directly beneath it on another pair of hooks. The sword was extraordinarily thin, with a long, tapered tip, edges on both sides, twin-fluted. Its surface was a strangely mottled oily blue, magenta and silver. The grip was round instead of flat, banded in gut, the pommel a single, large oblong sphere of polished haematite. The scabbard was of black wood, banded at the point and at the mouth in silver but otherwise unadorned. The harness belt attached to it was of small, almost delicate, black chain links.

Chain gauntlets waited on a wooden shelf on the wall behind the armour. The dull iron helm beside them was little more than a skullcap within a cage of studded bars, the bars reaching down like a massive hand, the gnarled fingers curving down to bridge nose, cheeks and jaw lines. A lobster tail of chain depended from the slightly flared neck rim.

Standing just within the entrance to the modest, low-ceilinged room, Cutter watched as Darist began preparations for donning his martial accoutrements. The Daru youth was finding it difficult to convince himself that such beautiful weapons and armour-which had clearly seen decades, if not centuries, of use-could belong to this silver-haired man, who carried himself like an absent-minded scholar, whose amber eyes seemed to hold a perpetual look of confused distraction beneath the glowing sheen. Who moved slowly as if protecting brittle bones-

Yet I have experienced the old Tiste Andu’s strength. And there is a mindfulness to his every movement which I should recognize-for I last saw it on another Tiste Andu, an ocean away. A racial trait? Perhaps, but it whispers like a song of threat, sunk deep in the marrow of my bones.

Darist stood facing his suit of armour, as if frozen in some startled contemplation-as if he’d forgotten how to put it on.

‘These Tiste Edur, Darist,’ Cutter said. ‘How many are there?’

‘Will we survive the coming attack, is your question? Unlikely, is my answer. At least five ships survived the storm. Two have reached our shore and managed landing. There would have been more, but they were engaged by a Malazan fleet that happened upon them by chance. We witnessed the clash from the Cliffs of Purahl…’ The Tiste Andu slowly glanced back at Cutter. ‘Your human kin did well-far better than the Edur no doubt anticipated.’

‘A sea battle between the Malazans and the Tiste Edur? When was this?’

‘Perhaps a week ago. There were but three Malazan war dromons, yet each managed to find company before plunging to the deep. There was a skilled mage among the humans-the exchange of sorcery was impressive-’

‘You and your kin watched! Why didn’t you help? You must have known the Edur were seeking this island!’

Darist stepped towards the armour, lifted it seemingly effortlessly from its frame. ‘We no longer leave this island. For many decades now, we hold to our decision to remain isolated.’

‘Why?’

The Tiste Andu gave no answer. He slipped the mail suit over his shoulders. The sound it made as it flowed down was like liquid. He then reached for the sword.

‘That looks as if it would snap with the first block of a heavier weapon.’

‘It will not. There are many names for this particular sword.’ Darist lifted it free of the hooks. ‘Its maker named it Vengeance. T’an Arcs, in our language. But I call it K’orladis.’

‘Which means?’

‘Grief.’

A faint chill rippled through Cutter. ‘Who was its maker?’

‘My brother.’ He sheathed the sword, slipped his arms through the chain harness. Then he reached for the gauntlets. ‘Before he found one more suited to his nature.’ Darist turned, his gaze travelling the length of Cutter, head to toe, then back again. ‘Do you have skill with those knives hidden about your person?’

‘Some, though I draw no pleasure from spilling blood.’

‘What else are they for?’ the Tiste Andu asked as he donned the helm. Cutter shrugged, wishing he had an answer to that question. ‘Do you intend to fight the Edur?’

‘Since they are seeking the throne, yes.’

Darist slowly cocked his head. ‘Yet this is not your battle. Why would you choose to borrow this cause?’

‘On Genabackis-my homeland-Anomander Rake and his followers chose to fight against the Malazan Empire. It wasn’t their battle, but they have now made it so.’

He was surprised to see a wry smile twist the Tiste Andu’s weathered features beneath the crooked iron fingers of the guards.

‘That is interesting. Very well, Cutter, join me-though I tell you now it will prove your final fight.’

‘I hope not.’

Darist led him from the room, out into the broad hallway once more, then through a narrow, black-wood-framed archway. The passage within appeared to be a tunnel through a single piece of wood, like the hollowed core of a massive, toppled tree trunk. It stretched on into the gloom, inclining slightly upward.

Cutter walked behind the Tiste Andu, the sound of the man’s armour soft as the hiss of rain on a beach. The tunnel ended abruptly with an upward turn, the ceiling opening to reveal a vertical shaft. A rough ladder of roots climbed towards a small, pale disc of light.

Darist’s ascent was slow and measured, Cutter impatient on the rungs directly beneath until the thought that he might soon die struck him, at which point a dull lassitude settled into his muscles, and it became a struggle to keep up with the ancient Tiste Andu.

They eventually emerged onto a leaf-cluttered floor of flagstones. Sunlight speared shafts of dust from slitted windows and gaps in the roof overhead-the storm seemed to have missed this place entirely. One wall had mostly collapsed and it was towards this that Darist strode.

Cutter followed. ‘Some sort of upkeep might well have made this defensible,’ he muttered.

‘These surface structures are not Andu-they are Edur, and were in ruin when we first arrived.’

‘How close are they?’

‘They range through the forest, working inland. Cautious. They know they are not alone.’

‘How many can you sense?’

‘This first party numbers perhaps a score. We shall meet them in the courtyard, permitting us sufficient room for swordplay yet allowing us a wall to which we can set our backs in the last few moments.’

‘Hood’s breath, Darist, if we drive them back you’ll likely die of shock.’

The Tiste Andu glanced back at the Daru, then gestured. ‘Follow me.’

A half-dozen similarly ruined chambers were traversed before they came to the courtyard. The vine-latticed walls were twice the height of a human, ragged-topped. Faded frescoes were hinted at beneath the overgrowth. Opposite the inner entrance through which they strode was an arched gateway, beyond which a trail of pine needles, snaking roots and moss-covered boulders wound into the shadows of enormous trees.

Cutter judged the yard to be twenty paces wide, twenty-five deep. ‘There’s too much room here, Darist,’ he said. ‘We’ll get flanked-’

‘I will command the centre. You remain behind, for those who might indeed try to get past me.’

Cutter recalled Anomander Rake’s battle with the demon on the Darujhistan street. The two-handed fighting style the Son of Darkness had employed demanded plenty of room, and it now appeared that Darist would fight in a similar manner-but the sword’s blade was, to Cutter’s mind, far too thin for such fierce, wheeling swings. ‘Is there sorcery invested in that blade of yours?’ he asked.

‘Not as investment is commonly known,’ the Tiste Andu replied, drawing the weapon and wrapping both hands about the grip, one high under the hilt, the other just above the pommel. ‘The power of Grief lies in the focused intent in its creation. The sword demands a singular will in its wielder. With such a will, it cannot be defeated.’

‘And have you that singular will?’

Darist slowly lowered the tip to the ground. ‘Had I, human, this would not be your last day this side of Hood’s gate. Now, I suggest you draw your weapons. The Edur have discovered the path and now approach.’

Cutter found his hands were trembling as he drew out his leading knives. He possessed four others, two under each arm, sheathed in leather and peace-looped by thongs-which he now pulled clear. These four were weighted for throwing. Once done, he adjusted his grip on the knives in his hands, then had to dry his palms and repeat the task.

A soft whisper of sound made him look up, to see that Darist had slipped into a fighting stance, though the tip of the sword still rested on the flagstones.

And Cutter saw something else. The leaf clutter and detritus on the flagstones was in motion, crawling as if pushed by an unseen wind, gathering towards the gate’s end of the courtyard, and out to heap against the walls to either side.

‘Keep your eyes slitted,’ Darist said in a low tone.

Slitted?

There was movement in the gloom beyond the gateway, furtive, then three figures stepped into view beneath the arch.

As tall as Darist, their skin a dusky pallor. Long brown hair, knotted and snarled with fetishes. Necklaces of claws and canines competed with the barbarity of their roughly tanned leather armour that was stitched with articulating strips of bronze. Their helms, also bronze, were shaped like bear or wolf skulls.

Among them, there was nothing of the natural majesty evident in Darist-or in Anomander Rake. A far more brutal cast, these Edur. Tip-heavy black-bladed scimitars were in their hands, sealskin-covered round shields on their forearms.

They hesitated before Darist, then the one in the centre snarled something in a language Cutter could not understand.

The silver-haired Tiste Andu shrugged, said nothing.

The Edur shouted something that was clearly a demand. Then they readied their weapons and swung their shields around.

Cutter could see more of the savage warriors gathered on the trail beyond the gate.

The three stepped from the archway, spread out to form a slight pincer position-the centre Edur a step further away than his companions on either side.

‘They don’t know how you will do this,’ Cutter murmured. ‘They’ve never fought against-’

The flankers moved forward in perfect unison.

Darist’s sword snapped upward, and with that motion, a fierce gust of wind lifted in the courtyard, and the air around the three Edur was suddenly filled with skirling leaves and dust.

Cutter watched as the Tiste Andu attacked. The blade tipped horizontal, point threatening the Edur on the right, but the actual attack was with the pommel, against the warrior on the left. A blurring sideways dip to close, then the pommel struck the swiftly upraised shield, splitting it clean in half. Darist’s left hand slipped off the pommel and slapped the warrior’s sword away even as the Tiste Andu dropped into a squat, drawing the edge of Grief down his opponent’s front.

It seemed there was no contact at all, yet blood gushed from a rent that began above the Edur’s left collar bone and descended in a straight line down to his crotch.

The squat became a backward springing motion that landed Darist two paces back, his blade already hissing to fend off the other two warriors, both of whom leapt away in alarm.

The wounded Edur crumpled in a pool of his own blood, and as he fell Cutter saw that Grief had cut through the collar bone and every rib in the cage down the left side.

The warriors beyond the archway screamed battlecries and surged into the wind-whipped courtyard.

Their only chance of success lay in closing on Darist, inside the man’s reach, closing and fouling that whispering blade, and the Edur lacked nothing in courage.

Cutter saw another cut down, then a third took the pommel on the side of his helm, and the bronze collapsed inward far too deep-the warrior’s limbs flailed in strange jerking motions as he fell to the flagstones.

Both leading knives were in the Daru’s left hand, and his right reached to a throwing knife. He sent the weapon darting out with a back-handed throw, saw it sink to the hilt in an Edur’s eye socket-and knew the tip had snapped against the inside of the man’s skull at the back. He threw the second one and swore as a shield lifted to take it.

In the storm of spinning leaves Darist’s sword seemed to be everywhere at once, blocking attack after attack, then an Edur flung himself forward to grapple, and managed to wrap both arms around the Tiste Andu’s legs.

A scimitar lashed in. There was a spray of blood from Darist’s right shoulder. Grief’s pommel dented the helm of the grappling warrior, and the Edur sagged. Another swing chopped into the Tiste Andu’s hip, the blade bouncing back out from the bone. Darist staggered.

Cutter rushed forward as the remaining Edur closed. Through spinning, clattering leaves, into the calmed air at the centre. The Daru had already learned that direct, head-on confrontation was not an ideal tactic when fighting with knives. He chose an Edur whose attention was fixed solely on Darist and was therefore turned slightly away-the warrior caught sight of him peripherally, and was quick to react.

A back-handed slash of the scimitar, followed by the shield swinging round.

Cutter punched his left knife at the blade, to intercept a third of the way down from the tip. Simultaneously, he stop-hit the swing with his other knife, midway along the man’s forearm-the point of his weapon punching through leather and stabbing between the bones with both edges on. The hilt of his other weapon then contacted the scimitar-and knocked the weapon from a numbed hand.

The Edur’s grunt was loud, and he swore as, yanking on the knife, Cutter moved past him. The blade was reluctant to pull free and dragged the impaled arm after it. The warrior’s legs tangled and he fell to one knee.

Even as he lifted his shield, Cutter’s free knife darted in over it, spearing him through the throat.

The shield’s rim cracked hard against the Daru’s out-thrust wrist, nearly springing the knife loose, but he managed to retain his grip.

Another tug and the other knife tore free of the Edur’s forearm.

A shield struck him a body blow from his left, lifting Cutter upward, his moccasins leaving the flagstones. He twisted and slashed out at the attacker, and missed. The shield’s impact had turned his left side into a mass of thrumming pain. He hit the ground and folded into a roll.

Something thumped in pursuit, bounced once, then twice, and as the Daru regained his feet an Edur’s decapitated head cracked hard against his right shin.

The agony of this last blow-absurdly to his mind-overwhelmed all else thus far. He screamed a curse, hopped backward one-legged.

An Edur was rushing him.

A fouler word grated out from Cutter. He flung the knife from his left hand. Shield surged up to meet it, the warrior ducking from view.

Grimacing, Cutter lunged after the weapon-while the Edur remained blind-and stabbed overhand above the shield. The knife sank down behind the man’s left collarbone, sprouting a geyser of blood as he pulled it back out.

There were shouts now in the courtyard-and suddenly it seemed the fighting was everywhere, on all sides. Cutter reeled back a step to see that other Tiste Andu had arrived-and, in their midst, Apsalar.

Three Edur were on the ground in her wake, all writhing amidst blood and bile.

The rest, barring their kin who had fallen to Apsalar, Cutter and Darist, were retreating, back through the archway.

Apsalar and her Tiste Andu companions pursued only so far as the gate.

Slowly, the spinning wind dwindled, the leaf fragments drifting down like ash.

Cutter glanced over to see Darist still standing, though he leaned against a side wall, his long, lean frame sheathed in blood, helm gone, his hair matted and hanging down over his face, dripping. The sword Grief remained in his two hands, point once more on the flagstones.

One of the new Tiste Andu moved to the three noisily dying Edur and unceremoniously slit their throats. When finished, she raised her gaze to study Apsalar for a long moment.

Cutter realized that all of Darist’s kin were white-haired, though none were as old-indeed, they appeared very young, in appearance no older than the Daru himself. They were haphazardly armed and armoured, and none held their weapons with anything like familiarity. Quick, nervous glances were thrown at the gateway-then over to Darist.

Sheathing her Kethra knives, Apsalar strode up to Cutter. ‘I am sorry we were late.’

He blinked, then shrugged. ‘I thought you’d drowned.’

‘No, I made shore easily enough-though everything else went with you. There was sorcerous questing, then, but I evaded that.’ She nodded to the youths. ‘I found these camped a fair distance inland. They were… hiding.’

‘Hiding. But Darist said-’

‘Ah, so that is Darist. Andarist, to be more precise.’ She turned a thoughtful gaze on the ancient Tiste Andu. ‘It was by his command. He didn’t want them here… because I imagine he expected they would die.’

‘And so they shall,’ Darist growled, finally lifting his head to meet her eyes. ‘You have condemned them all, for the Edur will now hunt them down in earnest-the old hatreds, rekindled once more.’

She seemed unaffected by his words. ‘The throne must be protected.’

Darist bared red-stained teeth, his eyes glittering in the half-shadows. ‘If he truly wants it protected, then he can come here and do it himself.’

Apsalar frowned. ‘Who?’

Cutter answered, ‘His brother, of course. Anomander Rake.’

It had been a guess, but Darist’s expression was all the affirmation needed. Anomander Rake’s younger brother. In his veins, nothing of the Son of Darkness’s Draconian blood. And in his hands, a sword that its maker had judged insufficient, when compared to Dragnipur. But this knowledge alone was barely a whisper-the twisted, dark storm of all that existed between the two siblings was an epic neither man was ever likely to orate, or so Cutter suspected.

And the skein of bitter grievances proved even more knotted than the Daru had first imagined, for it was then revealed that the youths were, one and all, close kin to Anomander-grandchildren. Their parents had inherited their sire’s flaw, the hunger for wandering, for vanishing into the mists, for shaping private worlds in forgotten, isolated places. ‘The search for loyalty and honour’, Darist had said, with a sneer, whilst Phaed-the young woman who had shown mercy to Apsalar’s victims-bound his wounds.

A task not done quickly. Darist-Andarist-had been slashed at least a dozen times, each time the heavy scimitar parting chain then flesh down to the bone, in various places on his body. How he had managed to stand upright, much less continue fighting, belied his earlier claim that his will was not of sufficient purity to match the sword, Grief. Now that the skirmish had been suspended, however, the force that had fired the old warrior fast dissipated. His right arm was incapacitated; the wound on his hip dragged him onto the flagstones-and he could not rise again without help.

There were nine dead Tiste Edur. Their retreat had probably been triggered by a desire to regroup rather than being hard-pressed.

Worse, they were but an advance party. The two ships just off the shore were massive: each could easily hold two hundred warriors. Or so Apsalar judged, having scouted the inlet where they were moored.

‘There is plenty of wreckage in the water,’ she added, ‘and both Edur ships have the look of having been in a fight-’

‘Three Malazan war dromons,’ Cutter said. ‘A chance encounter. Darist says the Malazans gave a good account of themselves.’

They were seated on some tumbled rubble a dozen paces from the Tiste Andu, watching the youths hover and fuss over Darist. Cutter’s left side ached, and though he did not look beneath his clothes he knew that bruises were spreading. He struggled to ignore the discomfort and continued eyeing the Tiste Andu.

‘They are not what I expected,’ he said quietly. ‘Not even schooled in the art of fighting-’

‘True. Darist’s desire to protect them could prove a fatal one.’

‘Now that the Edur know they exist. Not a part of Darist’s plan.’

Apsalar shrugged. ‘They were given a task.’

He fell silent, pondering that brusque statement. He’d always believed that a singular capacity to inflict death engendered a certain wisdom-of the fragility of the spirit, of its mortality-as he had known, and experienced first-hand, with Rallick Nom in Darujhistan. But Apsalar revealed nothing of such wisdom; her words were hard with judgement, often flatly dismissive. She had taken focus and made of it a weapon… or a means of self-defence.

She had not intended any of the three Edur she had taken down to die swiftly. Yet it seemed she drew no pleasure, as a sadist might. It is more as if she was trained to do so… trained as a torturer. Yet Cotillion-Dancer-was no torturer. He was an assassin. So where does the vicious streak come from? Does it belong to her own nature? An unpleasant, disturbing thought.

He lifted his left arm, gingerly, wincing. Their next fight would likely be a short one, even with Apsalar at their side.

‘You are in no condition to fight,’ she observed.

‘Nor is Darist,’ Cutter retorted.

‘The sword will carry him. But you will prove a liability. I would not be distracted by protecting you.’

‘What do you suggest? I kill myself now so I’m not in your way?’

She shook her head-as if the suggestion had been, on its face, entirely reasonable, just not what she had in mind-and spoke in a low voice. ‘There are others on this island. Hiding well, but not well enough to escape my notice. I want you to go to them. I want you to enlist their help.’

‘Who are these others?’

‘You yourself identified them, Cutter. Malazans. Survivors, I would assume, from the three war dromons. There is one of power among them.’

Cutter glanced over at Darist. The youths had moved the old man so that he sat with his back against the wall beside the inside doorway, opposite the gate. His head was lowered, bearded chin to chest, and only the faint rise and fall of his chest indicated that he still lived. ‘All right. Where will I find them?’

The forest was filled with ruins. Crumbled, moss-covered, often little more than overgrown heaps, but it was evident to Cutter as he padded along the narrow, faint trail Apsalar had described for him that this forest had risen from the heart of a dead city-a huge city, dominated by massive buildings. Pieces of statuary lay scattered here and there, figures of enormous stature, constructed in sections and fixed together with a glassy substance he did not recognize. Although mostly covered in moss, he suspected the figures were Edur.

An oppressive gloom suffused all that lay beneath the forest canopy. A number of living trees showed torn bark, and while the bark was black, the smooth, wet wood underneath was blood red. Fallen companions revealed that the fierce crimson turned black with death. The wounded upright trees reminded Cutter of Darist-of the Tiste Andu’s black skin and the deep red cuts slashing through it.

He found he was shivering in the damp air as he padded along. His left arm was now entirely useless, and though he had retrieved his knives-including the broken-tipped one-he doubted that he would be able to put up much of a fight should the need arise.

He could make out his destination directly ahead. A mound of rubble, pyramidal and particularly large, its summit sunbathed. There were trees on its flanks, but most were dead in the strangling grip of vines. A gaping hole of impenetrable darkness yawned from the side nearest Cutter.

He slowed, then, twenty paces from the cave, halted. What he was about to do ran against every instinct. ‘Malazans!’ he called out, then winced at his own loudness. But the Edur are closing on the Throne-no-one nearby to hear me. I hope. ‘I know you are within! I would speak with you!’

Figures appeared at the flanking edges of the cave, two on each side, crossbows cocked and trained on Cutter. Then, from the centre, emerged three more, two women and a man. The woman on the left gestured and said, ‘Come closer, hands out to your sides.’

Cutter hesitated, then stretched out his right hand. ‘My left arm won’t lift, I’m afraid.’

‘Come ahead.’ He approached.

The speaker was tall, muscular. Her hair was long, stained red. She wore tanned leathers. A longsword was scabbarded at her hip. Her skin was a deep bronze in hue. Cutter judged she was ten or more years older than him, and he felt a shiver run through him when he lifted his gaze and met her tilted, gold-hued eyes.

The other woman was unarmed, older, and her entire right side, head, face, torso and leg, was horrifically burned-the flesh fused with wisps of clothing, mangled and melted by the ravages of a sorcerous attack. It was a wonder that she was standing-or even alive.

Hanging back a step from these two was the man. Cutter guessed that he was Dal Honese, dusky-skinned, grey-shot black curled hair on his head cut short-though his eyes were, incongruously, a deep blue. His features were even enough, though crisscrossed with scars. He wore a battered hauberk, a plain longsword at his belt, and an expression so closed he could be Apsalar’s brother.

The flanking marines were in full armour, helmed and visored. ‘Are you the only survivors?’ Cutter asked. The first woman scowled.

‘I have little time,’ the Daru went on. ‘We need your help. The Edur are assailing us-’

‘Edur?’

Cutter blinked, then nodded. ‘The seafarers you fought. Tiste Edur. They are seeking something on this island, something of vast power and we’d rather it not fall into their hands. And why should you help? Because if it does fall into their hands, the Malazan Empire is likely finished. In fact, so is all of humanity-’

The burned woman cackled, then broke into a fit of coughing that frothed her mouth with red bubbles. After a long moment, the woman recovered. ‘Oh, to be young again! All of humanity, is it? Why not the whole world?’

‘The Throne of Shadow is on this island,’ Cutter said.

At this, the Dal Honese man started slightly.

The burned woman was nodding. ‘Yes yes yes, true words. The sense of things arrives-in a flood! Tiste Edur, Tiste Edur, a fleet set out on a search, a fleet from far away, and now they’ve found it. Ammanas and Cotillion are about to be usurped, and what of it? The Throne of Shadow-we fought the Edur for that? Oh, what a waste-our ships, the marines-my own life, for the Throne of Shadow?’ She spasmed into coughing once more.

‘Not our battle,’ the other woman growled. ‘We weren’t even looking for a fight, but the fools weren’t interested in actually talking, in exchanging emissaries-Hood knows, this is not our island, not within the Malazan Empire. Look elsewhere-’

‘No,’ the Dal Honese rumbled.

The woman turned in surprise. ‘We were clear enough, Traveller, in our gratitude to you for saving our lives. But that hardly permits you to assume command-’

‘The Throne must not be claimed by the Edur,’ the man named Traveller said. ‘I have no desire to challenge your command, Captain, but the lad speaks without exaggeration when he describes the risks… to the empire and to all of humanity. Like it or not, the Warren of Shadow is now human-aspected…’ he smiled crookedly, ‘and it well suits our natures.’ The smile vanished. ‘This battle is ours-we face it now or we face it later.’

‘You claim this fight in the name of the Malazan Empire?’ the captain asked.

‘More than you know,’ Traveller replied.

The captain gestured to one of her marines. ‘Gentur, get the others out here, but leave Mudslinger with the wounded. Then have the squads count quarrels-I want to know what we have.’

The marine named Gentur uncocked his crossbow then slipped back into the cave. A few moments later more soldiers emerged, sixteen in all when counting those who had originally come out.

Cutter walked up to the captain. ‘There is one of power among [missing text] at the burned woman-who was leaning over and spitting out murky blood. ‘Is she a sorceress?’

The captain followed his gaze and frowned. ‘She is, but she is dying. The power you-’

The air reverberated to a distant concussion and Cutter wheeled. ‘They’ve attacked again! With magic this time-follow me!’ Without a backward look, the Daru set off down the trail. He heard a faint curse behind him, then the captain began shouting orders.

The path led directly to the courtyard, and from the thundering detonations pounding again and again, Cutter judged the troop would have no difficulty in finding the place of battle-he would not wait for them. Apsalar was there, and Darist, and a handful of untrained Tiste Andu youths-they would have little defence against sorcery. But Cutter believed he did.

He sprinted on through the gloom, his right hand closed about his aching left arm, seeking to hold it in place, though each jostling stride lanced pain into his chest.

The nearest wall of the courtyard came into view. Colours were playing wildly in the air, thrashing the trees to all sides, deep reds and magenta and blues, a swirling chaos. The waves of concussions were increasing in frequency, pounding within the courtyard. There were no Edur outside the archway-an ominous sign. Cutter raced for the opening. Movement to his right caught his attention, and he saw another company of Edur, coming up from a coast trail but still sixty paces distant. The Malazans will have to deal with those… Queen of Dreams help them. The gate was before him, and he caught first sight of what was happening in the courtyard.

Four Edur stood in a line in the centre, their backs to him. A dozen or more Edur warriors waited on each flank, scimitars held ready. Waves of magic rolled out from the four, pulsing, growing ever stronger-and each one flowed over the flagstones in a tumbling storm of colours, to hammer into Darist.

Who stood alone, at his feet a dead or unconscious Apsalar. Behind him, the scattered bodies of Anomander Rake’s grandchildren. Somehow, Darist still held his sword upright-though he was a shredded mass of blood, bones visible through the wreckage of his chest. He stood before the crashing waves, yet would not take a single step back, even as they tore him apart. The sword Grief was white hot, the metal singing a terrible, keening note that grew louder and more piercing with every moment that passed.

‘Blind,’ Cutter hissed as he closed, ‘I need you now!’

Shadows blossomed around him, then four heavy paws thumped onto the flagstones, and the Hound’s looming presence was suddenly at his side.

One of the Edur spun round. Unhuman eyes widened on seeing Blind, then the sorcerer snapped out something in a harsh, commanding tone.

Blind’s forward rush halted in a skid of claws. And the Hound cowered.

‘Beru fend!’ Cutter swore, scrabbling to draw a knife-

The courtyard was suddenly filled with shadows, a strange crackling sound ripping through the air-

And a fifth figure was among the four Edur sorcerers now, grey-clad, gloved, face hidden in a rough hood. In its hands, a rope, that seemed to writhe with a life of its own. Cutter saw it snap out to strike a sorcerer in one eye, and when the rope whipped back out, a stream of blood and minced brains followed. The sorcerer’s magic winked out and the Edur toppled.

The rope was too fast to follow, as its wielder moved among the three remaining mages, but in its twisting wake a head tumbled from shoulders, intestines spilled out from a gaping rip, and whatever felled the last sorcerer happened in a blur that left no obvious result, except that the Edur was dead before he hit the ground.

There were shouts from the Edur warriors, and they converged from both sides.

It was then that the screams began. The rope lashed out from Cotillion’s right hand; a long-knife was in his left, seeming to do little but lick and touch everyone it came close to-but the result was devastating. The air was a mist of suspended blood around the patron god of assassins, and before Cutter drew his fourth breath since the battle began, it was over, and around Cotillion there was naught but corpses.

A final snap of the rope whipped blood across a wall, then the god threw back his hood and wheeled to face Blind. He opened his mouth to say something, then shut it once more. An angry gesture, and shadows swept out to engulf the trembling Hound. When they dissipated a moment later Blind was gone.

There was the sound of fighting beyond the courtyard and Cutter turned. ‘The Malazans need help!’ he shouted to Cotillion.

‘No they don’t,’ the god growled.

Both spun at a loud clatter, to see Darist lying motionless beside Apsalar, the sword lying nearby, its heat igniting the leaves it lay on.

Cotillion’s face fell, as if with a sudden, deep sorrow. ‘When he’s done out there,’ he said to Cutter, ‘guide him to this sword. Tell him its names.’

‘He?’

A moment later, with a final survey of the mayhem surrounding him, Cotillion vanished.

Cutter rushed over to Apsalar. He knelt down beside her. Her clothes were crisped, smoke rising in tendrils in the now still air. Fire had swept through her hair, but only momentarily, it seemed, for she had plenty left; nor was her face burned, although a long red welt, already blistering, was visible in a diagonal slash down her neck. Faint jerks of her limbs-the after-effects of the sorcerous attack-showed him she still lived.

He tried to wake her, failed. A moment later he looked up, listened. The sounds of fighting had ceased and now a single set of boots slowly approached, crunching on scorched ground.

Cutter slowly rose and faced the archway.

Traveller stepped into view. A sword broken three-quarters of the way up the blade was in one gauntleted hand. Though spattered with blood, he seemed unwounded. He paused to study the scene in the courtyard.

Somehow, Cutter knew without asking that he was the last left alive. Yet he moved none the less to look out through the archway. The Malazans were all down, motionless. Surrounding them in a ring were the corpses of half a hundred or more Tiste Edur. Quarrel-studded others lay on the trail approaching the clearing.

I called those Malazans to their deaths. That captain-with the beautiful eyes… He returned to where Traveller walked among the fallen Tiste Andu. And the question he asked came from a constricted throat. ‘Did you speak true, Traveller?’

The man glanced over.

‘This battle,’ Cutter elaborated. ‘Was it truly a Malazan battle?’

Traveller’s answering shrug chilled the Daru. ‘Some of these are still alive,’ he said, gesturing at the Tiste Andu.

‘And there are wounded in the cave,’ Cutter pointed out.

He watched as the man walked over to where lay Apsalar and Darist. ‘She is a friend,’ Cutter said.

Traveller grunted, then he flung his broken sword aside and stepped over Darist. He reached down for the sword.

‘Careful-’

But the man closed his gauntleted hand on the grip and lifted the weapon.

Cutter sighed, closed his eyes for a long moment, then opened them and said, ‘It is named Vengeance… or Grief. You can choose which best suits you.’

Traveller turned, met Cutter’s eyes. ‘Do you not wish it for yourself?’

The Daru shook his head. ‘It demands its wielder possess a singular will. I am not for that sword, nor, I think, will I ever be.’

Traveller studied the blade in his hand. ‘Vengeance,’ he murmured, then nodded and crouched down to retrieve the scabbard from Darist’s body. ‘This old man, who was he?’

Cutter shrugged. ‘A guardian. He was named Andarist. And now he’s gone, and so the Throne is without a protector-’

Traveller straightened. ‘I will abide here a time. As you said, there are wounded to tend to… and corpses to bury.’

‘I’ll help-’

‘No need. The god who strode through this place has visited the Edur ships-there are small craft aboard, and supplies. Take your woman and leave this island. If more Edur chance upon this location, your presence will only impede me.’

‘How long will you plan on staying here, in Andarist’s role?’

‘Long enough to do him honour.’

A groan came from Apsalar, drawing Cutter to her. She began thrashing, as if fevered.

‘Carry her from this place,’ Traveller said. ‘The sorcery’s effects linger.’

He looked up, met those eyes-and saw sorrow there, the first emotion yet to be revealed from the man. ‘I would help you bury-’

‘I need no help. It will not be the first time I have buried companions. Go. Take her.’

He lifted her in his arms. Her thrashing stilled and she sighed as if sinking into deep, peaceful sleep. Then he stood studying Traveller for a moment.

The man turned away. ‘Thank your god, mortal,’ he growled, his back still to Cutter, ‘for the sword…’

An elongated mass of the stone floor had fallen away, down to the black rushing water of the subterranean river. Athwart the gaping hole lay a bundle of spears, around which was tied a rope that reached down into the water, snaking about as the current tugged at it. The air of the rough-hewn chamber was chill and damp.

Kalam crouched at the edge and studied the swirling water below for a long moment.

‘The well,’ Sergeant Cord said from where he stood beside the assassin.

Kalam grunted, then asked, ‘What in Hood’s name inspired the captain and lieutenant to climb down there?’

‘If you look long enough, with the torches gone from this room, you’ll see a glow. There’s something lying on the bottom, maybe twice a man’s height in depth.’

‘Something?’

‘Looks like a man… all in armour. Lying spread-eagled.’

‘So take the torches out. I want to see this.’

‘Did you say something, Corporal? Your demon friend has disappeared, remember-vanished.’

Kalam sighed. ‘Demons will do that, and in this case you should be thankful for that. Right now, Sergeant, I am of the opinion that you’ve all been cooped up in this mountain for far too long. I’m thinking maybe you’ve lost your minds. And I have also reconsidered your words about my position in your company, and I’ve reached a decision and it’s this.’ He turned his head and fixed his gaze on Cord’s eyes. ‘I’m not in your company, Cord. I’m a Bridgeburner. You’re Ashok Regiment. And if that’s not enough for you, I am resurrecting my old status… as a Claw, a Leader of a Hand. And as such, I’m only outranked in the field by Clawmaster Topper, the Adjunct, and the Empress herself. Now, take the damned torches out of here!’

Cord suddenly smiled. ‘You want to take command of this company? Fine, you can have it. Though we want to deal with Irriz ourselves.’ He reached up to collect the first of the sputtering torches on the wall behind him.

The sudden alteration of attitude from Cord startled Kalam, then filled him with suspicion. Until I sleep, that is. Gods below, I was far better off on my own. Where did that damned demon go, anyway? ‘And when you’ve done that, Sergeant, head back up to the others and begin preparations-we’re leaving this place.’

‘What about the captain and the lieutenant?’

‘What about them? They were swept away and they either drowned or were sprung loose in some watering hole. Either way, they’re not with us now, and I doubt they’re coming back-’

‘You don’t know that-’

‘They’ve been gone too long, Cord. If they didn’t drown they would have had to reach the surface somewhere close. You can hold your breath only so long. Now, enough with this discussion-get going.’

‘Aye… sir.’

A torch in each hand, Cord headed up the stairs. Darkness swiftly engulfed the chamber.

Kalam waited for his eyes to adjust, listening to the sergeant’s boot-steps growing ever fainter.

And there, finally, far below, the glowing figure, indistinct, rippling beneath the rushing water.

The assassin retrieved the rope and coiled it to one side. About twenty arm-lengths had been played out, but the bundle of spears held a lot more. Then he pried a large chunk of stone from the ragged edge and tied the sodden, icy-cold end of the rope to it.

With Oponn’s luck, the rock was sufficiently heavy to sink more or less straight down. He checked the knots once more, then pushed it from the ledge.

It plummeted, dragging the coiled rope down with it. The spears clacked tight, and Kalam peered down. The stone was suspended the full length of the rope-a distance that Kalam, and, no doubt, the captain and the lieutenant, had judged sufficient to make contact with the figure. But it hadn’t, though it looked close. Meaning he’s a big bastard. All right… let’s see how big. He grasped the spears and began lifting and rolling the bundle, playing out ever greater lengths.

A pause to study the stone’s progress, then more playing out of rope.

It finally reached the figure-given the sudden bowing of the line as the current took the slack. Kalam looked down once more. ‘Hood’s breath!’ The rock lay on the figure’s chest… and the distance made that stone look small.

The armoured figure was enormous, three times a man’s height at least. The captain and the lieutenant had been deceived by the scale. Probably fatally so.

He squinted down at it, wondering at the strange glow, then grasped the rope to retrieve the stone-

And, far below, a massive hand flashed up and closed on it-and pulled.

Kalam shouted as he was pulled down into the torrent. As he plunged into the icy water, he reached up in an attempt to grasp the bundle of spears.

There was a fierce tug, and the spears snapped with an explosive splintering sound directly overhead.

The assassin still held on to the rope, even as the current swept him along. He felt himself being pulled down.

The cold was numbing. His ears popped.

Then he was drawn close by a pair of massive chain-clad fists-close, and face to face with the broad grille of the creature’s helm. In the swirling darkness beneath that grille, the glimmer of a rotted, bestial visage, most of the flesh in current-fluttering strips. Teeth devoid of lips-

And the creature spoke in Kalam’s mind. ‘The other two eluded me… but you I will have. I am so hungry-’

Hungry? Kalam answered. Try this.

He drove both long-knives into the creature’s chest.

A thundering bellow, and the fists shot upward, pushing Kalam away-harder and faster than he had thought possible. Both weapons yanked-almost breaking the grip of his hands, but he held on. The current had no time to grasp him as he was thrown upward, shooting back through the hole in an exploding geyser of water. The ledge caught one of his feet and tore the boot off. He struck the chamber’s low stone ceiling, driving the last of his breath from his lungs, then dropped.

He landed half on the pit’s ledge, and was nearly swept back into the river, but he managed to splay himself, clawing to regain the floor, moving clear of the hole. Then he lay motionless, numbed, his boot lying beside him, until he was able to draw in a ragged lungful of bitter cold air.

He heard feet on the stairs, then Cord burst into the chamber and skidded to a halt directly above Kalam. The sergeant’s sword was in one hand, a torch flaring in the other. He stared down at the assassin. ‘What was that noise? What happened? Where are the damned spears-’

Kalam rolled onto his side, looked down over the ledge.

The frothing torrent was impenetrable-opaqued red with blood. ‘Stop,’ the assassin gasped.

‘Stop what? Look at that water! Stop what?’

‘Stop… drawing… from this well…’

It was a long time before the shivers left his body, to be replaced with countless aches from his collision with the chamber’s ceiling. Cord had left then returned with others from his company, as well as Sinn, carrying blankets and more torches.

There was some difficulty in prying the long-knives from Kalam’s hands. The separation revealed that the grips had somehow scorched the assassin’s palms and fingerpads.

‘Cold,’ Ebron muttered, ‘that’s what did that. Burned by cold. What did you say that thing looked like?’

Kalam, huddled in blankets, looked up. ‘Like something that should nave been dead a long time ago, Mage. Tell me, how much do you know of B’ridys-this fortress?’

‘Probably less than you,’ Ebron replied. ‘I was born in Karakarang. It was a monastery, wasn’t it?’

‘Aye. One of the oldest cults, long extinct.’ A squad healer crouched beside him and began applying a numbing salve to the assassin’s hands. Kalam leaned his head against the wall and sighed. ‘Have you heard of the Nameless Ones?’

Ebron snorted. ‘I said Karakarang, didn’t I? The Tanno cult claims a direct descent from the cult of the Nameless Ones. The Spiritwalkers say their powers, of song and the like, arose from the original patterns that the Nameless Ones fashioned in their rituals-those patterns supposedly crisscross this entire subcontinent, and their power remains to this day. Are you saying this monastery belonged to the Nameless Ones? Yes, of course you are. But they weren’t demons, were they-’

‘No, but they were in the habit of chaining them. The one in the pool is probably displeased with its last encounter, but not as displeased as you might think.’

Ebron frowned, then paled. ‘The blood-if anyone drinks water tainted with that…’

Kalam nodded. ‘The demon takes that person’s soul… and makes the exchange. Freedom.’

‘Not just people, either!’ Ebron hissed. ‘Animals, birds-insects! Anything!’

‘No, I think it will have to be big-bigger than a bird or insect. And when it does escape-’

‘It’ll come looking for you,’ the mage whispered. He suddenly wheeled to Cord. ‘We have to get out of here. Now! Better still-’

‘Aye,’ Kalam growled, ‘get as far away from me as you can. Listen-the Empress has sent her new Adjunct, with an army-there will be a battle, in Raraku. The Adjunct has little more than recruits. She could do with your company, even as beaten up as it is-’

‘They march from Aren?’

Kalam nodded. ‘And have likely already started. That gives you maybe a month… of staying alive and out of trouble-’

‘We can manage,’ Cord grated.

Kalam glanced over at Sinn. ‘Be careful, lass.’

‘I will. I think I’ll miss you, Kalam.’

The assassin spoke to Cord. ‘Leave me my supplies. I will rest here a while longer. So we don’t cross paths, I will be heading due west from here, skirting the north edge of the Whirlwind… for a time. Eventually, I will try to breach it, and make my way into Raraku itself.’

‘Lady’s luck to you,’ Cord replied, then he gestured. ‘Everyone else, let’s go.’ At the stairway, the sergeant glanced back at the assassin. ‘That demon… did it get the captain and the lieutenant, do you think?’

‘No. It said otherwise.’

‘It spoke to you?’

‘In my mind, aye. But it was a short conversation.’

Cord grinned. ‘Something tells me, with you, they’re all short.’

A moment later and Kalam was alone, still racked with waves of uncontrollable shivering. Thankfully, the soldiers had left a couple of torches. It was too bad, he reflected, that the azalan demon had vanished. Seriously too bad.

It was dusk when the assassin emerged from the narrow fissure in the rock, opposite the cliff, that was the monastery’s secret escape route. The timing was anything but pleasant. The demon might already be free, might already be hunting him-in whatever form fate had gifted it. The night ahead did not promise to be agreeable.

The signs of the company’s egress were evident on the dusty ground in front of the fissure, and Kalam noted that they had set off southward, preceding him by four or more hours. Satisfied, he shouldered his pack and, skirting the outcropping that was the fortress, headed west. Wild bhok’arala kept pace with him for a time, scampering along the rocks and voicing their strangely mournful hooting calls as night gathered. Stars appeared overhead through a blurry film of dust, dulling the desert’s ambient silver glow to something more like smudged iron. Kalam made his way slowly, avoiding rises where he would be visible along a skyline.

He froze at a distant scream to the north. An enkar’al. Rare, but mundane enough. Unless the damned thing recently landed to drink from a pool of bloody water. The bhok’arala had scattered at that cry, and were nowhere to be seen. There was no wind that Kalam could detect, but he knew that sound carried far on nights like these, and, worse, the huge winged reptiles could detect motion from high above… and the assassin would make a good meal.

Cursing to himself, Kalam faced south, to where the Whirlwind’s solid wall of whirling sand rose, three and a half, maybe four thousand paces distant. He tightened the straps of his pack, then gingerly reached for his knives. The effects of the salve were fading, twin throbbing pulses of pain slowly rising. He had donned his fingerless gloves and gauntlets-risking the danger of infection-but even these barriers did little to lessen the searing pain as he closed his hands on the weapons and tugged them loose.

Then he set off down the slope, moving as quickly as he dared. A hundred heartbeats later he reached the blistered pan of Raraku’s basin. The Whirlwind was a muted roar ahead, steadily drawing a flow of cool air towards it. He fixed his gaze on that distant, murky wall, then began jogging.

Five hundred paces. The pack’s straps were abrading the telaba on his shoulders, wearing through to the lightweight chain beneath. His supplies were slowing him down, but without them, he knew, he was as good as dead here in Raraku. He listened to his breathing grow harsher.

A thousand paces. Blisters had broken on his palms, soaking the insides of his gauntlets, making the grips of the long-knives slippery, uncertain. He was drawing in great lungfuls of night air now, a burning sensation settling into his thighs and calves.

Two thousand paces left, in so far as he could judge. The roar was fierce, and sheets of sand whipped around him from behind. He could feel the rage of the goddess in the air.

Fifteen hundred remaining-

A sudden hush-as if he’d entered a cave-then he was cartwheeling through the air, the contents of his pack loose and spinning away from the shredded remains on his back. Filling his ears, the echoes of a sound-a bone-jarring impact-that he had not even heard. Then he struck the ground and rolled, knives flying from his hands. His back and shoulders were sodden, covered in warm blood, his chain armour shredded by the enkar’al’s talons.

A mocking blow, for all the damage inflicted. The creature could more easily have ripped his head off.

And now a familiar voice entered his skull, ‘Aye, I could have killed you outright, but this pleases me more. Run, mortal, to that saving wall of sand.’

‘I freed you,’ Kalam growled, spitting out blood and grit. ‘And this is your gratitude?’

‘You delivered pain. Unacceptable. I am not one to feel pain. I only deliver it.’

‘Well,’ the assassin grated as he slowly rose to his hands and knees, ‘it comforts me to know in these, my last moments, that you’ll not live long in this new world with that attitude. I’ll wait for you other side of Hood’s gate, Demon.’

Enormous talons snapped around him, their tips punching through chain-one in his lower back, three others in his abdomen-and he was lifted from the ground.

Then flung through the air once more. This time he descended from a distance of at least three times his own height, and when he struck blackness exploded in his mind.

Consciousness returned, and he found himself lying sprawled on the cracked pan, the ground directly beneath him muddy with his own blood. The stars were swimming wildly overhead, and he was unable to move. A deep thrumming reverberation rang in the back of his skull, coming up from his spine.

‘Ah, awake once more. Good. Shall we resume this game?’

‘As you like, Demon. Alas, I’m no longer much of a plaything. You broke my back.’

‘Your error was in landing head first, mortal.’

‘My apologies.’ But the numbness was fading-he could feel a tingling sensation, spreading out through his limbs. ‘Come down and finish it, Demon.’

He felt the ground shake as the enkar’al settled on the ground somewhere to his left. Heavy thumping steps as the creature approached.

‘Tell me your name, mortal. It is the least I can do, to know the name of my first kill after so many thousands of years.’

‘Kalam Mekhar.’

‘And what kind of creature are you? You resemble Imass…’

‘Ah, so you were imprisoned long before the Nameless Ones, then.’

‘I know nothing of Nameless Ones, Kalam Mekhar.’ He could sense the enkar’al at his side now, a massive, looming presence, though the assassin kept his eyes shut. Then he felt its carnivore’s breath gust down on him, and knew the reptile’s jaws were opening wide.

Kalam rolled over and drove his right fist down into the creature’s throat.

Then released the handful of blood-soaked sand, gravel and rocks it had held.

And drove the dagger in his other hand deep between its breast bones.

The huge head jerked back, and the assassin rolled in the opposite direction, then regained his feet. The motion took all feeling from his legs and he toppled to the ground once more-but in the interval he had seen one of his long-knives, lying point embedded in the ground about fifteen paces distant.

The enkar’al was thrashing about now, choking, talons ripping into the bleached earth in its frenzied panic.

Sensation ebbed back into his legs, and Kalam began dragging himself across the parched ground. Towards the long-knife. The serpent blade, I think. How appropriate.

Everything shuddered and the assassin twisted around to see that the creature had leapt, landing splay-legged directly behind him-where he had been a moment ago. Blood was weeping from its cold eyes, which flashed in recognition-before panic overwhelmed them once more. Blood and gritty froth shot out from between its serrated jaws.

He resumed dragging himself forward, and was finally able to draw his legs up and manage a crawl.

Then the knife was in his right hand. Kalam slowly turned about, his head swimming, and began crawling back. ‘I have something for you,’ he gasped. ‘An old friend, come to say hello.’

The enkar’al heaved and landed heavily on its side, snapping the bones of one of its wings in the process. Tail lashing, legs kicking, talons spasming open and shut, head thumping repeatedly against the ground.

‘Remember my name, Demon,’ Kalam continued, crawling up to the beast’s head. He drew his knees under him, then raised the knife in both hands. The point hovered over the writhing neck, rose and fell until in time with its motion. ‘Kalam Mekhar… the one who stuck in your throat.’ He drove the knife down, punching through the thick pebbled skin, and the blood of a severed jugular sprayed outward.

Kalam reeled back, barely in time to avoid the deadly fount, and dropped into another roll.

Three times over, to end finally on his back once more. Paralysis stealing through him once again.

He stared upward at the spinning stars… until the darkness devoured them.

In the ancient fortress that had once functioned as a monastery for the Nameless Ones, but had been old even then-its makers long forgotten-there was only darkness. On its lowermost level there was a single chamber, its floor rifted above a rushing underground river.

In the icy depths, chained by Elder sorcery to the bedrock, lay a massive, armoured warrior, Thelomen Toblakai, pure of blood, that had known the curse of demonic possession, a possession that had devoured its own sense of self-the noble warrior had ceased to exist long, long ago.

Yet now, the body writhed in its magical chains. The demon was gone, fled with the outpouring of blood-blood that should never have existed, given the decayed state of the creature, yet existed it had, and the river had swept it to freedom. To a distant waterhole, where a bull enkar’al-a beast in its prime-had been crouching to drink.

The enkar’al had been alone for some time-not even the spoor of others of its kind could be found anywhere nearby. Though it had not sensed the passage of time, decades had in fact passed since it last encountered its own kind. Indeed, it had been fated-given a normal course of life-to never again mate. With its death, the extinction of the enkar’al anywhere east of the Jhag Odhan would have been complete.

But now its soul raged in a strange, gelid body-no wings, no thundering hearts, no prey-laden scent to draw from the desert’s night air. Something held it down, and imprisonment was proving a swift path to mindless madness.

Far above, the fortress was silent and dark. The air was motionless once more, barring the faint sighs from draughts that flowed in from the outer chambers.

Rage and terror. Unanswered, except by the promise of eternity.

Or so it would have remained.

Had the Beast Thrones stayed unoccupied.

Had not the reawakened wolf gods known an urgent need… for a champion.

Their presence reached into the creature’s soul, calmed it with visions of a world where there were enkar’al in the muddy skies, where bull males locked jaws in the fierce heat of the breeding season, the females banking in circles far above. Visions that brought peace to the ensnared soul-though with it came a deep sorrow, for the body that now clothed it was… wrong.

A time of service, then. The reward-to rejoin its kin in the skies of another realm.

Beasts were not strangers to hope, nor unmindful of such things as rewards.

Besides, this champion would taste blood… and soon.

For the moment, however, there was a skein of sorcerous bindings to unravel…

Limbs stiff as death. But the heart laboured on.

A shadow slipping over Kalam’s face awakened him. He opened his eyes.

The wrinkled visage of an old man hovered above him, swimming behind waves of heat. Dal Honese, hairless, jutting ears, his expression twisted into a scowl. ‘I was looking for you!’ he accused, in Malazan. ‘Where have you been? What are you doing lying out here? Don’t you know it’s hot?’

Kalam closed his eyes again. ‘Looking for me?’ He shook his head. ‘No-one’s looking for me,’ he continued, forcing his eyes open once more despite the glare lancing up from the ground around the two men. ‘Well, not any more, that is-’

‘Idiot. Heat-addled fool. Stupid-but maybe I should be crooning, encouraging even? Will that deceive him? Likely. A change in tactics, yes. You! Did you kill this enkar’al? Impressive! Wondrous! But it stinks. Nothing worse than a rotting enkar’al, except for the fact that you’ve fouled yourself. Lucky for you your urinating friend found me, then led me here. Oh, and it’s marked the enkar’al, too-what a stench! Sizzling hide! Anyway, it’ll carry you. Yes, back to my haunted abode-’

‘Who in Hood’s name are you?’ Kalam demanded, struggling to rise.

Though the paralysis was gone, he was crusted in dried blood, the puncture wounds burning like coals, his every bone feeling brittle.

‘Me? You do not know? You do not recognize the very famosity exuding from me? Famosity? There must be such a word. I used it! The act of being famous. Of course. Most devoted servant of Shadow! Highest Archpriest Iskaral Pust! God to the bhok’arala, bane of spiders, Master Deceiver of all the world’s Soletaken and D’ivers! And now, your saviour! Provided you have something for me, that is, something to deliver. A bone whistle? A small bag, perchance? Given to you in a shadowy realm, by an even shadowier god? A bag, you fool, filled with dusky diamonds?’

‘You’re the one, are you?’ Kalam groaned. ‘The gods help us. Aye, I have the diamonds-’ He tried to sit up, reaching for the pouch tucked under his belt-and caught a momentary glimpse of the azalan demon, flowing amidst shadows behind the priest, until oblivion found him.

When he awoke once more he was lying on a raised stone platform that suspiciously resembled an altar. Oil lamps flickered from ledges on the walls. The room was small, the air acrid.

Healing salves had been applied-and likely sorcery as well-leaving him feeling refreshed, though his joints remained stiff, as if he had not moved for some time. His clothing had been removed, a thin blanket stiff with grime laid over him. His throat ached with a raging thirst.

The assassin slowly sat up, looking down at the purple weals where the enkar’al’s talons had plunged, then almost jumped at a scurrying sound across the floor-a bhok’aral, casting a single, absurdly guilty, glance over a knobby shoulder a moment before darting out through the doorway.

A dusty jug of water and a clay cup lay on a reed mat on the stone floor. Flinging the blanket aside, Kalam moved towards it.

A bloom of shadows in one corner of the chamber caught his attention as he poured a cup, so he was not surprised to see Iskaral Pust standing there when the shadows faded.

The priest was hunched down, looking nervously at the doorway, then tiptoeing up to the assassin. ‘All better now, yes?’

‘Is there need to whisper?’ Kalam asked.

The man flinched. ‘Quiet! My wife!’

‘Is she sleeping?’

Iskaral Pust’s small face was so like a bhok’aral’s that the assassin was wondering at the man’s bloodlines-no, Kalam, don’t be ridiculous-‘Sleeping?’ the priest sputtered. ‘She never sleeps! No, you fool, she hunts!’

‘Hunts? What does she hunt?’

‘Not what. Who. She hunts for me, of course.’ His eyes glittered as he stared at Kalam. ‘But has she found me? No! We’ve not seen each other for months! Hee hee!’ He jutted his head closer. ‘It’s a perfect marriage. I’ve never been happier. You should try it.’

Kalam poured himself another cup. ‘I need to eat-’ But Iskaral Pust was gone. He looked around, bemused.

Sandalled feet approached from the corridor without, then a wild-haired old woman leapt in through the doorway. Dal Honese-not surprisingly. She was covered in cobwebs. She glared about. ‘Where is he? He was here, wasn’t he? I can smell him! The bastard was here!’

Kalam shrugged. ‘Look, I’m hungry-’

‘Do I look appetising?’ she snapped. A quick, appraising glance at Kalam. ‘Mind you, you do!’ She began searching the small room, sniffing at corners, crouching to peer into the jug. ‘I know every room, every hiding place,’ she muttered, shaking her head. ‘And why not? When veered, I was everywhere-’

‘You’re a Soletaken? Ah, spiders…’

‘Oh, aren’t you a clever and long one!’

‘Why not veer again? Then you could search-’

‘If I veered, I’d be the one hunted! Oh no, old Mogora’s not stupid, she won’t fall for that! I’ll find him! You watch!’ She scurried from the room. Kalam sighed. With luck, his stay with these two would be a short one.

Iskaral Pust’s voice whispered in his ear. ‘That was close!’

Cheekbone and orbital ridge were both shattered, the pieces that remained held in place by strips of withered tendon and muscle. Had Onrack possessed anything more than a shrunken, mummified nugget for an eye, it would have been torn away by the Tiste Liosan’s ivory scimitar.

There was, of course, no effect on his vision, for his senses existed in the ghostly fire of the Tellann Ritual-the unseen aura hovering around his mangled body, burning with memories of completeness, of vigour. Even so, the severing of his left arm created a strange, queasy sense of conflict, as if the wound bled in both the world of the ritual ghost-shape and in the physical world. A seeping away of power, of self, leaving the T’lan Imass warrior with vaguely confused thoughts, a malaise of ephemeral… thinness.

He stood motionless, watching his kin prepare for the ritual. He was outside them, now, no longer able to conjoin his spirit with theirs. From this jarring fact there was emerging, in Onrack’s mind, a strange shifting of perspective. He saw only their physicality now-the ghost-shapes were invisible to his sight.

Withered corpses. Ghastly. Devoid of majesty, a mockery of all that was once noble. Duty and courage had been made animate, and this was all the T’lan Imass were, and had been for hundreds of thousands of years. Yet, without choice, such virtues as duty and courage were transformed into empty, worthless words. Without mortality, hovering like an unseen sword overhead, meaning was without relevance, no matter the nature-or even the motivation behind-an act. Any act.

Onrack believed he was finally seeing, when fixing his gaze upon his once-kin, what all those who were not T’lan Imass saw, when looking upon these horrific, undead warriors.

An extinct past refusing to fall to dust. Brutal reminders of rectitude and intransigence, of a vow elevated into insanity.

And this is how I have been seen. Perhaps how I am still seen. By Trull Sengar. By these Tiste Liosan. Thus. How, then, shall I feel? What am I supposed to feel? And when last did feelings even matter?

Trull Sengar spoke beside him. ‘Were you anyone else, I would hazard to read you as being thoughtful, Onrack.’ He was seated on a low wall, the box of Moranth munitions at his feet.

The Tiste Liosan had pitched a camp nearby, a picket line paced out and bulwarks of rubble constructed, three paces between each single-person tent, horses within a staked-out rope corral-in all, the precision and diligence verging on the obsessive.

‘Conversely,’ Trull continued after a moment, his eyes on the Liosan, ‘perhaps your kind are indeed great thinkers. Solvers of every vast mystery. Possessors of all the right answers… if only I could pose the right questions. Thankful as I am for your companionship, Onrack, I admit to finding you immensely frustrating.’

‘Frustrating. Yes. We are.’

‘And your companions intend to dismantle what’s left of you once we return to our home realm. If I was in your place, I’d be running for the horizon right now.’

‘Flee?’ Onrack considered the notion, then nodded. ‘Yes, this is what the renegades-those we hunt-did. And yes, now I understand them.’

‘They did more than simply flee,’ Trull said. ‘They found someone or something else to serve, to avow allegiance to… while at the moment, at least, that option is not available to you. Unless, of course, you choose those Liosan.’

‘Or you.’

Trull shot him a startled look, then grinned. ‘Amusing.’

‘Of course,’ Onrack added, ‘Monok Ochem would view such a thing as a crime, no different from that which has been committed by the renegades.’

The T’lan Imass had nearly completed their preparations. The bonecaster had inscribed a circle, twenty paces across, in the dried mud with a sharpened bhederin rib, then had scattered seeds and dust-clouds of spores within the ring. Ibra Gholan and his two warriors had raised the equivalent of a sighting stone-an elongated chunk of mortared fired bricks from a collapsed building wall-a dozen paces outside the circle, and were making constant adjustments beneath the confusing play of light from the two suns, under Monok Ochem’s directions.

‘That won’t be easy,’ Trull observed, watching the T’lan Imass shifting the upright stone, ‘so I suppose I can expect to keep my blood for a while longer.’

Onrack slowly swung his misshapen head to study the Tiste Edur. ‘It is you who should be fleeing, Trull Sengar.’

‘Your bonecaster explained that they needed only a drop or two.’

My bonecaster… No longer. ‘True, if all goes well.’

‘Why shouldn’t it?’

‘The Tiste Liosan. Kurald Thyrllan-this is the name they give their warren. Seneschal Jorrude is not a sorcerer. He is a warrior-priest.’

Trull frowned. ‘It is the same for the Tiste Edur, for my people, Onrack-’

‘And as such, the seneschal must kneel before his power. Whereas a sorcerer commands power. Your approach is fraught, Trull Sengar. You assume that a benign spirit gifts you that power. If that spirit is usurped, you may not even know it. And then, you become a victim, a tool, manipulated to serve unknown purposes.’

Onrack fell silent, and watched the Tiste Edur… as a deathly pallor stole the life from Trull’s eyes, as the expression became one of horrified revelation. And so I give answer to a question you were yet to ask. Alas, this does not make me all-knowing. ‘The spirit that grants the seneschal his power may be corrupted. There is no way to know… until it is unleashed. And even then, malign spirits are highly skilled at hiding. The one named Osseric is… lost. Osric, as humans know him. No, I do not know the source of Monok Ochem’s knowledge in this matter. Thus, the hand behind the seneschal’s power is probably not Osseric, but some other entity, hidden behind the guise and the name of Osseric. Yet these Tiste Liosan proceed unawares.’

It was clear that Trull Sengar was, for the moment, unable to offer comment, or pose questions, so Onrack simply continued-wondering at the sudden extinction of his own reticence-‘The seneschal spoke of their own hunt. In pursuit of trespassers who crossed through their fiery warren. But these trespassers are not the renegades we hunt. Kurald Thyrllan is not a sealed warren. Indeed, it lies close to our own Tellann-for Tellann draws from it. Fire is life and life is fire. Fire is the war against the cold, the slayer of ice. It is our salvation. Bonecasters have made use of Kurald Thyrllan. Probably, others have as well. That such incursions should prove cause for enmity among the Liosan was never considered. For it seemed there were no Tiste Liosan.

‘Monok Ochem considers this, now. He cannot help but consider this. Where are these Liosan from? How distant-how remote-their home? Why are they now awakened to resentment? What does the one hidden behind the guise of Osseric now seek? Where-’

‘Stop! Please, Onrack, stop! I need to think-I need-’ Trull rose suddenly, flinging a dismissive gesture at the T’lan Imass, then strode off.

‘I think,’ Onrack said quietly to himself as he watched the Tiste Edur storm away, ‘that I will revert to reticence.’

A small chunk of mortared brick had now been positioned in the centre of the ring; its top was being inscribed with slashes and grooves by the bonecaster, and Onrack realized that Monok Ochem had already discerned the celestial patterns of the two suns and the numerous moons that wheeled overhead.

Colours played constantly over this landscape in sullen blood hues, occasionally overwhelmed by deep blues that limned everything in a cold, almost metallic sheen. At the moment, magenta dominated, a lurid tone as of reflected conflagration. Yet the air remained still and damp, eternally pensive.

A world aswarm in shadows. The hounds that Onrack had inadvertently freed from their stone prisons had cast scores of them. The battered warrior wondered where the two beasts had gone. He was fairly certain that they were no longer in this realm, in this place known as the Nascent.

Shadow and spirit reunited… the beasts had possessed something… unusual. As if each was shaped of two distinct powers, two aspects chained together. Onrack had unleashed those hounds, yet, on second consideration, perhaps not freed them. Shadow from Dark. That which is cast… from that which has cast it. The warrior lowered his gaze to study his own multiple shadows. Was there tension between him and them? Clearly, there was a binding. But he was the master and they his slaves.

Or so it seemed… Silent kin of mine. You precede. You follow. You strive on my flanks. Huddle beneath me. Your world finds its shape from my bone and flesh. Yet your breadth and length belong to Light. You are the bridge between worlds, yet you cannot be walked. No substance, then. Only perception.

‘Onrack, you are closed to us.’

He lifted his gaze. Monok Ochem stood before him. ‘Yes, Bonecaster. I am closed to you. Do you doubt me?’

‘I would know your thoughts.’

‘They are… insubstantial.’

Monok Ochem cocked his head. ‘None the less.’

Onrack was silent for a long moment. ‘Bonecaster. I remain bound to your path.’

‘Yet you are severed.’

‘The renegade kin must be found. They are our… shadows. I now stand between you and them, and so I can guide you. I now know where to look, the signs to seek. Destroy me and you shall lose an advantage in your hunt.’

‘You bargain for… persistence?’

‘I do, Bonecaster.’

‘Tell us, then, the path the renegades have taken.’

‘I shall… when it becomes relevant.’

‘Now.’

‘No.’

Monok Ochem stared down at the warrior, then swung away and returned to the circle.

Tellann commanded that place now. Tundra flowers had erupted from the mud, along with lichen and mosses. Blackflies swarmed at ankle height. A dozen paces beyond stood the four Tiste Liosan, their enamel armour glowing in the strange magenta light.

Trull Sengar watched from a position fifteen paces to Onrack’s left, his arms tightly crossed about himself, a haunted expression on his lean face.

Monok Ochem approached the seneschal. ‘We are ready, Liosan.’

Jorrude nodded. ‘Then I shall begin my prayers, Undead Priest. And there shall be proof that our Master, Osric, is far from lost to us. You shall know his power.’

The bonecaster said nothing.

‘And when,’ Trull asked, ‘shall I start spraying blood around? Which one of you has the pleasure of wounding me?’

‘The choice is yours,’ Monok Ochem replied.

‘Good. I choose Onrack-he’s the only one here I’m prepared to trust. Apologies to those of you who might take offence at that.’

‘That task should be mine,’ Seneschal Jorrude said. ‘Blood lies at the heart of Osric’s power-’

Onrack was alone noting the slight start from the bonecaster at that, and the warrior nodded to himself. Much answered with those words. ‘-and indeed,’ Jorrude continued, ‘I shall have to spill some of my own as well.’

But Trull Sengar shook his head. ‘No. Onrack… or no-one.’ And he then uncrossed his arms, revealing a clay ball in each hand.

There was a snort from Jorrude, and the Liosan named Enias growled, ‘Grant me leave to kill him, Seneschal. I shall ensure that there is no shortage of Edur blood.’

‘Do so, and I guarantee the same lack of shortage,’ Trull responded, ‘concerning Liosan blood. Bonecaster, do you recognize these munitions?’

‘They are known by the Malazans as cussers,’ answered Ibra Gholan, the clan leader. ‘One will suffice, given our collective proximities.’

Trull grinned over at the T’lan Imass warrior. ‘Even that dhenrabi skin on your shoulders won’t help much, will it?’

‘True,’ Ibra Gholan replied. ‘While armour is not entirely ineffectual, such value invariably proves wanting.’

Monok Ochem turned to the seneschal. ‘Agree to the stipulation,’ he said. ‘Begin your prayers, Liosan.’

‘Such commands are not for you to utter,’ Jorrude snarled. He glared at Trull. ‘You, Edur, have much to learn. We shall create this gate, and then there will come a reckoning.’

Trull Sengar shrugged. ‘As you like.’

Adjusting his bloodstained cloak, the seneschal strode into the centre of the circle. Then he lowered himself onto his knees, chin settling onto his chest, closing his gleaming, silver eyes.

Blackflies formed a humming cloud around him. Whatever link existed between Jorrude and his god proved both strong and swift. Gold fire flickered into life here and there beyond the circumference of the circle. The remaining three Tiste Liosan returned to their own camp and began packing.

Monok Ochem strode into the circle, followed by the two clansmen Haran Epal and Olar Shayn. The clan leader faced Onrack and said, ‘Guard your companion close, if you would he survive. Cleave to that singular concern, Onrack. No matter what you might witness.’

‘I shall,’ Onrack replied. In many essential matters, the warrior realized, he had no need for a binding of souls with his kin… to know their minds. He strode to Trull Sengar. ‘Follow me,’ he instructed. ‘We must now enter the circle.’

The Tiste Edur scowled, then nodded. ‘Take the box of munitions, then. My hands are full.’

Trull had fixed straps to the box. Onrack collected it then led his companion into the circle.

The three Liosan had completed breaking their camp and were now saddling their white horses.

The fires continued flickering in and out of existence around the periphery, none large enough to pose a threat. But Onrack could sense the approach of the Liosan god. Or at least the outermost layers of its disguise. Cautious, mistrustful-not of the seneschal, of course-but for this to work, the hidden spirit would have to come to this realm’s very edge.

And when Jorrude offered up his own blood, the bridge of power between him and his god would be complete.

The thud of horse hoofs announced the arrival of the other three Liosan, the four mounts in tow.

Onrack drew forth from beneath rotted furs a small crescent-shaped obsidian knife, single-edged on the inward-curving line, and held it out to Trull. ‘When I so instruct you, Trull Sengar, cut yourself. A few drops will suffice.’

The Tiste Edur frowned. ‘I thought you were-’

‘I would not be distracted, in the moment of crossing.’

‘Distracted?’

‘Say nothing. Attend to yourself.’

His frown deepening, Trull crouched to return the two cussers to the box, affixed the lid once more and slung the contrivance over a shoulder, then straightened and accepted the stone blade.

The flames were now growing, unbroken immediately beyond the inscribed ring. Kurald Thyrllan, but the ascendant shaping it remained unseen. Onrack wondered at its nature. If these Liosan were any indication, it found sustenance from purity, as if such a thing was even possible. Intransigence. Simplicity.

The simplicity of blood, a detail whispering of antiquity, of primeval origins. A spirit, then, before whom a handful of savages once bowed. There had been many such entities, once, born of that primitive assertion of meaning to object, meaning shaped by symbols and portents, scratchings on rock-faces and in the depths of caves.

No shortage… but tribes died out, were winnowed out, were devoured by more powerful neighbours. The secret language of the scratchings, the caves with their painted images that came alive to the pounding of drums-those most mysterious cathedrals of thunder… all lost, forgotten. And with that fading away of secrets, so too the spirits themselves dwindled, usually into oblivion.

That some lingered was not surprising to Onrack. Even unto usurping the faith of a new tribe. What was new to the warrior, rising like a tightness into his desiccated throat, was the sense of… pathos.

In the name of purity, the Liosan worship their god. In the name of… of nostalgia, the god worships what was and shall never again return.

The spilling of blood was the deadliest of games.

As is about to be seen.

A harsh cry from the seneschal, and the flames rose into a wall on all sides, raging with unbridled power. Jorrude had laid open his left palm. Within the circle, a swirling wind rose, laden with the smells of a thaw-of spring in some northern clime.

Onrack turned to Trull. ‘Now.’

The Tiste Edur slashed the obsidian blade across the edge of his left hand, then stared down disbelieving at the gash-clear, the flesh neatly parted, frighteningly deep.

The blood emerged a moment later, welling forth, red roots racing and branching down his grey-skinned forearm.

The gate seemed to tear itself open, surrounding the group within the circle. Spiralling tunnels reached outward from it, each seeming to lead on into eternity. A roar of chaos on the flanks, miasmic grey fire in the spaces between the portals. Onrack reached out to catch a reeling Trull Sengar. The blood was spraying out from his left hand, as if the Edur’s entire body was being squeezed by some unseen, but unrelenting pressure.

Onrack glanced over-to see Monok Ochem standing alone, head tilted back as the winds of Tellann whipped the silver-tipped fur around his unhelmed head. Beyond the bonecaster, a momentary glimpse of Ibra Gholan, Olar Shayn and Haran Epal vanishing down a tunnel of fire.

The seneschal’s companions were now running towards their master’s prone, unconscious body.

Satisfied that the others were occupied-temporarily unmindful-Onrack dragged Trull close until their bodies made contact, the T’lan Imass managing a one-armed embrace. ‘Hold on to me,’ he rasped. ‘Trull Sengar, hold on to me-but free your left hand.’

Fingers clutched at Onrack’s ragged cloak, began dragging with growing weight. The T’lan Imass relinquished his one-armed hug and snapped out his hand-to close on Trull’s. The blood bit like acid into flesh that had forgotten pain. Onrack almost tore his grip free in the sudden, overwhelming agony, but then he tightened his hold and leaned close to the Tiste Edur. ‘Listen! I, Onrack, once of the Logros but now stranger to the Ritual, avow service to Trull Sengar of the Tiste Edur. I pledge to defend your life. This vow cannot be sundered. Now, lead us from here!’

Their hands still locked together, sealed for the moment by a slowing flow of blood, Onrack pulled Trull around until they faced one of the spiralling tunnels. Then they plunged forward.

Onrack saw the bonecaster wheel to face them. But the distance was too great, and the ritual had already begun tearing itself apart.

Then Monok Ochem veered into his Soletaken form. A blur, then a massive, hulking beast was thundering in pursuit.

Onrack sought to tear his grip from Trull to reach for his sword, to block the Soletaken and so ensure Trull’s escape-but the Edur had turned, had seen, and would not let go. Instead, he pulled, hard. Onrack stumbled back.

Knuckles pounded on the ground-the ape that Monok Ochem had become was, despite being gaunt with death, enormous. Patched grey and black skin, tufts of silver-tipped black hair on the broad shoulders and the nape of the neck, a sunken-eyed, withered face, jaws stretching wide to reveal canines-voicing a deep, grating roar.

Then Monok Ochem simply vanished. Swallowed by a surge of chaos.

Onrack stumbled over something, crashed down onto hard-packed ground, gravel skidding under him. Beside him, on his knees, was Trull Sengar.

The fall had broken their grip, and the Tiste Edur was staring down at his left hand-where only a thin, white scar remained.

A single sun blazed down on them, and Onrack knew they had returned to his native realm.

The T’lan Imass slowly climbed to his feet. ‘We must leave this place, Trull Sengar. My kin shall pursue. Perhaps only Monok Ochem remains, but he will not relent.’

Trull raised his head. ‘Remains? What do you mean? Where did the others go?’

Onrack looked down on the Tiste Edur. ‘The Liosan were too late to realize. The turning of Tellann succeeded in driving all awareness from the seneschal. They were entirely unprepared. Ibra Gholan, Olar Shayn and Haran Epal walked into the warren of Kurald Thyrllan.’

‘Walked into? Why?’

Onrack managed a one-sided shrug. ‘They went, Trull Sengar, to kill the Liosan god.’

Little more than bones and scraps of armour, what had once been an army lay in the thick grey ash, encircling a steeply sloped pit of some kind. There was no way to tell whether the army had faced outward-defending some sort of subterranean entrance-or inward, seeking to prevent an escape.

Lostara Yil stood ankle-deep in the trail’s ashes. Watching Pearl walk gingerly among the bones, reaching down every now and then to drag some item free for a closer look. Her throat was raw, her hatred of the Imperial Warren deepening with every passing moment.

‘The scenery is unchanging,’ Pearl had noted, ‘yet never the same. I have walked this path before-this very path. There were no ruins, then. And no heap of bones or hole in the ground.’

And no winds to shift the ashes.

But bones and other larger objects had a way of rising to the surface, eventually. Or so it was true in the sands-why should ashes be any different? None the less, some of those ruins were massive. Vast expanses of flagstones, unstained, devoid even of dust. Tall, leaning towers-like the rotted stubs of fangs. A bridge spanning nothing, its stones so precisely set that a knife-tip could not be slipped between them.

Slapping the dust from his gloved hands, Pearl strode up. ‘Curious indeed.’

Lostara coughed, hacked out grey sputum. ‘Just find us a gate and get us out of here,’ she rasped.

‘Ah, well, as to that, my dear, the gods are smiling down upon us. I have found a gate, and a lively one it is.’

She scowled at him, knowing he sought the inevitable question from her, but she was in no mood to ask it.

‘Alas, I know your thoughts,’ Pearl continued after a moment, with a quick wry grin. He pointed back towards the pit. ‘Down there… unfortunately. Thus, we are left with a dire choice. Continue on-and risk you spitting out your lungs-in search of a more easily approachable gate. Or take the plunge, as it were.’

‘You’re leaving the choice to me?’

‘Why not? Now, I’m waiting. Which shall it be?’

She drew the scarf over her mouth and nose once more, tightened the straps on her pack, then marched off… towards the pit.

Pearl fell in step. ‘Courage and foolishness, the distinction so often proves problematic-’

‘Except in hindsight.’ Lostara kicked herself free of a rib cage that had fouled her stride, then swore at the resultant clouds of ash and dust. ‘Who were these damned soldiers? Do you know?’

‘I may possess extraordinary powers of observation and unfathomable depths of intelligence, lass, but I cannot read when there is nothing to be seen. Corpses. Human, in so far as I can tell. The only detail I can offer is that they fought this battle knee-deep in this ash… meaning-’

‘That whatever crisped this realm had already happened,’ Lostara cut in. ‘Meaning, they either survived the event, or were interlopers… like us.’

‘Very possibly emerging from the very gate we now approach.’

‘To cross blades with whom?’

Pearl shrugged. ‘I have no idea. But I have a few theories.’

‘Of course you do,’ she snapped. ‘Like all men-you hate to say you don’t know and leave it at that. You have an answer to every question, and if you don’t you make one up.’

‘An outrageous accusation, my dear. It is not a matter of making up answers, it is rather an exercise in conjecture. There is a difference-’

‘That’s what you say, not what I have to listen to. All the time. Endless words. Does a man even exist who believes there can be too many words?’

‘I don’t know,’ Pearl replied.

After a moment she shot him a glare, but he was studiously staring ahead.

They came to the edge of the slope and halted, looking down. The descent would be treacherous, jumbled bones, swords jagged with decay, and an unknown depth of ash and dust. The hole at the base was perhaps ten paces across, yawning black.

‘There are spiders in the desert,’ Lostara muttered, ‘that build such traps.’

‘Slightly smaller, surely.’

She reached down and collected a thigh bone, momentarily surprised at its weight, then tossed it down the slope. A thud.

Then the packed ash beneath their boots vanished. And down they went, amidst explosions of dust, ashes and splinters of bone. A hissing rush-blind, choking-then they were falling through a dry downpour. To land heavily on yet another slope that tumbled them down a roaring, echoing avalanche.

It was a descent through splintered bones and bits of iron, and it seemed unending.

Lostara was unable to draw breath-they were drowning in thick dust, sliding and rolling, sinking then bursting free once more. Down, down through absolute darkness. A sudden, jarring collision with something-possibly wood-then a withered, rumpled surface that seemed tiled, and down once more.

Another thump and tumble.

Then she was rolling across flagstones, pushed on by a wave of ash and detritus, finally coming to a crunching halt, flat on her back, a flow of frigid air rising up on her left side-where she reached out, groping, then down, to where the floor should have been. Nothing. She was lying on an edge, and something told her that, had she taken this last descent, Hood alone would greet her at its conclusion.

Coughing from slightly further up the slope on her right. A faint nudge as the heaped bones and ashes on that side shifted.

Another such nudge, and she would be pushed over the edge. Lostara rolled her head to the left and spat, then tried to speak. The word came out thin and hoarse. ‘Don’t.’

Another cough, then, ‘Don’t what?’

‘Move.’

‘Oh. That doesn’t sound good. It’s not good, is it?’

‘Not good. Another ledge. Another drop… this one I think for ever.’

‘Judicious use of my warren seems appropriate at this point, don’t you think?’

‘Yes.’

‘A moment, then.’ A dull sphere of light emerged, suspended above them, its illumination struggling in the swirling clouds of dust.

It edged closer-grew larger. Brightened.

Revealing all that was above them.

Lostara said nothing. Her chest had contracted as if unwilling to take another breath. Her heart thundered. Wood. An X-shaped cross, tilting over them, as tall as a four-storey building. The glint of enormous, pitted spikes.

And nailed to the cruciform-

– a dragon.

Wings spread, pinned wide. Hind limbs impaled. Chains wrapped about its neck, holding its massive wedge-shaped head up, as if staring skyward-

– to a sea of stars marked here and there with swirls of glowing mist.

‘It’s not here…’ Pearl whispered.

‘What? It’s right above-’

‘No. Well, yes. But… look carefully. It’s enclosed in a sphere. A pocket warren, a realm unto itself-’

‘Or the entranceway,’ she suggested. ‘Sealing-’

‘A gate. Queen of Dreams, I think you’re right. Even so, its power doesn’t reach us… thank the spirits and gods and demons and ascendants and-’

‘Why, Pearl?’

‘Because, lass-that dragon is aspected.’

‘I thought they all were.’

‘Aye. You keep interrupting me, Lostara Yil. Aspected, I was saying. But not to a warren. Gods! I cannot fathom-’

‘Damn you, Pearl!’

‘Otataral.’

‘What?’

‘Otataral. Her aspect is otataral, woman! This is an otataral dragon.’

Neither spoke for a time. Lostara began edging herself away from the ledge, shifting weight incrementally, freezing at every increase in the stream of dust slipping away beneath her.

Turning her head, she could make out Pearl. He had unveiled enough of his warren to draw himself upward, hovering slightly above the slope. His gaze remained fixed on the crucified dragon.

‘Some help down here…’ Lostara growled.

He started, then looked down at her. ‘Right. My deepest apologies, lass. Here, I shall extend my warren…’

She felt herself lifted into the air.

‘Make no struggle, lass. Relax, and you’ll float up beside me, then pivot upright.’

She forced herself to grow still, but the result was one of rigid immobility.

Pearl chuckled. ‘Lacks grace, but it will do.’

A half-dozen heart-beats later she was beside him, hovering upright.

‘Try to relax again, Lostara.’

She glared at him, but he was staring upward once more. Reluctantly, she followed his gaze.

‘It’s still alive, you know,’ Pearl whispered.

‘Who could have done this?’

‘Whoever it was, we have a lot for which to thank him, her… or them. This thing devours magic. Consumes warrens.’

‘All the old legends of dragons begin with the statement that they are the essence of sorcery. How, then, could this thing even exist?’

‘Nature always seeks a balance. Forces strive for symmetry. This dragon answers every other dragon that ever existed, or ever will.’

Lostara coughed and spat once more, then she shivered. ‘The Imperial Warren, Pearl. What was it before it was… turned to ash?’

He glanced over at her, eyes narrowing. He shrugged and began brushing dust from his clothes. ‘I see no value in lingering in this horrendous place-’

‘You said there was a gate down here-not that one, surely-’

‘No. Beyond that ledge. I suspect the last time it was used was by whoever or whatever nailed this dragon onto the cross. Surprisingly, they didn’t seal the gate behind them.’

‘Careless.’

‘More like supremely confident, I would think. We’ll make our descent a little more orderly this time, agreed? You need not move-leave this to me.’

‘I despise that suggestion in principle, Pearl, but what I hate more is that I see no choice.’

‘Haven’t you had your fill of bared bones yet, lass? A simple sweet smile would have sufficed.’

She fixed him with a look of steel.

Pearl sighed. ‘A good try, lass. We’ll work on it.’

As they floated out over the ledge, Lostara looked up one last time, but not at the dragon, rather at the starscape beyond. ‘What do you make of that night sky, Pearl? I do not recognize the constellations… nor have I ever before seen those glowing swirls in any night sky I’ve looked at.’

He grunted. ‘That’s a foreign sky-as foreign as can be. A hole leading into alien realms, countless strange worlds filled with creatures unimaginable-’

‘You really don’t know, do you?’

‘Of course I don’t!’ he snapped.

‘Then why didn’t you just say so?’

‘It was more fun conjecturing creatively, of course. How can a man be the object of a woman’s interest if he’s always confessing his ignorance?’

‘You want me to be interested in you? Why didn’t you say so? Now I will hang on your every word, of course. Shall I gaze adoringly into your eyes as well?’

He swung on her a glum look. ‘Men really have no chance, do they?’

‘Typical conceit to have thought otherwise, Pearl.’

They were falling gently through darkness. The sorcerous globe of light followed, but at some distance, smudged and faint behind the suspended dust.

Lostara looked downward, then snapped her head up and closed her eyes, fighting vertigo. Through gritted teeth she asked, ‘How much farther do we sink, do you think?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You could’ve given a better answer than that!’ When he made no reply she glanced over at him through slitted eyes. He looked positively despondent. ‘Well?’ she demanded.

‘If these are the depths of despair, lass, we’re almost there.’

As it turned out, another hundred heartbeats passed before they reached the dust-laden floor. The sphere of light arrived a short while later, illuminating the surrounding area.

The floor was solid rock, uneven and littered with still more bones. No walls were in sight.

The magic that had slowly lowered them dissipated. Pearl took two strides then gestured, and, as if he had flung aside an invisible current, the glimmering outlines of a gate appeared before them. The Claw grunted.

‘Now what?’ Lostara asked.

‘Thyr. Or, to be more precise, the Elder Warren from which Thyr derived. I can’t recall its name. Kurald something. Tiste. Not Edur, not Andu, but the other one. And…’ he added in a low voice, ‘the last things to use it left tracks.’

Lostara stared down at the threshold. Somewhat obscured, but discernible none the less. Dragons. ‘I can make out at least three sets,’ she said after a moment.

‘More like six, maybe more. Those two sets’-he pointed-‘were the last to leave. Big bastards. Well, that answers the question of who, or what, was capable of subduing the Otataral Dragon. Other dragons, of course. Even so, it could not have been easy.’

‘Thyr, you said. Can we use it?’

‘Oh, I imagine so.’

‘Well, what are we waiting for?’

He shrugged. ‘Follow me, then.’

Staying close, she fell in step behind him.

They strode through the gate.

And stumbled into a realm of gold fire.

Wild storms on all horizons, a raging, blinding sky.

They stood on a scorched patch of glittering crystals, the past passage of immense heat having burnished the sharp-edged stones with myriad colours. Other such patches were visible here and there.

Immediately before them rose a pillar, shaped like an elongated pyramid, withered and baked, with only the surface facing them dressed smooth. Words in an unknown language had been carved on it.

The air was searing in Lostara’s lungs, and she was sodden with sweat.

But it was, for the moment, survivable.

Pearl walked up to the pillar.

‘We have to get out of here!’ Lostara shouted.

The firestorms were deafening, but she was certain he heard her, and chose to ignore it.

Lostara rarely tolerated being ignored. She strode after him. ‘Listen to me!’

‘Names!’ He spun to her. ‘The names! The ones who imprisoned the Otataral Dragon! They’re all here!’

A growing roar caught her attention, and she turned to face right-to see a wall of flame rolling towards them. ‘Pearl!’

He looked, visibly blanched. Stepped back-and his foot skidded out from beneath him, dropping him hard onto his backside. Blankly, he reached down under him, and when he brought his gloved hand back up, it was slick with blood.

‘Did you-’

‘No!’ He clambered upright-and now they both saw the blood-trail, cutting crossways over the patch, vanishing into the flames on the other side.

‘Something’s in trouble!’ Pearl said.

‘So are we if we don’t get moving!’

The firestorm now filled half the sky-the heat-

He grasped her arm and they plunged around the pillar-

– into a glittering cavern. Where blood had sprayed, gouted out to paint walls and ceiling, and where the shattered pieces of a desiccated warrior lay almost at their feet.

A T’lan Imass.

Lostara stared down at it. Rotted wolf fur the colour of the desert, a broken bone-hafted double-bladed axe of reddish-brown flint almost entirely obscured beneath a pool of blood. Whatever it had attacked had struck back. The warrior’s chest was crushed flat. Both arms had been torn off at the shoulders. And the T’lan Imass had been decapitated. A moment’s search found the head, lying off to one side.

‘Pearl-let’s get out of here.’

He nodded. Then hesitated.

‘Now what?’

‘Your favourite question,’ he muttered. Then he scrambled over to collect the severed head. Faced her once more. ‘All right. Let’s go.’

The strange cave blurred, then vanished.

And they were standing on a sun-bleached rock shelf, overlooking a stony basin that had once known a stream.

Pearl grinned over at her. ‘Home.’ He held up the ghastly head before him and spoke to it. ‘I know you can hear me, T’lan Imass. I’ll find for you the crotch of a tree for your final resting place, provided I get some answers.’

The warrior’s reply was strangely echoing, the voice thick and halting. ‘What is it you wish to know?’

Pearl smiled. ‘That’s better. First off, your name.’

‘Olar Shayn, of the Logros T’lan Imass. Of Ibra Gholan’s clan. Born in the Year of the Two-Headed Snake-’

‘Olar Shayn. What in Hood’s name were you doing in that warren? Who were you trying to kill?’

‘We did not try; we succeeded. The wounds delivered were mortal. It will die, and my kin pursue to witness.’

‘It? What, precisely?’

‘A false god. I know no more than that. I was commanded to kill it. Now, find for me a worthy place of rest, mortal.’

‘I will. As soon as I find a tree.’

Lostara wiped sweat from her brow, then went over to sit on a boulder. ‘It doesn’t need a tree, Pearl,’ she said, sighing. ‘This ledge should do.’

The Claw swung the severed head so that it faced the basin and the vista beyond. ‘Is this pleasing enough, Olar Shayn?’

‘It is. Tell me your name, and you shall know my eternal gratitude.’

‘Eternal? I suppose that’s not an exaggeration either, is it? Well, I am Pearl, and my redoubtable companion is Lostara Yil. Now, let’s find a secure place for you, shall we?’

‘Your kindness is unexpected, Pearl.’

‘Always is and always will be,’ he replied, scanning the ledge.

Lostara stared at her companion, surprised at how thoroughly her sentiments matched those of the T’lan Imass. ‘Pearl, do you know precisely where we are?’

He shrugged. ‘First things first, lass. I’d appreciate it if you allowed me to savour my merciful moment. Ah! Here’s the spot, Olar Shayn!’

Lostara closed her eyes. From ashes and dust… to sand. At least it was home. Now, all that remained was finding the trail of a Malazan lass who vanished months ago. ‘Nothing to it,’ she whispered.

‘Did you say something, lass?’

She opened her eyes and studied him where he crouched anchoring stones around the undead warrior’s severed head. ‘You don’t know where we are, do you?’

He smiled. ‘Is this a time, do you think, for some creative conjecture?’

Thoughts of murder flashed through her, not for the first time.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

FIFTEEN HUNDRED DESERT WARRIORS HAD ASSEMBLED AT THE southern edge of the ruined city, their white horses ghostly through the clouds of amber dust, the glint of chain vests and scaled hauberks flashing dully every now and then from beneath golden telabas. Five hundred spare mounts accompanied the raiders.

Korbolo Dom stood near Sha’ik and Ghost Hands atop a weathered platform that had once been the foundation of a temple or public building of some sort, allowing them a clear view of the assembling warriors.

The Napan renegade watched, expressionless, as Leoman of the Flails rode up for a last word with the Chosen One. He himself would not bother with any false blessings, for he would much prefer that Leoman never return. And if he must, then not in triumph in any case. And though his scarred face revealed nothing, he well knew that Leoman entertained no delusions about Korbolo’s feelings for him.

They were allies only in so far as they both served Sha’ik. And even that was far less certain than it might have outwardly seemed. Nor did the Malazan believe that the Chosen One was deluded as to the spite and enmity that existed between her generals. Her ignorance existed solely in the plans that were slowly, incrementally settling into place to achieve her own demise. Of that Korbolo was certain.

Else she would have acted long before now.

Leoman reined in before the platform. ‘Chosen One! We set out now, and when we return we shall bring you word of the Malazan army. Their disposition. Their rate of march-’

‘But not,’ Sha’ik cut in sternly, ‘their mettle. No engagements, Leoman. The first blooding of her army will be here. By my hand.’

Mouth pressing into a thin line, Leoman nodded, then he said, ‘Tribes will have conducted raids on them, Chosen One. Likely beginning a league beyond the walls of Aren. They will have already been blooded-’

‘I cannot see such minor exchanges as making a difference either way,’ Sha’ik replied. ‘Those tribes are sending their warriors here-they arrive daily. Your forces would be the largest she would have to face-and I will not have that. Do not argue this point again, Leoman, else I forbid you to leave Raraku!’

‘As you say, Chosen One,’ Leoman grated. His startling blue eyes fixed on Ghost Hands. ‘If you require anything, old man, seek out Mathok.’

Korbolo’s brows rose.

‘An odd thing to say,’ Sha’ik commented. ‘Ghost Hands is under my protection, after all.’

‘Minor requirements only, of course,’ Leoman said, ‘such as might prove distracting, Chosen One. You have an army to ready, after all-’

‘A task,’ Korbolo cut in, ‘which the Chosen One has entrusted in me, Leoman.’

The desert warrior simply smiled. Then he collected his reins. ‘May the Whirlwind guard you, Chosen One.’

‘And you, Leoman.’

The man rode back to his waiting horse warriors.

May your bones grow white and light as feathers, Leoman of the Flails. Korbolo swung to Sha’ik. ‘He will disobey you, Chosen One.’

‘Of course he will.’

The Napan blinked, then his gaze narrowed. ‘Then it would be madness to yield the wall of sand to him.’

She faced him, her eyes questioning. ‘Do you fear the Adjunct’s army, then? Have you not said to me again and again how superior you have made our forces? In discipline, in ferocity? This is not Onearm’s Host you will be facing. It is a shaky mass of recruits, and even should they have known hardening in a minor engagment or two, what chance have they against your Dogslayers? As for the Adjunct… leave her to me. Thus, what Leoman does with his fifteen hundred desert wolves is, in truth, without relevance. Or are you now revising all your opinions, Korbolo Dom?’

‘Of course not, Chosen One. But a wolf like Leoman should remain leashed.’

‘Leashed? The word you’d rather have used is killed. Not a wolf, but a mad dog. Well, he shall not be killed, and if indeed he is a mad dog then where better to send him than against the Adjunct?’

‘You are wiser in these ways than I, Chosen One.’

Ghost Hands snorted at that, and even Sha’ik smiled. The blood was suddenly hot in Korbolo’s face.

‘Febryl awaits you in your tent,’ Sha’ik said. ‘He grows impatient with your lateness, Korbolo Dom. You need not remain here any longer.’

From heat to ice. The Malazan did not trust himself to speak, and at the Chosen One’s dismissive wave he almost flinched. After a moment, he managed to find his voice, ‘I had best find out what he wants, then,’ he said.

‘No doubt he views it as important,’ Sha’ik murmured. ‘It is a flaw among ageing men, I think, that brittle self-importance. I advise you to calm him, Korbolo Dom, and so slow his pounding heart.’

‘Sound advice, Chosen One.’ With a final salute, Korbolo strode to the platform’s steps.

Heboric sighed as the Napan’s bootsteps faded behind them. ‘The poor bastard’s been left reeling. Would you panic them into acting, then? With Leoman now gone? And Toblakai as well? Who is there left to trust, lass?’

‘Trust? Do you imagine I trust anyone but myself, Heboric? Oh, perhaps Sha’ik Elder knew trust… in Leoman and Toblakai. But when they look upon me, they see an impostor-I can see that well enough, so do not attempt to argue otherwise.’

‘And what about me?’ Heboric asked.

‘Ah, Ghost Hands, now we come to it, don’t we? Very well, I shall speak plain. Do not leave. Do not leave me, Heboric. Not now. That which haunts you can await the conclusion of the battle to come. When that is done, I shall extend the power of the Whirlwind-back to the very edge of the Otataral Isle. Within that warren, your journey will be virtually effortless. Otherwise, wilful as you are, I fear you will not survive the long, long walk.’

He looked at her, though the effort earned him little more than a blur where she stood, enfolded in her white telaba. ‘Is there anything you do not know about, lass?’

‘Alas, far too much, I suspect. L’oric, for example. A true mystery, there. He seems able to fend off even the Whirlwind’s Elder magic, evading my every effort to discern his soul. And yet he has revealed much to you, I think.’

‘In confidence, Chosen One. I am sorry. All I can offer you is this: L’oric is not your enemy.’

‘Well, that means more to me than you perhaps realize. Not my enemy. Does that make him my ally, then?’

Heboric said nothing.

After a moment, Sha’ik sighed. ‘Very well. He remains a mystery, then, in the most important of details. What can you tell me of Bidithal’s explorations of his old warren? Rashan.’

He cocked his head. ‘Well, the answer to that, Chosen One, depends in part on your own knowledge. Of the goddess’s warren-your Elder warren fragment that is the Whirlwind.’

‘Kurald Emurlahn.’

He nodded. ‘Indeed. And what do you know of the events that saw it torn apart?’

‘Little, except that its true rulers had ceased to exist, thus leaving it vulnerable. The relevant fact is this, however: the Whirlwind is the largest fragment in this realm. And its power is growing. Bidithal would see himself as its first-and its penultimate-High Priest. What he does not understand is that there is no such role to be taken. I am the High Priestess. I am the Chosen One. I am the single mortal manifestation of the Whirlwind Goddess. Bidithal would enfold Rashan into the Whirlwind, or, conversely, use the Whirlwind to cleanse the Shadow Realm of its false rulers.’ She paused, and Heboric sensed her shrug. ‘Those false rulers once commanded the Malazan Empire. Thus. We are all here, preparing for a singular confrontation. Yet what each of us seeks from that battle is at odds. The challenge, then, is to cajole all those disparate motives into one, mutually triumphant effect.’

‘That,’ Heboric breathed, ‘is quite a challenge, lass.’

‘And so I need you, Ghost Hands. I need the secret you possess-’

‘Of L’oric I can say nothing-’

‘Not that secret, old man. No, the secret I seek lies in your hands.’

He started. ‘My hands?’

‘That giant of jade you touched-it is defeating the otataral. Destroying it. I need to discover how. I need an answer to otataral, Heboric.’

‘But Kurald Emurlahn is Elder, Sha’ik-the Adjunct’s sword-’

‘Will annihilate the advantage I possess in my High Mages. Think! She knows she can’t negate the Whirlwind with her sword… so she will not even try! No, instead she will challenge my High Mages. Remove them from the field. She will seek to isolate me-’

‘But if she cannot defeat the Whirlwind, what does that matter?’

‘Because the Whirlwind, in turn, cannot defeat her!’ Heboric was silent. He had not heard this before, but after a moment’s thought, it began to make sense. Kurald Emurlahn might be Elder, but it was also in pieces. Weakened, riven through with Rashan-a warren that was indeed vulnerable to the effects of otataral. The power of the Adjunct’s sword and that of Sha’ik’s Whirlwind Goddess would effectively cancel each other out.

Leaving the outcome in the hands of the armies themselves. And there, the otataral would cut through the sorcery of the High Mages. In turn leaving it all to Korbolo Dom. And Korbolo knows it, and he has his own ambitions. Gods, lass, what a mess. ‘Alas, Chosen One,’ he muttered, ‘I cannot help you, for I do not know why the otataral in me is failing. I have, however, a warning. The power of the jade giant is not one to be manipulated. Not by me, nor by you. If the Whirlwind Goddess seeks to usurp it, she will do more than suffer in the attempt-she will likely get obliterated.’

‘Then we must win knowledge without yielding an opportunity.’

‘And how in Hood’s name do you propose achieving that?’

‘I would you give me the answer to that, Heboric.’

Me? ‘Then we are lost. I have no control over that alien power. I have no understanding of it at all!’

‘Perhaps not yet,’ she replied, with a chilling confidence in her voice. ‘But you grow ever closer, Heboric. Every time you partake of hen’bara tea.’

The tea? That which you gave me so that I might escape my nightmares? Calling upon Sha’ik Elder’s knowledge of the desert, you said. A gift of compassion, I thought. A gift… He felt something crumbling inside him. A fortress in the desert of my heart, I should have known it would be a fortress of sand.

He swung away, made insensate by layer upon layer of blindness. Numbed to the outside world, to whatever Sha’ik was now saying, to the brutal heat of the sun overhead.

Stay?

He felt no longer able to leave.

Chains. She has made for me a house of chains…

Felisin Younger came to the edge of the pit and looked down. The sun had left the floor, leaving naught but darkness below. There was no glimmer of hearthlight, confirming that no-one had come to take up residence in Leoman’s abode.

A scraping sound nearby made her turn. Toblakai’s once-slavemaster had crawled into view around a wall foundation. His sun-blistered skin was caked in dust and excrement, the stumps at the ends of his arms and legs weeping a yellow, opaque liquid. The first signs of leprosy marred his joints at elbow and knee. Red-rimmed eyes fixed on Felisin and the man offered a blackened smile. ‘Ah, child. See me your humble servant. Mathok’s warrior-’

‘What do you know of that?’ she demanded.

The smile broadened. ‘I bring word. See me your humble servant. Everyone’s humble servant. I have lost my name, did you know that? I knew it once, but it has fled me. My mind. But I do what I am told. I bring word. Mathok’s warrior. He cannot meet you here. He would not be seen. You understand? There, across the plaza, in the sunken ruin. He awaits.’

Well, she considered, the secrecy made sense. Their escape from the camp demanded it, although Heboric Ghost Hands was by far the one most likely to be under surveillance. And he had gone into his tent days ago and refused all visitors. Even so, she appreciated Mathok’s caution.

Though she had not known that Toblakai’s slavemaster was a part of their conspiracy. ‘The sunken temple?’

‘Yes, there. See me your humble servant. Go. He awaits.’ She set out across the flagstoned plaza. Hundreds of the camp’s destitute had settled here, beneath palm-frond shelters, making no efforts at organization-the expanse reeked of piss and faeces, streams of the foul mess flowing across the stones. Hacking coughs, mumbled entreaties and blessings followed her as she made her way towards the ruin.

The temple’s foundation walls were hip high; within, a steep set of stone stairs led down to the subterranean floor. The sun’s angle had dipped sufficiently to render the area below in darkness.

Felisin halted at the top of the stairs and peered down, seeking to penetrate the gloom. ‘Are you there?’ she called.

A faint sound from the far end. The hint of movement.

She descended.

The sandy floor was still warm. Groping, she edged forward.

Less than ten paces from the back wall and she could finally make him out. He was seated with his back to the stone. The gleam of a helm, scale armour on his chest.

‘We should wait for night,’ Felisin said, approaching. ‘Then make our way to Ghost Hands’ tent. The time has come-he can hide no longer. What is your name?’

There was no reply.

Something black and smothering rose up to clamp over her mouth and she was lifted from the ground. The blackness flowed like serpents around her, pinning her arms and binding her thrashing legs. A moment later she hung motionless, suspended slightly above the sandy floor.

A gnarled fingertip brushed her cheek and her eyes widened as a voice whispered in her ear. ‘Sweetest child. Mathok’s fierce warrior felt Rashan’s caress a short while ago, alas. Now, there is only me. Only humble Bidithal, here to welcome you. Here to drink all pleasure from your precious body, leaving naught but bitterness, naught but dead places within. It is necessary, you understand.’ His wrinkled hands were stroking, plucking, pinching, pawing her. ‘I take no unsavoury pleasure in what I must do. The children of the Whirlwind must be riven barren, child, to make of them perfect reflections of the goddess herself-oh, you did not know that, did you? The goddess cannot create. Only destroy. The source of her fury, no doubt. So it must be with her children. My duty. My task. There is naught for you to do now but surrender.’

Surrender. It had been a long time since she had last been made to surrender, to give away all that was within her. A long time since she’d let darkness devour all that she was. Years ago, she had not known the magnitude of the loss, for there had been nothing to offer a contrast to misery, hunger and abuse.

But all that had changed. She had discovered, under Sha’ik’s protective wing, the notion of inviolacy.

And it was that notion that Bidithal now proceeded to destroy.

Lying on the landing at the top of the stairs, the creature that had once been a slavemaster on Genabackis smiled at Bidithal’s words, then the smile grew wider at her muffled cries.

Karsa Orlong’s favoured child was in the hands of that sick old man. And all that would be done to her could not be undone.

The sick old man had been kindly with his offers of gifts. Not just the impending return of his hands and feet, but the promise of vengeance against the Teblor. He would find his name once more. He knew he would. And with it, the confusion would go away, the hours of blind terror would no longer plague him, and the beatings at the hands of the others in this plaza would cease. It would have to, for he would be their master.

They would pay for what they did. Everyone would pay. As soon as he found his name.

There was weeping now. Despair’s own laughter, those racking heaves.

That lass would no longer look upon him with disgust. How could she? She was now like him. It was a good lesson. Viciously delivered-even the slavemaster could see that, could imagine it at least, and wince at the images he conjured in his head. But still, a good lesson.

Time to leave-footsteps approached from below. He slithered back into the daylight, and the sound he made over the gravel, potsherds and sand was strangely reminiscent of chains. Chains dragging in his wake.

Though there had been none to witness it, a strange glow had suffused L’oric’s tent shortly after noon. Momentary, then all was normal once more.

Now, as dusk finally approached, a second flare of light burgeoned briefly then died away, again unnoticed.

The High Mage staggered through the warren’s impromptu, momentary gate. He was drenched in blood. He stumbled with his burden across the hide-covered floor, then sank to his knees, dragging the misshapen beast into his arms, a single red hand pulling free to stroke its thick, matted hair.

Its whimpers of pain had ceased. Mercifully, for each soft cry had broken anew L’oric’s heart.

The High Mage slowly lowered his head, finally stricken with the grief he had been forced to hold back during his desperate, ineffectual efforts to save the ancient demon. He was filled with self-loathing, and he cursed his own complacency. Too long separated, too long proceeding as if the other realms held no danger to them.

And now his familiar was dead, and the mirrored deadness inside him seemed vast. And growing, devouring his soul as sickness does healthy flesh. He was without strength, for the rage had abated.

He stroked the beast’s blood-caked face, wondering anew at how its ugliness-now so still and free of pain-could nevertheless trigger depthless wellsprings of love from him. ‘Ah, my friend, we were more of a kind than either of us knew. No… you knew, didn’t you? Thus the eternal sorrow in your eyes, which I saw but chose to ignore, each time I visited. I was so certain of the deceit, you see. So confident that we could go on, undetected, maintaining the illusion that our father was still with us. I was…’ He crumpled then and could speak no further for a time.

The failure had been his, and his alone. He was here, ensnaring himself in these paltry games, when he should have been guarding his familiar’s back-as it had done for him for century upon century.

Oh, it had been close in any case-one less T’lan Imass, and the outcome might have proved different-no, now you lie to yourself, L’oric. That first axe-blow had done the damage, had delivered the fatal wound. All that transpired thereafter was born of dying rage. Oh, my beloved was no weakling, and the wielder of that stone axe paid for his ambush. And know this, my friend, I left the second one scattered through the fires. Only the clan leader escaped me. But I will hunt him down. This I swear.

But not yet. He forced clarity into his thoughts, as the weight of the familiar where it lay against his thighs slowly diminished, its very substance ebbing away. Kurald Thyrllan was undefended, now. How the T’lan Imass had managed to penetrate the warren remained a mystery, but they had done so, completing the task they had set out to do with their legendary brutality.

Would the Liosan have sensed the death? Perhaps only the seneschals, at first. Would they speak of it to the others? Not if they pause, for even a moment, and think about it. Of course, they had been the victims of the deceit all along. Osric had vanished-their god was gone-and Kurald Thyrllan was ripe for usurpation. And, eventually, those seneschals would realize that, had it truly been Osric behind the power that answered their prayers, then three T’lan Imass warriors would not have been enough-not nearly enough. My father is many things, but weak does not count among them.

The withered, bird-sized thing that had been his familiar slipped down to the tent floor. L’oric stared at it, then slowly wrapped himself in his own arms. I need… I need help. Father’s companions. Which one? Anomander Rake? No. A companion, yes, on occasion, but never Osric’s friend. Lady Envy? Gods, no! Caladan Brood… but he carries his own burdens, these days. Thus, but one left…

L’oric closed his eyes, and called upon the Queen of Dreams. ‘By your true name, T’riss, I would speak with you. In Osric my father’s name, hear my prayer…’

A scene slowly formed in his mind, a place unfamiliar to him. A formal garden, high-walled, with a circular pool in the centre. Marble benches waited beneath the shadows of the surrounding growth. The flagstones around the pool were rippled with fine, white sand.

He found himself approaching the pool, staring down into the mirrored surface.

Where swam stars in inky blackness.

‘The resemblance is there.’

He turned at the liquid voice, to see a woman now seated on the pool’s edge. She looked to be no more than twenty, her hair copper-gold and long. A heart-shaped face, pale, the eyes a light grey. She was not looking at him, her languid gaze on the pool’s unmarred surface instead. ‘Although,’ she added, with a faint smile, ‘you have done well to hide your Liosan traits.’

‘We are skilled in such things, Queen of Dreams.’

She nodded, still not meeting his eyes. ‘As are all the Tiste. Anomander once spent almost two centuries in the guise of a royal bodyguard… human, in the manner you have achieved.’

‘Mistress,’ L’oric said, ‘my father-’

‘Sleeps. We all long ago made our choices, L’oric. Behind us, our paths stretch, long and worn deep. There is bitter pathos in the prospect of retracing them. Yet, for those of us who remain… awake, it seems we do nothing but just that. An endless retracing of paths, yet each step we take is forward, for the path has proved itself to be a circle. Yet-and here is the true pathos-the knowledge never slows our steps.’

‘ “Wide-eyed stupid”, the Malazans say.’

‘Somewhat rough-edged, but accurate enough,’ she replied. She reached a long-fingered hand down to the water.

L’oric watched it vanish beneath the surface, but it was the scene around them that seemed to waken, a faint turbulence, the hint of ripples. ‘Queen of Dreams, Kurald Thyrllan has lost its protector.’

‘Yes. Tellann and Thyr were ever close, and now more than ever.’

A strange statement… that he would have to think on later. ‘I cannot do it alone-’

‘No, you cannot. Your own path is about to become fraught, L’oric. And so you have come to me, in the hopes that I will find a suitable… protector.’

‘Yes.’

‘Your desperation urges you to trust… where no trust has been earned-’

‘You were my father’s friend!’

‘Friend? L’oric, we were too powerful to know friendship. Our endeavours far too fierce. Our war was with chaos itself, and, at times, with each other. We battled to shape all that would follow. And some of us lost that battle. Do not misapprehend, I held no deep enmity for your father. Rather, he was as unfathomable as the rest of us-a bemusement we all shared, perhaps the only thing we shared.’

‘You will not help?’

‘I did not say that.’

He waited.

She continued holding her hand beneath the pool’s placid surface, had yet to lift her head and meet his eyes. ‘This will take some time,’ she murmured. ‘The present… vulnerability… will exist in the interval. I have someone in mind, but the shaping towards the opportunity remains distant. Nor do I think my choice will please you. In the meantime…’

‘Yes?’

She shrugged. ‘We had best hope that potentially interested entities remain suitably distracted.’

He saw her expression suddenly change, and when she spoke again the tone was urgent. ‘Return to your realm, L’oric! Another circle has been closed-terribly closed.’ She drew her hand from the pool.

L’oric gasped.

It was covered in blood.

His eyes snapped open, and he was kneeling in his tent once more. Night had arrived, and the sounds outside were muted, peaceful, a city settling down to its evening meal. Yet, he knew, something horrible had happened. He went still, questing outward. His powers-so weakened, so tremulous-‘Gods below!’ A swirl of violence, knotted upon itself, radiating waves of agony-a figure, small, twisted inward, in shredded clothes soaked through with blood, crawling through darkness.

L’oric lurched to his feet, head spinning with anguish.

Then he was outside, and suddenly running.

He found her trail, a smeared track through sand and dust, out beyond the ruins, into the petrified forest. Towards, he knew instinctively, the sacred glade that had been fashioned by Toblakai.

But there would be no succour for her there. Another abode of false gods. And Toblakai was gone, off to cross blades with his own fate.

But she was without clear thought. She was only pain, lancing out to fire instincts of flight. She crawled as would any dying creature.

He saw her at the edge of the glade, small, bedraggled, pulling herself forward in torturous increments.

L’oric reached her side, a hand reaching to settle at the back of her head, onto sweat-snarled hair. She flinched away with a squeal, fingers clawing against his arm. ‘Felisin! He’s gone! It is L’oric. You are safe with me. Safe, now-’

But still she sought to escape.

‘I shall call upon Sha’ik-’

‘No,’ she shrieked, curling tight on the sand. ‘No! She needs him! She needs him still!’ Her words were blunted by broken lips but understandable none the less.

L’oric sank back, struck mute by the horror. Not simply a wounded creature, then. A mind clear enough to weigh, to calculate, to put itself aside… ‘She will know, lass-she can’t help but know.’

‘No! Not if you help me. Help me, L’oric. Just you-not even Heboric! He would seek to kill Bidithal, and that cannot be.’

‘Heboric? I want to kill Bidithal!’

‘You mustn’t. You can’t. He has power-’

He saw the shudder run through her at that.

L’oric hesitated, then said, ‘I have healing salves, elixirs… but you will need to stay hidden for a time.’

‘Here, in Toblakai’s temple. Here, L’oric.’

‘I will bring water. A tent.’

‘Yes!’

The rage that burned in him had contracted down to a white-hot core. He struggled to control it, his resolve sporadically weakened by doubts that he was doing the right thing. This was… monstrous. There would be an answer to it. There would have to be an answer to it.

Even more monstrous, he realized with a chill, they had all known the risk. We knew he wanted her. Yet we did nothing.

Heboric lay motionless in the darkness. He had a faint sense of being hungry, thirsty, but it remained remote. Hen’bara tea, in sufficient amounts, pushed the needs of the outer world away. Or so he had discovered.

His mind was floating on a swirling sea, and it seemed eternal. He was waiting, still waiting. Sha’ik wanted truths. She would get them. And then he was done, done with her.

And probably done with life, as well.

So be it. He had grown older than he had ever expected to, and these extra weeks and months had proved anything but worth the effort. He had sentenced his own god to death, and now Fener would not be there to greet him when he finally stepped free of his flesh and bones. Nor would Hood, come to that.

It did not seem he would awaken from this-he had drunk far more of the tea than he ever had before, and he had drunk it scalding hot, when it was most potent. And now he floated on a dark sea, an invisible liquid warm on his skin, barely holding him up, flowing over his limbs and chest, around his face.

The giant of jade was welcome to him. To his soul, and to whatever was left of his days as a mortal man. The old gifts of preternatural vision had long vanished, the visions of secrets hidden from most eyes-secrets of antiquity, of history-were long gone. He was old. He was blind.

The waters slipped over his face.

And he felt himself sliding down-amidst a sea of stars that swirled in the blackness yet were sharp with sudden clarity. In what seemed a vast distance, duller spheres swam, clustering about the fiery stars, and realization struck him a hammer blow. The stars, they are as the sun. Each star. Every star. And those spheres-they are worlds, realms, each one different yet the same.

The Abyss was not as empty as he’d believed it to be. But… where dwell the gods? These worlds-are they warrens? Or are the warrens simply passageways connecting them?

A new object, growing in his vision as it drifted nearer. A glimmer of murky green, stiff-limbed, yet strangely contorted, torso twisted as if caught in the act of turning. Naked, spinning end over end, starlight playing across its jade surface like beads of rain.

And behind it, another, this one broken-a leg and an arm snapped clean off yet accompanying the rest in its silent, almost peaceful sailing through the void.

Then another.

The first giant cartwheeled past Heboric, and he felt he could simply extend a hand to brush its supple surface as it passed, but he knew it was in truth far too distant for that. Its face came into view. Too perfect for human, the eyes open, an expression too ambiguous to read, though Heboric thought he detected resignation within it.

There were scores now, all emerging from what seemed a single point in the inky depths. Each one displaying a unique posture; some so battered as to be little more than a host of fragments and shards, others entirely unmarred. Sailing out of the blackness. An army.

Yet unarmed. Naked, seemingly sexless. There was a perfection to them-their proportions, their flawless surfaces-that suggested to the ex-priest that the giants could never have been alive. They were constructs, statues in truth, though no two were alike in posture or expression.

Bemused, he watched them spin past. It occurred to him that he could turn, to see if they simply dwindled down to another point far behind him, as if he but lay alongside an eternal river of green stone.

His own motion was effortless.

As he swung round, he saw-

– and cried out.

A cry that made no sound.

A vast-impossibly vast-red-limned wound cut across the blackness, suppurating flames along its ragged edges. Grey storms of chaos spiralled out in lancing tendrils.

And the giants descended into its maw. One after another. To vanish. Revelation filled his mind.

Thus, the Crippled God was brought down to our world. Through this… this terrible puncture. And these giants… follow. Like an army behind its commander.

Or an army in pursuit.

Were all of the jade giants appearing somewhere in his own realm? That seemed impossible. They would be present in countless locations, if that was the case. Present, and inescapably visible. No, the wound was enormous, the giants diminishing into specks before reaching its waiting oblivion. A wound such as that could swallow thousands of worlds. Tens, hundreds of thousands.

Perhaps all he witnessed here was but hallucination, the creation of a hen’bara-induced fever.

Yet the clarity was almost painful, the vision so brutally… strange… that he believed it to be true, or at the very least the product of what his mind could comprehend, could give shape to-statues and wounds, storms and bleeding, an eternal sea of stars and worlds…

A moment’s concentration and he was turning about once more. To face that endless progression.

And then he was moving towards the nearest giant.

It was naught but torso and head, its limbs shorn off and spinning in its wake.

The mass burgeoned swiftly before him, too fast, too huge. Sudden panic gripped Heboric. He could see into that body, as if the world within the jade was scaled to his own. The evidence of that was terrible-and horrifying.

Figures. Bodies like his own. Humans, thousands upon thousands, all trapped within the statue. Trapped… and screaming, their faces twisted in terror.

A multitude of those faces suddenly swung to him. Mouths opened in silent cries-of warning, or hunger, or fear-there was no way to tell. If they screamed, no sound reached him.

Heboric added his own silent shriek and desperately willed himself to one side, out of the statue’s path. For he thought he understood, now-they were prisoners, ensnared within the stone flesh, trapped in some unknown torment.

Then he was past, flung about in the turbulent wake of the broken body’s passage. Spinning end over end, he caught a flash of more jade, directly in front of him.

A hand.

A finger, plunging down as if to crush him.

He screamed as it struck.

He felt no contact, but the blackness simply vanished, and the sea was emerald green, cold as death.

And Heboric found himself amidst a crowd of writhing, howling figures.

The sound was deafening. There was no room to move-his limbs were trapped against him. He could not breathe.

A prisoner.

There were voices roaring through his skull. Too many, in languages he could not recognize, much less comprehend. Like storm-waves crashing on a shore, the sound hammered through him, surging and falling, the rhythm quickening as a faint reddish gleam began to stain the green. He could not turn, but did not need to, to know that the wound was moments from swallowing them all.

Then a string of words reached through the tumult, close as if whispered in his ear, and he understood them.

‘You came from there. What shall we find, Handless One? What lies beyond the gash?’

Then another voice spoke, louder, more imperious: ‘What god now owns your hands, old man? Tell me! Even their ghosts are not here-who is holding on to you? Tell me!’

‘There are no gods,’ a third voice cut in, this one female.

‘So you say!’ came yet another, filled with spite. ‘In your empty, barren, miserable world!’

‘Gods are born of belief, and belief is dead. We murdered it, with our vast intelligence. You were too primitive-’

‘Killing gods is not hard. The easiest murder of all. Nor is it a measure of intelligence. Not even of civilization. Indeed, the indifference with which such death-blows are delivered is its own form of ignorance.’

‘More like forgetfulness. After all, it’s not the gods that are important, it is the stepping outside of oneself that gifts a mortal with virtue-’

‘Kneel before Order? You blind fool-’

‘Order? I was speaking of compassion-’

‘Fine, then go ahead! Step outside yourself, Leandris! No, better yet. Step outside.’

‘Only the new one can do that, Cassa. And he’d better be quick about it.’

Twisting, Heboric managed to look down, to catch a glimpse of his left forearm, the wrist, the hand-that was not there. A god. A god has taken them. I was blind to that-the jade’s ghost hands made me blind to that-

He tilted his head back, as the screams and shrieks suddenly rose higher, deafening, mind-numbing. The world turned red, the red of blood-

Something tugged on his arms. Hard. Once. Twice.

Darkness.

Heboric opened his eyes. Saw above him the colourless canvas of his tent. The air was cold.

A barely human sound escaped him, and he rolled onto his side beneath the blankets, curling tight into a ball. Shivers thrummed through him.

A god. A god has found me. But which god?

It was night, perhaps only a bell from dawn. The camp outside was silent, barring the distant, sorrow-filled howls of desert wolves.

After a while, Heboric stirred once more. The dung fire was out. No lanterns had been lit. He drew aside the blankets and slowly sat up. Then stared down at his hands, disbelieving.

They remained ghostly, but the otataral was gone. The power of the jade remained, pulsing dully. Yet now there were slashes of black through it. Lurid-almost liquid-barbs banded the backs of his hands, then tracked upward, shifting angle as they continued up his forearms.

His tattoos had been transformed.

And, in this deepest darkness, he could see. Unhumanly sharp, every detail crisp as if it was day outside.

His head snapped round at a sound and a motion-but it was simply a rhizan, alighting light as a leaf on the tent roof. A rhizan? On the tent roof? Heboric’s stomach rumbled in sudden hunger.

He looked down at his tattoos once more. I have found a new god. Not that I was seeking one. And I know who. What.

Bitterness filled him. ‘In need of a Destriant, Treach? So you simply… took one. Stole from him his own life. Granted, not much of a life, but still, I owned it. Is this how you recruit followers? Servants? By the Abyss, Treach, you have a lot to learn about mortals.’

The anger faded. There had been gifts, after all. An exchange of sorts. He was no longer blind. Even more extraordinary, he could actually hear the sounds of neighbours sleeping in their tents and yurts.

And there, faint on the near-motionless air… the smell of… violence. But it was distant. The blood had been spilled some time earlier in the night. Some domestic dispute, probably. He would have to teach himself to filter out much of what his newly enlivened senses told him.

Heboric grunted under his breath, then scowled. ‘All right, Treach. It seems we both have some learning to do. But first… something to eat. And drink.’

When he rose from his sleeping mat, the motion was startlingly fluid, though it was some time before Heboric finally noted the absence of aches, twinges, and the dull throb of his joints.

He was far too busy filling his belly.

Forgotten, the mysteries of the jade giants, the innumerable imprisoned souls within them, the ragged wound in the Abyss.

Forgotten, as well, that faint blood-scented tremor of distant violence…

The burgeoning of some senses perforce took away from others. Leaving him blissfully unaware of his newfound singlemindedness. Two truths he had long known did not, for some time, emerge to trouble him.

No gifts were truly clean in the giving.

And nature ever strives for balance. But balance was not a simple notion. Redress was not simply found in the physical world. A far grimmer equilibrium had occurred… between the past and the present.

Felisin Younger’s eyes fluttered open. She had slept, but upon awakening discovered that the pain had not gone away, and the horror of what he had done to her remained as well, though it had grown strangely cold in her mind.

Into her limited range of vision, close to the sand, a serpent slipped into view directly in front of her face. Then she realized what had awoken her-there were more snakes, slithering over her body. Scores of them.

Toblakai’s glade. She remembered now. She had crawled here. And L’oric had found her, only to set off once again. To bring medicine, water, bedding, a tent. He had not yet returned.

Apart from the whispering slither of the snakes, the glade was silent. In this forest, the branches did not move. There were no leaves to flutter in the cool, faint wind. Dried blood in folds of skin stung as she slowly sat up. Sharp pains flared beneath her belly, and the raw wound where he had cut flesh away-there, between her legs-burned fiercely.

‘I shall bring this ritual to our people, child, when I am the Whirlwind’s High Priest. All girls shall know this, in my newly shaped world. The pain shall pass. All sensation shall pass. You are to feel nothing, for pleasure does not belong in the mortal realm. Pleasure is the darkest path, for it leads to the loss of control. And we mustn’t have that. Not among our women. Now, you shall join the rest, those I have already corrected… ’

Two such girls had arrived, then, bearing the cutting instruments. They had murmured encouragement to her, and words of welcome. Again and again, in pious tones, they had spoken of the virtues that came of the wounding. Propriety. Loyalty. A leavening of appetites, the withering of desire. All good things, they said to her. Passions were the curse of the world. Indeed, had it not been passions that had enticed her own mother away, that were responsible for her own abandonment? The lure of pleasure had stolen Felisin’s mother… away from the duties of motherhood…

Felisin leaned over and spat into the sand. But the taste of their words would not go away. It was not surprising that men could think such things, could do such things. But that women could as well… that was indeed a bitter thing to countenance.

But they were wrong. Walking the wrong trail. Oh, my mother abandoned me, but not for the embrace of some lover. No, it was Hood who embraced her.

Bidithal would be High Priest, would he? The fool. Sha’ik would find a place for him in her temple-or at least a place for his skull. A cup of bone to piss in, perhaps. And that time was not long in coming.

Still… too long. Bidithal takes girls into his arms every night. He makes an army, a legion of the wounded, the bereft. And they will be eager to share out their loss of pleasure. They are human, after all, and it is human nature to transform loss into a virtue. So that it might be lived with, so that it might be justified.

A glimmer of dull light distracted her, and she looked up. The carved faces in the trees around her were glowing. Bleeding grey, sorcerous light. Behind each there was… a presence. Toblakai’s gods. ‘Welcome, broken one.’ The voice was the sound of limestone boulders grinding together. ‘I am named Ber’ok. Vengeance swarms about you, with such power as to awaken us. We are not displeased with the summons, child.’

‘You are Toblakai’s god,’ she muttered. ‘You have nothing to do with me. Nor do I want you. Go away, Ber’ok. You and the rest-go away.’

‘We would ease your pain. I shall make of you my special… responsibility. You seek vengeance? Then you shall have it. The one who has damaged you would take the power of the desert goddess for himself. He would usurp the entire fragment of warren, and twist it into his own nightmare. Oh, child, though you might believe otherwise-now-the wounding is of no matter. The danger lies in Bidithal’s ambition. A knife must be driven into his heart. Would it please you to be that knife?’

She said nothing. There was no way to tell which of the carved faces belonged to Ber’ok, so she could only look from one to the next. A glance to the two fully rendered Toblakai warriors revealed that they possessed no emanation, were grey and lifeless in the pre-dawn darkness.

‘Serve us,’ Ber’ok murmured, ‘and we in turn shall serve you. Give us your answer quickly-someone comes.’

She noted the wavering lantern light on the trail. L’oric. ‘How?’ she asked the gods. ‘How will you serve me?’

‘We shall ensure that Bidithal’s death is in a manner to match his crimes, and that it shall be… timely.’

‘And how am I to be the knife?’

‘Child,’ the god calmly replied, ‘you already are.’

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE WOLVES LOPED THROUGH THE ALMOST LUMINESCENT FOG, THEIR eyes flashing when they swung their massive heads in his direction. As if he was an elk, struggling through deep snow, the huge beasts kept pace on either side, ghostly, with the implacable patience of the predators they were.

Though it was unlikely these mountain beasts had ever before hunted a Teblor warrior. Karsa had not expected to find snow, particularly since his route took him alongside the north shoulder of the jagged range-it was fortunate that he would not have to climb through any passes. On his right, less than two leagues distant, he could still see the ochre sands of the desert basin, and well knew that down there, the sun blazed hot-the same sun that looked down upon him now, a blurred orb of cold fire.

The snow was shin-deep, slowing his steady jog. Somehow, the wolves managed to run across its wind-hardened, crusty surface, only occasionally plunging a paw through. The fog enshrouding hunters and prey was in fact snow crystals, glittering with bright, blinding light.

Somewhere to the west, Karsa had been told, the range of mountains would end. There would be sea on his right, a narrow rumpled passage of hills ahead and on his left. Across those hills, then southward, there would be a city. Lato Revae. The Teblor had no interest in visiting it, though he would have to skirt it. The sooner he left civilized lands behind, the better. But that was two river crossings distant, with weeks of travel between now and then.

Though he ran alone along the slope, he could feel the presence of his two companions. Ghost spirits at the most, but perhaps nothing more than fractured selves of his own mind. Sceptical Bairoth Gild. Stolid Delum Thord. Facets of his own soul, so that he might persist in this dialogue of self-doubt. Perhaps, then, nothing more than an indulgence. Or so it would seem, if not for the countless, blood-scoring edges of Bairoth Gild’s commentary. At times, Karsa felt as if he was a slave once more, hunched beneath endless flagellation. The notion that he was delivering this to himself was beyond contemplating.

‘Not entirely beyond, Warleader, if you’d spare yourself but a moment to regard your own thoughts.’

‘Not now, Bairoth Gild,’ Karsa replied. ‘I am running short on breath as it is.’

‘Altitude, Karsa Orlong,’ came Delum Thord’s voice. ‘Though you do not feel it, with each step westward you are descending. Soon you will leave the snow behind. Raraku may have once been an inland sea, but it was a sea couched in the lap of high mountains. Your entire journey thus far, Warleader, has been a descent.’

Karsa could spare that thought only a grunt. He had felt no particular descent, but horizons played deceptive games in this land. The desert and mountains ever lied, he had long since discovered.

‘When the snow is gone,’ Bairoth Gild murmured, ‘the wolves will attack.’

‘I know. Now be quiet-I see bare rock ahead.’ As did his hunters. They numbered at least a dozen, taller at the shoulder than those of Karsa’s homeland, and furred in tones of dun, grey and speckled white. The Teblor watched as four of the beasts sprinted ahead, two on each side, making for the exposed rock.

Growling, Karsa unslung his wooden sword. The bitter cold air had left his hands slightly numb. Had the western end of the Holy Desert held any sources of water, he would not have climbed to these heights, but there was little point in second-guessing that decision now.

The panting breaths of the wolves were audible on either side and behind him.

‘They want the sure footing, Warleader. Then again, so do you. Beware the three in your wake-they will strike first, likely a pace or two before you reach the rock.’

Karsa bared his teeth at Bairoth’s unnecessary advice. He well knew what these beasts would do, and when.

A sudden thumping of paws, flurries of snow springing into the air, and all the wolves raced past a surprised Karsa. Claws clattered on the bared rock, water spraying from the sun’s melt, and the beasts wheeled to form a half-circle before the Teblor.

He slowed his steps, readying his weapon. For once, even Bairoth Gild was silenced-no doubt as uncertain as he himself was.

A rasping, panting stranger’s voice hissed through Karsa’s mind: ‘We enjoyed that, Toblakai. You have run without pause for three nights and almost four days. That we are impressed would be a tragic understatement. We have never before seen the like. See our heaving flanks? You have exhausted us. And look at you-you breathe deep and there is red around your eyes, yet you stand ready, with not a waver in your legs, or from the strange sword in your hands. Will you now do us harm, warrior?’

Karsa shook his head. The language was Malazan. ‘You are like a Soletaken, then. But many, not one. This would be… D’ivers? I have killed Soletaken-this fur on my shoulders is proof enough of that, if you doubt me. Attack me if you will, and when I have killed all of you, I will have a cloak even the gods will envy.’

‘We are no longer interested in killing you, warrior. Indeed, we accost you now to deliver a warning.’

‘What kind of warning?’

‘You are on someone’s trail.’

Karsa shrugged. ‘Two men, both heavy, though one is taller. They walk side by side.’

‘Side by side, yes. And what does that tell you?’

‘Neither leads, neither follows.’

‘Danger rides your shoulders, Toblakai. About you is an air of threat-another reason why we will not cross you. Powers vie for your soul. Too many. Too deadly. But heed our warning: should you cross one of those travellers… the world will come to regret it. The world, warrior.’

Karsa shrugged a second time. ‘I am not interested in fighting anyone at the moment, D’ivers. Although, if I am in turn crossed, then I am not the one to answer for whatever regret the world then experiences. Now, I am done with words. Move from my path, or I will kill you all.’

The wolves hesitated. ‘Tell them that Ryllandaras sought to dissuade you. Before you make your last living act one that sees this world destroyed.’

He watched them wheel and make their way down the slope.

Bairoth Gild’s laugh was a faint thunder in his mind. Karsa nodded. ‘None would accept the blame for what has not yet occurred,’ he rumbled. ‘That, by itself, constitutes a curiously potent warning.’

‘You do indeed grow into yourself, Karsa Orlong. What will you do?’

Karsa bared his teeth as he reslung his sword over a fur-clad shoulder. ‘Do, Bairoth Gild? Why, I would meet these dire travellers, of course.’

This time, Bairoth Gild did not laugh.

Strains of meltwater flowed over the brittle rock beneath Karsa’s moccasins. Ahead, the descent continued into a crowded maze of sandstone mesas, their level tops capped with ice and snow. Despite the bright, mid-afternoon sun in the cloudless sky, the narrow, twisting channels between the mesas remained in deep shadow.

But the snow underfoot had vanished, and already he could feel a new warmth in the air. There seemed but one way down, and it was as much a stream as a trail. Given the lack of signs, the Teblor could only assume that the two strangers ahead of him had taken the same route.

He moved slower now, his legs heavy with fatigue. The truth of his exhaustion had not been something he would reveal to the D’ivers wolves, but that threat was behind him now. He was close to collapse-hardly ideal if he was about to cross blades with a world-destroying demon.

Still his legs carried him forward, as if of their own accord. As if fated.

‘And fate, Karsa Orlong, carries its own momentum.’

‘Returned at last to hound me once more, Bairoth Gild? At the very least, you should speak words of advice. This Ryllandaras, this D’ivers-portentous words, yes?’

‘Absurdly so, Warleader. There are no powers in this world-or any other-that pose such absolute threat. Spoken through the frenzied currents of fear. Likely personal in nature-whoever walks ahead has had dealings with the one named Ryllandaras, and it was the D’ivers who suffered with the meeting.’

‘You are probably right, Bairoth Gild. Delum Thord, you have been silent a long while. What are your thoughts?’

‘I am troubled, Warleader. The D’ivers was a powerful demon, after all. To take so many shapes, yet remain one. To speak in your mind as would a god-’

Karsa grimaced. ‘A god… or a pair of ghosts. Not a demon, Delum Thord. We Teblor are too careless with that word. Forkrul Assail. Soletaken. D’ivers. None are demons in truth, for none were summoned to this world, none belong to any other realm but this one. They are in truth no different from us Teblor, or the lowlanders. No different from rhizan and capemoths, from horses and dogs. They are all of this world, Delum Thord.’

‘As you say, Warleader. But we Teblor were never simplistic in our use of the word. Demon also refers to behaviour, and in this manner all things can be demonic. The one named Ryllandaras hunted us, and had you not driven it into exhaustion, it would have attacked, despite your words to the contrary.’

Karsa considered, then nodded. ‘True enough, Delum Thord. You advise caution. This was always your way, so I am not surprised. I will not ignore your words for that, however.’

‘Of course you will, Karsa Orlong.’

A last stretch of sunlight, then the Teblor was in shadow. The run-off swept around his ankles as the track narrowed, the footing growing treacherous. Once more he could see his breath.

A short climb to his left ran a broad ledge of some kind, out of the shadow and looking bone dry. Karsa swung from the trail and clambered up the gully’s eroded bank until he was able to pull himself onto it. He straightened. Not a natural ledge after all. A road, running parallel to the gorge as it girdled the first mesa on his left. The wall of the mesa itself seemed to have been smoothed once, long ago, to a height twice Karsa’s own. Faint pictographic images were visible on it, pitted and made colourless by passing centuries. A procession of figures, each scaled to that of a lowlander, bareheaded and wearing naught but a loincloth. They held their hands high overhead, fingers stretched out as if clutching at empty air.

The road itself was latticed in cracks, battered by incessant rocks tumbling down from the mesa. Despite this, it seemed as if the road was made of a single piece of stone, though of course that was impossible. Heaved and rumpled, it wound along the curve of the mesa wall then shifted away onto a ramp of sorts, hazy in the distance, that presumably led down to the plain. The horizon directly ahead and to Karsa’s right was cut short by towers of stone, though he knew that, beyond them, stretched the waters of the Longshan Sea.

Weariness forced the Teblor to slowly settle on the road, removing his pack and sitting against the mesa’s rock wall. The journey had been long, but he knew his path ahead was still longer. And, it seemed, he would ever walk it alone. For these ghosts remain just that. Perhaps, in truth, no more than my mind’s own conjuring. A displeasing thought.

He leaned his head back on the rough, sun-warmed stone.

His eyes blinked open-to darkness.

‘Awake once more, Warleader? We were wondering if your sleep would prove eternal. There are sounds ahead-can you hear them? Oh, they’ve travelled far, but that is the way with this land, isn’t it? Still… stones are being moved, I think. Tossed. Too slow, too regular to be a rockfall. The two strangers, one might conclude.’

Karsa slowly stood, stretching to ease his sore, chilled muscles. He could hear the steady clack of stones striking stone, but Bairoth Gild was right-they were distant. The warrior crouched down beside his pack and removed foodstuffs and a bladder of meltwater.

It was near dawn. Whoever it was working somewhere ahead had begun early.

Karsa took his time breaking his fast, and when he was finally done and ready to resume his journey, the sky was pink to the east. A final examination of the condition of his sword and the fittings on his armour, then he was on the move once again.

The steady clangour of the stones continued through half the morning. The road skirted the mesa for a distance that was longer than he had originally judged, revealing the ramp ahead to be massive, its sides sheer, the plain beneath a third of a league or more below. Just before the road departed the mesa, it opened out into a shelf-like expanse, and here, set into the mesa wall, was the face of a city. Rockslides had buried fully half of it, and the spreading ridges of secondary slides lay atop the main one.

Before one of these lesser slides sat a pair of tents.

Three hundred paces away from them, Karsa halted.

There was a figure at the secondary slide, clearing rocks with a steady, almost obsessive rhythm, tossing huge chunks of sandstone out behind him to bounce and roll on the flat concourse. Nearby, seated on a boulder, was another figure, and where the first one was tall-taller than a lowlander by far-this one was impressively wide at the shoulders, dark-skinned, heavy-maned. A large leather sack was beside him, and he was gnawing on a smoke-blackened hind leg-the rest of the small mountain goat was still spitted on a huge skewer over a stone-lined hearth near the tents.

Karsa studied the scene for a time, then, shrugging, made his way towards the two figures.

He was less than twenty paces away before the huge, barbaric man seated on the boulder swung his head around.

And gestured with the haunch in his hand. ‘Help yourself. The thing damn near brained me, falling from the cliffside, so I feel obliged to eat it. Funny, that. You always see them, scampering and clambering way up there, and so you naturally believe they never make a misstep. Well, another delusion shattered.’

He was speaking a desert dialect, a lowlander tongue, yet he was no lowlander. Large, thick canines, hair on shoulders like a boar’s bristles, a heavy-boned face wide and flat. Eyes the hue of the sandstone cliffs around them.

At his words, the stranger’s companion ceased throwing rocks and straightened, and was now regarding Karsa curiously.

The Teblor was equally frank as he returned the stare. Almost as tall as he was, though leaner. Greyish, green-tinged skin. Lower canines large enough to be tusks. A longbow leaned nearby, along with a quiver, and a leather-strap harness to which a scabbarded sword was attached. The first weapons Karsa had yet seen-for the other one appeared to be entirely unarmed, barring the thick hunting knife at his belt.

The mutual examination continued for a moment longer, then the tusked warrior resumed his excavation, disappearing from sight as he strode into the cavity he had cleared in the rockfall. Karsa glanced back at the other man. Who gestured again with the goat leg.

The Teblor approached. He set down his pack near the hearth and drew a knife, then cut away a slab of meat and returned to where the other sat. ‘You speak the language of the tribes,’ Karsa said, ‘yet I have never before seen your kind. Nor that of your companion.’

‘And you are an equally rare sight, Thelomen Toblakai. I am named Mappo, of the people known as Trell, who hail from west of the Jhag Odhan. My single-minded companion is Icarium, a Jhag-’

‘Icarium? Is that a common name, Mappo? There is a figure in my tribe’s own legends who is so named.’

The Trell’s ochre eyes narrowed momentarily. ‘Common? Not in the way you ask. The name certainly appears in the tales and legends of countless people.’

Karsa frowned at the odd pedantry, if that was what it was. Then he crouched down opposite Mappo and tore off a mouthful of the tender meat.

‘It occurs to me, of a sudden,’ Mappo said, a hint of a grin flickering across his bestial features, ‘that this chance encounter is unique… in ways too numerous to list. A Trell, a Jhag, and a Thelomen Toblakai… and we each are likely the only one of our respective kinds in all of Seven Cities. Even more extraordinary, I believe I know of you-by reputation only, of course. Sha’ik has a bodyguard… a Thelomen Toblakai, with an armoured vest made of petrified shells, and a wooden sword…’

Karsa nodded, swallowing down the last of the meat in his mouth before replying, ‘Aye, I am in the service of Sha’ik. Does this fact make you my enemy?’

‘Not unless you choose to be,’ Mappo answered, ‘and I would advise against that.’

‘So does everyone,’ Karsa muttered, returning to his meal.

‘Ah, so you are not as ignorant of us as you first said.’

‘A score of wolves spoke to me,’ Karsa explained. ‘Little was said, barring the warning itself. I do not know what makes you two so dangerous, nor do I much care. Impede me in my journey and I will kill you. It is as simple as that.’

Mappo slowly nodded. ‘And have we cause to impede you?’

‘Not unless you choose to have,’ Karsa responded.

The Trell smiled. ‘Thus, it is best we learn nothing of each other, then.’

‘Aye, that would be best.’

‘Alas,’ Mappo sighed, ‘Icarium already knows all he needs to of you, and as to what he intends, while already decided, he alone knows.’

‘If he believes he knows me,’ Karsa growled, ‘he deceives himself.’

‘Well, let us consider the matter. On your shoulders is the fur of a Soletaken. One we both happen to know-you killed a formidable beast, there. Luckily, he was no friend of ours, but the measure of your martial prowess has been taken. Next, you are haunted by ghosts-not just the two kinsmen who even now hover behind you. But the ghosts of those you have slain in your short, but clearly terrible life. They are appallingly numerous, and their hatred for you is a palpable hunger. But who carries their dead in such a manner? Only one who has been cursed, I think. And I speak from long experience; curses are horrible things. Tell me, has Sha’ik ever spoken to you of convergence?’

‘No.’

‘When curses collide, you might say. Flaws and virtues, the many faces of fateful obsession, of singular purpose. Powers and wills are drawn together, as if one must by nature seek the annihilation of the other. Thus, you and Icarium are now here, and we are moments from a dreadful convergence, and it is my fate to witness. Helpless unto desperate madness. Fortunately for my own sake, I have known this feeling before.’

Karsa had been eating throughout Mappo’s words. Now he examined the bone in his hands, then tossed it aside, wiped his palms on the white bear fur of his cloak, and straightened. ‘What else have you and Icarium discovered about me, Mappo?’

‘A few more things. Ryllandaras gauged you, and concluded that he had no wish to add his skins to your collection. He is ever wise, is Ryllandaras. A score of wolves, you said? His power has grown, then, a mystery both ominous and curious, given the chaos in his heart. What else? Well, the rest I choose not to reveal.’

Karsa grunted. He untied the bear cloak and let it fall to the ground, then unslung his sword and turned to face the rockslide.

A boulder sailed out from the cavity, of a size and weight that would strain even Bairoth Gild. The ground shook when it struck and bounced and rolled to a dusty halt.

‘Will he now make me wait?’ Karsa growled.

As if in answer Icarium emerged from the cave, slapping the dust from his long-fingered hands. ‘You are not Fenn,’ he said. ‘Indeed, I believe you are Teblor, a son of the fallen tribes in Laederon. You have travelled far, warrior, to meet your end.’

‘If you are so eager,’ Karsa growled, ‘cease your words.’

The Jhag’s expression grew troubled. ‘Eager? No. I am never eager. This is a moment of pathos, I believe. The first time I have felt such a thing, which is strange.’ He turned to his companion. ‘Have we known such moments as this one before, Mappo Runt?’

‘Aye, my friend. We have.’

‘Ah, well, then the burden of recollection is yours alone.’

‘As it ever was, Icarium.’

‘I grieve for you, friend.’

Mappo nodded. ‘I know you do. Now, best unsheathe your sword, Icarium. This Teblor evinces frustration and impatience.’

The Jhag went to his weapon. ‘What will come of this, Mappo?’

The Trell shook his head. ‘I do not know, but I am filled with dread.’

‘I shall endeavour to be efficient, then, so as to diminish the duration of your discomfort.’

‘Clearly impossible,’ Karsa muttered, ‘given your love of words.’ He readied his sword. ‘Be on with it, then, I have a horse to find.’

Icarium’s brows rose fractionally, then he drew out his sword. An unusual weapon, single-edged and looking ancient. He approached.

The Jhag’s attack was a flicker of motion, faster than anything Karsa had seen before, yet his sword flashed to meet it. Blades collided.

There was a peculiar snick and Karsa found himself holding nothing more than a handle.

Outrage exploded within him and he stepped forward, his huge fist hammering into Icarium’s face. The Jhag was thrown backward, leaving his feet, his sword cartwheeling away to clatter on the slope of the rockfall. Icarium landed with a heavy thump, and did not move.

‘Bastard broke my sword-’ Karsa began, turning towards Mappo.

White light detonated in his skull.

And he knew no more.

Mappo stared down at the motionless Thelomen Toblakai, noting the slow rise and fall of the giant’s chest. Hefting his mace, he glanced over to where Icarium lay, saw a hand slowly lift from the ground, twitch, then settle once more.

The Trell sighed. ‘Better than I could have hoped for, I think.’

He walked back and returned his weapon to the large leather sack, then set out to strike the camp.

Pounding pain behind his eyes, a sound of roaring, as of a river raging through a narrow channel. Karsa groaned.

Some time passed before he finally pushed himself onto his hands and knees.

It was dawn… again.

‘Say nothing, Bairoth Gild,’ he muttered. ‘Nor you, Delum Thord. I can well guess what happened. That bastard Trell struck me from behind. Aye, he didn’t kill me, but one day he will wish he had.’

A slow, cautious look around confirmed that he was alone. His broken sword had been positioned beside him, handle and blade side by side, with a small bound bundle of desert flowers lying atop them.

The blow to his head left him nauseous, and he found he was shaking once he’d managed to climb to his feet. He unstrapped his dented helm and tossed it aside. Dried blood matted his hair and covered the back of his neck.

‘At least you are now well rested, Karsa Orlong.’

‘You are less amused than you would have me think, Bairoth Gild. The one named Icarium. He is the one from our legends, isn’t he?’

‘And you alone among the living Teblor have crossed blades with him.’

‘He broke my sword.’

There was no reply to that. Karsa set about preparing to resume his journey, once more donning the bear cloak, then shouldering the pack. He left the wooden sword pieces and their bouquet, and made to set off down the descending road. Then he paused, turning his attention instead to the cavity that Icarium had excavated into the rockslide.

The Jhag’s efforts had partially uncovered a statue, broken here and there, with what remained fissured with cracks, but recognizable none the less. A grotesque construct, as tall as Karsa, made of a black, grainy stone.

A seven-headed hound.

It had been completely buried by the fall, and so would have revealed no sign that it existed beneath the rubble. Yet Icarium had found it, though his reasons for uncovering the monstrosity were still unfathomable. ‘He has lived too long, I think,’ Karsa murmured.

He strode back out from the cavity, then swung onto the road.

Six days later, the city of Lato Revae far behind him, the Teblor lay prone in the shadows of a guldindha tree at the edge of a grove, watching a pair of drovers switching their herd of goats towards a dusty corral. A small village lay beyond, its low buildings roofed in palm fronds, the air above it hazy with dung smoke and dust.

The sun would be down soon, and he could resume his journey. He had waited out the day, unseen. These lands between Lato Revae and the Mersin River were relatively crowded, compared to all that he had seen thus far, reminding him that his travels, since his landing at Ehrlitan, had been mostly through unbroken wilderness. The Pan’potsun Odhan-the Holy Desert itself-was a world virtually abandoned by civilization.

But here, irrigation ditches ribboned the plain. Wells and groves and villages abounded, and there were more roads than he had ever seen before, even in the lands of the Nathii. Most were dusty, winding tracks at ground level, usually situated between ditches. Thus far, the only exceptions were the imperial tracks, raised and straight and substantial enough to permit two wagons to pass each other with room to spare. These Malazan roads had suffered in the last year-despite their obvious value, foundation boulders had been dug out, league-markers uprooted. But the ditches alongside them were deep and wide, and Karsa had used those ditches to remain hidden from sight as he made his way southwestward.

The village ahead crouched on a crossroads of Malazan tracks, and a squat, square tower rose above the low roofs near the centre. Its limestone walls were stained black, streaks flaring up from arrow-slits and windows. When the sun finally settled beyond the horizon, no lights showed from the tower.

Though it was likely that there were rebel soldiers of the Apocalypse stationed in the village, given its strategic placement on the crossroads, Karsa had no interest in initiating contact. His was a private journey, if for no reason but that he chose to have it so. In any case, it seemed the rebellion was not quite as fierce here; either that or the unbridled blood-thirst had long since abated. There had been no widespread destruction of farms and fields, no slaughter in the village and town streets. Karsa wondered if there had been as many Malazan traders and landowners this far west, or if the garrisons had all been recalled into the major cities, such as Kayhum, Sarpachiya and Ugarat-their fellow non-combatants accompanying them. If so, then it had not helped them.

He disliked being weaponless, barring the Malazan short-sword he used as a knife, sheathed at his hip. But there was no suitable wood in this region. There were said to be ironwood trees in the Jhag Odhan and he would wait until then.

The swift descent into night was done. The Teblor warrior stirred collecting his pack, then set out along the edge of the guldindha grove. One of the imperial roads led off in the direction he sought, likely the main artery connecting Lato Revae with the Holy City Ugarat. If any bridges across the Mersin River had survived the uprising, it would be the Malazan-built one on that road.

He skirted the village on its north side, through knee-high grains, the soil soft from the previous night’s irrigating. Karsa assumed the water came from the river somewhere ahead, though he could not imagine how the flow was regulated. The notion of a life spent tilling fields was repellent to the Teblor warrior. The rewards seemed to be exclusive to the highborn landowners, whilst the labourers themselves had only a minimal existence, prematurely aged and worn down by the ceaseless toil. And the distinction between high and low status was born from farming itself-or so it appeared to Karsa. Wealth was measured in control over other people, and the grip of that control could never be permitted to loosen. Odd, then, that this rebellion had had nothing to do with such inequities, that in truth it had been little more than a struggle between those who would be in charge.

Yet the majority of the suffering had descended upon the lowborn, upon the common folk. What matter the colour of the collar around a man’s neck, if the chains linked to them were identical?

Better to struggle against helplessness, as far as he was concerned. This blood-soaked Apocalypse was pointless, a misdirected explosion of fury that, when it passed, left the world unchanged.

He bounded across a ditch, crossed through a narrow fringe of overgrown brush, and found himself at the edge of a shallow pit. Twenty paces across and at least thirty paces wide. The town’s refuse was piled here, not entirely successful at covering the mass of lowlander bones.

Here, then, were the Malazans. As tamed and broken as the earth itself. The wealth of flesh, flung back into the ground. Karsa had no doubt that it was their rivals in status who were loudest in exhorting their deaths.

‘And so, once again, Karsa Orlong, we are given the truths of the lowlanders.’ Bairoth Gild’s ghostly voice was palpably bitter. ‘For every virtue they espouse, a thousand self-serving evils belie their piety. Know them, Warleader, for one day they will be your enemy.’

‘I am no fool, Bairoth Gild. Nor am I blind.’

Delum Thord spoke. ‘A place of haunting lies ahead, Karsa Orlong. As ancient as our own blood. Those who live here avoid it, and have always avoided it.’

‘Not entirely,’ Bairoth interjected. ‘Fear has inspired them on occasion. The place is damaged. None the less, the Elder power lingers. The path beckons-will you walk it, Warleader?’

Karsa made his way around the pit. He could see something ahead, earthworks rising to break the flatness of the surrounding plain. Elongated barrows, the slabs of stone that formed them visible in places although they were mostly covered in thorny brush and tufts of yellow grasses. The mounds formed an irregular ring around a larger, circular hill that was flat-topped, though slightly canted as if one side had settled over time. Rising at angles from the summit were standing stones, a score or more.

Rocks from clearing the nearby fields had been discarded in this once-holy site, around the barrows, heaped against the slope of the central hill, along with other detritus: the withered wooden skeletons of ox ploughs, palm fronds from roofs, piles of potsherds and the bones of butchered livestock.

Karsa slipped between two barrows and made his way up the central slope. The nearest standing stone reached barely to his waist. Black symbols crowded it, the spit and charcoal paint relatively recent. The Teblor recognized various signs, such as had been employed as a secret, native language during the Malazan occupation. ‘Hardly a place of fear,’ he muttered. Fully half of the stones were either shattered or toppled, and from the latter Karsa noted that they were, in fact, taller than he was, so deeply had they been anchored in the artificial hill. The summit itself was pitted and uneven.

‘Oh, these are the signs of fear, Karsa Orlong, do not doubt that. This desecration. Were this a place without power, the answer would have been indifference.’

Karsa grunted, stepping carefully on the treacherous ground as he approached the nominal centre of the stone ring. Four smaller slabs had been tilted together there, the wiry grasses stopping a pace away on all sides, leaving only bare earth flecked with bits of charcoal.

And fragments, Karsa noted as he crouched, of bone. He picked one up and studied it in the starlight. From a skull, lowlander in scale though somewhat more robust, the outer edge of an eye socket. Thick… like that of my gods… ‘Bairoth Gild. Delum Thord. Do either of you sense the presence of a spirit or a god here?’

‘No,’ Delum Thord replied.

Bairoth spoke. ‘A shaman was buried here, Warleader. His head was severed and left fixed in the apex of the four cardinal stones. Whoever shattered it did so long afterwards. Centuries. Perhaps millennia. So that it would no longer see. No longer watch.’

‘Then why is this place of value to me?’

‘For the way through it offers, Warleader.’

‘The way through what, Bairoth Gild?’

‘Passage westward, into the Jhag Odhan. A trail in the dreamworld. A journey of months will become one of mere days, should you choose to walk it. It lives still, for it was used not long ago. By an army.’

‘And how can I walk this trail?’

Delum Thord replied, ‘We can lead you, Karsa Orlong. For, like the one once buried here, we are neither dead nor alive. The lord Hood cannot find our spirits, for they are here with you. Our presence adds to the god of death’s hatred of you, Warleader.’

‘Hatred?’

‘For what you have taken and would not give to him. Will not. Would you become your own Keeper of Souls? So he must now fear. When last did Hood know a rival?’

Karsa scowled and spat onto the ground. ‘I have no interest in being his rival. I would break these chains. I would free even you and Bairoth Gild.’

‘We would rather you did not, Warleader.’

‘You and Bairoth Gild are perhaps alone in that sentiment, Delum Thord.’

‘What of it?’ Bairoth snapped.

Karsa said nothing, for he had begun to understand the choice that lay ahead, sometime in the future. To cast off my enemies… I must also cast off my friends. And so Hood follows, and waits. For the day that must come.

‘You hide your thoughts now, Karsa Orlong. This new talent does not please us.’

‘I am warleader,’ Karsa growled. ‘It is not my task to please you. Do you now regret that you follow?’

‘No, Karsa Orlong. Not yet.’

‘Take me into this trail in the dreamworld, Delum Thord.’

The air grew suddenly colder, the smell reminding Karsa of the sloped clearings on high mountain sides when spring arrived, the smell of enlivened, softened lichen and moss. And before him, where there had been night-softened farmland a moment ago, there was now tundra, beneath a heavily overcast sky.

A broad path lay before him, stretching across the rolling land, where the lichen had been crushed, the mosses kicked aside and trampled. As Bairoth Gild had said, an army had passed this way, although by the signs it seemed their journey had been but a moment ago-he half expected to see the tail end of that solemn column on the distant horizon, but there was nothing. Simply an empty, treeless expanse, stretching out on all sides. He moved forward, in the army’s wake.

This world seemed timeless, the sky unchanging. On occasion, herds appeared, too distant to make out the kind of beasts, rolling across hillsides then slipping from view as they streamed down into valleys. Birds flew in arrowhead formation, a strange long-necked breed high overhead, all of them consistently flying back the way Karsa had come. Apart from the whine of the insects swarming about the Teblor, a strange, unreal silence emanated from the landscape.

A dream world, then, such as the elders of his tribe were wont to visit, seeking portents and omens. The scene not unlike what Karsa had glimpsed when, in delirium, he had found himself before his god, Urugal.

He continued on.

Eventually, the air grew colder, and frost glittered amidst the lichen and moss to either side of the wide trail. The smell of rotting ice filled Karsa’s nose. Another thousand paces brought him to the first dirt-studded sweep of snow, filling a shallow valley on his right. Then shattered chunks of ice, half buried in the ground as if they had fallen from the sky, many of them larger than a lowlander wagon. The land itself was more broken here, the gentle roll giving way to sharp-walled drainage gullies and channels, to upthrust hillsides revealing banded sandstone beneath the frozen, thick skin of peat. Fissures in the stone gleamed with greenish ice.

Bairoth Gild spoke. ‘We are now at the border of a new warren, Warleader. A warren inimical to the army that arrived here. And so, a war was waged.’

‘How far have I travelled, Bairoth Gild? In my world, am I approaching Ugarat? Sarpachiya?’

The ghost’s laughter was like a boulder rolled over gravel. ‘They are behind you now, Karsa Orlong. You approach the land known as the Jhag Odhan.’

It had seemed no more than a half-day’s worth of travel in this dream world.

Signs of the army’s passage grew less distinct, the ground underfoot frozen rock hard and now consisting mostly of rounded stones. Ahead, a plain studded with huge flat slabs of black rock.

Moments later, Karsa was moving among them.

There were bodies beneath the stones. Pinned down.

‘Will you free these, Karsa Orlong?’

‘No, Delum Thord, I shall not. I shall pass through this place, disturbing nothing.’

‘Yet these are not Forkrul Assail. Many are dead, for they had not the power their kind once possessed. While others remain alive, and will not die for a long time. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. Karsa Orlong, do you no longer believe in mercy?’

‘My beliefs are my own, Delum Thord. I shall not undo what I do not understand, and that is all.’

He travelled on, and soon left the terrible plain behind.

Before him now stretched a field of ice, crack-riven, with pools of water reflecting the silver sky. Bones were scattered on it, from hundreds, perhaps thousands of figures. Bones of a type he had seen before. Some still sheathed in withered skin and muscle. Shards of stone weapons lay among them, along with fragments of fur, antlered helms and torn, rotting hides.

The fallen warriors formed a vast semicircle around a low, square-walled tower. Its battered stones were limned in runnelled ice, its doorway gaping, the interior dark.

Karsa picked his way across the field, his moccasins crunching through the ice and snow.

The tower’s doorway was tall enough to permit the Teblor to stride through without ducking. A single room lay within. Broken furniture and the pieces of more fallen warriors cluttered the stone floor. A spiral staircase that seemed made entirely of iron rose from the centre.

From what he could determine from the wreckage, the furniture was of a scale to suit a Teblor, rather than a lowlander.

Karsa made his way up the ice-sheathed staircase.

There was a single level above, a high-ceilinged chamber that had once held wooden shelves on all four walls. Torn scrolls, bound books ripped apart, vials and clay jars containing various pungent mixes crushed underfoot, a large table split in half and pushed up against one wall, and on a cleared space on the floor…

Karsa stepped off the landing and looked down.

‘Thelomen Toblakai, welcome to my humble abode.’

Karsa scowled. ‘I crossed blades with one much like you. He was named Icarium. Like you, yet less so.’

‘Because he is a half-blood, of course. Whilst I am not. Jaghut, not Jhag.’

She lay spread-eagled within a ring of fist-sized stones. A larger stone rested on her chest, from which heat rose in waves. The air in the chamber was a swirling mix of steam and suspended frost.

‘You are trapped within sorcery. The army was seeking you, yet they did not kill you.’

‘Could not would be more accurate. Not immediately, in any case. But eventually, this Tellann Ritual will destroy this core of Omtose Phellack, which will in turn lead to the death of the Jhag Odhan-even now, the north forest creeps onto the plains, whilst from the south the desert claims ever more of the odhan that was my home.’

‘Your refuge.’

She bared her tusks in something like a smile. ‘Among the Jaghut, they are now one and the same, Thelomen Toblakai.’

Karsa looked around, studying the wreckage. He saw no weapons; nor was the woman wearing armour. ‘When this core of Omtose Phellack dies, so will you, yes? Yet you spoke only of the Jhag Odhan. As if your own death was of less importance than that of this land.’

‘It is less important. On the Jhag Odhan, the past lives still. Not just in my fallen kin, the Jhag-the few that managed to escape the Logros T’lan Imass. There are ancient beasts that walk the treeless lands beside the sheets of ice. Beasts that have died out everywhere else, mostly on the spears of the T’lan Imass. But there were no Imass in the Jhag Odhan. As you said, a refuge.’

‘Beasts. Including Jhag horses?’

He watched her strange eyes narrow. The pupils were vertical, surrounded in pearlescent grey. ‘The horses we once bred to ride. Yes, they have gone feral in the odhan. Though few remain, for the Trell come from the west to hunt them. Every year. They drive them off cliffs. As they do to many of the other beasts.’

‘Why did you not seek to stop them?’

‘Because, dear warrior, I was hiding.’

‘A tactic that failed.’

‘A scouting party of T’lan Imass discovered me. I destroyed most of them, but one escaped. From that moment, I knew their army would come, eventually. Granted, they took their time about it, but time is what they have aplenty.’

‘A scouting party? How many did you destroy?’

‘Seven.’

‘And are their remains among those surrounding this tower?’

She smiled again. ‘I would think not, Thelomen Toblakai. To the T’lan Imass, destruction is failure. Failure must be punished. Their methods are… elaborate.’

‘Yet what of the warriors lying below, and those around the tower?’

‘Fallen, but not in failure. Here I lie, after all.’

‘Enemies should be killed,’ the Teblor growled, ‘not imprisoned.’

‘I would not argue that sentiment,’ the Jaghut replied.

‘I sense nothing evil from you.’

‘It has been a long time since I heard that word. In the wars with the T’lan Imass, even, that word had no place.’

‘I must answer injustice,’ he rumbled.

‘As you will.’

‘The need overwhelms all caution. Delum Thord would smile.’

‘Who is Delum Thord?’

Not answering, Karsa unslung his pack then threw off his bear cloak and stepped towards the ring of stones.

‘Stay back, warrior!’ the Jaghut hissed. ‘This is High Tellann-’

‘And I am Karsa Orlong, of the Teblor,’ the warrior growled. He kicked at the nearest stones.

Searing flame swept up to engulf Karsa. He snarled and pushed his way through it, reaching down both hands to take the slab of stone, grunting as he lifted it from the woman’s chest. The flames swarmed him, seeking to rend his flesh from his bones, but his growl simply deepened. Pivoting, flinging the huge slab to one side. Where it struck a wall, and shattered.

The flames died.

Karsa shook himself, then looked down once more.

The ring was now broken. The Jaghut’s eyes were wide as she stared up at him, movement stirring her limbs.

‘Never before,’ she sighed, then shook her head as if in disbelief. ‘Ignorance, honed into a weapon. Extraordinary, Thelomen Toblakai.’

Karsa crouched down beside his pack. ‘Are you hungry? Thirsty?’

She was slow in sitting up. The T’lan Imass had stripped her, leaving her naked, but she seemed unaffected by the bitter cold air now filling the chamber. Though she appeared young, he suspected she was anything but. He felt her eyes watching him as he prepared the meal.

‘You crossed swords with Icarium. There had ever been but a single conclusion to such an ill-fated thing, but that you are here is proof that you somehow managed to avoid it.’

Karsa shrugged. ‘No doubt we will resume our disagreement the next time we meet.’

‘How did you come to be here, Karsa Orlong?’

‘I am seeking a horse, Jaghut. The journey was long, and I was led to understand that this dream world would make it shorter.’

‘Ah, the ghost-warriors hovering behind you. Even so, you take a grave risk travelling the Tellann Warren. I owe you my life, Karsa Orlong.’ She cautiously climbed to her feet. ‘How can I repay you?’

He straightened to face her, and was surprised-and pleased-to see that she almost matched him in height. Her hair was long, murky brown, tied at the back. He studied her for a moment, then said, ‘Find for me a horse.’

Her thin eyebrows rose fractionally. ‘That is all, Karsa Orlong?’

‘Perhaps one more thing-what is your name?’

‘That is what you would ask?’

‘No.’

‘Aramala.’

He nodded and turned once more to readying the meal. ‘I would know all you can tell me, Aramala, of the seven who first found you.’

‘Very well. If I may ask something in turn. You passed through a place on your way here, where Jhag had been… imprisoned. I shall of course free those who have survived.’

‘Of course.’

‘They are half-bloods.’

‘Aye, so I am told.’

‘Do you not wonder at what the other half is?’

He glanced up, then slowly frowned.

She smiled. ‘There is much, I think, that I must tell you.’

Some time later, Karsa Orlong strode from the tower. He moved on, resuming the trail of the army where it began once again beyond the frozen ground of Omtose Phellack.

When he finally emerged from the warren, into the heat of late afternoon on the world of his birth, he found himself on the edge of a ridge of battered hills. Pausing, he glanced behind him, and could make out, at the very rim of the horizon, a city-probably Sarpachiya-and the glimmer of a vast river.

The hills ahead formed a spine, a feature on the land that he suspected showed up only on local maps. There were no farms on the lowlands before it, no herds on its broken slopes.

The T’lan Imass had reappeared in this place before him, though their passage onwards, into those hills, left no sign, for decades had passed in this world since that time. He was on the edge of the Jhag Odhan.

Dusk had arrived by the time he reached the foothills and began making his way up the weathered slope. The exposed rock here had a diseased look, as if afflicted by some kind of unnatural decay. Pieces of it collapsed under his feet as he climbed.

The summit was little more than a ridge, less than three paces across, crusted with rotten stone and dead grasses. Beyond, the land fell away sharply, forming a broad valley marked by sunken, banded sandstone mesas rising from its base. The valley’s opposite side five thousand or more paces distant, was a sheer cliff of rust-coloured rock.

Karsa could not imagine the natural forces that could have created such a landscape. The mesas below were born of erosion, as if floods had run the length of the valley, or perhaps fierce winds roared down the channels-less dramatic and demanding much greater lengths of time. Or the entire valley could have once stood level with the surrounding hills, only to suffer some subterranean slump. The decayed outcroppings suggested some kind of leaching process afflicting the region.

He made his way down the steep slope.

And quickly discovered that it was honeycombed with caves and pits. Mines, if the scree of calcreted rubble fanning out from them was any indication. But not tin or copper. Flint. Vast veins of the glassy brown material lay exposed like raw wounds in the hillside.

Karsa’s eyes narrowed on the mesas ahead. The bands in the sandstone were all sharply tilted, and not all at the same angle. Their caps displayed nothing of the flat plateau formation that one would expect; instead, they were jagged and broken. The valley floor itself-for as far as he could see amidst the squat mesas-seemed to be sharp-edged gravel. Shatter flakes from the mining.

In this single valley, an entire army could have fashioned its weapons of stone…

And the flint in this place was far from exhausted.

Bairoth Gild’s voice filled his head. ‘Karsa Orlong, you circle the truths as a lone wolf circles a bull elk.’

Karsa grunted, his only reply. He could see, on the cliff on the other side, more caves, these ones carved into the sheer wall. Reaching the shadowed valley floor, he set out for them. The gravel underfoot was thick, shifting treacherously, the sharp edges slicing into the hide soles of his moccasins. The air smelled of limestone dust.

He approached a large cave mouth situated a third of the way up the cliff. A broad slope of scree led up to within reach of it, though it shifted ominously under the Teblor as he scrambled upward. He finally managed to clamber onto the uneven floor.

With the cliff wall facing northeast, and the sun already riding the horizon, there was no ambient light in the cave. The Teblor set down his pack and drew out a small lantern.

The walls were calcined limestone, blackened by generation upon generation of woodsmoke, the ceiling high and roughly domed. Ten paces further in, the passage swiftly diminished as ceiling, walls and floor converged. Crouching, Karsa slipped through the choke point.

Beyond was a vast cavern. Dimly seen on the wall opposite was a monolithic projection of solid, pure flint, reaching almost up to the ceiling. Deeply recessed niches had been bored into the flanking walls. A fissure above the centre of the hewn chamber bled grey light from the dusk outside. Directly beneath it was a heap of sand, and growing from that mound was a knotted, twisted tree-a guldindha, no higher than the Teblor’s knee, its leaves a deeper hue of green than was usual. That daylight could reach down two-thirds of this cliff was itself a miracle… but this tree…

Karsa walked over to one of the niches and extended the lantern into it. Another cavern lay beyond. And it was filled with flint weapons. Some were broken but most were whole. Swords, double-bladed axes with bone shafts, hundreds upon hundreds covering the floor. The next niche contained the same, as did the one after that. Twenty-two side-chambers in all. The weapons of the dead. The weapons of the failed. In every cave on this cliff, he knew, he would find the same.

But none of the others were important to him. He set the lantern down near the pillar of flint, then straightened. ‘Urugal the Woven, Beroke Soft Voice, Kahlb the Silent Hunter, Thenik the Shattered, Siballe the Unfound, Halad the Giant, Imroth the Cruel. Faces in the Rock, gods of the Teblor. I, Karsa Orlong of the Uryd Tribe of the Teblor, have delivered you to this place. You were broken. Severed. Weaponless. I have done as you commanded me to do. I have brought you to this place.’

Urugal’s broken rasp replied, ‘You have found that which was taken from us, Karsa Orlong. You have freed your gods.’

The Teblor watched the ghost of Urugal slowly take shape before him. A squat, heavy-boned warrior, shorter than a lowlander but much broader. The bones of his limbs were split-where Karsa could see between the taut straps of leather and hide that bound them, that held him together. More straps crossed his chest.

‘Karsa Orlong, you have found our weapons.’

The warrior shrugged. ‘If indeed they are among the thousands in the chambers beyond.’

‘They are. They did not fail us.’

‘But the Ritual did.’

Urugal cocked his head. His six kin were taking shape around him. ‘You understand, then.’

‘I do.’

‘Our physical forms approach, Karsa Orlong. They have journeyed far, bereft of spirit, held only by our wills-’

‘And the one you now serve,’ the Teblor growled.

‘Yes. The one we now serve. We have guided you in turn, Warleader. And now shall come your reward, for what you have given us.’

Siballe the Unfound now spoke. ‘We have gathered an army, Karsa Orlong. All the children sacrificed before the Faces in the Rock. They are alive, Warleader. They have been prepared. For you. An army. Your people are assailed. The lowlanders must be driven back, their armies annihilated. You shall sweep down with your legions, down into their lands, and reap destruction upon the lowlanders.’

‘I shall.’

‘The Seven Gods of the Teblor,’ Urugal said, ‘must now become Eight.’

The one named Halad-the largest of the seven by far, hulking, bestial-stepped forward. ‘You must now fashion a sword, Karsa Orlong. Of stone. The mines outside await you-we shall guide you in the knowledge-’

‘There is no need,’ Karsa said. ‘I have learned the many hearts of stone. The knowledge is mine, and so too shall the sword be mine. Those you fashion are well enough for your own kind. But I am Teblor. I am Thelomen Toblakai.’ With that he swung about and walked towards the monolithic pillar of flint.

‘That spar will defeat you,’ Halad said behind him. ‘To draw a long enough blade for a sword, you must strike from above. Examine this vein carefully, and you will see that, pure as it is, the flow of the stone is unforgiving. None of our kind has ever managed to draw forth a flake longer than our own height. The spar before you can no longer be worked; thus its abandonment. Strike and it shall shatter. And that failure shall stain your next efforts, and so weaken the sorcery of the making.’

Karsa stood before the brown, almost black, flint pillar.

‘You must fashion a fire at its base,’ Halad said. ‘Left to burn without cessation for a number of days and nights. There is little wood in the valley below, but in the Jhag Odhan beyond, the bhederin herds have travelled in their multitudes. Fire, Karsa Orlong, then cold water-’

‘No. All control is lost with that method, T’lan Imass. Your kind are not unique in knowing the truths of stone. This task is mine and mine alone. Now, enough words.’

‘The name you have given us,’ Urugal rasped, ‘how did you come by such knowledge?’

Karsa turned, face twisting into a sneer. ‘Foolish Teblor. Or so you believed. So you would have us. Fallen Thelomen Toblakai, but he who has fallen can rise once again, Urugal. Thus, you were once T’lan Imass. But now, you are the Unbound.’ The sneer became a snarl. ‘From wandering to hold. From hold to house.’

The warrior climbed the spar of flint. Perched on its top, he drew out his Malazan short-sword. A moment’s examination of the stone’s surface, then he leaned over to study the almost vertical sweep of flawless flint reaching down to the cave’s floor. Reversing the sword, Karsa began scraping the top of the pillar, a hand’s width in from the sharp edge. He could see the tracks of old blows-the T’lan Imass had tried, despite Halad’s words, but had failed.

Karsa continued roughing the surface where he would strike. In his mind, he spoke. Bairoth Gild. Delum Thord. Hear me, when none other can. One day, I shall break my chains, I shall free the souls that now hound me. You would not be among them, or so you said. Nor would I wish Hood’s embrace upon you. I have considered your desires in this. And have fashioned an alternative…

‘Warleader, Delum Thord and I understand your intent. Your genius never fails to astonish me, Karsa Orlong. Only with our consent will you succeed. And so you give us words and lo, we find our path forced. Hood’s embrace… or what you seek.’

Karsa shook his head. Not just me, Bairoth Gild. But you yourself. Do you deny it?

‘No, Warleader. We do not. Thus, we accept what you offer.’ Karsa knew that he alone could see the ghosts of his friends at this moment, as they seemed to dissolve, reduced to pure will, that then flowed down into the flint. Flowed, to find a shape, a form of cohesion…

Awaiting… He swept dust and grit from the roughened surface, then closed both hands about the short-sword’s stubby grip. He lifted the weapon high, fixing his gaze upon the battered striking platform, then drove the pommel down. A strange snapping sound-

Then Karsa was leaping forward, short-sword flung aside, down through the air, spinning as he dropped. His knees flexed to absorb the impact, even as he raised his hands to intersect the toppling spear of flint.

A spear almost as tall as the Teblor himself.

It fell away from the pillar, a flattened shard, and settled into his hands. A warm lick on his palms, and suddenly blood was running down his forearms. Karsa quickly backed up, lowering the blade to the floor. When he drew his hands away he saw that they had been cut down to the bone. Clever Bairoth, to drink my blood to seal the bargain.

‘You… surpass us,’ Halad whispered.

Karsa went to his pack and drew out a bundle of field dressings and a sewing kit. There would be no infection, of course, and he would heal swiftly. Still, he would need to close the cuts before he could hope to begin work on the huge blade’s edges, and hack out a grip of sorts.

‘We shall invest the weapon,’ Urugal announced behind him. ‘So that it cannot be broken.’

Karsa nodded.

‘We shall make you the Eighth God of the Teblor.’

‘No,’ he replied as he began working on his left hand. ‘I am not as you, Urugal. I am not Unbound. You yourself closed the chains about me. By your own hands, you saw to it that the souls of those I have slain will pursue me eternally. You have shaped my haunting, Urugal. Beneath such a curse, I can never be unbound.’

‘There is place for you none the less,’ Urugal said, ‘in the House of Chains.’

‘Aye. Knight of Chains, champion of the Crippled God.’

‘You have learned much, Karsa Orlong.’

He stared down at his bloodied hands. ‘I have, T’lan Imass. As you shall witness.’

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

TO THE NORTH, THE DUST OF THE IMPERIAL ARMY OBSCURED THE forest-mantled hills of Vathar. It was late afternoon, the hottest part of the day, when the wind died and the rocks radiated like flatstones on a hearth. Sergeant Strings remained motionless beneath his ochre rain cloak, lying flat as he studied the lands to the southwest. Sweat streamed down his face to prickle in his iron-shot red beard.

After a long moment studying the mass of horse warriors that had emerged out of the dusty odhan in their wake, Strings lifted a gloved hand and gestured.

The others of his squad rose from their places of concealment and edged back from the crest. The sergeant watched them until they reached cover once more, then slid around and followed.

Endless skirmishes with raiders these last weeks, beginning just outside Dojal, with more heated clashes with Kherahn Dhobri tribes at Tathimon and Sanimon… but nothing like the army now trailing them. Three thousand warriors, at the very least, of a tribe they’d not seen before. Countless barbaric standards rose above the host, tall spears topped with ragged streamers, antlers, horns and skulls. The glitter of bronze scale armour was visible beneath the black telabas and furs, as well as-more prolific-a strange greyish armour that was too supple to be anything but hide. The helms, from what Strings could make out with the distance, looked to be elaborate, many of them crow-winged, of leather and bronze.

Strings slid down to where his squad waited. They’d yet to engage in hand-to-hand combat, their sum experience of fighting little more than firing crossbows and occasionally holding a line. So far… so good. The sergeant faced Smiles. ‘All right, it’s settled-climb on that miserable horse down below, lass, and ride to the lieutenant. Looks like we’ve got a fight coming.’

Sweat had tracked runnels through the dust sheathing her face. She nodded, then scrambled off.

‘Bottle, go to Gesler’s position, and have him pass word to Borduke. I want a meeting. Quick, before their scouts get here.’

‘Aye, Sergeant.’

After a moment, Strings drew out his waterskin and passed it to Corporal Tarr, then he tapped Cuttle on the shoulder and the two of them made their way back to the ridge.

They settled down side by side to resume studying the army below.

‘These ones could maul us,’ the sergeant muttered. ‘Then again, they’re riding so tight it makes me wonder…’

Cuttle grunted, eyes thinned to slits. ‘Something’s gnawing my knuckles here, Fid. They know we’re close, but they ain’t arrayed for battle. They should’ve held back until night, then hit all along our line. And where are their scouts, anyway?’

‘Well, those outriders-’

‘Way too close. Local tribes here know better-’

A sudden scattering of stones and Strings and Cuttle twisted round-to see riders cresting the ridge on either side of them, and others cantering into view on the back-slope, closing on his squad.

‘Hood take us! Where did-’

Yipping warcries sounded, weapons waving in the air, yet the horse warriors then drew rein, rising in their stirrups as they surrounded the squad.

Frowning, Strings clambered to his feet. A glance back at the army below showed a vanguard climbing the slope at a canter. The sergeant met Cuttle’s eyes and shrugged.

The sapper grimaced in reply.

Escorted by the riders on the ridge, the two soldiers made their way down to where Tarr and Koryk stood. Both had their crossbows loaded, though no longer trained on the tribesmen wheeling their mounts in a prancing circle around them. Further down the ridge Strings saw Gesler and his squad appear, along with Bottle; and their own company of horse warriors.

‘Cuttle,’ the sergeant muttered, ‘did you clash with these anywhere north of the River Vathar?’

‘No. But I think I know who they are.’

None of these scouts wore bronze armour. The grey hide beneath their desert-coloured cloaks and furs looked strangely reptilian. Crow wings had been affixed to their forearms, like swept-back fins. Their faces were pale by local standards, unusual in being bearded and long-moustached. Tattoos of black tears ran down the lengths of their weathered cheeks.

Apart from lances, fur-covered wooden scabbards were slung across their backs, holding heavy-bladed tulwars. All had crow-feet earrings dangling from under their helms.

The tribe’s vanguard reached the crest above them and drew to a halt, as, on the opposite side, there appeared a company of Wickans, Seti and Malazan officers.

Beru fend, the Adjunct herself’s with them. Also Fist Gamet, Nil, Nether and Temul, as well as Captain Keneb and Lieutenant Ranal.

The two mounted forces faced one another on either side of the shallow gully, and Strings could see Temul visibly start, then lean over to speak to the Adjunct. A moment later, Tavore, Gamet and Temul rode forward.

From the tribe’s vanguard a single rider began the descent on the back-slope. A chieftain, Strings surmised. The man was huge; two tulwars were strapped to a harness crossing his chest, one of them broken just above the hilt. The black tears tattooed down his broad cheeks looked to have been gouged into the flesh. He rode down fairly close to where Strings and Cuttle stood and paused beside them.

He nodded towards the approaching group and asked in rough Malazan, ‘This is the Plain Woman who leads you?’

Strings winced, then nodded. ‘Adjunct Tavore, aye.’

‘We have met the Kherahn Dhobri,’ the chieftain said, then smiled. ‘They will harass you no more, Malazan.’

Tavore and her officers arrived, halting five paces away. The Adjunct spoke. ‘I welcome you, Warchief of the Khundryl. I am Adjunct Tavore Paran, commander of the Fourteenth Army of the Malazan Empire.’

‘I am Gall, and we are the Burned Tears of the Khundryl.’

‘The Burned Tears?’

The man made a gesture of grief. ‘Blackwing, leader of the Wickans. I spoke with him. My warriors sought to challenge, to see who were the greatest warriors of all. We fought hard, but we were humbled. Blackwing is dead, his clan destroyed, and Korbolo Dom’s Dogslayers dance on his name. That must be answered, and so we have come. Three thousand-all that fought for Blackwing the first time. We are changed, Adjunct. We are other than we once were. We grieve the loss of ourselves, and so we shall remain lost, for all time.’

‘Your words sadden me, Gall,’ Tavore replied, her voice shaky.

Careful now, lass…

‘We would join you,’ the Khundryl warchief rasped, ‘for we have nowhere else to go. The walls of our yurts look strange to our eyes. The faces of our wives, husbands, children-all those we once loved and who once loved us-strangers, now. Like Blackwing himself, we are as ghosts in this world, in this land that was once our home.’

‘You would join us-to fight under my command, Gall?’

‘We would.’

‘Seeking vengeance against Korbolo Dom,’

He shook his head. ‘That will come, yes. But we seek to make amends.’

She frowned beneath her helm. ‘Amends? By Temul’s account you fought bravely, and well. Without your intercession, the Chain of Dogs would have fallen at Sanimon. The refugees would have been slaughtered-’

‘Yet we then rode away-back to our lands, Adjunct. We thought only to lick our wounds. While the Chain marched on. To more battles. To its final battle.’ He was weeping in truth now, and an eerie keening sound rose from the other horse warriors present. ‘We should have been there. That is all.’

The Adjunct said nothing for a long moment.

Strings removed his helm and wiped the sweat from his brow. He glanced back up the slope, and saw a solid line of Khundryl on the ridge. Silent. Waiting.

Tavore cleared her throat. ‘Gall, Warchief of the Burned Tears… the Fourteenth Army welcomes you.’

The answering roar shook the ground underfoot. Strings turned and met Cuttle’s eyes. Three thousand veterans of this Hood-damned desert. Queen of Dreams, we have a chance. Finally, it looks like we have a chance. He did not need to speak aloud to know that Cuttle understood, for the man slowly nodded.

But Gall was not finished. Whether he realized the full measure of his next gesture-no, Strings would conclude eventually, he could not have-even so… The Warchief gathered his reins and rode forward, past the Adjunct. He halted his horse before Temul, then dismounted.

Three strides forward. Under the eyes of over three hundred Wickans, and five hundred Seti, the burly Khundryl-his grey eyes fixed on Temul-halted. Then he unslung his broken tulwar and held it out to the Wickan youth.

Temul was pale as he reached down to accept it.

Gall stepped back and slowly lowered himself to one knee. ‘We are not Wickans,’ the warchief grated, ‘but this I swear-we shall strive to be.’ He lowered his head.

Temul sat unmoving, visibly struggling beneath a siege of emotions, and Strings suddenly realized that the lad did not know how to answer, did not know what to do.

The sergeant took a step, then swung his helm upward, as if to put it back on. Temul caught the flash of movement, even as he looked about to dismount, and he froze as he met Strings’s eyes.

A slight shake of the head. Stay in that saddle, Temul! The sergeant reached up and touched his own mouth. Talk. Answer with words, lad!

The commander slowly settled back into his saddle, then straightened. ‘Gall of the Burned Tears,’ he said, barely a tremble to his voice, ‘Blackwing sees through the eyes of every Wickan here. Sees, and answers. Rise. In Blackwing’s name, I, Temul of the Crow Clan, accept you… the Burned Tears… of the Crow Clan, of the Wickans.’ He then took the loop of leather to which the broken tulwar was tied, and lowered it over his shoulder.

With the sound of a wave rolling up a league-long strand of beach, weapons were unsheathed along the ridge, a salute voiced by iron alone.

A shiver rippled through Strings.

‘Hood’s breath,’ Cuttle muttered under his breath. ‘That is a lot more frightening than their warcries were.’

Aye, as ominous as Hood’s smile. He looked back to Temul and saw the Wickan watching him. The sergeant lowered the helm onto his head once more, then grinned and nodded. Perfect, lad. Couldn’t have done better myself.

And now, Temul wasn’t alone any more, surrounded by sniping arthritic wolves who still wouldn’t accept his command. Now, the lad had Gall and three thousand blooded warriors to back his word. And that’s the last of that. Gall, if I was a religious man, I’d burn a crow-wing in your name tonight. Hood take me, I might do it anyway.

‘Gall of the Burned Tears,’ the Adjunct announced. ‘Please join us at our command quarters. We can discuss the disposition of your forces over a meal-a modest meal, alas-’

The Khundryl finally straightened. He faced the Adjunct. ‘Modest? No. We have brought our own food, and this night there shall be a feast-not a single soldier shall go without at least a mouthful of bhederin or boar!’ He swung about and scanned his retinue until he spied the one he sought. ‘Imrahl! Drag your carcass back to the wagons and bring them forward! And find the two hundred cooks and see if they’ve sobered up yet! And if they haven’t, I will have their heads!’

The warrior named Imrahl, an ancient, scrawny figure who seemed to be swimming beneath archaic bronze armour, answered with a broad, ghastly smile, then spun his horse round and kicked it into a canter back up the slope.

Gall swung about and raised both hands skyward, the crow-wings attached to the forearms seeming to snap open beneath them. ‘Let the Dogslayers cower!’ he roared. ‘The Burned Tears have begun the hunt!’

Cuttle leaned close to Strings. ‘That’s one problem solved-the Wickan lad’s finally on solid ground. One wound sewn shut, only to see another pried open.’

‘Another?’ Oh. Yes, true enough. That Wickan Fist’s ghost keeps rearing up, again and again. Poor lass.

‘As if Coltaine’s legacy wasn’t already dogging her heels… if you’ll excuse the pun,’ the sapper went on. ‘Still, she’s putting a brave face on it…’

No choice. Strings faced his squad. ‘Collect your gear, soldiers. We’ve got pickets to raise… before we eat.’ At their groans he scowled. ‘And consider yourselves lucky-missing those scouts don’t bode well for our capabilities, now, does it?’

He watched them assemble their gear. Gesler and Borduke were approaching with their own squads. Cuttle grunted at the sergeant’s side. ‘In case it’s slipped your mind, Fid,’ he said, low, ‘we didn’t see the bastards, either.’

‘You’re right,’ Strings replied, ‘it’s slipped my mind completely. Huh, there it goes again. Gone.’

Cuttle scratched the bristle on his heavy jaw. ‘Strange, what were we talking about?’

‘Bhederin and boar, I think. Fresh meat.’

‘Right. My mouth’s watering at the thought.’

Gamet paused outside the command tent. The revelry continued unabated, as the Khundryl roved through the camp, roaring their barbaric songs. Jugs of fermented milk had been broached and the Fist was grimly certain that more than one bellyful of half-charred, half-raw meat had returned to the earth prematurely out beyond the fires, or would in the short time that remained before dawn.

Next day’s march had been halved, by the Adjunct’s command, although even five bells’ walking was likely to make most of the soldiers regret this night’s excesses.

Or maybe not.

He watched a marine from his own legion stumble past, a Khundryl woman riding him, legs wrapped around his waist, arms around his neck. She was naked, the marine nearly so. Weaving, the pair vanished into the gloom.

Gamet sighed, drawing his cloak tighter about himself, then turned and approached the two Wickans standing guard outside the Adjunct’s tent.

They were from the Crow, grey-haired and looking miserable. Recognizing the Fist they stepped to either side of the entrance. He passed between them, ducking to slip between the flaps.

All of the other officers had left, leaving only the Adjunct and Gall, the latter sprawled on a massive, ancient-looking wooden chair that had come on the Khundryl wagons. The warchief had removed his helm, revealing a mass of curly hair, long and black and shimmering with grease. The midnight hue was dye, Gamet suspected, for the man had seen at least fifty summers. The tips of his moustache rested on his chest and he looked half asleep, a jug gripped by the clay handle in one huge hand. The Adjunct stood nearby, eyes lowered onto a brazier, as if lost in thought.

Were I an artist, I would paint this scene. This precise moment, and leave the viewer to wonder. He strode over to the map table, where another jug of wine waited. ‘Our army is drunk, Adjunct,’ he murmured as he poured a cup full.

‘Like us,’ Gall rumbled. ‘Your army is lost.’

Gamet glanced over at Tavore, but there was no reaction for him to gauge. He drew a breath, then faced the Khundryl. ‘We are yet to fight a major battle, Warchief. Thus, we do not yet know ourselves. That is all. We are not lost-’

‘Just not yet found,’ Gall finished, baring his teeth. He took a long swallow from his jug.

‘Do you regret your decision to join us, then?’ Gamet asked.

‘Not at all, Fist. My shamans have read the sands. They have learned much of your future. The Fourteenth Army shall know a long life, but it shall be a restless life. You are doomed to search, destined to ever hunt… for what even you do not know, nor, perhaps, shall you ever know. Like the sands themselves, wandering for eternity.’

Gamet was scowling. ‘I do not wish to offend, Warchief, but I hold little faith in divination. No mortal-no god-can say we are doomed, or destined. The future remains unknown, the one thing we cannot force a pattern upon.’

The Khundryl grunted. ‘Patterns, the lifeblood of the shamans. But not them alone, yes? The Deck of Dragons-are they not used for divination?’

Gamet shrugged. ‘There are some who hold much store in the Deck, but I am not one of them.’

‘Do you not see patterns in history, Fist? Are you blind to the cycles we all suffer through? Look upon this desert, this wasteland you cross. Yours is not the first empire that would claim it. And what of the tribes? Before the Khundryl, before the Kherahn Dhobri and the Tregyn, there were the Sanid, and the Oruth, and before them there were others whose names have vanished. Look upon the ruined cities, the old roads. The past is all patterns, and those patterns remain beneath our feet even as the stars above reveal their own patterns-for the stars we gaze upon each night are naught but an illusion from the past.’ He raised the jug again and studied it for a moment. ‘Thus, the past lies beneath and above the present, Fist. This is the truth my shamans embrace, the bones upon which the future clings like muscle.’

The Adjunct slowly turned to study the warchief. ‘We shall reach Vathar Crossing tomorrow, Gall. What will we find?’

The Khundryl’s eyes glittered. ‘That is for you to decide, Tavore Paran. It is a place of death, and it shall speak its words to you-words the rest of us will not hear.’

‘Have you been there?’ she asked. He nodded, but added nothing more.

Gamet drank down a mouthful of wine. There was a strangeness to this night, to this moment here in the Adjunct’s tent, that left his skin crawling. He felt out of place, like a simpleton who’d just stumbled into the company of scholars. The revelry in the camp beyond was dying down, and come the dawn, he knew, there would be silence. Drunken oblivion was, each time, a small, temporary death. Hood walked where the self once stood, and the wake of the god’s passage sickened mortal flesh afterwards.

He set his cup down on the map table. ‘If you’ll forgive me,’ he muttered, ‘the air in here is too… close.’

Neither replied as he walked back to the flap.

Outside, in the street beyond the two motionless Wickan guards, Gamet paused and looked up. Ancient light, is it? If so, then the patterns I see… may have died long ago. No, that does not bear thinking about. It is one of those truths that have no value, for it offers nothing but dislocation.

And he needed no fuel for that cold fire. He was too old for this war. Hood knows, I didn’t enjoy it much the first time round. Vengeance belonged to the young, after all. The time when emotions burned hottest, when life was sharp enough to cut, fierce enough to sear the soul.

He was startled by the passing of a large cattle dog. Head low, muscles rippling beneath a mottled hide literally seamed with countless scars, the silent beast padded down the aisle between the tent rows. A moment later and it disappeared into the gloom.

‘I’ve taken to following it,’ a voice said behind him.

Gamet turned. ‘Captain Keneb. I am surprised to find you still awake.’

The soldier shrugged. ‘That boar’s not sitting too well in my gut, sir.’

‘More likely that fermented milk the Khundryl brought-what is it called again?’

‘Urtathan. But no, I have experienced that brew before, and so chose to avoid it. Come the morning, I suspect three-quarters of the army will realize a similar wisdom.’

‘And the remaining quarter?’

‘Dead.’ He smiled at Gamet’s expression. ‘Sorry, sir, I wasn’t entirely serious.’

The Fist gestured for the captain to accompany him, and they began walking. ‘Why do you follow that dog, Keneb?’

‘Because I know its tale, sir. It survived the Chain of Dogs. From Hissar to the Fall outside Aren. I watched it fall almost at Coltaine’s feet. Impaled by spears. It should not have survived that.’

‘Then how did it?’

‘Gesler.’

Gamet frowned. ‘The sergeant in our legion’s marines?’

‘Aye, sir. He found it, as well as another dog. What happened then I have no idea. But both beasts recovered from what should have been mortal wounds.’

‘Perhaps a healer…’

Keneb nodded. ‘Perhaps, but none among Blistig’s guard-I made enquiries. No, there’s a mystery yet to be solved. Not just the dogs, but Gesler himself, and his corporal, Stormy, and a third soldier-have you not noted their strangely hued skin? They’re Falari, yet Falari are pale-skinned, and a desert tan doesn’t look like that at all. Curious, too, it was Gesler who delivered the Silanda.’

‘Do you believe they have made a pact with a god, Captain? Such cults are forbidden in the imperial army.’

‘I cannot answer that, sir. Nor have I evidence sufficient to make such a charge against them. Thus far, I have kept Gesler’s squad, and a few others, as the column’s rearguard.’

The Fist grunted. ‘This news is disturbing, Captain. You do not trust your own soldiers. And this is the first time you’ve told me of any of this. Have you considered confronting the sergeant directly?’

They had reached the edge of the camp. Before them stretched a broken line of hills; to their right, the dark forest of Vathar.

To Gamet’s questions, Keneb sighed and nodded. ‘They in turn do not trust me, Fist. There is a rumour in my company… that I abandoned my last soldiers, at the time of the uprising.’

And did you, Keneb? Gamet said nothing.

But it seemed that the captain heard the silent question none the less. ‘I didn’t, although I will not deny that some of the decisions I made back then could give cause to question my loyalty to the empire.’

‘You had better explain that,’ Gamet said quietly.

‘I had family with me. I sought to save them, and for a time nothing else mattered. Sir, whole companies went over to the rebels. You did not know who to trust. And as it turned out, my commander-’

‘Say no more of that, Captain. I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to know. Your family? Did you manage to save them?’

‘Aye, sir. With some timely help from an outlawed Bridgeburner-’

‘A what? Who, in Hood’s name?’

‘Corporal Kalam, sir.’

‘He’s here? In Seven Cities?’

‘He was. On his way, I think, to the Empress. From what I gathered, he had some issues he wanted to, uh, raise with her. In person.’

‘Who else knows all this?’

‘No-one, sir. I’ve heard the tale, that the Bridgeburners were wiped out. But I can tell you, Kalam was not among them. He was here, sir. And as to where he is now, perhaps the Empress alone knows.’

There was a smudge of motion in the grasses, about twenty paces distant. That dog. Hood knows what it’s up to. ‘All right, Captain. Keep Gesler in the rearguard for now. But at some point, before the battle, we’ll have to test him-I need to know if he’s reliable.’

‘Aye, sir.’

‘Your beast is wandering out there.’

‘I know. Every night. As if looking for something. I think it might be Coltaine. Looking for Coltaine. And it breaks my heart, sir.’

‘Well, if it’s true, Captain, that the dog’s looking for Coltaine, I admit to being surprised.’

‘What do you mean, sir?’

‘Because the bastard’s here. You’d have to be blind, dumb and deaf to miss him, Captain. Goodnight to you.’ He turned and strode off, feeling the need to spit, but he knew the bitter taste in his mouth would not so easily leave him.

The fire was long dead. Wrapped in his cloak, Strings sat before it, looking at but not seeing the layered bricks of ash that were all that remained of the pieces of dung. Beside him lay the scrawny Hengese lapdog that Truth said was named Roach. The bone the creature gnawed on was bigger than it, and had that bone teeth and appetite it would be the one doing the eating right now.

Contented company, then, to mock this miserable night. The blanketed forms of his squad lay motionless on all sides. They’d been too exhausted to get drunk, after raising the pickets then sitting first watch, and full bellies had quickly dragged them into sleep. Well enough, he mused, they’d be among the few spared the ravages of hangover in a few bells’ time. Even Cuttle had yet to awaken, as was his custom-or perhaps his eyes were open where he lay with his back to the hearth.

It did not matter. The loneliness Strings suffered could not be alleviated by company, not such as he might find here, in any case. Nor were his thoughts the kind he would willingly share.

They’d been spitting dust almost since the march began. Not the place for marines, unless a massive pursuit threatened the rear of the column, which was not the case. No. Keneb was punishing them, and Strings had no idea why. Even the lieutenant, who had somehow managed to avoid actually being present to command the squads, was uncertain as to the captain’s motivations. Though not displeased, of course. Then again, how can Ranal hope to acquire his stellar reputation with his soldiers coughing the entire Fourteenth’s dust?

And do I even give a damn, any more?

The night air stank of bile, as if Poliel herself stalked the camp. The sudden acquisition of three thousand veterans had done much to lift the Fourteenth’s spirits-Strings hoped there was no omen in the aftermath.

All right then, let’s consider the matter at hand. This army has its chance, now. It doesn’t need bastards like me. Why would I want to go back to Raraku anyway? I hated it the first time. I’m not that young, mouthy fool-not what I once was. Did I really think I could recapture something in that holy desert? What, exactly? Lost years? That charging momentum that belongs to the young? To soldiers like Smiles and Koryk and Bottle and Tan. I joined for revenge, but it’s not filling my belly like it used to-Hood knows, nothing does any more. Not revenge. Not loyalty. Not even friendship. Damn you, Kalam, you should’ve talked me out of it. Right there in Malaz City. You should’ve called me a fool to my face.

Gesler’s cattle dog padded into view.

Roach growled, and the bigger beast paused, nose testing the air, then settled down a few paces away. The lapdog returned to its gnawing.

‘Come ahead, then, Gesler,’ Strings muttered.

The sergeant appeared, a jug in one hand. He sat down opposite, studied the jug for a moment, then made a disgusted sound and tossed it away. ‘Can’t get drunk any more,’ he said. ‘Not me, not Stormy or Truth. We’re cursed.’

‘I can think of worse curses,’ Strings muttered.

‘Well, so can I, but still. What’s really bad is I can’t sleep. None of us can. We was at Vathar Crossing-that’s where we drew the Silanda in to wait for the Chain of Dogs. Where I got punched good and hard, too. Damn, but that surprised me. Anyway, I’m not looking forward to seeing it again. Not after what happened there.’

‘So long as the bridge hasn’t been swept away,’ Strings replied.

Gesler grunted.

Neither spoke for a time, then: ‘You’re thinking of running, aren’t you, Fid?’

He scowled.

Gesler slowly nodded. ‘It’s bad when you lose ’em. Friends, I mean. Makes you wonder why you’re still here, why the damned sack of blood and muscle and bones keeps on going. So you run. Then what? Nothing. You’re not here, but wherever you are, you’re still there.’

Strings grimaced. ‘I’m supposed to make sense of that? Listen, it’s not just what happened to the Bridgeburners. It’s about being a soldier. About doing this all over again. I’ve realized that I didn’t even like it much the first time round. There’s got to come a point, Gesler, when it’s no longer the right place to be, or the right thing to do.’

‘Maybe, but I ain’t seen it yet. It comes down to what you’re good at. Nothing else, Fid. You don’t want to be a soldier no more. Fine, but what are you going to do instead?’

‘I was apprenticed as a mason, once-’

‘And apprentices are ten years old, Fiddler. They ain’t crabby creak-bones like you. Look, there’s only one thing for a soldier to do, and that’s soldiering. You want it to end? Well, there’s a battle coming. Should give you plenty of opportunity. Throw yourself on a sword and you’re done.’ Gesler paused and jabbed a finger at Strings. ‘But that’s not the problem, is it? It’s because now you’ve got a squad, and you’re responsible for ’em. That’s what you don’t like, and that’s what’s got you thinking of running.’

Strings rose. ‘Go pet your dog, Gesler.’ He walked off into the darkness.

The grass was wet underfoot as he made his way through the pickets. Muted challenges sounded, to which he replied, and then he was out beyond the camp. Overhead, the stars had begun to withdraw as the sky lightened. Capemoths were winging in swirling clouds towards the forested hills of Vathar, the occasional rhizan diving through them, upon which they exploded outward, only to reform once the danger was past.

On the ridge three hundred paces ahead of the sergeant stood a half-dozen desert wolves. They’d done their howling for the night, and now lingered out of curiosity, or perhaps simply awaiting the army’s departure, so they could descend into the basin and pick at the leavings.

Strings paused at a faint singing, low and mournful and jarring, that seemed to emanate from a depression just this side of the ridge. He’d heard it other nights, always beyond the encampment, but had not been inclined to investigate. There was nothing inviting to that thin, atonal music.

But now it called to him. With familiar voices. Heart suddenly aching, he walked closer.

The depression was thick with yellowed grasses, but a circle had been flattened in the centre. The two Wickan children, Nil and Nether, were seated there, facing one another, with the space between them occupied by a broad, bronze bowl.

Whatever filled it was drawing butterflies, a score at present, but more were gathering.

Strings hesitated, then made to leave.

‘Come closer,’ Nil called out in his reedy voice. ‘Quickly, the sun rises!’

Frowning, the sergeant approached. As he reached the edge of the depression, he halted in sudden alarm. Butterflies swarmed around him, a pale yellow frenzy filling his eyes-brushing air against his skin like a thousand breaths. He spun in place, but could see nothing beyond the mass of fluttering wings.

‘Closer! He wants you here!’ Nether’s high, piping voice. But Strings could not take another step. He was enveloped, and within that yellow shroud, there was a… presence.

And it spoke. ‘Bridgeburner. Raraku waits for you. Do not turn back now.’

‘Who are you?’ Strings demanded. ‘Who speaks?’

‘I am of this land, now. What I was before does not matter. I am awakened. We are awakened. Go to join your kin. In Raraku-where he will find you. Together, you must slay the goddess. You must free Raraku of the stain that lies upon it.’

‘My kin? Who will I find there?’

‘The song wanders, Bridgeburner. It seeks a home. Do not turn back.’

All at once the presence vanished. The butterflies rose skyward, spinning and swirling into the sunlight. Higher, ever higher…

Small hands clutched at him, and he looked down. Nether stared up at him, her face filled with panic. Two paces behind her stood Nil, his arms wrapped about himself, his eyes filling with tears.

Nether was screaming. ‘Why you? We have called and called! Why you!?’

Shaking his head, Strings pushed her away. ‘I-I don’t know!’

‘What did he say? Tell us! He had a message for us, yes? What did he say?’

‘For you? Nothing, lass-why, who in Hood’s name do you think that was?’

‘Sormo E’nath!’

‘The warlock? But he-’ Strings staggered another step back. ‘Stop that damned singing!’

The Wickans stared.

And Strings realized that neither was singing-neither could have been-for it continued, filling his head.

Nether asked, ‘What singing, soldier?’

He shook his head again, then turned and made his way back towards camp. Sormo had no words for them. Nor did he. Nor did he want to see their faces-their helpless desperation, their yearning for a ghost that was gone-gone for ever. That was not Sormo E’nath. That was something else-Hood knows what. ‘We are awakened.’ What does that mean? And who’s waiting for me in Raraku? My kin-I’ve none, barring the Bridgeburners-gods below! Quick Ben? Kalam? One, or both? He wanted to scream, if only to silence the song that whispered through his head, the dreadful, painfully incomplete music that gnawed at his sanity.

Raraku, it seemed, was not yet done with him. Strings silently railed. Damn all of this!

To the north, through the smoky wreaths of the encampment, the mantled hills of Vathar seemed to unfurl the sun’s golden light. On the ridge behind him, the wolves began howling.

Gamet settled back in the saddle as his horse began the descent towards the river. It had not been long enough for the land to entirely swallow the victims of the slaughter that had occurred here. Bleached bones gleamed in the sandy mud of the shoreline. Fragments of cloth, pieces of leather and iron. And the ford itself was barely recognizable. Remnants of a floating bridge were heaped on it on the upstream side, and on this barrier more detritus had piled. Sunken, waterlogged wagons, trees, grasses and reeds, now anchored by silts, a hulking, bowed mass that had formed a kind of bridge. To the Fist’s eye, it seemed the whole thing was moments from breaking loose.

Scouts had crossed it on foot. Gamet could see a score of mud-smeared Seti on the opposite side, making their way up the steep slope.

The forests on both sides of the river were a mass of colour, their branches festooned with strips of cloth, with braids and painted human bones that twisted in the wind.

Mesh’arn tho’ledann. The Day of Pure Blood. Upstream, on either bank for as far as he could see, long poles had been thrust into the mud at angles so that they hung over the swirling water. The carcasses of sheep and goats hung from them. From some the blood still drained, whilst others were well along in their rot, seething with flies, capemoths and carrion birds. Small white flecks rained down from the sacrificed animals, to which fish swarmed, and it was a moment before Gamet realized what those flecks were-maggots, falling into the river.

Captain Keneb drew his horse alongside Gamet’s own as they approached the bank. ‘That’s not mud binding that flotsam, is it? Oh, a little silt and sand, but mostly-’

‘Blood, aye,’ Gamet muttered.

They were trailing the Adjunct, who was flanked by Nil and Nether. The three reached the water’s edge and halted their mounts. Behind Gamet and Keneb, the front companies of the 10th Legion were on the slope, within sight of the river and its ragged bridge.

‘Those sacrifices, do you think they were done to welcome us, Fist? I can’t imagine such slaughter to be ongoing-the herds would be wiped out in no time.’

‘Some have been here a while,’ Gamet observed. ‘But you must be right, Captain.’

‘So we would cross a river of blood. If these damned tribes consider that gesture an honourable one, then the Queen has stolen their sanity. This notion of seeing the world metaphorically has ever driven me to distraction. The Seven Cities native sees everything differently. To them, the landscape is animate-not just the old notion of spirits, but in some other, far more complicated way.’

Gamet glanced at the man. ‘Is it worth making a study of it, Captain?’

Keneb started, then half smiled, adding a strangely despondent shrug. ‘That particular dialogue spoke of the rebellion and only the rebellion-for months and months before it finally happened. Had we bothered to read those signs, Fist, we could have been better prepared.’

They had drawn up behind the Adjunct and the two Wickans. At Keneb’s words, Tavore turned her horse round and faced the captain. ‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘knowledge is not enough.’

‘Your pardon, Adjunct,’ Keneb said.

Tavore fixed her flat gaze on Gamet. ‘Bring forward the marines, Fist. We will require sappers and munitions. We shall cross a ford, not a bridge of detritus held in place by blood.’

‘Aye, Adjunct. Captain, if you will join me…’

They pulled their horses round and made their way back up the slope. Glancing over at Keneb, Gamet saw that the man was grinning. ‘What amuses you, Captain?’

‘Munitions, sir. The sappers will weep.’

‘So long as they don’t destroy the ford itself, I will be glad to give them comforting hugs.’

‘I wouldn’t let them hear a promise like that, sir.’

‘No, I suppose you’re right.’

They reached the front ranks of the 10th Legion and Gamet waved a messenger over. As the rider approached, Fist Tene Baralta joined the woman and the two arrived together.

‘Sappers?’ the Red Blade asked.

Gamet nodded. ‘Aye.’

Tene Baralta nodded and said to the messenger, ‘Take word to the marine lieutenants. The Adjunct requires some demolition. Immediately.’

‘Aye, sir,’ she replied, wheeling her horse round.

They watched her canter back along the line, then the Red Blade faced Gamet. ‘They will see it as an insult. This bridge of blood is intended as a blessing.’

‘She knows that, Tene Baralta,’ Gamet replied. ‘But the footing is far too treacherous. That should be obvious, even to our hidden observers.’

The large man shrugged, armour clanking with the motion. ‘Perhaps a quiet word to Gall of the Khundryl, a rider sent out to find those observers, to ensure that no misunderstanding occurs.’

‘A good suggestion,’ Gamet replied.

‘I shall see to it, then.’

The Red Blade rode off.

‘Forgive me if I am too forward, Fist,’ Keneb murmured, ‘but what just occurred strikes me as the very thing that the Adjunct would dislike most.’

‘Do you believe she dislikes initiative among her officers, Captain?’

‘I wouldn’t presume-’

‘You just did.’

‘Ah, well, I see your point. My apologies, Fist.’

‘Never apologize when you’re right, Keneb. Wait here for the squads.’ He set off down to where the Adjunct still sat astride her horse at the shoreline.

Nil and Nether had dismounted and were now kneeling, heads bowed, in the muddy water.

Gamet could see, upon arriving, Tavore’s tightly bridled anger. Aye, they cling still to the chains, and it seems letting go is the last thing they would do… given the choice. Well, I was the one who mentioned initiative. ‘I see the children are playing in the mud, Adjunct.’

Her head snapped round and her eyes narrowed.

Gamet went on, ‘I advise we assign a minder for them, lest they injure themselves in their exuberance. After all, Adjunct, I doubt the Empress intended you to mother them, did she?’

‘Well, no,’ she drawled after a moment. ‘They were to be my mages.’

‘Aye, so I wonder, have you instructed them to commune with the ghosts? Do they seek to appease the river spirits?’

‘No, again, Fist. In truth, I have no idea what they’re doing.’

‘I am of the opinion that you are proving far too permissive a mother, Adjunct.’

‘Indeed. Then I give you leave to act in my stead, Fist.’

There was no way Nil and Nether were uncognizant of the conversation behind them, but neither altered their position. With a loud sigh, Gamet dismounted and walked to the muddy waterline.

Then reached down and closed a hand on their hide shirts, just behind their necks, and yanked the two Wickans upright.

Loud squeals, then hissing fury as the Fist shook them both for a moment, then turned them round until they faced the Adjunct. ‘This is what a Wickan grandmother would have done. I know, somewhat harsher than is the Malazan style of parenting. Then again, these two children are not Malazan, are they?’ He set them down.

‘Perhaps it’s too late, Fist,’ Tavore said, ‘but I would remind you that these two children are also warlocks.’

‘I’ve seen no sign of it yet, Adjunct. But if they want to curse me, then so be it.’

For the moment, however, neither seemed inclined to do so. Rage had given way to something very much resembling a sulk.

Tavore cleared her throat. ‘Nil, Nether, I believe there will be need for representatives of our army to seek out the local tribes in this forest, to assure them we are aware of the meaning behind their gesture. None the less, we must ensure safe passage across this ford.’

‘Adjunct, Fist Tene Baralta has suggested something similar, but using the Khundryl.’

‘Perhaps representatives from both, then.’ To the Wickans: ‘Report to Fist Tene Baralta.’

Gamet watched the siblings exchange a glance, then Nil said to the Adjunct, ‘As you wish.’

Nether cast a parting look of venom at Gamet as they headed off.

‘Pray you won’t have to pay for that,’ Tavore said when they were out of earshot.

Gamet shrugged.

‘And next time, have Tene Baralta bring his suggestions to me personally.’

‘Aye, Adjunct.’

Cuttle and Strings scrambled back from the shoreline. Soaked and sheathed in blood-crusted mud, they none the less could not keep grins from their faces. A doubling of pleasure in that the munitions had come from the Fourteenth’s stores, not their own. Twelve crackers that would drive the explosions horizontally, three cussers placed shallow in the detritus to loosen the wreckage.

And a bare handful of heartbeats before it all went up.

The rest of the army had pulled back to the top of the slope on this side; the Seti scouts on the opposite side were nowhere to be seen. Leaving only the two sappers-

– running like madmen.

A thundering whump sent both men flying. Sand, mud, water, followed by a rain of debris.

Hands over their heads, they lay motionless for a long moment, with the only sound to reach them the rush of water sweeping over the cleared ford. Then Strings looked across at Cuttle, to find him looking back.

Maybe two cussers would have done.

They exchanged nods, then clambered to their feet.

The ford was indeed clear. The water beyond seethed with flotsam, now making its way down to the Dojal Hading Sea.

Strings wiped mud from his face. ‘Think we made any holes, Cuttle?’

‘Nothing that’ll drown anyone, I’d wager. Good thing you didn’t run,’ Cuttle added in a murmur, as riders made their way down the slope behind them.

Strings shot the man a glance. ‘What don’t you hear?’

‘Not a question I can answer, is it, Fid?’

The first rider arrived-their fellow sapper, Maybe, from the 6th squad. ‘Flat and clean,’ he said, ‘but you left it too close-what’s the point of making a big explosion when you’ve got your face in the dirt when it goes off?’

‘Any other bright comments to make, Maybe?’ Cuttle growled, brushing himself down-a gesture that clearly had no chance of any kind of measurable success. ‘If not, then kindly ride out there and check for holes.’

‘Slowly,’ Strings added. ‘Let your horse find its own pace.’

Maybe’s brows rose. ‘Really?’ Then he nudged his mount forward.

Strings stared after the soldier. ‘I hate satirical bastards like him.’

‘The Wickans will skin him alive if he breaks that horse’s legs.’

‘That has the sound of a feud in the making.’

Cuttle paused in his fruitless efforts to clean himself, then frowned. ‘What?’

‘Never mind.’

Ranal and Keneb rode up. ‘Nicely done,’ the captain said. ‘I think.’

‘Should be all right,’ Strings replied. ‘So long as nobody starts firing arrows at us.’

‘Taken care of, Sergeant. Well, to your squad, the privilege of first crossing.’

‘Aye, sir.’

There should have been pleasure, in a task well done, but Strings felt nothing beyond the initial rush that had immediately followed the detonation. The broken song whispered on in his mind, a dirge lying beneath his every thought.

‘The way ahead seems clear,’ Cuttle muttered.

Aye. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.

The land rose steeply on the north side of the Vathar River, with a treeless butte towering over the trail to the west. The army’s crossing continued as the Adjunct and Gamet climbed the goat trail towards the butte’s summit. The sun was low in the sky-their second full day at the ford-and the river was made molten by the lurid streams of light off to their left, although this side of the rock prominence was in deep shadow.

The mud covering Gamet’s leather-clad legs was drying to a stiff, crack-latticed skin that shed dust as he clambered in Tavore’s wake. He was breathing hard, his undergarments soaked with sweat.

They reached the summit, emerging once more into sunlight. A brisk, hot wind swept the barren, flat rock. A ring of stones on a lower shelf, on what passed for the lee side, marked where a hearth or watch-fire had once been constructed, possibly at the time of the Chain of Dogs.

The Adjunct wiped dust from her gloves, then strode to the north edge. After a moment, Gamet followed.

The city of Ubaryd was visible, dun-coloured and sheathed in smoke, to the northeast. Beyond it glittered the Dojal Hading Sea. The city’s harbour was crowded with ships.

‘Admiral Nok,’ the Adjunct said.

‘He’s retaken Ubaryd, then.’

‘Where we will resupply, yes.’ Then she pointed northward. ‘There, Gamet. Do you see it?’

He squinted, wondering what he was supposed to look at across the vast wasteland that was the Ubaryd Odhan. Then the breath hissed between his teeth.

A fiery wall of red on the horizon, as if a second sun was setting.

‘The Whirlwind,’ Tavore said.

Suddenly, the wind was much colder, pushing hard against Gamet where he stood.

‘Beyond it,’ the Adjunct continued, ‘waits our enemy. Tell me, do you think Sha’ik will contest our approach?’

‘She would be a fool not to,’ he replied.

‘Are you certain of that? Would she rather not face unblooded recruits?’

‘It is a huge gamble, Adjunct. The march alone will have hardened the Fourteenth. Were I her, I would prefer to face a battle-weary, bruised enemy. An enemy burdened with wounded, with a shortage of arrows, horses and whatnot. And by that time of final meeting, I would also have learned something of you, Adjunct. Your tactics. As it is, Sha’ik has no way to take your measure.’

‘Yes. Curious, isn’t it? Either she is indifferent to me, or she feels she has already taken my measure-which of course is impossible. Even assuming she has spies in our army, thus far I have done little more than ensure that we march in an organized fashion.’

Spies? Gods below, I hadn’t even considered that!

Neither spoke for a time, each lost in their own thoughts as they stared northward.

The sun was vanishing on their left.

But the Whirlwind held its own fire.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

HE AWOKE TO A FAINT, DAMP NUZZLING AGAINST HIS SIDE. EYES slowly opened, head tilted downward, to see a bhok’aral pup, patchy with some sort of skin infection, curled against his stomach.

Kalam sat up, suppressing the urge to grab the creature by the neck and fling it against a wall. Compassion was not the consideration, of course. Rather, it was the fact that this subterranean temple was home to hundreds, perhaps even thousands of bhok’arala, and the creatures possessed a complex social structure-harm this pup and Kalam might find himself beneath a swarm of bull males. And small as the beasts were, they had canines to rival a bear’s. Even so, he fought to contain his revulsion as he gently pushed the mottled pup away.

It mewled pathetically and looked up at him with huge, liquid eyes.

‘Don’t even try,’ the assassin muttered, slipping free of the furs and rising. Flecks of mouldy skin covered his midriff, and the thin woollen shirt was sodden from the pup’s runny nose. Kalam removed the shirt and flung it into a corner of the small chamber.

He’d not seen Iskaral Pust in over a week. Apart from occasional tingling sensations at the tips of his fingers and toes, he was more or less recovered from the enkar’al demon’s attack. Kalam had delivered the diamonds and was now chafing to leave.

Faint singing echoed from the hallway. The assassin shook his head. Maybe one day Mogora will get it right, but in the meantime… gods below, it grates! He strode to his tattered backpack and rummaged inside until he found a spare shirt.

Sudden thumping sounded outside his door, and he turned in time to see it flung open. Mogora stood framed in the doorway, a wooden bucket in one hand, a mop in the other. ‘Was he here? Just now? Was he here? Tell me!’

‘I haven’t seen him in days,’ Kalam replied.

‘He has to clean the kitchen!’

‘Is this all you do, Mogora? Chase after Iskaral Fust’s shadow?’

‘All!’ The word was a shriek. She stormed up to him, mop thrust forward like a weapon. ‘Am I the only one using the kitchen! No!’

Kalam stepped back, wiping spittle from his face, but the Dal Honese woman advanced.

‘And you! Do you think your suppers arrive all by themselves? Do you think the shadow gods simply conjure them out of thin air? Did I invite you here? Are you my guest? Am I your serving wench?’

‘Gods forbid-’

‘Be quiet! I’m talking, not you!’ She thrust the mop and bucket into Kalam’s hands, then, spying the bhok’aral pup curled up on the cot, dropped into a predatory crouch and edged closer, fingers hooked. ‘There you are,’ she murmured. ‘Leave your skin everywhere, will you? Not for much longer!’

Kalam stepped into her path. ‘Enough, Mogora. Get out of here.’

‘Not without my pet.’

‘Pet? You’re intending to wring its neck, Mogora!’

‘So?’

He set the mop and bucket down. I can’t believe this. I’m defending a mangy bhok’aral… from a D’ivers witch.

There was movement in the doorway. Kalam gestured. ‘Look behind you, Mogora. Harm this pup and you’ll have to face them.’

She spun, then hissed. ‘Scum! Iskaral’s beget-always spying! That’s how he hides-using them!’

With a ululating scream she charged into the doorway. The bhok’arala massed there shrieked in answer and scattered, although Kalam saw one dart between her legs and leap onto the cot. It scooped the pup up under one arm then bolted for the corridor.

Mogora’s wailing cries dwindled as she continued her pursuit.

‘Hee hee.’

Kalam turned.

Iskaral Pust emerged from the shadows in the far corner. He was covered in dust, a sack draped over one bony shoulder.

The assassin scowled. ‘I’ve waited long enough in this madhouse, Priest.’

‘Indeed you have.’ He cocked his head, tugging at one of the few wisps of hair that remained on his pate. ‘I’m done and he can go, yes? I should be kindly, open, scattering gold dust to mark his path out into the waiting world. He’ll suspect nothing. He’ll believe he leaves of his own free will. Precisely as it should be.’ Iskaral Pust suddenly smiled, then held out the sack. ‘Here, a few diamonds for you. Spend them here and there, spend them everywhere! But remember, you must breach the Whirlwind-into the heart of Raraku, yes?’

‘That is my intent,’ Kalam growled, accepting the sack and stuffing it into his own backpack. ‘We do not proceed at cross-purposes, Priest, although I realize you’d rather we did, given your perverse mind. Even so… breach the Whirlwind… without being detected. How will I manage that?’

‘With the help of Shadowthrone’s chosen mortal. Iskaral Pust, High Priest and Master of Rashan and Meanas and Thyr! The Whirlwind is a goddess, and her eyes cannot be everywhere. Now, quickly collect your belongings. We must leave! She’s coming back, and I’ve made another mess in the kitchen! Hurry!’

They emerged from the warren of shadow beneath a large outcropping, in daylight, less than a hundred paces from the raging wall of the Whirlwind. After three strides forward Kalam reached out and grabbed the priest by the arm and spun him round.

‘That singing? Where in Hood’s name is that singing coming from, Iskaral? I’d heard it in the monastery and thought it was Mogora-’

‘Mogora can’t sing, you fool! I hear nothing, nothing but the wild winds and the hiss of sands! You are mad! Is he mad? Yes, possibly. No, likely. The sun broiled his brain in that thick skull. A gradual dissolution-but of course not, of course not. It’s the Tanno song, that’s what it is. Even so, he’s probably still mad. Two entirely separate issues. The song. And his madness. Distinct, unrelated, both equally confounding of all that my masters plan. Or potentially so. Potentially. There is no certainty, not in this damned land, especially not here. Restless Raraku. Restless!’

With a snarl, Kalam pushed the man away, began walking towards the wall of the Whirlwind. After a moment, Iskaral Pust followed.

‘Tell me how we’re going to manage this, Priest.’

‘It’s simple, really. She’ll know the breach. Like a knife stab. That cannot be avoided. Thus, misdirection! And there is none better at misdirection than Iskaral Pust!’

They arrived to within twenty paces of the seething wall of sand. Swirling clouds of dust engulfed them. Iskaral Pust moved close, revealing a grin filled with grit. ‘Hold tight, Kalam Mekhar!’ Then he vanished.

A massive shape loomed over the assassin, and he was suddenly gathered up in a swarm of arms.

The azalan.

Running, now, flowing faster than any horse along the edge of the Whirlwind Wall. The demon tucked Kalam close under its torso-then plunged through.

A thundering roar filled the assassin’s ears, sand flailing against his skin. He squeezed shut his eyes.

Multiple thuds, and the azalan was racing across packed sand. Ahead lay the ruins of a city.

Fire flared beneath the demon, a path of flames raging in its wake.

The raised tel of the dead city rose before them. The azalan did not even slow, swarming up the ragged wall. A fissure loomed, not large enough for the demon-but sufficient for Kalam.

He was flung into the crack as the azalan flowed over it. Landing heavily amidst rubble and potsherds. Deep in the fissure’s shadow.

Sudden thunder overhead, shaking the rock. Then again and again, seeming to stitch a path back towards the wall of sand. The detonations then ceased, and only the roar of the Whirlwind remained.

I think he made it back out. Fast bastard.

The assassin remained motionless for a time, wondering if the ruse had succeeded. Either way, he would wait for night before venturing out.

He could no longer hear the song. Something to be grateful for.

The walls of the fissure revealed layer upon layer of potsherds on one side, a sunken and heaved section of cobblestone street on another, and the flank of a building’s interior wall-the plaster chipped and scarred-on the last. The rubble beneath him was loose and felt deep.

Checking his weapons, Kalam settled down to wait.

Apsalar in his arms, Cutter emerged from the gateway. The woman’s weight sent waves of pain through his bruised shoulder, and he did not think he would be able to carry her for long.

Thirty paces ahead, at the edge of the clearing where the two trails converged, lay scores of corpses. And in their midst stood Cotillion.

Cutter walked over to the shadow god. The Tiste Edur lay heaped in a ring around a clear spot off to the left, but Cotillion’s attention seemed to be on one body in particular, lying at his feet. As the Daru approached, the god slowly settled down into a crouch, reaching out to brush hair back from the corpse’s face.

It was the old witch, Cutter saw, the one who had been burned. The one I thought was the source of power in the Malazan party. But it wasn’t her. It was Traveller. He halted a few paces away, brought up short by Cotillion’s expression, the ravaged look that made him suddenly appear twenty years older. The gloved hand that had swept the hair back now caressed the dead woman’s scorched face.

‘You knew her?’ Cutter asked.

‘Hawl,’ he replied after a moment. ‘I’d thought Surly had taken them all out. None of the Talon’s command left. I thought she was dead.’

‘She is.’ Then he snapped his mouth shut. A damned miserable thing to say-

‘I made them good at hiding,’ Cotillion went on, eyes still on the woman lying in the bloody, trampled grass. ‘Good enough to hide even from me, it seems.’

‘What do you think she was doing here?’

Cotillion flinched slightly. ‘The wrong question, Cutter. Rather, why was she with Traveller? What is the Talon up to? And Traveller… gods, did he know who she was? Of course he did-oh, she’s aged and not well, but even so…’

‘You could just ask him,’ Cutter murmured, grunting as he shifted Apsalar’s weight in his arms. ‘He’s in the courtyard behind us, after all.’

Cotillion reached down to the woman’s neck and lifted into view something strung on a thong. A yellow-stained talon of some sort. He pulled it loose, studied it for a moment, then twisted round and flung it towards Cutter.

It struck his chest, then fell to lie in Apsalar’s lap.

The Daru stared down at it for a moment, then looked up and met the god’s eyes.

‘Go to the Edur ship, Cutter. I am sending you two to another… agent of ours.’

‘To do what?’

‘To wait. In case you are needed.’

‘For what?’

‘To assist others in taking down the Master of the Talon.’

‘Do you know where he or she is?’

He lifted Hawl into his arms and straightened. ‘I have a suspicion. Now, finally, a suspicion about all of this.’ He turned, the frail figure held lightly in his arms, and studied Cutter for a moment. A momentary, wan smile. ‘Look at the two of us,’ he said, then he swung away and began walking towards the forest trail.

Cutter stared after him.

Then shouted: ‘It’s not the same! It’s not!’ We’re not-

The forest shadows swallowed the god.

Cutter hissed a curse, then he turned to the trail that led down to the shoreline.

The god Cotillion walked on until he reached a small glade off to one side of the path. He carried his burden into its centre, and gently set her down.

A host of shadows spun into being opposite, until the vague, insubstantial form of Shadowthrone slowly resolved itself. For a change, the god said nothing for a long time.

Cotillion knelt beside Hawl’s body. ‘Traveller is here, Ammanas. In the Edur ruins.’

Ammanas grunted softly, then shrugged. ‘He’ll have no interest in answering our questions. He never did. Stubborn as any Dal Honese.’

‘You’re Dal Honese,’ Cotillion observed.

‘Precisely.’ Ammanas slipped noiselessly forward until he was on the other side of the corpse. ‘It’s her, isn’t it.’

‘It is.’

‘How many times do our followers have to die, Cotillion?’ the god asked, then sighed. ‘Then again, she clearly ceased being a follower some time ago.’

‘She thought we were gone, Ammanas. The Emperor and Dancer. Gone. Dead.’

‘And in a way, she was right.’

‘In a way, aye. But not in the most important way.’

‘Which is?’

Cotillion glanced up, then grimaced. ‘She was a friend.’

‘Ah, that most important way.’ Ammanas was silent for a moment, then he asked, ‘Will you pursue this?’

‘I see little choice. The Talon is up to something. We need to stop them-’

‘No, friend. We need to ensure that they fail. Have you found a… trail?’

‘More than that. I’ve realized who is masterminding the whole thing.’

Shadowthrone’s hooded head cocked slightly. ‘And that is where Cutter and Apsalar are going now?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are they sufficient?’

Cotillion shook his head. ‘I have other agents available. But I would Apsalar be relatively close, in case something goes wrong.’

Ammanas nodded. ‘So, where?’

‘Raraku.’

Though he could not see it, Cotillion knew that his companion’s face was splitting into a broad grin. ‘Ah, dear Rope, time’s come, I think, that I should tell you more of my own endeavours…’

‘The diamonds I gave Kalam? I’d wondered about those.’

Ammanas gestured at Hawl’s corpse. ‘Let us take her home-our home, that is. And then we must speak… at length.’

Cotillion nodded.

‘Besides,’ Shadowthrone added as he straightened, ‘Traveller being so close by makes me nervous.’

A moment later, the glade was empty, barring a few sourceless shadows that swiftly dwindled into nothing.

Cutter reached the sandstone shoreline. Four runners had been pulled up on the flat, grainy shelf of rock. Anchored in the bay beyond were two large dromons, both badly damaged.

Around the runners gear lay scattered, and two huge trees had been felled and dragged close-probably intended to replace the snapped masts. Barrels containing salted fish had been broached, while other casks stood in a row nearby, refilled with fresh water.

Cutter set Apsalar down, then approached one of the runners. They were about fifteen paces from bow to stern, broad of beam with an unstepped mast and side-mounted steering oar. There were two oarlocks to a side. The gunnels were crowded with riotous carvings.

A sudden coughing fit from Apsalar swung him round.

She bolted upright, spat to clear her throat, then wrapped her arms about herself as shivering racked through her.

Cutter quickly returned to her side.

‘D-Darist?’

‘Dead. But so are all the Edur. There was one among the Malazans…’

‘The one of power. I felt him. Such… anger!’

Cutter went over to the nearest water cask, found a ladle. He dipped it full and walked back. ‘He called himself Traveller.’

‘I know him,’ she whispered, then shuddered. ‘Not my memories. Dancer’s. Dancer knew him. Knew him well. They were… three. It was never just the two of them-did you know that? Never just Dancer and Kellanved. No, he was there. Almost from the very beginning. Before Tayschrenn, before Dujek, before even Surly.’

‘Well, it makes no difference now, Apsalar,’ Cutter said. ‘We need to leave this damned island-Traveller can have it, as far as I’m concerned. Are you recovered enough to help me get one of these runners into the water? We’ve a bounty in supplies, too-’

‘Where are we going?’

He hesitated.

Her dark eyes flattened. ‘Cotillion.’

‘Another task for us, aye.’

‘Do not walk this path, Crokus.’

He scowled. ‘I thought you’d appreciate the company.’ He offered her the ladle.

She studied him for a long moment, then slowly accepted it.

‘Pan’potsun Hills.’

‘I know,’ Lostara drawled.

Pearl smiled. ‘Of course you would. And now, at last, you discover the reason I asked you along-’

‘Wait a minute. You couldn’t have known where this trail would lead-’

‘Well, true, but I have faith in blind nature’s penchant for cycles. In any case, is there a buried city nearby?’

‘Nearby? You mean, apart from the one we’re standing on?’ She was pleased to see his jaw drop. ‘What did you think all these flat-topped hills were, Claw?’

He loosened his cloak. ‘Then again, this place will suit just fine.’

‘For what?’

He cast her a sardonic glance. ‘Well, dear, a ritual. We need to find a trail, a sorcerous one, and it’s old. Did you imagine we would just wander directionless through this wasteland in the hopes of finding something?’

‘Odd, I thought that was what we’ve been doing for days.’

‘Just getting some distance between us and that damned Imass head,’ he replied, walking over to a flat stretch of stone, where he began kicking it clear of rubble. ‘I could feel its unhuman eyes on us all the way across that valley.’

‘Him and the vultures, aye.’ She tilted her head back and studied the cloudless sky. ‘Still with us, in fact. Those damned birds. Not surprising. We’re almost out of water, with even less food. In a day or two we’ll be in serious trouble.’

‘I will leave such mundane worries with you, Lostara.’

‘Meaning, if all else fails, you can always kill and eat me, right? But what if I decide to kill you first? Obsessed as I am with mundane worries.’

The Claw settled down into a crosslegged position. ‘It’s become much cooler here, don’t you think? A localized phenomenon, I suspect. Although I would imagine that some measure of success in the ritual I am about to enact should warm things up somewhat.’

‘If only the excitement of disbelief,’ Lostara muttered, walking over to the edge of the tel and looking southwestward to where the red wall of the Whirlwind cut a curving slash across the desert. Behind her, she heard muted words, spoken in some language unknown to her. Probably gibberish. I’ve seen enough mages at work to know they don’t need words… not unless they’re performing. Pearl was probably doing just that. He was one for poses, even while affecting indifference to his audience of one. A man seeking his name in tomes of history. Some crucial role upon which the fate of the empire pivots.

She turned as he slapped dust from hands, and saw him rising, a troubled frown on his all-too-handsome face.

‘That didn’t take long,’ she said.

‘No.’ Even he sounded surprised. ‘I was fortunate indeed. A local earth spirit was killed… close by. By a confluence of dire fates, an incidental casualty. Its ghost lingers, like a child seeking lost parents, and so would speak to any and every stranger who happens by, provided that stranger is prepared to listen.’

Lostara grunted. ‘All right, and what did it have to say?’

‘A terrible incident-well, the terrible incident, the one that killed the spirit-the details of which lead me to conclude there is some connec-’

‘Good,’ she interrupted. ‘Lead on, we’re wasting time.’

He fell silent, giving her a wounded look that might well have been sincere. I asked the question, I should at least let him answer it.

A gesture, and he was making his way down the tel’s steep, stepped side.

She shouldered her pack and followed.

Reaching the base, the Claw led her around its flank and directly southward across a stony flat. The sunlight bounced from its bleached surface with a fierce, blinding glare. Barring a few ants scurrying underfoot, there was no sign of life on this withered stretch of ground. Small stones lay in elongated clusters here and there, as if describing the shorelines of a dying lake, a lake that had dwindled into a scatter of pools, leaving nothing but crusted salt.

They walked on through the afternoon, until a ridge of hills became visible to the southwest, with another massive mesa rising to its left. The flat began to form a discernible basin that seemed to continue on between the two formations. With dusk only moments away, they reached the even base of that descent, the mesa looming on their left, the broken hill ahead and to their right.

Towards the centre of this flat lay the wreckage of a trader’s wagon, surrounded by scorched ground where white ashes spun in small vortices that seemed incapable of going anywhere.

Pearl leading, they strode into the strange burned circle.

The ashes were filled with tiny bones, burned white and grey by some intense heat, crunching underfoot. Bemused, Lostara crouched down to study them. ‘Birds?’ she wondered aloud.

Pearl’s gaze was on the wagon or, perhaps, something just beyond it. At her question he shook his head. ‘No, lass. Rats.’

She saw a tiny skull lying at her feet, confirming his words. ‘There are rats of a sort, in the rocky areas-’

He glanced over at her. ‘These are-were-D’ivers. A particularly unpleasant individual named Gryllen.’

‘He was slain here?’

‘I don’t think so. Badly hurt, perhaps.’ Pearl walked over to a larger heap of ash, and squatted to sweep it away.

Lostara approached.

He was uncovering a corpse, nothing but bones-and those bones were all terribly gnawed.

‘Poor bastard.’

Pearl said nothing. He reached down into the collapsed skeleton and lifted into view a small chunk of metal. ‘Melted,’ he muttered after a moment, ‘but I’d say it’s a Malazan sigil. Mage cadre.’

There were four additional heaps similar to that which had hidden the chewed bones. Lostara walked to the nearest one and began kicking the ash away.

‘This one’s whole!’ she hissed, seeing fire-blackened flesh.

Pearl came over. Together, they brushed the corpse clear from the hips upward. Its clothing had been mostly burned off, and fire had raced across the skin but had seemed incapable of doing much more than scorch the surface.

As the Claw swept the last of the ash from the corpse’s face, its eyes opened.

Cursing, Lostara leapt back, one hand sweeping her sword free of its scabbard.

‘It’s all right,’ Pearl said, ‘this thing isn’t going anywhere, lass.’

Behind the corpse’s wrinkled, collapsed lids, there were only gaping pits. Its lips had peeled back with desiccation, leaving it with a ghastly, blackened grin.

‘What remains?’ Pearl asked it. ‘Can you still speak?’

Faint sounds rasped from it, forcing Pearl to lean closer.

‘What did it say?’ Lostara demanded.

The Claw glanced back at her. ‘He said, “I am named Clam, and I died a terrible death.” ’

‘No argument there-’

‘And then he became an undead porter.’

‘For Gryllen?’

‘Aye.’

She sheathed her tulwar. ‘That seems a singularly unpleasant profession following death.’

Pearl’s brows rose, then he smiled. ‘Alas, we won’t get much more from dear old Clam. Nor the others. The sorcery holding them animate fades. Meaning Gryllen is either dead or a long way away. In any case, recall the warren of fire-it was unleashed here, in a strange manner. And it left us a trail.’

‘It’s too dark, Pearl. We should camp.’

‘Here?’

She reconsidered, then scowled in the gloom. ‘Perhaps not, but none the less I am weary, and if we’re looking for signs, we’ll need daylight in any case.’

Pearl strode from the circle of ash. A gesture and a sphere of light slowly formed in the air above him. ‘The trail does not lead far, I believe. One last task, Lostara. Then we can find somewhere to camp.’

‘Oh, very well. Lead on, Pearl.’

Whatever signs he followed, they were not visible to Lostara. Even stranger, it seemed to be a weaving, wandering one, a detail that had the Claw frowning, his steps hesitant, cautious. Before too long, he was barely moving at all, edging forward by the smallest increments. And she saw that his face was beaded with sweat.

She bit back on her questions, but slowly drew her sword once more.

Then, finally, they came to another corpse.

The breath whooshed from Pearl, and he sank down to his knees in front of the large, burned body.

She waited until his breathing slowed, then cleared her throat and said, ‘What just happened, Pearl?’

‘Hood was here,’ he whispered.

‘Aye, I can well see that-’

‘No, you don’t understand.’ He reached out to the corpse, his hand closing into a fist above its broad chest, then punched down.

The body was simply a shell. It collapsed with a dusty crunch beneath the blow.

He glared back at her. ‘Hood was here. The god himself, Lostara. Came to take this man-not just his soul, but also the flesh-all that had been infected by the warren of fire-the warren of light, to be more precise. Gods, what I would do for a Deck of Dragons right now. There’s been a change in Hood’s… household.’

‘And what is the significance of all this?’ she asked. ‘I thought we were looking for Felisin.’

‘You’re not thinking, lass. Remember Stormy’s tale. And Truth’s. Felisin, Heboric, Kulp and Baudin. We found what was left of Kulp back at Gryllen’s wagon. And this’-his gesture was fierce-‘is Baudin. The damned Talon-though the proof’s not around his neck, alas. Remember their strange skin? Gesler, Stormy, Truth? The same thing happened to Baudin, here.’

‘You called it an infection.’

‘Well, I don’t know what it is. That warren changed them. There’s no telling in what way.’

‘So, we’re left with Felisin and Heboric Light Touch.’

He nodded.

‘Then I feel I should tell you something,’ Lostara continued. ‘It may not be relevant…’

‘Go on, lass.’

She turned to face the hills to the southwest. ‘When we trailed that agent of Sha’ik’s… into those hills-’

‘Kalam Mekhar.’

‘Aye. And we ambushed Sha’ik up at the old temple at the summit-on the trail leading into Raraku-’

‘As you have described.’

She ignored his impatience. ‘We would have seen all this. Thus, the events we’ve just stumbled upon here occurred after our ambush.’

‘Well, yes.’

She sighed and crossed her arms. ‘Felisin and Heboric are with the army of the Apocalpyse, Pearl. In Raraku.’

‘What makes you so certain?’

She shrugged. ‘Where else would they be? Think, man. Felisin’s hatred of the Malazan Empire must be all-consuming. Nor would Heboric hold much love for the empire that imprisoned and condemned him. They were desperate, after Gryllen’s attack. After Baudin and Kulp died. Desperate, and probably hurting.’

He slowly nodded, straightened from his crouch beside the corpse. ‘One thing you’ve never explained to me, Lostara. Why did your ambush fail?’

‘It didn’t. We killed Sha’ik-I would swear to it. A quarrel in the forehead. We could not recover the body because of her guards, who proved too much for our company. We killed her, Pearl.’

‘Then who in Hood’s name is commanding the Apocalypse?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Can you show me this place of ambush?’

‘In the morning, aye. I can take you right there.’ He simply stared at her, even as the sphere of light above them began to waver, then finally vanished with a faint sigh.

His memories had awakened. What had lain within the T’lan Imass, layered, indurated by the countless centuries, was a landscape Onrack could read once more. And so, what he saw before him now… gone were the mesas on the horizon, the wind-sculpted towers of sandstone, the sweeps of windblown sand and white ribbons of ground coral. Gone the gorges, arroyos and dead riverbeds, the planted fields and irrigation ditches. Even the city to the north, on the horizon’s very edge, clinging like a tumour to the vast winding river, became insubstantial, ephemeral to his mind’s eye.

And all that he now saw was as it had been… so very long ago.

The inland sea’s cloudy waves, rolling like the promise of eternity, along a shoreline of gravel that stretched north, unbroken all the way to the mountains that would one day be called the Thalas, and south, down to encompass the remnant now known as the Clatar Sea. Coral reefs revealed their sharkskin spines a sixth of a league beyond the beach, over which wheeled seagulls and long-beaked birds long since extinct.

There were figures walking along the strand. Renig Obar’s clan, come to trade whale ivory and dhenrabi oil from their tundra homelands, and it seemed they had brought the chill winds with them… or perhaps the unseemly weather that had come to these warm climes hinted of something darker. A Jaghut, hidden in some fasthold, stirring the cauldron of Omtose Phellack. Much more of this and the reefs would die, and with them all the creatures that depended on them.

A breath of unease fluttered through the Onrack who was flesh and blood. But he had stepped aside. No longer a bonecaster for his clan-Absin Tholai was far superior in the hidden arts, after all, and more inclined to the hungry ambition necessary among those who followed the Path of Tellann. All too often, Onrack had found his mind drawn to other things.

To raw beauty, such as he saw before him now. He was not one for fighting, for rituals of destruction. He was always reluctant to dance in the deeper recesses of the caves, where the drums pounded and the echoes rolled through flesh and bone as if one was lying in the path of a stampeding herd of ranag-a herd such as the one Onrack had blown onto the cave walls around them. His mouth bitter with spit, charcoal and ochre, the backs of his hands stained where they had blocked the spray from his lips, defining the shapes on the stone. Art was done in solitude, images fashioned without light, on unseen walls, when the rest of the clan slept in the outer caverns. And it was a simple truth, that Onrack had grown skilled in the sorcery of paint out of that desire to be apart, to be alone.

Among a people where solitude was as close to a crime as possible. Where to separate was to weaken. Where the very breaking of vision into its components-from seeing to observing, from resurrecting memory and reshaping it beyond the eye’s reach, onto walls of stone-demanded a fine-edged, potentially deadly propensity.

A poor bonecaster. Onrack, you were never what you were meant to be. And when you broke the unwritten covenant and painted a truthful image of a mortal Imass, when you trapped that lovely, dark woman in time, there in the cavern no-one was meant to find… ah, then you fell to the wrath of kin. Of Logros himself, and the First Sword.

But he remembered the expression on the young face of Onos T’oolan, when he had first looked upon the painting of his sister. Wonder and awe, and a resurgence of an abiding love-Onrack was certain that he had seen such in the First Sword’s face, was certain that others had, as well, though of course none spoke of it. The law had been broken, and would be answered with severity.

He never knew if Kilava had herself gone to see the painting; had never known if she had been angered, or had seen sufficient to understand the blood of his own heart that had gone into that image.

But that is the last memory I now come to.

‘Your silences,’ Trull Sengar muttered, ‘always send shivers through me, T’lan Imass.’

‘The night before the Ritual,’ Onrack replied. ‘Not far from this place where we now stand. I was to have been banished from my tribe. I had committed a crime to which there was no other answer. Instead, events eclipsed the clans. Four Jaghut tyrants had risen and had formed a compact. They sought to destroy this land-as indeed they have.’

The Tiste Edur said nothing, perhaps wondering what, precisely, had been destroyed. Along the river there were irrigation ditches, and strips of rich green crops awaiting the season’s turn. Roads and farmsteads, the occasional temple, and only to the southwest, along that horizon, did the broken ridge of treeless bluffs mar the scene.

‘I was in the cavern-in the place of my crime,’ Onrack continued after a moment. ‘In darkness, of course. My last night, I’d thought, among my own kind. Though in truth I was already alone, driven from the camp to this final place of solitude. And then someone came. A touch. A body, warm. Soft beyond belief-no, not my wife, she had been among the first to shun me, for what I had done, for the betrayal it had meant. No, a woman unknown to me in the darkness…’

Was it her? I will never know. She was gone in the morning, gone from all of us, even as the Ritual was proclaimed and the clans gathered. She defied the call-no, more horrible yet, she had killed her own kin, all but Onos himself. He had managed to drive her off-the truest measure of his extraordinary martial prowess.

Was it her? Was there blood unseen on her hands? That dried, crumbled powder I found on my own skin-which I’d thought had come from the overturned bowl of paint. Fled from Onos… to me, in my shameful cave.

And who did I hear in the passage beyond? In the midst of our love-making, did someone come upon us and see what I myself could not?

‘You need say no more, Onrack,’ Trull said softly.

True. And were I mortal flesh, you would see me weep, and thus say what you have just said. Thus, my grief is not lost to your eyes, Trull Sengar. And yet still you ask why I proclaimed my vow…

‘The trail of the renegades is… fresh,’ Onrack said after a moment.

Trull half smiled. ‘And you enjoy killing.’

‘Artistry finds new forms, Edur. It defies being silenced.’ The T’lan Imass slowly turned to face him. ‘Of course, changes have come to us. I am no longer free to pursue this hunt… unless you wish the same.’

Trull grimaced, scanned the lands to the southwest. ‘Well, it’s not as inviting a prospect as it once was, I’ll grant you. But, Onrack, these renegades are agents in the betrayal of my people, and I mean to discover as much as I can of their role. Thus, we must find them.’

‘And speak with them.’

‘Speak with them first, aye, and then you can kill them.’

‘I no longer believe I am capable of that, Trull Sengar. I am too badly damaged. Even so, Monok Ochem and Ibra Gholan are pursuing us. They will suffice.’

The Tiste Edur’s head had turned at this. ‘Just the two of them? You are certain?’

‘My powers are diminished, but yes, I believe so.’

‘How close?’

‘It does not matter. They withhold their desire for vengeance against me… so that I might lead them to those they have hunted from the very beginning.’

‘They suspect you will join the renegades, don’t they?’

‘Broken kin. Aye, they do.’

‘And will you?’

Onrack studied the Tiste Edur for a moment. ‘Only if you do, Trull Sengar.’

They were at the very edge of cultivated land, and so it was relatively easy to avoid contact with any of the local residents. The lone road they crossed was empty of life in both directions for as far as they could see. Beyond the irrigated fields, the rugged natural landscape reasserted itself. Tufts of grasses, sprawls of water-smoothed gravel tracking down dry gulches and ravines, the occasional guldindha tree.

The hills ahead were saw-toothed, the facing side clawed into near cliffs.

Those hills were where the T’lan Imass had broken the ice sheets, the first place of defiance. To protect the holy sites, the hidden caves, the flint quarries. Where, now, the weapons of the fallen were placed.

Weapons these renegades would reclaim. There was no provenance to the sorcery investing those stone blades, at least with respect to Tellann. They would feed the ones who held them, provided they were kin to the makers-or indeed made by those very hands long ago. Imass, then, since the art among the mortal peoples was long lost. Also, finding those weapons would give the renegades their final freedom, severing the power of Tellann from their bodies.

‘You spoke of betraying your clan,’ Trull Sengar said as they approached the hills. ‘These seem to be old memories, Onrack.’

‘Perhaps we are destined to repeat our crimes, Trull Sengar. Memories have returned to me-all that I had thought lost. I do not know why.’

‘The severing of the Ritual?’

‘Possibly.’

‘What was your crime?’

‘I trapped a woman in time. Or so it seemed. I painted her likeness in a sacred cave. It is now my belief that, in so doing, I was responsible for the terrible murders that followed, for her leaving the clan. She could not join in the Ritual that made us immortal, for by my hand she had already become so. Did she know this? Was this the reason for her defying Logros and the First Sword? There are no answers to that. What madness stole her mind, so that she would kill her closest kin, so that, indeed, she would seek to kill the First Sword himself, her own brother?’

‘A woman not your mate, then.’

‘No. She was a bonecaster. A Soletaken.’

‘Yet you loved her.’

A lopsided shrug. ‘Obsession is its own poison, Trull Sengar.’

A narrow goat trail led up into the range, steep and winding in its ascent. They began climbing.

‘I would object,’ the Tiste Edur said, ‘to this notion of being doomed to repeat our mistakes, Onrack. Are no lessons learned? Does not experience lead to wisdom?’

‘Trull Sengar. I have just betrayed Monok Ochem and Ibra Gholan. I have betrayed the T’lan Imass, for I chose not to accept my fate. Thus, the same crime as the one I committed long ago. I have always hungered for solitude from my kind. In the realm of the Nascent, I was content. As I was in the sacred caves that lie ahead.’

‘Content? And now, at this moment?’

Onrack was silent for a time. ‘When memories have returned, Trull Sengar, solitude is an illusion, for every silence is filled by a clamorous search for meaning.’

‘You’re sounding more… mortal with every day that passes, friend.’

‘Flawed, you mean.’

The Tiste Edur grunted. ‘Even so. Yet look at what you are doing right now, Onrack.’

‘What do you mean?’

Trull Sengar paused on the trail and looked at the T’lan Imass. His smile was sad. ‘You’re returning home.’

A short distance away were camped the Tiste Liosan. Battered, but alive. Which was, Malachar reflected, at least something.

Strange stars gleamed overhead, their light wavering, as if brimming with tears. The landscape stretching out beneath them seemed a lifeless wasteland of weathered rock and sand.

The fire they had built in the lee of a humped mesa had drawn strange moths the size of small birds, as well as a host of other flying creatures, including winged lizards. A swarm of flies had descended on them earlier, biting viciously before vanishing as quickly as they had come. And now, those bites seemed to crawl, as if the insects had left something behind.

There was, to Malachar’s mind, an air of… unwelcome to this realm. He scratched at one of the lumps on his arm, hissed as he felt something squirm beneath the hot skin. Turning back to the fire, he studied his seneschal.

Jorrude knelt beside the hearth, head lowered-a position that had not changed in some time-and Malachar’s disquiet deepened. Enias squatted close by the seneschal, ready to move if yet another fit of anguish overwhelmed his master, but those disturbing sessions were arriving ever less frequently. Orenas remained guarding the horses, and Malachar knew he stood with sword drawn in the darkness beyond the fire’s light.

There would be an accounting one day, he knew, with the T’lan Imass. The Tiste Liosan had proceeded with the ritual in good faith. They had been too open. Never trust a corpse. Malachar did not know if such a warning was found in the sacred text of Osric’s Visions. If not, he would see that it was added to the collected wisdom of the Tiste Liosan. When we return. If we return.

Jorrude slowly straightened. His face was ravaged with grief. ‘The Guardian is dead,’ he announced. ‘Our realm is assailed, but our brothers and sisters have been warned and even now ride out to the gates. The Tiste Liosan will hold. Until Osric’s return, we shall hold.’ He slowly swung to face each of them in turn, including Orenas who silently appeared out of the gloom. ‘For us, another task. The one we were assigned to complete. On this realm, somewhere, we will find the trespassers. The thieves of the Fire. I have quested, and they have never been closer to my senses. They are in this world, and we shall find them.’

Malachar waited, for he knew there was more.

Jorrude then smiled. ‘My brothers. We know nothing of this place. But that is a disadvantage that will prove temporary, for I have also sensed the presence of an old friend to the Tiste Liosan. Not far away. We shall seek him out-our first task-and ask him to acquaint us with the rigours of this land.’

‘Who is this old friend, Seneschal?’ Enias asked.

‘The Maker of Time, Brother Enias.’

Malachar slowly nodded. A friend of the Tiste Liosan indeed. Slayer of the Ten Thousand. Icarium.

‘Orenas,’ Jorrude said, ‘prepare our horses.’

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

KARSA ORLONG WAS NO STRANGER TO STONE. RAW COPPER GOUGED from outcroppings, tin and their mating that was bronze, such materials had their place. But wood and stone were the words of the hands, the sacred shaping of will.

Parallel flakes, long and thin, translucent slivers punched away from the blade, leaving ripples reaching across, from edge to wavy spine. Smaller flakes removed from the twin edges, first one side, then flipping the blade over between blows, back and forth, all the way up the length.

To fight with such a weapon would demand changes to the style with which Karsa was most familiar. Wood flexed, slid with ease over shield rims, skipped effortlessly along out-thrust sword-blades. This flint sword’s serrated edges would behave differently, and he would have to adjust, especially given its massive weight and length.

The handle proved the most challenging. Flint did not welcome roundness, and the less angular the handle became, the less stable the striking platforms. For the pommel he worked the stone into a step-fractured, oversized diamond shape. The nearly right-angled step-fractures would normally be viewed as dangerous flaws, inviting a focus for shattering energies, but the gods had promised to make the weapon unbreakable, so Karsa dismissed his instinctive worry. He would wait until he found suitable materials for a cross-hilt.

He had no idea how much time passed during his making of the sword. All other considerations vanished for him-he felt no hunger, no thirst, and did not notice as the walls of the cavern grew slick with condensation, as the temperature ever rose, until both he and the stone were sheathed in sweat. He was also unmindful of the fire in the boulder-lined hearth that burned ceaselessly, unfuelled, the flames flickering with strange colours.

The sword commanded all. The feel of his companion ghosts resonated from the blade into his fingertips, then along every bone and muscle in his body. Bairoth Gild, whose cutting irony seemed to have somehow infused the weapon, as had Delum Thord’s fierce loyalty-these were unexpected gifts, a mysterious contortion of themes, of aspects, that imbued a personality to the sword.

Among the legends there were songs celebrating cherished weapons and the Teblor heroes who wielded them. Karsa had always held that the notion of weapons possessing wills of their own was little more than a poet’s conceit. And those heroes who had betrayed their blades and so suffered tragic ends, well, in each tale, Karsa had no difficulty in citing other, more obvious flaws in their actions, sufficient to explain the hero’s demise.

The Teblor never passed down weapons to heirs-all possessions accompanied the one who had died, for what worth a ghost bereft of all it had acquired in its mortal life?

The flint sword that found shape in Karsa’s hands was therefore unlike anything he had known-or heard of-before. It rested on the ground before him, strangely naked despite the leather he had wrapped around the grip. No hilt, no scabbard. Massive and brutal, yet beautiful in its symmetry, despite the streaks of blood left by his lacerated hands.

He became aware of the searing heat in the cavern, and slowly looked up.

The seven gods stood facing him in a flattened crescent, the hearth’s flames flickering across their battered, broken bodies. They held weapons to match the one now lying before him, though scaled down to suit their squat forms.

‘You have come in truth,’ Karsa observed.

The one he knew as Urugal replied, ‘We have. We are now free of the Ritual’s bindings. The chains, Karsa Orlong, are broken.’

Another spoke in a low, rasping voice. ‘The Warren of Tellann has found your sword, Karsa Orlong.’ The god’s neck was mangled, broken, the head fallen onto a shoulder and barely held in place by muscle and tendons. ‘It shall never shatter.’

Karsa grunted. ‘There are broken weapons in the caverns beyond.’

‘Elder sorcery,’ Urugal answered. ‘Inimical warrens. Our people have fought many wars.’

‘You T’lan Imass have indeed,’ the Teblor warrior said. ‘I walked upon stairs made of your kin. I have seen your kind, fallen in such numbers as to defy comprehension.’ He scanned the seven creatures standing before him. ‘What battle took you?’

Urugal shrugged. ‘It is of no significance, Karsa Orlong. A struggle of long ago, an enemy now dust, a failure best forgotten. We have known wars beyond counting, and what have they achieved? The Jaghut were doomed to extinction-we but hastened the inevitable. Other enemies announced themselves and stood in our path. We were indifferent to their causes, none of which was sufficient to turn us aside. And so we slaughtered them. Again and again. Wars without meaning, wars that changed virtually nothing. To live is to suffer. To exist-even as we do-is to resist.’

‘This is all that was learned, Karsa Orlong,’ said the T’lan Imass woman known as Siballe. ‘In its totality. Stone, sea, forest, city-and every creature that ever lived-all share the same struggle. Being resists unbeing. Order wars against the chaos of dissolution, of disorder. Karsa Orlong, this is the only worthy truth, the greatest of all truths. What do the gods themselves worship, but perfection? The unattainable victory over nature, over nature’s uncertainty. There are many words for this struggle. Order against chaos, structure against dissolution, light against dark, life against death. But they all mean the same thing.’

The broken-necked T’lan Imass spoke in a whisper, his words a droning chant. ‘The ranag has fallen lame. Is distanced from the herd. Yet walks on in its wake. Seeking the herd’s protection. Time will heal. Or weaken. Two possibilities. But the lame ranag knows naught but stubborn hope. For that is its nature. The ay have seen it and now close. The prey is still strong. But alone. The ay know weakness. Like a scent on the cold wind. They run with the stumbling ranag. And drive it away from the herd. Still, it is stubborn hope. It makes its stand. Head lowered, horns ready to crush ribs, send the enemy flying. But the ay are clever. Circle and attack, then spring away. Again and again. Hunger wars with stubborn hope. Until the ranag is exhausted. Bleeding. Staggering. Then the ay all attack at once. Nape of neck. Legs. Throat. Until the ranag is dragged down. And stubborn hope gives way, Karsa Orlong. It gives way, as it always must, to mute inevitability.’

The Teblor bared his teeth. ‘Yet your new master would harbour that lame beast. Would offer it a haven.’

‘You cross the bridge before we have built it, Karsa Orlong,’ Urugal said. ‘It seems Bairoth Gild taught you how to think, before he himself failed and so died. You are indeed worthy of the name Warleader.’

‘Perfection is an illusion,’ Siballe said. ‘Thus, mortal and immortal alike are striving for what cannot be achieved. Our new master seeks to alter the paradigm, Karsa Orlong. A third force, to change for ever the eternal war between order and dissolution.’

‘A master demanding the worship of imperfection,’ the Teblor growled.

Siballe’s head creaked in a nod. ‘Yes.’

Karsa realized he was thirsty and walked over to his pack, retrieving a waterskin. He drank deep, then returned to his sword. He closed both hands about the grip and lifted it before him, studying its rippled length.

‘An extraordinary creation,’ Urugal said. ‘If Imass weapons could have a god…’

Karsa smiled at the T’lan Imass he had once knelt before, in a distant glade, in a time of youth-when the world he saw was both simple and… perfect. ‘You are not gods.’

‘We are,’ Urugal replied. ‘To be a god is to possess worshippers.’

‘To guide them,’ Siballe added.

‘You are wrong, both of you,’ Karsa said. ‘To be a god is to know the burden of believers. Did you protect? You did not. Did you offer comfort, solace? Were you possessed of compassion? Even pity? To the Teblor, T’lan Imass, you were slavemasters, eager and hungry, making harsh demands, and expecting cruel sacrifices-all to feed your own desires. You were the Teblor’s unseen chains.’ His eyes settled on Siballe. ‘And you, woman, Siballe the Unfound, you were the taker of children.’

‘Imperfect children, Karsa Orlong, who would otherwise have died. And they do not regret my gifts.’

‘No, I would imagine not. The regret remains with the mothers and fathers who surrendered them. No matter how brief a child’s life, the love of the parents is a power that should not be denied. And know this, Siballe, it is immune to imperfection.’ His voice was harsh to his own ears, grating out from a constricted throat. ‘Worship imperfection, you said. A metaphor you made real by demanding that those children be sacrificed. Yet you were-and remain-unmindful of the most crucial gift that comes from worship. You have no understanding of what it is. But even that is not your worst crime. No. You then gave us your own burdens.’ He shifted his gaze. ‘Tell me, Urugal, what have the Teblor done to deserve that?’

‘Your own people have forgotten-’

‘Tell me.’

Urugal shrugged. ‘You failed.’

Karsa stared at the battered god, unable to speak. The sword trembled in his hands. He had held it up for all this time, and now, finally, its weight threatened to drag his arms down. He fixed his eyes on the weapon, then slowly lowered the tip to rest on the stone floor.

‘We too failed, once, long ago,’ Siballe said. ‘Such things cannot be undone. Thus, you may surrender to it, and so suffer beneath its eternal torment. Or you can choose to free yourself of the burden. Karsa Orlong, our answer to you is simple: to fail is to reveal a flaw. Face that revelation, do not turn your back on it, do not make empty vows to never repeat your mistakes. It is done. Celebrate it! That is our answer, and indeed is the answer shown us by the Crippled God.’

The tension drained from Karsa’s shoulders. He drew a deep breath, released it slowly. ‘Very well. To you, and to the Crippled God, I now give my answer.’

Rippled stone made no silent passage through the air. Instead, it roared, like pine needles exploding into flame. Up, over Karsa’s head, wheeling in a sliding circle that then swept down and across.

The edge taking Siballe between left shoulder and neck. Bones snapping as the massive blade ploughed through, diagonally, across the chest, severing the spine, down and through the ribcage, sweeping clear just above her right hip.

She had lifted her own sword to intercept at some point, and it had shattered, flinging shards and slivers into the air-Karsa had not even felt the impact.

He whipped the huge blade in a curving arc in his follow-through, lifting it to poise, suddenly motionless, over his head.

The ruined form that was Siballe collapsed in clattering pieces onto the stone floor. The T’lan Imass had been cut in half.

The remaining six had raised their own weapons, but none moved to attack.

Karsa snarled. ‘Come ahead, then.’

‘Will you now destroy the rest of us?’ Urugal asked.

‘Her army of foundlings will follow me,’ the Teblor growled, sneering down at Siballe. Then he glared up once more. ‘You will leave my people-leave the glade. You are done with us, T’lan Imass. I have delivered you here. I have freed you. If you ever appear before me again, I will destroy you. Walk the dreams of the tribal elders, and I will come hunting you. And I shall not relent. I, Karsa Orlong, of the Uryd, of the Teblor Thelomen Toblakai, so avow.’ He took a step closer, and the six T’lan Imass flinched. ‘You used us. You used me. And, for my reward, what did you just offer?’

‘We sought-’

‘You offered a new set of chains. Now, leave this place. You have all you desired. Get out.’

The six T’lan Imass walked towards the cave mouth. A momentary occluding of the sunlight spilling into the front cavern, then they were gone.

Karsa lowered his sword. He looked down at Siballe.

‘Unexpected,’ she said.

The warrior grunted. ‘I’d heard you T’lan Imass were hard to kill.’

‘Impossible, Karsa Orlong. We… persist. Will you leave me here?’

‘There is to be no oblivion for you?’

‘Once, long ago, a sea surrounded these hills. Such a sea would free me to the oblivion you speak of. You return me to a fate-and a punishment-that I have spent millennia seeking to escape. I suppose that is apt enough.’

‘What of your new master, this Crippled God?’

‘He has abandoned me. It would appear that there are acceptable levels of imperfection-and unacceptable levels of imperfection. I have lost my usefulness.’

‘Another god that understands nothing of what it is to be a god,’ Karsa rumbled, walking over to his pack.

‘What will you do now, Karsa Orlong?’

‘I go in search of a horse.’

‘Ah, a Jhag horse. Yes, they can be found to the southwest of here, on the odhan. Rare. You may be searching for a long time.’

The Teblor shrugged. He loosened the strings that closed the mouth of the pack and walked over to the shambles that was Siballe. He lifted the part of her containing the head and right shoulder and arm.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Do you need the rest?’

‘No. What-’

Karsa pushed her head, shoulder and arm into his pack, then drew the strings once more. He would need a harness and a scabbard for the sword, but that would have to wait. He shrugged into the pack’s straps, then straightened and leaned the sword over his right shoulder.

A final glance around.

The hearth still raged with a sorcerous fire, though it had begun flickering more rapidly now, as if using up the last of its unseen fuel. He thought about kicking gravel over it to douse it, then shrugged and turned to the cave mouth.

As he came to the entrance, two figures suddenly rose before him, blocking the light.

Karsa’s sword whipped across his path, the flat of the blade thundering against both figures, sending them flying off the ledge.

‘Get out of my way,’ the warrior growled, stepping out into the sunlight.

He spared neither intruder another glance as he set off along the trail, where it angled southwest.

Trull Sengar groaned, then opened his eyes. He lifted his head, wincing at the countless sharp pains pressing into his back. That flint sword had thrown him down a scree of stone chips… although it had been hapless Onrack who had taken the brunt of the blow. Even so, his chest ached, and he feared his ribs were bruised, if not cracked.

The T’lan Imass was awkwardly regaining its feet a dozen paces away.

Trull spat and said, ‘Had I known the door was barred, I would have knocked first. That was a damned Thelomen Toblakai.’

The Tiste Edur saw Onrack’s head snap round to stare back up at the cave.

‘What is it?’ Trull demanded. ‘He’s coming down to finish us?’

‘No,’ the T’lan Imass replied. ‘In that cave… the Warren of Tellann lingers…’

‘What of it?’

Onrack began climbing the rock slide toward the cavern’s mouth.

Hissing his frustration, Trull clambered upward and followed, slowly, pausing every few steps until he was able to find his breath once more.

When he entered the cave he gave a shout of alarm. Onrack was standing inside a fire, the rainbow-coloured flames engulfing him. And the T’lan Imass held, in its right hand, the shattered remains of another of its kind.

Trull stepped forward, then his feet skidded out from under him and he fell hard onto a bed of sharp flint chips. Pain thundered from his ribs, and it was some time before he could breathe once more. Cursing, he rolled onto his side-gingerly-then carefully climbed upright. The air was hot as a forge.

Then the cavern was suddenly dark-the strange fire had gone out.

A pair of hands closed on Trull’s shoulders.

‘The renegades have fled,’ said Onrack. ‘But they are close. Come.’

‘Right, lead on, friend.’

A moment before they emerged into the sunlight, sudden shock raced through Trull Sengar. A pair of hands.

Karsa skirted the valley side, making his way along what passed for a trail. Countless rockslides had buried it every ten paces or so, forcing him to scramble across uncertain, shifting gravel, raising clouds of dust in his wake.

On second consideration, he realized that one of the two strangers who had blocked his exit from the cave had been a T’lan Imass. Not surprising, since the entire valley, with all its quarries, mines and tombs, was a site holy to them… assuming anything could be holy to creatures that were undead. And the other-not human at all. But familiar none the less. Ah, like the ones on the ship. The grey-skinned ones I killed.

Perhaps he should retrace his route. His sword had yet to drink real blood, after all. Barring his own, of course.

Ahead, the trail cut sharply upward, out of the valley. Thoughts of having to repeat this dust-fouled, treacherous route decided him. He would save the blooding of his sword for more worthy enemies. He made his way upward.

It was clear the six T’lan Imass had not taken this route. Fortunate for them. He had lost his patience with their endless words, especially when the deeds they had done shouted louder, loud enough to overwhelm their pathetic justifications. He reached the crest and pulled himself onto level ground. The vista stretching to the southwest was as untamed as any place Karsa had yet to see in Seven Cities. No signs of civilization were apparent-no evidence at all that this land had ever been broken. Tall prairie grasses waved in the hot wind, cloaking low, rolling hills that continued on to the horizon. Clumps of low, bushy trees filled the basins, flickering dusty green and grey as the wind shook their leaves.

The Jhag Odhan. He knew, suddenly, that this land would capture his heart with its primal siren call. Its scale… matched his own, in ways he could not define. Thelomen Toblakai have known this place, have walked it before me. A truth, though he was unable to explain how he knew it to be so.

He lifted his sword. ‘Bairoth Delum-so I name you. Witness. The Jhag Odhan. So unlike our mountain fastnesses. To this wind I give your name-see how it races out to brush the grasses, to roll against the hill and through the trees. I give this land your name, Bairoth Delum.’

That warm wind sang against the sword’s rippled blade with moaning cadence.

A flash of movement in the grasses, a thousand paces distant. Wolves, fur the colour of honey, long-limbed, taller than any he had ever before seen. Karsa smiled.

He set forth.

The grasses reached to just beneath his chest, the ground underfoot hardpacked between the knotted roots. Small creatures rustled continually from his path, and he startled the occasional deer-a small breed, reaching no higher than his knees, that hissed like an arrow between the stalks as it fled.

One proved not quite fast enough to avoid his scything blade, and Karsa would eat well this night. Thus, his sword’s virgin thirst was born of necessity, not the rage of battle. He wondered if the ghosts had known displeasure at such an ignoble beginning. They had surrendered their ability to communicate with him upon entering the stone, though Karsa’s imagination had no difficulty in finding Bairoth’s sarcastic commentary, should he seek it. Delum’s measured wisdom was more difficult, yet valued all the more for that.

The sun swept its even arc across the cloudless sky as he marched on. Towards dusk he saw bhederin herds to the west, and, two thousand paces ahead, a herd of striped antelope crested a hilltop to watch him for a time, before wheeling as one and vanishing from sight.

The western horizon was a fiery conflagration when he reached the place where they had stood.

Where a figure awaited him.

The grasses had been flattened in a modest circle. A three-legged brazier squatted in its centre, filled with orange-glowing pieces of bhederin dung that cast forth no smoke. Seated behind it was a Jaghut. Bent and gaunt to the point of emaciation, wearing ragged skins and hides, long grey hair hanging in strands over a blotched, wrinkled brow, eyes the colour of the surrounding grass.

The Jaghut glanced up as Karsa approached, offering the Teblor something between a grimace and a smile, his yellowed tusks gleaming. ‘You have made a mess of that deer skin, Toblakai. I will take it none the less, in exchange for this cookfire.’

‘Agreed,’ Karsa replied, dropping the carcass beside the brazier.

‘Aramala contacted me, and so I have come to meet you. You have done her a noble service, Toblakai.’

Karsa set down his pack and squatted before the brazier. ‘I hold no loyalty to the T’lan Imass.’

The Jaghut reached across and collected the deer. A small knife flashed in his hand and he began cutting just above the animal’s small hoofs. ‘An expression of their gratitude, after she fought alongside them against the Tyrants. As did I, although I was fortunate enough to escape with little more than a broken spine. Tomorrow, I will lead you to one far less fortunate than either Aramala or myself.’

Karsa grunted. ‘I seek a Jhag horse, not an introduction to your friends.’

The ancient Jaghut cackled. ‘Blunt words. Thelomen Toblakai indeed. I had forgotten, and so lost my appreciation. The one I will take you to shall call out to the wild horses-and they will come.’

‘A singular skill.’

‘Aye, and hers alone, for it was, by and large, by her hand and her will that the horses came into being.’

‘A breeder, then.’

‘Of sorts,’ the Jaghut nodded amicably. He began peeling the hide from the deer. ‘The few of my fallen kin still alive will greatly appreciate this skin, despite the damage wrought by your ghastly stone sword. The aras deer are fleet, and clever. They never use the same trail-ha, they do not even make trails! And so one cannot lie in wait. Nor are snares of any use. And when pursued, where do they go? Why, into the bhederin herds, under the very beasts themselves. Clever, I said. Very clever.’

‘I am Karsa Orlong, of the Uryd-’

‘Yes, yes, I know. From distant Genabackis. Little different from my fallen kin, the Jhag. Ignorant of your great and noble history-’

‘Less ignorant than I once was.’

‘Good. I am named Cynnigig, and now you are even less ignorant.’

Karsa shrugged. ‘The name means nothing to me.’

‘Of course not, it’s mine. Was I infamous? No, though once I aspired to be. Well, for a moment or two. But then I changed my mind. You, Karsa Orlong, you are destined for infamy. Perhaps indeed you have already achieved it, back in your homeland.’

‘I think not. No doubt I am believed dead, and nothing of what I did is known to my family or my tribe.’

Cynnigig cut off a haunch and threw it on the flames. A cloud of smoke rose from the hissing, spitting fire. ‘So you might think, but I would hazard otherwise. Word travels, no matter what the barriers. The day you return, you will see.’

‘I care not for fame,’ Karsa said. ‘I did once…’

‘And then?’

‘I changed my mind.’

Cynnigig laughed once again, louder this time. ‘I have brought wine, my young friend. In yonder chest, yes, there.’

Karsa straightened and walked over. The chest was massive, iron-bounded and thick-planked, robust enough to challenge even Karsa, should he choose to lift it. ‘This should have wheels and a train of oxen,’ the Teblor muttered as he crouched before it. ‘How did you bring it with you?’

‘I didn’t. It brought me.’

Games with words. Scowling, Karsa lifted the lid.

A single carafe of crystal stood in its centre, flanked by a pair of chipped clay beakers. The wine’s deep red colour gleamed through the transparent crystal, bathing the otherwise empty interior of the chest with a warm, sunset hue. Karsa stared down into it for a moment, then grunted. ‘Aye, I can see that it would fit you, provided you curled up. You and the wine and the brazier-’

‘The brazier! That would be a hot journey!’

The Teblor’s scowl deepened. ‘Unlit, of course.’

‘Ah, yes, of course. Cease your gawking, then, and pour us some wine. I’m about to turn the meat here.’

Karsa reached down, then snatched his hand back. ‘It’s cold in there!’

‘I prefer my wine chilled, even the red. I prefer everything chilled, in fact.’

Grimacing, the Teblor picked up the carafe and the two beakers. ‘Then someone must have carried you here.’

‘Only if you believe all that I tell you. And all that you see, Karsa Orlong. A T’lan Imass army marched by here, not so long ago. Did they find me? No. Why? I was hidden in my chest, of course. Did they find the chest? No, because it was a rock. Did they note the rock? Perhaps. But then, it was only a rock. Now, I know what you’re thinking, and you would be precisely correct. The sorcery I speak of is not Omtose Phellack. But why would I seek to employ Omtose Phellack, when that is the very scent the T’lan Imass hunted? Oh no. Is there some cosmic law that Jaghut can only use Omtose Phellack? I’ve read a hundred thousand night skies and have yet to see it written there-oh, plenty of other laws, but nothing approaching that one, neither in detail nor intent. Thus saving us the bloody recourse of finding a Forkrul Assail to adjudicate, and believe me, such adjudication is invariably bloody. Rarely indeed is anyone satisfied. Rarer still that anyone is left alive. Is there justice in such a thing, I ask you? Oh yes, perhaps the purest justice of all. On any given day, the aggrieved and the aggriever could stand in each other’s clothes. Never a question of right and wrong, in truth, simply one of deciding who is least wrong. Do you grasp-’

‘What I grasp,’ Karsa cut in, ‘is the smell of burning meat.’

‘Ah, yes. Rare are my moments of discourse-’

‘I had no idea.’

‘-which cannot be said for this meat. Of course you wouldn’t, since we have just met. But I assure you, I have little opportunity to talk-’

‘There in your chest.’

Cynnigig grinned. ‘Precisely. You have the gist of it. Precisely. Thelomen Toblakai indeed.’

Karsa handed the Jaghut a beaker filled with wine. ‘Alas, my hand has warmed it some.’

‘I’ll suffer the degradation, thank you. Here, help yourself to the deer. Charcoal is good for you, did you know that? Cleanses the digestive tract, confounds the worms, turns your excrement black. Black as a forest bear’s. Recommended if you are being pursued, for it will fool most, barring those who have made a study of excrement, of course.’

‘And do such people exist?’

‘I have no idea. I rarely get out. What preening empires have risen only to then fall beyond the Jhag Odhan? Pomposity choking on dust, these are cycles unending among short-lived creatures. I do not grieve for my own ignorance. Why should I? Not knowing what I have missed means I do not miss what I do not know. How could I? Do you see? Aramala was ever questing for such pointless knowledge, and look where it got her. Same for Phyrlis, whom you will meet tomorrow. She can never see beyond the leaves in front of her face, though she ceaselessly strives to do so, as if the vast panorama offers something other than time’s insectile crawl. Empires, thrones, tyrants and liberators, a hundred thousand tomes filled with versions of the same questions, asked over and over again. Will answers deliver their promised solace? I think not. Here, cook some more, Karsa Orlong, and drink more wine-you see the carafe never empties. Clever, isn’t it? Now, where was I?’

‘You rarely get out.’

‘Indeed. What preening empires have risen only to then fall beyond the Jhag Odhan? Pomposity choking…’

Karsa’s eyes narrowed on the Jhag Odhan, then he reached for the wine.

A lone tree stood on ground that was the summit of a hill that in turn abutted a larger hill. Sheltered from the prevailing winds, it had grown vast, its bark thin and peeling as if it was skin unable to contain the muscular breadth underneath. Branches as thick around as Karsa’s thigh reached out from the massive, knotted trunk. Its top third was thickly leaved, forming broad, flattened canopies of dusty green.

‘Looks old, doesn’t it?’ Cynnigig said as they climbed towards it, the Jaghut walking with a hooked, sideways gait. ‘You have no idea how old, my young friend. No idea. I dare not reveal to you the truth of its antiquity. Have you seen its like before? I think not. Perhaps reminiscent of the guldindha, such as can be found here and there across the odhan. Reminiscent, as a ranag is reminiscent of a goat. More than simply a question of stature. No, it is in truth a question of antiquity. An Elder species, this tree. A sapling when an inland sea hissed salty sighs over this land. Tens of thousands of years, you wonder? No. Hundreds of thousands. Once, Karsa Orlong, these were the dominant trees across most of the world. All things know their time, and when that time is past, they vanish-’

‘But this one hasn’t.’

‘No sharper an observance could be made. And why, you ask?’

‘I do not bother, for I know you will tell me in any case.’

‘Of course I shall, for I am of a helpful sort, a natural proclivity. The reason, my young friend, shall soon be made evident.’

They clambered over the last of the rise and came to the flat ground, eternally shadowed beneath the canopy and so free of grasses. The tree and all its branches, Karsa now saw, were wrapped in spiders’ webs that somehow remained entirely translucent no matter how thickly woven, revealed only by a faint flickering reflection. And beneath that glittering shroud, the face of a Jaghut stared back at him.

‘Phyrlis,’ Cynnigig said, ‘this is the one Aramala spoke of, the one seeking a worthy horse.’

The Jaghut woman’s body remained visible here and there, revealing that the tree had indeed grown around her. Yet a single shaft of wood emerged from just behind her right collarbone, rejoining the main trunk along the side of her head.

‘Shall I tell him your story, Phyrlis? Of course, I must, if only for its remarkability.’

Her voice did not come from her mouth, but sounded, fluid and soft, inside Karsa’s head. ‘Of course you must, Cynnigig. It is your nature to leave no word unsaid.’

Karsa smiled, for there was too much affection in the tone to lend the words any edge.

‘My Thelomen Toblakai friend, a most extraordinary tale, for which true explanations remain beyond us all,’ Cynnigig began, settling down cross-legged on the stony ground. ‘Dear Phyrlis was a child-no, a babe, still suckling from her mother’s breast-when a band of T’lan Imass ran them down. The usual fate ensued. The mother was slain, and Phyrlis was dealt with also in the usual fashion-spitted on a spear, the spear anchored into the earth. None could have predicted what then followed, neither Jaghut nor T’lan Imass, for it was unprecedented. That spear, wrought of native wood, took what it could of Phyrlis’s life-spirit and so was reborn. Roots reached down to grip the bedrock, branches and leaves sprang anew, and in return the wood’s own life-spirit rewarded the child. Together, then, they grew, escaping their relative fates. Phyrlis renews the tree, the tree renews Phyrlis.’

Karsa set his sword’s point down and leaned on it. ‘Yet she was the maker of the Jhag horses.’

‘A small role, Karsa Orlong. From my blood came their longevity. The Jhag horses breed infrequently, insufficient to increase, or even maintain, their numbers, were they not so long-lived.’

‘I know, for the Teblor-my own people, who dwell in the mountains of north Genabackis-maintain herds of what must be Jhag horses.’

‘If so, then I am pleased. They are being hunted to extinction here on the Jhag Odhan.’

‘Hunted? By whom?’

‘By distant kin of yours, Thelomen Toblakai. Trell.’

Karsa was silent for a moment, then he scowled. ‘Such as the one known as Mappo?’

‘Yes indeed. Mappo Runt, who travels with Icarium. Icarium, who carries arrows made from my branches. Who, each time he visits me, remembers naught of the previous encounter. Who asks, again and again, for my heartwood, so that he may fashion from it a mechanism to measure time, for my heartwood alone can outlive all other constructs.’

‘And do you oblige him?’ Karsa asked.

‘No, for it would kill me. Instead, I bargain. A strong shaft for a bow. Branches for arrows.’

‘Have you no means to defend yourself, then?’

‘Against Icarium, no-one has, Karsa Orlong.’

The Teblor warrior grunted. ‘I had an argument with Icarium, which neither of us won.’ He tapped his stone sword. ‘My weapon was of wood, but now I wield this one. The next time we meet, even Mappo Trell’s treachery shall not save Icarium.’

Both Jaghut were silent for a long moment, and Karsa realized that Phyrlis was speaking to Cynnigig, for he saw his expression twist with alarm. Ochre eyes flicked momentarily up to the Teblor, then away again.

Finally, Cynnigig loosed a long sigh and said, ‘Karsa Orlong, she now calls upon the nearest herd-the lone herd she knows has come close to this area in answer to her first summons. She had hoped for more-evidence, perhaps, of how few Jhag horses remain.’

‘How many head in this herd?’

‘I cannot say, Karsa Orlong. They usually number no more than a dozen. Those that now approach are perhaps the last left in the Jhag Odhan.’

Karsa lifted his gaze suddenly as the noise of hoofs sounded, rumbling through the ground underfoot. ‘More than a dozen, I think,’ he murmured.

Cynnigig clambered upright, wincing with the effort. Movement in the valley below. Karsa swung around. The ground was shaking, the roar of thunder on all sides now. The tree behind him shook as if struck by a sudden gale. In his mind, the Teblor heard Phyrlis cry out.

The horses came in their hundreds. Grey as iron, larger even than those Karsa’s tribe had bred. Streaming, tossing manes of black. Stallions, flinging their heads back and bucking to clear a space around them. Broad-backed mares, foals racing at their flanks. Hundreds into thousands.

The air filled with dust, lifting on the wind and corkscrewing skyward as if to challenge the Whirlwind itself.

More of the wild horses topped the hill above them, and the thunder suddenly fell away as every beast halted, forming a vast iron ring facing inward. Silence, the dust cloud rolling, tumbling away on the wind.

Karsa faced the tree once more. ‘It seems you need not worry that they near extinction, Phyrlis. I have never seen so many foals and yearlings in a herd. Nor have I ever before seen a herd of this size. There must ten, fifteen thousand head-and we cannot even see all of them.’

Phyrlis seemed incapable of replying. The tree’s branches still shook, the branches rattling in the hot air.

‘You speak true, Karsa Orlong,’ Cynnigig rasped, his gaze eerily intent on the Thelomen Toblakai. ‘The herds have come together-and some have come far indeed in answer to the summons. But not that of Phyrlis. No, not in answer to her call. But in answer to yours, Karsa Orlong. And to this, we have no answer. But now, you must choose.’ Nodding, he turned to study the horses.

‘Karsa Orlong, you spoke earlier of a wooden weapon. What kind of wood?’

‘Ironwood, the only choice remaining to me. In my homeland, we use bloodwood.’

‘And blood-oil?’

‘Yes.’

‘Rubbed into the wood. Blood-oil, staining your hands. They can smell it, Karsa Orlong-’

‘But I have none.’

‘Not on you. In you. It courses in your veins, Karsa Orlong. Bloodwood has not existed in the Jhag Odhan for tens of thousands of years. Yet these horses remember. Now, you must choose.’

‘Bloodwood and blood-oil,’ Cynnigig said. ‘This is an insufficient explanation, Phyrlis.’

‘Yes, it is. But it is all I have.’

Karsa left them to their argument and, leaving his sword thrust upright in the ground, walked down to the waiting horses. Stallions tossed their heads at his approach and the Teblor smiled-careful not to show his teeth, knowing that they saw him as predator, and themselves as his prey. Though they could easily kill me. Among such numbers I would have no chance. He saw one stallion that was clearly dominant among all others, given the wide space around it and its stamping, challenging demeanour, and walked past it, murmuring, ‘Not you, proud one. The herd needs you more than I do.’ He spied another stallion, this one just entering adulthood, and made his way towards it. Slowly, approaching at an angle so that the horse could see him.

A mane and tail of white, not black. Long-limbed, muscles rippling beneath its sleek hide. Grey eyes.

Karsa halted a single pace away. He slowly reached out his right hand, until his fingertips settled on the beast’s trembling bridge. He began applying pressure. The stallion resisted, backing up a step. He pushed the head further down, testing the flexibility of the neck. Still further, the neck bowing, until the horse’s chin almost rested in the space between its breast bones.

Then he withdrew the pressure, maintaining contact as the stallion slowly straightened its neck.

‘I name you Havok,’ he whispered.

He moved his hand down until his fingertips rested, palm upward, beneath its chin, then slowly walked backward, leading the stallion out from the herd.

The dominant stallion screamed then, and the herd exploded into motion once more. Outward, dispersing into smaller groups, thundering through the high grasses. Wheeling around the twin hills, west and south, out once more into the heartland of the Jhag Odhan.

Havok’s trembling had vanished. The beast walked at Karsa’s pace as he backed up the hillside.

As he neared the summit, Cynnigig spoke behind him. ‘Not even a Jaghut could so calm a Jhag horse, Karsa Orlong, as you have done. Thelomen Toblakai, yes, you Teblor are that indeed, yet you are also unique among your kind. Thelomen Toblakai horse warriors. I had not thought such a thing possible. Karsa Orlong, why have the Teblor not conquered all of Genabackis?’

Karsa glanced back at the Jaghut. ‘One day, Cynnigig, we shall.’

‘And are you the one who will lead them?’

‘I am.’

‘We have witnessed, then, the birth of infamy.’

Karsa moved alongside Havok, his hand running the length of its taut neck. Witness? Yes, you are witness. Even so, what I, Karsa Orlong, shall shape, you cannot imagine.

No-one can.

Cynnigig sat in the shade of the tree that contained Phyrlis, humming sofly. It was approaching dusk. The Thelomen Toblakai was gone, with his chosen horse. He had vaulted onto its back and ridden off without need for saddle or even reins. The herds had vanished, leaving the vista as empty as it had been before.

The bent-backed Jaghut removed a wrapped piece of the aras deer cooked the night before and began cutting it into small slices. ‘A gift for you, dear sister.’

‘I see,’ she replied. ‘Slain by the stone sword?’

‘Aye.’

‘A bounty, then, to feed my spirit.’

Cynnigig nodded. He paused to gesture carelessly with the knife. ‘You’ve done well, disguising the remains.’

‘The foundations survive, of course. The House’s walls. The anchor-stones in the yard’s corners-all beneath my cloak of soil.’

‘Foolish, unmindful T’lan Imass, to drive a spear into the grounds of an Azath House.’

‘What did they know of houses, Cynnigig? Creatures of caves and hide tents. Besides, it was already dying and had been for years. Fatally wounded. Oh, Icarium was on his knees by the time he finally delivered the mortal blow, raving with madness. And had not his Toblakai companion taken that opportunity to strike him unconscious… ’

‘He would have freed his father.’ Cynnigig nodded around a mouthful of meat. He rose and walked to the tree. ‘Here, sister,’ he said, offering her a slice.

‘It’s burnt.’

‘I doubt you could have managed better.’

‘True. Go on, push it down-I won’t bite.’

‘You can’t bite, my dear. I do appreciate the irony, by the way-Icarium’s father had no desire to be saved. And so the House died, weakening the fabric…’

‘Sufficiently for the warren to be torn apart. More, please-you’re eating more of it than I am.’

‘Greedy bitch. So, Karsa Orlong… surprised us.’

‘I doubt we are the first victims of misapprehension regarding that young warrior, brother.’

‘Granted. Nor, I suspect, will we be the last to suffer such shock.’

‘Did you sense the six T’lan Imass spirits, Cynnigig? Hovering there, beyond the hidden walls of the yard?’

‘Oh yes. Servants of the Crippled God, now, the poor things. They would tell him something, I think-’

‘Tell who? The Crippled God?’

‘No. Karsa Orlong. They possess knowledge, with which they seek to guide the Thelomen Toblakai-but they dared not approach. The presence of the House, I suspect, had them fearful.’

‘No, it is dead-all that survived of its lifespirit moved into the spear. Not the House, brother, but Karsa Orlong himself-that was who they feared.’

‘Ah.’ Cynnigig smiled as he slipped another sliver of meat into Phyrlis’s wooden mouth, where it slid from view, falling down into the hollow cavity within. There to rot, to gift the tree with its nutrients. ‘Then those Imass are not so foolish after all.’